Walt Franks stood up. "I'm still stiff," he said. "But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit down at my own wedding."
Christine stood beside him. "You're thinking about that 'repair to the bar' and don't want to get left," she told him. "Well, frozen solid or not, I'm sticking tight."
Johannson turned to the pilot and gave the order. The big ship dropped from the platform, and they all looked down through the glass dome at the diminishing view of Venus Equilateral.
The captain turned to Channing and asked: "Just what did happen to Mark Kingman?"
"Mark has mortgaged his everlasting black soul to the hilt to maintain communications under the standard franchise. For a period of five years, Mark Kingman must live on that damned station alone in the cold and the loneliness, maintaining once each day a relay contact or lose his shirt. And because he dropped the Relay Girl into the sun when he planned that 'elopement' we've just confiscated his ship. That leaves Kingman aboard a practically frozen relay station with neither the means to get away nor the ability to handle the situation at all. He must stay, because when he puts a foot on any planet we clap him in jail for kidnaping. He's lost his financial shirt because Venus Equilateral is an obsolete commodity and he'll never regain enough of his personal financial standing to fight such a case.
"If I were Mark Kingman, about now I'd—"
Channing shook his head, leaving the sentence unfinished. He turned to Walt. "Got a ring handy?"
Wes Farrell held up a greenish metal ring that glinted iridescent colors. "Y'might try this new synthetic," he offered.
Walt shook his head. He fumbled in an inner pocket and came up with a small band that was very plain. "This is a certified unique," he said proudly. "It was mother's, and grandmother's, too."
Then with Venus Equilateral still visible in the port below and a whole sky above, Captain Johannson opened his book and started to read. Behind them was work and fun and pain, and before them—