reports also carried the weather forecasts for a five-hundred-mile
radius from the broadcasting control point. Decreasing temperatures
with light to moderate snow was in the works for Car 56 for the first
couple of hundred miles west of St. Louis, turning to almost blizzard
conditions in central Kansas. Extra units had already been put into
service on all thruways through the midwest and snow-burners were
waging a losing battle from Wichita west to the Rockies around
Alamosa, Colorado.

Outside the temperature was below freezing; inside the patrol car it
was a comfortable sixty-eight degrees. Kelly had cleared the galley
and taken her place on the jump seat between the two troopers. With
all three of them in the cab, Ben cut from the intercom to commercial
broadcast to catch the early morning newscasts and some pleasant
music. The patrol vehicle glided along at a leisurely sixty miles an
hour. An hour out of St. Louis, a big liquid cargo carrier was stopped
on the inner edge of the green lane against the divider to the police
lane. The trucker had dropped both warning barriers and lights a half
mile back. Ben brought Beulah to a halt across the divider from the
stopped carrier. "Dropped a track pin," the driver called out to the
officers.

Ben backed Beulah across the divider behind the stalled carrier to
give them protection while they tried to assist the stalled vehicle.

Donning work helmets to maintain contact with the patrol car, and its
remote radio system, the two troopers dismounted and went to see what
needed fixing. Kelly drifted back to the dispensary and stretched out
on one of the hospital bunks and picked up a new novel.

Beulah's well-equipped machine shop stock room produced a matching
pin and it was merely a matter of lifting the stalled carrier and
driving it into place in the track assembly. Ben brought the patrol
car alongside the carrier and unshipped the crane. Twenty minutes
later, Clay and the carrier driver had the new part installed and the
tanker was on his way once again.

Clay climbed into the cab and surveyed his grease-stained uniform
coveralls and filthy hands. "Your nose is smudged, too, dearie,"
Martin observed.

Clay grinned, "I'm going to shower and change clothes. Try and see if
you can drive this thing until I get back without increasing the
pedestrian fatality rate." He ducked back into the crew cubby and
stripped his coveralls.

Bored with her book, Kelly wandered back to