"Come on," I say mysteriously. "You and me have got things to do."
It is hard to say who is more nervous that night, Hotlips or a certain
piano player with my name. Frankie is smirking like always, and Stella
Starlight is sitting and looking beautiful while she waits for her cue.
Hotlips is fumbling with his trumpet like maybe he never sees one
before. And I--even I am not exactly calm like always.
The band begins to warm up, but we do not knock ourselves out because
there are still no customers to speak of. Frankie's license makes it
plain that he has to stay over the western hemisphere so he has to wait
until it gets dark enough there for the people to want to go
night-clubbing, even though it is not really night on the _Saturn_, or
morning or anything else.
We play along like always, and Hotlips has his trumpet pressed into his
face, and nothing but beautiful sounds come from the band. I do not know
if Frankie is altogether happy about this, for he does not like Hotlips
and would like this chance to bounce him. But what surprises me most is
that the thrush, Stella Starlight, keeps looking back at Hotlips like
she notices him for the first time and is plenty worried by what she
sees.
We have a short break after a while and I am telling Hotlips that the
idea goes over real great, when Stella Starlight waltzes over. Hotlips'
big eyes bug out and I can see him shaking and covered with goosebumps.
"You do not play like that before, Hotlips," she coos. "What did you
do?"
Hotlips blushes and stammers, "Eddie and I fix--" But I give him a kick
in his big shins before he gives the whole thing away.
"Hotlips does some practicing this afternoon," I tell her, "to get his
lip in shape for tonight."
She looks at me like she is looking through me, and then she turns back
to Hotlips and says, soft and murmuring: "Please do not play too high,
Hotlips. I am delicate and am disturbed by high sounds."
She waltzes away, and I scratch my head and try to figure out what this
pitch is for. Hotlips is not trying to figure out anything; he just sits
there looking like he has just got his trumpet out of hock for the last
time.
"Hotlips," I say to him.
"Go away, please, Eddie," he tells me. "I am in heaven."
"You will be in the poorhouse or maybe even in jail if you tell somebody
how we fix your playing," I warn him.
"I still feel funny feelings though, Eddie," he tells me, frowning,
"like I cannot hit high notes now if I try."
"Then do not try," I advise. "One problem at a time is too much."
There is a commotion at the entrance on the other side of the dance
floor, where some people all dressed up come in. A woman is holding her
head and moaning and threatening to faint all over the place.
Frankie hurries over to us, running fidgety hands through his hair. "For
goodness sake, play something," he almost begs.
"What gives?" I inquire.
"Flying cuspidors," Frankie says in a frantic tone. "They are all around
the place, like they are maybe mad at something, and a few minutes ago
they buzz the ferry and get the passengers all nervous and upset. If
they do that again, business will be bad; maybe even now it will be bad.
Play something!"
He hops out in front with his baton and gives us a quick one-two, and we
all swing into "Space On My Hands," real loud so as to get people's
minds off things which Frankie wants to get people's minds off of.
Stella Starlight gets up to sing, but she looks more like she would
rather do something else. She stares at Hotlips and at the trumpet on
his lips and begins to quiver like she is about to do a dance.
I remember she says she does not like high notes, and this song has some
pretty well up in the stratosphere, especially for the trumpet section,
which is Hotlips.
She is frowning like maybe she is thinking real hard about something and
is surprised her thoughts do no good. Her face becomes waxy and there is
a frightened look on it.
She quivers some more, as the notes go up and up and up. Then she lets
out a shriek, like maybe she is going to pieces.
And then she does. Actually.
Right before our popping eyeballs she goes to pieces.
As each one in the band sees what is going on, he stops playing, until
finally Hotlips is the only one. But the trumpet is in Hotlips' hand,
and the music is coming from the recording machine we place under his
chair. The notes are clear and smooth, and you can almost feel the air
shaking with them.
But nobody notices the music or where it comes from. They are too busy
watching the thrush, Stella Starlight.
She stands there, her face as white as clay, shaking like a carrot going
through a mixmaster. And then tiny cracks appear on her face, on her
arms, even in her dress, and then a large one appears in her forehead
and goes down through her body. She splits in the middle like a cracked
walnut, and there in the center, floating three feet from the floor is a
small flying cuspidor.
Nobody in the room says anything. They just stand there, bug-eyed and
frightened like anything. Somewhere, across the room, a woman faints. I
do not feel too well myself, and I am afraid to look to see how Hotlips
takes this.
There is no sound, but I hear a voice in my mind and know that the
others hear it too. The voice sounds like it is filled with wire and
metal and is not exactly human. It says:
"_You win, Hotlips Grogan. I, as advance agent in disguise, tell you
this. We will go away and leave you and your people alone. We place a
mental block in your mind, but you outsmart us, and now you know our
weakness. We cannot stand high sounds which you can play so easy on your
trumpet. We find ourselves a home someplace else._"
With that, the cuspidor shoots across the room and plows right through
the wall.
"That's the engine room!" Frankie wails.
There is a sudden explosion from the other side of the wall, and
everybody decides all at once they would like to be someplace else, and
they all pick the same spot. The space ferry is pretty crowded, but we
jam aboard it and drift away from the _Saturn_--musicians, waiters and
paying customers all sitting in each other's laps.
The _Saturn_ is wobbling around, with flames shooting out at all angles,
and Frankie is holding his head and moaning. In the distance, you can
just about make out little specks of cuspidors heading for the wild
black yonder.
So all is well that ends well, and this is it.
Frankie uses his insurance money to open a rest home on Mars for ailing
musicians.
Hotlips is all broken up, in a manner of speaking, over Stella
Starlight's turning out to be not human, but he consoles himself with a
good job playing trumpet in a burlesque house where the girls wear
costumes made of glass and other brittle stuff.
* * * * *
As for me, Mamie gets me a job playing piano at the place where she
works, and everything is okay except for one thing. When Mamie is around
I cannot seem to concentrate on my playing. I feel a funny feeling in my
stomach, like maybe it is full of supersuds or something, and my mouth
is dry like cotton candy.