Kingman nodded happily. His bit of personal graft had begun to pay off--though he of course did not consider his gift anything but a matter of furnishing to a deserving person a gratuity that worked no hardship on the giver. The bond annoyed Kingman. Even in an era when material holdings had little value, the posting of such securities as demanded left Kingman a poor man. Money, of course, was not wanted nor expected. What he handed over was a statement of the equivalent value on an identium check of the Terran Electric Company, his holdings in the Research Services Corporation, and just about everything he had in the way of items that could not be handled readily by the normal sized duplicator. At Terran Electric, for instance, they had duplicators that could build a complete spacecraft if done in sections, and these monstrous machines were what kept Terran Electric from the cobweb-growing stage. A man could not build a house with the average household-sized duplicator, and to own one large enough to build automobiles and the like was foolish for they were not needed that often. Kingman didn't like to post that size of bond, but he felt certain that within a year he would be able to re-establish his free holdings in Terran Electric because of revenues from Venus Equilateral. Doubtless, too, there were many people on Venus Equilateral that he could hire--that he would need desperately. For Kingman had no intention of losing. * * * * * A duplicator produced snowflakes by the myriad and hurled them into the corridor-ventilators. They swirled and skirled and piled into deep drifts at the corners and in cul-de-sacs along the way. A faint odor of pine needles went with the air, and from newly-installed water pipes along the cornices, long icicles were forming. There was the faint sound of sleigh bells along the corridors, but this was obviously synthetic since Venus Equilateral had little use for a horse. Kids who had never seen snow nor known a cold snap reveled in their new snow suits and built a huge snowman along the Mall. One long ramp that led into a snaky corridor was taken over by squatter's or rather "sledder's"--rights and it became downright dangerous for a pedestrian to try to keep his ankles away from the speeding sleds. Snow forts were erected on either side of one wide corridor and the air was filled with flying snowballs. And from the station-wide public announcement system came the crooned strains of Adeste Fideles and White Christmas. A snowball hissed past Arden's ear and she turned abruptly to give argument. She was met by another that caught her full in the face--after which it was wiped off by her husband. "Merry Christmas," he chuckled.