'Trying to reach him,' said Ron, his chin flipping upward again. 'Don't feel him dead. Probably knocked out.. Can't find him unconscious.' 'Oh.' The stranger's fingers tightened on mine. I looked at him. He was struggling to get up. I let go of him and shakily, on hands and knees we crawled to the window, his knees catching on the blanket. For a long moment, the two of us stared out into the darkness. I watched the lights wheel slowly past, until I reoriented, and we were the ones wheeling. But as soon as I relaxed, again it was the lights wheeling slowly past. I didn't know what we were looking for. I couldn't get any kind of perspective on anything outside our craft. Any given point of light could have been a dozen light-years away-or could have been a glint inside the glass-or was it glass?-against which I had my nose pressed. But the stranger seemed to know what he was looking for. Suddenly I cried out and twisted my crushed fingers to free them. He let go and gestured toward the darkness, saying something tentative and hopeful. 'Ron!' I called, trying to see what the man was seeing. 'Maybe-maybe he sees something:' There was a stir above me and Jemmy slid down to the floor beside me. 'A visual sighting?' he whispered tensely. 'I don't know,' I whispered back. 'Maybe he-'' Jemmy laid his hand on the man's wrist, and then concentrated on whatever it was out in the void that had caught the stranger's attention. 'Ron-' Jemmy gestured out the window and-well, guess Ron gestured with our craft-because things outside swam different way until I caught a flick or a gleam or a movement. 'There, there, there,' crooned Jemmy, almost as though soothing an anxious child. 'There, there, there, Lizbeth!' And all of us except Ron were crowded against the window, watching a bundle of some sort tumbling toward us. 'Shield intact,' whispered Jenny. 'Praise the Power!' 'Oh, Daddy, Daddy!' choked Vincent against his whitened knuckles. Mrs. Kroginold clung to him wordlessly. Then Jemmy was gone, streaking through our craft, away outside from us. I saw the glint of his shield as he rounded our craft. I saw him gather the tumbling bundle up and disappear with it. Then he was back in the craft again, kneeling-unglinted-beside Mr. Kroginold as he lay on the floor. Mrs. Kroginold and Vincent launched themselves toward them. Our stranger tugged at his half-shed blanket. I shuffled my knees off it and he shivered himself back into it. They had to peel Mr. Kroginold's arms from around the instrument packet before they could work on him-in their odd, undoing way of working. And the stranger and I exchanged wavery smiles of congratulations when Mr. Kroginold finally opened his eyes. So that was it. After it was all over, I got the deep, breath-drawing feeling I get when I have finished a most engrossing book, and a sort of last-page-flipping-feeling, wistfully wishing there were more-just a little more! Oh, the loose ends? I guess there were a few. They tied themselves quite casually and briskly in the next few days. It was only a matter of moments after Mr. Kroginold had sat up and smiled a craggy smile of satisfaction at the packet he had brought back with him that Ron said, 'Convenient.' And we spiraled down-or so it felt to me to the Earth beneath while Jemmy, fingers to our stranger's wrist, communicated to him in such a way that the stranger's eyes got very large and astonished and he looked at me-at me! –questioningly. I nodded. Well, what else could I do? He was asking something, and, so far, every question around these People seemed to have a positive answer! So it was that we delivered him, not to the FBI in Washington, but to his own doorstep at a launching base somewhere deep in his own country. We waited, hovering under our unlight and well flowed, until the door swung open and gulped him in, instrument packet, my blanket, and all. Imagination boggles at the reception there must have been for him! They surely knew the capsule had been destroyed in orbit. And to have him walk in-! And Mr. Kroginold struggled for a couple of days with 'Virus X' without benefit of the company doctor, then went back to work. A couple of weeks later they moved away to another lab, half across the country, where Mr. Kroginold could go on pursuing whatever it is he is pursuing. And a couple of days before they left, I quite unexpectedly gave Vincent a going-away gift. That morning Vincent firmed his lips, his cheeks coloring, and shook his head. 'I can't read it,' he said, and began to close the book. 'That I don't believe,' I said firmly, my flare of exasperation igniting into sudden inspiration. Vincent looked at me, startled. He was so used to my acceptance of his reading block that he was shaken as I . 'But I can't,' he said patiently. 'Why not?' I asked bluntly. 'I have a block,' he said as flatly. 'What triggers it?' I probed. 'Why-why Mother says anything that suggests unhappy compulsion-' 'How do you know this story has any such thing in it?' asked. 'All it says in the title is a name-Stickeen.' 'But I know,' he said miserably, his head bent as he flicked the pages of the story with his thumb. 'I'll tell you how you know,' I said. 'You know because you've read the story already.' 'But I haven't!' Vincent's face puckered. 'You only brought this book today!' 'That's true,' I said. 'And you turned the pages to see how long the story was. Only then did you decide yon wouldn't read it-again!' 'I don't understand-' Wonder was stirring in his eyes. 'Vincent,' I said, 'you read this whole story in the time it took you to turn the pages. You gulped it page by page and that's how you know there's unhappy compulsion in it. So, you refuse to read it-again.' 'Do-do you really think so?' asked Vincent in a hopeful half whisper. 'Oh, Teacher, can I really read after all? I've been so ashamed! One of the People, and not able to read!' 'Let's check,' I said, excited, too. 'Give me the book. I'll ask you questions-' And I did. And he answered every single one of them! 'I can read!' He snatched the book from me and hugged it to him with both arms. 'Hey! Gene! I can read!' 'Big deal!' said Gene, glancing up from his labor on the butcher paper spread on the floor. He was executing a fanciful rendition, in tempera, of the Indians greeting Columbus in a chartreuse, magenta and shriek-pink jungle. 'I learned to read in the first grade. Which way do a crocodile's knees bend?' 'All you have to remember,' I said to a slightly dashed Vincent, 'is to slow down a bit and be a little less empathetic.' I was as pleased as he was. 'And to think of the time I wasted for both of us, making you sound out your words- 'But I need it,' he said. 'I still can't spell for sour apples!' Vincent gave me a going-away present the Friday night that the Kroginolds came to say goodbye. We were sitting in the twilight on the school porch. Vincent, shaken by having to leave Rinconcillo and Gene, and still thrilling to knowing he could read, gave me one of his treasures. It was a small rock, an odd crystalline formation that contrived at the same time to be betryoidal. In the curve of my palm it even had a strange feeling of resilience, though there was no yielding in it when I pressed my thumb to it. 'Daddy brought it to me from the moon,' he told me, and deftly fielded it as my astonishment let it fall. 'I'll probably get another one, someday,' he said as he gave it back to me. 'But even if I don't, I want you to have it.' Mr. and Mrs. Kroginold and I talked quietly for a while with no reference to parting. I shook them a little with, 'Why do you suppose that stranger could send his thoughts to Vincent? I mean, he doesn't pick up distress from everyone, very apparently. Do you suppose that man might be from People like you? Are there People like you
