"We'll never need one of those again. Where we're going there's no tolerance factor. A man doesn't have to die just because he can't do all the work he once could. Earth is such a big terrarium that a man can just keep on living."
"Johnny, old Sam's confused. He's all mixed up." One lone tear ran down his cheek.
"You go to your cabin and get some rest. You'll never need a bottle. Understand that, Sam? You'll never need a bottle."
"Then you weren't foolin' me? We're really goin' Home? Somebody said we were, and I thought we were, and then I thought you were all foolin' me and then—
"I guess I better had, Johnny. Old Sam's tired. Old Sam's awful tired."
He limped out of the compartment.
Johnny Nine watched his back until it disappeared down the companionway ladder to the passenger quarters. The rest of the passengers had been doing Sam's work for nearly three years now. But it didn't matter. They were so near Home that it didn't matter. They no longer needed to produce a balance for a new generation; it was journey's end.
Johnny Nine began to rummage through the supplies, extra parts for all sorts of fancied emergencies that never occurred, and no parts, of course, for those that did, over the long, four hundred years of the trip.
Johnny Nine finally found the radio spares. Mislaid behind a mass of junk that once had been air control gauges. One of the First Generation had smashed the gauges when he went mad. But the Ship had been lucky. It had survived without them.