positions on the upper levels.

Outside my rocket I noticed the guide-line color bands on the force fence deepen suddenly, almost obscuring the stands. Although these bands were invisible to the crowd, they stood out sharply in my specially ground lenses, tracing the dome-shaped path of the force fence. This force fence, despite its apparent fragility, can stop a churning rocket on a pinpoint. And it has stopped plenty of them, too. Not even radar controlled cushioning jets and the strong repellent force the fence exerted can keep a rocket from going into it.

When the color bands steadied to racing ready, I felt for the accelerator paddles, jabbing them all the way home. With the paddles completely depressed, the forward propulsion jets were all set to fire simultaneously when the starter threw the radio-controlled master switch in the judges' stand.

On the instrument board in front of me the keys that operated trimming jets and repulsion magnets shone with a dull green incandescence.

The ten-second warning signal let go with a sharp buzz in my earphones. I braced myself, pulling my neck down as far as it would go. And then suddenly my stomach was trying to push its way through the back of my spine and into the contacts of my anti-black-out belt. In one awful surge my big sizzle buggy kicked itself out of the starting tube.

That first magnet bend on the big elliptic is always the worst. Anything can happen when twenty bunched up rockets go into that curve still fighting the blasting surge of their starting momentum.

Automatically I set my repulsion magnets and increased the starboard trimming jets to ride the fence around. It's the only safe way to take that first tight corner. With the magnets of one rocket playing against the next and the last ship cushioned against the fence, you're in a groove as neat and cozy as a baby in a crib.

It's the safe way, but it drags off speed in a hurry, and now and then you run into a rider with just the combination of iron nerves and ivory skull that gives him the idea he can get around on skill and jets alone. This time it was the kid in the white rocket. Maybe he saw himself winning his first try in the big time, just like the guy in the book.

Maybe his girl was parked somewhere up there in the stands, popping off with every quivering inch of her young chassis, and he wanted to look good. Or maybe it was just that the brain-drugging ecstasy 

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