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 disappeared, one by one, into the interior of the ship. Ward began to run.
It was strictly forbidden for a teacher to enter the dormitory—that part of the boys' world was completely their own. But he ignored that ruling now as he raced up the stairs. All he could think of was that this was the chance to identify the invaders. The boys who had levitated themselves up to the Saucer would be missing.