e ship up a
little, put some stripes running down from the nose, a few pieces of
chrome around over the body....

* * * * *

Poor old Harold came off his back porch carrying a thermos jug and six
loaves of bread.

"Morning, Harold," said Orville.

"Oh--morning, Orville." Harold flinched. Another reporter had come out
of the shed and taken their picture.

"What's your name, mister?" the reporter asked Orville.

"I'd rather you left me out of this," Orville said.

A loaf of bread had broken open and slices were falling out. Harold put
down the thermos jug and picked up the slices and stuffed them back into
the wrapper. The first reporter came over.

[Illustration]

"It's got Vitamin D." Harold grinned wretchedly. "Costs two cents more a
loaf, but I thought, what the heck--"

"How about a shot of you and the missus saying good-by?" the first
reporter said.

"Why--she left me," Harold blurted. He tried to get away, but the
reporters hemmed him in.

"Was she scared?" the second reporter asked.

"Look, boys!" Orville put his hands on the top rail of the fence and
climbed across. He was getting his shoes wet in the weeds in Harold's
garden, but he didn't care. "The man has work to do. Can't you leave him
alone?"

* * * * *

He picked up the jug and took Harold by the elbow and led him into the
shed.

There, resting on some concrete blocks on the dirt floor, was the base
of the ship. In the semi-darkness, it looked harmless enough: like a
tank, six or eight feet across, reaching up through a jagged hole in the
roof.

"Harold, you could make a good thing out of this," Orville said. "All
this publicity."

Harold was climbing a rickety ladder to the roof. Orville followed.

"Mount this thing on a trailer. Take her around to fairs and carnivals."

Orville waited on the roof while Harold climbed another ladder to the
small oval door in the side of the ship. Harold called down: "You never
saw the inside. Want to look around?"

"Well...." Orville glanced into his back yard. Polly wasn't ready yet.
He climbed up and handed the jug to Harold and stuck his head in.

"Huh!" There wasn't much to see. Just a small compartment with some
pipes leading from below into the nose. "You got to fix this up," he
said. "Some Rube Goldberg contraptions."

"The works are all up here." Harold climbed a ladder and disappeared
through a hole overhead. "C'mon up,