“I’m working pro bono today!” I said, and from the odd look she gave me, I got the impression that I had used that Latin expression in the wrong context, but I didn’t care and waved her to the saddle behind me. I felt the same pressure that I felt when I made my first real dive somewhere in the southern seas. In my arms, the two cones tried to buzz apart, but I, eager to bring them intact to the scientists, held them with all my might, so that I didn’t even realize I had arrived in the present until the tachometer gave a final, end-of-travel clink. It’s the fact that they don’t that gives these races their charm and makes them watched by millions of fans. I gritted my teeth and drove on through an increasingly desolate and darkening world: the sky had gone black and the stars were constantly visible. As I said, in the first race I took an honorable thirteenth place, although, to be honest, I wasn’t hoping for that either. It was right on the edge of a puddle, and as I got closer, I saw that the scientists in the second category were right: the object consisted of two conical bodies that were clamped together at the base, and I could see that they were
