The Mouse on the Moon

From the flaps of the Morrow edition: Lilliput Heads for Moon in Junked U.S. Rocket read the headline in a New York paper... Once again the tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick was confounding the world - and proving that the shortest route from here to there can sometimes be the most outrageously delightful one. What diplomat could have imagined that a pair of bobolinks could alter the course of history... that a rocket could be successfully powered by a hogshead of iron filings plus... that when the United States gave the Duchy $50,000,000 outright to join the race to the moon, some of the money would actually be used for that purpose and not just for bathtubs and a birthday present for Her Grace Gloriana XIII? It was all because Gloriana XII wanted and Imperial Russian Sable fur coat. Or perhaps it was because the Count of Mountjoy, prime minister of the Duchy, believed that "the time-honored techniques of indirection" were essential to statesmanship; or because Dr. Kokintz, one of the world's greatest physicists, was also a bird watcher. At any rate - it could only have happened in Grand Fenwick.