Arthur Hailey - Wheels

The foreman hesitated. But since he was not a man given to fear, he opened the door and went in.

Seconds later, with an ugly head wound, he tumbled, unconscious, beside the vending machine collectors.

The three bodies were discovered an hour or so later - long after the quartet of Big Rufe, Daddy-o Lester, Leroy Colfax, and Rollie Knight had left the plant by climbing over a wall.

The Indian was dead, the other two barely alive.

Matt Zaleski sometimes wondered if anyone outside the auto industry realized how little changed, in principle, a final car assembly line was, compared with the days of the first Henry Ford.

He was walking beside the line where the night shift, which had begun work an hour ago, was building Orions - the company's new cars, still not released to public view. Like others in senior plant management, Matt's own working day did not end when the day shift went home. He stayed on while the next shift settled down, dealing with production snafus as they occurred, which inevitably happened while the plant's people - management as well as workers - learned their new assignments.

Some assignments had been discussed during a foreman's meeting, held in Matt's office soon after the change of shifts. The meeting had ended fifteen minutes ago. Now Matt was patrolling an alert surveillance, his experienced eyes searching for potential trouble spots.

While he walked, his thoughts returned to Henry Ford, the pioneer of mass production auto assembly.

Nowadays, the final assembly line in any auto plant was unfailingly the portion of car manufacturing which fascinated visitors most. Usually a mile long, it was visually impressive because an act of creation could be witnessed. Initially, a few steel bars were brought together, then, as if fertilized, they multiplied and grew, taking on familiar shapes like an exposed fetus in a moving womb. The process was slow enough for watchers to assimilate, fast enough to be exciting. The forward movement, like a river, was mostly in straight lines, though occasionally with bends or loops. Among the burgeoning cars, color, shape, size, features, frills, conveyed individuality and sex. Eventually, with the fetus ready for the world, the car dropped on its tires. A moment later an ignition key was turned, an engine sprang to life - as impressive, when first witnessed, as a child's first cry - and a newborn vehicle moved from the assembly line's end under its own power.

Matt Zaleski had seen spectators thronging through the plant - in Detroit they came like pilgrims, daily - marveling at the process and talking, uninformed and glibly, of the wonders of automated mass production. Plant guides, trained to regard each visitor as a potential customer, gave spiels to titillate the sense of wonder. But the irony was: a final assembly plant was scarcely automated at all; in principle it was still an oldfashioned conveyor belt on which pieces of an automobile were hung in sequence like decorations on a Christmas tree. In engineering terms it was the least impressive part of modern automobile production. In terms of quality it could swing this way or that like a wild barometer. And it was wholly susceptible to human error.

By contrast, plants making auto engines, though less impressive visually, were truly automated, with long series of intricate operations performed solely by machines. In most engine plants, row after row of sophisticated machine tools operated on their own, masterminded by computers, with the only humans in sight a few skilled tool men making occasional adjustments.

If a machine did something wrong, it switched itself off instantly and summoned help through warning systems. Otherwise it did its job unvaryingly, to hairsbreadth standards, and stopped neither for meal breaks, toilet visits, nor to speak to another machine alongside. The system was a reason why engines, in comparison with more generally constructed parts of automobiles, seldom failed until neglected or abused.

If old Henry could come back from his grave, Matt thought, and view a car assembly line of the '70s, he might be amused at how few basic changes had been made.

At the moment, there were no production snags - at least, in view - and Matt Zaleski returned to his glass-paneled office on the mezzanine.

Though he could leave the plant now, if he chose, Matt was reluctant to return to the empty Royal Oak house. Several weeks had gone by since the bitter night of Barbara's departure, but there had been no rapprochement between them. Recently Matt had tried not to think about his daughter, concentrating on other thoughts, as he had on Henry Ford a few minutes earlier; despite this, she was seldom far from mind. He wished they could patch up their quarrel somehow, and had hoped Barbara would telephone, but she had not. Matt's own pride, plus a conviction that a parent should not have to make the first move, kept him from calling her. He supposed that Barbara was still living with that designer, DeLosanto, which was something else Matt tried not to think about, but often did.

At his desk, he leafed through the next day's production schedule.

Tomorrow was a midweek day, so several "specials" would go on the line - cars for company executives, their friends, or others with influence enough to ensure that an automobile they ordered got better-than-ordinary treatment. Foremen had been alerted to the job numbers, so had Quality Control; as a result, all work on those particular cars would be watched with extra care. Body men would be cautioned to install header panels, seats, and interior trim more fussily than usual. Engine and power train sequences would receive close scrutiny. Later, Quality Control would give the cars a thorough going over and order additional work or adjustments before dispatch. "Specials" were also among the fifteen to thirty cars which plant executives drove home each night, turning in road test reports next morning.

Of course - as Matt Zaleski knew - there were dangers in scheduling "specials," particularly if a car happened to be for a plant executive.

A few workers always had grievances, real or imagined, against management and were delighted at a chance to "get even with the boss." Then the legendary soft drink bottle, left loose inside a rocker panel so it would rattle through a car's lifetime, was apt to become reality. A loose tool or chunk of metal served the same purpose. Another trick was to weld the trunk lid closed from inside; a skilled welder, reaching through the back seat could do it in seconds. Or a strategic bolt or two might be left untightened. These were reasons why Matt and others like him used fictitious names when putting their own cars through production.

Matt put the next day's schedule down. There had been no need to review it, anyway, since he had gone over it earlier in the day.

It was time to go home. As he rose from the desk, he thought again of Barbara and wondered where she was. He was suddenly very tired.

On his way down from the mezzanine, Matt Zaleski was aware of some kind of disturbance shouting, the sound of running feet. Automatically, because most things which happened in the plant were his business, he stopped, searching for the source. It appeared to be near the south cafeteria. He heard an urgent cry: "For God's sake get somebody from Security!"

Seconds later, as he hurried toward the disturbance, he heard sirens approaching from outside.

A janitor who discovered the huddled bodies of the two vending machine collectors and Frank Parkland, had the good sense to go promptly to a telephone. By the time Matt Zaleski heard the shouts, which were from others who had come on the scene subsequently, an ambulance, plant security men, and outside police were already on the way.

But Matt still reached the janitor's closet on the lower floor before any of the outside aid. Bulling his way through an excited group around it, he was in time to see that one of the three recumbent forms was that of Frank Parkland whom Matt had last seen at the foremen's meeting about an hour and a half before. Parkland's eyes were closed, his skin ashen, except where blood had trickled through his hair and clotted on his face.