Hover Car Racer by Matthew Reilly Page B

for good reason: it’s a Venus fly trap: looks pretty and alluring from the outside, but it’ll just eat you up. It’ll put you either further behind or out of the running completely.’
    ‘That’s just what Mr Syracuse said,’ Jason said.
    ‘Scott Syracuse said the same thing?’ Henry said. ‘Oh! Of course - ‘ he cut himself off, chuckled.
    ‘What?’ Jason asked.
    Henry Chaser smiled. ‘Scott Syracuse once tried to cut the heel in the Italian Run. It was the last time he raced the Italian Run; a few races later, he had that huge crash in New York that ended his career.
    ‘That time in Italy, Syracuse was way back in the pack because of a collision he’d had with another car, so he decided to try and cut the heel. Now, if you cut the heel in Italy, you can gain up to four whole minutes on the rest of the field. It woulda put him back in contention.’
    ‘And what happened?’ Jason asked.
    ‘Two hours later, the race was over and he still hadn’t come out,’ Henry said. ‘He didn’t emerge until four hours after the race, and even then, he came out the way he went in. Didn’t even find the way through. By the time he reached the Finish Line in Venice, they were dismantling the grandstands! No wonder he advises against cutting the heel.’
    ‘Yeah,’ Jason said, frowning. ‘No wonder.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

    RACE 25
    RACETIME: 4 HOURS 24 MINS
    LAP: 11 [OF 20]

    Race 25 was easily the most hard-fought race of the season so far.
    No-one was giving an inch.
    Those racers who hadn’t yet qualified for the Sponsors’ tournament were going all-out for the win. While those who had qualified were racing just as fiercely - they were well aware that if a pre-qualified racer won, it meant one less contender to deal with on Saturday.
    The intensity of the racing was simply furious.
    And at Lap 11, Jason was still in it.
    After narrowly avoiding a wild three-car crash on Lap 2, he had stayed in touch with the early leaders - Xavier, Varishna Krishna (a talented young racer from India) and Isaiah Washington - and now, after more than four hours of racing, he was well positioned in 4th place.
    The ripple strips had caused chaos - if you took a turn too wide, you would edge over the top of them and suddenly your magneto drive levels would drain before your eyes.
    The big crash on Lap 2 had been the direct result of the ripple strips, and it had taken out some of the contenders in this race.
    It was Barnaby Becker’s fault.
    He had slid out over the ripple strips flanking the tight hairpin near the pits. He had stayed over the demag strips for almost five seconds, enough to deprive all six of his magneto drives of nearly all of their power. Out of control, he had slid back across the track, collecting two other racers - among them Ariel Piper - on the way through, ending all of their races.
    Ariel wasn’t pleased.
    For his part, Jason felt he was handling the strips pretty well - not perfectly, but well. On any given lap, he might edge over a couple of them and lose a little bit of power. But judging by the similarity of their pit-stop schedules, it didn’t seem as if any of the other contenders were doing any better.
    Significantly, no racer had attempted to use the short cut.
    The leaders completed Lap 11, and flocked into the pits - Jason among them.
    He swung into his bay and the Tarantula descended on the Argonaut from above, its arms bristling with magneto drives and coolant hoses.
    Jason gulped down some energy drink, breathed hard. Their pit stops had been good in this race. Their mag drives and computer systems seemed okay -
    And suddenly the Tarantula froze in mid-action. ‘No!’ Jason yelled.
    Sally McDuff dived for the Tarantula’s console, started tapping keys. ‘The system’s crashed again! Damn!’ she yelled. ‘I have to reboot!’
    She typed fast on the computer.
    Jason snapped round - to see Krishna, then Washington and then Xavier zoom out of the pits, one after the other, rejoining the