Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

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?”