Along the highway there were arrows and signs. When the trucks had labored to the top of a ridge, the spaceport installations came into view all at once: Barbed-wire fences, low, olive-drab gate buildings, guidance tower, the magnesium dome of a powerhouse reactor, repair and maintenance shops, personnel-housing area carefully shielded against radiation by a huge stellene bubble, sealed and air-conditioned, with double-doored entrances and exits. Inside it were visible neat bungalows, lawns, gardens, supermarket, swimming pools, swings, a kid's bike left casually here or there. The first sunshine glinted on the two rockets and their single, attendant gantry tower, waiting on the launching pad. The rockets were as gaunt as sharks. They might almost have been natural spires on the Moon, or ruined towers left by the extinct beings of Mars. At first they were impersonal and expected parts of the scene, until the numbers, ceramic-enamelled on their striped flanks, were noticed: GO-11 and GO-12. "They're us--up the old roller coaster!" Charlie Reynolds shouted. Then everybody was checking his blastoff ticket, as if he didn't remember the number primly typed on it. Frank Nelsen had GO-12. GO--Ground-to-Orbit. But it might as well mean go! glory, or gallows, he thought. The trucks reached the gate. The Bunch met the bored and cynical reception committee--a half-dozen U.S.S.F. men in radiation coveralls. Each of the Bunch held his blastoff ticket, his space-fitness and his equipment-inspection cards meekly in sweaty fingers. It was an old story--the unknowing standing vulnerable before the knowing and perhaps harsh. Nelsen guessed at some of the significance of the looks they all received: Another batch of greenhorns--to conquer and develop and populate the extra-terrestrial regions. They all come the same way, and look alike. Poor saps... Frank Nelsen longed to paste somebody, even in the absence of absolute impoliteness. The blastoff drums were already being lifted off the trucks, weighed, screened electronically, and moved toward a loading elevator on a conveyor. The whole process was automatic. "Nine men--ten drums--how come?" one of the U.S.S.F. people inquired. "A spare. Its GO carriage charge is paid," Reynolds answered. He got an amused and tired smirk. "Okay, Sexy--it's all right with us. And I hope you fellas were smart enough not to eat any breakfast. Of course we'd like to have you say--tentatively--where you'll be headed, on your own power, after we toss you Upstairs. Toward the Moon, huh, like most fledglings say? It helps a little to know. Some new folks start to scream and get lost, up there. See how it is?" "Sure--we see--thanks. Yes--the Moon." This was still Charlie Reynolds talking.