The Second Voice

In Short

Robbie Crawford is an elite ventriloquist visiting a secretive military base while touring for the troops. When base scientists recruit him to bounce his dummy's unique high-frequency voice off Mars, the transmission returns with an unexpected warning from another world. The hostile alien entity claims the transmission's frequency as its own, leaving Crawford robbed of his vocal range and desperate to convince a skeptical military hierarchy that Earth has just made dangerous contact. Rubin's tale endures for its crisp blend of mid-century cold-war paranoia, showbiz atmosphere, and tight narrative momentum.

The Story

Robbie Crawford is riding high on five years of hard-won success in Hollywood, radio, and television. Despite his demanding schedule, he devotes two months every year to performing for troops on the USO circuit as a gesture of gratitude for his initial break. During a stop at Harlow Field—the nation's premier experimental military proving grounds—he finishes a smooth rehearsal with his famous dummy, Spud O'Malley.

While waiting in his dressing room before the main evening show, Crawford receives an unexpected visit from the base commander, Colonel Meadows, and Dr. Paul Shalt, a top military physicist specializing in radar and atomic detonators. Dr. Shalt explains that standard human voices drown in cosmic static when amplified into deep space. However, tests during Crawford's rehearsal revealed that the specialized, highly resonant "second voice" he uses to perform as Spud possesses an unusual vocal pitch capable of breaking through interstellar pressures. The scientist asks Crawford to participate in an immediate, historic experiment: beaming his voice to Mars to achieve humanity's first interplanetary vocal contact.

Intrigued by the historical significance and assured that the test is completely safe for his vocal cords, Crawford agrees. They drive to a heavily guarded laboratory complex on the base perimeter, where Crawford enters a soundproofed broadcast studio and delivers a humorous greeting to space using Spud's signature squeak. High-frequency amplifiers lift his speech beyond human hearing and launch it into the stratosphere.

After a tense fifteen-minute wait for the signal to complete the thirty-five-million-mile journey, the lab monitor picks up the return transmission. At first, the experiment appears a absolute success as Spud's recorded greeting echoes clearly back into the control room. Seconds later, however, the static clears again to reveal an unscripted, authoritative response in Spud's exact pitch, warning Earth that Martians refuse all contact and are seizing the voice frequency permanently to prevent future intrusions.

When Crawford panics, Dr. Shalt and Colonel Meadows assume he is pulling a humorous prank. Terrified, Crawford insists he never spoke those threatening words, but the scientists dismiss his fears as fatigue or practical joking. Returned to the auditorium, Crawford steps onto the stage to perform for thousands of waiting soldiers. When he attempts to speak for Spud, only choked gurgles emerge; his specialized vocal capability has vanished entirely. Hysterical, Crawford collapses on stage, screaming that the Martians took his voice, leaving the military authorities to cover up the breakdown while the entertainment goes on.

How It Unfolds

The routine check Crawford wraps up a smooth rehearsal at Harlow Field, navigating the tight security of the experimental military installation before retiring to his dressing room to relax before the main performance.

An unusual request Colonel Meadows introduces Dr. Paul Shalt, a base physicist who reveals he monitored Crawford's vocal pitch and wants to use the ventriloquist's specialized high-frequency voice to beam an interplanetary message to Mars.

Into the soundproof booth Crawford agrees to the experiment out of patriotism and duty, traveling under heavy guard to a secluded laboratory where he projects his dummy Spud's high-pitched persona into a powerful space transmitter.

Answering from the void The team listens as the bounced signal returns from space, but after the initial friendly greeting plays back, an unsolicited alien message uses Spud's voice to command humanity to stay away from Mars.

Silence on stage Dismissed as a prankster by the scientists, Crawford returns to the auditorium stage for his live show, only to find himself completely unable to produce his ventriloquist voice before a room full of troops.

The People

• Robbie Crawford wants to complete his USO tour and enjoy a well-deserved vacation after five years of intense work building a top-tier entertainment career. What stands in his way is his own unique vocal talent, which draws the attention of military researchers and ultimately exposes him to an unthinkable foreign force. By the end of the narrative, he is physically stripped of his signature performance voice, psychologically traumatized, and dragged off stage by military police while screaming unheard warnings.
• Dr. Paul Shalt wants to successfully demonstrate a breakthrough in long-range space communication by proving that specific human vocal frequencies can penetrate cosmic disturbance. His rigid scientific rationalism prevents him from taking Crawford's panicked warnings seriously, causing him to misinterpret genuine terror as a performer's lighthearted joke. He ends the story convinced of the experiment's technical success, completely blind to the alien threat he has triggered.
• Colonel Meadows wants to maintain smooth operations at Harlow Field, support cutting-edge weapons research, and present an entertaining event for his base troops. His cheerful camaraderie and appeals to patriotism persuade Crawford to join the experiment, but his insistence on treating the terrifying return transmission as a routine comedy bit leaves the base unprepared for the true nature of the event.

In Its Own Voice

"He was used to it now; the applause, the audiences, the pictures, the autographs, the fuss. Everywhere the response was the same."

Crawford reflects on the standard trappings of celebrity that follow him while touring military bases on the USO circuit.

"It's called a Voice Oscillator," explained Dr. Shalt. "It's sensitive to the slightest tonal inflection. We use it to measure the pitch and volume of a human voice."

Dr. Shalt presents the specialized equipment used to evaluate the pitch of Crawford's secondary vocal register.

"A sound started, a low, plaintive wail that broke into a dirge and finally into a wild shriek from Crawford's lips."

The tragic moment on stage when Crawford realizes his secondary voice has been permanently taken from him.

What It's Really About

Underneath its outer-space premise, the story explores the vulnerability of human identity and the dangerous hubris of technological expansion. Crawford views his ventriloquism as a personal gift and a commercial asset, only for institutional forces to reframe his physical body as material for scientific experimentation. The story questions whether humanity is truly prepared for the reality of what lies beyond its borders, suggesting that scientific ambition often outpaces understanding. When the military blithely broadcasts into the unknown, it treats deep space as a passive frontier, failing to anticipate that broadcasting into the dark invites an answer. The loss of Crawford's voice represents the ultimate personal violation—an individual stripped of his livelihood and identity by forces that reduce human communication to raw signal frequencies.

Why Read It Today

This short work appeals to fans of classic mid-century sci-fi anthologies like The Twilight Zone or Tales of Tomorrow, where a simple, eerie premise escalates quickly toward a dramatic payoff. It captures the distinct post-war atmosphere of the 1950s—a world of atomic proving grounds, rigid base security, and burgeoning space-race anxieties. Rubin writes with clean, fast-paced momentum, capturing both the backstage realities of vintage show business and the cold procedural atmosphere of secret government labs.

Readers should note the period-typical melodrama and straightforward narrative style, which favors swift plot movement over complex character development. The story's strength lies in its tight focus and ominous ending: the military machinery simply rolls forward, brushing off the central horror in favor of keeping up public appearances. It leaves a haunting impression of how easily human life can be swept aside by cold institutional priorities and unknown cosmic realities.