The Winged Men of Orcon | Page 4

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.
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