"What's the matter, Verne?" Larry asked, staring hard at his top bike rider. "You turn chicken over a little wind?"

Verne Smith laughed, looking embarrassed as he glanced at the teenager hugging him. He'd never quite learned to handle these precocious cycle groupies, nor quite managed to overcome his innate guilt about cheating on his wife.

"I ain't scared of no wind," he said to Larry, "you know me better than that. But I was just trying to calm down Sherry here."

"Just go on and get that act moving. I'll handle Sherry."

Verne moved out onto the track and mounted his powerful black cycle to the accompaniment of the crowd's loud yells. Though he was only twenty-five, he was already famous among cycle enthusiasts around the country for his fearless skill.

"Don't do it, Verne! Don't do it!" he heard Sherry's shrill adolescent voice calling and turned to smile and wave reassuringly before gunning his bike and tearing across the field to the first hurdle.

Suddenly, so quickly that the watching crowd hardly saw what happened, a particularly violent gust of wind caught the speeding, climbing cycle at an angle that sent it hurtling back down the hill. Verne Smith's black leather clad body flew through the air to land not far from the spectators with a sickening thud, then lay as still as a crushed insect. Beyond him, the accelerating bike's powerful engine immediately burst into crimson flames that shot high into the darkening sky.

Larry Johnson rushed toward his friend's twisted body, the terrified screams of the crowd and the wail of the fire siren echoing in his ears.

"Verne! Verne!" he shouted, kneeling beside the sprawled out body. But the stunt rider was unconscious, and in the next minute his inert body was being lifted into a shrieking ambulance which raced toward the nearest hospital.