The Cadillac leaped at a sign.

Heller turned the wheel.

The Cadillac launched itself over a curb!

Heller yanked the wheel. He overcompensated and headed back for the curb. He corrected and got the car going north. He was in the middle of the road.

An ancient truck was coming at him.

“To the right!” screamed the girl.

Heller swerved to the right, hit the gravel, came back on the road.

“Drive on the right side of the road!” screamed the girl.

“Got it,” said Heller.

Behind them two police cars had started up in mad pursuit. They had their quarry in sight and their chortling said so for all the world to hear!

I smiled to myself in great satisfaction. Heller was going to be in a box much sooner than I thought! Chiefs of police do not take lightly to having their sons hospitalized. They don’t have many cops in such a small town. I didn’t need to hear their radios to know the chief was in one of those police cars! Police cars are as fast as that Cadillac. And that chief was not going to give up. That was for sure!

Mary Schmeck yelled, “Turn down that side road! It cuts across country. We can get over on U.S. 29. It’s a four-lane to Lynchburg!”

The right-angle turn was just ahead. Heller yanked the steering wheel to the left. Tires screamed! A wild skid.

Heller said, as he fought the wheel to point the swerving car straight on the new road, “Ho, ho! Centrifugal momentum about 160 foot-tons per second.”

“What?” yelled Mary.

“You have to counteract it ahead of time,” said Heller, firing the car down the narrow, two-lane country road.

“On this road and U.S. 29, there’s no place they can call ahead and set up road blocks.”

Heller screamed around a curve. The car weaved, spraying headlights against the speeding trees. “A shift to angular velocity can overcome the road friction potential of this machine! Inadequate centripetal force simulation.”

“You better step on it, kid! They’re in shooting range behind you!”

Trees and fences blurred by. The lights of the cop cars glared in the rearview mirror. They were closing!

Mary said, “The county line is up here. Maybe they’ll quit chasing us when we cross it! Step on it, kid! You’re only doing seventy!” A sign flashed by:

Heller said, “So, by reduction of velocity before the turn, using this foot brake, then stamping on this throttle as you start the turn and releasing the brake, adequate compensating acceleration can be added through the turn. I got it!”

A shot blasted out. It hit the car somewhere in the rear with a jolt.

A steep downslope curve swept away to the left, evading the headlight path. Heller braked!

“I’m getting the hang of this now,” he said.

The engine raced into a scream, the brakes came off! The car leaped into the curve, accelerating madly. The tires screamed but it was less.

The speedometer was racing up to ninety.

Behind them wild tire howls came from the cop cars.

Mary said, “There’s a lot of curves ahead! I’ll see if there’s a road map in this glove compartment!”

“I don’t need any,” Heller said. “It was all on the Geological Survey.”

A new steep curve flashed into view ahead. Heller stamped on the brakes. Mary almost went through the windshield. The engine roared. Off came the brakes, and the car shot around the curve as though fired from a gun.

“Jesus, kid, you’re doing ninety!” A hasty buckling sound. She must be fastening her seat belt.

Heller glanced at trees whipping by. “That’s wrong. It’s only eighty-six.”

He braked and then, accelerating, shot the car around a new curve.

“But I’ll get it up to speed,” said Heller. “Oh!” He looked at the shift lever indicator. “It was on the first drive slot. No wonder we were poking along!” He shifted the lever to high drive.

But they had lost distance. A short, straight stretch was ahead. In the rearview mirror, the leading cop car lights were getting nearer.

Heller said, “They sure build these seats close to the pedals. No leg room.”

“There’s some buttons down on your left that push the seat back.”

Above the roar of the engine, the seat motor whirred.

A shot flash flared in the rearview mirror. It must have hit the road: the ricochet whine-yowled away, overtaken by the blast of the shot.

“Come on, you chemical-fuel Cadillac Brougham Coupe d’Elegance,” said Heller. “Do I have your brake lever on?” He glanced down. It was off.

The car surged over a rise, almost lifting from the ground. A big sign flashed by:

A moment later, Mary said, “Those (bleepards)! They’re coming right on across the county line. Don’t they know it’s illegal?”

The cop cars were not so close. The lead one turned on a searchlight.

A barn whipped by.

Heller braked and fired the car into a new curve. “What are all those buttons on the panel? You got an instruction book in there?”

“No.” Her hand came into view in the tail of his eye.

“But I can show you. This is the air conditioning. This is the heater. This dial is where you set the interior temperature. This is the aerial for the radio but it goes up automatically when you turn the radio on. This is the radio tuning control.”

The car flashed across a cattle guard with a sharp roar. The yell of the cop cars was loud.

“This is the automatic station selector. These are the preset station push buttons. You tune in the station then you pull one out and push it in and it repeats the station whenever you push it.”

“You sure know a lot about cars,” said Heller.

“I had one once.”

A truck was turning out from a gate, dead ahead.

Heller yanked the steering wheel. They hit the gravel on the edge. The car swerved widely. He yanked it back on the road.

He said, “You’re not from around here, are you. I can tell by your accent.”

I hastily made a note. Since he had begun to talk to her, his own accent was fading into New England! Aha! A Code break?

He was negotiating, with brake and accelerator, a new series of curves. Fences were whipping by. He had accidentally found the floor dimmer switch and turned the lights up.

The cop cars were a few hundred yards behind, holding their noisy own.

“Oh, I’m a tried-and-true first family of Virginia all right,” she said. She was swabbing at her streaming eyes and nose with the hem of her skirt. “My people were farmers. They didn’t want me to have such a hard life.”

They howled into a new curve.

“I sure got to get a fix,” she said, swabbing some more. “Anyway, my father and mother skimped and scraped and sent me to Bassardt Woman’s College: that’s up the Hudson from New York.”

They roared across a wooden bridge and streaked up the hill on the far side. The roar of the cop cars on the bridge sounded hot behind them.

“You look like an honest kid,” she said. “I got some advice for you. You be sure to finish college. You be sure to get your degree. It isn’t what you know that gets you the job. It’s the diploma, the sheepskin. That’s what talks. Nobody will listen to anything you say unless you have that piece of parchment!”

“Got to have a diploma before anyone will listen to you,” said Heller, taking careful mental note of it.

A cop car had sped up. It got its hood even with the rear wheels of the Cadillac. A bullhorn roared!

“PULL OVER, GOD (BLEEP) YOU! YOU’RE UNDER ARREST!”

Heller weaved the Cadillac’s rear over toward the cop car’s front wheels. The cop car frantically braked. Heller straightened out the Cadillac’s swerves and fed it more accelerator.