The Green Book Read Online Free Page A

the lake, and looked over, they found they were not looking down at Shine but down into a strange new valley.
    It was a scooped-out shape, gently sloping and curved. They ran down the slope into the valley. It was like standing in the bottom of a bowl, or nearly like that, except that one edge of the bowl was missing, and through the break in the rim of hill the lake could be seen. There were a few scrubby bushes with bright crystalline blue flowers on them, and a lot of brown boulders scattered around all over the lower slopes and the valley floor.
    When Pattie and Jason called to each other, their voices seemed very loud and clear, as though the hillside was talking back at them in their own voices.
    When they crossed the bowl of the new valley and climbed up to the top of its far side, they found themselves where they had expected to be before, on one of the ridges that bounded the plain of Shine, and in sight of home.
    Pattie took Father and Sarah and Joe to see the valley a few days later, when the Guide ruled a rest day.
    â€œA natural amphitheater,” Father said. “Perhaps we should have made our village here.”
    â€œOh no, Father,” said Sarah. “Think of having to shift all these rocks!”
    â€œI like the rocks,” said Pattie. “They’re fun to climb up and jump off!” And she showed them, by climbing up the nearest one.
    â€œIt’s odd,” said Joe. “I wonder why they’re all rounded like that?”
    â€œGlacial boulders?” wondered Father. “But why all here, and none on the plain?”
    â€œWell, thank goodness for that,” said Joe. “Sarah’s right. It would be terrible work if we had to clear them to plow.”
    Sarah was sitting on one now, chanting to herself, and listening to the sound of her voice ringing around the bowl of hillside. “I’m the King of the Castle, get down, you dirty rascal…”
    â€œCan’t you think of anything better to say than that?” demanded Father. And he began to say, very loud and clear, “I wandered lonely as a cloud,/That floats on high o’er vales and hills,/ When all at once I saw a crowd,/ A host of golden daffodils.” Then he stopped and shook his head. “I can’t remember any more.”
    Then Pattie said, “What’s a cloud, Father? What’s a daffodil?” and then wished she hadn’t, because it made Father look suddenly sad.
    â€œDon’t you even remember clouds, Pattie?” he asked, and took her hand in his for the walk home.
    When she could get Sarah by herself, Pattie asked about clouds. Sarah said they were big white bolsters in the sky that made it rain. But on the new planet there weren’t any things in the sky, and every night as darkness fell, a downfall of rain came close after it, very heavy and sudden, so that you fell asleep with the sound of it on the roof; and by midnight it had stopped, and the mornings dawned bright and clear, with beads of moisture on every branch and leaf.
    â€œYou can’t have rain without clouds,” Sarah said. “What comes here must be a kind of dew. Dewfall. I like it better. Rain used to spoil the days at home.”
    The day after the trip with Father to see Boulder Valley, the land hopper finished orbiting and came back. The explorers were very impressed with the village. And they had found out a lot. They went up to the spacecraft right away, to put the tapes they had made during their flight through the computer. The computer would be able to manage just this last task, then the battery cells would be used up and there would be no more super science from the Earth to help them.
    When the tapes were processed, all the people met in the big hut that had been made for gatherings. The Guide told us the news.
    â€œWe are on quite a small planet,” he told us all. “More like the moon than the Earth. We are orbiting a bright sun, but we are orbiting much