The Collection (24 page)

This gave Larry Snell food for thought. He was not an
uneducated man; he knew what a whammy was. In fact, he
^'
d tried
whammies before, but they
^'
d never worked for him. Had something
changed? It was worth trying. Carefully he made out a list of twenty people
whom, for one reason or another, he hated. He telephoned them one at a time—spacing
the calls over the course of a week—and told each of them to drop dead. They
did, all of them.

It was not until the end of that week that he discovered
that what he had was not simply the whammy, but the Power. He was talking to a
dame,
a top
dame, a striptease working in a top nightclub and making
twenty or forty times his own income, and he had said, "Honey, come up to
my room after the last show, huh?
^"
She did, and it staggered
him because he'd been kidding. Rich men and handsome playboys were after her,
and she
^'
d fallen for a casual, not even seriously intended,
proposition from Larry Snell.

Did he have the Power? He tried it the next morning, before
she left him. He asked her how much money she had with her, and then told her
to give it to him. She did, and it was several hundred dollars.

He was in business. By the end of the next week he was rich;
he had made himself that way by borrowing money from everyone he knew—including
slight acquaintances who were fairly high in the hierarchy of the underworld
and therefore quite solvent—and then telling them to forget it. He moved from
his fleabag pad to a penthouse apartment atop the swankiest hotel in town. It
was a bachelor apartment, but need it be said that he slept there alone but
seldom, and then only for purposes of recuperation.

It was a nice life but even so it took only a few weeks of
it to cause it to dawn on Snell that he was wasting the Power. Why shouldn't he
really use what he had by taking over the country first and then the world, make
himself the most powerful dictator in history? Why shouldn't he have and own
everything, including a harem instead of a dame a night? Why shouldn't he have
an army to enforce the fact that his slightest wish would be everyone else's
highest law? If his commands were obeyed over the telephone certainly they
would be obeyed if he gave them over radio and television. All he had to do was
pay for (pay for?, simply demand) a universal network that would let him be
heard by everyone everywhere. Or almost everyone; he could take over when he
had a simple majority behind him, and bring the others into line later.

But this would be a Big Deal, the biggest one ever swung,
and he decided to take his time planning it so there would be no possibility of
his making a mistake. He decided to spend a few days alone, out of town and
away from everybody, to do his planning.

He chartered a plane to take him to a relatively uncrowded
part of the Catskills, and from an inn—which he took over simply by telling
the other guests to leave—he started taking long walks alone, thinking and
dreaming. He found a favorite spot, a small hill in a valley surrounded by
mountains; the scenery was magnificent. He did most of his thinking there, and
found him-self becoming more and more elated and euphoric as he began to see
that it could and would work.

Dictator, hell. He'd have himself crowned Emperor. Emperor
of the World. Why not? Who could defy a man with the Power? The Power to make
anyone obey any command that he gave them, up to and including "Drop dead!
^"
he shouted from the hilltop, in sheer vicious exuberance, not caring whether or
not anyone or anything was within range of his voice .. .

A teenage boy and a teenage girl found him there the next
day and hurried back to the village to report having found a dead man on the
top of Echo Hill.

Mitkey The Mouse, wasn
^'
t Mitkey then.

He was just another mouse, who lived behind the floorboards
and plaster of the house of the great Herr Professor Oberburger, formerly of Vienna
and Heidelberg; then a refugee from the excessive admiration of the more
powerful of his fellow-countrymen. The excessive admiration had concerned, not
Herr Oberburger himself, but a certain gas which had been a by-product of an
unsuccessful rocket fuel-which might have been a highly successful something
else.

If, of course, the Professor had given them the correct
formula. Which he-Well, anyway, the Professor had made good his escape and now
lived in a house in Connecticut. And so did Mitkey.

A small gray mouse, and a small gray man. Nothing unusual
about either of them. Particularly there was nothing unusual about Mitkey; he
had a family and he liked cheese and if there were Rotarians among mice, he
would have been a Rotarian.

The Herr Professor, of course, had his mild eccentricities.
A confirmed bachelor, he had no one to talk to except himself, but he
considered himself an excellent conversationalist and held constant verbal
communion with himself while he worked. That fact, it turned out later, was
important, because Mitkey had excellent ears and heard those night-long
soliloquies. He didn't understand them, of course. If he thought about them at
all, he merely thought of the Professor as a large and noisy super-mouse who
squeaked over-much.

"Und now,
^"
he would say to himself,
"ve vill see vether this eggshaust tube vas broberly machined. It should
fidt vithin vun vunhundredth thousandth of an indtch. Ahhh, it iss berfect.
Und now-"

Night after night, day after day, month after month. The gleaming
thing grew, and the gleam in Herr Oberburger's eyes grew apace.

It was about three and a half feet long, with weirdly shaped
vanes, and it rested on a temporary framework on a table in the center of the
room that served the Herr Professor for all purposes. The house in which he and
Mitkey lived was a four room structure, but the Professor hadn't yet found it
out, seemingly. Originally, he had planned to use the big room as a laboratory
only, but he found it more convenient to sleep on a cot in one corner of it,
when he slept at all, and to do the little cooking he did over the same gas
burner over which he melted down golden grains of TNT into a dangerous soup
which he salted and peppered with strange condiments, but did not eat.

"Und now I shall bour it into tubes, and see vether vun
tube adjacendt to another eggsplodes der secondt tube vhen der virst tube iss-
^"

That was the night Mitkey almost decided to move himself and
his family to a more stable abode, one that did not rock and sway and try to turn
handsprings on its foundations. But Mitkey didn't move after all, because there
were compensations. New mouse-holes all over, and-joy of joy!-a big crack in
the back of the refrigerator where the Professor kept, among other things,
food.

Of course the tubes had been not larger than capillary size,
or the house would not have remained around the mouseholes. And of course
Mitkey could not guess what was coming nor understand the Herr Professor
^'
s
brand of English (nor any other brand of English, for that matter) or he would
not have let even a crack in the refrigerator tempt him.

The Professor was jubilant that morning.

"Der fuel, idt vorks! Der secondt tube, idt did not
eggsplode.Und der virst, in seggtions, as I had eggspectedt! Und it is more
bowerful; there will be blenty of room for der combartment-"

Ah, yes, the compartment. That was where Mitkey came in,
although even the Professor didn't know it yet. In fact the Professor didn't
even know that Mitkey existed.

"Und now,
^"
he was saying to his
favourite listener, "idt is budt a madter of combining der fuel tubes so
they work in obbosite bairs. Und then-"

That was the moment when the Herr Professor's eyes first
fell on Mitkey. Rather, they fell upon a pair of gray whiskers and a black,
shiny little nose protruding from a hole in the baseboards.

"Veil!" he said, "vot haff ve here! Mitkey
Mouse himself! Mitkey, how would you like to go for a ride, negst veek? Ve
shall see."

***

That is how it came about that the next time the Professor
sent into town for supplies, his order included a mousetrap-not one of the
vicious kind that kills, but one of the wire-cage kind. And it had not been
set, with cheese, for more than ten minutes before Mitkey's sharp little nose
had smelled out that cheese and he had followed his nose into captivity.

Not, however, an unpleasant captivity. Mitkey was an honored
guest. The cage reposed now on the table at which the Professor did most of his
work, and cheese in indigestion-giving abundance was pushed through the bars,
and the Professor didn't talk to himself any more.

"You see, Mitkey, I vas going to sendt to der
laboratory in Hardtfordt for a vhite mouse, budt vhy should I, mit you here? I
am sure you are more soundt and healthy and able to vithstand a long chourney
than those laboratory mices. No? Ah, you viggle your viskers and that means
yes, no? Und being used to living in dargk holes, you should suffer less than
they from glaustrophobia, no?"

And Mitkey grew fat and happy and forgot all about trying to
get out of the cage. I fear that he even forgot about the family he had
abandoned, but he knew, if he knew anything, that he need not worry about them
in the slightest. At least not until and unless the Professor discovered and
repaired the hole in the refrigerator. And the Professor's mind was most
emphatically not on refrigeration.

"Und so, Mitkey, ve shall place this vane so-it iss
only of assistance in der landing, in an atmosphere. It and these vill bring
you down safely and slowly enough that der shock-absorbers in der movable
combartment vill keep you from bumping your head too hard, I think." Of
course, Mitkey missed the ominous note to that "I think"
qualification because he missed all the rest of it. He did not, as has been
explained, speak English. Not then.

But Herr Oberburger talked to him just the same. He showed
him pictures. "Did you effer see der Mouse you vas named after, Mitkey?
Vhat? No? Loogk, this is der original Mitkey Mouse, by Valt Dissney. Budt I
think you are cuter, Mitkey."

Probably the Professor was a bit crazy to talk that way to a
little gray mouse. In fact, he must have been crazy to make a rocket that
worked. For the odd thing was that the Herr Professor was not really an
inventor. There was, as he carefully explained to Mitkey, not one single thing
about that rocket that was
new.
The Herr Professor was a technician; he
could take other people's ideas and make them work. His only real invention-the
rocket fuel that wasn't one-had been turned over to the United States
Government and had proved to be something already known and discarded because
it was too expensive for practical use.

As he explained very carefully to Mitkey, "It iss
burely a matter of absolute accuracy and mathematical correctness, Mitkey. Idt
iss all here-ve merely combine-und ve achieff vhat, Mitkey?

"Eggscape velocity, Mitkey! Chust barely, it adds up to
eggscape velocity. Maybe. There are yet unknown facgtors, Mitkey, in der ubper
atmosphere, der troposphere, der stratosphere. Ve think ve know eggsactly how
mudch air there iss to calculate resistance against, but are ve absolutely
sure? No, Mitkey, ve are not. Ve haff not been there. Und der marchin iss so
narrow that so mudch as an air current might affect idt."

But Mitkey cared not a whit. In the shadow of the tapering
aluminum-alloy cylinder he waxed fat and happy.

"Der tag, Mitkey, der tag! Und I shall not lie to you,
Mitkey. I shall not giff you valse assurances. You go on a dancherous chourney,
mein little friendt.

"A vifty-vifty chance ve giff you, Mitkey. Not der moon
or bust, but der moon und bust, or else maybe safely back to earth. You see, my
boor little Mitkey, der moon iss not made of green cheese und if it were, you
vould not live to eat it because there iss not enough atmosphere to bring you
down safely und vith your viskers still on.

"Und vhy then, you may veil ask, do I send you? Because
der rocket may not attain eggscape velocity. Und in that case, it issstill an
eggsperiment, budt a different vun. Der rocket, if it goes not to der moon, falls
back on der earth, no? Und in that case certain instruments shall giff us
further information than ve haff yet about things up there in space. Und you
shall giff us information, by vether or not you are yet alife, vether der shock
absorbers und vanes are sufficient in an earth-equivalent atmosphere. You see?

"Then ladter, vhen ve send rockets to Venus maybe vhere
an atmosphere eggsists, ve shall haff data to calculate the needed size of
vanes und shock-absorbers, no? Und in either case, und vether or not you
return, Mitkey, you shall be vamous! You shall be der virst liffing greature to
go oudt beyond der stratosphere of der earth, out into space.

"Mitkey, you shall be der Star-Mouse! I enfy you,
Mitkey, und I only vish I vere your size, so I could go, too."

Der tag, and the door to the compartment. "Gootbye,
little Mitkey Mouse." Darkness. Silence. Noise!

"Der rocket-if it goes not to der moon-falls back on
der earth, no?" That was what the Herr Professor thought. But the
best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley. Even star-mice.

All because of Prxl.

***

The Herr Professor found himself very lonely. After having
had Mitkey to talk to, soliloquies were somehow empty and inadequate.

There may be some who say that the company of a small gray mouse
is a poor substitute for a wife; but others may disagree. And, anyway, the
Professor had never had a wife, and he had a mouse to talk to, so he missed one
and, if he missed the other, he didn't know it.