"Outwardly," Haller snapped. "But what do you or any other earthmen know about what goes on in their round red heads? And the proof that some revolt is planned lies in what's been happening the past few weeks! Look here!" Haller bent forward, the lines about his mouth tighter than ever. "Three weeks ago my technical advisor, Rawlins, committed suicide. Not a care in the world, but he killed himself. A week later Harris, head of the television department, went insane. Declared a feud with the whole planet, began shooting at everyone he saw. The police rayed him in the struggle. The following week Pegram, the musical director, died of a heart attack. Died with the most terrorized expression on his face I've ever seen. Fear, causing the heart attack, his doctor said. You begin to see the set-up? Three men, each a vital power in M.B.C. gone within three weeks! And who's next? Who?" Jared Haller's eyes were bright with fear.
"Suicide, insanity, heart attack." Ranson shrugged. "All perfectly normal. Coincidence that they should happen within three weeks. What makes you think there's been foul play?"
For a long brittle moment Jared Haller stared out at the graceful white city, wan in the light of the twin moons. When he turned to face Ranson again, his eyes were bleak as a lunar plain.
"One thing," he said slowly. "The music."
"Music?" Ranson echoed. "Look here, Mr. Haller, you...."
"It's all right." Jared Haller grinned crookedly. "I'm not insane. Yet. Look, Mr. Ranson! There's just one clue to these mysterious deaths! And that's the music! In each instance the servants told of hearing, very faintly, a strange melody. Music that did queer things to them, even though they could hear it only vaguely. Music like none they'd ever heard. Like the devil's pipes, playing on their souls, while.... Almighty God!"
Jared Haller froze, his face gray as lead, his eyes blue horror. Ranson was like a man in a trance, bent forward, lips pressed tight until they resembled a livid scar. The room was silent as a tomb; outside, they could hear the vague rumbling of the city, with the distant swish of canal boats, the staccato roar of rockets as some earth-bound freighter leaped from the spaceport. Familiar, homey sounds, these, but beneath them, like an undercurrent of madness, ran the macabre melody.
There was, there had never been, Ranson knew, any music like this. It was the pipes of Pan, the chant of robots, the crying of souls in torment. It was a cloudy purple haze that engulfed the mind, it was a silver knife plucking a cruel obligato on taut nerves, it was a thin dark snake writhing its endless coils into the room.
Neither man moved. Ranson knew all the tricks of visual hypnotism, the whirling mirror, the waving hands, the pool of ink ... but this was the hypnotism of sound. Louder and clearer the music sounded, in eerie overtones, quavering sobbing minors, fierce reverberating bass. Sharp shards of sound pierced their ears, deep throbbing underrhythm shook them as a cat shakes a mouse.