They were strolling after dinner, down the Mall. The air was sharp and warned that autumn had definitely arrived; the many brilliant stars, almost as bright as the moon of Terra, were coming out in the dusk. "Conn, this thing about Merlin," she began. "Do you really believe in it? Ever since Dad and I came to Poictesme, I've been hearing about it, but it's just a story, isn't it?" He was tempted to tell her the truth, and sternly put the temptation behind him. "Of course there's a Merlin, Sylvie, and it's going to do wonderful things when we find it." He looked down the starlit Mall ahead of him. Somebody, maybe Lester Dawes and Morgan Gatworth and Lorenzo Menardes, had gotten things finished and cleaned up. The pavement was smooth and unbroken; the litter had vanished. "It's done wonderful things already, just because people started looking for it," he said. "Some of these days, they're going to realize that they had Merlin all along and didn't know it." There was a faint humming from somewhere ahead, and he was wondering what it was. Then they came to the long escalators, and he saw that they were running. "Why, look! They got them fixed! They're running!" Sylvie grinned at him and squeezed his arm. "I get you, chum," she said. "Of course there's a Merlin." Maybe he didn't have to tell her the truth. When they returned to the house, his mother greeted him: "Conn, your father's been trying to get you ever since you went out. Call him, right away; Ritz-Gartner Hotel, in Storisende. It's something about a ship." It look a little time to get his father on-screen. He was excited and happy. "Hi, Conn; we have one," he said. "What kind of a ship?" "You know her. The _Harriet Barne_." That he hadn't expected. Something off Mothball Row that would have to be flown to Barathrum and torn down and completely rebuilt, but not the one that was there already, partly finished. "How the dickens did you wangle that?" "Oh, it was Yves' idea, to start with. He knew about her; the T. & O.'s been losing money on her for years. He said if they had to pay prize-money on her and then either restore her to original condition or finish the job and build a spaceship they didn't want, it would almost bankrupt the company. They got up as high as fifty thousand sols for prize-money and we just laughed at them. So we made a proposition of our own. "We proposed organizing a new company, subsidiary to both L. E. & S. and T. & O., to engage in interplanetary shipping; both companies to assign their equity in the _Harriet Barne_ to the new company, the work of completing her to be done at our spaceport and the labor cost to be shared. This would give us our spaceship, and get T. & O. off the hook all around. Everybody was for it except the president of T. & O. Know anything about him?" Conn shook his head. His father continued: