river?"

"Maybe a little better to the north. The ground looked higher that way when I came out of the canyon." Lampert obediently eased the flyer's course a trifle to the left, and everyone aboard watched the ground as it began to rise toward them.

At first the "hills" were merely low mounds, as jungle-covered as the level ground; but very quickly these gave way to higher, steeper rises on whose tops the larger trees grew very sparsely. One of these was quickly selected after a brief, questioning glance from Lampert to the guide, and the helicopter began to descend.

"We'd better take what we have now." McLaughlin amplified the nod with which he had answered the pilot. "This belt of hills is pretty narrow, and we'd be into the main range in another minute or two."

"Do you know whether the other side is as abrupt, or whether—" Lampert's question was cut short by an exclamation from Mitsuitei.

"Rob! Hold it a moment!"

Lampert was a good pilot; the increase in rotor-blade pitch under his deft fingers brought the helicopter's descent to as nearly an instant halt as was possible to anything airborne. Not until he had also checked horizontal drift did he look in the direction the archaeologist was indicating. By then, everyone else had seen what had attracted Mitsuitei's attention.

Between the hill on which Lampert had intended to land and the river were several lower eminences. These were now almost directly south of the helicopter, and every detail upon them was shown in exaggerated relief by shadows stretching to the east. It was one of these hills which Mitsuitei was examining with the utmost care.

It was covered with jungle, like the rest; but a curious regularity was visible. The trees appeared, at this distance, to be of the usual species; but some of them towered over their fellows by a good thirty or forty feet.

This in itself was not odd. The whole jungle was studded with such projections. However, on this hill the taller trees seemed to have been planted in orderly rows. Five solid lines of them were visible, extending roughly north and south so that their long shadows made them stand out sharply. They were separated from each other by perhaps a quarter of a mile. Running at right angles to them were other, less outstanding rows of vegetation. Lampert was not quite sure that these were not the product of his own imagination, since the 

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