we had
cost us ninety-eight cents each. And it cost a dollar and a half for
the special tube that Skinny needed to make the TV set into a radar.

You see, we didn't steal anything, really. It was mostly stuff that was
just lying around. Like the TV set was up in my attic, and the old
refrigerator that Skinny used the parts to make the atomic power plant
out of from. And then, a lot of the stuff we already had. Like the skin
diving suits we made into spacesuits and the vacuum pump that Skinny had
already and the generator.

Sure, we did a lot of skin diving, but that was last summer. That's how
we knew about old man Brinker's compressor that Stinky said was his and
I traded my outboard motor for and had to trade back. And that's how we
knew about Mr. Fields' old compression chamber, and all like that.

The rocket? Well, it works on the same principle as the atomic power
plant, only it doesn't work except in a vacuum, hardly. Course you don't
need much of a rocket when you have antigravity. Everyone knows that.

Well, anyway, that's how we built the spaceship, and believe me, it
wasn't easy. I mean with Stinky all the time bothering us and laughing
at us. And I had to do a lot of lawn mowing to get money for the square
tubing for the antigravity and the special tube for the radar, and my
space helmet.

Stinky called the space helmets kid stuff. He was always saying things
like say hello to the folks on Mars for me, and bring back a bottle of
canal number five, and all like that, you know. Course, they did look
like kid stuff, I guess. We bought them at the five-and-dime, and they
were meant for kids. Of course when Skinny got through with them, they
worked fine.

We tested them in the air lock of the compression chamber when we got
the compressor in. They tested out pretty good for a half-hour, then we
tried them on in there. Well, it wasn't a complete vacuum, just
twenty-seven inches of mercury, but that was O.K. for a test.

So anyway, we got ready to take off. Stinky was there to watch, of
course. He was saying things like, farewell, O brave pioneers, and stuff
like that. I mean it was enough to make you sick.

He was standing there laughing and singing something like up in the air
junior birdmen, but when we closed the air-lock door, we couldn't hear
him. Skinny started up the atomic power plant, and we could see Stinky
laughing fit to kill. It takes a couple of minutes for it to warm up,
you know. So Stinky