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Updated: May 27, 2025
They saw, I think, that I was planning something, and we retreated together, with the result that the Orconites ceased to threaten and once more fell back to the walls of the cavern. Their captain flew over and joined them. "I thought for a moment," I said, "that we might tell the captain that Hargrib was locked up in the ship, and so furnish an excuse to get aboard. But that isn't good.
At once the ship moved forward, and, rolling easily on her ground gear, swung left and lunged toward the swooping mob of Orconites. Handling that space flier in the cavern was like trying to navigate a one-hundred-thousand-ton freighter in a pond. But Captain Crane did it she whom I had once accused, to myself, of misnavigating and wrecking our other ship.
"So far as I can see," I said quickly, "Leider hasn't armed his guards with any unique weapon, but has merely left them to watch us. And the Orconites don't know how to fight! Think of the ease with which I got away with Hargrib last night. When it comes to dealing destruction with scientific weapons, their power is appalling. When it comes to a slugging match, they are only so many sheep.
Encouraged greatly, I met an advance of pressing, jostling bodies by a return to my original technique of stabbing. I stabbed every time a hand reached out to hold me, and if I did not take a life with each stab, I at least drew a spout of greenish-colored blood. It was not a nice business, any of it, especially as the Orconites were as fearless before our onslaught as they were powerless.
The confusion brought about by the destruction of the score or so of Orconites by the flying cable, and by our unexpected salvation, all worked for me. And another thing worked for me, too. These people had great intelligence, but they seemed like sheep when it came to a question of physical, hand to hand encounter.
Some of the Orconites would surely go with us, and in that case it would be next to impossible to get at the kotomite properly. What we need is at least a couple of minutes which will be uninterrupted. We'll leave Hargrib right where he is, and get access to the ship in another way. We'll fight for it!" "Fight?" Captain Crane shot a glance at me, and I saw that the idea appealed to her.
I told LeConte, who would stay with the ship, to fire the explosive himself if anything happened to make him believe that we had been killed while scouting. I did not fail to point out that since our atomic guns were useless against the Orconites and Leider, we should have to go unarmed on our expedition, and I did not fail to state that the whole effort seemed futile.
Now it was a case of being drowned again by a sheer deluge of men. While the Orconites pawed me, tripped me, and otherwise discommoded me, I broke necks, dug out eyes, tore quivering antennae from foreheads until I felt as if I had been doing nothing else for hours. And those beside me were doing the same. Yet always more bladder faces rose in front of us, and more wings beat down from above.
"Captain," I whispered as we battered against some confused and helpless Orconites and flung them aside, "could you make anything of the control system on the cruiser before Leider got us?" Virginia Crane said vigorously that she had. "The light switches are all on a board to the right of the entrance door. The other controls are as readily accessible." "Leaves us in something of a position!"
Again the cruiser backed up and swung around. We headed toward Koto, straight toward him. There still were droves of Orconites to contend with. Flocks of them had taken to their wings, and were filling the whole upper reaches of the cavern, now that a juggernaut had the floor. They had spied Koto and were swooping toward him.
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