Beneath The Planet Of The Apes (16 page)

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. Uysus 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 nuzzle 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.

The attention of the cathedral was solely on the act being performed on the bomb. Zaius, Ursus and the others were all intent on the ape soldiers clambering aloft, scrambling all over the steel sides of the monster. A network of ropes had been slung around the weapon so that the apes could now haul at the rising Bomb. With great strength and celerity, the soldiers tugged at the ropes. The Bomb stopped.

Ursus smiled triumphantly at Zaius.

“Well done!” he bellowed to his troops.

Now the Bomb, still carrying the clinging, climbing apes, was pulled down to the ground. It lay dormant, off the launching pad. Zaius almost shrugged. Yet, he was still worried.

At the rear of the gloom-shrouded cathedral, Brent moved painfully down the left side of the aisle, making full use of the cathedral’s architectural covering. The pillars, the posts. His hand was pressed to his side to hold back the sharp agony knifing him. Parallel to him, across the aisle on the right, Taylor’s big body moved from pillar to pillar, keeping pace with him.

Brent had taken a heavy pistol from one of the guards in the cell fight, as had Taylor. A pitiful armament against General Ursus and his legions but at least something . . .

The keen eye of Dr. Zaius spotted a flashing movement behind one of the pillars on the left. The doctor whirled, his eyes-roving. He saw Brent, staggering, lurching to cover.

“Ursus!” Zaius shouted in alarm. “Behind the pillar!”

The General had rearmed himself with the rifle of one of his climbing troops. His reflexes were lightning-like. Spinning, his eyes finding what Dr. Zaius had seen, he fired. The blast of the gun rose like thunder in the arched cathedral.

Brent went down, clattering to the floor with a muted blurt of pain. As he tried to rise, Ursus fired again. Brent lay there in the darkened aisle, waves of nausea and agony closing over him. He moaned. A whimper. The Bomb, unnoticed in the excitement, had separated into two closely adjacent sections. In falling down, it had divided. Part of the steel casing began to glow strangely. But Ursus and several of his apes had come down off the high altar, circling, moving in on Brent.

Across the aisle, his lungs bursting, Taylor sprang toward the dais, on which stood Dr. Zaius, the Bomb and the dangling apes behind him.

“Zaius!” Taylor yelled.

Zaius saw him, recognized him. The orangutan face split in a shock of surprise. He recoiled as if Taylor were a leper.

“You!” he gasped.

“It’s Doomsday, Zaius.” Taylor spoke bitterly from the depths of the front row of pews. “The end of the world. Can’t you understand? For God’s sake, help me . . .”

“Stay away from me,” Zaius said, backing away, looking for the armed support behind him.

“You damned animal!” Taylor thundered.

He started to bring up his gun, coming on to the high altar, reaching up to the
prie-dieu.
Zaius scuttled forward. “Don’t touch that,” he warned. Frantically, he signaled the guards.

“Help me,” Taylor pleaded. “Help me.” His eyes, in the dim light, shone like stars. Zaius shook his head.

“You asked me to help you. Man is evil—capable of nothing but destruction.”

Worn, spent, bleeding, Taylor sagged along the edge of the dais.

“You bloody bastard,” he panted helplessly.

“Evil,” Dr. Zaius repeated, his voice rising. “And the destroyer himself must be destroyed!”

Oblivious of the dialogue on the dais, General Ursus had closed in on Brent lying in the darkened aisle. Brent stirred painfully, bringing his pistol up. Ursus bounded forward in a prodigious leap, his powerful legs landing him directly across Brent. He seized Brent’s gun hand, and bit with his great jaws into Brent’s forearm. The gun clattered to the floor. Ursus scooped it up, beaming. He motioned to the accompanying soldiers to kill Brent. His eyes swept to the platform where Dr. Zaius stood pointing a gun at the battered Taylor who had lifted himself to the high altar. Taylor was now only twenty feet from the Bomb. General Ursus knotted his fists.

“Fire!” he commanded Dr. Zaius. “Fire!”

But Dr. Zaius was indecisive. There was a look in Taylor’s eyes that he did not understand. That was beyond his range of science. Men do not look at you that way when they are not in deadly earnest.

Taylor limped to the
prie-dieu.
He reached it.

Ursus bounded forward, cleared the platform, raced toward Dr. Zaius. As the baffled apes hovering over the prone Brent hesitated, Brent’s dying gasp called out, echoing in the hollow reaches of the cathedral. “
For God’s sake, it’s the Doomsday Bomb—the end of the world!
”

Snarling, General Ursus snatched the weapon from the hands of Dr. Zaius. He aimed the gun at Taylor and fired. Taylor’s back was to him. An unmissable target. Ursus did not miss. The blast of automatic gunfire stitched across Taylor’s massive back, hammering him down to the floor before the
prie-dieu.
Amazingly, Taylor staggered erect, lurched forward and toppled over the
prie-dieu,
like a tired orator clutching his lectern. General Ursus growled in his chest. Dr. Zaius was rigid with growing dread. The great shining Bomb, with its passengers of great apes still in position on it like so many children, glowed more strongly than ever. A strange aura of
something
pervaded the stage.

The great stain of blood on Taylor’s back spread into a river of red. Through blood-curtained eyes, Taylor saw the cathedral spin all about him, whirling, coruscating, like a kaleidoscope. His senses fused and he died, slamming down over the bejeweled panel board.

He never saw the End.

The dead weight of his big body pressed down on the ruby button on the panel. The one that had never been touched before.

General Ursus stared at the Bomb. The glow evanesced over a period of seconds. General Ursus’ mouth opened and his fangs showed in a tremendous, terrified scream.

Dr. Zaius had no time to think about anything else. Not in this world or any other.

The ape militia scattered about the cathedral, three hundred in all, stupid, belligerent, unthinking, did not even think of running. Not that running would have helped.

The great cathedral was visible for only one second more.

Taylor’s dead body blackened to a silhouette, while above and behind him the Bomb whitened to an incandescence more blinding than the sun which Taylor would never see again.

And then the universal fire began . . .

. . . and all that was left was melting and burning.

And small, blackened wisps.

An electronic crackling sputtered in Outer Space.

Listen, if you have the ears to hear.

The Wind is speaking again.

“. . .
the Universe, at present, contains billions upon billions of spiral galaxies. In one of them, one-third from the edge, is a medium-sized star
. . .”

Only a small, blackened wisp. If you have the eyes to see it. Or the heart to care.

“. . .
and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet . .
.”

Blank, white, glaring.

“. . .
is now dead.”

Silence.

There is nothing more. There is nothing left.

It is as it was in the Beginning.

Wasteland.