Planet of the Apes Omnibus 4 by William Arrow

Author:William Arrow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan

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The jeep slid to a stop in a cloud of dust and the two simians in the back seat jumped to their feet, different expressions on their faces. Dr. Zaius started to laugh, while General Urko looked out at the lagoon at the giant snake still snapping at the air, fifteen feet out of the water. Anger was plain on the general’s heavy features.

“Well, general,” said Zaius, still laughing, “there’s your Unidentified Flying Object! Scales, teeth, and all! And not a sign of a humanoid—talking or otherwise—anywhere.”

“The ship must have sunk when it landed…” Urko snarled. “They must have escaped…”

“General,” Zaius said, the laughter dying to a chuckle, but still with a bright twinkle in his eyes, “not even one of your soldiers—your personal guard, even—could survive in the lake with that monster. Much less a humanoid!”

“Well,” Urko asked, unwilling to give up, “what about that explosion just before we got here? What was that?”

“Just another Forbidden Zone illusion, Urko. No more, nor any less, impressive than any of the others we’ve seen since entering the Zone. And also no more significant.”

“We’ll search the area anyway,” Urko growled. “There must be some sign of them! Some, tracks! Something left behind…!”

Seeing that the apes’ attention was fixed on the lagoon and the monster, Bill, Jeff, and Nova crept away behind the low ridge, keeping down, out of sight of the soldiers who were beginning to line the hill bordering the lagoon, all of them watching the show going on out on the water. Five minutes of scrambling from rock to rock took the three out of sight of the ape forces, and they stopped to catch their breath.

“Well, we made it—so far!” Jeff whispered. “Although I thought for a minute back there that we’d had it!”

“You should have been in the cave!” Bill said wryly.

“No, thanks!”

“Well, we’ve burned our bridges now,” Bill said, turning and looking back toward the lake, now hidden by several rows of intervening hills.

“What do you mean?”

“No more ship. No way back home…” Bill said somewhat sadly.

“Even with the ship, there was no way back,” Jeff said with a similar hint of sadness in his voice. “We are home…”

“Well,” Bill sighed, looking across the arid wastes of the Forbidden Zone, “at least we salvaged our most important equipment.”

“And we’re still alive,” Jeff reminded him.

“And moving. Which we’d best be doing, unless we want to meet the apes again!”

The two men and Nova gathered up their load of salvaged possessions and started off again, away from the lake.

After about forty-five minutes’ walking, they spotted a lone truck in the distance—one that General Urko had left behind, at a narrow pass in the hills, to direct cargo trucks coming along behind the main expeditionary force. From where they crouched behind a rock fifty yards away, Bill and Jeff watched the truck for fifteen minutes, until they were certain it had only one soldier to guard it. No cargo trucks were approaching it from the road to Ape City.

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