It wasn’t long before he realized that he wasn’t being taken to his cell. Understanding now that his captors meant to toss him into one mortal duel after another until he lost, he cudgeled his brain for something to do about it. But he could think of nothing, aside from making it a costly project for Sark and the ranks of the Elite.
His preoccupation was cut short as he was escorted into the holding area for the light-cycle contest. There, he found two User-Believers already waiting. He recognized the closest, Ram, even as he went to take his place with them.
Ram’s face broke into a surprised look, then a delighted smile. “Flynn!” He turned to his companion. “Look, Tron; he survived!”
Flynn glanced sharply to the other User-Believer as he passed Ram, curious about the legendary User Champion. A tall figure stood there; Flynn got his first good look at Tron.
“Alan!” he exclaimed.
Tron frowned, disturbed by something he couldn’t quite bring to mind, like a shadow from a dream. He examined the new program, then demanded, “Where did you hear that name?”
Flynn, groped, confused, for an answer. He’d concluded for an instant that the MCP had zapped Alan as well as himself, but for some reason Alan didn’t seem to recognize him. “Well, isn’t that—”
“My User’s name, yeah,” Tron finished for him. “But how—”
“I, uh,” Flynn fumbled, knowing now that this was no digitized man of the Other World. It came to him then that Tron had been in the System for a long time before he, Flynn, had shown up. Overcoming his initial shock, Flynn saw that this wasn’t the time to go into his real origin. As he took his place next to Tron, he improvised, “I’m a program from a User that—that knows Alan.” Not too far from the truth, he congratulated himself.
“He was disoriented in transport, Tron,” Ram put in.
“Yeah,” Flynn added out of the side of his mouth. “But I’m remembering all kinds of stuff. Like, my User wants me to go after the MCP.” That put surprise on Tron’s face; he was plainly impressed with Flynn.
But just then three Red Warriors entered; they were loud, rough, anxious for combat, slapping one another’s shoulders and laughing harshly. They lined up opposite the User-Believer team, a few paces from them. The two teams eyed each other without comment. Even odds, Flynn reflected; they must figure these Elite are good.
They suddenly felt the coursing and crackling of transport beams passing through them. Both teams abruptly disappeared in a haze of static, to reappear on the Grid, still facing each other, but separated now by a distance of a half-mile.
Sark’s Carrier maintained position over the Game Grid, directly above. High, polished walls enclosed the place, and over it floated a number of Recognizers. The walls were marked with giant numerals, strange ciphers, and symbols unintelligible to Flynn, in varieties and combinations of gleaming colors.
“That’s what my User wants too,” Tron told Flynn. Tron was the answer to his dilemma, Flynn felt sure now. If Flynn’s efforts in the laser lab hadn’t made it possible to get the Tron program free of the MCP, maybe there was something he could do here in the System.
A warning buzzer sounded; the race was about to start. “I know,” Flynn answered Tron. Tron and Ram looked at him strangely, wondering how he knew the things he did. There’d been little time to sort things out, but both programs found themselves inclined to trust the peculiar newcomer.
Flynn, for his part, was finding Tron a revelation. He brought much of Alan Bradley into sharp focus. Flynn saw in Tron an absolute stubbornness when he felt he was right, commitment to beliefs, determination to see that justice was served.
The three leaned forward, each of them now gripping a strangely designed set of handlebars. Light circled and swirled around them, resolving itself, as their light-cycles were brought into existence. Flynn held the posture as he’d been taught, pulling his feet up as he felt the vehicle coalesce under and around him. The cycles glowed with power; Tron’s in gold, Flynn’s red, and Ram’s green. Across the arena, the Reds’ cycles had also taken on substance, in blue.
The light-cycles were about nine feet from end to end, two-wheeled, all aerodynamic curves and racing lines from fairing to tail. Their rear wheels were of conventional design, but the front ones were broad, nearly spherical. The rider’s back, once he was hunched down over his handlebars and controls, became part of a smooth, nearly drag-free shape. Flynn mentally reviewed the techniques and fine points of the game, and he and the others revved their engines.
Somewhere above them, Sark touched a control stud. A siren sounded across the arena; the race had begun.
All six cyclists gunned their machines and accelerated away, tucked tightly within their cycles. From the rear of each vehicle, a spume of white force rose like the wake of a speedboat to solidify almost instantly into a partitioning wall coded to the color of the rider’s team; blue for the Elite, each conscript in his individual hue.
Tron, the most experienced combatant, took the lead. Ram and Flynn veered off to the right and left, riding the grid lines of the arena floor precisely, as they must. Their turns were made nearly instantaneously at grid intersections. Off in the distance the Elite did the same, leaving one of their number to race head-on at Tron. The gap between them disappeared with harrowing speed. Tron watched his opposite number grow with his approach and fixed all his attention on his own vehicle and his enemy’s.
Just as it seemed that the two light-cycles, inscribing their walls across the grid, must crash directly into each other, the two riders made lightning turns, Tron’s left and the Elite Warrior’s right, to turn parallel to one another. Off they raced, throwing up barrier-wakes behind them in blue and gold.
In other parts of the arena the remaining four antagonists sped along, bringing more partitioning into being, turning abruptly and maneuvering for their lives as the arena began to fill with the cycles’ mazes of light-walls.
Over Tron’s communicator, Flynn’s voice complimented that first head-on turn: “Nice one!” Tron and his opponent sped across the arena floor, neck and neck. Then began the perilous competition, each trying to box the other in, or get the other to turn at the wrong time and crash into a wall.
Tron’s voice came back over the communicator: “Ram, stay all the way over!”
Ram peeled off from his course in response, the turn coming in an instant, acknowledging, “I’ve got control. Go ahead.”
Tron and the Warrior against whom he was paired zoomed toward one of the clifflike walls that enclosed the arena. Tron maneuvered, and the Elite player found himself trapped between a gold partition and Tron’s cycle, and the barrier it created as it roared along, a second wall of gold.
Tron’s opponent couldn’t slow or stop; once begun, the game was continued at speed. By keeping just ahead of him, Tron contained any effort that the Elite might make to turn, chuting him toward the arena wall. An instant later the Red’s cycle crashed into it with such a tremendous liberation of energy as Warrior and cycle de-rezzed, that a segment of the arena wall itself also de-rezzed. Instantly, the wall that had been generated by the Elite Warrior faded from existence.
Flynn was alongside an opponent, bent low on the handlebars as the fairing’s slipstream tore at him. He grinned into the blast; he’d always enjoyed motorcycles. The bike he rode now was superior to anything he’d ever ridden, its responses immediate, its speed breathtaking. No machine in that Other World could have duplicated its performance.
They made a turn together, swinging the balloonlike front tires in vector changes at the intersections of the grid lines. Flynn eluded impact with one of his antagonist’s barriers, then another, and saw a third ride up directly before them both, all in moments. The arena had become a labyrinth where split-second decisions and constant attention were required to keep from colliding with something; the enemy’s maneuvers were an unceasing threat. The need for turns grew more frequent as the teams sectioned and subsectioned the gridded floor. It was becoming impossible to tell whether another barrier or an open stretch lay around the next turn. Memory was some help, but the mazework thrown up behind the five remaining cycles was complicated and fast-growing, and there was little time to study it. Instinct and training and reflexes came to the fore.