‘You’re right, of course,’ said Fallon shortly. ‘I’ll arrange it. And we must let the Mexican authorities know the extent of our discoveries here.’
The season was coming to an end. The rains would soon be breaking and work on the site would be impossible. I daresay it wouldn’t have made any difference to my own work in the cenote—you can’t get wetter than wet—but we could see that the site would inevitably become a churned-up sea of mud if any excavations were attempted in the wet season, so Fallon reluctantly decided to pack it in.
This meant a mass evacuation back to Camp One. Rudetsky looked worriedly at all the equipment that had to be transported, but Fallon was oddly casual about it. ‘Leave it here,’ he said carelessly. ‘We’ll need it next season.’
Rudetsky fumed about it to me. ‘There won’t be a goddamn thing left next season,’ he said passionately. ‘Those chiclero vultures will clean the lot out.’
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ I said. ‘Fallon can afford to replace it.’
But it offended Rudetsky’s frugal soul and he went to great lengths to cocoon the generators and pumps against the weather in the hopes that perhaps the chicleros would not loot the camp. ‘I’m wasting my time,’ he said gloomily as he ordered the windows of the huts to be boarded up. ‘But, goddamn it, I gotta go through the motions!’
So we evacuated Uaxuanoc: The big helicopter came and went, taking with it the men who had uncovered the city. The four young archeologists went after taking their leave
of Fallon. They were bubbling over with enthusiasm and promised fervently to return the following season when the real work of digging into the buildings was to begin. Fallon, the father figure, smiled upon them paternally and waved them goodbye, then went back to his work with a curiously grave expression on his face.
He was not taking any part in the work of the evacuation and refused to make decisions about anything, so Rudetsky tended to come to me for answers. I did what I thought was right, and wondered what was the matter with Fallon. He had withdrawn into the hut where the finds were lined up on the shelves and spent his time painstakingly cleaning them and making copious notes. He refused to be disturbed and neither would he allow the precious objects to be parted from him. ‘They’ll go when I go,’ he said. ‘Carry on with the rest of it and leave me alone.’
Finally the time came for us all to go. The camp was closed down but for three or four huts and all that was left would just make a nice load for the two helicopters. I was walking to Fallon’s hut to announce the fact when Rudetsky came up at a dead run. ‘Come to the radio shack,’ he said breathlessly. ‘There’s something funny going on at Camp One.’
I went with him and listened to the tale of woe. They’d had a fire and the big helicopter was burned up—completely destroyed. ‘Anyone hurt?’ barked Rudetsky.
According to the tinny voice issuing waveringly from the loudspeaker no one had been seriously injured; a couple of minor burns was all. But the helicopter was a write-off.
Rudetsky snorted. ‘How in hell did it happen?’
The voice wavered into nothingness and came back again, hardly more strongly. ‘…don’t know…just happened…’
‘It just happened,’ said Rudetsky in disgust.
I said, ‘What’s the matter with that transmitter? It doesn’t seem to have any power.’
‘What’s the matter with your transmitter?’ said Rudetsky into the microphone. Turn up the juice.’
‘I receive you loud and clear,’ said the voice weakly. ‘Can’t you hear me?’
‘You’re damned right we can’t,’ said Rudetsky. ‘Do something about it.’
The transmission came up a little more strongly. ‘We’ve got everyone out of here and back to Mexico City. There are only three of us left here—but Mr Harris says there’s something wrong with the jet.’
I felt a little prickling feeling at the nape of my neck, and leaned forward over Rudetsky’s shoulder to say into the microphone, ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘…doesn’t know…grounded…wrong registration…can’t come until…’ The transmission was again becoming weaker and hardly made sense. Suddenly it cut off altogether and there was not even the hiss of a carrier wave. Rudetsky fiddled with the receiver but could not raise Camp One again.
He turned to me and said, ‘They’re off the air completely.’
‘Try to raise Mexico City,’ I said.
He grimaced. ‘I’ll try, but I don’t think there’s a hope in hell. This little box don’t have the power.’
He twiddled his knobs and I thought about what had happened. The big transport helicopter was destroyed, the jet was grounded in Mexico City for some mysterious reason and Camp One had gone off the air. It added up to one thing—isolation—and I didn’t like it one little bit. I looked speculatively across the clearing towards the hangar where Rider was polishing up his chopper as usual. At least we had the other helicopter.
Rudetsky gave up at last. ‘Nothing doing,’ he said, and looked at his watch. ‘That was Camp One’s last transmission of the day. If they fix up their transmitter they’ll be on the air again as usual at eight tomorrow morning. There’s nothing we can do until then.’
He didn’t seem, unduly worried, but he didn’t know what I knew. He didn’t know about Jack Gatt. I said, ‘All right; we’ll wait until then. I’ll tell Fallon what’s happened.’
That proved to be harder than I anticipated. He was totally wrapped up in his work, brooding over a golden plate and trying to date it while he muttered a spate of Mayan numbers. I tried to tell him what had happened but he said irritably, ‘It doesn’t sound much to me. They’ll be on the air tomorrow with a full explanation. Now go away and don’t worry me about it.’
So I went away and did a bit of brooding on my own. I thought of talking about it to Halstead but the memory of what Pat Harris had said stopped me; and I didn’t say anything to Katherine because I didn’t want to scare her, nor did I want her to pass anything on to her husband. At last I went to see Rider. ‘Is your chopper ready for work?’ I asked.
He looked surprised and a little offended. ‘It’s always ready,’ he said shortly.
‘We may need it tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Get ready for an early start.’
That night
we
had a fire—in the radio shack!
I woke up to hear distant shouts and then the closer thudding of boots on the hard ground as someone ran by outside the hut. I got up and went to see what was happening and found Rudetsky in the shack beating out the last of the flames. I sniffed the air. ‘Did you keep petrol in here?’
‘No!’ he grunted. ‘We had visitors. A couple of those goddamn chicleros got in here before we chased them off.’ He looked at the charred remains of the transmitter. ‘Now why in hell would they want to do that?’
I could have told him but I didn’t. It was something else to be figured into the addition which meant isolation. Has anything else been sabotaged?’ I asked.
‘Not that I know of,’ he said.
It was an hour before dawn. ‘I’m going down to Camp One,’ I said. ‘I want to know what’s happened down there.’
Rudetsky looked at me closely. ‘Expecting to find trouble?’ He waved his hand. ‘Like this?’
‘I might be,’ I admitted. ‘There may be trouble here, too. Keep everyone in camp while I’m away. And don’t take any backchat from Halstead; if he makes trouble you know what to do about it.’
‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ said Rudetsky feelingly. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me what’s really going on?’
‘Ask Fallon,’ I said. ‘It’s a long story and I have no time now. I’m going to dig out Rider.’
I had a bite to eat and then convinced Rider he had to take me to Camp One. He was a bit uncertain about it, but since Fallon had apparently abdicated all responsibility and because I was backed up by Rudetsky he eventually gave way and we were ready for takeoff just as the sun rose. Katherine came to see me off, and I leaned down and said, ‘Stick close to the camp and don’t move away. I’ll be back before long.’
‘All right,’ she promised.
Halstead came into view from somewhere behind the helicopter and joined her. ‘Are you speeding the hero?’ he asked in his usual nasty way. He had been investigating the Temple of Yum Chac above the cenote and was chafing to really dig into it instead of merely uncovering the surface, but Fallon wouldn’t let him. The finds Katherine and I had been making in the cenote had put his nose out of joint. It irked him that non-professionals were apparently scooping the pool—to make a bad pun—and he was irritable about it, even to the point of picking quarrels with his wife.
He pulled her away from the helicopter forcibly, and Rider looked at me and shrugged. ‘We might as well take off,’ he said. I nodded, and he fiddled with the controls and up we went.
I spoke to Rider and he merely grinned and indicated the intercom earphones, so I put them on, and said into the microphone ‘Circle around the site for a bit, will you? I want to see what it looks like from the air.’
‘Okay,’ he said, and we cast around in a wide sweep over Uaxuanoc. It actually looked like a city from the air, at least the part that had been cleared did. I could see quite clearly the huge platform on which was built the Temple of Kukulkan and the building which Fallon referred to jocularly as ‘City Hall’. And there was the outline of what seemed to be another big platform to the east along the ridge, but that had only been partially uncovered. On the hill above the cenote Halstead had really been working hard and the Temple of Yum Chac was unmistakable for what it was—not just a mound of earth, but a huge pyramid of masonry with, a pillared hall surmounting it.
We made three sweeps over the city, then I said. ‘Thanks, Harry; we’d better be getting on. Do you mind keeping low—I’d like to take a closer look at the forest.’
‘I don’t mind, as long as you don’t want to fly too low. I’ll keep the speed down so you can really see.’
We headed east at a height of about three hundred feet and at not more man sixty miles an hour. The forest unreeled below, a green wilderness with the crowns of trees victorious in their fight for light spreading a hundred and sixty feet and more from the ground. Those crowns formed scattered islands against the lower mass of solid green, and nowhere was the ground to be seen.
‘I’d rather fly than walk,’ I said.
Harry laughed. ‘I’d be scared to death down there. Did you hear those goddamn howler monkeys the other night?
It sounded as though some poor guy was having his throat cut—slowly.’
‘The howlers wouldn’t worry me,’ I said. ‘They just make a noise, nerve-racking though it is. The snakes and pumas would worry me more.’
‘And the chicleros,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve been hearing some funny stories about those guys. Just as soon kill a man as spit from what I hear.’ He looked down at the forest. ‘Christ what a place to work in! No wonder the chicleros are tough. If I was working down there I wouldn’t give a damn if I lived or died—or if anyone else did, either.’
We crossed a part of the forest that was subtly different from the rest. I said, ‘What happened here?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Harry, and sounded as puzzled as I was. ‘That tree looks dead. Let’s have a closer view.’
He manipulated the controls, and the chopper slowed and wheeled around the treetop. It was one of the big ones whose crown had broken free of the rest to spread luxuriantly in the upper air, but it was definitely leafless and dead, and there were other dead trees all about. ‘I think I get it,’ he said. ‘Something has happened here, probably a tornado. The trees have been uprooted, but they’re so damned close packed they can’t fall, so they’ve just died where they are. What a hell of a place—you gotta die standing up!’
We rose and continued on course. Harry said, ‘It must have been a tornado: the dead trees are in a straight line. The tornado must have cut a swathe right through. It’s too localized to have been a hurricane—that would have smashed trees over a wider area.’
‘Do they have hurricanes here?’
‘Christ, yes! There’s one cutting up ructions in the Caribbean right now. I’ve been getting weather reports on it just in case it decides to take a swing this way. It’s not likely, though.’
The helicopter lurched in the air suddenly and he swore. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’ He was rapidly checking his instruments. After a while he said, ‘Everything seems okay.’
No sooner had he said it than there was a hell of a bang from astern and the whole fuselage swung around violently. The centrifugal force threw me against the side of the cockpit and I was pinned there, while Harry juggled frantically with the controls.
The whole world was going around in a cock-eyed spin; the horizon rose and fell alarmingly and the forest was suddenly very close—too damned close. ‘Hold on!’ yelled Harry, and slammed at switches on the instrument panel.
The noise of the engine suddenly stopped, but we continued to spin. I saw the top of a tree athwart our crazy path and knew we were going to crash. The next thing—and last thing—I heard was a great crackling noise ending in a smash. I was thrown forward and my head connected violently with a metal bar.
And that was all I remember.
My head hurt like hell. At first it was a distant throb, no worse than someone else’s hangover, but it grew in intensity until it felt as though someone was using my skull for a snaredrum. When I moved something seemed to explode inside and everything went blank.
The next time I came round was better—but not much. I was able to lift my head this time but I couldn’t see. Just a lot of red lights which danced in front of my eyes. I leaned back and rubbed at them, and then was aware of someone groaning. It was some time before I could see properly and then everything was green instead of red—a dazzle of moving green something-or-other showing through the transparent canopy.
I heard the groan again and turned to see Harry Rider slumped forward in his seat, a trickle of blood oozing from the side of his mouth. I was very weak and couldn’t seem to move; besides which, my thought processes seemed to be all scrambled and I couldn’t put two consecutive thoughts together. All I managed to do was to flop my head to the other side and stare through the window.
I saw a frog! He was sitting on a broad leaf staring at me with beady and unwinking eyes, and was quite still except for the rapid pulsation of his throat. We looked at each other for a very long time, long enough for me to repeat
to myself twice over that poem about the frog who would a-wooing go—
Heigh Ho, says Rowley.
After a while he blinked his eyes once, and that broke the spell, and I turned my head again to look at Harry.
He stirred slightly and moved his head. His face was very pale and the trickle of blood from his mouth disturbed me because it indicated an internal injury. Again I tried to move but I felt so damned weak.
Come on
, I said;
don’t be so grey and dim. Bestir yourself, Wheale; act like a man who knows where he’s going!
I tried again and managed to sit up. As I did so the whole fabric of the cabin trembled alarmingly and swayed like a small boat in a swell. ‘Christ!’ I said aloud. ‘Where
am
I going?’ I looked at the frog. He was still there, but the leaf on which he sat was bobbing about. It didn’t seem to worry him, though, and he said nothing about it.
I spoke again, because the sound of my voice had comforted me. ‘You must be bloody mad,’ I said. ‘Expecting a frog to talk back! You’re delirious, Wheale; you’re concussed.’
‘Wha…wha…’ said Harry.
‘Wake up, Harry boy!’ I said. ‘Wake up, for Christ’s sake! I’m bloody lonely.’
Harry groaned again and his eye opened a crack. ‘Wa…wat…’
I leaned over and put my ear to his mouth. ‘What is it, Harry?’
‘Wa…ter,’ he breathed. ‘Water be…hind seat.’
I turned and felt for it, and again the helicopter trembled and shuddered. I found the water-bottle and held it to his lips, uncertain of whether I was doing right. If he had a busted gut the water wouldn’t do him any good at all.
But it seemed all right. He swallowed weakly and dribbled a bit, and a pink-tinged foam ran down his jaw. Then he came round fast, much faster than I had done. I took a
sip of water myself, and that helped a lot. I offered Harry the bottle and he swilled out his mouth and spat. Two broken teeth clattered on the instrument panel. ‘Aagh!’ he said. ‘My mouth’s cut to bits.’
‘Thank God for that,’ I said. ‘I thought your ribs were driven into your lungs.’
He levered himself up, and then paused as the helicopter swayed. ‘What the hell!’
I suddenly realized where we were. ‘Take it easy,’ I said tightly. ‘I don’t think we’re at ground level. This is a case of “Rock-a-bye baby, on the tree top”.’ I stopped and said no more. I didn’t like the rest of that verse.
He froze in his seat and then sniffed. ‘A strong smell of gas. I don’t particularly like that.’
I said, ‘What happened—up there in the sky?’
‘I think we lost the rear rotor,’ he said. ‘When that happened the fuselage started to spin in the opposite direction to the main rotor. Thank God I was able to declutch and switch off.’
‘The trees must have sprung our landing,’ I said. ‘If we’d have hit solid ground we’d have cracked like an eggshell. As it is, we seem to be intact.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘Why should the rear rotor come off?’
‘Maybe a fatigue flaw in the metal,’ I said.
‘This is a new ship. It hasn’t had time to get fatigued.’
I said delicately, ‘I’d rather discuss this some other time. I propose to get the hell out of here. I wonder how far off the ground we are?’ I moved cautiously. ‘Stand by for sudden action.’
Carefully I pressed on the handle of the side door and heard the click as the catch opened. A little bit of pressure on the door swung it open about nine inches and then something stopped it, but it was enough open for me to look down. Directly below was a branch, and beyond that just a
lot of leaves with no sign of the ground. I looked up and saw bits of blue sky framed between more leaves.
Fallon had wandered about in the forest for many years and, although he wasn’t a botanist, he’d taken an interest in it and on several occasions he had discussed it with me. From what he had told me and from what I was able to see I thought that we were about eighty feet up. The main run of rain forest is built in three levels, the specialists call them galleries; we had bust through the top level and got hooked up on the thicker second level.
‘Got any rope?’ I asked Harry.
‘There’s the winch cable.’
‘Can you unwind it all without too much moving about?’
‘I can try,’ he said.
There was a clutch on the winch drum which he was able to operate manually, and I helped him unreel the cable, coiling it as neatly as I could and putting it behind the front seat out of the way. Then I said, ‘Do you know where we are?’
‘Sure!’ He pulled out a clipboard to which was attached a map. ‘We’re about there. We hadn’t left the site more than ten minutes and we weren’t moving fast. We’re about ten miles from the camp. That’s going to be a hell of a walk.’
‘Do you have any kind of survival kit in here?’
He jerked his thumb. ‘Couple of machetes, first aid kit, two water-bottles—a few other bits and pieces.’
I took the water-bottle that was lying between the seats and shook it experimentally. ‘This one’s half empty—or half full—depending on the way you look at things. We’d better go easy on the water.’
‘I’ll get the rest of the stuff together,’ said Harry, and turned in his seat. The helicopter sagged and there was the rending cry of torn metal. He stopped instantly and looked at me with apprehensive eyes. There was a film of sweat on his upper lip. When nothing else happened he leaned over gently and stretched his hand for the machetes.
We got all we needed into the front, and I said, ‘The radio! Is it working?’
Harry put his hand out to a switch and then drew it back. ‘I don’t know that I want to try it,’ he said nervously. ‘Can’t you smell gas? If there’s a short in the transmitter, one spark might blow us sky high.’ We looked at each other in silence for some time, then he grinned weakly. ‘All right; I’ll try it.’
He snapped down the switch and listened in on an earphone. ‘It’s dead! No signal going out or coming in.’
‘We won’t have to worry any more about that, then.’ I opened the door as far as it would go, and looked down at the branch. It was about nine inches thick and looked very solid. ‘I’m getting out now. I want you to drop the cable to me when I shout.’
Squeezing out was not much of a problem for me, I’m fairly slim, and I eased myself down towards the branch. Even going as far as I could, my toes dangled in air six inches above it, and I’d have to drop the rest of the way. I let, go, hit the branch squarely with my feet, teetered sickeningly and then dropped forward, wrapping my arms about it and doing a fair imitation of a man on a greasy pole. When I got in an upright position astride the branch I was breathing heavily.
‘Okay—drop the cable.’
It snaked down and I grabbed it. Harry had tied the waterbottles and the machetes on to the harness at the end. I left them where they were, for safety, and snapped the harness around the branch. ‘You can come out now,’ I yelled.
More cable was paid out and then Harry appeared. He had tied a loop of cable around his waist, and instead of coming down to the branch he began to climb up on top of the helicopter canopy. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shouted.
‘I want to look at the tail assembly,’ he said, breathing heavily.
‘For Christ’s sake! You’ll have the whole bloody thing coming down.’
He ignored me and climbed on hands and knees towards the rear. As far as I could see, the only thing holding the helicopter in position was one of the wheels which was jammed into the crotch formed by a branch and the trunk of a tree and, even as I looked, I saw the wheel slipping forward infinitesimally slowly.
When I looked up Harry had vanished behind a screen of leaves. ‘It’s going!’ I yelled. ‘Come back!’
There was only silence. The helicopter lurched amid a crackle of snapping twigs, and a few leaves drifted down. I looked at the wheel and it had slipped forward even more. Another two inches and all support would be gone.
Harry came into view again, sliding head first back towards the canopy. He climbed down skilfully and let himself drop on to the branch. It whipped as his boots struck it, and I caught him around the waist. We’d have made a good circus turn between us.
He manoeuvred until he, too, was astride the branch facing me. I pointed to the wheel which had only an inch to go. His face tautened. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
We untied the machetes and water-bottles and put the sling around our shoulders, then hauled the rest of the winch cable out of the chopper. ‘How long is it?’
‘A hundred feet.’
‘It ought to be enough to reach the ground.’ I started to pay it out until it had all gone. I went first, going down hand over hand. It wasn’t so bad because there were plenty of branches lower down to help out. I had to stop a couple of times to disentangle the cable where it had caught up, and on one of those stops I waited for Harry.
He came down and rested on a branch, breathing heavily. ‘Imagine me making like Tarzan!’ he gasped. His face twisted in a spasm of pain.
‘What’s the matter?’
He rubbed his chest. ‘I think maybe I cracked a couple of ribs. I’ll be all right.’
I produced the half-empty water-bottle. ‘Take a good swallow. Half for you and half for me.’
He took it doubtfully. ‘I thought you said go easy on the water.’
‘There’s some more here.’ I jerked my thumb at the scum-covered pool in the recess of a rotting tree. ‘I don’t know how good it is, so I don’t want to mix it with what’s in the bottle. Besides, water does you more good in your stomach than in the bottle—that’s the latest theory.’
He nodded, and swallowed water convulsively, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. He handed the bottle to me and I finished it. Then I dipped it into the murky pool to refill it. Tadpoles darted away under the surface; the tree frogs bred up here in the high forest galleries, and lived from birth to death without ever seeing ground. I rammed the cork home, and said, ‘I’ll have to be
really
thirsty before I’ll want to drink that. Are you ready?’
He nodded, so I grasped the cable and started down again, getting a hell of a fright when I startled a spider monkey who gave a squawk and made a twenty-foot leap to another tree, then turned and gibbered at me angrily. He was a lot more at home in the forest than I was, but he was built for it.
At last we reached bottom and stood in the humid greenness with firm ground underfoot. I looked up at the cable. Some Maya or chiclero would come along and wonder at it, and then find a use for it. Or maybe no human eyes would ever see it again. I said, ‘That was a damnfool stunt you pulled up there. What the devil were you doing?’
He looked up. ‘Let’s get out from under the chopper. It’s not too safe here.’
‘Which way?’
‘Any goddamn way,’ he said violently. ‘Just let’s get out from under, that’s all.’ He drew his machete and swung it viciously at the undergrowth and carved a passage through it. It wasn’t too bad—what Fallon would call a twenty-foot forest, perhaps, and we didn’t have to work very hard at it.
After going about two hundred yards Harry stopped and turned to me. ‘The chopper was sabotaged,’ he said expressionlessly.
‘What!’
‘You heard me. That crash was rigged. I wish I could get my hands on the bastard who did it.’
I stuck my machete in the earth so that it remained upright. ‘How do you know this?’
‘I did the day-to-day maintenance myself, and I knew every inch of that machine. Do you know how a helicopter works?’
‘Only vaguely,’ I said.
He squatted on his heels and drew a diagram in the humus with a twig. ‘There’s the big rotor on top that gives lift. Newton’s law says that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, so, if you didn’t stop it, the whole fuselage would rotate in the opposite direction to the rotor. The way you stop it is to put a little propeller at the back which pushes sideways. Got that?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘This helicopter had one engine which drove both rotors. The rear rotor is driven by a long shaft which runs the length of the fuselage—and there’s a universal coupling here. Do you remember that bang we heard just before the crash? I thought it was the rear rotor flying off. It wasn’t. It was this coupling giving way so that the shaft flailed clean through the side of the fuselage. Of course, the rear rotor stopped and we started to spin.’
I patted my pockets and found a half-empty packet of cigarettes. Harry took one, and said, ‘I had a look at that coupling. The retaining screws had been taken out.’
‘Are you sure about that? They couldn’t have broken out?’
He gave me a disgusted look. ‘Of course I’m goddamn sure.’
‘When did you last inspect that coupling?’
‘Two days ago. But the sabotage was done after that, because I was flying yesterday. My God, we were lucky to get ten minutes’ flying without those screws.’
There was a noise in the forest—a dull boom from overhead—and a bright glare reflected through the leaves. ‘There she goes,’ said Harry. ‘And we’re damned lucky not to be going with her.’