nd back onto
another thruway.

During the coming patrol they would cross ten state lines as if they
didn't exist. And as far as thruway traffic control and authority was
concerned, state and national boundaries actually didn't exist. With
the growth of the old interstate highway system and the Alcan Highway
it became increasingly evident that variation in motor vehicle laws
from state to state and country to country were creating impossible
situations for any uniform safety control.

* * * * *

With the establishment of the Continental Thruway System two decades
later, came the birth of the supra-cop--The North American Thruway
Patrol, known as NorCon. Within the five-mile bands of the
thruways--all federally-owned land by each of the three nations--the
blue-coveralled "Continental Commandos" of NorCon were the sole law
enforcement agency and authority. Violators of thruway law were cited
into NorCon district traffic courts located in the nearest city to
each access port along every thruway.

There was no challenge to the authority of NorCon. Public demand for
faster and more powerful vehicles had forced the automotive industry
to put more and more power under the touch of the ever-growing
millions of drivers crowding the continent's roads. Piston drive gave
way to turbojet; turbojet was boosted by a modification of ram jet and
air-cushion drive was added. In the last two years, the first of the
nuclear reaction mass engines had hit the roads. Even as the hot
Ferraris and Jags of the mid-'60s would have been suicide vehicles on
the T-model roads of the '20s so would today's vehicles be on the
interstates of the '60s. But building roads capable of handling three
hundred to four hundred miles an hour speeds was beyond the financial
and engineering capabilities of individual states and nations. Thus
grew the continental thruways with their four speed lanes in each
direction, each a half-mile wide separated east and west and north and
south by a half-mile-wide landscaped divider. Under the Three Nation
Compact, the thruways now wove a net across the entire North American
continent.

On the big wall map, NAT 26-west showed as four colored lines; blue
and yellow as the two high and ultra-high speed lanes; green and white
for the intermediate and slow lanes. Between the blue and yellow and
the white and green was a red band. This was the police emergency
lane, never used by other than offi