“They’re coming,” Brent said.
Outside their cell, they could hear the thunderous united tramp of marching feet. The sudden rumble of movement and equipment moved Taylor faster than any warning could have. Quickly he lugged the corpse of the Negro to the base of the cell wall. Brent and Nova joined him there, flattening out along the ground, hugging the wall. Out of sight of the peephole in the door of the cell.
A helmeted gorilla face loomed there.
He couldn’t see Taylor, Brent and the girl, or the Negro lying directly below him out of his line of sight. The gorilla face winced briefly and then the black muzzle of a machine gun appeared, poking into the cell.
The weapon stuttered, erupted, blasted and raked the interior of the cell with lateral fire. The stench of cordite filled the room. Soon the firing ceased and the gorilla moved on, joining the tramping hordes in the corridor. Not until the sound of marching feet diminished did Taylor, Brent or Nova move.
“Wait,” cautioned Brent.
They didn’t know that Company A of the ape army had just trooped by their place of confinement.
The marching sounds faded into silence.
Taylor rose to his feet, picking up a club which lay in one corner of the cell. He used this now to batter away at the cell door, smashing it open with a burst of tremendous blows. Brent’s bandages were oozing blood. He was sweating and his face was gray with pain. Taylor hesitated, but peered down the corridor beyond the battered door. Then he looked at Brent. Brent looked at him. Each man in that instant recognized what the other had in mind. Nova stood, waiting eternally, as she always had to, with her men.
“Let’s go!” Brent snapped impatiently. “Let’s go!”
Taylor nodded, and let Brent push into the corridor. He took Nova’s hand and led her out.
The corridor was empty.
Taylor eyed Brent with fresh respect.
“You’ve got the same crazy thought I have, haven’t you?”
“Except, it’s not crazy,” Brent panted, the pain searing him. “If these—’people’—think they’re going to lose to the apes, they’ll explode the bomb. Which is the end of the ape, but also the end of everything else. The end of life. The end of the world. You told me that yourself.”
“I should do it alone,” Taylor said.
“Let’s double our chances.”
Taylor frowned. “I don’t know if you’re much use. You’re bleeding pretty good…”
“I’m all right!”
Before Taylor could answer that, a sound of gunfire hammered near them and they heard the hoarse screams of some gorilla soldiers. Taylor jumped. He had caught sight of three gorilla soldiers coming down the passageway. He backed quickly into the cell, pulling Nova with him. Too late. They had been seen. With a whoop of something akin to pleasure, the gorillas bounded forward, weapons upraised. Obviously, they had already had some casualties and this was a chance to even up a few scores. Grimly, Taylor and Brent, braced to meet the attack. Taylor had his club; Nova shrank into one comer of the cell.
The fight was brief and bloody.
Brent and Taylor, motivated by a tremendous fear and a desire for survival, swarmed over the gorilla trio. Taylor swung the heavy club with telling accuracy. But as the scuffle ensued and Brent chipped in as best he could, one of the gorilla rifles got off a random shot. Soon, however, his face a contorted mask, Taylor won the day. The club smashed out, battering gorilla heads and faces. Suddenly the corridor was a pile of inert soldiers. Taylor swayed, panting from the effort. And then he turned back to Nova and Brent, almost smiling.
The smile vanished.
Nova lay crumpled on the floor of the cell. Her slender, lithe body did not move. There was an ugly stain spreading over the pitiful rags that covered her left breast.
She was dead. The random shot had found her as truly as any marksman’s well-aimed bullet.
The face of Taylor crumpled. Strength fled from it. He moved to the girl, fell to his knees, cradling her still head in his lap. Brent stood by, helpless. The moment held, Taylor holding the girl, silently dying within himself. Then he stood up, his dirty, bronzed face flooded with an almost uncontrollable anger. Beyond the walls of the cell, the sounds of street combat echoed dimly.
“I should let them all die!” Taylor raged, his voice rising on a sob. “Not just the gorillas! Everyone! Every living thing! Us too! Look at how it all ends—! It’s time it was finished—finished!”
He clawed at the air, a monument of bitterness and frustration. His great body trembled.
“Come on, Taylor,” Brent spoke up, more strongly than before, trying not to think about Nova. About anything that had to do with love and gentleness. “Come on!”
He moved out of the cell, not looking back.
Not daring to recall.
Forgetting Nova and her mute, appealing goodness.
He knew that Taylor would follow him.
Taylor the man had to.
Taylor did.
But Taylor was remembering…
His brain was alive with images. Swirling, exploding pictures of the grand error which had begun with a space flight from Cape Kennedy. The disastrous flight, the time differential, the coming down into the smooth blue lake in the middle of nowhere. The death of the woman astronaut, shriveled like a mummy on landing. The planting of the small American flag in the middle of nowhere. The capture by the apes; the lobotomizing of one of the others. His own escape from Ape City with the help of a beautiful savage girl who had trusted him from the very beginning. Without words, without complaints. The sight of the Statue of Liberty poking from the sands, the wall of ice and losing the girl. Finding himself here in this underground civilization of mutants.
And Cornelius, Zira and Dr. Zaius.
And now Brent, a man from that same world that had vanished. Brent—almost the reflection of himself. What he had once been, at any rate.
And Nova…
Nova!
By God, he had loved her. More than any woman he ever knew back on the planet in the time when all men hoped for the best in order to avoid the worst.
His eyes hardened into flints. His tears dried up. This world, whatever it was, would have to pay for Nova!
B, C and D Company of the ape army had solved the various complexities of the many and different air tunnels leading into the center of the leaders’ domain. All companies, jubilant, armed and prepared for slaughter, moved in for the kill.
From convergent directions.
General Ursus’ militia was functioning like a well-oiled machine. Victory was in sight.
In the Corridor of Busts, Dr. Zaius stood staring at the impressive rows of sculpted heads depicting the Mendez Dynasty. His intelligent nostrils were curled in disgust. He looked down the row of busts on their plinths and saw where the Inquisition Room began. The door. The bust of Mendez I heightened Zaius’ distaste.
With Zaius was a gorilla sergeant, machine gun at the ready. Ursus had gone off somewhere, with bigger plans in his head. Zaius shivered, looking at the stone idols. “They’re obscene,” he muttered. The sergeant made no comment, but kept his eyes peeled, on the alert.
Zaius suddenly knocked Mendez I off his gleaming plinth. The bust crashed to the floor, shattering. Methodically, grimly, Dr. Zaius moved down the line, striking out, pushing, breaking. One by one, the stone history of the Mendez Dynasty broke apart in scattered, useless fragments. With great enthusiasm, Zaius finally reached the end of the stone line. Mendez XXVI. The last bust disintegrated on the floor in a shower of chips.
As it too smashed, a woman’s scream, muffled but agonizing, sounded from beyond the door of the Inquisition Room.
The sergeant brushed by Dr. Zaius, batted the wall button and plunged in. Zaius followed him, curious.
They found Albina.
She lay sprawled in her lovely blue robes in a curved chair before the wall screen. A small phial was clutched in her outstretched hand. Her lovely face, even in death, was as stunningly beautiful as ever. Zaius scooped up the phial, put it to his nose and sniffed. The sergeant could not take his eyes off the beauty of Albina nor the ample spill of her nearly bared breasts in the blue robes. She was still bewitching.
“She’s dead,” Zaius said, without inflection.
He turned away, leaving the sergeant to ogle Albina while he studied the strange room. The wall caught his interest…
When he turned back it was to see the sergeant’s hairy paw on Albina’s unmoving breast. The sergeant was greatly agitated, sexually stimulated. Zaius hid his disgust for all gorillas. Animals!
“Sergeant,” he said mildly.
The ape withdrew his hand.
Dr. Zaius continued to study the Inquisition Room.
There was a lot to be learned here.
He could see that, too.
* * *
The great double doors of the cathedral reverberated with the crescendo thud of an ape-wielded battering ram. General Ursus stood back as his armed troops broke down the mighty doors. In the cathedral square, ape companies had converged until they now totaled nearly three hundred strong. General Ursus was proud and happy. Victory was in the air.
The war was going well!
There had been an interesting diversion on the way to the cathedral. A bit of sport. For himself and his gorilla squads of highly efficient soldiers.
In the stone plaza outside the church, they had encountered three robed figures hurrying across the square. A huge fat man encased in scarlet robes, an elder-statesman type in brilliant green, and a tall, lean, hooded man. These had been, of course, the fat man, Caspay and the verger. General Ursus had not even bothered to halt them to ask questions. Rather, he had raised one authoritative paw and the machine gunners flanking him had done their specialty. A withering, blasting, raking crossfire of a thousand bullets which had seemed to pluck up the robed figures and send them skittering like puppets along the hard earth until the guns had closed down. General Ursus had never seen, in all his military past, such effectiveness of machine gun fire on mere flesh. The dull, bleak buildings bordering the plaza, with their curious starkness and contrasting moldiness and fresh stone architecture, had shown no signs of life. The streets and the alleys of this tomblike metropolis had been curiously empty.
Save for the three hurrying figures in robes.
General Ursus had not been disposed to take them prisoner to ask them questions. He somehow felt that the imposing edifice of the cathedral held all the answers he might need to know.
In any case, the machine gun exercise had been a necessary tactic for his troops. Lest their fingers grow stale from disuse.
Ursus hardly gave the bullet-riddled, blood-soaked corpses a second look as he trundled up to the mighty double doors at the head of his troops. He felt an imminent end to this war.
Genuine resistance had been virtually nil. These people, whatever they were, were certainly no warriors!
He had waited for Dr. Zaius to join him at this hour of ultimate conquest. Still smarting from the heroics of Zaius on the plain, before the whole of his Grand Army, Ursus was anxious to get some of his own back. And now was the time.
The great doors of the cathedral unhinged, broken open by the force of the ram. General Ursus and his troops piled through the new opening. Dr. Zaius accompanied them.
With nearly three hundred elite gorilla troops behind him, General Ursus stalked into the cathedral proudly. Mightily. The great dim hall lay in gloom. Only the half light of the prie-dieu on the high altar showed any illumination. Ursus moved toward this, his troops and Zaius following. Their feet made gobbling echoes in the gigantic nave.
There was only one man in the cathedral.
Mendez. The Twenty-Sixth.
Dr. Zaius recognized the glasslike, marble-like face.
The altar screens were closed behind Mendez. In his purple robes, Mendez awaited his conquerors.
Ursus and Zaius, flanked by gorilla machine gunners, stalked up the nave to a point midway where Ursus imperiously motioned for a halt. Mendez did not move. His face was impassive in the dim light.
“Arrest that—creature,” Ursus commanded the guards. “And bring it to me.”
The guards moved forward, machine guns leveled, reaching the sanctuary.
Behind the prie-dieu, Mendez pressed the emerald button on the panel board. It glowed green.
The altar screens parted noiselessly. The guards looked up, hesitating. And in the moment of their indecision, Mendez’s powerful voice filled the cathedral, echoing off the vaulted ceiling.
“This is the instrument of my God.”
The first guard recoiled, batting his eyes at his partner.
“He can speak!”
Mendez pressed the second button on the bejeweled panel. The topaz one. It glowed yellow.
General Ursus snorted, angry with the delay. He started forward, snarling, “Your God…!”
Spurred by his voice, the guards seized Mendez, attempting to drag him off the high altar. Zaius caught his breath in a gasp of wonderment. And new knowledge.
The Bomb was in view.
Resplendent, frightening, all mighty, its sinister fins and snoutlike nose magnificently awesome. It had begun to rise—very very slowly, in response to the mechanism triggered by the topaz button. And now, as it would have been obvious to Taylor and Brent, the Bomb was poising itself on a mammoth launching pad.
The steel sides of the monster glistened out over the cathedral. Mendez began to raise his own arms in genuflection and homage. General Ursus’ face twisted with sheer rage and hate.
“Your God didn’t save you, did he?” he snarled, motioning to the soldiers. Before Mendez could speak again, the guards has brutally knotted the purple robes about his defenseless throat, and with both of them vising from each side, had strangled him where he stood. It took only two minutes. Mendez flopped like a limp doll when they finally released him, falling to the floor of the high altar. Ursus laughed sardonically at the sight.
Then he snatched a machine gun from one of the guards and aimed it up at the Bomb. Directly at the glistening metallic body of the thing. Dr. Zaius moved quickly, speaking in a furious undertone. “Ursus, you fool! That’s a weapon built by Man…”
Ursus spat full in his face.
Zaius was heedless of that. He gestured at the Bomb suspended on the launching pad.
“You can’t shoot it down with a clip of bullets!”
Ursus sneered. He was a simple soldier. The Devil take Zaius and his intellectual claptrap! He tugged back the cocking handle of the machine gun with one black paw. His gimlet eyes were beady with joy.
“It’ll kill us all—” Zaius begged, trying to knock the gun aside. Ursus growled, pushed him aside, leveled the machine gun upward and fired. The cathedral rocked with the sounds of automatic fire. Ursus kept on firing until the machine gun closed down on an empty drum of cartridges. His face was angry again.
The impenetrable armor plating of the Bomb had deflected all the bullets of the bursting gunfire. Ricochets had whined and howled all over the nave. General Ursus flung the machine gun back to its owner. He brushed his paws together. His troops were still waiting, crowded behind him in this enemy cathedral.
“Well, if we can’t shoot it down, we’ll haul it down. Rope and tackle!” he bellowed in a voice used to giving commands and being obeyed. Zaius fell back gratefully. All was not yet lost.
Thirty soldiers came forward, put down their weapons and mounted the high, altar, making preparations to do as the General ordered. Thirty apes began to climb up the great golden brackets that supported the Bomb. They climbed agilely, quickly, efficiently.
As only apes can.
General Ursus waited, smiling.
Dr. Zaius could only-hope for the best.
At the dark end of the cathedral, behind the massed troops at the edge of the battered double doors, with the diversion of the activity on the high altar aiding their surreptitious entrance, Taylor and Brent crept into view.
Their faces were damp, strained and unearthly.
Their eyes could have belonged to madmen.
Far away in Ape City, the house of Zira and Cornelius had grown unaccountably colder. Cornelius checked the barometer on the kitchen wall. He frowned. Almost perfect for the season—then why was the place so drafty? It wasn’t at all logical.
Zira came in from the living room, her cute muzzle wrinkling.
“Well?” she asked, hugging her forearms.
Cornelius shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t be cold at all. Not for this time of year.”
Zira shuddered. Her tiny eyes sparkled.
“Maybe it’s an omen,” she laughed. “That things aren’t going so well for our glorious ape army.”
“Zira,” Cornelius said wearily.
“Oh, you!” she raged suddenly. “You’ll never do anything about anything, will you?”
Cornelius had nothing to say to that.
Nor did the house get any warmer as daylight waned.
No word had come, as yet, from the Forbidden Zone.