Location: The Brisby Farm, the Lee of the Stone.
Sol 6Josh woke from a blissful sleep, unlike anything he'd had in a long time. Back on Earth, in his London home, the mornings were always filled with the annoying sounds of traffic; and onboard the NIMH-One, he always slept by the sounds of the ship's constantly running machinery, as well as Fitzgibbons' annoying roll-call. But here, the peaceful sounds of the forest, combined with the fact that he was finally sleeping in a realbed once again, made it a very pleasant experience indeed.
Glancing over at his host's bed, he saw it was empty. The appetising smell coming from the kitchen told him Mrs Brisby was already up and about, tending to her family. Feeling his ribs where the snake had slammed into him yesterday, he saw she had treated and bandaged up the bruising while he had been sleeping. His uniform sat at the foot of the bed, neatly folded and cleaned.
This girl sure is the soul of hospitality. Too bad there aren't many like her left nowadays…
Stretching and yawning, he got up to dress. He had just finished zipping up his overalls, when he realised he had visitors come to say good morning; peeping curiously at him from behind the curtain in the doorway were Teresa and Cynthia. He smiled at them, causing them to squeal and bolt in embarrassment. Then he heard Mrs Brisby's voice.
"Children! What have I told you about peeping? It's rude! And Captain Anderson needs rest…"
"It's all right, I'm up," said Josh, straitening his hair as he emerged, playfully picking up Cynthia on the way out. The young mouse at first seemed tense at being handled by a stranger – one who wasn't even a fellow mouse nonetheless – but then relaxed in Josh's arms, enjoying the cuddle.
"Good morning, Josh," said Mrs Brisby, smiling at the sight of her youngest daughter looking so content in the arms of her new friend, "Sleep well?"
"Marvellous," said Josh, playfully tickling Cynthia in the tummy, making her squeal, "How's the leg getting along?" he asked, gesturing at Mrs Brisby's bandaged ankle.
"Feeling good as new," she said sweetly, "Come on, breakfast is ready. Teresa, dear, would you get the dishes out please?" Carrying the giggling Cynthia on his shoulders, Josh followed the family of mice into the kitchen. Only one member of the family (excluding the bedridden Timothy) was still absent.
"Is Martin up yet?"
Teresa, who was cutting up what Josh recognised as a hard-boiled pigeon's egg the size of a large melon and placing servings on the plates, gestured in the direction of the children's bedroom, "I told him to get up and check on Timmy. The nitwit has probably gone back to sleep again. Ha, he'll go into another of his tantrums when he finds out he's missed breakfast…"
"There is no need to talk about your brother like that, Teresa!" Mrs Brisby scolded her daughter, preparing a breakfast tray for her youngest son, who was still too ill to get out of bed. Josh then remembered Timmy. How was the boy doing? Had the penicillin worked? Then, suddenly he realised his survival kit, which he had left hanging on a peg by the fireplace beside his spacesuit last night, was gone! For an instant, he knew fear; had someone been here last night? Maybe Auntie Shrew had gotten cold feet and tipped off the Rats? Then the obvious finally dawned on him.
Those little monkeys… he thought, feeling real silly about his paranoia. Excusing himself, he followed Mrs Brisby into the bedroom. Timmy was indeed awake, sitting propped up in bed. Although noticeably still weak and frail, at least his delirium had passed, indicating his fever had finally gone down. His brother sat beside his bed, the two of them curiously going through Josh's survival kit, which Martin had sneaked in here last night, right from under his mother's nose.
Although Josh didn't really mind their childish curiosity, he was ever so glad that he had removed his gun and Taser before turning in, which he had placed within easy reach under his pillow, just as a precaution. The memory of little Cynthia holding his loaded gun to her head made him shudder... Mrs Brisby frowned at the sight of her sons going through her guest's things without permission. She clearly was not pleased at all.
"Martin and Timothy Brisby!" she shouted angrily, "Who said you could help yourselves to Captain Anderson's belongings? I've taught you better than that! You give it back this instant or so help me…!" But Josh placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder before she could continue scolding them.
"Let them be, they meant no harm by it," he said, approaching to retrieve his belongings, while Mrs Brisby placed the tray on the bedridden Timmy's lap, all the while glaring daggers at her eldest son, who was hastily helping Josh repack his kit, fearing his mother's wrath. Catching the hint from her stern gaze, he stammered apologetically to Josh, "I…I'm sorry, Mr Anderson. I just wanted to show Timmy…"
"Never mind, laddie," said Josh, playfully ruffling the boy's hair, as he retrieved the inferred goggles Martin had been trying on for fun, "Curiosity is not a sin after all. However, you might want to take your mother's advice and ask first next time." Satisfied to see that the children had been extremely careful and not damaged anything, he closed up the kit and turned to check on Timmy who was being spoon-fed egg by his mother, much to his embarrassment.
"Mama, really, I'm not helpless...!"
"Feeling better now, son?" asked Josh, lovingly stroking the boy's hair. Timmy stared curiously at him for a few seconds; like his siblings, he had heard lots about humans from his father's old stories his sister would often recite to him and his siblings and had always wondered what they might look like in real life.
"Yes, thank you, Mr Anderson," he said kindly, giving Josh a warm-hearted grin. Like his brother and sisters, he had quickly taken a great liking to this strange creature his mother had brought home. Beside him, Mrs Brisby smiled happily; it had always saddened her that her children didn't have any friends or playmates, always being reliant on each other, but now, the arrival of Josh had completely changed that.
Josh took out his HHC and performed another x-ray on Timmy's lungs. Although the scan still showed some mild inflammation, at least his pulse and core temperature were only slightly above normal now; he would need a good deal of rest and would have to be kept as warm as possible for a while, but his chances of recovery had definitely improved. For the moment, it seemed the crisis was under control.
"So you really come from the stars?" the young mouse asked excitedly, his breakfast entirely forgotten. The man gently stroked the boy's hair in fondness, admiring his plucky spirit, "I guess you could say that."
"Could you show us more of those…magical trinkets of yours?" pleaded Martin, eager to see more of Josh's box of magic tricks. The man grabbed the chubby youngster in a bear hug, playfully ruffling his hair. Timmy snorted at the sight of his big brother trying to squirm out of the human's grip – a snort that developed into a painful cough because of his tender lungs. His mother worryingly pulled the blankets back over him, keeping him warm.
"Anytime, Tiger. Just let me have some breakfast first," said Josh, feeling his stomach growling. Not surprising, he thought, considering he hadn't had a decent meal for almost a whole week.
"Mother, can I come too, please?" Timmy pleaded with his mother, upset at the prospect of being forced to stay in bed all alone, whilst his siblings were outside, having fun with Captain Anderson, "I'm tired of bed…" Mrs Brisby shook her head sadly.
"I'm sorry, darling, not yet. Mr Ages warned me you might get real sick again if you don't keep warm for the next three weeks." Timmy looked utterly frustrated at the prospect of spending the next three weeks confined to his bed. Josh however, sympathising for the boy, patted his hand in reassurance.
"It's all right, lad, time flows by faster than you think. In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to borrow this?" he asked, taking out his copy of An Astronaut's Pocket Manual, the only book he carried, from the kit and handing it to Timmy. For an instant, it crossed his mind that perhaps the boy couldn't read, but then saw Timmy's eyes light up with interest as he read the title aloud.
Everything about this planet is crazy, thought Josh, so why shouldn't these humanoid mice also be able to read a language spoken on another world light years away?
Mrs Brisby smiled. Although, unlike her husband, she had never received a full education because of her poor background, she was pleased that at least their children – with the possible exception of Martin, who considered reading to be dull and stupid – took after their father's beautiful mind. Timmy, in particular, had developed good reading skills and had even moved on to practicing writing as well. Unfortunately, only the privileged, elite classes, namely the Rats, had access to formal education, which a family of poor mouse farmers like them couldn't possibly afford. She turned to her son, who was already flipping through the pages of the manual with interest.
"Timmy, what do we say to Captain Anderson?"
"Eh… Thank you, Captain Anderson," muttered the boy shyly. Josh stroked his hair again, "Don't mention it, lad. And, it's Josh, not Captain Anderson."
"Come on, breakfast is getting cold," said Mrs Brisby, picking up Timmy's empty tray and returning to the kitchen. Josh picked up Martin on his shoulders and followed her out, leaving Timmy to his reading, no longer bored to death. The rest of the children couldn't wait to finish breakfast, undoubtedly thinking they were in for a lot of fun with Josh. Unfortunately, their mother had other plans.
"Now children, we have our chores to attend to; you'll have plenty of time to play with Captain Anderson later. Come on, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish."
Ignoring her children's groaning and protesting, she ushered them towards the door, so they could get on with their harvest. Winter was only a few weeks away and they were already behind schedule because of Timmy getting ill; and they still had to grind all that corn before the freeze came, to make bread, which was the main food supply during the winter. It would mean a long run to make the deadline in time, otherwise they'd all go hungry.
"You had better go lie down Josh," she said to Josh, "You still need rest." But Josh was already picking up his suit's tool pouch, containing his pickaxe and laser cutter. After hearing that the family was on such a serious time crunch, and given he was now living off their livelihood, as that old cow Auntie Shrew had so conveniently pointed out, he was determined to earn his keep.
"Nonsense, I can pitch in with the work. A soldier doesn't rest when he can still walk," he said to Mrs Brisby, who felt touched. This human was indeed a nice fellow, she thought. Josh followed them outside, into the corn field. Auntie Shrew, always a hard-working, early-rising person, was already there, expecting them.
"About time you showed up! Have those ungrateful piglets of yours been sleeping in again?" she snapped indignantly, handing her niece an axe and rope. Ignoring Mrs Brisby's explanation that Timmy needed care, she finished handing out the tools and directed each of them to the sections of the field they would be working today. Josh wasn't surprised to see she had brought an axe and rope for him too.
"At least you have the dignity to earn your keep without being asked to, unlike some other freeloaders I've known," she huffed, although notably with a more approving tone than the rude greeting she'd given him the other night, "You'll be working with the children over there; and I'll be working with Elisabeth on the other side. Try and keep that lazy hindrance of a brat in line," she glared at Martin, who pulled a face at her.
Josh couldn't suppress a snort of amusement; the problem with Auntie Shrew was that she didn't have any sense of humour or fun, which was why the children always drove her mad. He, on the other hand, had always been comfortable around children, probably because he liked how they liked making the most out of life, unlike his stern, no-nonsense commanding officers like Fitzgibbons, who treated him like their lapdog. The children too, he noticed, looked delighted at being assigned to work with him.
With the corn-plants towering forty feet high, the barrel-sized ears of corn hanging way out of reach, the only way to collect them was to chop the whole corn-plant down, using a rope to direct the fall. The process would have to likewise be repeated for several dozen or so corn plants. A straightforward, yet extremely time-consuming and laborious task, to say the least.
Martin wasted no time and tied the rope round his waist, following a routine task he knew so well, but had never been so keen on doing promptly until now, wanting to impress Josh.
"Watch me Josh!" Breaking into a run, the young mouse darted up the plant, with the natural acrobatic skill of his terrestrial counterpart. Within seconds, he had secured the end of the rope around the top of the plant in a tight knot and tossed the other end down to Teresa.
"Impressive laddie," called Josh, clapping, but frowned when he saw Martin start doing some unnecessary and extremely reckless acrobatics, showing off, "Hey, get down from there! That isn't such a good idea…"
Before the words had even passed his lips, the boy suddenly lost his footing on the slippery stem, still wet from the morning dew, and came plummeting down. Teresa screamed. It was only thanks to Josh and his lighting reflexes, who lunged forward, catching the falling mouse by the tail in the nick of time, keeping Martin from slamming headfirst into the ground.
"I told you this wasn't a very good idea, didn't I?" he said, teasingly dangling the young mouse upside down. Martin seemed to recover pretty fast from the shock of nearly joining his little brother in bed with a serious injury. He looked up at Josh, starting to feel a little embarrassed by being held in such an undignified position.
"Point taken. Put me down! And it's not funny!" he snapped at his sisters, who were giggling and pointing at him, amused by his embarrassment. They resumed work.
Taking out the laser-cutter from his tool pouch, originally intended for sampling rocks for his crew's geological surveys, Josh turned to the children, "Who wants a bet, I can cut this thing down in one minute flat?" Martin, who had been busy gnawing through the bark of the stem using his pointed front teeth, marking a good spot for him to start chopping, stared in confusion at the little gadget in his hand.
"What's that?"
"This, is a useful little gadget called a laser cutter," Josh explained, "You use it to cut through the toughest of materials with exact precision, like say, a block of solid rock, or, in this case, the trunk of this corn plant. No need to slave away for hours on end with an axe when you can do the job this way." The children stared at him in disbelief.
"Chop down a corn-plant with that little…nail-like thingy?" Martin scoffed, making a grimace at the sight of the small cutter, which was no bigger than a chisel, clearly unimpressed, "That will take forever…!" But Josh only smiled as he fired up the laser head and attacked the stem with it. The youngsters' mouths dropped in surprise as they saw the little red beam cut clean through the trunk like a knife through hot butter. The corn plant tilted and came crashing down, its wonderful treasure of ripe corn landing at their feet.
Josh smiled as the children cheered at his 'magic'. Never before had they seen someone cut down corn plants so fast, the concept of even the most rudimentary of power tools being completely unheard of in this world. Within an hour, they had levelled the entire field, leaving them only with the task of collecting the corn and putting it in storage. An ecstatic little Cynthia had gone running, calling for her mother and Auntie Shrew to come over and see. The two adult mice stood staring in amazement at the sight of all this workload, normally meant for a whole staff of labourers working around the clock, now completed in record time by one man.
"He's a wizard, mama!" squealed Cynthia excitedly, jumping up and down in delight, "Mr Anderson is a wizard!" Josh smiled at the little girl's innocence, as her mother picked her up for a hug, all the while smiling warmly at Josh, muttering her thanks. Even bossy Auntie Shrew seemed impressed, yet refrained from saying it out loud, instead turning dismissively back to the next job at hand.
"So now that we've finished the cutting," she said, waving her walking stick around like an opera conductor, giving orders ("Hey, Josh did all your stinking work!" retorted Martin incredulously), "it's time to start loading and storing. Children, you go get the baskets from the shed. We will get the cart ready. Hop to it!"
While Mrs Brisby hurried back to the house to check on Timmy and prepare some lunch for everybody, the children, sulking for not getting a break, hurried over to the shed to get the wicker baskets they used to store their corn in, before they took it to the mill. Auntie Shrew led Josh to the edge of the field, where the wooden cart he had seen on his first visit stood empty, waiting to be loaded.
Barking orders like a slave-driver, she and Josh mounted the limbers and dragged the cart over to the chopped-down corn-plants. Josh suspected she was being irate and treating him like a servant on purpose because she was jealous that he could keep the children in line so easily, when they made her life a living hell. But being well accustomed to working under harsh military discipline put Josh way beyond letting this old busybody have the satisfaction, knowing his efforts would only benefit Mrs Brisby and her children, which suited him just fine.
Suddenly, a scream was heard from the direction of the shed, where the children had gone to fetch the baskets. There was trouble. Abandoning their work, Josh and Auntie Shrew hurried over to find out what was going on, the former drawing his gun as he went.
Hurrying over, they saw a terrified Teresa emerge from the shed, helping a crying Cynthia along. Martin followed right behind them, brandishing a bloodstained hoe, indicating the aftermath of a struggle. What had happened?
Hurrying over to them, Josh realised that Cynthia wasn't crying in fear, as he'd thought, but in pain. She was hurt! Mrs Brisby, who had also heard the commotion from the house, came running, gasping at the sight of her daughter's state. As a tearful Teresa cradled Cynthia's head on her lap, Auntie Shrew bent over her, her usually stern face having softened with concern.
"Whatever is the matter, my pet? What happened?"
"It hurts…It hurts…!" moaned Cynthia, tears of pain and shock rolling down her face.
"She was bit," wept Teresa, looking scared half to death, "In the shed, it was lingering among the baskets… Caught us by surprise… I tried to help her but it was too fast…" It was then that Josh noticed the ugly spider bite on Cynthia's left thigh. The little mouse was going into shock, the venom acting fast. This was bad.
Josh wasted no time; ignoring the despairing mice around him, who were all just staring, feeling at a loss, he picked Cynthia up and carried her back to the house as fast as his legs would carry him. Setting her down on the empty kitchen table, which would serve as an examination table, he ran to get the first-aid box from his survival kit.
Taking out a haemostatic tourniquet, he tightened it around Cynthia's leg, cutting off the blood flow in the limb and interrupting the spreading of the venom. Then came the hard part. As anti-venom drugs weren't something carried in an astronaut's medical kit, he would have to use an old-fashioned technique instead.
Elevating the limb, he took out a sterile scalpel and brought the gleaming blade close to the bite point, about to perform an incision. Before he could use it however, he suddenly felt Auntie Shrew's walking stick strike him hard over the shoulder, the children all gasping in outraged shock at what he had been about to do.
"Ow! What the…?!"
"What do you think you're doing?! Stop it!" shrieked the old mouse, roughly pushing him away from Cynthia, brandishing her walking stick furiously in his face, undoubtedly thinking he had been trying to hurt her little niece with that scalpel. Josh roughly brushed the walking stick away, snapping, "I'm trying to helpher, dammit! Get out of the way!"
"By cutting her?" shrieked Teresa incredulously, recoiling, protectively shielding her little sister. Martin likewise glared menacingly at Josh, balling his fists, any fondness he had previously shown towards the human instantly forgotten. Josh felt frustrated; he knew how to help Cynthia, but because of her family's ignorance that what he was doing was in fact good, they wouldn't let him get on with it while there was still time! But then Mrs Brisby, who had already seen Josh do some amazing things in the strangest of ways, stepped in.
"Please, let him try, Auntie Shrew. He knows what he's doing." Josh felt touched to see she was placing her trust in him and his questionable – not to mention seemingly harmful – methods, for the sake of her child. Auntie Shrew reluctantly stepped aside, yet continued to keep her eagle-like eyes fixed firmly on him, watching his every move. Josh got back to work with a vengeance.
"All right, now twist the tourniquet tight and keep the pressure on it."
Following Josh's instructions, Teresa and Mrs Brisby braced Cynthia, whilst Martin held the tourniquet tightly in place, "That's it, good. Now, I have to make an incision to drain out the venom. It will be a little bloody, but, I assure you, it will help her." Wearily nodding her permission, Mrs Brisby, with Auntie Shrew's help, braced the writhing Cynthia.
Carefully positioning the scalpel over the bite area, Josh cut a smooth gash, drawing blood, but not penetrating deep enough to damage any nerves or major vessels. Cynthia's cry of pain instantly had all the mice on edge, but luckily this time they held it together.
After letting the cut bleed for a few minutes in a bowl, to drain out the venom, Josh cleaned out both the bite and incision wounds with antiseptic and bandaged them up, stopping the bleeding. Then, to prevent any infection, he gave Cynthia his second ampoule of penicillin, saving the last one for Timmy, who might still need it. A scan with his HHC showed her vitals were all normal, confirming she hadn't suffered any permanent ill-effects. They'd gotten it just in time. Making sure she was comfortable, they carried her to bed.
Leaving Cynthia to rest, with her siblings and Auntie Shrew keeping her company, Mrs Brisby took Josh aside for a private talk. For a moment, the man thought the she was going to start yelling at him for using a scalpel on her daughter; instead, he was caught entirely by surprise when she grabbed him into a firm hug.
"Thank you, Josh. Thank you so much for helping my little Cynthia," she said, kissing him on the cheek, "I dread to think what might have happened if it hadn't been for you…" She broke down crying with joy and relief. Josh hugged her back, trying not to show how much he was enjoying her embrace – it felt like being in the arms of a beautiful woman, which, technically, was precisely the case.
"You're very welcome," he said sheepishly, patting her on the back, "I'm sorry I gave you all such a scare with that scalpel. I should have said something first… But how come you trusted me when you saw what I was doing, when the others wouldn't?"
"I...I don't know. In fact, for an instant, I almost wanted to strike you myself," Mrs Brisby admitted, with a slight twinge of shame, "But then, I saw how you were desperately trying to help my little girl, and we were standing in your way. Something in my heart told me you weren't going to harm her… Thank you."
"My pleasure, Mrs Brisby…"
"Please, you can call me Elizabeth," said the widow mouse, her beautiful sapphire blue eyes piercing his gaze. For an instant, Josh felt tempted to lean over and kiss her but caught himself at the last moment.
Bloody hell, what am I thinking? She's a bleeding mouse for Christ's sake! Is my space fatigue that bad, it's taking a toll on my psychology? But she's still so beautiful… Shrugging off the lunatic notion that he might actually be falling in love with a mouse, he turned and followed her back to the bedroom to check on Cynthia.
With Cynthia now also bedridden, and with the crops all harvested way ahead of schedule, they decided to take the rest of the day off. Josh and Auntie Shrew had returned to the shed and used burning weeds to gas the spider out. The foul creature, almost the size of a Labrador, had emerged, its hairy skeletal legs twitching angrily and its many mean beady eyes fixed on them, as if they were a pair of juicy flies to swallow. That was probably the last thought that went through its sickly mind, before the electric bullet from Josh's gun blasted it to slimy smithereens.
With the shed now clear of any spider infestation, they could start storing the corn tomorrow on schedule. As for Cynthia, she hadn't taken long to recover, much to everyone's relief. By dinner time, she was back on her feet again, healthy as a horse, except for the white gauze dressing the incision wound, which she would constantly show off to her mother and siblings. Martin had made a habit of teasing her, telling her she looked like one of her patched-up rag-dolls, almost driving her to tears with his remarks, but cut it out when his mother threatened to send him to bed without supper.
After dinner that evening, the family gathered together on the rug by the fireplace. Josh had managed to persuade Elisabeth to let Timmy join them, after assuring her that as long as he stayed indoors where it was warm there was no risk of his pneumonia flaring up again. The children eagerly gathered around as Josh opened up his kit, passing around his various tools and gadgets, explaining what they were for.
"…It's used to help you find your way when you get lost," he said, trying to explain to Teresa how a magnetic compass worked, "The needle aligns itself with north; that helps you determine your direction, based on the four compass headings: north, south, east, and west." The eldest Brisby daughter stared in confusion at the moving needle of the compass in her hands, as it aligned itself with Nimh-Beta's magnetic north.
"What about this, Josh?" asked Martin, fiddling with the power-multitool; he yelped in surprise as he accidentally hit the start button, causing the axel protruding from the top to start spinning wildly. Josh gently took the gadget from the boy and fitted on one of the tool heads – the drill bit –, to demonstrate. Picking up a log from the stash of firewood beside the fireplace, he brought the drill close and fired it up, drilling a neat bolthole through the wood. The children all stared in awe at the skill and precision of the tool.
"And this is used to tell time and date?" asked Timmy, carefully studying the space watch which Josh had fitted onto his wrist (it hung on loosely, like an oversized bracelet, due to the boy's tiny arms). The young mouse continued to stare at the Earth and Nimh-Beta time readouts on the display, which calculated both planets' date and time in parallel. He glanced at the Earth's time dial, "Earth… Is that your home?"
"That's right lad, the home of over twelve billion human beings," said Josh, taking out his HHC and bringing up a 3-D rotating model of the Earth for them to see. The children gathered around, muttering excitedly to each other at their first glimpse of a planet as seen from space.
"Your home is round?" asked Martin, finding it hard to believe that anyone could live on that blue sphere floating in the sky (the majority of the Nimh-Beta population believed their world to be flat), "Don't you fall over the edge?" Josh burst out laughing at the young mouse's ignorance.
"No, the gravity of Earth – and of every celestial body, like a planet – including the one we are standing on right now –, as they say, keeps your feet firmly on the ground," he explained. The children looked utterly baffled. Their world was round? And what was gravity? To explain in layman's terms, Josh picked up a small pebble and held it high, demonstrating the force of gravity.
"Sir Isaac Newton once said why everything falls from the sky to the ground; it's the force of gravity created by the planet's mass." He dropped the pebble, letting it fall onto his outstretched hand. Just another blank stare. To explain better, he pointed out the window at the horizon.
"If you were to set off, always walking in a straight line, you'd eventually end up back exactly where you started. You'd be circling this globe, because gravity keeps you stuck to the ground anywhere you stand on it." Finally, Timmy seemed to grasp the jest of Josh's theory.
"So our world is round, like the stars in the sky, but the force of gravity keeps us, our home and everything else stuck to the ground." This is one smart boy, Josh thought, "Exactly. Very good, Timmy!" The others finally seemed to grasp it as well, Martin in particular, given how he had, unintentionally, been the guinea pig for demonstrating the force of gravity earlier that morning out on the field. However, he didn't miss the opportunity to point out a potential flaw.
"But if this…gravity thingy keeps us stuck to the ground, how come birds can fly? How did you fly all the way here from the stars?" he asked. Although getting slightly irritated at the endless questions, which he could barely explain to them even in the simplest of terms, Josh was patient and did his best to explain how space travel worked.
Turning back to his HCC, he brought up a 3-D model of his ship, showing them the same flight simulation OWL had shown them during their first in-flight briefing following their arousal from stasis.
"A spacecraft, like the NIMH-One, uses the blast force of its rocket engines to escape the Earth's gravitational pull; once in space, where there is no gravity, and everything is weightless, the ship drifts on and on in the direction it's headed, until the gravity of another planet attracts it; then we use the engines to control our descent, for a smooth landing on the surface. In my case, it meant a voyage that lasted four and a half years, most of which I spent sleeping in suspended animation…"
"You've been sleeping for four years?" gasped Martin, whistling aloud, "Boy, I wish I could do that!" His older sister snorted.
"Oh, I bet you would," said Teresa, rolling her eyes, "Given what a sleepyhead you are, if we didn't tickle you awake every morning, you'd sleep on until you were old as Mr Ages and not even realise!" Cynthia and Timothy giggled. Martin blew a raspberry at his sister; he never was a morning mouse and his siblings teaming up on him to wake him up every morning (unbeknownst to him, on their mother's orders) was really getting on his nerves.
Teresa frowned mischievously; in an instant she had tackled her brother to the floor, tickling him senseless. Martin guffawed with uncontrollable laughter, struggling to escape his sister's swift-moving fingers digging into his sides, as his siblings and Josh watched on with amusement.
"Do mice live on Earth too?" piped up Cynthia, remembering how Josh had explained earlier in the evening what terrestrial mice looked like, "Are they really all tiny like me?"
Despite her mother's reassurance that she'd grow someday, sometimes it bothered Cynthia being the smallest in the family, always having to beg her older siblings to let her ride on their shoulders just to feel taller and on occasion being teased and picked on by Martin, who'd grab her, and her brother Timmy, and swing them around in the air by their ankles or toss them around to no end, until their mother or Teresa would step in – only Timmy, who had a heart of gold, never seemed to mind being roughhoused by his big brother and would go right back to playing with him once their mother's back was turned.
Josh picked the small mouse up onto his lap for a cuddle, gently stroking her soft white fur, "So tiny they'd fit in the palm of your hand, sweetie," he said. Cynthia giggled at the thought of mice so small, thinking they must look real cute.
"Could you take us to see your world?" asked Timmy eagerly, utterly fascinated by Josh's stories about Earth and human civilisation. Neither he nor his siblings had ever ventured beyond the Lee of the Stone in their lives and longed to see more of the world when he was older. He envied Josh, who had travelled farther than any mouse or Rat alike. Josh smiled at the boy, ruffling his hair.
"Someday, laddie, perhaps…"
At that moment, Elizabeth appeared and told them it was time for bed. Bidding Josh goodnight, the children followed their mother into the bedroom so she could tuck them in.
Later that night, Josh lay awake in bed, staring out the bedroom window. The Nimh-Alpha gas giant glowed brightly against the cloudless night sky, amidst unfamiliar constellations of stars as seen from this solar system, the multiple coloured gas ribbons of its nebulous atmosphere creating a spectacular sight, which any astronomer back on Earth would gladly kill to see this far up close.
Staring at the sky, he saw the electromagnetic storm that had brought him here had finally dissipated; just as Dr Stetson had said, this mysterious space anomaly only occurred briefly and only once during the Nimh-Beta's year. And with the storm now passed, the NIMH-One, hopefully still orbiting the planet, would soon be coming in to land. Rescue was finally underway!
Although Josh wouldn't be surprised if Fitzgibbons had probably given him up for dead by now, he realised it would soon be time to say goodbye to his new friends. No matter how much he hated to leave them, he had to rejoin his fellow astronauts, so they could carry on with their mission. Mankind's future depended on them.
First thing in the morning, he decided, he would climb the Lee of the Stone, to set up his transmitter and send out a distress signal. Once his colleagues realised he was still alive, he would be picked up. As he turned to look at the sleeping Elizabeth on the bed next to his, his mind was filled with the painful thought that they would soon be forced to say farewell.
Author's note: Coming up next, Josh attempts to regain contact with the NIMH-One and word of his arrival begins to spread… Enjoy and please review!