Dept., F.B.I. (Dept. Just.), Fish & Wildlife (Dept. Int.), Public Health (Dept. Welf.), Immigration & Naturalization and Alaskan Affairs. The latter turned out to be a mistake.

his had taken two weeks, and George had lingered in the walls, impatiently waiting for his chance to testify. Of course, he was in telepathic communication with Clara. He knew that his family were all well, that Clara had made friends with the janitor, also that the trap was still there.

The janitor no longer put cheese in it, and he didn't set the spring any more, but he still followed his orders and so, every morning, moved it back by the door of the little mousehouse.

A fat Washington mouse guided George to the mousehole in the conference room. George looked inside and sniffed the smoky air distastefully.

There were seven men seated at a long table, with a glass of water in front of each. This was a liquid that even George knew was hardly designed to lubricate the way to a quick agreement.

"Bomb them, I say," the General cried, smashing his fist down on the table. "Hit them hard with atomic weapons. Hit them now, before they have a chance to strike first."

"But that's one of our best plants," a civilian from the A.E.C. protested. "We don't want to blow it up, not for a few paltry mice."

"Couldn't we send them to Alaska?" the man from Alaskan Affairs asked timidly, wondering what he was doing there.

"How about traps?" the man from Fish and Wildlife said. "We have some honeys."

"But that's just it!" George said in a loud voice, and they all turned to look at him. "My wife would like that trap by our front door removed. She's afraid that it might hurt the children."

"Who are you?" the man from Immigration & Naturalization demanded sharply.

"I'm George," George said. "It's my house that has the trap in front of it."

"What are you doing here?" the man from the F.B.I. demanded. "Spying on a closed meeting!"

"I'm not spying!" George exclaimed. "I just came to ask you to please remove the trap."

he man from the F.B.I. looked at him with something close to pity. "It's not that simple any more," he said. "Don't you realize what a threat you comprise?"

"No," George said, scampering up the leg of the table and walking to its center. "We're not a threat to anybody. We're just mice. It's not our nature to be a threat to anybody."

Then, as he looked around the table at the seven huge faces that surrounded him, he immediately saw that they were all scared half to death because he was a mouse, and he had a sudden premonition that he would not come out of the meeting alive. So he opened his mind to let his family and all the other telepathic mice hear everything that was happening.

"Don't tell me you don't fully realize," the Fish and Wildlife man demanded sarcastically, trying to hide his terror beneath a blustering tone, "that from one mouse, your great-great-grandfather Michael, there must be now at least twelve billion descendants—or six times the human population of Earth!"

"No, I didn't know," George said, interested despite himself.

"Don't tell me it never occurred to you," the man from the F.B.I. said, shaking a finger at him, while George could see that he kept the other hand on the revolver in his pocket, "that you mice have access to and could destroy every secret file we have!"

"No, it didn't," George said, shrinking from that huge, shaking finger. "We mice would never destroy anything uselessly."

"Or that you could cut the wires on any plane, tank, vehicle, train or ship, rendering it