"I hate to interrupt your exuberance," said the elder Dr. Arcot, "but I should like to know the name of this remarkable ship." "What?" asked Wade. "Name? Oh, it hasn't any." The elder Morey shook his head sadly. "That is indeed an important oversight. If a crew of men can overlook so fundamental a thing, I wonder if they _are_ to be trusted." "Well, what are we going to call it, then?" asked Arcot. "_Solarite II_ might do," suggested Morey. "It will still be from the Solar System." "I think we should be more broadminded," said Arcot. "We aren't going to stay in this system--not even in this galaxy. We might call it the _Galaxian_." "Did you say broadminded?" asked Wade. "Let's really be broad and call it the _Universite_ or something like that. Or, better yet, call it _Fluorine!_ That's everywhere in the universe and the most active element there is. This ship will go everywhere in the universe and be the most active thing that ever existed!" "A good name!" said the elder Morey. "That gets my vote!" Young Arcot looked thoughtful. "That's mighty good--I like the idea--but it lacks ring." He paused, then, looking up at the ceiling, repeated slowly: _"Alone, alone, all, all alone; Alone on a wide, wide sea; Nor any saint took pity on My soul in agony."_ He rose and walked over to the window, looking out where the bright points of light that were the stars of space rode high in the deep violet of the moonlit sky. "The sea of all space--the sea of vastness that lies between the far-flung nebulae--the mighty void--alone on a sea, the vastness of which no man can imagine--alone--alone where no other man has been; alone, so far from all matter, from all mankind, that not even light, racing at billions of miles each day, could reach home in less than a million years." Arcot stopped and stood looking out of the window. Morey broke the silence. "_The Ancient Mariner._" He paused. "'Alone' will certainly be right. I think that name takes all the prizes." Fuller nodded slowly. "I certainly agree. _The Ancient Mariner._ It's kind of long, but it is _the_ name." It was adopted unanimously. IV The _Ancient Mariner_ was built in the big Transcontinental shops in Newark; the power they needed was not available in the smaller shops. Working twenty-four hours a day, in three shifts, skilled men took two months to finish the hull according to Fuller's specifications. The huge walls of lux metal required great care in construction, for they could not be welded; they had to be formed in position. And they could only be polished under powerful magnets, where the dense magnetic field softened the lux metal enough to allow a diamond polisher to do the job. When the hull was finished, there came the laborious work of installing the power plant and the tremendous power leads, the connectors, the circuits to the relays--a thousand complex circuits.