"Welcome, newcomers. I suppose you're from that ship that just put down? The _Valhalla_?" "Right. Name's Alan Donnell, and this is Roger Bond. Yours?" "I'm Kevin Quantrell." He was short and stocky, heavily tanned, with a square jaw and a confident look about him. "I'm out of the starship _Encounter_, just back from the Aldebaran system. Been in the Enclave two weeks now--with a lot more ahead of me." Alan whistled. "Aldebaran! That's--let's see, 109 years round trip. You must be a real old-timer, Quantrell!" "I was born in 3403. Makes me 473 years old, Earthtime. But I'm actually only seventeen and a half. Right before Aldebaran we made a hop to Capella, and that used up 85 years more in a hurry." "You've got me by 170 years," Alan said. "But I'm only seventeen myself." Quantrell grinned cockily. "It's a good thing some guy thought up this Tally system of chalking up every real day you live through. Otherwise we'd be up to here in confusion all the time." He leaned boredly against the wall of a rickety building which once had proudly borne the chrome-steel casing characteristic of early 27th Century architecture, but whose outer surface was now brown and scaly from rust. "What do you think of our little paradise?" Quantrell asked sarcastically. "Certainly puts the Earther cities to shame." He pointed out across the river, where the tall, glistening buildings of the adjoining Earther city shone in the morning sunlight. "Have you ever been out there?" Alan asked. "No," Quantrell said in a tight voice. "But if this keeps up much longer----" He clenched and unclenched his fists impatiently. "What's the trouble?" "It's my ship--the _Encounter_. We were outspace over a century, you know, and when we got back the inspection teams found so many things wrong with the ship that she needs just about a complete overhauling. They've been working her over for the last two weeks, and the way it looks it'll be another couple of weeks before she's ready to go. And I don't know how much longer I can stand being penned up in this Enclave." "That's exactly how your brother----" Roger started to say, and stopped. "Sorry." "That's okay," Alan said. Quantrell cocked an eye. "What's that?" "My brother. I had a twin, but he got restless and jumped ship last time we were down. He got left behind at blastoff time." Quantrell nodded understandingly. "Too bad. But I know what he was up against--and I envy the lucky so-and-so. I wish _I_ had the guts to just walk out like that. Every day that goes by in this place, I say I'm going over the hill next day. But I never do, somehow. I just sit here and wait." Alan glanced down the quiet sun-warmed street. Here and there a couple of venerable-looking starmen were sitting, swapping stories of their youth--a youth that had been a thousand years before. The Enclave, Alan thought, is a place for old men.