The Mouse On The Moon: eBook Edition (The Grand Fenwick Series 2)

by Leonard Wibberley

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  More Books By Leonard Wibberley

  About the Author

  THE MOUSE ON THE MOON

  By Leonard Wibberley

  The Mouse On The Moon

  Copyright © 1962, 1990 by Leonard Wibberley

  First Digital Edition Copyright © 2015 by

  The Estate of the Late Leonard Wibberley

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  ISBN-13: 978-1518785009

  ISBN-10: 151878500X

  CHAPTER I

  His Excellency the Count of Mountjoy, Prime Minister of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, the world's smallest sovereign nation, located on the northern slopes of the Alps between Switzerland and France, was preparing his annual budget speech which was to be given to a meeting of the Council of Freemen, the parliament of the Duchy, on the following week.

  He had before him the figures which were to be incorporated in his budget and they irritated him. He came of a long line of prime ministers, ambassadors and regents. He was of that unique breed of European (almost gone in our days) whose families have, through the centuries, provided their countries with their principal servants. And previous Counts of Mountjoy—the title dated back to the founding of the Duchy in the early part of the fifteenth century—had made notable contributions to the history of their times. Words which they had uttered at periods of crisis were still repeated with respect in the chancellories of Europe. Perhaps the most noted of such sayings was the consolation offered by the then Count to Napoleon Bonaparte after the latter's defeat at Waterloo. Coming upon the disconsolate emperor shortly after the battle, he said, "Cheer up, Sire. You can't win 'em all." The utter collapse of the Emperor and the crushing of the morale of the Imperial Armies of France had often been attributed to his remark.

  For such a man, descendant as stated of a long line of august statesmen, it was galling to be dealing with a budget whose total figures could be expressed in the round in twenty thousand pounds. The breakdown of the figures was painful in the extreme, though the various headings had a most impressive ring to them.

  "Allocated to the Armed Forces for the Defense of the Nation and Continuance of the Independence of its People." That was one heading, and the Count fancied it would sound well when he gave it forth to the attentive parliament. But the sum which followed—one hundred and twenty-two pounds, eighteen shillings and sixpence, three farthings—completely spoiled the effect. And the breakdown of this was indeed a pathetic thirteen pounds, two shillings and sixpence for new bowstrings; seven pounds, eighteen shillings and sixpence for English goose feathers with which to fetch arrows (the army of Grand Fenwick had relied though the centuries on the longbow as its principal weapon); four pounds, nine shillings and sixpence, halfpenny for bow grips. And so on.

  "Bah!" cried the Count of Mountjoy as he went over these details. "What frightful and malevolent fate has condemned a man of my scope of mind to these pettifogging details, while men scarcely the master of two lines of Homer, and whose ancestors faced no problem greater than the handling of a shovel, deal in budgets involving billions."

  He turned to the next item on the budget with the brave heading, "Development of Internal Communications." Oh, it sounded well enough but it consisted of an expenditure of thirty-one pounds, fifteen shillings for the repair of twelve miles of roadway (all the same road in fact) that wound through the Duchy. The Count of Mountjoy had, in vain, in previous years pleaded that this portion of the budget be greatly enlarged (it was about the same every year, as were all the other items) to permit of a bold plan for straightening parts of the road in places where it wound around the mountainsides. But nobody would listen to him. The Grand Fenwickians liked their roads narrow, winding and dangerous to a degree, although since there were no cars in the Duchy and the fastest method of travel was by bicycle, the danger was not extreme.

  "A modern road program, straightening out the more tortuous sections by the construction of bridges and cuttings wherever required," the Count had argued, "would provide a considerable increase in though-traffic between France and Switzerland, with resulting revenue to ourselves."

  "Fill the graveyards," said David Bentner, the solid phlegmatic leader of the Opposition. Representing the working man of Grand Fenwick, David Bentner had a curious resort to cryptic sentences of this sort in debate, the meaning of which, he intimated, was fully understood by workingmen like himself, but utterly lost on aristocrats like the Count of Mountjoy who, never having worked with their hands, were thereby out of touch with all common sense.

  "A good motor road, linking Switzerland and France, and passing through our borders could not fail to bring a most beneficial increase in tourists to our country," Mountjoy had continued.

  "Fill the graveyards," said Mr. Bentner, faithful as an echo.

  "We are practically the only country in Europe which is unvisited by tourists, winter or summer, and all because of our lack of facilities, for those which we have to offer can be described in one word—medieval," continued the Count.

  "Fill the graveyards," said Mr. Bentner, solemn as a bell.

  "If the Leader of Her Grace's Loyal Opposition would kindly stop reiterating 'Fill the graveyards' and explain what he means by that curious expression, perhaps we can continue with this debate," said Mountjoy, quite exasperated.

  "Four cars passed through Grand Fenwick last year," said Mr. Bentner rising. "There were six geese killed, five ducks, four sheep dropped their lambs early and the ewes died and Ted Painter's mother has had a ringing noise in her ears ever since, as everybody knows."

  "Ted Painter's mother," cried the exasperated Count of Mountjoy, "is eighty-seven years of age, as everybody also knows."

  "Wonderful hearing she had until them cars went through," said Mr. Bentner. "On behalf of the working people of this country I will serve notice here and now that I would vote a flat and unyielding 'No' to any plans for making Grand Fenwick a kind of a freeway for French motor cars headed south and Swiss motor cars headed north. Besides which, you can't trust the French." Having said this, he sat down to a vigorous round of applause from his supporters, the sentiment "You can't trust the French" being well known in Grand Fenwick, which had been at war with France as late as 1475.

  Mr. Bentner, representing, as has been noted, the workingmen of Grand Fenwick, was by the curious alchemy of politics a radical conservative. Although
the word "conservative" to him was an expression close to poisonous, and although he regarded himself as a progressive socialist, the fact was that in the interests of the workingman, he opposed all change in the Duchy. In any change at all he saw a plot to deprive the people of work, or raise prices beyond their means, or make them produce more for the same pay; and the Count of Mountjoy had more than once remarked that his rival's political slogan should be, "Backwards With Bentner."

  Mountjoy, on the other hand, was regarded by Bentner as an irresponsible dreamer who had to be watched closely lest he ruin the Duchy with schemes which would appall a nation as daring in economical matters as the United States of America. The one was the perfect counterweight to the other, and between the two of them, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, a sovereign nation of fifteen square miles, but of remarkable world prestige, ambled along through the fearful decades of the twentieth century.

  The prestige of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick came (as has been related elsewhere; see The Mouse That Roared) from its defeat of the United States of America when, desperate for money, it had conceived the plan of declaring war on that nation. It was argued, history providing an excellent precedent, that if the Duchy declared war on the United States on Monday, it would be defeated by Tuesday and a glorious rehabilitation of the nation as a defeated enemy would certainly be under way by Friday night. But the plan had gone awry. Tully Bascomb, in charge of the handful of longbowmen sent to invade New York, had fumbled the whole thing and with the capture of a weapon of mass destruction called the Q-bomb, together with its inventor, Dr. Kokintz, won, rather than lost, the war.

  The bomb now rested in the Duchy, representing, together with two hundred longbows, several suits of mail and the necessary arrows, the complete and astonishing armament of the country. Possessed of the bomb, Grand Fenwick had formed a League of Little Nations with the smaller countries of the world, and had been able to enforce an atomic inspection of the other nations. An uneasy peace between East and West ensued. But the inspection, the result of coercion rather than sincere agreement, was not working. Atomic rearmament was going on in spite of it. The bigger nations grew bigger and more menacing. The smaller nations dwindled to insignificance. The rivalry for control of the earth was even being taken into space, so that mastery of the moon and the planets was now part of the ambitions of East and West.

  It was not surprising then that it maddened the Count of Mountjoy, coming as he did of such distinguished diplomatic lineage, that he should be concerned with a budget of less than twenty thousand pounds while his counterparts in other nations juggled with billions and calculated the orbit to the moon and East vied with West for the mastery of space. The Count had an active and imaginative mind which operated on the grand scale. But as Prime Minister of so small a nation, his scope was tremendously reduced and all the plans which he could evolve within the scope allotted to him were frustrated, year after year, by the arch conservatism of the Opposition led by Mr. Bentner.

  These plans included not only the straightening of the twelve miles of road through the Duchy to encourage tourism. Even dearer to the Count's heart was the modernization of the plumbing in the castle of Grand Fenwick, in which he had his apartments. He had fought for this project for fifteen years and got nowhere. Such plumbing as the castle had was in a word barbarous. The Count was compelled to wash in water brought to his chambers in a ewer, for when the castle was built at the close of the thirteenth century, no piping had been put through the walls.

  The water was obtained from a well in the courtyard and then heated in a caldron over the kitchen fires. By the time it came to him up three hundred steps of a circular staircase, it was invariably tepid if not downright cold. The services of two men and a boy were required to get sufficient water heated and rushed to the Count's apartments so that he might bathe in a hip bath which was two hundred years old and leaked dismally from some unlocatable hole along its seam.

  What applied to the Count, of course, applied to Her Grace the Duchess Gloriana XII, ruler of Grand Fenwick, and her consort, Tully Bascomb, and all the other occupants of the castle. But try as he might, the Count could never get the Council of Freemen to vote sufficient funds to install modern plumbing, or agree to borrowing the money from the United States, which he was sure would certainly sanction the loan.

  Angered at the impossibility of obtaining from the obdurate Bentner so small a convenience as hot and cold water throughout the castle, the Count pushed the budget material aside on his desk and went off to see Dr. Kokintz, the eminent developer of the Q-bomb, now alas an almost archaic weapon with the possibility of a neutron bomb in sight.

  He found Dr. Kokintz in his study in the castle, seated before an excellent fire and deeply immersed in a book on birds, for he was devoted to ornithology and his study was gay with cages of birds which he cared for himself and all of which he called by name.

  "Ah, good evening, Mountjoy," Kokintz said when the Count entered. "I have just had the most exciting news from Bascomb."

  "Oh?" said Mountjoy.

  "Yes. Two bobolinks have been found in the forest. Bascomb did not see them closely but he believes they are male and female. Just think of it. There have been no bobolinks in Grand Fenwick in all its history. Now these two little visitors come to us and perhaps will make their home in our forest. I am going down to the forest tomorrow with Bascomb, and we are going to spend the whole day trying to get a picture of them. I can assure you that the Audubon Society will be very interested. In fact astounded. But as you know there is a shrike about, in the southern edge of the forest, and his presence is very serious indeed."

  "A shrike?" asked Mountjoy.

  "Yes. A butcher bird. They are demons among birds, nipping the heads off their fellow creatures and devouring them. It would be appalling if the shrike were to discover the bobolinks and perhaps kill one or the other of them. We may have to kill the shrike. Bascomb says it can be done, though it may take a day or two. He says unfortunately there are no funds in his budget for this kind of work. Do you think something could be managed when you make your budget speech next week? The bobolinks are very important."

  Mountjoy groaned aloud. Bobolinks and shrikes. These were the problems placed before such a man as he.

  "Yes," he said savagely, "I expect Bentner will permit the expenditure of a few shillings to protect two bobolinks. But I was hoping for conversation of a somewhat larger scope when I came to see you."

  "Ah," said Kokintz, "you have no feeling for birds. It is a pity. They are so cheerful and bright at all times. Indeed, of all creatures birds are the busiest and gayest. And in times such as these, my friend, we need their company."

  The scientist rose and, going to a cupboard, brought forth a bottle of Pinot Grand Fenwick, that noble wine for which (perhaps even more than its defeat of the United States of America) the Duchy was famed throughout the civilized world.

  He placed two glasses on a small table before the fire, fumbled in his pocket and took out an old-fashioned clasp-knife he had had since he was a boy. The knife was almost a museum piece, containing not only several blades but also an implement for the removal of stones from horses' hoofs, a gimlet, a screwdriver, a can opener and a corkscrew.

  Kokintz opened the corkscrew and while Mountjoy shivered in agony that so great a wine should be tapped by so ignoble an instrument, drew the cork. Then he carefully poured a glass of the Pinot for himself and another for Mountjoy, and then with a slight salute, and again to the horror of the Count, drained his glass in one swallow.

  "That," said Mountjoy, "is Premier Grand Cru 'Fifty-eight—the greatest Pinot we have produced in fifty years."

  "Very good too," said Kokintz, on whom this rebuke was utterly lost. He poured himself another glass and then taking an apple out of his pocket, cut a piece from it with his clasp knife and put the piece in the bars of a cage containing two black and white rice birds.

  "They like a piece of apple now and again, but too much is bad for them." He be
amed as the rice birds pecked away at the apple, fluttering with ecstasy.

  "Who do you think will be first on the moon?" asked Mountjoy desperate to head the conversation in a direction worthy of his mentality.

  "A monkey," said Kokintz. "You remember our little childhood saying? Well, first man on the moon is a monkey." He chuckled at the thought. "A monkey and maybe a mouse. After that—a man. If, of course, the monkey survives and can be brought back."

  "Do you think it will be a Russian monkey or an American monkey?" asked Mountjoy.

  "African, most likely," said Kokintz. "They are hardier. And small."

  "But will it be a Russian rocket that takes it there or an American rocket?"

  Kokintz shrugged. "Who am I to say?" he asked. "I read what I can here. But it is what one cannot read that is important. I would say, however, that the Russians are likely to succeed first. They have already put a rocket on the moon. They have already orbited an astronaut several times around the earth; so has the United States, but the Russians were first. They are probably ahead in the only remaining problem, which is that of getting a rocket back from the moon.

  "That is a really difficult problem. The earth's gravity, which as you know is several times greater than that of the moon, will accelerate the speed of a rocket approaching earth tremendously. And the increasing density of the atmosphere around the earth would produce such a terrible friction that the rocket is likely to burn up like a meteor.

  "Of course there are ways of combating these difficulties which are well known to physicists. But I would suspect that the Russians are further ahead with the actual work and are therefore likely to succeed before the United States of America."

  "What is the major problem involved in getting a rocket to the moon?" asked Mountjoy, whose thoughts recently had been much occupied with the space race.