John DeChancie Skyway 00 Starrigger

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anachronistic vehicle for the apex of the triangle the blocking cars formed.
Hang on, people.
Shots caromed off the glass which wasn t glass at all and coherent beams
played over the curving, glossy hull. Impervious. We hit the squad cars with a
loud bang but a mild jolt, shoved them carelessly aside, and raced on down the
street. We passed other cop cars, an armored personnel carrier, then broke
through the perimeter the Militia had secured. Their second line of defense
was negligible:
wooden barriers. I made toothpicks of a few of them, screeched around a comer
to the right, hung a left, then a right again, then debouched onto a wide
boulevard mat seemed to lead away from town.
Frightening power throbbed beneath my foot. I d never driven anything with
comparable performance. And it was still in third gear. The speedometer read
ninety somethings per hour. Miles?
Sure. Appropriate to the period.
For the next twenty minutes I drove with nothing in my way but air.
Maxwellville thinned to suburbs, then to development tracts, then to nothing
but open road with bare land on either side. No roadblocks; they hadn t had
time. Everyone sat in dazed silence. The Teelies were stunned, blank faces
staring at the mesa rolling by.
Flashing barriers ahead, a new section of Colonial highway, and a sign. TO
SKYWAY AND
SEVEN SUNS INTERCHANGE ROUTES 85, 14 AND POINTS SPINWARD. I managed to avoid
hitting the barriers. We shot over the entry ramp and out onto new Maklite
surface six lanes wide. I
called Sam.
I got a fix on you now, boy.
That s good, I said. Where are you?
Out in the bush by the starslab. But don t worry, I II pick you up. What are
you driving? You won t believe it, but you ll know it the moment you see it.
Old Terran automobile. A replica, of course.
But, Sam, I ll need to know where you are. We have to make the switch off the
road somewhere, out of sight. Everybody in the galaxy s hot on my trail.
Really? Hold on. A pause. Yeah, I m painting them now. Too far away, can t
tell exactly how many... .Hey! What re you trying to do, bum up the road?
That s the general idea.
What s your speed?
Two hundred miles per hour.
What? Oh, I understand. Wait a minute. If it s a true replica, the
speedometer wouldn t read that high.
The needle buried itself at 100, then came up the other side again, and the
numbers changed. This buggy s a replica as far as looks, but under the engine
hous I mean the hood she s something else again. I m waiting to get to the
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Skyway to see what she can do. Better step on it now. Something s gaining on
you.
Okay. I thought it was about time for fourth gear. I slid it in smoothly and
the car surged ahead, pressing us back into our seats. The numbers on the
speedometer now ranged from 200 to 300. I urged the car onward and the needle
crept up to 250.
God, I can t believe this old rattletrap I looked at the speedometer again
and did a take.
What? Now this thing reads like a machometer!
You sure?
Yeah. It is a machometer.
And it s not a reaction-drive vehicle?
Negative. I m at Mach point three five and holding. Sam, how s the Skyway up
ahead for highspeed travel?
It s all straightaway to the portal, but be careful. You know what they say.
No ground vehicle is safe anywhere at over Mach point five.
Right, but let em eat my dust for a while back there.
They re still gaining.
They are? Sam, get moving!
Say again?
Get rolling now. If they re still gaining, it s a Militia interceptor, and I
know exactly who s driving it. The ambush hadn t been Petrovsky s doing. That
had been Elmo reasserting his authority. But
Petrovsky was on his own now, that wide Slavic nose pushed to the scent. No
chance of us meeting anywhere on Goliath. Get moving toward Seven Suns and
we ll play it by ear from there. Hold on, now, I m getting more than one
blip. There s the fast-moving one, and then there re two behind him, a little
slower.
The Reticulans, with a backup vehicle?
And tailing them at a fairly good clip is another one.
The Ryxx, maybe.
And behind them...
More? Well, hell. Move it out, Sam. You ll have a lot more speed on the
other side. Vacuum.
You don t know what Stinky did to me. Feel like a new man. I haven t opened
it up yet, but my cruising speed s up by at least thirty percent. Stinky
outdid himself this time. Good, but get rolling!
Okay, okay!
In no time we reached the old Skyway, pointing straight and true toward a
limitless horizon. The machometer crept upward but what about aerodynamics?
The vehicle s shape was rounded, streamlined was the word that came to mind,
but the surface didn t look capable of slicing an air mass at Mach one. There
were no stabilizer foils, no GE flange, nothing. There d be heavy turbulence
ahead if
I kept pushing, and possible disaster. But how was the car staying on the road
at the speed we were doing now? And in Goliath s soupy air to boot? To say
there was more to this vehicle than met the eye was an understatement by
several degrees. Sam, are you grabbing slab?
That I am, son. I m tracking you at Mach point four. Where s the fire?
Up my kazoo. By the way, what happened at Stinky s?
Well, it s a long story.
Edit it severely.
Right. Stinky worked on me all day yesterday, then into evening. He said it
was a challenge. It was
way after dark when he finished, and I insisted he rehook me to the trailer
and let me squeeze into the garage. I hadn t heard from you, and I thought it
best. He balked at that, but gave in. It was a tight fit.
Anyway, about an hour later I hear somebody breaking into the place. So I
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