Wheels by Arthur Hailey Page A

last night had slightly spotted the car's bright finish; routinely it would be washed today, topped off with gas, and serviced if necessary. A personal car of an executive's own choice, replaced every six months, and each time with all the extras he wanted, plus fuel and constant attention, was a fringe benefit which went with the auto industry's higher posts. Depending on which company they worked for, most senior people made their selections from the luxury ranges-Chrysler Imperials, Lincol ns, Cadillacs. A few, like Adam, preferred something lighter and sportier, with a high performance engine. Adam's footsteps echoed as he walked across the black, waxed garage floor, gleaming and immaculate. A spectator would have seen a gray-suited, lithe, athletic man, a year or two past forty, tall, with broad shoulders and a squarish head thrust forward, as if urging the rest of the body on. Nowadays, Adam Trenton dressed more conservatively than he used to, but still looked fash ionable, with a touch of flashiness. His facial features were clean-cut and alert, with intense blue eyes and a straight, firm mouth, the last tempered by a hint of humor and a strong impression, over-all, of open honesty. He backed up this impression, when he talked, with a blunt directness which sometimes threw others off balance-a tactic he had learned to use deliberately.
    His manner of walking was confident, a no-nonsense stride suggesting a man who knew where he was going. Adam Trenton carried the auto executive's symbol of office-a filled attach6 case. It contained papers he had taken home the night before and had worked on, after dinner, until bedtime. Among the few executive cars already parked, Adam noticed two limousines in vice-presidents' row-a series of parking slots near an exclusive elevator which rose nonstop to the fifteenth floor, preserve of the company's senior officers. A parking spot closest to the elevator was reserved for the chain-nan of the board, the next for the president; after that came vice-presidents in descending order of seniority. Where a man parked was a significant prestige factor in the auto industry.
    The higher his rank, the less distance he was expected to walk from his car to his desk. Of the two limousines already in, one belonged to Adam's own chief, the Product Development vice-president. The other was the car of the Vice-President Public Relations. Adam bounded up a short flight of stairs, two at a time, entered a doorway to the building's main lobbv, then continued briskly to a regular staff elevator where he jabbed a button for the tenth floor. Alone in the elevator, he waited impatiently while the computer-controlled mechanism took its time about starting, then on the way up experienced the eagerness he always felt to become immersed in a new day's work. As always, through most of the past two years, the Orion was at the forefront of his thoughts. Physically, Adam felt good. Only a sense of tension troubled him-a mental tautness he had be come aware of lately, a nuisance, illogical, yet increasingly difficult to shake off. He took a small , green-and-black capsule from an inside pocket, slipped it into his mouth and gulped it down. From the elevator, along a silent, deserted corridor which would see little activity for another hour, Adam strode to his own office suite-a corner location, also a token of rank, rating only a little lower than a vice-president's parking slot. As he went in, he saw a pile of newly delivered mail on his secretary's desk. There was a time, earlier in his career, when Adam would have stopped to rifl e through it, to see what was interesting and new, but he had long since shed the habit, nowadays valuing his time too much for that kind of indulgence. One of the duties of a top-notch secretary was-as Adam once heard the company president declare-to "filter out the crap" from the mountain of paper which came her boss's way. She should be allowed to go through everything first, using her