Longtree played. And as he played, his features relaxed into a gentle smile of happiness and his body turned orange. Delicately, he strummed the three strings of the blowstring with his long-nailed fingers, softly he pursed his frail lips and blew expertly into the mouthpiece. From the instrument came sounds the like of which Channeljumper had never before heard. The Martian sat and listened in evident rapture, his body radiating a golden glow of ecstasy. He sat and dreamed, and as the music played, his spine tingled with growing excitement. The music swelled, surrounding him, permeating him, picking him up in a great hand and sweeping him into new and strange and beautiful worlds--worlds of tall metal structures, of vast stretches of greenness and of water and of trees and of small pale creatures that flew giant metal insects. He dreamed of these things which his planet Mars had not known for millions of years. After a while, the music stopped, but for a moment neither of them said anything. At last Channeljumper sighed. "It's beautiful," he said. "Yes," Longtree admitted. "But--" Channeljumper seemed puzzled--"but somehow it doesn't seem complete. Almost, but not quite. As though--as though--" Longtree sighed. "One more note would do it. One more note--no more, no less--at the end of the crescendo could tie the symphony together and end it. But which one? I've tried them all, and none of them fit!" His voice had risen higher in his excitement, and Channeljumper warned, "Careful, you're beginning to turn purple." "I know," Longtree said mournfully, and the purple tint changed to a more acceptable green. "But I've got to win first prize at the festival tomorrow; Redsand promised to marry me if I did." "You can't lose," Channeljumper told him, and then remembered, "if you can get that last note." "If," Longtree echoed despairingly, as though his friend had asked the impossible. "I wish I had your confidence, Chan; you're orange most of the time, while I'm a spectrum." "I haven't your artistic temperament," Channeljumper told him. "Besides, orange is such a homely color I feel ashamed to have it all the time." As he said this, he turned green with shame, and Longtree laughed at the paradox. Channeljumper laughed too, glad that he had diverted his friend's attention from the elusive and perhaps non-existent note. "Did you know the space rocket is due pretty soon," he said, "perhaps even in time for the Music Festival?" "Space rocket?" "Oh, I forgot you were busy composing and didn't get to hear about it," Channeljumper said. "Well, Bigwind, who has a telescope in his hole, told me a rocket is coming through space toward us, possibly from the third planet." "Oh?" Longtree said, not particularly interested. "I wonder if they'll look like us?" Channeljumper wondered.