Joe, having no vocal apparatus, performed his music telepathically. At times it was indescribable, and at other times it was—well—magnificent.

Within the Purple Claw there was music permeating the smoky air, coursing through the nerve channels of the listeners. It was slow and hot, loose and tight at the same time.

Grey slipped down farther into his chair. A horn took a high passage, and the chill began to pass up and down Grey's spine. He knew, then, that he was in—that the night was good and the music right.

Joe's antennae swayed quietly, in time with the beat, in time with the antennae of the other Canopans who sat there, spreading a net of rapport through the room. Imperceptibly there was produced an augmentation of the music, a heightened receptivity, as though the entire audience was in itself a musical instrument, guided by the band, and in return leading the band ahead.

"Lawdy, that was good," Grey sighed when the spell finally broke and the audience shuffled feet, scraped chairs, ordered fresh drinks, and relit forgotten smokes.

These moments of complete retreat had become more and more rare during the past few months.

The mobilization had been accelerating, and the training periods had become more and more intense, in preparation for this day when they were now assigned to a ship and were about to push off for a training run, followed by the long trip to the battle sector.

It had been slightly more than a year ago that the first enigmatic events had been noticed in a corner of the galaxy which was just newly being explored and developed. Ships had failed to return—colonies had ceased communicating with their prime bases.

To Jed Grey, a young man still in school on Terra, far within the borders of the civilized galaxy, these events had seemed distant and impersonal. They had been words in the newspapers, on the news broadcasts. They had been vague events taking place on just another of the many hundreds of habitable planets which by that time had been discovered.

Then the knowledge had grown that the events taking place thousands of light years distant were to have an impact on the life of Jed Grey and the others living on Terra. Gradually it developed that the civilized galaxy was rapidly becoming immersed in a struggle for existence against an enemy whose character was initially somewhat obscure, but whose unfriendly aims were quite definite.

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