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 ran 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 threads. Out it came, and it paused just outside 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 stop 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.
And Norton knew that the "fence-building" job was but a test. For if the thing could build a house—
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.
The blister was gone. A shaken Wes Farrell clung to a stanchion, his face white behind the spacesuit mask. They fished him out of the wreckage and took him inside.
"What happened?" asked Don.
"Was making artificial elements," explained Wes. "Far outside of the Periodic Chart. I'd been stacking them over in a corner—they come in six-inch cubes, you know. But the last one—Bang!"