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  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 fluidwith black pigment. Breathing was difficult, but in spite of that,however, I felt exhilarated mentally. Also I felt strong, stronger thanI ever had in my life before. I tried to raise my hands, and found thatI was handcuffed.

  I lay sprawled out on a sharply canted floor of metal, and from outsidethe house, or whatever it was I was in, I could hear the screeching andhowling of the wind. I touched my face with my fettered hands, and theact gave me a feeling of comfort, for the scar on my cheek was stillthere and I knew that I was myself.

  A flash of blue light played about our ship.]

  Twisting around, I sat up, and with great difficulty drew a lighter frommy trousers pocket. The flame glimmered up. I knew then that I was lyingin the control room of a great flying machine!

  All about me I saw crumpled human forms clad in glistening gray flyingjumpers. It was very, very hot. I thought I caught the sound of wavescrashing on a shore. Through a broken port blustered a hot wind ladenwith an odd odor suggestive of garlic and kelp. It was just as darkoutside as in. I stirred about a bit, and found that I was in good shapeexcept for the handcuffs.

  A low moan came from behind a bulkhead door at one end of the controlroom. I listened, and again the sound was repeated. With the lighterstill flickering in my hands, I got to my feet. The bulkhead door wasjammed, but I found a heavy telargeium spanner-wrench on the floor, andwith a strength which frightened me--a strength which could have comeonly by some upset condition of gravitation--I soon crashed the dooropen. I had no sooner done it, however, than I forgot about the moanwhich 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 along-barrelled, gleaming atomic gun, undamaged, and a couple of the newcold-ray flashlights. Free, I caught up one of the flashlights, andplaced back on their hook the keys which had opened the cuffs. Then Istooped over each corpse, and confirmed my first impression that two ofthe dead men were strangers to me, but that I half recognized one.

  The vaguely familiar man was clad, under his gray jumper, in the uniformof a rear admiral of the U. S. W. Upper Zone Patrol Division. He wore amedal of high honor, the Calypsus medal. I knew that he was WellingtonForbes, 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 whichhad brought me to Forbes' death chamber. Uppermost in my mind was themanner in which I had been brought here. For it was he, approaching methrough the medium of letters and messengers, who had begged, imploredme 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 theUniverse from ours. Because of my knowledge of Orcon, with its bubblingseas, its brooding nightmares, and lastly, its queer conduct towardEarth, he had wanted to take me away from my telescopes to fight. And Ihad refused.

  Now I understood how I came to be here.

  I knew that this dead man had kidnapped me after drugging me with one ofthe new amnesiacs. Yorildiside, I reckoned it. And just because I knewthat Admiral Forbes had seized me by force, I knew almost to a certaintythat I was shipwrecked on that very Orcon which I had discovered twoyears before.

  * * * * *

  I was enraged at this high-handed treatment. For if danger was indeedthreatening Earth from Orcon, my place of all places was at mytelescopes. I could do with them, for the civilizations about me, whatno one else could. Too, I was actuated by selfish motives. I loved mytelescopes and my isodermic super-spectroscopes. And there was stillmuch work I had to do! Already I had discovered three new elements, andthat had showed me I was but at the beginning of a knowledge ofcosmological chemistry. Forbes! He had brought me by force out here onthis beastly little planet whose orbit was like that of a snake with theSaint Vitus' dance! He had taken me to this wretched planet which lay atsuch a remote end of the Universe that not even explorers had beentempted to visit it!

  "Oh, damn the whole business!" I groaned aloud. I was thoroughly angryand bitter.

  In a little while I experienced a sudden change of mood. I'd no soonerspoken than a moan came from directly behind me, and I remembered whyI'd got going in the beginning, and was ashamed. I entered a smallcompartment which opened from Forbes' cabin, and discovered immediatelythree more people.

  The strides I had taken made me realize that I had to be careful, for Iwas indeed endowed with a terrific strength--an extraordinary strengthand lightness. One of these three new people was obviously dead, for hisneck was broken. The other two still breathed. The first of the two wasa short man, a Japanese by the look of him. His arm was broken. Theother 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 wasthat 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 bunkwere mixed. Being a reactionary, I still felt that woman's place was notin the Army or Navy. Yet I confess that the woman--or girl, rather--wasornamental. She was of the Iberian type. She was beautiful, and lookedhelpless. Some atavistic trait of the protective instinct in man made metake a little more pains in caring for her than I might have taken witha man.

  * * * * *

  "Doctor Weeks," were the first surprised words she murmured when I hadbandaged a cut in her head and she came to.

  Weeks being my name--Frederick Weeks--I grunted and wondered just howmuch _she'd_ had to do with my being here. I noted that the eyes weregray 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 theadmiral was dead. Her cheeks, already pale, grew white. I asked her thenumber 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 gritwhich I could not deny, despite my disapproval of her being here.

  "I suppose you wonder why you're here," she said suddenly, "and where weare."

  "I don't need to be told where I am," I said coldly, "but a littleinformation as to who was responsible for my coming to Orcon wouldn't beamiss. I suppose it was Forbes."

  She cut me off with a look.

  "It wasn't the admiral." Her really beautiful eyes narrowed. "It was Iwho 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 meanything? 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,wa
s not going to see your egotistical ideas about an unimportant pieceof work--your cosmological chemistry--jeopardize the safety of theworld. Oh, I know the government wanted you in your laboratory. But withLudwig Leider loose on Orcon, and you the only one in our Zone who knewmuch of anything about the planet, what could you expect?"

  * * * * *

  I hardly know what might have happened between us if she had notmentioned Leider's name when she did. The insults with which she hadbegun had hardly been atoned for by her half understanding of my refusalto join Forbes, and I was still in a rage. Yet, as it was, at themention 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 sillykidnapping?"

  She moved a little on the couch and looked at me.

  "There was not time to tell you and to chance putting up with furthersilly arguments on your part. When the secret service detail which hadbeen handling the Leider case brought in word of his whereabouts, therewas time only to get a ship specially outfitted for such a tremendousjourney 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 wasthe greatest example of the megalomaniac--the power-seekinggenius--which the human race had produced for decades. Everyone knewthat he--furious because he had been denied the high position he cravedas ruler for life of the united peoples of Earth--had been the leader ofthe interplanetary struggle which had resulted in Forbes' brilliantlysuccessful attack on Calypsus. And everyone knew that he had escapedfrom Calypsus. And that, while he was free, there could be no realsafety anywhere, either for Earth, which he hated, or any of its alliedplanets. Leider, here! No wonder I had been observing queer goings on inOrcon!

  * * * * *

  Somehow I forgot to be angry with poor dead Forbes. Almost I forgot todisapprove of the woman.

  "See here!" I broke out. "If your secret service detail was right, andLeider _is_ on Orcon, we've got to stop talking and get going. Tell memore about your expedition."

  "Do you know," she said presently, "I rather thought you would makequite a leader--and fighter--if you could ever be aroused. As for theexpedition, 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 aspiredto any sort of naval or military leadership.

  "Yes," she answered; "suicide party. And I suppose, with our shipwrecked, 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, andthen radio information back to Earth. But we also have two tons of thenew explosive, kotomite, aboard and are to do damage if we can. What areyou going to do, Doctor? The command is yours now."

  I was well enough versed in the upper space tactics of our modern navyto appreciate the wisdom which had been used in sending the one shipalone on the expedition, and I could well understand the reasonable hopeof success which had been promised. I confess I was staggered to knowwhat could be done, however, now that the admiral was dead and the shipwrecked. As for my having inherited the command, I was even moredisconcerted.

  "_I_ don't know what we're going to do," I said in answer to CaptainCrane's question. "I doubt if Forbes would know, if he were alive, andI'm by no means the commander he was. But, as you say, we have to dosomething. So, since it's a little early in the game to explode thekotomite and call it a day's work, we better declare a truce betweenourselves, 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 thegreat flier which was damaged, and that while she was in fair shapeamidships and astern, she would never fly again. We discovered that thethree unaccounted-for men of the crew were lying forward, and found thattwo were dead and one lived--a radio man named LeConte. He had two ribsbroken. Half a dozen atomic guns remained to us, and we found intact onedynamo capable of generating the new cold light in considerablequantities. It was not an encouraging check-up, though. Out of a crew often, 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 stillhabitable, but smashed beyond hope of repair. Around us stretchedOrcon--in the control of Ludwig Leider.

  I got LeConte, the radio man with the broken ribs, into the small cabinwhere the Jap still lay and made him comfortable. Then I set the Jap'sbroken arm. I gave both him and LeConte an injection of penopalatrin inorder that their shattered bones might be decently knitted in two orthree hours. The Jap presently came to, and I found that he was acivilian 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 hewas 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 magnogravitossystem had failed in some mysterious manner as they approached Orcon. Inspite of the checking effect of their helium pontoons, which hadexpanded properly when they had come into Orcon's atmosphere, they hadslammed into a sea of light and crashed. That was all anyone knew. Buteveryone suspected that Leider had been somehow responsible.

  "I do not enjoy the prospect," Koto said after a glance at histemporarily helpless left arm. "If Leider is able to wreck a space shipbefore she ever reaches his planet, he has more power than he ever hadduring the Calypsus war."

  * * * * *

  I said nothing, but simply looked at LeConte, and nodded approval whenhe muttered something about getting his sending set in shape, if thatwere possible. We were sitting in the small cabin and Captain Crane wassearching my face with those discomforting, violet-lighted gray eyes. Iknew she was asking me once more what I was going to do, and I knewthat, 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 gentlyover on one side and began to move. Slowly, but definitely.

  Koto and I were on our feet in a flash. Captain Crane stiffened andfaced me, waiting.

  "What is it?" Koto gasped.

  "We'll find out what it is," I flung back. "Miss Crane--Captain--on deckwith you. Here, Koto, a hand with one of the guns. We'll take it up outof the hatchway and through the main cabin."

  LeConte, I knew, was the one we must be careful of, with his crackedribs.

  "Get to your apparatus," I ordered him, "and stay with it until you getthrough to Earth."

  With that I jumped into the main cabin, stepped over Forbes' lifelessbody, and caught hold of the nearest of the atomic guns. I was to be aleader, after all.