full of energy. It's big—so big that it covers four-fifths of the globe. Or is it two-thirds? Anyhow, it goes on and on. You needn't believe me. Ask any oceanographer!"

"No, Daddy! It's dying. So are you and Mommy, and Uncle Henry and Aunt Katie! And everybody! But I'm not! I'm new—and I'll never die!"

Yes, Johnny was new. But so were all children. It seemed incredible that Johnny could be so aware of the strong, bright flood of life in himself. The strength of childhood could make even the sea seem old and tired, perhaps. But what other little boy of six could express the inexpressible with the self-conscious artistry of a Dali?

A child's imagination could be winged and white and fearful. You could no more curb it than you could clamp a bit on Pegasus. But behind Johnny's unwashed ears were murmurs stranger than any heard in a sea shell.

The miracle of Johnny!

The door opened and Johnny's mother came into the library.

"Stephen, I've got to talk to you! It's about Johnny."

Johnny's father turned slowly, the wonder of Johnny in retrospect bowing to a slightly older Johnny in the flesh. Memory fell away, and reality took its place, so that Stephen was no longer smiling when he met his wife's troubled gaze.

"Well, what is it? Is Johnny still sulking?"

Helen Ambler nodded. Stephen noticed that she stood very still and that her hands were tightly clenched.

"Stephen, I'm worried! He says the strangest things!"

"Does he now? What, for instance?"

"That people are coming for him. Total strangers. Coming to take him away from us."

"He's living in a world of fantasy," Stephen said, scowling. "All children do, more or less."

"Stephen, it isn't only that. He keeps talking to Fuzzy Head, making a confidant of Fuzzy Head. When I go to him he pushes me away. But nothing's too good for that ridiculous doll. It's horrible, but I've got to say it, Stephen. Johnny's developing a fixation!"

"You mean a psychiatrist would call it a fixation," Stephen said, a trifle impatiently. "They put everything in 

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