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The seven figures crested the last low ridge and stared down in disbelief. Beneath them, the baked and cracked riverbed stretched like a great open scar through the sand. A few dark stones and patches of caked mud were all that remained of the once vital stream. But none of that held their attention for long—not when, half-buried in dust and tilted at a shallow angle near the far bank, gleamed the unmistakable orange-red fuselage of the Spindrift.
Steve exhaled a dry, stunned breath. “There she is.”
Dan shaded his eyes with one hand. “She’s intact. At least… mostly. Could’ve been a lot worse.”
Mark stepped forward, voice filled with cautious optimism. “With the riverbed dry, we can reach her. No problem there. Question is, can we do anything with her?”
Betty squinted, then said softly, “She’s been sitting in the sun too long. Electronics could be fried. Instruments warped. But she’s there. That counts for something.”
Valerie touched Nova’s shoulder and smiled down at her. “We made it.”
Fitzhugh, brushing dust from his collar, muttered, “Wonderful. We find our miraculous little ship again… and it’s stuck in the middle of a dried-up ditch like a grounded fish.”
Steve looked around the full extent of the dried up river. "Look as if we're in time," he said. "No sign of the Ape Army yet!"
"No," Dan answered. "But they probably aren't far behind us, so let's get it in gear."
One by one, the castaways and Nova descended from the sandy ridge and stole across the dry riverbed, their movements cautious but quick. The brittle mud beneath their feet cracked and flaked with every step, sending faint echoes through the still, sun-scorched air. Steve led the way, his eyes locked on the half-buried form of the Spindrift, glinting dully beneath a crust of windblown grit. Dan flanked him, scanning the horizon, while the others moved in pairs—Valerie keeping close to Betty, Mark watching their rear, and Fitzhugh complaining under his breath about the heat and the “lunar landscape.” Nova hesitated once, glancing around the valley with wide, uncertain eyes, then hurried after Valerie, the dry earth crunching beneath her bare feet. As they closed the distance, the familiar contours of the ship seemed both alien and reassuring—damaged, but still theirs.
Nova suddenly darted ahead, placing herself between the group and the Spindrift, her arms flung wide as if to physically block their path. Her face was taut with fear, her wide eyes scanning the cliffs above the dried riverbed. She shook her head violently and pounded her chest with a closed fist, then pointed toward the far side of the valley and cried, ““Nuh! Baahh... plaashh!"
The castaways froze, exchanging glances. Valerie stepped forward, gently reaching for Nova’s arm, but the girl recoiled, frantically repeating, “Nuh! Baahh... plaashh!"
Steve approached her carefully, his voice calm and steady. “Nova… listen. I don’t know what’s out there—maybe you’ve seen something we haven’t. But we’ll be careful. You hear me? We’ll watch for it. We have to reach the ship.”23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbQgYYVvB8X
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As the castaways and Nova reached the Spindrift, they paused for a moment, all staring up at the scorched, dust-caked hull of the small red ship—its sleek curves dulled by time, exposure, and the brutal environment. The once-pristine exploratory vehicle sat wedged slightly on its side in the cracked bank of the dried river, a silent monument to everything they’d left behind.
Steve climbed the short incline to the entry hatch, brushing away sand and brittle leaves. “We’ll go in fast, grab what we need, and get back out. No telling how long we’ve got before that ape army column arrives.”
Dan nodded. “I’ll head for the main console—see what systems might still be alive. Power cells, navigational data, anything.”
Valerie added, “I’ll go with you. If the medkit’s still intact, we’ll need supplies.”
Mark shaded his eyes and glanced toward the west. “We’ll need carrying capacity. Something to haul anything heavy.”
Fitzhugh, hands on hips, scowled. “And just how, dear boy, do you propose we carry said treasures out of here? We’ve no cart, no wheelbarrow... I left my porter behind in Century City.”
Steve replied curtly, “We’ll use the tool crates. There’s two in the aft hold. Mark, you and Betty check the galley storage. Anything with handles, anything with wheels—hell, even a pressure suitcase if it’s light enough to drag.”
Betty spoke up, “I’ll see if we still have those old harness straps. We can rig something between two of us if we have to.”
Meanwhile, Nova lingered back a few paces, looking nervously over her shoulder toward the cliffs beyond the riverbed, her brow furrowed in warning. But for now, the humans were focused. Inside the Spindrift lay their best hope of survival—and maybe, of evening the odds against the apes.
Mark had just ducked through the narrow access hatch when he stopped cold. His eyes narrowed as he glanced back out over the jagged rocks lining the far bank of the dry riverbed. Something—he wasn’t sure what—had moved. A flicker, a shimmer, maybe a shadow darting between two boulders.
He turned slightly, voice low but tense. “Hold up. I just saw something.”
Steve, halfway into the cockpit, paused and looked over his shoulder. “Where?”
Mark pointed. “Back there, near those dark rocks. Left of that crooked mesquite tree.”
Dan and Valerie crowded toward the hatch, squinting into the heat-hazed distance. Betty shaded her eyes with a hand. Fitzhugh muttered, “Probably a buzzard. Or your imagination.”
“I know what I saw,” Mark replied, firmly but quietly. “Something’s watching us.”
Nova came up beside them, her eyes scanning the same place. She saw nothing. Her face twisted, not in recognition, but dread. She didn’t need to see it. Her instincts were already screaming. “Ugghhh....” she muttered, backing away from the hatch.
Steve stepped out again, hand resting on the edge of the doorframe. His voice was steady. “Everyone inside. Now. We keep this fast. If something’s out there, we don’t give it a reason to get curious.”
As they slipped into the ship’s dim, dust-choked interior, the temperature dropped a few degrees. But the tension didn’t.
Inside the Spindrift, time seemed to hang still, cloaked in a film of dust and silence. The dim ambient lighting flickered to life with a few hesitant sparks as Steve toggled the main power switch from the cockpit—though most systems stayed dead. He let out a breath. “Minimal reserves. We’ve got just enough juice for the lights and maybe a readout or two. That’s it.”
The cockpit itself looked mostly intact—sleek, futuristic panels lining the curved front wall, their banks of dials and switches like a frozen orchestra of technology. Cracked Plexiglas on the main viewscreen spidered from one corner but hadn't collapsed. Dan moved to the co-pilot seat, brushing debris off the control console, instinctively checking for diagnostic feedback. “No flight. That’s a given. But the mainframe’s still intact.”
Behind them, the others stepped cautiously into the main compartment—a narrow corridor lit with soft glows along the edges of the ceiling, leading past the communications room and the galley. Valerie and Betty turned into the lab area, where metal cabinets and racks of scientific instruments had been jostled, some spilled onto the floor during the crash. Betty frowned. “We’ll need to check the med supplies too. Might be gauze and alcohol in here we can use.”
“Focus on tools first,” Steve called back. “Power units. Scanners. Anything we can carry to defend or fix.”
Mark and Fitzhugh moved toward the aft section, where the corridor widened slightly and split. To the left: the compact bunk room. To the right: the sealed hatch to the reactor chamber. Mark turned the manual lever, and the door gave way with a groan of protest. The reactor room, deep in the rear, smelled of scorched metal and ozone. “Core’s fractured,” he announced, crouching near a half-detached panel. “But if we cannibalize the micro-transformers and one of the field generators, we might be able to power a defense system. Or rig a signal.”
Fitzhugh trailed in, expression unimpressed. “Marvelous. Shall we sling it all on our backs like mules?”
Dan stepped in with a grin and held up one of the collapsible field packs from the storage lockers. “We don’t have to. These should hold enough for what we’re taking—if we pack smart.”
Steve returned with Nova beside him. She looked around in awe, running her hand along the curved bulkhead, muttering in soft grunts. Her eyes locked on a blinking diode in the wall panel as if it were magic. But she stuck close to Steve, mistrustful of the walls and humming lights.
“Fill the packs. One hour, max,” Steve ordered. “Then we’re gone. I don’t want to find out what Mark saw the hard way.”
Dan unlatched the storage compartment with a sharp metallic click, pulling out a folded equipment pack and handing it to Mark. “Field-issue. Designed to expand. We load these tight, they’ll hold.”
Fitzhugh sniffed as he accepted one, turning it over in his hands with disdain. “Lovely. Compact misery.”
They moved efficiently, spreading through the vessel. Mark returned to the reactor room and unscrewed the fastenings on a half-loose panel. “This converter module—still intact.” He unplugged it with a practiced motion, the connectors sizzling slightly before going dead. He wrapped it in a protective cloth and tucked it into the expanding pack.
Steve and Dan slipped into the cockpit, now dimly lit with streaks of faded red and amber. “Transponder’s burned out,” Dan murmured, running his fingers over the main communications board. “But the signal amplifier’s usable.” Together they removed it carefully, every movement slow, deliberate. No one spoke unless they had to.
Valerie stood in the lab, pulling open one of the top drawers with Betty at her side. "Still sealed," she said, holding up a compact medical scanner. “Might get a few more scans out of this if we ration it.” Betty nodded, reaching into another compartment for a satchel of emergency supplies: bandages, antiseptic wipes, and a long-shelved glucose injector. “If we get caught out there,” she said, “these might be what keep us going.”
Even Fitzhugh, grumbling all the while, found himself sorting tools in the engineering nook. “A man of refinement, reduced to a glorified junkman,” he muttered, but he still tucked a heat spanner and two laser fuses into his pouch.
Nova remained silent but alert, standing in the corridor between compartments. Her eyes flicked from room to room, shoulders tight with unease. Every flicker of light, every spark of static on the wall monitors made her flinch, though she kept close to Steve, trailing his steps.
From the cockpit, Steve looked over his shoulder at the others. “We’ll need the emergency solar cell too. Might not power much, but it could be enough to boost a shield or a comm burst.”
“Got it!” Dan called back from the locker beneath the galley console, pulling out the silver-paneled disk the size of a small tray. He handed it off to Valerie, who gingerly stowed it in her pack.
The work went on quickly but quietly. The silence of the ship was oppressive. Outside, nothing stirred in the desert, but each castaway felt the weight of being watched. Whether it was memory or something more, they didn’t know.
Steve paused at the foot of the corridor, one hand gripping the inner hull frame, eyes narrowing at the glint of a small, red-painted case half-buried beneath a collapsible bunk. He took a step forward and crouched, brushing away dust and debris. “Here we go,” he muttered.
Fitzhugh, just entering the room behind him, froze mid-step. “Now, see here, Captain. I’ve told you—those are private property. Personal effects. I insist—”
Steve flipped open the latch with a loud snap, revealing a neatly packed row of miniature cutters, micro-drills, a compact sonic probe, and several small vials of bonding agent—none of them standard-issue. None of them legal. All gleaming under a thin layer of dust, like forbidden jewels.
Steve didn’t look up. “Personal effects, huh? Smuggled aboard in your luggage, if I remember right.”
Fitzhugh puffed up, flustered. “I prefer the term unauthorized procurement. And I might add, these items have sentimental—”
“Sentimental, my foot,” Dan said, coming up beside them with his arms full of gear. “Those are the only things that’ll cut through bonded alloy if we need to repair the comm dish.”
Steve pulled the kit free and handed it to Mark without ceremony. “This is what I came back for,” he said. “The rest of the parts we can improvise—but without these, we’re sunk.”
Fitzhugh threw up his hands. “Wonderful. Confiscated by my own crew. I’d report this theft if I weren’t already marooned in a simian dystopia.”
Steve stood and gave him a look, half amused, half grateful. “Save the speech, Alex. You just became our most important contributor.”
Fitzhugh blinked. “Really?”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Betty said, brushing past with a full pack slung over her shoulder. “You’re still dead weight until something needs sawing.”
Fitzhugh sniffed and straightened his collar. “Well. It’s nice to be appreciated for a change.”
Nova watched the exchange from a few feet away, puzzled but alert, her dark eyes flicking between the men and the odd metal tools. She didn’t understand their words—but she could tell something important had just changed.
They were almost out. One by one, the castaways had started slipping through the narrow forward hatch, their packs full, their boots echoing softly on the metal floor. But Steve didn’t move. He stood just inside the threshold of the cockpit, staring toward the pilot’s console as if something had tugged at him from the past.
He held up a hand. “Wait.”
Betty, halfway down the access ramp, turned. “What is it?”
"Wait here," he said quietly. "I just remembered something."
He stepped into the narrow corridor and made his way into the cockpit, the control panels dimmed and dusty under years of sand and silence. The silence felt deeper here, almost reverent—as if the ship still remembered the skies it once soared. He reached beneath the main flight console, feeling blindly until his fingers touched a recessed compartment. With a faint click, it opened, and he withdrew a small sealed case, no bigger than his palm.
Inside: a thin spool of microfilm.
He stared at it for a moment, then turned instinctively to the forward viewport—and froze.
Beyond the riverbed, across the cracked and baking earth, a faint tremor stirred the horizon. Dust, rising in columns. He narrowed his eyes. Not wind. Not natural. It was rhythmic, thickening, swelling with movement. The unmistakable haze of machines on the march.
Tanks. Jeeps. Troop carriers. Urko’s expeditionary force.
The ground had betrayed them. It was bringing the apes.
From behind him, faint but urgent, came a cry from the passenger compartment. “Uh-roh-gohs!” Nova’s voice, full of fear, echoed down the corridor.
Steve reentered the passenger section, the narrow strip of microfilm clutched tightly between his fingers. His expression was taut with urgency, but behind it burned hope.
“I just remembered,” he said, and the others turned to face him. “This—this spool.” He held it up. “It records all suborbital flight data—everything from launch to crash landing. It might’ve captured the exact moment the Spindrift hit the space warp.”
Valerie leaned forward. “You think it shows what happened to us?”
Steve nodded. “It might show how we ended up her in the first place. Maybe even how the warp formed. If I can find a way to play it back—maybe just maybe—I can figure out how to reverse it."
A silence spread across the narrow corridor.
“You mean…” Valerie said, stepping forward slowly, “go home?”
Steve shook his head. “If we can find the Marintha, and if it’s intact…” He took a breath. “I think I can repair it. At least enough to bring it online, initiate a reverse warp sequence—and go back. Back to 1983.”
He went on, voice low and deliberate. “Zira and Cornelius have risked everything for us. If we can show them our world—our time—before the fall… maybe it can change something. Maybe it can stop what’s coming. Or at least give them a fighting chance to steer things differently.”
Mark blinked. “You’re thinking of taking them back with you? To 1983?”
“I’m thinking,” Steve said, lowering his voice, “that if I can make the calculations work—if the warp field can be retriggered—we could show them our world. A world before the collapse. Let them see what happened. Maybe even help prevent it.”
“You’re insane,” Fitzhugh declared, folding his arms. “Completely bananas. Forgive the pun.”
Dan shrugged. “Told you that was crazy. Been saying it for weeks.”
Still, no one moved to argue further. Even Fitzhugh had the sense not to push past a moment this big.
Dan took one look at the microfilm strip clutched tightly in Steve's fingers and nodded grimly. "All right. I’ll go set the destruct timer on the main computer bank. Give me a couple of minutes—I’ll meet you outside."
He turned before anyone could protest, ducking back through the narrow corridor. The others watched him go in silence.
The cockpit felt hotter now, heavier with pressure, as if the air itself knew something was coming. Dan moved fast, crossing to the central console. 23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRNw2bhNt9A
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Self-destruct systems on suborbital craft like the Spindrift were a hard-learned necessity of the late 20th century’s volatile geopolitical climate. These advanced vessels carried not only cutting-edge propulsion systems and navigation technologies, but often experimental power sources and sensitive data banks—materials that, in the wrong hands, could be reverse-engineered into weapons or surveillance tools. But more than that, the potential for a crash landing in hostile territory or a timeline fracture scenario (as theorized after the first spacewarp anomalies) made containment paramount. A self-destruct ensured that if recovery was impossible, the secrets of Earth’s most ambitious aerospace programs would vanish in a controlled burn—leaving nothing behind to be misused, misinterpreted, or misunderstood by those not yet ready to wield such knowledge.23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7SCTWxrkFO
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Dan flipped open the secondary panel beneath the flight instruments and began entering the command sequence—destruction code, delay timer, confirmation lockout.
Almost done.
Something shifted in the light. A shadow slid across the console.
He glanced up.
And there, just outside the forward cockpit window, its grotesque face pressed to the glass, was something monstrous.
The thing stared directly at him—an enormous, twisted parody of a canine, but without true canine symmetry. Its flesh was leathery, stretched tight and lumpy over a bloated skull. Its eyes were bulbous and filmed, sunken deep into their sockets, and its mouth was a crooked smear of teeth and slaver. Tufts of wiry fur sprouted in uneven patches across its jowls and snout, but nothing about it looked truly alive—only sustained. Mutated.
Dan froze, breath caught in his throat, unable to move or look away.
The creature blinked. Slow. Intent.
Dan swore under his breath, finished the last keystroke, and turned to run.23Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzi54cGjJ5o
