“How are you doing, Cabbie?” asked Jimmy a little while later. “Have you warmed up?”
“Heading for optimum temperature and speed,” said Cabbie. “Getting warmer ... even warmer ... we’re red-hot and racing!”
Cabbie’s tyres ate up the ground, his engines roaring loud and clear once more. The ice stretched in every direction, flat and smooth and white and empty.
“We must be miles behind Horace,” sighed Jimmy. “And without Cabcom we’ve got no idea how far ahead he’s got.”
“Oh!” said Cabbie. “I’ve got a surprise.”
A panel slid back on Cabbie’s dashboard. A circle of green glass appeared. It lit up and a line of green light swept round the circle like the minute hand on a watch. Every time the line swept over a little green blob, the machine went ‘ping!’
“What is it?” asked Jimmy.
“Pete installed it last night,” explained Cabbie. “It’s called a radar. They used to use it in the olden days. Grandpa knows all about them, anyway.”
“Why have we got it? What does it do?” asked Jimmy.
“See that little green blob?” said Cabbie. “That’s Horace.”
“Ping!” announced the radar.
“Really?” exclaimed Jimmy. “It’s pretty good for an antique, isn’t it?”
“Pete said Crusher’s coms system is always going down. Big Al uses radar all the time. He says it’s basic but more reliable. Big Al loves his radar, Pete says. With this we’ll be able to locate any robot within a ten-kilometre radius.”
“So how far ahead is Horace?”
“Three kilometres,” said Cabbie. “But we’re gaining on him.”
Jimmy peered at the radar. The little green blob was getting nearer – but peering through Cabbie’s windscreen Jimmy could still see no sign of Horace and Zoom.
A thin flutter of snow landed on the windscreen.
“Weather warning,” announced Cabbie. “There’s a snowstorm coming in from the north.”
Already the flakes of snow had thickened, flying at Cabbie’s windscreen as he raced into the storm, splatting on it in big white blotches.
“Activate screen clearance,” said Jimmy.
Cabbie set his windscreen wipers flicking and hot air blasting inside, but the snow was flying thicker and faster than he could clear it. It began to creep up the windscreen. Jimmy hunched over the steering wheel and pushed his face to the glass. All he could see was a solid white curtain of flakes flying at him.
“We’re going to have to slow down, Cabbie,” said Jimmy. “This is dangerous.” He eased his foot off the accelerator, and little by little the green blob on the radar moved further and further away from them.
“Horace and Zoom are getting away!” said Cabbie anxiously. “We’ll never catch them if we crawl along like this.”
“We’ll never catch them if we drop off the ice or fall down a hole because we can’t see where we’re going!” said Jimmy.
“There must be something we can do,” grumbled Cabbie.
“Hold on,” said Jimmy. “I’ve got it!”
“What are you going to do?”
“You know your engine-cooling system?” asked Jimmy.
“Yes,” said Cabbie.
“It sucks in cold air, doesn’t it?” Jimmy asked excitedly
“That’s right,” said Cabbie.
“Cabbie, can you reverse it and spray out hot air instead?”
“Consider it done,” said Cabbie.
Just like when he was using the grappling hook, the compartment in Cabbie’s bonnet slid open. But it wasn’t the grappling-hook launcher that rose. It was a huge pipe, like a vacuum cleaner, pointing out into the wall of flying snow.
“Activating snow clearance,” announced Cabbie with ice-cool calm.
All of a sudden a large round hole appeared in the snowstorm: a tunnel through the blizzard of snowflakes. The snowstorm raged around them but for at least five metres in front of the car it was crystal-clear.
“It works!” cried Cabbie in amazement.
“Great,” said Jimmy.
“Genius!” said Cabbie. “Now, let’s get moving. We’ve got a race to win!”
Jimmy slammed his foot on the accelerator again and pinned his eyes to the tunnel through the snowstorm.
“I can just about see where we’re going,” he said, “but I can’t see if we’re going the right way. You might have to navigate for me so I don’t steer us back into the sea.”
“Our GPS stopped working properly in the storm,” Cabbie replied. “We could end up racing back to the start line if we’re not careful.”
“What about the radar?” asked Jimmy.
“It can help us track Horace,” Cabbie said. “But it can’t show us the route.”
“Well, let’s follow Horace!” Jimmy grinned. “He can actually help us for once!”
“Got it,” Cabbie replied, revving his engine.
It took a while, but soon they were out of the storm. And up ahead of them, Jimmy could just make out a distant black blur.
“It’s Horace and Zoom,” he said. “And they’re swerving all over the place!”
“Looks like that snow has caused them a few technical problems,” laughed Cabbie.
“We’re going to catch them up,” said Jimmy as they raced towards Horace, who was still veering from one side of the track to the other.
Jimmy roared up behind them. As he and Cabbie got closer they could see Horace thumping Zoom’s steering wheel and shouting and flicking switches furiously.
But just as they were about to pull level and overtake, a huge cloud of snow exploded like an enormous sneeze from somewhere underneath Zoom and he seemed to pull himself together.
Vrmmm! Vrmmm! Zoom’s engine let out a deep, powerful growl and then off he went again.
“He’s got the snow out of his system,” said Cabbie, “and he’s back on track.”
“And we’re back in the race,” said Jimmy. “But I wish we could get him back for melting the ice and putting us in danger,” he added angrily.
Jimmy was sick of seeing Horace Pelly playing dirty tricks in the Robot Races championship. For once he wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine.
“That’s it!” he cried. “The robo-pummeller. If we can just get ahead by thirty, maybe fifty metres, we can use it to crack a huge hole in the ice. Horace will be falling down it before he even knows it’s there. The only place Horace will be racing is to the bottom of the sea!”
“Jimmy?” said Cabbie desperately. “Jimmy, are you there?”
“Of course I am,” said Jimmy.
“I thought you must have got out and some idiot taken your place,” said Cabbie.
“What do you mean?” asked Jimmy in surprise.
“We can’t send Horace down a hole in the ice!” cried Cabbie. “That’s exactly what he did to us! It’d make us just as bad as him.”
“No we won’t,” said Jimmy fiercely. “We’d just be paying him back. He started it.”
“And besides,” said Cabbie, “the robo-pummeller’s for getting us through snowy roads, not for smashing through the ice and sending people to the bottom of the sea – even if it is smelly Horace Pelly.”
“Listen, Cabbie,” said Jimmy. “If we can take Horace out of the race, we’ll win for sure. And that robo-upgrade will be ours! Big Al wouldn’t think twice about it. He’d be knocking a hole in the ice faster than Pete Webber can change a tyre!”
“Yes, but—”
“Activating rocket-boosters,” said Jimmy, stabbing a finger at a button.
A flash of flame sent them rocketing past Horace and skidding over the ice.
“Activating robo-pummeller,” said Jimmy, pulling the orange lever forward.
“JIMMY—” Cabbie yelled as he hopped across the ice, jumping up and down like a kangaroo, the robo-pummeller thumping and banging holes in the ice as they went.
In his rear-view mirror, Jimmy grinned as he saw thick black cracks ripping through the ice, rocketing towards Zoom like lightning bolts.
“Jimmy!” Cabbie yelled frantically. “What have you done?”