Good story, but it immediately makes me want to read Junkyard Planet/Cosmic Computer. The basics are there - Merlin, Poictesme falling apart and salvaging Federation goods, Conn using what he knows to build it up into a new start. This is much shallower - for one thing, it stops at the decision to make the push rather than going on to see some of the results. Characterization is also shallower. Of course, it's a short story, it doesn't have room to get all that deep. It's still fun and an excellent sketch of a crisis and a way - not around, but past it. I don't remember if the book has the lines of poetry that supply the title of the story - they're quite good, and apparently Piper's own work (in the story, they were written by a Martian colonist). ( )