Escape from the Planet of the Apes - Pournelle Jerry - Страница 1

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET

OF THE APES

The time indicator raced back through the years—from 3955 to 1973. The spacecraft held the Earth's future inhabitants—three survivors of a devastating cataclysm.

The capsule's occupants included Cornelius, his mate Zira, and Dr. Milo—three Apes, the thinking, speaking descendants of the species that had dominated Man and the Earth for centuries.

The world of 1973 welcomed them at first, pampered them when it realized their unusual qualities, threatened them later when it was learned that Zira carried the seed of the future ascendance of Ape over Man.

They had to be killed! But first . . .

20th Century-Fox Presents

An Arthur P. Jacobs Production

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET

OF THE APES

Starring

RODDY McDOWALL • KIM HUNTER

BRADFORD DILLMAN • NATALIE TRUNDY

ERIC BRAEDEN • WILLIAM WINDOM • SAL MINEO

and

RICARDO MONTALBAN

as Armando

Produced by

APJAC PRODUCTIONS

Directed by

DON TAYLOR

Written by

PAUL DEHN

Based on Characters from

PLANET OF THE APES

Music by

JERRY GOLDSMITH

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES

FIRST AWARD PRINTING January 1974

Copyright © 1971, 1973 by

Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation.

All rights reserved

AWARD BOOKS are published by

Universal-Award House, Inc., a subsidiary of

Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation,

235 East Forty-fifth Street, New York, N.Y. 10017

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

Title

Copyright

Dedication

About the Author

ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET

OF THE APES

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

TO: P. Schuyler Miller

and L. Sprague de Camp

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jerry Pournelle is currently president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He is the recipient of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best new science fiction writer since 1971. His novella, The Mercenary, has been nominated for a 1973 Hugo Award.

Mr. Pournelle was intimately involved in the U.S. space program from 1956 to 1968. He is married, the father of four boys, and his wife teaches in a correctional institution. Unlike many of his SF writer friends he prefers dogs to cats, and has a Husky named Klondike. Mr. Pournelle is currently writing a regular science fact column for Galaxy magazine.

ONE

It was two o’clock in the afternoon with bright sunshine and cloudless skies over Omaha. A gentle wind flowed out of the northwest, and the temperature was seventy, nearly perfect weather. It would have been a marvelous day for a picnic.

Major General Raymond Hamilton, USAF, knew this because the weather over each of his Strategic Air Command bases was displayed on the command status board above his desk in the hole. Otherwise, Omaha’s weather wouldn’t interest him for another six hours. It would be night before he went off duty and home to his wife and two boys and the red brick house originally built for the U.S. Cavalry before the turn of the century. Now the cavalry wasn’t needed to stand guard over Omaha. Instead, the old fort was Offutt Air Force Base, home of SAC, and SAC stood guard over the world.

General Hamilton’s desk was three stories underground. It rested on a glassed-in balcony overlooking the main SAC command post, and two floors further down, directly below and in front of Hamilton’s balcony, were the Air Force personnel who could put him in communication with any SAC base. They could also launch enough nuclear firepower to destroy half the world.

Among the telephones on Hamilton’s desk were two in color. The gold phone would instantly reach Executive One—the president. Next to it was the red phone that could launch the force.

Ray Hamilton wasn’t thinking about the red phone at two in the afternoon. The president’s summit conferences had been successful, and although Ray, like all SAC generals, believed the Russians were planning something and had to be watched at all times, he didn’t believe the “Big One” was coming just yet. If SAC stayed alert, it might never come. Ray was relaxed in his easy chair, leafing through a murder mystery. He grimaced as he realized he’d read it before and faced the afternoon with nothing to do.

General Hamilton was bored. If he worried about anything, it was about his son’s bicycle. That was the third ten-speed stolen from his family in less than two years, and it irritated him to think that SAC could guard the free world, but SAC’s Air Police couldn’t catch a bicycle thief. The boy had to ride a mile to high school and would need a new bike, and that would cost money Ray Hamilton didn’t have at the moment.

A phone rang. A black one. Hamilton picked it up. “SAC Duty Commander.”

“SAC, this is Air Defense. We have a bandit re-entry coming in over the South Pole. I say again we have a bandit on re-entry course over the South Pole. Probable place of impact, vicinity of San Diego, California. Estimated time, plus 26 minutes.”

Hamilton tensed. “NORAD, this is SAC. Are you sure you have a bandit?”

“Affirmative, SAC. We have no previous plot. Bandit has no previous orbital flight. Launch point unknown. This is a big one. Estimated excess of 35,000 pounds.”

“My God!” Ray Hamilton looked across at the enormous screens on the opposite wall. His staff had already projected a map of the Western Hemisphere and the predicted path of the intruder. The red dotted line led from the bandit’s position over Chile up to a large circle just north of San Diego. Hamilton scowled. The Soviets had tested a 100 megaton bomb, and a vehicle that size could carry one. That thing would take out most of Southern California, including Oceanside. Hamilton’s status board showed Executive One in residence at the Western White House.