The mayan prophecy (Timeriders # 8) Read Online Free PDF

shook his head and once again sucked in the incredible view before him. No, this
was
money well spent. OK, they hadn’t discovered any long-lost tribes or hoards of hidden treasure, or any hitherto-undiscovered species of slimy jungle fungus, but Professor Brian’s students had experienced firsthand an actual dig site.
    And, of course, the breath-taking majesty of the Cusco mountains, the fragile beauty of a rainforest.
    He was just putting his camera back into his backpack when he felt the root-stump wobble unsteadily beneath his shifting weight. He quickly stood up. The stump’s gnarled root ends had pulled free of the loose, dry soil, and now it see-sawed uncertainly, dirt crumbling and cascading down the steep slope on to the zigzagging trail below. With a tired creak, it slowly began to sway outward, and then, carried further by its own weight, it toppled lazily over the side of the narrow track. Roots trailing behind it, yanked out of the dirt.
    The stump bounced and rolled down the sheer slope, finally smacking into a rocky outcrop by the edge of the trail below and spinning out into open air. It ended up crashing through the upper branches of the jungle canopy below, scaring a flock of white-fronted birds into the sky and startling the ecosystem beneath into a momentary chorus of cheeps and whistles and hoots, which eventually subsided and returned to the normal soothing music of rainforest life.
    ‘Crap.’ Adam whistled.
    Nice one, genius
. He could have so very easily sailed over the side with that heavy boulder of desiccated wood.
    The stump’s bulk and gnarled roots had wrenched away and taken with them a thick curtain of vines that had grown accustomed to its presence and become interwoven with it. This curtain now pulled away, Adam found himself staring at the mouth of a previously completely concealed cave.
    Adam gaped at the dark entrance for a moment.
    Uh … Mission Control to Adam, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking – Don’t!
    ‘Don’t what?’
    Duh … don’t wander in, idiot! ‘Things’ live in caves.
    ‘Relax. I’m just going to have a peek.’
    Adam … FYI, some of the dumbest mistakes known to man probably began with the words ‘I’m just gonna …’
    ‘Just a peek.’ He stepped carefully round the edge of the crumbly bite out of the track towards the cave entrance. Several vines and creepers still made a pretence of trying to hide the entrance. He brushed them aside.
    ‘Yoo-hoo!’ he cooed self-consciously. His voice echoed and reverberated around inside. He heard nothing growling back at him. Encouraging.
    ‘There you go … nothing’s home.’
    Mission Control had nothing to say at this time.
    Adam took a step inside. The cave appeared to open up within a yard or so of the entrance. A natural jagged fissure, worn by time, the elements and restless geology. The vine-filtered light from the entrance was enough to push the darkness a dozen yards back. All the same, he decided to pull a torch from his backpack.
    He rummaged and found it: a pencil-torch gaffer-taped to a grubby sports sweat-band. He wore it when he cycled home from university at night, fancying that, with it strapped to the left side of his mushroom-head cycle helmet, he looked just a little bit like one of the colonial marines in
Aliens
. He pulled the sweat-band over his dreads until it settled on the rough moon surface of his pimply forehead.
    ‘Hellooo? Anyone home?’ he called out, wondering what kind of response he was expecting by saying that. He snapped the torch on. The cave’s ragged contours sent shadows dancing across the rocky surface like sidewinder snakes scurrying for cover as he turned his head and panned the thin beam of light around.
    ‘Whoa … big-ass cave.’
    From the roof, rust-coloured stalactites hung like shark’s teeth, vines like shreds of rancid seal meat between them. The floor of the cave was an uneven surface of emergent stalagmite humps and