A voice answered with the methodical thoroughness of a trained agent. "Yen Dal died an hour ago of nerve shock caused by an IP's paralysis beam. The man who informed the IP was executed by our Martian agent thirty minutes later. That is all." "Good!" the Falcon said grimly, closed the switch. He turned to the silent negro. "A _cahnde_, Jericho," he finished tiredly. "Then we'll doctor me up a bit." He sagged in a chair, utterly spent and tired, worn from the constant strain that was his life every hour of the day. He was no longer the debonair flashing Falcon; he was only a man to whom life became grimmer and more danger-filled day by day; a man whose life was in no way his own. III Jean Harlon leaned back from the table, sighed blissfully. "I never knew," she said, "that such wonderful food existed. Why, that watermelon was the most delicious thing I've eaten in my life." Curt Varga smiled, shoved back his chair. "Let's take a quick look at the gardens before getting some sleep," he said. "I'll show you such things as the ordinary person has not seen in more than a century." "Swell!" Jean Harlon nodded. They walked from the dining hall, entered a side tunnel, followed a winding ramp toward the center of the asteroid. They chatted aimlessly, speaking of nothing in particular; and Curt felt a vague pleasure in him when her eyes reflected her astonishment when she found that he was educated beyond the average of most men. There was a tang to living at the moment, and his lithe body felt good and strength-filled, ready to follow any dictate of his mind. They turned right, stepped through a side door, and Jean's tiny gasp of awe was ample reward for all that Curt had done. The air was warm and moist, heady with the oxygen of growing plants. Great tiers of water tanks rose along the walls, their surfaces thick with the green and yellow and bright colors of fruits and vegetables growing in the vitamin-charged hydroponic baths. They seemed to grow visibly, even as the Earthpeople watched. Pipes as thick as a man's arm, bank upon bank, were braced in rows through the center of the immense room, and thousands of clear bubbles of water clung to them. The light of gravitic-stasis bulbs glowed deep in each bubble, and the surfaces of all were threaded with the tender shoots of growing seedling plants. "How utterly incredibly marvelous!" Jean whispered. The Falcon nodded proudly. "Ten thousand tons of food go out of this cavern every day, taken to the starving people of a dozen worlds. It is not a one man job; it is a tremendous task for hundreds of thousands of men and women." He pointed to the workers between the rows. "Those are the ones who are doing the job; those are my people, my friends. They and all people like them are what I fight for."