The Mouse On The Moon: eBook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 2)

by Leonard Wibberley

  When the returns of what came to be known as the Lunar Election were in, Mountjoy's party had a solid majority in the Council of Freemen of three votes and Bentner was dazed to discover that women, who in Grand Fenwick had no vote, were yet capable of swinging an election.

  "I could have warned you of this outcome before, my good man," Mountjoy informed him loftily when the returns were in. "There has never been a time or a country in history when women have not had a vote—even though they may officially be unable to cast a ballot. Since balloting was first devised, men may have cast the ballots but women have always told them how to do it. But do not be disturbed. I can be of some help to you and you can be of some help to me in the grave business that lies ahead."

  Much chastened, Bentner was inclined to listen to the counsel of Mountjoy.

  "As matters now stand," said Mountjoy, "Bascomb intends that forty-five million dollars are to be literally flung into the sky in a ridiculous attempt to get to the moon. Only five million are left to benefit the people of Grand Fenwick in works of one kind or another. If we work wisely together, we should be able to reverse these figures.

  "It would have been much easier, by the way, if you hadn't called for that general election when you did. If you hadn't done so, you might have been able to call for one after accepting the money and campaigned on the issue of getting forty-five million dollars for the workers of Grand Fenwick, leaving the five million dollars for the moon. In which case you would undoubtedly have won. You must learn, Bentner, in politics, while publicly challenging your opposition on every occasion, to work closely with him behind the scenes, as quite often the opposition has precisely the same aims as yourself."

  "But I didn't want any part of the money," said Bentner, "and I still don't."

  "You must learn to be a realist and not a dreamer," said Mountjoy. "Nobody has ever won an election by demanding that the voters turn down an offer of fifty million dollars. You were beaten at the start. Your proper objective should have been to get as much of the fifty million as you could for your party. However, as I say, we can perhaps work together on the matter. If, for instance, you were to introduce a motion when we have accepted the funds that a larger portion be spent in Grand Fenwick and less on the moon, my party would support you and the motion would be unanimously carried. That would considerably restore your political prestige here."

  "But I don't want any part of the money," repeated Bentner. "I know what you're after with your highway and hotel program. You'll ruin the country. And I don't want to have anything to do with ruining the country. I like it the way it is."

  "Well," said Mountjoy with a sigh, it seems to me that I will have to take over the leadership of both parties in Grand Fenwick since you are intent upon deserting the working people. It will be somewhat difficult to supply my own Opposition but I have no doubt I can manage it." He left Bentner to think the matter over and Bentner, lacking other counsel, consulted with his daughter, Cynthia.

  If Mountjoy has his way," he said, "it's going to mean rising wages and rising prices and all the troubles of inflation. The Grand Fenwick pound is as solid now as the Swiss franc. But let wages start rising and groups of foreign workers come into the country building highways and hotels and putting in plumbing, and then let them be followed by hordes of tourists and our pound won't be worth a Swiss centime. It's happened elsewhere and it can happen here. That Mountjoy is a villain. He'll ruin this country with his scheming?"

  "If you think it will ruin the country," said Cynthia quietly, it seems to me that you can't avoid accepting the money, but there is nothing to prevent you throwing it away."

  "Throwing it away?" echoed Bentner. You can't take fifty million dollars and just dump it out with the garbage. People would pick it up and start spending it and everything I fear would happen."

  "You have to throw it somewhere where they can’t get it?" said Cynthia, busy with her ironing. "About a quarter of a million miles away."

  "Meaning?" asked Bentner, who was not at his most acute.

  "You have to throw it away on the moon," said his daughter. "Just insist that every penny of it is spent on this rocket research and when the rocket is made and all the money is tied up in it, then fire it off to the moon and you have no more money problems.

  "They have been doing that in America for years," she added, "but then I expect they have so much money there that getting rid of it is a problem. And if the money is spent on this rocket, then I think Vincent will stay here. It would give him something to use his engineering training on instead of taking one of those big jobs in America."

  "You want him to stay?" asked Bentner, hardly aware that any relationship existed between his daughter and the Count of Mountjoy's son.

  "Yes," said Cynthia. "I do. And if it means building a rocket to go to the moon to keep him here, then that's what has to be done."

  Bentner became conscious, and not for the first time, of depths in his daughter beyond his knowledge. He began to feel a little uneasy and, recalling what had happened to him during the recent elections, he said, "Cynthia, did you have anything to do with Mountjoy winning that last election?"

  Cynthia turned the shirt she was ironing over, spread the collar carefully, and ran the iron over it. Her father noted that she was blushing a little at the base of her neck.

  "I did mention to some of the other women that it would be nice to have hot and cold water in the houses and maybe washing machines," she said.

  "You mean that you took a part in defeating your own father?" demanded Bentner.

  "Well," said Cynthia, "it was very important that you lose the election because if you won, the money would have been turned down and then Vincent would have gone to the United States and perhaps met somebody over there and I would never have seen him again."

  "Did the Count of Mountjoy put you up to this?" demanded Bentner.

  "He thought he did," said Cynthia, "but I had worked it out for myself before. Women have a lot of time to think when they are ironing, and men are always kept busy at things that don't let them think. Besides, when a woman is in love, she has to do everything she can to keep her man for herself."

  "You mean that you are in love with Vincent of Mountjoy?" demanded Bentner. "How long has this been going on?"

  "Let's see," said Cynthia calmly. "I'm twenty-two now, so it's seventeen years. When I was five he hit me on the head with a little red mallet and that's when I fell in love with him, and I've been in love with him ever since." She folded the shirt down neatly and turned to another, and David Bentner looked at her in astonishment and awe, bemused at the issues which, all unknown to him, a prime contender, had been involved in the general election.

  "I am on your side now," said Cynthia after a while. "I think you ought to see that every penny of that money is spent on the rocket. That would keep Vincent here longer and give me a better chance with him. I don't think he would be much interested, with all his degrees, in installing plumbing or even building highways. But designing a rocket—that would be a big challenge."

  So it was that the Count of Mountjoy, far from obtaining Bentner's aid in securing more of the money for spending in Grand Fenwick, found Bentner insisting that every penny of it be spent on lunar research, including the five million which Tully Bascomb had agreed should be earmarked for the Count's purposes.

  It took him some little time to discover the real source of this stubborn opposition.

  CHAPTER VIII

  By May of 1968 three nations were fully entered in the race for the moon. They were the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with an area of something over 8,300,000 square miles, the United States of America with an area of around 3,000,000 square miles and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, whose area may be put precisely at 23 square miles and 17 acres. The odds, if size were to be regarded as a factor, were obviously heavily loaded in favor of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and indeed that nation hoped to offset the price of shoes and the lack of privacy among its people
by being first to the moon. As the British representative at the United Nations, who was something of a wit, remarked over his whisky and soda in the delegates lounge, "Our Communist friends have taken over the old slogan about 'Pie in the Sky.' Well, we mustn't complain. We got plenty of mileage out of it ourselves in our day."

  Nobody, outside of those directly engaged, knew how close to a moon landing the Russians were. They had achieved some magnificent feats in space. Their astronauts had not only circumnavigated the earth several times, but their scientists had put several space capsules in orbit around the moon as satellites. The next step was plainly a space platform circling the moon from which a local rocket-launching could be made to the moon's surface and back again to the space platform. And yet for a full year there had been no great advance in the Russian program, which seamed to have entered, after a brilliant start, a period of stalemate.

  With the United States, matters were somewhat better. The United States had come belatedly into the space race, and had proceeded cautiously. There had been a lot of service bickering and infighting which had held up rocket development. But the American program gathered momentum as the months and years went by, and the handicap of having had to work initially with underpowered rockets with a thrust of scarcely two hundred tons was now paying dividends.

  In the days of the small-thrust rockets, American scientists had been forced to miniaturize all their instruments and cut down on weight in every department, while Russia, with a rocket developing a thrust of five hundred tons, had been under no such handicap. The result was that the United States rocket designers had become experts at weight reduction without sacrifice of efficiency. They now had rockets with a thrust equal to if not greater than those of Russia. The Saturn Rocket Mark H developed a whopping 1500 tons of thrust and could carry on its nose a three-man space craft which could be put into orbit around the moon (on which the rocket itself would land) rejoining the rocket for the return to earth after a full photographic survey of the moon's surface had been made.

  Grand Fenwick had Dr. Kokintz, $50,000,000 and a minor political crisis, as the Labor party insisted that the full $50,000,000 be shot to the moon in the interests of the nation, and Mountjoy found for $5,000,000 of it for bathtubs—also in the interests of the nation.

  Nobody in Grand Fenwick had any idea of how to start to get to the moon though all the people for a while had a sense of great importance that their country should have been selected for such a project. The farmers talked wisely to each other about what should be the first thing done when a man landed on the moon's surface. Most agreed that a flag should be planted somewhere, but after that they were at something of a loss, for as far as they knew the moon was just a large lump of rock floating up there in the sky and it would be impossible to raise sheep on it or plant vines. It seemed then that after planting a flag on the moon, the next thing to do would be to get back to earth again as quickly as possible, and when the novelty of the thing had worn off, the whole project, while fascinating to the children, seemed rather silly to the older people, who took to remarking wisely that no good would come of it.

  Mountjoy was, of course, pleased with this development. He believed that all he had to do was bide his time and the whole of Grand Fenwick would be behind him and he would be able to get the major portion of the funds for the various projects for the development of the country which were so dear to his heart.

  But Mountjoy had reckoned without Dr. Kokintz, who for the past several weeks had been working with the photographic plates he had exposed in attempting to get pictures of the two bobolinks. (The bobolinks had nested in the big beech and the female was sitting on the eggs, which pleased the scientist enormously.)

  One day he sought an audience with Gloriana and Tully, saying he had something very important to tell them.

  "If it is about the bobolinks," said Gloriana to Tully, "maybe it can wait until tomorrow. I have to get my hair washed this afternoon and you know what a business that is."

  "I don’t think it’s about the bobolinks," said Tully. "When Dr. Kokintz says it's something important, it could be birds, but it could be something like Einstein's theory of the unified field. He has a queer idea of what is important. I think we ought to see him."

  Gloriana sighed, and the two of them called on the doctor in his apartments since he had asked if they would see him there.

  They found him at ease in a large leather chair and he seated them courteously and begged them not to be disturbed by the festoons of developed film which hung from every portion of the ceiling.

  "I had to make three hundred exposures," he said, "and then analyze the results by mathematical computation but everything checked out in the end and all is a success."

  Gloriana looked blankly at Tully. "All of what is a success?" Tully asked.

  "In one moment I will give you a little demonstration and then I will explain," said the doctor. "That is always the best way. A demonstration first, and then the explanation?" He was plainly in the best of humor and enjoying himself. He went to a cupboard and returned carrying a wine bottle, a piece of fishing net and a length of stout rope.

  "Strange apparatus, eh?" he said, nodding his head over the three items. "But one can never tell what will provide scientific equipment." Tully examined the wine bottle closely. It was a bottle of Pinot Grand Fenwick, but the cork had been removed and replaced by a metal plug from which a little pipe thrust out, not unlike a pouring device such as is used in serving whisky in bars.

  "It was the bobolinks that started it all," said Dr. Kokintz. "But be patient and you will learn everything." To their surprise he then wrapped the fishing net entirely around the wine bottle and tied the rope to the net. The other end of the rope he fastened to the leg of a work-bench. Then he stood before the two of them holding the wine bottle upside down in the net, with the rope attached to it.

  "In one minute we will start," he said. "We should have a countdown." He glanced at his wrist watch and started counting, "Fifty…forty-five…forty…thirty-five…" and then, "ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one."

  At the word one the wine bottle moved a little from side to side in the doctor's hands and then, steadying, rose gracefully up in the air toward the ceiling, accelerating as it went. It was brought to a sudden halt by the rope attached to the fishing net around it. The rope was stretched as stiff as a bar of steel. Tully and Gloriana stared at the wine bottle straining in the air at the top of the rope.

  "Whatever is it?" asked Tully, who was the first to recover from his surprise.

  "Pinotium Sixty-four," said Dr. Kokintz. "A new element obtained from Pinot Grand Fenwick—Premier Cru." He turned to Gloriana, "Sixty-four is the atomic number," he said. "It also happens to be my age," he added charmingly.

  Tully got up and tested the tension of the rope by pulling down on it. He expected it to give, but he could not budge it an inch. He pulled harder without success and finally got his whole weight on the rope, lifting his feet off the floor. The rope remained stiff, the bottle thrust up toward the ceiling did not move by as much as a centimeter. But when Tully, using all his weight on the rope, jerked downward on it, the net around the bottle broke and the bottle itself, with a subdued roar, rushed upward and, being deflected from the upright at its release, thundered out the tall window of Dr. Kokintz' chambers. It was in sight for only a moment, leaving, such was its speed, a vapor trail behind it. Then, lofting over the mountain top, it disappeared into the clouds. They had all run to the window to watch it.

  "I'm sorry, Doctor," said Tully as they looked at the little wisp of vapor the rocketing wine bottle had left hanging in the air like a white silk thread.

  "It is of no concern," said Kokintz. "You have had the demonstration, but now the explanation. You saw me take a bottle of wine, wrap it in a fishnet, attach a rope to the net and you saw the bottle rise to the ceiling with sufficient force to support the weight of a man. And you ask yourself what provides this force.

&n
bsp; "I have given you the answer but in name only—Pinotium Sixty-four, a new radioactive element I have found in Pinot Grand Fenwick—Premier Grand Cru.

  "Now comes the difficult part—to explain this element." He seated himself in his chair, filled his big Oompaul pipe and, in the process of filling it, seemed to be arranging his thoughts so as to be able to explain all about Pinotium 64 to these two people who were by no means scientists.

  "I will start from the beginning," he said, "and if you do not understand please stop me and question me. It is always important to ask questions. The foolish ones are the ones who do not understand but do not ask questions.

  "Well, it began with a bottle of Pinot Grand Fenwick. I was here one night with the Count of Mountjoy and the cork was ejected from a bottle of Pinot Grand Fenwick which was on that table there. Naturally I assumed that Boyle’s law of the expansion of gases was in operation—that the heat of the fire had turned some of the alcohol in the wine into a gas and the gas, mixed with the air in the bottle and both seeking to expand, had pushed the cork out of the bottle.

  "I had nothing with which to occupy my mind and I began to wonder what exactly was the alcoholic content of Pinot Grand Fenwick and at what temperatures the various components of the wine would be turned into gas and what solid residue would be left.

  "It was an experiment for a schoolboy but nonetheless I decided to undertake it. I set up my apparatus and when the Count of Mountjoy had gone, I worked all that night. I obtained from the wine a very small amount of a whitish residue the greatest portion of which I knew would be sugar, while there would be traces of various minerals and salts as well.

  "The following morning I went out with Tully to photograph the bobolinks, putting the photographic plates in one pocket of my overcoat together with the residue from the wine which I had in an envelope."