- [first lines]
- Tim O'Hara: Say, Uncle Martin, I always thought it would take a larger spaceship to get here from Mars.
- Uncle Martin: Well, we have larger models, but a compact is all you need to drop in on a neighbor.
- Uncle Martin: A neighbor? Now, frankly, I never felt exactly chummy about Mars.
- Uncle Martin: Why not? Every seventeen years we're only 35 million miles apart.
- Tim O'Hara: Oh, well, practically across the street.
- Uncle Martin: Tom Edison asked me the same thing about uranium.
- Tim O'Hara: You knew Tom Edison?
- Uncle Martin: Who do you think gave him the idea for the light bulb?
- Stevie: You sure know a lot about Mars, don't you?
- Uncle Martin: Know it like a native.
- Stevie: Boy, you must've read a pile of comic books. I wonder what Mars is really like.
- Uncle Martin: It's a beautiful place, Stevie. A wonderful place to live. They call it the Red Planet but it's really pink. Lovely pink valleys shaded by tall pink trees.
- Stevie: Trees are pink? Why?
- Uncle Martin: Why not?
- Stevie: I dunno. Are the kids pink, too?
- Uncle Martin: No. I guess children are the same all over the universe, Stevie.
- Tim O'Hara: [pointing to the broken levitator] What happened to that?
- Uncle Martin: What didn't happen to it? It's been broken more times than a Russian promise.
- Uncle Martin: You see, you didn't need any help. All you had to do was try a little bit. As one of your philosophers said, "wondrous things occur when man and mountain meet."