vehicle."

Now Car 56 was about three miles astern and still the gap closed. The
fugitive car flashed past the site of the abandoned roadblock and
fifteen seconds later all four patrol cars racing ahead of the
Travelaire broke into almost simultaneous reports of "Here he comes."

A second later, Clay Ferguson yelled out, "There he goes. He's
boondocking, he's boondocking."

"He has you spotted," Martin broke in. "He's heading for the median.
Cut, cut, cut. Get out in there ahead of him."

The driver of the fugitive car had seen the bulk of the four big
patrol cruisers outlined against the slight rise in the thruway almost
at the instant he flashed onto their screens ten miles behind them. He
broke speed, rocked wildly from side to side, fighting for control and
then cut diagonally to the left, heading for the outer edge of the
thruway and the unpaved, half-mile-wide strip of landscaped earth that
separated the east and westbound segments of NAT-26.

The white and green car was still riding on its airpad when it hit the
low, rounded curbing at the edge of the thruway. It hurtled into the
air and sailed for a hundred feet across the gently-sloping
snow-covered grass, came smashing down in a thick hedgerow of
bushes--and kept going.

Car 56 slowed and headed for the curbing. "Watch it, kids," Ben
snapped over the intercom, "we may be buying a plot in a second."

Still traveling more than five hundred miles an hour, the huge patrol
car hit the curbing and bounced into the air like a rocket boosted
elephant. It tilted and smashed its nose in a slanting blow into the
snow-covered ground. The sound of smashing and breaking equipment
mingled with the roar of the thundering jets, tracks and air drives as
the car fought its way back to level travel. It surged forward and
smashed through the hedgerow and plunged down the sloping snowbank
after the fleeing car.

"Clay," Ben called in a strained voice, "take 'er."

Ferguson's fingers were already in position. "You all right, Ben?" he
asked anxiously.

"Think I dislocated a neck vertebra," Ben replied. "I can't move my
head. Go get 'em, kid."

"Try not to move your head at all, Ben," Kelly called from her cocoon
in the dispensary. "I'll be there the minute we slow down."

A half mile ahead, the fugitive car plowed along the bottom of the
gentle draw in a cloud of snow, trying to fight its way up the
opposite slope and onto the eastbound thruway.

But the Travelaire w