CHAPTER II
_The Cable of Menace_
It was dark when we gained the deck; as dark as it had been when I firstregained consciousness. Captain Crane was attending to that problem,however. As Koto and I floundered with the gun on the slipperytelargeium plates of the outer hull, I heard her moving about. Then sheuttered a cry of relief, and there came a faint click. Instantly thedarkness all about--the clinging noisome darkness of Orcon at night--wasshattered.
The blessed rays of our one good lighting dynamo were loosed!
I saw the girl standing braced beside a stanchion, staring over theship's side.
"Come on, Koto!" I snapped.
I am no fighting man by trade. Nevertheless, there was a kind ofinstinct which told me to get the gun set up at any point of vantagealong the ship's side. And Koto understood.
"There," he breathed after but a few seconds, and from the experiencedway in which he touched the disintegration-release trigger with his onegood hand, I knew we were ready.
The flier was still moving, slowly and smoothly. She seemed to be halflifted, half drawn by some colossal force. I leaned far out over therail.
A long, slender, but apparently indestructible cable had been affixed toour stern by means of a metal plate at its end which I guessed to bemagnetic. I saw that the cable vanished under lashing waves which brokeon a not distant shore, and that we were being drawn irresistibly towardthe waves.
* * * * *
The light from the deck brought out dazzling scintillations from a beachcomposed of gigantic crystal pebbles as large as ostrich eggs. On thebeach and grouped thickly all about our hull, swarmed a legion ofcreatures which--
Well, they were the brood of Orcon. They were the creatures who hadgiven Ludwig Leider refuge and allied themselves with him in his attemptto make trouble for Earth. And they were half-bird, half-human! Theirfaces, bodies, arms, and legs were human. _But they had wings!_Translucent, membranous structures, almost gauzy, which stretched outfrom their shoulders like bat's wings. And their skins, as they surgedabout in the beams of our light, gleamed a bright orange color, andabout their heads waved frilled antennae which were evidently used asextra tactile organs to supplement the human hands. I could seeinstantly that the Orconites possessed a high degree of intelligence. Ofall the queer breeds that interplanetary travel and exploration hadproduced, this was the queerest.
I swung to Koto, who was crouching beside the gun.
"Get rid of that cable before we go under!" I exclaimed.
I had already guessed that the plate which held the cable to our sternwas magnetic. It was easy to see that the cable had been fastened thereby the Orconites and that our ship and ourselves might be drawn todestruction. I flung myself over to Koto's side to help him with thegun.
The howling wind which had been at a lull as we reached the deck, brokeloose again, and, as a gust hit us, Koto, gun, and I were all but sweptoverboard. The winged legion overside gave loud cries and bracedthemselves against the gusts. I saw Virginia Crane clinging desperatelyto her stanchion beside the light switches.
"More light if you have it!" I screamed to her against the wind.
Then Koto and I got the gun going.
* * * * *
My first feeling was one of intense relief. As the thing went off underour hands, and I knew from a faint trembling and a low hiss that theweapon was functioning perfectly, I felt thankful indeed for theinstinct which had made me get the gun on deck. It could be only amatter of seconds now until a whole section of the metallic cable wasdisintegrated completely and until our ship was free.
Breathlessly I watched the greenish atomic stream play along the brightlength of the cable of death, and, as Koto and I steadied the guntogether, I knew he shared my relief. Despite the howling of the wind,the yells of the Orconites, the continued slow movement of the ship, andthe hideous churning of the waves astern, I laughed to myself.
"Doctor Weeks!"
I saw that Captain Crane had gone aft to watch the effects of our fire.
"All right," I bellowed. "What--"
"Nothing is happening back here! Your gun! What's the matter with it?"
I was too startled to answer otherwise than I did.
"Nothing's the matter with it. What's the matter with _you_?"
But the next instant I knew she was right.
"My God, Doctor!" Koto cried, and I knew he had leaped to the sameconclusion I had.
Suddenly I brushed Koto's hands away from the gun, and myself directedit so that its ray cut straight across one whole group of the queercreatures on the beach. Then I cursed.
Instead of being cut down, broken like so many blades of grass, not oneof the creatures showed that the ray had touched them at all. They onlyuttered tremendous hoarse sounds that might have been laughter.
I stood up.
"Koto, Leider's found means of protecting both raw materials and livingbeings against the atomic gun!"
* * * * *
Captain Crane was beside us now, and I saw that she did not need to betold of the disaster. As Koto turned away from the gun, I thought ofLeConte below. When the waves closed in on us, he would be caught like arat.
The shriek of the wind and the crash of waves grew louder. I felt uponmy face the sting of spray from the aqueous solution of which thelashing sea at our stern was composed. The cable held, and the shipcontinued to move. We were barely a hundred yards away from the shore.
All at once, though, a string of both chemical and physicalformulae--the last thing a man would expect to think of in such aposition--flashed into my mind.
"Here, wait a minute," I thought. "If Leider's done this thing, itmeans--it must mean--that he's juggled his atomic structures throughproduction in terrific quantities of the quondarium light which Itheorized about last year! But he can't have done that without playinghell with the action of magnetic forces from beginning to end! I believeif we take the gun aft and direct it at--"
That was as far as I got with forming words. I flung myself toward thegun and began to drag it to a position aft, where we might direct itsray full force, at close range, against the magnetic metal plate whichheld the cable to our stern.
"Help me!" I yelled at the others.
Koto was the first to close in. Struggling, slipping, hampered ratherthan helped by our great strength, we clawed our way aft. A combinedlurch of ship and blast of wind threw Captain Crane down, but shestaggered up.
We dropped the gun with a thump at a spot where the bulging curve of thestern swelled directly under the muzzle. I grabbed at the trigger justas a new surge of movement brought the flier perilously close to agreat, inrushing wall of water which was not water. Koto's face wasdrawn, and Virginia Crane was staring in horrified fascination at thegun.
* * * * *
Again came the faint trembling of the beautifully constructed mechanism.The green ray leaped out across the blinding whiteness of our lightrays. I jammed the muzzle down until the whole force of the atomicstream was spouting against the magnetic plate which held the cable toour stern.
"Look, Doctor! Look!" Captain Crane cried.
But I was already looking.
For an instant a flash of blue light played about our ship. There was asingle sharp, crackling sound; and, ringing in the night, an echoing,high-pitched twang.
Koto let out a shout. I took my hands away from the gun.
Backward the twanging cable snapped, demolishing with one touch a scoreof the clustering Orconites. Into the waves it snapped, and our ship,ceasing to move, came to rest upon the glittering pebbles of the beach.
I heaved a deep sigh.
"What came to me a moment ago," I said breathlessly to the others, "wasthe idea that when atomic structures are so juggled that they are nolonger affected by the gun, all the forces of magnetism, which usuallyare immune to the atomic
stream, are rendered liable to disruption byit. We could not destroy Leider's cable, but we could play the deucewith its magnetic grip on us."
Koto was looking at me wide-eyed, and I saw that his interest was askeen as my own. Even Virginia Crane, scientist though she was not, wasinterested.
We were in no position, however, to sit still and think. The wavesastern and the howling wind were subsiding noticeably, but theinhabitants of Orcon all about us were still creating a great hubbub.Our next obvious move, regardless of what they might do, was to get holdof one of them and make him talk.
* * * * *
After a gesture to Koto and Captain Crane to stay where they were, I ranto a spot on the deck where I had seen a permanent ladder fixed to theside of the ship. Three jumps took me down to the beach, and three moretook me into the very midst of the mob.
The confusion brought about by the destruction of the score or so ofOrconites by the flying cable, and by our unexpected salvation, allworked for me. And another thing worked for me, too.
These people had great intelligence, but they seemed like sheep when itcame to a question of physical, hand to hand encounter. Of rough andtumble fighting with fists they knew nothing--as indeed not many peopledo in this century, even on Earth. The result of it all was that theyshrank back when I charged into them, and not a blow was struck, evenwhen I caught up the nearest figure in my path, swung it over myshoulder, and tore back to the ladder. In two shakes I was standing onthe deck again, my prisoner all safe.
"What a creature!" Virginia Crane cried as I presented her and Koto withmy struggling but helpless prize.
That was just what I had thought after my first glimpse of the wholebrood of them. Close inspection showed, as I had supposed, that theOrconite was a man, and yet not a man. The body, the limbs, the enormoushead, the features of the orange-colored face were human; and the chapbegan to spout excited sounds which were certainly the words ofintelligent speech. But also he was winged, and from the orange foreheadwaved those curious, frilled feelers!
* * * * *
He was clad in a single loose garment of woven cloth which permittedfree action for both limbs and wings. A small, flat black box with amouthpiece into which he could speak, was strapped to his chest in sucha position that it was almost concealed by the folds of his blouse. Wewere to find out presently the purpose of this instrument, but I did notexamine it carefully then. As the creature glared balefully at us fromhis intelligent dark eyes, I glanced over the side of the ship to seewhether trouble was to be expected from his fellows.
And for the moment they surged about so much, and made so much noise,that I thought trouble might come. The shouting, however, was caused bytheir dismay at all that had happened to them, and I saw that instead ofmaking ready to attack they were preparing a retreat. We had whippedthem temporarily.
We had thrown them into such disorder, indeed, that in another moment awhole force of them gave proof of their ability to fly, by taking offfrom the beach. Up and out they swept, out into the intense blacknesswhich overhung the sea behind us. In another moment the whole crew hadvanished, and I was glad enough of it.
"Come on below," I said to my two companions. "There's no telling howlong Leider will keep his hands off us, and we've got to find out fromour prisoner whatever we can."
With that I turned to the companionway, lugging the winged man, and theothers followed.
The Winged Men of Orcon: A Complete Novelette Page 2