opy. For a mile on either
side of the police lane, streams of cars sped westward. Ben eyed the
sky, the traffic and then peered at the outer hull thermometer. It
read thirty-two degrees. He made a mental bet with himself that the
weather bureau was off on its snow estimates by six hours. His Vermont
upbringing told him it would be flurrying within the hour.

He increased speed to a steady one hundred and the car sped silently
and easily along the police lane. Across the cab, Clay peered
pensively at the steady stream of cars and cargo carriers racing by in
the green and blue lanes--all of them moving faster than the patrol
car.

The young officer turned in his seat and looked at his partner.

"You know, Ben," he said gravely, "I sometimes wonder if those
old-time cowboys got as tired looking at the south end of northbound
cows as I get looking at the vanishing tail pipes of cars."

The radio came to life.

"Philly Control to Car 56."

Clay touched his transmit plate. "This is Five Six. Go ahead."

"You've got a bad one at Marker 82," Control said. "A sideswipe in the
white."

"Couldn't be too bad in the white," Ben broke in, thinking of the
one-hundred mile-an-hour limit in the slow lane.

"That's not the problem," Control came back. "One of the sideswiped
vehicles was flipped around and bounded into the green, and that's
where the real mess is. Make it code three."

"Five Six acknowledge," Ben said. "On the way."

He slammed forward on the throttles. The bull horn blared and a second
later, with MSO Kelly Lightfoot snugged in her dispensary cocoon and
both troopers in body cushions, Car 56 lifted a foot from the roadway,
and leaped forward on a turbulent pad of air. It accelerated from one
hundred to two hundred fifty miles an hour.

The great red emergency lights on the bow and stern began to blink and
from the special transmitter in the hull a radio siren wail raced
ahead of the car to be picked up by the emergency receptor antennas
required on all vehicles.

The working part of the patrol had begun.

* * * * *

Conversation died in the speeding car, partly because of the
concentration required by the troopers, secondly because all
transmissions whether intercom or radio, on a code two or three run,
were taped and monitored by Control. In the center of the instrument
panel, an oversized radiodometer was clicking off the mileage marks as
the car passed each milestone.