Read STRANGE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY OMNIBUS for Free Online

America’s largest companies. Walt Disney and Ludeveccio move to a grand new home Walt Disney purchased in Hollywood, although they kept the little beach cottage for vacations.
    Walt Disney and the mouse became such good friends that Ludeveccio began referring to Walt Disney by his first name and he affectionately called the mouse by the nickname Lou. Every day, Ludeveccio dined on the finest of Italian cheeses and he slept every night in a little bed, on satin sheets. As a treat for the mouse, when time permitted, Walt Disney would carry Ludeveccio concealed in his jacket pocket to the Pasadena campus of Cal Tech, where he would drop the mouse for the day. Ludeveccio would go to one of the seminar rooms used by the advanced engineering and physics classes to audit the discussions, concealing himself behind the books in a bookcase. On several occasions, when the professor mistakenly declared there was no possibility of time travel, Ludeveccio was tempted to voice his objection. However, he always managed to hold his tongue, aware that humans do not take kindly to being corrected by a mouse.
    He mouse lived a very long and very happy life. At last, as it must to all mice, death came for Ludeveccio. As the end drew near, Walt Disney took Ludeveccio to the little cottage on the beach, and placed the mouse’s bed on a table so that he could look out and view the beach and ocean he loved so well. On Ludeveccio’s final night, Walt Disney did not leave his side, holding Ludeveccio’s hand and softly weeping. He did not want to say goodbye to his best friend, to whom he owed so much.
    Shortly after dawn, Ludeveccio opened his eyes to take a last look at the beach and ocean. The sight was always dear to his heart. It brought back the memory of his arrival in California and his meeting with Walt Disney. Closing his eyes, he said more to himself than to Walt Disney, “I have had the most wonderful life any mouse could possibly have. I now pray that the most merciful God will permit me to enter Mouse Heaven. He then breathed his last, an expression of complete satisfaction on his face.
    There is only one sad footnote to the story of Ludeveccio’s life. His time machine, the only time machine ever invented on this earth, vanished from the beach on the day of the mouse’s arrival, washed away by the tide. The machine, which could have contributed so much to human knowledge, now sits on the ocean floor some miles off the California coast. It was last viewed by human eyes in 1948, when a diver came across it while checking on an offshore oil drilling platform. He actually picked it up and examined it. Owing to the advanced state of deterioration and its tiny mouse size, he failed to appreciate its potential value and deposited it on the ocean floor, where it remains to this day.

SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
    The shade of John Wilkes Booth was unhappy. This was not surprising. The souls of the damned in Hell are supposed to be unhappy. But the shade of the late actor was so unhappy that it aroused attention. One day, Satan sent for him.
    “You’re giving Hell a bad name,” he declared. “You’re supposed to be miserable here because of the punishments we inflict. Instead, you’re making yourself unhappy. That’s against all the rules and I urge you to brace yourself and cheer up. Let us be the ones who make you unhappy.”
    The damned soul of Booth looked even more sorrowful at these words. “I’ll try to do what I can,” he said, “But I don’t think it will do any good. I’m just so miserable.”
    Satan’s nonexistent heart was, of course not touched. Still he was interested. “What seems to be your personal trouble?” he inquired.
    “I was a great Shakespearean actor,” Booth said. “But today, nobody remembers that fact. All they think about is that I assassinated Abraham Lincoln.”
    “Well after all, you did do that,” came back the Arch Fiend.
    “O.K., O.K., so I did do that,” admitted Booth. “One little