slapping together a sandwich. Munching on it, he headed into the
engine room to make the midnight check. Car 56 had now been on patrol
eight hours. Only two hundred thirty-two hours and two thousand miles
to go.

Kelly looked around at the departing back of the younger trooper.
"I'll bet this is the only car in NorCon that has to stock twenty days
of groceries for a ten-day patrol," she said.

Ben chuckled. "He's still a growing boy."

"Well, if he is, it's all between the ears," the girl replied. "You'd
think that after a year I would have realized that nothing could
penetrate that thick Canuck's skull. He gets me so mad sometimes that
I want to forget I'm a lady." She paused thoughtfully. "Come to think
of it. No one ever accused me of being a lady in the first place."

"Sounds like love," Ben smiled.

Hunched over on the jump seat with her elbows on her knees and her
chin cupped in both hands, Kelly gave the senior officer a quizzical
sideways look.

Ben was watching his monitors and missed the glance. Kelly sighed and
stared out into the light streaked night of the thruway. The heavy
surge of football traffic had distributed itself into the general flow
on the road and while all lanes were busy, there were no indications
of any overcrowding or jam-ups. Much of the pattern was shifting from
passenger to cargo vehicle as it neared midnight. The football crowds
were filtering off at each exchange and exit and the California fans
had worked into the blue and yellow--mostly the yellow--for the long
trip home. The fewer passenger cars on the thruway and the increase in
cargo carriers gave the troopers a breathing spell. The men in the
control buckets of the three hundred and four hundred-ton cargo
vehicles were the real pro's of the thruways; careful, courteous and
fast. The NorCon patrol cars could settle down to watch out for the
occasional nuts and drunks that might bring disaster.

Once again, Martin had the patrol car on auto drive in the center of
the police lane and he steeled back in his seat. Beside him, Kelly
stared moodily into the night.

"How come you've never married, Ben?" she asked. The senior trooper
gave her a startled look. "Why, I guess for the same reason you're
still a maiden," he answered. "This just doesn't seem to be the right
kind of a job for a married man."

Kelly shook her head. "No, it's not the same thing with me," she said.
"At least, not entirely the same thing. If I got married