CONTENTS
Cover
Also Available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Visions from Nowhere
Dedication
Escape from Terror Lagoon
Man, The Hunted Animal
Dedication
Also Available from Titan Books
OMNIBUS 4
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
PLANET OF THE APES OMNIBUS 1
Beneath the Planet of the Apes by Michael Avallone
Escape from the Planet of the Apes by Jerry Pournelle
PLANET OF THE APES OMNIBUS 2
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes by John Jakes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes by David Gerrold
Planet of the Apes by William T. Quick
PLANET OF THE APES OMNIBUS 3
Man the Fugitive
Escape to Tomorrow
Journey Into Terror
Lord of the Apes
by George Alec Effinger
OMNIBUS 4
WILLIAM ARROW
TITAN BOOKS
Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4
Print edition ISBN: 9781785653957
E-book edition ISBN: 9781785653964
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: February 2018
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
William Arrow asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Visions from Nowhere copyright © 1976, 2018.
Escape from Terror Lagoon copyright © 1976, 2018.
Man, the Hunted Animal copyright © 1976, 2018
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
OMNIBUS 4
VISIONS FROM NOWHERE
Adapted by William Arrow
Based on the teleplays:
“Flames of Doom” by Larry Spiegel
“Escape from Ape City” by Larry Spiegel
“A Date with Judy” by Jack Kaplan & John Barrett
Based on charcters from Planet of the Apes
For Charles Burbee
The stars were brilliant, unwinking spots of light across the blackness of space. “God’s jewelcase,” murmured Judy Franklin to herself, staring out through the tiny triangular window over her control desk. Distant galaxies and filmy nebulae were all but invisible, only infinitesimal dots among millions of other dots.
The great band of the Milky Way could be seen through Judy’s small window of quartz glass. Our own galaxy seen edge on, she thought, staring into the heart of it, almost forty thousand light-years to the great core cluster of stars, burning suns, black holes and unknown, uncounted millions of planets.
She brushed back a strand of wheat-colored hair and bent to look at more of the stars, hoping for a glimpse of their own sun, Sol, but it was behind them. Sitting back, she ran a practiced eye over the display panel before her, automatically checking for deviations from the norm on the scores of dials, readout panels, light pattern relays, and other instruments on the console that practically surrounded her. Everything was normal. She glanced at the dual chronometers set into one of the panels and saw it was about time for Bill Hudson to put an entry into the ship’s log.
Judy leaned out of her padded seat, a curving metal and plastic womb that protected against the high accelerations the spacecraft could achieve, and looked forward to Bill’s command seat.
She could not see him over the top of his enclosing g-couch, but she saw his hand reach out to touch the button that would record on the ship’s log as well as send the same message back to NASA, to the Spaceflight Center in Houston.
“Ship’s log, Commander Bill Hudson reporting. Message to Houston from the Venturer…”
Judy glanced at the dual chronometers again. One was labeled EARTH CLOCK and gave the date of 12:00:4, 6 August 2081. The second digital chronometer was labeled SHIP TIME and read 21:08:3, 6 August 1979.
Bill’s voice came over the intercom circuit to Jeff Allen, a muscular black astronaut seated in the copilot’s position opposite Judy Franklin. Jeff’s own elaborate console reflected some of the instrumentation of Judy’s controls as well as the command controls of Bill Hudson’s, forward in the pilot’s seat. In addition, Jeff had his own individual instruments to monitor and control, and one panel was beginning to show some minute deviations. He concentrated upon these, trying to identify the cause, and paid little attention to Bill Hudson’s report, the content of which he knew anyway.
“…According to our earth clock,” Bill went on, “matched to Greenwich by tuned radio pulses, and to our ship’s clock, we have traveled some one hundred and two years, eight months, five weeks and four days, eleven hours and eight minutes into our own future. This is due, of course, to our speed, which is now approaching the speed of light…”
Bill paused, and Judy smiled faintly, knowing what was coming.
“Therefore, we conclude that Doctor Stanton’s theory of time thrust is correct. Man can propel himself into the future.”
The spacecraft commander paused again, then continued in a somewhat different tone. “…Houston, we know that none of the men and women who saw us off are even alive today, but maybe their children are. Maybe they’d like to know that their parents and grandparents did not do all that work in vain. We have broken another frontier!”
Judy’s smile broadened. The space program always needs some good PR, she thought, even something more than a century late!
“…Houston, this is the Venturer signing off on this report. Next report twenty-four hours, ship time, from now—or about ten years in your future! Venturer out.”
Judy’s readout panel showed that Bill Hudson had locked the controls and a quick look showed that he was coming back to talk face-to-face. She gave her own console another scan, then swung her padded couch around to the narrow aisle as blond-haired, blue-eyed Bill stopped between her and Jeff.
He floated there, in the null-gravity, a well-built young man typical of the second generation of astronauts. Unlike the first generation, who had all been test pilots or fighter pilots or both, in atmospheric aircraft, Bill—like Jeff and Judy—was a product of the space age. He knew how to fly conventional airfoil aircraft, but this entire orientation and training had been in and with spacecraft. To him, interplanetary spaceships were nothing all that especially marvelous. They were finely built ships, but no more wondrous than, say, a 747 jet would have been to a pilot of the 1970’s. Only the Venturer, with its capability of interstellar flight, excited him.
After the landing on the moon July 20, 1969, the next big step was the stars. Anything else was nice, no denying it, and most interesting, but the stars were the big thing. The possibility of being the first Homo sapiens to land on the planets of another star excited Bill, as it did Jeff and Judy and the others of their generation. C
ommanding the test flight of the Venturer was the first big step toward that goal.
Jeff swung around toward Bill and Judy, a worried frown on his face, “Some deviation on the time plane scanner, Bill,” he said.
“I wouldn’t rely on that thing to be all that accurate, Jeff,” he answered. “It’s even more experimental than this ship. They weren’t even certain there would be anything for it to read.”
“Well, the differential between the clocks is affecting it in some way,” Jeff said, “but I can’t figure out exactly how.”
Bill grinned at him. “You know pioneers always get a few arrows stuck in them.” His smile faded and he glanced at his two companions. “Well, gang,” he said softly, “the theory is proved, I think. Now to turn around and go home.” He looked again from Judy to Jeff. “But what are we going to find there? Will we be a couple of hundred years ahead of our own time, or will we reverse time?”
“Just don’t get back before we left!” Judy laughed
Jeff’s frown melted for a moment as he looked across to the young and attractive woman. “I hate time-travel paradoxes. I just can’t figure them out, They’re not logical.”
“Well, if they are not to be, then they are not to be,” Bill said. “But we know we have traveled through time in one sense. Now let’s see if we can do it in the other direction!”
Bill returned to his g-couch and both Judy and Jeff heard him over the intercom in their earphones.
“Ship’s log recording. We are returning home. Ship time, 21:10:55.”
There was a pause, and Jeff’s topmost row of small readout screens blinked into drive mode, reflecting the condition and action of the ship’s powerful nuclear engines.
The ship was coasting, engines off, headed into interstellar space, and first Bill had to plot a circular orbit back to Earth orbit, then institute the computer controls that would take them into that flight plan. Judy’s readout screens showed the program that was being punched into the Mark IX onboard computer, then the computer’s almost instantaneous answer.
“…Prepare to start engines in… five seconds… Mark!”
A readout panel flashed red and the seconds ticked off in a visual display, with the hundredth-of-a-second pie slices blinking red to green.
Five… four… three… two… one…
There was no sound, only the gentle pressure back into the seat, increasing slowly but definitely. The control panels blinked their messages to the three young astronauts. Outside Judy’s window the Milky Way seemed to turn and tilt as the ship began its great turn. The movement of the stars and the gentle pressure were the only indications of flight.
After a few moments, Jeff called up to Bill through the intercom. “Deviation increasing, Bill. Can’t understand it.”
“Any correlation between speed and the deviation?”
“Nothing definite, but the deviation. increased when—
” Jeff stopped as the instruments began to change. Percentage modification monitors began to blink and ring their strident alarms as the changes overran the set limits.
“What the devil—!”
Judy slapped the alarm disconnect on her console, cutting the noise, and her eyes went round as she saw the incredibly swift advances being displayed across her controls.
“Bill! Something’s—!”
A klaxon began its shrill cry, then was cut off by Bill’s quick hand.
“We have a problem,” Bill said, his voice steady, his blue eyes scanning the multiplicity of controls.
Automatically the recording devices had come on, monitoring and digesting all the information from throughout the ship for future reference. If there is a future, Bill thought as he keyed in a disaster-control program.
The screen showed that there was no external damage, no meteorite hulling or other structural damage. Bill shifted to the drive monitor, his eyes searching for the cause through the visual displays that winked onto his screens.
“Bill!” Jeff’s voice was urgent. “That deviation has gone right out of sight!”
He flipped the scale switch, reducing the scale by a tenth, and still the deviation climbed right out of sight.
Judy’s eye was now caught by something outside her tiny triangular window and she gasped. The entire sky was blurring, the stars shimmering and becoming wet streaks across the heavens.
“Look outside!” she cried into the intercom.
“What in blazes is going on?” Bill yelled.
Both Bill and Judy heard Jeff gasp in surprise. “Look at the clocks!”
“They’ve gone wild!” Judy exclaimed, her eyes staring.
The earth clock’s digital face was almost a blur as the numerals changed swiftly. 2215… 2276… 2299… 2315… The numbers moved smoothly, inexorably higher and higher. 2350… 2362… 2384… 2405…
The panels were red-lit now with overburdened circuits. The computer cut the functions of some and demanded human judgment on others.
2446… 2472… 2491… 2513…
“Jeff! Cut the internal power! I’m shutting off the engines!”
“Bill, the—” Judy’s words were lost in a sudden lurch as the Venturer twisted.
2590… 2646… 2672… 2697…
“Drive cut! Report!”
“Bill, we’re still in the grip of something, God only knows what!” Jeff’s voice was urgent, but unpanicked. “The drive didn’t seem to stop us from—”
Another great lurch sent their stomachs heaving and more emergency signals rang and blinked.
2740… 2783… 2808… 2877…
“She won’t respond to controls!” Bill said, his voice harsh with anxiety, but controlled.
Astronauts, trained in simulators to respond to every sort of danger situation, did not easily panic or lose control, but this was something none of them had ever encountered or even conceived.
2944… 2970… 2999… 3043…
“Jeff, is the rate increasing or decreasing?”
“Steady, sir, but rapid.”
“Judy! Anything?”
“There’s something on the radar… It’s—Good Lord, Bill, it’s a planet!”
3105… 3187… 3244… 3291…
“I can’t see a thing out there,” Bill answered in a tense voice. “It’s all too blurred, like it was a watercolor and everything’s running! What’s the range?”
3325… 3378… 3455… 3489…
“Hard to tell… Interference…”
Judy cleared her visual channels and rerouted the radar impulses through a backup circuit. Things cleared for a moment, then the interference crumbled the image into incoherent mush.
3566… 3590… 3622… 3679…
“Jeff! I’m setting the braking program—!”
Bill’s fingers plunged down on the buttons. Outside the ship, the small rockets used for fine steering and braking maneuvers came to life. The blurred images beyond Judy’s window twisted as the ship reversed itself. Then the main engine came alive, sending a vibration throughout the craft as it roared into emergency braking. The three astronauts were pressed deep into the cushioning pads of their chairs, their eyes pressing back in their heads and their stomachs in knots as the immense nuclear engines tried to slow their velocity through space.
3710… 3754… 3788… 3898…
“Slowing!” Jeff cried.
3803… 3805… 3807… 3808… 3809… 3810…
“Atmosphere!” Judy cried.
Bill’s fingers sped over the controls and a television picture of what lay below them came onto the big screen over his console.
“What is it?” he asked, but no one answered.
Clouds obscured much of the planet to the east and Bill could not see much toward the west as they caromed down through the outer atmosphere. Directly below them was a cratered desert marked with a few belts and patches of green, some areas of blue water, and markings he was unable to identify.
“Hang on!” he shouted into the microphone. “We’re going to hit!”
Jeff and Judy grasped the arms of their couches, their eyes glued to the television screens that showed the rapidly approaching surface of the cratered planet.
“The water, the water!” Jeff groaned, knowing that Bill had seen it, too. “Set us down in the water!”
The Venturer flashed across the blue sky of the desert, its speed still fast despite the braking action of the rockets and the slowing by the atmosphere. A deft, last-minute spurt on the control rockets and the Venturer was lined up down the length of the biggest body of water they could see.
Bill got the impression of sun-baked desert and mesa-like protuberances lining the lake, of patches of green sparse in the yellow-brown hills. But mostly he watched for rocks and islands. The Venturer swept across the sky, leaving a white vapor trail until it dropped below a certain level; then there was only the ship, racing toward a watery setdown at much too fast a speed.
They flashed over the last mesa and dropped toward the blue, ruffled surface of the desert lake. At the last moment, Bill pulled up the ship’s nose, cutting speed still further, and the Venturer struck the water.
The ship rang, and it was as if a giant had given it a pounding with a massive hammer. The spacecraft flipped again into the air, came down again, slipping along the surface of the lake. Bill clung desperately to the controls, trying to keep the ship in a reasonably straight line, but it was like trying to control a raging bull. The Venturer shot up blinding clouds of water and steam at each hit; then the ship flipped over, landing upside down, twisting again.
They heard a terrible ripping in the rear of the space vessel and the hiss of water under tremendous pressure pouring into the Venturer. The ship’s velocity arrested, it nevertheless rolled over again—with the sound of rending metal, hissing water, Judy’s scream, and the clatter of every loose object aboard.
Then the Venturer stopped tearing through the waves, rocked on the surface for a moment, and slipped almost without a sound beneath the surface of the blue water. The waves closed over it and the ripples spread out and died. In a moment, there was no sign of the Venturer at all.
Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4 Page 1