They were halfway around the Moon when the first verses of the song began to trickle in.

"That music even sounds outer-spacey, doesn't it? You hear that? That whistling sound?" Gene muttered, trying to distract himself from the tones. He reflexively scanned the instruments for the tenth time in as many minutes, almost disappointed to find everything still in order. 

At his side, Tom grunted a monosyllablic assent, and seeing Colonel Tom Stafford staring vacantly into space rattled Gene more than the thin-piped fluting itself. He chuckled, thinking to play the sounds off as a joke, only to be thwarted by the radio's crackle. 

"Did you hear that whistling sound, too?" John's voice came from the distant command module.

Slowly, and without taking his eyes off Tom's vacant stare, Gene replied. "Yeah. Sounds like - " Words failed him. "You know, outer-space-type music."

"I wonder what it is?" John mused. Gene chose not to reply. Parts of his brain were volunteering answers to that question, but Barb and Theresa were 200,000 miles away, not sleeping next to him. And how could an eclipse make a sound, much less a melody?

Instead, he snapped his fingers and tried to bring Tom to life. "Hey, Tom, uh. Is your - is your insulation all burned off here? On the front side of your window over here?" 

No answer. Gene grabbed his commander's hand.

[i]"Yeah."[/i] Finally, Tom shook his grip off, and gave Gene a glare.

"Mine's all burned off. Isn't that weird, eerie, John?" Gene said quickly, relieved to have gotten some response. Until John's reply turned his relief to ice.

"Yes, I got it, too. I was going to see... who was outside." 

Tom, again far too calm, met Gene's frozen eyes, then reached out and flipped off the switch for the main cabin lights. They sat together in darkness, listening to the unearthly song play. Thumping sounds came in over the radio sometimes, interrupting the mindless piping. Gene tried his hardest not to think about what attempting to open the crew hatch in the command module would sound like. 

In the dark, the grey sheen of the Moon shone through the porthole. But Gene could see something else there in its blurry reflection. Something alien moving against the surface, effortlessly galloping along under their orbit, with at least six or seven spiked limbs. Its colors were impossible: blacks deeper than space, mixed with flashes of blues and violets that he'd never seen while awake. 

The song was part of it. Gene could feel that much in his brain. It wasn't music, or even sound, probably, but whatever it was came directly from the heart and dreams of that living nightmare and told him the truth of itself. It pulled like gravity, uncaring and unceasing, capturing anything that brushed up too closely. It was a night that would last forever. An eternal dream of darkness, untouched by any sun - and incompatible with everything that NASA and the Navy had taught him. 

That last part finally made up Gene's mind. If that was the way the universe was, if things truly ran on magic instead of science, and not-flutes could really play not-music for some paradoxical beast on the Moon, well, so be it. But he wouldn't believe it until he saw it.

Eugene Cernan looked out the porthole and stared directly at the Nightmare on the Moon.

For an instant, he saw something, and spoke into his microphone before breaking down laughing at the absurdity of what his brain tried to process. 

And then it was gone, a dream fading in his morning memory. 

Gene turned the lights back on. John hadn't gone anywhere, and was laughing. Tom, who had believed the music was for him, was simply asleep.  It had never been for Tom, or for them at all.  

"Boy, that sure is weird music," he mused.

John replied quickly. "We're going to have to find out about that. Nobody will believe us!"

"No." Gene exhaled, listening to the song's remains. "It's a whistling, you know, like... an outer space-type thing."

"Probably due to the VHF ranging, I'd guess?" John hazarded, with his inside-joke tone. 

"Yes." Gene concurred. He wasn't sure Houston would buy that, or exactly what John had done or seen. But VHF ranging was a hell of a lot better than telling people Apollo 10 had a traffic accident with God, and she looked like a Disney cartoon horse. 

"I wouldn't believe there's anyone out there."