The grinning man with the pipe gazed across the vast arctic tundra, hands in the pockets of his hideous Bermuda shorts. He was
waiting. Waiting and grinning. He pulled a small silver tin from one pocket; it gleamed like an arc light under the unforgiving sun.
One word was engraved across the front of the tin in ornate Gothic capitals: FROP. The tin had been hand-crafted by the last
gnomes of an ancient, dying race; their leader had personally presented the tin to the grinning man. He opened the tin and removed
a small pinch of the brownish leaves, stuffing them in his pipe. He lit the pipe; immediately the air was filled with the ripe fragrance
of a herb from another time. His grin, already grotesque in its proportions, grew wider.

A hum in the distance made him watch the horizon. As he did, a small black dot appeared, far and wee. Even at such a great
distance, the insect- like hum told him what it was: a snowmobile.

He waited for it to come. He didn't mind. It wasn't like he had anything better to do. Not to mention he was too stoned to move.

Eventually -- it could have been minutes, hours, or eons later -- the snowmobile came to a stop beside him, spraying fine sparkling
clouds of snow across his bare shins. He appeared not to notice. "So," he said, somehow speaking with perfect diction even
though his clenched-teeth smile never changed. "What do you have to report, soldier?"

"It -- I saw -- I mean, you should have... it was... God!"

"Now slow down. Now remember that first rule of Great Salesmanship: Always keep your mouth moving, even if you've got
nothing to say. Works every time."

"Okay... okay. Yeah."

"So what did you see?"

"A ship, man. Not just ANY ship, but the Ship of Ships. It was round, sorta round with this big thing at one end and these tiny
tripod legs, and it must have been half a mile wide, God knows how tall.... It was bigger than a shopping mall. All gleaming metal
with funny things sticking out and tiny windows in all different shapes made of reflector glass. It was a hot- rod rocket from the
stars, I'm telling you. It was sitting just at the foot of Glacier X-14...." His voice trailed away as he reflected once again upon the
ship's majesty.

"But that's not all," he said, dazed. "While I was standing there looking at it, a blinding light came from one of its beacons and
landed right on me. For a minute I couldn't see anything but white light in every direction -- I thought they were going to take me
up in a tractor beam... but then the light died away, and these things were sitting at my feet."

He held up two items: a large burlap sack filled with goods, and a compact disc. The sack bore no markings, but the compact
disc's orange cover was stamped with the cryptic words F/i: HELIOSCOPIUM.

The grinning man took the CD, then opened the bag and looked inside. It was filled with cigarette lighters, Sun Ra CDs, women's
panties, Ho-Hos, Frop tins, a pair of fuzzy dice, bullets of random calibers, three dog- eared Japanese bondage magazines, a
smattering of spare change, and cash. Thick, greasy wads of cash. "Ah, how lovely. They know just what I need, those boys."

The soldier was dumbstruck. "You... you KNOW them?"

"Absolutely," the man said, his grin never disappearing. "They're advance scouts for the Xists, Overmen cleverly disguised as a
space-rock band. And just so -- after all, who would be more qualified to perform the ritual space opera than galactic
commanders of the Interstellar Overdrive?"

"But... but I thought they were just a bunch of goofy sci-fi freaks from Wisconsin who just smoked too much dope and listened to
too much Hawkwind."

The man with the pipe laughed. "Oh, how naive! Don't you know that Hawkwind were advance scouts too? And that's not
dope they've all been smoking, it's frop. The highest-grade cut in this particular universe too, I might add." He adjusted his pipe.
"Another thing you might not know -- Sun Ra and his Arkestra, THEY were the ORIGINAL advance scout team. You think Sun
Ra's dead? HA! He just moved on to do the advance recon for the colonization of Saturn, to set up the Helium Cities we'll all
need after Xist Day finally arrives!"

The soldier started to say something, only to be drowned out by eerie music from the skies. They looked up to find the galactic
cruiser hovering directly above them at a thousand feet, blotting out the sun. Music poured from its metallic pores, at first a
drugged-out series of bell-like chimes, ethereal vapor music that gradually gave way to serrated thunder-riffing like the blasted
craters of the invisible side of the moon.

"My God," the soldier screamed, falling to his knees in the snow. "I -- oh God it's filling up my BRAIN! What -- what IS IT?!?!"

"The helioscopic sounds of F/i, my son." He spread his arms joyously wide. "When the Xists arrive to take those of the one true
cult to the next galaxy, they'll be playing this fine music of the spheres while they strip- mine what's left of the planet."

A hypnotic barrage of descending buzzsaw guitars swaddled in cellos and saxaphones erupted from the ship's hull, causing glaciers
in the distance to shatter and crack. "Ah, so this one DID end up on the final disc," the pipe-smoker exulted. "They call it '3rd
Crown.' I'm told the Xists like this one so much they'll be playing it during the actual Rupture."

More cosmic music issued forth from the hovering ship, including one accompanied by a wailing, ethereal ghost chorus. "I believe
this one is called 'Your Illusion,'" the pipe-smoker said genially. "The orchestra playing on this is from another planet in a galaxy so
far away that it might as well not even exist, by the way."

The music droned on, coming to a song filled with droning pipes and anchored by an oddly familiar bass pulse. "Hey," the soldier
said, the frosted glaze in his eyes thawing for a brief moment. "That sounds like... uh, like... sorta like Pink Floyd's 'Careful With
That Axe Eugene,' only with, um, like, orchestra instruments and stuff."

"Indeed it does," the pipe-swilling salesman to the elder gods said, slapping the soldier on the back. "It's actually called
'Helioscopium' and is only available on the CD, as is the demented demi-jazz masterpiece 'Doktors for Bob,' a tribute to both Sun
Ra and my own bad self. Needless to say, it's my favorite track. Pity so few will ever get to hear it, since by the time it comes out
of the Xist spaceship speakers, most of the human race will have been reduced to charred lumps of meaty stinking carbon."

After what seemed like an eternity, the music came to an end. The soldier continued to stare blindly up at the star cruiser, his eyes
seeing far beyond it, into another world. The pipe-smoking man refilled his pipe and squatted next to him.

"You see this CD?" He slapped it down into the soldier's hand. "Take it home. Listen to it. STUDY it. You know why? I'll TELL
you why. Because the Xists will be using this to TIME THEIR MOVEMENTS when the Day of the Rupture arrives on July 5
later this year. F/i is making it available to all of us as an ADVANCE WARNING -- so those in the know might have a chance of
evading the Helioscopic Death Ray Machines as the ships level our cities and turn our women into Beef Jerky Bondage Biscuits.
Only those who are left standing after the disc finishes will be allowed on the ship... which, given the inevitably tiny distribution for
this fine CD, shouldn't be many. Oh yeah, brother, you NEED this CD... we ALL need it. Take it home! Tell your loved ones to
buy it! Sleep with it! Eat with it! Fornicate with it! DON'T LET IT OUT OF YOUR SIGHT... or away from your CD player.
Jehovah-1 help us... it may be... mankind's LAST HOPE."

He was still grinning as he said these last terrifying words, his face bathed in the radiant glow of the stellecruiser's thundering
afterburners.