Tim’s helicopter rose straight up, and he activated the winch to bring the harness up as he flew off to the west toward the burned clearing. Sam and Remi began to look through their packs. Remi said, “Pretty quiet all of a sudden, isn’t it?”

He put his arms around her and kissed her. “It’s kind of nice to be alone.”

“It is,” she said. “But if we don’t get this place photographed, we’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“Let’s get it done.” Each of them opened a day pack, took out a pistol, stuck it in the bellyband they both wore under their shirts, and then took out a digital camera.

They worked systematically, taking shots from each side of the pyramid, so that in all four directions they photographed a quarter of the surrounding city complex, which looked like an arrangement of steep hills covered by trees. They went into the house-sized temple atop the pyramid and took photographs of its walls, floor, and ceiling. The temple had two rooms plastered with stucco and then painted with murals that were in fairly good shape. They depicted a procession of Mayan people bringing bowls and plates to a hideous figure who must have been a god.

They slowly descended the pyramid, taking photographs of it, of the steps, of the monumental buildings in every direction. Much of the time, each of them included the other person in the photograph to establish scale and to prove that they had been there.

When they reached the ground level, they walked a quarter of a mile in each of the four directions from the pyramid, still photographing everything they could see. At the end of the afternoon, they returned to the foot of the pyramid and stopped on the east side. Sam took a foot-length section of PVC pipe, capped and sealed on both ends, from his pack. Inside were rolled papers, printed statements in English and Spanish. They said that Remi and Sam Fargo had been at this GPS position on this date to explore and map these Mayan ruins. There were also telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and street addresses for contacting the Society for American Archaeology, the World Archaeological Congress, and the Society for Historical Archaeology, all of which had been notified of the discovery, as had the Guatemalan government. Sam dug a hole and buried the pipe in front of the eastern steps and then marked the spot with a small red plastic flag, like the ones that gas companies use to mark gas lines.

“So much for that,” said Remi. “I feel a little like the old-time explorers who used to plant flags on other people’s property and say they owned it.”

“Let’s just settle on the idea that we were here and registered it with the people who are qualified to study it and learn more about it,” he said. “That’s enough for me.”