Code Three | Page 4

slammed the door.
* * * * *
The wind had died down by the time the troopers entered the brilliantly lighted parking
area. The temperature seemed warmer with the lessening winds but in actuality, the
mercury was dropping. The snow clouds to the west were much nearer and the overcast

was getting darker.
But under the great overhead light tubes, the parking area was brighter than day. A dozen
huge patrol vehicles were parked on the front "hot" line. Scores more were lined out in
ranks to the back of the parking zone. Martin and Ferguson walked down the line of
military blue cars. Number 56 was fifth on the line. Service mechs were just re-housing
fueling lines into a ground panel as the troopers walked up. The technician corporal was
the first to speak. "All set, Sarge," he said. "We had to change an induction jet at the last
minute and I had the port engine running up to reline the flow. Thought I'd better top 'er
off for you, though, before you pull out. She sounds like a purring kitten."
He tossed the pair a waving salute and then moved out to his service dolly where three
other mechs were waiting.
The officers paused and looked up at the bulk of the huge patrol car.
"Beulah looks like she's been to the beauty shop and had the works," Martin said. He
reached out and slapped the maglurium plates. "Welcome home, sweetheart. I see you've
kept a candle in the window for your wandering son." Ferguson looked up at the lighted
cab, sixteen feet above the pavement.
Car 56--Beulah to her team--was a standard NorCon Patrol vehicle. She was sixty feet
long, twelve feet wide and twelve feet high; topped by a four-foot-high bubble canopy
over her cab. All the way across her nose was a three-foot-wide luminescent strip. This
was the variable beam headlight that could cut a day-bright swath of light through night,
fog, rain or snow and could be varied in intensity, width and elevation. Immediately
above the headlight strip were two red-black plastic panels which when lighted, sent out a
flashing red emergency signal that could be seen for miles. Similar emergency lights and
back-up white light strips adorned Beulah's stern. Her bow rounded down like an
old-time tank and blended into the track assembly of her dual propulsion system. With
the exception of the cabin bubble and a two-foot stepdown on the last fifteen feet of her
hull, Beulah was free of external protrusions. Racked into a flush-decked recess on one
side of the hull was a crane arm with a two-hundred-ton lift capacity. Several round
hatches covered other extensible gear and periscopes used in the scores of multiple
operations the NorCon cars were called upon to accomplish on routine road patrols.
Beulah resembled a gigantic offspring of a military tank, sans heavy armament. But even
a small stinger was part of the patrol car equipment. As for armament, Beulah had
weapons to meet every conceivable skirmish in the deadly battle to keep Continental
Thruways fast-moving and safe. Her own two-hundred-fifty-ton bulk could reach speeds
of close to six hundred miles an hour utilizing one or both of her two independent
propulsion systems.
At ultra-high speeds, Beulah never touched the ground--floating on an impeller air
cushion and driven forward by a pair of one hundred fifty thousand pound thrust jets and
ram jets. At intermediate high speeds, both her air cushion and the four-foot-wide tracks
on each side of the car pushed her along at two hundred-mile-an-hour-plus speeds.

Synchro mechanisms reduced the air cushion as the speeds dropped to afford more
surface traction for the tracks. For slow speeds and heavy duty, the tracks carried the
burden.
Martin thumbed open the portside ground-level cabin door.
"I'll start the outside check," he told Clay. "You stow that garbage of yours in the galley
and start on the dispensary. I'll help you after I finish out here."
As the younger officer entered the car and headed up the short flight of steps to the
working deck, the sergeant unclipped a check list from the inside of the door and turned
towards the stern of the big vehicle.
* * * * *
Clay mounted to the work deck and turned back to the little galley just aft of the cab. As
compact as a spaceship kitchen--as a matter of fact, designed almost identically from
models on the Moon run--the galley had but three feet of open counter space. Everything
else, sink, range, oven and freezer, were built-ins with pull-downs for use as needed. He
set his bags on the small counter to put away after the pre-start check. Aft of the galley
and on the same side of the passageway were the double-decked bunks for the patrol