, 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.

I think maybe it is indigestion.

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ August 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this pub