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In the Ape Army command post---a commandeered farmhouse----General Urko was pacing back and forth impatiently. His manner was intimidating to everyone except Dr. Zaius, who sat unmoving in a rustic chair, his eyes staring sightlessly into the fire in the hearth. Both of their officer companions tried to be inconspicuous. Urko had already busted one lieutenant to subsergeant for getting in the way of his pacing pattern.
Everyone jumped when the field radio beeped.
Urko strode over to the operator, who visibly cringed. He handed the receiver up to his commander, saying, "It's Captain Trang, sir."
Urko snatched the receiver away and growled, "Urko here, captain!" Then once again his face grew livid with rage. His mouth sprayed spittle, and his yellowish tusks showed prominently as he bellowed belligerently at the captain. "Damn you, Trang! I didn't mean it literally! What are you using for brains? You should have left a guard at the stockade!"
Dr. Zaius broke his reverie and looked up sharply at the general. He laboriously rose to his feet, carefully smoothing out his light-colored robe, and walked over to Urko, who was still berating Trang, who was now suddenly "corporal" instead of "captain."
After Urko, with a curse, slammed the receiver back into the hands of the operator, Zaius asked, "The humanoids at the stockade...?"
"Freed. And two trucks were stolen. The stockade's been partially burned down." He struck the top of the radiotelephone, spilling the operator's mug of soup and making him look even more afraid. "That stupid Trang! When I told him to use every man, he used every man!"
"When you berate your troops for acting on their initiative, you should not also condemn them for taking your orders literally," the Elder said in a quiet voice. But although outwardly calm, he was actually quite desperate. "You, general, are the stupid one!"
Urko bridled, looking down at the golden-furred Zaius with hostility. "Don't you dare call me stupid, Zaius! This is your fault---allowing those scientists to have their way! Besides, I had no idea the beast was still in the area!"
Zaius was sarcastic as he looked Urko up and down, from his polished stiff leather helmet to his dusty black leather boots. "You had no idea? Bah!"
Urko drew himself up to his full height, his clenched fists beating on his leather-clad chest, his eyes growing red. His aides cringed, recognizing the signs of one of his destructive rages.
But before anything could happen to the defiant Zaius the operator called out. "General Urko! The two trucks have been spotted moving up the Apexcrown Peak Road!"
The general turned with a scowl, redirecting his rage.
But Dr. Zaius spoke first. "Well, what are you waiting for?"
The general threw Zaius a venomous look, there grabbed at his gloves. "Let's go!" he rumbled loudly. "Come on, you idiots. Move!"
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Steve Burton lay prone in the weeds in front of some trees and a shallow gully which were hiding the two trucks. The young astronaut had caught sight of something ahead and had stopped and hidden the convoy in order to investigate.
Up a straight stretch of road lay a gorilla roadblock. A deep ditch lay along both sides of the road and enough rugged country surrounded it to prevent anything less than a tank from going around the block.
"They picked a good spot," Steve muttered to himself as he slid back from the edge and ran along until he was safely out of sight. When he reached the trucks, he found Dan nervously awaiting his return.
"Hey! That's an idea!" he said, approving what Steve had instructed the humanoids to make.
They had scouted the surrounding trees to find strong limbs---dry and hard---for clubs, enough they didn't as yet know their intended use. They were just following orders.
"I hope they can use 'em if they have to," Dan mumbled gloomily. "They don't seem to have much fighting spirit"
"It was probably bred out of them as a result of their spirit being subjugated by superior ape technology. That left only the meek to breed." Steve sighed. "I hope there's some 'fight' left, however."
He squatted in the dirt and grass and picked up a stick. "Here's what's up there. Road straight like this, deep ditches on both sides. Little flimsy hut on the left side, with a pole across the road resting on some logs. I counted only three guards, but there might be one or even two more sitting or sleeping in the hut."
"How alert are they?"
"Well, I don't think they're expecting trouble. They're just a routine patrol, a routine guardpost. But they've got rifles---and a possible clear shot at us for almost a hundred yards while we're coming at them."
Dan shook his head, then squinted at the sky. "We can't wait until dark to try and surprise them."
"No, we'll have to surprise them, all right, but not by sneaking up on them at night." Steve took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Look, I've never done anything like this and neither have you. And it's a certainty they haven't." He pointed at the trucks. "But we must try." Steve grinned at his mahogany-skinned partner. "Now here's my plan---as the guy in the dungeon said...."
"It better be good, Commander Burton, sir," Dan said with a rueful grin. "We only got one chance, partner."
Steve stood and started walking along the trucks, looking in at the humanoids who were fashioning crude clubs by breaking off limbs to a handy length. He spotted one cavedweller, a woman in her twenties, and took her hand.
She tried to pull away, scared, and her companions were horrified.
It took all of Dan's prodding and a lot of Nova's tugging and pushing to calm the humanoids down, but finally Steve isolated the young woman from the others. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a young man resentfully watching him from under the rear of the truck.
"What's he up to?" Dan asked. "Some hanky-panky?"
"Never mind that, just keep an eye on loverboy there." Steve turned and quietly motioned for Nova to come to him. "Please tell the attractive humanoid girl that I want her dress," he explained in gestures to Nova.
"What the----?" said Dan.
"It's dark fur---not all that different from a gorilla's." he said aloud to Steve. "In bad taste, that is. But it's her dress..." He tugged at it and looked at Nova, who looked puzzled.
Steve partially undid his own suit of skins and then suddenly Nova seemed to realize what was wanted. She did a quick pantomime for the girl, which neither Steve nor Dan understood, and the girl nodded. She gave Steve a fearful look, but without another hesitation she took off her black fur garment and handed it to the astronaut. She stood naked but unembarrassed.
"I guess they don't have much in the way of nudity taboos," Steve said to Dan.
"Maybe they just wear these things for warmth. Okay, now what are you going to do with it?"
"Nova...Nova?" Steve caught her attention again and, wrapping his arms around himself, pointed to the other girl.
Immediately Nova started to undo her own clothes, presumably to give them to the nude girl.
"No, no!" Steve pointed at the truck and over it at the others. "Find her something else, will you? Maybe the tops of a couple of other garments?"
Nova seemed to grasp the idea and took the girl by the hand to lead her around the truck.
"I think you are elected, Dan." Steve started to shape the fur around Dan's head and shoulders.
"Hey! What's going on?"
"You're going to become a gorilla truck driver, my friend. Tear off some of the edge there and shape it around your mouth and chin. Hide that handsome nonsimian face of yours."
"I get it. We take the trucks...."
"One truck. Filled with the most likely humanoids with clubs, and me on the floorboards ready to jump out and surprise the hell outta them."
Dan looked at him for a long time. "A Trojan horse....of sorts."
"Of sorts."
The black sighed. "Well....okay. Mainly because I can't think of anything better."
As Dan began to assemble the fur around his head, Steve went around to determine the most likely club handlers. He ended up picking two women and ten men. Giving them the best clubs, he silently demonstrated their use. But the humanoids just looked at him. Steve shrugged and went back to inspect Dan's costume.
"Not bad, not if they don't get too close before they tumble," he said. "And only your head and shoulders will show above the truck door. But let's not be slow."
Steve put the clubbers in the first truck; then he herded the others into the second truck, and put Nova in charge of these latter.
"Now you keep them here," he said, mimicking the words.
Nova nodded, and Steve climbed into the first truck's passenger side. He gave a slight and uncontrollable start as he looked at Dan.
"Not bad!" he admitted.
"Well, I wouldn't want it to be too good," Steve complained.
"Don't smile! It spoils the effect."
Steve hefted the yard-long hardwood club he had and got down onto the floorboards. Then he tested the door and even tried jumping out once. He climbed back in and knelt down: "Drive on, MacDuff!" he said.
The truck lurched into gear and bounced up over a rock. "Uck! Sorry, but I don't see too good through all this fur," Dan said.
The rolled through the trees, then turned up the road toward the guardpost.
"I see 'em," Dan muttered as he got onto the straightaway. "Two on my side and none on yours. Rifles. Don't see any others. Whoops! One just walked over to your side. One is on this side of the cross-pole and one on the other. But only one had the rifle in his hands instead of the shoulder strap.
"Which one?"
"The one nearest me. Better take him first. Ssssh! Here we go."
The truck braked and was grinding to a halt. "Here he comes," Dan mumbled. "My side."
It seemed to Steve that it was the world's longest wait. He thought of several schemes he should have tried first, including the very risky gambit of charging the roadblock.
"Get ready," Dan breathed.
Steve tensed his body.
"All right, there," came the gruff voice of the guard. "What are you carrying. Humanoids, for Sagan's sake? Nasty cargo!" Steve heard the other guard laugh. "So let's see your pass and....Hey!"
"Now!" Dan screamed. He threw open his door, smashing it into the armed guard. Steve leaped out of the truck on the opposite side and landed heavily, rolling under the barrier as he saw the startled guard start to unshoulder his rifle.
Steve rolled against his legs and the guard fell. Rising to his knees, Steve smashed his club across the guard's face. Blood gushed and Steve didn't wait.
Steve now threw himself under the roadblock pole again and thrust up at Dan's opponent with the ragged end of the thick, broken limb. It knocked away the guard's rifle, which exploded loudly, but smashed into the chin of the hulking gorilla. The guard staggered, and Steve leaped to his feet, swinging his club with both hands. The gorilla went down with a scream and Steve struck him again.
Both guards were dead.
As Steve whirled, he saw the handsome black pilot leaning casually against the front fender, ripping off his ape disguise.
Breathing heavily, Steve glared at him. "Some help you were."
Dan grinned. "Efficiency and dispatch, good buddy. You took care of mine enemy, so I checked the guardhouse. Only one there, asleep, so I dispatched him. Besides, you looked as though you were having fun. Far be it from me to keep a man from his pleasures!"
Steve couldn't help smiling. Then he quickly gathered up the rifles and ammunition from the two guards and tossed them into the truck as Dan ran back down the hill to bring up the second vehicle.
Dan hopped out, and they redistributed the humanoids to equalize the load. "A lot of good they were," he grumbled.
"Fighting does seem to be bred out of them," Steve snapped, "but maybe that wasn't the right stimulus." He saw how the humanoids looked fearfully down at the dead apes.
"C'mon, let's roll!" Steve yelled as he ran back to the second truck.
Dan jumped up into the cab of the lead truck and ground it into gear.
As the caravan started up the grade ahead, Dan gained some distance on Steve. They went down the other side of the hill and through a winding road in a forest of oaks. Steve didn't see the frightened humanoids pick up the two rifles and bags of ammunition and throw them into the bushes.
The trucks sped on.23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡspqKhslz5g
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Dan's truck ground its way up the mountain road in low gear. Nova, who had originally been almost petrified at being put into the great growling metal beast, had adjusted and was cuddle against the passenger-side door, asleep. The long hours cooped up in the truck had put most of the humanoids to sleep, and Dan's own eyes were glazed with fatigue as he kept them locked on the narrow road ahead.
In the second truck Steve, too, was nodding with weariness. His truck labored slowly up the twisting, turning mountain road, his hands cramped from long hours of gripping the wheel. As he turned to go up yet another switchback, Steve glanced back down toward the base of a steep mountain.
"Dammit!" he said, the shock killing his drowsiness.
A caravan of Ape Army trucks was just starting up the mountain road, followed by three light tanks.
Steve quickly squinted ahead again and saw that he and Dan were almost to the top of the long, steep grade. Then he looked down again, trying to gauge the speed of the enemy trucks and count their number.
"They probably can go no faster than we can," he muttered to himself. "But there are a lot of them. If they get within rifle range...." His mouth set in a firm line and he kept his foot firmly pressed on the accelerator. Don't let anything go wrong, he thought grimly.
When he reached the top, Steve honked his horn once as a signal to Dan to stop. He jumped out and ran over to the edge of the road, gesturing for Dan to join him.
The black pilot whistled when he saw what was coming. "Oh, brother!"
Steve turned and looked at the trucks for a moment, then said, "Let's get them out. All of them!" He started running toward the trucks as Dan called after him.
"What're you gonna do?"
"Use the tracks to block the road!"
Dan, too, started running back. "We'll need to block it as low down the road as possible, to give them more mountain to climb!"
Steve nodded, dropping the back gate of his truck. "Everyone out!" he shouted.
He gestured for them to leave the truck and once again had trouble getting them to obey. But at last both trucks were emptied and the humanoids stood in a big, frightened cluster as Dan drove his truck over to the edge of the mountain road. Steve guided him with hand signals, then stopped him.
"Leave the engine running," he said. "It may catch on fire that way."
Both men now ran to the rear of the vehicle and started pushing. But the truck was too heavy, even in neutral.
"I'll start it off, then jump," Dan said.
Steve grabbed him as he started forward. "No way! You might get hurt."
He ran back towards the humanoids and began urging them toward the truck. They went reluctantly, until they saw what the men from the 20th century had in mind. In moments, the truck rolled over the edge and started its dangerous plunge down the mountain.
The big vehicle careened downward, crashing into the road on the switchback below and killing much of its momentum. But it nevertheless bounced across the dusty mountain road and started down the steep slope once again. Farther down, it hit the next switchback, toppling itself again and landing on its side. Fortunately, it still had enough momentum to roll across the narrow road and fall off the edge again. After two rolls, it exploded with a whoom, scattering bits and p arts in all directions, but kept bouncing and sliding for several more switchbacks until it collapsed finally with a roar across the road about halfway down the mountain.
Dan let out a cheer and Steve grinned as he turned to drive the second truck to the hill's edge. Dan guided him to the very brink, where the dirt began to crumble under the big knobbed tires; then Steve leaped out. He was no sooner clear of the vehicle than the humanoids started to push.
"Let's try for distance!" Steve yelled.
The truck tipped and started rolling, gaining speed. It was falling at a different angle from the first truck, the terrain helped it to gain even more speed. A tire blew as it crashed along the third switchback, causing it to veer. But it kept going, since it had too much weight and momentum to stop easily.
It now passed through the patch of grassfire caused by the first truck's explosion, then skirted the edges of the much larger fire where the first truck's wreckage burned. Steve shouted with glee when he saw that the second truck had a chance of getting all the way down the mountain and hitting the Ape Army column.
"They don't know which way to jump!" Dan exclaimed.
The heavy truck lurched and weaved, going left, then right---but always down---and the terrified troops in the gorilla trucks were starting up at the hurtling missile.
Two soldiers jumped from the last truck and started running down the road past some follow-up tanks. But the attempted escapees were stopped by their own sergeant, who rose up and put a bullet into the back of each deserter.
Several more soldiers had jumped to the ground, but now clung to the metal sides of the troop carriers with frozen fingers, their eyes glued to the bouncing juggernaut approaching them.
At the last minute, the descending truck veered from its track, which ended at a troop carrier, bounced high off a rock, and headed toward a lead tank.
For some reason the tank fired---probably it was a terrified gunner. The shell struck the slope harmlessly, but the truck angled off the mountainside, flying through the air, and struck the tank squarely in the side.
The truck exploded in an orange fireball, and both tank and truck tumbled over the edge of the road, a welded mass of metal. In a few moments, the sliding, tumbling tank exploded with a great roar as its ammunition was touched off. Flaming parts of its wreckage rained about the Ape Army trucks and troop carriers below it, injuring several soldiers, and killing the officer who had fired at the deserters.
Steve and Dan let out wild rebel yells and slapped each other on the back. Then they each hugged Nova. But the rest of the humanoids cringed with fear: they had never seen anything like it, and they knew they had taken part in what had happened.
"Come on!" Steve said. "Let's get outta here while they're still disorganized."
Near the bottom of the hill, General Urko looked along at his injured vehicles, his face again contorted by a livid rage. "Those beasts! Look what they've done! Captain Quintus!"
The aide-de-camp ran back to Urko's command jeep and saluted.
"Put those fires out! Leave the wounded! Get this column moving!"
Within minutes the trucks, troop carriers, and tanks were moving, and Urko was gritting his sharp teeth in frustration. He could see that the humanoid's first truck had blocked the road and left them no room to get around.
As they approached the still-burning truck, halfway up the mountain, he bellowed again for Captain Quintus. "Push that wreck out of the way!"
"Sir, it's still burning! We might set a truck afire!"
"Then get a tank up here! If they weren't so damn slow, they would be in the front of the column anyway!"
"Sir, the road is too narrow to pass the tank around our own...."
"Captain Quintus! I gave you an order! Carry it out!"23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwTjXYJrOic
"Sir!"
The gorilla officer turned away, hiding his own rage. They give orders, impossible orders, and it's up to us to make 'em work, he thought angrily. He gave an order to a grim-faced tank driver to pull out and inch along the steep side of the road in order to push the burning truck off the side of the mountain. We'll never catch them at this rate, Quintus thought gloomily, and it will somehow be my fault!
"This might take hours," Dr. Zaius said to the infuriated general, who was by now pacing the road.23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUFK9LAa3Yc
Urko gave the orangutan a bitter look but did not deign to reply.
Zaius sighed. "Apes also serve who only stand and wait...."
Urko stopped his pacing and looked a Zaius with loathing. "Civilians!" he snorted.
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