as never designed for driving on anything but a
modern superhighway. Car 56 slammed through the snow and down to the
bottom of the draw. A quarter of a mile ahead of the fugitives, the
first of the four roadblock units came plowing over the rise.

The car speed dropped quickly to under a hundred and the cocoons were
again retracted. Ben slumped forward in his seat and caught himself.
He eased back with a gasp of pain, his head held rigidly straight.
Almost the instant he started to straighten up, Kelly flung herself
through the cab door. She clasped his forehead and held his head
against the back of the control seat.

Suddenly, the fugitive car spun sideways, bogged in the wet snow and
muddy ground beneath and stopped. Clay bore down on it and was about
two hundred yards away when the canopy of the other vehicle popped
open and a sheet of automatic weapons fire raked the patrol car. Only
the low angle of the sedan and the nearness of the bulky patrol car
saved the troopers. Explosive bullets smashed into the patrol car
canopy and sent shards of plastiglass showering down on the trio.

An instant later, the bow cannon on the first of the cut-off patrol
units opened fire. An ugly, yellow-red blossom of smoke and fire
erupted from the front of the Travelaire and it burst into flames. A
second later, the figure of a man staggered out of the burning car,
clothes and hair aflame. He took four plunging steps and then fell
face down in the snow. The car burning and crackled and a thick
funereal pyre of oily, black smoke billowed into the gray sky. It was
snowing heavily now, and before the troopers could dismount and plow
to the fallen man, a thin layer of snow covered his burned body.

* * * * *

An hour later, Car 56 was again on NAT 26-West, this time heading for
Wichita barracks and needed repairs. In the dispensary, Ben Martin was
stretched out on a hospital bunk with a traction brace around his neck
and a copper-haired medical-surgical patrolwoman fussing over him.

In the cab, Clay peered through the now almost-blinding blizzard that
whirled and skirled thick snow across the thruway. Traffic densities
were virtually zero despite the efforts of the dragonlike snow-burners
trying to keep the roadways clear. The young trooper shivered despite
the heavy jacket over his coveralls. Wind whistled through the shell
holes in Beulah's canopy and snow sifted and drifted against the back
bulkhead