Hanlon went slowly down into the cubicle assigned him and the roches, and there fought for calmness. And it was a measure of his innate strength of character that he succeeded. The jitters passed, the butterflies went into hibernation, and his nerves calmed down.
The first acts were the usual type seen on Estrellan stages—singers, posturers (they did not seem to have any dancers in the sense that Terran theatres do), and acrobats. Hanlon had always been interested in these, for almost none of the things they did were like what he was used to seeing or hearing.
The music, however, he could not get used to. Estrellan music was based on a five-toned scale, of course, and was—to his ears—more of a cacophony than Chinese music. Yet the Estrellan singers had clear, beautiful, flutelike voices.
The footlights that Hanlon had finally persuaded Yandor to have set in place around the edge of the stage, and lighted, occasioned great comment at first. But once the performance started, and the people found how much better they could see, were acclaimed as a great achievement.
"How did you ever happen to think of them?" Yandor had asked when Hanlon first spoke of them and showed the impresario what he had made.
Hanlon shrugged. "I always feel cheated because I can't see better when I go to a performance," he said. "When I got to thinking of my act, I knew it wouldn't show up well if people couldn't see clearly exactly what my roches were doing. So I figured out these lights. Don't you like the idea?"
"Well now, yes, I like them. But I don't know. People are peculiar about change. They may do something about it if they don't approve of them."
"Well," Hanlon made a nonchalant gesture, "we can always turn 'em off if they yell."
But after the first few moments, when the customers had seen how much better they could watch the posturer who came on first, the value of the footlights was clearly seen, and they gave their whole-hearted approval. A new custom was born on Estrella.
Hanlon had been below in the cubicle assigned him and his roches, so had not seen nor heard the crowd's reactions to the acts that preceded him. When it came his turn to go on, he was glad to find that his nervousness was gone, and that he was perfectly calm.