He let out a deep sigh and settled back down in the bed with satisfaction. But when he tried to relax and take it easy in his new sense of safe security, he found that he was wide-awake and strangely invigorated. He wondered for a moment if it might be the result of some medication the doctors had given him. But from what little he knew of such matters, most painkillers had precisely the opposite effect, causing lethargy and even sleepiness rather than unexpected bursts of energy.

He spent a few minutes cautiously checking himself out, and found he seemed more or less in the same shape as he had been after the ministrations of the monkey doctors. His left arm was still strapped and taped to his chest which was covered with heavy bandages. Here and there smaller pieces of bandage covered the various slashes and gashes on the more exposed parts of his body . He saw with some satisfaction that the stitches that had stretched in an ugly, zigzag pattern along his right forearm and elbow had been removed and replaced with surgical tape of some kind. Thinking that such a procedure must have taken some time to perform he began to wonder just how long he had been unconscious. When it came to that, what had really happened there at the end, out in the jungle? All he could remember was overhearing a lot of loud noises followed by everything more or less blowing up all around him.

Well, whatever had taken place, it seemed to have come to a good end, for here he was, apparently safe and sound, back with the Mechanicals and their human servants. He was seemed to be halfway restored to his normal good health and had regained his former sense of personal security.

He relaxed in bed for a time, thinking over what had happened, but mostly he found his thoughts drifting back to the nameless young woman with the flowing black hair and the good set of lungs. The two of them had exchanged scant words, but he had felt a stirring of sympathy and- well, of something! Slowly he began to realize his feelings were the first stages of the another infatuation such as the romantically inclined young man was prone to fall into at the least opportunity.

Once this undeniable fact made itself known to him he spent a moment or two enjoying the luxury of daydreams about the girl, but then he shook his head in frustration and tried to put the whole impossible idea out of his mind. He was all for love at first sight, in fact, he experienced it on a regular basis and had never objected to it before, but this was really ridiculous. After all, he didn't even KNOW this girl, and the odds were that he would never see her or hear a word about her ever again.

He wasn't sure of the exact numbers, but there must have been literally hundreds of thousands of humans on Mechanica, acting as employees and servants of various kinds of the android-like natives who were scattered across the entire length and breadth of the large planet. Even if he wanted to try to continue a relationship with this girl, how could he ever track her down? He didn't even know her name. Assuming, of course, that she would want anything to do with him. Atwood had his full share of self-confidence, but he was well aware that any young woman as attractive as she had been most likely already had a boyfriend of one sort or another.

Well, he might have to surrender to common sense and give up all idea of ever seeing the young woman again, but that couldn't stop him from thinking about her, and since he had nothing else to do just at the moment, he spent an enjoyable half hour or so doing just that.

He had just begun to drift off into an afternoon nap when the wide door in one wall began to roll up into the ceiling. A brilliant yellow automobile that Atwood, who was by now somewhat of an expert, recognized as a Mechanica model of a 1957 Chevy, rolled into the room, accompanied by a tall, heavy, half-bald male nurse dressed in the traditional hospital whites.

"Well well well, and what have we here?" the Chevy boomed in its best bedside manner. The car pulled up next to where Atwood was lying and gunned its motor for a moment before dropping into the low, almost inaudible idling that the Mechanicals used for polite conversation. "And the hero is awake at last?"

Atwood shifted with momentary embarrassment. "Are you a doctor, sir?" he asked.

"That I am, that I am, young man," the imitation car assured him. "Why else do you think I'd be filling your poor sick room with my carbon monoxide exhaust?"

Atwood chuckled politely at the little joke, for, in fact, the Mechanicals, though sticklers for detail, seldom actually used the internal combustion engines they had built into the copies of human automobiles they had begun to build for themselves almost immediately after the two species had made contact.

The Mechanicals, origins were kept a carefully guarded secret from even the most determined human probing. Or, perhaps, they didn't really know themselves where they had come from, any more than the humans know what their roots were. It was said that they had, prior to contact, used purely utilitarian and remarkably ugly machines for their replaceable bodies, but though they had no artistic talents of their own, they had a good eye for beauty, and they had immediately fallen in love with the style and design of human machinery.

It had been quite a shock for humans to realize that an entire world of intelligent machines were quickly and thoroughly duplicating themselves in the form of terrestrial cars, trucks, and other vehicles. But once the culture shock of two people who were so totally different, in, apparently, a merely physical sense, had been overcome the humans and their Mechanical friends had quickly developed a good working relationship. Almost any man or woman who wanted to live on Mechanica could find work there in some role or another as the hands, and occasionally the feet, of a race that preferred to occupy bodies that were made for speed and style rather than dexterity. The Mechanicals might find terrestrial cars to be so aesthetically pleasing that they couldn't resist creating imitations of them to be their bodies, but it did leave them somewhat shortchanged in terms of their ability to perform what might be termed, in this case with remarkable accuracy, manual labor.

At any rate, though they did love the external forms of terrestrial cars, and though their insistence on authenticity caused them to build into their car bodies internal combustion engines, transmissions, and tires as close to the originals as possible, in practical terms they usually relied on their own energy sources for everything except racing about on the freeways which they had quickly built for themselves all over the surface of the planet. Atwood doubted very much that even the most conservative of Mechanical doctors would actually emit exhaust fumes into a hospital sick room.

Nevertheless, he sniffed as inconspicuously as possible while the car doctor rocked back and forth at his bedside, apparently studying a battery of flashing lights that ran the length of the frame of the bed, occasionally calling out esoteric numbers to the male nurse, who impassively wrote them down on a clipboard. Finally the doctor seemed satisfied and backed up slightly so that its headlights seemed to be peering directly into Atwood's face.

"All seems as it should be, considering what you've been through, young man," it told him. "Understand, despite their many flaws, those monkey fellows must have some pretty good doctors. Granted, their methods are somewhat crude and old-fashioned, but you may well have bled to death out there in the jungle if they hadn't stitched you up right there on the spot." The doctor made the gurgling, slightly metal-scraping sound that Atwood recognized as the common Mechanical's attempt at human laughter.

"Yeah, well if they hadn't blown me up in the first place, they wouldn't have had to take care of me at all," the young man said bitterly. He shifted slightly on his mattress so that he could look at the automobile more directly. "I don't really know- can you tell me what HAPPENED?" he asked uncertainly.

The doctor gunned his engine slightly for the briefest of moments, an action Atwood recognized as the Mechanical equivalent of an embarrassed cough. "Ah, well, I suppose it's entirely understandable that you should want to know all the details, young man," he said in what Atwood felt to be a somewhat condescending tone of voice. "Especially since, as I understand it, you had lost consciousness long before the squadron rescued Miss Jacobs and yourself."

Atwood quickly stored away the young woman's name for future reference, but before he could say anything further, the doctor began rolling backward toward the open garage door. "I'm afraid I have many other patients to see before gastime," it said. "And, too, to be honest with you, young man, I don't know much more about the circumstances of your rescue than you do yourself. Perhaps you should hear it from someone who was right on the spot with you?"

Atwood looked at the car blankly as it pulled away. "How am I supposed to do that?" he asked, his frustration at being snubbed by the Mechanical doctor overcoming, for a moment, his habitual deference to the native upper classes.

"I should think all you'd have to do is ask, don't you?" the doctor commented indifferently as it withdrew from the room. Before Atwood could question it further the garage door slid down smoothly from the ceiling, shutting him off by himself.

"How am I supposed to do that?" he repeated softly to himself in frustration.

"I'll tell you all I know if you want me to, Mr. Atwood," a soft voice said from somewhere to his left. The young man, who had believed himself to be left entirely alone, jumped with surprise and then he struggled to turn in the direction of the voice, though the heavy cast and bandages on that side of his body made it difficult for him to do so.

"Don't!" the voice cried out with concern, and before he could make any further efforts to shift to his left a slight form moved from that direction around the foot of his bed and stepped into his line of vision.

Atwood's jaw fell open and he simply stared. Standing before him was the young woman he had rescued from the monkeys. She reached out cautiously and took his good, right hand. "How are you feeling, Mr. Atwood?" she asked with a tender smile.

Read the next exciting chapter of Mechanica

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