"They have no mind," said Cartwright. "That is, no mind to speak of. Just a bundle of nervous reactions, probably without the type of sensory perceptions that we have, but more than likely with other totally different sensory perceptions to make up for it. Sensitive things. Music to them is an expression of sensory impressions. They can't help the way they sing any more than a moth can help killing himself against a candle-flame. And they're naturally telepathic. They pick up thoughts and pass them along. Retain none of the thought, you understand, just pass it along. Like old fashioned telephone wires. Thoughts that listeners, under the spell of music, would pick up and accept."
"And the beauty of it is," said Nevin, "is that if a listener ever became conscious of those thoughts afterward and wondered about them, he would be convinced that they were his own, that he had had them all the time."
"Clever, eh?" asked Cartwright.
West let out his breath. "Clever, yes. I didn't think you fellows had it in you."
West wanted to shiver and found he couldn't and the shiver built up and up until it seemed his tautened nerves would snap.
Cartwright was speaking. "So our Stella is doing all right."
"What's that?" asked West.
"Stella. The other one of them. The one with the face."
"Oh, I see," said West. "I didn't know her name was Stella. No one, in fact, knows anything about her. She suddenly appeared one night as a surprise feature on one of the networks. She was announced as a mystery singer, and then people began calling her the White Singer. She always sang in dim, blue light, you see, and no one ever saw her face too plainly, although everyone imagined, of course, that it was beautiful.
"The network made no bones about her being an alien being. She was represented as a member of a mystery race that Juston Lloyd had found in the Asteroids. You remember Lloyd, the New York press agent."