All nine members of the Maxxim Board of Directors were seated around a very large oval table. Astrid’s mother left her to take a seat at the far end, leaving Astrid to face the entire group, and she was feeling very small. The girl inventor knew how it worked. Those at the table didn’t own all the shares of Maxxim Industries. In fact, she herself had quite a large block inherited from her grandmother. But these nine had been chosen by the shareholders to oversee the operations of the company, so they had tremendous power.

“These will be the new line of Maxxim Supercell Batteries,” Astrid started, lifting the cover off of the cart full of mock-ups. Mr. Brown had outdone himself. There were more than 30 different battery sizes represented—everything from tiny button batteries to large, square lantern batteries.

“Aren’t there already lots of battery manufacturers?” asked Astrid’s aunt Lauren, usually her harshest critic on the board. “Why would we want to get into a such a crowded business.”

“Our batteries will change the marketplace,” replied Astrid. “They will change the world. First of all, since they are made with our own, patented Astricite, their charge will last much longer than any other batteries. Secondly, again because of the Astricite, they can be made for far less. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they will be far less toxic than batteries made with lead, mercury, or cadmium.

“Every year Americans alone dump 180,000 tons of batteries into landfills where toxic contaminants leach out into the soil and water. Every year dozens of children are hospitalized because of ingesting tiny batteries, from which corrosive or poisonous chemicals are released.”

“Our batteries would be safe to swallow?” asked former Senator Charles Bentlemore.

“No,” Astrid replied. “There is still the problem of liquefaction necrosis, which occurs because sodium hydroxide is generated by the current produced by the battery.”

“But our batteries won’t leach into landfills?” asked board member Saul Smith.

“Correct. Astricite has a relatively short life, on the order thirty to forty years depending on the sample size. After that, it degrades into its component compounds, all of which are non-toxic.”

“How much money can we make on this?” asked Astrid’s uncle Carl, her father’s brother and Aunt Lauren’s husband.

“As my mother can confirm,” said Astrid, “batteries are a $64 billion dollar business.”

“How soon can we get these to market?” asked Mr. Roy Dillanson.

“I’ve talked to Mr. Gortner in production, and he says we can have a factory in place in fourteen months.”

“Why don’t we just use an existing factory in China or Mexico?” asked Aunt Lauren.

“We will discuss that after Astrid has gone,” said her mother. “You are finished, aren’t you Astrid?”

“Yes, Mom.”

Tuesday at school wasn’t all that different from Monday, with the exception that Astrid had a presentation to make in US History class. Her subject was Robert E. Lee. She was a little miffed that Mr. Hoffman gave her an A-, saying that she could have used more creativity in her PowerPoint.

“Substance is more important than style,” she said under her breath.

At lunch, which was Asian lettuce wraps with soy dipping sauce, vegetable stir-fry, steamed rice, and strawberries, Austin joined their table in the quad. There was no trouble from Mark McGovern.

After school they all stepped into the monorail train traveling deeper into the Maxxim campus, rather than the train the other students took heading home. It wasn’t a straight shot to the R&D section. The track stopped at the Business Offices Complex, before continuing on, following along the shores of Pearl Lake, through the Saguaro Cactus Park, and finally to the Research and Development Department.

“So, I don’t get it,” said Austin. “If thousands of people are working all the time to make better batteries, how come it takes a fourteen year old girl to do it?”

“I’ll bet they don’t want to make batteries better,” said Christopher. “You make them last longer and you don’t sell as many.”

“I have an advantage over anyone else,” said Astrid. “I have Astricite. It’s a relatively inexpensive, superconductive alloy that I developed when I was six. We’re already using it in our microprocessors.”

They arrived in the lab and Astrid examined the readings on her experiment.

“I think this might make it till the week-end.”

“What’s in this box?” asked Toby, from across the room. “What’s Project RG-7, and why is it top secret?”

“I was going to show you guys next week,” said Astrid, leading the others to where Toby was standing beside the crate. “I guess you can go ahead and take a look now.”

Reaching up, she flipped open a latch and opened the side of the crate. Inside, packed with straw, was a metallic girl. She had bright silver skin, but was otherwise quite human looking. Her hair was the same metallic material as the rest of her, a solid hair-shaped mass rather than individual fibers, but she was wearing regular clothing. She had on a pink jacket over a blue t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

“Oh my gosh!” squealed Valerie. “She looks like me!”

I hadn’t been left alone for more than half an hour, when I heard the approach of someone or something. I say something because the primary sound that I heard coming toward me was a low guttural growling. It became louder, and as it did, I could tell that it wasn’t the simple sound set of an animal, but a language unlike anything I had ever heard before. Minutes later the foliage at the edge of the clearing parted, and out sprang what I could only assume were the Tumukua.

It was a party of about twenty men, but the Tumukua were very different from the Tokayana, the Chikuyana, and the other inhabitants of Elizagaea. They were shorter, stockier, and heavier, with thick brow ridges and lantern jaws. Rather than the copper skin of the other natives, theirs was a deep umber color. It took me a moment, but at last I recognized them from the Boston Society of Natural History. Fossils of just such people had been found in Europe near the Neader Valley. They were cavemen!

While one of the new arrivals began untying me, another spoke to me. I didn’t understand the low growls and grunts any better than I had understood the language that the natives had used in Abbeyport on the coast. My hands were retied in front of me, and then were attached to a rope used as a leash, and I was led on into the thick forest.

We hadn’t gone far before it started raining. It continued raining the rest of the day. As darkness fell, I realized my new captors were not of a mind to stop and make camp. I wasn’t sure if this was just their custom or whether they just decided not to bother stopping in the rain. Either way, I couldn’t keep up. My body had reached the limit of its endurance. One moment I was walking as the world turned sideways. The next, I was on the ground in the mud and everything went black. For just a moment, I saw Trudy’s face, looking down at me and laughing. Then I passed into consciousness just long enough to realize that I was being carried over one of my new companion’s shoulders, like a sack of wheat.

Suddenly I was on my back on the stony ground. My face was turned to the sky and a torrent of water was still falling. I opened my mouth and drank. Raising my hands to protect my eyes and keep the rain from going up my nose, I found them still tied. I just stayed where I was and continued to drink. The water was so good I drank too much. When rough hands jerked me to my feet, I vomited up a good deal of what I had swallowed. This was met by coarse laughter from the Tumukua.

Looking around, I saw that I hadn’t been lying on the bare ground at all, but a platform of fitted stones. My eyes followed these stones as they formed a bridge, which connected to a road, and which then led through a great gate and into a vast city. The sheets of rain made it difficult to get a complete view, but what I could see filled me with wonder. It was like looking on the splendors of Rome or Athens as they had been two thousand years ago. But the architecture wasn’t quite the same. Still, I realized where I had seen similar stonework before. The style exactly matched the ancient construction of Kanana’s fortress, jutting up near the border between the savannah and the jungle somewhere to the east.

“I suppose I’ll never see you again,” I said to myself.

The only answer I received was a jerk on my leash, as I was guided the rest of the way across the bridge.

“I hope you’re safe, Kanana.”

“Kanana!” hissed one of the Tumukua. The others repeated her name in hushed tones, looking around as if they expected her to appear out of the torrential mists. “Kanana. Kanana.” After a moment, they continued on into the city. It could have been my imagination, but it didn’t seem as if they tugged quite as hard.

An hour later, we stopped to rest beneath a small tree that sat out on the grass away from the rest of the forest. The sun was warm, but the little tree provided enough shade. I was just starting to feel drowsy, when Kanana got up and stepped over to a small green plant growing amid the brown grass. Kneeling down, she dug into the ground with her knife. I stepped over to watch her. About twelve inches below the surface, she uncovered two large tubers. Cutting them away from their roots, she pulled the vegetables out and peeled them.

“Henry eat,” she said, handing me one.

I took a bite to find something very much like a mild radish, but with a much greater water content.

“This is good,” I said, feeling my thirst quenched more than my hunger abated. “I’m getting hungry.”

“Kanana say eat harbi-togo. Henry not eat.”

“We don’t eat bugs where I come from.”

“Not in Boston,” said the jungle girl. “In Boston we eat what Henry say. In Kanana’s land we eat what Kanana say.”

A loud bellow a short distance away brought all conversation to a halt. We looked up to see a great shaggy form lumbering toward us. It looked like a frightening cross between a bear and a horse, and though it wasn’t quite as big as Giwa, it was fully as large as the bull elephants of Africa. Though I had never seen one alive, I knew from my visits to the Boston Society of Natural History what it was. It was a megatherium or giant sloth. I also knew that it was a plant eater.

As I watched, it stood up on its hind legs, stretching to a height of twenty feet, and bellowed again. Kanana grabbed me by the sleeve and jerked me almost off my feet.

“Run,” she hissed.

“It’s a sloth.”

The gigantic monster shifted from its slow walk to a sort of jog. Still holding onto my sleeve, she turned and ran toward the trees, pulling me along with her. I stumbled a few steps, but regained my footing and ran along with her. Looking over my shoulder, I could see that we were easily outdistancing the megatherium, and I wasn’t running as fast as I was able, so I knew that Kanana wasn’t.

“It’s big and all, but it’s a herbivore, isn’t it?”

“Utuga bad all the time. Utuga kill lion. Utuga kill Giwa. Utuga eat plants, trees. Sometimes eat meat.” She slowed to a brisk walk as we reached the tree line. “Henry eat what Kanana say. Henry run when Kanana say.”

“River not good,” said Kanana, and then she stretched her arms out and made a scissors motion with them.

“Crocodiles?”

“Croc-o-diles. Crocodiles eat Henry.”

“What about you? Won’t they eat you too?”

“No. Kanana is lion.” To add emphasis to her statement, she once again gave a throaty and very realistic lion’s roar.

Kanana started gathering large stones and placing them in the path of the stream, and as soon as I realized what she was doing, I followed suit. Soon we had dammed up the little trickle and made a small pool. It wasn’t more than eight inches deep at most, but it allowed us to sit and bathe. The jungle girl was finished first, having been already really naked. I had never been overly shy, so I quickly disrobed and washed myself. By the time I was clean and dried and had begun to dress, I noticed that my companion was gone.

Deciding that the best course of action would be to return to the tree house and wait for Kanana, I started back the way we had come. The jungle trees were alive with life, from buzzing insects to howling monkeys and squawking birds. Either the sights and sounds distracted me, or I just lost my way, but just when I thought I should be arriving at the arboreal dwelling, I stepped out onto the shore of a large river. It was as large as the river I had navigated on my steamer trunk. It could have been the same river for all I knew.

I didn’t want anything to do with the river, knowing the dangers, especially since I had already washed and drunk from the little stream. As I turned to leave however, a huge form shot out of the water and a great reptilian mouth snapped down. The crocodile’s jaws closed, missing me, and for a split second, I congratulated myself on my luck. Then the beast jerked its head to the left and clamped down on my leg just below my knee. It had me, and it immediately dragged me into the water. I tried to grab at something on shore, but I could no more stop him from taking me than a trout, once hooked on a lure at the end of a rod and reel, could have prevented me from pulling him into a net.

Suddenly, a form fell from the sky. Kanana had flown from the branches of a nearby tree, dropping right onto the crocodiles back. Before the beast, which had to weigh well over a ton, could move, she jammed her knife through its thickly armored skull and into its brain. The crocodile stopped moving and just floated. The jungle girl grasped its snout and pried the jaws apart, freeing me.

“River not good!” she growled at me.

We left the shoreline and she guided me back to the little pool. My heart was still pumping and I felt as though I could have run back to Abbeyport. Such are the effects of discovering one is still alive after having been sure of the reverse. When I sat down though, not only did I feel light-headed, I noticed my trouser leg had a large bloodstain. Kanana lifted it to examine my calf. There were a dozen round tooth marks, all bleeding.

“Henry Goode not listen,” she said angrily. “Henry stay.”