Two years after President Kennedy announced America’s goal to reach the moon by the end of the decade, and three years since the formation of the covert military group that split from the civilian program in order to minimize the risk of communist infiltration and sabotage, there were two branches of the United States space program.
The civilian group was called NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The military arm was ANSA, the American National Space Administration. ANSA had the benefit of pre-eminent scientists Dr. Hasslein and Dr. Stanton, while NASA’s top brains were the less notable Kriegstein and Freleng.
To Taylor, that meant all the crazy dangerous stuff happened there, and every hotshot pilot wanted a chance at being part of that. ANSA was where the secretive Project Liberty had found a home—specifically at Groom Lake in Restricted Area 4808 North, in the Nevada Test and Training Range. Colloquially referred to as Area 51.
He had been attached to the project since the Korean War, and since then, American space technologies had surged, in no small part thanks to the ship that had fallen out of the skies over Korea in 1953. Reverse engineering machinery discovered aboard that ship, Hasslein and his team had developed more and more extreme propulsive, communication, and weapons systems.
Taylor was finally in a place where his penchant for pushing boundaries was welcome. In fact, ANSA not only wanted him to push them, they wanted him to break them.
It was what was keeping Taylor alive. Only in the thick of it could he could forget what he had seen his fellow man do.
Only then could he breathe.
* * *
“Fireball 3 on final approach,” Major George Taylor said. “Transitioning to vertical descent, over.”
The X-13A Vertijet could land and take off sitting on its tail. Originally conceived to examine the feasibility of launching planes from a submarine, she had been deemed unviable, but VTOL piloting experience was something ANSA’s astronauts were going to need in order to put down their planetary landers on alien worlds. Modified to an A configuration, X-13 had been resurrected and Taylor was the first to give her a spin.
She had handled rough on takeoff, but he had his spurs dug in on return. Approaching the X-13 mobile berthing station, Taylor rotated the stubby craft. Suspending her tail ten feet over the tarmac, he hovered.
“Fireball 3, is there a problem, over?”
“No problem, ground,” he responded. “Maneuverability test. Over.”
Taylor pulled the controls hard.
“Goddamn it, Taylor…”
Instead of coming to rest in her assigned berth, Taylor swayed the vertical plane across the field. Still vertical and maintaining ten feet of clearance the entire time, he performed a figure eight around the landing trailer and the support and emergency vehicles that were waiting nearby. Once he was satisfied, he tail-landed the Vertijet on the other side of the field.
Let them come and pick her up. He smiled.
Used to his horseplay, the support crew already had the trailer on the move as Taylor climbed the ladder down from the cockpit.
“Major!” The voice was breathless. “Major Taylor!” Taylor handed his helmet to the first technician to arrive, and watched as a fuel truck pulled up next to the Vertijet. Then he turned to find the woman who seemed to be vying for his attention.
Instead, he collided with her.
She was young, blond, and gorgeous, and she was—
“Lieutenant Stewart,” she panted, “Maryann. Sorry, sir, I didn’t—”
Taylor knew who she was; he’d read her file. A biologist fresh out of astronaut training at NASA, she had been cleared for ANSA a couple of months ago. She was a scientist and she was green.
“Slow down, Lieutenant,” Taylor said. “We don’t stand on ceremony here.”
Not unless the admiral’s around, he lamented.
Stewart exhaled. “Thank you.”
Standing near the newly arrived fuel truck, Taylor unzipped the pocket on his flight suit sleeve and produced a cigar. Before she could object, he struck a match across the FLAMMABLE sign on the vehicle’s fuel tank.
“What’s on your mind?” He puffed and inhaled deeply.
“I didn’t know who else to turn to,” Stewart said. “Some of the other astronauts were talking about you and made me think you were the right person…”
“Oh?” Taylor leaned against the truck and exhaled. “What did they say?”
Stewart paused and answered slowly.
“They said that you were anti-war,” she replied, “and that you hate everyone. On the planet, that is.”
Taylor smirked. Can’t argue with that.
“Come on, walk with me,” he said with a gesture. Walking the desert airfield of Area 51, no one would be able to listen in on them.
“I hate war… and I hate everybody,” Taylor said when they were a respectable distance away. “How did that make you want to hunt me down?”
“It was Lieutenant Dodge, actually, who suggested that I go to you,” she admitted. “I trust Thomas, and he said you could be trusted, too.”
Taylor paused. Lieutenant Thomas Dodge was a scientist, and he wasn’t given to flights of fancy. Taylor trusted him, as well. If Dodge had sent her, it was serious.
“I work in radiobiology,” she began, “studying the positive and negative effects of radiation on living things. When I arrived at ANSA, I was assigned to Thomas’s team.” Looking around, she leaned in close. “They had us running numbers and tests involving the effects of extremely high doses of ionizing radiation—deterministic effects, stochastic, heritable—”
“So what has you worried?” Taylor frowned.
“I don’t want to be a part of the next Manhattan project.” She shook her head. “I joined the space program to explore, not to develop weapons.”
Taylor understood that. It was why he had joined, and Dodge.
He’s hoping I’ll go straight to the admiral. Taylor grimaced. That’s not going to happen.
Besides, ANSA is military, he reminded himself.
“Thomas tried to ask questions, and got a runaround,” Stewart continued, “until someone finally told him his inquiries were Churchdoor clearance and up. Then they pulled our research.”
Churchdoor? That was something new.
He decided to ease her fears.
“Look,” Taylor explained, “the propulsion drive and communication system Hasslein and Stanton are working on put out a lot of radiation. They’re probably trying to figure out what happens to us when the engine breaks, and we’re stuck in deep space.” When the doubt didn’t leave her downcast eyes, he continued. “Tell you what. I’ll chat with the big brains and see what I can find out—alright?”
She smiled.
But without talking to the admiral, he added silently.
CHAPTER 11
A QUOTIENT OF INTELLIGENCE
The White Ones herded Mungwortt—still carrying Zao—deep into the fungus-laden forest to an outpost of ruined dwellings. It was another world in here, beneath the darkened canopy of deadened trees and giant mushrooms. He struggled to read the sign that appeared on the wrought-iron gate, lit by the soft cerulean glow.
CENTRAL PARK ZOO
Not unlike the Academy Research Complex, it was a small enclave of cages and what looked to Mungwortt to be habitats for housing captured humans. Except the only humans that resided there were piles of skeletons, sharing their space with even more living White Ones than the pack that had captured him and Zao. The dead albino beast the pack had carried was laid down beside them.
Exhausted, Mungwortt licked at his protruding fang. He had been in his share of brawls. One had left him with a broken jaw that hadn’t set properly, and a snaggletooth to go with it. That tooth always ached when he was tired. Right now it throbbed. With the weight of his burden becoming too much, he shuffled along a little while more, peering at the ground in front of him. There was a raised pool that seemed to be the center of this place, surrounded by ca
ges. There he was held fast, and he squinted at the brass plaque on the side of the pool.
SEA LIONS
He looked up, his eyes went wide, and he almost dropped Zao. Sitting in glass containers, on platforms rising from the pool, were three brains.
Big ones.
The size of wagons. Floating inside very big jars.
Mungwortt had seen brains before—damaged ones left in the trash outside Dr. Galen’s private laboratory. He knew what they looked like, and these were clearly not your average brains.
How can they be here? he wondered. How can they even exist? And they whispered to him.
* * *
Human scientists who survived the initial ape revolt fourteen hundred years ago grafted together cloned cerebral matter in an attempt to create a biologically based computer. As the nuclear blasts of the final war disrupted electronics across the globe, those scientists hoped to find an alternative method of storing information.
Dubbed 1N-HR8-TR—an acronym for words which no longer had any bearing—the Inheritor was to be the next-generation technology that would “inherit the earth.” Yet it never made it past the testing stages and was discarded. It wasn’t expected that the tissue would survive, let alone grow.
Yet grow it did. First in size, and then—eventually—intelligence, until five subjects of experiment 1N-HR8-TR gained full sentience. The Inheritors gained control over the creatures called the White Ones.
Allied with Old New York’s underground mutant community, the Inheritors became known as the Overseers, and were stationed in various key locations, living computers used to manage the subterranean city’s infrastructure and augment the mutants’ own cognitive powers. These three had other ideas, however, and used their slave race to spirit them away into the darkened bowels of central Manhattan. There they conspired to wrest control from their mutant overlords.
* * *
Mungwortt shook his head and wondered if the voices had been real. There had been no sound, but he had heard talking. Hadn’t he? Bubbles aerated the tanks, and soft lights illuminated the undersides of the massive cerebral matter within them. The illumination in the left brain jar rippled.
Scan them, came a thought. Like the whispering he had not-heard before, this idea was not his own. It was also different than the others. It was forceful.
Strange machinery on the other side of the path pivoted, and Mungwortt and Zao were bathed in fluttering flashes of various hues. As quickly as it began the display was over, but lingering lights still shimmered in Mungwortt’s eyes.
The center tank flickered.
Analysis, another thought boomed. It made no sense.
I’m not smart enough for this, Mungwortt decided.
“Zao…” He gingerly slid his broken friend off his back. Then the brain to the far left throbbed, and a new voice filled his mind.
The orangutan suffered internal injuries. It is deceased.
Panic began to claw at him. Once he had Zao on the ground, Mungwortt tapped the elder’s face.
“Zao, wake up. Wake. Wake—”
Please wake up, Zao. Don’t leave me alone.
The orangutan’s face was cold. Lifeless.
Zao was indeed dead.
How long? the half-breed wondered. He had been carrying his new friend for at least a day.
The brain to the near right “spoke.”
The other one is part gorilla, part chimpanzee.
The brains pulsed lights and beeps to each other. They were loud and annoying and hard to tune out. Mungwortt covered his ears, but it was a futile gesture—the sounds were thoughts in his head. He squeezed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and waited for them to stop.
This hybrid ape may be valuable to our heterogeneous experiments.
There were no objections. In unison, they commanded the White Ones, Spare the live one, consume the other.
A thunderous DEET followed the order. Two of the White Ones dragged the stunned Mungwortt away from his dead friend. He was too exhausted to offer any real resistance.
“Wait, no…”
The other albino beasts descended on the orangutan. Suddenly, they were as animals, tearing at the elder’s corpse, shredding cloth and rending flesh. White fur was stained dark red—looking almost black in the alien light—as bone was stripped of muscle and sinew. And the pack ate more than Zao. They retrieved the one Mungwortt had killed—the one they carried all the way from the pit—and devoured him, as well.
They even eat their own dead.
Since Mungwortt was not showing any resistance, the two that were restraining him released their grips and joined the carnage. He could do nothing but watch.
Zao was with the angels now.
Mungwortt was truly alone.
* * *
The angel in the desert was wearing dog tags. Taylor’s tags. The chances were astronomical, the likeliness ludicrous. And yet here he was, riding on the back of a horse through this wasteland, his arms around the waist of a beautiful mute savage.
“You take me to Taylor,” he had said, even before mounting the horse behind her. “Taylor,” he had demanded. “Now.” At first she seemed frightened, but then she had complied—at least he hoped that was what she was doing. For all Brent knew, she was taking him on a picnic. How could that be any less absurd?
They traveled most of the day, and were going to need to camp soon for the night. He had a small battery-powered compass in his back pocket—an ANSA tracking device that could home in on a TX-9 signal. Its range was limited, however. Even so, he checked it from time to time. To his surprise, Brent noticed that the flashing light grew steadier. He gestured for the girl to follow the signal, and before long they were close. Very close.
Brent dismounted, cupping his hands around the device to see the light better against the glare of the sinking sun, continuing on foot. The blink of red turned constant—and there it was.
He nearly walked right over it. At his feet, in a dry stream bed, was a TX-9. Brent crouched and examined it. The transmitter was weathered but intact. The fact that it was still transmitting meant that it couldn’t have been set up any more than twelve weeks back. After that its batteries would have lost their ability to recharge in the sun, and would have died.
Cracking the metallic cylinder, he began to play with its wired guts, tapping in code. If he could use the TX-9 to access his own ship’s orbiting stardrive, he might be able to convince her to uncouple from the fusion engine and attempt re-entry. Then, if he could make it back into orbit, engage the Hasslein drive, and—
No. He was wasting his time, and he knew it. Liberty 2’s hull wasn’t designed for atmospheric re-entry, nor was it capable of leaving the planet, either. No, the only thing he could do was have the ship transmit a signal back to Lazenbe and the research and development boys, just as Liberty 1 had. Then he could sit and wait for a rescue.
Except without the confirmation from her skipper, the ship refused to accept any access codes transmitted via TX-9—and Maddox’s command overrides had died with him.
Furious, Brent lashed out. His foot smashed into the TX-9, caving in its aluminum skull. He stomped relentlessly, turning the transmitter into so much scrap. With nothing else to smash, he hurled the hand-held tracking device into the desert. Then he collapsed, shaking his head and running his fingers through his dirty blond hair.
* * *
Consus’s farmhouse was burning.
A gorilla gardener working the next field over had noticed the comings and goings at the farm. Concerned that there might be mischief, he alerted the local constable. When his first three warnings went unheeded, he changed his approach. He claimed to have seen chimps with a human. Word reached Dr. Zaius before it got to Chief Cerek—who would have informed General Ursus.
Then the entire province would have been razed, Zaius surmised.
In the course of the investigation an oil lamp had been knocked over. Zaius and Aurelios arrived too late to prevent the fire. Luckily, no apes were killed
in the raid. Two prisoners were taken.
A cautious Zaius brought with him Commissioner Maximus from Animal Affairs, as well as Julius from the Research Complex. He feared that the human would be Taylor, alive and well and returned from the Forbidden Zone. Instead, it was the one known as Landon—lobotomized and now very much deceased.
“Why is this creature dead?” the Minister of Science demanded.
Maximus was adamant. “I ordered the constabulary take all animals alive.”
“I warn you, Commissioner, if this—”
“This human’s been dead for hours, Minister,” Julius said.
“Are you certain?” Zaius moved to examine the body.
“Look for yourself,” Julius said. It was true. The body was ashen, cold, and had already begun to stiffen with rigor mortis. Zaius examined the infected scar left where he and his surgeons had… corrected the man’s brain. It was swollen and filled with pus.
Death by infection. It wasn’t uncommon for such an operation to result in complications.
But why was this beast here? Of all the humans liberated from the cages, these chimpanzees had singled out the one who used to be able to speak. Peering around the cellar, Zaius separated the human footprints—all apparently made by Landon—from the ones made by the chimpanzees. The human prints followed a specific pattern, as if he had walked in circles, over and over, since his “liberation.”
Curious.
“I want to see those prisoners,” Zaius demanded of the constable. The gorilla nodded and led him outside, where he squinted in the daylight. There on the lawn a wagon stood at the ready, the prisoners already loaded in the back. As he approached them, Zaius could see it was a chimpanzee duo—male and female—and feared the worst.
After all I’ve done to clear and maneuver them into positions to protect the city, he thought furiously, if they have—
“Jaila?” Zaius said. The male prisoner he recognized as Consus—the owner of the now smoldering farmhouse. Surprised to find the notorious Dr. Galen’s former assistant, Zaius was nevertheless relieved that the two chimpanzee prisoners were not Cornelius and Zira.
Zaius knew Jaila as a veterinary nurse who worked at the Academy Research Complex. He had thought that, despite her former association with Galen, she still had a promising career ahead of her.
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