CHAPTER THREE.

THE CHALLENGER RACE LAP: 13 OF 30.

The Challenger Race was run at a blistering pace - if you took a turn an inch too wide, you were overtaken by the car behind you. If you missed a turn by a few metres, three drivers would shoot past you.

You also had to take into account the constantly-falling rain of confetti in the city sections of the course - it made the air misty, cloudy, affecting visibility. The bullet-paced cars left spiralling snow-trails of the shredded paper in their wakes.

The Challenger course was a super-tight track that twisted and turned through Greater New York - from the home straight on Fifth Avenue, out to JFK International Airport via Brooklyn, and then back to Manhattan via Queens, the Bronx and Yankee Stadium. The intricacy of the course made it especially tough on magneto-drives - each racer would require no less than five pit stops over thirty relatively short laps.

Right out of the gates, two drivers had zoomed out to the front.

Xavier and Jason.

Xavier had gone straight into the lead. Jason had tucked in close behind him.

A larger chase pack of ten racers loomed behind them - with Ariel and Varishna Krishna embedded in it.

Then, on the third lap of the race, as the chase pack came roaring down the home straight, the nasty Russian twins, Igor and Vlad Krotsky, claimed their first victim: the Indian racer, Chandra.

The result was catastrophic.

In fact, it would go down as one of the most spectacular chain-reaction crashes in recent hover car racing history.

Chandra had been leading the chase pack, and the Krotskys, in an attempt to push past him, had squeezed Chandra from either side, one hitting him on the front left side, the other pushing on Chandra's rear right flank, forcing him into a sideways lateral skid.

The problem was, Chandra - intent on winning this vital race - didn't give in.

And he made his biggest mistake. He powered up... and flipped...turning his car fully sideways into the wind and as such, he lost speed instantly - Bam!

Bam!

Bam!

The next three racers slammed into him - at full speed.

Carnage.

Hover cars flew every which way across Fifth Avenue. Chandra's car hit the ground hard, crumpled against the asphalt - then Zhang Lao careered straight into it. Ejection. Explosion.

Varishna Krishna came next. Boxed in by two other racers, there was no way he could avoid the ugly pile of

metal that was Chandra's and Lao's cars. He and his navigator ejected a nanosecond before the Calcutta-IV hit

the pile and it too became shrapnel.

The fourth and last car to hit the pile was Markos Christos's Arion. It banked to avoid the pile, but clipped it

with its left wing, snapping the wing clean off - which caused the Greek racer to lose all control and shoom at

right angles right across Fifth Avenue and take out three more racers!

It was only the magnetic Dead Zone protecting the nearest building that stopped them all from smashing right through its windows.

The four cars. .h.i.t the Dead Zone, stopped, then fell, dropping like shot birds down to the roadway.

The end result of this great conflagration was twofold. First: the crash left two high piles of battered and

crumpled hover cars on either side of Fifth Avenue,

creating a kind of gateway between them, a gateway big enough for only one car to fit through at a time.

And second: it left Xavier Xonora and Jason Chaser well clear of the rest of the field.

The New York Challenger Race, winner take all, was now a two-horse race.

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE CHALLENGER RACE LAP: 18 OF 30.

Xavier and Jason.

Out in front.

On their own.

Engaged in the race of their lives.

Left and right, they weaved, through the city section of the track. Then blasting out through the streets of Brooklyn, before shooting up and down the runways at JFK, slowing dramatically at the ultra-sharp hairpins there.

And all the while, Xavier drove perfectly, never once giving Jason a chance to get past him.

Jason hung in there, only a few car lengths behind the Speed Razor.

On each lap, he actually gained on Xavier in the supertight city section of the course just before the home straight - banking left and right in the confetti-filled canyons of New York City - but in the straight-line sections of the track, Xavier would power away from him, cancelling out the gains Jason had made.

The situation was all too familiar.

No matter what he tried, Jason just couldn't get past the Black Prince. He was half a second behind Xavier, but it might as well have been half an hour.

Lap 20 went by, and still Xavier remained in front.

Lap 25 - and Jason was still on his tail.

He's just too good! Jason's mind screamed. Too good! But that's also his weakness: he thinks he's too d.a.m.ned good.

'Sally!' Jason called into his radio. 'Time to start the plan! You ready?'

'You're absolutely crazy, Superstar,' came the reply, 'which is why I love you so much. Let's dance.'

Jason flew around the next lap - Lap 26 - like a bullet, hanging onto Xavier's tail, but if anything, compared to his previous laps, it looked like Jason had actually lost ground to Xavier.

He had.

'Okay!' Sally called. 'You just lost a second to Xavier on that lap!'

'One second is okay,' Jason said grimly. 'I hope Oliver Koch noticed.'

Lap 27 - and Jason lost more ground to Xavier.

'Another half second...' Sally called. 'He's pulling away from you!'

It was true. Xavier was pulling away from him - even the crowd could see it now.

But that was part of the plan. It could only work if Xavier thought he was pulling away from Jason.

And with only three laps remaining, the race looked over.

It was Xavier out in front.

Then Jason.

Then daylight, thanks to the big crash, followed by the Russians and Ariel Piper.

Lap 28 - and Xavier was ahead of Jason by two full seconds.

In the pits, Sally looked over at Oliver Koch - the Speed Razor's Mech Chief was looking at his race computer and speaking into his radio-mike.

'Oliver's taking the bait, Jason,' she reported.

'He should be taking the bait,' Jason said. 'It was this kind of attention to detail that won him Mech Chief of the Year. Now it's gonna lose him this race.'

Lap 29 - and the lead extended another 0.2 of a second.

Sally took a deep breath. 'I hope you're right about this, Jason,' she whispered.

And with that the last lap began.

At the start of the final lap, Xavier's lead over Jason was a full 2.2 seconds.

Even if Jason hauled him in amid the city S-bends near the home straight, he'd only gain a second.

Xavier was out of reach.

But then a strange thing happened.

As soon as the last lap began, Jason started gaining on Xavier - just slowly, in a measured way, over the course of the entire lap.

They hit JFK and the lead was 2.0 seconds.