focussed?"

"I don't see ..."

"Neither do I," said Soames. "But I've got a hunch that the little
pocket gadget Fran carries has some superconductor in it. I think I
could make something that wouldn't be his instrument, at all--it would
do different things--but that gadget does suggest some possibilities I
fairly ache to try out."

"And I," said Gail, with a faint smile, "I want to try to write
something that nobody would print. I'd like to write the real story as I
see it, the children from a viewpoint nobody will want to see."

He looked at her, puzzled.

"My syndicate wants a story about the children that nobody will have to
think about. No recognition of a problem in plain decency with the
children considered as human as they are, but just a story that
everybody could read without thinking anything but what they wanted to.
They're nice children. Somebody raised them very well. But with most
people nowadays thinking that if children aren't ill-bred they're
frustrated...."

She made a helpless gesture as the plane bellowed onward.

* * * * *

Presently the moon shone on Fran's face. He moved in his sleep. After a
little he opened his eyes and gasped a little. He looked startledly
around, an instinct of anyone waking in a strange place. Then he turned
back. He saw the moon.

He uttered a little cry. His face worked. He stared at the misshapen,
incompletely round companion of Earth as if its appearance had some
extraordinary, horrifying meaning for him. His hands clenched.

Behind him, Gail whispered:

"Brad! He's--horrified! Does that mean that he and the other children
need to signal to someone ..."

"I doubt it very much," said Soames. "If his parents and companions had
landed on the moon, and I stopped him from signalling to them, he might
look hopefully at it, or longingly, but not the way he does."

Fran touched the other boy, Hod. Hod waked, and Fran spoke to him in an
urgent whisper. Hod jerked his head about and stared at the moon as Fran
had done. He made a little whimpering noise. Then Mal made a bubbling
sound, as from a bad dream. She waked. Then Zani roused and began to ask
what was obviously a question, and stopped short. They spoke to each
other in hushed voices in that unintelligible language of theirs.

"I've got an idea," said Soames in a flat, unbelieving tone. "Let's
see."

Soames went forward and into the pilot's compartment. He came back with
bin