boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

272 Anthony Boucher
The audition winner had at first treated him merely with the courtesy due to a
judge who had cast one of the votes that sent her to Venus. The slight coldness that
he had detected in her singing was accentuated in her speaking personality, and he
was more than willing now to believe that she was Dr. Weddergren’s creation.
Then, one week out, came the episode of her practicing.
Whether it was consideration for others or the sense of relaxation that strikes all
space voyagers, Jon Arthur was uncertain; the first seemed a little unlikely. But for
a week she had refrained from practicing. Now she began.
The most beautiful voice in the world (which it was quite possible that the Parva
possessed) is somewhat lacking in appeal when it practices scales, when it takes one
single phrase of great technical difficulty and scant musical interest and repeats it,
worries it, frets it until at last the phrase is perfect and the accidental listener is cutting
out paper dolls.
No space crew in history has ever mutinied, but few space crews have traveled with
a contralto whose tremendous voice can fill an amphitheater—or a space liner.
What made Jon Arthur pause in front of the captain’s cabin was the unusual
quality of intense emotion in the Parva’s voice.
“You can’t do this!” she was saying, toward the very top of her extensive range.
“I have to practice. If I go three months without practicing, I’ll land at Venusberg
in such shape that Mme. Storm will wonder why they ever picked me!”
“If you go three months with practicing, my dear young lady,” the captain announced,
“there won’t be a man on this liner capable of landing you at Venus-berg!”
It was a pretty impasse, Arthur thought. Both parties were unquestionably right.
It seemed a problem to which there was no key …
Key …
Key … !
Jon Arthur pushed open the door. “Pardon me, I couldn’t help overhearing the
discussion. Wouldn’t it solve the problem,” he hurried on before he could be interrupted,
“if Miss Parva were assigned one hour a day in which she might practice in
one of the air locks?”
Both captain and contralto stared at him, then turned to each other with broad
smiles.
“So the key was the lock,” Arthur was saying to the Parva later in the bar. “Vacuum-
sealed, soundproof …”
“I’m afraid I’m very much indebted to you.” She sounded as though she really
regretted the fact. “First the audition, now this …”
“Honestly, I’m indebted to you.” Why had he thought her plain at that audition?
“Simply for existing with the voice that you have.”
“Do you mind?” a man’s voice asked. “Since we’re all going to the same place,
why not get acquainted now?”
The Parva seemed not to place him, but Arthur’s mind rang instantly with
sounds about saddles and hounds and the treble shout of the merry rout. The robustious
baritone introduced himself as Ivor Harden, explained that though he’d lost
out on the scholarship he had scraped up barely enough money to make it on his
own, paid the Parva a pretty compliment on winning, and still without having