“I’VE HAD ENOUGH for today,” Will decided.
“Really? So soon?” Dr. Burrows mumbled, as he continued to work on a sketch.
“My arm’s acting up a bit,” Will added, although the injury from the Limiter’s spear had long since healed.
“Going back to see Elliott?” Dr. Burrows asked, a knowing tone to his voice.
Will ignored this, raising his eyes to the ever-burning sun. “I just don’t want to overdo it again,” he said, adjusting the wide-brimmed hat that Elliott had fashioned for him from animal hide.
He and his father were on the side of the pyramid, and while the hat afforded his face a measure of protection from the direct sun, he still had to be careful about the reflected rays in their exposed position.
“No, quite,” Dr. Burrows finally answered, looking up from his work.
Will rubbed his eyes and blinked several times. “Of all the places we could have ended up, this one is an albino’s worst nightmare. Dad, do you think next time you could find us a world with a few more clouds?” he asked with a smile.
“I’ll see what I can do. Off you go if you want to,” Dr. Burrows replied glumly. He depended on his son’s support for the mammoth task of recording the inscriptions and the scenes depicted on each of the tiers of the pyramid. It was all written in one of the languages on the Burrows Stone, and little by little he was deciphering it. He and Will had started at the base of the pyramid and were methodically working their way to the top, knowing they had another two pyramids to tackle that they hadn’t even visited yet.
“I’ll see you back at the camp, Dad,” Will said.
“Yes …,” Dr. Burrows murmured. He watched his son make his way down the successive tiers to the ground, leaping distances that would be unthinkable in the Topsoil world. Then Dr. Burrows resumed his work on a numerical sequence, which was making no sense to him at all.
After a while his concentration was broken by a distant droning. He immediately dismissed it as the wind, telling himself it was another of the violent storms, of which there were many. It sounded as if it was too far away to be a concern, so there was no need to get himself under cover. But then he heard the noise again, louder this time, and it didn’t sound anything like the wind. He wiped his brow, then rose to his feet to study the sky.
He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but he realized he wasn’t in the best position, so he vaulted up the tiers until he reached the very top of the pyramid. There he walked across the level plateau of stone, passing the radio beacon that Will had left the very first time they’d climbed it.
“What a view,” Dr. Burrows sighed, never failing to be impressed, no matter how many times he saw it. From this elevated position, he was a considerable way above the canopy of the rain forest, which stretched out before him like some rolling green sea, broken only by the tops of the other pyramids.
“Where’s the storm?” he said to himself, not seeing any clouds as he scanned the horizon on each side.
Instead he spotted something in the distance.
Stepping slowly across to the other side of the pyramid, he shielded his eyes with his hand as he tried to make out what it was.
“What in earth is that?”
Something was moving across the clear white sky.
Something that, as he looked further, was terribly familiar.
He reeled, nearly losing his footing at the edge of the pyramid.
And as it changed direction and began to come toward the pyramid, Dr. Burrows could clearly hear the whine of its single prop engine.
“An airplane? Here?” he said soundlessly.
As he strained to see more, he wished he’d brought his binoculars with him.
But there was no doubt.
It was an airplane.
And, yes, it was strangely familiar.
He recognized the W shape of the wings. It was still some distance away, but as it tipped into a full dive, he could hear the howl of the siren on the aircraft, issuing one of the most distinctive and most feared sounds of the Second World War.
“A German bomber,” Dr. Burrows gasped, nearly losing his footing again. “A Stuka!”