Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4

by William Arrow

  “Don’t pry any rocks from the ground,” Bill said, “just use loose ones. We don’t want this to look artificial, and soil would be a giveaway.” He stepped back to survey the pile and smiled. “There. That ought to keep it hidden until we find out just what Krador has in mind.”

  Bill walked down the hill a short distance, then turned to memorize the slope. “Look at it several times as we go down,” he told Jeff. “If you don’t, you may not be able to find it, coming back. It’s an old cowboy-and-Indian trick.”

  “Where do you learn these things?” his partner asked.

  “I read Westerns,” he replied brightly. Then his face took on an embarrassed look, and he added, “Well, I used to. C’mon!”

  The two astronauts moved down the slope and ran quickly across the sand toward the depression. Throwing themselves to the ground, they watched for a minute or two, then got up and moved closer to the rocks that were clustered along one side.

  Bill looked down into the cone-shaped hole. Yes, this was where a section of the ancient New York subway tunnel ceiling had collapsed and given them their way out, up past the ruined streets and rubble of New York. Bill could see the ragged edge of the crumbling concrete roof, almost indistinguishable from the rock around it, stained with age and pitted. Firing with their eye beams, the blue-robed men who had chased them had accidentally exploded the ceiling section down upon themselves, enabling Bill and Jeff to escape just in time.

  “Looks quiet,” Jeff said. “It also looks as if they never bothered to dig out the corpses.”

  The broken ground was exactly as the two astronauts had left it; only the dust had settled. But they could see a dark, curving slit, and knew that they could re-enter the subway by way of it.

  “Our handcar might even be where we abandoned it,” Bill suggested.

  “I wonder why Krador doesn’t have one or more of his fancy defensive illusions guarding this place.” Jeff remarked.

  Bill shrugged. “Maybe they don’t know about it. It’s a long way from here to the subway station where we found the entrance into the Below World. They might have thought we got rid of those guys who were chasing us somewhere else.”

  “They must not patrol the subway, at any rate,” Jeff said. “But then, I guess the whole thing is pretty well hidden, isn’t it?” He looked back over the desert. “And this once New York City. By all that’s holy, Bill! What happened?”

  “Beats me,” the blond astronaut said. “But what’s happening down there, right now, that’s what interests me more.”

  He started down the slope, his feet disturbing more loose dirt and gravel and cascading it down into the depression. Silently, Jeff followed Bill. They slipped and clattered their way to the bottom, then climbed over the debris of the fallen roof and into the dimness of the tunnel beyond.

  “Listen,” Bill advised cautiously as they let their eyes adjust to the semi-darkness.

  There was no sound, only an occasional plop! as a dislodged stone from the cave-in fell into a new position.

  “Nothing,” Jeff said. He pointed along the rusty tracks. “The handcar is where we left it.”

  “So is that!”

  Jeff looked to where Bill pointed, and saw the edge of a blue robe under the pile of fallen rock and broken concrete. A corpse.

  “Nothing we can do for him,” Jeff said as he started toward the handcar. “Some of the torches we made are still on it,” he added with some delight.

  Climbing onto the handcar—they had repaired it when they first discovered the ruins of New York—the two men started pumping. The car began to move. Slowly, then faster and faster, squeaking and groaning, the vehicle moved down the tracks into the darkness of a ruined tunnel probably two thousand years old.

  * * *

  The lava ate away at the rock, every second adding more fuel to its fires. The arrow of the needle on the indicator was well into the red “Danger” zone, and Krador looked at it with bitter eyes.

  “Soon the pressure will be so great that lava will be eating into the rock walls of the reactor room.”

  Judy’s voice was flat, but her words were loyal. “They will come. I know it.”

  Krador took his eyes from the television picture that the special armored cameras were bringing to them. He studied Judy’s face.

  “Only if their concern for you is stronger than their suspicion of me, Oosa.”

  Judy was silent, her eyes troubled. But her spirit was strong.

  * * *

  The torchlight trembled and cast shaky shadows over the stained and cracked walls of the subway tunnel. The handcar creaked and groaned, but made swift progress along the rusted rails. Bill now remembered the illusionary obstacles Krador had put in their way when they were trying to escape with Judy. The man must have tremendous powers, he thought. He took Judy away from us by some strange means, scientific or… or mental. And he guides the Underdwellers in their mysterious actions down here, below the surface. Hidden from the Ape World for God only knows how long, these people must have developed peculiarly, perhaps mutated by radiation or maybe even by biological warfare. They have a whole, hidden civilization, a counter-civilization to the ape society. But they are vulnerable, Bill mused, in so many ways… And so paranoid!

  “Bill!” Jeff was peering into the darkness ahead, holding a torch high as they pumped.

  “What is it? Do you see some illusion Krador has set up—something like that fake hole we thought we were going to fall into?”

  “No, I think I see a little light. It may be the station. We better slow down.”

  They eased off, and in a few moments Bill, too, could see the dim light that marked the subway station. They let the handcar coast to a halt in the darkness of the tunnel. As the two men eased quietly off the handcar, Jeff put out the torch in a spill of dirt beside a crack in the subway wall.

  Ahead of them they saw the buckled and tilted cars of the wrecked, skeleton-filled subway train, and approached cautiously, every sense alert. Bill climbed up onto the subway platform, searching through the dimness toward the ruined subway entrance beyond. He saw no one and gestured for Jeff to join him.

  The black astronaut looked critically at the rusted hulks of the ruined cars, suspicious of hidden Underdweller snipers. But he saw nothing, and the two men turned their attention to the hidden door, which they had first seen two blue-robed Underdwellers open by a secret switch.

  Bill glanced at Jeff. “Ready?”

  Jeff nodded, and the white astronaut reached up to touch a certain stained tile in the crumbling tile wall of the station. At once, a large section, ragged-edged and irregular, snapped back a few inches, then slid whiningly to one side. Beyond was a chamber crudely cut in the living rock and dimly lit by a single red light.

  The two astronauts stepped through the door, which closed behind them a moment later. Following the familiar trail, one they had discovered on their earlier visit to the Below World, Bill and Jeff crossed the room and opened the inner door, stepping through it onto the platform that looked out over a huge cavern that was artificially cut into the bedrock of New York City. A narrow catwalk crossed the cavern to an elevator shaft that led to the floor below.

  Bill and Jeff stepped to the railing of the walkway and inspected the huge chamber carefully. The transformers, generators, and other machines that they could not identify covered the level floor of the vast room. On several levels, blue-clad figures walked about or stood at control panels. The solar disk, the one Judy had wrecked to obtain their freedom from the cell with the force-field door in which Krador had imprisoned them, had been repaired; it stood near the mysterious egg-shaped control chair. The disk was a miniature of the incredibly huge solar reflector that brought the benefits of free sun power to the Below World, the big disk that had enabled Bill and Jeff to find their way into the secret Underdweller world.

  “Everything looks calm enough,” Jeff said softly.

  Bill shrugged. “Well, let’s go find Judy.”

  Cross
ing the catwalk, they called up the elevator cage. Both men felt a little trapped once they had entered the cage, but their trip down to the main floor was simple, swift and uneventful. No one seemed to notice them; everyone appeared to be too busy.

  Conspicuous in their trim-fitting spare spacesuits, Bill and Jeff crossed the main floor to the door to the corridors into the Below World. Jeff saw one of the Underdwellers look right at them, but no alarm was given, nor was there any look of anger or hostility.

  “So far so good,” Bill said.

  “Said the spider to the fly…” Jeff added.

  * * *

  The speaker on the wall of Krador’s study beeped, and the elegantly robed man flicked the switch with a bony finger.

  “Yes?”

  “Oosa’s friends have arrived, Krador. They await you in the Planning Chamber.”

  “Very well.”

  Krador gazed over at Judy and saw a very faint smile on her face, but he kept his own expression impassive and no observer could have been certain of his emotions.

  “Come,” he said, and pressed a control that made the door slide back noiselessly.

  Judy followed the Underdweller leader through the rock hallways of the Below World. Their robes swished as they strode along, and other robed figures they encountered stepped aside respectfully to allow them to pass.

  Outside the Planning Chamber, Krador pressed a stud and the large door slid quietly to the side.

  “Judy!” Jeff’s voice boomed out in the room. He took several quick steps to her.

  “Wait!” Bill said. He stepped close and looked at Judy critically. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Judy smiled and nodded. “I am now.” She gave Krador a quick look. “He hasn’t—well, he doesn’t keep me under, now.”

  “Thank God!” Jeff said. “We were so worried about you that—”

  “There is no time for sentimentality.” Krador’s voice cut through the conversation sharply and the three astronauts looked at him in surprise. Krador was glaring at them. “Where is the special tool Oosa spoke of?”

  Jeff straightened and looked hard at Krador. “In a safe place, Krador. Before you get it, tell us why you need it.”

  Krador’s face darkened with anger. “Fools! Your distrust may cost us very dearly.”

  “Now, just a minute, Krador,” said Bill. “The last time we met, it wasn’t exactly a love fest. Your bunch of killers tried to zap us in the subway! Why wouldn’t we distrust you?”

  Judy’s voice was urgent as she addressed the one-time commander of the Venturer. “Bill, you must listen to him.”

  Bill gave her a searching look, then nodded brusquely to Krador. “Okay, give us the bad news.”

  The Underdweller’s eyes were shadowed, but his voice was strong and harsh with determination. “The entire civilization of the Underdwellers is threatened.”

  “What do you mean?” Bill asked.

  Krador raised his hand and pointed at one of the smooth plastic walls of the Planning Chamber. “Look.”

  A beam of light sprang from each of his eyes, and the astronauts reacted, jumping back—for all their previous experience with such light beams had been severely threatening. It was the beams from Krador’s eyes that had first struck down Bill and Jeff; and it was those beams of exploding light, from other Underdwellers, that had collapsed the subway tunnel, almost killing the two.

  But the light-beams were quite benign this time. As Krador flashed his light over the wall, the flat surface seemed to melt. The three astronauts could see what appeared to be a three-dimensional “model” of the entire Underdweller complex, from the mountains above to the myriad passages and the vast cavern containing the Chair of Power; and from the huge solar disk that could go up into the desert air and bring down almost unlimited power from the Sun to many other rooms. At the very bottom was a cavern that housed the reactor. Krador now caused the light to dim over all the complex “model” except the area of the nuclear reactor.

  The leader spoke, his voice impatient as he brought Bill and Jeff up-to-date. “We chose this place for our central complex because of the many natural caverns. We expanded and altered some, drilled new passages, created a whole new world. We placed our first power source—the nuclear reactor—at the bottom level. As you know, after we had built the main solar power generator, this reactor was kept active as a backup power plant, for emergencies and for certain experimentation.”

  A red glow began to grow in the area underneath the deepest portion of the Below World. A line of red was beginning to rise toward the Underdweller caverns. It had meandered and changed course, but had risen steadily until it was almost touching the reactor room.

  “There was a volcano far off,” Krador continued. “It created this complex of caverns to begin with. It was thought to be long extinct—”

  “Only it came to life…” Jeff broke in briefly, studying the red finger of lava.

  “That burning river of molten rock rose through an ancient flue, a passage made by gases when the volcano was active. But the main vent for that gas passage is now blocked, aboveground. So the lava has begun to flood our caverns. It eats the rock away…”

  Bill and Jeff watched the spot where the red glow reached the top of the flue, pressed against the blockage, then sought other outlets. It had begun to eat its way toward the reactor room.

  “You can see the problem,” Krador said. “If the lava eats its way through the floor of the reactor room, the whole thing will explode.”

  “Close it down!” Bill exclaimed. “Move the radioactive material away from there!”

  Krador nodded. “We are doing that. But you cannot turn off a reactor like a light bulb. It takes time. It takes much care. It must be done properly—or you will have the explosion you sought to avoid.”

  “But—”Bill began.

  “We don’t have time, you see. The new lava flow was not detected until less than two days ago. We were not even certain then that it would be going in the direction it did until last night. The flow was then quickly diverted into some empty caverns by exploding some rather thin walls. But the rate of flow has increased. The caverns are filled—and we have lost our lead!”

  The Underdweller leader seemed to age before their eyes. “If—if that lava explodes the reactor, it might—just might—set off a chain reaction that could mean the end of the entire planet.”

  Bill and Jeff exchanged grim looks. “Why do you need us?” Bill asked. “We’re astronauts, not geologists.”

  “You have a laser drill. It was made—I understand from Oosa—to cut through rocks. We have nothing precisely like it, nothing so powerful. But if your laser can cut a new path through the rock—a path that will allow the lava to escape—” Krador stopped, then straightened his back. “Our civilization is in your hands.”’

  Again, the astronauts exchanged looks. Then Bill turned back to Krador. “No, Krador. It is in your hands!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A simple bargain.” Bill stepped toward the Underdweller leader. “If we succeed, you will allow Judy to leave with us.”

  “And none of your sneaky tricks of pulling her back, as you did the last time!” Jeff added.

  Krador looked stunned. His eyes went to Judy. “Oosa… leave? But the prophecy that Oosa would someday lead us back to our rightful place above…” His voice faltered and the picture on the wall died.

  Jeff stepped between Judy and Krador. “If that reactor goes, you won’t have anybody to lead anywhere.”

  The Underdweller hesitated, his face twisted with a rising emotion. His nostrils flared and his voice stormed. “No!” He threw up his arm in a defiant gesture. “I will not release her! Even if you save us, without Oosa my people have no hope!”

  Bill Hudson shook his head. “Krador, you are the most stubborn—”

  “Wait!”

  Judy stepped around Jeff, her blue eyes going from, one astronaut to the other, her expression one of pleading. Then she tur
ned to the Below World leader.

  “Krador, if you let me go free, I promise I will return when you need me.”

  “Judy, you don’t know what they have in—”

  “Bill, I must do it this way. Krador, it’s the only way… if you trust me.”

  The three former astronauts watched as emotions chased each other across Krador’s harsh face. He pondered the question with heavy frustrations showing, then finally burst into speech.

  “All right!” He drew himself up slowly. “Very well. You will be free to go. But, now—hurry!”

  Krador’s finger pointed at the wall as the beams of light emanated from his eyes. Bill and Jeff looked “through” the wall and saw into Krador’s television room; the arrow of the monitor was quivering well into the red of the “Danger” zone.

  “Even now, it is almost too late.” Krador’s voice was hollow, tinged with the gloom of defeat.

  Bill tugged at Jeff’s arm as they started toward the door. “Come on, partner. We’ll have the laser back here in no time!”

  * * *

  The gorilla patrol came to a halt and no one moved until the cloud of dust had settled. Then the gorillas, stiff with hours of riding over rough ground, got out to stretch.

  “Sergeant, sir, how long will our rest stop last? When do we depart again?”

  The black-furred sergeant looked up from his map, his frown pinning the soldier. “Mungwort, when in the name of Kerchak are you going to learn to talk like everyone else?” His gruff voice savagely mimicked the uncomfortable private: “Ser-geant, when do we depart again…?” The burly gorilla noncom snorted. “Great sniveling humanoids! In rawther less than fifteen minutes,” he drawled. “Get out of my sight, Mungwort!”

  Mungwort shuffled away, sullen and resentful. Why does Sergeant Brutar always pick on me? he wondered. Just because I’m one-fourth chimpanzee is no reason to act as though I’m a humanoid or something. I can’t help it, can I?

  The disconsolate private looked around, then padded toward a nearby pile of rocks. Maybe I can squat down there, out of sight, and have a little peace for once, he thought glumly.