The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet
by Eleanor Cameron
No. 1 in the Mushroom Planet series
The Mushroom Planet series by Eleanor Cameron:
1 The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, 1954
2 Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, 1956
3 Mr. Bass's Planetoid, 1958
4 The Terrible Churnadryne, 1959
5 A Mystery for Mr. Bass, 1960
6 Time and Mr. Bass, 1967
by ELEANOR CAMERON
With Illustrations by Robert Henneberger
An Atlantic Monthly Press Book
Little, Brown and Company • Boston • Toronto
Published September 1954
Published simultaneously In Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To my son, the real David, who asked for this book and who edited it with a stern black pencil-and to Ian, who whispered in Mr. Bass's ear the secret of the marvelous stroboscopic Polaroid filter-with my love and my thanks.
Contents
Part One: Mr. Bass
1 A Little Planet Just My Size
2 At 5 Thallo Street
3 Spare Parts
4 Dr. Topman Pays a Visit
5 Mr. Bass-at Last!
6 The Discovery of a Satellite
7 The Marvelous Filter
8 Mr. Bass Does Some Tinkering
Part Two: On Basidium
9 Blast-off!
10 Into Uncharted Regions
11 The Pale Planet
12 The Wise Men Who Weren't Very Wise
13 The Place of the Hidden Water
14 The Cracking of a Shell
15 Two Dollars for Adults and Fifty Cents for Children
16 Into the Storm
17 Nothing but a Tinkle in the Wind
Part Three: A Most Mysterious Disappearance
18 The Angry Sea
19 Like a Leaf in the Sky
20 I, Tyco Bass
PART ONE
Mr. Bass
CHAPTER 1
A Little Planet Just My Size
One night after dinner when David was reading Dr. Dolittle in the Moon, and his father was reading the newspaper, and his mother was darning socks, his father suddenly exclaimed:
"Well, now, that's very odd!"
"What's odd?" David and his mother both asked at once.
"Why," said his father, "this notice in the paper."
David went over to look, and there, down at the very bottom corner of the next to the last page of the newspaper, were a few lines of print. But though the rest of the newspaper was printed in black, this little notice was in green. Here is what it said:
Wanted: A small space ship about eight feet long, built by a boy, or by two boys, between the ages of eight and eleven. The ship should be sturdy and well made, and should be of materials found at hand. Nothing need be bought. No adult should be consulted as to its plan or method of construction. An adventure and a chance to do a good deed await the boys who build the best space ship. Please bring your ship as soon as possible to Mr. Tyco M. Bass, 5 Thallo Street, Pacific Grove, California.
Well, a notice like that sprung suddenly on any boy, just because of its general air of mystery and urgency, would be enough to start him simmering. But for David it was stupendous!
Regularly, every night after he got into bed and the light was turned out, he took off in his own imaginary space ship. Making peculiar, jagged noises like "rht-ttttttt-chsssssssss" or "r-r-r-r-r-r-ram-am-ama-am-BooM!" he'd poise for a second on the window sill. And then - with a horrible roar and a blinding burst of light - he'd streak off smooth and powerful and free as a bullet into the far, far reaches of the sky. He'd flash past Mars and Jupiter, turn, take a couple of whirls around the dead and glowing moon (right around the frozen, dark side nobody else has ever seen) and be back again in a wink.
But it was all imagination. He could stare as 4
much as he liked at his big map of the solar system tacked up on the wall, but he was still exactly where he had been in the first place.
So you can understand what the sight of that little green notice in the paper did to him, how it set him vibrating like a harp in the wind. Build a real space ship all his own. Why, he'd never thought of that! And yet, why not? And then, after that -
"But it's a joke," said Dr. Topman firmly, after a moment or two in which he must have been cogitating. "I'll bet you anything it's just some sort of joke - and a pretty poor one at that."
"Oh, but Father, it can't be! Why would it be a joke?"
"The notice is in green," said his mother, smiling to herself. "I wonder what Mr. Bass is like." Then she bit off her thread and held up a sock to the lamp to be sure she'd done a good job.
"Well, by George," said Dr. Topman, "I'll bet Mr. Bass has vanished by now. Because there is no such street as Thallo Street in this town. After all the calls I've made, I think I ought to know. Sounds made up to me."
An adventure and a chance to do a good deed await the one who builds the finest ship! 6
"Oh, Father," burst out David, "what kind of an adventure, do you suppose?" -• But Dr. Topman only muttered to himself something about its being a crime to lead children on like that, and about there being a catch to it somewhere. Then he tossed aside the page containing the mysterious little notice and buried himself in the rest of the paper.
David looked at his mother. She winked at him and held out her scissors, and in a minute David had the notice all cut out and neatly folded up in his pocket.
Tomorrow morning, he said to himself, he'd begin working on his design for the ship - or he'd begin hunting around to see how much material he could find to build it. And maybe Chuck Mas-terson could dig out a lot of old boards and stuff nobody wanted any more over in his grandfather's boathouse. But then all at once he thought: Why not begin drawing the plans right away? So he got some paper and a pencil and started to work.
"Father!" exclaimed David as he drew his first lines.
"Yes, David," answered his father patiently, putting down his newspaper.
7
"What would the earth look like from way out in the sky, thousands oi miles awav?
"We-e-ll," replied Dr. Topman, seeming to consider, "I can't imagine. But one thing I know, all around us stretches the absolute black of space, even with the sun burning and flaming away out there like a huge furnace - space that is almost empty inside and around our solar system, but that beyond is crowded with stars even in the daytime. Because, as a matter of fact, you see, there is no daytime out there - no wind, no sound, nothing but blackness and the eternal movements of those little points of light."
No daytime, no wind, no sound, nothing but blackness!
"But Father, why is there no daytime there, even if the sun is shining?"
"Because there is nothing out there to reflect the sun's light, David. Atmosphere, made up of gases, surrounds our earth, so that whatever part of the earth the sun is shining on has light - the atmosphere reflects it. The atmosphere carries sound, causes the winds. But not out in space. And if you were thousands of miles away and looking at the earth," continued Dr. Topman, "you would see both day and night from there 8
at once, if the sun were in the right position."
David, with his tongue in the corner of his mouth, held his breath while he drew an almost perfect curve.
"Do you suppose I'll ever be a space man, Father?" he asked longingly.
"Shouldn't be at all surprised," answered his father in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. "Shouldn't be at all surprised. But I'll never be - all that's beyond my time. Besides, I like my own home and the view of the bay out our back windows. Catch me whizzing around through space - not on your life!"
By bedtime, half an hour later, David had a most beautiful diagram of his space ship all finished.
The ship was long and smooth and cigar-shaped, with a slender pointed nose. It had one big window at the front. Just back of the window there was a door which could be bolted tight. The ship had no wings, but it had four broad blades for a tail, set at right angles to one another around the rocket exhaust. They were level at the ends so that the space ship could sit upended on them quite firmly, and they were curved on the inside edges where they extended
9
below the exhaust. There was a cross-section drawing of the ship, so that you could see its interior, and a rear-view, a side-view, and a front-view drawing.
Tomorrow was Tuesday, the second day of Easter vacation. He and Chuck would have to work fast. They would have to keep their plans secret, and the building of the space ship hidden - maybe down in that cave on Cap'n Tom's beach - so no other fellows could see what they were doing and steal their ideas. And they wouldn't even tell Cap'n Tom, who was Chuck's grandpop, because Cap'n Tom would want to help build.
Now David wandered away to his own room and slowly and thoughtfully began to get undressed. Finally, quite a bit later, and still thinking hard about frameworks and air pressure and velocity and all that, he climbed into bed and curled into a ball. But when his father and mother came in to say good night and turn out the light, he sat up again.
"You know what?" he said, looking up at the moon that was sending a pale beam through his window.
10
"What, David?" asked his father and mother, stopping to listen.
' "I'd like to find a little planet just my size - not a big one like the earth that takes months and months to get around, but a nice little one that you could explore in a day or two."
"But I'm afraid that's not possible, David," said Dr. Topman, smiling down at him, "not for ten or twenty years yet, or maybe even fifty. Might be something to look forward to, though."
"Perhaps you'll find it in your dreams, David," said his mother hopefully.
"But I don't want to find it in my dreams," said David impatiently. "That wouldn't do at all. I don't want it to be a dream. I want it to be real!"
11
CHAPTER
At 5 Thallo Street
through the trees shone a soft, spreading light. It came from the window of Mr. Bass's cellar, and if you had peeked in, you would have seen a little old man bending over an enormous ledger. The light shining down on him was curious. It was bright and yet cool; it was gentle and yet penetrating. It had the silvery restfulness of moonlight combined with the clarity of sunlight. Mr. Bass had invented it, and had done all the wiling and the stringing up of those glowing bubbles of glass himself. But he couldn't, for the life of him, have told you how he had invented it.
"Fifteen and ten are twenty-five -" he muttered to himself.
He was seated on a very high stool at his workbench, and he was surrounded by such a clutter of screws and nails and wires and batteries and bits of twine and bottles of green and yellow and 12
raspberry colored fluids as you never saw. Behind him, piled up on the floor, were his empty mushroom boxes.
"-and six are thirty-two - no, thirty-one," said Mr. Bass, licking the end of his pencil and writing down thirty-one. Then he did some more adding and subtracting. "Five dollars and ninety-two cents," he announced finally. "But really, I don't know why I bothered. For I have a suspicion I shall have no time to spend it. However," and he sighed, "it would have been a pity to waste all those nice mushrooms." Then he turned and surveyed the rest of his cellar. "More pushing up, too. Dear me, what's to become of them? Ah, well, there's no use worrying about that now."
He put the ledger away in a drawer, stuck the pencil behind his ear, and hopped down off the stool.
"Rocket motor," he said to himself, as if he were beginning to check off items on a list in his mind. And he looked over to where a large, shining, complicated contraption rested on a broad shelf. "Fuel," he muttered, frowning and pursing his lips. Then he tapped the side of his nose and went over to a large, battered metal container which 14
looked like an old milk can. He lifted the lid and sniffed. "Hee-hee!" he chuckled. "And now for 'the final touch. Just those four drops of atomic tritetramethylbenzacarbonethylene." He skipped over to his bench and quickly chose a bottle, then - plop! plop! plop! plop! "Whe-e-e-e!" cried little Mr. Bass, rubbing his hands in delight. "That'll fix it! Blow a mountain to smithereens, that would! Ten mountains!" Then he printed a label which said:
FUEL FOR SPACE SHIP
and stuck it on the side of the can and put the lid back on again.
Next he went over to a big wooden vat, lifted the lid, and peered in. Then he got a huge wooden spoon and began stirring and stirring, occasionally lifting the spoon so that he could examine the smooth, clear, gluey substance that dripped from it. He seemed tremendously pleased. "Beautiful consistency," he murmured, "simply beautiful. Couldn't be better. Now - if only the boy doesn't take too long with his space ship. A week would see this stuff ruined. Of course, I could add a little - tarnation! What was it now? Oh well, doesn't matter - doesn't matter."
15
Now he popped the lid on again, leaned the spoon on a clean piece of paper against the wall, and printed another label. This time it said:
FLUID RESINOID SILICON (WITH OTHER INGREDIENTS) FOR TREATING EXTERIOR OF SPACE SHIP
16
and when it was finished he pasted it onto the vat. "Never can tell," he murmured. "I just might have to leave before I can complete my mission - however, I must simply trust -"
Then he gave a last look around, turned out the light, went outside and closed the door and scurried round to the front of the house. A minute or so later he was up on the second story seated on another high stool. But this time, instead of making labels or adding and subtracting into a ledger, he was squinting through a large telescope.
"Yes," he murmured to himself, "I must have been right." Then he opened a notebook which he had by him and which was titled, in his very peculiar handwriting, A Few Facts Concerning the Hitherto Undiscovered Satellite, Basidium-X. He opened the notebook to a page covered with figures, and his finger went down the columns. "Diameter - thirty-five miles. Yes, yes, there's no way out of it. And yet, if the diameter is so small, how in thunderation has it managed to hang onto its atmosphere? The smaller the planet, the less gravity it has, and therefore the less atmosphere. A puzzle! A most extraordinary puzzle!"
Now again he peered into the eyepiece of his
17
telescope, squinting and screwing up his face in his intense interest.
"Oh, lovely," he whispered. "A lovely color. Bluish green - yet, not always - now pale - now a bit deeper. Variations could be the effect of our atmosphere, however. But what could the green be? Not chlorine, thank goodness, because then my boy, whoever he is, would be unable to breathe. No - some infinitesimal plant matter, perhaps? Another mystery. But it's beautiful, and to those living on Basidium, a blessing. For that green mist must curtain the eyes of the Basidium-ites against the too-brilliant nearness of the earth. Marvelous, indeed, are the arrangements of nature!"
Mr. Bass smiled to himself, plucked his pencil from behind his ear, and made the following notation in his Basidium notebook:
"The deliverance of my people on Basidium is near," he wrote, "because today there appeared in the newspaper my want ad for a small space ship. Who has seen it? What boy (only one boy, of course - the right boy) will have seen, or been shown, that notice? He will be lying in his bed at this moment wondering what it could possibly mean. But being the right boy he will have his 18
plans all drawn and they will be ready, even now, on some shelf or table in his darkened room. Soon I shall meet him. Who is he, I wonder. What is his name? Oh, I am like a child myself, for I can hardly wait to find out!"
Then little Mr. Bass, still smiling, closed the notebook, laid down his pencil, turned out the light, and went off to bed.
19
Spare Parts
V ery, very early the next morning David was to be found hunched over a number of old can and bottle boxes near the incinerator at the bottom of the Topman garden. Dr. Topman had cleaned out the garage on Sunday, and when that happened no sensible person would believe the number of perfectly good things that got thrown away.
Now began such a rattling and scraping and banging that John, the rooster, and Mrs. Penny-feather, his wife, craned their necks and stared, and their children all ran up to the fence of the chicken yard and stretched out their beaks in amazement. Up from those old can and bottle boxes there flew all sorts of odds and ends.
"Nope, don't think so," David would mutter to himself, for he had a surprisingly clear picture in his head of exactly what he needed. Then, excit-20
edly, like a dog digging for a bone, "Yep, yep, just the thing for the instrument panel!" Now there would be absolute silence while he sat back on his heels and pondered over an old cog wheel, or a coiled-up spring covered with graphite. Then, presently, "Oh bo-o-oy, a barometer! Now why d'you s'pose Pop threw that away? It's broken, but I betcha it could be fixed. And here's a toggle switch - at least I think it's a toggle switch. Then I've got to have a pressure gauge.
21
Very important. Can't get along without a pressure gauge."
This went on for quite a while, and just about the time David had all the spare parts he needed, who should come along but Chuck Masterson. Chuck could be a lot of fun and very helpful sometimes. But other times Chuck was stubborn. Just let David get an idea about how something should be done, and Chuck would think it should be done just the opposite way. And he wouldn't give in. He'd say David was stubborn and wouldn't give in either, so there were days when they never got anywhere.
All the same, they were the best of friends. They were both in the same grade at school. David was tall and quick, with freckles and sun-bleached brown hair that flopped over his eyebrows. Chuck was shorter and squarer with brown skin and dark hair. David liked to plan things and draw and talk, but Chuck just liked to get right in and do them without saying much. Right now, Chuck's father and mother were away on a trip, so Chuck and Cap'n Tom were living alone.
"Watcha doin'?" said Chuck.
David turned up his streaked and sweaty face 22
and squinted at Chuck sideways. He seemed to consider something with great seriousness, and ^then finally to make up his mind.
"Chuck," he began solemnly, "have you and Cap'n Tom talked much lately about space ships and traveling to the moon and life on other planets and all that?"
"Sure," said Chuck, "lots of times." Now David stood up, leaned close to Chuck, and stopped a moment before he spoke very, very slowly, with stern and narrowed gaze.
"Did he read out to you a piece in the paper last night about a small space ship being wanted by a certain Mr. Tyco M. Bass - a little notice printed in green?"
Chuck's eyes grew big. "A space ship! Gee whillikers - no!"
"He didn't say a word?"
"Nope. But if he'd seen it, he would have."
You see, Cap'n Tom believed in all sorts of things - flying saucers and such as that - and sometimes he'd stand out on the beach at night and stare and stare up into the sky for minutes at a time to see if he could spot anything. But he never had. All the same, Cap'n Tom loved to yarn about discoveries in space and flying to the moon
23
and what life on space stations would be like just as much as he loved to yarn about all the weird things that had happened to him at sea.
"Well, listen, Chuck," said David, "it's a kind of mystery, because my father says there is no such street as Thallo Street, the place you have to bring your space ship to when it's finished."
"Then," said Chuck in his downright, sensible way, "why don't we go try to find it?" But David frowned at that and didn't answer. He just began picking out all the biggest tin cans he could find and tearing the paper off of them.
"Not going to," he said finally. "There's a Thallo Street somewhere, all right, or that notice wouldn't have been in the paper. Besides, it'd take too much time to go off and hunt for it, and I've got to hurry."
The truth of the matter was, David didn't want to admit his real reason for not settling the mystery. You see, if there were no Thallo Street, and therefore no Mr. Bass, and therefore no reason to build the space ship, he couldn't have stood it, because he was as stuck to the idea of that space ship as a nail is stuck to a magnet. Now he looked up at Chuck again and fixed him with a grave stare. 24
"Chuck," he said, "would you like to go off on an adventure and have a chance to do a good •deed?"
"What kind of an adventure?" asked Chuck cautiously.
"I don't know exactly - but I'll bet it'll have something to do with space."
"I think we ought to go and find that street first," said Chuck stubbornly, "or else what's the good of beginning?"
"O.K.," said David, picking up his box of spare parts, "I'll just build the ship myself, and if it's the best one I'll go off on the adventure alone."
Oh, but Chuck couldn't bear that! If there was one thing he hated more than another, it was being left out of whatever was going on.
"All right, all right, then - how do we begin?" And he looked angry, but you could tell he was going to stick until he found out what this was all about.
"Bring that box of tin cans, will you, Chuck?" grinned David, pleased as Punch he'd won Chuck over. "I thought we could do our building down in that cave on Cap'n Tom's beach...
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