Up ahead of the lieutenant, against the cliff face, where they got some protection from the icy wind, the detachment of snow troops and the captain who led them were gathered around a small fire.
“Captain Jemmo!” the lieutenant called out waving. “Come on down here, sir. I’ve spotted something.”
The captain, both his age and the cold stiffening his bones, got slowly to his feet from where he had been sitting near the fire and looked down the slope at the young officer for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to have him shot. It was the first time in six hours that the captain had been able to relax and warm up a little, and he resented being disturbed. Finally, though, slipping and sliding over the icy patches that were forming on the snow crust, he walked down to his junior officer.
“All right, Lieutenant Uka. What is it?” he growled when he had finally covered the hundred feet to where the young ape was waiting.
“Up there, sir!” the lieutenant said, pointing. “Take a look!”
The captain was in an irritable mood. Several days earlier, his commander, Colonel Boora, had sent a snow troop detachment to the foot of these uncharted and unknown mountains in the extreme northern part of his province, Wambo. Since then the detachment, under Captain Jemmo, had been scouring the snow-swept slopes in search of humanoids. Humanoids here! he fumed as he joined the lieutenant. Why, they’d freeze their butts off in this snow! he thought.
The captain grabbed the binoculars from the lieutenant, wiped a bit of melted snow from the lenses, and began to slowly scan the snowfield above them.
“Just to the right of that big rock face,” the lieutenant explained, pointing to a massive prow of rock that thrust itself out from the canyon’s side.
The captain swung the binoculars more to the right, then stopped—as if frozen—when the irregular shape of the partially deflated balloon, came into view. “What in Great Guzo’s name is it?” he asked.
“I sure don’t know, sir. But whatever it is, it was flying when I first saw it.”
“What do you mean, it was flying?” The captain lowered the binoculars and turned angrily to look at the lieutenant.
“It was floating through the air, sir,” the lieutenant said, unwilling to change his story despite his captain’s wrath. “And underneath it was a sort of basket.”
“Which, I suppose, was full of fruit and flowers?”
“No-o, sir. But those two black spots just to the right of the—whatever it is—are bodies that were thrown out when it hit.”
The captain lifted the fieldglasses and again examined the wreckage above him.
“Well, I suppose it could be those stupid, uppity chimpanzees trying out some kind of new weapon. We’d better investigate!”
“Ah, one other thing, sir…” the lieutenant said hesitantly.
“What?”
“I got a pretty good look at them when they were thrown clear.”
“And…? Well, out with it!”
“One of them did seem to be a chimpanzee but—”
“Yes?”
“The other seemed to be a—humanoid, sir.”
“Oh, damnation! That means we’re going to have to send someone back to base to radio a report to headquarters.”
“Could we wait until after we investigate, sir?” the lieutenant suggested. “That way we could all go back together and make the report more complete.”
“You know the orders, lieutenant. We’re to ‘watch for, and report immediately,’ any sign of unusual behavior on the part of the humanoids. Those orders come from our provincial commander, Colonel Boora. He got his orders from General Urko in Ape City a few days ago—and you know how fanatical the general is on the subject of humanoids!”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant admitted, “I know only too well.”
“Orders are orders,” the captain restated. “We’re going to have to report this at once. You take Corporal Tenzic with you and head back to base as quickly as possible. I’ll write out an official report for you to take with you. And while you’re headed back, I’ll take the rest of the men up die mountain and see if we can find out just what that crazy-looking thing is!”
“Yes, sir…”
The lieutenant dreaded having to fight his way back down through the mountains in the middle of a storm with only one man to help. It was too easy to get lost in these canyons when the winds blew and the snow flew.
* * *
While Captain Jemmo was writing out his brief report for Lieutenant Uka to carry back to their temporary base at the foot of the mountains for radio transmission to General Urko, Bill was slowly levering himself upward out of the snow, brushing the cold flakes from his eyes with a hand that was already turning numb in the freezing temperature.
He sat in the snow for a moment, waiting for his head to stop spinning and his vision to clear, then he looked around to see just what their situation was and spotted a crumpled brown-and-green shape half buried in the snow ten feet from where he was sitting. Painfully, he began to crawl that way.
“Cornelius! Cornelius!” he called.
The chimpanzee, stunned, gradually opened his eyes, blinking at the bright, snow-reflected light and wincing at the cold wind.
“Are you all right?” Bill asked. “Is anything broken?”
“I’m too frozen to tell,” Cornelius groaned. “There may not be a whole bone left in my body!”
Bill grinned, knowing that his friend must be basically all right if he could make jokes about his condition, and slowly got to his feet. Wading through the snow to where Cornelius was lying, he helped the ape to his feet.
“Maybe we can find some wood and build us a fire,” he said. “Otherwise, we’re going to freeze to death in no time flat! The temperature up here must be at least twenty below!”
“What about the fuel in the gondola?” Cornelius asked. “We could burn that.”
“No, we’ll need that fuel after the storm breaks. That is, unless you want to try walking down out of the mountains…”
Cornelius shuddered, not bothering to answer. He turned, ready to look for some wood. “I’ll look over this way, and—” Cornelius stopped dead in his tracks, a look of astonishment and fear on his face. “Great simian gods!” he exclaimed. “What’s that?”
“What?” Bill asked, glancing in the direction the chimpanzee was pointing.
“By the claws of Kerchak, there! On the mountaintop!”
Up on an outcropping of rock above them, gazing over the snow-capped peaks that rose from horizon to horizon, loomed the giant figure of an ice ape.
Almost thirty feet tall, the great ape stood erect on short, tremendously muscled legs. Sunlight reflecting off the snow gleamed on the black, leathery skin of his gigantic face. Except for that leathery shine and the palms of his hands and a bare patch on his stomach, the great ape was covered with long thick, dark fur from the great ridges of bone above his sunken eyes to his solidly planted feet. He appeared to be almost half as wide as he was high, his huge arms bunched with muscles that looked as if they could have ripped the mountain itself apart!
“By all that’s holy in the Solar System!” Bill exclaimed “What in blazes is it?”
Cornelius didn’t say a word, but just stood staring upward.
For a moment, Bill gazed at the incredible figure looming against the slate-gray sky above them. Then he suddenly realized that, realistic as it was, the creature was not moving, and that it was covered with patches of snow.
“Why, it’s some kind of statue!”
“It’s the great god Kygoor…” Cornelius mumbled.
“What…? What did you say?” Bill asked.
“I said,” Cornelius pronounced, more clearly this time, “that’s it’s the great god Kygoor.” The ape scientist looked completely humbled.
“And what, may I ask, might the great god Kygoor be?”
“Something… something I thought was merely a primitive superstition. A carry-over from our Dark Ages. But, it appears, I was wrong�
�” Cornelius answered, still staring upward.
“But it’s just a statue—not a god,” Bill insisted.
“Yes, but it’s a statue I thought I would never see. Our legends tell us about the god Kygoor, god of the ice apes. Nevertheless, science has taught us that the ice apes don’t exist—and that therefore neither does the god Kygoor. But, if the statue exists, then—”
“Then these mountains must be inhabited!” Bill finished for Cornelius. “Maybe we can find shelter, food, even help in getting the balloon off the ledge before the wind blows it away,”
“I would not be too hasty if I were you, my friend,” Cornelius said, worry and caution in his voice. “Some ‘primitive’ tribes of apes can be very hostile to strangers—especially humanoid strangers. And if the ice apes actually exist, I must assume that they are very primitive. Otherwise we would have come into contact with them during our movements in these mountains.”
“But didn’t you say these mountains have never been explored by your people?”
“Yes, I said that. But they have been passed through sometimes by army patrols—even though they lie at the northern extremity of Wambo Province, an outlying region far to the southwest of Ape City. If there were a tribe of ‘developed’ apes up here, we would have found them. Or they, us.”
Bill looked up the slope at the statue of the giant ice ape for a long moment. Thinking about it, he admitted to himself that he was somewhat frightened and more than a bit awed by the size and life-like giant look of the thing—especially out here in this frozen, apparently deserted mountain wasteland. Finally, he dropped his gaze from the statue and scanned the snow shelf around them, seeking a suitable path away from the snowy slope.
“It doesn’t really matter what the natives up here might be like,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re going to have to find them, and hopefully get some help from them. It’s either that—or freeze.”
Cornelius glanced fearfully up at the giant ice ape. “You’re right, of course. Lead the way.”
Bill quickly got a piece of the mooring rope out of the gondola and tied the balloon as well as he could to several scattered boulders, hoping that they would anchor the flying machine should the wind come up again. Finished, he turned, motioning to Cornelius, and they started off across the snowfield, angling upward and toward the statue of the ice ape.
* * *
Fifteen hundred feet below them, on another ice- and snow-covered ledge, gorilla captain Jemmo was peering upward again through the binoculars. He had just sent Lieutenant Uka off on his mission back to base, and had given orders to his sergeants about moving the detachment up to the canyon slope where the balloon lay as soon as the men could be made ready. Now, seeing the chimpanzee and the humanoid apparently trying to escape, he knew he didn’t have much time. The mountains were a maze of canyons and spurs, and furthermore, with their head start, the two would soon be lost to him—and the wind would quickly conceal their tracks in the blowing snow.
“Sergeant!” he yelled. “Let’s move ’em out! If anyone doesn’t have his pack, have him leave his equipment! We can pick it up later. But get everyone moving, now!” To himself he said: “Blast this mountain duty! We’ll probably break our fool necks!”
“Yes, sir!” the sergeant called, throwing a quick salute to Jemmo.
He began to scream at his men, and in moments every gorilla had his snowshoes buckled on and the detachment was ready to move out.
* * *
“Get up, Cornelius!” Bill panted, almost unable to speak. “Keep moving or you’ll get frostbite!”
The ape scientist, struggling up the slope into the wind just ahead of the astronaut, had stumbled and fallen and showed no signs of getting up again.
“I can’t, Bill!” the chimpanzee gasped. “I just… can’t move anoth—another step!”
The wind began to howl again, sending swirling clouds of snowflakes over the fallen scientist as Bill fought his way up to him. Bending over Cornelius, he struggled to lift his friend out of the snow and away from the creeping lifelessness that the cold was bringing. If I don’t get Cornelius moving again fast, my friend will freeze to death, he was thinking.
“Come on,” Bill urged. “I’ll carry you.”
“Then pretty soon… we’ll both be exhausted,” Cornelius answered weakly. “I think it would be much wiser… if you left me here and went… to find help.”
“No way, buddy!” Bill said. “You’re coming with me! We’ll find some shelter pretty quick. Then we can both rest.”
Picking Cornelius up out of the snow, with the chimpanzee’s help he got him into a piggyback position across his shoulders and began to struggle forward through the nearly waist-deep snow. His hips broke through the icy crust that had formed over the snow with each forward step. Then, as if the very gods were against them, a sudden new blizzard hit, pouring over the peak in a numbing wave, its winds whipping the snow around them into an impenetrable curtain.
In minutes, Bill exhausted his final reserves of strength and collapsed into the snow, Cornelius falling from his back and rolling a few feet away, now completely unconscious and close to freezing to death.
Bill had not yet lost consciousness, but he no longer had any control over his body, and what was happening around him seemed to be happening faraway. He, too, was only minutes from death as drifts began to pile up around him, shrouding his body in a cocoon he would not escape from until the spring thaws released his frozen body. He knew he was dying, but he no longer cared. His eyes were open, staring into the swirling snow, but what they saw made no impression on his slowing mind—until an impression forced its way through the curtain of icy calm, jolting him abruptly back to reality.
It was the impression of an ape’s hand reaching down to touch him tenderly on the cheek!
Suddenly Bill’s mind was again churning with life, even though his body was numb past the point of action. He could only look—and wonder—as a large, snow-white ape clad in a deep-red robe bent down and lifted him from his snowy coffin.
“Wrap them in warm furs and bring them to the temple,” the red-clad ape said to several green-robed apes who were standing behind him, two of them holding Cornelius up in a sitting position.
“Yes, Most Worthy One,” one of the apes replied, turning to signal to his fellows that they were to carry the chimpanzee and humanoid.
“When you get to the temple, have the healer minister to them.” The large-statured rescuer then looked up at the dark figure of the giant ice ape statue, still visible occasionally through the swirling snow, half a mile away. “I go to Kygoor to pray for their lives—and to find out who and what they are.”
Unable to understand just what was happening to them, Bill realized that, for the moment at least, he and Cornelius were safe. And with that understanding came a relaxation that, at last, allowed his mind to slip into painless, healing unconsciousness.
* * *
Bill Hudson did not know how much time had passed when he again opened his eyes, but however long it was, it had been long enough for some sensation to return to his body—enough sensation for the tingling of returning nerve functions to make every movement a painful experience. Green-clad white apes were massaging his limbs, however, and in minutes the tingling died away and he was able to sit up and look around.
The first thing he saw was Cornelius, sitting on the edge of a narrow bed, sipping something from a steaming mug. Then, with a start, he saw the figure he had earlier thought was a dream brought on by the snow and the cold: the ice ape clad in the dull-red robe. And he saw now that the ape was old—unbelievably old!
“Welcome,” the old ice ape said simply, looking at Bill with sharply intelligent brown eyes.
“Where are we?” Bill asked. “And who are you?”
“You are in the temple of the great god Kygoor. And I am the High Priest of Kygoor, Menluth.”
“And I thought Kygoor was just a legend…” Cornelius
apologized, shaking his head in wonderment.
“Kygoor has been real since the beginning of all legends,” Menluth said with a smile.
Bill swung his legs over the edge of his bed, surprised to find that he was still dressed in his flight suit and skin jacket. “We want to thank you for saving our fives!” he said warmly.
“Your gratitude is most unusual, for a humanoid,” the High Priest said, nodding solemnly.
“But you don’t seem surprised that this humanoid has the power of speech, Most Worthy Menluth,” said Cornelius.
“Why should I be surprised?” the High Priest asked gently. “After all, humanoids were able to speak long before we apes were even able to think.”
“That’s a surprising confession—for an ape,” Bill exclaimed.
“Up here… in the arms of Kygoor,” Menluth said softly, “we have a somewhat clearer picture of the world, and the world’s history, than have our cousins who live on the plains.”
“Then you must know what has happened in the last two thousand years!” Bill spoke excitedly “You must know what brought this—this decline of human beings about!”
“Yes… I know,” Menluth answered, losing his smile. “I know how your people—you humanoids—almost destroyed the planet. I know how your people hunted down and killed every ape you could find, in an effort to prevent any other race from inheriting what you had given up: true self-control and mastery of the planet. I know the hate that was in your hearts…”
“Don’t harm him!” Cornelius broke in fearfully, getting up from his couch and stepping between Bill and the scowling High Priest. “He is not at fault. He is my friend!”
“I have observed that,” said Menluth. “And I have observed that he does not have the hatred in his heart that cursed his race. All creatures with loving hearts are equal in the eyes of Kygoor, and are welcome under the protection of Kygoor!”
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