EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

"You mean you actually took that jump?" Vinnie said incredulously.

"I was supposed to ride through Pit Crew turf, maybe?" Charley shot back.

"Or maybe you wouldn't have thought she could do it?" Trudy added in a challenging voice. She turned to her daughter. "Don't let the Great White Ego over there get your goat," she said. "It was like riding with your father again."

Vinnie's eyes were sullen as he bit somewhat harder than necessary into his hot dog.

"You know," Throttle grinned, his eyes dancing merrily behind his shades, "there's only one thing missing from this caper." He waved his hot dog in Charley's direction. "You didn't trash Limburger Tower."

"No; I had something different in mind," Charley told him airily.

oOo

"Well, Limburger, you actually came through for once," Camembert said, his tone anything but pleased. He stepped out of the pickup's field, to reveal a lab similar to Karbunkle's, with a motorcycle in the middle of the floor. Off to the side, a technician was soldering components to a circuit board, carefully consulting a set of written instructions before installing each one. "As you can see, the motorcycle itself is finished. All that's left is the remote control, and Jarlsberg here is almost done with that."

The technician so named seemed to start in his seat and began looking back and forth between the circuit board in his hand and the instructions. Behind him, another Plutarkian approached the motorcycle, a half-helmet on his head. Jarlsberg suddenly spun his chair around and said something the pickup couldn't catch; the other looked over his shoulder as he continued to mount. Limburger thought Jarlsberg's mouth formed the word "don't" just before the bike collapsed under the would-be rider's weight, parts flying in all directions, leaving the Plutarkian sitting on the floor, looking very confused. Jarlsberg shrugged helplessly in Camembert's direction, holding up the circuit board; the lines of solder across it clearly spelled the word "sucker."

"LIMBURGER!!" Camembert roared in a voice that the victim of that bit of engineer's revenge swore could be heard all over the city.

Finis