"They have always been. But someday," said the old man, "they will meet their doom. They have blasphemed enough, have they. They cannot own planets as they have and expect nothing but greedy luxury for their sluggishly squat bodies. Someday——!" His voice rose high, in tempo and pitch with the Piper's wild music.
Wild music, insane music, stirring music. Music to stir the savage into life. Music to effect man's destiny!
"Wild-eyed Piper on the hill,
Crying out your rigadoons,
Bring the savages to kill
'Neath the waning Martian moons!"
"What is that?" asked the boy.
"A poem," said the old man. "A poem I have written in the last few days. I feel something is going to happen very soon. The Piper's song is growing more insistent every night. At first, twenty years ago, he played on only a few nights of every year, but now, for the last three years he has played until dawn every night of every autumn when the planet is dying."
"Bring the savages?" the boy sat up. "What savages?"
"There!"
Along the star-glimmered mountain tops a vast clustering herd of black, murmuring, advancing. The music screamed higher and higher.
"Piper, pipe that song again!
So he piped, I wept to hear."
"More of the poem?" asked the boy.