"Uh-huh," she said.
"On Terra, where Christmas originated? Where Christmas trees adorn
every home, and the street corners are loaded with Santa Clauses?
Where--"
"Christmas is a time for joy," said Christine. "Also to the average
party, Christmas means snow, wassail, and friends dropping in. Me, I'm
acclimated--almost--to this chilly Martian climate. Cold weather has no
charm for your little sister, James."
"Oh," said Barney.
"Oh," echoed Jim, winking at his side-kick.
"Don't you 'Oh' me," snorted Christine.
"Oh?" repeated Barney. "Okay, woman, we get it. Instead of the cold and
the storm you'd prefer a nice warm climate like Venus?"
"It might be fun," she said evasively.
"Or even better," said Jim Baler to Barney Carroll, "we might visit
Venus Equilateral."
Christine's evasive manner died. "Now," she said, "you've come up with
a bright idea!"
Barney chuckled. "Jim," he said, "call Walt Franks and ask him if he
has a girl for us?"
"He has quite a stock in his little black book," remarked Jim.
"We'll drop in quietly, surprise-like," announced Christine. "And if
there's any little black book, I'll see that you two Martian wolves
divide 'em evenly."
"Walt is going to hate us for this," chuckled Jim. "Accessories to the
fact of his lost bachelorhood. Okay, Chris, pack and we'll--"
"Pack nothing," laughed Christine. "I've packed. For all three of us.
All we need is our furs until we get to Canalopsis. Then," she added
happily, "we can dress in light clothing. I'm beginning to hate cold
weather."
"How about passage?" asked Barney. "Or did you--"
Christine nodded. "The _Martian Girl_ leaves Canalopsis in about three
hours. We pause at Mojave, Terra, for six hours, and thence to Venus
Equilateral on the special trip that takes Christmas stuff out there."
Jim Baler shrugged. "I think we've been jockeyed," he said. "Come on,
Barney, needs must when a woman drives."
"The quotation pertains to the devil," objected Barney.
"No difference," said Jim, and then he ducked the pillow that Christine
threw at him.
A half hour later they were heading for Canalopsis.
* * * * *
"Walt?" smiled Arden. "Oh, sure, Walt's fine."
"Then--?"
"Yeah," added Barney good naturedly, "do we find 'em in Joe's or
elsewhere?"
"The Joe-Section of the engineering has been completed," said Arden
with a grin. "They nearly drove Joe nuts for about a week."
"What were they doing?" asked Jim. "Building an electronically-operated
Martini?"
"When I tell you, you won't believe me," said Arden. "But they've been
living in Joe's refrigerator."
"Refrigerator?" gasped Christine.
"Just like a gang of unhung hams," said Arden. "But they're out now."
"Well! That's good."
Arden paused in front of three doors on the residence level near her
apartment and Jim, Christine, and Barney each put their traveling bags
inside. Then Arden led them high into the station where they came to a
huge bulkhead in which was a heavy door.
Arden opened the door and an icy blast came out.
"Jeepers!" exploded Christine.
"Hey! Ice-men!" called Arden.
From the inside of the vast room came Don, Walt, and Wes. They were
clad in heavy furs and thick gloves, Channing was carrying a small pair
of cutters that looked a bit ridiculous in the great glove.
"Well, holy rockets!" exploded Channing, "what gives?"
"Merry pre-Christmas," said Jim. Don whipped off a glove and Jim wrung
his hand unmercifully. Wes Farrell greeted Barney Carroll jovially,
while Walt Franks stood foolishly and gaped at Christine Baler.
Christine looked the heavy clothing over and shook her head. "And I
came here to be warm," she said. "Come out from behind that fur, Walt
Franks. I know you!"
"What is going on?" asked Barney.
"It all started in Joe's refrigerator," said Wes. "We found that the
cold had crystallized a bit of metal in the compressor. We discovered
that it was radiating one of the super-frequencies of the crystal-alloy
level. When warm it didn't. So we've set up this super-cooler to make
checks on it. Looks big."
Channing waved toward the door. "We've got the ultimate in
super-coolers in there," he said. "Remember the principle of the
sun-power tube--that it will drain power out of anything that it is
attuned to? Well, we're draining the latent heat-energy out of that
room with a power-beam tube--actually we're transmitting it across
space to Pluto."
"Pluto?"
"Uh-huh. In effect, it is like trying to warm Pluto from the energy
contained in that room. Obviously we aren't going to melt much of the
solid-frozen atmosphere of Pluto nor create a warm and habitable planet
of it. We can run the temperature down to darned near Nothing Kelvin
without doing much of anything to Pluto."
"We're below the black-body temperature of Mars right now," said Walt.
"And the gadgetry is working so much better that we're going to run it
down to as far as we can get it."
"What do you hope to find?" asked Barney.
"Why, it looks as though we can make a set of crystals that will permit
instantaneous communication from one to the other."
"Sounds good."
"Looks good, so far," said Channing. "Want to see it?"
Christine looked at the thermometer set in the face of the door. She
turned back to the others and shook her head vehemently.
"Not for all the ice in Siberia," she said fervently.
Walt brightened. "How about some ice in a glass," he said.
"For medicinal purposes only," agreed Barney. "It's been deadly cold on
Mars--about a quart and a half of sheer and utter cold."
"Been cold in there, too," said Don. "Arden, you're out of luck--you've
stayed out of the cold."
"You try to freeze me out of this session," said Arden, "and you'll
find that I have the coldest shoulder in the Solar System."
As the party from Mars left the platform of the spacecraft that was
poised on the Landing Stage of Venus Equilateral, another landing was
made. This landing came from the same ship, but unlike the arrival of
the Balers and Barney Carroll, the later landing was unseen, unknown,
and unwanted.
Mark Kingman had been a stowaway.
Now, most stowaways are apprehended because success in such a venture
is difficult. To properly stow away, it is calculated that more than
the nominal cost of the trip must be spent in planning and preparation.
Also, there is the most difficult of all problems--that of stepping
blithely ashore under the watchful eye of purser or authority whose
business it is to see that all the passengers who embarked ultimately
disembark--no more and no less; plus or minus zero. (It is considered
that an infant born aboard ship is a legal passenger and not a
stowaway. This is a magnanimity on the part of the transportation
companies who understand that they might have difficulty in persuading
any court that the will exists to defraud the company of rightful
revenues, etc.) (A death and burial at sea is also ignored; the
transportation company has already collected for a full fare!)
But Mark Kingman had done it. He had come aboard in a large packing
case, labelled:
_CERTIFIED UNIQUES!_
(Identium Protected)
Under NO Circumstances
will
DUPLICATOR
or
MATTER TRANSMITTER
Be Tolerated
With magnificent sophistry, Kingman was within the letter of the law
that did not permit false representation of contained merchandise. For
he, a human being, was a certified unique, he having never been under
the beam of the integrator scanning beam of the matter duplicator or
transmitter. Nor had any other living human, for that matter. The
identium protection was insurance on all such cargoes; it prevented
some overly--or underly bright clerk from slipping the package into a
duplicator to make shipping easier. Identium exploded rather violently
under the impact of the scanner beam, it will be recalled.
Along with Kingman was a small battery-powered duplicator, and a set of
recordings. The duplicator produced fresh air as needed, water, food,
and even books, games, and puzzles for solitary entertainment. Waste
material went into the matter bank, proving the earlier statements that
with a well-equipped duplicator and a set of recordings, any man can
establish a completely closed system that will be valid for any length
of time desired.
When the ship landed, Kingman tossed all the loose material into the
duplicator and reduced it to nonhomogeneous matter in the matter bank.
Then he turned the duplicator-beam against the side-wall of the huge
box and watched the side-wall disappear into the machine.
He stepped out through the opening, which was calculated to miss the
concealed plates of identium installed to prevent just this very thing.
Kingman, of course, had planned it that way.
Once outside, Kingman set the duplicator on the deck between other
cases and snapped the switch. The scanner beam produced books from
Kingman's own library which he packed in the case. Then by reversing
the direction of depth scan without changing the vertical or horizontal
travel, Kingman effected a completed reversal of the restoration. The
side of the packing case was re-established from the inside out, from
the original recording which, of course, was made from the other side.
It re-formed perfectly, leaving no seam.
Kingman went down an unused shaft to the bottom of the ship, where he
drilled down with the duplicator through the bottom of the ship where
it stood upon the Landing Stage. Down through the stage he went and
into a between-deck volume that was filled with girders.
He re-set the duplicator and replaced landing stage and the ship's hull.
By the time that the party had adjourned to Joe's, Mark Kingman was
high in the Relay Station, near the center line and a full mile and a
half from the Landing Stage. He was not far from the vast room that
once contained a lush growth of Martin Sawgrass, used before the advent
of the duplicator, for the purification of the atmosphere in Venus
Equilateral.
He was reasonably safe. He knew that the former vast storages of food
and supply were no longer present, and that being the case, few people
would be coming up to this out of the way place almost a third of a
mile above the outer radius of the station where the personnel of Venus
Equilateral lived and worked.
He started his duplicator and produced a newly charged battery first.
He tossed the old one into the matter bank. He'd have preferred a solar
energy tube, but he was not too certain of Sol's position from there
and so he had to forego that.
Then he used the duplicator to produce a larger duplicator, and that
duplicator to make a truly vast one. The smaller numbers he shoved into
the larger one.
From the huge duplicator, Kingman made great energy-beam tubes and
the equipment to run them. Taking his time, Kingman set them up and
adjusted them carefully.
He pressed the starting button.
Then a complete connection was established between an area high in the
station but a good many thousand feet away--and on the other side of
the central axis--through the energy-beam tubes, and a very distant
receptor tube on the planet Pluto.
"This," punned Kingman, "will freeze 'em out!"
His final act before relaxing completely was to have the huge
duplicator build a small but comfortable house, complete with furniture
and an efficient heating plant. Then he settled down to wait for
developments.
* * * * *
"So what brings you out to Venus Equilateral?" asked Don.
"Christmas," said Barney. "We--Christine--thought that it might be nice
to spend Christmas with old friends in a climate less violent than
Mars."
"Well, we're all tickled pink," nodded Arden.
"Frankly," grinned Jim Baler, "my charming sister has set her sights on
your bachelor playmate."
"I think it is mutual," said Arden. "After all, Walt has had a lot
of business to tend to on Mars. He used to use the beams to conduct
business--in fact he still does most of it by communications when it
isn't Mars--but give him three ten-thousandths of an excuse and he's
heading for Canalopsis."
"I noted with interest that Christine was quite willing to help him
work."
"Fat lot of work they'll accomplish."
"Speaking of work, Wes, what goes on right now in this deal?"
"We've just set up a modulator," said Wes. "I'm modulating the current
since the magnetic field is supplied by a permanent magnet and the
monochromatic light comes from an ion arc. Using varying light seems
to widen the response band with a loss in transmission intensity. This
way, you see, all the energy going into the crystal is transmitted on a
single band, which is of course a matter of concentrated transmission."
"That sounds sensible. Also, if this gets to sounding practical, it is
quite simple to establish and maintain a high-charge permanent magnet
field, and also a monochromatic light from a continuous gas-arc.
Easier, I'd say, than making ammeters all read alike."
"Utopia," said Wes Farrell, "is where you can use any handy meter and
find it within one tenth of one percent of any other--including the
Interplanetary Standard."
Channing observed that Utopia was far from achieved. Then he said:
"You've got the Thomas gents out in a ship with another crystal set-up?"
"_Anopheles_," said Farrell. "Will shortly head for Mars with the other
half of the gear in another refrigerated compartment. If this proves
practical, Pluto is going to become useful."
Arden nodded absently. "I've always claimed that there is a practical
use for everything."
Channing opened his mouth to say something and had it neatly plugged by
Arden's small hand. "No, you don't," she said. "We've all heard that
one."
"Which one?" asked Farrell.
"The one about the navel being a fine place to hold the salt when
you're eating celery in bed," said Arden. Channing removed Arden's
hand from his mouth and placed it in hers. "You done it," he told her
ungrammatically. "For which I'll not tell you what Walt and Christine
are doing right now."
Arden's attempt to say, "Pooh. I know," was thoroughly stifled and it
came out as a muffled mumble.
Channing turned to Wes and asked: "Have any good theories on this
thing?"
Farrell nodded. "I noted that the energy entering the crystal was not
dissipated as heat. Yet there was quite a bit of energy going in, and
I wanted to know where it was going. Apparently the energy going in to
the crystal will only enter under the influence of a magnetic field.
Changing the field strength of the magnet changes the band, for the
transmission to the similar crystal ceases until the other one has had
its magnetic field reduced in synchronous amount. Also, no energy is
taken by the crystal unless there is an attuned crystal. The power
just generates heat, then, as should be normal.
"So," said Wes thoughtfully, "the propagation of this communicable
medium is powered by the energy going into the crystal. Crystals tend
to vibrate in sympathy with one another; hitting one with a light
hammer will make the other one ring, and vice versa. I've tried it with
three of them, and it makes a complete three-way hookup. As soon as
Chuck and Freddie Thomas get out a good way, we'll be able to estimate
the velocity of propagation, though I think it is the same as that
other alloy-transmission band we've been using."