Planet of the Apes Read Online Free

had disturbed me profoundly. There could be no doubt as to the humanness of the foot. Perhaps it belonged to an adolescent or to a small man, but with much more likelihood—and this I hoped with all my heart—to a woman.
    “So Soror is inhabited by humans,” Professor Antelle murmured.
    There was a hint of disappointment in his voice, which made me at that moment less well disposed toward him. He shrugged his shoulders with a gesture that was habitual with him and joined us ininspecting the sand around the lake. We discovered other footprints, obviously left by the same creature. Levain, who had moved away from the water’s edge, drew our attention to one on the dry sand. The print itself was still damp.
    “She was here less than five minutes ago,” the young man exclaimed.
    “She was swimming, heard us coming, and fled.”
    It had become an implicit fact for us that the subject under discussion was a woman. We fell silent, scanning the forest, but without hearing so much as the noise of a branch breaking.
    “We’ve got all the time in the world,” said the professor, shrugging his shoulders again. “But if a human being swam here, we could no doubt do the same without any danger.”
    Without further ado the learned scientist shed his clothes and plunged his skinny body into the pool. After our long voyage the pleasure of this swim in cool, delicious water made us almost forget our recent discovery. Levain alone seemed harassed and lost in thought. I was about to make a taunting remark about his melancholy expression when I saw the woman just above us, perched on the rocky ledge from which the cascade fell.
    I shall never forget the impression her appearance made on me. I held my breath at the marvelous beauty of this creature from Soror, who revealed herself to us dripping with spray, illuminated by the blood-red beams of Betelgeuse. It was a woman—ayoung girl, rather, unless it was a goddess. She boldly asserted her femininity in the light of this monstrous sun, completely naked and without any ornament other than her hair, which hung down to her shoulders. True, we had been deprived of any point of comparison for over two years, but none of us was inclined to fall a victim to mirages. It was plain to see that the woman, who stood motionless on the ledge like a statue on a pedestal, possessed the most perfect body that could be conceived on Earth. Levain and I were breathless, lost in admiration, and I think even Professor Antelle was moved.
    Standing upright, leaning forward, her breasts thrust out toward us, her arms raised slightly backward in the attitude of a diver taking off, she was watching us, and her surprise clearly equaled our own. After gazing at her for a long time, I was so dazzled that I could not discern any particular feature: her body as a whole hypnotized me. It was only after several minutes that I saw she belonged to the white race, that her skin was golden rather than bronzed, that she was tall, but not excessively so, and slender. Then I noticed, as though in a dream, a face of singular purity. Finally I looked at her eyes.
    Then I became more alert, my attention sharpened, and I stiffened, for in her expression there was an element that was new to me. In it I discerned the outlandish, mysterious quality all of us had been expecting in a world so distant from our own. But I was unable to analyze or even define the nature ofthis oddity. I only sensed an essential difference from individuals of our own species. It did not come from the color of her eyes: these were of a grayish hue not often found among us, but nevertheless not unknown. The anomaly lay in their emanation, a sort of void, an absence of expression, reminding me of a wretched mad girl I had once known. But no! it was not that, it could not be madness.
    When she saw that she herself was an object of curiosity—or, to be more accurate, when my eyes met hers—she seemed to receive a shock and abruptly looked away with an