Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4

by William Arrow

  “What is it, dear?” he asked softly.

  She sighed, and waited a long moment before she spoke. “Oh… I couldn’t sleep. I—I keep thinking of Blue-Eyes… where he is… what he’s doing… whether he’s even alive.”

  Cornelius got up and padded over to his wife and put his arm around her comfortingly. She patted his hand and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “You mustn’t worry, Zira. My grandmother Mokka used to say, “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow; it only robs today of its strength.”

  Zira smiled in the darkness and hugged her husband’s arm. “Thank you, dear. But—” She paused, her nose twitching nervously. “But I can’t help worrying…”

  “I know, dear. I know. I like Blue-Eyes, too.”

  They stood at the window until the first rays of the sun began to lighten the eastern sky.

  * * *

  General Urko’s gloved fist struck the map before him with a boom, sending cups of hot drink bouncing on the hood of the jeep that served as a table.

  “We must find them!” he bellowed. “Captain Ramja, you take Sector One.”

  One of the gorilla officers who were gathered around the jeep saluted. Urko pointed at another officer. “Major Sark, Sector Two. I’ll take Sector Five myself.”

  He started folding up the map, but Captain Mulla spoke up. “General, who is most important? Do you want the humanoid or the Underdwellers?”

  General Urko gave his aide a penetrating look, then he spoke to all of his assembled officers. “Find one… and I promise you will find the other.”

  He swept the cups from the hood with an angry hand and crammed the map into its case. “Now move out!”

  * * *

  Bill lay on his bunk, his arm across his face to cut out the ever-present light that hung in a wire cage in the center of the cell’s ceiling.

  “What do you think Krador has done to Judy?” he asked.

  Jeff, who was sitting on the edge of his bunk, looked over at his blond friend. “Some sort of ‘mind control,’ I expect. God only knows how he does it, though. Drugs, maybe…”

  “We’ve got to get her out.” Bill’s voice was determined.

  Jeff, staring at the floor blankly, but his mind working in deep concentration, answered, “Right, but first we’ve got to get us out.”

  “You will never escape the Below World!”

  The new voice, coming from beyond their cell door, startled both astronauts. They had been so deep into thoughts of escape that they had not heard the virtually silent approach of the robed figures who now stood outside. Jeff jerked his head around and Bill sat up on his elbows.

  “No one ever has,” one of the blue-robed figures said in a hollow voice. “No one. No one ever will…” Bill and Jeff looked at the two figures, trying to think of something to say, but the Underdwellers turned and left.

  “Just checking on us, I guess,” said Jeff.

  “I think that’s just some kind of psychological number they laid on us to keep us from trying. It would make their job easier if prisoners never tried to get out.” Bill sat up and put his feet on the floor. “But it was certainly discouraging.”

  “Well, they have us pretty good,” Jeff admitted, gesturing around them. “Solid rock—God only knows how thick!—all around us in every direction, and a Flash Gordon zapper on the door. I’d say Krador was fairly straight with us: I don’t think you get out of here unless they let you.”

  Bill shook his head. “You disappoint me, Jeff. I thought surely you had a lock pick concealed in one boot heel and a disguise kit in the other. Next time, I’m going to pick a more resourceful friend to take on my adventures.”

  Jeff grinned at him. “Okay, hero, you get us out! Reach right through that force field or disintegrator net or whatever it is and overcome the guards. If you were a real hero, you’d do it in a snap.”

  Bill nodded. “You’re right, but I never got Lesson Ten in my mail-order ‘Hero Course.’ That was the one about how to get out of high-security cells run by the bad guys. Lost in the mails, I guess.”

  “Do you want to be dubbed an ‘underachiever’?” Jeff asked. “Improvise! Use these lumpy mattresses and my belt buckle and make us a geodesic unilateral matter converter that will let us walk right through the walls.”

  “Nope, can’t,” Bill said. “NASA told me there were some things man was not meant to know. Lumpy mattresses were high on the list, I remember that clearly. Right after ‘How does the refrigerator light know when to come on?’” He shook his head. “No, I pass the hero bit over to you, ole buddy. It’s time you black guys had a chance at heroing.”

  Jeff grinned and started to return Bill’s quip when he heard a noise in the passage leading to their cell. He cautioned Bill with a gesture and they waited expectantly.

  A robed figure glided into the light that spilled into the passage from their cell. It was a dark-blue robe, and both astronauts jumped to their feet as they realized it was Judy Franklin.

  “Judy!” Jeff whispered fiercely.

  “I’ve come to free you,” she said in a low voice, glancing back over her shoulder as both men moved toward the doorway.

  “Judy, what happened to you?” Bill asked. “You were—well, like you were hypnotized.”

  Judy flashed him a quick smile. Then she looked at Jeff. “The ring you put on my hand did bring me back to reality. But I had to pretend to remain Oosa… or Krador would have known.”

  “But you’re all right now?” Jeff asked anxiously.

  “Yes, but Krador’s power is very strong.” She looked again over her shoulder, her expression concerned. “Sometimes… I—”

  Bill leaned toward her, dangerously close to the invisible force field of the door. “Judy! What is it?”

  She stared at them, anxiously, but gave them a quick reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing!” Her manner then became all business. “Now, quickly! I will disrupt the main power source. That will break the force field here.”

  “How will we know?” Jeff asked.

  “The lights here will dim.”

  She turned to leave and Bill called after her. “Judy!” She turned to look back at them. “Be careful.”

  She nodded, and pointed at the, door. “Remember, when the lights dim it’s safe to come through.”

  “Where will we meet?” Jeff asked quickly.

  “In the subway tunnel in the station above. It will be easier for me to go there directly than return here.”

  “All right, but don’t take any unnecessary risks,” Jeff called after her as she disappeared down the passage. ‘

  “Good luck!” Bill said, but she was gone.

  The two men looked at each other, their faces hard and worried, all traces of levity gone.

  * * *

  Judy pulled the hood close around her face, then pressed the button that opened the door into the main converter room. No one appeared to pay any attention to her as she walked in. With lowered head, and each arm tucked in the opposite sleeve in the approved manner, the pretty young astronaut walked diagonally across the vast room to the elevator, entered it, and rose to the highest level. She walked quickly across to the platform where the hatch from the subway tunnel opened into a red-lit room and then the cavern.

  Prying loose a rather large chunk of rock from the rough-cut wall, she carried it laboriously out onto the catwalk. Looking over the edge, she positioned herself almost directly over the miniature of the huge solar collector that drank from the desert sun. Taking aim and holding her breath, she threw the rock down.

  A startled figure on a lower level caught the movement and cried out, “What are you doing?”

  But the chunk of stone was hurtling toward the dish far below.

  The man who had spotted her shouted, “No!” in an agonized voice.

  Unfortunately, the rock missed the dish and bounced once to fall against the base of the huge transformer nearby. Judy bit at her lip and turned to run toward the rock wall to obta
in a second missile. She heard the elevator start up and cursed herself for forgetting to lock it off at her level until she had destroyed the solar device.

  Her fingers tugged at a second stone outcropping, the sharp edges cutting her fingers, but the rock was too firmly attached. She looked over her shoulder, saw the elevator stop at a lower catwalk, where several blue-robed men were crowding into it.

  After renewing her fruitless efforts to loosen the new rock, she desperately tugged at another rough outcropping. She could now hear the elevator rising, pick the humming of its machinery out of the myriad noises of the big echoing cavern. She also heard shouts on the floor far below, commands to somehow protect the delicate mechanism of the dish from falling rock.

  Almost crying in a desperate effort to loosen the third rock, Judy lurched back from the wall, her eyes searching for something else to use.

  And then she saw a hinged cage alongside the railing that surrounded the platform. It was sometimes used to lower loads brought in by way of the subway tunnel which were too heavy to carry across the catwalk.

  Frantically she unlocked it, then started to lift it off its simple hinges. Her eyes snapped up as she heard the elevator door click open and she saw several men moving out along the catwalk toward her. The sight gave her strength, the manic strength of the desperate.

  Her slim body heaved and the cage ripped loose, sliding up off its gravity hinges. Staggering and almost dropping it before she intended, she changed her grip, holding the cage so that at an angle one corner pointed forward in a crude attempt at a weapon. Then she ran out on the catwalk.

  Her feet rang on the metal grating and she heard several of the men cry out and start running faster from the far side of the walk. Reaching the center, she heaved the cage up onto the railing and positioned it over the dish far below.

  “Don’t!”

  “Stop! You don’t know what you are doing!”

  Ignoring their voices, and knowing she had only this one chance, Judy took careful aim. Estimating the weight of the cage and how far out the dish was from directly below her, Judy gave the metal-mesh cube a shove.

  There came a gasp from the men running toward her and they stopped to grasp the railing, staring with horror as the cage tumbled toward the valuable collector.

  It struck one edge of the concave surface, shattering it; then it bounded across toward the opposite side, breaking the delicate central focusing device in a shower of sparks. Finally, it smashed into the other edge, cracking it too. The central projector fell, struck the cage, shorted out again, and something started to bum furiously in the column that supported it. A flash burst and a shower of sparks cascaded over the figures who stood aghast around it. Some of the sparks started fires on the men’s robes.

  The figures near Judy on the catwalk were horrified and turned to ran back to the elevator, their faces white with shock. Alarms were ringing and the cavern lights flickered. One of the machines shorted and arced across the floor, biting another, and Judy heard a scream as someone was knocked out or killed by an electric shock.

  The men who had at first tried to stop her seemed now to have forgotten Judy entirely as they crowded back into the elevator. Below, flashing lights on the control panels warned of serious trouble in the Below World, and a large light started blinking red, red, red, red…

  * * *

  The command jeep skidded to a halt and General Urko leaped to his feet, jamming his fieldglasses against his eyes. He uttered a harsh, guttural oath. “By the horns of Kerchak!”

  Captain Mulla’s glasses swept the rocky hillside before them, then locked on—of all things!—a flickering rock! He gazed in astonishment as a perfectly real rock blinked into existence, and then out again. He stared at the apparition as his commander growled out a triumphant order.

  “That way! There it is! An entrance to the Below World!” He waved at his column of vehicles. “Forward! Captain, keep your eye on that spot! It’s our path to the Underdwellers!”

  The jeep slammed into gear and shot off in a cloud of choking dust. The column of trucks and tanks that were in the general’s section roared after him.

  * * *

  When the lights dimmed, Bill and Jeff were ready. To be certain, Jeff threw several small stones through the doorway; they fell outside in the passage with a clatter.

  “She did it!” Bill yelled. “Let’s go!”

  The two astronauts leaped through the doorway and into the dimness of the passage, turning toward where they believed the cavern exit was located. Sprinting along the rock passage, they skidded to a halt when they found they had come to a section they did not recognize.

  “That last turn!” Bill gasped. “Back to it!”

  They turned and ran back swiftly, almost colliding with three robed figures running from the opposite direction.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Jeff gave the first man an uppercut that staggered him. Bill threw, a punch into the belly of the second blue-robed figure, then kicked at the kneecap of the third. Jeff then gave his adversary a fast left and a hard right hook, and the man staggered and fell heavily. Bill had already sent the second man reeling so hard that his head struck the rock wall, and he fell, dazed. Both Jeff and Bill punched the third man into unconsciousness, then stood breathing hard.

  “Come on!” Bill said, tugging at Jeff’s arm.

  “No,”gasped the dark astronaut. “Let’s use their robes!”

  “Good idea!” Bill agreed, and quickly started stripping a robe off one of the men. In moments, the two astronauts were tugging the garments down over their heads and pulling the hoods around their faces.

  * * *

  Two of the blue-robed Underdwellers stood panting before Krador in his study, the terrible words of their report hanging in the air.

  Their leader’s face was flaring with anger and he brushed past the men’ to activate one. of the plastic screens. It slid smoothly upward, exposing a control panel.

  “First we must determine if the external defenses are in danger,” he said. “Then we will deal with our internal problems.”

  Krador pressed a button marked SITUATION, which keyed his remote panel to the main defense controls. At once, one of the four screens before him lit up and at that moment an alarm started to sound.

  Impatiently, he cut off the alarm and studied the picture before him. Dialing for the hidden cameras to magnify, he then tracked what he saw.

  On a television screen, Krador watched the motorized column of the Gorilla Army racing toward the hidden entrance on the hillside. He pushed more buttons and another screen showed a different angle of the same situation.

  The two blue-robed men behind him gasped with fright, but Krador grew icy-calm. “The hidden crevice will slow them down… but not stop them.”

  He now snapped off the screens and turned quickly as the plastic screen slid down to cover the controls.

  “Our defenses against the Above World are in danger!” He pointed out the door. “Prepare the Chair of Power!”

  One of the men gasped, his extended hand shaking. “Krador! Your power is not limitless. You will deplete your energies!”

  Krador pushed by them, striding out the door and down the rock passage. “I can sustain the defenses for a short time,” he said to the two who followed. “At least until repairs are made. We must prevent the apes from finding that faulty mirage door! Hurry! Prepare the Chair!”

  * * *

  Amid the confusion around them, Bill and Jeff had succeeded in reaching the cavern elevator, and were ascending, when they saw Krador enter the great power room below them. Technicians were trying desperately to repair the shattered and fused collector, tearing the shards of the dish away, cutting through the wreckage with flaming torches, and trying to bypass damaged circuits with temporary cables laid across the floor.

  But another technician was riding up in the elevator with them, and neither Bill nor Jeff wanted to draw attention to themselves. They kept their hoods close around their faces
and watched Krador out of the comer of their eyes.

  At last the elevator came to the topmost catwalk and the three robed men emerged.

  The technician looked at them and muttered, suspiciously, “Are you supposed to help me?”

  Now a loud command from Krador far below distracted him, however. Bill and Jeff started across the catwalk.

  The technician turned and called out to them, “What are you two doing up here anyway?”

  “We’ll have to take him,” Bill whispered and he saw Jeff’s hooded head nod.

  They turned and walked back, faces averted, looking at the activity below them. “I thought we were supposed to change the gaffiss to the frandistand,” Jeff said, then hit the startled technician very hard in the stomach.

  Bill’s brawny right hand connected to the man’s gaping jaw and the technician folded.

  Leaving him crumpled on the catwalk, they turned again toward the hatch on the opposite wall.

  “Double-talk?” Bill asked with a smile.

  “Oh, I just out-jargoned him,” Jeff grinned.

  Bill indicated the shattered fragments of the ruined dish on the cavern floor. “Judy did a hell of a job, didn’t she?”

  “But where is she?”

  They gave the cavern one more look, then opened the hatch and stepped into the red-lit passage that led to the hidden door in the subway-station wall.

  “No Judy…” Bill muttered.

  “Maybe she’s waiting in the tunnel.”

  Opening the tiled door, they stepped into the litter and dirt of the ancient subway tunnel. They looked around, but saw no one and were starting to go back into the cavern and search for her when they heard a soft, hesitating call.

  “Bill…? Jeff…?”

  The two astronauts whirled at the sound of Judy’s voice, saw her blond head peeking out from behind one of the dirt-encrusted subway car windows.

  “Judy!”

  “It’s you!” She stood up and ran to the wrecked door of the subway car to stand looking at them. “Those robes had me fooled! I thought—” She stopped and broke into a wide smile.