ny emergency run or chase at speeds
in excess of two hundred miles an hour.

Again he kicked off the brakes, pressed down on the foot feed and Car
56--Beulah--rolled out of the Philadelphia motor pool on the start of
its ten-day patrol.

* * * * *

The motor pool exit opened into a quarter-mile wide tunnel sloping
gently down into the bowels of the great city. Car 56 glided down the
slight incline at a steady fifty miles an hour. A mile from the mouth
of the tunnel the roadway leveled off and Ben kicked Beulah up another
twenty-five miles an hour. Ahead, the main tunnel ended in a series of
smaller portal ways, each emblazoned with a huge illuminated number
designating a continental thruway.

Ben throttled back and began edging to the left lanes. Other patrol
cars were heading down the main passageway, bound for their assigned
thruways. As Ben eased down to a slow thirty, another patrol vehicle
slid alongside. The two troopers in the cab waved. Clay flicked on the
"car-to-car" transmit.

The senior trooper in Car 104 looked over at Martin and Ferguson. "If
it isn't the gruesome twosome," he called. "Where have you two been?
We thought the front office had finally caught up with you and found
out that neither one of you could read or write and that they had
canned you."

"We can't read," Ben quipped back. "That's why we're still on the job.
The front office would never hire anyone who would embarrass you two
by being smarter than either of you. Where're you headed, Eddie?"

"Got 154-north," the other officer said.

"Hey," Clay called out, "I've got a real hot doll in Toronto and I'll
gladly sell her phone number for a proper price."

"Wouldn't want to hurt you, Clay," the other officer replied. "If I
called her up and took her out, she'd throw rocks at you the next time
you drew the run. It's all for your own good."

"Oh, go get lost in a cloverleaf," Clay retorted.

The other car broke the connection and with a wave, veered off to the
right. The thruway entrances were just ahead. Martin aimed Beulah at
the lighted orifice topped by the number 26-W. The patrol car slid
into the narrower tunnel, glided along for another mile and then
turned its bow upwards. Three minutes later, they emerged from the
tunnel into the red patrol lane of Continental Thruway 26-West. The
late afternoon sky was a covering of gray wool and a drop or two of
moisture struck the front face of the cab can