"It's nothing but junk!" _Junk_, whispered everyone, getting hysterical. "Don't let him get away!" Mr. Thirkell tried to break and run, but a thousand possum traps closed on him from every side. He withered. Everybody walked around in circles like blind mice. There was a confusion and a weeping that lasted for five minutes as they went over and touched the Rocket, the Dented Kettle, the Rusty Container for God's Children. "Well," said Mrs. Bellowes. She stepped up into the askew doorway of the rocket and faced everyone. "It looks as if a terrible thing has been done to us," she said. "I haven't any money to go back home to Earth and I've too much pride to go to the Government and tell them a common man like this has fooled us out of our life's savings. I don't know how you feel about it, all of you, but the reason all of us came is because I'm eighty-five, and you're eighty-nine, and you're seventy-eight, and all of us are nudging on toward a hundred, and there's nothing on Earth for us, and it doesn't appear there's anything on Mars either. We all expected not to breathe much more air or crochet many more doilies or we'd never have come here. So what I have to propose is a simple thing--to take a chance." She reached out and touched the rusted hulk of the rocket. "This is _our_ rocket. We paid for our trip. And we're going to _take_ our trip!" Everyone rustled and stood on tiptoes and opened an astonished mouth. Mr. Thirkell began to cry. He did it quite easily and very effectively. "We're going to get in this ship," said Mrs. Bellowes, ignoring him. "And we're going to take off to where we were going." Mr. Thirkell stopped crying long enough to say, "But it was all a fake. I don't know anything about space. He's not out there, anyway. I lied. I don't know where He is, and I couldn't find Him if I wanted to. And you were fools to ever take my word on it." "Yes," said Mrs. Bellowes, "we were fools. I'll go along on that. But you can't blame us, for we're old, and it was a lovely, good and fine idea, one of the loveliest ideas in the world. Oh, we didn't really fool ourselves that we could get nearer to Him physically. It was the gentle, mad dream of old people, the kind of thing you hold onto for a few minutes a day, even though you know it's not true. So, all of you who want to go, you follow me in the ship." "But you can't go!" said Mr. Thirkell. "You haven't got a navigator. And that ship's a ruin!" "You," said Mrs. Bellowes, "will be the navigator."