e left
and right. Car 56 was now directly behind the speeding passenger
vehicle. Ben fingered the cut-in switch that put his voice signal onto
the standard vehicular emergency frequency--the band that carried the
automatic siren-warning to all vehicles.

* * * * *

The patrol car was still hitting above the two-hundred-mile-an-hour
mark and was five hundred feet behind the speeder. The headlamp bathed
the other car in a white glare, punctuated with angry red flashes from
the emergency lights.

"You are directed to halt or be fired upon," Ben's voice roared out
over the emergency frequency. Almost without warning, the speeding car
began braking down with such deceleration that the gargantuan patrol
car with its greater mass came close to smashing over it and crushing
the small passenger vehicle like an insect. Ben cut all forward power,
punched up full retrojet and at the instant he felt Beulah's tracks
touch the pavement as the air cushion blew, he slammed on the brakes.
Only the safety cocoon kept Martin from being hurled against the
instrument panel and in their bunks, Kelly Lightfoot and Clay Ferguson
felt their insides dragging down into their legs.

The safety cocoons snapped open and Clay jumped into his boots and
leaped for the cab. "Speeder," Ben snapped as he jumped down the steps
to the side hatch. Ferguson snatched up his helmet from the rack
beside his seat and leaped down to join his partner. Ben ran up to the
stopped car through a thick haze of smoke from the retrojets of the
patrol car and the friction-burning braking of both vehicles.
Ferguson circled to the other side of the car. As they flashed their
handlights into the car, they saw the driver of the car kneeling on
the floor beside the reclined passenger seat. A woman lay stretched
out on the seat, twisting in pain. The man raised an agonized face to
the officers. "My wife's going to have her baby right here!"

"Kelly," Ben yelled into his helmet transmitter. "Maternity!"

The dispensary ramp was halfway down before Ben had finished calling.
Kelly jumped to the ground and sprinted around the corner of the
patrol car, medical bag in hand.

She shoved Clay out of the way and opened the door on the passenger
side. On the seat, the woman moaned and then muffled a scream. The
patrol doctor laid her palm on the distended belly. "How fast are your
pains coming?" she asked. Clay and Ben had moved away from the car a
fe