“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 apes, 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 corner 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.