Free Collection 1986 - Night Over The Solomons (v5.0) by Louis L’Amour

somehow.”
    “It does that!” Buck glanced up sharply. Against the darkening sky the shape of the tower was all gone. “I wonder if that is a tower? Or is it just a rock?”
    Dick London laughed. “There’s nothing of that kind in here. This is all wild country.”
    Mora shrugged. “So was the jungle in Cambodia before they found the lost city of Angkhor. You never know what you’ll find under this jungle. You couldn’t even see a city from the air unless you were hedgehopping. Not if it is really covered with jungle.”
    Buck Rodd had taken over the cooking job from Shan Bao for the evening, and Turk seated himself on a rock watching the brawny prospector throw a meal together, and listening half unconsciously to an argument between Mora and London as to the relative merits of Joe Louis and Jack Dempsey.
    It was not only his interest in this area of jungle that had prompted Madden to accept so readily the challenge of this new venture. Prospecting with the magnetometer was new, and as always such developments intrigued him. He was aware that the device would not entirely replace the usual surface instruments and methods, but it would outline the areas that deserved careful study and eliminate many others and much waste of time.
    Both Mora and London had worked with the magnetometer, the latter a good deal. Even in civilized areas, the cost of such a survey on the ground was nearly twenty times more expensive than by air, while the difference in the time required for the survey was enormous. The magnetometer would be towed a hundred feet or so behind the plane in a bomblike housing, with the plane flying from five hundred to a thousand feet in the air, and at speeds around one hundred fifty miles per hour.
    In the nose of the flying eye there was contained a small detector element called a fluxgate, kept parallel to the magnetic field of the earth by a gyro mechanism. As the magnetic field varied in intensity with variations in the earth’s crust, the changes were picked up by an alternating current imposed upon the detector. These sharp pulses in voltage were picked up, amplified, and recorded. Once recorded, these observations were sent to geophysicists and geologists who interpreted the information, with the result that possible oil structures as well as mineral bodies could be identified with fair accuracy.
    Darkness closed in around the tiny camp, and overhead the stars came out, bright and close. The water of the lake lapped lazily at the amphibian’s hull, and Turk leaned back against his rock and stared into the fire. Phil had picked up his guitar and was singing a Western ballad when suddenly there came a new sound.
    Turk heard it first. He stiffened, then held up a hand for quiet. The lazy sound of the voice and the strings died and the fire crackled, and the water lapped with its hungry tongue. And then the sound came again, the low, throbbing sound of distant drums.

----
    F ROZEN IN PLACE, they listened. Buck Rodd sat up and stared over at Turk.
    “They know we’re here,” he said grimly. “The natives know it, anyway.”
    “They sound pretty far off,” London hazarded.
    “Maybe.” Turk shrugged. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell. They often sound loudest at a distance.”
    The drums throbbed, then died, then boomed louder still, and then the sound ended abruptly and the silence lay thick upon the jungle and savanna. Waiting, listening, they suddenly heard something else—a woman’s voice singing in the distance.
    The low, deep voice sang, with a strange accent.
“Home, home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play!”
    London sat up. “Oh, no!” he said. “Not that! Here in the middle of the jungle some babe starts singing cow ballads! What is this?”
    “Next thing somebody will start broadcasting soap operas!” Rodd said sarcastically. “Ain’t a man safe anywhere?”
    Turk Madden’s scowl grew deeper, and his green eyes narrowed. It didn’t make sense. Not any way you