But nobody notices the music or where it comes from. They are too busy watching the thrush, Stella Starlight.
She stands there, her face as white as clay, shaking like a carrot going through a mixmaster. And then tiny cracks appear on her face, on her arms, even in her dress, and then a large one appears in her forehead and goes down through her body. She splits in the middle like a cracked walnut, and there in the center, floating three feet from the floor is a small flying cuspidor.
Nobody in the room says anything. They just stand there, bug-eyed and frightened like anything. Somewhere, across the room, a woman faints. I do not feel too well myself, and I am afraid to look to see how Hotlips takes this.
There is no sound, but I hear a voice in my mind and know that the others hear it too. The voice sounds like it is filled with wire and metal and is not exactly human. It says:
"You win, Hotlips Grogan. I, as advance agent in disguise, tell you this. We will go away and leave you and your people alone. We place a mental block in your mind, but you outsmart us, and now you know our weakness. We cannot stand high sounds which you can play so easy on your trumpet. We find ourselves a home someplace else."
With that, the cuspidor shoots across the room and plows right through the wall.
"That's the engine room!" Frankie wails.
There is a sudden explosion from the other side of the wall, and everybody decides all at once they would like to be someplace else, and they all pick the same spot. The space ferry is pretty crowded, but we jam aboard it and drift away from the Saturn—musicians, waiters and paying customers all sitting in each other's laps.
The Saturn is wobbling around, with flames shooting out at all angles, and Frankie is holding his head and moaning. In the distance, you can just about make out little specks of cuspidors heading for the wild black yonder.
So all is well that ends well, and this is it.