If there was atmosphere on the moon. If the mouse—
Eyes on the minute-hand of his watch, the professor waited. Then the second-hand. Now—
His finger touched the accurately-timed delayed-action starter button, and then he ran into the house.
WHOOOSH!
Trail of fire into the air where the rocket had been.
“Gootbye, Vhitey. Boor liddle mouse, but someday you vill be vamous. Almost as vamous as mine star-mouse Mitkey vill be, some day vhen I can bublish—”
Now for the diary entry of the departure.
The professor reached for his pen, and as he did so caught a glimpse of the inside of his hand, the hand that held the mouse.
White it was. Perplexed, he studied it closer under the light.
“Vhite paint. Vhere vould I haff picked up vhite paint? I haff some, but I haff not used it. Nothing on der rocket, nothing in der room or der yard—”
“Der mouse? Vhitey? I held him so. But vhy vould der laboratories send me a mouse painted vhite? I tole them any color vould do—”
Then the professor shrugged, and went to wash his hands. It was puzzling, very puzzling, but it did not matter really. But why on Earth would the laboratories have done that?
But in the black compartment of the roaring, soaring rocket. Moon-bound and bust.
Doped Limburger cheese.
Black treachery.
White paint.
Alas, poor Mitkey! Moonward-bound, without a ticket back.
Night, and it had been raining in Hartford. The professor hadn’t been able to follow the rocket through his telescope.
But it was up there all right, and going strong.
The radio pick-up told him that. Roar of the jets, so loud he couldn’t tell whether or not the mouse inside was alive or not. But it probably was, hadn’t Mitkey survived on the trip to Prxl?
Finally, he turned off the lights to take a cat-nap in his chair. When he awoke, maybe the rain would have stopped.
His head nodded, his eyes closed. And after a while, he dreamed that he opened them again. He knew he was dreaming because of what he saw.
Four little white spots moving across the floor from the door.
Four little white spots that might have been mice, but couldn’t be—unless they were dream mice—because they moved with military precision, in an exact rectangle. Almost like soldiers.
And then a sound, too faint for him to distinguish, and the four white spots abruptly fell into a single file and disappeared, one by one at precise intervals, against the baseboard.
The professor woke, and chuckled to himself.
“Vot a dream! I go to sleep thinking of der vhite mouse und vhite paint on mein hands und I dream—”
He stretched and yawned, and stood up.
But a small white spot, a white something had just appeared at the baseboard of the room again. Another joined it. The professor blinked his eyes and watched them. Could he be dreaming, standing up?
A scraping sound, something being shoved across the floor, and as the first two white spots moved away from the wall, two more appeared. Again in rectangular formation, they started across the floor toward the door.
And the scraping continued. Almost as though the four—could they be white mice?—were moving something, two of them pulling it and two pushing.
But that was silly.
He reached out beside him for the switch of the light, and clicked it. The light momentarily blinded him.
“Stobp!” High and shrill and commanding.
The professor could see again now, and it was four white mice. They had been moving something, a strange little object fashioned around what looked like one of the cells of his own pencil-type flashlight.
And three of the mice were now doing the moving, frantically, and the fourth had stepped between him and the strange object. It pointed what seemed to be a small tube at the professor’s face.
“If you moofe, I gill you,” shrilled the mouse with the tube.
It wasn’t completely the threat of the tube that kept the professor motionless. He was simply too surprised to move. Was the mouse with the tube Whitey? Looked like him, but then they all looked like Whitey, and anyway Whitey was on his way to the moon.
“But vot—who—vhy—?”
The three mice with the burden were even now vanishing through the hole in the screen door. The fourth mouse backed after them.
Just inside the screen door, he paused.
“You are a vool, Brofessor,” he said. “All men are vools. Ve mice vill take care uf that.”
And it dropped the tube and vanished through the hole.
Slowly the professor walked over and picked up the weapon the white mouse had dropped. It was a match-stick. Not a tube or a weapon at all, just a burned safety match.
The professor said, “But how—vhy—?”
He dropped the match as though it were hot, and took out a big handkerchief to mop his forehead.
“But how—und vhy—?”
He stood there what seemed to be a long time, and then slowly he went to the icebox and opened it. Back in a far corner of it was a bottle.
The professor was practically a teetotaler, but there comes a time when even a teetotaler needs a drink. This was it.
He poured a stiff one.
Night, and it was raining in Hartford.
Old Mike Cleary, watchman for the Hartford Laboratories, was taking a drink, too. In weather like this, a man with rheumatism in his bones needed a drink to warm his insides after that walk across the yard in the rain.
“A foine night, for ducks,” he said, and because that drink had not been the first, he chuckled at his own wit.
He went on into building number three, through the chemical stockroom, the meter room, the shipping room. His lantern, swinging at his side, sent grotesque shadows before him.
But these shadows didn’t frighten Mike Cleary; he’d chased them through this building for nights of ten years now.
He opened the door of the live-stock room to look in, and then left it wide behind him and went on in. “Begorra,” he said, “and how did that happen?”
For the doors of two of the large cages of white mice were open, wide open. They hadn’t been open when he’d made his last round two hours before.
Holding his lantern high, he looked into the cages. They were both empty. Not a mouse in either.
Mike Cleary sighed. They’d blame him for this, of course.
Well, and let them. A few white mice weren’t worth much, even if they took it out of his salary. Sure, let them take it out if they thought it was his fault.
“Misther Williams,” he’d tell the boss, “those doors were closed when I went by the first time, and open when I went by the second, and I say the catches on them were worthless and dee-fective, but if you want to blame me, sorr, then just deduct the value of the—”
A faint sound behind him made him whirl around.
There in a corner of the room was a white mouse, or what looked like a white mouse. But it wore a shirt and trousers, and—
“Ye Gods,” said Mike Cleary, and he said it almost reverendy. “Is it the D.T.’s that I’m—”
And another thought struck him. “Or can it be, sorr, that you are one of the little folk, please, sorr?”
And he swept off his hat with a trembling hand.
“Nudts!” said the white mouse. And, like a streak, it was gone.