by Evan Hunter
Can this be Yucatan? Neil wondered. Are we back in Yucatan again?
It seemed impossible. They’d been in the time machine for such a long time, listening to the steady roar of the engines, the throbbing of the instruments. All that time they thought they were winging back toward home, whisking through time and space, back to America and the twentieth century.
But suppose something had gone wrong? Suppose Dave hadn’t really repaired the machine? Suppose that gold oscillator coil wasn’t a good substitute? Suppose the. . .
“Neil! Look at that!”
. . . instruments hadn’t been calibrated correctly? Suppose, suppose, suppose they were really and truly back in Yucatan again, far from . . .
“Neil, are you listening to me?”
Neil snapped out of his gloomy thoughts. “I . . . I’m sorry, Dave. What did you say?”
“Look at that! A light, Neil. An electric light! A good, old, one-hundred-percent American electric light bulb!”
“What?”
“Yes! There, right ahead. It’s a house and a light.”
Neil stared, hardly willing to believe his eyes. “It is! It’s a light.” He looked closer. “Well, for crying out loud!”
“What’s the matter?” Dave asked.
Neil began laughing, his raucous bellow splitting the night air. “What is it?” Dave demanded.
“That house,” Neil said between gales of laughter. “It’s Student Hall. We’re right on the campus, Dave. We’ve been right here since we landed.”
Dave stared around him in bewilderment. Then he slapped one hand against the other and started laughing. “You’re right! We’ve been floundering around in the woods behind the stadium. We’re home, boy! Home!”
They broke into a run, dashing out of the woods and onto the paved streets of the campus.
The campus looked exactly as they’d left it. Student Hall, proud and austere, covered with ivy. The street lamps glowing. The twisted walks covered with autumn leaves.
Autumn! It had been the beginning of summer when they left. Autumn!
They ran past the Exchange, past Crane Hall, past Examination Walk and into Faculty Row.
The little red brick house stood at the end of Faculty Row, a light glowing in the front room. They ran down the street, clattered up the front steps and hastily rang the bell.
“Just a minute,” came a voice from inside.
“My father,” Neil said breathlessly.
They heard the shuffle of slippers against a rug, and then the door opened. Doctor Falsen stood there, his head high, the neat, black beard covering the point of his chin.
He was standing! No cast, no cane.
He peered out into the darkness, his eyes squinting. “Who is it?” he asked.
Neil bit his lip and grinned broadly. Doctor Falsen snapped on the porch lights. He was turning, his hand still on the switch, when he saw his visitors for the first time.
“Neil!” He shouted. And then as if uncertain this was really his son standing there, he asked, “Neil?”
Neil rushed into his father’s arms. “Dad, Dad.”
The two men stood on the steps, father and son. Doctor Falsen mumbled, “Neil, my boy, Neil. We thought you’d been . . .” His eyes saw Dave, and he extended a welcome hand to him. “Dave! My, I don’t know what to . . .” Tears rushed into his eyes.
He broke away from Neil and shouted, “Motherl Get down here, Mother. Neil is home!”
And then, in an outburst that seat of learning would remember for a long time, Doctor Falsen shouted to Faculty Row, “My son is home! My son is home! Come in, Neil. Come in. Don’t stand out there. Come in, come in!”
The Falsen household was a festive place that night. The faculty came and went, and Mrs. Falsen rushed here and there, serving her guests, hardly able to keep her eyes off her son. How he had grown! Students dropped in, and Neil talked for hours, explaining the trip, relating all the experiences he and Dave had known, telling all about Erik and Talu and the city of Chichen-Itza.
At last everyone was gone, and Neil sat in the quiet of his living room, talking to his father.
“You see, Dad,” he said, “we never did find Kukulcan. The trip was a failure.”
“Was it?” Doctor Falsen asked.
“Why, yes,” Neil said. “I just told you. There was no Kukulcan. The Mayas never heard of him.”
Doctor Falsen stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You didn’t know very much about Kukulcan, Neil,” he said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t tell you more before you left. But then, I didn’t know that Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake would . . .” His voice trailed off.
“I don’t understand, Dad.”
“Unless I’m greatly mistaken,” Doctor Falsen said, “the trip wasn’t such a failure, after all.”
“How do you mean?”
“We know very little about Kukulcan, but I’m sure you’ll be able to tell us a lot more about him now.”
Neil shook his head. “Dad, you don’t understand. We didn’t find Kukulcan. There was no such . . .”
“Kukulcan,” Doctor Falsen interrupted, “is described as a tall, white man with blond hair and a blond beard”
“Well, what’s that got to . . .”
“It is believed that he greatly influenced the agricultural habits of the Mayas.”
“Agricultural habits?” Neil asked, a faint glimmer of understanding beginning to seep into his mind.
“Yes. And it is further believed that he outlawed human sacrifice, substituting fruits and flowers in its . . .”
“Erik!” Neil shouted. “Holy jumping jehosophat! Erik!”
“Yes,” Doctor Falsen replied, smiling. “Erik was Kukulcan.”
“But that’s impossible. I knew Erik. I mean, I was his friend. We . . . I mean, we were friends.”
“It all adds up. You say he killed a serpent.”
“Yes. Yes, he did.”
“And his helmet. It was a winged helmet.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps they came to know him as the feathered serpent slayer, or the feathered slayer of serpents. And perhaps this was later shortened to the Feathered Serpent. I’m guessing, of course.”
“It’s too far-fetched,” Neil said.
“It might be — unless there were something that really convinced the Mayas he was a god. Something that convinced them beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
“But what could that have been?”
Doctor Falsen lifted an eyebrow. “Put yourself in the place of a Maya, Neil. Your friends are leaving you. They have been very close to the blond giant who slays serpents and who works wonders with their agriculture. They step into a transparent bubble, climb a ladder . . .”
“Holy cow!” Neil said.
“. . . and their vessel begins to rise in the air. And then it disappears completely.”
“The time machine. I’d forgotten all about that. But I told Talu not to be frightened. I told him, Dad.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind, son, that you really found Kukulcan. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you, as a person, are intricately wound up in the Kukulcan legend.”
“I couldn’t be. You mean me?”
“Perhaps, Neil. Erik, certainly. And you, to some extent.”
Neil passed a hand nervously over his face.
Doctor Falsen smiled. “You not only found a god, Neil. You helped create one.”
“Think of it,” Neil said. “Erik a god.” He paused, thinking of the Norseman again. “He was a swell guy, Dad. I’d like to see him again. I really would.”
“That’s not impossible, Neil. You’ve a lot to learn yet and a lot of work to do. But you can learn more about the time machine, and then . . .” he winked, “who knows where it might take you?”
He grinned and put his arm around Neil as they started up the steps to their rooms.
“And maybe next time you’ll take your old man along? How about it?”
Neil went to sleep in his old room that
night, the wind lifting the curtains and the moonlight glancing off the pennants on the wall.
But before he drifted off to sleep, he saw a picture of a tall, proud Norseman, the sun lighting his golden hair and beard as he stood in silhouette on the bow of his ship. Erik.
Kukulcan.
There was a smile on Neil’s face when at last he gave way to weariness.
“You’ve a lot to learn . . . l o t o f work to do . . . learn more about the time machine . . . and then who knows where it might take you?”
Happily, peacefully, Neil dropped off to sleep.
Glossary
CACAO: a tropical American tree cultivated for its seeds, which are the source of cocoa and chocolate.
CALABASH: a gourd, growing in many shapes and sizes, from three inches to three feet long. Often used for utensils in Yucatan.
CALIBRATE: determining, checking, or rectifying the graduation of an instrument measuring quantity. In this case, the checking of the instruments that measure time and space, gearing them so that a certain time speed coupled with a certain space speed will bring the machine to rest in the desired time and location.
COPAL: a hard, lustrous resin yielded by various tropical trees, used today for making varnishes.
PLASTIC BUBBLES: transparent globes, much like the gun turrets on Air Force bombers. In the time machine, of course, the bubbles are respectively large enough to hold passengers and a rotor shaft.
TEMPORIUM CRYSTAL: a purely imaginary crystal, which would have to be of a heavy radioactive element, and which might possibly be the by-product of an atomic pile.
TEMPORIUM IODIDE: a compound of temporium and iodine.
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