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Ebook has 194 lines and 8361 words, and 4 pages

RAT RACE

BY GEORGE O. SMITH

Illustrated by Cartier

"You're nuts," came the reply, but the voice on the telephone was jovially reproving rather than sarcastic. "I can't do anything about this order."

Peter Manton blinked. "But it has a Four-A-One priority."

Brannon nodded--invisibly, of course--and said, "Sure you have a top priority. Anything your lab wants has top. But darn it, Peter, the best priority in the world isn't going to buy you a dozen mousetraps that are nonexistent."

"But--"

"Besides which, that building you're in is about as rat-proof as a sealed gasoline can. There isn't an item of comestible in the place."

"I know that. And the mice can go hungry for all I care. But the mice don't seem to understand that bringing food into the place is not only forbidden by law but dangerous."

"But there ain't a mousetrap in the country. Ding bust it, Peter, mousetraps take spring wire, and labor. The people who used to make mousetraps are now making bombsights and tanks. Besides, Peter, over at that laboratory of yours there should be enough brains and gear to really build the Better Mousetrap. If you can spot a plane at fifty miles, split atoms, and fire radio equipment out of a cannon, you ought to be able to dispose of a mouse or two."

Peter grinned. "You mean spot 'em with radar, and then shoot 'em down in flames with proximity fuses loaded with plutonium war heads? That might be a little strenuous, don't you think? Like cutting the throat to stop the spread of impetigo."

"Well, if you have mice over there, you think of something. But top priority or not, we can't get you your mousetraps!"

Peter hung up unhappily. He turned from his desk to see an impertinent mouse sitting on the floor watching him out of beady black eyes. Peter hurled a book at it and swore, a rare thing for him.

The mouse disappeared behind a bank of filing cabinets.

"That's right," he grunted. "Go on--disappear!"

The word struck home. Peter blinked. And remembered....

It was dark, though not too dark for the mouse to see his surroundings. It was hungry, and it was beginning to understand that of the many places occupied by man, this was one place where man left nothing that could be eaten. This evening, however, the situation was changed. There was a faint smell of food in the place, relatively great compared to the sterile atmosphere of previous days.

The mouse located the odor. A small wire tunnel closed at the far end. A nice, rancid bit of bacon hung there.

The mouse was no fool. He inspected the wire tunnel carefully. Three of his brothers had been taken away by various metal contrivances and he was not going to follow them if he could help it. The mouse sniffed the wires, climbed the top of the little cage and raced around it, poking it and bumping it. Often a trap could be sprung by poking it with a foot--just jarring it. That left the bait safe to eat.

But this seemed innocuous. No springs, no wires, no trapdoor, no mirrors. Just a little tunnel of wire cloth about six inches long and two inches in diameter.

The mouse entered the tunnel; headed for the bit of bacon.

Nothing happened, and the mouse gathered speed. It paid no attention to the silvery metal ring that encircled the inside of the tunnel, and would not have known what it was anyway. There were other things there, too. Bits of Alnico V, a couple of cubes of Cerise Wax, some minute inductances and a very small capacitor made of a tiny square of mica with some silver sputtered on both sides. Down in the center was a clear crystal with electrodes clamped on it. The whole assembly was about a half inch cubed and from it on either side emerged the ends of the silvery-wire loop.

Had the mouse seen all this, it would not have understood. That was not strange, for even the man who built it was not too certain what it did, or what it was, nor how it worked.

He knew it worked, and it served its purpose. He was like the man who daily uses electricity enough to kill him, but is not quite sure of what goes on in the instant between his snap of the switch and the arrival of the illumination.

The mouse cared not. All he was after was food.

He paused, uncertainly and checked to see if there were any moving parts. There were, but they were intangible fields and stresses of space.

Then the mouse raced forward and passed through the silvery circle.

But did not come out on the far side.

A second mouse, watching, took a sigh of relief. The bait was still there. There had neither been cry of pain nor was there a captive warning the rest away in mouse-ese.

He, too, came to the trap, and entered, the odor from the rancid bacon drawing him with a magnetic force.

He, too, came to the silvery circle, passed through--into nothingness!

Came then another, and another, each pleased in turn that the bait was his alone for the taking. And as each one entered and disappeared, a tiny silent counter moved one digit higher.

Came morning....

And--

"Great Unholy Madness," exploded Peter. "If this is a rat-proof building, I am a Chinese policeman!"

Jack Brandt looked over Peter's shoulder. "How many?" he asked.

"Twenty-three!"

"Golly," grinned Brandt. "We're outnumbered."

"We won't be long if this thing works like this every night. This is better than the original ball-bearing mousetrap."

"Which?"

Peter grinned. "The tomcat," he said.

That was how it started. It went on for a week, passed through a huge peak of catch, and then tapered off abruptly. A month later, the trap had passed no mouse into--nothingness--for three days. The Better Mousetrap was placed back in the cabinet and forgotten.

For this was during the days of War, when he who was not fighting was working to provide the fighting man with what he needed. And Peter Manton's laboratory had too much to do in too short a time to permit even an hour's wonder or work on anything not directly concerned with the problem at hand.

The months passed. Peter Manton nodded knowingly when Hiroshima heralded the atomic age. He made penciled notes on the margin of the paper correcting some of the reporter's errata in describing radar. He wrote a hot letter to OSRD complaining that the news release on the proximity fuse had been mishandled, that he knew the real facts. He followed sonar and loran with interest.

More months passed, and the peace which was raging all over the world continued, but Peter Manton's laboratory was disbanded. Much of the stuff was sold as scrap, and among it was the Better Mousetrap. It no longer worked. Its magnets were mere bits of metal alloy; its permanent wax-electrets were discharged. The crystal no longer vibrated molecularly, and besides, the wire loop was crushed beneath a pile of scrap metal.

The next time Peter Manton remembered his Better Mousetrap was when a friend of his mentioned that he wanted to move.

"Move?" asked Peter. "Where to?"

"That's the point," grumbled Tony Andrews. "There's no place. But I'm not going to stay where I am!"

"It looks like a nice enough place. What's wrong?"

"Mice. The place is lousy with 'em."

"Oh? Thought that was a fairly respectable place."

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