es glued to
the headline.

* * * * *

He was kind to his sister, however. He read the news item aloud, if an
account so startling could be called an item. To Jimmy it seemed more
like a dazzling burst of light in the sky.

"A New Orleans resident reported today that he saw a big bright object
'roundish like a disk' flying north, against the wind. 'It was all
lighted up from inside!' the observer stated. 'As far as I could tell
there were no signs of life aboard the thing. It was much bigger than
any of the flying saucers previously reported!'"

"People keep seeing them!" Jimmy muttered, after a pause. "Nobody knows
where they come from! Saucers flying through the sky, high up at night.
In the daytime, too! Maybe we're being _watched_, Pigtail!"

"Watched? Jimmy, what do you mean? What you talking about?"

Jimmy stared at his sister, the paper jiggling in his clasp. "It's way
over your head, Pigtail!" he said sympathetically. "I'll prove it!
What's a planet?"

"A star in the sky, you dope!" Pigtail almost screamed. "Wait'll Uncle
Al hears what a meanie you are. If I wasn't your sister you wouldn't
dare grab a paper that doesn't belong to you."

Jimmy refused to be enraged. "A planet's not a star, Pigtail," he said
patiently. "A star's a big ball of fire like the sun. A planet is small
and cool, like the Earth. Some of the planets may even have people on
them. Not people like us, but people all the same. Maybe we're just
frogs to them!"

"You're crazy, Jimmy! Crazy, crazy, you hear?"

Jimmy started to reply, then shut his mouth tight. Big waves were
nothing new in the wake of steamboats, but the shantyboat wasn't just
riding a swell. It was swaying and rocking like a floating barrel in the
kind of blow Shantyboaters dreaded worse than the thought of dying.

Jimmy knew that a big blow could come up fast. Straight down from the
sky in gusts, from all directions, banging against the boat like a
drunken roustabout, slamming doors, tearing away mooring planks.

* * * * *

The river could rise fast too. Under the lashing of a hurricane blowing
up from the gulf the river could lift a shantyboat right out of the
water, and smash it to smithereens against a tree.

But now the blow was coming from just one part of the sky. A funnel of
wind was churning the river into a white froth and raising big swells
directly offshore. But the river wasn't rising and