"I hypnotized you," MacKenzie said. "You were never dead. I don't know
what the details of your hallucination were, but the important part came
through, all right. You thought you'd been to the Moon before. It took
all the adventure out of the actual flight; it was just a workaday
trip."
"I said it was easy," Ish said.
"There was no other way to do it! I had to cancel out the thrill that
comes from challenging the unknown. You knew what death was like, and
you knew what the Moon was like. Can you understand why I had to do it?"
"Yeah. _Now get out before I kill you._"
He didn't live too long after that. He never entered a rocket again--he
died on the Station, and was buried in space, while a grateful world
mourned him. I wonder what it was like, in his mind, when he really
died. But he spent the days he had, after the trip, just sitting at an
observatory port, cursing the traitor stars with his dead and
purposeless eyes.