"Let me hear a swear-word."
"I will not. What kind of car do you think I am, anyway?"
"I'm sorry," said Murdock. "You're a lady. I forgot."
There was an audible click within the radio.
They raced forward on the level ground that lay before the foot ofthe mountains. Murdock took another drink, then switched to coffee.
"Ten years," he muttered, "ten years..."
The trail swung in a wide curve as the mountains jogged back andthe foothills sprang up high beside them.
It was over almost before he knew it.
As they passed a huge, orange-colored stone massif, sculpted likean upside-down toadstool by the wind, there was a clearing to theright.
It shot forward at themчthe Devil Car. It had lain in ambush,seeing that it could not outrun the Scarlet Lady, and it rushed towarda final collision with its hunter.
Jenny skidded sideways as her brakes caught with a scream and asmell of smoke, and her fifty-calibers were firing, and her hoodsprang open and her front wheels rose up off the ground as the rocketsleapt wailing ahead, and she spun around three times, her rear bumperscraping the saltsand plain, and the third and last time she fired herremaining rockets into the smouldering wreckage on the hillside, and shecame to a rest on all four wheels; and her fifty-calibers kept firinguntil they were emptied, and then a steady clicking sound came fromthem for a full minute afterwards, and then all lapsed into silence.
Murdock sat there shaking, watching the gutted, twisted wreckblaze against the sky.
"You did it, Jenny. You killed him. You killed me the DevilCar," he said.
But she did not answer him. Her engine started once more and sheturned toward the southeast and headed for the Fuel Stop/Rest StopFortress that lay in that civilized direction