Holding Wonder

"Jemmy?" Mr. Kroginold called across the craft. "What do you think? Would the shock of our appearance be too much?"
"It could hardly be worse than the hell he's in now," said Jemmy, "So-"
"Oh!" cried Vincent. "He thinks he just now died. He thinks we're the Golden Gates!"
"Rather a loose translation." Jemmy flung a smiling glance at us. "But he is wondering if we are the entrance to the afterworld. Ron, can we dock?"
Moments later, there was a faint metallic click and a slight vibration through our craft. Then we three extras stood pressed to the window and watched Mr. Kroginold and Jemmy leave our craft. They were surrounded, it's true, by their shields that caught light and slid it rapidly around, but they did look so unguarded-no, they didn't! They looked right at home and intent on their rescue mission. They disappeared from the sight of our windows. We waited and waited, not saying anything-not aloud, anyway. I could feel a clanking through the floor under me. And a scraping. Then a long nothing again.
Finally they came back in sight, the light from our window glinting across a mutual protective bubble that enclosed the two of them and a third inert figure between them.
"He still thinks he's dead," said Vincent soberly. "He's wondering if he ought to try to pray. He wasn't expecting people after he died. But mostly he's trying not to think."
They brought him in and laid him on the floor. They eased him out of his suit and wrapped him in my blanket. We three gathered around him, looking at his quiet, tight face. So young! I thought. So young! Unexpectedly his eyes opened, and he took us in, one by one. At the sight of Vincent, his mouth dropped open and his eyes fled shut again.
"What'd he do that for?" asked Vincent, a trifle hurt.
"Angels," said his mother firmly, "are not supposed have peanut butter around the mouth!"
The three men consulted briefly. Then Mr. Kroginold prepared to leave our craft again. This time he took a blanket from the Rescue Pack they had brought in the craft.
"He can manage the body alone," said Jemmy, being our intercom. A little later– "He has the body out, but he's gone back-' His forehead creased, then cleared. "Oh, the tapes and instrument packets," he explained to our questioning glances. "He thinks maybe they can study them and prevent this happening again."
He turned to Mrs. Kroginold. "Well, Lizbeth, back when all of you were in school together in the canyon, I wouldn't have given a sandwiched quarter for the chances of any Kroginold ever turning out well. I sprinkle repentant ashes
on my bowed head. Some good can come from Kroginolds!"
And Vincent screamed!
Before we could look his way, there was a blinding flash that exploded through every window as though we had suddenly been stabbed through and through. Then we were all tumbled in blinded confusion from one wall of our craft to another until, almost as suddenly, we floated in a soundless blackness. "Jake! Oh, Jake!" I heard Mrs. Kroginold's whispering gasp. Then she cried out, "Jemmy! Jemmy! What happened? Where's Jake?"
Light came back. From where, I never did know. I hadn't known its source even before.
"The retro-rockets-" I felt more of his answer than I heard. "Maybe they finally fired. Or maybe the whole capsule just blew up. Ron?"
"Might have holed us." A voice I hadn't heard before answered. "Didn't. Capsule's gone."
"But-but-" The enormity of what had happened slowed our thoughts. "Jake!" Mrs. Kroginold screamed. "Jemmy! Ron! Jake's out there!"
And, as suddenly as the outcry came, it was cut off. In terror I crouched on the floor, my arms up defensively, not to my ears as Vincent's had gone-there was nothing to hear-but against the soundless, aimless tumbling of bodies above me. Jemmy and Vincent and Mrs. Kroginold were like corpses afloat in some invisible sea. And Vincent, burrowed into a corner, was a small, silent, humped-up bundle.
I think I would have gone mad in the incomprehensible silence if a hand hadn't clutched mine. Startled, I snatched it away, but gave it back, with a sob, to our shipwrecked stranger. He accepted it with both of his. We huddled together, taking comfort in having someone to cling to. Then I shook with hysterical laughter as I suddenly realized. " `A sort of telepathy'!" I giggled. "They are not dead but speak. Words are slow, you know." I caught the young man's puzzled eyes. "And of very little use in a situation like this."
I called to Ron where he crouched near the amplifier box. "They are all right, aren't they?"
"They?" His head jerked upward. "Of course. Communicating."
"Where's Mr. Kroginold?" I asked. "How can we ever hope to find him out there?"
"Trying to reach him," said Ron, his chin flipping upward again. "Don't feel him dead. Probably knocked out.. Can't find him unconscious."
"Oh."
The stranger's fingers tightened on mine. I looked at him. He was struggling to get up. I let go of him and shakily, on hands and knees we crawled to the window, his knees catching on the blanket. For a long moment, the two of us stared out into the darkness. I watched the lights wheel slowly past, until I reoriented, and we were the ones wheeling. But as soon as I relaxed, again it was the lights wheeling slowly past. I didn't know what we were looking for. I couldn't get any kind of perspective on anything outside our craft. Any given point of light could have been a dozen light-years away-or could have been a glint inside the glass-or was it glass?-against which I had my nose
pressed.
But the stranger seemed to know what he was looking for. Suddenly I cried out and twisted my crushed fingers to free them. He let go and gestured toward the darkness, saying something tentative and hopeful.
"Ron!" I called, trying to see what the man was seeing. "Maybe-maybe he sees something:" There was a stir above me and Jemmy slid down to the floor beside me.
"A visual sighting?" he whispered tensely.
"I don't know," I whispered back. "Maybe he-''
Jemmy laid his hand on the man's wrist, and then concentrated on whatever it was out in the void that had caught the stranger's attention.
"Ron-" Jemmy gestured out the window and-well, guess Ron gestured with our craft-because things outside swam different way until I caught a flick or a gleam or a movement.
"There, there, there," crooned Jemmy, almost as though soothing an anxious child. "There, there, there, Lizbeth!"
And all of us except Ron were crowded against the window, watching a bundle of some sort tumbling toward us.
"Shield intact," whispered Jenny. "Praise the Power!"
"Oh, Daddy, Daddy!" choked Vincent against his whitened knuckles. Mrs. Kroginold clung to him wordlessly.
Then Jemmy was gone, streaking through our craft, away outside from us. I saw the glint of his shield as he rounded our craft. I saw him gather the tumbling bundle up and disappear with it. Then he was back in the craft again, kneeling-unglinted-beside Mr. Kroginold as he lay on the floor. Mrs. Kroginold and Vincent launched themselves toward them.
Our stranger tugged at his half-shed blanket. I shuffled my knees off it and he shivered himself back into it.
They had to peel Mr. Kroginold's arms from around the instrument packet before they could work on him-in their odd, undoing way of working. And the stranger and I exchanged wavery smiles of congratulations when Mr. Kroginold finally opened his eyes.
So that was it. After it was all over, I got the deep, breath-drawing feeling I get when I have finished a most engrossing book, and a sort of last-page-flipping-feeling, wistfully wishing there were more-just a little more!
Oh, the loose ends? I guess there were a few. They tied themselves quite casually and briskly in the next few days.
It was only a matter of moments after Mr. Kroginold had sat up and smiled a craggy smile of satisfaction at the packet he had brought back with him that Ron said, "Convenient." And we spiraled down-or so it felt to me to the Earth beneath while Jemmy, fingers to our stranger's wrist, communicated to him in such a way that the stranger's eyes got very large and astonished and he looked at me-at me! –questioningly. I nodded. Well, what else could I do? He