'Or someone set us up,' Sally said.

The words hung in the air.

'Someone arranged for us to collect three bogus mags from the Parts Department. Think about it. I picked up eighteen magneto drives for this race, three sets of six. We were going to have to use all of them at some point today. So we were destined to wipe out or at least have an unscheduled pit stop at some stage. Jason,' she frowned, 'I think someone sabotaged our car today.'

A few moments later, Ariel Piper came by their pit bay. The media tornado had got what it needed from her - some sound-bites to match their footage - and had gone on its way.

'There he is, my knight in shining armour,' she said.

'Hi,' Jason said. He introduced Sally and the Bug. 'Thanks for what you did out there,' Ariel said. 'And for understanding why I couldn't eject.'

'Forget about it,' Jason said. 'You woulda done the same for me.'

Ariel snuffed a laugh. 'I don't know about that, Jason,' she said. 'For some of us, heroics aren't the natural first

instinct. But thanks again.'

She stood up to go.

'Oh, and one more thing,' she said. 'My Mech Chief, Bonnie, did some quick diagnostics on my car when I got

back. Some of my magneto drives had apparently been doctored before the race, drained of ninety per cent of

their power. And my onboard electronics had also been infected with a time-bomb computer virus that was

programmed to go off late in the race - which was why I lost all control on the last turn.'

'No way...' Jason said. 'We got bogus drives, too. But not the other stuff.'

Ariel locked eyes with him. 'Someone didn't want me to finish this race today. And if it hadn't been for you, it

would have been worse - a lot worse. I'm scared, Jason. I think someone wants me out of Race School permanently.'

PART III: ENEMIES WITHIN.

CHAPTER ONE.

There was no rest for Jason and his team after the high drama of Race 1.

The races continued - at the rate of two per week, usually held on Tuesday and Thursday, with cla.s.ses in between.

One thing quickly became clear: the boy in black, the winner of Race 1, was a seriously good racer. He also won Race 2. And Race 3.

Jason managed to come fifth in Race 2, but 'DNF'd' Race 3 - Did Not Finish - on account of another mysterious mechanical problem, this time a bottle of thinned coolant.

The boy in the all-black Car No.1 won by a mile on each occasion - and each time he was shadowed by his stablemate, Barnaby Becker. As such, both of them flew to the top of the Championship Ladder, at 30 and 27 points respectively.

Their mentor Zoroastro strutted around the Race School like a coach with the two top-placed racers in his stable - while behind closed doors other racers complained that Zoroastro's drivers were unfairly driving as a team, with Barnaby flying obstruction for the supercool boy in black.

It took only a few questions for Jason to find out who this mysterious and talented boy in black was.

His name was Xavier Xonora, and it turned out that he was Zoroastro's nephew. Now, not only was he blessed with dashing good looks, great driving skills, an incredible racing pedigree and a top-of-the-line Lockheed-Martin car, Xavier Xonora also had one other thing going for him.

He was a prince.

A solid-gold bona-fide prince. His parents were the king and queen of the Princ.i.p.ality of Monesi, a small sovereign European state not far from Monaco.

Whenever he walked by, the Mech girls at the Race School t.i.ttered and whispered. Every society mother in Hobart begged him to attend their dinner parties, hoping the young prince might take a liking to their dreamy-eyed daughters.

Jason and the Bug would b.u.mp into him occasionally in the pits. One time Jason smiled and said, 'Hey, Xavier.'

The Prince froze in mid-stride. Turned.

'If you insist on speaking to me, you will address me as Prince Xavier or Your Royal Highness,' he said, before moving on, nose held high.

'Okay,' Jason said after him. 'Like that's gonna happen.'

Life at Race School was just non-stop. Cla.s.ses, races, homework and sleep.

For Jason, grappling with the sheer pace of Race School life was difficult.

While he loved the chance to race nearly every other day, no sooner were you finished with one race than you were back in the cla.s.sroom a.n.a.lysing it. And then it was straight into the simulator, the race lab, or the pits to practise, practise, practise.

Worse still, for Jason and the Bug a special arrangement had to be made for them to do regular schoolwork in amongst their racing cla.s.ses.

It amounted to more information than Jason had ever absorbed in his whole life and at times it was a struggle. While he was certainly smart, he had never been comfortable with the time-tabled nature of school life. It was all he could do to keep up.

Scattered in amongst his racing cla.s.ses were regular sessions in the School's giant centrifuge - a huge mechanical arm (with a race-car c.o.c.kpit attached to its outer extremity) that swung in fast sweeping circles. Like the old Dynamic Flight Simulator at NASA, this centrifuge was designed to test each racer's G-force tolerances.

Jason invariably blacked out around 8-Gs, which was the average. Some other racers and navigators could get up to 8.5 or 8.7 before losing consciousness. It was perhaps surprising then when it was discovered that the student who could withstand the most G-forces was...

...the Bug.

The little guy could withstand an astonishing 9.3-Gs on the centrifuge - and still perform certain physical and mental tasks. And while many of the other students gagged or vomited when they were on the centrifuge, the Bug spent the whole time squealing with delight, like a kid on a roller-coaster.

Jason and the Bug were living in their own dorm room in the east wing of the Race School.

It was a high-tech white-walled three-level apartment - with recessed bunk beds, auto-fold-down sofas, and even a sliding pole to allow quick access between the multiple levels. In effect it was a kid-sized apartment, and as such the best cubby house in the world. It even had spectacular views over Storm Bay.

Jason loved it, loved the independence of it.

But the Bug was different.

For all his astounding mathematical abilities (and his incredible results on the centrifuge), he was still essentially just a quiet little 12-year-old from a dusty desert town who missed his mum and his dad.

So late at night Jason would sit with him as they wrote long emails home, and when they got a reply several minutes later, the Bug would leap up with delight.

Then they'd sleep and suddenly the alarm clock would be ringing and it would be time for the next race.

And what a variety of races they were.

Gate races, enduros, sprints and last-man drop-offs, on an equally varied array of courses.

After 15 races, however, the points ladder didn't look good for Jason and the Argonaut team. It looked like this: INTERNATIONAL RACE SCHOOL CHAMPIONSHIP LADDER.

AFTER 15 RACES.

DRIVER NO. CAR POINTS.

1. XONORA, X 1 Speed Razor 118 2. BECKER, B 09 Devil's Chariot 105 3. KRISHNA, V 31 Calcutta-IV 102 4. WONG, H 888 Little Tokyo 100 5. WASHINGTON, I 42 Black Bullet 99 Prince Xavier had won an astonishing five of the fifteen races, garnering 10 points for each win. He'd also had strong finishes in the other races, giving him a whopping 118 points out of a possible 150.

Of the twenty-five racers in total, languishing down near the bottom of the ladder was: 20. CHASER, J 55 Argonaut 79 After their zero-point efforts for not finishing Races 1 and 3, Jason and the Bug had started the season at the bottom of the compet.i.tion ladder.

They'd had a couple of podium finishes since - mainly in gate races and the superlong enduros (long-distance races that lasted up to eight hours) - and the points they got for those lifted them slightly up the ladder.

But then around Race 9 they were suddenly beset by technical problems again.

After the 'depleted magneto drives incident' of Race 1, Sally McDuff had started electro-checking their drives before each race. In Races 9 and 12, she found that they had again received depleted mags from the Parts and Equipment Department.

But other technical problems also surfaced.

More thinned coolant in Race 13. A mystery computer virus that occasionally caused the Tarantula to malfunction. It was as if in every race they were fighting against an army of invisible gremlins constantly getting into their systems. If they finished at all, it was only after a huge effort.

So one day, Sally went off to the Parts and Equipment Department to investigate the faulty parts, only to return an hour later, fuming.

'Stupid greasy punk. The desk guy just waved me away,' she growled. 'Said "Sorry, honey, that's how it goes. Sometimes you just get a dodgy mag or two." Honey? Honey! So I told him we got six dodgy mags in one race and he just shrugged and stared at me. It was like talking to an Easter Island statue.'

Their mentor, Scott Syracuse, offered little sympathy.

It didn't help that their stablemates under Syracuse - Wong and Washington - were in the top five on the ladder and performing well in the same races, and experiencing no technical problems at all.

It made Jason appear simply unlucky, or worse, just not good enough.

The beautiful Ariel Piper was having similar problems - with magneto drives and faulty parts. After her near-catastrophic experience in Race 1 caused by a virus in her pit computer, she had installed a new firewall which seemed to have stemmed that problem. She was currently in 12th place - solid but unspectacular for the first girl to attend the Race School.

In any case, a key feature of the School's racing season was fast approaching and it was particularly troubling Jason.

The mid-season Sponsors' Event - a feature race held in front of the School's sponsors, benefactors and famous exstudents - would be held after Race 25, and it was only open to those students who had won a race during the season.

The Sponsors' Event was a huge opportunity to perform in front of some of the major players in the pro racing world. The thing was: Jason hadn't yet won a race, and with 15 races already down, he was fast running out of races to win.

Either way, it was time to address his team's problems. It was time to go to the source of all the depleted drives, thinned coolants and faulty parts.

The Race School's Parts and Equipment Department.