"The Joe-Section of the engineering has been completed," said Arden with a grin. "They nearly drove Joe nuts for about a week." "What were they doing?" asked Jim. "Building an electronically-operated Martini?" "When I tell you, you won't believe me," said Arden. "But they've been living in Joe's refrigerator." "Refrigerator?" gasped Christine. "Just like a gang of unhung hams," said Arden. "But they're out now." "Well! That's good." Arden paused in front of three doors on the residence level near her apartment and Jim, Christine, and Barney each put their traveling bags inside. Then Arden led them high into the station where they came to a huge bulkhead in which was a heavy door. Arden opened the door and an icy blast came out. "Jeepers!" exploded Christine. "Hey! Ice-men!" called Arden. From the inside of the vast room came Don, Walt, and Wes. They were clad in heavy furs and thick gloves, Channing was carrying a small pair of cutters that looked a bit ridiculous in the great glove. "Well, holy rockets!" exploded Channing, "what gives?" "Merry pre-Christmas," said Jim. Don whipped off a glove and Jim wrung his hand unmercifully. Wes Farrell greeted Barney Carroll jovially, while Walt Franks stood foolishly and gaped at Christine Baler. Christine looked the heavy clothing over and shook her head. "And I came here to be warm," she said. "Come out from behind that fur, Walt Franks. I know you!" "What is going on?" asked Barney. "It all started in Joe's refrigerator," said Wes. "We found that the cold had crystallized a bit of metal in the compressor. We discovered that it was radiating one of the super-frequencies of the crystal-alloy level. When warm it didn't. So we've set up this super-cooler to make checks on it. Looks big." Channing waved toward the door. "We've got the ultimate in super-coolers in there," he said. "Remember the principle of the sun-power tube--that it will drain power out of anything that it is attuned to? Well, we're draining the latent heat-energy out of that room with a power-beam tube--actually we're transmitting it across space to Pluto." "Pluto?" "Uh-huh. In effect, it is like trying to warm Pluto from the energy contained in that room. Obviously we aren't going to melt much of the solid-frozen atmosphere of Pluto nor create a warm and habitable planet of it. We can run the temperature down to darned near Nothing Kelvin without doing much of anything to Pluto." "We're below the black-body temperature of Mars right now," said Walt. "And the gadgetry is working so much better that we're going to run it down to as far as we can get it." "What do you hope to find?" asked Barney. "Why, it looks as though we can make a set of crystals that will permit instantaneous communication from one to the other." "Sounds good." "Looks good, so far," said Channing. "Want to see it?" Christine looked at the thermometer set in the face of the door. She turned back to the others and shook her head vehemently.