The gadget was still attached to the motor of the ancient car. It had helped pull the car across the continent and was solely responsible for the fact that it had pulled the Rockies. Now it was turned off. The small boy turned it on. The car began to ride smoothly and easily with seemingly infinite power.

It came out of the narrow woods-road upon a main highway. The fourteen-year-old boy turned up the gadget. The ancient jalopy breezed up to sixty miles an hour—seventy—eighty....

A horn blared its astonishment as a motorcycle-cop flashed past, going in the opposite direction. Bud Gregory's son heard the cop's brakes squeal. He was going to turn around and come in pursuit.

The flapping, squeaking, preposterous flivver hit one hundred and twenty miles an hour as the scared boy lit out. He rounded a curve. The small town lay before him. In panicky haste, he turned the knob to reverse the molecular drive of the four-wheeled wreck he drove.

In fifty yards it dropped from a hundred and twenty miles to ten. He snapped off the drive and limped into town on three cylinders. He parked the car in an inconspicuous place and went and got the beer.

He lingered uneasily, afraid to go back until the motor-cop should have vanished. The motor-cop came into town, swearing. The boy saw him ask questions. He moved out of sight. The boy got into the car and stowed the beer. Then he saw the cop heading for his car where it was parked. The cop looked purposeful.

The small boy cringed. He shared his father's terror of the Law. When the motor-cop was ten yards away, Bud Gregory's son reacted in panic. He flipped over the molecular-drive switch and the car plunged forward.

It dented the fender of the car ahead of it, side-swiped a farm-truck, upset a "Keep Right" sign and flashed for the open road, with no sound of any running engine.

The motor-cop lunged for his motorcycle and roared in pursuit. A fourteen-year-old boy is not a startlingly conservative driver at any time. Bud Gregory's son was filled with stark terror. On the two-mile stretch of straight road just around the first curve he gave the car all the speed that molecular heat-energy would yield.

It wasn't the same as atomic power but it was plenty. The motor-cop reached the curve just in time to see the jalopy stop almost as abruptly as if it had run into a brick wall—but unharmed—and go 

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