LITMIR.BIZ

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recognized after a moment or two as a hospital screen. Lefty, Ginge, Herbie, Doug, Acker. Plus a nurse and a tall man in a white coat.

      “Where’s Synth?” she asked, struggling to sit up. “What do you mean, lost me too?”

      “Nothing. Nothing.” Lefty made a move to light another cigarette, but the nurse caught his eye and frowned.

      “If you don’t mind, Mr. Clemson, I think now that you know she’s all right.... In fact”—she looked questioningly at the doctor, who nodded—“it would be best if you all left now and let Miss—erm—Aurora rest.”

      “No!” cried Aurora sharply, “Where is Synth? I want to know—right now—or I won’t rest. Something’s happened to him, hasn’t it?”

      “No, he’s fine,” said Lefty. “But he’s left the band—walked out while you were still playing last night, tell you the truth. He’s stripped his flat. The manager at the Grotto says Synth told him...well, that you made him look like an idiot. But that wasn’t your fault—he is an idiot.”

      Aurora hid her face in her hands. “Yes, it was my fault,” she sobbed. “I warned you, didn’t I? I told you I’m always trouble and you wouldn’t want me around....”

      Ginge stepped forward before anyone else could speak. “You couldn’t be more wrong there, gal. Something good happened while you were around us. Real good. We all played better than we ever knew we could.” The circle of heads nodded vigorously. “And as for you, you were fuckin’ amazing on that synthesizer, pardon my French. Jeez, we need you in the band now. Don’t we, guys?” More nods. “You will join us, won’t you...?”

      But Aurora’s eyes were flickering shut again.

      “I never even got to tell her about the manager of Yes being in the audience, and wanting to book us as support band on their next tour,” complained Ginge.

      * * * *

      There was nothing wrong with Aurora, the doctor told Lefty when he collected her from the hospital two days later, apart from the life she had been leading. Nothing that rest, good food and vitamins couldn’t fix.

      She was installed in her own room in part of what had been Synth’s flat. Ginge and Lefty had moved into the rest of it, since it was so much better than their previous places.

      There they were all able to work out new numbers. It was almost always Aurora who took the lead in their compositions; but they quickly discovered that she found it almost impossible to play the same piece twice. This hardly seemed to matter, though, and instead they evolved a sort of code by which they knew what type of number they would play next, whether fast, slow, happy, plaintive, heavy rock, vocal or instrumental.

      They also found that, while they all enjoyed playing together and almost every piece proved an emotional experience of some kind, they never reached in practice the heights they had in the Grotto Club. Even so, they deliberately avoided any further public appearances. They wanted to save themselves for the tour with Yes.

      Two weeks before the first scheduled gig of the tour, in London, Herbie rushed into the flat, obviously highly excited.

      “I’ve fixed it! A whole day in the UROK Studios! The way we’ve been playing lately, we should be able to record a whole album, no problem, and pick the best two tracks for our single. We can have the single into the shops while the tour’s still on—and just watch it go up the charts!”

      Days later Aurora found herself being pushed out of a battered, psychedelically painted minibus and helping to carry boxes, amplifiers, and guitar-cases through an ordinary-looking green door, past the dusty and flyblown window of a small office from which an elderly uniformed man peered at them suspiciously, and down a long corridor lined with doors. Through another door and down some rickety wooden steps into a litter-strewn open courtyard between high buildings; up more steps into what looked like the warehouse it had once been.

      The inside of the warehouse was a revelation, though. Emerging from a short corridor, Aurora found herself surrounded by glass booths, some containing stand microphones, others chairs and music stands. Fluorescent tubes hung from the high ceiling, while thick black electrical cables snaked in all directions across the wooden boarded floor, on which stood several huge speaker cabinets. In a gallery right across one end of the room, with a metal stairway leading up to it, were more glass windows, behind which brightly lit figures moved about.

      The band, with other helpers and hangers-on, rapidly set up their equipment. Aurora noticed that the drum kit was placed in a booth of its own, and saw Doug fitting a pair of headphones over his bushy hair. When she found that she was expected to do the same, she became agitated.

      “No!” she cried. “If I can’t have everyone with me, I don’t play.”

      The studio engineers tried hard to get her to change her mind, but she was adamant. So the rest of the band were clustered around the synthesizer, microphones were rearranged, and, after the usual twangs and toots of tuning up, the recording session began for real.

      The first number lasted twenty minutes. Although as soon as she began playing Aurora fell into her trancelike state, she did see one of the figures in the control booth pick up a telephone several times. Shortly afterwards, people began to file silently into the studio. All but a couple of red lights in the actual studio were dimmed, leaving the control room a bright oasis.

      The second piece was also over fifteen minutes long and, when it finished, after a respectful silence of a few seconds in deference to the tape machines, spontaneous applause broke out.

      A tinny voice spoke from nowhere. “Far out! We don’t even need any overdubs. But you’ll have to do some shorter numbers—three, four minutes, five max—if you want to put out a single.” Aurora saw that one of the men behind the long control panel in the glasshouse was speaking into a microphone with a long flexible neck. It looked like a goose, she thought.

      “Let’s do the vocal?” suggested Ginge, hopefully. He had written the lyric, and was rather proud of it. Another batch of onlookers surged through the door while the red RECORDING light was out.

      “OK, the vocal. Then The Seagull—and let’s keep it short,” said Herbie.

      Lefty sang the lead vocal; he had a good blues voice, hoarse yet tuneful. Doug, with a mike slung over his drums, joined in the chorus line. To everyone’s surprise, for she had never done this before, Aurora pulled over a nearby live microphone and began to sing, wordlessly. Or was she singing in some foreign language? It didn’t seem to matter. Her voice, while not strong, was pure and clear. She sang a strange harmony to the middle-eight bars, playing the melody line on single, gliding notes. The result was ethereal.

      Once again there was wild applause at the end, and it was obvious from comments she heard that these studios had never witnessed such scenes before. Or such music. The effort was taking its toll, but Aurora couldn’t recall ever feeling so happy.

      At the close of the next piece, though, Lefty looked concerned, for she was white and strained. “Can we call it a day?” he asked the control room.

      The recording engineers were bemused. The Gas Giants had been in the studio for less than two hours. Yet there was certainly enough material in the can for an album, and for the A and B sides of a single. A double-sided number one single, too, or they’d trade in their headphones for brooms and go street-sweeping, as one engineer put it.

      From the crowd came cries of “No, more—more!” and “Keep it going while it’s hot!”

      Lefty scowled at them and pointed to Aurora. “Look at her, can’t you? She’s about all in.”

      He unplugged his bass and put it into its battered case. This signaled the rest of the group to follow his lead. Aurora revived enough to help a little, though she still looked shaken.

      She spoke once. “Thanks, Lefty. You’re a real rock.”

      When they had left, the studio seemed even emptier than usual. Little groups of people stood around aimlessly

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