"Robert F. Young - Operation Peanut Butter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

not to worry any more about his tomatoes." Her thoughts seemed strangeтАФas though there were tears in
them. "Good-by, GeoffreyтАФ"
"Good-by, Geoffrey," Mr. Wings echoed.
"Good-by, Sally Sunbeam," Geoffrey said aloud. "Good-by, Mr. Wings."

His father had just started to look down at him when the lightning hit the clearing. At least his father
thought it was lightning, but Geoffrey knew better. And he understood suddenly why the house had
seemed so peculiar. It was peculiar only when you thought of it as a house instead of as a spaceship.
His father was plunging ahead into the underbrush, shouting: "If a tree catches fire, the whole woods
will go!" Geoffrey followed him. But there wasn't any fire in the clearing when they reached it. There
wasn't anything in the clearing at all, except a small blackened spot where the "house" had stood, and an
acrid chemical smell.
His father was shining the flashlight around wildly. "Well, I'll be damned !" he was saying. "I could
have sworn that was a bolt of lightning. But it couldn't have been of course. Lightning means a
thunderstorm, and a thunderstorm means rain, and anybody, even a fool like me, knows it doesn't rain
any more!"
Suddenly there was an odd sound in the leaves of the trees, a gentle rustling sound. His father
stopped shining the light around then, and stood perfectly still in the middle of the clearing, his face
uplifted to the sky. The rustling sound grew louder, became a steady patter. Geoffrey felt the first drop of
rain then, and then the second. Abruptly the whole sky lit up with lightningтАФreal lightning, this timeтАФand
from somewhere, thunder crashed.
Slowly, the patter of raindrops turned into a steady downpour, and still his father stood unmoving in
the clearing, his face uplifted to the sky. Lightning flashed again, and Geoffrey saw how wet his fatherтАЩs
face was, saw the raindrops coursing down his cheeks. And suddenly he realized that some of the drops
weren't rain at all, but tears instead.