x
While the zephyr of a breeze carried the balloon slowly westward, the lifting power of the hot air trapped inside the canvas, constantly replenished by the burner just above the gondola, pulled the balloon higher and higher into the air. Within minutes, Steve and Cornelius were high enough to see the horizon on all sides.
Five minutes later, the balloon was passing through wisps of cloud; then larger puffs of cumulus completely obscured their view of the clearing they'd launched themselves from. The air now grew chill, and Steve drew his deerhide jacket tighter around the flightsuit he'd rescued from the Spindrift.
Soon the gondola began to sway jerkily back and forth as the balloon passed through conflicting air currents. Moving carefully, Cornelius eased himself over to the side of the wicker basket and, his hands tightly clutching the edge, he looked down at the ground, rapidly disappearing in a haze far below their west-drifting vehicle.
"I have made a very important scientific discovery," Cornelius shouted after a loud gulp cleared his throat.
"Yeah? What?" Steve yelled back.
"That when one is flying, it is best not to look down. Especially if one had a large breakfast." Holding tight to the edge of the gondola, Cornelius watched in fascination as a small bird flew past the balloon, giving the two of them a curious look, then winging on toward the eastern coast. "Besides," he croaked, his voice quavering slightly, "aren't we going much too high?"
"Relax, Cornelius," Steve answered, smiling. "Everything's okay."
"I can't relax. Whenever any of the balloons built by us apes went this high it either collapsed or exploded---those that got off the ground at all, I mean. And the ones that did get this high weren't carrying all the weight of a gondola and passengers."
"Well, this balloon isn't going to explode or collapse. It's well designed, and we shouldn't have any trouble with it."
"I certainly hope you're right," Cornelius responded, taking a cautious peek over the gondola's edge.
"We seem to be headed pretty much due west," Steve called out, changing the subject. "Where's this mountain you want to visit? Somewhere along our line of flight, I hope."
"Yes, it is. Just a bit to the north. But we're headed in the right general direction. There---up ahead!" he yelled, pointing to the horizon. "See that large peak that's rather flattened on top? That's Mount Galeneth---among those extremely high mountains, the highest range within hundreds of miles."
"Well," the blond aviator said, squinting his eyes to compare their direction of drift with the course to Mount Galeneth, "it looks as if we might not make it right on the top---we're headed a few degrees off that course. But we should be able to ground either near the base of the mountain or on its slopes. How high is it? Can we climb it?"
"From the lower slopes," Cornelius answered," to the ledge just below the top, where the Forbidden City was built, is about five thousand feet."
"Whew!" Steve said. "That can be a pretty rough climb without equipment."
"No, it shouldn't be any problem. The slopes are gentle on all sides, and on the southern face there is a cut trail. We should be able to climb to the top in five or six hours, and come back down in another three. We might even make it back in time to catch the evening breeze to the east."
"Well," Steve sighed, "I told the others and your wife not to expect us back before early tomorrow evening, so there's no real rush----"
"There is one slight problem, however, I believe," Cornelius said, still hanging onto the edge of the swaying gondola.
"What?"
"I don't like the looks of those clouds coming in from the east, behind us."
The aviator quickly turned and looked back the way they had come, then to each side. The clouds, dark and heavy-looking, filled the sky behind them, which just a short time before had been clear. And to the north an arm of clouds had prodded ahead of the main body, almost as if the storm was trying to reach past the sailing balloon in order to encircle it and drag it down.
"Well?" the chimpanzee asked after several minutes of silence. "Aren't you going to reassure me?"
"Nope," Steve answered grimly. "I don't like the look of those clouds either."
"What do we do, then?"
"Land and sit it out! Which I hate to do---if only because we don't know how long it's going to last, or what we might find below. We could come down right on top of some tall sequoias or mahoganies and get stuck far above the ground, without possibility of getting the balloon free."
"Yes, I see your point. I guess we haven't much choice then, have we...?"
Slowly and almost imperceptibly the wind speed increased, until the balloon was rushing through the sky at what must have been nearly 60 miles an hour ground speed. The temperature dropped even further now, and Steve and Cornelius crowded into the center of the gondola. There they were a bit more exposed to the wind than they would have been, crouched below the basket's edge; but in the center they were able to absorb some heat from the gas burner that supplied hot air to the canvas envelope above them.
In less than half an hour, Mount Galeneth, which had been a head of them and slightly to the right when they first spotted the storm building up, was passing behind them as the winds took them past their destination, into the higher peaks and unknown territory.
As the dark clouds hemmed in the balloon, Steve began to valve off the hot air, at the same time turning down the burner, in an attempt to lose altitude. But the winds were not going to release them that easily, and as lightning began to crash about the balloon, the wind swept the canvas bag ahead at such speed that the gondola stretched out behind it at a forty-five-degree angle.
Steve soon closed the relief valve and turned the burner back up, however. He was scared that if he bled off too much hot air, a "still" spot might appear in the hurtling storm's winds, and they would be sent crashing to the ground with zero lift.
Thunder and lightning bolts now exploded in rolling waves, and the gondola was now tossed by shock after shock. Ice began to form on the ropes attaching it to the balloon and occasional stinging sprays of terribly cold rain shot across the basket.
Through occasional breaks in the rolling clouds, Steve could see the landscape below him. Gone were the forests and grassy meadows. Now all he saw was rocky tumbled boulders of gray granite and jagged spires of stone waiting to pierce their frail craft. Patches of white-gleaming snow glistened between spreads of the dark rock; then, within minutes, snow covered everything, and this made it hard for Steve to judge the balloon's height above the rocks. What had been a storm was now a howling gale, and the balloon was coming closer and closer to the ground. Not that the balloon was losing height! No. The mountains were rising to meet the balloon, to snatch it from the sky and grind it to pieces against their hard granite sides.
The gondola began to spin round and round, back and forth, under the balloon, the ropes holding it to the hot-air bag twisting and pulling it up against the canvas, then releasing it, to twist it up the other way. With each turn the man and the chimpanzee inside were thrown about---against each other, against the sides of the basket---and once Steve was tossed against the burner, which left an angry red welt on his hand as he thrust himself away from it.
Then what Steve had been fearing happened. The winds started to ease; and as they did so, the balloon began to fall.
"Hang on!" Steve yelled. "We're going down!"
The winds whistled in the rigging with the speed of their fall and the clouds became thinner and thinner, allowing them longer glimpses of what lay below: the snowy peaks and rocks reaches of unforgiving mountains.
The balloon, falling less quickly for a brief moment, barely missed a needle-like pinnacle of rock. Then it dropped quickly again as a downdraft caught it and sucked it toward a narrow pass in the high mountains.
"Where are we?" Steve shouted to Cornelius over the screech of the wind.
"I have no idea," Cornelius yelled back in a moment of wind calm. "In the mountains somewhere to the west of Mount Galeneth. But I have no notion how far we may have been blown already. And my maps at home show no detail of these towering mountains---they've never really been explored, you see." Cornelius peered out over the edge of the gondola at the snow-covered terrain that seemed to be all rugged mountaintops and steep glacier-filled canyons without a flat spot anywhere in sight.
The wind that was now carrying the balloon down and along at about forty miles an hour apparently was funneling toward a dark, slab-sided canyon---a canyon full of twists and turns. Outcroppings of ice-coated rock reached from the sides as if to pluck the balloon from the air and send it dashing to the canyon floor far below, where a fast-running river of icy-gray water filled the canyon from side to side.
Holding tight to the ropes to keep from being thrown from the gondola as it twisted from side to side, struck by up and down drafts in the narrow canyon, Steve peered with squinting eyes into the patches of icy mist that sometimes surrounded them, trying to get some idea of what was coming next. But even though he'd been straining his eyes, he had no warning of the violent jolt that tumbled both of them into the bottom of the gondola as the balloon crashed into something protruding from the canyon wall. Something that had been completely hidden in the swirling mists. Something that caught and held the balloon, swinging the basket around in a whistling arc and slamming it into the deep snow on a canyon slope.
Two bodies, one light-haired and light-skinned, the other dark-furred and green-clad were thrown abruptly from the gondola, where they lay without moving in the snow.22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMwLZN5Gyzq
22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3eYgkBJSCW
22Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnpwM5CRsO6
Far below, on another snow-covered slope, stood a white-clad gorilla on skis, with the gold triangle of lieutenant pinned to his pale-blue snow-troops harness. He stared upward through a pair of long, powerful binoculars at the collapsed balloon and the two dark spots that showed, unmoving, against the white background.
Up ahead of the lieutenant, against the cliff face, where they got some protection from the icy wind, the detachment of snow troops and the captain who led them gathered around a small fire.
"Captain Kronus!" the lieutenant called out waving. "Come on down here, sir. I've spotted something."
The captain, both his age and the cold stiffening his bones, got slowly to his feet from where he had been sitting near the fire and looked down the slope at the young officer for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to have him shot. It was the first time in six hours that the captain had been able to relax and warm up a little, and he resented being disturbed. Finally, though, slipping and sliding over the icy patches that were forming on the snow crust, he walked down to his junior officer.
"All right, Lieutenant Trak. What is it?" he growled when he had finally covered the hundred feet to where the young ape was waiting.
"Up there, sir!" the lieutenant said, pointing. "Take a look!"
The captain was in an irritable mood. Several days earlier, his commander, Colonel Sakano, had sent a snow troop detachment to the foot of these uncharted and unknown mountains in the extreme northern part of his province, Alvah. Since then, the detachment, under Captain Kronus had been scouring the snow-swept slopes in search of humanoids. Humanoids here! he fumed as he joined the lieutenant. Why, they'd freeze their asses off in this snow! he thought.
The captain grabbed the binoculars from the lieutenant, wiped a bit of melted snow from the lenses, and began to slowly scan the snowfield above them.
"Just to the right of that big rock face," the lieutenant explained, pointing to a massive prow of rock that thrust itself out from the canyon's side.
The captain swung the binoculars more to the right, then stopped---as if frozen---when the irregular shape of the partially deflated balloon came into view. "What in Great Kaleb's name is it?" he asked.
"I sure don't know, sir. But whatever it is, it was flying when I first saw it."
"What do you mean, it was flying?" The captain lowered the binoculars and turned angrily to look at the lieutenant.
"It was floating through the air, sir," the lieutenant said, unwilling to change his story despite his captain's wrath. "And underneath it was a sort of basket."
"Which, I suppose, was full of fruit and flowers?"
"No-o, sir. But those two black spots to the right of the---whatever it is---are bodies that were thrown out when it hit."
The captain lifted the field glasses and again examined the wreckage above him.
"Well, I suppose it could be those stupid, uppity chimpanzees trying out some kind of new weapon. We'd better investigate!"
"Ah, one other thing, sir...." the lieutenant said hesitantly.
"What?"
"I got a pretty good look at them when they were thrown clear."
"And....?"
"One of them did seem to be a chimpanzee but...."
"But what?"
"The other seemed to be a---humanoid, sir."
"Oh, blangdang! That means we're going to have to send someone back to base to radio a report to headquarters."
"Could we wait until after we investigate, sir?" the lieutenant suggested. "That way we could all go back together and make the report more complete."
"You know the orders, Lieutenant. We're to 'watch for, and report immediately,' and sign of unusual behavior on the part of the humanoids. Those orders come from our provincial commander, Colonel Sakano. He got his orders from General Urko in Ape City a few days ago---and you know how fanatical the general is on the subject of humanoids!"
"Yes, sir," the lieutenant admitted. "I know only too well."
"Orders are orders," the captain restated. "We're going to have to report this at once. You take Corporal Davon with you and head back to base as quickly as possible. I'll write out an official report for you to take with you. And while you're headed back, I'll take the rest of the men up the mountain and see if we can find out just what that crazy-looking thing is!"
"Yes, sir....."
The lieutenant dreaded having to fight his way back down through the mountains in the middle of a storm with only one man to help. It was too easy to get lost in these canyons when the winds blew and the snow flew.
ns216.73.216.148da2
