"Spinach," said Channing, "there isn't anything there!"
Farrell handed the figures to Don. "That's where the short circuit load
is coming from," he said.
"Up there," said Channing, "I'll bet it is hitting close to seventy or
eighty degrees below zero. A supercold condition--"
He paused and shook his head. "The tube room reached absolute zero some
time ago," he said, "and there's no heavy drain to that position."
"Well?" demanded Arden, yawning. "Do we wait until tomorrow morning or
go up there now?"
Channing thought for a moment. "We're due to leave in the morning," he
said. "Yet I think that the question of why anything up in an empty
section of Venus Equilateral should be blowing fuses would belabor us
all of our lives if we didn't make this last screwball search. Let's
go. Wes, get your portable sun-finder, huh?"
"His what?" demanded Arden.
"Figger of speech, sweet. We mean a small portable relay tube that we
can stick in series with this gawd-awful drain and use for a direction
finder. I have no intention of trying to scour every storeroom in that
area for that which I don't really believe is there."
The main deterrent to swift action was the bitter, bitter cold that
stabbed at their faces and hands which were not enclosed in the
electrically heated suite--of which each one of them wore three against
this ultraviolent chill.
"There should be a door here," objected Don, reading a blueprint from
the large roll he carried under his arm. "Fact is, this series of rooms
seems to have been sealed off entirely though the blueprint calls for a
door, about here!"
"How could anybody re-seal a doorway?" asked Barney.
"Duplicator," said Don thoughtfully. "And I smell rats!"
"So. And how do we get in?" demanded Arden.
"We break in," said Channing harshly. "Come on, gang. We're going back
downstairs and get us a cutter!"
The cutter consisted of a single-focus scanner beam that Don wielded
like an acetylene torch. Clean and silently it cut through the metal
wall and the section fell inward with a slight crash.
They stepped in through the opening.
"Someone has been homesteading," said Channing in a gritty voice. "Nice
prefab home, hey? Let's add house-breaking to our other crimes. I'd
like to singe the heels offa the character that did this. And I think
I'll let the main one simmer."
"Who?" asked Arden.
Channing pointed to the huge energy tube at one end of the room. It
bore the imprint of Terran Electric.
"Kingman," he said drily.
He applied his cutter to the wall of the cottage and burned his way
through. "No one living here," he said. "Colder than Pluto in here,
too. Look, Wes, here's your short circuit. Tubes from--"
"And here," said Farrell quickly, "are your missing chums!"
Channing came over to stand beside Farrell, looking down at the
too-still forms. Baler looked at Channing with a puzzled glance, and
Channing shook his head quietly. Then he said: "I may be wrong, but it
strikes me that Walt and Christine interrupted skullduggery at work and
were trapped as a consequence. No man, no matter how insane, would ever
enter a trap like this willingly. This is neither a love nest nor a
honeymoon cottage, Jim. This is a death trap!"
Channing turned from the place and left on a dead run. He paused at the
door to the huge room and yelled: "Don't touch 'em 'till I get Doc!"
* * * * *
By the clock, Christmas Day dawned bright and clear. The strip
fluorescents came on in the corridors of Venus Equilateral and there
began the inexorable flow of people towards the South End Landing Stage.
Each carried a small bag. In this were the several _uniques_ he
possessed and a complete set of recordings on the rest of his personal
possessions. Moving was as easy as that--and once they reached Terra,
everything they owned could be reproduced at will.
It was both glad and sad; the thrill of a new experience to come
balancing the loss of the comfortable routine of the old. Friends,
however, managed to get aboard the same spacecraft as a general rule
and so the pain of parting was spared them.
One by one the huge ships dropped South and then headed for Terra.
One by one until the three thousand-odd people who lived, loved, and
operated Venus Equilateral through its working years had embarked.
Channing shook hands with Captain Johannson as he got aboard the last
remaining ship. Behind Channing there came Keg Johnson, who supervised
the carrying aboard of Walt Franks and Christine Baler. They were
seated side by side in deck chairs on the operating bridge of the
spacecraft and Arden came up to stand beside her husband as she asked:
"Captain Johannson, you are empowered to perform matrimony?"
Johannson nodded.
"Well," she said, "I'm the Maid of Honor and this husband of mine
intends to be best man. We agree that the couple there have spent too
much time living with one another--"
"If she says 'sin' I'll strangle her," groaned Walt.
Christine reached over and took his hand. "She doesn't dare," said the
girl. "She knows it was ah--er--colder than sin!"
Big Jim Baler clenched and unclenched his hands. "I still think we
should have called on Mark Kingman," he said in a growl.
Channing shook his head. "And spoil the fine end of a fine holiday?
Nope. And also spoil a fine bit of retribution?"
Linna Johnson smiled. "A man of action like Jim finds the finer points
of retribution a bit too smooth," she said. "But it'll be plenty rough
on Kingman."
"To the devil with Kingman," said Barney Carroll. "I say we ought to
commit this ceremony at once and then repair to the bar--or have the
bar repair here--and have a last drink to Venus Equilateral."
Walt Franks stood up. "I'm still stiff," he said. "But I'll be damned
if I'm going to sit down at my own wedding."
Christine stood beside him. "You're thinking about that 'repair to the
bar' and don't want to get left," she told him. "Well, frozen solid or
not, I'm sticking tight."
Johannson turned to the pilot and gave the order. The big ship dropped
from the platform, and they all looked down through the glass dome at
the diminishing view of Venus Equilateral.
The captain turned to Channing and asked: "Just what did happen to Mark
Kingman?"
"Mark has mortgaged his everlasting black soul to the hilt to maintain
communications under the standard franchise. For a period of five
years, Mark Kingman must live on that damned station alone in the cold
and the loneliness, maintaining once each day a relay contact or lose
his shirt. And because he dropped the _Relay Girl_ into the sun when
he planned that 'elopement' we've just confiscated his ship. That
leaves Kingman aboard a practically frozen relay station with neither
the means to get away nor the ability to handle the situation at all.
He must stay, because when he puts a foot on any planet we clap him
in jail for kidnaping. He's lost his financial shirt because Venus
Equilateral is an obsolete commodity and he'll never regain enough of
his personal financial standing to fight such a case.
"If I were Mark Kingman, about now I'd--"
Channing shook his head, leaving the sentence unfinished. He turned to
Walt. "Got a ring handy?"
Wes Farrell held up a greenish metal ring that glinted iridescent
colors. "Y'might try this new synthetic," he offered.
Walt shook his head. He fumbled in an inner pocket and came up with a
small band that was very plain. "This is a certified unique," he said
proudly. "It was mother's, and grandmother's, too."
Then with Venus Equilateral still visible in the port below and a whole
sky above, Captain Johannson opened his book and started to read.
Behind them was work and fun and pain, and before them--
Was the exciting, uncharted future.