By the second morning in the Dark-Ice Sector, the Star-Train had rolled through the spatial wormhole tunnel onto World 24 (Iron-Icicle World), where four billion miners were already celebrating on their newly warmed 72-degree streets.
Right outside the station square, five thousand barefoot miners stood cheering around a neat pile of tied-up prison guards, with the former dungeon warden Commander Cold-Whip sitting on top like a trussed turkey.
“Lord Pei! General Tie!” the lead miner shouted, waving his pickaxe happily. “When your brass heating pipes popped under our dungeon floor last night, the ice bars melted right off! We tied up Commander Cold-Whip and all forty of his guards for you! We even washed the street with the melted cell water so your boots wouldn’t get muddy!”
Abacus Su hopped off the train step, pushed his spectacles up his nose, and immediately slapped a yellow Debtor vest onto Commander Cold-Whip’s chest.
“Good initiative! Very thrifty use of melted prison water!” Abacus Su praised, handing each of the forty guards a pair of heavy iron garden trowels. “Commander Cold-Whip, for running an unlicensed freezing dungeon and wasting heat energy, your fine is three billion Grain-Notes! Stand in line—you are now the first planting crew for World 24’s greenhouse district!”
