He walked before the menace of the gun through the open door, followed the line of radi-lights down the stone corridor. He felt nothing but a dull apathy within his mind, and he cared nothing for the future. He knew there was no escape, and the knowledge left him unemotional. But then the thought came that Jean had fought on his side, and he felt warmness spreading through his heart. There was a gulf between them, a space that would never be spanned. Yet he felt closer to the girl now than he had felt toward any person other than his brother in years. "This way, Falcon," Jason Vandor said. They walked a corridor, turned right, entered the vizi-beam room where operators sat before the machines that connected with all planets. Jason Vandor stopped beside a machine. "Get the _Ardeth_ on the beam," he ordered. "Yes, your Lordship!" The beam-man's fingers made clicking contacts with the machine's controls. The vizi-screen became silvery, slowly turned green. Life grew on the screen. Color swirled, then merged, and Jean Vandor frowned from the screen. "Yes?" she asked. Jason Vandor forced the Falcon to the screen with his gun. The Falcon was conscious then of the utter quiet in the room, as though all were afraid to breathe. He could feel the pounding of his heart as he stepped forward. "Can you hear me, Jean?" he asked quietly. "I can hear you, Curt." The Falcon forced all feeling from his voice. "Jean, answer me truthfully; did you plot that I should be captured?" Tears welled in the girl's eyes, and her head shook slightly. "No, Curt." Curt Varga sighed then, and the ache in his heart was a tangible thing that hurt with an agony he had not thought possible for a man to feel. "Remember the things I told you, Jean? Remember the hopes and dreams and plans I had?" "I remember." "Then, Jean, this is the truth. Remember this all of your life; fight for it, never let it die. _Men are born to be free; no man can place himself in the role of God, there to dictate what--_" The blow of the gun barrel smashed him to his knees. He knelt there for seconds, laughing into Jason Vandor's face. "I'm a _small_ man, Vandor," the Falcon said. "I can hate and I can love. But I am true to myself, if nothing else. Get somebody else to do your lying." Jason Vandor's face was a chiseled mask of evil rage. He saw then the crumbling of the life he had built, saw then the truth that lay in the Falcon. He knew then that all of the treasures and powers of a hundred worlds could not replace that which he had lost in those fleeting seconds. He lifted his gun to shoot the defenseless Falcon to death--and died that way, a dis-ray scything him down in a huddled heap. "By damn, a fight at last!" a great voice roared from the doorway, and Schutler sprang into the room.