Free Area 51: The Sphinx-4 by Robert Doherty Page B

Europeans ignored. Stanley was the first white man to see the peaks in the modern age. He was in this area in 1875 and told of the mountains by his native guides, but, like us today, he could see nothing but the clouds and mist they are covered in for over three hundred days out of the year. He came back thirteen years later, in 1888, and happened to have a clear day and saw the white peaks."
    "Uncle . . ." Lago knew if he didn't interrupt, his uncle would fall completely into his lecture mode, and it might be hours before he got around to the information the young man most needed to know.
    Mualama frowned. "Yes?"
    "Where are we going?"
    "Mount Speke."
    That answered one of Lago's unasked questions-why he was here. He had experience mountain climbing, summiting numerous mountains in Ethiopia and South Africa. He had never been to the Mountains of the Moon, but he knew climbing Speke would be difficult, especially if the weather turned bad. So, as usual his uncle needed his help. He decided to ask the third question.

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    "Why are we climbing Mount Speke?"
    "Do you know who Speke was?" Mualama asked instead of answering.
    Lago shook his head.
    "Stanley was Anglo-American. Luigi di Savoia was an Italian duke who mapped the mountain range in the first decade of the twentieth century. Speke was an English explorer. He is best known for discovering Lake Tanganyika with Sir Richard Francis Burton in 1858. At the time, they thought it was the source of the Nile. The two had a long-running feud when Speke returned to England before Burton and announced the discovery, taking most of the credit. They were scheduled to debate the issue when, the day before, Speke was killed in a most unfortunate hunting accident. It is quite an irony that Burton would have hidden the next clue on the mountain named for his hated rival."
    "The next clue?"
    "You will see," Mualama said.
    Lago checked the cuts on his arm from the jungle that had encroached over much of the trail, half listening to his uncle, waiting for him to answer the question as to the purpose of this expedition. His uncle was known not only in the family but at the university, for his trips all over the world, searching for something he never quite told anyone.
    The journey had been more than worth it so far, though, simply to see the bizarre terrain they had passed through. Swamps and marshes had surrounded the trailhead, but as they went up, the vegetation changed to a strange world of giant plants among misshapen rocks. Lobelias grew twenty times. their normal height, and many other plants that rarely topped a foot or two elsewhere towered over their heads. The almost constant moisture from the clinging clouds combined with the

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    mineral-rich soil and high dosage of ultraviolet light, due to the altitude and latitude, to produce mutations unknown elsewhere on the planet.

    Tall, writhing stems crowned with heads of spiky leaves swayed overhead, while the ground was covered with layers of pink blossoms. Tree heathers draped with beards of lichens formed with the rest to create a landscape that might have existed millions of years ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It was a land out of time with the rest of the world, and one of the most remote and inaccessible places on the planet.

    Lago was startled out of his thoughts as his uncle grasped his arm. Lago was surprised by the intensity in his usually easygoing uncle's face. "Men died so I could get the information that leads me here."
    That got Lago's attention. "What men?"
    "My guide and porters in Brazil." Mualama quickly summarized his escape from beneath the stone altar in the Devil's Throat; the walk to the nearest town; hitching a ride back to Santos; and then the flight to Dar es Salaam.
    "This Bauru was a brave man," Lago noted when his uncle finished. "Who killed your porters and trapped you there?"
    "I believe it was a group that has tried to stop me several times over the years," Mualama said. "They are known