Prey of the Space Falcon

He leaned indolently back in his chair, his clear gaze utterly guileless, a lazy hint of careless laughter lifting the corners of his mobile lips. He tightened the muscles of his belly, shifting the gun-belt a bit until the dis-gun lay flat along his thigh. He felt mocking laughter bubbling in his throat, when he saw the IP men moving inconspicuously about the night club, their keen gaze searching patiently and eagerly every shadowed corner. The Martian padded silently away.

"Things are getting hot, Val," he said into his throat mike. "Yen Dal just told me that five IP men are searching the place. Better get out of here before a fight starts."

"I heard your conversation." Val's voice grew tight and hurried. "Now listen, Curt," he finished. "As far as I have been able to learn, the headquarters of the Smothalene Smugglers lies somewhere in the Sargasso. An Earth renegade, Duke Ringo, is the boss. You've got to smash those smugglers, and do it quickly, for the worlds are beginning to believe that the Falcon is the man behind the smothalene smuggling."

Curt Varga scowled unconsciously, swirled the liquid about in the bottom of his cahnde glass. He felt the first pulsings of anger in his heart, and his grey eyes were no longer cool.

"I know," he answered brittlely. "Two of my ships rocketed into a trap on Jupiter's moons last week. They were carrying cargoes of oranges to the Dahkils, and some woman whose son had died of smothalene gave information to the IP."

"I hadn't heard that," Val said slowly, his voice grave.

"Now, here's the situation," the Falcon said tautly, watching the unhurried movements of an IP man walking along the long bar. "I have sold almost enough fruit and vegetables the past three months to finance buying three more Kent-Horter needle-rockets. My fleet is almost complete, lacking but a dozen or so ships that I figure will be the minimum needed to whip the IP. I won't contact you again here, but will let you know where to meet me later. This place is getting too hot; I've got a hunch somebody tipped the fact that I use this as headquarters on Mars. Get out of here as inconspicuously as you can; then I'll make a run for it, if necessary."

"OQ, Curt!" Val's voice with subdued. "But take it easy; your job is too big to be destroyed because you insist on taking chances."

"Forget it, kid."

The Falcon finished the liquor in the first glass, sipped slowly at the fresh cahnde set before him by a noiseless waiter. Deep in his mind sang a tiny warning voice of danger. But he sat still, waiting for an opportunity to make a silent escape from the night club that was fast becoming an IP trap. His keen gaze flicked about the room, finding and identifying the agents scattered through the crowd.

He broke the pulnik capsule, rolled the fragrant tobacco in a fresh paper, lit it with his pocket lighter. He smoked slowly, the glow shadowing the flat planes of his face, lighting the rugged, almost brutal, sweep of his jaw. He edged his chair back quietly, tensing the great muscles of his legs, estimated the distance to the rear door.

Other than that, he didn't move, for he saw that he was watched by two agents converging on him from both sides of the swaying dancers on the floor. He smiled slightly, sat cool and debonair, the leather vest and silk singlet accenting the wedge of his deep chest and shoulders.

"_Any minute now, Val_," he said into his throat amplifier.

The Kaana four-piece orchestra swung into the soft lazy melody of a century before. Glasses clinked at the bar, and the soft rustle of laughing conversation made the room seem intimate and warm. Nostalgia bit at Curt Varga's heart, when he remembered the days not so many years before when his life had been an ordered thing, when he had not been a hunted outlaw prowling the spaceways, a price on his head.

In those days, before his mind had fully matured, he had thought his life full and untrammelled. He had worn his uniform as an IP Commander with the bullying swagger his superiors affected. With dis-guns and a brutal carelessness, he had enforced the commands of Jason Vandor, Dak Yar and Mezo Yong, the Food Administrators, had forced obedience from recalcitrant people of a dozen worlds, had been the leader of the shock-troops that pillaged city after city because they had incurred the anger of the Triumvirate whose hands controlled the food supplies of the Solar System.

Then in his twenty-fifth year, he had seen the foulness of the system that broke the lives and courage of the inhabitated worlds. He had seen his father blasted to death for daring to raise his voice against the tyranny of the Food Administrators. He had seen his older brother die while fighting to save their father. And a conflict had raged within him for days; he had fought against the training that had been instilled within him from the day of his birth.

From musty records, he had reread the histories of the worlds, had really understood for the first time the true meaning of freedom. And in that hour, he had thrown aside all that had been his life, and had striven to build a new one. In a stolen Kent-Horter, he had prowled the spaceways, striking at small freighters for supplies and wealth. In the cold of space, he had stooped like the Falcon for whom he had been named, and stolen the Food Administrators' supplies time and again.

And as ever when a leader arises, other men and women came to him as filings are attracted to a lodestone. Some were renegades, the scum of the spacelanes, whose only desire was to pillage and rob those who could not fight back. But others were the peoples of a dozen worlds in whose minds flowed the desire for freedom, whose only wish was to aid in a seemingly-hopeless fight against the oppressors. And still others were the great minds of science and art and living whose lives had been stifled by rigid rules of living imposed by the Food Administrators.

Plan after plan had been made and discarded, until one was left that showed the clever brilliance of its creators. Unlimited wealth was the one thing needed for a revolution, and the plan showed clearly that way in which it could be obtained.

Because they controlled all energy-tablet and vitamin factories, the Food Administrators held a whip hand over all the worlds. Starvation was the answer to any trouble that might arise. And should the trouble become too large to handle with the starvation threat, then the degenerate remnants of the famous Interplanetary Patrol used their weapons and brutal methods to enforce the laws.

The plan reasoned out by Curt Varga and his board of strategy had been clever enough to avoid all obstacles.

In a great asteroid, used by the Falcon for his first base, great rooms had been hollowed by gargantuan dis-guns. These rooms had been converted into living quarters for the men and women. Once established there, the men and women had worked for two years to hollow out more caverns for the growing of fruit and vegetables by hydropony. Still more rooms were manufactured for the workshops and hangars for the fitting of a huge space fleet with which the Falcon hoped to smash for all time the IP and the three men who controlled it.

And in the passing four years the gigantic task had almost reached fruition. Dead-black freighters raced the starways, carrying contraband food to all planets, there unloading, and then returning with all monies collected to buy more space equipment for the fight that was to come.