'Ah...ye - yes,' Henry Chaser said.

Jason stood up. 'Mr Syracuse? What are you doing here?'

Scott Syracuse remained in the doorway. 'I came to ask you a question, young Master Chaser. Oh, and your brother, too.'

'Yeah...'

'I was rather taken with the way you drove today, Master Chaser. With your feet and with your heart. I believe that with the proper training, your skills could be sculpted into something very special. I also ran your little brother's race-plan through a professional course-plotting program on a computer. His race-plan was 97% efficient. Almost the optimal plan for that course. But you guys didn't receive the gate layout until two minutes before race-time. Your little brother formulated that race-plan in the s.p.a.ce of two minutes in his head. That's impressive.

'In short, I think you two make quite a team. n.o.body else caught my eye today, but you two did. And now that I work at the Race School in Tasmania...'

Jason felt his heart beating faster. 'Yes...'

'Master Chaser,' Syracuse said. 'Would you and your brother like to come and study at the International Race School under my supervision?'

Jason's eyes went wide.

He spun to face his mother. Her eyes were tearing up.

He looked at his dad. His mouth had fallen open.

He turned to the Bug. The Bug's face was a mask. He slowly kicked back his chair and came over to Jason, stood on his tiptoes and whispered something in Jason's ear.

Jason smiled.

'What did he say?' Syracuse asked.

Jason said, 'He says your race computer must be broken. His race-plan was perfect. Then he said, "When do we leave?"'

PART II: RACE SCHOOL.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE INTERNATIONAL RACE SCHOOL.

HOBART, TASMANIA.

Dangling off the bottom of Australia is a large island shaped like an upside-down triangle Once known by the far more intimidating name of Van Dieman's Land, it is now simply called Tasmania.

It is a rugged land, tough and forbidding. It features jagged coastal cliffs, ancient rainforests and a winding network of long open highways. Dotted around its many peninsulas are the grim sandstone remains of British prisons built in the 19th century - Port Arthur, Sarah Island. Names you didn't want to hear if you were a 19th century criminal.

Once Tasmania was the end of the world. Now, it was just a pleasant two-hour hover-liner cruise from Sydney.

Jason Chaser stood on the deck of the liner as it sailed up the Derwent River, and beheld modern Hobart.

With its elegant mix of the very old and the very new, Hobart had become one of the world's hippest cities. Two-hundred-year-old sandstone warehouses blended beautifully with modern silver-and-gla.s.s skysc.r.a.pers and swooping t.i.tanium bridges over the river.

Through a quirk of fate, the entire island was owned by the International Race School, making it the single largest privately owned plot of land in the world.

Back in the early 2000s, the Australian state of Tasmania had been in decline, its population both aging and dwindling. When the population fell below 50,000 people, the Australian Government took the extraordinary step of privatising the entire island. Tasmania was bought by an oil-and-gas company that never saw hover technology coming. In the liquidator's sale of the dead company's a.s.sets, the island-state was bought by Harold T. Youngman, the leader of a strange group of people who planned to create a school for the nascent sport of hover car racing.

The rest, as they say, was history.

As desert boys, Jason and the Bug had never seen anything like the east coast of Australia.

Their cruise liner had swept past Sydney on its way to Tasmania. Just off Sydney, stretching down the Pacific coastline, they'd seen the famous Eight Dams - a simply amazing feat of ma.s.s-scale construction. A few years ago, engineers had literally held back the Pacific Ocean while they built eight ma.s.sive hydro-electric dams a few miles out from the coast.

The eight waterfalls that now streamed majestically down the faces of the dams provided an endless supply of clean power with an added bonus: the waterfalls were the second most-visited tourist attraction in the world behind the Pyramids, and a spectacular backdrop to the annual hover car race held in Sydney - the Sydney Cla.s.sic - one of the four Gland Slam races.

The cruise liner pulled into the dock at Hobart.

Jason and the Bug grabbed their bags and made for the gangway bridge - where they were cut off by two surly youths.

'Well, if it isn't little Jason Chaser,' Barnaby Becker sneered, blocking their way. Becker was 18 and a full head

and shoulders taller than Jason. He was also now the Indo-Pacific Regional Champion, a t.i.tle that garnered some respect in racing circles.

Barnaby nodded to his navigator: Guido Moralez, also 18, with shifty eyes and a slick sleazy manner.

'I dunno, Guido,' Barnaby said. 'Tell me how a little runt who comes stone motherless last in the regionals gets

to come to Race School.'

'Couldn't tell ya, Barn,' Guido said smoothly, eyeing Jason and the Bug sideways. 'But I hope they're up for it.

You never know what sort of accidents can happen in a place like this.'

This exchange pretty much summed up their trip. After their unexpected invitation to come to Race School, Jason and the Bug hadn't seen Scott Syracuse. He was taking a private hover plane to Tasmania, and had said he would meet the boys there. Unfortunately, this meant Jason and the Bug - already outsiders on account of their ages - had had to endure the taunts of Becker and Guido all the way to Tasmania.

Barnaby, knowing that Jason and the Bug lived with adoptive parents back at Hall's Creek, took particular joy in including the word 'motherless' in most of his snide remarks.

The Bug whispered something in Jason's ear.

'What! What did you say?' Barnaby demanded. 'What's with all this whispering, you little moron? Why don't you talk like a man?'

The Bug just stared up at him blankly.

'I asked you a question, punk - ' Barnaby made to grab the Bug by his shirt, but Jason slapped the bigger boy's hand away.

Barnaby froze.

Jason didn't back down, returned his gaze evenly.

'Ooh, I smell tension,' Guido Moralez rubbed his hands together.

'Don't you touch him,' Jason said. 'He talks. He just doesn't talk to people like you.'

Barnaby lifted his hand away, smiled. 'So what did he say, then?'

Jason said, 'He said: we ain't motherless.'

CHAPTER TWO.

The Race School was situated directly opposite the dock, on the other side of the wide Derwent River, inside a shimmering gla.s.s-and-steel building that looked like a giant sail.

Jason and the other new racers were led into the School's cavernous entry foyer. Famous hover cars hung from the ceiling: Wilmington's original prototype, the H-1, took pride of place in the centre, where it was flanked by Ferragamo's Masters-winning Boeing HyperDrive and an arched gate from the London Underground Run.

'This way,' their guide said, leading them into a high-tech theatre that looked like Mission Control at NASA. An enormous display screen up front faced fifteen rows of amphitheatre-like seating. Each seat was fitted with a computer screen. A gallery at the very back of the theatre was provided for the media and at the moment it was full to bursting.

'Welcome to the Race Briefing Room,' the guide said. 'My name is Stanislaus Calder and I am the Race Director here at the School. Trust me, all of you drivers will come to know this room very well. Please take a seat. Professor LeClerq and the teaching staff will be joining us shortly.'

Jason looked around the room, checking out the other racers. There were about twenty-five drivers in total, most of them older boys of seventeen or eighteen. Nearly all of them sat with two companions: their navigators and Mech Chiefs. Jason and the Bug didn't have a Mech Chief, having always done their own pit work. Syracuse had said they would be matched up with someone upon the start of cla.s.ses.

Jason saw Barnaby Becker and Guido sitting up the back with some other older boys. A few girls were scattered about the room, most of them wearing the black coveralls of Mech Chiefs, but the a.s.sembled crowd was largely male.

One girl, however, caught Jason's eye. She was very pretty, with a nymph-like face, bright green eyes and strawberry-blonde hair. She looked about seventeen, and sat all on her own, way over at the right-hand end of the front row.

It took Jason a moment to realise that not a few of the reporters in the media gallery were gazing directly at her, pointing, trying to get photos of her. Jason didn't know why.

'Close your mouth and stop drooling,' a husky female voice said from somewhere nearby.

Jason turned to find the girl seated immediately behind him also staring at the pretty girl in the front row. 'Ariel Piper is way outta your league, little man.'

'I wasn't looking at her like that,' Jason protested.

'Sure you weren't.' The girl behind him was about sixteen, with a round face, bright flame-orange hair (with matching flame-orange horn-rimmed gla.s.ses) and a wide rosy-cheeked grin. 'I'm Sally McDuff, Mech Chief and allround great gal from Glasgow, Scotland.'

'Jason Chaser, and this here's the Bug, he's my little brother and my navigator.'

Sally McDuff a.s.sessed the Bug for a long moment. 'The Bug, huh? Well aren't you just the cutest thing. How old are you, little one?'

The Bug went pink with embarra.s.sment.

'He's twelve,' Jason said.

'Twelve...' Sally McDuff mused. 'Must be some kind of mathematical wiz if someone invited him here. Nice to meet you, Jason Chaser and his navigator, the Bug. I imagine we'll be running into each other again over the course of this year. Hope you get a good mentor.'

'What do you mean?'

Sally McDuff said, 'Gosh, you are a newbie. Getting through Race School ain't just about being a great racer. Having a top teacher makes a huge difference. Apparently the best is Zoroastro. The Maestro. His students have taken out the School Championship three out of the last four years. Word is, Charlie Riefenstal is light on homework and heavy on track-time, so a lot of drivers want to get him.'

'What do you know about Scott Syracuse?' Jason asked.

'Syracuse. Yeah. Teaching full-time this year. I heard he did some fill-in teaching last year when the full-timers went on vacation.'

'And...'

'Apparently, his students were relieved when their regular mentors got back. They say Syracuse works you long and hard. Lotta theory. Lotta pit practice - over and over until you get it right. And a lot of homework.'