The Star Mouse
By FREDRIC BROWN
Robinson Crusoe ... Gulliver ... Paul
Bunyan; the story of their adventures
is nothing compared to the Saga of Mitkey.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
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 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.