pump started, sucking
dry with a harsh racket. The natives twittered in surprise. Then
the water came, and the pump settled down to a steady _thugg-thugg,
thugg-thugg_.

The Svants seemed to like the new sound; they grimaced in pleasure
and moved closer; within forty or fifty feet, they all squatted on
the ground and sat entranced. Others came in from the fields, drawn
by the sound. They, too, came up and squatted, until there was a
semicircle of them. The tank took a long time to fill; until it did,
they all sat immobile and fascinated. Even after it stopped, many
remained, hoping that it would start again. Paul Meillard began
wondering, a trifle uneasily, if that would happen every time
the pump went on.

"They get a positive pleasure from it. It affects them the same way
Luis' voice does."

"Mean I have a voice like a pump?" Gofredo demanded.

"Well, I'm going to find out," Ayesha Keithley said. "The next time
that starts, I'm going to make a recording, and compare it with your
voice-recording. I'll give five to one there'll be a similarity."

Questell got the foundation for the sonics lab dug, and began
pouring concrete. That took water, and the pump ran continuously
that afternoon. Concrete-mixing took more water the next day, and
by noon the whole village population, down to the smallest child,
was massed at the pumphouse, enthralled. Mom was snared by the sound
like any of the rest; only Sonny was unaffected. Lillian and Ayesha
compared recordings of the voices of the team with the pump-sound;
in Gofredo's they found an identical frequency-pattern.

"We'll need the new apparatus to be positive about it, but it's there,
all right," Ayesha said. "That's why Luis' voice pleases them."

"That tags me; Old Pump-Mouth," Gofredo said. "It'll get all through
the Corps, and they'll be calling me that when I'm a four-star general,
if I live that long."

Meillard was really worried, now. So was Bennet Fayon. He said so
that afternoon at cocktail time.

"It's an addiction," he declared. "Once they hear it, they have no
will to resist; they just squat and listen. I don't know what it's
doing to them, but I'm scared of it."

"I know one thing it's doing," Meillard said. "It's keeping them
from their work in the fields. For all we know, it may cause them
to lose a crop they need badly for subsistence."

* * * * *

The native they had come to call the Lord Mayor evidently thought