"Get everything in motion," said Channing. "Arden, make plans to clean out about an acre of former living space—make a one-room apartment out of it. Get the gals a-decorating like mad. Wes, get someone to make a firebrick and duplicate it into enough to build a fireplace. Then make enough fireplaces to go around to all as wants 'em. For draft, we'll tie the chimneys together and let it blow out into space at fourteen pounds per square inch of draft. Better get some good dampers, too. We'll have the air-duplicator running at full blast to keep up. We've got some crude logs—duplicate us a dozen cords of wood for fire-wood. Tell the shopkeepers down on the Mall that the lid is off and the Devil's out for breakfast! We'll want sleds, fur coats, holly and mistletoe by the acre. And to hell with the lucite icicles they hang from the corridor cornices. This year we have real ones.
"Oh," he added, "better make some small heating units for living rooms. We can freeze up the halls and 'outdoor' areas, but people want to come back into a warm room, shuck their earmuffs and overcoats and soak up a cup of Tom and Jerry. Let's go, gang. Prepare to abandon ship! And let's abandon ship with a party that will go down in history—and make every man, woman, and child on Venus Equilateral remember it to the end of their days!"
"Poor Walt," said Arden. "I wish he could be here. Let's hope he'll come back to us by Christmas."
For the ten thousandth time Walt inspected the little metal house. It was made of two courses of metal held together with an insulating connector, but these metal walls had been coupled with water now, and they were bitter cold to the touch.
Lights were furnished from outside somewhere, there was but a switch in the wall and a lamp in the ceiling. Walt thought that he might be able to raise some sort of electrical disturbance with the lighting plan, but found it impossible from the construction of the house. And, obviously Kingman had done the best he could to filter and isolate any electrical fixtures against radio interference that would tell the men in Venus Equilateral that funny-work was a-foot. Kingman's duplicator had been removed along with anything else that would give Walt a single item that he could view with technical eye.
Otherwise, it was a miniature model of a small three-room house; not much larger than a "playhouse" for a wealthy child, but completely equipped for living, since Kingman planned it that way and lived in it, needing nothing.
"Where do we go from here?" asked Walt in an angry tone.
Christine shuddered. "What I'm wondering is when these batteries will run out," she said.
"Kingman has a horse-and-buggy mind," said Walt. "He can't understand that we'd use miniature beam-energy tubes. They won't give out for about a year."