Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4

by William Arrow

  Mungwort sighed. Soldiering was so dreary—the same thing day after day. Even this chase they were on for the past few days, hunting around for humanoids, was monotonous. Of course, that one time—when he found the strange firing device among the rocks in the Forbidden Zone—that time was glorious! But he was now certain he had never gotten credit for the discovery. If Trommo or Dubark or Kork had found it—or even my one gorilla friend, Pooka—they would have been given a medal! But not me, Mungwort mourned, not me! And merely because I have a few drops of chimpanzee blood in me. Just a few insignificant drops! And I really don’t even look that different from the other soldiers!

  Mungwort turned over restlessly, facing the river. Sometimes, he thought, I would simply like to float away—like that flotsam out there on the river—disappear downstream and never come back. I might, perchance, go to some far land to the south, or west, someplace that has not been explored yet. I can see myself tramping through the jungle and meeting some other great explorer, who has come from the opposite end of the planet. “Doctor Livvo, I presume,” I say as we meet. And he reaches out to shake my hand. We’ve charted a continent!

  Or, he sighed again, more deeply, perhaps in some foreign land I might meet a beautiful simian princess! An ape-enchantress with the softest fur and the nicest leathery lips. And she might believe me to be the greatest ape in the world! As Mother always told me, “Behind every successful ape there is a female ape.” Unless it might be more peaceful for me if I found a lost city with countless old books. I could sit around reading them, and listening to the birds make music among the ruins of ancient buildings.

  Like those pieces of wood floating on the river out there, my life would just go on peacefully undisturbed, and I wouldn’t ever have to concern myself about humanoids or General Urko or Sergeant Brutar…

  * * *

  Dripping wet, Bill pulled himself onto the fourth raft, and signaled to the others ahead. Then he slipped back into the water and swam ahead with swift, sure strokes to the first raft.

  “We slipped by them,” Jeff said as Bill arrived, “but if it hadn’t been night and if you hadn’t seen the reflection of their campfire…” The dark-skinned astronaut left the sentence unfinished.

  “Everyone will have to keep alert,” Bill said. “It’s the best we can do!”

  The rafts sailed down the murmuring river while Jeff and Bill debated traveling at night.

  “It’s risky, but then so is day sailing,” Bill said.

  “But rocks, rapids, sunken snags… And the next gorilla camp might have no fire to warn us, and a more alert guard.” Jeff was worried.

  Bill shrugged. “If we get too cautious, the ape forces might catch up, and then where are we…?”

  Jeff agreed. “Night sailing and day sailing are both evils, but night sailing is the lesser of the two, I suppose.”

  Bill grinned at his companion in the dark. “Okay, Philosopher First Class, for that you get the watch. Wake me after the moon is up!”

  Jeff climbed to the top of the pile of-baskets and skin bags. He cheeked to see that Judy, who was helmsman, hadn’t fallen asleep before he settled down. Now his dark eyes continuously scanned both sides of the river.

  Where are we going? he wondered. What’s going to happen to us, and to all the humanoids of this strange, strange new Earth…?

  The rafts drifted on, carried by the gurgle and swirl of the river, drifting into the unknown.

  * * *

  The small flotilla was still drifting south, but the current of the river had become sluggish. Even worse, the sun—in a cloudless sky—had begun to sear their bodies.

  Bill, Judy, and Jeff had found relief by diving off their raft from time to time; and after seeing that they came to no harm, the humanoids slipped off into the water, too, holding to the rafts’ edges and climbing quickly back aboard whenever they felt a passing fish tickle their feet.

  It was the afternoon after they had passed the gorilla camp, and Jeff sat limply by the rudder of the lead raft. “This river is certainly in low gear now!” he complained.

  “It’s spread out here. That’s why,” Bill explained. “And what worries me is that, if it spreads out even more—and gets shallower and shallower—we may be headed into a swamp!”

  “Oh, boy! Just what I wanted: bugs!” Jeff said without enthusiasm.

  “At least it’s easier than walking, and faster—though not much, now!” Bill commented. “But I’m beginning to be worried, Jeff… You remember the last time we came south—on foot—how we turned west, into the forest, after we’d passed over some ridges? I wonder if we’ve already passed the ridges—maybe sailed between them last night…”

  “I don’t think so. I was on the rudder after the moon went down, and I believe I’d have noticed the river meandering among those ridges,” Jeff assured him.

  But was Jeff certain…? Bill asked himself.

  * * *

  The quiet was broken only by the sudden, raucous laughter of hidden tropical birds. The water was very slow and the humanoids were propelling the raft along by sticking their poles into the black muck at the bottom and shoving.

  A green jungle now grew thick around them. Viney trees were decorated with brilliant flowers. Sometimes they saw snakes slithering along the tree limbs, or watching their passage with motionless stares. Once in a while a snake dropped into the water, holding on to a branch with his tail until most of his length was in the water, then letting go with a slight splash. The humanoids batted at those snakes that swam to their rafts, and no one went into the water to cool off anymore.

  Sometimes the travelers saw movement in the thick green bushes along the riverbank, but never actually saw what caused it. Jeff hoped it was jungle animals, and not hostile apes watching them.

  “This place is like the Amazon,” Bill said.

  “And only three days southwest of little old New York!” Jeff remarked lazily, without opening his eyes.

  Judy was at the helm. “Could we be near the old site of Washington? Or the Carolinas?”

  “Chesapeake Bay maybe,” Jeff answered. “But have things changed!”

  “A couple of thousand years can change a lot of places,” Bill said, shifting his position on the hard logs. “Ur and Babylon were in a lush country when they were founded. But three thousand years later, in our time, their country was desolate and dry.”

  “I wish we could find some term other than ‘in our time,’” Jeff broke in. “This is our time. This is when and where we are living, now!”

  Judy sighed. “Someday I’ll write a story about the whenabouts of Judy Franklin, Girl Astronaut.”

  Bill shoved himself erect. “Still the same ole jungle! I never thought the trip would be this difficult.” He struggled to his feet and took the pole from Jeff. “But there’s no turning back—not until we reach the end of this swamp and jungle. We wouldn’t stand a chance getting through this area on foot!”

  “Aye-aye, Captain Bligh, sir.”

  “Jungle rot has gotten to Jeff’s mind,” Judy said with a dry laugh.

  The female astronaut sighed, looking at the dark and spidery jungle around her. She appreciated Jeff and Bill’s attempts to keep her in good humor, but faintly resented being “protected.” Nevertheless, she also realized they were doing it to each other as well, this jollying-up process.

  But she did wonder, looking around her, if the jungle was going to continue forever.

  * * *

  The alligators came slithering noisily down the mud banks and plopped into the water. Jeff, at the rudder, shouted an alarm. Bill came out of a restless, sweaty sleep to grab at the laser drill. Judy stopped poling the raft at the alarm.

  “Are they heading for us?” Bill asked, blinking sleep from his eyes.

  “I think so! They disappeared underwater—No, look there! You can see their eyes!”

  Bill threw the laser to his shoulder and fired. The scarlet beam sliced into the head of the nearest alligator, killing it at once. Re
flexive muscle action caused the great reptile to thrash and flop for a moment, attracting the attention of other alligators close by. With a hissing sound they closed in for the kill, tearing great chunks of bloody meat from the scaley greenish corpse in seconds.

  Bill watched, laser at the ready, his feet braced. The raft drifted past the gators and Bill checked the rafts behind. The humanoids were crouched in fear and no one was poling!

  Bill shouted at them, but the rafts were slowing in the sluggish water and starting to drift out of line. The blond astronaut hoisted the laser and boiled water along the side of one raft. Steam, rose in a sudden cloud.

  “Get on the poles!” he ordered.

  Jeff was on his feet at the rudder, and Judy poled for all she was worth! Additional alligators flopped into the water from their sunny banks. Bill killed another one that came too close, slicing through its back and breaking the spine cleanly.

  But the rafts behind were still drifting.

  Bill grabbed a coil of rope and tossed it to Jeff. “See if you can get someone on the second raft to catch this!”

  The laser fired again and a third alligator died in a great, splashing fit. Then Bill heard a scream from the third raft and saw a child topple into the water. In seconds, two alligators were on the child, and although Bill killed them at long distance the child did not surface again.

  The death of the child seemed to galvanize the humanoids into action. They took up their poles and shoved frantically down into the muck of the swamp, and the rafts begin to move. Bill killed two more alligators and then they were past the nest of reptiles.

  “Oh, that poor child!” Judy said, coiling up the wet rope morosely.

  Neither Bill nor Jeff had anything to say.

  The rafts drifted on through the green swamp.

  * * *

  Because of the slow-moving water, the swampy jungle lasted another full day.

  The travelers were attacked by swarms of voracious insects, hit another gaggle of alligators, and finally ran into a flight of bats after sunset the next evening. They didn’t leave their rafts when they tied up that night, preferring to fight only bugs and an occasional water snake that slithered aboard, rather than face the creepy-crawlies and other nocturnal hunters on shore.

  They came out of the jungle into a wide savannah and saw some distance ahead of them high ramparts of rock, extending in ridges miles-long in each direction and broken only by a single cleft straight ahead.

  The water speeded up as it was confined to the narrow cut between the cliffs. The sides of the gorge rose steeply on both sides, with centuries of water-cut traces seen on the cliff faces. Only a little greenery grew along the edges of the river, in side pools and rock tanks.

  Judy eyed the canyon walls in amazement. “It’s really incredible! One moment we were in a jungle swamp that was thicker and nastier than I thought could have existed—certainly on America’s Eastern Seaboard—and the next we’re in a place where there’s not a solitary sign of animal life!”

  Just as Judy finished speaking, the river—moving ever more swiftly now—made a turn. Ahead was only a rock wall. The river was disappearing into a hole in that wall, moving underground to no-one-knew where!

  Acting as fast as their reflexes allowed them, the three astronauts poled their raft up against the right wall of the canyon, motioning to the other rafts behind them to do likewise. In another minute, the raft would have been swept into the deep, dark opening that loomed not more than one hundred yards beyond!

  Bill and Jeff reached up and caught a spur of rock and held tight to it, steadying the raft while Judy threw them one end of the raft’s, rope and then tossed the greater length of the rope to the second raft, now drifting past. The rope was, fortunately, long enough to reach the third and fourth rafts too, for, unable to stop themselves, they had sped by the astronauts’ craft.

  The four rafts were strung out—the fourth dangerously rocking—in a line. Only the rope, tied to the spur of rock by Jeff’s swift hands, had kept them from being swept on to an unspeakable doom!

  Slowly and cautiously—for the rope must not break!—the rafts’ supplies and human occupants gained a narrow ledge of rock below the spur.

  All, humans and humanoids alike, collapsed on the ledge. No one moved for some time.

  * * *

  Zira was pacing back and forth in the Behavioral Sciences Laboratory. She hugged herself with one arm, while the other jerked about spasmodically, Cornelius was trying to read a scientific journal, but his eyes kept flicking to the impatient, striding figure of his wife.

  Finally Zira spoke. “It will be a catastrophe for the humanoids if Urko’s army catches up with them…”

  Her voice trailed off and Cornelius, closing his periodical, walked over to his wife and put an arm around her.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do to help them, Cornelius? You’re so clever, dear, you can think of something, I’m sure.” Zira looked up at her husband, her nose wrinkling. “Doctor Zaius said he would grant us anything we wish. Maybe we can get him to call off General Urko’s attack. What do you think?”

  Cornelius shrugged. “It’s too late for that, Zira. Urko is already on the march!”

  “But—”

  “Besides, dear, things have gone pretty far, you know. I doubt whether Urko would even obey Zaius now. He must be very angry at the things Doctor Zaius said after the sky vehicle demonstration—and at his own failure. He will try to set things right, and the only means an ape like Urko knows to employ is force and more force! Besides, you and I have already done more for the humanoids than any other apes have ever done. You know that, dear.” He shook Zira slightly. “Isn’t that right?”

  She nodded weakly. Cornelius released his wife and stepped back.

  “The only thing we can do is hope that maybe the humanoids and our friends will get to New Valley before Urko and his army catches up with them!”

  * * *

  When, at last, he and Judy and Jeff had overcome the shock at their—and the humanoids’—narrow escape from death, Bill spoke.

  “Jeff, I believe that this series of rocky cliffs is much farther south than we came on our last journey south. We’ve—I’ve—miscalculated badly!”

  “I think we’ve gone too far, too,” Jeff replied. “But no apologies are necessary. We’ll just have to turn northwest from here—”

  Judy Franklin interrupted. “If we can ever get out of this canyon. I’m no mountain goat!”

  Jeff and Bill exchanged glances.

  “Though some of our humanoid friends may be,” Judy added. “They’ve lived in caves and climbed many an escarpment, I’d say. Why not ask one of them to help…?”

  One young humanoid was already searching the rock wall with experienced eyes. Bill and Jeff pantomimed to him that he should attempt to locate a way up—and out—of the gorge.

  Nearly an hour later, the young man eased himself down the canyon wall and pointed skyward. The astronauts and humanoids, backpacking their carefully hoarded supplies, began slowly to follow the young cavedweller’s lead.

  Up and up they climbed, picking their way along a snaking trail only as wide, in many places, as one of their feet. The rope from the raft joined, by a simple twist, one climber to the next. Once or twice, however, one of them almost lost his footing; and it was more than an hour before the group reached the top of the gorge.

  “Wow!” Judy exclaimed. “Look how far we’ve climbed! The rafts must be no bigger, to us, now than Trisquit squares!”

  “Don’t look now, Judy,” Jeff teased, “but the rafts are long gone—swallowed up in that black hole we would have fallen into ourselves if luck hadn’t been on our side!”

  A sudden exclamation from Bill made Jeff’s and Judy’s heads turn forward again, in his direction.

  “Damnation!” Bill shouted again as the other two astronauts, followed by the humanoids next in line, reached him. “The cliff is just as high—and just as steep—on this side. And, worse luck,
a landslide has evidently wiped out the trail downward. Unless—”

  “Yes,” Jeff interrupted, “I just had the same idea. Unless we use the laser to cut us a trail down!”

  “Let me try my hand at it this time, Jeff,” Bill suggested, and the black astronaut handed over the heavy drill.

  Bill spent a minute or two carefully checking the power levels. Then: “Okay, then. Here goes!” he said, aiming, the laser and starting to slice a new trail into the side of the cliff.

  His first cut exploded rock out into the broad canyon below, and it fell in a rattle and roar. Bill kept slicing in steady, short bursts to outline a trail on which they might have adequate footing on their descent.

  Hot rock showered and slid noisily for nearly a half-hour, until Bill was certain he had cut a safe path for his troop.

  At length, as he thumbed on the safety and set the laser down, he said: “Let’s give the molten rock that’s run down onto the trail a chance to cool a bit. Then we can go on.”

  “This is one hot country we’re in now,” Jeff remarked as he sat down to wait.

  Judy squinted up at the blistering sun. “And getting hotter,” she muttered. “You’d think we were at the Equator.” A sudden thought brought Judy’s head back around to her two friends. “You don’t think that’s what happened, do you? That the earth tipped its orbit? By some fantastic explosion, or an atomic war, or something…?”

  Bill shook his head. “I don’t know. It seems unlikely. There is a theory that the Earth changes its magnetic field from time to time, but that hasn’t been proven. There’s another theory that says the Earth changed the angle of its axis one or more times in the past. But again, there is no way to prove it or disprove it.”

  “Wouldn’t this heat—?” Judy started to ask.

  “We don’t really even know what time of year it is,” Bill went on. “New York used to get pretty hot in the summer, remember?”