"You have answered our message. We'll be seeing you."
Channing told the man in the cruiser to return. He kicked the main switch and the generators whined down the scale and coasted to a stop. Tube filaments darkened and meters returned to zero.
"O.K., Walton. Let the spinach lay. Get the next crew to clean up the mess and polish the set-up into something presentable. I'll bet a cooky that we'll be chasing spaceships all the way to Pluto after this. We'll work it into a fine thing and perfect our technique. Right now I owe the gang a dinner, right?"
Nothing ever happens at Venus Equilateral. The weather is always right. It never rains or storms. There is no icy street nor heat-waved plain. There is no mud. There is no summer, no winter, no spring, no fall. People ice skate and swim in adjacent rooms. There is no moon to enchant for the moon is millions of miles away. There is no night or day and the stars blaze out in the same sky with the sun; and it has been said that on Venus Equilateral you have been in the only place where the Clouds of Magellan and Polaris can be seen at the same time from your living-room window.
Venus Equilateral is devoted to the business of supplying communication between the three inner planets. As such, it is more than worth it. And though electromagnetic waves travel with the speed of light in vacuo, Channing and his crew were fast asleep by the time that Williams, of Interplanet, read the following message:
EMPRESS OF KOLAIN CONTACTED AND MESSAGE CONVEYED. SHIP WILL PUT IN AT TERRA AS PER YOUR REQUEST. YOURS FOR BETTER COMMUNICATIONS.
DON CHANNING.
THE END