Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4

by William Arrow

  The Elder did not enter the room, but continued to stand in the doorway, an impatient figure with his hand still on the knob.

  “Doctor Zaius… uh…” Cornelius seemed to be searching for words.

  Zaius made an impatient face. “Be quick about it, Cornelius. I’m in the middle of an important meeting.”

  Cornelius gulped, gave Zira a quick look, then plunged ahead. “Two things, Doctor Zaius. We heard General Urko has cornered Blue-Eyes.”

  Zaius nodded. “That is correct. I have been in radio contact. It seems your Blue-Eyes caused a great deal of damage at the general’s camp. But I just received a message that a patrol has discovered what may be a secret entrance to the Below World. A sergeant happened to see two humanoids disappear into the ground. Urko and his whole force are on the way there now. He says it will only be a matter of hours,” Doctor Zaius added. “If the humanoids don’t come out, he will start a barrage, and then attack in force.”

  Zira’s hands fluttered again. “That—that means you will vote to give the money to the army?”

  Zaius nodded.

  “But you mustn’t do that, Doctor Zaius! Scientific research can bring great advances to the ape world!”

  The orangutan leader nodded, his orange fur quivering. “That is true, my dear Zira, but I made a bargain with Urko… and I am an ape of my word.”

  “But—” Cornelius was making his mouth move, but nothing came out.

  Zaius gave them both impatient looks. “What else? Come on! Quickly!”

  “Sir—uh, well, sir—we recommend…” Cornelius gave, his wife another pleading look, but she glared back at him to get on with it. “Sir, from a scientific point of view… well, the escaped humanoid must be preserved for study…”

  As he wound down, Zira stood up and spoke quickly. “It would also give us an opportunity to prove that perhaps he did not talk. What sentry heard was probably Cornelius and me, not Blue-Eyes. He simply thought it was Blue-Eyes.” She smiled nervously. “You know how simple some of these gorillas are, doctor.”

  Cornelius quickly nodded agreement. “Yes, that’s probably it. We sometimes use coaxing tones or cute little voices to try and persuade humanoids to do things, you know, Doctor Zaius. They are so shy, these simple humanoids. So bullied by the gorillas that they are almost imbeciles sometimes. We have to coax them. Perhaps it was one of these voices that the guard heard…”

  Dr. Zaius looked at them solemnly from under his pale, bushy eyebrows. Sighing, he said, “General Ukro is on the scene. It is up to him.”

  Zira took a step toward Zaius, her trembling hand out. “But, Doctor Zaius, you can’t let Urko harm Blue-Eyes. He means so much to us—”

  “Zira!” Cornelius interrupted her with a sharp tone.

  Zira looked at him, her face both angry and almost tearful. “No, Cornelius. It’s true!” She turned again to the orangutan Elder. “Doctor Zaius, stop Urko! Please? Help Blue-Eyes!…”

  The eyes of Zaius were troubled, but his voice was forceful—and tinged with anger. “I will pretend I heard none of this.” He raised a finger. “But let me warn you: to involve yourself with that talking humanoid can only bring trouble.” He turned, his voice quivering with suppressed emotion. “The matter is closed!”

  He slammed the door and Zira sat down abruptly. Cornelius went to his trembling, quietly sobbing wife and put out an arm around her.

  “Oh, Cornelius… What do we do now?”

  Her husband had no easy answers.

  * * *

  The platform was crude, simply a door ripped from its hinges and suspended by ropes from each corner, which joined to form a pyramid a few feet overhead. Bill and Jeff guided it through the irregular laser-cut hole they had made in the floor.

  “Get it level,” muttered Jeff.

  Bill looked back and saw the line of blue-robed Underdwellers reeling it out from the railinged walkway above. “Ready?” he asked.

  The foremost figure nodded.

  Judy stepped closer and started to say something, but Bill waved her back. “Watch out, Judy! That room below is filled with lava and fumes.”

  Bill nodded to Jeff, who slithered over the edge of the hole, and, holding onto the ropes, landed on the platform. He held up his arms and Bill handed him the laser. Then the blond astronaut gave Judy a quick grin, made a slight salute to the impassive Krador, and went down the ropes himself.

  “Watch where the ropes go over the edge,” he yelled up to Judy and Krador. “Don’t let them fray!” Then he disappeared below the floor. Judy checked to make certain the line of Underdwellers holding the rope was strong enough. The rope was taut but they seemed to be holding it without much trouble.

  “All right,” came Bill’s voice from below. “Lower away!”

  Judy made a gesture and the blue-roped line of human counterweights began letting out the rope.

  “Okay, Bill?” she shouted.

  “So far so good!”

  Below, on the jury-rigged platform, Bill and Jeff were swaying over a bubbling sheet of fresh lava. Only the reactor still showed above the molten rock. Every piece of equipment, and every cabinet and workbench, had been burned or dissolved by the searing heat. The hot air—rushing up to escape through the hole—was almost a wind. The stench was nauseating, and the heat had both astronauts dripping in seconds.

  “Lower us some more!” Bill yelled up.

  The rope scraped on the rough edge of the hole above and the crude cage jerked down a few feet.

  Bill and Jeff clung to the ropes and Bill shouted up, “Okay! Hold it!”

  They then heard Judy repeat the order, and the cage stopped, swaying slightly and rotating very slowly.

  “Do I ever wish we had a way to keep it from turning,” Jeff grumbled.

  “No time,” Bill said. He pointed at the far wall. “That’s the spot. Think you can keep it on target with this thing moving as it is.”

  “I’ll try to compensate. The red light of the laser beam itself will help. I just hope there’s enough power.”

  Bill nodded in agreement. “Okay! Fire away! And good luck.”

  Jeff aimed the laser carefully, bracing himself with his legs and with his free arm wrapped around a guy rope.

  “Better steady me,” he told Bill, then coughed. “Man, it stinks in here! Never smelled anything like it!”

  Bill held on tightly to the other rope, and hooked a hand under Jeff’s arm to steady him.

  “Let her rip,” he called to Jeff.

  The black took aim again, then pressed the firing stud. The ruby-red-beam flashed out across the cavern with the speed of light. The flash was followed by an explosion on the far wall. Chunks of rock broke loose and fell into the lava just below, splashing and causing sparks.

  “A little farther down?” Bill suggested, and Jeff aimed slightly lower, cutting into the edge of the lava itself, which exploded, splashing wildly bubbling molten rock. The beam continued to cut into the rock, but the lava flowed into the hole and exploded in a series of fiery splashes.

  “I was wrong,” Bill shouted over the noise. “You’ll have to cut just above, until we get the hole all the way through, then cut a channel into it for the lava to flow through!”

  Jeff nodded and raised his sights. The rock sizzled and popped, and smoke and steam billowed out to join the poisonous vapors in the big, cloudy cavern. The powerful laser cut swiftly, and Jeff rotated it constantly to enlarge the passage.

  “It’s going to work!” Bill shouted.

  * * *

  “Do you hear that?” Judy said to Krador. “It’s going to work.”

  “But is it going to work fast enough?”

  Krador stood unimpressed, staring into the portable television receiver that had just been brought to him. The armored cameras within the reactor room had difficulty piercing the billowing steam and smoke, but he could see the lava eating away at the rock base of the reactor.

  Even as they watched, a portion of the base collapsed and the reactor
tilted slightly, with an accompaniment of metallic screams and ripping supports.

  Judy gasped. “The lava—it’s melting the base!”

  * * *

  Urko was scanning the cliffside with his binoculars, his face set in an angry grimace.

  Captain Mulla, on the ground by the jeep, spoke up. “Any sign of him, general?”

  Urko lowered the binoculars and scowled fiercely at the high cliff. “Not yet. But be patient. We’ll have Blue-Eyes soon enough. Are all the guns trained on that spot at the top of the cliff where Sergeant Tuka reported seeing two humanoids sink into the rock?”

  “Yes, sir. We sent a patrol up and they verified the spot. Very ingenious, these Underdwellers!”

  Urko glared down at his aide. “You sound like a sympathizer, captain.”

  “Oh, no, sir. Not me. But it never hurts to know just how good your enemy is. Does it, sir? I mean, that’s something I learned from you, sir.”

  The general grunted and raised the field glasses again. “Be patient, captain. We’ll have him soon. One way or another.”

  * * *

  Bill was wiping Jeff’s forehead with a piece of cloth. Sweat streamed down the foreheads and into the eyes of both men and Jeff was almost firing blind.

  “Stop for a second,” Bill said. “Let some of the smoke clear out of here. You could be wasting power.”

  Jeff shook his head. “No. I think we’re almost through. Notice how the smoke changed its color and smell a little bit ago. I think that means we’re through the harder rock. The softer rock ought to be easier.”

  Bill shrugged. The room was a furnace. It was so hot that he was mildly amazed their clothing didn’t burst into flame. Their skin was parched and burning. Judy had lowered to them a container of water, but neither man took the time to stop and drink.

  “Look!” Bill shouted. A faint beam of white light filtered into the red glow of the reactor room. Jeff circled the laser a bit and the beam became brighter.

  “That’s it, Jeff! You’ve cut through!”

  “Now I’ve got to make that hole big enough to do some good.”

  Bill glanced down at the floor. The lava was rising slowly, but steadily. The molten rock was almost level with the base upon which the reactor rested. In moments, it could flow onto the base and start melting away the sturdy steel supports. And soon after that, it would be all over…

  “Hurry!” Bill urged.

  The red beam continued to cut into the rock.

  After a few seconds Jeff yelled, “There, I think that does it. Now I’ll just cut down from the opening, and let the lava—”

  The laser beam died.

  “Bill! The laser—We’re out of power!”

  “Try it again!” Bill suggested in desperation.

  “I am! It—it’s dead!”

  Bill stared at the molten material, and at the opening Jeff had cut above it, through to the outside. “Only a few seconds more, and we’d have—”

  “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!” Jeff broke in. He shouted up at the crew holding the rope. “Pull us up! Fast!”

  “There’s no use,” Bill said hopelessly. “The explosion will get us all, anyway.”

  “Maybe not,” Jeff grunted as the swaying platform drew up.

  “We failed,” Bill groaned miserably as they were drawn up through the hole above.

  Jeff scrambled out, tossing the laser to the side, then reached back for Bill.

  “You couldn’t do it…?” Judy asked, her brow furrowed.

  Bill shook his head. He gestured to the men holding the rope. “Let go!”

  They did, and the platform dropped. The rope whipped across the rock floor and disappeared. On the television screen they saw the platform burst into flames, disappearing almost at once.

  “Oh!” Judy gasped, terribly frightened.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Bill told Judy helplessly.

  Krador’s fierce eyes turned to the television screen. The lava was still rising…

  * * *

  “General! Look!” One of Urko’s junior officers was pointing at the cliff some distance below the spot at the top where all the guns were trained. “Smoke! Halfway down the cliff!”

  Urko swiveled, jerking his field glasses to his eyes. His lips parted and the sun flashed on his tusks.

  “They must have built a campfire, the fools!” The gorilla commander laughed—a harsh, guttural explosion. “Tell the men to stand by! Mulla, order the artillery to zero in on that smoke!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The black-furred gorilla growled from deep within his massive chest. “Now!” he said in a low voice, “now, humanoid…!”

  * * *

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” Judy asked plaintively.

  Jeff and Bill exchanged desperate looks. “Not without that other power cell,” Jeff said.

  Krador sighed as the three astronauts crowded closer to look into the television screen. The leader of the Underdwellers pointed. The lava was bubbling at the foundation beams of the reactor.

  “Nothing can save us now,” he said. “We couldn’t even run fast enough.”

  * * *

  “Artillery ready, sir!”

  Urko’s mouth twisted in a grim smile. He took a deep breath. “Fire!”

  His growled order echoed across the line of cannons, and gorilla hands yanked at the lanyards of six artillery pieces.

  Cannon muzzles flared, too, and the combined sound deafened everyone in the vicinity. Urko’s binoculars were focused on the wisp of smoke along the cliff side. His deepset eyes flared as the explosions struck at it in a series of flashes, to produce great eruptions of dirt and rock. The sound of the explosions came rolling back to the ape forces before the dust cleared, but Urko was already relaying more orders to his cannoneers.

  “Down one, right two!”

  “Down one, right two!” was repeated.

  “Fire!”

  “Fire!” came the echo to the general’s command.

  The barrage crashed again, and in Urko’s binocular field the line of explosions were across the spot where the smoke had been.

  “Prepare to fire again!”

  * * *

  “What was that?” Bill was staggering from the heaving earth beneath them.

  Krador’s voice was tense. “It must be an earthquake!”

  “Wait a minute,” Jeff said. “That’s no earthquake! That’s artillery!”

  “Artillery?” Krador gasped. “The gorillas have found us at last!”

  “Krador,” Bill snapped, “we have more urgent matters right below us!”

  * * *

  The dust was drifting away from a third series of explosions and Urko was peering intently into the drifting dust, his teeth bared in a fierce grin.

  “Direct hits, by Kerchak!” he gloated.

  Then his manner changed as he heard a rumbling deep behind the cliff. More smoke was issuing from the spot where the shells had hit—new smoke, billowing out.

  “What’s going on? Mulla, what do you think—?”

  The cliff exploded. Fragments of shattered boulders spewed forth with a sudden glow; then came a gushing of molten rock, flaming brightly and splashing as it cascaded down and along the desert floor. Soon a slower, thicker river of lava oozed relentlessly to form a stream of molten rock.

  “A river of flame!” Urko gasped, finding it hard to believe his eyes. “It’s a trick of the cursed Underdwellers!” he shouted, but his men didn’t believe him.

  Gorilla voices rang out.

  “A volcano!”

  “Run! Retreat!”

  “Look out! Let’s get out of here!”

  “The earth’s exploding!”

  Urko raged at his men, but they threw down their rifles and deserted their cannons. “You fools! It’s a trick! Come back or I’ll have you all shot!”

  Captain Mulla tugged at the sleeve of his commander. “Sir! General! General Urko. It’s not one of their illusions. It’
s real! Look!”

  The aide-de-camp pointed at the first vehicle in the line, the one closest to the lava. Exploded gobs of molten rock had fallen on it and parts of the truck were burning. As they watched, the truck’s gas tank exploded and sent flaming pieces of rent metal in every direction.

  Urko stared in disbelief.

  The first streams of lava reached the line of jeeps and their tires exploded. The lava flowed under them, one lurched and fell into the red stream. Urko heard a sizzle, then another explosion as the jeep’s gas tank went; and finally the battered chassis of the truck settled into the river of fire and quickly disappeared.

  “General! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “An illusion—”

  “No, sir! It’s real! Sir!”

  Captain Mulla ran and jumped into the seat of the command vehicle; it had been vacated by a frightened driver. Slamming the jeep into gear, he started backing it up toward the general.

  Mulla jumped down and tugged at his commander’s arm. “General! It’s time to retreat!” ‘

  “Retreat! No, never retreat…!”

  Mulla sighed. His commander seemed dazed. He pulled at him again. “Then we’ll advance, sir!”

  “Advance…?”

  “In this direction, sir! Yes, sir, that’s it. This way! Hurry, sir!”

  The aide-de-camp pulled at Urko in desperation. The advancing fingers of the now quicker-flowing lava were almost upon them. The slower, thicker, and even more deadly lava was not far behind, engulfing rocks—dissolving them and absorbing them into its red-hot mass.

  Mulla pulled Urko away, in fact, just as the first hot finger touched the now stranded command jeep. A tire exploded and the jeep rocked. The lava flowed under and past it, dissolving the fallen vehicle into its relentless progress.

  Another explosion rang out as a ruined troop truck fell into the lava. As another wave of lava reached the cannons, the shells exploded, throwing gobbets of the molten rock high into the air. Cannon after cannon fell, melting slowly into the glowing stream. Another troop carrier tilted over, and a fear-frozen gorilla, who had been hiding in the back of the truck, was thrown screaming into the red-hot river. His screams ended abruptly, and then the troop carrier exploded.