over the Everglades.

"It's not the same," he said.

The Personnel Manager sighed.

"Don't you see," Ish said, "It can't be the same. I didn't push the beast up here. There wasn't any feel to it. There wasn't any sound of rockets."

The Personnel Manager sighed again. "There wouldn't be, you know. Taking off from the Station, landing here—vacuum."

Ish shook his head. "There'd still be a sound. Maybe not for anybody else to hear—and, maybe, maybe there would be. There'd be people, back on Earth, who'd hear it."

"All right," the Personnel Manager said. His face was grave, but his eyes were shining a little.

"ISH! HEY, Ish, wake up, will you!" There was a hand on his shoulder. "Will you get a load of this guy!" the voice said to someone else. "An hour to go, and he's sleeping like the dead."

Ish willed his eyes to open. He felt his heart begin to move again, felt the blood sluggishly beginning to surge into his veins. His hands and feet were very cold.

"Come on, Ish," the Crew Chief said.

"All right," he mumbled. "Okay. I'm up." He sat on the edge of his bunk looking down at his hands. They were blue under the fingernails. He sighed, feeling the air moving down into his lungs.

Stiffly, he got to his feet and began to climb into his G suit.

The Moon opened its face to him. From where he lay, strapped into the control seat in the forward bubble, he looked at it emotionlessly, and began to brake for a landing.

He looked for footprints in the crater, though he knew he hadn't left any. Earth was a familiar sight over his right shoulder.

He brought the twin-bubble beast back to the station. They threw spotlights on it, for the TV pickups, and thrust microphones at him. He could see broad grins behind the faceplates of the suits the docking crew wore, and they were pounding his back. The interior of the Station was a babbling of voices, a tumult of congratulations. He looked at it all, dead-faced, his eyes empty.

"It was easy," he said over a 

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