“Didn't notice that on our way in,” he said, “shall we take a look?”
Brodrick got out his torch and shone it into the entrance.
“Just a small chamber, as far as I can see - nothing inside it. Odd though, it doesn't seem to be built of blocks - almost like one massive block which has been hollowed out.”
A flash of light lit up the cavity, and Brodrick looked at his torch to see what had gone wrong with it, and then a distant rumble of thunder gave him the answer. Seconds later the first of the rain drops fell, soon building up into a deluge.
“Better get in here,” called Brodrick. “Looks like a real downpour.”
The sky quickly grew darker, and the lightning flashes more frequent, tearing into the taller of the jungle trees and shattering their trunks as the heat boiled off the moisture they contained.
“Good thing we found this little haven,” Ted yelled, trying to be heard above roar of the raging storm, “we'd have got soaked, and probably swept away out there.”
The huge paved area of the temple above them soon filled with water, which cascaded down the steps past them, building in volume all the time.
“My God,” exclaimed Brodrick, “this is the worst storm I've ever been in - if the rain gets any denser, it'll fall in a solid lump.”
“Do you think it’s got anything to do with disturbing the dead alien in its sarcophagus? - I mean disturbing the copper nodules and exposing it?” Ted asked.
“No,” Brodrick replied, shouting to be heard above the racket of the storm, “he’s been dead and mummified for a long time; anyway, we covered him up again.”
A massive strike of lightning struck the temple above them with a deafening roar, and they both clapped their hands over their ears. Several more strikes hit home on the huge building of the Maya, and then the ground under their feet heaved, accompanied by an ear splitting explosion. Building blocks and small stones rained down on the ground outside, causing a few new expletives to issue forth from Brodrick.
They sat huddled together, watching the water outside slowly rising towards the threshold of the chamber, and then the rain ceased as quickly as it had begun, and the water outside slowly seeped away.
Some minutes later, they crawled out of their shelter to see the shattered remains of the temple. The steps had split down the middle, one half now canting off at an angle, and strewn with broken blocks of stone.
“I wonder if the inside has been damaged?” said Brodrick. “As we're here, we'd better have a look I suppose.”
They climbed the steps once more, dismayed at what they saw - a beautiful stone creation, which had stood for hundreds of years, now lay shattered before them.
“Good God,” Brodrick called out, “come and look at this - one of the lightning strikes must have hit the teleport. My guess is that the power plant that ran it must have been beneath - and it's blown the whole bloody lot to pieces - there's just a huge hole where the teleport was before. Good thing we got back when we did.”
The building which housed the ore teleport was now a heap of rubble, the main temple still had most of its walls standing, but the roof had collapsed and filled the interior with stone blocks, and there was a huge deep pit where they had sheltered at night in the teleport which had taken them to another world.
“Well, that's screwed up my plans for the future,” Brodrick said, sounding less disappointed than he really was. “It's going to take a lot of heavy machinery to shift that lot, and no one in their right mind is going drag that sort of thing all out here - sod it!”
“We've still got all the photographs,” Ted said. “That should prove the point of what we've seen and done.”
“Doubt that, but thanks for the optimism,” Brodrick replied. “We can't prove we didn't fake them - these days it's so easy to make anything look real, and what we've been through is so preposterous compared to most people's normal lives, no one is going to believe us. I mean, let's face it - an alien race, subjugating several worlds to rob them of their materials - flitting about space in teleports - who's going to believe that? Anyway, it looks as if the aliens came up against an even more powerful bunch who didn't like the idea of being subjugated - and decided to fix the alien's world once and for all - we saw the results of that. We still have our memories, that's the important thing. We know what we saw and did, so what happened is something we share between us - no one can take that away.”
Sadly, the pair collected up their belongings, and their thoughts, and began the long haul back through the steaming jungle to the only civilisation they would now know - but they still had the hypnotising artefact taken from the monk's robe…..
• THE END •
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