'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 wont have to worry any more about that, then.' I opened the door as far as it would go, and looked down at me 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 water-bottles 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-bottler 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 [ 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 damn fool 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
