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[Illustration]
The Winged Men of Orcon
_A Complete Novelette_
By David R. Sparks
Far out at the edge of the Universe
two scientists play a game of
wits--Earth to the winner.
CHAPTER I
_The Wrecked Space-Ship_
When I came to, it was dark; so dark that the night seemed all but fluid
with black pigment. Breathing was difficult, but in spite of that,
however, I felt exhilarated mentally. Also I felt strong, stronger than
I ever had in my life before. I tried to raise my hands, and found that
I was handcuffed.
I lay sprawled out on a sharply canted floor of metal, and from outside
the house, or whatever it was I was in, I could hear the screeching and
howling of the wind. I touched my face with my fettered hands, and the
act gave me a feeling of comfort, for the scar on my cheek was still
there and I knew that I was myself.
[Illustration: A flash of blue light played about our ship.]
Twisting around, I sat up, and with great difficulty drew a lighter from
my trousers pocket. The flame glimmered up. I knew then that I was lying
in the control room of a great flying machine!
All about me I saw crumpled human forms clad in glistening gray flying
jumpers. It was very, very hot. I thought I caught the sound of waves
crashing on a shore. Through a broken port blustered a hot wind laden
with an odd odor suggestive of garlic and kelp. It was just as dark
outside as in. I stirred about a bit, and found that I was in good shape
except for the handcuffs.
A low moan came from behind a bulkhead door at one end of the control
room. I listened, and again the sound was repeated. With the lighter
still flickering in my hands, I got to my feet. The bulkhead door was
jammed, but I found a heavy telargeium spanner-wrench on the floor, and
with a strength which frightened me--a strength which could have come
only by some upset condition of gravitation--I soon crashed the door
open. I had no sooner done it, however, than I forgot about the moan
which had fetched me.
* * * * *
What I saw first, hanging on a hook on one wall, was a bunch of keys,
one of which readily opened the lock of my handcuffs. Then there was a
long-barrelled, gleaming atomic gun, undamaged, and a couple of the new
cold-ray flashlights. Free, I caught up one of the flashlights, and
placed back on their hook the keys which had opened the cuffs. Then I
stooped over each corpse, and confirmed my first impression that two of
the dead men were strangers to me, but that I half recognized one.
The vaguely familiar man was clad, under his gray jumper, in the uniform
of a rear admiral of the U. S. W. Upper Zone Patrol Division. He wore a
medal of high honor, the Calypsus medal. I knew that he was Wellington
Forbes, the man who had defeated the planet Calypsus three years before.
Wellington Forbes! And I with him!
I think I may be excused my temporary forgetfulness of the moan which
had brought me to Forbes' death chamber. Uppermost in my mind was the
manner in which I had been brought here. For it was he, approaching me
through the medium of letters and messengers, who had begged, implored
me to help him against Orcon, the eccentric planet of my own discovery,
the planet which belonged to a solar system at the other end of the
Universe from ours. Because of my knowledge of Orcon, with its bubbling
seas, its brooding nightmares, and lastly, its queer conduct toward
Earth, he had wanted to take me away from my telescopes to fight. And I
had refused.
Now I understood how I came to be here.
I knew that this dead man had kidnapped me after drugging me with one of
the new amnesiacs. Yorildiside, I reckoned it. And just because I knew
that Admiral Forbes had seized me by force, I knew almost to a certainty
that I was shipwrecked on that very Orcon which I had discovered two
years before.
* * * * *
I was enraged at this high-handed treatment. For if danger was indeed
threatening Earth from Orcon, my place of all places was at my
telescopes. I could do with them, for the civilizations about me, what
no one else could. Too, I was actuated by selfish motives. I loved my
telescopes and my isodermic super-spectroscopes. And there was still
much work I had to do! Already I had discovered three new elements, and
that had showed me I was but at the beginning of a knowledge of
cosmological chemistry. Forbes! He had brought me by force out here on
this beastly little planet whose orbit was like that of a snake with the
Saint Vitus' dance! He had taken me to this wretched planet which lay at
such a remote end of the Universe that not even explorers had been
tempted to visit it!
"Oh, damn the whole business!" I groaned aloud. I was thoroughly angry
and bitter.
In a little while I experienced a sudden change of mood. I'd no sooner
spoken than a moan came from directly behind me, and I remembered why
I'd got going in the beginning, and was ashamed. I entered a small
compartment which opened from Forbes' cabin, and discovered immediately
three more people.
The strides I had taken made me realize that I had to be careful, for I
was indeed endowed with a terrific strength--an extraordinary strength
and lightness. One of these three new people was obviously dead, for his
neck was broken. The other two still breathed. The first of the two was
a short man, a Japanese by the look of him. His arm was broken. The
other person was, to my surprise, a woman. She, like the dead Forbes,
wore the insignia of the U. S. W. Upper Zone Patrol. Her insignia was
that of a navigating officer.
So it was she who had caused the crash!
It was also she who had moaned. My feelings as I lifted her to a bunk
were mixed. Being a reactionary, I still felt that woman's place was not
in the Army or Navy. Yet I confess that the woman--or girl, rather--was
ornamental. She was of the Iberian type. She was beautiful, and looked
helpless. Some atavistic trait of the protective instinct in man made me
take a little more pains in caring for her than I might have taken with
a man.
* * * * *
"Doctor Weeks," were the first surprised words she murmured when I had
bandaged a cut in her head and she came to.
Weeks being my name--Frederick Weeks--I grunted and wondered just how
much _she'd_ had to do with my being here. I noted that the eyes were
gray with violet lights.
"You were handcuffed and drugged," she announced wonderingly.
"I was," I answered, "but I'm not any more. Thanks to my own efforts."
She dropped that subject.
"Take me to Admiral Forbes, Doctor Weeks. I am Captain Virginia Crane."
I acknowledged curtly her introduction of herself and told her the
admiral was dead. Her cheeks, already pale, grew white. I asked her the
number of the space flyer's crew. She said ten. So far, four were dead,
three alive, including myself, and the rest unaccounted for, I told her.
She winced. In a moment, though, she pulled herself together with a grit
which I could not deny, despite my disapproval of her being here.
"I suppose you wonder why you're here," she said suddenly, "and where we
are."
"I don't need to be told where I am," I said coldly, "but a little
information as to who was responsible for my coming to Orcon wouldn't be
amiss. I suppose it was Forbes."
She cut me off with a look.
"It wasn't the admiral." Her really beautiful eyes narrowed. "It was I
who planned your abduction and got him to execute it."
"You!"
I drew back. My manner was formal and cold.
And after that I guess I pretty well boiled over. But did it gain me
anything? Before I had said half enough to soothe my lacerated feelings,
the girl simply shrugged and looked bored.
"Don't be a fool," she ordered curtly. "We needed you, and I, for one,
was not going to see your egotistical ideas about an unimportant piece
of work--your cosmological chemistry--jeopardize the safety of the
world. Oh, I know the government wanted you in your laboratory. But with
Ludwig Leider loose on Orcon, and you the only one in our Zone who knew
much of anything about the planet, what could you expect?"
* * * * *
I hardly know what might have happened between us if she had not
mentioned Leider's name when she did. The insults with which she had
begun had hardly been atoned for by her half understanding of my refusal
to join Forbes, and I was still in a rage. Yet, as it was, at the
mention of Leider I snapped to attention.
"Ludwig Leider! Here?"
"Yes," she replied significantly.
"But that makes a difference! Why wasn't I told? Why this silly
kidnapping?"
She moved a little on the couch and looked at me.
"There was not time to tell you and to chance putting up with further
silly arguments on your part. When the secret service detail which had
been handling the Leider case brought in word of his whereabouts, there
was time only to get a ship specially outfitted for such a tremendous
journey and start. We _had_ to kidnap you."
I hardly heard her last words. Ludwig Leider--scientist extraordinary,
renegade, terrorist. Everyone of our latter day century knew that he was
the greatest example of the megalomaniac--the power-seeking
genius--which the human race had produced for decades. Everyone knew
that he--furious because he had been denied the high position he craved
as ruler for life of the united peoples of Earth--had been the leader of
the interplanetary struggle which had resulted in Forbes' brilliantly
successful attack on Calypsus. And everyone knew that he had escaped
from Calypsus. And that, while he was free, there could be no real
safety anywhere, either for Earth, which he hated, or any of its allied
planets. Leider, here! No wonder I had been observing queer goings on in
Orcon!
* * * * *
Somehow I forgot to be angry with poor dead Forbes. Almost I forgot to
disapprove of the woman.
"See here!" I broke out. "If your secret service detail was right, and
Leider _is_ on Orcon, we've got to stop talking and get going. Tell me
more about your expedition."
"Do you know," she said presently, "I rather thought you would make
quite a leader--and fighter--if you could ever be aroused. As for the
expedition, we have only this one ship. It's that kind of a job."
"Oh, suicide party, eh?"
I ignored her remark about my ability as a fighter. I had never aspired
to any sort of naval or military leadership.
"Yes," she answered; "suicide party. And I suppose, with our ship
wrecked, our admiral dead, and contact with Leider not even made as yet,
it's become doubly so. But we've got to do something."
She leaned forward on the couch.
"Our primary objective," she went on, "was to reach Orcon and scout, and
then radio information back to Earth. But we also have two tons of the
new explosive, kotomite, aboard and are to do damage if we can. What are
you going to do, Doctor? The command is yours now."
I was well enough versed in the upper space tactics of our modern navy
to appreciate the wisdom which had been used in sending the one ship
alone on the expedition, and I could well understand the reasonable hope
of success which had been promised. I confess I was staggered to know
what could be done, however, now that the admiral was dead and the ship
wrecked. As for my having inherited the command, I was even more
disconcerted.
"_I_ don't know what we're going to do," I said in answer to Captain
Crane's question. "I doubt if Forbes would know, if he were alive, and
I'm by no means the commander he was. But, as you say, we have to do
something. So, since it's a little early in the game to explode the
kotomite and call it a day's work, we better declare a truce between
ourselves, and then check up on the ship. Come on, if you're able."
She was able.
* * * * *
In the next twenty minutes we found that it was the forward end of the
great flier which was damaged, and that while she was in fair shape
amidships and astern, she would never fly again. We discovered that the
three unaccounted-for men of the crew were lying forward, and found that
two were dead and one lived--a radio man named LeConte. He had two ribs
broken. Half a dozen atomic guns remained to us, and we found intact one
dynamo capable of generating the new cold light in considerable
quantities. It was not an encouraging check-up, though. Out of a crew of
ten, only the four of us were alive; Captain Crane, the Jap, LeConte,
and myself. And all of us were more or less battered. The ship was still
habitable, but smashed beyond hope of repair. Around us stretched
Orcon--in the control of Ludwig Leider.
I got LeConte, the radio man with the broken ribs, into the small cabin
where the Jap still lay and made him comfortable. Then I set the Jap's
broken arm. I gave both him and LeConte an injection of penopalatrin in
order that their shattered bones might be decently knitted in two or
three hours. The Jap presently came to, and I found that he was a
civilian like myself, but one who had long been employed on the U. S. W.
research staff as a ray and explosive expert. I realized at once that he
was the inventor of the kotomite with which the ship was loaded.
All of them, including Captain Crane, told me the story of the crash.
Captain Crane hadn't been responsible, after all. Their magnogravitos
system had failed in some mysterious manner as they approached Orcon. In
spite of the checking effect of their helium pontoons, which had
expanded properly when they had come into Orcon's atmosphere, they had
slammed into a sea of light and crashed. That was all anyone knew. But
everyone suspected that Leider had been somehow responsible.
"I do not enjoy the prospect," Koto said after a glance at his
temporarily helpless left arm. "If Leider is able to wreck a space ship
before she ever reaches his planet, he has more power than he ever had
during the Calypsus war."
* * * * *
I said nothing, but simply looked at LeConte, and nodded approval when
he muttered something about getting his sending set in shape, if that
were possible. We were sitting in the small cabin and Captain Crane was
searching my face with those discomforting, violet-lighted gray eyes. I
knew she was asking me once more what I was going to do, and I knew
that, except that we might fire the kotomite, I could tell her nothing.
We sat on in silence. Then, however, before I spoke about the kotomite,
a change came.
All at once I felt the space flier tremble under me. It rocked gently
over on one side and began to move. Slowly, but definitely.
Koto and I were on our feet in a flash. Captain Crane stiffened and
faced me, waiting.
"What is it?" Koto gasped.
"We'll find out what it is," I flung back. "Miss Crane--Captain--on deck
with you. Here, Koto, a hand with one of the guns. We'll take it up out
of the hatchway and through the main cabin."
LeConte, I knew, was the one we must be careful of, with his cracked
ribs.
"Get to your apparatus," I ordered him, "and stay with it until you get
through to Earth."
With that I jumped into the main cabin, stepped over Forbes' lifeless
body, and caught hold of the nearest of the atomic guns. I was to be a
leader, after all.