"I'll bear up," answered Sandra with a laugh. "Thanks."
"O.K., then, see you later."
"Right," said Sandra. "So long!" the set died, but before it went completely off, they heard her say to someone in the background: "You can turn the lights on again."
"What did she mean by that?" asked Hammond.
"I'll bet a cooky that they had the entire output of some city diverted into her communications set. After all, what with Soaky's absorption plus the normal power-gravitic communication, they'd do a lot of running on a waterfall plant, or a coal burning plant to make up for what we accomplish with a single machine in Sol. Our power took a beating, as far as we are from it, and we know what kind of power it takes to do anything with the gravitics on Telfu. Well, let's get going. This seems to be the beginning of Our Busy Week."
At Hellsport, on Pluto, twenty-four huge ships were grouped. They looked like the Devil's spawn; their upright ovoid shapes set in the glimmering background of the light that danced from the open-hearth furnaces of Mephisto. In the sky, the reflection glowed, and it was known for hundreds of miles as The Eternal Fire.
But the men that were arriving were too busy to notice the picture it presented. They were too close to that scene, although they had seen the photographs in the News From Hell and Sharon's Post, where almost identical pictures filled a whole page in the roto-gravure sections.
They kept arriving, these men who were going to Sirius to set up another Lens. They came from resorts on the Sulphur Sea near Hell and they all asked the reason. They came from Sharon, which lies across the River Styx from Hell, and they asked the same question. The hurried call sought men from their play-spots in the Devil's Mountains and from the vacation wonderlands of the Nergal Canyon. The Great Cave of Loki in the Æsir Plains lost a dozen or so, and Fafnir's Abyss no longer rang to the click of camera shutters as the group left for Hellsport. Vulcan, the frustrated volcano, felt the downward-moving footsteps of the seven who were studying the embryonic crater that was beginning to show signs of life under the heat of Pluto's synthetic sun; the men left eagerly to be on their way to Sirius, but they all prayed that the cold of Pluto's interior would remain cold until they returned.
The Hall of the Mountain King rang to their laughter as they returned to their hotel accommodations near Hellsport, and then again was silent as they went to Hellsport and made the last finishing touches on their equipment.
Just before take-off time, the old familiar cry of "Where's Carlson?" went the rounds until Carlson himself took up the general communicator microphone and called "Here, dammit!" and was informed that it was good because they couldn't start the lens without him. That cooled Carlson off, because it was true and all of them knew it.