He waved the apology away with a short movement of his hand. "You've got to understand that what you've been saying isn't a valid claim. If it were, human history would be very different, wouldn't it?" "Suppose I showed you something, first? Then, you could decide whether you want to stay, after all." "How long's it going to take?" Ish flushed under the memory of having actually begged for something. "Not long," the Personnel Manager said. He half-turned and pointed up at the Earth, hanging just beyond the wall of the crater in which they were suddenly standing. "Earth," the Personnel Manager said. Somehow, Ish was not astonished. He looked up at the Earth, touched by cloud and sunlight, marked with ocean and continent, crowned with ice. The unblinking stars filled the night. He looked around him. The Moon was silent--quiet, patient, waiting. Somewhere, a metal glint against the planet above, if it were only large enough to be seen, was the Station, and the ship for which the Moon had waited. Ish walked a short distance. He was leaving no tracks in the pumice the ages had sown. But it was the way he had thought of it, nevertheless. It was the way the image had slowly built up in his mind, through the years, through the training, through the work. It was what he had aimed the _Navion_ at, that day 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.