Cornelius and Zira were chimpanzees, the class of apes that did most of the work which required intelligence and dexterity. The gorillas were the brutes—both in strength and outlook—and most of them were in the army, led by the bulky figure of General Urko. The highest ape class was that of the orangutans. These golden-furred creatures were the leaders of the Simian World, the philosophers and lawgivers. They made up the Council of Elders, headed by Dr. Zaius. Traditionally the orangutans were the mediators, the ones who judged and made the decisions. It was they who kept the brutal ambitions and lack of foresight of the gorillas from overrunning the more fragile and sensitive chimpanzees, as well as the chimpanzees’ works and important contributions to the simian way of life.
Jeff finally spoke. “This ape civilization,” he said softly, “it’s incredible. Intelligent apes running the world! Ape armies hunting down humans…!” He shook his head. “It makes you think. Back in our time such an idea would have been considered insane!” the husky black astronaut snorted. “‘Back in our time’? What a phrase!” He looked over at his partner. “I wonder if we’ll ever get back to our own time.”
Bill frowned. “I don’t know how, now, since we had to destroy the Venturer the other day. And we don’t even know that we could reverse the time thrust process…”
The two men again stared silently into the fire, their eyes unfocused and their minds a thousand miles—and two thousand years—away. Jeff tossed another handful of twigs onto the weak flames, and the twigs caught, snapping and crackling.
Suddenly Bill’s head came up, and he directed his eyes toward two trees that stood like sentinels at one side of the small clearing. “What’s that?” he whispered.
“Just the twigs, Bill,” Jeff said, but he, too, looked at the two trees. “Hey, there is something—!”
Both young men came quickly to their feet, alert for any danger.
Jeff’s mouth dropped in surprise. “Why, it’s—”
“Judy!” Bill took a step forward, then stopped.
A shimmer of cold, pale light glowed, by the trees. Within the oblong of the light stood the blue-robed figure of Judy Franklin, their fellow astronaut.
Although Bill and Jeff could see her clearly, the light that pulsed faintly around her didn’t seem to add much illumination. Judy stood straight and with her head up, but with a curious lack of movement.
“Judy…?” Jeff asked…
The two men stepped closer. Their experiences with Krador and the Underdwellers had been nip and tuck, and they had learned to be cautious on this new Earth.
“She looks okay,” Bill said. “Judy, are you all right?”
Slowly she nodded, her eyes open and staring, as if in a trance.
“How did you escape the Below World?” Jeff asked.
She didn’t answer, and after a moment Bill spoke softly. “I think she’s still there…”
“An illusion?” Jeff asked, his eyes probing what he saw. “She looks three-dimensional…”
“So did those moving mountains and some of those other supposedly terrifying illusions the Underdwellers produce.” Bill stepped still closer. “Judy, how did you find us?”
Her lips moved, but it was a moment before the words came. When at last she spoke, her voice was flat and unemotional.
“No… no questions. Just listen. You must come to the Below World and bring the laser from the spaceship. Otherwise, Krador and the Underdwellers will be destroyed… and perhaps the entire planet.”
Bill’s eyes narrowed. “But, Judy, we’ll have to know more. Thank God, you are here to tell us. But remember, the last time we saw Krador’s gang they were trying to kill us with those illusions and those rays they can shoot from their eyes. And you want us to go back to that? With them knowing we’re coming? Come on, Judy, you’ve got to give us more information.”
He reached out to touch her, but there was now a ripple across the image, like waves across a pond. Bill yanked his hand back, staring.
“Judy? Judy!” Jeff’s yells were loud in the cave. “No, Judy, wait!”
Her voice was very thin. “Remember… bring the laser…”
The image wavered and seemed to pale. It had lost its solid, three-dimensional look. It seemed like a motion picture projected on smoke. Then the haze of light drifted away… and Judy was gone.
“Judy!” Jeff jumped forward, his arms out.
The white astronaut stopped him. “No use, Jeff.” His dark-skinned companion slumped. “It’s another one of Krador’s illusions. It was Judy, but it was a ‘picture’ of her, like a television picture transmitted here.” The blond astronaut scowled. “But why? Why does Krador want the laser? And us? Or is it just the laser?”
As Bill and Jeff walked back to the fire, the black kept looking toward the trees, but there was no shimmering image returned.
“I don’t like it,” Jeff said gloomily. “I don’t think we can trust Krador.”
“But aren’t we trusting Judy, really?” Bill asked.
“She’s drugged or hypnotized; you can see that.”
“But I wonder if Krador can make her do anything that is really against her will…”
“Well, I’ve heard that about hypnosis—that you don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do. But hypnotists can make you perceive the situation differently, Bill! And then you go ahead and do what seems perfectly normal and logical for you—except that your new ‘perception’ of reality is dead wrong!” He looked at his partner with a worried expression. “That could be what’s wrong here, you know. She thinks she’s doing the right and proper thing. Only it’s just what Krador wants…”
Squatting, Bill tossed more twigs onto the fire. His face was thoughtful.
* * *
The lava bubbled soundlessly, providing its own fiery light for the television cameras.
Krador looked, however, at the monitoring panels with a critical eye. The hawk-faced Underdweller stared longest at the large dial marked SAFE-CAUTION-DANGER and at the arrow that trembled between the yellow arc of “Caution” and the scarlet of the “Danger” zone. As he watched, the arrow touched the edge of the red arc and a bright-red alarm light began to blink. Then the arrow eased back a fraction of an inch, and the light stopped pulsating its frightening message.
Krador turned to Judy, who stood erect and open-eyed an arm’s length away. “Your friends must decide to come, Oosa,” he said.
“They will come, Krador,” she answered, her voice mechanical-sounding.
The Underdweller leader’s eyes returned to the television screen, to the small round image of Hell, where molten rock flowed, and bubbled like oil and chewed into the bedrock, dissolving it with its heat and fire.
Krador patched with outward calm, but he knew that if they did not soon get help, the lava would eat its way from the volcano under the crust of the Earth and into the deepest cavern of the Below World. In that cavern, unfortunately, was a functioning nuclear reactor, the powerful backup power source to the enormous solar disk that daily sucked their power needs from the sun. During occasional long spells of clouds or rain, the reactor supplied the power necessary to fill the Underdwellers’ personal needs, and ran their exterior defenses as well.
Someday, Krador knew, the gorillas might find the solar power disk, and destroy it. That would be when the atomic reactor was most needed.
Unless something was done soon, the lava would chew its way into the cavern and reach the nuclear reactor. With its destruction would come not only a loss of power, but quite probably an explosion that would destroy the entire Below World. And it was also more than likely that such an explosion would hurtle radioactive waste into the air, to poison all the inhabitants of the Earth, ape and human alike.
“There is not much time…” Krador murmured low.
The lava bubbled. The special armored cameras near it showed the crumbling of another section of the bedrock. Krador watched the rock fall into the red, flowing stream and melt, adding volume to the molten river, a
nd eating away the foundation of the Below World…
* * *
“It may be a trick,” Jeff said. He sat staring again into the tiny fire.
“And it may not be. Can we ignore it?”
Jeff bit at his lip. “If Krador ever got his hands on that laser…!”
“That’s a funny thing, too,” Bill commented. “Apparently, with all their science, this was something they didn’t invent—or re-invent. I guess the technology was lost during… whatever happened.” Then he shook his head. “But we can’t worry about that. It’s Judy we should be concerned about! Suppose she’s in real danger and not in some phoney trap Krador has set up?”
Jeff agreed. “You’re right. There’s no choice. We’ll have to take the chance.” He lay down and wrapped his arms around himself, then remembered his spare spacesuit and threw it over his body. “What will we do about the humanoids until we return? We can’t just leave them here unprotected.”
Bill had the solution. “You know those low hills that lie just to the north of us, on the edge of the mountains that frame the Forbidden Zone? We’ll take the humanoids there and, hopefully, locate some caves they can stay in until we get back to them.”
* * *
Dr. Zaius’s study in Ape City reflected the person he was. It was orderly and clean, but filled with books, maps, files bulging with information, and memorabilia of past honors. The room also contained a round television set, boxes of his correspondence with a variety of individuals throughout the Simian Nation, and a small statue of the First Lawgiver. The furniture, like most simian furniture, was sturdy and simple. The desk was purely functional. On the desk sat a mug that had once contained a hot drink. It was now cold with neglect.
Zaius sat behind the desk with lowered eyes, looking out from under his shaggy yellow-orange brows at the three apes who stood belligerently facing one another in the center of the room.
“Weapons!” General Urko snarled, waving his large gloved fist at Zira.
His voice thundered in the small room, but the chimpanzee scientist did not retreat.
“Science!” she threw back with a brisk gesture of her own balled fist.
Next to her, Cornelius, her husband, stepped forward to speak, his eyes flashing angrily at Urko, first for threatening his wife, and then for threatening their continued scientific investigations.
But Old Dr. Zaius intervened, clearing his throat noisily and slapping his hand down on his desk. “All of you seem to forget that the Ape Senate has only so much money to give.” His eyes darted from one to the other of the argumentative apes across from him. “In its own time, the Elders will decide—and the Ape Senate will provide.”
Cornelius, turned his attention to the golden-furred orangutan. “But, Doctor Zaius”—he paused and took a deep breath, then continued in a calmer voice—“you, as senior Elder, have great influence. You have swayed the Supreme Council before. We must have the money for research!”
Urko snorted, and Cornelius glared at him. “Research, huh?” the general exploded. He threw back his head and laughed, showing his huge yellow tusks clearly. “Hah! Research!” he sneered. The massive gorilla leader now put one fist on the desk and shook the other under the nose of the chimpanzee scientist. “We need arms.” He leaned back and opened his eyes wide at Cornelius. “What borders does research protect?”
“Why, you—!”
“Cornelius!” Dr. Zaius rose from his chair quickly, his voice crackling with command. The pouched and weary eyes of the old orangutan turned to Urko. “General, a simple savage has eluded your army for many days,” he said, his brows coming down over his eyes. His voice was steely. “You bring me the escaped humanoid—the one Cornelius and Zira call ‘Blue-Eyes’—and I will be more likely to cast my vote for the military.”
“Doctor Zaius!” Zira exclaimed in surprised shock.
Neither Zaius nor the general paid her any attention. The big gorilla smiled, and Cornelius saw more teeth than an ape mouth should have.
A loud, insolent snort escaped the nostrils of the gorilla commander. “A bargain well struck, Doctor Zaius!”
The commander of the Gorilla Army flashed a victorious look at the chimpanzee scientists and turned to stride heavily to the door. Then turning again, he loomed large in the open portal.
“I go now,” he said boomingly. “But I will return soon! With Blue-Eyes!” His eyes raked Cornelius and Zira impudently. “I swear it!”
Slapping his hand to his chest in the ancient gorilla salute, he left. The door slam behind him ruffled the papers on the desk and made Zira blink angrily.
She turned to Zaius, her eyes dark and her face set. “Doctor Zaius, I suppose you know that with more money Urko could get and maintain a larger army—and, with that larger army, he might challenge even your power!”
Zaius sat down, but said nothing, only tugging at the yellowish hair of his beard.
Cornelius leaned over the desk. “Sir, why are you arming your enemy? What about research and the ultimate good of all apekind?”
Zaius turned away from the two chimpanzees, swiveling in his chair to look out at the Arch of Triumph in the central square. After a long moment of silence, the venerable Elder spoke.
“What you say may be true, Cornelius, but I have no choice.” He paused, as if lost in thought, then continued: “The escaped humanoid must be captured—or killed, though I prefer capture. He must be taken, and at any cost. Any! Even if I have to pay with my own power!”
Cornelius looked at his wife with a disappointed frown, but she was watching the orangutan leader intently.
Zaius swung back to them and placed both hands on his desk. “If he continues to roam free, ape civilization, as we know it, could very well be doomed.”
Cornelius blinked and stared at the gold-furred Elder. “B-but, D-doctor Z-zaius.…!”
“I’m perfectly serious, Cornelius. I am not exaggerating. You know I am not prone to such things. If Blue-Eyes is not quickly captured and examined, everything we know may be doomed!”
* * *
The Forbidden Zone stretched endlessly to the south, west, and north of them. Hot, scratched, and weary, Bill and Jeff had first traveled north—inside the Zone—among the green foothills that flanked the mountains at its eastern boundary, then had set out toward the northwest across one ridge of sun-baked rock after another. Sand mesas lay between the ridges and provided no water to the thirsty men, who had now emptied their canteen supplies.
They paused a moment, Jeff squinting toward the northwest.
“The Zone is beginning to look all alike to me. Are you sure we’re going in the right direction, Bill?”
The blond astronaut lowered the heavy laser drill to the parched ground and wiped his brow. “Pretty sure. See that mesa over there?” He pointed with his free hand to a rise in the distance. “The one with the two spires of rock standing separate at the mesa’s western end? And look at those dome-shaped sandy rises to the south. I remember them when we got out of the subway from the Underdwellers’ world.” Bill grinned at his partner. “Don’t worry, we’ll find it. Even without street signs.”
Jeff grunted and reached for the laser drill. “My turn.” He grunted again as he swung the heavy device to his shoulder. “I thought we were in the age of miniaturization.”
Bill grinned through dry lips at his black friend as they climbed the rocky ridge. “We are. Otherwise, that thing would be something only a truck could carry.”
“Hoo-ray…” Jeff said woodenly.
Climbing to the top of a ridge, they paused to survey the land ahead. Almost at once they saw the dust cloud of a motorized column approaching.
Bill took the laser from Jeff’s shoulder and set it behind a cluster of rocks; then they both hid themselves. They watched the column come closer, and soon could make out a number of the figures who were in the front vehicles. Neither astronaut moved, for they knew that movement attracted attention. They stayed in the shade of a large boulder.
&n
bsp; “They’re certainly out in force,” Jeff muttered. “That’s the third patrol we’ve seen!”
Watching the column grind past, the two waited until it was safely out of sight before they got to their feet. Jeff hefted the laser and they walked down to where the patrol tracks had ripped up the desert sand.
“Let’s go up that way and cross over on those rocks,” Bill suggested. “No use leaving tracks they can see on the way back.”
“You betchum, Indian scout,” Jeff said.
Bill scooped a small pebble from the ground and flung it at his companion. “Gotcha, wiseguy!”
Crossing the rocky flats, they climbed and topped a rise to the west. Bill held a hand to his brow to shield his eyes from the intense sunlight and surveyed the ground ahead.
“Jeff, see those rocks? I think the place where we climbed out is just ahead.”
Jeff said nothing, just started walking. When they reached the rocks they were more cautious, fearful both of Krador’s defenses and any Gorilla Army trap that might have been set.
“There it is!” Bill said, pointing at a depression in the desert. “That rough-looking spot there. You can hardly see it, even if you know what you’re looking for. And I guess you’d have to be right on it to see it was a hole.” He started down the rocky slope. “Come on, let’s find Judy.”
Bill looked back when he realized Jeff wasn’t moving. “What’s the matter? This is the place.”
“Listen, Bill. If this is one of Krador’s tricks… well, we could lose the laser. Then we’ll never be able to help the humanoids build fortifications in the new valley—when we finally get there. And we will!”
“You’re right, on both counts. But there is something we can do now.” He climbed quickly back up to Jeff, took, the laser from the black’s shoulder, then looked around. “Over there!” he said.
The former commander of the Venturer set the laser into a crevice between two rocks, putting it down carefully. Then he found a flat rock and laid it across the crevice while Jeff placed additional rocks around it to hide any traces of what they had done.
Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4 Page 31