Part 32

"How could anybody re-seal a doorway?" asked Barney.

"Duplicator," said Don thoughtfully. "And I smell rats!"

"So. And how do we get in?" demanded Arden.

"We break in," said Channing harshly. "Come on, gang. We're going back downstairs and get us a cutter!"

The cutter consisted of a single-focus scanner beam that Don wielded like an acetylene torch. Clean and silently it cut through the metal wall and the section fell inward with a slight crash.

They stepped in through the opening.

"Someone has been homesteading," said Channing in a gritty voice. "Nice prefab home, hey? Let's add house-breaking to our other crimes. I'd like to singe the heels offa the character that did this. And I think I'll let the main one simmer."

"Who?" asked Arden.

Channing pointed to the huge energy tube at one end of the room. It bore the imprint of Terran Electric.

"Kingman," he said drily.

He applied his cutter to the wall of the cottage and burned his way through. "No one living here," he said. "Colder than Pluto in here, too. Look, Wes, here's your short circuit. Tubes from--"

"And here," said Farrell quickly, "are your missing chums!"

Channing came over to stand beside Farrell, looking down at the too-still forms. Baler looked at Channing with a puzzled glance, and Channing shook his head quietly. Then he said: "I may be wrong, but it strikes me that Walt and Christine interrupted skullduggery at work and were trapped as a consequence. No man, no matter how insane, would ever enter a trap like this willingly. This is neither a love nest nor a honeymoon cottage, Jim. This is a death trap!"

Channing turned from the place and left on a dead run. He paused at the door to the huge room and yelled: "Don't touch 'em 'till I get Doc!"

* * * * *

By the clock, Christmas Day dawned bright and clear. The strip fluorescents came on in the corridors of Venus Equilateral and there began the inexorable flow of people towards the South End Landing Stage.

Each carried a small bag. In this were the several _uniques_ he possessed and a complete set of recordings on the rest of his personal possessions. Moving was as easy as that--and once they reached Terra, everything they owned could be reproduced at will.

It was both glad and sad; the thrill of a new experience to come balancing the loss of the comfortable routine of the old. Friends, however, managed to get aboard the same spacecraft as a general rule and so the pain of parting was spared them.

One by one the huge ships dropped South and then headed for Terra. One by one until the three thousand-odd people who lived, loved, and operated Venus Equilateral through its working years had embarked.

Channing shook hands with Captain Johannson as he got aboard the last remaining ship. Behind Channing there came Keg Johnson, who supervised the carrying aboard of Walt Franks and Christine Baler. They were seated side by side in deck chairs on the operating bridge of the spacecraft and Arden came up to stand beside her husband as she asked: "Captain Johannson, you are empowered to perform matrimony?"

Johannson nodded.

"Well," she said, "I'm the Maid of Honor and this husband of mine intends to be best man. We agree that the couple there have spent too much time living with one another--"

"If she says 'sin' I'll strangle her," groaned Walt.

Christine reached over and took his hand. "She doesn't dare," said the girl. "She knows it was ah--er--colder than sin!"

Big Jim Baler clenched and unclenched his hands. "I still think we should have called on Mark Kingman," he said in a growl.

Channing shook his head. "And spoil the fine end of a fine holiday? Nope. And also spoil a fine bit of retribution?"

Linna Johnson smiled. "A man of action like Jim finds the finer points of retribution a bit too smooth," she said. "But it'll be plenty rough on Kingman."

"To the devil with Kingman," said Barney Carroll. "I say we ought to commit this ceremony at once and then repair to the bar--or have the bar repair here--and have a last drink to Venus Equilateral."

Walt Franks stood up. "I'm still stiff," he said. "But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit down at my own wedding."

Christine stood beside him. "You're thinking about that 'repair to the bar' and don't want to get left," she told him. "Well, frozen solid or not, I'm sticking tight."

Johannson turned to the pilot and gave the order. The big ship dropped from the platform, and they all looked down through the glass dome at the diminishing view of Venus Equilateral.

The captain turned to Channing and asked: "Just what did happen to Mark Kingman?"

"Mark has mortgaged his everlasting black soul to the hilt to maintain communications under the standard franchise. For a period of five years, Mark Kingman must live on that damned station alone in the cold and the loneliness, maintaining once each day a relay contact or lose his shirt. And because he dropped the _Relay Girl_ into the sun when he planned that 'elopement' we've just confiscated his ship. That leaves Kingman aboard a practically frozen relay station with neither the means to get away nor the ability to handle the situation at all. He must stay, because when he puts a foot on any planet we clap him in jail for kidnaping. He's lost his financial shirt because Venus Equilateral is an obsolete commodity and he'll never regain enough of his personal financial standing to fight such a case.

"If I were Mark Kingman, about now I'd--"

Channing shook his head, leaving the sentence unfinished. He turned to Walt. "Got a ring handy?"

Wes Farrell held up a greenish metal ring that glinted iridescent colors. "Y'might try this new synthetic," he offered.

Walt shook his head. He fumbled in an inner pocket and came up with a small band that was very plain. "This is a certified unique," he said proudly. "It was mother's, and grandmother's, too."

Then with Venus Equilateral still visible in the port below and a whole sky above, Captain Johannson opened his book and started to read. Behind them was work and fun and pain, and before them--

Was the exciting, uncharted future.