Chapter I: Front Matter

Prey of the Space Falcon

By WILBUR S. PEACOCK

The Administrators of the Solar System were
as deadly as a Hydra-monster to those who sought
freedom. Then came the Falcon and his outlaw Brood,
fighting with the strangest weapon the Universe
had ever seen--only to find that their existence lay
in the slender hands of a girl with a Judas kiss.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Curt Varga watched lazily from a shadowed corner of the Martian _gailang_ night club, his space-tanned left hand toying with a frosted glass of _cahnde_, and his right hand making cryptic marks with a radi-stylus upon the scrap of gold paper before him.

Music was a lilting swirl in the air, and his booted foot tapped unconsciously with the muted rhythm. He smiled at the great-chested Martians squatted about the dance floor, wondering for the hundredth time what enjoyment they received from swaying to music they understood only as a series of harmonic vibrations.

Over by the circular bar, four Venusians drank stiffly and stolidly of Venusian _cahnde_, as they stood knee-deep in their water tanks. Their skins were wet and slimy, eternally soaked with the fluids flowing from the glands in their reptilian skins. They watched the good-natured crowd from beneath nictilian lids, their gazes blank and eerily aloof.

Curt Varga's throat muscles tightened as he sent his inaudible questions to his brother in the curtained booth across the room.

"Is there any suspicion that you are working with me?" he asked. "If so, then this arrangement must be broken; I can't ruin your career, too."

The bean-sized amplifier imbedded so cunningly in the living bone at his right temple vibrated lightly from the mocking laughter.

"I think they do, Falcon," Val Varga said lightly. "But it doesn't matter; somebody has to do the undercover work--and I happen to be in a position where I can do it with the least suspicion." The voice softened. "Careers _aren't_ important, anyway. I seem to remember that Dad had quite a reputation as a bio-chemist, until the Food Administrators decided his work threatened their dictatorial monopoly. And as a Commander of the IP, you were slated to go rather high."

Curt Varga grinned, and suddenly all of the deadly grimness was gone from his tanned face, and there was only the laughter in his cool grey eyes and the hint of a swashbuckling swagger to the tilt of his head to betoken the man.

"OQ!" he said inaudibly into the amplifier unit. "Now, give me a few facts."

"Well," Val's voice steadied, "the IP is still searching for the Falcon's base; they've got direct orders from Vandor to smash it within a month, Earth time. The situation is getting rather desperate; gardens have been found on half a dozen worlds, and the revenue from sale of vitamins and energy tablets has fallen alarmingly. Unless the base is found and destroyed, the IP is due for a general shake-up in command and personnel."

"Hold it!" Curt said brusquely, glanced at the Martian waiter who padded along the wall toward him.

The waiter, grotesquely-chested, round-headed, with his antennae curled on either side of his great single eye, threaded his way through the tables, stood solicitously over the Falcon's table. His right antennae uncurled, its tip lightly darting out to touch the Earthman's wrist.

"Another _cahnde_," Curt Varga said loudly. "And a _pulnik_ capsule."

"_Five IP agents just entered_," the Martian said, the nerve impulse emanating from the antennae and travelling along Curt's arm to his brain, where the impulse was changed into familiar English. "_I think they know you are here._"

"Thank you, Yen Dal," the Falcon said evenly. "That will do fine."

* * * * *

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.

The Falcon's luck had been phenomenal; he had lost less than two percent of his men and fleet since the day his plans had been carefully organized. While IP ships had been blasted out of existence at the alarming rate of over five per cent a year.

Of course there had been trouble. There had been the internal revolution created by the rotten elements of his pirate gang. Blood had been spilled, and the war had been a deadly one that lasted for ninety days. Then the Falcon's men had conquered the others by clever maneuvering, had quashed the civil war at the cost of hundreds of lives. Telepathy and hypnotism had been used on all of the survivors, driving all thoughts of greed from their minds, fitting their mentalities for the task that was a common purpose.

And there had been the time when the IP had almost closed a trap over the Food Smugglers' leaders. Only a lucky chance had sprung the trap too soon, permitting Curt Varga and most of his board of strategy to escape.

* * * * *

But those things lay in the past. Now a new situation had arisen that promised to be more destructive to their plans than any IP plot or internal strife.

_Smothalene_ smugglers had begun to operate again on each planet. Once, the drug had been outlawed, all sources of the Venusian _lanka_ plant, from which it was derived, had been blasted from existence. But now the drug had reappeared, was being smuggled from some secret base, and its origin could not be found.

The inhabitated worlds were slowly becoming convinced that the Falcon and his men were distributing the drug; and such was the horror and agony the drug inflicted on its users, the peoples of the worlds had forgotten the good done by the Falcon's men, and were giving information to the IP as to the movements of the Food Smugglers.

It had become a war of survival for the Falcon; he had to stamp out the _smothalene_ smugglers so as to protect himself, his great plan, and the lives of those who had entrusted their futures to his capable hands.

Progress had been slow, for the _smothalene_ ring had been so carefully organized that only the barest of information was obtainable. But Curt Varga's organization, too, was carefully organized. His spies and agents had been working for weeks, ferreting out trivial bits of information, then relaying it back to headquarters where it was sifted and fitted with exquisite skill and patience.

For days, the Falcon had prowled the planets, contacting his agents, obtaining first-hand reports, doing two men's work himself. Now, he had the clue given him by his brother, and he felt a thrill of success touching his mind as he thought over his plans for invading the Sargasso of Space, where the drug ring's headquarters were supposed to be.

But the pressing problem of the moment was not the _smothalene_ smugglers, but rather the saving of himself from the IP men who were advancing so grimly on his table.

The Falcon shifted his glance indolently about the room, giving only an uninterested cursory scrutiny to the agents, then relaxed, his cigarette canted debonairly between his lips. He glanced about in faked surprise, when one of the agents seated himself at the table.

"What the hell do you want?" he asked pleasantly. "There are plenty of empty tables; when I want company, I'll send out invitations!"

The agent said nothing; his eyes made a quick inventory of Curt's lounging body, widening imperceptibly when they saw the casual wornness of the dis-gun's butt. He nodded at his companion, and the man ranged himself at the Falcon's left side.

Curt Varga straightened, feigning anger. "Listen," he said coldly, "I don't know you, so beat it!"

The agent at the table opened his hand; a small shield glowed dully in the palm. "What's your number, Earthman?" he asked heavily.

The Falcon shrugged, held out his wrist. The agent standing beside the table lifted a pocket fluorscope tube, trained it on the exposed wrist. The flesh seemed to dissolve, and numbers glowed bluely from the ulna bone.

"X three five one four eight L T," the agent read impersonally. He twitched off the fluorscope beam; the flesh magically came back into being. The second agent spoke the numerals and letters into a pocket vocoder.

"Hell," the Falcon said, "why didn't you tell me you were IP men? I haven't done anything wrong!"

"Who are you, and why the gun?"

Curt Varga shrugged. "I'm a scavenger, just in for a couple of days. I always carry a gun; I've got a permit from the IP here on Mars." He dry-washed his hands nervously. "Look, I don't want any trouble; I'll help any way I can, if you'll tell me what you want."

"Shut up!" the seated agent said brittlely, listened to the tinny voice coming from his vocoder. Then he pocketed the tiny unit, stood slowly. "Your numbers check," he said slowly. "But don't leave this place without my permission."

Without another word, he and his partner walked back to the bar. Curt Varga sat silently for a moment, feeling the cold sweat on his spine, breathing a bit fast. He grinned slightly, mockingly, remembering the hours of pain that had been his when the surgeons of his hidden base had grafted the ulna of a slain Earthman into his arm after removing the natural bone. Unconsciously, his right hand lifted, and the forefinger traced the invisible scars left on his face by the surgeon whose plastic surgery had changed the shape of his features.

"I think I passed all right, Val," he said into the microphone imbedded in the cartilage of his throat. "Take it easy."

"OQ, Curt," Val answered. "I'm about to get the once over, too."

* * * * *

The Falcon's fingers dipped into his pocket, found a bill. He laid it on the table, came lithely to his feet. He stood there for silent seconds, watching the crowd that swayed to the music.

Then he walked toward the bar; and there was in the unconscious swagger of his stride a love of life and laughter, a hint of the adventurer's blood that made his home the great sweeps of starway that stretched to the far horizons of the universe.

He skirted the swaying dancers on the dance floor, thrust out a steadying hand to the weaving figure of a Martian _boiloong_ who had evidently been inhaling _gailang_ gas for too long a period in the rooms below. The _boiloong_ embraced him drunkenly with a couple of tentacles, then staggered benignly away, hiccoughing loudly from two of his three mouths.

"_Cahnde_," Curt said to the bartender. The music piled in tiny swirls of melody in the air, and he absently hummed several notes of it. He accepted the frosted glass from the bartender, turned, braced his elbows on the bar. He stood silently, his nerves like taut wire.

He watched the crowd, permitting his eyes to lift to the alcove in which his brother sat. He felt a surge of affection for the man who dared to fight at his side for a principle he did not clearly understand. They met but once or twice a year, and then surreptitiously, for Val was on the chemi-staff of the Food Administrators' greatest vitamin plant. They knew they played a deadly game, in which the probable reward was death; but such was the mettle of the brothers, they gave no heed.

An IP agent jerked the curtain aside on the booth, spoke to the seated man. The Falcon could barely make out the words, the speech coming through the amplifier grafted into Val's throat, as they were grafted into all key man of the Falcon's brood.

"Declare yourself," the agent snapped.

"Jak Denton, five four three M R S two nine, on special furlough from the chemi-staff at Luhr." Val Varga's voice was submissive, resigned, as befitted those who knew the power of the IP.

Tiny sparks of anger flared in the depths of the Falcon's grey eyes, and the muscles swelled across his wide back. But he made no outward move. "It checks," he heard the agent declare a moment later, and then the agent stepped from the booth.

The Falcon smiled slightly, drank slowly from his glass. Then his fingers tightened spasmodically, and he felt shock traveling over his lithe body in a nerve-tightening shroud.

"Get out of here, Val," he snapped earnestly into his throat-mike. "The showdown is coming."

* * * * *

Time was frozen for the moment. The music dwindled to flat discords, and the dancers were only a blur at the edge of his line of sight. The Falcon straightened, set the glass on the bar without turning around, and braced his wide-spread booted feet. He felt a surge of fear in his heart, and the muscles of his gun hand were tight and strained. He knew then that the trap was sprung; it was too late to run.

Yen Dal, the Martian waiter, was on his knees, his mouth gaping in soundless agony, held there by a numbing paralysis beam in the hands of the IP man who had questioned Curt. His single eye rolled in the ecstasy of pain, and his antennae twisted and writhed with an uncanny life, as the paralysis beam ripped along each nerve with exquisite agony. Then a whistle of pain came from his lung orifice, scaled until it was almost inaudible--and his body threshed in an intolerable spasm that was horrible to see.

The Falcon stepped from the bar, circled noiselessly toward the rear exit, felt panic eating at his nerves, for he knew that Yen Dal could not hold out much longer.

He stopped in the shadow of a pillar, seeing the IP agent beside the door. He turned a bit, gasped, when he saw that the paralysis beam had been turned off, and that the Martian's antennae was wrapped tightly about the agent's wrist. Then the agent whirled, and his shrill whistle ripped the music to scattered shreds.

"_Get that man!_" he bellowed. "_He's the Falcon!_"

Curt Varga went whirling to one side, and the dis-gun leaped into his fingers. A needle-ray brushed at his back, and he scythed the agent down with a withering blast from the dis-gun. Smoke surged from a naming drapery, where a ray slashed, and then the curtain flaked into nothingness.

A Venusian screamed in a high thin whistle, dropped below the surface of the water in which he stood. The music stilled in broken fragments, and women screamed their fear in panic-stricken voice. Vibrations from a hundred sets of antennae filled the air with a solid sense of knowing dread.

"Shoot that man!" the first agent screamed again, and his voice died in a choking burbling sound, as the Falcon's shot caught him squarely in the throat.

Curt fired without conscious thought, his hand following the dictates of instinctive thinking, the blazing energy of his gun's discharges hissing in a blurred stream at the agents firing from behind pillars and overturned tables.

An agent came erect, sighed deliberately, died, his head blown completely from his shoulders by a shot winging from a side booth.

"Get out of here, Curt!" Val Varga's voice rang high and exalted. "I'll keep them busy."

His gun sang again in his hand, and there was something simple and heroic about the manner in which he stood before the booth on his crippled twisted legs. He was not a cripple then, not the remnant of a man the IP had crushed and left for dead years before when he had stood fighting at his father's side. He was, instead, bright and formidable, like the licking blade of a cause that fought against superstitious greed and intolerance.

"This is my way, Falcon," he called clearly. "Don't let me down."

Curt Varga sobbed deep in his throat, seeing that last gallant stand of the man whose deformities and keen brain had made him able to act as a spy in the Food Adminstrators' stronghold. He spun on his heel, smashed a Martian to one side with a sweep of his gun-hand, then rayed an agent to death with a brutal callousness utterly foreign to his nature.

He plowed through the tables, scattering them and their screaming occupants, hoping to get to his brother's side before the man was killed. He cursed in a vicious steady whisper, darted through the crowd, firing without sighting at the men behind him. He ducked instinctively, and a network of rays crossed the spot where his head had been, burning the very air, filling all the room with the stench of ozone.

And then he was at Val's side, towering over him, and their guns wove a barrage before whom Death walked with a steady implacable stride.

An IP agent screamed, pawed blindly at the shattered remains of his face, his gun singing an undirected arc of death about the room. Bodies were lanced with the ray, and the cries of the dead made a ghastly overtone to the sound of the firing.

And then Val sagged, caught through the chest with a ray bolt that held him erect for a fleeting moment. He fell, his free hand clutching Curt's arm, almost dragging him from his feet. He smiled a bit as he died, and his voice was barely audible.

"_Make it a good world, Curt_," he said, and he was dead.

* * * * *

The Falcon straightened, and there was no mercy in his eyes then; there was only a bleak grief and a hate for those whose utter blind stupidity and cruelty had brought about such a situation.

He went forward lightly, his gun blazing in his hand, his face craggy and stone-like. He never looked back at the huddle which had been his brother.

An IP man died in a blast of searing energy that sought him out behind a pillar, surging through the wood, and then withering him into a charred and blackened mass. Another agent turned to run, and the bolt of Curt's dis-gun skewered his back, pinned him to a wall for a fleeting second, then dropped him in a silent heap.

Curt whirled, darted toward the rear door. His gun menaced the entire room, and he was a shifting fading figure as he fled from that room of death. His eyes were blurred with tears, and his throat was constricted with grief. At the door, he hesitated briefly, then surged ahead. He heard the shrill whistles of other IP men in the street before the night club, and his nerves were tense for the slightest of sounds betokening hidden watchers in the alleyway.

He slammed the door behind him, raced down the alley. He tripped, rolled like a prowling cat, came lithely to his feet again. His hand brushed at a wall to steady himself, missed its hold, and he lurched to one side.

That misstep saved his life. A blazing bolt from a dis-rifle sprayed molten rock from the alley's floor, swung, tried to catch him in its range. He fired twice, shooting instinctively, feeling a gladness in him when he heard the choking death-rattle of the man who had fired.

He twisted about a corner, ran with a desperate speed, hearing the growing sounds of pursuit behind. He knew a place of comparative safety a block away, and he plunged toward it through the moon-lit night.

Feet were pounding in the street, when he came to a manhole that led into the unused conduit system of the city. He knew he was watched but he knew also that he had to make his escape as best he could. He kicked the rusted latch of the manhole cover free, lifted the lid, shoved one leg through. Sitting on the manhole rim, he lifted his other leg through the hole, then braced his hands, and lowered himself so fast he almost fell.

The single shot melted the edge of the conduit opening, flecked briefly at the side of his head, dropped him squarely into a blaze of flame that seemed to grow out of nowhere and fold him in its embrace.