An attendant snapped down the plexite canopy. Ahead, a guide-master twirled a blue flag in a starting signal. Tom flicked on a switch. His trembling hands tightened about the steering lever. The Hornet lunged forward, quivering as it was seized by the Jetway's electromagnetic guide-field. He drove.... * * * * * One hundred miles an hour, two hundred, three hundred. Down the great asphalt valley he drove. Perspiration formed inside his goggles, steaming the glass. He tore them off. The glaring whiteness hurt his eyes. Swish, swish swish. Jetmobiles roared past him. The rushing wind of their passage buffeted his own car. His hands were knuckled white around the steering lever. He recalled the advice of Harry Hayden: Don't let 'er under 600 per. If you do, some old veteran'll know you're a greenhorn and try to knock you off. Lord. Six hundred. But strangely, a measure of desperate courage crept into his fear-clouded mind. If Larry Miles, a pimply-faced kid of seventeen, could do it, so could he. Certainly, he told himself. His foot squeezed down on the accelerator. Atomic engines hummed smoothly. To his right, he caught a kaleidoscopic glimpse of a white gyro-ambulance. A group of metal beasts lay huddled on the emergency strip like black ants feeding on a carcass. _Like Grandfather_, he thought. _Like those two moments out of the dark past, moments of screaming flame and black death and a child's horror._ Swish. The scene was gone, transformed into a cluster of black dots on his rear-vision radarscope. His stomach heaved. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick again. But stronger now than his horror was a growing hatred of that horror. His body tensed as if he were fighting a physical enemy. He fought his memories, tried to thrust them back into the oblivion of lost time, tried to leave them behind him just as his Hornet had left the cluster of metal beasts. He took a deep breath. He was not going to be sick after all. Five hundred now. Six hundred. He'd reached the speed without realizing it. Keep 'er steady. Stay on the right. If Larry Miles can do it, so can you. _Swooommmm._ God, where did _that_ one come from? Only ten minutes more. You'll be there. You'll make a right hand turn at the college. The automatic pilot'll take care of that. You won't have to get in the fast traffic lanes. He wiped perspiration from his forehead. Not so bad, these Drivers. Like Harry Hayden said, the killers come out on Saturdays and Sundays. Now, most of us are just anxious to get to work and school. Six hundred, seven hundred, seven-twenty-- Did he dare tackle the sonic barrier? The white asphalt was like opaque mist. The universe seemed to consist only of the broad expanse of Jetway. _Swooommmm._ Someone passing even at this speed! The crazy fool! And cutting in, the flame of his exhaust clouding Tom's windshield!