He had come to dread the hill. Rob had a twenty mile commute home from work. Mostly his little Chevy did just fine on the roads; it could accelerate to speed when getting on the freeways, and it could handle the gentle rises and slopes of the countryside. But the hill lay at the end of the drive home, the last obstacle to overcome after a long day at work. It was probably five hundred feet bottom to top, and the grade was the steepest thing for miles around. Every day Rob approached the hill with trepidation, because his Chevy didn't do well on it – and it was getting worse.His car's engine just didn't have the get-up-and-go. As soon as he hit the climb, the motor would rev into high gear and stay there. The high-pitched buzz would become a scream, drowning out the radio. Before he reached the halfway point, Rob would start to smell something burning.For several evenings Rob had been obliged to pull the car into a driveway partway up the hill, rest the car there for fifteen minutes, and then climb the rest of the way, trying to ignore the tortured sounds coming from under the hood. On the last evening, afraid that his poor car would burst into flames, Rob had actually had to stop twice – the second time within view of his own driveway – and give the engine a chance to recover before pulling into the garage.Rob had had enough. He coasted down the hill easily enough on his way to work. He informed his boss that he had an errand to run that might require him to take his lunch a bit longer than usual, and drove the Chevy to Mac's Garage. Mac had been taking care of Rob's cars since he was in high school. Mac himself greeted Rob, cleaning his hands on an oilrag, as Rob pulled into one of the bays."Engine trouble?" asked Mac as Rob got out."That obvious, huh?" said Rob ruefully. "I was thinking I might have a bad spark plug.""You can really hear it," said Mac. "Let's take a look."He popped the hood and propped it, then made a face and shook his head. "There's your problem," he said. Rob looked.In the middle of the engine was a large box with a transparent plastic lid. Inside it four tiny treadmills could be seen. Sitting on the treadmills were four hamsters, all brown and white. To Rob's horror, one of the hamsters was lying on its side and not moving."Oh my God," moaned Rob. "This is going to be expensive."Mac lifted the cover on the engine and fished out the ailing hamster while the other three busied themselves at the miniature feed trough at the front of their compartment. He held it on the palm of his hand and palpated its midsection. Its chest rose and fell once. Under its fur, its skin was faintly blue."Looks like you've got a stuck valve," said Mac, laying the hamster on a work table. "Atrial, most likely. Poor little bastard had a heart attack. Hold on a second."As an anxious Rob looked on, Mac pulled a flat box out from his workbench and laid it next to the motionless hamster. He pulled two paddles the size of penlights off the box and rubbed them together; a tiny spark arced between them, roughly as powerful as the static discharge made by pulling apart two woolen socks that just came out of the dryer. He then applied them to the hamster's chest. The creature's body spasmed and its back arched. When the paddles were removed, the hamster swallowed, and then its chest began rising and falling again."Well, that's a relief," said Rob. "I could have sworn it was my spark plug."Mac raised the engine's plastic cover and put the hamster back with its mates. It staggered and fell over, but then dazedly joined its co-workers at the tray of seeds. Mac pulled a small silver box off the back of the compartment."Nope," he said, "looks okay." He held the plug up to his eye to examine the contacts that gave the hamsters a mild jolt to spur them into running. "No carbon scoring. This thing's working fine." He turned to look sternly at Rob."Are you still living up in the hills?" he asked."Yeah, sure," said Rob. "Some house and everything.""Look," sighed Mac, "that grade is a beast. You can't drive a dinky, underpowered Chevy up that thing. No wonder your engine's giving out. Four hamsters can't handle that kind of punishment.""I can't afford a new car right now," protested Rob. "I mean, I'm sorry it's so wimpy, but there's not a lot I can do about that.""What about an engine upgrade?" suggested Mac."What, you mean like going to six hamsters?" asked Rob dubiously. "I thought there's no way to fit that big an engine into a little car like mine.""You're right, that's pretty much out of the question," agreed Mac. "But you have a few other options. You could think about supercharging your engine. You know, put a little something in their birdseed. Nothing zips quite like a hamster hopped up on goofballs.""Yeah, but doesn't that burn out your engine?" Rob asked."Sure," said Mac. "Your hamsters will get you up that hill, but in a year you'll be replacing all of them.""That sucks, then," said Rob."Okay, how about going with something with a little more displacement?" offered Mac. He reached a box down from a high shelf and pulled out something brown and floppy. It wriggled and writhed but couldn't escape Mac's grasp."This is a ferret," said Mac. "Quicker and more powerful than a hamster. Lots of pickup. These guys have the 'go' juice." In the engine compartment, the hamsters pressed their noses up against the plastic cover and looked profoundly worried. The ferret peered down at them with shiny eyes."I dunno," said Rob. "I couldn't mix and match them, could I?""Oh, absolutely not," replied Mac. "You'd have to change out all of them. We'd also have to elongate your treadmills and change up your fuel source from birdseed to chicken meal.""I knew this was going to be expensive," complained Rob."Yeah, but you'll get a Chevy that can keep hauling you up that big old hill for the next ten years," said Mac. "Besides, I'm sure we can work out a payment plan. And look, I'll throw in one of these."The object Mac held up looked like a muffler. Rob took it uncertainly. "What does it do?" he asked.Mac held the ferret up to one end of the object and squeezed lightly. The ferret squeaked, but the sound that came out the other end of the device sounded more like the roar of a panther. Mac grinned."You know. For the ladies," he said.Rob's eyebrows went up. "Hot damn," he said.