And then Charlie let out a sudden yip and dived headfirst out of the bunk he’d been lying on, and grabbed the gun out of my hand. I’d just finished cleaning it and slipped the cartridge-clip back in.
And then, with it in his hand, he stood there staring at me as though he’d never seen me before.
Blake said, “Sit down, Charlie. Don’t you know when you’re being ribbed? But—uh—better keep the gun, just the same.”
Charlie kept the gun all right, and turned it around to point at me. He said, “I’m making a damn fool out of myself all right, but—Hank, roll up your sleeves.”
I grinned and stood up. I said, “Don’t forget my ankles, too.”
But there was something dead serious in his face, and I didn’t push him too far. Blake said, “He could even have it on him somewhere else, with adhesive tape. I mean on the million-to-one chance that he wasn’t kidding.”
Charlie nodded without turning to look at Blake. He said, “Hank, I hate to ask it, but—”
I sighed, and then chuckled. I said, “Well, I was just going to take a shower anyway.”
It was hot in the ship, and I was wearing only shoes and a pair of coveralls. Paying no attention to Blake and Charlie, I slipped them off and stepped through the oil-silk curtains of the little shower cubicle. And turned on the water.
Over the sound of the shower, I could hear Blake laughing and Charlie cursing softly to himself.
And when I came out of the shower, drying myself, even Charlie was grinning. Blake said, “And I thought that yarn Charlie just told was a dilly. This trip is backwards; we’ll end up having to tell each other the truth.”
There was a sharp rapping on the hull beside the airlock, and Charlie Dean went to open it. He growled, “If you tell Zeb and Ray what chumps you made out of us, I’ll beat your damn ears in. You and your earring gods…”
Portion of telepathic report of No. 67843, on Asteroid—J-864A to No. 5463, on Terra:
As planned, I tested credulity of terrestrial minds by telling them the true story of what happened on Ganymede.
Found them capable of acceptance thereof.
This proves that our idea of embedding ourselves within the flesh of these terrestrial creatures was an excellent one and is essential to the success of our plan. True, this is less simple than our method on Ganymede, but we must continue to perform the operation upon each terrestrial being as we take him over. Bracelets or other appendages would arouse suspicion.
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—”