The cruiser whipped through the night, inertia momentarily pinning its passengers to their seats. A beam lanced out from the spaceport, instantly winked off. The Falcon's hands made lightning adjustments on the board, and the ship scooted back toward the ground, fled, barely a hundred feet above the rusty sand.
The vizi-screen was dull now, reflecting the interior of the port office—and the Port Authority's voice sang through the speaker.
"Five IP ships take off. Catch that pleasure cruiser. Use tractors to bring it down; it isn't armed. Watch out for the man aboard—he's the Falcon."
"The Falcon!" Fear was in the voice; the words were barely breathed.
Curt Varga smiled savagely, glanced around, fully saw his companion for the first time. He felt a certain sense of amazement; but so much had happened to him in the past hour, he no longer had the capacity for complete surprise.
She was tiny, and the synthesilk dress gloved the soft curves of her body. Her nose was impudent against the red of her mouth, and fright was in her bluish-green eyes momentarily. Then she stiffened, and her eyes were hard with a calculating coldness.
"I thought kidnaping went out with the dark ages," she said quietly.
"Miss, this is shipnapping." Ironical humor softened the brutal harshness of Curt Varga's jaw for the moment.
And then there was no time for talk, for he was weaving the ship in a manner that only a space-master could do, flipping the cruiser about until metal sang in a dozen tones, evading the bluish rays that fingered from the ships behind.
He gained the night shadow, circled about on muffled jets, watched the IP ships flash past him in hot pursuit of their quarry. Then he sent the cruiser straight back toward the city, angling after a time toward the mountains to the north. Not a word was spoken until after he had landed the cruiser close to his own rocket hidden beneath the overhang of a rusty bluff.