"And what do I get for all this?"
"Nothing. You'll be fed and clothed and housed. That's all that any of us are. Men out there are all the same, Norton. No one has a dime. They're all bankrupt. There isn't one of them that can buy a thing—even if the stores were open. But not one of them is starving, not one of them is going unclothed, and not one of them is going without the luxuries of life, except for those communities of which you speak. Take life to them, Norton, and you'll be the ultimate gainer."
"Why do they remain?" wondered Norton.
"The duplicator will run on direct current," said Keg. "They just have a set of fully charged batteries recorded. They have a set in spare. When battery one runs down, battery two takes its place and the first thing run off is a spare battery number three, and so on. The exhausted batteries are dumped into the matter bank and re-converted. But it is not a real luxury, running on batteries. They need the high power that your stations will deliver. They need the telephone and the radio which your men can maintain. Go and seek the officials of the various companies, and tell them what you want to do. Work at it, Norton. There will be a lot of men in your gang that would rather do something else. Eventually you will be able to release them to do the jobs they are best fitted for. Until we get a medium of exchange, it is a job for job proposition. I'll add this inducement: The medical service of Fabriville is yours—providing that you and your men work with us."
Norton thought for a moment. "Done," he said shortly. "Can you give us warmth and food until we take care of the details?"
"That we can."
A stilted monster rolled out from Fabriville under its own power. Four great girdered legs supported a housing the size of a freight car, and the legs moved on small tractor treads. Out it came, and it paused just outside of the gate. A faint violet glow emerged from the bottom of the housing, and the whirling-skirling of Martian sands obscured the vastness of the space between the legs of the monster machine.
It moved again, and the original dust settled to disclose a very small but completely finished and furnished house. Around the encircling fence went the monstrous duplicator, and at each pause it dropped the carbon copy of the original house. Hour after hour it hummed, and when it completed the circle, Norton's mob was housed, fed, and clothed.
Venus Equilateral resounded and re-echoed from the force of the blast. It rocked, and precession tilted it away from its true North and South axial positioning. Men raced along the car-way to the blister laboratory and Channing led the wild rush.