 What was Hank's mission?
The first man to return from beyond the Great Frontier may be welcomed ... but will it be as a curiosity, rather than as a hero...? There was the usual welcoming crowd for a celebrity, and the usual speeches by the usual politicians who met him at the airport which had once been twenty miles outside of Croton, but which the growing city had since engulfed and placed well within its boundaries. The crowd was quiet, and the mayor didn't seem quite as at-ease as he'd been on his last big welcoming—for Corporal Berringer, one of the crew of the spaceship Washington , first to set Americans upon Mars. There he sat between the mayor and a nervous young coed chosen as homecoming queen, and looked out at the police and fire department bands, the National Guard, the boy scouts and girl scouts, the Elks and Masons. The tremendous national interest, the fact that he was the First One, had made them come around. He had traveled and he had returned and his voyage was very much like the voyages of the great mariners, from Columbus onward—long, dull periods of time passing, passing, and then the arrival. The head of the American Legion and the chief of police, who had escorted him on this trip from the square, didn't ask to go in with him. He walked up what had once been a concrete path and was now an ornate flagstone path. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. So he put him down and told himself that it would all change, that everything would loosen up just as his commanding officer, General Carlisle, had said it would early this morning before he left Washington. Carlisle had said his position was analogous to Columbus', to Vasco De Gama's, to Preshoff's when the Russian returned from the Moon—but more so. Carlisle had said lots of things, but even Carlisle who had worked with him all the way, who had engineered the entire fantastic journey—even Carlisle the Nobel prize winner, the multi-degreed genius in uniform, had not actually spoken to him as one man to another. They had feared for him, having read of the many launchings gone wrong even in continent-to-continent experimental flight. He saw twin beds separated by an ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire fence around the experimental station.
 Hank's mission was to pilot an experimental continent-to-continent flight.
 Hank's mission was to touch down on Mars in preparation for a future colony.  Hank's mission was to experience death and be brought back to life.  Hank's mission was to build a colony on the moon.  Hank's mission was to pilot an experimental continent-to-continent flight.