"That's it," I told him. "Fifty years ago the Karden might have been a good ship, but not now. Not now, Gramps. It's as obsolete as a pea-shooter. Will it run?" "You're durned tootin' it'll run. What do you think I paid? Go ahead, guess." Something was still gnawing at my stomach. Gramps had had three hundred dollars to purchase our ship and equipment. You could stretch three hundred dollars a long way if you bought wisely these days. "You tell me," I said. "Hundred and fifty. 'Nother hundred and a quarter for supplies--" There's some old saying about letting old dogs lie or not crying over spilled milk or some such thing, but anyway, I reminded him, "For another twenty-five or thirty dollars you could have got a Wilson '13, maybe even a twelve-bank Carpenter." "Couldn't," Gramps said. "Kid, let me tell you, I saw the nicest _gui_-tar. One of them old Martian types with eight strings, you know. Twenty-five bucks...." I looked at him a long time without saying anything. When you're down to just a few dollars in these depression years, everything counts, every last penny. But my folks had died in the panic and riots of '24 and Gramps had reared me since almost before the time I could reach the wart on his knee. "Let's go look at our Karden," I said. * * * * * Gramps was beaming proudly. "There she is," he told me. "Section G, Row 14, Ship 7. Beauty, eh?" As far as you looked, you couldn't see anything but the old ships, all lined up, row on row of them. Some glistening with new paint if they had been bought as early as yesterday and sprayed today, others still dull and cracked with caked jet-slag and the erosion of a dozen atmospheres, all with people scurrying in and out of them, getting new faces and new entrails for blast-off tomorrow. The Karden squatted in row 14, a short, stubby grub-like boat whose jet-slag completely hid the original paint job. But I didn't want to say another thing about it. I just hoped the Karden could get us where we were going, even if it burped and hiccupped like a drunken driver all the way. Clair opened the lock and I saw her red hair framed against the dark interior of the ship, and I hardly remembered Gramps was there. We'd been married two months, and separated for half that time, with me getting my last month's paycheck in New York so I'd have money for the liner-fare to Canal City. Clair cried, "Welcome aboard ship. Captain Brooks, wel.... Umm-m, Captain, that was nice.... Umm-m, again...." Gramps coughed. "You two gonna stand there mooning over each other all afternoon, or do we get some work done?" "It's just about all finished," Clair told him. She snuggled up close once more and then skipped out of my arms, leading us through the lock and into the Karden.