Home is Where You Hang Upside Down
by "The Enduring Man-Child"
All standard disclaimers apply.
Chapter 8
The next morning no one disturbed the young couple as they watched the sunrise, even though the others were up early enough to do so had they wished. Dale happily anounced that no humans had been visible when they had checked during the night. Gadget was careful to thank them both very politely. Foxglove gave Dale a small hug and retired for the day as the Rangers prepared breakfast.
The boys spent that day doing their shopping at a local supermarket (a bit tricky, but doable if one were used to it), leaving Gadget happily alone to do her work. They returned just in time to provide her lunch tray and have their own meal. Monty and Zipper volunteered to stake out the police station by themselves for the afternoon while the chipmunks monitored the television and police scanner.
Gadget had begun her project on a Tuesday and continued into the next week, taking the weekend off as the Rangers usually did. During this time the other Rangers politely refrained from voicing their enormous curiosity. Most days they posted themselves in Sergeant Spinelli's office listening carefully for indications that their anonymous services were needed. June was usually a busy time for them, but this year was different. There was plenty for the human police, of course, but nothing as yet that required the Rangers' attention. In fact, Chip was beginning to remark that everything would probably "bust loose" during their annual July vacation. Each night the Rangers would relax in front of the TV with Gadget, who was careful to end each day's activity by the time they returned. Foxglove continued to board with them, sitting up with Dale when he pulled his all-nighters and feeding outside when he actually decided to sleep or when the movie theme seemed ominously Gothic. Either way she remembered to keep her radar peeled for suspicious humans during the night.
Over that weekend Gadget realized she would need something to present to the others as her project so that their curiosity would be satisfied while her secret remained protected. On Monday morning she beagan assembling the rejected parts during lulls and breaks into a "toy" that should impress all of them. It wasn't going to be pretty, but it was going to be a very adequate shortwave radio set. She could have finished this very quickly but stretched it out so that it would appear to be the fruit of her protracted labor. It was really an obsolete device, with transistors, a clumsy and unmarked tuning indicator ("Too bad I can't make it digital!" she thought to herself), and an old car radio aerial to facilitate reception. It wouldn't get the entire spectrum, and the frequencies on what it would pick up would be horribly bunched together, but she knew that this concept, quaint and old fashioned as it was, would fascinate the others no end and provide the perfect cover.
On Wednesday morning, just eight days after she had begun, she was near enough finished to devote her labors to finishing the radio. "I'm almost done!" she told the relieved Rangers when she actually ventured out of her lonely cell to eat lunch with them. This created quite a stir among the others, and Dale wanted to call off the afternoon shift to be there when she finished, but Monty and Chip both suggested there was no need to be impatient this close to the finish. Dale accompanied them reluctantly back to the Ranger Plane, but they at least abandoned the police station for an aerial surveillance of the city. This was not done very thoroughly; in fact it was mostly intended to make the afternoon pass quickly for them while giving Gadget the opportunity to finish once and for all.
This was the hardest part of the whole process for the mouse-prodigy. What she had built looked like one of the bat detectors out of the chiropterology books, but it contained a built-in mic that with the help of the dial could theoretically transform animal speech into something understandable to a human. The key word was "theoretically." She had no way of knowing if it would work and did not dare test it. It was only a personal challenge, anyway, she told herself again. But the project could not be officially concluded without a test. A failure would mean her theory had been flawed and send her into repeating the whole tiring process over again, and this time without a "cover." But aside from the fact that she was afraid of the consequences of either failure or (especially) success, she could not even be sure it would work with a mouse's voice. It was based on a bat detector and might only work with a bat. She didn't dare try it with Foxglove, whose desire to communicate with humans could easily spiral out of control into an obsession once she saw even a possibility of its fulfillment. She could slip off that evening and find other bats throughout the city, but the problem was the same. As much as she wanted to be sure she had solved the problem of inter-species communication, she was terrified of what the solution might mean to the world. She felt like Dr. Frankenstein again.
Gadget looked a long time at the innocent looking little device in her hands. Finally she sighed and took it to a little-used cabinet she had brought from her old home when she had joined the Rangers. Her father had built it for her when she had first begun tinkering as a little girl, and had fitted it with a combination lock whose combination was known only to the two of them. She had used it quite a bit at first to "hide" her treasures, which meant everything she hammered together in those days. She had brought it mostly as a reminder of her father, who had carved their names into a "secret" place underneath. Since growing up she realized that not that much that she built was really a treasure or a secret. But this definitely was both. And so she spent a few minutes recalling the combination and then opened it for the first time since childhood. She placed her invention on the bottom shelf, looked at it, and then scooted it all the way to the back. She was about to close the door when she hesitated and then quickly picked up as many spare parts and old pieces of junk as she thought she wouldn't be needing anytime soon and placed them throughout the cabinet, taking care that the "voice box," as she was beginning to call it, was obscured as much as possible. Then she stared for a while and slowly closed the door and spun the combination lock. Then she stared another minute at the cabinet.
She sighed and shook her head sadly. Then she picked up the shortwave and stepped out of the shadows where forbidden deeds are committed and back into the world of living things to rejoin her friends.
