Mission incredible [antikvár]

Chapter One When'an aircraft disappears men will conjecture its fate, especially when that plane is lost on a daring combat mission. This is the strange tale of such a plane, a B-25 medium bomber that was one of a swarm on a mission to New Britain. Out of the routine wartime incident came a story from its missing crew as puzzling and fantastic as the gnarled Southwest Pacific jungle from which it sprung. New Guinea itself is a cwitradiction and perhaps it was apropós that such an illogical tale shoxild spring from this primitive isle of untamed \^demess. WhÜe the island's cold Owen-:Stanley Range, running the length of a thousand miles, challenge .the heights of the Himalayas, the-wild, humid swamplands hug the coast for endless miles. While roaring waterfalls and swirling rivers slice through the mountainous interior, the boundless flats of swaying kunai grass cover its high plateaus. Its stagnant swamps resemble green mud; its streams and small lakes look like distilled waters. Heavy rains chum its clay terrain to stícljy muck, but an hour later the pulsating sun dries this mire as hard as concrete. Its dense uncharted jungles sleep one moment and erupt the rasping shrieks of lory birds the nejct. Its streams gurgle a peaceful solitude or convey the thioaty snort of crocodiles. And always there is the buzz of a thousand different insects. This second largest island in the world, shaped like a dinosaur, has survived the primitive past from which the dinosaur came. She has lain asleep for centuries, forgotten, while history weaved its civilization elsewhere. Its 200,000 native inhabitants, ranging from the passive Goroka tribesmen to fierce Wahgi cannibals, hold but one trait in common: all belong to the last vestige of a stone age that still exists in a modern world. The rneshed New Guinea sün and dampness eat away vegetation Uke hydrochloric acid, corrode the shaped metal of machines, and erode the human flesh. If the Papuan native 5 ÍI r