«Ah, und now it iss dargk enough, Minnie, that ve can loogk for that husband of yours. His viery trail across the sky. True, Minnie, it iss a very small viery trail und der astronomers vill not notice it, because they do not know vhere to loogk. But ve do.
«He iss going to be a very vamous mouse, Minnie, this Mitkey of ours, vhen ve tell der world about him und about mein rocket. You see, Minnie, ve haff not told them yet. Ve shall vait und giff der gomplete story all at vunce. By dawn of tomorrow ve’ll — Ah, there he iss, Minnie! Vaint, but there. I’d hold you up to der scope und let you loogk, but it vould not be vocused right for your eyes, und I do not know how to —
«Almost vun hundred thousand miles, Minnie, und still agcelerating, but not for much longer. Our Mitkey iss on schedule; in fagt he is going vaster than ve had vigured, no? It iss sure now that he vill eggscape the gravitation of der earth, und fall upon der moon?»
Of course, it was purely coincidental that Minnie squeaked.
«Ah, yess, Minnie, little Minnie. I know, I know. Ve shall neffer see our Mitkey again, und I almost vish our eggsperiment hadt vailed. Budt there are gompensations, Minnie. He shall be der most vamous of all mices. Der Star-Mouse! Virst liffing greature effer to go beyond der gravitational bull of earth!»
The night was long. Occasionally high clouds obscured vision.
«Minnie, I shall make you more gomfortable than in that so-small vire cage. You vould like to seem to be vree, vould you not, vithout bars, like der animals at modern zoos, with moats insteadt?»
And so, to fill in an hour when a cloud obscured the sky, the Herr Professor made Minnie her new home. It was the end of a wooden crate, about half an inch thick and a foot square, laid flat on the table, and with no visible barrier around it.
But he covered the top with metal foil at the edges, and he placed the board on another larger board which also had a strip of metal foil surrounding the island of Minnie’s home. And wires from the two areas of metal foil to opposite terminals of a small transformer which he placed nearby.
«Und now, Minnie, I shall blace you on your island, vhich shall be literally supplied mitt cheese und vater, und you shall vind it is an eggcelent blace to liff. But you vill get a mild shock or two vhen you try to step off der edge of der island. It vill not hurt much, but you vill not like it, und after a few tries you vill learn not to try again, no? Und —»
And night again.
Minnie was happy on her island, her lesson well learned. She would no longer so much as step on the inner strip of metal foil. It was a mouse-paradise of an island, though. There was a cliff of cheese bigger than Minnie herself. It kept her busy. Mouse and cheese; soon one would be a transmutation of the other.
But Professor Oberburger wasn’t thinking about that. The Professor was worried. When he had calculated and recalculated and aimed his eight-inch reflector through the hole in the roof and turned out the lights —
Yes, there are advantages to being a bachelor after all. If one wants a hole in the roof, one simply knocks a hole in the roof and there is nobody to tell one that one is crazy. If winter comes, or if it rains, one can always call a carpenter or use a tarpaulin.
But the faint trail of light wasn’t there. The Professor frowned and re-calculated and re-re-calculated and shifted his telescope three-tenths of a second and still the rocket wasn’t there.
«Minnie, something iss wrong. Either de tubes haff stopped viring, or —»
Or the rocket was no longer traversing a straight line relative to its point of departure. By straight, of course, is meant parabolically curved relative to everything other than velocity.
So the Herr Professor did the only thing remaining for him to do, and began to search, with the telescope, in widening circles. It was two hours before he found it, five degrees off course already and veering more and more into a — Well, there was only one thing you could call it. A tail spin.
The darned thing was going in circles, circles which appeared to constitute an orbit about something that couldn’t possibly be there. Then narrowing into a concentric spiral.
Then — out. Gone. Darkness. No rocket flares.
The Professor’s face was pale as he turned to Minnie.
«It iss imbossible, Minnie. Mein own eyes, but it could not be. Even if vun side stopped viring, it could not haff gone into such sudden circles.» His pencil verified a suspicion. «Und, Minnie, it decelerated vaster than bossible. Even mitt no tubes viring, its momentum vould haff been more —»
The rest of the night — telescope and calculus — yielded no clue. That is, no believable clue. Some force not inherent in the rocket itself, and not accountable by gravitation — even of a hypothetical body — had acted.
«Mein poor Mitkey.»
The gray, inscrutable dawn. «Mein Minnie, it vill haff to be a secret. Ve dare not bublish vhat ve saw, for it vould not be believed. I am not sure I believe it myself, Minnie. Berhaps because I vas offertired vrom not sleeping, I chust imachined that I saw —»
Later. «But, Minnie, ve shall hope. Vun hundred vifty thousand miles out, it vas. It vill fall back upon der earth. But I gannot tell vhere! I thought that if it did, I vould be able to galculate its course, und — But after those goncentric cirgles — Minnie, not even Einstein could galculate vhere it vill land. Not effen me. All ve can do iss hope that ve shall hear of vhere it falls.»
Cloudy day. Black night jealous of its mysteries.
«Minnie, our poor Mitkey. There is nothing could have gauzed —»
But something had.
Prxl.
Prxl is an asteroid. It isn’t called that by earthly astronomers, because — for excellent reasons — they have not discovered it. So we will call it by the nearest possible transliteration of the name its inhabitants use. Yes, it’s inhabited.
Come to think of it, Professor Oberburger’s attempt to send a rocket to the moon had some strange results. Or rather, Prxl did.
You wouldn’t think that an asteroid could reform a drunk, would you? But one Charles Winslow, a besotted citizen of Bridgeport, Connecticut, never took a drink after the time when — right on Grove Street — a mouse asked him the road to Hartford. The mouse was wearing bright red pants and vivid yellow gloves —
But that was fifteen months after the Professor lost his rocket. We’d better start over again.
Prxl is an asteroid. One of those despised celestial bodies which terrestrial astronomers call vermin of the sky, because the darned things leave trails across the plates that clutter up the more important observations of novae and nebulae. Fifty thousand fleas on the dark dog of night.
Tiny things, most of them. Astronomers have been discovering recently that some of them come close to Earth. Amazingly close. There was excitement in 1932 when Amor came within ten million miles — astronomically, a mere mashie shot. Then Apollo cut that almost in half, and in 1936 Adonis came within less than one and a half million miles.
In 1937, Hermes, less than half a million, but the astronomers got really excited when they calculated its orbit and found that the little mile-long asteroid can come within a mere 220,000 miles, closer than Earth’s own moon.
Some day they may be still more excited, if and when they spot the three-eighth-mile asteroid Prxl, that obstacle of space, making a transit across the moon and discover that it frequently comes within a mere hundred thousand miles of our rapidly whirling world.
Only in event of a transit will they ever discover it, though, for Prxl does not reflect light. It hasn’t, anyway, for several million years since its inhabitants coated it with a black, light-absorbing pigment derived from its interior. Monumental task, painting a world, for creatures half an inch tall. But worth it, at the time. When they’d shifted its orbit, they were safe from their enemies. There were giants in those days — eight-inch tall marauding pirates from Deimos. Got to Earth a couple of times too, before they faded out of the picture. Pleasant little giants who killed because they enjoyed it. Records in now-buried cities on Deimos might explain what happened to the dinosaurs. And why the promising Cro-Magnons disappeared at the height of their promise only a cosmic few minutes after the dinosaurs went west.