More early-morning practice.

Then Race 47: win (over Barnaby and Washington in a race that employed the Port Arthur short cut - the Bug remembered the correct way through; Xavier didn't race).

Race 48...second (to Xavier; in this race, Ariel bowed out with another technical problem, a few of which had started to occur lately).

Race 49...third (behind Krishna and Barnaby; Xavier hadn't even tried to win the race; he just cruised over the line in 10th place, needing only the one point to claim an una.s.sailable lead in the School Championship).

And so, with one race left in the Race School season, Jason had charged up the Championship Ladder: INTERNATIONAL RACE SCHOOL.

CHAMPIONSHIP LADDER.

AFTER 49 RACES.

DRIVER NO. CAR POINTS.

1. XONORA, X 1 Speed Razor 307 2. KRISHNA, V 31 Calcutta-IV 296 3. WASHINGTON, I 42 Black Bullet 278 4. BECKER, B 09 Devil's Chariot 276 5. CHASER, J 55 Argonaut 276 6. PIPER, A 16 Pied Piper 275 7. WONG, H 888 Little Tokyo 274 8. SCHUMACHER, K 25 Blue Lightning 273 Xavier was untouchable on 307 points, the Championship his.

Varishna Krishna, on 296 points, was also going to New York no matter what happened in Race 50.

But below them, it was a six-way tussle for the final two invitations to New York. Any one of the next six racers could - depending on the finishing order in Race 50 - could come in the Top 4.

Jason and Barnaby Becker were level on 276 points, equal 4th on the Ladder (and now one point ahead of Ariel, whose niggling technical problems in recent races had hurt her badly).

But they weren't truly equal - if Barnaby and Jason ended the season on equal points (for example, they both crashed in Race 50), Barnaby would beat Jason on a countback, since he had come 2nd in Race 49 when Jason had come 3rd.

In the end, for Jason, there was only one option in Race 50: he had to beat Barnaby Becker and, if he finished low in the placings, he had to hope some other results went his way. But with Barnaby's new allies also out there on the track, just finishing Race 50 was going to be a tough prospect indeed.

To cap it all off, the final race of the year was the perfect kind of race to conclude the season.

Designed to test every hover car racing skill imaginable, it was to take place on the rarely-used Course 13 - a super-difficult track that began by stretching southward, down over the Southern Ocean along a superlong straight, before it transformed into a twisting and turning series of bends that weaved between the outer icebergs of Antarctica.

In that section of the course, racers could - if they were prepared to take the risk - opt to take one of three shortcuts between the bergs, but every short cut ran between two bergs that clashed together (thanks to an underwater mechanism), giving them the name: 'the Clashing Bergs'. The standard course did not run through any clashing bergs, but it was longer. High risk, high reward.

After that, the course turned back north, returning to Tasmania, where the racers had to slow dramatically to negotiate the tight highways of the island, before reaching the Start-Finish Line in Hobart.

Each lap took about 14 minutes. And since Race 50 was a 51-lap enduro - that meant a 12-hour race.

But there was one more feature to Race 50 that made it an absolute killer: not only was it a test of endurance and skill, it was also a test of race positioning - Race 50 was a Last Man Drop-Off race.

Technically, it was cla.s.sified as a '51-3-1 Super-Enduro Last Man Drop-Off' meaning: it would be fifty-one laps, and every three laps, the last-placed racer would be eliminated, until only four racers remained to fight out a six-lap sprint to the finish, a sprint that would involve one last pit stop.

Which made Jason's battle with Barnaby even more perilous: if Jason was eliminated at any time before Barnaby, Barnaby would be going to New York.

After all that, perhaps only one thing was truly clear.

Race 50 would be run on a knife-edge: it would be a dogfight of hardcore racing, under the ever-present threat of last-man elimination.

Race 50 made no allowance for mistakes.

It would be winner take all.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Jason woke with a start, gasping, sweating. Another crash nightmare.

'What is wrong with me?' he whispered aloud. He checked the digital clock beside his bed. It was 1:30am. It was the middle of the night - the night before Race 50. Just what he needed.

He sat up, and decided that sleep would be impossible at least for a while. He went for a walk, wandered down to a small enclosed garden overlooking the river, to gaze at the fountains there.

He sat down on a bench - and suddenly heard footsteps on gravel and voices in the darkness. He ducked behind a statue, listened. He could make out two voices. One old and deep, the other younger, slimier.

Older voice: 'Good work. You've slowed her rise up the Championship Ladder.'

Younger voice: 'Only doing what I'm told.'

Older voice: 'But she can still finish in the Top 4. And this School does not want to see Ms Piper going to New York. It's been embarra.s.sing enough having her study here for the year - and then that Chaser boy gave her a whole heap of publicity in Italy - but it would be beyond the pale if she ended up representing the School in New York. I need you to make sure she doesn't.'

Younger voice: 'After the Becker incident at the tournament, we can't deplete her magneto drives with microwaves anymore. Worms and viruses in her pit machine have worked recently, but she put in a new firewall two days ago and it's a good one. That said, I think I can find a newer virus that can bring her system down.'

Older voice: 'Make it happen.'

There was a crunching of gravel and the two speakers were gone.

Jason's eyes were wide with shock.

He recognised both voices.

The older voice had belonged to Jean-Pierre LeClerq.

And the younger one: Wernold Smythe, the nasty grease monkey from the School's Parts and Equipment Department.

Jason returned to bed.

Before the race tomorrow, he'd have to have a word with Ariel.

CHAPTER NINE.

Dawn came on the day of Race 50.

It found Jason sitting on a clifftop with Dido, the two of them gazing out at the ocean sunrise. Despite his sleepless night, they'd arranged to meet and truth be told, Jason wanted to see Dido alone before the race - her presence gave him strength.

On the horizon, dark clouds framed the rising sun. 'So how are you feeling today?' Dido asked him.

'Better,' he said firmly. 'Stronger.'

His eyes were fixed forward. Game face.

'And your plan for Barnaby?'

'Solid,' he said. 'We've found a c.h.i.n.k in his technique. The Bug's been a.n.a.lysing his racing manoeuvres on video-disc. Barnaby's weak on right-hand hairpins - that's where he gets sloppy; he goes too wide, so you can cut inside him. And this track is tight, lots of hairpins.'

Dido grabbed his hand. 'Good luck, Jason.'

'Thanks.'

Jason looked at the dark clouds on the horizon. 'It's going to rain today.'

CHAPTER TEN.

Rain hammered down on the straight in front of the startgates.

Sheltered from the driving rain, nineteen hover cars sat poised in their gates, their magneto drives thrumming, pilots and navigators hunched in their c.o.c.kpits, ready. (Due to mechanical and other issues, six students were sitting out the race.) The Race School's starting gates were based on those used in old Roman chariot races: a wide arc-shaped structure fitted with thirty archways opened onto a wide straight. Each archway housed one car and at the starter's signal, steel grilles barring them would all spring open together, unleashing the racers.

Clang!

The grilles burst open and, like horses leaping out of the gates in the Melbourne Cup, the nineteen cars of the students of the International Race School blasted out of their archways, into the rain, and commenced the fiftieth and final race of the Race School season.

The field shoomed due south out over the Southern Ocean, noses into the driving rain, heading for the bottom of the world.

Barnaby Becker immediately took the lead - with Xavier slotting in close behind him.

This was unusual.

In previous races, Xavier had shown a clear advantage over Barnaby in straight-line speed, yet now he just settled in tight behind his stable-mate...as if he were glad to be travelling at three-quarter pace.

Jason saw what was happening at once.

Xavier was riding shotgun for Barnaby.

He was protecting his stablemate.

Not needing any points for himself, Xavier was trying to ensure that Barnaby won the race - thus getting Barnaby into the Top 4, and ensuring that Jason didn't go to New York.

But no sooner had he realised this than Jason faced another, more immediate problem.

For it was at that moment - as they swept low over the rain-battered waves of the Southern Ocean - that some of the other racers started targeting the Argonaut.

Joaquin Cortez zeroed in on Jason from the right, aiming straight for his tailfin!

The blow would have knocked them both out of the race, but Cortez - not in contention for a place in the Top 4 - didn't seem to care at all. Jason ducked under him, swooping low, avoiding the blow - at which moment Horatio Wong rammed him from the other side, banging into the Argonaut's left wing, before zooming ahead of Jason. Unlike Cortez, Wong still had a chance of making the Top 4 and he wasn't going to jeopardise that just yet.

' Jason!' Sally's voice came in. 'What the h.e.l.l is happening!'

'Cortez just tried a kamikaze run, tried to knock us out of the race!' Jason called. 'Barnaby must have bought him!'

'What are you going to do?'

'There's only one thing we can do, outrun him.'

Jason gunned the accelerator as they hit the pair of icebergs halfway down the Southern Ocean straight - known as the Chicane - and leapt ahead of Cortez, now in 7th place behind Barnaby (1), Xavier (2), Varishna Krishna (3), Isaiah Washington (4), Ariel (5) and Wong (6); but with Joaquin Cortez nipping at his heels, trying to find an opportunity to take him out.

Then it was into the iceberg section.

If he could have, Jason would have gaped at the spectacle of the field of mammoth bergs, but there was no time for gawking now. He banked the Argonaut between the white monoliths, following the path of the demag lights.

At this early stage in the race, everyone took the standard route between the icebergs.

But as Jason well knew, as the race went on and things got desperate, that would change.

After three laps, the eliminations began.

At first, they were relatively un.o.btrusive. Minor racers crashed in the tight land-bound sections of the course, or racers succ.u.mbed to technical mishaps - thus eliminating themselves.

Barnaby continued to lead, with Xavier shadowing him in second place.