Hover Car Racer (34 page)

The tiny figures of Jason and the Bug pushed their car down Fifth Avenue, in front of the seething cheering roaring crowds in the multi-tiered grandstands.

‘
HEAVE! HEAVE!
‘ came the chant.

Jason lowered his head, pushed.

Step, heave.

Step, heave.

But then, the Bug slipped…and fell.

Jason stopped, picked him up, put the Bug back where he had been standing.

‘Keep pushing…!’ he gasped. ‘We…have to…make it!’

And then the race-clock hit 3:00.

Every second now would cost them 2 points…and they still had 80 metres to go.

‘
HEAVE…!
’

20 seconds gone.

‘
HEAVE…!
’

40 seconds gone.

‘
HEAVE…!
’

A minute.

And then, 70 seconds after the 3-hour time-limit for the race had expired, to a million camera flashes exploding all around them, Jason Chaser and his brother, the Bug, pushed the
Argonaut
over the Finish Line and collapsed together in a heap.

Had he not wiped out on 42nd St, Jason would have won the Manhattan Gate Race by 60 points - his dash to the Cloisters Gate would have been the difference.

As it turned out, however, with his 70-second-late finish - incurring a whopping 140-point penalty - Jason ended up coming 3rd, behind the two US Air Force gate race specialists, Carver and Lewicki.

Fabian had come 4th - aided by his early tailing of the
Argonaut
- and Romba was very satisfied to finish 5th.
But other results had gone Jason’s way. The lesserplaced racers coming into the Gate Race - Hassan, Rein, Chow and Reitze - had either crashed (Chow), come in late (Hassan and Rein) or simply not fared well (Reitze), all of them coming in the bottom four.
As such, after the Gate Race the Masters Scoreboard looked like this:

LIBERTY MANHATTAN THE THE TOTAL

DRIVER CAR SUPERSPRINT GATE RACE PURSUIT QUEST POINTS

1. ROMBA, A (1) 10 6 16

Lockheed-Martin Racing

2. FABIAN (17) 9 7 16

Team Renault

3. TROUVEAU, E (40) 8 3 11

Team Renault

4. CARVER, A (24) 7 10 17

USAF Racing

5. LEWICKI, D (23) 6 9 15

USAF Racing

6. SKAIFE, M (102) 5 4 9

GM Factory Team

7. HASSAN, R (2) 4 0 4

Lockheed-Martin Racing

8. REIN, D (45) 3 1 4

Boeing-Ford Team

9. CHOW, A (38) 2 DNF 2

China State Racing

10. REITZE, R (51) 1 2 3

Porsche Racing

11. RIVIERA, P (12) 0 5 5

Lombardi Racing Team

12. CHASER, J (55) 0 8 8

Lombardi Racing Team

13. REITZE, H (50) DNF X

Porsche Racing

14. MARTINEZ, C (44) DNF X

Boeing-Ford Team

15. PETERS, B (05) DNF X

GM Factory Team

16. IDEKI, K (11) DNF X

Yamaha Racing Team

In one fell swoop, with his 8 points for coming 3rd, Jason had leap-frogged Hassan, Rein, Chow and Reitze, not to mention his Lombardi team-mate, Pablo Riviera.

He was now 7th on the overall points ladder.

Which meant, incredibly, after two races, he was in the final eight racers.

Jason Chaser was still in the Masters
.

And only two races away from glory…

NEW YORK CITY, USA (SATURDAY)

RACE 3: THE PURSUIT

LAP 120 OF 120

The
Argonaut
screamed down the Hudson River at top speed, with Etienne Trouveau’s
Vizir
right alongside it, banging against it, ramming it - on the very last lap of Race 3 - and with only one turn to go, the fearsome Liberty’s Elbow, Jason and Trouveau were out in front of the other racers, battling it out for the win.

The world blurred around Jason. The buildings of New York City. The bridges. The vast hoverstands flanking the river.

This race had been bitter. Bitter and tough.

But now it had come to this - one turn, two racers. The
Argonaut
dived into the Elbow. So did the
Vizir
. Jason battled the G-forces, gritted his teeth.

6-Gs…

The
Vizir
was still beside him.

7-Gs…

The
Argonaut
began to shake.

Jason gripped his steering wheel with all his might. 8-Gs and Jason’s vision started to darken, the initial stages of blacking out.

Gotta stay conscious!
he told himself.
Gotta stay conscious!
But the
Vizir
was still beside him. Worse, it was creeping
past
him, round the outside on the terrible turn!

How was Trouveau doing it!
Jason’s mind screamed.

8.5-Gs…

Jason started to feel nauseous. He’d never survived this many G-forces before - but all he could think of was the
Vizir
edging away from him, slipping out of his grasp,
beating him
in this race that he had to win to stay in the Masters.

Had to win.

Win.

Then the end of the giant hairpin came into view and - Jason blacked out.

The
Argonaut
was instantly flung clear of the Elbow.

Jason flopped back in his seat like a rag doll. Dimly, he heard the Bug scream in terror as their car rocketed out of control over the demag lights flanking the turn, screaming like a wounded fighter jet, before it flipped and bounced horribly on the surface of the harbour - pieces of it being stripped away in the process. Then the
Argonaut
slammed at tremendous speed into the carcass of another car that had crashed in the same manner earlier in the race and which was blocking the nearest Dead Zone.

There was no chance to eject. No chance of survival. The
Argonaut
hit the wreck and exploded.

Jason awoke with a shout - dripping with sweat and breathless to the point of suffocation.

He caught his breath, and recognised his surroundings: he was in his cousin’s bedroom in New Jersey. The Bug lay in the single bed beside his, snoring happily.

The digital clock next to Jason ticked over to 4:44 a.m. It wasn’t yet Saturday.

Race 3 had not been run.

It had just been a bad dream. A really bad dream. But the emotions of it lingered: Jason’s overwhelming desire to win, his pain at watching Trouveau pull away, the nausea of the G-forces, the descent into black-out, and worst of all, Jason’s fear of that turn, Liberty’s Elbow.

He just didn’t like Liberty’s Elbow - it was perhaps the toughest turn in racing and today, like it or not, Jason was going to be taking it once every minute for two hours.

NEW YORK CITY, USA (SATURDAY)

RACE 3: THE PURSUIT

Race 3 of the New York Masters is a variety of race known as a ‘Collective Pursuit Race’.

Just like the pursuit races Jason had run in the School tournament, it involved racers blasting around a relatively short circular track - in Race 3, it was a lap of Manhattan Island, starting and ending at the Brooklyn Bridge. Each lap took approximately one minute: redefining the term ‘quicker than a New York Minute’.

But this track featured obstacles:

Firstly,
ion waterfalls
that rained down from all of the bridges of New York City. They looked like upside-down fireworks displays: the luminescent gold particles of the ionised waterfalls wreaked havoc on magnetic and electrical systems. If you missed the one-car-wide gaps in the (moving) waterfalls, and accidentally drove your car
through
the falling curtain of golden ions, your car emerged on the other side as merely the shell of a hover car - no power, magnetic or electrical. A horrible crash usually ensued.

Secondly,
the Meat Grinders
: there are two forks in the Pursuit course, at Roosevelt Island and at Ward’s/Randall’s Island (they are in fact one island, but were once two, hence the double name). At both forks, racers can take a longer, less dangerous route to the righthand side.

The
left
-hand fork, however, is much shorter - but in both cases it contains an enormous iron wall, forty metres thick, blocking the way completely. In the centre of each iron wall is a narrow cylindrical tunnel. The thing is, the walls of this tunnel - the
entire
tunnel - open and close in an iris-like fashion. If a racer chooses to take the short route, and gets caught in the closing tunnel, that racer can be crushed, hence the name ‘meat grinder’. More often, desperate racers opt to take the short route, miss the opening of the tunnel, and lose even more time waiting for it to re-open.