The Winged Men of Orcon: A Complete NoveletteSparks, David R.
Science
The Winged Men of Orcon: A Complete Novelette
Sparks, David R.
Science fiction
Wellington Forbes! And I with him!
I think I may be excused my temporary forgetfulness of the moan which
had brought me to Forbes' death chamber. Uppermost in my mind was the
manner in which I had been brought here. For it was he, approaching me
through the medium of letters and messengers, who had begged, implored
me 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 the
Universe from ours. Because of my knowledge of Orcon, with its bubbling
seas, its brooding nightmares, and lastly, its queer conduct toward
Earth, he had wanted to take me away from my telescopes to fight. And I
had refused.
Now I understood how I came to be here.
I knew that this dead man had kidnapped me after drugging me with one of
the new amnesiacs. Yorildiside, I reckoned it. And just because I knew
that Admiral Forbes had seized me by force, I knew almost to a certainty
that I was shipwrecked on that very Orcon which I had discovered two
years before.
* * * * *
I was enraged at this high-handed treatment. For if danger was indeed
threatening Earth from Orcon, my place of all places was at my
telescopes. I could do with them, for the civilizations about me, what
no one else could. Too, I was actuated by selfish motives. I loved my
telescopes and my isodermic super-spectroscopes. And there was still
much work I had to do! Already I had discovered three new elements, and
that had showed me I was but at the beginning of a knowledge of
cosmological chemistry. Forbes! He had brought me by force out here on
this beastly little planet whose orbit was like that of a snake with the
Saint Vitus' dance! He had taken me to this wretched planet which lay at
such a remote end of the Universe that not even explorers had been
tempted to visit it!
"Oh, damn the whole business!" I groaned aloud. I was thoroughly angry
and bitter.
In a little while I experienced a sudden change of mood. I'd no sooner
spoken than a moan came from directly behind me, and I remembered why
I'd got going in the beginning, and was ashamed. I entered a small
compartment which opened from Forbes' cabin, and discovered immediately
three more people.
The strides I had taken made me realize that I had to be careful, for I
was indeed endowed with a terrific strength--an extraordinary strength
and lightness. One of these three new people was obviously dead, for his
neck was broken. The other two still breathed. The first of the two was
a short man, a Japanese by the look of him. His arm was broken. The
other 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 was
that of a navigating officer.
So it was she who had caused the crash!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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