The Winged Men of Orcon | Page 4

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.
CHAPTER II
The Cable of Menace
It was dark when we gained the deck; as dark as it had been when I first regained consciousness. Captain Crane was attending to that problem, however. As Koto and I floundered with the gun on the slippery telargeium plates of the outer hull, I heard her moving about. Then she uttered a cry of relief, and there came a faint click. Instantly the darkness all about--the clinging noisome darkness of Orcon at night--was shattered.
The blessed rays of our one good lighting dynamo were loosed!
I saw the girl standing braced beside a stanchion, staring over the ship's side.
"Come on, Koto!" I snapped.
I am no fighting man by trade. Nevertheless, there was a kind of instinct which told me to get the gun set up at any point of vantage along the ship's side. And Koto understood.
"There," he breathed after but a few seconds, and from the experienced way in which he touched the disintegration-release trigger with his one good hand, I knew we were ready.
The flier was still moving, slowly and smoothly. She seemed to be half lifted, half drawn by some colossal force. I leaned far out over the rail.
A long, slender, but apparently indestructible cable had been affixed to our stern by means of a metal plate at its end which I guessed to be magnetic. I saw that the cable vanished under lashing waves which broke on a not distant shore, and that we were being drawn irresistibly toward the waves.
* * * * *
The light from the deck brought out dazzling scintillations from a beach composed of gigantic crystal pebbles as large as ostrich eggs. On the beach and grouped thickly all about our hull, swarmed a legion of creatures which--
Well, they were the brood of Orcon. They were the creatures who had given Ludwig Leider refuge and allied themselves with him in his attempt to make trouble for Earth. And they were half-bird, half-human! Their faces, bodies, arms, and legs were human. But they had wings! Translucent, membranous structures, almost gauzy, which stretched out from their shoulders like bat's wings. And their skins, as they surged about in the beams of our light, gleamed a bright orange color, and about their heads waved frilled antennae which were evidently used as extra tactile organs to supplement the human hands. I could see instantly that the Orconites possessed a high degree of intelligence. Of all the queer breeds that interplanetary travel and exploration had produced, this was the queerest.
I swung to