BR034 Smash Up Time

Prince Bullpup presented the winning trophy to Condon after the race. The Bees won it for Condon, if you ask me, helping with their air power to engineer a tremendous surge at the end. They pushed it so fast that the car would have gone airborne if we hadn't installed baffles at the back to prevent lift. It was probably that mechanism that caused the car to careen slightly after it had crossed the finish line and then go into a complete flip, crashing straight down onto the front end.

For a long moment the crowd held its breath as the other racers sped past the crashed car and the emergency vehicles turned on their sirens. The crowd waited painfully as the smoke cleared around the car and then started cheering as the door opened and Condon leapt out onto the tarmac. With a grand flourish he made a little bow and then the crowd went wild, jumping up and screaming and clapping with joy.

Condon, of course, loved every minute of it and he kept basking in the glory of his expanding legend throughout the trophy ceremony, milking the moment for everything he could get out of it. For Condon the Bees, the car, everything else was momentarily forgotten.

Personally, I couldn't take a lot of pleasure in it, or any. I'd known the car was fast and since it was a prototype I'd been looking forward to getting it back to the Jackster plant and fine tuning the thing. Now it was a wreck, waiting to be shovelled off the track. And the Bees were seriously disheartened. The crash had shook them up badly and the first thing they did when I arranged for the hood to come off was to call for a medic. An ambulance took about a hundred of them to the East Poultry Hospital Burn Unit. The head Bee said he would take the rest of his workers back to the Jackster plant immediately in a taxi. He said he would be making a report right away to the Queen Bee and that I'd probably hear from her in the morning.

I called Jilly, still up in the Beastburg Gazette box, and told her to go home without me. I knew I'd be dealing with the mess for at least another hour.