The young woman shrugged her slim shoulders and pushed a lock of long, black hair back over her shoulder. "I didn't want to disturb you," she said. "I was just sitting there. I guess you can't see that side of the room, what with your cast and all. I've been looking in on you off and on ever since we got back," she told him. "When I could get off from work, that is." She gave a somewhat rueful smile. "They've been keeping me pretty busy, but then you can hardly blame them, I suppose."

Atwood looked at her blankly, but then he decided he wasn't exactly behaving in a way that had much hopes of sweeping her off her feet, something he was even more eager to do now that he got a good look at her and saw how truly beautiful the young woman was, so he smiled and made an effort to put into effect the full extent of whatever charm he possessed. "You know, we've never even been introduced," he said.

The young woman blinked, but then she lowered her eyes modestly. "It seems kind of late for that now, but okay," she said. "My name is Phyllis Jacobs, and I work for the Tew Refineries, at the edge of the city. I already know you're Hayden Atwood." She looked into the young man's eyes with a mischievous smile.

Atwood shifted uncomfortably on his mattress. "I suppose you've had a chance to find out a lot about me, since..." His voice faded away and then he shook his head. "Well, since whatever. I don't even know what happened, at the end, out there in the jungle," he admitted in frustration. "The last I remember is, we were right at the edge of that monkeytown and I was just about to send that little king back, and then all of a sudden all hell broke loose."

The young woman giggled and nodded. "More like all heaven, really, for us," she told him. "But if you don't remember, then I can tell you that much, at least. We were really pretty lucky, when it comes right down to it. We were just far enough outside of that horrible place to be clear of the attack when the Mechanical fighter jets started dropping their bombs. Then by what was pure luck, as far as I know, one of their jets picked us up with their instruments, where we were standing on the edge of the jungle- not that you were standing," she interrupted herself. "You got hit on the back of the head by a piece of log or something in the first attack, and you were unconscious. But once they detected us, they just sent in a squad of humans to pick us up and- well, here we are," she finished.

Atwood's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Is that what happened?" he asked. Phyllis Jacobs nodded, now with a grave expression on her face. Atwood stared up at the ceiling for a moment, thinking this through. "We're lucky we didn't get killed," he said finally, turning to look at the girl.

"I know," she agreed seriously. "But then if we hadn't been able to get away from those awful monkeys we might as well have been dead anyway." She shuddered. "I'd have blown up the whole camp and myself with it, if I'd been able to do that, rather than stay in the hands of those horrible little beasts!"

Atwood looked at her doubtfully. "Well, you probably know more about them than I do," he said carefully, not wanting to offend a girl he was attempting to charm by disagreeing with her quite so early in their relationship. "I guess when it comes right down to it I wasn't in their power long enough to find out what it was like to be their prisoner."

The girl shuddered once more, even more violently this time, and she gazed at Atwood with an earnest expression. "Oh, they're just horrible, awful little monsters!" she exclaimed. "All the time they had me in their clutches I was praying for some miracle to rescue me. I- well, maybe I shouldn't say this, but there were times I would gladly have killed myself to get away from them if they'd given me the chance." She lowered her eyelashes and blushed in a manner that Atwood found utterly charming, even though the intensity of what she had said was unsettling to the easy-going young man.

He tried to shrug but the cast on his left shoulder inhibited his movements and he flinched at a slight stab of pain. "So the Mechanicals started dropping bombs?" he asked, more to change the subject slightly than from any other reason.

The young woman nodded. "I guess they'd managed to track down the enemy camp some time ago, but after the terrorist attack on the Studebaker factory they decided it was time to teach the little monsters a lesson." She paused for just a moment. "Not that I know much about what the Mechanicals are thinking, I'm just a secretary for one of their refineries, but since I got back they've let a few things slip when they were asking me questions, and...." She made a vague gesture with her hands.

"I suppose they figure they don't have to worry about keeping secrets from somebody like you," Atwood said reassuringly.

"What do you mean by that?" the girl demanded sharply. Atwood's eyes widened and he blinked in confusion.

"Hey, I didn't mean anything at all," he exclaimed. "I was just saying, it's obvious they can trust you and wouldn't have to- well, to be careful what they say when you're around. After all, if anybody has any reason to hate the monkeys, it's you and me, right?" He smiled in what he hoped was a friendly, just-between-us manner.

"Well, I should hope so!" the girl said, clearly still miffed. For a moment neither of them spoke, but then she seemed to recollect herself somewhat and she rested her hand lightly on his.

"I never thanked you for coming to my rescue, back there," she said. "I don't know how to repay you for what you did for me. If you hadn't come along right when you did, who knows what might have happened?"

Atwood found it difficult to think clearly with the young woman's hand touching his own, but he swallowed and tried to speak normally. "Maybe it would have been all right anyway," he said modestly. "From what I saw of that little monkey king, he seemed like a pretty decent guy, under the circumstances. What happened to him, anyway? Did the Mechanicals bring him in when they rescued us?"

Phyllis Jacobs smiled in a way even the infatuated young man found unsettling and she shook her head. "Not unless he was one of the corpses they bulldozed into a mass grave at the edge of the camp after the attack," she said. "Though I doubt if there was enough left of him to bury. I hope not, anyway. And serve him right!" she added fiercely.

Atwood swallowed. "You mean he- he got KILLED?" he exclaimed in dismay.

The young woman looked at him with wide-eyed, innocent surprise. "Well, I didn't really SEE it, of course," she said slowly, "but when that sack of grenades blew up- and he was carrying them, after all, or at least he had them when he ran off into the jungle...."

Atwood turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Not that felt any grief over the death of the little monkey king, he had known him for only a few minutes at most, and hardly under the most congenial of circumstances even then, but he had felt no real sense of antagonism in the little monarch's behavior, and it seemed a shame that a person with so much personal charm would die so casually, out there in the jungle. Besides-

Atwood almost sat upright as he realized what the death of the monkey king meant, but the heavy cast on his left side and, most probably, the considerable, lingering weakness from his wounds fortunately prevented him from moving more than an inch or so before he collapsed back onto the mattress.

"What's the matter?" Phyllis Jacobs exclaimed, holding out her hand reflexively to hold him back.

I just thought," Atwood said with a nervous laugh. "Remember what the king said? If anything happened to him, the monkeys were to make sure they got their revenge on me? And something did happen to him, didn't it? So it looks like I'm a marked man! The monkeys will be out to get me for the rest of my life!"

The young woman shook her head. "But it wasn't your fault!" she said firmly. "That little monster was the one who blew himself up, wasn't he? He grabbed the grenades away from you, you didn't- throw them at him or anything. Besides, if he'd been back at their camp he'd have been killed in the attack anyway. So you see," she said, smiling reassuringly. "No one could possibly blame you."

"Besides," he added after the briefest of pauses, "from what I saw, and what they told me, so many of the monkeys got killed that it's not likely that any of the ones who were there when the king was kidnapped are still alive, so the chance is good that no one even knows what happened, except for you and me. And neither one of us is going to tell them, are we?"

Atwood grimaced. "I hate to think my personal safety depends on hoping that as many people as possible got killed," he said.

The young woman stared at him blankly. "But why not?" she asked. "They're not real people, they're only monkeys!"

Atwood gave her a doubtful look but said nothing.

Read the next exciting chapter of Mechanica

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