LITMIR.BIZ

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the Thames. If you....”

      He stopped in surprise as, with a few deft movements, Aurora shrugged out of her clothes and draped them over a chair near the fire. That done, she flopped naked into another chair in front of it. Against the segment of dark sky framed by the dirty, rain-streaked window, her face and body reflected the warm orange glow of the gas fire.

      Lefty hastily looked in the other direction, pointing. “That’s—er—that’s the piano where we do most of our songwriting. The rest of the guys have got flats in this dump, or just down the road. There’s the bathroom; you have to pull the chain twice to make it flush. No shower, but there should be hot water if you want a bath. The bedroom’s through there. I can probably find you a pair of pajamas if you....”

      “No, thanks. I never bother, not when I’ve got a proper bed.”

      “Oh, man!” Lefty raised his eyes heavenwards. He reached inside the bedroom door and pulled a string which hung there. An unshaded orange bulb clicked on over the bed, and he picked up his pajamas from a heap on the floor.

      “Sleep well,” he said through a yawn as Aurora passed him on her way in.

      * * * *

      He raised his head groggily and pried open his bleary eyes. What had woken him? Someone must have turned on the radio, for there was tinkling music coming from behind him. Something on Radio Three? Classical, yet a bit avant-garde? Normally the dial was never moved from Radio One. It seemed a bit loud and clear for the old trannie, though. He levered himself up and peered over the back of the sofa.

      Aurora, wearing only briefs and bra—but at least she’d got something on—was sitting at the piano, her fingers flickering over the yellowed keys, her face trancelike.

      “Hey—you never told me you could play!” Lefty yelled, louder than he had intended. “You said you didn’t like music much! So where’d you learn to do that?”

      The girl started violently and drew back her hands as though the keys had suddenly become red-hot. “I said I didn’t like the music I’ve heard. I’ve never had a chance to play an instrument myself before.”

      “Oh, sure. Now pull the other one—got bells on it!”

      “It’s true.” She looked at him blankly. “Why not? You just find out where the notes are and then play them, don’t you?”

      “Yeah, right on. Except that most people take weeks just to learn the basics—and some have lessons for years and still never get further than ‘Jingle Bells’....”

      “Well, p’raps I’m just a natural, then. Some people are, aren’t they?”

      “So the story goes,” said Lefty dubiously. A moment later the door sprang open with the inevitable crash and four men, all aged between twenty and thirty, burst into the room. They screeched to a halt on spotting Aurora, and began making exaggerated motions of backing out of the door again.

      One of them, who sported an Afro hairstyle in bright red hair, said with a grin, “Hey, sorry to break in on your scene, man!”

      “Like, we didn’t know you’d got company!” added the one with a droopy, Mexican-style moustache.

      Lefty glowered, but before he could speak Aurora snapped: “I don’t know what you’re all staring at. But, if you’re embarrassed, I’ll go and get dressed.”

      She left the room with a histrionic sigh. The five young men exchanged guilty looks, wondering what it was they should be feeling guilty about.

      A minute or two later she reappeared wearing her jeans, now dry and stiff.

      “Perhaps I can do the introductions now,” said Lefty with a flourish, as the door opened and a youth with shoulder-length dark hair strolled in. “The latecomer, as usual, is Synth. The rest of this mob”—he pointed—“are Ginge, Doug, Acker, and Herbie. Herbie’s our road manager, but he doubles on guitar as well. Guys, this is Aurora.”

      He didn’t explain further. The others seemed immediately to accept her presence as one of the gang.

      “Hey, the new synth’s arrived,” burst out the newcomer. “It’s just got to be stacks better than that old thing I cobbled together.”

      “It better be,” grunted Acker, “after we’ve sold all our worldly goods to pay for it.” He grimaced at Aurora. “Just to put a deposit on it, even.”

      “Synthesizer? Oh—is that why you call him Synth?” Aurora whispered to Lefty. “I thought perhaps he was—you know....”

      Lefty smiled. “Don’t let him hear you say that!” He continued more loudly: “This one’s polyphonic—not like the old Moogs.” He pronounced the name to rhyme with “rogues”.

      Aurora looked totally blank. “Sorry, mate, but I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

      “Oh, yeah, I forgot—you aren’t into our kind of music, are you? Well, on the old Moog synthesizers you could only play single notes. If you wanted to record something like Walter Carlos’s album Switched-On Bach you had to keep overdubbing—re-recording from one tape to another—to get the harmonies and so on. But we’ve just got hold of one that plays chords. And it’s really compact as well.”

      The group fell to discussing their gig that night and Aurora roamed around the room, taking science-fiction paperbacks and magazines from the shelves that lined the walls, and staring with a puzzled expression at the star-charts and maps of the Moon and Mars, and at the big art print of a planetary landscape with a huge red sun looming in its sky, bearing the title Stellar Radiance, that filled the rest of the wall-space along with faded posters of rock bands in concert. Someone had turned on the old radio, and they took a brief interest as a news bulletin announced that Apollo 16 had landed safely at Descartes. Lefty bemoaned the fact that the next Moon landing could well be the last manned space mission for decades if not forever. “We should be going on to Mars—that’s where it’s at,” he stated decisively.

      Aurora blinked, as if coming out of a reverie, as Ginge called: “See you in the grotty club—sorry, Grotto Club—tonight, then.”

      “Who, me?” she said.

      “Well you want to see what we can do, don’t you?” said Lefty.

      “Oh, well, s’pose so. Why not? I’ve got nothing better to do.”

      “Cor, such enthusiasm! You’ll see—one of these fine days you’ll be boasting about knowing us when we were just starting out!”

      ROCK

      No doubt, if the light of day were ever admitted, the Grotto Club’s decor would have looked cheap and shoddy; but in the pulsing shadows cast by concealed blue, green and ultraviolet tubes it seemed an ideal setting for the Gas Giants. Boulder-shaped tables and chairs crouched beneath papier-mâché arches; stalactites hung from the ceiling. Aurora hesitated as she entered through the skull-shaped doorway, almost as though afraid to step inside. Then she threaded her way to a table near the stage, along the front of which was draped plastic ivy, glowing a vivid green in the hidden lighting.

      The club was only half-full so early—it was barely ten o’clock. At the side of the stage an elderly man in evening dress was playing Top Twenty tunes from six months before on an electric organ. Lefty had told her that the guy had used to own the club when it was a much more respectable and staid affair, and had been allowed to stay on as “resident organist” as part of the deal when he was forced to sell it. The rest of the clientele secretly laughed at him, but it didn’t matter. He was almost completely deaf.

      On the darkened stage itself, her new friends were busily setting up their equipment, of which there seemed to be a great deal. The organist looked round in annoyance as a loudspeaker gave a loud pop! which even he could hear, and a sibilant, echoing voice chanted: “Testing. Testing. One-two. One-two.” The synthesizer emitted a sound that Aurora mentally likened to a constipated duck; then, as Synth moved what looked like pegs on

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