The Flying Cuspidors

A trumpet-tooter in love can be a wonderful sight, if Local 802 will forgive our saying so; when extraterrestrials get involved too—oh brother! V. R. Francis, who lives in California and has previously appeared in men's magazines, became 21 and sold to FANTASTIC UNIVERSE all in the same week.
This was love, and what could be done about it? It's been happening to guys for a long time, now.
Hotlips Grogan may not be as handsome and good-looking like me or as brainy and intellectual, but in this fiscal year of 2056 he is the gonest trumpet-tooter this side of Alpha Centauri. You would know what I mean right off if you ever hear him give out with Stars Fell on Venus, or Martian Love Song, or Shine On, Harvest Luna. Believe me, it is out of this world. He is not only hot, he is radioactive. On a clear day he is playing notes you cannot hear without you are wearing special equipment.
That is for a fact.
Mostly he is a good man—cool, solid, and in the warp. But one night he is playing strictly in three or four wrong keys.
I am the ivory man for this elite bunch of musicians, and I am scooping up my three-dee music from the battered electronic eighty-eight when he comes over looking plenty worried.
Eddie, he says, I got a problem.
You got a problem, all right, I tell him. You are not getting a job selling Venusian fish, the way you play today.
He frowns. It is pretty bad, I suppose.
Bad is not the word, I say, but I spare his feelings and do not say the word it is. What gives?
He looks around him, careful to see if anybody in the place is close enough to hear. But it is only afternoon rehearsal on the gambling ship Saturn , and the waiters are busy mopping up the floor and leaning on their long-handled sterilizers, and the boys in the band are picking up their music to go down to Earth to get some shut-eye or maybe an atomic beer or two before we open that night.
Hotlips Grogan leans over and whispers in my ear. It is the thrush, he says.