Chapter 4

T-minus eleven days—July 11, 1980

Major Burke tugged at the tight neck of his dress shirt, trying to resist the urge to fiddle with the bow tie and cummerbund of his mess dress uniform. He knew he was fidgeting, but he hated wearing the tuxedo-like monkey suit. At least since they were indoors, he didn't have to suffer through wearing the farts and darts lid that went with it. He snagged a flute of champagne as a tray went by carried by a formally dressed waiter. While he sipped, he scanned the room looking for his fellow astronauts. Neither Virdon nor Jones were in sight, but a platter of bacon wrapped scallops caught his eye. He plucked one up by its brightly colored toothpick and popped it in his mouth. One good thing about White House receptions, the food and the booze were always first rate.

He wandered through the ornately decorated room, stopping every few feet to press flesh with some dignitary or politician who wanted to introduce themselves. Smile and nod, Pete, smile and nod. These were the people who kept the money flowing into the space program, the money that funded the mission they would be undertaking in just over a week. Keeping them happy and impressed was job security.

When he finally made it into the next room—a ballroom with an elegant string quartet playing in one corner—he saw Jones on the parquet dancing cheek to cheek with his wife. He smiled wistfully. Given the way Michelle laughed and blushed at something Jones whispered in her ear, his buddy was going to get laid but good tonight. Hopefully that would make him bearable to be around for the next ten days while they were in quarantine before the mission.

He could have brought a date tonight; the invitation with its curling script printed in raised ink on thick, embossed stationary had said "Major Peter J. Burke and Guest", after all. But he'd decided he'd rather go stag and keep his options open for his last night as a free man. Because if one of America's elite astronauts couldn't score at the White House, then he might as well hang up his flight suit and put on monastic robes.

Although most of the women in attendance were wives, there were a few single ladies. That was usually the first thing that pinged on his radar—check the left hand for a ring. And while it was true that many of the eligible women here were daughters of powerful and influential men, well, he was about to head into space for five months. Plenty of time for any furor to die down.

He caught Jonesy's eye when the dance turned him in Burke's direction, and they gave each other a grin and a nod. Jonesy had a toddler at home, but he'd confided in Burke a few days ago that they were trying for another before he left. Yeah, he knew what was going to be occupying his buddy for the rest of the night.

Burke saw another waiter, so he ditched his empty glass on a table before taking a fresh one from the tray as it passed. He was about to go scope out the dining room, see who they had wedged him between on the seating arrangement, when he saw Sally Virdon sitting by herself against the wall of the ballroom. Her long blonde hair was curled and pinned up in a stylish arrangement, her pale blue gown a perfect counterpoint to the navy blue dress uniform the astronauts wore. But Colonel Alan Virdon was nowhere in sight. Burke shook his head and changed course in her direction, picking up another glass of champagne along the way.

"I see the good Colonel is neglecting the most beautiful woman here tonight. Again." He held the flute in front of her, drawing her back from whatever middle distance she'd been staring into, and flashed a charming smile.

"Thank you, Major." She inclined her head then patted the seat next to her. "And where is your date?"

"Don't have one," he replied with a smirk.

"You're going to spend the night before quarantine alone?"

He wiggled a finger at her. "Now, I never said that. Just because I showed up alone doesn't mean I plan on leaving alone."

She shook her head. "You're incorrigible. Hasn't Alan or Steve rubbed off on you at all in the past three years?"

"No, ma'am. Not if I can help it." He looked around. "Speaking of the old ball and chain, where is Alan?"

"Off somewhere talking shop with Senator Glenn. I'm not sure which of them was more excited about meeting the other."

Burke chuckled. "Well, then I guess it's my duty to cover for my CO." He rose smoothly and extended his hand. "Shall we dance?"

"I haven't finished my champagne yet," she laughed, arching a slender eyebrow.

"There'll be more later." He took both glasses, his empty, and placed them on a nearby table, then offered his hand again.

She slipped her hand into his and let him lead her onto the dance floor. He took her in a gentle clasp, his hand resting lightly on her waist, with a respectful distance between them.

The smile Sally wore as they swayed to and fro held a touch of melancholy. Like her husband, Sally's thoughts easily turned maudlin at the prospect of their upcoming long separation. Burke decided that just wouldn't do at all.

He clucked his tongue and sighed dramatically. "There go my prospects for the rest of the evening," he began mysteriously.

Sally knew a baiting when she heard one but decided she might as well bite. "Oh? How so?"

"Well," he drew the word out. "All the fine young ladies are going to see me dancing with you and decide they shouldn't even bother trying. They can't hold a candle."

She laughed lightly while rolling her eyes. "And women really fall for lines like that?"

"Like a ton of bricks."

They danced in an easy silence for a few minutes until the song ended. As they started back to their chairs, Sally grabbed Burke's hand and squeezed it fervently. "Just take care of him for me, Pete. Okay? Bring my husband home safe."

Burke recognized the look in her eye and the jocular retort died on his lips. "I will, Sally. I promise."

Virdon slipped his wedding ring off his finger and twirled it around the tips of his fingers, a nervous habit that drove Sally crazy. He stared at the ceiling of the bomb shelter from his bedroll on the floor. Finally, he cleared his throat and whispered to his companion. "Pete, you awake?"

After Farrow has shown him the ancient picture book, Virdon couldn't get the image from it out of his mind. The image that had killed his hope of rescue, destroyed his dream of returning home to his family, his life. Farrow's storybook, an elementary school history text, had shown them a picture of a futuristic-looking New York City, labeled as being from the year 2503. As Burke had so aptly put it, they couldn't go home, because they were already there. But how?

"Yeah." Burke lay on his side facing away from Virdon, a blanket pulled up over his shoulders. Both men had bombarded Farrow with questions after they'd seen the picture. Farrow, of course, had no answers for them; he couldn't even read the caption of the photo, and wouldn't have known its significance if he could.

"We must've come through a... a time warp. We could be five hundred years into the future. Or five thousand," he added quietly, despair heavy in his voice. "Everyone's dead... my wife... my son."

Burke sighed, opening his eyes. His head felt like it was going to break apart, from the jackhammer pounding on the inside of it. What he desperately needed was sleep, but it was as elusive for him as it was for his friend. It was all too much—the crash, waking up to find Jonesy dead and the world turned upside down. "Alan, there's nothing you can do about it. He said he'd take us to the ship in the morning. If the chronometer's still working, we'll know what year it is."

"What did we do to ourselves?" Virdon wondered aloud. From the book, they knew that human civilization had continued to progress for at least another five hundred years. But sometime after that, things had gone to hell. Virdon could imagine some of the circumstances that would lead to the downfall of Man. Natural disasters. Disease. War... nuclear war. His gut said that whatever happened, human beings brought it on themselves.

The seeds of destruction were already well established in 1980. The overuse of natural resources. The harnessing of forces and energies that humans had proven again and again that they could not entirely control. Violence, hatred, mistrust—the worst of human nature paraded through the news every evening.

Like every idealist who turned his face to the sky, Virdon had hoped that the spirit of exploration, the hope of finding life on another planet, would unite the people of Earth. Maybe they wouldn't all be holding hands and singing kum-by-ya, but at least they wouldn't be blowing each other to hell, either.

And for all he knew, maybe his dream came to pass. For at least five-hundred years after they left, the human race seemed to have continued on their merry way. But the memory of the human race was notoriously short and slipshod. Somewhere, sometime, everything had gone off the rails.

What did we do to ourselves?

The three soldiers spread out on the mossy ground around a small fire, their rifles propped against a log near their heads. Like soldiers in all times, they universally learned to sleep when the opportunity presented itself, regardless of comfort.

Galen, on the other hand, was not a soldier and sat next to a tree, deep in thought.

Zaius's story of humans from another time—ast-ro-nauts—weighed heavily on his mind. The Sacred Scrolls asserted the dominance of Ape. The scriptures said that when the world formed, out of all the animals who roamed creation, Apes were the ones who rose above the others. They were the only ones with intellect and philosophy. They were the only ones who created a civilization that set them apart from mindless animals.

Humans... He snorted. Now humans were the epitome of mindless. For while they could speak, follow instruction, and use tools, they needed a firm hand to curb their destructive tendencies. Like so many other animals, they thought only of satisfying their baser impulses without regard for consequence, for their future. He had heard tales of roaming bands of wild humans that would move into a region and strip it of all edible food within a matter of weeks. Strip it bare, and then move on to another area. And violence! He'd seen humans fight ferociously over scraps of food or a piece of discarded clothing. They had no capacity for altruism, for loyalty, for courage. Sometimes he wondered if they had any concept of something as basic as love.

No. Humans were animals, like any other animal. Did a cow think about its future? Did it feel any loyalty to the farmer who milked it, who cared for it? Did a horse worry about the comfort of its rider or feel pride when finished a well-traveled journey?

Humans were animals, like any other animal.

But now Zaius himself—head of the High Council, one of the wisest and most learned of their elders—said that humans could be different. That these humans, these ast-ro-nauts that they were going to Chalo to investigate had the capacity to be more. They could build and operate a machine that flew. Not even apes could do such a thing!

Well, not anymore, they couldn't. Galen knew from studying archaeology that evidence supported the premise that Apes once had a greater knowledge of building and science than they had now. If these humans came from the past as they claimed, maybe the craft they were flying was built by Apes, who sent humans—granted, they would have to be highly trained humans—to face danger, rather than risk the lives of good apes. It made a certain amount of sense.

And wasn't it possible that these highly trained humans might appear more intelligent, with greater knowledge and capability? Having been trained, might they not appear to have feelings of independence and freedom? Yes, yes, that would explain it.

Except—

Except that the humans he knew could barely be trained to cook a meal or to tend farm animals and crops. They certainly couldn't learn to operate such a sophisticated machine as this ship that Zaius talked about.

No, these humans must be different somehow than the humans of his time. As his thoughts circled back to that conclusion, the furrow in his brow grew deeper.

What if—

"The errand boy is worried," Urko's voice broke into his revere. Leave it to Urko's stunted intellect to assume that Galen's philosophical ponderings were worry. "Aren't you?"

Galen rolled his eyes as the big gorilla towered over him. "No. No, just confused. I always thought humans were unimportant animals." But now his entire view of the world was being challenged. And he had no one to talk to about it. Certainly not Urko!

"So they are." In Urko's world, nothing ever changed. Apes and humans had their places in the natural order, and nothing was going to change that, even if evidence to the contrary smacked him in the muzzle. "Get some sleep. I want to make an early start in the morning."

Galen sighed and rolled himself up in a blanket as Urko went to check on his soldiers. But sleep was not going to come easily.

T-minus six weeks—June 1980

Sally Virdon tapped an egg with a little too much force on the edge of the mixing bowl, and the delicate shell crumbled in her hand, coating her fingers with slime. She swore lightly under her breath and dropped the mess into the sink.

She spun the faucet to rinse her hand and wash the mixture down the garbage disposal. But instead of flicking on the switch for the disposal, she suddenly swayed on her feet and grabbed the sides of the sink to steady herself. Head down, she listened to the soothing sound of the running water as she slowly and deliberately breathed in and out. Her chest felt tight, and she could feel the rush of blood in her ears as her heart beat out a staccato rhythm. But as she watched the egg drop bit by bit into the darkness of the disposal, she couldn't bring herself to turn the device on, to hear the awful grinding sound. A sound so much like what she imagined twisted and buckling metal would make.

She'd had that dream this morning, waking with a scream on her lips to find the other side of the bed empty. A quick glance at the clock told her that Alan would be out having his morning run, and wouldn't be back for at least an hour. She sat there, her breath coming in quick gasps, the sheen of sweat on her face and chest drying quickly in the air-conditioned coolness. As tears blurred her vision and slid down her cheeks, she laid back down and turned her face into her pillow.

Before every mission, she always had nightmares about Alan dying in the cold vacuum of space. When the destination was Titan, she'd also dreamed about him dying on the distant moon, suffocating when a failure in his environment suit had vented his life-sustaining oxygen into the thin, toxic atmosphere.

In this morning's dream, Alan's ship had been lost in what the braintrust at NASA and JPL called "hyperspace", ripped apart by the stresses of trying to travel faster than light. In her dream, she'd been inside the ship with them, heard the sirens go off, watched the helpless desperation of the three men as they scrambled to avert disaster. She's listened to the screeching and grinding as the metal skeleton of the ship tore like tissue paper and the ceramic polymer that made up the skin cracked open like an egg.

She somehow heard Alan whisper, "I'm sorry, Sal," before the ship decompressed and no more sound was possible.

The human body, she knew, could survive several minutes without oxygen. People who had drowned, or who had choked, could be brought back five, sometimes even ten minutes later under the right conditions. But that wasn't the same thing as being in a vacuum, where it wasn't just that you couldn't pull air into your lungs, but that what air was there was sucked out of your body. Not just from the lungs, but from the very blood, shredding the lungs in its rush to escape.

The movies always got it wrong, Alan had told her one night when they'd just come from watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. Because they had to make it look spectacular, full of special effects and gore, to keep the viewers engaged. In reality, astronauts who died of exposure to a vacuum, whether explosive decompression or a slow leak, showed no outward signs of trauma. They could even be saved if recompressed within one or two minutes, tops. But usually death was quick, so quick that the brain didn't have time to shut down into unconsciousness first from lack of oxygen.

No, death in the hard vacuum of space was quick but painful, with full cognizance of what was happening.

She was still standing over the sink, clutching it with an iron grip, when the sliding door a few feet away opened. She jumped and let out a shriek as her husband, his shirt drenched in sweat, entered the kitchen. Pressing a hand to her chest, turned toward him by instinct, before she had a chance to school her expression.

"Man, oh man, it's hot out there—" Virdon stopped short when he saw Sally's face. He rushed over and put an arm around her, guiding her to sit in a chair. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, Alan—" was all she could get out before her voice died and the tears started to flow again.

"Shhhh." Virdon squatted down in front of Sally, rubbing his hands up and down her arms soothingly. Although he never got used to her outbursts, he'd come to expect them when a mission loomed near. "It's gonna be okay, Sal."

She wrapped both arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder, heedless of the moisture already turning clammy in the air-conditioned house. As she cried out her fear, Alan continued to make reassuring noises, knowing that nothing he could say would help.

Because any reassurances he made would be lies.

Truth was that the mission was risky. Every mission he went on had some degree of danger; the best they could do was to reduce that risk as much as possible. But he couldn't give guarantees, at least not honest ones.

But even knowing the danger, the chances of leaving his family behind forever, he had to go. The urge to explore, to discover things that no one had ever seen before, was just too strong. So he simply held his wife while she cried.

After a few minutes, her sobs died down to hiccoughing sniffles. She pulled her face away from him with a wrinkled nose, wiping the remnants of her tears off her cheeks.

"You are ripe, Colonel!" She smiled at his mock indignation. "Go get a shower, and I'll have some breakfast ready by the time you get back down."

One way or another, life would go on.

The next morning, Farrow led the way out of the secret cave. He'd packed a few essential items into a sack—a few pieces of fruit, some hard bread—then, after considering for a few moments, he went to the alcove and uncovered his storybook, replacing the stones over the white uniforms they'd put there last night. He didn't know when he might be able to come back to his secret cave.

He'd gone out in the hour just after dawn, while the two astronauts slept, to check if the gorillas were still searching. Although he hadn't seen any mounted patrols, he also knew that the apes hadn't given up on finding the strangers. As they passed the outer door to the shelter, he cautiously peered to each side, then turned sharply left. "This way." He set off at a rapid pace, but Virdon and Burke had no trouble jogging behind him.

He led the astronauts back along the path toward the clearing where their ship had landed. When they passed the tree where he'd sought shelter from Arno's dog—it seemed so long ago, but it was just yesterday morning—he told them, "It's not far."

"Why bring the book?" Virdon asked him, puffing slightly.

"You didn't think I was gonna leave it behind, did ya?"

"Wait a minute," Burke called, and they all stopped. "The apes aren't looking for you. You don't have to go with us," he added quizzically.

"We're friends, aren't we?" Farrow beamed proudly at the thought. "Come on."

Farrow turned and continued through the brush. Burke and Virdon exchanged an amused look then followed.

When they scaled the small rise leading from the forest to the clearing, Farrow suddenly flattened himself on the ground and motioned for the other two to get down as well. Although his back was currently to them, the figure patrolling around the ship was obviously a gorilla soldier. Farrow tucked his book into the sack, then pushed himself to his feet.

"I'll get rid of him," he muttered over his shoulder, then surged into the opening ground.

"Farrow, no!" Virdon objected, and both men reached to stop the old man. But he was already out of range. They hunkered back down under cover and anxiously watched the scene unfold before them.

As Farrow crashed noisily through the bushes, the gorilla spun and raised his rifle. "Halt!"

Farrow ignored him and kept rushing toward him. "The two humans! I just saw them running off that way." He waved wildly off to the side, away from where the two astronauts crouched. He skidded to a halt a careful distance from the solider, whose rifle was still pointed at Farrow. "Come on, I'll show ya."

The soldier tilted his head to one side, considering. Farrow turned and ran a few steps in the direction he wanted to lead the gorilla in, then stopped when he realized the gorilla still hadn't moved.

"Come on!" he urged the soldier, waving frantically for him to follow. "The two humans! You can catch them!"

The appeal finally worked, and the gorilla quickly loped after Farrow. As soon as the two of them had disappeared into the surrounding trees, Virdon and Burke darted into the clearing. With an ease born of practice and familiarity, they leapt onto the triangular wing that led to the hatch. Virdon reached it first, but paused in the opening as his heart sank into his stomach, his face a mask of anguish.

The interior of the ship was trashed. Panels were pulled off the walls, left dangling by bundles of colored wire. Conduits for wires and fibers hung limply from the ceiling. Every dial and monitor was smashed, every piece of equipment was ripped from its fitting. Even the chairs that they had sat in were torn from their mountings on the floor and lay overturned like broken and discarded toys.

At an impatient tap from Burke behind him, Virdon slowly descended the steps into the interior and heard a groan behind him as Burke got his first look at the wreckage.

Gone. It was all gone. A final glimmer of irrational hope flickered and died in Virdon's heart.

Burke walked around Virdon as he just stood and stared at the remains of what was once the most sophisticated space vehicle Man had ever built. Now it was just a pile of junk.

Out of the corner of his eye, Virdon's attention was caught by the panel that Burke was making a beeline for. A series of white numbers glowed brightly on the display. Designed to survive a catastrophic failure of the rest of the ship, the flight recording unit—along with the ship's chronometer—were the only systems with an independent power source, encased in hardened materials. The unit would survive the destruction of the rest of the ship to provide a final record, if recovered, of what had happened.

Now, it was their only lifeline, their only hope of figuring out when they were and how they'd gotten there.

Virdon took a step closer behind Burke as he leaned over the panel to read the display. The lower chronometer, the one that displayed subjective time that had passed on the ship, was blank. But the upper one, that represented time on Earth, displayed the date as March twenty-first, in the year 3085.

"The year 3085?" Burke read, incredulous. "More than a thousand years in the future."

"Marvelous," breathed Virdon. A thousand years!

"Maybe further. That's when it stopped working."

Virdon stepped back a pace, grabbed a sagging brace on the ceiling to steady himself as the implications slammed home. He drew in a ragged breath. His training began to reassert itself, and he once again become the mission commander, with a problem to solve.

"Well, we're just gonna have to find a—" A what? Another ship? Another time warp? Virdon shook his head and let the thought trail off.

Something on the floor caught his eye. He bent down and pulled a photograph from beneath a bundle of wires. Blowing off the dust, he held it up with a sigh. The picture was of his family, his wife Sally and his son Chris, from shortly before the mission. It had been tucked into a monitor on the command panel.

A gunshot rang out, and both astronauts reacted instantly. Virdon tucked the picture into his shirt and bolted up the steps, Burke a half-step behind him.

"Run! Run!" they heard as they emerged from the ship.

Farrow stumbled into the clearing, one hand clutching at his chest. He fell over into the dirt as Virdon jumped from the wing to his side. "Run... run..." the old man gasped, still trying to warn them.

"Farrow!" Virdon cried out as he saw the bright blood coursing over Farrow's clenched fingers and staining his lips. Burke straddled the prone man and, as Virdon tried to hold Farrow still, pulled open the tattered shirt to reveal the puckered bullet wound. Blood poured from the ugly hole, and a gurgled sound came from it with every breath Farrow struggled to take.

Before either of them could try to help the wounded man, four gorillas with rifles shuffled out from behind the ship. Burke and Virdon looked up, startled, as they stared down the barrels of four rifles trained on them. A moment later, two other apes on horses followed—another gorilla riding a white stallion and a chimpanzee on a brown mare. The gorilla wore a tall helmet that set him apart from the others, along with an air of superiority. The chimpanzee's horse danced nervously as he struggled to reign it in, but the animal was obviously reacting to its rider's apprehension.

The two astronauts exchanged an alarmed glance then slowly raised their hands in the air to signal their surrender. They were captured by apes.