Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4

by William Arrow

  “Wow, that was close!” Jeff said sincerely, but prematurely.

  A sudden roar made all three astronauts whirl about. Out of nowhere, an immense burst of flame shot forth on the face of the cliff.

  Stunned, the three Earth people stared up at the sudden phenomenon as a second jet of flame spouted out, closer.

  “Where’s that fire coming from?” Judy shouted over the roar of the flames as a third jet of fire issued from the solid rock, terrifyingly close to them this time.

  “Run!” shouted Bill.

  Another jet of fire flamed out into the desert sun, as if from the mouth of a dragon, just missing the three astronauts. Jeff snatched up their survival pack and trailed it behind him as the three forced their weary bodies into a desperate run along the cliff face.

  A fifth flaming jet incinerated the pack as it flew along behind Jeff. He dropped the charred straps and kept running.

  Ahead of him, Bill and Judy reached a turning in the cliff wall and threw themselves behind it.

  Jeff joined them, his heart pounding and his lungs painfully sucking in the hot air. “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  “The pack…?” Bill looked around and saw its charred remains lying some distance away, on the sand.

  Finally one more great spout of flame erupted with a vast roaring sound. Then nothing.

  “What’s happened?” Judy said, her chest heaving. “It’s—it’s stopped.”

  Bill peered cautiously around the rock, and Judy joined him. “It’s disappeared without a trace… No marks on the rock… nothing,” he said.

  She looked at him in bewilderment. “What kind of place is this?” she asked.

  Bill had no answers.

  * * *

  The sun hung low in the western sky, a fire-breathing monster that was still determined to sear the minds and bodies of the three limp astronauts. They lay on their backs, sharing the paltry shade of a small rock, their scorched bodies getting little relief.

  Wearily Bill raised his head and squinted into the distance. “Come on,” he mumbled. “Better get going. I’d like… to get to those hills before dark.”

  They got to their feet slowly, staggering with exhaustion, and started off again.

  “I just love those… long rests,” Jeff said wryly.

  “If we can… find some water, we’ll rest,” Bill said in a husky rasp. “Then we’ll move only at night.”

  Jeff nodded heavily. Moving was agony, but so was lying in the sun. He felt sorry for Judy, who had considerably less muscle to drive her on.

  Their faces haggard and sweaty, the three lumbered on across the burning ground. Their feet scuffed in the sand as they tried to raise them for the next step. Judy stumbled and fell once, and both Bill and Jeff, in the slow motion of exhaustion, turned to raise her to her feet.

  “There should be some… some plants… and streams… something at the base of those mountains ahead…”

  “Optimist,” Jeff croaked. “The streams… will be hot water and the plants cactus.”

  “I’d settle for that,” Bill said. “Cactus fritters… cactus a la mode… cactus steaks, rare…”

  Jeff didn’t even smile.

  The sand now gave way to hardpan, gravel, and rock outcroppings. They stopped to breathe and Bill raised his eyes to the mountains. Unless he was delirious, they seemed noticeably closer.

  “Look!” Judy said, her voice forced and dry.

  The two men faced where she was pointing and saw a tiny flower. It was not as big as the nail of her little finger, but it was definitely a flower. They stared at it in some wonder.

  “There is life… on this planet,” Bill said.

  “Plant life… means water…” Jeff added, looking around. “Somewhere, anyway…”

  The commander drew a long breath of scorched air into his lungs and said, “Well, let’s go find it!”

  Gravel rolled beneath their feet and they saw other flowers now and again, tiny yellow dots on minuscule green stalks. The grit crunched noisily under their boots as they trudged on, but the mountains did grow steadily closer. The sun was slowly moving over the horizon and the shadows stretched long behind them.

  Suddenly a flash illuminated the twilit desert around them as brightly as day. Almost at once came the crack of thunder. The astronauts looked up at the cloudless sky in astonishment. Another lightning bolt split the sky as they watched, a white-hot scar across the purpling night.

  Another and another and another followed in a barrage so sudden and unnatural that the three humans cringed. Thunder crashed around them as one continuous, boiling, seething roar.

  A bolt struck near them with a simultaneous crack of thunder, boiling the sand and scattering the gravel like grapeshot. Another bolt of white-hot electricity struck down from the empty sky, splitting a projection of hard rock and flinging shards in every direction.

  Lightning now struck all around them, too fast to count, too thunderous to bear, and the three astronauts covered their ears, crouching like animals. Another bolt struck dangerously close, then the ground—already quivering from the barrage—began to tremble and shake, its joltings throwing the humans apart from each other. As the ground crumbled and began to split, Judy was thrown down painfully.

  Bill lurched toward her but another quake threw him back. As a result, he caught his spacesuit on a rock shattered by lightning and still hot, and ripped the tough fabric as he fell. Jeff tried to crawl toward her, as well, but the ground heaved and quivered, then split apart before his eyes. Fissures made terrifying gaps in the sandy surface, spreading and branching swiftly. The gaps finally totally separated Judy from the men.

  Meanwhile, flashes of lightning continued to strike.

  Deafened by thunder, blinded by lightning, and terrified by the earthquake, Bill and Jeff were still trying to reach Judy, but the cracks were widening faster than they could move. She screamed suddenly, and her two companions looked across to see her moving backward, as if dragged by an invisible force. She was clawing at the ground, unable to stop slipping as the ground beneath her tilted dangerously.

  “Help…!” Her voice was faint over the rumbles and whiplike lightning crashes. “I’m being dragged into-—”

  Shrieking, she slid over the edge and out of sight. Bill and Jeff heard her cry just as a flurry of lightning blots drove them to their knees.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the noise ceased.

  The ground rumbled a bit and then quieted. The lightning and thunder ceased. It was ended.

  Jeff and Bill opened their eyes, shut tight a moment earlier against the glare and the flying sand.

  The silence was now as thunderous as the sudden and unexplained earthquake and lightning storm had been. More important, the ground was just as before! It was devoid of any fissures, merely rolling hardpan and rock shelves stretching to the base of the nearby mountains!

  “I don’t understand,” Jeff said, looking around, his face twisted in puzzlement. “What’s going on?”

  Bill pointed down at the spot where, moments before, there had been a fissure too wide to jump across. “Look!”

  Jeff followed his gaze, then said, “I don’t see anything—”

  “That’s just it. There is nothing. And moments ago Judy…”

  The astronauts looked at each other in shock. Raising their heads, they looked around. The sun was just going over the horizon. It was dusk, and the desert was silent and serene.

  “What kind… of place… is this?” Jeff asked.

  Once again, Bill had no answers.

  None.

  They walked on.

  “How can there be fire shooting out of rocks and leave no trace? How can earthquakes come and go just like that?” Bill was puzzling as he and Jeff climbed up onto a rock to get a better view. “And how can lightning come out of a clear sky…?”

  Jeff did not answer, but inched himself to the top of the rock and reached down to pull up Bill. “Maybe we can spot her from here—” />
  “Jeff, she disappeared into the ground!”

  “We’ve got to find her! No one just ‘disappears’!”

  The former pilot of the Venturer glanced at the intense face of his friend and shrugged. No use arguing, he thought.

  Jeff studied the desert floor in the growing dusk, fear and care draining the life from his face. “It’s too dark,” he muttered.

  Bill, shaken by the sudden dramatic loss of Judy Franklin, sat down on the rock. “We’ve got to get food and water, Jeff.”

  “But Judy—!”

  “We can’t help Judy if we’re dead. If she’s alive, we’ll find her. If not… well, we’ll find that out, too.”

  “It’s so dark,” Jeff said, slumping down on the rock. “I can’t see to—”

  “Come on,” Bill said wearily. “Let’s get some sleep. We’ll look for her in the morning.”

  Jeff nodded silently, his eyes wet with sadness.

  And in the darkness of the alien desert, Bill Hudson cried.

  * * *

  Before dawn, Bill and Jeff began the first of several searches around the site where Judy had disappeared. When the sun finally came above the eastern horizon, Bill looked at Jeff and said, “Now we move on.”

  Jeff followed silently.

  By midday, the two men finally stood in the shadow of the mountains that had seemed so close a few days earlier. Weak but still able to move, they trudged into a pass and wearily undertook the climb upward. Here was more evidence of greenery—stunted, gnarled plants clinging desperately to the mountainside—but nothing they thought they could use as food.

  Topping the pass, they found themselves at the head of a small valley. It was a dry area, with some scrub trees at the bottom. They started down afraid to feel hope, but maybe beyond… in the next valley…

  “Look!” Jeff’s excited voice, croaking out a hoarse exclamation, caused Bill to look up.

  Above them, along the side of the cliff through which they had just come, flanking the pass like some kind of strange guardians, were huge carved faces, sculpted right out of the living rock. The faces were immense, many stories high, much like those on Mount Rushmore.

  Except that the faces were simian!

  The faces were those of gorillas, chimpanzees, and other ape-like creatures.

  Chiseled from the rock of the cliff was a double phalanx of beetle brows, protruding lips, shaggy hair, small ears, a hint of sharp teeth…

  Bill and Jeff stared, amazed and surprised at this first sign of civilization—-or at least life—they had seen.

  “What…” Jeff’s voice, dry and raw, choked on the first words. He swallowed, then spoke again. “What kind… of people would carve the faces… of apes on a mountain?”

  Bill shook his head.

  After a long moment of study, the need for water and food drove them forward again.

  “Let’s push on,” Bill said, “maybe farther along…”

  They walked unsteadily down into the dry valley. The farther edge of the little valley was lower, and they reached it quickly and looked down into another valley. This one was rocky, but it had a forest that ran through the center!

  Bill could see the glint of water and started forward at once. But Jeff grabbed his shoulder.

  Silently he pointed, and Bill narrowed his red-rimmed eyes to look along Jeff’s arm. A series of dark blotches were the mouths of caves honeycombing the northern side of the valley, he realized. And in front of the caves were moving figures!

  “People!” Jeff whispered, his voice rough and dry.

  Bill squinted, focusing upon the small figures. “They—they look human!” he said in surprise.

  “Come on,” Jeff said. “Let’s get closer. But carefully.”

  Energized by their discovery, the two astronauts came down into the valley quickly. Using the cover of rocks and the growing number of shrubs and trees to hide their approach to the caves, as silently as they could, Bill and Jeff crept toward the caves. Finally, Bill halted Jeff with a raised hand and pointed toward some bushes not far away.

  As they watched, crouching, a figure came around the greenery. Bill’s eyes widened in surprise. Not only was the figure that of a human being, but a woman—and a very good-looking woman at that! She certainly gave every indication of being a normal human being.

  She was wearing a brief garment made of furs and skins. Her body was lithe and shapely, her skinned tanned smoothly, and her thick black hair long. She was plucking berries from the bushes and dropping them into a crudely woven basket.

  Jeff leaned close to Bill and whispered, “She looks like something out of a caveman movie.”

  “Well, let’s find out what she’s like,” Bill said and started to rise.

  Jeff pulled him back roughly. He whispered fiercely into Bill’s ear, “Suppose they are hostile, or cannibals, or—”

  “What choice do we have?”

  They looked at each other and rose, taking one step toward the girl.

  She heard them.

  The skin-clad woman whirled, stared at them for a fraction of a second, and started to run. Her basket of berries was thrown to the winds and she dashed fleetly over the ground in the direction of the caves, her shrill squeals of warning alerting the cavemen.

  Bill and Jeff followed as quickly as they could, but the healthy cavegirl soon outdistanced them. By the time the two astronauts had cleared the trees and were advancing on the caves, they heard sounds of panic everywhere.

  Squealing men and women hurried up from the bushes and trees, dropping their fruit and berries, running madly for the shelter of the honeycomb of caves.

  “Hey, we mean no harm!” Bill shouted.

  For a moment the frantic scurrying of the cave-people stopped. They stared at Bill and Jeff with open astonishment, frozen in their flight. But, a second later, it was even more astonishing. They doubled their efforts to escape, and crowded against one another as they forced themselves into the caves.

  In moments, no one was in sight, only Bill and Jeff, feeling weak and staggering across the clearing and up to the caves mouths. Fallen fruit and spilled berries were the only signs of habitation on the rocky ground leading up to the caverns. The two lurched wearily toward the largest of the caves.

  “They didn’t seem hostile,” Bill said.

  “Scared to death… if you ask me.”

  “Strange… a society as primitive as this… is usually very hostile to strangers.”

  Weak with thirst, the two men came to the cave entrance and stepped into the gloom, letting their eyes adjust to the darkness. Inside huddled more than a score of cavepeople, cowering fearfully, their eyes gleaming, catching the light coming from the cave opening as they stared in horror and helplessness.

  “Hello…” Jeff said, his voice rasping.

  “Help us!” Bill pleaded, his head starting to whirl. “Help us… Water…”

  The cave blurred and Bill collapsed.

  Jeff staggered toward him with his last bit of strength, but crashed down, too, helpless on the floor of the cavern.

  The terrified primitives crowded fearfully away from them.

  * * *

  Bill felt the water trickle down his throat. He gulped gratefully, his consciousness weaving in and out of the blackness. He felt the coolness of something wet on his face, then wiping his shoulders and chest, then more water at his lips.

  Blackness came again, but this time it was welcome.

  * * *

  Jeff sat up, his eyes blinking. The light from the mouth of the cave was too harsh, so he turned his head.

  The first thing he saw was Bill, lying sleeping near him. The pilot’s face and body were washed and his skin looked no longer parched. A movement caught his eye and Jeff looked up to see the cavegirl they had first spotted crouching nearby. She seemed about to run, so Jeff smiled.

  “Hi!” he said.

  His single word sent a quiver through her body. Her eyes widened and she looked toward the cave entrance, t
hen swiftly back to him several times.

  Jeff smiled again and raised both hands in a gesture of peace—or at least in a gesture he thought might be universal. “That’s all right,” he said soothingly. “Take it easy… Don’t worry, we won’t hurt you… That’s all right…”

  His words seemed to startle the girl, but his tone also seemed to calm her. A nerve twitched in her cheek and she seemed to be gathering all her nerve to stay still. She got up then, but it was to go in the other direction, toward a fire Jeff saw burning at the back of the cave. The smoke drifted out through a rent in the cave ceiling.

  The cavegirl returned in a few moments with a gourd full of stew. Handing it to Jeff, she watched him eat every morsel and drink deeply from a gourd of water she had brought to him.

  Bill stirred and Jeff called out to him. “Hey, ole buddy! Rise and shine! Chow time!”

  Bill opened his eyes blearily and looked at his copilot, who grinned at him and waved the empty gourd of stew. “Food!”

  The girl now took the empty gourd away, and returned quickly with two more gourds of food, which she gave to the astronauts.

  After they were full, Bill lay back against the cave wall and looked around him. “Where are the others?”

  “Don’t know,” Jeff shrugged. “Out gathering food, I guess. Either that, or they ran for the hills.”

  The girl rummaged around in the rear of the cave and brought out two brown, roundish, hairy objects. Through mime, she proceeded to demonstrate their use: she threw them to the ground roughly, then picked them up, pretending to peel away a bit of their shells and drink and eat from them.

  The two men grinned, picked up the coconuts, and smashed them against the rocky cave floor. It took two cracks before the spheres started leaking the milky fluid, and the men quickly quenched their thirst with the tasty fluid.

  Then they broke open the hard, round nuts and pried out the white meat with bits of bone that the woman gave them. They both offered her chunks of the meat, which she took silently, chewing on it quickly and watching their faces with alert glances.