Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Astounding Stories May 1932. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. The Table of Contents is not part of the original magazine. The pages have been renumbered. The Martian Cabal A Complete Novelette By R. F. Starzl * * * * * Contents Page I Strange Intruder 2 II Scar Balta 10 III The Price of Monarchy 18 IV Torture 23 V The Wrath of Tolto 30 VI The Fight in the Fort 37 VII The Flight of a Princess 49 VIII In the Desert 57 IX Plot and Counter-Plot 71 X One Thousand to One 79 XI Giant Against Giant 86 XII "He Must Be a Man of Earth" 96 * * * * * [Sidenote: Sime Hemingway, of the I. F. P., strikes at the insidious interests that are lashing high the war feeling between Earth and Mars.] CHAPTER I _Strange Intruder_ Sime Hemingway did not sleep well his first night on Mars. There was no tangible reason why he shouldn't. His bed was soft. He had dined sumptuously, for this hotel's cuisine offered not only Martian delicacies, but drew on Earth and Venus as well. Yet Sime did not sleep well. He tossed restlessly in the caressing softness of his bed. He turned a knob in the head panel of his bed, tried to yield to the soothing music that seemed to come from nowhere. He turned another knob, watched the marching, playing, whirling of somnolent colors on the domed ceiling of his room. At last he gave it up. Some sixth sense had him all jumpy. It was not usual for Sime Hemingway to be jumpy. He was one of the coolest heads in the I. F. P., the Interplanetary Flying Police who patrolled the lonely reaches of space and brought man's law to the outermost orbit of the far-flung solar system.