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

like Hospodi pomelui. I think he's talking to God."

"Call your mother," I said, no linguist I. "She's probably worried to death by
now."

Obediently, he closed his eyes and sat silent for a while on the step below
me. Then he opened his eyes. "She'd just found out I wasn't in bed," he said.
"They're coming." He shivered a little. "Daddy gets so mad sometimes. He
hasn't the most equitable of temperaments!"

"Oh, Vincent!" I laughed. "What an odd mixture you are!"

"No, I'm not," he said. "Both my mother and daddy are of the People. Remy is a
mixture 'cause his grampa was of the Earth, but mine came from the Home. You
know-when it was destroyed. I wish I could have seen the ship our People came
to Earth in. Daddy says when he was little, they used to dig up pieces of it
from the walls and floors of the canyon where it crashed. But they still had a
life ship in a shed behind their house and they'd play they were escaping
again from the big ship." Vincent shivered. "But some didn't escape. Some died
in the sky and some died because Earth people were scared of them."

I shivered too and rubbed my cold ankles with both hands. I wondered wistfully
if this wasn't asking just a trifle too much of my ability to believe, even in
the name of moonlight.

Vincent brought me back abruptly to my particular Earth. "Look! Here they are
already! Gollee! That was fast. They sure must be mad!" And he trailed out
onto the playground.

I looked expectantly toward the road and only whirled the other way when I
heard the thud of feet. And there they stood, both Mr. and Mrs. Kroginold. And
he did look mad! His-well-rough-hewn is about the kindest description-face
frowning in the moonlight. Mrs. Kroginold surged toward Vincent and Mr.
Kroginold swelled preliminary to a vocal blast-or so I feared-so I stepped
quickly into the silence.

"There's our school capsule," I said, motioning towards the crushed clutter at
the base of the boulder. "That's what he was planning to go up in to rescue a
man in a disabled sputnik. He thought the air inside that shiny whatever he
put around himself would suffice for the trip. He says a man is dying up
there, and he's been carrying that agony around with him, all alone, because
he was afraid to tell you."

I stopped for a breath and Mr. Kroginold deflated and -amazingly-grinned a
wide, attractive grin, half silver, half shadow.

"Why the gutsy little devil!" he said admiringly. "And "I've been fearing the
stock was running out! When I was a boy in the canyon-" But he sobered
suddenly and turned to Vincent. "Vince! If there's need, let's get with it.
What's the deal?" He gathered Vincent into the curve of his arm, and we all