waiting for the copter to get well off, then tried to stand up. He was able to. He tried to walk, and was able to. He began to run across the fields, skirting trees and bushes. If the baggage door held shut and they didn't see him above, he had plenty of time to get to Murph and into the Hester. He was halfway there when the copter veered and came humming back. It came dropping toward him and he knew he was spotted. He ran stumbling into a stretch of trees and woods, altered course and dropped behind a big rock at the edge of the trees. There were leaves drifted against it and he burrowed under them. Panting, sweaty and itching, with aching legs, he watched and listened as the copter landed. The port opened and they poured out. "He doesn't know what he's doing," said his mother. "We're going to find him." Mr. Fobey drew back a little, his rubbery face pink-creased and nervous. "In there--in all the brush and snakes and swamp?" She set her jaw and touched his arm. "I'm counting on you, Mr. Fobey." They entered the woods, the children ranging ahead like shrill, bloodhungry little pups, poking and peeping and rustling. Pete tried to lie like a stone beneath the leaves. The adults might not have found him, but the children hunted him eagerly and fiercely, like some huge prize Easter egg, and the sudden screech of little Sally Doolittle skirled his discovery. Mr. Fobey came up first. Pete stood up, leaf-cluttered, and screamed at him. "You're a stupid fat crot!" he shrilled. "A crot! A godamn stupid fat crot, and leave me alone, I'm not going with you!" But he did go with them. On Indian Hill, Fobey set up his air sluice, stripping off the soil as dust and laying it back down as dirt. They turned up flint arrowheads and pestels and they found a buried skeleton, an orange smear on the breast bone where a talisman bag had lain. The children cheered and laughed and quarrelled--all but Pete. Pete climbed a tall pine. All afternoon he watched the black glass rocket lift high on its fine blue skirt and streak toward the cold black place of stars, and come dropping back like a needle that is light as a feather, to take on more joyriders and swoop back upward. It was like watching unfolding poems in motion. _I'll be a spaceman_, he told himself. _I don't care what happens, I'm going to be a spaceman!_ He stayed in the tree all day and watched the Hester rise and return and on the last flight, when she lifted on a voyage that would terminate in some other part of the country in some other field, he saw the regal blue of the jet suddenly flush to a deep rose orange, then back to blue, and he thought of Murph and was suddenly happy. His day would come.Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed. Creating the works from print editions 

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