TIME AND MR. BASS
by Eleanor Cameron
No. 6 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
A Mushroom Planet Book
Illustrated by Fred Meise
An Atlantic Monthly Press Book
Little, Brown and Company boston toronto
This book is for David, who waited nine years,
and for Susie, Julie, Ellen and Paul Bernstein,
and Bob and Tom and Philip Neches
COPYRIGHT © 1967 BY ELEANOR CAMERON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT BY A REVIEWER WHO MAY QUOTE BRIEF PASSAGES IN A REVIEW TO BE PRINTKD IN A MAGAZINE OR NEWSPAPER.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NO. AC 66-1054! FIRST EDITION
ATLANTIC-LITTLE, BROWN BOOKS
ARE PUBLISHED BY LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS
Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
Part One: The Necklace
1 Questions, Questions, Questions
2 A Hop, a Skip and a Jump
3 Mr. Bass Peppers His Tea
4 Towyn Eats His Words
5 Collapsed
6 Once You Get the Idea
7 Gossip Among the Artifacts
8 At Stonehenge
9 No Difference to Sarsen
10 Poor Old Penmaen
11 But Not to Dream
Part Two: The Scroll
12 The Beckoning of a Fox
13 Not Even Christmas
14 The Great Designs
15 Absolutely Extraordinary!
16 The First Endurance
17 A Promise of Terror
18 The Drumming
19 The Vision and the Dream
PART ONE
The Necklace
CHAPTER 1
Questions, Questions, Questions
On a June afternoon of swinging wind and high scudding clouds, Chuck was down in the garden at 5 Thallo Street helping Mr. Bass pull weeds, and David was up in the observatory reading. Which was precisely, as Tyco Bass would have put it, typical of those two boys. Not that David wouldn't have come down and helped if he had actually been called upon, but it was true that he greatly preferred reading to weeding. However, it was perhaps fortunate that he was up in the observatory near the phone, because certainly Mr. Bass and Chuck, laughing over some joke of Tyco's, couldn't have heard it.
When it began ringing, David slowly put down his book, continuing to read as he did so, and was still lost in the story as he went dreamily across to Mr. Bass's desk. But the instant the voice on the other end of the line came through to him (it was a woman's voice and had an odd, familiar accent), everything else darted right out of his mind.
"Long distance calling - person to person for Mistar Tyco Bass from Mistar Towyn Niog in Llan-bedr, Wales. Is this Mistar Tyco Bass speaking?"
David was speechless for an instant, blinking, then:
"No, ma'am, it isn't. But he's right here. Just a second - he's down in the garden. I'll go right -"
"Who is this - who is this - ?" came an impatient male voice. "Tyco? Tyco, we want you not to come home just yet. We want -"
"Just a moment, please, Mistar Niog," came the female voice. "I'm trying to get your party -"
"I'll go right now, ma'am," said David in high, carrying tones as if trying to make himself heard clear across half the world. "Just hold on, please - Mr. Bass will be right up."
Llanbedr! Llanbedr in Wales! And Towyn Niog was a member of the Mycetian League of which Mr. Bass was the president, or master. (David had laid the receiver on the desk and was on his way down the steep observatory stairs, two at a time.) Golly, it must be terribly important for Mr. Niog to be calling long distance, and it had sounded as if those people on the other end, David remembered wonderingly, had been right here in Pacific Grove, in California.
"Mr. Bass - Mr. Bass!" he began the minute he hit the floor of Tyco's living room. He banged out onto the porch and rattled down the steps, still
shouting at the top of his lungs. "Mr. Bass, it's Mis-tar Niog in Wales" (David had no idea he was pronouncing "Mistar" in the Welsh way) "and he's calling long distance! He says he wants you not to come home, Mr. Bass."
"Yes, David. All right -"
That was Tyco, though he was not in sight from where David stood in the green and gold flecked dimness of the path that led around to the cellar, which was Mr. Bass's workroom. But now Chuck's flushed, dirty face rose out of a thicket just in front of David, and he looked absolutely astonished. He stared about.
"But he was here just a second ago!" Then his face changed abruptly. "Oh, of course - he thought himself in to the phone. I keep forgetting -"
At once David turned, sped back along the path, up the porch stairs and into the house again, with Chuck right at his heels and passing him so as to get through the door first. Which he did. He always got places first, as a matter of fact. And there, when they came in, was little Mr. Bass in his gardening coat and elastic-sided boots, sitting in his favorite armchair with the downstairs phone at his side, the receiver at his ear and his large, baldish head, with its few wisps of white hair, tilted slightly as he listened with intentness to what Towyn Niog was saying. His eyes, brown with bronze flecks, gazed off into
the distance, but not vaguely. Rather, they seemed to be picturing with precision and clarity all that Mr. Niog was telling him. Or perhaps far more.
"Yes, Towyn, of course, I quite understand. No, no reason whatever why we can't put off the meeting. I still have a good bit of work to do here - my notes for Random Jottings are all behindhand and there are one or two puzzling questions that have arisen in my mind in going back over the history of the Mycetians. These I want to discuss at the meeting. Yes, Saturday morning, then, around six or so." He chuckled. "What are all of you up to, anyway? But I won't ask. Just give everyone my best regards, and tell them I shall be there early. Yes, for breakfast. And I think I shall have the boys with me it their families approve. It's high time they saw my old home, don't you think?" He glanced up at the boys and winked, grinning with mischievous delight at their expressions of amazement and at their open mouths. Then he stopped smiling. "You don't think it would be icisc just now, Towyn! But why not? Is anything wrong?" Tyco listened. "Good heavens, they could occupy themselves in a million ways, and they're very responsible, you know. Yes, I should really like to bring them, Towyn - they're extraordinary boys, as you well know. Tell me, Towyn, are you well? You haven't been sick, have you? You don't sound quite yourself." Now Mr. Bass was lis-
tening again with more than just his ears, listening to what could not only be heard, but felt as well. "That's right, Towyn," he said in a moment or two. "All three of us - six o'clock in the morning this coming Saturday. Yes - good-by." He hung up and looked grave.
"Mr. Bass, are we really - ?"
But Tyco held up a hand for silence as if he wanted to think, and Chuck and David hushed themselves, waiting tensely while he made his way through the various thoughts and questions in his mind. Then all at once he sat back, relaxed, and looked up at them.
"Well, now," he said. "As you know, Towyn Niog is always in charge of the Mycetian League and all its doings whenever I am away in Galaxy M 81." Yes, and inside David's head was also the knowledge that the League was a kind of law court keeping in touch with Mycetians (or spore people of earth) everywhere, of which there were no more than around five thousand throughout the entire world. And the purpose of the League was, and had been since time immemorial, to hear and to judge all cases of wrong or injustice done by Mycetians or to them. David knew also that the number of the League's members was invariably thirteen, a lucky number among the spore people. "We meet every three months," Mr. Bass went on, "meetings which, as
8
I am so often away these days, I cannot always attend. But I came back to earth early this time in order to give my papers here in Pacific Grove some very serious study before I popped over to Llan-bedr."
By "popped over," David knew he meant "thought myself over," which was, of course, the way he traveled back and forth between earth and
J
the Galaxy M 81 in Ursa Major. This he had been doing ever since he had blown away right after David and Chuck returned from their first flight to Basidium, the Mushroom Planet. It was at that time, Mr. Bass had since explained to the boys, that the Ancient Ones had bestowed upon him the gift of being able to travel by thought, and had made known to him the work they wanted him to do in M 81.
"How did Mr. Niog know you'd be here, Mr. Bass?" asked Chuck. "Don't you usually just think yourself right to Wales when there's a meeting, and then come to Pacific Grove afterwards, if you have time, before going back to M 81?"
"Yes, I do, Chuck. Which is what leads me to suspect that something extremely serious must be afoot, though Towyn was trying to make very light about keeping me away. Very light, indeed - suspiciously so. By calling me here, he was taking no chance of not intercepting me if there was the slightest possibility he could. He made it sound as if they were
9
concocting some sort of surprise for me over there and didn't want me interrupting before everything was ready."
"Maybe they're planning a birthday party for you," said David eagerly. "Is it your birthday pretty soon?"
Tyco put back his head and burst out laughing.
"A birthday partyl" he exclaimed. "Can't you just imagine an old man like me sitting down to a vast birthday cake with hundreds and hundreds of candles on it - and where would I get the breath to blow them all out, and how could I ever make a wish big enough to go with that cake? My goodness, I haven't had a birthday celebration in centuries, though Mycetians do love them. But nobody except you and your families and Theo, because he's my cousin, and the members of the League know when I was born. Very rare spore people of my age - and I'm the oldest one in existence at present, with Cousin Theo next - just cannot go around confessing their years. Someday I must tell you what it has meant in my life, being so terribly old." He smiled at them, then began singing in a minor key:
Maytime, fairest season, Loud are the birds, green the groves, Ploughs in furrow, ox under yoke, Green is the sea, lands are many-colored.
10
When cuckoos sing on the tops of fine trees, Greater grows my gloom. Smoke smarts, sorrow cannot be hidden, For my kinsmen have passed away.
"That is what I would sing to myself sometimes before I had grown accustomed to my second hundred years. I used to get so lonely."
"Tell us about it, Mr. Bass," begged David.
"Please?" pressed Chuck. "Do you realize you'j-e our very best friend, and we don't know anything about your life - not really?"
"I will, Chuck, I will - but not just now." A^d Mr. Bass seemed lost in thought and a little anxio\jS as he got up and went over to the door. "What could Towyn be up to! And it was so odd that at first he didn't at all like the idea of my bringing you two to Carn Bassyd."
"Well, why don't you just think yourself over right this second, Mr. Bass," asked Chuck in that downright, direct way he had, "and find out? Th^y haven't any right to keep secrets from you."
Mr. Bass gazed at Chuck in surprise.
"But, Chuck, I have been asked not to come--not right now, that is. I wouldn't think of doing such a thing to Towyn as appearing against his wishes, especially when he seems so upset."
"What's Carn Bassyd, Mr. Bass?" David opened
11
the screen door and they went out on the porch. He wanted to know everything possible about Tyco and had had long, fantastic dreams concerning the events in Mr. Bass's life.
"Goodness, haven't I ever told you? But there are dozens of things I haven't had time to tell you! Cam Bassyd is my home in Wales, built when I was just a boy back in the late 1500's -1593, to be precise. You see, back in those days, my name was Bassyd, in the Welsh fashion, instead of plain Bass. In fact, my name was Tyco ap Bassyd - Tyco, son of Bass. As for earn, it means 'pile of stones' in Gaelic. And that's just what it is: a pile of stones belonging to the Basses, only I'm the only Bass left, except for Theo. But, of course, Theo's never there and so, long ago, I turned the house over to the Mycetian League for their meeting place, to hold councils and trials. And always, the person I leave in charge of the League - Towyn Niog, of course, right now, as he is my chief assistant - lives there with his wife as caretaker and overseer, because Cam Bassyd is full of treasures of great antiquity - books and carvings and metalwork that have come down to us from our ancestors."
"And well see them, Mr. Bass?" Imagine, David thought, being allowed to see the private treasures of the Mycetian League!
"Of course you shall - you shall see everything
12
and hear all about everything. And now, while I get to work on my papers, I think you two had better skip along and find out about Friday. That is the last day of school, isn't it?"
"•\7 'L • "
Yes - yes, it is -
"Well, good. So you find out if it's all right to come with me. But I imagine, as you've been allowed to travel by space ship on other journeys, your families won't be too concerned about this little jaunt."
Chuck's hazel eyes widened.
"I never thought. But, naturally - we'll go by space ship! Dave, isn't that funny? From here to Wales, just a hop around the globe. And why not?"
"Indeed, why not?" echoed Mr. Bass. "As you said, Chuck, I could simply think myself over. But why should I, when I can go in the company of my two closest friends?"
The boys went on down the stairs and, when David looked back to say good-by, Mr. Bass was still standing on the porch. Just as on that first day they'd met in April of last year, the sun was sending down a golden light through the leaves of the trees above the porch, deepening the tint of Mr. Bass's hands and face - that wise, humorous, youthful face - to the palest possible green.
13
CHAPTER 2
A Hop, a Skip and a Jump
at last it was Friday, the Friday night before summer vacation, with the stars out and a sliver of moon floating on its back in the sky. Ten minutes of nine, to be precise.
And there, upended on Cap'n Tom's beach, stood the space ship.
It was, without doubt, the most fortunate thing in the world that David's and Chuck's houses were the only two that looked down on that beach. Because here was the cave in which the space ship was hidden wlien it wasn't over in Mr. Bass's cellar workroom being checked out to see that every smallest part was in absolutely perfect working order. And from this beach the space ship always took off. It was also exceedingly fortunate that the Topmans' property (David's folks) and the Mastersons' property ( Chuck's folks ) joined together somewhere near the center of the bluffs at the back of the beach and extended the full way round on either hand to where the bluffs met the sea. What could have been more
14
private? And what more necessary when such unheard-of events as two boys soaring off into space took place every now and then - always after dark, of course.
So far, there had been no really uncomfortable questions concerning strange, thunderous bursts, though one or two neighbors had asked Mrs. Top-man at the market on the morning after the last take-off if she had heard anything unusual the night before.
"Why, yes," she had replied brightly, "yes, I believe I did."
"Probably rocket testing over at the missile base," another neighbor had observed, "though it did seem much closer than that -"
"It's certainly very odd it was so loud," the first woman had gone on, the one who'd brought up the subject in the beginning. "It was as bad as those jets breaking the sound barrier, only this wasn't sudden. It was a kind of gradually increasing roar -"
Chuck grinned when he heard about the questions.
"Grandpop always heads them off into an argument about flying saucers. People are usually either awfully hot for (though not many) or awfully hot against flying saucers, or they just think the whole thing's silly, and Grandpop says that bringing up this subject gets them sidetracked."
15
Chuck's grandpop, Cap'n Tom, was for. He and Chuck had been having a fine time together, just the two of them, while Chuck's mother and father were away on what was to have been a year-long trip. But when the year had been up in April, the Mastersons had decided to take two more months to finish out their journey around the world. They were due home in a week or so.
At this moment Dr. and Mrs. Topman, Chuck and David and Mr. Bass and Cap'n Tom were all down on the beach around the foot of the space ship where it stood poised and ready for flight. How smoothly and elegantly, like an enormous spindle-shaped shell, it tapered out gradually from the tail section. Its widest girth was almost three-quarters of the way up, where the door and the broad plastiglass window were, then it curved in again to its gleaming nose, long and needle-like, pointing to the heavens as if eager to pierce them.
Nearby stood the four-wheeled carrier on which Cap'n Tom and Dr. Topman had wheeled it down from the cave to a tall rock that rose out of the sand. From this rock David and Chuck and Mr. Bass would climb through the space ship door and into their seats, unless, of course, Mr. Bass should choose some other approach.
Which he did.
One moment he was standing beside Annabelle
16
Topman. He had just finished checking over the list of things he wanted to take to Wales - several volumes of his Random Jottings that covered about ten years, certain other books and papers on ancient languages, various tools, and a can of resinoid silicon sealer in case they needed to coat meteor scars on the exterior of the ship before returning home. He had just answered the last of her mom-like questions about when they'd be back, and would he let her know that they had arrived safely, and did he think the boys had the right clothes for early summer weather in that climate. The next moment he had disappeared and was next to be seen smiling down upon them from inside the space ship.
"Mr. Bass!" cried Annabelle Topman. "Never will I get used to you doing that. I cannot believe that you actually -"
"Astonishing - absolutely astonishing!" murmured Dr. Topman, gazing up at the small, merry face under the domed head, as stunned as he had been the only other time Mr. Bass had done this in his presence.
Cap'n Tom said nothing, being quite unable to.
Usually Mr. Bass did not think himself places in front of anyone but David and Chuck, the main reason being that he did not want to get into the habit and disappear some time when strangers were about. But no doubt, with the prospect ahead of
17
showing the boys his beloved Wales, he was filled with mischievousness and gaiety, and then, too, he had always liked his little jokes. Now he was beckoning.
18
"Come on, boys, let's get under way. It's two minutes of nine and we're all ready." He disappeared again, but this time only to move over to the controls.
Up the rock, scrambling eagerly, went Chuck and David, and in at the door of the ship. Then they turned and their heads appeared side by side.
"'By, Grandpop. 'By, Dr. and Mrs. Topman-"
"Good-by, Mom and Dad - Cap'n Tom - don't worry about us -"
"Imagine worrying about them after the flights those two have taken," observed Dr. Topman.
"- and alone," said Cap'n Tom. He rubbed one reddish-brown hand back and forth through his thatch of thick white hair and stood grinning up at them.
"But I always do worry just a little at first - I can't help it," said Mrs. Topman, waving. "It's such a comfort to know Mr. Bass is with them this time."
The space ship door closed and there was a moment or two of silence while it was bolted shut, making the ship completely airtight. Then Mr. Bass must have pressed the ignition button and pulled back the control stick, for a throbbing roar started up under the tail, at which Dr. and Annabelle Topman and Cap'n Tom moved hastily away. A white-hot bloom of flame began spurting down onto the sand; Dr. Topman said something more, but nobody heard.
Next, the spurting flame, which seemed, all by it-
19
self, to be pushing the ship slowly aloft, became blinding. Up, up went the ship with the ribbon of flame streaming behind it until, at last, trailing an arc of airy, pinkish-silver light, it soared away over the sea where the arc faded and was lost against the bright-patterned sky.
"They're gone," murmured Mrs. Topman. "They're gone."
"But they'll be back before you know it," and Dr. Topman slid his arm through hers. "Did Tyco say when?"
"No - he wasn't sure."
They turned, and there was Cap'n Tom already pulling the four-wheeled carrier back up the beach to its place in the cave.
* * *
David came out of his take-off shock listening. Yes, there it was - and he smiled to himself. Pheep, pheep, pheep! Very softly and regularly. It was the oxygen urn, another of Mr. Bass's inventions, as was the rocket motor they were using, and the space ship fuel with precisely four drops of atomic tritetra-methylbenzacarbonethylene in it, and the fluid resin-oid silicon sealer which coated the space ship inside and out, making it proof against unscreened cosmic rays, extreme degrees of heat and cold, and against the impact of any meteors that might cross their path. The oxygen urn piped its small cheery whistle
20
to let them know this trip had started under a good omen; but how could it possibly have started otherwise with Mr. Bass aboard?
"Mr. Bass!" Somet...
allforjesus2001