“Then, may we ask another favor of you, worthy Menluth,” the astronaut asked.
“If it is within the power of Kygoor to grant, you shall have it,” Menluth replied, again smiling.
“Our balloon—our flying machine—is down on one of the snow shelves, damaged. Could you help us get it to the top of the mountain and repair any rips it might have in it, so that we may return to our home?”
Menluth looked at them for a moment, a deep worry in his eyes. “For thousands of years, we of Kygoor have lived upon our mountains, hidden from the world because we desired to be. To let your return, knowing of our existence, could be gravely dangerous to us!”
“We’ll tell no one of you or your temple,” Bill pleaded. “You have my word on that!”
“And mine,” Cornelius echoed.
“We must consult with the Great One. He will guide us in this matter.”
“The Great One…?” Cornelius inquired, wonderingly. “I thought you were the High Priest, Most Worthy Menluth.”
“I am. But in this case I must consult my… superior,” the old ice ape said, calmly. “The great god Kygoor. And now he awaits us. Come!”
Troubled—and suddenly wondering about the sanity of the High Priest—Bill and Cornelius followed him out of the room and down a long corridor carved out of what seemed to be one massive block of stone, perhaps the side of the mountain itself. At length, the three arrived at a huge pair of bronze doors, each fully twenty feet high and ten feet wide. Green-clad priests who guarded the doors, two to each side, pushed lightly on them and the magnificently balanced slabs of bronze, each perhaps weighing several tons, swung gently open.
As the doors opened, snow driven by the still-blowing blizzard outside swirled into the hallway, and the numbing cold began again to eat into Bill’s bones, reminding him of how close he’d come to death only about an hour before.
* * *
Unknown to the astronaut, a mile away, and hidden by the storm, was another threat to his life: the gorilla snow troop detachment, struggling upward, skis strapped to their backs now as they climbed the almost-sheer rock face leading to the plateau where the great god Kygoor stood…
* * *
Through a sudden break in the swirling snow clouds, Bill got a brief glimpse of the giant statue at the top of a peak, still high above them.
“That’s going to be quite a climb up there in this storm,” he said. “Are you sure we can make it?” he asked Menluth. “After all, Cornelius is still pretty weak.”
“We will not have to climb,” the High Priest informed him. “Come.”
Menluth walked out the door into the storm and turned immediately to the right, heading in again toward the mountain’s face. Following, Bill and Cornelius saw the temple, a large part of which had been carved out of the rock face of the mountain on this spacious level shelf so many thousands of feet from the canyon floor.
Near the entrance to the temple the trio saw a set of carved stone steps that led upward at a sharp angle. Menluth led the way up the steps, passing by the temple entrance and mumbling something quietly. Bill could not make out the priest’s words. At the top of the steps, Bill was surprised to see an enclosed gondola—similar to the balloon’s—made of beautifully carved wood and resting on a small platform. Extending up into the mist above it was a slim, woven metal rope.
“A cable car!” Bill exclaimed.
“A cable car to the Place of the God,” Menluth told him. “Which saves a lot of wear and tear on these old legs of mine!”
“How is it powered?” Bill asked, puzzled.
“Through large gears, below, inside the temple,” the High Priest explained. “Turned by acolytes. It is part of their training to become priests—and one of the few ways I have found of keeping them out of trouble, until they have learned the discipline necessary to live in total harmony with their fellow apes!”
“That is fascinating, Your Worship,” Cornelius said. “But if you had our gasoline engines—”
“We would have bad smells, smoke to reveal our existence to the plain apes, a necessity to obtain oil, and a bunch of lazy teenagers with nothing to do to keep them out of mischief. No, thank you. We will continue to do it our way. But, come, my friends! Kygoor awaits us at the summit!”
Menluth held open the door to the cable car for the humanoid and the chimpanzee, then he rang a small bell and the cable car began to move upward with a little jerk, sliding off its platform and beginning a steady climb. In minutes, the temple below them was lost to sight in the swirling mists and snow flurries and they were enveloped in a white, formless world, with only the softly thrumming cable breaking the natural sounds of wind and snow.
Settling himself into a softly cushioned red seat, the High Priest unfurled a scroll of prayers.
Bill looked at the white ape for an instant, then out at the swirling world of the storm as Cornelius clung tightly to the back of one of the seats and Menluth began to chant a prayer to Kygoor.
“O Kygoor… Kygoor… Most Mighty Kygoor! Greet these strangers in peace! Surround them with your strength! Guide them with gentle winds! Guide them back to their home and their loved ones in peace and safety! Kygoor… Kygoor… Most Mighty Kygoor!”
Cornelius was peering upward, his eyes following the cable, and suddenly the mists parted to give them a view of the statue. “I find this ritual fascinating—and more than a bit terrifying!” he whispered to Bill.
“Cornelius,” Bill said, also in a whisper, “never knock another man’s religion. Especially when that man might be able to get you down off a mountain! Unless you’d rather try to walk down on your own?”
“Through that?” Cornelius chuckled softly and pointed out at the icy, snow-covered rocks.
Then his eyes widened.
On those rocks, right at the feet of the great god Kygoor, he saw the ape soldiers who had climbed the peak, searching for them.
“Look!” Cornelius warned his companions.
Bill’s head snapped around at the terror he heard in Cornelius’s voice and Menluth dropped the scroll he had been reading, looking outside to where Cornelius was pointing.
High above them, Captain Jemmo and four of his men had finished their climb and were standing exactly at the feet of Kygoor, where the cable was anchored into the rock. Weary but determined, they were looking down the cable, at the rising car.
“It’s the chimp and the humanoid—with someone else,” the gorilla sergeant shouted at the captain.
Jemmo made a quick decision. He knew that he would never be able to get these prisoners down alive off the mountain if they didn’t want to cooperate, and the giant statue above him was making him nervous.
He turned to one of the soldiers. “Cut the cable!” he ordered.
The soldier quickly unstrapped an ax from his backpack and stepped forward, the heavy blade raised over his head.
“Do something!” Cornelius yelled. “He’s going to cut the cable!”
“What do you suggest I do?” Bill asked grimly.
“Have no fear, my friends!” Menluth told them. “Kygoor will protect us. He will not let the soldiers kill us!”
“Just how in blazes can a statue protect us?” Bill asked, disbelief in his voice.
“Watch!” Menluth said simply.
The soldier brought his ax down on the woven steel cable and sparks flew. The echoing clank was audible all the way down to the swaying car—as was a sharp twang as one strand split. As the soldier raised, the ax for a second blow, suddenly another sound—a quite different sound—filled the air. It was a sound that filled everyone who was within earshot with terror, except the calmly waiting High Priest.
First came a tremendous cracking sound, like a series of rifle shots echoing across the mountainside; and inches of ice broke, falling in glistening glass-like plates from the gigantic shape of the statue. One of those ice pieces, falling point downward, sliced into a stumbling gorilla soldier and cut him in half from skull to waist.
> Then came a thundering sound, for Kygoor moved!
On the broad face, nostrils flared open and air whistled through them. Dreadful red eyes glared down at the intruders near his broad, heavy feet. The cavernous mouth opened, showing frighteningly sharp yellow teeth, each nearly a foot in length. Then a vibrating, avalanche-starting, blood-curdling scream left the tunnel-like throat—a maniac shriek of hatred and fury at those who would disturb his resting place.
Kygoor’s massive body bent forward at the waist, and down, until the weight of his upper body was resting on his huge knuckles. Then, with one mighty sweep of his arm, he tumbled the soldiers off the edge of the small plateau he called his own, over the several-thousand-foot fall to the floor of the canyon far below.
Bill whistled softly, looking up at the mighty creature above them.
“I beg your pardon?” Menluth asked.
“Sorry,” Bill said, shaking his head to clear the shock from it. “I couldn’t help being amazed—completely and wonderfully amazed…!”
“What brought it—him—to life like that?” Cornelius asked, a quiver of fear still in his voice.
“Why, he has always been alive!” the High Priest said serenely. “And he has blessed and protected us—and you from the beginning.”
“From the beginning?” Bill was puzzled.
“Yes,” Menluth said. “From the first moment when he plucked your balloon from the clutches of the storm to learn if you were friend or foe to us…”
Bill, looking quite ashamed of his doubts, gazed up the cable at the mighty ape god. “Thank you, O Great God Kygoor,” he said with deep and honest feeling.
* * *
Two days later, the storm blew itself out against the solid bulwark of the mountains. The balloon and its gondola were brought up the mountain and repaired.
“I have been praying to the great god Kygoor that you may have a safe flight home,” Menluth said, his snow-white fur gleaming in the warm sunlight that was quickly melting the ice and snow from the broad ledge on which the temple stood.
Above them, the mighty figure of Kygoor, again encased in a light covering of ice, stared with unblinking eyes out over the towering peaks and canyons that were his home.
“We shall never, never forget your help,” Cornelius said sincerely.
“I am but a servant of Kygoor,” the High Priest responded.
“Someday,” Bill said, “we would like very much to return. I would like to speak with you, Most Worthy Menluth, about history. The history of both our races.”
“We would welcome that, my son.”
“Until that day, however, could you do us one more small favor?”
“Of course. You have the blessing of Kygoor.”
“I have a book here,” Bill said, holding out the package he and Cornelius had brought with them. “It was written by my people—by the humanoids—more than two thousand years ago. Would you keep it here and guard it from harm? Someday, perhaps both our races can benefit from the book!”
The High Priest accepted the book. “I will place it in a small cave that is just behind Kygoor. I am certain it will be safe there,” he said with a smile. “He will allow no one to touch it but you. I promise you that as High Priest of Kygoor!”
“Thank you, Menluth. You have been a more than kind friend to us.”
“Bless you, bless you, my sons, in the name of Kygoor. And have a safe journey homeward to your loved ones.”
Menluth stepped away from the edge of the plateau where they had been standing, and with a wave of his hand signaled to his fellow priests to release the ropes that held the refurbished balloon to the ground.
“Have a safe voyage!” he repeated once more, waving good-bye until the balloon was out of sight.
MAN, THE HUNTED ANIMAL
Adapted by William Arrow
Based on the teleplays:
“River of Flames” by Jack Kaplan & John Barrett
“Screaming Wings” by Jack Kaplan & John Barrett
“Trail to the Unknown” by Larry Spiegel
Based on characters from Planet of the Apes
For Socorra Burbee
The fire was small but comforting. For the forest was cool tonight.
Bill Hudson and Jeff Allen sat neat the flames, thinking over the past weeks’ events; the humanoids whom they were leading to a new—and safer—valley to the west of the Forbidden Zone had gone to sleep hours before. Even Nova, for whom Bill felt a great affection, was soundly sleeping a few feet from the fire.
“I’m glad Cornelius and Zira left the camp yesterday,” Bill said. “I feel relieved for two reasons: their absence from Ape City would soon have been noticed, and this would have caused trouble for them, since General Urko and Doctor Zaius already suspect them of helping us; and, then, too, Urko might have followed the car tracks of their jeep and located us here if they’d stayed any longer and Urko had started off in search of them.”
“And Zira’s suggestion was wise,” Jeff added, “that she and Cornelius stop off at their dig south of the humanoids’ old valley to pick up some pottery and bones. That way, their friends in Ape City will think they’ve just been puttering around at the archeological site, as usual.”
“Well, I’m anxious to move on tomorrow. There’s no telling how long it’ll be before Urko does come looking for us—and we’ve got to get these people to the new valley in the next few days!”
“I just hope it’s as safe a place as Cornelius said—with cliffs on three sides of it. Urko will never be able to get his trucks and tanks and jeeps into it, if that’s so,” Jeff explained.
The events of the past three days had been exciting ones.
A steady wind had driven Bill and Cornelius, in the scientist’s hot-air balloon, out of the Land of the Ice Apes and away from those high, frosty mountains where Menluth, High Priest of Kygoor, and his people lived a peaceful, monk-like life. The wind had weakened, however, before the balloon reached the forest, and the blond-haired astronaut and his chimpanzee-scientist friend had hiked many miles before reaching the humanoids’ campsite.
The reunion between Cornelius and Zira—as well as the meeting of Bill and Nova—had been happy. Zira, especially, had feared for the safety of her husband; and Nova worried about her husband-to-be.
The fire crackled now, in the small clearing in the forest, and the two astronauts were quiet for a moment.
The two men had trained in NASA together, and in 1979 had begun a voyage—with a third crew member, flaxen-haired Judy Franklin—in a ship called the Venturer, which had been “thrust through time” to 3979 to arrive at what seemed, at first, like a new planet. They later discovered, to their great shock, that they had landed on Earth—an Earth radically different from the Earth they had known. Even the geography seemed different, with New York City buried under a hot desert and no Atlantic Ocean nearby! But perhaps their greatest shock was to realize that the human race had somehow fallen to the level of dumb animals, frightened and weak-willed creatures who lived—like primitive man—in caves, wearing skins and gathering fruit and berries. Apes had become the dominant race, and controlled almost all of the world Jeff and Bill had seen so far. Intelligent apes…
There were other creatures here as well, perhaps mutated by some unknown radiation: strange birds, and even stranger almost-human beings who lived in what was called the Below World.
The gorillas now wanted to kill off all the cave-dwellers—the humanoids. But, more important, the apes were definitely interested in capturing Bill Hudson in order to determine if he indeed possessed the ability to talk. To the Simian World possessing language was the same as a sentence of death.
Out of all the cave-dwelling humanoids, Bill and Jeff had encountered only one, a woman named Nova, who was able to speak any words at all. And these words were pitifully few: only her own name, and Bill’s and Jeff’s, plus the name Ronald Brent, the USAF astronaut born over a hundred years after Bill and Jeff, whose dogtags Nova wore.
Unfor
tunately, events had been moving too fast for the two astronauts to investigate many of the things they wanted to. Just keeping alive had occupied most of their time these past weeks. It was only in rare instances, such as this evening, that they had time to think about what had been happening to them.
Jeff was thinking about Judy Franklin now, the pretty young astronaut who had been the other member of the Venturer’s three-person crew. After crossing the burning desert from the lake in which they had crashed their spaceship, Judy had disappeared into a crevice opened by an earthquake—only to reappear later as the goddess-figure of the Underdwellers of the Below World. These people called her Oosa, after a small metal bust of Judy which they had discovered; the bust said she was lost and listed her country as “USA.” But when they found her, the female astronaut had been drugged, and was controlled by Krador, the leader of the mysterious Underdwellers.
Jeff thought these people, who lived in a vast rock-walled world beneath the ruins of New York City, might be mutated humans. With solar devices of enormous size, bringing them almost unlimited power, and with computers and other machines, they maintained a defense against the invasions of the Gorilla Army. Their defenses were mostly illusions, but were very effective—spouts of flame, phony earthquakes, walls of fire, strange (fake) monsters, moving mountains, and so forth.
After rescuing Jeff and Bill from imprisonment by the Underdwellers and helping them escape into the Above World, Judy was mysteriously whisked back into the control of Krador. They had not seen her since.
Is Judy all right? Jeff asked himself as he sat by the fire.
He was angry and frustrated because he and Bill had been prevented from going back to rescue her, and was about to propose to his ex-commander that such a venture be the next thing they did. However, before he suggested this, Jeff wanted to have some kind of workable plan. And getting into the world of the Underdwellers again—and out once more—was not going to be easy!
On the other side of the fire, Bill Hudson thought about his chimpanzee friends, Cornelius, and Zira, who had caged him soon after his arrival in Ape City, then had helped him to escape when his life was threatened by General Urko and Zaius.
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