The two friends, derringers in hand, slipped through the heavy underbrush surrounding the Circle of Fifths stauary park. They could make out vaguely in the gloom the circle of beautiful stainless sculptures that surrounded the periphery of the formal garden, each towering about eight feet, in various curves that shone even in the muted starlight. They were variously formed, and swayed gently in the light on-shore breeze -- some had rounded hemispheres in twos or threes sculpted into their tops, and others had frustrums gracefully carved at their heads in similar numbers.

"See, Bobby? The bumps and points? Those are sharps and flats. They make the Circle of Fifths. The one with the perfect circle on its top must be the center point, the "C" note....", Charles whispered.

They stayed silently alert for a number of minutes, and the quiet breeze lulled them with their warmth in the dark. A sudden sound of a large form movig through shrubbery startled them both into full alertness.

A rounded, pale form moved into the starlit circle, moving slowly from column to column around the Circle, as though seeking something.

"Hey," Charles whispered, "Isn't that the gal who was running around starkers earlier?"

"Shhh..", repsonded Leej. "Looks like she's still doing it."

The heavy woman was, indeed, doing some sort of trotting dance around the central front column with the circle on its top. She slapped it on one side, and then on the other, and then did a kind of starlight sashay around the circle. The column she had slapped began to oscillate, and a pale blue light, pulsing lsightly, started to glow around its base.

She moved around to the column with two of the rounded hemispheres.
Two flats...lesse--D-flat?, Charles thought. She repeated the ceremony, and a blue glow and slow ringing began emanated from the tall sculpture. She moved on, from D-flat to G, then across the garden to a column with six sharp points on it, back to one on the other side with two points on it, slapping and dancing.

She stopped her dance and faded into the shrubbery. The men watched as the blue glows at th ebase of each column expanded and formed into coherent beams, joing each other across the circle to form lines. One by one, the ringing columns extended their lights.

The final pattern was unmistakable, glowing in brightening, shimmering fluorescent blue light in the night, forming the pattern of a huge letter W.

Their amazed focus was disrupted by the growing harmonic tones coming from the five columns the strange streaker had activated with her weird ritual; like the growing hum of a planetary tunning fork, the humming, rich with overtones both deep and high, grew and grew in the night.

It was beginning to hurt their ears, when a sudden flash made them forget their discomfort. The night sky, sprinkled with beautiful stars, was suddenly shadowed with a huge grim black circle, floating overhead, acres in size, and a brilliant flooding white, mysterious and etheral, pulsing brilliance which switched on in the night sky.
Charles Stonewall Delacroix, Gambler, felt his own jaw dropping as he estimated the size of the huge disk that was suddenly illuminated. It stood off into the night sky, easily a mile or so above the ground, and yet it seemed to be thousands of yards in diameter.

"Bobby," he said. "I think they're here, and I think we're in trouble again, compadre."

Bobby leapt into the circle, pulling his second polished silver derringer out of his pocket. He kneeled in front of the vibrating column in the peak of the glowing blue "W" form, and holding the gun by the barrel, carefully slid the silvery butt across the point where the blue lines emanated.

The gun heated up fast and he snatched his fingers away. The lines sparked and scattered at random angles from the polished gun butt, wrecking the neat pattern the woman had started, and sending streaks of semi-coherent blue lightbeams in a thousand different directions.

Overhead the huge disc veered suddenly, yawed a full 180 degrees and tilted sharply downward on one side, and began skittering downward, as though no longer able to steer.

A red heat surrounded it as it began a violent slope through the thickening atmosphere, slicing downward and eastward at an acceleration neither man had ever imagined was possible.

Beyond Point Sharp, about five cables from shore, the gigantic disk, moving faster than a bullet, collided with the inflexible and welcoming surface of the gentle rolling sea, with a sound that broke the atmosphere like lightning striking abedroom door. Steam towered and the cracking and thundering of huge explosions penetrated the brains of a thousand sleeping folksingers and half the students at Portsworth University; huge seas rose up and began their long march to shore, hidden in towering plumes of electric smoke and hot steam.

Slowly, the incredible tumult of angry waves, red-hot steam and molten metal subsided. The Albert Hansell rose and fell uncomfortably as the residual of those gigantic waves found their way into the shallows of the bay and reached the pier. AT anchor, the Mudcat Schooner bobbed and horsed frenetically for a while as they passed under her keel.


By morning, the sea was again blue, and calm, the stink blown clear by the rising gentle breezes, and the folkies who gathered for breakfast were swapping tales of the terrible thunder that had awoken. Someone struck up a bluegrass rendition, and Don't Let Your Deal Go Down echoed up and down the boardwalk. The morning was full of music, and it looked like fun.