The back of the barbarian resistance was broken. Like a crippled snake, the foe slithered away from the city, pursued all the way by the ferocious Baz and his warriors.
The screams died on the night, and the smoldering torches faded and winked out, replaced by the cold, hard stars overhead.
The barbarian attack was over.
Neil slept fitfully that night, dreaming of the unkempt invaders and of the warrior Baz.
It was not until three weeks later, when Neil could converse with Talu in a halting, broken version of the Maya tongue, that he learned that those barbarian attacks were not infrequent.
“They come from the south,” Talu said, and Neil strained his ears and his mind to grasp the meaning of the Maya language. “They come often, and each time they come in stronger numbers. I fear they will completely overrun the city some day. And then what will become of us? What will happen to the Mayas?”
Neil’s knowledge of Maya had not come easy to him. The day after the barbarian attack, Talu had introduced Neil to a boy and a girl of approximately his own age.
Talu had pointed to the boy and said, “Rixal.”
Neil smiled and acknowledged the name.
The priest had then indicated the young girl and said, “Tela.”
Neil nodded profusely and repeated both names, “Rixal,” pointing to the muscular, brown-bodied boy, and “Tela,” his finger extended toward the shy, grinning girl.
The two of them had taken him under their wings then, two well-appointed teachers who led him around the city, pointing out buildings and courts, plazas and pillars. At first they chattered on and on in Maya, but Neil’s ears were deaf to the language.
After a week of constant exposure to the language, he began to pick up simple words and concepts. Words such as, “eat,” and “sleep,” and “boy,” and “girl,” and “temple,” and “palace.”
It was then that Neil learned the pyramid-shaped buildings were temples, and that the clustered rooms atop the low, fiat mounds were the palaces of the nobles and city officials. Rixal and Tela were brother and sister, and they lived in one of the palm-thatched huts on the outskirts of the city. Ordinarily they worked in the fields during the day, but they had been chosen to serve as guides for Neil and were thus excused from their normal duties.
Rixal was close to seventeen, and Tela was fifteen.
Neil learned their ages the hard way, during the second week of his education. By that time, his knowledge of Maya had increased enough for him to make his wants known in simple, direct phrases.
They had been eating, and Neil pointed toward a plum, indicating that he wanted one.
Rixal reached into the wooden bowl and scooped three plums into the palm of his hand.
“No,” Neil said in Maya. Then, not knowing the Maya word for one, he shook his head and held up one finger.
Rixal understood immediately and handed Neil one plum. And that had started them off on numbers and the Maya system of counting.
They sat at a low table in front of one of the temples, the table having been set up in the court for Neil and his guides. Rixal rose and tugged at Neil’s hand, leading him to a patch of dry earth beyond the court. He knelt then, and held up one finger.
Neil nodded.
With the end of a stick, Rixal poked into the sand, making a large dot. He pointed to the symbol, •, and held up one finger again. Neil smiled and nodded.
Rixal then held up two fingers and poked into the dried earth again, twice this time. ••.
Neil nodded in understanding again. Rixal repeated the process until he was holding up four fingers, with four dots in the sand.
Then he held up five fingers. He moved the stick across the sand in a long 
symbol.
Neil understood that the bar was five. Rixal dropped the stick near his knees, held up five fingers of one hand and one of the other, and made the symbol 
in the earth. This was six. It continued: 
was eight: 
was ten: 
was nineteen.
Neil understood now and drew some symbols in the sand to show that he knew what they meant. Rixal was delighted, and he chattered in rapid Maya to Tela, who was no longer shy in Neil’s presence.
Then Rixal dragged Neil to one of the huge pillars embedded in the earth at various spots around the city. He pointed to the faces carved on the stone, and began holding up fingers again. Neil realized that there was probably a face symbol for each number, too, but he had had enough teaching for one day.
He held up his hands in protest, and Rixal and Tela laughed uproariously. They went back to their fruit, and Neil made a mental note to look into the Maya face symbols at a later date. It was while they were eating that he used his new-found knowledge to scrawl his age on the table top with a charred stick, using the bars and dots system that Rixal had taught him.
The weeks seemed to float by lazily. Neil was so busy with his sight-seeing and his absorption of the language that he’d almost forgotten about Dave, Erik, and the time machine. One day, he went down to the beach alone, walking through the forest, and making sure he marked a trail this time.
The machine stood on the white sand, its rotors still badly twisted, the surf whipping whitely onto the beach behind it. The ocean was a clear green, stretching as far as the eye could see. Neil stood on the edge of the forest, looking at the machine and the ocean, his heart suddenly filling with a terrible loneliness for home. He walked to the machine and opened the hatchway.
“Dave,” he called.
“Yeah?” came the shouted answer.
“It’s Neil.”
“Hiya, stranger. Just a second, I’ll be right down.”
Neil waited while Dave climbed down the aluminum ladder. When Dave stepped out into the sunlight, he grinned in near-embarrassment and extended a grimy hand toward Neil.
Realizing that the hand was covered with grease, he withdrew it hastily and wiped it on the back of his dungarees.
He held it out again and Neil gripped it tightly.
“Long time no see,” Dave said.
“They’ve been showing me around the city,” Neil explained, feeling a little awkward. He was usually asleep by the time Dave returned at night, and Dave was up and gone long before Neil awoke. “I’ve been learning a lot.”
“Good,” Dave answered in earnest honesty. “You’ll have a lot to tell your father when you get back.” His face clouded. “If we get back,” he added.
“Is it that bad?” Neil asked, looking at the rotors at the top of the machine.
Dave’s eyes followed Neil’s to the twisted rotors. “Oh, I can fix that, all right. I think. It’ll just take a lot of heat and some steady pounding. I’m worried about the time mechanism.”
“Has something happened to the crystal?” Neil asked, a faint touch of panic in his voice.
“That’s just it,” Dave replied. “I don’t know. I’ve been over every inch of the panel and I can’t find the trouble. She’s as dead as yesterday, though; that’s for sure.”
Neil hesitated. “Think you can fix her?”
“I don’t know,” Dave replied slowly. He grinned. “How’d you like to spend the rest of your life in Chichen-Itza?”
Neil gulped hard. “I… I… is there a possibility we might have to?”
“A strong possibility,” Dave said, suddenly sobering.
“Well… I suppose if we have to…”