The "Coffin" was light, and it was new. A slight improvement over the last one. But the so-called improvement was a farce, Stevens knew, because no one had any idea why none of the others had ever come back. None of them expected him to come back either, and they showed it plainly. Also, none of them cared particularly, from any human point of view. The Military cared of course, from another view-point. This was another velocity test run. Once around the Earth to this take-off spot on the desert. The Military wanted to get to the Moon if they had to walk there over a suspension bridge of human dead. The first Sovereign State to get a military base on the Moon would, in theory, be the all-time victor in what certain kinds of humorists called the "game" of war. So far, no one had been able to stand the velocity. Stevens felt his skin stretch in a dry, tight grin. He carefully and slowly moistened his lips and watched the light that would blink yellow. A minute after that the job would kick-off before rockets delivering a 3000-pound thrust for twelve seconds. * * * * * Stevens guessed that the brain-boys up in some hidden bureau had an idea that sooner or later they would find somebody who could stand it, then they could make tests, find out why. Stevens had no idea how many had already been sacrificed. The boys upstairs knew but they weren't giving out statistics these days. Stevens would increase the unknown number by one more. So it meant nothing, he thought. He wasn't one of the superboys, the jet-jyrenes, the hero lads who never came back and had statues and plaques stuck all over the place for being permanently en absentia. Not anymore, he wasn't. He was one of the new volunteers from the West Coast branch of the Military Prison. Big-hearted Kanin had even promised him a pardon if he brought the ship back. It was a new high in irony, but that was about all. He wouldn't come back, and he knew it. But he would be free, and Doris would be free to live her own life. He had been stupid, hot-headed, once--and this was a preferable way, he had decided, to pay up the debt. Doris had resigned herself to waiting for him. It was a manslaughter charge, and he would have gotten out maybe in fifteen years. They didn't parole anybody from a Military Prison, at least not on anything as heavy as manslaughter. It wasn't fair to Doris, nor to himself. All right. He was in a shiny "Coffin" and he would soon be on his way to wherever the others had gone--into nowhere. Where was nowhere? That was a question. It was way up, higher than anyone had returned from to answer--still within the bounds of gravity but--_high_. A lot of guys had found it, but they weren't sending back any ESP messages from the Beyond.