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Read Ebook: The Drivers by Ludwig Edward W Hunter Mel Illustrator
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Ebook has 103 lines and 5482 words, and 3 pages
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.
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.
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.
Someone passing even at this speed! The crazy fool! And cutting in, the flame of his exhaust clouding Tom's windshield!
Tom's foot jerked off the accelerator. His Hornet slowed. The car ahead disappeared into the white distance like a black arrow.
Whew!
His legs were suddenly like ice water. He pulled over to the emergency strip. Down went the speedometer--five hundred, four, three, two, one, zero....
He saw the image of the approaching Hornet in his rear-vision radarscope. It was traveling fast and heading straight toward him. Heading onto the emergency strip.
A side-swiper!
Tom's heart churned. There would be no physical contact between the two Hornets--but the torrent of air from the inch-close passage would be enough to hurl his car into the Jetway bank like a storm-blown leaf.
There was no time to build enough acceleration for escape. His only chance was to frighten the attacker away. He swung his Hornet right, slammed both his acceleration and braking jet controls to full force. The car shook under the sudden release of energy. White-hot flame roared from its two dozen jets. Tom's Hornet was enclosed by a sphere of flame.
But dwarfing the roar was the thunder of the attacking Hornet. A black meteor in Tom's radarscope, it zoomed upon him. Tom closed his eyes, braced himself for the impact.
There was no impact. There was only an explosion of sound and a moderate buffeting of his car. It was as if many feet, not inches, had separated the two Hornets.
Tom opened his eyes and flicked off his jet controls.
Ahead, through the plexite canopy, he beheld the attacker.
It was far away now, like an insane, fiery black bird. Both its acceleration and braking jets flamed. It careened to the far side of the Jetway and zig-zagged up the curved embankment. Its body trembled as its momentum fought the Jetway's electromagnetic guide-field.
As if in an incredible carnival loop-the-loop, the Hornet topped the lip of the wall. It left the concrete, did a backward somersault, and gyrated through space like a flaming pinwheel.
It descended with an earth-shaking crash in the center of the gleaming Jetway.
He saw the sleek white shape of a Referee's 'copter-jet floating to the pavement beside him. Soon he was being pulled out of his Hornet. Someone was pumping his hand and thumping his back.
"Magnificent," a voice was saying. "Simply magnificent!"
Night. Gay laughter and tinkling glasses. Above all, Dad's voice, strong and proud:
"... and on his very first day, too. He saw the car in his rear radarscope, guessed what the devil was up to. Did he try to escape? No, he stayed right there. When the car closed in for the kill, he spun around and turned on all his jets full-blast. The killer never had a chance to get close enough to do his side-swiping. The blast roasted him like a peanut."
Dad put his arm around Tom's shoulder. All eyes seemed upon Tom's bright new crimson fatality ribbon embossed not only with a silver death's-head, but also with a sea-blue Circle of Honor.
Tom thought:
Dad went on:
Applause from Uncle Mack and Aunt Edith and Bill Ackerman and Lou Dorrance--and more important, from young Larry Miles and big Norm Powers and blonde Geraldine Oliver and cute little Sally Peters.
Fame was as unpredictable as the trembling of a leaf, Tom thought, as delicate as a pillar of glass. Yet the yoke of fame rested pleasantly on his shoulders. He had no inclination to dislodge it. And while a fear was still in him, it was now a fragile thing, an egg shell to be easily crushed.
Later Mom came to him. There was a proudness in her features, and yet a sadness and a fear, too. Her eyes held the thoughtful hesitancy of one for whom time and event have moved too swiftly for comprehension.
"Tomorrow's Saturday," she murmured. "There's no school, and no one'll expect you to Drive after what happened today. You'll be staying home for your birthday, won't you, Tom?"
Tom Rogers shook his head. "No," he said wistfully. "Sally Peters is giving a little party over in New Boston. It's the first time anyone like Sally ever asked me anywhere."
"I see," said Mom, as if she really didn't see at all. "You'll take the monorail?"
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