Code Three | Page 7

and locked into
place. Only their fingers were loose beneath the spongy substance to work arm controls.
The half-molds included headforms with a padded band that locked across their foreheads
to hold their heads rigidly against the backs of their reinforced seats. The instant all three
crew members were locked into their safety gear, the bull horn ceased.
"All tight," Ben called out as he wiggled and tried to free himself from the cocoon. Kelly
and Clay tested their harnesses.
Satisfied that the safety cocoons were operating properly, Ben released them and the

molds slid back into their recesses. The cocoons were triggered automatically in any
emergency run or chase at speeds in excess of two hundred miles an hour.
Again he kicked off the brakes, pressed down on the foot feed and Car 56--Beulah--rolled
out of the Philadelphia motor pool on the start of its ten-day patrol.
* * * * *
The motor pool exit opened into a quarter-mile wide tunnel sloping gently down into the
bowels of the great city. Car 56 glided down the slight incline at a steady fifty miles an
hour. A mile from the mouth of the tunnel the roadway leveled off and Ben kicked
Beulah up another twenty-five miles an hour. Ahead, the main tunnel ended in a series of
smaller portal ways, each emblazoned with a huge illuminated number designating a
continental thruway.
Ben throttled back and began edging to the left lanes. Other patrol cars were heading
down the main passageway, bound for their assigned thruways. As Ben eased down to a
slow thirty, another patrol vehicle slid alongside. The two troopers in the cab waved.
Clay flicked on the "car-to-car" transmit.
The senior trooper in Car 104 looked over at Martin and Ferguson. "If it isn't the
gruesome twosome," he called. "Where have you two been? We thought the front office
had finally caught up with you and found out that neither one of you could read or write
and that they had canned you."
"We can't read," Ben quipped back. "That's why we're still on the job. The front office
would never hire anyone who would embarrass you two by being smarter than either of
you. Where're you headed, Eddie?"
"Got 154-north," the other officer said.
"Hey," Clay called out, "I've got a real hot doll in Toronto and I'll gladly sell her phone
number for a proper price."
"Wouldn't want to hurt you, Clay," the other officer replied. "If I called her up and took
her out, she'd throw rocks at you the next time you drew the run. It's all for your own
good."
"Oh, go get lost in a cloverleaf," Clay retorted.
The other car broke the connection and with a wave, veered off to the right. The thruway
entrances were just ahead. Martin aimed Beulah at the lighted orifice topped by the
number 26-W. The patrol car slid into the narrower tunnel, glided along for another mile
and then turned its bow upwards. Three minutes later, they emerged from the tunnel into
the red patrol lane of Continental Thruway 26-West. The late afternoon sky was a
covering of gray wool and a drop or two of moisture struck the front face of the cab
canopy. For a mile on either side of the police lane, streams of cars sped westward. Ben
eyed the sky, the traffic and then peered at the outer hull thermometer. It read thirty-two

degrees. He made a mental bet with himself that the weather bureau was off on its snow
estimates by six hours. His Vermont upbringing told him it would be flurrying within the
hour.
He increased speed to a steady one hundred and the car sped silently and easily along the
police lane. Across the cab, Clay peered pensively at the steady stream of cars and cargo
carriers racing by in the green and blue lanes--all of them moving faster than the patrol
car.
The young officer turned in his seat and looked at his partner.
"You know, Ben," he said gravely, "I sometimes wonder if those old-time cowboys got as
tired looking at the south end of northbound cows as I get looking at the vanishing tail
pipes of cars."
The radio came to life.
"Philly Control to Car 56."
Clay touched his transmit plate. "This is Five Six. Go ahead."
"You've got a bad one at Marker 82," Control said. "A sideswipe in the white."
"Couldn't be too bad in the white," Ben broke in, thinking of the one-hundred
mile-an-hour limit in the slow lane.
"That's not the problem," Control came back. "One of the sideswiped vehicles was
flipped around and bounded into the green, and that's where the real mess is. Make it
code three."
"Five Six acknowledge," Ben said. "On the way."
He slammed forward on