at the
car did not rattle around considerably as it left the smooth roadbed and
plunged into a field that had not long since been ploughed.

"They'll telephone ahead of us, and they'll be waiting," Jack explained.
"I've got to cut through the fields here, so that we can get on another
road where they won't be looking for us. Otherwise I'm afraid we
wouldn't get very far before we ran into a trap that all our armor and
all our speed wouldn't get us out of without capture. You don't want to
lose this car on its first trip, do you, Tom?"

"Not by a good deal!" yelled Tom, who was beginning to feel the
exhilaration of the wild, bumping ride over the furrows of the field.
"It was sort of sudden, that's all, Jack; I wasn't expecting it, you
see."

"I meant to tell you we'd do that, but I forgot. I had it all doped out.
See, we're coming to another road, now. This is a pretty big field, and
it was marked accurately on that map. This whole section was surveyed
and mapped especially for this war game."

"Say, if they do many things like that, it must cost something," said
Tom.

"War's the most expensive thing in the world, Tom, and the next most
expensive, I guess, is getting ready for it, and having such a strong
army and navy that no one will want to fight you. But it pays to be
ready for war, no matter how much it costs, for the country that isn't
ready is always the one that has to fight when it least expects it. And
fighting when you're not ready is the most expensive of all. It costs
money and lives."

Then, with a sickening bump, the car took the road again, and Jack was
heading straight for Hardport.

"Those wheels worked splendidly," he said. "And the car, too. An
ordinary car would have bumped itself to pieces a mile or so back, and
this one is running just as easily as when we started. I suppose it cost
a lot, but it was certainly worth it."

"Every time we hit a new furrow I thought we were going to break down,"
confessed Tom. "I was scared at first. But I soon decided that we were
all right. But I don't believe, even if I knew how to drive a car, that
I'd have the nerve to take it through a ploughed field that way."

"Yes, you would, Tom, if you knew it was the only thing you could do.
You couldn't be any worse scared than I was when we left the road--but I
knew, you see, that there simply wasn't any other way out of it. When
you have to do a thing, you can usually manage it. I've found that out."

"Wha