Gloria Farrow was in the lead.
We went howling down the road, Farrow in the lead car by a hundred feet and me behind her. We went roaring around a curve, over a hill, and I had my perception out to its range, which was far ahead of her car. The main gate came into range, and we bore down upon that wire and steel portal like a pair of madmen.
Gloria Farrow plowed into the gate without letting up. The gate went whirling in pieces, glass flew and tires howled and bits of metal and plastic sang through the air. Her car weaved aside; I forgot the road ahead and put my perception into her car.
Farrow was fighting the wheel like a racing driver in a spin. Her hands wrenched the wheel with the swift strength of the Mekstrom Flesh she wore, and the wheel bent under her hands. Over and around she went, with a tire blown and the lower rail of the big gate hanging onto the fender like a dry-land sea-anchor. She juggled the wheel and made a snaky path off to one side of the road.
Out of the guardhouse came a uniformed man with a riot gun. He did not have time to raise it. Farrow ironed out her course and aimed the careening car dead center. She mowed the guard down and a half-thousandth of a second later she plowed into the guardhouse. The structure erupted like a box of stove-matches hit with a heavy-caliber soft-nosed slug, like a house of cards and an air-jet. There was a roar and a small gout of flame and then out of the flying wreckage on the far side came Farrow and her stolen car. Out of the mess of brimstone and shingles she came, turning end for end in a crazy, metal-crushing twist and spin. She ground to a broken halt before the last of the debris landed, and then everything was silent.
And then for the first and only time in my life I felt the penetrant, forceful impact of an incoming thought; a mental contact from another mind:
#Steve!# it screamed in my mind, #Get out! Get going! It's your move now——#
I put my foot on the faucet and poured on the oil.