by Jerry
Ferguson stood up and stretched, then went into the galley. He poured himself a cup of coffee and carrying it with him, went back to the crew quarters. He closed the door to the galley and sat down on the lower bunk to sip his coffee. When he had finished, he tossed the cup into the basket, reached and dimmed the cubby lights and kicked off his boots. Still in his coveralls, Clay stretched out on the bunk and sighed luxuriously. He reached up and pressed a switch on the bulkhead above his pillow and the muted sounds of music from a standard broadcast commercial station drifted into the bunk area. Clay closed his eyes and let the sounds of the music and the muted rumble of the engines lull him to sleep. It took almost fifteen seconds for him to be in deep slumber.
Ben pushed Beulah up to her steady seventy-five-mile-an-hour cruising speed, moved to the center of the quarter-mile-wide police lane and locked her tracks into autodrive. He relaxed back in his seat and divided his gaze between the video monitors and the actual scene on either side of him in the night. Once again the sky was lighted, this time much brighter on the horizon as the roadways swept to the south of Cincinnati.
Traffic was once again heavy and fast with the blue and green carrying almost equal loads while white was really crowded and even the yellow “zoom” lane was beginning to fill. The 2200 hour density reports from Cinncy had been given before the Ohio State-Cal football game traffic had hit the thruways and densities now were peaking near twenty thousand vehicles for the one-hundred-mile block of westbound NAT 26 out of Cincinnati.
Back to the east, near the eastern Ohio state line, Martin could hear Car 207 calling for a wrecker and meat wagon. Beulah rumbled on through the night. The video monitors flicked to the next ten-mile stretch as the patrol car rolled past another interchange. More vehicles streamed onto the westbound thruways, crossing over and dropping down into the same lanes they held coming out of the north-south road. Seven years on patrols had created automatic reflexes in the trooper sergeant. Out of the mass of cars and cargoes streaming along the rushing tide of traffic, his eye picked out the track of one vehicle slanting across the white lane just a shade faster than the flow of traffic. The vehicle was still four or five miles ahead. It wasn’t enough out of the ordinary to cause more than a second, almost unconscious glance, on the part of the veteran officer. He kept his view shifting from screen to screen and out to the sides of the car.
But the reflexes took hold again as his eye caught the track of the same vehicle as it hit the crossover from white to green, squeezed into the faster lane and continued its sloping run towards the next faster crossover. Now Martin followed the movement of the car almost constantly. The moving blip had made the cutover across the half-mile wide green lane in the span of one crossover and was now whipping into the merger lane that would take it over the top of the police lane and drop down into the one hundred fifty to two hundred mile an hour blue. If the object of his scrutiny straightened out in the blue, he’d let it go. The driver had been bordered on violation in his fast crossover in the face of heavy traffic. If he kept it up in the now-crowded high-speed lane, he was asking for sudden death. The monitors flicked to the next block and Ben waited just long enough to see the speeding car make a move to the left, cutting in front of a speeding cargo carrier. Ben slammed Beulah into high. Once again the bull horn blared as the cocoons slammed shut, this time locking both Clay and Kelly into their bunks, sealing Ben into the control seat.
Beulah lifted on her air cushion and the twin jets roared as she accelerated down the police lane at three hundred miles an hour. Ben closed the gap on the speeder in less than a minute and then edged over to the south side of the police lane to make the jump into the blue lane. The red emergency lights and the radio siren had already cleared a hole for him in the traffic pattern and he eased back on the finger throttles as the patrol car sailed over the divider and into the blue traffic lane. Now he had eyeball contact with the speeding car, still edging over towards the ultra-high lane. On either side of the patrol car traffic gave way, falling back or moving to the left and right. Car 56 was now directly behind the speeding passenger vehicle. Ben fingered the cut-in switch that put his voice signal onto the standard vehicular emergency frequency—the band that carried the automatic siren-warning to all vehicles.
The patrol car was still hitting above the two-hundred-mile-an-hour mark and was five hundred feet behind the speeder. The headlamp bathed the other car in a white glare, punctuated with angry red flashes from the emergency lights.
“You are directed to halt or be fired upon,” Ben’s voice roared out over the emergency frequency. Almost without warning, the speeding car began braking down with such deceleration that the gargantuan patrol car with its greater mass came close to smashing over it and crushing the small passenger vehicle like an insect. Ben cut all forward power, punched up full retrojet and at the instant he felt Beulah’s tracks touch the pavement as the air cushion blew, he slammed on the brakes. Only the safety cocoon kept Martin from being hurled against the instrument panel and in their bunks, Kelly Lightfoot and Clay Ferguson felt their insides dragging down into their legs.
The safety cocoons snapped open and Clay jumped into his boots and leaped for the cab. “Speeder,” Ben snapped as he jumped down the steps to the side hatch. Ferguson snatched up his helmet from the rack beside his seat and leaped down to join his partner. Ben ran up to the stopped car through a thick haze of smoke from the retrojets of the patrol car and the friction-burning braking of both vehicles. Ferguson circled to the other side of the car. As they flashed their handlights into the car, they saw the driver of the car kneeling on the floor beside the reclined passenger seat. A woman lay stretched out on the seat, twisting in pain. The man raised an agonized face to the officers. “My wife’s going to have her baby right here!”
“Kelly,” Ben yelled into his helmet transmitter. “Maternity!”
The dispensary ramp was halfway down before Ben had finished calling. Kelly jumped to the ground and sprinted around the corner of the patrol car, medical bag in hand.
She shoved Clay out of the way and opened the door on the passenger side. On the seat, the woman moaned and then muffled a scream. The patrol doctor laid her palm on the distended belly. “How fast are your pains coming?” she asked. Clay and Ben had moved away from the car a few feet.
“Litter,” Kelly snapped over her shoulder. Clay raced for the patrol car while Ben unshipped a portable warning light and rolled it down the lane behind the patrol car. He flipped it to amber “caution” and “pass.” Blinking amber arrows pointed to the left and right of the halted passenger vehicle and traffic in the blue lane began picking up speed and parting around the obstructions.
By the time he returned to the patrol car, Kelly had the expectant mother in the dispensary. She slammed the door in the faces of the three men and then she went to work.
The woman’s husband slumped against the side of the patrol vehicle.
Ben dug out his pack of cigarettes and handed one to the shaking driver.
He waited until the man had taken a few drags before speaking.
“Mister, I don’t know if you realize it or not but you came close to killing your wife, your baby and yourself,” Ben said softly, “to say nothing of the possibility of killing several other families. Just what did you think you were doing?”
The driver’s shoulders sagged and his hand shook as he took the cigarette from his mouth. “Honestly, officer, I don’t know. I just got frightened to death,” he said. He peered up at Martin. “This is our first baby, you see, and Ellen wasn’t due for another week. We thought it would be all right to visit my folks in Cleveland and Ellen was feeling just fine. Well, anyway, we started home tonight—we live in Jefferson City—and just about the time I got on the thruway, Ellen started having pains. I was never so scared in my life. She screamed once and then tried to muffle them but I knew what was happening and all I could think of was to get her to a hospital. I guess I went out of my head, what with her moaning and the t
raffic and everything. The only place I could think of that had a hospital was Evansville, and I was going to get her there come hell or high water.” The young man tossed away the half-smoked cigarette and looked up at the closed dispensary door. “Do you think she’s all right?”
Ben sighed resignedly and put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Don’t you worry a bit. She’s got one of the best doctors in the continent in there with her. Come on.” He took the husband by the arm and led him around to the patrol car cab hatch. “You climb up there and sit down. I’ll be with you in a second.”
The senior officer signaled to Ferguson. “Let’s get his car out of the traffic, Clay,” he directed. “You drive it.”
Ben went back and retrieved the caution blinker and re-racked it in the side of the patrol car, then climbed up into the cab. He took his seat at the controls and indicated the jump seat next to him. “Sit down, son. We’re going to get us and your car out of this mess before we all get clobbered.”
He flicked the headlamp at Ferguson in the control seat of the passenger car and the two vehicles moved out. Ben kept the emergency lights on while they eased carefully cross-stream to the north and the safety of the police lane. Clay picked up speed at the outer edge of the blue lane and rolled along until he reached the first “patrol only” entrance through the divider to the service strip. Ben followed him in and then turned off the red blinkers and brought the patrol car to a halt behind the other vehicle.
The worried husband stood up and looked to the rear of the car. “What’s making it so long?” he asked anxiously. “They’ve been in there a long time.”
Ben smiled. “Sit down, son. These things take time. Don’t you worry. If there were anything wrong, Kelly would let us know. She can talk to us on the intercom anytime she wants anything.”
The man sat back down. “What’s your name?” Ben inquired.
“Haverstraw,” the husband replied distractedly, “George Haverstraw. I’m an accountant. That’s my wife back there,” he cried, pointing to the closed galley door. “That’s Ellen.”
“I know,” Ben said gently. “You told us that.”
Clay had come back to the patrol car and dropped into his seat across from the young husband. “Got a name picked out for the baby?” he asked.
Haverstraw’s face lighted. “Oh, yes,” he exclaimed. “If it’s a boy, we’re going to call him Harmon Pierce Haverstraw. That was my grandfather’s name. And if she’s a girl, it’s going to be Caroline May after Ellen’s mother and grandmother.”
The intercom came to life. “Anyone up there?” Kelly’s voice asked. Before they could answer, the wail of a baby sounded over the system. Haverstraw yelled.
“Congratulations, Mr. Haverstraw,” Kelly said, “you’ve got a fine-looking son.”
“Hey,” the happy young father yelped, “hey, how about that? I’ve got a son.” He pounded the two grinning troopers on the back. Suddenly he froze. “What about Ellen? How’s Ellen?” he called out.
“She’s just fine,” Kelly replied. “We’ll let you in here in a couple of minutes but we’ve got to get us gals and your new son looking pretty for papa. Just relax.”
Haverstraw sank down onto the jump seat with a happy dazed look on his face.
Ben smiled and reached for the radio. “I guess our newest citizen deserves a ride in style,” he said. “We’re going to have to transfer Mrs. Haverstraw and . . . er . . . oh yes, Master Harmon Pierce to an ambulance and then to a hospital now, George. You have any preference on where they go?”
“Gosh, no,” the man replied. “I guess the closest one to wherever we are.” He paused thoughtfully. “Just where are we? I’ve lost all sense of distance or time or anything else.”
Ben looked at the radiodometer. “We’re just about due south of Indianapolis. How would that be?”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Haverstraw replied.
“You can come back now, Mr. Haverstraw,” Kelly called out. Haverstraw jumped up. Clay got up with him. “Come on, papa,” he grinned, “I’ll show you the way.”
Ben smiled and then called into Indianapolis Control for an ambulance.
“Ambulance on the way,” Control replied. “Don’t you need a wrecker, too, Five Six?”
Ben grinned. “Not this time. We didn’t lose one. We gained one.”
He got up and went back to have a look at Harmon Pierce Haverstraw, age five minutes, temporary address, North American Continental Thruway 26-West, Mile Marker 632.
Five minutes later, mother and baby were in the ambulance heading north to the hospital. Haverstraw, calmed down with a sedative administered by Kelly, had nearly wrung their hands off in gratitude as he said good-by.
“I’ll mail you all cigars when I get home,” he shouted as he waved and climbed into his car.
Beulah’s trio watched the new father ease carefully into the traffic as the ambulance headed down the police-way. Haverstraw would have to cut over to the next exchange and then go north to Indianapolis. He’d arrive later than his family. This time, he was the very picture of careful driving and caution as he threaded his way across the green.
“I wonder if he knows what brand of cigars I smoke?” Kelly mused.
The chrono clicked up to 2335 as Car 56 resumed patrol. Kelly plumped down onto the jump seat beside Ben. Clay was fiddling in the galley. “Why don’t you go back to the sack?” Ben called.
“What, for a lousy twenty-five minutes,” Clay replied. “I had a good nap before you turned the burners up to high. Besides, I’m hungry. Anyone else want a snack?”
Ben shook his head. “No, thanks,” Kelly said. Ferguson finished slapping together a sandwich. Munching on it, he headed into the engine room to make the midnight check. Car 56 had now been on patrol eight hours. Only two hundred thirty-two hours and two thousand miles to go.
Kelly looked around at the departing back of the younger trooper. “I’ll bet this is the only car in NorCon that has to stock twenty days of groceries for a ten-day patrol,” she said.
Ben chuckled. “He’s still a growing boy.”
“Well, if he is, it’s all between the ears,” the girl replied. “You’d think that after a year I would have realized that nothing could penetrate that thick Canuck’s skull. He gets me so mad sometimes that I want to forget I’m a lady.” She paused thoughtfully. “Come to think of it. No one ever accused me of being a lady in the first place.”
“Sounds like love,” Ben smiled.
Hunched over on the jump seat with her elbows on her knees and her chin cupped in both hands, Kelly gave the senior officer a quizzical sideways look.
Ben was watching his monitors and missed the glance. Kelly sighed and stared out into the light streaked night of the thruway. The heavy surge of football traffic had distributed itself into the general flow on the road and while all lanes were busy, there were no indications of any overcrowding or jam-ups. Much of the pattern was shifting from passenger to cargo vehicle as it neared midnight. The football crowds were filtering off at each exchange and exit and the California fans had worked into the blue and yellow—mostly the yellow—for the long trip home. The fewer passenger cars on the thruway and the increase in cargo carriers gave the troopers a breathing spell. The men in the control buckets of the three hundred and four hundred-ton cargo vehicles were the real pros of the thruways; careful, courteous and fast. The NorCon patrol cars could settle down to watch out for the occasional nuts and drunks that might bring disaster.
Once again, Martin had the patrol car on auto drive in the center of the police lane and he steeled back in his seat. Beside him, Kelly stared moodily into the night.
“How come you’ve never married, Ben?” she asked. The senior trooper gave her a startled look. “Why, I guess for the same reason you’re still a maiden,” he answered. “This just doesn’t seem to be the right kind of a job for a married man.”
Kelly shook her head. “No, it’s not the same thing with me,” she said. “At least, not entirely the
same thing. If I got married, I’d have to quit the Patrol and you wouldn’t. And secondly, if you must know the truth, I’ve never been asked.”
Ben looked thoughtfully at the copper-haired Irish-Indian girl. All of a sudden she seemed to have changed in his eyes. He shook his head and turned back to the road monitors.
“I just don’t think that a patrol trooper has any business getting married and trying to keep a marriage happy and make a home for a family thirty days out of every three hundred sixty, with an occasional weekend home if you’re lucky enough to draw your hometown for a terminal point. This might help the population rate but it sure doesn’t do anything for the institution of matrimony.”
“I know some troopers that are married,” Kelly said.
“But there aren’t very many,” Ben countered. “Comes the time they pull me off the cars and stick me behind a desk somewhere, then I’ll think about it.”
“You might be too old by then,” Kelly murmured.
Ben grinned. “You sound as though you’re worried about it,” he said.
“No,” Kelly replied softly, “no, I’m not worried about it. Just thinking.” She averted her eyes and looked out into the night again. “I wonder what NorCon would do with a husband-wife team?” she murmured, almost to herself.
Ben looked sharply at her and frowned. “Why, they’d probably split them up,” he said.
“Split what up?” Clay inquired, standing in the door of the cab.
“Split up all troopers named Clay Ferguson,” Kelly said disgustedly, “and use them for firewood—especially the heads. They say that hardwood burns long and leaves a fine ash. And that’s what you’ve been for years.”
She sat erect in the jump seat and looked sourly at the young trooper.
Clay shuddered at the pun and squeezed by the girl to get to his seat. “I’ll take it now, pop,” he said. “Go get your geriatrics treatment.”
