“What does this mean, ladies and gentlemen? It means that instead of taking six months to reach Mars, our ship will reach that planet in about a week. It means further that—” He stopped suddenly. A car came bouncing and bounding up through the gap in the fence and swung around and stopped at the foot of the ladder. Judge Willey was driving. He hopped out and opened the door on the other side and a small figure in a space suit climbed stiffly out. In one hand this person held a large umbrella, in the other a small paper bag.
Freddy called: “Hey, Uncle Ben, Mrs. Peppercorn is here!” and then ran down and with the Judge’s help hoisted the old lady up the ladder and into the ship. “She doesn’t have to wear this suit,” he panted; “not until we land on Mars,” and Judge Willey panted back: “She wanted to show herself off in it. That’s why we’re late. Made me drive her all around town. You’d think she’d been elected queen. Bowing and waving to the populace.”
Freddy went down and started to go on with his little speech, but Uncle Ben came to the door. “Zero minus five,” he said. “Get in.”
So Freddy got in and they shut the door and spun the wheels that locked it tight. “Lie down on the floor,” said Uncle Ben. With his eye on his watch, he kept one hand on the big valve that controlled the Benjamin Bean Atomic Engine. And when the watch showed exactly eight twenty-one, he spun the valve.
There was a terrific roar, and the floor seemed to come up and press so hard against them that they could barely draw breath. For a few minutes the pressure got worse and worse as the big rocket built up speed. Then slowly the pressure diminished, and soon they were coasting. They were outside the earth’s atmosphere.
At first, when the ship was building up more and more speed in order to leave the earth, Freddy had felt as if he weighed a ton. He felt as though, if he weighed just one pound more, he would squash himself out flat against the floor. But when the rockets were cut off and the ship was coasting, he got lighter and lighter, and the first thing he knew he didn’t weigh anything at all. He rose right off the floor and began to drift around the control room along with the others, who of course were doing the same thing. Presently he bumped into Jinx.
“Hi, pig,” said the cat; “fancy meeting you here!”
“Hi, pig. Fancy meeting you here.”
Uncle Ben was steadying himself by holding on to the padded hand rail that ran around the room. He was watching the radar screen. “Catch hold of the rail,” he said. “Help Mrs. P.”
Mrs. Peppercorn had let go of her umbrella while she was struggling to get out of her space suit, and it had floated off. She was making sort of swimming motions to catch up with it, but every time she managed to touch it it would move away from her. Jinx and Freddy tried to help her, but the umbrella seemed to be alive; it was rather like three swimmers trying to catch a live fish under water. It was Charles who got hold of it finally with his beak. By using his wings he was able to move about more freely than the others.
Mrs. Peppercorn thanked him, and they had all gathered by the big window and were looking out at the black sky, sprinkled with thousands and thousands of bright points. There wasn’t much to see. The earth was behind them and so was the sun; Mars was still on the other side of the sun, swinging around in its orbit towards the spot where they planned to meet it. Uncle Ben pointed out Venus and Saturn and some of the big fixed stars. Of course they didn’t really need the window; in order to navigate the ship they had the Benjamin Bean Large Economy Size Radar Screen, which would give them all the information they needed.
They were discussing this when Uncle Ben held up his hand. “Listen,” he said. They stopped talking. At intervals of perhaps six seconds there came a little sound: click … squeak … click …
“It’s inside the ship,” said Georgie.
“Of course it is, you dope,” said Jinx. “There’s nothing outside except the universe.”
“Better find it,” Uncle Ben said. For if one of the instruments had gone wrong, or if there was a leak of some kind, things could be pretty serious.
So they began hunting. They floated around, looking behind things and under things, and Uncle Ben took several of the instruments apart and peered into them. But still the click continued.
“You’re just wasting your time, young man,” Mrs. Peppercorn said finally. She always called Uncle Ben “young man,” although he was forty-seven years and two months old. “There’s nothing in here that clicks. It must be outside. And if there’s nothing outside but the universe, then it’s the universe that clicks. Although if a universe the size of this one can’t do more than squeak like an undergrown tree toad, then it ought to go out of business.”
“The tree toad doesn’t squeak,” said Charles. “It—”
“Hey!” Jinx interrupted. “Look!”
Since none of them had any weight, they were all floating freely about the room, holding on by the handrail, like swimmers clinging to a raft. The space suits and all the boxes and various objects that they were taking to Mars were fastened to the floor or walls so that they wouldn’t get in the way; but a few had been loose, and although Uncle Ben had captured and tied most of them down, a large heavy box was drifting around right in the middle of the room. It contained bright bead necklaces, lengths of red cloth, and trinkets of various kinds, which Freddy planned to trade with the natives of Mars for whatever they had that was of value. Now, out from behind this box, a small animal floated. A mouse. He was waving his paws feebly, trying to pull himself back out of sight, but being without weight he was helpless.
“A stowaway!” Freddy exclaimed. “Why, it’s Cousin Augustus! How’d you get here?”
“Wanted to go to—hic—Mars,” said the mouse. “I got in and hid a week ago. I’m—hic—I’m hungry.”
Each hiccup twisted him a little in the air, so that as he talked he turned a very slow somersault. Of course, having no weight, there was no up nor down, and unless they were holding on to the rail, all of them were in different positions. Freddy thought it was fun, talking to somebody who was apparently standing on his head in the air. But Mrs. Peppercorn didn’t like it.
“I wish you’d turn right side up so I can talk to you,” she had said crossly once to Jinx.
“But I am right side up,” he replied. “You’re the one that’s upside down.” As of course she was, from his point of view.
“Isn’t any ‘up’,” Uncle Ben put in.
“Fiddlesticks!” she snapped. “‘Up’ is this way.” She pointed a finger toward the space over her head.
But Uncle Ben, who was hanging on to the rail, reached out and gave her shoulder a gentle push, and she turned a slow half circle, so that her feet were where her head had been a second before. “Now where’s ‘up’?” he asked.
“Oh—oh, fudge!” she said disgustedly. Then she laughed. “All right,” she said; “but for goodness’ sake, Jinx, don’t start doing cartwheels again when you’re trying to tell me something.”
It was hard to tell what to do with Cousin Augustus. They stopped the hiccups with a drink of water and gave him something to eat. They couldn’t just tell him to get out and go on back home, a couple of hundred thousand miles through empty space. Freddy said that stowaways always had to work their passage, and Jinx suggested that perhaps they could send him outside to wash the window. Of course Jinx wasn’t serious, because even if the mouse had had a space suit, there was no way of getting him out and in again, but the mere thought of going out into emptiness brought back the hiccups. At last Uncle Ben tied him to the rail with a piece of string and set him to keeping an eye on the radar screen.
And the rocket whizzed on towards its meeting with the planet Mars.
CHAPTER
6
There isn’t much to do on a space ship. Except for watching the radar screen and occasionally regulating the temperature and pressure, there is no work for the crew. There wasn’t much to see out of the window, either. The stars were brighter and there were millions of them, but as Cousin Augu
stus said, when you’d seen one, you’d seen them all.
After the first day, the novelty of not weighing anything, of not knowing whether they were on their heads or their heels, had worn off. Among the trade goods which Freddy had brought was a checker board, and he and Mrs. Peppercorn tried to play; but the checkers wouldn’t stay on the board. They floated an inch or so above it, and if you happened to brush one with your hand it would drift off, and when you went after it the others would swim around and get all mixed up.
It was impossible to believe that the ship was moving away from the earth at 100,000 miles an hour. It was hard to believe that it was moving at all. Indeed Mrs. Peppercorn refused to believe it. She said if she opened the door, she’d be able to climb right down into the Bean pasture. “We haven’t moved an inch,” she said. “This ship isn’t taking us anywhere. I’m going to get out and go home.” Fortunately she wasn’t strong enough all alone to turn the wheel that sealed up the door.
Freddy spent a lot of time sleeping. You didn’t have to lie down to go to sleep. You just closed your eyes and floated without touching anything. It gave Jinx nightmares, though, to sleep without feeling any bed under him. It made him dream that he was falling, and he’d wake up with a screech. Finally Uncle Ben tied him to the rail with some strips of cloth, so that he could feel something solid against him, and he slept better.
Freddy wrote one poem, but it was so much fun to let go of the pencil and see it stay right there in the air with its point on the paper, that it wasn’t a very long one. It went like this:
Hark
While I croon a verse
In praise
Of the universe.
The universe is quite good-sized,
And is, I think, well organized,
Containing as it does, a slew
Of stars and planets. Comets too
Occasionally whiz about
And dodge and circle in and out
Among the clustered nebulae.
They scare the dickens out of me,
But I suppose they know their stuff
And are expert and quick enough
To keep from bumping or colliding
With other worlds. But I’m residing
At present on the planet, earth,
And it does not arouse my mirth
To see these reckless comets fly
Around as if they owned the sky.
It’s much too dangerous in a crowd,
And really shouldn’t be allowed.
Yet tho there’s nothing to prevent
Bad manners in the firmament,
The heavenly bodies, generally,
Are well behaved and courteously
Avoid all quarrels and disputes—
Tho when they have them, they are beauts.
As to the universe’s size,
It’s rather large than otherwise,
Containing stars and galaxies
And satellites of all degrees.
And some are dim and some are bright
But all are lighted up at night,—
Mostly along the Milky Way—
A quite remarkable display.
Some scientific fellows hope
By peering thru a telescope
To chart the heavens and name each star
Of all the billions that there are.
More sensible I think it is
Just to sit back and let them whiz
Along on their accustomed track
Around and round the zodiac.
For since they are not bothering me
I think it’s best to let them be.
And that is all I have to say
About the universe today.
Freddy might have written more, but when she found out what he was doing, Mrs. Peppercorn remarked that as a girl she had been no slouch of a poet herself, and she kept trying to help Freddy. Some of the verses were pretty terrible. Here is one:
“Some stars are large and some are small,
And some are quite invisiball.”
And another went like this:
“The light from some far distant stars
Does not reach earth for yars and yars.”
She was quite irritated with Freddy when he wouldn’t put them into the poem.
Luckily they were able to talk with the earth. Uncle Ben had built a radio outfit; there was a short wave transmitter on the ship, and another in the cow barn, which he had trained Mrs. Wiggins’ sister, Mrs. Wurzburger, to run. She was to be on duty twenty-four hours a day. So they were able to find out everything that was going on at the farm, a couple of hundred thousand miles away.
At first there wasn’t anything very exciting in the way of news. But on Sunday, Mrs. Wurzburger had some real trouble to report. It seemed that on Saturday afternoon Mrs. Wiggins had been invited to tea by Miss McMinnickle, who lived in a little house down the Centerboro road. She had a dog, Prinny, and you may remember that one of Freddy’s first detective cases was known as “The Case of Prinny’s Dinner.”
The animals were often invited out like this—to tea, or to dinner, or to play cards in the evening. Mrs. Wiggins was very popular. It is true that like most cows she was rather clumsy, and in moving through a room, or in the excitement of an argument, she often knocked over small tables and other furniture, and occasionally a priceless vase or some other valuable knickknack got smashed in this way. But she cried so hard when she did anything like this, and was so well liked, that the owners always said it didn’t matter.
On this afternoon, Mrs. Wiggins was sitting in Miss McMinnickle’s front parlor, drinking tea and discussing various neighborhood topics with her hostess when Mr. Bismuth called. He was a frequent caller. Miss McMinnickle made a very rich and delicious fruit cake, and rich food drew Mr. Bismuth as syrup draws flies. He could be very entertaining when he wanted to, and Miss McMinnickle was always glad to see him.
But after her callers were gone, and she was brushing up the crumbs, Miss McMinnickle couldn’t find her purse. She looked and looked, and at last when she was sure that it was not in the house, she called the state troopers. They came and searched the rooms in which the Bismuths were living at the Bean house and found nothing. Then they searched the cow barn. And tucked down in a corner out of sight, they found the purse. But the eighty-three dollars that had been in it was gone. They arrested Mrs. Wiggins and took her down to the jail and locked her up to await trial.
They arrested Mrs. Wiggins.
Of course the Beans and the other animals didn’t believe for a minute that Mrs. Wiggins had stolen the purse. Even the troopers were pretty doubtful, for—as they said—they had never before even heard of any cow who was not a model citizen. They even called up J. Edgar Hoover and asked him if the F.B.I. had ever investigated a cow. But he said that in all the annals of crime there was no record of a cow criminal. But Miss McMinnickle was mad and demanded Mrs. Wiggins’ arrest, and so of course she had to be put in jail until she could be brought before the judge for trial. She thought it was rather fun, herself.
Freddy was pretty worried. Not on Mrs. Wiggins’ account: he knew that Judge Willey would never pronounce her guilty. And he knew too that the sheriff, who was a friend of his, would make her stay at the jail a pleasant one. But now there’d be no one to keep an eye on the Bismuths.
“But Mr. Bean won’t stand for any monkey business,” said Georgie.
“He won’t if he can help himself,” Freddy said. “But the only way to keep out of trouble would be to tell the Bismuths to get out. And he won’t do that, because you can’t throw your cousin out in the street.”
“You can’t, hey?” said Jinx. “I’d throw my whole family—cousins, sisters, aunts, grandmothers—the whole kit, cat and caboodle—right out on the sidewalk if they started crowding me out of my own house, the way these Bismuths are doing. You know what their latest caper is? They want Mr. and Mrs. Bean to give up their nice front bedroom to Carl, so he can put up a ping-pong table there. Mr. Bean said why n
ot use the loft over the stable, but Mrs. Bismuth said it was draughty, and Carl was too delicate—he might get pneumonia. Pneumonia—ha! I pity any germ that tackled that kid!”
“But Mr. Bean won’t let him have the room, will he?” Georgie asked.
“Oh, my goodness,” said Freddy, “you know how it’ll be. He’ll say no, of course; but they’ll keep on squalling and begging, and Mrs. Bismuth will burst into tears at the breakfast table—”
“After her fifteenth pancake,” put in Cousin Augustus.
“Yeah,” said Jinx. “And Bismuth, he’ll say how ‘twon’t really be giving up anything, because the little back bedroom is much handier to the kitchen, and so on. And by and by the Beans will give in, just so the Bismuths will shut up. That’s the way it’s been about everything else—Bella always having a pitcher of cream with her cereal, because she’s delicate, and old Bismuth having chicken every meal because he’s delicate, and Mrs. Bismuth always sitting in the parlor while Mrs. Bean cooks the meals and washes the dishes—because she’s delicate too. Why, they’re all so darned delicate that they can’t manage to eat but six or seven meals a day.”
But until they got back, there wasn’t much they could do to help the Beans, whom they were leaving behind them at the rate of 100,000 miles an hour.
They usually tied themselves to something before going to sleep. The first night they hadn’t known they needed to, and they drifted around the control room like dust specks in a sunbeam, until Charles drifted into Freddy. The pig was just taking a deep breath when it happened; he drew in Charles’s tail feathers with the air, and the rooster, dreaming that he was being swallowed by an alligator, turned with a squawk and clawed and pecked at Freddy’s nose. It took them all an hour to settle down again.
It was on Sunday night, when they were all asleep except Georgie, who was on watch, that they had a bad scare. Jinx came loose from his rail and drifted into Mrs. Peppercorn, who waked up with a yell when she felt a small cold nose in her ear. She struck out excitedly with both hands; she didn’t hit the cat, but somehow managed to turn a valve that controlled one of the small side rockets which were used to steer the ship. And at once the ship began to spin.
Freddy and the Space Ship Page 4