_Through the Darkness of Orcon_
Gongs clanged, blue lights flashed on and off with the lurid glare of
sulphur pits burning in hell, and screaming, winged Orconites, all mixed
up together, pelted toward us as thickly as the snowflakes of a
blizzard. I don't suppose the destruction of one little mesh of wires
had ever created such a disturbance before.
Leider's cruiser rested in the hangar two caverns away.
"Play hide-and-seek with them!" I shouted against the turmoil.
The initial wave of the attack struck us as we tore from the laboratory
corridor into the first power room. Captain Crane went down under the
onslaught of what must have been a hundred Orconites, and it took all
the tearing strength of Koto's, LeConte's, and my hands combined to
burrow through the piles of creatures who covered her, and get her out.
By the time she was on her feet again, a new legion was at us.
I had not, however, suggested hide-and-seek meaninglessly.
While the others fought, and wildest confusion reigned, I pulled off my
coat, flung it aside, and crammed myself into a loose, one-piece costume
of Orcon which I tore off a corpse. Then I fought while my three
companions repeated the operation. We succeeded in confusing the mob to
such an extent that we were able to work our way through the fringes of
the melee and move clear across the first room, before we were
recognized.
* * * * *
The alarm of our escape, though, spread into the next room almost as
soon as we reached it, and a foolish attempt we made to keep bunched
together and get through with a dash, betrayed us before we got well
started.
Now it was a case of being drowned again by a sheer deluge of men. While
the Orconites pawed me, tripped me, and otherwise discommoded me, I
broke necks, dug out eyes, tore quivering antennae from foreheads until
I felt as if I had been doing nothing else for hours. And those beside
me were doing the same. Yet always more bladder faces rose in front of
us, and more wings beat down from above. Not even our supreme strength
was great enough to stand it.
Out across the bleeding, crumpled bodies and the teeming swarms beyond,
I saw as through a red mist the glittering, whirling maze of Leider's
wondrous generators, and began to curse to myself.
For the steady pressure was forcing us slowly back toward the machines
and toward the rugged, high wall of the cavern beyond, and I knew that
once we reached the wall we could retreat no farther and must stand
there to fight until we were completely exhausted. I drew closer to
Virginia Crane and did what I could to help her with her main group of
assailants while still battling my own.
Oddly enough, I was remembering how, when she had been caught up by the
magnetic current that had brought us here, she had cried out to me,
calling me by my given name.... The recollection filled me with a queer
emotion, partly rebellion and partly--something else. In the crisis we
were facing now, I somehow lacked my wonted power to shun femininity.
* * * * *
Side by side we struggled against our enemies, tearing at them with our
whole strength, yet always we were driven closer to the wall which would
finally stop us.
"Oh," she finally gasped, "I--didn't want--to die!"
"No," I answered through set teeth as I hurled down an Orconite only to
be confronted by two more; "but I'm afraid--we must. Well, we've done
away with Leider, anyway."
"Yes," she choked. "That's--something."
Koto and LeConte were as hard pressed as we. Then, as we fell steadily
back into a passage between two of the vast generators, back toward the
solid wall of the cavern, a queer thing happened.
Despite the fact that LeConte was embroiled with a dozen winged men, his
face became crinkled with a broad grin!
"Watch!" he yelled suddenly, and I _did_ watch.
We were within a few feet of the driving gear of one of the generators.
Quick as a bolt of lightning, LeConte caught a deadly firm hold on one
of the ugly, squawking orange-skinned creatures, raised him into the
air, and there held him poised while he swung around to face the
generator.
Genius!
There was a shriek, then a thousand shrieks. Impelled by the Frenchman's
tremendous heave, the winged man shot forward and struck full, with a
splashing sound, against the terrifically revolving armature. A
thunderbolt seemed to explode in our faces. All in that room, we as well
as the Orconites, reeled dazedly back. A stench of seared flesh and
short circuited wires smote our nostrils. Darkness--smothering, thick,
absolute darkness--settled over us.
* * * * *
"Come on!" LeConte shouted amidst the blessed inkiness of it, and I felt
him tug at my hand. Captain Crane's hand slipped into my other, Koto
caught hold of her, and we started forward.
Genius indeed, this stroke of LeConte's.
Clinging stoutly to each other, we pushed through the meager,
floundering opposition which was all that was offered in the intense
darkness, and began to forge swiftly ahead. Ten yards ... a hundred. A
slight decrease of the sounds of crying and panting and of confused
flopping wings told us we had passed through the arch which separated
the wrecked power room from the hangar.
"Captain," I whispered as we battered against some confused and helpless
Orconites and flung them aside, "could you make anything of the control
system on the cruiser before Leider got us?"
Virginia Crane said vigorously that she had.
"The light switches are all on a board to the right of the entrance
door. The other controls are as readily accessible."
"Leaves us in something of a position!" I whispered.
The hand which she had placed in my own tightened its grip. I heard
LeConte grunt with satisfaction as he pressed forward. I began to figure
on ways and means of getting to our wrecked ship alone after the others
were aboard the cruiser.
We crossed another fifty or sixty yards of the darkness, and found fewer
of the badly shaken Orconites in our path. Now, in that thick obscurity,
I sensed that we were nearing the magnificent, tapering hull with its
fish-scale sides.
"Come on!" I urged unnecessarily. I kicked into several of the yielding
bodies left from our first fight, before Leider had taken us, and in a
little while the feel of cool, smooth metal under my hand told me we had
reached the gangway.
"Up you go, Captain!" I snapped, and as she clutched the slender rail of
the gangway and plunged upwards, "LeConte, you next. Koto--"
But Koto laid a firm hand on my arm.
"No, I do not go."
* * * * *
We stopped where we were. The noises of pursuit were still around us,
and I could have slugged him for making a delay.
"You fool, get aboard!" I roared.
But it did no good.
"No."
"Get the motors started!" I called to Captain Crane. "LeConte, you help
her." Then I turned to Koto and in the dark waved a fist under his nose.
"You idiot--"
"No, my friend," he laughed at me. "You killed Leider. LeConte put out
the lights. Captain Crane will pilot the ship. Now it's my turn. You
will pardon my insubordination, but you will also please to hurry up the
gangway before I knock you unconscious and throw you up. Damn it, it's
my explosive, anyway, isn't it? Who has the best right to fire it?"
With that he whirled away from me.
"Don't wait!" he called over his shoulder.
I laughed at him and sang out the order to Captain Crane to stand by. As
for myself, I remained standing on the small platform at the foot of the
gangway.
The moment Captain Crane flipped a switch which flooded the control room
and a score of ports along the hull with golden light, I thought the
yells which rose from the other room and the far side of this one would
blow the roof off. By the time we felt a quiver run through the hull,
and heard the sweet, deep-throated hum of the gigantic power plant, a
mob of Orconites had formed for a new attack. It was hideous that we
could not wait for Koto in darkness, but the light was essential to
Captain Crane's preparations, so there was nothing to be done. I felt
that Koto's chances of getting back to us were one in a thousand.
* * * * *
Yet suddenly, as I still clung to the foot of the gangway, LeConte
thrust his head from the control room door and yelled at me to hang on
tight. At once the ship moved forward, and, rolling easily on her ground
gear, swung left and lunged toward the swooping mob of Orconites.
Handling that space flier in the cavern was like trying to navigate a
one-hundred-thousand-ton freighter in a pond. But Captain Crane did
it--she whom I had once accused, to myself, of misnavigating and
wrecking our other ship. The Orconites had formed themselves in a dense
group. We went into them, mowed them down, stopped under the great arch
which led to the inky black power rooms, backed up, and, as the
screaming lines reformed, crunched terrifically into them again.
By this time I saw in the corridor leading to our old ship, where the
darkness was only partially broken by our lights, a dark-headed grinning
man who was bent nearly double with the speed of his running.
"He's coming!" I howled.
"He's coming!" LeConte echoed to Virginia Crane in the control room.
And again the miracle of the hundred-thousand-tonner in the pond was
performed. Again the cruiser backed up and swung around. We headed
toward Koto, straight toward him.
* * * * *
There still were droves of Orconites to contend with. Flocks of them had
taken to their wings, and were filling the whole upper reaches of the
cavern, now that a juggernaut had the floor. They had spied Koto and
were swooping toward him. But they could not seize him without coming to
the floor, and they could not come to the floor without contending with
the juggernaut.
Now the cruiser seemed to swoop. I saw a swirl of wings all about,
battering down and down about the Jap; then I clung to the gangway rail
with one hand and reached far out with the other toward our friend.
He leaped, and I felt the warm contact of his hands gripping my arm. I
gave a heave, and landed him on the steps as neatly as a fisherman ever
netted a trout.
"All clear!" I screamed up the gangway.
It was not until we were on the deck, and the cruiser was gliding
magnificently forward toward the shaft which led outside to space and
light, that Koto spoke. But when he did, his words had significance.
"It's done!" he panted. "The gun is firing against the drums!"
We dove into the control room, and LeConte banged the outer door shut
and jammed huge catches, battening it down for our flight through space.
"Get out as fast as you can!" LeConte panted on, speaking now to Captain
Crane as she headed us gently into the tunnel. "The kotomite's due to go
off the second the first drums are disintegrated."
I dropped limply on to a seat beside the pilot and sat still.
* * * * *
We passed through the tunnel in five or six seconds. In another five
seconds, we had not only taken off, but had worked up a formidable
speed. We barely felt the explosion when it came. But on the instrument
board in front of Virginia Crane, gleamed a little box with a
ground-glass top, and in that we saw, as by a magic, what happened on
Orcon.
First the mountains which topped the subterranean power houses were
lifted off. Then the whole planet rocked. Finally the caverns were
inundated by the deluge of the sea which, in the beginning, had so
nearly swallowed us.
Orcon was not destroyed, but we knew even then that such of its
inhabitants as might remain alive would not soon again dream of making
an attack upon Earth.
On the way back, as Earth took form and grew round in the interminable
reaches of space ahead of us, I got on well with Captain Crane. It
started when she asked me if I were still so cocksure that woman had no
place in the U. S. W. Upper Zone Patrol, and I was forced to answer that
I was not. After that, one thing led to another.
We were photographed together when we landed beside the colossal,
metal-roofed hangars of the Long Island station of the U. S. W. The
snapshot was published in that afternoon's tabloids under the caption:
Betrothed.
Transcriber's Note:
This e-text was produced from Astounding Stories January 1932. Extensive
research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Winged Men of Orcon, by David R. Sparks