'All I can tell you,' Osch said, 'is I wish it were me instead of you.'
He sipped his fresh martini; of the three of them, he was the only one still drinking. 'If I was younger I think it might have been me. But I guess I'll go on doing what I always have: advertising that nonexistent car to the unreal person.'
'Teddy,' Barbara said, 'I'm sorry.'
'No need to be. The sad thing is, I think you're right.' The creative chief blinked. 'Christ! Those peppers are hotter than I thought.' He produced a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
Chapter 7
Some thirty miles outside Detroit, occupying a half thousand acres of superb Michigan countryside, the auto company's proving ground lay like a Balkan state bristling with defended borders. Only one entrance to the proving ground existed - through a security-policed double barrier, remarkably similar to East-West Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie. Here, visitors were halted to have credentials examined; no one, without prearranged authority, got in.
Apart from this entry point, the entire area was enclosed by a high, chain-link fence, patrolled by guards. Inside the fence, trees and other protective planting formed a visual shield against watchers from outside.
What the company was guarding were some of its more critical secrets.
Among them: experiments with new cars, trucks, and their components, as well as drive-to-destruction performance tests on current models.
The testing was carried out on some hundred and fifty miles of roads-routes to nowhere ranging from specimens of the very best to the absolute worst or most precipitous in the world. Among the latter was a duplicate of San Francisco's horrendously steep Filbert Street, appropriately named (so San Franciscans say) since only nuts drive down it. A Belgian block road jolted every screw, weld, and rivet in a car, and set drivers' teeth chattering. Even rougher, and used for truck trials, was a replica of an African game trail, with tree roots, rocks, and mud holes.
One road section, built on level ground, was known as Serpentine Alley.
This was a series of sharp S-bends, closely spaced and absolutely flat, so that absence of any banking in the turns strained a car to its limits when cornering at high speed.
At the moment, Adam Trenton was hurling an Orion around Serpentine Alley at 60 mph.
Tires screamed savagely, and smoked, as the car flung hard left, then right, then left again. Each time, centrifugal force strained urgently, protestingly, against the direction of the turn. To the three occupants it seemed as if the car might roll over at any moment, even though knowledge told them that it shouldn't.
Adam glanced behind him. Brett DeLosanto, sitting centrally in the rear seat, was belted in, as well as bracing himself by his arms on either side.
The designer called over the seatback, 'My liver and spleen just switched sides. I'm counting on the next bend to get them back.'
Beside Adam, Ian Jameson, a slight, sandyhaired Scot from Engineering, sat imperturbably. Jameson was undoubtedly thinking what Adam realized - that there was no necessity for them to be going around the turns at all; professional drivers had already put the Orion through grueling tests there which it survived handily. The trio's real purpose at the proving ground today was to review an NVH problem (the initials were engineerese for Noise, Vibration, and Harshness) which prototype Orions had developed at very high speed. But on their way to the fast track they had passed the entry to Serpentine Alley, and Adam swung on to it first, hoping that throwing the car around would release some of his own tension, which he had continued to be aware of since his departure from the press session an hour or two earlier.
The tension, which started early this morning, had occurred more frequently of late. So a few weeks ago Adam made an appointment with a physician who probed, pressed, performed assorted tests, and finally told him there was nothing wrong organically except, possibly, too much acid in his system. The doctor then talked vaguely of 'ulcer personality,' the need to stop worrying, and added a kindergarten bromide, 'A hill is only as steep as it looks to the man climbing it.'
While Adam listened impatiently, wishing that medics would assume more knowledge and intelligence on the part of patients, the doctor pointed out that the human body had its own built-in warning devices and suggested easing up for a while, which Adam already knew was impossible this year. The doctor finally got down to what Adam had come for and prescribed Librium capsules with a recommended dosage. Adam promptly exceeded the dosage, and continued to. He also failed to tell the doctor that he was taking Valium, obtained elsewhere. Today, Adam had swallowed several pills, including one just before leaving downtown, but without discernible effect. Now, since the S-turns had done nothing to release his tension either, he surreptitiously transferred another pill from a pocket to his mouth.
The action reminded him that he still hadn't told Erica, either about the visit to the doctor, or the pills, which he kept in his briefcase, out of sight.
Near the end of Serpentine Alley, Adam swung the car sharply, letting the speed drop only slightly before heading for the track which was used for high-speed runs. Outside, the trees, meadows, and connecting roads sped by. The speedometer returned to 60, then edged to 65.
With one hand, Adam rechecked the tightness of his own lap straps and shoulder harness. Without turning his head, he told the others, 'Okay, let's shake this baby out.'
They hurtled on the fast track, sweeping past another car, their speed still climbing. It was 70 mph, and Adam caught a glimpse of a face as the driver of the other car glanced sideways.
Ian Jameson craned left to watch the speedometer needle, now touching 75. The sandy-haired engineer had been a key figure in studying the Orion's present NVH problem.
'We'll hear it any moment,' Jameson said.
Speed was 78. The wind, largely of their own creating, roared as they flew around the track. Adam had the accelerator floored. Now he touched the automatic speed control, letting the computer take over, and removed his foot. Speed crept up. It passed 80.
'Here she comes,' Jameson said. As he spoke, the car shuddered violently - an intense pulsation, shaking everything, including occupants.
Adam found his vision blurring slightly from the rapid movement.
Simultaneously a metallic hum rose and fell.
The engineer said, 'Right on schedule.' He sounded complacent, Adam thought, as if he would have been disappointed had the trouble not appeared.
'At fair grounds Brett DeLosanto raised his voice to a shout to make himself heard; his words came through unevenly because of the shaking.
'At fair grounds, people pay money for a ride like this.'
'And if we left it in,' Adam said, 'most drivers would never know about it. Not many take their cars up to eighty.'
Ian Jameson said, 'But some do.'
Adam conceded gloomily: it was true. A handful of madcap drivers would hit eighty, and among them one or two might be startled by the sudden vibration, then lose control, killing or maiming themselves and others.
Even without accident, the NVH effect could become known, and people like Emerson Vale would make the most of it. It was a few freak accidents at high speed, Adam recalled, with drivers who over- or understeered in emergencies, which had killed the Corvair only a few years ago. And although by the time Ralph Nader published his now-famous indictment of the Corvair, early faults had been corrected, the car had still gone to a precipitate end under the weight of publicity which Nader generated.
Adam, and others in the company who knew about the high-speed shake, had no intention of allowing a similar episode to mar the Orion's record.
It was a reason why the company high command was being close-mouthed so that rumors of the trouble did not leak outside. A vital question at this moment was: How could the shake be eliminated and what would it
