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visible, bathing naked in the now-warm water. Other tributaries swirled in, half-seen through wisps of steam, from gullies among the rocks. Strange, fern-like plants sprang from the banks.
    In a sudden glare of sound the torrent sluiced straight down a hillside in the full light of day; yet this daylight had an unearthly quality. The stream broadened, and meandered through open countryside. Trees lined its banks, trailing yellow-green leaves in its swirling surface. On the left, the land rose to a huge, flat-topped hill. Many white-robed people were making their way up its slopes. Among them ran nude and bronzed pale-eyed children, youths and girls, laughing and dancing. The music seemed to swell as though joined by an orchestra and choir from outside itself, rolling down from the rim of the hill....
    The people in the auditorium blinked, collectively, as the music seemed to falter. The scene blurred. There were low metal buildings, an interminable flat expanse of sand. Some of the audience felt they were being carried in strong arms. Then the view tilted upward, up over curved metal plates.
    Confusion.
    Noise.
    Pressure.
    Red darkness.
    Black darkness.
    For a long time, total lack of sensation.
    Sudden shock, pain. A surge of movement, forward; then falling. Somewhere far off, as though seen through crystal, violent blasts of light: red, yellow, white, red again. Darkness. Falling, falling. Gentle hands lifting, lowering. A jolt, a hard surface below.
    Noise!
    Fear!
    There was a startling crackle and a shower of sparks, and the music stopped abruptly. Aurora reeled back from her instrument, fell into the drums and was caught by Doug, as limp as though she were a rag doll. The curtains were hurriedly lowered. There was a cursory announcement that someone had been taken ill.
    After a long and uneasy pause the main band came on and played their usual set. It was one of their best performances, but they played to an apathetic and unresponsive house.
    Next day the critics in the musical and national press virtually ignored them. They wrote of the incredibly talented debut performance of this unknown support group, and of the unfortunate collapse of their beautiful young female keyboards player (whose age was given as 16). A few mentioned the almost psychical effect upon the audience; others, practical men and women at heart, wrote of the effective pre-recorded orchestral and choral tapes which had augmented the live performance, and of what must surely be a breakthrough in back-projection, suggesting a new holographic laser process producing lifelike and three-dimensional moving images of scenes and people.
    The rest of the Gas Giants’ tour had to be cancelled, of course, but, thanks to all the publicity, both the single and the LP, rush-released within the week, were immediate hits, remaining in the charts for months. Even so, everyone who had been present at the concert—or at the recording studio, or at the Grotto Club—agreed that, fine though the records were, they failed to capture the intensely personal atmosphere of the live performances. Something indefinable was missing.
    Aurora was missing, too. The Gas Giants brought in Herbie’s younger sister, her hair bleached blonde, and mimed to their tapes on Top of the Pops . But without Aurora they seemed like insensate marionettes.
    A few months later, they dissolved the band.
    * * * *
    Lefty often relived that night in his dreams. He saw Aurora reach into the electronics-filled innards of the synthesizer, seeking...seeking what ? Some new sound? Who knew?
    He had shouted uselessly: “Aurora—DON’T!”
    The shock from the full mains voltage had sent her flying backwards. As Doug had carried her inert body into the dressing room, he’d known for sure she was dead.
    But she wasn’t. After they had loosened her clothes and, in lieu of brandy, poured a measure of scotch from Ginge’s hipflask down her throat, she had revived quickly,