Comeback Tour

channel to the beyond through which magic was pouring in an irregular, gushing, dangerous flood…

He sang the first songs, the ones he had laid down with Bill Black and Scotty Moore in the Sun Studio in July, 1954. The songs that had taken him from truck driver to star. They were the songs, the ones that still meant the most to him, meant the most to everybody…

'I Love You Because…'

'That's All Right (Mama)…'

'Blue Moon of Kentucky…'

'Blue Moon…'

Love, defiance, prayer, longing.

It was music to reclaim the stars.

“We haven't got time to take heat pattern readings, just tell Keystone to strike down everybody above ground within a five mile radius of this installation…'

Addams' tired fingers paused over the keyboard. She was on the lip of questioning an order from the Prezz.

Fonvielle knew what was needed. Direct, unhestitating action. If the Dream was to be preserved, he would have to get into the cockpit and haul on the stick.

He elbowed the woman aside, and slipped into her chair. It was a keyboard and a screen, not a joystick and a windshield, but he was a fighter jock again.

He fed in the co-ordinates.

The Prezz laid a supporting hand on his shoulder.

The ghosts were ascending through the ceiling. Grissom was the last to go, with a sad wave. Fonvielle was too busy communicating with Needlepoint to pay attention.

'Target co-ordinates locked in, Mr President…'

The Prezz squeezed his shoulder.

'Firing…'

The kid had come into the studio to cut a presentation record for his mother. Marion couldn't imagine anything more square, and yet there was something about his sulky good looks, and the way he shifted about on his feet. He looked a bit like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, and dressed like a motorcycle hoodlum.

'What kind of singer are you?' she asked as they were setting up.

'I sing all kinds.'

'Who do you sound like?'

'I don't sound like nobody.'

'Hillbilly?'

'Yeah, I sing hillbilly.'

'Who do you sound like in hillbilly?'

'I don't sound like nobody.'

Elvis sang, surrounded by a swirl of ghosts. Across the site, by the gantry, the ghost rocketship was taking shape. The ghosts seemed to be converging on the thing, melding into it, giving it substance.

He couldn't stop himself. As he sang and played, his feet moved, his hips moved. The music shook him.

He was all shook up.

'…NOW!'

Fonvielle stabbed the RUN key, and the instructions were downloaded from Keystone into the entire Needlepoint Ring. There were two satellites who could bring their lases to bear on Florida.

Duroc's fist clenched and his breath caught.

Within seconds…

'You know, Marion,' Sam Phillips had said, listening to the ten-inch acetate the kid had made, 'that boy has got something. That boy has got the power!'

Krokodil felt the channels opening up as the Op sang. The music was getting into her too, shaking her down to the depths, the depths where the Ancient Adversary lived.

The whole Cape was shaking.

The gantry creaked enormously as it collapsed, leaving the shadow ship standing, smoke pouring from its base.

The spirits were clustered close around the rocket.

Elvis sang 'Jailhouse Rock.'

A lizardman burst into flames, and fell in ashes. Krokodil looked up at the sky.

'I wouldn't let my daughter cross the street to go to an Elvis Presley concert,' declaimed the shouting preacher in 1958, 'with his lewd behaviour, his jungle rhythms, his obscene movements, his suggestive lyrics, and raucous jangles that barely qualify as music, that boy is an instrument of the Devil!'

Nguyen Seth's consciousness nestled inside Keystone, and looked down with a strange detachment at the State of Florida. The hair-thin beams were striking down meticulously, criss-crossing the Cape Canaveral site, snuffing out the inconvenient creatures.

And yet there was a disturbance in the Outer Darkness. A great magic was being worked down on Earth. The Ancient Adversary was exerting its baleful influence.

Krokodil was there. And another shaman, a pure human with great powers.

Seth's anger spurted through the circuits of the satellite. The death rained down with redoubled fury.

Shiba didn't know what was happening. People all around him were exploding in flames.

Captain Marcus shouted to everyone to 'take cover, take cover…'

Elvis kept playing, too caught up in the music that possessed him to notice the chaos around him. Shiba wondered if the music was doing this, causing people to explode…

In Japan, they had always said that rock 'n' roll was bad for you.

No, he thought. Whatever this effect is, the music is set against it. If the Op keeps playing, maybe there's a chance that the fires from above will stop.

'…take cover,' shouted Marcus, his head smoking, 'take…'

The Captain's blood boiled over, leaking out of his mouth, eyes, nostrils and eardrums. He pointed his pistol into the sky, and fired…

His clothes were burning now. Marcus struggled to hold himself together, but it was hopeless.

He burst apart, spreading sizzling scraps around him.

Fonvielle's elation was ebbing.

The Dream was working. Needlepoint was on line. The program would be up and running again.

But the console in front of him was doing funny things.

'T-minus ten…' said a rasping computer-generated voice.

'What?' asked the Prezz.

'It's initiated a launch sequence.'

'T-minus nine…'

'What has?'

'T-minus eight…'

'The equipment. Something is cleared for take-off…'

'T-minus seven…'

'…according to the readings, it's the Circe IV…'

'T-minus six…'

'…but that blew up years ago…'

Simone ran, the invisible beams all around her. The Suitcase People were being cut down like stalks of wheat.

The ghosts were together now, in the body of the ghost ship. Great clouds were being discharged from the manitou.

She just hoped she lived to see it take off.

'T-minus five…'