If Pancho had any reply for that, I don't know, for Gleda came in. She was wearing her hair blue and she wore a really striking pattern of iridescent blue paint with a double snake pattern coiling up her legs and torso.
The party got under way very quickly. Gleda supplied the alkie and treacle and everyone nibbled their own synthetic protein out of their pouches. The combination soon had an hilarious effect on the gathering and a couple that I didn't know, a boy and girl in particolored green and blue, starting throwing small articles of furniture at the Eyespy over my head.
Couldn't hurt the Eye, of course, but I was kept pretty busy dodging. Then Thais suggested a quick game of Clobber. I must confess, not without satisfaction, that I cheated a little and peeked through the bandage so I could land a real lulu on Pancho's long pointed nose.
When Gleda stopped the bleeding and he was on his feet, someone asked Lyra for a song and the cry was taken up by all. I caught a glimpse of the five Venerians' round eyes peering at us out of the kitchenette. But Gleda was saving them for the last—the piece de resistance.
Lyra tore down a drapery and staggering a bit from two or three too many alkie-and-treacles, wrapped herself in it from head to foot. There was a shocked sort of gasp from the watchers. Professor Cripps turned red under his yellow paint.
Gleda put a tape on the MusiKall and Lyra went into her act. I've never seen anything like it. Swaying like a cobra, her bare feet pounding out the beat on the plastic floor, she raised the temperature about ten degrees in that room. Her green painted lips twisted in agony, her eyes rolled in the chromatic mask of her face. An old folk tune—not the sort of thing she generally did. Something that really tore at the heartstrings. A song that dated centuries back. History and the sense of our way of life lived in that room for a few short moments. Her voice was a blood-stirring trumpet—
"Mairzy Doats and Lammsy Doats
And little kiddsie Divy—
A Kiddlee Tivy Tooo Wouldn't you—?"
When it was over, there was a breathless hush in the room. I wondered where in the world Gleda had gotten that MusiKall tape—It had probably cost her plenty.