Mayan building Fallon had mentioned.
The cenote was about thirty feet in diameter and the water lay about fifteen feet down in the pit. The sides of me pit were almost sheer, but someone had cut rough steps so as to get to the water. I was startled by the sudden noisy throb of an engine close by and found a small pump run by a petrol engine which had apparently come into operation automatically. It was pumping water from the cenote up to the camp -- another bit of Fallonese efficiency.
I didn't find a building although I looked hard enough, and after half an hour of futile searching I gave up. I was about to go back to the camp when I saw two men on the other side of the cenote looking at me. All they wore were ragged white trousers and they stood as still as statues. They were small, sinewy and brown, and a stray sunbeam falling through the leaves reflected in a coppery sheen from the naked chest of the nearest man. They regarded me solemnly for the space of thirty seconds and then turned and vanished into the forest.
III
The helicopter came back and Fallon dumped a load of film spools on the table in the big hut. 'Know anything about film processing?' he asked.
'In an amateur sort of way.'
'Umph! That might not be good enough. But well do the best we can. Come with me.' He led me into another hut and showed me his photographic department. 'You should be able to get the hang of this,' he said. 'It's not too difficult.'
There was no dabbling in trays of hypo for Fallon; he had the neatest darkroom set-up I'd ever seen -- and he didn't need a darkroom. I watched him as he demonstrated. It was a big box with a sliding, light-tight door at one side and a slot at the other. He slid open the door, put a spool of undeveloped film into a receptacle and threaded the leader through sprockets. Then he closed the door and pressed a button. Fifteen minutes later the developed colour film uncoiled through the slot on the other side, dry and ready for screening.
He took the cover off the box and showed me the innards -- the sets of slowly turning rollers and baths of chemicals, and the infra-red dryer at the end -- and he explained which chemicals went where. 'Think you can handle it? It will save time if we have someone who can process the film as quickly as possible.'
'I don't see why not,' I said.
'Good! You can carry on with these, then. There's something I want to talk over with Paul.' He smiled. 'You can't really carry on a sensible conversation in a whirlybird -- too noisy.' He held up a spool. This one consists of stereo pairs; I'll show you how to cut it and register it accurately into frames when it's developed.'
I got stuck in to developing the films, pleased that there was something I could do. All it took was time -- the job itself was so simple it could have been contracted out to child labour. I developed the last spool -- the stereos -- and took it to Fallon, and he showed me how to fit the images into the double frames, which was easy if finicky.
That evening we had a magic-lantern show in the big hut. Fallon put a spool into the film strip projector and switched on. There was just a green blur on the screen and he chuckled. I seem to have got the focus wrong on that one.'
The next frame was better and the screen showed an area of forest and a cenote reflecting the blue of the sky. It just looked like any other bit of forest to me, but Fallon and Halstead discussed it for quite a while before moving on to the next frame. It was a good two hours before all the pictures were shown and I'd lost interest long before that, especially when it seemed that the first cenote had proved a bust.
Fallon said at last, 'We still have the stereo pictures. Let's 'lave a look at those.'
He changed the projectors and handed me a pair of polaroid glasses. The stereo pictures were startlingly three-dimensional; I felt that all I had to do was lean forward to pluck the top-most leaf from a tree. Being aerial shots, they also gave a dizzying sense of vertigo. Fallon ran through them all without result. 'I think we can chalk that one off our list,' he said. We'd better go to bed -- we'll have a heavy day tomorrow.'
I yawned and stretched, then I remembered the men I had seen. 'I saw two men down at the cenote.'
'Chicleros?' asked Fallon sharply.
'Not if chicleros are little brown men with big noses.'
'Mayas,' he decided. They'll be wondering what the hell we're doing.'
I said, 'Why don't you ask them about Uaxuanoc? Their ancestors built the place, after all.'
'They wouldn't know about it -- or if they did, they wouldn't tell us. The modem Maya is cut off from his history. As far as he is concerned the ruins were made by giants or dwarfs and he steers clear of them. They're magical places and not to be approached by men. What did you think of that building down there?'
'I couldn't find it,' I said.
Halstead gave a suppressed snort, and Fallon laughed. 'It's not so hidden; I spotted it straight away. I'll show you tomorrow -- it will give you some idea of what we're up against here.'
IV
We established a routine. Fallon and Halstead made three flights a day- -- sometimes four. After each flight they would hand me the films and I would get busy developing them and every night we would screen the results. Nothing much came of that except the steady elimination of possibilities.
Fallon took me down to the cenote and showed the the Mayan building and I found that I had passed it half a dozen times without seeing it. It was just by the side of the cenote in thick vegetation, and when Fallon said, There it is!' I didn't see a thing except another bit of forest.
He smiled, and said, 'Go closer,' so I walked right to the edge of the clearing and saw nothing except the dappled dazzle-pattern of sun, leaves and shadows. I turned around and shrugged, and he called, 'Push your hand through the leaves.' I did as he said and rammed my fist against a rock . with an unexpected jolt.
'Now step back a few paces and have another look,' said Fallon.
I walked back, rubbing my skinned knuckles and looked again at the vegetation through narrowed eyes. It's a funny tiring -- one moment it wasn't there and a split second later it was, like a weird optical illusion, bat even then
