and he shook the boy.

Bobby was awake immediately and, together, they watched its approach. It
was moving slowly, turned on an edge. It looked like a knife of light.
Then it rolled over, or shifted its form, and the familiar shape
appeared. The humming stopped and the Saucer floated in the moonlight
like a giant metallic lily-pad, perhaps a half mile away.

"Try now, Bobby," he said, attempting to keep calm.

The boy stood in the moonlight in front of the blind, very still, as if
collecting the silence out of the night. Once he shook his head as
though to clear it and started to say something. Then, for a long
minute, he held his face toward the moon as if he were listening.

Suddenly, he giggled.

"What is it?" Ward snapped, unable to repress his impatience.

"I'm not sure. I thought it seemed something like a joke."

"Try to ask where they're from."

A moment later, the boy shook his head. "I guess I can't get anything,"
he said. "All I seem to get is that they're saying, '_We're here_.' As
if they didn't understand me."

"All right. Try to get _anything_."

A moment later, the ship turned on edge, or shifted its shape, and slid
back into the sky. Ward picked up the phone and called Saucer Control.

"Got it," the bored voice said.

He put down the phone and sat in silence, feeling sick with frustration.

"Might as well knock off, Bobby," he said gently to the boy. "I guess
that's all for the night. You run along and hit the sack."

The boy started to leave and then turned back. "I'm sorry, John," he
said. "I guess I'm not very good at it. There's one thing though...." He
hesitated.

"Yes?"

"I don't think they know any poetry. In fact, I'm pretty sure of that."

"All right," Ward said, laughing. "I guess that's the most important
thing in _your_ life right now. Run along, Bobby."

* * * * *

An hour later, his watch ended and he started for home, still feeling
depressed at having failed. He was passing the dormitory when he saw it.
It hung in the air, almost overhead. The color of the moonlight itself,
it was hard to spot. But it was not the Saucer that held him rigid with
attention.

Over the roof of the dormitory, small and growing smaller as it went
straight toward the Saucer, he saw a figure, then another and then a
third. While he watched, there was a jet of blue light from the object
in the sky--the opening of an airlock, he thought--and the figures
disapp