Escape from the Planet of the Apes - Pournelle Jerry (книги онлайн бесплатно .TXT) 📗

“None, Mister President. That ship maneuvered into the water. It came in on automatic, but there was a pilot working the controls just before it splashed. Colonel Taylor’s been missing over a year. There weren’t enough supplies to keep the crew alive that long. No, sir, it can’t be our people coming back.”

“I see.” The President pulled his lip again. “Have you thought of this possibility, General—that the Russians retrieved one of our missing spacecraft and have now manned it with their own cosmonauts. Could there be Russians aboard that ship?”

The line hummed a moment as General Brody listened to a background voice the President couldn’t quite hear. Then his Chief of Staff came back on. “Sir, there could be anybody aboard that thing. The Navy’s bringing the capsule onto their recovery ship right now. Have you any instructions?”

“Yes. If there’s anyone alive on that thing, welcome them to the United States. Or to Earth, if they’re—uh, there’s always that possibility, isn’t there? That they’re little green men? Have Admiral Jardin use his judgment, General. Meanwhile, you get those NASA scientists to go over that ship with whatever’s the scientific equivalent of a fine-toothed comb. When they know anything, tell me. And General, I want full security on this operation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You do understand me, don’t you, General? This is not for the networks.”

“Yes, sir.” General Brody cradled the phone and swore. He couldn’t blame the president. There’d been a lot of leaks to the press. The heavy sarcasm was probably deserved. Still, there were a lot of people who were easier to work for.

He lifted another telephone and dialed; then, as it was ringing, shouted, “Sergeant, where’s that TV monitor?”

“Coming up, General.” Three uniformed men rolled a color TV set into General Brody’s office. They fussed with the dials, and a picture formed. The camera was atop the island on the aircraft carrier, looking down onto the flight deck. Brody could just see waves over the side of the ship—a calm sea.

A crane lifted the space capsule out of the water and over the deck. There was no mistaking the NASA markings on the sides and the vertical stabilizer. Ugly ship, Brody thought. No wings. Just the body of the craft, bent, so that it would provide lift at high speeds. Pilots told him it had all the glide characteristics of a rock, but they were all willing to fly in it. With the cutbacks in the space program, there were five astronauts for every mission anyway.

The capsule was lowered to the deck with a thump. Sailors clustered around it. Brody’s phone rang and he answered absently.

“Admiral Jardin, sir,” the voice on the phone said.

“Put him on.” Brody continued to watch the spacecraft on the TV set. No one wanted to open it. Two Navy surgeons stood outside the hatch, watching, saying nothing. Admiral Jardin, with a phone, stood with them. Brody spoke into his phone. “You going to open that thing, Admiral? I’ve got a TV monitor here, I’m watching. The president says you’re to use your own judgment, but keep the reporters away.”

“We were wondering about quarantine, General,” Admiral Jardin said. The voice was gruff and hard, rasping. “Both ways. What might we catch from them, of course, but if they’ve been a long time in space they have been in a sterile environment. What might they catch from us? Whoops!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Excuse me, General, the problem’s not ours anymore. Whoever’s inside is opening the hatch. See it?”

“Yes.”

The hatch cover opened very slowly. Brody watched as it swung all the way, and a ladder was rolled up. Three figures climbed out. A bit clumsy, Brody thought. Why not? They were a long time in space. Only how had they managed that? Could that be Colonel Taylor and his crew?

The astronauts wore complete space gear: full pressure suits, coveralls over that, helmets with mirrored visors dogged into place. They’d be roasting in there, Brody thought. A man sealed into a full pressure suit and disconnected from cooling air can quickly generate enough heat to cook himself to death, and there is no place for the heat to go.

A Navy flight surgeon came forward and gestured at the helmets. The astronauts nodded and reached up to the latches, began undogging the faceplates.

“Welcome aboard, gentlemen,” Admiral Jardin said.

The helmets opened. Brody’s TV screen gave a perfect view into each faceplate. His sergeant was watching intently too. He looked at the astronauts and roared with laughter. “Monkeys!” he shouted. “Holy clout, General, they caught themselves three monkeys in space suits!”

“Admiral Jardin,” Brody said quietly into the phone. His voice was the same deadly calm that Ray Hamilton had used when he alerted SAC. “Admiral—”

“Yes, General. You are seeing it. That is what you wanted to ask, isn’t it? I’m seeing it too,” the Admiral said. “No question about it, our astronauts are chimpanzees.”

“And just where the devil did they come from?” Brody demanded.

“I’ll just ask them, shall I?”

“Admiral, I have to report to the president. I do not need your jokes.”

“Sorry, Len. Well, have you any suggestions? This is a bit stranger than I’d expected. I’m at a loss.”

“Yeah. So am I. Well, the president wants an examination of that capsule made. Immediate and thorough. Meanwhile, take the—uh, the passengers somewhere secure. Someplace that knows how to take care of them. You got any labs around there? A university maybe?”

“Not secure.” Admiral Jardin was quiet for a moment. “I have a friend in the LA Zoo Commission. I expect we could get them lodged there without anybody’s knowing it. We can’t keep this secret very long, General. The whole crew of this ship knows . . .”

“Yeah. But the president decides when to break this, and to whom. Right? OK, take ’em to the zoo. That seems an appropriate place for chimps. Get somebody to examine them. Somebody with clearances.”

“You save the easy jobs for the Navy, don’t you?” Jardin said sourly.

Brody made a face at the phone. “You think you have troubles? I’ve got to report to the president. He’s going to just love this.”

THREE

Admiral George “Snapper” Jardin was not a happy man. What made things worse was that none of these problems were his own fault. His Navy people had performed flawlessly. Within minutes of the signal that an unscheduled spacecraft was going to splash down, he had a Navy interceptor fighter in the air over the predicted splash area, a rescue helicopter airborne and on the way, and a recovery carrier speeding to the scene at twenty-eight knots. The chopper crew put inflation collars around the spacecraft and kept it upright and afloat. His carrier came alongside and hoisted it aboard. Everything went fine—until the astronauts turned out to be chimpanzees. Snapper Jardin shuddered again. How did they get in the ship? “Where have we got them now?” he asked his aide.

“In the wardroom, Admiral,” Lt. Commander Hartley said. “We had them in sick bay, but there are too many things they might get hold of down there. They could hurt themselves.”

“I bet the ship’s officers like having monkeys in their wardroom. Did anybody object?”

“No, sir.” How could anyone object? Hartley wondered. They hadn’t been asked. In his experience, nobody ever asked in the Navy; the brass sent down The Word, and that was that.

“Did you get the LA Zoo?”

“Yes, sir,” Hartley said. “They’re ready. Tight security. The apes can go into the sick bay. Nothing in there right now, except a mauled fox cub, a deer with pneumonia, and a depressed gorilla who’s lost his mate. The apes will be out of sight, quarantined, and there’ll be plenty of facilities for medical and psych examinations.”