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

by Leonard Wibberley

  "You're sure that you won't be exposed to that kind of danger?"

  "No," said Vincent. "Not a chance. Well just chug along at a nice, steady thousand miles an hour, which is a lot slower than many military planes fly these days, land on the moon, take some photographs, pick up a few rocks and then come on back again. Really, the only reason people think it is so fearful is because It hasn't been done before. Actually our main problem is going to be finding some way to pass the time on the rocket. Kokintz has proposed that we bring along some chessmen and he's going to teach me to play. There'll be certain observations to make of the rocket itself and various celestial bodies. But over and above that, we'll have plenty of leisure."

  It was 11 pm when Vincent got back to the castle, and its occupants had already retired for the night. He felt much more serene in his mind after his evening with Cynthia. He felt now as if he belonged to someone and was loved by someone, and this gave him a deep strength and self-confidence, very much at odds with his previous state when he had been readily irritated with everybody and most of all with himself.

  To enter the castle he had to cross over the drawbridge to go to the courtyard which was contained within the massive outer walls of the castle. The moon was newly risen, throwing an elongated shadow of himself before him across the worn cobblestones of the courtyard.

  He looked at it and was amused by the thought that the moon had caused him to grow—at least in his shadow. He turned to look at the moon, sailing silent and impassive in the dark heavens. It was so bright that no stars were to be seen close to it, their light canceled by the moon's glow. The dark markings of the various "seas" of the moon could be plainly seen with mottled light areas around them which Vincent knew to be mountains. Some of them were as high as Mount Everest, or so Dr. Kokintz had told him. It would not be long before he stood on their steep and arid sides, gazing at earth. He shuddered and, turning his back on the moon, strode briskly toward the castle.

  The main gate was open and his own quarters lay up a circular stairway to the left. There were four of these circular staircases, one in each corner of the castle, climbing the interior of a tower located at each corner. The staircase in the Jericho Tower, as stated, had been removed so the tower might house the rocket, but the other three staircases were in good repair and constant use.

  One only led down to the dungeon—the one up which Vincent was about to climb. As he entered the tower to go up the staircase, switching on a flashlight he had with him, he heard a loud cry from below him in the direction of the dungeon, followed by a great clattering and then another cry. Then there was silence. Vincent darted down the stairs. At the bottom he found Mr. Spender, seated in a terrible litter of broken cameras and holding his head. "Are you hurt?" cried Vincent, rushing to him and helping him to his feet.

  "No," said Mr. Spender. "Not much. Missed my footing, you know, and came clattering down here." He looked around at the wreckage of his cameras and said, "Oh dear. Oh dear. They're all broken. This is terrible."

  Vincent felt quite sorry for him. He helped him gather up the pieces and then said, "Whatever were you doing coming down the stairs anyway?"

  "I thought I heard an owl," said Mr. Spender.

  "In the dungeon?" said Vincent. "Owls go out at nighttime. Hunting. What is all this about anyway?"

  "I'm afraid I've made a mess of things—again," said Mr. Spender. "I throw myself on your mercy and I claim sanctuary." To Vincent's embarrassment, Mr. Spender plumped down and grabbed Vincent around the legs as he said this. But in plumping down, Mr. Spender's knee hit on a sharp piece of one of the broken cameras and he said "Ow," rather spoiling the effect of his appeal.

  "What the blazes are you kneeling there for?" asked Vincent. "Get up."

  "Not until you promise me sanctuary," said Mr. Spender, rubbing his injured knee with one hand but holding on to Vincent's legs with the other. "You have to do it, you know. It's the law of nations."

  "All right," said Vincent, who would have promised anything to get out of his embarrassing predicament. "You can have sanctuary, whatever that is. Now get up and explain all this to me."

  Mr. Spender gave a big sigh of relief, got up, dusted off the knees of his hairy tweeds and sat down on the bottom step of the circular staircase, beckoning Vincent to join him.

  "I'm not really a bird watcher," he said. "I'm a spy. Of course, I should really be called an intelligence agent, but in the present circumstances…" He gestured toward the broken cameras and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know who is going to pay the bill for them," he said hopelessly. "Not me. I haven't got a cent, really."

  "What do you mean you're a spy?" said Vincent, ignoring all the side issues. "Who are you spying for and what do you want to find out?"

  "The Russians," said Mr. Spender. "My mother was a Russian, but my father was an Englishman. We lived in Russia for a while and then in Poland and then in India where my father had a government post and used to go exploring and sometimes shoot tigers. It was a wonderful life. I thought I could spend the rest of my life like my father did, if the supply of tigers didn't run out. But when they took India away from us, which meant no more of those wonderful jobs, that put an end to that, and I had to find some other way of making a living.

  "I tried all kinds of things. You wouldn't think to look at me that I once owned a little tobacco shop on the beach front in Bournemouth, would you?"

  "No," said Vincent, but only because that was the answer patently expected of him.

  "Nice little business," said Mr. Spender. "But humdrum. I wanted something exciting and by various means which I won't explain to you now, I became an agent for the Russians. This was my first big assignment."

  "What kind of spying did you do before?" asked Vincent.

  "Nothing very big," said Mr. Spender. "I really got my start supplying cigarette papers to other agents to write their secret messages on. They're all written on cigarette papers, you know. Then I was asked to go and spy on that American submarine that went to Scotland years ago with the Polaris missile on board."

  "What did you have to find out about it?" asked Vincent.

  "Oh, I just had to report that it was actually there and so on. Just checking up, you know."

  "But, heavens, there were pictures of it in all the newspapers, and students from Scottish universities protesting its presence by swarming all over it."

  "Well, the Russians don't believe anything they read in other people's newspapers," said Mr. Spender. "They are a very suspicious people. They hardly believe anything at all. They even check on the work of their own government departments. That's why I was sent here."

  "Take your time and explain," said Vincent. "Right now I don't understand a thing."

  "Well, they had to check on their own propaganda," said Mr. Spender. "They had to check on whether their propaganda was the truth or not. That would make a big difference."

  "Muddier and muddier," said Vincent, "but wade ahead."

  "It's very simple," said Mr. Spender. 'Their propaganda ministry had put out the story that that fifty million dollars got from the United States was to be spent not on rocket research but on plumbing. Now I had to find out whether that was true or whether it wasn't true. And of course I found out that it was true—although you did try to stop me."

  "Stop you?" cried Vincent. "I thought I was doing everything I could to help you."

  "Oh, come now," said Mr. Spender. "I'm being frank with you so you might as well be frank with me. You'll have to admit that you tried to deceive me by pretending that that big thing you have in the tower over there with the pipes sticking out of it was a rocket designed to go to the moon when it is as plain as a pikestaff that it's actually a castle-sized water heater."

  "But it isn't a water heater," said Vincent. "It's a rocket designed to go to the moon and it will take off very shortly." "There you are," said Mr. Spender sorrowfully. "Trying to deceive me again."

  "Look," said Vincent, "I'm telling you the truth. If you don'
t want to accept it, that's up to you. That rocket we are building there is going to go to the moon in about a month. And Ill be aboard it with Dr. Kokintz as I explained to you during your tour this morning."

  "It's sad how human beings keep trying to deceive each other," said Mr. Spender. "It makes you feel that life is hardly worth living."

  "You're a fine one to talk about deceit," said Vincent. "You come here pretending to be a bird watcher and actually you're a spy."

  "Oh, but my profession calls for deceit," said Mr. Spender. "In my business deceit is a virtue whereas with you—well, it's just an unnecessary vice. That is the difference."

  "Look," said Vincent, "I don't suppose I can make you believe this, but I'm going to try. We have nothing to hide here. Everything is open. That rocket is actually a rocket being prepared to go to the moon. And the rest of the stuff is just new plumbing fixtures for the castle. The plumbing fixtures are not important. The rocket is. But to show you that I'm not trying to hide anything, you can take all the pictures you want of anything you want. Nobody will try to stop you."

  "Can I really?" asked Mr. Spender, brightening immediately. "I say, that's awfully nice of you. Really very generous. I withdraw my request for sanctuary. I don't think, since I have permission to take the pictures, that I have to take refuge from my employers for the time being."

  "Think nothing of it," said Vincent. "Now let's go to bed."

  The following morning Vincent explained to his father and Dr. Kokintz that Mr. Spender was really a Russian spy come to Grand Fenwick to check the Russian propaganda story that the American grant was for the purpose of modernizing the castle and that the story of building a rocket was actually a pretext designed to put the Soviet Union in an embarrassing international situation.

  "I can't get him to believe anything else," Vincent concluded.

  "What a pity he really wasn't interested in the bobolinks," said Dr. Kokintz, ignoring the whole issue. "It would be very valuable indeed, in view of the present controversy, to have an independent witness testify to the presence of bobolinks in our forest." He brightened for a moment. "Perhaps Mr. Spender would still consent to come and take a picture of them and testify that they are actually here," he said.

  "In view of his attitude toward the rocket," said Vincent, "Mr. Spender is the last person to ask to testify about the bobolinks. He would probably swear they were vultures. He seems incapable of accepting the simple truth."

  "It is one of the hazards of espionage," said the Count of Mountjoy. "Spies thrive on what is hidden. If nothing is hidden, they have nothing to thrive on and their situation is desperate."

  Mr. Spender spent the whole day taking pictures of the plumbing with a camera Tully lent him. Then he caught the evening bus back to Switzerland, where he spent the next week compiling a report. It was masterly and suited the Soviet propaganda agency to perfection.

  His report stated that Grand Fenwick was going to elaborate lengths to disguise the real purpose of the American grant. A rocket, built into one of the towers of Grand Fenwick castle to support the American deceit, was really a water heater and he was pleased to be able to enclose photographs showing the true nature of the work upon which the American money was being spent and for which it had been granted. He enclosed two dozen pictures of the plumbing and the sections of the giant furnace together with several shots of whole rows of bathtubs.

  The Soviet Ministry of Propaganda deliberated over the pictures and the report and sent Mr. Spender a draft for two thousand English pounds, and he immediately bought himself a big game gun and a plane fare to India and was not heard of thereafter.

  The pictures of the plumbing and the bathtubs, with an article under the heading "American Deceit on Workers Exposed" was printed on the main foreign news page of Izvestia.

  It was unfortunate that it appeared on the very day that the Grand Fenwick rocket took off for the moon.

  CHAPTER XII

  The take-off went without a hitch and it is a pity that, due to the world's incredulity, the only witnesses to it were the people of Grand Fenwick. The Count of Mountjoy sent invitations to the launching to the heads of the principal nations of the world but nobody even bothered to reply, which upset him as being impolite.

  "Royalty in better times would attend the opening of a bridge," he said. "Presidents these days will not attend the launching of a rocket to the moon. It is all part of the deterioration of our times. A sense of public duty has given way to a sense of political expediency and the whole world suffers from the change."

  Headed by Gloriana and her consort Tully Bascomb, the people of the Duchy crowded together in the courtyard around the Jericho Tower, and Dr. Kokintz and Vincent of Mountjoy took their leave of them.

  First of all Gloriana made a speech which was short but nonetheless effective. She said that this was a very proud moment in the history of Grand Fenwick, for two men of the nation were going to dare the heavens and be the first of all men on earth to attempt a landing on the moon.

  She reminded them that Florence had only a small state, scarcely the size of Grand Fenwick, when Galileo had, with a telescope he fashioned himself, laid the foundations for the modern science of astronomy. Copernicus was a citizen of one of the poorest countries in Europe when he revolutionized thinking on the subject of the solar system, which men had previously thought rotated about the earth.

  "Size of nations has little to do with scientific achievement," she said, "and it has fallen to our lot to lead mankind into outer space. I do not doubt for one moment that this mission will be successful," she continued. "But when our men return to us, let us not be overly proud, but remember that all things are done under the hand of God, and nothing may be achieved by man alone.

  "It is proper then that we should ask God's blessing upon this project and recall for our comfort during the period of waiting that lies ahead of us, that all things are in His hands and He is concerned about the falling of a sparrow."

  Gloriana glanced at Cynthia Bentner when she said this. Cynthia was standing by Vincent of Mountjoy and her face was very pale. Her lips were trembling and she bent her head and Gloriana looked quickly away from her.

  "You can be sure of our prayers," she said, turning to Vincent and Dr. Kokintz. "And the prayers of a whole nation, however small, will hardly go unanswered. We send with you all our faith, all our courage and all our love. With these you will not be alone, even on the distant plateaus of the moon, but supported and surrounded by the spirit of the people of the nation from which you come."

  The Bishop of Grand Fenwick then blessed the two astronauts and the rocket, and the people tried to look somewhere else but could not when Vincent took leave of Cynthia. As many as could came forward to shake the astronauts' hands and suddenly they were alone in a little area by themselves, the crowd withdrawing from them.

  Dr. Kokintz blinked around in the bright sunlight through his thick glasses and then, turning to Gloriana, said, "Thank you, my lady. We will be back soon, please God."

  And then, in silence, they walked to the base of the Jericho Tower and through a heavy steel door which Vincent had had installed there and which was as stout as that on a massive safe. They were about to swing the door closed behind them when Dr. Kokintz opened it again and said to Tully, "Please do not forget to feed the birds." Then the door was shut and those outside heard the several locks on it being slipped into place and knew that in a few minutes Kokintz and Vincent would be entering the rocket and strapping themselves to their bunks in preparation for the take-off.

  Everybody now backed away from the tower. They had been told that there was no danger at all, that since the rocket was equipped with nuclear power, there would be no terrible blasts of flame to crack the stones of the tower and burn them, but they could not believe this. Nonetheless they moved to the wall surrounding the courtyard and stared in silence at the Tower of Jericho from which the capstones had all been removed, so that it looked like a huge factory chimney.

 
There was no warning of the take-off at all—no thunderous noise or escape of vapors in terrifying clouds. Watching the top of the tower, they saw the nose of the rocket appear quite slowly above it, as if it were some creature come out to sniff the morning air. A big "Aaaah" went up from the people; and then in utter silence the rocket suddenly left the tower, so swiftly that they could not follow the motion until it was already many hundreds of feet up in the air.

  It left a graceful thin line of vapor behind it, and when it was up some distance, there was a sudden heavy explosion which produced a shock wave that sent the spectators staggering and many of them thought that the rocket had blown up.

  "Mach One," said the Count of Mountjoy. "They have gone through the sound barrier."

  After a little while the rocket appeared to alter course, as if it were coming down to the earth again. "They're in trouble," someone cried. "It's falling back to earth!"

  But it was not so.

  The rocket was still gaining altitude and Tully, who was the first to collect his wits, rushed to Dr. Kokintz study to switch on the microwave two-way radio with which they could communicate with the astronauts. His instructions were not to message them first but to wait for a report, and it was twenty minutes before they got one. Then Dr. Kokintz' voice came through, surprisingly clear, as if he were talking from the next room.