And he left.

'Could've said, "Nice work today, kids,"' Jason said.

Sally clapped him on the shoulder. 'Nice work today, kid.'

'Thanks.'

CHAPTER FOUR.

Jason walked to the dining hall, alone. The Bug and Sally had both gone off to their rooms to rest - Jason was going to bring them some food later.

Ahead of him walked Horatio Wong and Isaiah Washington, Scott Syracuse's other two charges. Neither Wong nor Washington even attempted to include Jason in their conversation.

Wong was complaining.

'What is his problem? I mean, why should I have to attend a d.a.m.n physics cla.s.s? So long as my Mech Chief knows what's happening inside my car, I just want to be left alone to drive it.'

'Frickin' A,' Washington agreed. 'Hey, he pinned me for a pit bay violation. G.o.d, everybody does it. When was the last time you saw any racer pinned in a pro race for a pit bay violation? Never! Scott Syracuse wasn't that great a racer when he was driving on the tour anyway. What makes him think he's such a great teacher now?'

Wong lowered his voice, did a Scott Syracuse impression: 'To err is human, to make the same mistake twice is stupid.'

The two of them laughed.

'Talk about bad luck,' Washington said. 'Why'd we have to get the teacher from h.e.l.l?'

They came to the dining hall.

All of the other students at the Race School were already well into their dinners, having started at seven. Wong and Washington quickly grabbed a couple of trays and joined a table of boys their age, taking the last available seats.

Jason scanned the room for a place to sit.

Many of the racing teams were eating with their teachers, laughing, smiling, getting to know each other. Syracuse hadn't even offered to dine with his students.

At one table, Jason saw Barnaby Becker and his crew, eating with their teacher, a skeleton-thin man with a beaklike nose.

Jason recognised the teacher instantly: he was Zoroastro, the celebrated former world-champion racer from Russia. One of the very first hover car racers, Zoroastro was still regarded by many as perhaps the most technically precise driver ever to grace the Pro Circuit: he was almost mechanical in his exactness, never missing a turn, just wearing his opponents down until they cracked under the pressure.

Now, as a coach, he was so good - and so vain - that he only deigned to teach two driving teams, not three, as all the other teachers did. And the Race School indulged him.

Which brought Jason's gaze to the other young driver seated with Barnaby and Zoroastro.

He was a strikingly handsome boy of about eighteen. He sat high and proud, and he scanned the dining room as if he owned it. He was dressed completely in black - black racing suit, black boots, black cap - perhaps to match his jet black hair and deep dark eyes.

His absolute coolness rattled Jason.

Alone among the racers in the room, his sheer confidence was unsettling. It was said that the very best hover car racers behaved as if they owned the world: you needed a kind of narcissistic super-confidence and self-belief to propel yourself successfully around a track at close to the speed of sound.

Jason made a mental note to keep an eye on this boy in black.

He resumed his search for a place to sit.

A quick survey revealed that there was only one option and it was a strange one.

Over in the corner of the dining hall, seated at a table all by herself, sat Ariel Piper, the pretty girl he had seen at the Opening Ceremony.

Jason grabbed a tray of food and went over to her table.

As he arrived there, he realised that Ariel Piper was even more beautiful up close. He hoped she didn't see his face flush slightly.

'Hi,' he said, 'is it okay if I sit here?'

Ariel Piper looked up at him suddenly, as if roused from a daydream, as if she were surprised to hear a human voice so close to her.

'Sure,' she said sarcastically, 'so long as you're not afraid to catch cooties.'

'Come on. I can't catch cooties just from sitting near you,' Jason said with absolute honesty. 'You only catch cooties from kissing a girl - ' He cut himself off, blushed bright pink, before adding quickly: 'Not that I came over here hoping to kiss you, miss.'

Ariel Piper snuffed a laugh at that, and examined Jason more closely. At seventeen, she was lean and graceful, and way too old for a fourteen-year-old like him. Never had Jason wished more that he was three years older.

Then she said, 'You don't know anything about me, do you?'

Jason shrugged. 'Nope. Just that you're a student here at the hover school, like the rest of us. I'm Jason Chaser, from Hall's Creek, W.A.'

'Ariel Piper. Mobile, Alabama.'

'Why did you say that about catching cooties? Are you sick or something? Is that why you're sitting over here all by yourself?'

Ariel gazed at Jason, a curious smile forming on her pretty face.

'You race with girls back in Halls Creek, Jason?'

'Sure. All the time. Some of the girl racers back home are the most vicious and dirty - I mean, compet.i.tive - racers in the district.'

'Okay, then. Have you ever seen a girl racer on the Pro Circuit?'

That stopped Jason.

'No...' he said slowly. 'No, I haven't.'

Ariel said, 'That's because, until now, the Race Schools haven't admitted girls, and since the Race Schools are the prime entry route to the Pro Circuit, there are no female pro racers. Mankind is funny. We've had all this progress, all these advancements in technology, equality and equal opportunity, but some prejudices die hard. People still see men and women differently in the world of sport.'

'But entry into the School is pretty well set,' Jason said. 'You either get invited or you get an automatic exemption by winning certain regional championships.'

'That's exactly right,' Ariel said. 'And I won the SouthEast-American Regional Championships. After I did, I applied for entry into the International Race School. But the School didn't admit me. They didn't let me in because I was a girl.'

'But that's just stupid,' Jason said. 'If you can race a hover car, it shouldn't matter whether you're a boy or a girl.'

Ariel said, 'Fortunately for me, Jason, the Australian High Court agreed with you. And they forced the School to accept me. It took a h.e.l.l of a fight, but I got in.'

And suddenly the penny dropped, and Jason understood the presence of all the photographers and journalists at the Opening Ceremony, all focused on Ariel Piper.

He also now understood why she was sitting over here in the corner, all alone, ostracised. And he'd thought that he was an outsider because of his age.

'And so now I'm here,' Ariel said, 'and I'm wondering if it was all worth it. In just one day, my mentor has treated me twice as hard as his male racers. Girl Mech Chiefs will at least talk to me, but they won't risk eating with me. And forget about the male racers. Then there are all the sideways looks in the corridors and the pit area, the media attention, h.e.l.l, even the Princ.i.p.al doesn't want me here...'

She looked away and Jason saw that her eyes were beginning to fill with tears.

'Hey,' he said firmly. He tried to think of what his mum would say in this situation, and he got it: 'No. Don't cry. Don't let them see you cry. Then they've won.'

That scored.

Ariel raised her head, sniffed once, sucked back the tears.

Jason said, 'Ariel, I don't know you that well, but I know this. You're here. Now. At Race School. And the only thing that matters at Race School is one thing: racing. If you can hold your own on the racecourse, people'll come round.'

She turned to face him. 'You know, you're pretty smart for a fourteen-year-old.'

'I can be a little slow on the uptake,' he said, 'but just like on the track, I catch up. If it helps, and if you want me to, I'll be your friend while you're here, Ariel.'

'I'd like that, Jason. Thanks.'

And with that, they started eating together.

CHAPTER FIVE.

RACE SCHOOL,.

TASMANIA RACE 1, COURSE 1.

Race day.

The roar of hover cars filled the air.

Blurring bullets with racers and navigators inside them whipped past Pit Lane. Large floating grandstands filled with cheering spectators enjoyed the carnival atmosphere of the opening race of the Race School season.

Race 1 had been simply electrifying from the start. A crash on the first corner had seen two cars tumble into the banks of the Derwent River at 500 km/h. They'd touched as they'd turned, then flipped and rolled and bounced with frightening speed, shedding pieces of their fuselages as they skimmed the river's surface, before they came to twin thumping halts, their racers (and navigators) safe in their reinforced c.o.c.kpits and their cars now only good for a trip to the Maintenance and Rebuilding Shed.

Jason had never seen anything like it.

The pace of the race was far faster than anything he'd ever been involved in. The intensity was furious. It was the difference between amateur stuff and pro racing.

The race was indeed a 'SuperSprint 30-2-1: Last Man Drop-Off': 30 laps, and every 2 laps, the last-placed car was removed from the field.

Since there were 20 starters (a few racers had pulled out due to technical problems with their cars), that meant that the last two laps would be fought between 6 cars.

The course was tight - winding its way westward through the rainforests of lower Tasmania before returning to Hobart via the treacherous southern coastline of the island.

Such a tight course was brutal on magneto drives, which meant that pit stops would be required every seven or eight laps - creating a (very deliberate) dilemma near the end: did you pit near Lap 30 or did you try to get to the Finish Line on ever-diminishing magneto drives? Of course, if you were in the pits when everyone else crossed the Start-Finish Line to complete a lap, leaving you the last-placed car, you would be eliminated.

The first two cars eliminated were, naturally, the two who had crashed so spectacularly on the first turn - which meant that the remaining eighteen cars could drive in safety for the next six laps: the third elimination would not occur until the end of Lap 6.

Winding, bending, chasing, racing.

Jason saw the world rush by in a blur: the lush green leaves of the rainforests became streaking green paintstrokes. The sharply twisting road near Russell Falls - one of the great sights of Tasmania - became just another overtaking point, a spot where you could take someone under brakes.

Sweeping around the coastal cliffs and down the ocean straight.

730 km/h.

S-bending through a series of silver steel archways that jutted out from the wave-battered southern coastline.

550 km/h.

Then braking hard to a bare 210 km/h to take the final turn: a wicked left-hand hairpin around Tasman Island, a tall pillar-like rock formation not far from the ruins of the 19th century prison at Port Arthur.

Then, finally, heading back up to the Derwent River - the home straight - hitting top speed: 770 km/h.

RACETIME: 15:00 MINS LAP: 5.

The Argonaut screamed down the straight, swept round the deadly Turn One, and shot into the rainforest. It was Lap 5, and out of 18 cars, Jason was coming 10th and feeling pretty good.

Which was precisely when his left-rear magneto drive inexplicably went dead.

Immediately, his car lost some 'traction', became harder to handle.