"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."