Roger Zelazny's "Devil Car"
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Murdock sped across the Great Western Road Plain.
High above him the sun was a fiery yo-yo as he took the
innumerable hillocks and rises of the Plain at better than a
hundred-sixty miles an hour. He did now slow for anything, and
Jenny's hidden eyes spotted all the rocks and potholes before they
came to them, and she carefully adjusted their course, sometimes
without his even detecting the subtle movement of the steering column
beneath his hands.
Even through the dark-tinted windshield and the thick goggles he
wore, the glare from the fused Plain burnt into his eyes, so that at
times it seemed as if he were steering a very fast boat through night,
beneath a brilliant alien moon, and that he was cutting his way across
a lake of silver fire. Tall dust waves rose in his wake, hung in the
air, and after a time settled once more.
"You are wearing yourself out," said the radio, "sitting there
clutching the wheel that way, squinting ahead. Why don't you try to
get some rest? Let me fog the shields. Go to sleep and leave the
driving to me."
"No," he said, "I want it this way."
"All right," said Jenny. "I just thought I would ask."
"Thanks."
About a minute later the radio began playingчit was a soft,
stringy sort of music.
"Cut that out!"
"Sorry, boss. Thought it might relax you."
"When I need relaxing, _I'll_ tell _you_."
"Check, Sam. Sorry."
The silence seemed oppressive after its brief interruption. She
was a good car, though, Murdock knew that. She was always concerned
with his welfare, and she was anxious to get on with his quest.
She was made to look like a carefree Swinger sedan: bright red,
gaudy, fast. But there were rockets under the bulges of her hood, and
two fifty-caliber muzzles lurked just out of sight in the recesses
beneath her headlamps; she wore a belt of five and ten-second timed
grenades across her belly; and in her trunk was a spray-tank
containing a highly volatile naphthalic.
....for his Jenny was a specially designed deathcar, built for him
by the Archengineer of the Geeyem Dynasty, far to the East, and all
the cunning of that great artificer had gone into her construction.
"We'll find it this time, Jenny," he said, "and I didn't mean to snap
at you like I did."
"That's all right, Sam," said the delicate voice. "I am
programmed to understand you."
They roared on across the Great Plain and the sun fell away to the
west. All night and all day they had searched, and Murdock was tired.
