Cosmic Interference

"He beamed a call, but there was no answer. Only the dry whisper of cosmic interference."
-Poul Anderson, The Snows Of Ganymede (New York, 1958), Chapter 4.

Compare the "...dismal universal hiss..." in John Milton and James Blish here. I had thought that Blish mentioned not a "hiss" but the music of the spheres"! See:

Song Of Earth
Cosmic Questions
Contact Re-Established (Out Of The Silent City)

Blish wrote that no one had ever heard "...the sound of the stars..." (The Star Dwellers, Chapter 12, p. 117) "...until two centuries after [Milton] but nobody has ever described it better." (ibid.) Maybe Anderson's "...dry whisper..." is a good attempt?

(I must have misremembered "the sound of the stars" as "the music of the spheres.")