The Second Fredric Brown Megapack: 27 Classic Science Fiction Stories

by Fredric Brown

  There is no necessity in wasting a month here. I shall now take command of the ship and return. We will report no ore present here. The four of us who will animate the four terrestrials now aboard this ship will report to you from Terra…

  MITKEY RIDES AGAIN

  In the darkness within the wall there was movement, and Mitkey, who was once again merely a little gray mouse, scurried for the hole in the baseboard. Mitkey was hungry, and just outside that hole lay the Professor’s icebox. And under the icebox, cheese.

  A fat little mouse, Mitkey, almost as fat as Minnie, who had lost her figure completely because of the Professor’s generosity.

  “Alvays, Mitkey,” Professor Oberburger had said, “vill be cheese under der izebox. Alvays.” And there always was. Not always ordinary cheese, either. Roquefort and beerkase and hand cheese and Camembert, and sometimes imported Swiss that looked as though mice had already lived in it, and which tasted like mouse-heaven.

  And Minnie ate and Mitkey ate, and it was well that the holes in the walls and the baseboards were large holes, else their roly-poly little bodies would no longer have found passage.

  But something else was happening, too. Something that would have pleased and yet worried the good professor, had he known.

  In the darkness within a tiny mind there were stirrings not unlike the scurrying of mice within a wall. Stirrings of strange memories, memories of words and meanings, memories of deafening noise within the black compartment of a rocket, memories of something more important than cheese and Minnie and darkness.

  Slowly, Mitkey’s memories and intelligence were coming back.

  There under the shadow of the icebox, he paused and listened. In the next room, Professor Oberburger was working. And as always, talking to himself.

  “Und now ve pudt on der landing vanes. Much bedder iss, mit landing vanes, for vhen der moon it reaches, softly it vill land, iff air iss there.”

  Almost, almost, it made sense to Mitkey. The words were familiar, and they brought ideas and pictures into his little gray head and his whiskers twitched with the effort to understand.

  The professor’s heavy footsteps shook the floor as he walked to the doorway of the kitchen and stood there looking at the mouse-hole in the baseboard.

  “Mitkey, should I set again der trap und—Budt no. No. Mitkey, my liddle star-mouse. You haff earned peace and rest no? Peace und cheese. Der segund rocket for der moon, another mouse vill be in, yes.”

  Rocket. Moon. Stirrings in the mind of a little gray mouse cowering beside a plate of cheese under the icebox, unseen in the shadow. Almost, almost, he remembered.

  The Professor’s steps turned away, and Mitkey turned to the cheese.

  But still he listened, and with uneasiness that he could not understand.

  A click. The Professor’s voice giving a number.

  “Hardtvord Laboratories, yess? Brofessor Oberburger. I vant mice. Vait, no, a mouse. Vun mouse… Vhat? Yess, a white mouse vill do. Color, it doess nodt madder. Effen a purple mouse… Hein? No, no I know you haff no burple mice. I vass vhat you call kidding, chust… Vhen? No hurry. Nodt for almost a veek vill der—Neffer mind dot. Chust send der mouse vhen convenient, no?”

  A click.

  And a click in the mind of a mouse under an icebox. Mitkey stopped nibbling cheese and looked at it instead. He had a word for it. Cheese.

  Very softly to himself he said it. “Cheese.” Halfway between a squeak and a word it was, for the vocal chords Prxl had given him were rusty. But the next time it sounded better. “Cheese,” he said.

  And then, the other two words coming without his even thinking about it, “Dot iss cheese.”

  And it frightened him a little, so he scurried back into the hole in the wall and the comforting darkness. Then that became just a bit frightening, too, because he had a word for that, too. “Vail. Behind der vail.”

  No longer was it just a picture in his mind. There was a sound that meant it. It was very confusing, and the more he remembered the more confusing it became.

  * * * *

  Darkness of night outside the professor’s house, darkness within the wall. But there were bright lights in the Professor’s workroom, and there was brightening dimness in Mitkey’s mind as he watched from a shadowed vantage point.

  That gleaming metal cylinder on the workbench—Mitkey had seen its like before. And he had a word for that, too, rocket.

  And the big lumbering creature who worked over it, talking incessantly to himself as he worked…

  Almost, Mitkey called out “Brofessor!”

  But the caution of mousehood kept him silent, listening.

  It was like a downhill-rolling snowball now, that growing memory of Mitkey’s. Words came back in a rush as the Professor talked, words and meanings.

  And memories like the erratic shapes of jig-saw falling one by one into a coherent picture.

  “Und der combartment for der mouse—Hydraulic shock absorbers yet, so der mouse lands softly-safely. Und der shortvafe radio dot vill tell me vhether he liffs in der moon’s admosphere after…”

  “Admosphere,” and there was contempt in the professor’s voice. “These vools who say the moon it hass no admosphere. Chust because der spegtroscope—”

  But the slight bitterness in the voice of the professor was nothing to the growing bitterness in Mitkey’s little mind.

  For Mitkey was Mitkey again, now. Memory intact, if a bit confused and spotty. His dreams of Moustralia, and all.

  His first sight of Minnie after his return, and the blackout-step onto tinfoil charged with electricity that had ended all his dreams. A trap! It had been a trap!

  The professor had double-crossed him, had given him that shock deliberately to destroy his intelligence, perhaps even to kill him, to protect the interests of the big awkward lumbering race of men from intelligent mice!

  Ah, yes, the professor had been smart, Mitkey thought bitterly. And Mitkey was glad now that he had not called out “Brofessor” when it had come to him to do so. The professor was his enemy!

  Alone and in the dark, he would have to work. Minnie first, of course. Create one of the X-19 machines the Prxlians had showed him how to make, and raise Minnie’s intelligence level. Then the two of them—

  It would be hard, working in secret without the Professor’s help, to make that machine. But maybe…

  A bit of wire on the floor under the workbench. Mitkey saw it and his bright little eyes gleamed and his whiskers twitched. He waited until Professor Oberburger was looking the other way, and then softly ran toward the wire, and with it in his mouth he scurried for the hole in the wall.

  The professor didn’t see him.

  “Und for der uldra-vafe brojector…”

  Mitkey safe in darkness with his bit of wire. A start! More wire, he would need. A fixed condenser—the professor would have one, surely. A flashlight cell—that would be hard to handle. He’d have to roll it across the floor after the professor was asleep. And other things. It would take him days, but what did time matter?

  The professor worked late that night, very late.

  But darkness in the workshop came at last. Darkness and a very busy little mouse.

  * * * *

  And bright morning, and the ringing of a doorbell.

  “Package for Professor—uh—Oberburger.”

  “Yah? Vot iss?”

  “Dunno. From the Hartford Laboratories, and they said to carry it careful.”

  Holes in the package.

  “Yah, der mouse.”

  The professor signed for it, and then carried it into the workroom and unwrapped the wooden cage.

  “Ah, der vhite mouse. Liddle mouse, you are going a long, long vay. Vhat shall ve call you yet? Vhitey, no? Vould you vant some cheese, Vhitey?”

  Yes, Whitey wanted cheese all right. He was a sleek, dapper little mouse with very close-set beady eyes and supercilious whiskers. And if you can picture a mouse to be haughty, Whitey was haughty. A city-slicker type of mo
use. A blue-blood of the laboratories, who had never before tasted cheese. Nothing so common and plebian as cheese had entered his vitamin-infested diet.

  But he tasted cheese and it was Camembert, good enough even for a blue-blood. And he wanted cheese all right. He ate with daintiness, a well-bred sort of nibbling. And if mice could smile, he would have smiled.

  For one may smile and smile and be a villain.

  “Und now, Vhitey, I show you. I put der pick-up by your cage, to see if it iss set to broadcast der vaint sounds you make eating. Here. I adchust—”

  From the speaker on the corner table a monstrous champing sound, the magnification a thousand times of the sound of a mouse eating cheese.

  “Yess, it vorks. You see, Vhitey, I eggsplain—Vhen der rocket on der moon lands, der combartment door it opens. But you can nodt get out, yet. There vill be bars, of balsa vood. You vill be able to gnaw through them, und you vill do so, to get out. If you are alife, see?”

  “Und der sound of your gnawing vill be on der ultra shordt-vafe to vhich I shall stay duned-in, see? So vhen der rocket lands, I vill listen on my receifer, und if I hear you gnawing, I vill know you landed alife.”

  Whitey might well have been apprehensive if he had understood what the professor was saying, but of course he didn’t. He nibbled on at the Camembert in blissful supercilious indifference.

  “Und it vill tell me iff I am right about der admosphere, too, Vhitey. Vhen der rocket lands und der combartment door opens, der air vill shut off. Unless air iss on der moon, you vill liff only fife minutes or less.”

  “If you keep on gnawing through der balsa vood after dot, it is because admosphere iss on der moon und der astronomers und der spegtroscopes are vooling themselfes. Und vools they are vhen they vail to subtract der Liebnitz revraction lines avay from der spectrum, no?”

  Over the vibrant diaphragm of the radio speaker, the champ-chomp-chomp of chewing cheese.

  Yes, the pick-up worked, beautifully.

  “Und now to install it der rocket in…”

  * * * *

  A day. A night. Another day. Another night.

  A man working on a rocket, and within the wall behind him a mouse working even harder to complete something much smaller, but almost equally as complex. The X-19 projector to raise the intelligence of mice. Of Minnie, first.

  A stolen pencil stub became a coil, a coil with a graphite core. Across the core, the stolen condenser, nibbled to within a microfarad of the exact capacity, and from the condenser a wire—But even Mitkey didn’t understand it. He had a blueprint in his mind of how it was made, but not of why it worked.

  “Und now der flashlight dry-cell vhich I stole from der—” Yes, Mitkey, too, talked incessantly to himself while he worked. But softly, softly so the professor wouldn’t hear.

  And from the wall, the rumble of a deeper guttural voice:

  “Und now to put der pick-up der combartment in…”

  Of men and mice. Hard to say which was the busier of the two.

  * * * *

  Mitkey finished first. The little X-19 projector was not a thing of beauty to the eye; in fact it resembled the nucleus of an electrician’s scrap pile. Most definitely it was not streamlined and gleaming like the rocket in the room outside the wall. It had rather a Rube Goldberg look about it.

  But it would work. In every essential detail it followed the instructions Mitkey had received from the Prxlian scientists.

  The final wire, so.

  “Und now to bring mine Minnie…”

  She was cowering in the far corner of the house. As far as possible from those strange neuric vibrations that were doing queer things inside her head.

  There was panic in her eyes as Mitkey approached. Sheer panic.

  “Mine Minnie, nothing iss to be avraid about. You must closer come to der brojector und then—und then you vill be an indelligent mouse, mine Minnie. You vill dalk goot English, like me yet.”

  For days now she had been puzzled and apprehensive. The strange actions of her consort, the strange noises he made that were not sensible mouse-squeaks at all, terrified her. Now he was making those weird noises at her.

  “Mine Minnie, it iss all right. To der machine you must come closer, und you vill be able to dalk soon. Almost like me, Minnie. Yess, der Prxls did things to mine vocal chords so mine voice it sounds bedder yet, but effen mitout, you vill be able to—”

  Gently Mitkey was trying to wedge his way in behind her, to push her out of the corner and edge her in the direction of the machine behind the wall of the next room.

  Minnie squealed, and then she ran.

  But alas, only a few feet toward the projector, and then she turned at right angles through the hole in the baseboard. Scurried across the kitchen floor and through a hole in the screen of the kitchen door. Outside, and into the high unmown grass of the yard.

  “Minnie! Mine Minnie! Come back!”

  And Mitkey scurried after her, too late.

  In the foot-high grass and weeds he lost her completely, without a trace.

  “Minnie! Minnie!”

  Alas, poor Mitkey. Had he remembered that she was still only a mouse, and had he squeaked for her instead of calling, she might have come out from her hiding place.

  Sadly, he returned and shut off the X-19 projector.

  Later, when she returned, if she returned, he would figure some way. Possibly he could move the projector near her when she was asleep. To play safe, he could tie her feet first, so that if she was awakened by the neuric vibrations…

  * * * *

  Night, and no Minnie.

  Mitkey sighed, and waited.

  Outside the wall, the rumble of the professor’s voice.

  “Ach, effen the bread iss all gone. No food, und now I must go out und to der store yet. Food, it iss such a nuisance people must eat vhen on something imbortant they vork. But—ach, vhere iss mine hat?”

  And the opening and closing of the door.

  Mitkey crept to the mousehole. This was opportunity to look about out in the work-shop, to find a bit of soft string that would serve to tie Minnie’s dainty little feet.

  Yes, the light was on out there, and the professor was gone. Mitkey scurried to the middle of the room and looked around.

  There was the rocket, and it was finished, as far as Mitkey could see. Probably now the professor was waiting until the proper time to fire it. Against one wall the radio equipment that would pick up the automatic broadcast from the rocket when it had landed.

  Lying on the table, the rocket itself. Beautiful shining cylinder which—if the professor’s calculations were correct—would be the first Earth-sent object ever to reach the moon.

  It caught at Mitkey’s breath to look at it.

  “Iss is nodt beautiful, no?”

  Mitkey jumped an inch up in the air. That had not been the professor’s voice! It was a strange, squeaky, grating voice, a full octave too high for a human larynx.

  A shrill chuckle, and, “Did I vrighten you?”

  And Mitkey whirled around again, and this time located the source of the voice. The wooden cage on the table. Something white inside it.

  A white paw reached through the bars of the door, the latch lifted, and a white mouse stepped out. His beady-bright eyes looked down, a bit contemptuously, at the little gray mouse on the floor below.

  “You are this Mitkey, no, of whom der brofessor sbeaks?”

  “Yess,” said Mitkey, wonderingly. “Und you—ach, yess, I see vhat happened. Der X-19 brojector. It vas in der vail chust oudside your cage. Und, like me, from der brofessor you learned to dalk English. Vhat iss your name?”

  “Vhitey, der brofessor calls me. It vill do. Vhat iss der X-19 brojector, Mitkey?”

  Mitkey told him.

  “Ummm,” said Whitey. “Bossibilities I see, many bossibilities. Much more bedder than a drip to der moon. Vhat are your blans for using der brojector?”

  Mitkey told him. The beady-bright eyes of Whitey grew brighter—and
beadier. But Mitkey didn’t notice.

  “Iff to der moon you are nodt going,” Mitkey said, “come down. I vill show you vhere to hide der vail inside.”

  “Nodt yet, Mitkey. Look, at dawn tomorrow takes off der rocket. No hurry iss. Soon der brofessor comes home. He vorks around a vhile und dalks, und I listen. I learn more. Und a vhile he vill sleep before dawn, und then I eggscape. Iss easy.”

  Mitkey nodded. “Dot iss smart. Budt do nodt trust der brofessor. If he learns you are now indelligent, he vill either kill you or make sure you do nodt eggscape. He is avraid of indelligent mice. Ach, vootsteps. Get back your cage in. Und be careful.”

  And Mitkey scurried toward the mousehole, then remembered the piece of string and scurried back after it. The tip of his tail was just disappearing into the hole as Professor Oberburger walked into the room.

  “Cheese, Vhitey. Cheese I brought you, und to put in der combartment of der rocket too so as you eadt on der vay. You haff been a goot liddle mouse. Vhitey?”

  “Squeak.”

  The professor peered into the cage.

  “Almost I thingk you answer me, Vhitey. You did, yess?”

  Silence. Deep silence from the wooden cage…

  Mitkey waited, and waited longer.

  No Minnie.

  “Der yard she iss hiding in,” he told himself reassuringly. “She knows it iss dangerous to come in vhen iss light. Vhen dargkness comes—”

  And darkness came.

  No Minnie.

  It was as dark outside now as it was within the wall. Mitkey sneaked to the kitchen door and made sure that it was open and that the hole was still there in the bottom of the screen.

  He stuck his head through the hole and called, “Minnie! Mine Minnie!” And then he remembered she did not speak English, and squeaked for her instead. But softly so the professor in the next room would not hear him.

  No answer. No Minnie.

  Mitkey sighed and scurried back from dark corner to dark corner of the kitchen until he had reached safety in the mouse-hole.