The Man of Bronze by Kenneth Robeson Page B

topography, to use pontoons instead of landing wheels on the plane. Due to the wildly rank jungle and the unbelievably craggy nature of the region, chances were one in a thousand of finding a clearing large enough for a set-down.
    On the other hand, Hidalgo was in a sphere of great rainfall, of tropical downpours. The streams were small rivers, and here and there in a mountain chasm lay a tiny lake. Hence the floats on the plane.
    While Doc lifted the plane to ten thousand feet to find a favorable air current, and thus cut gasoline consumption, his five friends used binoculars through the cabin windows.
    They hoped to find trace of their enemy, the blue monoplane. But not a glimpse of its hangar did they catch in the nodular, verdurous carpet of jungle. It must be concealed, they reasoned, somewhere very near the capital city of Blanco Grande. But they didn’t sight it.
    Below was an occasional patch of milpa , or native corn, growing in jungle clearings. Through the glasses, they could see natives carrying burdens in macapals , or netting bags suspended by a strap about the forehead. These became scarcer. Where had once been milpa patches was only a thick growth of uamiz bushes ten to twenty feet high. They were leaving civilization behind. Hours passed.
    Great barrancas , or gorges, began to split the terrain. The earth seemed to tumble and writhe and pile atop itself in inconceivable derangement. Mountains lurched up, gigantic, made black and ominous by the jungle growth. From above, the flyers could look down into canyons so deep their floors were nothing but gloomy space.
    “There’s not a level place down there big enough to stick a stamp on!” Renny declared in an awed voice.
    Johnny laughed. “I told Monk that Columbus tackling the Atlantic Ocean had a pipe compared to this.”
    Monk snorted. “You’re crazy. Us settin’ in comfortable seats in this plane, and you call it somethin’ hard! I don’t see nothin’ dangerous about it.”
    “You wouldn’t!” Ham said dryly. “If we should be forced down, you could take to the trees. The rest of us would have to walk. And a half mile a day is good walking in that country under us!”
    Renny, up in the pilot’s well with Doc, called: “Heads up, you eggs! We’re getting close!”

    RENNY had checked their course figures again and again. He had calculated angles and inscribed lines on the map. And they were nearing their destination, the tract of land that was Doc’s legacy! It lay directly ahead.
    And ahead was a mountain range more nodular and sheer than any they had sighted yet. Its foothill peaks were like stone needles. To the rampant sides of the mountains clung stringy patches of jungle, fighting for existence.
    The great speed plane bucked like a plains cayuse as it encountered the tremendous air currents set up by the precipitous wastes of stone below. This in spite of Doc’s masterful hand at the controls. An ordinary pilot would have succumbed to such treacherous currents, or prudently turned back.
    It was as though they were flying the tumultuous heart of a vast cyclone.
    Monk, hanging tightly to a wicker seat, which was in turn strapped with metal to the plane fuselage, had become somewhat green under his ruddy brick complexion. Plainly, he had changed his ideas about the ease of their exploration method. Not that he was scared. But he was about as seasick as man ever became.
    “These devilish air currents explain why this region has not been mapped by plane,” Doc offered.
    Four or five minutes later, he leveled an arm. “Look! That canyon should lead to the center of this tract of land we’re hunting!”
    The eyes, all of them, followed Doc’s pointing arm.
    A narrow-walled gash that seemed to sink a limitless depth into the mountain met their gaze. This cut was of bare stone, too steep and too flintlike in hardness to support even a trace of green growth.
    The plane careened closer.
    So deep was the gash of a canyon that twilight swathed