Destination: Saturn

XIII

The Wuj made his way along the catwalk and through a maze of corridors into the central control suite. This was the brain-center of the asteroid-sized supership, and a mighty complicated place it was. Walls covered with flickering lights… panel after panel of mysterious controls whose labels were in the peculiar and still undeciphered hieroglyphics of the Asteroidals. Ajax, Emily and the Wuj had only managed to figure out the functions of few—a very few—of the control systems as yet. The hundreds of others were still beyond conjecture.

The little spiderman looked around, his pugnose wrinkled with dogged determination. It was up to him and to him alone to keep the planetoid-ship out of the clutch of the ambitious Saturnians… but the question was, how?

He could, of course, turn off the drive engines and lock the control panel. But a few moments of thought persuaded him this plan would contribute but little to foiling the amoeboid spies. The drive was already off, and the planetoid-ship was on direct course for Saturn. And, unfortunately, the Wuj did not know enough about the drive-controls to be able to reverse the alignment, turn the planetoid-ship around and pilot it back to EMSA-controlled space. It was an oversight, but not his fault at all, that Ajax and Emily had taken the largest part in experimenting with the drive-controls. So much for that idea…

Another possibility occurred to the little being. Once Ajaxia arrived in Saturnian space, and was established in a permanent orbit about the ringed planet, perhaps the Wuj could somehow incapacitate the two Saturnian impostors and keep the airlocks closed so that the Saturnians could not enter. Since the airlock was controlled from here on the bridge, it seemed an idea likely to succeed. But how to lock up or knock out the two Amoeba-Men posing as Ajax Calkins and Emily Hackenschmidt? That was the question…

Until the planetoid-ship arrived at Saturn, the Wuj resolved to continue pretending that he believed the two spies were really his master and mistress.

After the close brush with the pursuit squadron, Ajaxia continued on its merry way unimpeded. It seemed that discretion overcame the natural valor of Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach, for the choleric commander ordered his ships not to pursue the runaway planetoid across the EMSA/Saturnian border. The phony “Ajax” and “Emily” watched the EMSA squadron turn about and head back home like a flock of cowed puppies, tails between their legs, so to speak. The Wuj observed them closely while the two spies chortled with amusement and made pointed comments on the behavior of the EMSA commander. The Wuj sighed quietly; he had hoped that perhaps Admiral Kreplach would indeed ignore the boundary and continue to attempt to overtake and capture the defecting asteroid. But no such luck… no, there was no one else who could be expected to foil the Saturnian hands (or tentacles). It was up to the Wuj.

He had plenty of time to think about the problem and decide on a course of action. Saturn lies over 400 million miles beyond Jupiter and that’s an awful lot of miles when you stop to think about it. The planetoid-ship had powerful engines of course, but they had to push a considerable tonnage. The planetoid was as heavy as all the other spacecraft in the entire Solar System combined, and no engine—not even the electronic monsters in the center of Ajaxia—could push all that dead weight and break any speed records at the same time. Hence the voyage was long, dull, and slow.

Most of the time, the Wuj avoided “Ajax” and “Emily” to reduce the possibility of making a conversational slip, and revealing that he knew they were naught but a couple of overgrown jellyfish in disguise. This was easy enough to do, since “Ajax” and “Emily” were also avoiding the Wuj’s company to reduce the possibility that they would make a conversational slip, and reveal the fact they were naught but two jellyfish in disguise. Hence, the better part of the immensely long voyage was spent with the two Saturnians and the Martian spider-being slinking around carefully avoiding each other. It would have been an amusing spectacle, had anyone been there to see it.

The Wuj spent most of the long days moping about in his cabin, wondering where the real Ajax and Emily were, and what was happening to them. It was just as well for the Wuj’s peace of mind that he could not know. However, he had a vague inkling of what might be happening to his dear leader and the royal consort-to-be, since he had overheard the pseudo-Ajax make his scornful announcement of defection to Saturnian Imperial space. The Wuj was sharp enough to deduce that if the real Ajax and Emily were not in hiding somewhere, they would be slapped into jail as criminals and traitors. It was all bitterly unfair to his beloved monarch, and the mournful little spider-being determined to do his level best to wreak a satisfactory revenge…

Daily, the yellow bulk of Saturn grew in the ‘scopes, like a baleful giant eye glaring at the hurtling planetoid-ship from the blackness of space. The famous rings were not in evidence at this season, or perhaps the planetoid-ship was approaching the Ringed World at a poor angle for getting a good view of them. Nor were any of the several moons to be seen, at least not yet. The Wuj watched the giant planet grow bigger and bigger with each day, and felt trepidation and suspense. “Ajax” and “Emily” also observed their approach, but with relish and satisfaction; their plastic faces were immobile, and could neither smile nor frown, but the Wuj could tell how they felt from the gloating pleasure in their voices.

At last the fateful moment was at hand. Saturn filled half of the forward view like a stupendous custard pie. The Ringed World’s atmosphere was so dense and soupy, that only its very upper level or exosphere could be seen. Unlike Earth or Mars, whose surface features are clearly visible from space, naught of Saturn’s face could be seen behind its impenetrable mask of clouds. These clouds were made up of noxious, unbreathable gases like methane and ammonia, and the atmosphere was unbelievably frigid—something like minus 143deg Centigrade. That made even chilly little Mars sound like Acapulco in August, thought the Wuj nervously, remembering a phrase his sovereign used. He hoped they would not make a landing on the surface, but would remain in orbit for unloading purposes.

Saturn was a mighty strange planet, all things considered, and full of weird contrasts. Although its diameter is nine times greater than that of Earth, the gravity on the surface is only a fraction more. This puzzled the first EMSA scientists, and induced them to take a good close-up look at the ringed giant; they decided the planet’s density was very slight, and that it was made up of light materials almost to the complete exclusion of heavier minerals. When EMSA specialists got into contact with the Saturnian Amoeba-Men, they found this to be true.

Saturn is like a giant mud-pie, and nothing on it is tougher than poor-grade balsa-wood or cardboard; thus, for millions of years, the Saturnians had been held in a very low level of technology. But the coming of EMSA changed all that, and once EMSA sold the Saturnians some used space ships, the ambitious Amoeba-People began to exploit the mineral wealth of their several moons. Titan, for example, proved a goldmine… or perhaps iron-mine would be more correct.

Until EMSA’s help enabled the Saturnians to begin mining the satellites, the Saturnians had made ingenious use of the natural resources of their inhospitable planet. Since the Saturnian atmosphere is very deep and made up of dense gases, its weight is terrific and everything on the surface of the planet is subjected to terrific pressure. Hence the EMSA explorers were surprised to see how structurally strong slabs of frozen mud could be… They were so strong, that the Saturnian cities were built out of this substance exclusively!

In place of metal, the Amoeba-Men used ice. Most everything on the surface of Saturn is covered beneath a thick layer of methane or ammonia ice. Squeezed under tremendous pressure, it was of such great tensile strength that the primitive Saturnians used it in tools and machines and weapons as Earth-folk use metals. EMSA released some extraordinary pictures of Saturnian mining camps where ice-drills were used to open up mines of pure mud.

Unfortunately, the Saturnians proved to be the greatest imitators in the Solar System. For millions of years they had been perfectly content to continue along their primitive ways, building cities of mud and fighting with swords of ice. But when the EMSA people came along and showed them the superiority of a metals technology, they happily adopted the new ways; in fact, they hero-worshipped and copied everything the Earthmen did. As soon as they looked into Earth history, they happily adopted first the warring ways of the Middle Ages, then developed Imperial ambitions, and set about planning to conquer the Universe. EMSA leaders would have been relieved if the Saturnians had not hero-worshipped them to quite that extent, but it was too late. The damage had already been done…

At least, up until now, the Saturnian plans for conquest had been very seriously hampered by this inability to do any more than just copy EMSA; they were constantly behind the progress of EMSA’s scientific know-how. Unfortunately, with the wealth of weird new weapons and machinery in the ancient Asteroidal spaceship, they would soon be ahead of Earth science, and perfectly able to make their dreams of universal conquest start coming true! No one knew just what kind of weapons might yet be discovered in the planetoid-ship… but now that the asteroid had defected to the Saturnian side, the first Earth would know of these weapons would be when they were used against Earth!