Channing pointed to the huge energy tube at one end of the room. It bore the imprint of Terran Electric.
"Kingman," he said drily.
He applied his cutter to the wall of the cottage and burned his way through. "No one living here," he said. "Colder than Pluto in here, too. Look, Wes, here's your short circuit. Tubes from—"
"And here," said Farrell quickly, "are your missing chums!"
Channing came over to stand beside Farrell, looking down at the too-still forms. Baler looked at Channing with a puzzled glance, and Channing shook his head quietly. Then he said: "I may be wrong, but it strikes me that Walt and Christine interrupted skullduggery at work and were trapped as a consequence. No man, no matter how insane, would ever enter a trap like this willingly. This is neither a love nest nor a honeymoon cottage, Jim. This is a death trap!"
Channing turned from the place and left on a dead run. He paused at the door to the huge room and yelled: "Don't touch 'em 'till I get Doc!"
By the clock, Christmas Day dawned bright and clear. The strip fluorescents came on in the corridors of Venus Equilateral and there began the inexorable flow of people towards the South End Landing Stage.
Each carried a small bag. In this were the several uniques he possessed and a complete set of recordings on the rest of his personal possessions. Moving was as easy as that—and once they reached Terra, everything they owned could be reproduced at will.
It was both glad and sad; the thrill of a new experience to come balancing the loss of the comfortable routine of the old. Friends, however, managed to get aboard the same spacecraft as a general rule and so the pain of parting was spared them.