Mad Holiday

"Yeah," drawled Wes Farrell, "but what makes it vibrate?"

Don Channing looked down at the crystal. "Where did you get it?" he asked.

Walt Franks chuckled. "I bet you've been making synthetic elements again with the heterodyned duplicator."

Farrell nodded. "I've found a new series sort of like the iron-nickel-cobalt group."

Channing shook his head. There was a huge permanent magnet that poured a couple of million gauss across its gap, and in this magnetic field Farrell had the crystal supported. A bank of storage batteries drove several hundred amperes—by the meter—through the crystal from face to face on another axis, and down from above there poured an intense monochromatic light.

"Trouble is," complained Wes, "that there isn't a trace of a ripple in any of the three factors that work on the thing. Permanent magnet, battery current, and continuous gas-arc discharge. Yet—"

"It vibrates," nodded Channing. "Faintly, but definitely it is vibrating."

Walt Franks disappeared for a moment. He returned with a portable phonograph, which caused Don Channing to grin and ask, "Walt, are you going to make a recording of this conversation, or do you think it will dance to a Strauss waltz?"

"It's slightly bats, so I brought the overture to Das Fledermaus for it," snorted Franks. As he spoke, he removed the pick-up from the instrument and added a length of shielded wire. Then he set the stylus of the phonograph against the faintly vibrating crystal and turned up the gain.

At once a whining hum came from the loud speaker.

"Loud, isn't it?" he grinned. "Can you identify that any better?"

Wes Farrell threw up his hands. "I can state with positiveness that there isn't any varying field of anything that I know of that is at that frequency."

Channing just grinned. "Maybe it's just normal for that thing to vibrate."

"Like an aspen leaf?" asked Walt.

Channing nodded. "Or like my wife's jello."

Walt turned the dial of an audio generator until the note was beating at zero with the vibrating crystal. "What frequency does Arden's jello work at?" he asked. "I've got about four-fifty per second."

"Arden's jello isn't quite that nervous," said Don, puzzling.

"Taking my name in vain?" asked a cool and cheerful contralto. Don whirled and demanded, "How long have you been keyhole listening?"

Arden smiled. "When Walt Franks nearly runs me down without seeing me—and in his great clutching hands is a portable phonograph but no records—and in his eye there is that wild Tom Swift glint—I find my curiosity aroused to the point of visible eruption. Interesting, fellers?"

"Baffling," admitted Channing. "But what were you doing standing on odd-corners waiting for Walt to run you down for?"

"My feminine intuition told me that eventually one of you would do something that will wreck the station. When that happens, my sweet, I want to be among the focus of trouble so that I can say I told you so."

Walt grunted. "Sort of a nice epitaph," he said. "We'll have them words 'I tole ya so' engraved on the largest fragment of Venus Equilateral when we do."

Don grinned. "Walt, don't you like women?"

Franks swelled visibly and pompously. "Why, of course," he said with emphasis. "Some of my best friends are women!"

Arden stuck her tongue out at him. "I like you, too," she said. "But you wait—I'll fix you!"

"How?" asked Walt idly.

"Oh, go freeze," she told him.

"Freeze?" chuckled Walt. "Now, that's an idea."

"Idea?" asked Don, seeing the look on Walt's face. "What kind of idea?"

Walt thought seriously for a moment. "The drinks are on me," he said. "And I'll explain when we get there. Game? This is good." Insistent, Walt led them from Wes Farrell's laboratory near the South End skin of Venus Equilateral to Joe's, which was up nine levels and in the central portion of the station. "Y'know," he said, "women aren't so bad after all. But I've got this feminine intuition business all figured out. Since women are illogical in the first place, they are inclined to think illogical things and to say what they think. Then if it should happen to make sense, they apply it. I used to know an experimenter that tried everything he could think of on the theory that some day he'd hit upon something valuable. Well—this is it, good people."

Walt shoved the door open and Wes Farrell grinned as he always did at the sign that read:

JOE'S The Best Bar in Twenty-seven Million Miles (minimum)

Arden entered and found a place at the long bar. The three men lined up on either side of her and Joe automatically reached for the Scotch and glasses.

"Now," said Channing, "what is it?"

Walt lifted his glass. "I drink to the Gods of Coincidence," he chanted, "and the Laws of Improbability. 'Twas here that I learned that which makes me master of the situation now."

Arden clinked her glass against his. "Walt, I'll drink to the Gods of Propinquity. Just how many problems have you solved in your life by looking through the bottom of a glass—darkly?"

"Ah—many," he said, taking a sip of the drink.

He swallowed.

A strange look came over his face. He spluttered. He grew a bit ruddy of face, made a strangling noise, and then choked.

"Migawd, Joe—what have you mixed this with, shoe polish?"

"Just made it this afternoon," replied Joe.

"Then throw it back in the matter bank and do it again," said Walt.

Don took a very cautious sip and made a painfully wry face. "The SPCS—Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Scotch—should dip their tongue in this," he said.

Joe shrugged. "It's from your own pet brand," he told Channing.

Arden smelled gingerly. "Don," she asked him seriously, "have you been petting dragons?"

Wes, chemist like, dipped his forefinger in the drink, diluted it in a glass of water, and touched it to his tongue. "It'll never be popular," he said.

Joe turned back to his duplicator and shoved a recording into the slot. The machine whirred for a few seconds, and Joe opened the door and took out the new bottle, which he handed to Walt. Walt cut the seal and pulled the cork, and poured. He tasted gingerly and made the same wry face.

"What in the name of could have happened?" he asked.

"It's the same recording," asserted Joe.

"But what happened to it?"

"Well," admitted Joe, "it was dropped this morning."

"In what?" demanded Walt.

"Just on the floor."

Wes Farrell nodded. "Probably re-arranged some of the molecular patterns in the recording," he said.

Joe put both bottles in the duplicator and turned the switch. They disappeared in seconds, and then Joe took another recording and made a bottle of a different brand. Again Walt tasted gingerly, smiled hugely, and took a full swallow.

"Whew," he said. "That was almost enough to make a man give up liquor entirely."

"And now," said Don Channing, "let us in on your big secret—or was this just a ruse to get us in this gilded bistro?"

Walt nodded. He led them to the back of the bar and into the back room. "Refrigerator," he said.

Arden took his arm with affected sympathy. "I know it's big enough but—"

Walt swung the huge door open and stepped in.

"I didn't really mean—" continued Arden, but her voice died off, trailing away into silence as Walt, motioning them to come in, also put his finger on his lips.

"Are you going to beef?" demanded Channing.

"No, you big ham," snorted Walt. "Just listen!"

Wes blinked and slammed the door shut behind them.

And then in the deep silence caused when the heavy door shut off the incident sounds from Joe's restaurant and bar, there came a faint, high-pitched hum.

Don turned to Arden. "That it?" he asked. "You've got better pitch-sense than I have."

"Sounds like it," admitted Arden.

"Cold in here," said Wes. He swung open the door and they returned to the bar for their drink. "We can establish its identity easily enough," he told them. He finished the drink, and turned from the bar. "Walt, you bring the pick-up and amplifier; Don, you carry the audio generator, and I'll bring up the rear with the rest of the gadget."

They left, and Joe threw his hands out in a gesture of complete helplessness.

"Trouble?" asked Arden cheerfully.

"I didn't mind when they used the tablecloths to draw on," he said. "I didn't really object when they took the tablecloths and made Warren use 'em as engineering sketches to make things from. But now, dammit, it looks like they're going to move into my refrigerator and for God knows what! I give up!"

"Joe," said Arden sympathetically, "have one on me."

"Don't mind if I do," chuckled Joe laconically. "If I'm to be shoved out of mine own bailiwick, I might as well enjoy these last few days."

He was finishing the drink as the technical section of Venus Equilateral returned, laden with equipment.

Arden shrugged. "Here we go again," she said. "Once more I am a gadget widow. What do you recommend, Joe? Knitting—or shall I become a dipsomaniac?"

Joe grinned. "Why not present Don with a son and heir?"

Arden finished her glass in one draught, and a horrified expression came over her face. "One like Don is all I can stand," she said in a scared voice. Then she smiled. "It's the glimmering of an idea, though," she added with brightening face. "It stands a fifty-fifty chance that it might turn out to be a girl—which would scare Don to death, having to live with two like me."

"Twins," suggested Joe.

"You stay the hell out of this," said Arden good-naturedly.

Walt Franks re-appeared, headed out of the restaurant, and returned a few minutes later with another small case full of measuring equipment.

"And this," said Arden as Walt vanished into the refrigerator once again, "will be known as the first time Walt Franks ever spent so much time in here without a drink!"

"Time," said Joe, "will tell."

Half way from Lincoln Head to Canalopsis, Barney Carroll was examining a calendar. "Christmas," he said absently.

Christine Baler stretched slender arms. "Yeah," she drawled, "and on Mars."

Her brother Jim smiled. "Rather be elsewhere?"

"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."

Channing grinned. "The speed of light, squared?"

Farrell winced. That argument was still going on, whether or not you could square a velocity. "We'll know," he said quietly.

The loudspeaker above Farrell's desk hissed slightly, and the voice of Freddie Thomas came in: "I'm about to trust my precious life once more to the tender care of the hare-brained piloting of my semi-idiot brother. Any last words you'd like to have uttered?"

Wes picked up a microphone and said: "Nothing that will bear transmission under the rules. If there's anything I want to tell you, I'll call you on this—and if this doesn't work, we'll try the standard. They're on your course?"

"On the button all the way—they tell me."

"Well, if you jiggle any, call us," said Farrell, "either on the standard space phone or this coupled-crystal set-up."

Channing grinned. "So it has a name?"

Freddie laughed. "We never did settle on a name for the driver-radiation communication system. So we're starting this one off right. It's the Coupled-Crystal Communicator. For short, 'Seesee', see?"

Channing returned the laugh. "Seeseesee, or Seesee, understand?"

Chuck Thomas chimed in. "My semi-moronic brother will delay this take-off if he doesn't sharpen up," he said. "What he means is: Seesee, get it?"

"I get it," replied Channing.

And they did get it. Hour followed hour and day followed day from take-off to turnover, where there was no Doppler effect even though the velocity of the ship was fiercely high.

The hours fled by in a working flurry of tests and experiments and almost-constant talk between the arrowing ship and Venus Equilateral....

"It doesn't add up," complained Walt Franks.

Christine looked up from her book and waited.

"Something's more'n we bargained for," he said.

"What?" asked Christine.

"Why, that area we're chilling off is cooling far too fast."

"I should think that would be an advantage," said Christine.

"Maybe—and maybe not," said Walt. "The big thing is that things should behave according to rules. When they do not, then's when people make discoveries that lead to new rules."

"That I don't follow," said Christine.

"Well, in this case we know to several decimal places the heat equivalent of electrical energy. Three thousand, four hundred thirteen kilowatt hours equals one B.T.U.—a British Thermal Unit. We know the quantity of electrical power—the number of kilowatts—being coursed through the tubes en route to Pluto. We know by calculation just how many calories of heat there are in the area we're cooling off—and therefore we can calculate the time it will take to reduce the temperature of that area a given number of degrees centigrade. We're about double."

"And—you were starting to explain something different," said Christine.

"Oh—yes. Well, for a number of years—several thousand, in fact—it was taught that a heavy mass falls faster than a light mass. Then Galileo tossed rocks off of the Tower at Pisa and showed that a small stone and a large stone fall equally fast. That was a case where definitely provable evidence was at variance with the rules. They couldn't revise the actuality, so they had to revise the rules."

"I see. And now because that area is cooling off much faster than anticipated, you anticipate that something is not behaving according to the rules?"

"Bright girl," chuckled Walt.

"Thank you, kind sir," laughed Christine. "But remember that I was raised in a bright family."

"Come on," said Walt. "We're going to investigate."

"In that cold room?" asked Christine with some concern.

Walt nodded. "You'll get used to it," he said absently, collecting a few instruments.

"Look, Walt," said Christine in a scathing tone, "I'm used to it! That's why I came to Venus Equilateral from Mars. Remember?"

Walt looked at her, wondering. But Christine wore a smile that took most of the sting out of her words.

"Lead on, Walt. I can take a bit of chill. In fact," she said with a half-smile, "under the proper circumstances, a bit of chill is fun."

Walt finished collecting his equipment and packed it into two carrying cases. Then from a closet, he took electrically warmed clothing, helped Christine into hers, climbed into his own, and then they took the long trek along corridors and up elevators to the cold room.

"It's cold even here," said Christine.

"The room leaks bad," said Walt. "Wes Farrell's hobby these days is making synthetic elements on the duplicator—he uses a filter to get a mono-atomic pattern and then heterodynes the resulting signal to atomic patterns above the transuranic system. But in all of Wes Farrell's playing at making synthetic transuranic elements, he hasn't come up with anything like a good heat insulator yet. We did toy with the idea of hermetically sealing in a double wall and piping some of the vacuum of interstellar space in there. But it was too vast a project. So we let some heat leak and to hell with it."

Christine shuddered. "I've never really appreciated the fact that Venus Equilateral is really just a big steel capsule immersed in the vacuum of interplanetary space," she said. "It's so much like a town on Terra."

"Inside, that is," grinned Walt. "There's a nice queasy thrill awaiting you when first you stand in an observation blister made of plastiglass."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because first you are terrified because you are standing on a bubble that is eminently transparent and looking down beneath your feet, you see the stars in the sky. You know that 'down' to the working and residence section of the station is actually 'out and away' from the axis of the station, since it revolves about the long axis to provide a simulated gravity plus gyroscopic action to stabilize the beam-stage and pointers. Well, when you go down—and again 'Down' is a relative term meaning the direction of gravitic thrust—into one of the blisters, your mind is appalled at the fact that your feet are pressing against something that your eyes have always told you is 'up'. The stars. And then you realize that between you and the awesome void of space in just that thin glass.

"You end up," he grinned, "being very careful about banging your heels on the floor of the station for about a week."

"Well thanks for the preparation," said Christine.

"You'll still go through it," he told her. "But just remember that anybody on the other side of the station, standing in a similar blister a mile 'above' your head, is standing feet 'upward' with respect to you. But he, too, is being thrown out and away by centrifugal force."

Walt put his equipment down and rummaged through it. He selected a supersensitive thermocouple and bridge and fixed the couple to one of the fixtures in the room. He balanced the bridge after the swinging needle came to a halt—when the thermocouple junction had assumed the temperature of the fixture. "Now," he said, "we'll read that at the end of a half hour and we'll then calculate the caloric out-go and balance it against the kilowatts heading out through the energy beam."

"And in the meantime?" asked Christine.

"In the meantime, we measure the electrical constants to within an inch of their lives," he told her. "I've got a couple of real fancy meters here—this one that I'm hooking across the original wattmeter in the circuit measures the wattages in the region between one hundred thousand kilowatts and one hundred ten thousand kilowatts. Designed especially as a high-level meter."

Walt clipped the portable meters in place and made recordings. Finally he nodded. "Right on the button," he said. "Just what the meters should read."

The crystal began to vibrate faintly, and Walt mentioned that either Wes Farrell was calling Freddie Thomas or vice versa. "Can't hear it very well," complained Walt, "because Wes has the amplifiers downstairs, both incoming amplifier from the dynamic pick-up—we had to give up the standard crystal because it is expected to get cold enough to make the crystal too brittle—-to the modulating equipment. The monitor-speaker is outside—we haven't been in here enough to make use of it since our first tries."

Walt took a look at the bridge on the thermocouple and nodded vaguely. He killed more time by showing Christine the huge tube that drained the latent heat out of the room and hurled it across the solar system to Pluto.

"Y'know," he grinned as a thought struck him, "I think we've licked the Channing Layer that so neatly foiled Mark Kingman and Terran Electric on that solar power project."

"Yes?"

"Sure," he said. "All we do is set up a real beam-input device on the moon, for instance, and then use a batch of these things to draw the power from there."

"But how about the formation of ozone?"

"That'll have to be checked," said Walt. "For Pluto hasn't got a Channing Layer, of course, and our station out there is no criterion. But you note there is no smell of ozone in here. That leads me to think that w've given Terran Electric the runaround once more. Funny thing about Kingman, if someone gave him this development, he'd never think of reversing it to bring energy in."

"From what I know of the man," said Christine, "he'd not think of reversing, but he would think of perverting."

"Christine!" shouted Walt.

"Huh?" asked the bewildered girl.

"You may have had your thought for the week!"

Walt tried a bit of Indian War Dance but failed because the pseudo-gravitic force was too light to hold him down. They were too close to the axis for full force.

"But I don't understand."

Walt laughed hugely and hugged her. Christine was lissome in the curve of his arm as she relaxed against him.

Walt looked down at her for what seemed to be a long time while the stream of highly-technical thinking and deduction gave way to a series of more fundamental thoughts. Then he added his other arm to the embrace, and Christine turned to face him. He kissed her gently; experimentally—and discovered instead of resistance there was co-operation. His kiss became fervent and Christine's lips parted beneath his.

Some minutes later, Christine leaned back in his arms and smiled at him affectionately. "I was wondering if you'd ever get around to that," she said softly.

Walt grinned. "Have I been had?"

"I had Jim pack the all-white shotgun," she told him.

"Shucks, why not just have him threaten to sit on me?" asked Walt. He kissed her again.

"Now," she said after an appropriate and pleasant interval, "just what was my 'thought for the week'?"

"Kingman," he said, his forehead creasing in a frown.

"Kingman?"

"We've no corner on brains," said Walt. "Anybody tinkering with these energy tubes might easily devise the same thing. Kingman's immediate thought would be to freeze us out, I betcha."

Walt kissed her again and then let her go, "Let's do some juggling with figures," he said.

"What kind of?"

"The Laws of Probability aided by a bit of sheer guesswork and some shrewd evaluation of the barrister's mind."

Christine smiled. "You can speak plainer than that," she said.

"I know," he replied, reaching for his bag of gear, "but there's a lady present."

"You forget that the lady thought of it," Christine pointed out. "So let's go and find the—barrister."

"It ought to show, though," observed Walt. "And yet, my lady, we can check whether there has been cross-duggery at the skull-roads by making a brief observation along here somewhere."

"How?"

"Well, about fifty yards up this corridor there is a wall-thermostat."

"You think that if Kingman were trying to chill-off the place, he'd have bollixed the thermostats so they can't heat up the place and compensate?"

Walt nodded. "He'd do it, not knowing that we had all the near-by circuits shut off for our own experiment, no doubt."

"You don't suppose Kingman knew about this idea and decided to add to the general effect?" asked Christine.

Walt shook his head. "He'd assume that someone would be rambling up here off and on to look at the works. He'd automatically choose another place if he thought we had this one under observation."

Walt stopped at the thermostat and with a screwdriver he removed the face of the instrument. He reached down into his tool-pocket and took out a long, slender pair of tweezers. He probed in the depths of the thermostat and come out with a tiny square of paper.

He held it up for Christine to see.

"Stickum on one side held it until the contacts closed," he said. "Then it made a darned good insulator. Betcha this slip of paper came from Terran Electric!"

"Now what?" asked Christine.

"I'm going to call Don," said Walt. "Iffen and providen we can find a live jack." He took a handset from his kit of tools and plugged it into the jack below the thermostat. He jiggled a tiny switch and pressed a little red button, and after a full three minutes, he said "Damn," under his breath and dropped the handset back into his tool kit.

"Nobody's paying much attention to the telephone from this section of Venus Equilateral any more," he said. "There's a live one in the cold room, though. Let's take a look around first."

"Which way?"

Walt thought for a moment. "We set the cold room about one-third of the way from the North End because it was as far from the rest of the station's operating and living section as possible while commensurable with being reasonably close to the labs," he said. "We're not very far—perhaps a hundred yards from the axis. We're about a mile from the North End.

"Now, if I were Kingman, I'd set up shop in some place as far from the operating section as possible commensurable with an out of the way place—and definitely far from the laboratories. Then I'd select a place as far from me as I could get without too much danger of having the effect detected."

Christine nodded. "If Venus Equilateral were a cube, you'd take one corner and chill off the opposite corner."

"Venus Equilateral is a cylinder, and the skin is filled with people. However, you can set up an equation in differential calculus that will give you two spots as far from one another as possible with the least danger of detection from the ends or skin of a cylinder. The answer will give you two toroidal volumes located inside of the cylinder. You set your workshop in one and start the chill-off in the other—and right across the center from you."

"And?" prompted Christine with a smile.

"We used the same equation to locate the least dangerous place. Predicated on the theory that if the personnel need be protected from the danger area as much as the danger area need be concealed from people, we can assume the use of the same constants. Now, since by sheer coincidence Markus the Kingman selected a spot in the toroid that we also selected, it narrows our search considerably."

"In other words, we chase down the length of the station, cross the axis, and knock on Kingman's door."

"Right," said Walt.

And being firmly convinced that mixing pleasure with business often makes the business less objectionable, Walt kissed Christine once more before they started toward the place where they expected to find their troublemaker.

"About here," said Walt, looking up at a smooth bulkhead.

"How are we going to find him?" asked Christine. The corridor was long and die-straight, but both walls were sheer for thirty feet and unbroken.

"Look, I guess," said Walt, uncertainly. "I'm not too familiar with this section of the station. When I was first here—many years ago—I spent a lot of spare time roaming and exploring these seldom-used corridors. But my Boy Scout hatchet wouldn't cut trail-blazes on the steel walls."

He laughed a bit thoughtfully, and then he put his hands to his mouth, cupping them like a megaphone, and he yelled:

"Hey! Kingman! We're on to you!"

"But what good will that do?" asked Christine doubtfully.

"Might scare him into action," said Walt. "Easiest way to shoot pa'tridge is to flush it into the open. Otherwise you might walk over a nest and never see it. I—Holy Grease!"

A four foot section of the wall beside them flashed into nothingness with neither sound nor light nor motion. It just disappeared. And as they goggled at the vacant square, an ugly round circle glinted in the light and a sourly-familiar voice invited them in—or else!

"Well," said Walt Franks, exhaling deeply. "If it isn't Our Legal Lamp himself!"

Kingman nodded snappishly. "You were looking for me?"

"We were."

"It's too bad you found me," said Kingman.

"It was just a matter of time before you dropped all pretense of being thinly legal," said Walt scathingly. "Give you credit, Kingman, for conducting yourself as close to the line without stepping over for a long time. But now you can add breaking and entering to kidnaping to whatever other crimes you have committed."

Kingman smiled in a superior manner. "I might," he said suavely, "add murder. There would be no corpus delicti if both of you were fed into the duplicator."

"You can't record a human being," said Walt.

"Don't be stupid," said Kingman. "Who said anything about making a record?"

Walt admitted that this was so.

Then Kingman snapped the switch on the duplicator and the wall was re-established. Then he forced Christine to tie Walt, after which he tied Christine and then checked and added to Walt's bonds from a large roll of friction tape. He dropped them side by side in chair, and taped them thoroughly.

"You are a damned nuisance," he said. "Having to eliminate you tends to decrease my enjoyment at seeing the failure of Venus Equilateral. I'd have preferred to watch all of you suffer the hardest way. Killing you leaves fewer to gloat over, but it must be done. Once you found me, there is no other way."

"Walt," pleaded Christine, "won't the others find the same thing and follow us?"

Walt wanted to lie—wanted desperately to lie, if for no other reason than to spare Christine the mental anguish of expecting death. But Walt was not a good liar. He gave up and said: "I happen to be the guy who rigged the thermal-energy tube—and I'm the only guy who knows about the too-fast drop. All I hope for is that we'll be missed."

"We will," said Christine.

Kingman laughed nastily and began to fiddle with the scanning-rate controls on his duplicator.

Arden came running into her husband's office breathlessly. She was waving a sheet of paper and there was mingled anger and pleasure on her face as she shoved the paper under Don's eyes and waggled it. "Look!" she commanded.

"Stop fanning me with that," said Channing, "and let me see it if it's so all-fired important."

"I'll murder 'em in cold blood," swore Arden.

Channing pried his wife's fingers apart and took the paper. He read—and his eyes bulged with amused concern—

"Dear Characters:

When we were giving Venus Equilateral's advantages the up and down a coupla years ago after the sudden and warranted departure of Director Francis Burbank, we forgot one important item—a justice of the peace.

So Christine and I are eloping in a time-honored fashion.

Neither of us have any desire to get wedded in the midst of a Roman Holiday even though it does deprive a lot of guys the right to kiss the bride.

You may give my Little Black Book to Jim Baler, Barney Carroll, and Wes—and have Arden see that they divide 'em up proportionately.

Your ex-bachelor chum(p) Walt.

PS: He chased me 'til I caught him—

Christine."

"Well," chuckled Don good-naturedly, "that's Our Walt. He never did do anything the slow and easy way. Does Jim know?"

"I dunno, let's find him and ask."

They found Jim and Barney in Farrell's laboratory discussing the theories of operating a gigantic matter-transmitter affair to excavate sand from a cliff. Channing handed the note to Jim, who read it with a half smile and handed it to Barney, who shared it with Wes while they read it together. Jim said "I'm not surprised; Christine could have been talked into wedlock—holy or unholy—by a mere wink from Walt."

"I hope she'll be kind to our little bucket-headed idiot," said Arden, making to wipe tears with a large sheet of emery paper from Farrell's workbench. "He's been slightly soft-skulled ever since he set eye on that scheming hussy you have for a sister."

Barney shook his head sadly. "Poor guy."

"We ought to toast 'em even though they aren't here," suggested Farrell.

"A requiem toast."

"This," chuckled Don Channing, "is one mess that Walt will have to get out of himself."

"Mess is it?" demanded Arden with a glint in her eye. "Come, husband, I would have words with thee."

Don reached in his hip pocket. "Here," he said, "just take my checkbook."

"I'd rather have words with you."

Don shook his head. "If I just give you the checkbook, you'll use it reasonably sparing, all things feminine considered. But gawd help the balance once you get to talking me into writing the check myself. Besides, we're about to hear from the Thomas boys again. They're about to land at Canalopsis."

"I'll wait," said Arden, settling on a tall stool and lighting a cigarette.

It took about ten minutes, and then Freddie Thomas's voice came from the speaker, loud and clear. "Well, we've landed. We're here. And where are you?"

"Hang on, Freddie," replied Farrell. "And we've some news for you. Walt Franks and Christine Baler have just committed matrimony."

"That's fine—What? Who? When?"

"They eloped; left a note; took the Relay Girl unbeknownst to all and sundry. Left their damned note right where the Relay Girl's landing space was."

"Well I'll be—"

Chuck's voice came in. "He probably will," he observed. "And you know, when I think of spending Eternity with my brother, it's enough to make a guy spend an exemplary life in the hope of going to Heaven so we can be apart. But I've got another guy here that might be interested."

"Hello, Channing?"

"Well if it ain't Keg Johnson. Own Mars yet?"

"No, but I'm darned interested in this coupled-crystal gadget of yours. Mind if I bring Linna out for a few days?"

"Come ahead. Coming on Anopheles?" asked Don.

Keg Johnson laughed. "Not a chance, Don. I own a spaceline, remember? And not wanting to cast disparagement at your type of genius, but I'll prefer riding in style at two gravities instead of blatting all over the sky at five, ducking meters and festoons of cable; eating canned beans off a relay-rack shelf standing up; and waking up in the morning to the tune of Chuck Thomas carving a hole through the bedroom wall to make a straight-line half-wave dipole that won't quite fit in otherwise."

"I'd send the Relay Girl," said Don, "but it seems as how my old side-kick, Walt Franks, swiped it to locate a justice of the peace in the company of a young and impressionable gal named Christine."

"Nuts?"

"If so, happy about it. Hope he'll be home by Christmas, anyway."

"Well, we'll be arriving in about ten days. See you then, Don."

"Right," answered Channing, and Wes Farrell took the microphone to give the Thomas boys some information.

Mark Kingman emerged from his tiny house in the huge storeroom and his breath blew out in a white cloud. He went to the couple tied to their chairs and said: "Cold, isn't it?"

Franks swore. Christine shivered despite the electrically-heated clothing.

"You know," said Kingman, "those batteries are going to wear out sooner or later. I'd remove them and let the cold do its work excepting for the fact that I'd have to loose you and get into the inside pocket of the suits. You stay tied!"

"Having nothing to eat but your words is beginning to undermine my health," snapped Walt. "Gonna starve us to death too?"

"Oh," said Kingman expansively, "I've been devising a machine for you. As an inventor of note, you will appreciate Little Joe. He will take care of you both, to keep you alive until the cold gets you."

He returned to his little house and emerged with a large, complicated gadget that he trundled to position in front of Walt and Christine. There was a large hopper above and a wild assortment of levers and gears interlocked in the body of the mechanism.

Kingman pressed a button and the gears whirled and the levers flashed—

And from the insides of the thing a lever speared forward. A spoon was welded to the fore end, and it carried a heaping load of mushy something-or-other.

Walt blinked and tried to duck, but his bindings wouldn't permit too much freedom of motion. The spoon hit him on the cheek, cutting him and spilling the food on his chest. The spoon disappeared back into the machine.

It re-appeared on the other side and sliced towards Christine, who screamed in fright. The spoon entered her opened mouth, and the stuff it hurled into her throat nearly strangled her. It came again at Walt, who miscalculated slightly and received a cut lip and a mouth full of heavy gruel.

"You have to get set just so," explained Kingman, "then you'll not be cut."

"Damn you—glub!" snapped Walt.

Christine waited and caught the next spoonful neatly.

And then the thing accelerated. The velocity of repetition increased by double—then decreased again—and then started on random intervals. They could never be certain when the knifing spoon would come hurtling out of the machine to plunge into the position where their mouths should be. They were forced to swallow quickly and then sit there with mouth wide open to keep from getting clipped. With the randomness of interval there came another randomness. One spoonful would be mush; the next ice-cream; followed by a cube of rare steak. The latter was tough, which demanded jaw-aching rapid chewing to get set for the next possible thrust.

"A balanced diet," chortled Kingman, rolling his eyes in laughter. He held his stomach at the sight.

"You—glub!

"—devil—glub!" snarled Walt.

"It won't be long now," said Kingman. "Your cold room is down to almost absolute zero row. You know what that means?"

"—glub—you—"

"When the metal reaches absolute zero, as it will with the thermal beam, the spread of cooling will accelerate. The metal will become a superconductor—which will superconduct heat as well as electricity. The chill area is spreading rapidly now, and once this cold room section reaches absolute zero, the chill will spread like wildfire and the famous Venus Equilateral Relay Station will experience a killing freeze."

Walt glared. There was nothing else he could do. He was being fed at a rapid rate that left him no time for other occupations. It was ignominious to be so treated, but Walt consoled himself with the fact that he was being fed—even though gulps of scalding-hot coffee drenched spoons of ice cream that came after mashed potatoes (with lumps, and where did Kingman get that duplicator recording?). The final blow was a one-inch tube that nearly knocked their teeth out in arriving. It poured a half pint of Benedictine and brandy down their throats which made them cough—and which almost immediately left them with their senses reeling.

Kingman enjoyed this immensely, roaring with laughter at his 'feeding machine' as he called it.

Then he sobered as Walt's eyes refused to focus. He stepped to a place behind Walt and unbound him quickly. Walt tried to stand, but reeled, and Kingman pointed his heavy rifle at Walt from a very safe distance and urged him to go and enter the small metal house. Walt did. Then Kingman transferred Christine to the house in the same way.

He sealed the only door with the duplicator, and from a small opening in the wall, he spoke to them.

"I'm leaving," he said. "You'll find everything in there to set up light housekeeping but food and heat. There'll be no heat, for I've removed the heating plant. You can see it through this hole, but the hole will soon be closed by the feeding machine, which I'm fixing so that you can eat when hungry. I'd prefer that you stay alive while you slowly freeze. Eventually your batteries will give out, and then—curtains.

"But I've got to leave because things are running my way and I've got to be in a place to cash in on it.

"I'll be seeing you."

Keg Johnson greeted Don warmly. Then he said, "I knew you'd do it sooner or later," with a grin.

Don blinked. "The last time you said that was in the courtroom in Buffalo after we wrecked the economic system with the matter-duplicator. What is it this time?"

"According to the guys I've had investigating your coupled-crystal effect, it is quite simple. The effect will obtain with any crystalline substance—so long as they are absolutely identical! It took the duplicator to do it right to the atomic lattice structure. You'll get any royalties, Channing, but I'm getting all my ships talking from ship to ship direct, and from Canalopsis direct to any ship. You've just invented Venus Equilateral out of business!"

"Good!" exclaimed Don.

"Good?"

Don nodded. "Venus Equilateral is fun—and always has been. But, darn it, here we are out here in space lacking the free sky and the fresh natural air. We'd never abandon it so long as Venus Equilateral had a shred of necessity. But—now we can all go home to Man's Natural Environment. A natural planet."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Furnish the Communications Stations at Northern Landing, at Canalopsis, and on Terra with coupled-crystal equipments. Then we abandon Venus Equilateral in one grand celebration."

Arden smiled. "Walt and Christine will be wild. Serves 'em right."

Farrell shrugged. "Going to tell 'em?"

"Nope. For one thing, they're honeymooning where no one knows. And so we'll just leave quietly and when they come back, they'll find that Venus Equilateral is a large empty house. Run off on us, will they!"

"Making any public announcements?" asked Keg.

Don shook his head. "Why bother?" he asked. "People will know sooner or later, and besides, these days I'd prefer to keep the coupled-crystal idea secret as long as possible. We'll get more royalty, because once it is known, the duplicators will go crazy again. So long as Venus Equilateral—the generic term—maintains interplanetary communications, that's all that is necessary. Though Venus Equilateral as an identity is no more, the name of the interplanetary communications company shall be known as Venus Equilateral as a fond tribute to a happy memory of a fine place. And—"

"And now we can haul off and have a four-alarm holiday brawl," said Arden.

Farrell noted the thermometers that measured the temperature of the cold room. "About all we'd have to do is to hold the door open and Venus Equilateral will have its first snow storm."

"Just like Mars," said Jim. "No wonder Christine eloped with Walt. Bet they're money-hooning on Venus."

"Well," said Channing, "turn up the gain on that ice-cream freezer of Walt's, and we'll have our winter snowstorm. A white Christmas, by all that's good and holy!"

Farrell grinned widely and reached up to the servo panel. He twisted the master control dial all the way clockwise and the indicators read high on their scales. Imperceptibly, the recording thermometers started to creep downward—though it would take a day or so before the drop became evident.

"Get everything in motion," said Channing. "Arden, make plans to clean out about an acre of former living space—make a one-room apartment out of it. Get the gals a-decorating like mad. Wes, get someone to make a firebrick and duplicate it into enough to build a fireplace. Then make enough fireplaces to go around to all as wants 'em. For draft, we'll tie the chimneys together and let it blow out into space at fourteen pounds per square inch of draft. Better get some good dampers, too. We'll have the air-duplicator running at full blast to keep up. We've got some crude logs—duplicate us a dozen cords of wood for fire-wood. Tell the shopkeepers down on the Mall that the lid is off and the Devil's out for breakfast! We'll want sleds, fur coats, holly and mistletoe by the acre. And to hell with the lucite icicles they hang from the corridor cornices. This year we have real ones.

"Oh," he added, "better make some small heating units for living rooms. We can freeze up the halls and 'outdoor' areas, but people want to come back into a warm room, shuck their earmuffs and overcoats and soak up a cup of Tom and Jerry. Let's go, gang. Prepare to abandon ship! And let's abandon ship with a party that will go down in history—and make every man, woman, and child on Venus Equilateral remember it to the end of their days!"

"Poor Walt," said Arden. "I wish he could be here. Let's hope he'll come back to us by Christmas."

For the ten thousandth time Walt inspected the little metal house. It was made of two courses of metal held together with an insulating connector, but these metal walls had been coupled with water now, and they were bitter cold to the touch.

Lights were furnished from outside somewhere, there was but a switch in the wall and a lamp in the ceiling. Walt thought that he might be able to raise some sort of electrical disturbance with the lighting plan, but found it impossible from the construction of the house. And, obviously Kingman had done the best he could to filter and isolate any electrical fixtures against radio interference that would tell the men in Venus Equilateral that funny-work was a-foot. Kingman's duplicator had been removed along with anything else that would give Walt a single item that he could view with technical eye.

Otherwise, it was a miniature model of a small three-room house; not much larger than a "playhouse" for a wealthy child, but completely equipped for living, since Kingman planned it that way and lived in it, needing nothing.

"Where do we go from here?" asked Walt in an angry tone.

Christine shuddered. "What I'm wondering is when these batteries will run out," she said.

"Kingman has a horse-and-buggy mind," said Walt. "He can't understand that we'd use miniature beam-energy tubes. They won't give out for about a year."

"But we can't hold out that long."

"No, we damwel can't," grunted Franks unhappily. "These suits aren't designed for anything but a severe cold. Not a viciously killing kind. At best, they'll keep up fairly well at minus forty degrees, but below that they lose ground degree for degree."

Christine yawned sleepily.

"Don't let that get you," said Walt nervously. "That's the first sign of cold-adaptation."

"I know," she answered. "I've seen enough of it on Mars. You lose the feeling of cold eventually, and then you die."

Walt held his forehead in his hands. "I should have made an effort," he said in a hollow voice. "At least, if I'd started a ruckus, Kingman might have been baffled enough to let you run for it."

"You'd have been shot."

"But you'd not be in this damned place slowly freezing to death," he argued.

"Walt," she said quietly, "remember? Kingman had that gun pointed at me when you surrendered."

"Well, damn it, I'd rather have gone ahead anyway. You'd have been—"

"Not better off. We're still alive."

"Fine prospect. No one knows we're here; they think we're honeymooning. The place is chilling off rapidly and will really slide like hell once that room and the original tube reaches absolute zero. The gang below us don't really know what's going on because they left the refrigerator tube to my care—and Channing knows that I'd not go rambling off on a honeymoon without leaving instructions unless I was certain without doubt that the thing would run without trouble until I returned. I'm impulsive, but not forgetful. As for making any kind of racket in here—we're licked."

"Can't you do something with the miniature power tubes that run these suits?"

"Not a chance—at least nothing that I know I can do between the removal of the suit and the making of communications. They're just power intake tubes tuned to the big solar beam jobs that run the station. I—"

"Walt—please—no reproach."

He looked at her. "I think you mean that," he said.

"I do."

He nodded unhappily. "But it still obtains that it is my fault."

Christine put cold hands on his cheeks. "Walt, what would have happened if I'd not been along?"

"I'd have been trapped alone," he told her.

"And if I'd come alone?"

"But you wouldn't have—"

"Walt, I would have. You couldn't have kept me. So, regardless of whether you blame yourself, you need not. If anybody is to blame, call it Kingman. And Walt, remember? I've just found you. Can you imagine—well, put yourself in my place—how would you feel if I'd walked out of your office and dropped out of sight? I'm going to say it once and only once because it sounds corny, Walt, but I'd rather be here and knowing than to be safe and forever wondering. And so long as there is the breath of life in us, I'll go on praying for help."

Walt put his arms around her and held her gently. Christine kissed him lightly. "Now I'm going to curl up on that couch," she said. "Don't dare let me sleep more than six hours."

"I'll watch."

"And I'll measure time for you. Once we start sleeping the clock around, we're goners."

Christine went to the couch and Walt piled the available covers on after he checked the operation of the power tube that furnished heat for her suit. He turned it up a bit, and then dimmed the light.

For Walt there was no sleep. He wandered from room to room in sheer frustration. Given anything of a partially technical nature and he could have made something of it. Given a tool or two or even a few items of kitchen cutlery and he might have quelled his restlessness in working toward some end. But to be imprisoned in a small house that was rapidly dropping toward zero degrees Kelvin without a book, without a knife or fork or loose bit of metal anywhere was frustration for the technical mind.

Mark Kingman, of course, had been quite afraid of just that and he had skinned the place bare of everything that could possibly be used. Kingman even feared a loose bit of metal because metal struck against metal can produce sparks that will light a fire.

There was nothing at all but himself—and Christine.

And Walt knew that it would take only a few more days before that, too, would end.

For the metal of the house was getting to the point where he stuck to it if he touched it. The suits kept them warm—to take them off would have been sheer folly.

So from kitchenette to bathroom to livingroom prowled Walt. He swore at the neat little shower—the water was frozen, even had anybody wanted to take a bath.

Kingman entered the conference room of the Interplanetary Communications Commission with confidence. He knew his ground and he knew his rights, and it had been none other than Mark Kingman who managed to call this meeting together. With a bland smile, Kingman faced the members of the Commission.

"I wish to state that the establishment known as Venus Equilateral has forfeited their license," he said.

This was intended to be a bombshell, and it did create a goodly amount of surprise on the part of the Commission. The chairman, Lewis Hollister, shook his head in wonder. "I have this morning received a message from Mars."

"It did not go through Venus Equilateral," stated Kingman.

"I'm not acquainted with the present celestial positions," said Hollister. "However, there are many periods during which time the communications are made direct from planet to planet—when Terra and Mars are on line-of-sight to Venus and one another."

"The celestial positions are such that relay through Venus Equilateral is necessary," said Kingman.

"Indeed?"

Kingman unrolled a chart showing the location of the planets of the inner solar system—Mars, Terra, Venus—and Venus Equilateral. According to the lines-of-sight drawn on the map, the use of the relay station was definitely desirable.

"Conceded," said Hollister. "Now may I ask you to bring your complaint?"

"The Research Services Corporation of Northern Landing, Venus, have for years been official monitors for the Interplanetary Communications Commission," explained Mark Kingman. "I happen to be a director of that corporation, which has research offices on Terra and Mars and is, of course, admirably fitted to serve as official monitor. I make this explanation because I feel it desirable to explain how I know about this. After all, an unofficial monitor is a lawbreaker for making use of confidential messages to enhance his own position. As an official monitor, I may observe and also make suggestions pertaining to the beat interests of interplanetary communications.

"It has been reported along official channels that the relaying of messages through the Venus Equilateral Relay Station ceased as of twelve hundred hours Terran mean time on Twenty December."

"Then where are they relaying their messages?" asked Hollister. "Or are they?"

"They must," said Kingman. "Whether they use radio or the sub-electronic energy bands, they cannot drive a beam direct from Terra to Mars without coming too close to the sun. Ergo they must be relaying."

"Perhaps they are using their ship-beams."

"Perhaps—and of course, the use of a secondary medium is undesirable. This matter of interrupted or uninterrupted service is not the major point, however. The major point is that their license to operate as a major monopoly under the Communications Act insists that one relayed message must pass through their station—Venus Equilateral—during every twenty-four hour period. This is a safety measure, to ensure that their equipment is always ready to run—even in periods when relaying is not necessary."

"Venus Equilateral has been off the air before this."

Kingman cleared his throat. "A number of times," he agreed. "But each time that discontinuance of service occurred, it was during a period of emergency—and in each instance this emergency was great enough to demand leniency. Most of the times an explanation was instantly forthcoming; the other times were after seeking and receiving permission to suspend operations during the emergency period. This, gentlemen, is Twenty-three December and no message has passed through the Venus Equilateral Relay Station since noon on Twenty December."

"Your statements, if true, indicate that Venus Equilateral has violated their license," nodded Hollister. "However, we are inclined to be lenient with them because they have been exemplary in the past and—"

"And," interrupted Kingman, "they are overconfident. They think that they are big enough and clever enough to do as they damn well please!"

"Indeed?"

"Well, they've been doing it, haven't they?"

"We've seen no reason for interfering with their operations. And they are getting the messages through."

Kingman smiled. "How?"

Hollister shrugged. "If you claim they aren't using the station, I wouldn't know."

"And if the government were to ask—you would be quite embarrassed."

"Then what do you suggest?" asked Hollister.

"Venus Equilateral has failed to live up to the letter of their license regardless of what medium they are using to relay communications around Sol," said Kingman. "Therefore I recommend that you suspend their license."

"And then who will run Venus Equilateral?" asked Hollister.

"As of three years ago, the Terran Electric Company of Evanston, Illinois, received an option on the operation of an interplanetary communications company," said Kingman. "This option was to operate at such a time as Venus Equilateral ceased operating. Now, since Venus Equilateral has failed, I suggest that we show them that their high-handedness will not be condoned. I recommend that this option be fulfilled; that the license now held by Venus Equilateral be suspended and turned over to Terran Electric."

Hollister nodded vaguely. "You understand that Venus Equilateral has posted as bond the holdings of their company. This of course will be forfeit if we choose to act. Now, Mr. Kingman, is the Terran Electric Company prepared to post a bond equivalent to the value of Venus Equilateral? Obviously we cannot wrest holdings from one company and turn them over to another company free of bond. We must have bond—assurance that Terran Electric will fulfill the letter of the license."

"Naturally we cannot post full bond," replied Kingman stiffly. "But we will post sufficient bond to make the transfer possible. The remainder of the evaluation will revert to the Commission—as it was previously. I might point out that had Venus Equilateral kept their inventiveness and efforts directed only at communications, they would not be now in this position. It was their side-interests that made their un-subsidized and free incorporation possible. I promise you that Terran Electric will never stoop to making a rubber-stamp group out of the Interplanetary Communications Commission."

Hollister thought for a moment. But instead of thinking of the ramifications of the deal, Hollister was remembering that in his home was a medium sized duplicator made by Terran Electric. It had a very low serial number and it had been delivered on consignment. It had been sent to him not as a gift, but as a customer-use research—to be paid for only if the customer were satisfied. Not only had Terran Electric been happy to accept the thousand dollar bill made in the duplicator, but it had happily returned three hundred dollars' worth of change—all with the same serial number. But since Hollister received his consignment along with the very first of such deliveries, Hollister had prospered very well and had been very neatly situated by the time that the desperate times of the Period of Duplication took place. Hollister recalled that Venus Equilateral wanted to suppress the duplicator. Hollister recalled also that Venus Equilateral had been rather rough on a certain magistrate in Buffalo, and though he thought that it was only a just treatment, it was nevertheless a deep and burning disrespect for the Law.

Besides, if this deal went through, Hollister would once more be a guiding hand in the operation of Venus Equilateral. He did believe that Channing and Franks could out-do Terran Electric any day in the week, but business is business. And if Kingman failed, the license could always be turned back to Channing & Co.—with himself still holding a large hunk of the pie.

"You will post bond by certified identium check," said Hollister. "And as the new holder of the license, we will tender you papers that will direct Venus Equilateral to hand over to you as representative of Terran Electric, the holdings necessary to operate the Venus Equilateral Relay Station and other outlying equipments and stations."

Kingman nodded happily. His bit of personal graft had begun to pay off—though he of course did not consider his gift anything but a matter of furnishing to a deserving person a gratuity that worked no hardship on the giver.

The bond annoyed Kingman. Even in an era when material holdings had little value, the posting of such securities as demanded left Kingman a poor man. Money, of course, was not wanted nor expected. What he handed over was a statement of the equivalent value on an identium check of the Terran Electric Company, his holdings in the Research Services Corporation, and just about everything he had in the way of items that could not be handled readily by the normal sized duplicator. At Terran Electric, for instance, they had duplicators that could build a complete spacecraft if done in sections, and these monstrous machines were what kept Terran Electric from the cobweb-growing stage. A man could not build a house with the average household-sized duplicator, and to own one large enough to build automobiles and the like was foolish for they were not needed that often. Kingman didn't like to post that size of bond, but he felt certain that within a year he would be able to re-establish his free holdings in Terran Electric because of revenues from Venus Equilateral. Doubtless, too, there were many people on Venus Equilateral that he could hire—that he would need desperately.

For Kingman had no intention of losing.

A duplicator produced snowflakes by the myriad and hurled them into the corridor-ventilators. They swirled and skirled and piled into deep drifts at the corners and in cul-de-sacs along the way. A faint odor of pine needles went with the air, and from newly-installed water pipes along the cornices, long icicles were forming. There was the faint sound of sleigh bells along the corridors, but this was obviously synthetic since Venus Equilateral had little use for a horse.

Kids who had never seen snow nor known a cold snap reveled in their new snow suits and built a huge snowman along the Mall. One long ramp that led into a snaky corridor was taken over by squatter's or rather "sledder's"—rights and it became downright dangerous for a pedestrian to try to keep his ankles away from the speeding sleds.

Snow forts were erected on either side of one wide corridor and the air was filled with flying snowballs.

And from the station-wide public announcement system came the crooned strains of Adeste Fideles and White Christmas.

A snowball hissed past Arden's ear and she turned abruptly to give argument. She was met by another that caught her full in the face—after which it was wiped off by her husband. "Merry Christmas," he chuckled.

"Not very," she said, but she could not help but smile back at him. When he finished wiping her face Arden neatly dropped a handful of snow down his collar. He retaliated by scooping a huge block out of a near-by drift and letting it drape over her head. Arden pushed him backwards into a snowbank and leaped on him and shovelled snow with both hands until her hands stung with cold and Don was completely covered.

Channing climbed out of the drift as Arden raced away. He gave chase, though both of them were laughing too much to do much running. He caught her a few hundred feet down the hall and tackled her, bringing her down in another drift. As he was piling snow on her, he became the focal point of a veritable barrage from behind, which drove him to cover behind a girder. His assailants deployed and flushed him from behind his cover, and he stood in the center of a large square area being pelted from all sides.

Channing found a handkerchief and waved it as surrender. The pelting slowed a bit, and Channing took that time to race to one side; join Jim Baler, and hurl some snowballs at Barney Carroll across the square. That evened things and the snowfight was joined by Arden, who arose from her snowdrift to join Barney Carroll and Keg Johnson.

"We used to freeze 'em," grunted Don.

"Me too," agreed Jim. "These things wouldn't stop a fly."

Then down the corridor there hurtled a snowball a good two feet in diameter. It caught Channing between the shoulder blades and flattened him completely. Baler turned just in time to stop another one with the pit of his stomach. He went 'ooof!' and landed in the drift beside Don. Another huge one went over their heads as Don was arising, and he saw it splat against a wall to shower Barney Carroll and Arden with bits.

"Those would," remarked Don. "And if Walt weren't honeymooning somewheres, I'd suspect that Our Tom Swift had just hauled off and re-invented the ancient Roman catapult."

"There's always Wes Farrell, or does the physicist in him make him eschew such anachronisms?" asked Jim.

Arden scurried across the square in time to hear him, and she replied: "Not at all. So long as the thing is powered by a new spring-alloy and charged by a servo-mechanism run by a beam-energy tube. Bet he packs 'em with an automatic packing gadget, too."

Barney Carroll caught one across the knees that tripped him headlong as he crossed the square. He arrived grunting and grinning. "We can either take it idly," he said, "or retreat in disorder, or storm whatever ramparts he has back there."

"I dislike to retreat in disorder," said Channing. "Seems to me that we can get under that siege-gun of his. He must take time to re-load. Keep low, fellers, and pack yourself a goodly load of snowballs as we go."

"How to carry 'em?" asked Arden.

Don stripped off his muffler, and made a sling of it. Then down the corridor they went, dodging the huge snowballs that came flying over at regular intervals. Channing finally timed the interval, and then they raced forward in clear periods and took cover when fire was expected.

They came upon Farrell eventually. He was 'dug in' behind a huge drift over which the big missiles came looping. Farrell had obviously cut the power of his catapult to take care of the short-range trajectory, but his aim was still excellent. With as many snowballs as they could carry, the attackers stormed the drift, pelting without aim until their supply was gone and then scooping snow up and throwing without much packing.

Behind the rampart was Wes Farrell with a trough-shaped gadget and a pair of heavy coil springs. Above the rear end of the trough was a duplicator. It dropped a snowball on the trough and the springs snapped forward.

The flying ball caught Don Channing in the pit of the stomach just as he attained the top of the rampart.

When he regained the top once more, the festivities were about over. The shooting was stopped, and the others of his side had Farrell held face upward on the trough while the duplicator dropped snowball after snowball on him.

"Wonder how far we could shoot him," suggested Jim Baler.

Farrell did not think that funny. He struggled to his feet and then grinned, "Fine war," he told them. "Anybody ready for a bit of hot toddy?"

Channing grunted. "Yeah, and a hot bath and a hearty dinner and a seven hour sleep. So you've taken over Walt's job of making weapons, huh?"

"Walt will be green with envy," said Arden.

Don sobered. "He's missing plenty. I've got all the word out that if he's seen, get here quick. He must have dropped the Relay Girl in some out of the way place. He hasn't landed on any regular spaceport."

"There's lots of room for that in the Palanortis Country," said Farrell.

"We've got likker and wassail and turkey," said Arden. "Also mistletoe. Let's go to our place and drink Walt's health and Christine's happiness."

"And that's appropriately apportioned," remarked Don with a grin. "Walt's health and Christine's happiness. But I'll bet a hat that they'd not mind being cold if they knew what fun this is." He brushed snow from the back of his neck and grinned. "Let's add fuel for the inner man," he suggested, leading the way to the Channing apartment.

Walt Franks sat dully in a chair, his eyes glazed over and but half open. Through them dimly and out of focus he could see Christine, who was huddled and quiet under the blankets. Her lips were blue and Walt felt dully that this should not be so but he had trouble remembering why. There was but one thought in his mind, and that was to awaken Christine before he himself fell asleep. They'd been doing that for—for—for years? No, that was not right. It must have been days, because he hadn't been living with Christine for years. Fact, he hadn't really lived with Christine at all; he'd just found her when this all happened—and—and—

He shook himself, and the motion hurt inside and outside. His muscles ached and where his skin touched a bit of clothing that hadn't been against his skin before it was bitterly cold. Quickly, Walt opened his hands and then drew out his left hand from the pocket and took a quick look at his wrist watch. He stuffed his hand back in again quickly and tried to stand up.

His legs were numb and he almost fell forward, which carried him where he wanted to go anyway, so he just let himself stumble forward heartlessly until he fell on his knees beside the couch.

"Christine," he mumbled. To himself his voice sounded loud, but it was faint and cracked. It hurt his lips to move, but he moved them for Christine where he would have moved them for no one else.

"Christine," he said, a bit more clearly and loudly on the second attempt.

"Christine!"

Dull eyes opened and cracked lips smiled faintly and painfully.

"Mus' wake up," he warned.

She nodded—painfully slow. She made no effort to move.

Walt stood up and made his way to the accursed feeding machine. He pressed the button and collected dollops of hot food in a shallow bowl. It was a mess because coffee mingled with the many other items of a fine balanced diet including appetizer and dessert made just that—a mess. But it was hot and it was food, and though there was not a single bit of silverware in the place, Walt managed. He carried the bowl to the couch and offered it to Christine, who protestingly permitted Walt to feed her with his fingers. She did not eat much, but it did warm her. Then Walt finished the plate.

Christine shuddered under the blankets. "Suits losing ground?" she asked.

Walt nodded pitifully.

Christine thought that over for a full minute. Then she said: "Must get up, Walt."

Walt wanted to let her stay there, but he knew that she must arise and move in order to keep from freezing. He nodded dumbly.

"Losing ground," he said, meaning the heated suite. Minutes he considered it. Long minutes....

There was a faint crackling noise, and a pungent odor came. It increased without either of them noticing it because their senses were numbed. A curl of smoke wreathed Walt's chest and it rose above his face and got into his eyes. Walt coughed and tears came and the salty water dribbled down his cheeks, dropped to his suit, and froze.

"Something burning," he mumbled, looking around to see what it was.

"It's you!" cried Christine.

Walt looked down at his hip, where the tiny power tube was, and he saw it smoking. As he watched, flame burst from the inside and came through.

He shucked the suit just as it burst into open flames, and he watched it burn on the metal floor. He warmed himself against the flames, but they were too meager to really help, and five minutes later all that was left of the heated suit was a still-operating power tube and a tangled maze of red hot heater-resistance wire.

Walt shivered. Beneath the suit he wore the usual slacks and short-sleeved shirt, and it was pitifully inadequate. The dullness that had been assailing him for hours reasserted itself—strengthened by the exertion of removing the suit—and helped not at all by the scant warmth from the fire.

Walt reeled dizzily, his eyes half closed, beads of ice from the tears on his lashes gave the scene a dazzlingly sparkling tone that prevented him from seeing clearly.

He fell forward and his body twitched violently as his skin touched the viciously cold metal of the floor.

Christine hurled the covers back and with great effort she pulled and lifted Walt onto the couch. She covered him and then leaned down and kissed him with dry, cracked lips. As she stood up, she felt a spear of pain at her side.

Looking, she found her suit on fire as Walt's had been. As Christine fumbled with cold fingers at the fastenings, she realized that only the added warmth of the blankets had kept both suits from burning out at the same time. For they were duplicated models and were identical; therefore they would burn out at exactly the same temperature.

She shivered in her thin summer frock even though she stood with the flames licking at her sandals.

Then there were two useless tangles of wire on the floor, their red-hot wires struggling hopelessly against the monstrous quantity of cold.

Christine shuddered convulsively, and turned slowly to look at Walt. He was asleep already.

The sleep of frozen death.

Christine's eyes filled with tears which she brushed away quickly. She smiled faintly.

It seemed warmer under the blankets, or maybe it was warmer there beside him. His arm went around her instinctively though he slept and Christine pressed against him partly to gain what warmth there was from him and partly to give him what warmth there was in her.

It was warmer beneath the blankets.

Or, she thought just before the dizzying but welcome waves of black slumber crept over her, this is that feeling of warmth that goes before—

"Now that," said Arden with complimentary tones, "is something that duplicating can't buy."

She meant the twenty piece orchestra that filled the vast hall with music. It was a vast place, for it contained three thousand people, all talking or dancing. Joe presided over a bowl of punch that would have made Nero die of jealousy—it was platinum, fifteen feet in diameter and studded profusely with huge gold chasings and inlays, and positively alive with diamonds and emeralds. On the edge of the huge bowl hung Joe's original sign, and Joe handled a huge silver ladle to scoop the highly-charged punch into small gold cups.

Linna Johnson, she of the formerly be-jewelled class, proudly displayed a bit of hand-made jewelry and told everybody that Keg had made it for her. Barney Carroll was holding forth at great length to a group of women on the marvels and mysteries of digging in the Martian desert for traces of the Lost Martian Civilization, while his partner Jim was explaining to Chuck and Freddie Thomas just how they intended to let a matter-transmitter do their excavating for them. Wes Farrell was explaining the operation of the element-filter and heterodyne gadget that produced pure synthetic elements to a woman who nodded gayly and didn't understand a word he said but would rather be baffled by Farrell than be catered to by anyone else.

"It's quite a sight," agreed Don. "Never before."

Arden sighed. "And never again!"

"It's an occasion to remember," grinned Don. "Christmas Eve at Venus Equilateral! Here's Triplanet Films with their cameramen, and they tell me that the Interplanetary Network has called off all Christmas broadcasts at midnight, Terra mean time, to carry the sounds of revelry from Venus Equilateral as a Christmas celebration program."

"Yeah," said Arden, "and tomorrow I've got to go to church and explain to a class of Sunday Schoolsters how and why Santa Claus can make the haul across a hundred million miles of space in an open sleigh powered with a batch of reindeer."

"Some blowout," said Warren, coming up with his wife.

Hilda Warren smiled happily. "I don't think I've ever appreciated how many people really worked here," she said.

"Shucks," grinned Don, "I've been trying to get along by merely mumbling about half of the names myself. And if I may point it out, Hilda, you're standing under a hunk of mistletoe." And before she could say anything, Don had proceeded with great gusto to the amusement of Warren.

Arden shook her head. "The rascal has been standing there for a half hour because people are always coming up to tell him it's a fine party."

"Method in my madness," nodded Channing.

There was a faint tinkle of bells in the distance, and as people became aware of them, Keg Johnson tapped Don on the shoulder and said: "The fleet's in, Don. Here comes our professional Santa Claus. And the fleet is going to land and await midnight tomorrow night. The Johnson Spaceline is going to have the honor of hauling, bag, baggage, foot, horse, and marines to Terra. Everything ready?"

Don nodded absently. He listened to the sleigh bells for a moment and then said: "Everything of a personal nature is packed. The rest is worthless. How many men have you?"

"About two hundred."

"Then tell 'em to forget the packing and join in. After this mass, we won't even notice a couple of hundred more. But tell me is S. Claus going to drive that thing right in here?"

Keg nodded. "He's running on snow in the corridor, of course, but he's equipped with wheels for hard sledding."

The orchestra broke into Jingle Bells and a full dozen reindeer came prancing in through the large double doors. They came in a whirl of snow and a blast of icy air from the corridor, and they drew a very traditional Santa Claus behind them in the traditional sleigh laden with great bags.

Before the door was closed on the veritable blizzard in the hallway, several men came in hauling a great log which they placed on the monstrous fireplace at one end of the vast hall.

The only incongruity was the huge spit turned by a gear train from a motor run from a beam energy tube.

Santa Claus handed out a few gifts to those nearest and then mounted the orchestra platform. He held up his hands for silence.

"Before I perform my usual job of delivering gifts and remembrances," he said, "I want you to hear a word or two from your friend and mine—Don Channing!"

This brought a roar. And Channing went to the platform slowly.

"My friends," said Don Channing, "I've very little to say and I'm not going to take a lot of time in saying it. We've had a lot of hard work on Venus Equilateral and we've had a lot of fun. Venus Equilateral has been our home—and leaving our home tomorrow night will be as great a wrench as was the leaving of our original homes so many years ago to come to Venus Equilateral. It will for me. I shall darned well be homesick.

"Yet—this job is finished. And well done. Frankly," he grinned cheerfully, "we started out just covering the planet-to-planet job. We extended that to include planet-to-ship, and then when they added ship-to-planet, it automatically made it ship-to-ship. Well, we've got it all set now to make it anywhere-at-all without relay. People speak of Venus Equilateral and forget the Relay Station part of the name. A relay station is no darned good without something to relay—and you know, good people, I'm completely baffled as of now for a communications project. I can't conceive of a problem in communications that would be at all urgent. I—"

A loop of the maze of heater-wire from the fire-ruined suit twisted on the bare metal floor. The bare metal shorted part of the long loop and the remaining section grew hotter as a consequence. The expansion caused by heat made the tangle of wire writhe slowly, and two crossing lines touched, shortening the overheated loop still more.

It flared incandescent and blew like a fuse and showered the room with minute droplets of molten metal that landed on wall and floor solid, but yet warm.

A tiny stinging rain of them pelted Walt's face. This penetrated when few other things would have. Walt stirred coldly painful, and his eyes struggled against a slightly-frozen rim that tried to hold eyelash to cheek.

It took minutes for the idea to filter through his mind: What woke me?

He could not know that it had been his subconscious mind. To the trained electronic technician the arc-discharge of a shorted circuit has a special meaning where to the untrained it may be but an ambiguous "Splat!" The blowing of a fuse penetrates the subconscious and brings to that part of the brain a realization of the facts in the case just as a trained musician will wince when the third violin strikes a sour note in the midst of full orchestration.

Instinctively, Walt's trained brain considered the source. Ponderously slow, he turned painful head to look on the floor at the remains of the ruined suits. As he watched, the still writhing metal shorted again and a loop glowed brightly, then died as the additional heat expanded it away from its short circuit.

Walt wondered about the time.

He found his left arm trapped beneath Christine and he turned from one side to the other and he considered her dully. She slept, and was as still and stiff as death itself.

Walt released his arm, and the motion beneath the blankets pumped viciously cold air under the covers and chilled his already stiff body. He looked at his watch; it was nine hours since he'd awakened Christine before.

Walt felt no pain, really. He wanted desperately to snuggle down under the covers once more and return to oblivion, where it was warmer and pleasant. But there was something—

Something—

Taking his nerve in his teeth, Walt forced his brain to clear. Christine—didn't deserve this.

Yet if he got out from beneath those covers he would most certainly freeze in a matter of minutes. Yet he must—do—something.

He considered the tubes and their tangles of wire through puffed, half-closed eyes. He thought he was moving with lightning-rapidity when he leaped out of the bed but his motion was insufferably slow. He dropped on his knees beside the tubes and with his bare hands he fumbled for the hot wires. They seared his fingers and sent pungent curls of smoke up to torture his nose, but his fingers felt no pain and his olfactory sense did not register the nauseous odor of burning flesh.

He found the switch and turned off the tiny tubes.

He collected loop after loop and shorted them close to the terminals of the two tubes. A hundred feet of wire looped back and forth in a one-inch span across the terminal lugs would produce a mighty overload. It made a bulky bundle of wire the very mass of which would prevent it from heating to incandescence and blowing out in a shower of droplets.