y the time the troopers entered the
brilliantly lighted parking area. The temperature seemed warmer with
the lessening winds but in actuality, the mercury was dropping. The
snow clouds to the west were much nearer and the overcast was getting
darker.

But under the great overhead light tubes, the parking area was
brighter than day. A dozen huge patrol vehicles were parked on the
front "hot" line. Scores more were lined out in ranks to the back of
the parking zone. Martin and Ferguson walked down the line of military
blue cars. Number 56 was fifth on the line. Service mechs were just
re-housing fueling lines into a ground panel as the troopers walked
up. The technician corporal was the first to speak. "All set, Sarge,"
he said. "We had to change an induction jet at the last minute and I
had the port engine running up to reline the flow. Thought I'd better
top 'er off for you, though, before you pull out. She sounds like a
purring kitten."

He tossed the pair a waving salute and then moved out to his service
dolly where three other mechs were waiting.

The officers paused and looked up at the bulk of the huge patrol car.

"Beulah looks like she's been to the beauty shop and had the works,"
Martin said. He reached out and slapped the maglurium plates. "Welcome
home, sweetheart. I see you've kept a candle in the window for your
wandering son." Ferguson looked up at the lighted cab, sixteen feet
above the pavement.

Car 56--Beulah to her team--was a standard NorCon Patrol vehicle. She
was sixty feet long, twelve feet wide and twelve feet high; topped by
a four-foot-high bubble canopy over her cab. All the way across her
nose was a three-foot-wide luminescent strip. This was the variable
beam headlight that could cut a day-bright swath of light through
night, fog, rain or snow and could be varied in intensity, width and
elevation. Immediately above the headlight strip were two red-black
plastic panels which when lighted, sent out a flashing red emergency
signal that could be seen for miles. Similar emergency lights and
back-up white light strips adorned Beulah's stern. Her bow rounded
down like an old-time tank and blended into the track assembly of her
dual propulsion system. With the exception of the cabin bubble and a
two-foot stepdown on the last fifteen feet of her hull, Beulah was
free of external protrusions. Racked into a flush-decked recess on one
side of the hull was a crane arm with a two-hundred-ton lift cap