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."