Venus Equilateral

The staff of Venus Equilateral must cope with an incompetent manager named Francis Burbank who is appointed Director of the station by the Interplanetary Communications Commission. Disaster looms when Burbank disposes of the air plant, thinking that the Martian sawgrass is simply a collection of weeds that sprouted up in an empty compartment. Channing is able to avert disaster, and Burbank is recalled in disgrace and replaced by Channing. The "QRM" in the title is a Q code meaning "Are you being interfered with?"

Channing is contracted by Interplanetary Transport to find a way of communicating with a spaceship that must be diverted from Venus to avoid being caught in a quarantine. Channing is able to use an electron gun to activate the ship's meteor detector and uses it to send the necessary message in Morse Code.

Neurosurgeon-turned-space-pirate Allison "Hellion" Murdoch attacks Venus Equilateral. Channing is able to use a super-electron-gun to short out the attacking ships' electrical systems.

Martian archeologists Carroll and Baler discover an ancient Martian electronic device. After getting the device running and experimenting with it, the two are able to deduce that the device is a relay unit for a wireless power transmission system. The Martian relay becomes the basis for power transmission networks throughout the Solar System.

Channing is on board the Ariadne when a meteor strike leaves it crippled and off course. He is able to turn the ship into a signalling device, and Franks on Venus Equilateral, anticipating him, is able to work out a means of receiving his signal and tracking down the ship.

While negotiating with Terran Electric's hardnosed chief lawyer Mark Kingman for a licence on Carroll and Baler's Martian power transmitter, which they had sold to TE, Channing works out a way to use the transmitter to harness solar energy. Channing cuts a deal with Kingman allowing Terran Electric to operate the solar power tube on planetary surfaces while Venus Equilateral operates it in space. It turns out, though, that an atmosphere blocks the tube's reception, so it can't operate on the surface of any inhabited world.

When the engineering staff of Terran Electric use a Martian power transmitter to create a faster-than-light communicator, Kingman uses it to manipulate Venus Equilateral's stock price in an effort to gain a controlling interest in the company. When Venus Equilateral independently reproduces the FTL communicator, Channing discovers Kingman's plot, and manipulates him back.

After escaping from prison, Hellion Murdoch teams up with Kingman. Kingman will use Terran Electric's research lab to create energy weapons, and Murdoch will mount the weapons in his ship, the Black Widow, and blackmail interplanetary commerce. When news of Murdoch's escape reaches Venus Equilateral, Channing realizes the station will be his first target. The station's staff design a set of missiles that will home in on the Black Widow, and they succeed in destroying it. Kingman is able to hide his association with Murdoch.

Wes Farrell, now employed at Venus Equilateral, uses the Martian power transmitter to construct a matter transmitter. Kingman sues on behalf of Terran Electric, arguing that the matter transmitter is essentially a power transmitter, and thus falls within Terran Electric's licence. Channing successfully argues that the device is not a transmitter by using it as a matter duplicator, to create multiple copies of the judge's antique watch.

Now that it is possible to duplicate money and precious metals, an economy based on scarcity collapses. The people of the Solar System must fall back on barter, and those too poor to buy matter duplicators are left to their own devices. It is not until the staff of Venus Equilateral invents a material that cannot be duplicated that a monetary system can be re-established.

Use of the matter duplicator allows the staff of Venus Equilateral to invent a method of instantaneous communication. Since line-of-sight is no longer necessary for communication, Venus Equilateral itself is obsolete, and the staff prepare to abandon the relay station. Meanwhile, Kingman sneaks aboard the station, rigs a power transmitter to lower the station's temperature to absolute zero, and kidnaps Walt Franks and Christine Baler, leaving them to freeze to death. Not knowing of the new instantaneous communication, Kingman assumes that the station has stopped relaying messages because of his sabotage, and he sues to gain VE's communications franchise for Terran Electric. Following a Christmas party set against the backdrop of the station's falling temperature, the Channings and Farrell rescue Franks and Baler, and the entire staff of VE departs, leaving Kingman to try to maintain the frigid station alone.

Twenty-seven years after "Mad Holiday", the Channing and Franks families live on a thoroughly terraformed Pluto, and the Channings' daughter Diane is married to the Franks' son Jeffrey. Don Channing, Walt Franks and Jeffrey Franks get together to try to come up with a teleportation device that will allow original objects, and not just their duplicates, to be transmitted across interplanetary space. They succeed in teleporting mice from Pluto to Triton, but the mice only live for five minutes. The plot thickens when Diane Channing Franks' newborn twins need urgent treatment for a blood disorder, and only the teleport can get them that treatment. Don Channing finally realizes that the teleport system was inverting the mice, and that their inverted hemoglobin was unable to carry oxygen, leading to their deaths. By teleporting an object twice, the inversion is cancelled out, so the twins are saved by teleporting them to a hospital on Earth via a relay on Triton.

350 years after the invention of the matter duplicator, the technology has been improved to the point where human beings can be duplicated, and it is common medical practice for surgeons to test their surgical procedures on duplicates of their patients before operating on the originals. As a result, the greatest insult that can be offered to a person is to claim that they are a duplicate rather than the original (the slang expression is "dupe"). This is the reason identical twins such as Calvin and Benjamin Blair tend to hate each other's guts, as Cal and Benj do.

Cal Blair hates space travel, and he's not very keen on surgery either, which is why his relationship with Tinker Elliot, a spacefaring surgeon, has never blossomed into marriage. When the long-lost electronic key to Hellion Murdoch's hidden treasure finds its way into Blair's hands, though, he winds up deeply involved in both. Cal, a cryptographer, uses his skills to decipher the key, build a device that will allow him to use it to find Murdoch's treasure, and travels to Venus to locate it. His nasty brother Benj kidnaps Elliot and follows him, intent on gaining the treasure for himself. Elliot suffers a serious spinal injury when Benj's aircraft crashes in the Venusian swamps, and Cal must defeat his twin in a duel using three-foot soldering irons before he can help her. With Benj disposed of, Cal learns that Murdoch's treasure is actually a database of Murdoch's illegal medical experiments. Overcoming his deep aversion to surgery, Cal uses Murdoch's treasure to repair Elliot's spinal injury and save her life.