"Zenna Henderson - Holding Wonder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

into the thin slice of moonlight. I gasped and let the slats fall.

A flying saucer! With purple lights! On the porch! Then I gave a half grunt of
laughter. Flying saucers, in- deed! There was something familiar about that
row of purple lights-unglowing-around its middle. I knew they were purple-even
by the dim light-because that was our space capsule! Who was trying to steal
our cardboard-tincan-poster-painted capsule? Then I hastily shoved the blind
aside and pressed my nose to the dusty screen. The blind retaliated by
swinging back and whacking me heavily on the ear, but that wasn't what was
dizzying me.

Our capsule was taking off!

"It can't!" I gasped as it slid up past the edge of the porch roof. "Not that
storage barrel and all those tin cans! It can't!" And, sure enough, it
couldn't. It crash-landed just beyond the flagpole. But it staggered up again,
spilling several cans noisily, and skimmed over the swings, only to smash
against the boulder at the base of the wall.

I was out of the teacherage, through the dark schoolroom and down the porch
steps before the echo of the smash stopped bouncing from surface to surface
around the canyon. I was halfway to the capsule before my toes curled and made
me conscious of the fact that I was barefooted. Rather delicately I walked
the rest of the way to the crumpled wreckage. What on earth had possessed
it-?

In the shadows I found what had possessed it. It was Vincent, his arms wrapped
tightly over his ears and across his head. He was writhing silently, his face
distorted and gasping.

"Good Lord!" I gasped and fell to my knees beside him. "Vincent! What on
earth!" I gathered him up as best I could with his body twisting and his legs
flailing, and moved him out into the moonlight.

"I have to! I have to! I have to!" he moaned, struggling away from me. "I hear
him! I hear him!"

"Hear whom?" I asked. "Vincent!" I shook him. "Make sense! What are you doing
here?"

Vincent stilled in my arms for a frozen second. Then his eyes opened and he
blinked in astonishment. "Teacher! What are you doing here?"

"I asked first," I said. "What are you doing here, and what is this capsule
bit?"

"The capsule?" He peered at the pile of wreckage and tears flooded down his
cheeks. "Now I can't go and I have to! I have to!"

"Come on inside," I said. "Let's get this thing straightened out once and for