Static crackled sharply. Drake saw four wild pigs come trotting out of the jungle, moving slowly, like a reconnaissance squad probing for weak spots in an enemy position. They stopped; the static stopped. Byrnes, standing guard with his rifle, took a snap shot at them. The pigs turned, and static crackled as they moved back into the jungle. There was more static as the bird of paradise swept down for a look, then climbed out of range. After that, the static stopped. Drake put down his binoculars and went back inside the shed. "That must be it," he said. "The static is related to the Quedak. I think it comes when he's operating the animals." "You mean he has come sort of radio control over them?" Sorensen asked. "Seems like it," Drake said. "Either radio control or something propagated along a radio wavelength." "If that's the case," Sorensen said, "he's like a little radio station, isn't he?" "Sure he is. So what?" "Then we should be able to locate him on a radio direction finder," Sorensen said. Drake nodded emphatically. He snapped off the receiver, went to a corner of the shed and took out one of their portable direction finders. He set it to the frequency at which Cable had picked up the Rabaul-Bougainville broadcast. Then he turned it on and walked to the door. * * * * * The men watched while Drake rotated the loop antenna. He located the maximum signal, then turned the loop slowly, read the bearing and converted it to a compass course. Then he sat down with a small-scale chart of the Southwest Pacific. "Well," Sorensen asked, "is it the Quedak?" "It's got to be," said Drake. "I located a good null almost due south. That's straight ahead in the jungle." "You're sure it isn't a reciprocal bearing?" "I checked that out." "Is there any chance the signal comes from some other station?" "Nope. Due south, the next station is Sydney, and that's seventeen hundred miles away. Much too far for this RDF. It's the Quedak, all right." "So we have a way of locating him," Sorensen said. "Two men with direction finders can go into the jungle--" "--and get themselves killed," Drake said. "We can position the Quedak with RDFs, but his animals can locate us a lot faster. We wouldn't have a chance in the jungle." Sorensen looked crestfallen. "Then we're no better off than before." "We're a lot better off," Drake said. "We have a chance now." "What makes you think so?" "He controls the animals by radio," Drake said. "We know the frequency he operates on. We can broadcast on the same frequency. We can jam his signal." "Are you sure about that?" "Am I _sure_? Of course not. But I do know that two stations in the same area can't broadcast over the same frequency. If we tuned in to the frequency the Quedak uses, made enough noise to override his signal--"