"My latest composition will do so even more graphically, for it has been composed on a deliberate psychological foundation. This song will show Mars to you. It will show you my people, and what my people want.
"I may add that I have studied the law carefully, and I can assure you that this composition is not military in nature.
"Ladies and gentlemen of Earth, accompanied by the orchestra I shall now play The Martianne."
In the control rooms of the auditorium and of relay points throughout the world, censors, vaguely alarmed by Cornel's words, hovered with their fingers on cutoff keys. Then they relaxed. Cornel had told the truth. There was nothing of a military nature in the opening bars of The Martianne.
It was a theme handled, but less competently, in some of his other compositions. The woodwinds began on a soft, sad note, gradually rising in power, like the thin winds that moaned across the Martian desert sands. Into this, almost inaudibly at first, crept the clear piano notes that marked the cautious, wondering intrusion of humanity on an alien world.
The drums beat the construction of the domes, the horns blared the landing of the spaceships, the violins cried the hopes of the men and women who went to Mars to find a new life. It was a picture in music, so skilfully drawn that when the first discordance crept in, every listener could identify it instantly as the age-old greed of man seeking to subvert frontier freedoms to his own selfish ends.
When the blare of trumpets and the ruffle of drums thundered into the final militant theme of The Martianne, every listener knew it bespoke the valiant fight of men for freedom against an oppressor.
Every listener knew what he heard was music that had been prohibited on Earth for a decade—yet they listened. The censors, shocked, galvanized, started to act, to cut off the broadcast—and could not. The powerful music had crept insidiously into their minds, and their fingers were paralyzed above the keys while The Martianne flamed triumphant through the air of Earth.
When the final note had died away, Cornel stood up at his piano and said into the microphones:
"That is the music of Mars. Remember it, people of Earth."