Authors: Matthew Reilly
‘
Then come on in, my boys!
‘ Sally roared. ‘
This is what it’s all about! I’ll be waiting!
’
The
Argonaut
took the final Port Arthur hairpin perfectly, and as the leaders shot off down the Derwent on Lap 6, Jason pulled his car into Pit Lane.
He hit his mark perfectly.
The clock started ticking.
00:00
00:01
The pit machine - now christened by Sally as the ‘Tarantula’ - descended on the
Argonaut
, six of its arms removing the car’s six underside magneto drives, while its other two arms respectively replenished Jason’s coolant tank and recharged his compressed-air thrusters.
00:04
00:05
Jason was tapping his foot impatiently. Every second spent in here was a second lost.
Shoom!-shoom!-shoom!
The hover cars that had previously been behind him now whizzed past the pits.
‘Come
on!
Come
on!
‘ he whispered.
00:08
00:09
A ten-second pit stop would be great.
Shoom
!
Suddenly the last-placed car shot past the pits. They were now officially last.
The Tarantula was almost done. Only the coolant hose was still connected to the
Argonaut
. Jason, keen to rejoin the race, leaned forward on his accelerator, creeping forward -
‘
Pit Bay Violation! Car 55!
‘ a shrill amplified voice boomed out from some track-side speakers. ‘
Fifteen second penalty!
’
‘What!’ Jason yelled.
And then he saw the Pit Bay Supervisor - the teachers took it in turns to be Supervisor and today it was Professor Zoroastro, Barnaby’s mentor and also the mentor of the mysterious boy in black. Right now, he was pointing at the
Argonaut
‘s front wings.
They were exactly two inches over the pit bay line. ‘Oh, no way!’ Jason shouted.
A red boom gate whizzed down in front of the
Argonaut
, preventing it from leaving the pits. A digital timer on the horizontal boom counted down from 00:15. Now every second seemed an eternity to Jason.
00:10
00:09
00:08
Jason looked over at Sally. Behind her stood Scott Syracuse - his arms firmly folded.
00:02
00:01
00:00
The boom gate lifted and the
Argonaut
shot off the mark, blasting back out onto the course.
The six brand-new magneto drives under him gave Jason a new lease of life.
The
Argonaut
flew like a bullet, gripping the tight turns of the rainforest section as if it were travelling on rails.
With its new mags, it had a grip advantage over the other cars, whose own magneto drives were now nearly six laps old.
Sally’s voice: ‘
You’re twenty seconds behind the second-last-placed car, Car 70, and gaining. Nineteen…now eighteen seconds behind…
‘
The Bug spoke.
‘I know,’ Jason replied. ‘I know.’
They were gaining roughly one second for every kilometre. But the course was only 25 kilometres long.
At this rate - provided Jason raced an almost perfect lap - they’d only catch Car 70 right at the Start-Finish Line.
Whipping past Russell Falls.
Ten seconds behind.
Out round the cliffs, onto the ocean straight - just in time to see Car 70 whip around a faraway bluff.
Six seconds.
Weaving through the S-bends of the coastal arches - and suddenly, the tailfin of Car 70 was close.
Four seconds behind.
And then Jason saw the Port Arthur hairpin up ahead, saw the building-sized rock pillar that was Tasman Island.
That was the passing point.
And he had new mags and the other guy didn’t.
Car 70 hit the hairpin.
The
Argonaut
took it wider, cutting inside 70’s line.
And the two cars rounded the curve together, flying dangerously close to the jagged rocky pillar - and the
Argonaut
emerged with its winged nose level with Car 70’s bulbous snout!
The crowds on the grandstands leapt to their feet.
The local TV commentators went bananas at the audacity of the move.
Car 70 and the
Argonaut
raced down the Derwent side-by-side, neck-and-neck until -
sh-shoom!
- they crossed the Start-Finish Line together.
RACETIME: 18:02 MINS LAP: 7
The official loudspeakers blared:
‘End of Lap 6, eliminated car is Car 70. Racer Walken.’ The crowd cheered.
Jason floored it - while Car 70 slowed, its driver punching his steering wheel before pulling off into the Exit Lane at the end of the straight.
The
Argonaut
was still in the race.
RACETIME: 01:15 HOURS LAP: 25
Almost an hour later, Jason was still in it. Coming in 6th.
The end of Lap 25 saw the final eight cars enter the pits more or less together.
Jason stopped the
Argonaut
on a dime. The Tarantula descended, did its stuff.
Entering the pits just in front of Jason had been the boy in black.
His car was a super-sleek Lockheed-Martin ProRacer-5, painted entirely in black and simply numbered 1. It was rather presumptuous to number your car ‘1’, since in the pro world, that number was allotted to the champion of the previous year. But at Race School, a racer’s number was his or her personal choice.
The Black Boy’s pit machine worked with extraordinary precision - attaching new mags, filling his car’s coolant tanks, pumping in compressed air.
And then suddenly the boy in black was gone, booming out of the pits a full three seconds ahead of Jason. It must have been a 7-second pit stop.
How did he do that!
Jason thought.
Damn, he’s good
.
The Tarantula finished and Jason jammed down on the collective, rejoining the race.
RACETIME: 01:21 HOURS LAP: 27
Three laps to go. Seven cars left on the track.
The next elimination was the result of a huge crash out on the coastline: the car coming in 2nd had lost two mags while wending his way through the S-bends of steel arches - his mags had not been attached properly during his last pit stop and had fallen off.
The result was a 500 km/h frontal crash into one of the solid-steel arches. A shocking explosion followed, but the racer and his navigator had survived by ejecting a nanosecond beforehand.
Which meant that when the field next crossed the StartFinish line, that driver was eliminated - the fourteenth and last elimination of the race.
So now everyone had pitted three times - as such all were travelling on mags of the same age.
Six cars left. Two laps.It was now a dash for the Finish Line.
Superfast and supertense. One mistake and you were out. Pressure-driving time.
Place check:
Jason was in 5th place.
The boy in black, in his sleek black Lockheed-Martin, Car No.1, was coming in first.
Jason could see Barnaby Becker - in his own maroon-coloured Lockheed-Martin up in 2nd place.
In 3rd, hammering at Barnaby’s tail, was a French youth in a Renault X-700. The French driver was throwing everything at Barnaby, but Barnaby was foiling his every attempt to get past.
In 4th place was a red-and-white Boeing Evercharge-III. This was Ariel Piper’s car, No.16: the
Pied Piper
.
Good on you, Ariel,
Jason thought.
Hang in there.
And then came Jason, followed by Isaiah Washington, in last place.
The six cars took the bend at the end of the straight and entered the rainforest for the last time. Past the falls and out to the ocean straight. Nothing in it.
Then they entered the S-bends of the coastal arches and suddenly, without warning, the
Argonaut
shuddered violently and its tail flailed out wildly behind it like a stunt car in an old movie skidding on a dirt tack and Sally McDuff’s voice was blaring in Jason’s ear.
‘
Jason! My telemetry just went berserk! Both of your rear magneto drives just lost all power!
’
Jason grappled with his steering wheel. ‘I kinda noticed that, Sally!’
Steel archways whistled past him, inches away, just as Washington’s car zoomed by, leaving the
Argonaut
in last place.
‘Damn it!’ Jason yelled. ‘We’re screwed! Goddamnit, we got so far…’
They were indeed screwed. With only four mags, Jason couldn’t maintain the high levels of speed and control necessary to keep up with the others.
The
Argonaut
fell back. But Jason kept on driving. He was determined to finish the race - and get the 5 points for coming 6th - even if it meant limping over the line a long way behind the leaders.
He burst out from the S-bends to see the wide-open bay leading to the Port Arthur hairpin.
He saw the all-black Car No.1 bank into the final turn with clinical precision, disappearing behind the huge rocky pillar, closely followed by Barnaby - still holding off the French racer in the Renault - and then Ariel Piper swooping in close behind them.
And then it happened.
Ariel’s car didn’t take the left-hand hairpin.
Instead, it just kept on going straight ahead, shooting out and away to the
right
, heading for the open ocean.
Jason’s eyes almost popped out of his head.
‘What the - ?’ he said.
Washington’s car took the final turn - pleased now to be moving up into 4th - and headed for home.
But Jason just kept watching Ariel’s hover car. It was now shuddering violently and listing away to the right - the absolutely wrong direction - shooming off into the distance in a superwide right-hand arc.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Jason said. ‘If she missed the turn, she would have pulled up by now…’
Then came the realisation.
‘She’s lost control of the car.’
And as he said those words, Jason saw the final hairpin approaching, and suddenly he had a choice: he could finish the race - and get the 6 championship points for coming 5th - or he could help Ariel.
The Bug pointed out that the School would send out recovery vehicles to get Ariel.
‘No,’ Jason said. ‘Look at her. She’s too far gone. They won’t get to her in time. We’re the only ones who can help her.’
And with that, he made his decision.
Instead of taking the final left-hand hairpin turn himself, Jason banked the
Argonaut
right, booming off after Ariel’s out-of-control hover car.
The commentators had never seen anything like it.
That the
Pied Piper
had missed the final turn under intense pressure was nothing new. But that the
Argonaut
had shoomed off into the distance after it was!
Two orange-painted truck-sized recovery vehicles were dispatched from Race HQ - standard practice for a race mishap. They couldn’t know that this was no ordinary mishap.
The
Argonaut
zoomed low over the ocean, came alongside the tail of the red-and-white
Pied Piper
, both cars turning in a wide right-bending arc.
‘Sally! Get me Ariel’s radio frequency!’ Jason yelled into his radio-mike.
Sally did so, and as the
Argonaut
pulled alongside Ariel’s shuddering car, Jason saw Ariel grappling with her steering wheel.
‘Ariel! What’s wrong!’
‘
I’ve lost power in all my right-side magneto drives, Jason! They all switched off at exactly the same time, just as I was about to take that last hairpin!
’
‘What kind of control have you got?’ Jason asked.
‘
Nothing! It’s like everything just cut out at once! Thruster controls are gone! Electronics are unresponsive - I can’t even shut down - and my other mags are losing magnetism fast.
’
This was bad. Ariel’s left-hand magneto drives were bearing the weight of her whole car, and were thus losing their power twice as fast as they should have been. They were also driving the car in a wide circle, banking right.
What made it worse was the sight looming up ahead.
The southern coastal cliffs of the Port Arthur Peninsula rose up out of the ocean like a gigantic wall. High ocean waves crashed at their feet. Ariel’s wide right-bending arc had brought her round a full 270 degrees: she was now rocketing northward, about to crash into the coastal cliffs.
‘Ariel! You have to eject!’ Jason yelled.
‘
No!
‘ Ariel shouted back.
‘No? Are you crazy! Why not!’
‘
Jason, if I eject, the
Piper
will smash into those cliffs, and I won’t have a car anymore. And without a car, I’ll be out of Race School!
’
‘And if you die, you’ll also be out of Race School!’
‘
I am not going to eject!
’
The cliffs were approaching. Fast. Wide. Immovable.
There couldn’t be more than ten seconds to impact. Jason thought quickly.
‘All right…’ he said.
He gunned his engine and swung the
Argonaut
in underneath Ariel’s speeding red-and-white car.
The cliffs rushed toward them.
Nine seconds…eight…seven…
The body of the
Pied Piper
cast a dark shadow over Jason and the Bug, blocking out the sun. Jason saw the underbelly of the
Piper
less than a foot above his open cockpit.
Six…five…four…
The cliffs were very close now.
Then Jason pulled back on his stick, causing the
Argonaut
to gradually rise…
Clunk!
The arched hunchback of the
Argonaut
clanged against the underside of the
Pied Piper
. Its wide flat tailfin also touched the bottom of Ariel’s speeding car, providing a kind of three-point stability.
Three seconds…
And Jason gunned his thrusters, taking the weight of two hover cars with the engine of one.
The two cars rose together - slowly, painfully - one balancing on top of the other.
Rising…rising…
Two seconds…
Further…
One second…
The cliffs were right on top of them now, rushing forward. The
Pied Piper
was going to clear the clifftop, but the
Argonaut
, it seemed, was not.