Destination: Saturn

XXI

Of course Emily was still wearing her space-helmet, so she almost deafened herself. Nor had she happened to think of switching on her suit-phone so Ajax might hear. But, as it turned out, her hair-raising screech was clearly audible both to Ajax and the Wuj, for they both stiffened as if pole-axed, and jerked around to stare at her.

What it was, of course, was that this corridor was still “tight.” When the Destiny breached the hull of the planetoid-ship, much air had whooshed into the vacuum of the void. But the ancient Asteroidal builders had thought of the possibility of an accidental hull-breach—although they were thinking more of meteors than of space yachts. They had built a simple alarm system: on hull-puncture, atmospheric pressure-drop automatically activated the compartment doors, closing and sealing off the stricken area. Hence the part of the ship they were presently in was still air-tight. Emily and Ajax had both come through several sealed doors which cycled them through just like airlocks. They had been too busy puzzling about their environment to notice or pay much attention. Hence, though muffled by the helmet, Emily’s scream reached them and they spun about—simultaneously seeing each other.

“Wuj! Dear old Wuj!—Quit yelling, Emily. And what in the name of Space are you doing here, anyway? I thought I told you to stay in the ship—I say, Wuj, that’s a gun. Pointing at me… don’t you recognize your beloved monarch?”

“S-stay where you are, both of you. I don’t know how you escaped from the refrigerator, but…” The Wuj wavered, his gun wobbling back and forth between Emily and Ajax. He could not blast both down at the same time, and both were armed. Whichever one he picked to sizzle first, the other would blast him in the next second.

“Escaped from the refrigerator? What are you talking about? Don’t you recognize us? I say, Emily, the old Wuj has cracked up—he seems to think we’re a couple of frozen foods or something!”

The Wuj’s compound eyes glinted madly.

“You can’t fool me with your clever talk, you despicable Saturnians, you!”

“Ajax, you idiot!” Emily snapped. “Wake up! Don’t you see what’s happening—the Wuj is mistaking us for those two phonies, just like when we phoned him from Calkins Hall back on Earth.”

“Oh, that’s it, of course!” Ajax sounded relieved. “I say, Wuj, if that’s what’s troubling you, then take a look in the old viewer here. The impersonators are still in the ice box, all right. Emily and I are the genuine article—go ahead take a look, if you don’t believe me!”

The Wuj shot him a suspicious glance, but edged over to the wall screen and peered in with his left eye, while his right eye kept a keen gaze on the two of them. This sounds difficult, I’ll admit, but with compound eyes such as a Martian spider-being has, it’s quite practical.

And there they were, pseudo-Ajax and pseudo-Emily, frozen stiff; even their lasers were frozen in the middle of beaming through the door. The brand of synthetic rubies used by the Saturnians crack under extremely low temperatures, but the two were quite stiff and covered with frost. He relaxed, pistol drooping with relief.

“Oh, dear leader… Miss Hackenschmidt, ma’am!” he quavered. “That I, your loyal subject and Prime Minister should mistake you for vile Saturnian spies! That I should lift a weapon against you! Oh, the ancestral Web will vibrate with my eternal shame, and all my eggs will be sc-scrambled!”

“Tut, tut,” Ajax said soothingly. “Never you mind. Mistakes will happen—don’t blame yourself—there’s a good fellow!”

“B-but fearless leader! If Miss Hackenschmidt had not vocalized at the exact moment she did, I—I would have blasted you down! I th-thought you were…”

“Erk! Ulp. Well, well! I didn’t realize that… I apologize, Emily, for telling you to stop yelling. Henceforth, you have our Royal Permission to scream your head off at will, under such circumstances!”

“Oooh, Ajax, I could clobber you!”

“Now, now. No clouting of crowned heads. I say, everybody, we all have fifty million questions… why don’t we go up to the bridge and get out of these suits and relax and pass around some explanations. Good idea? I, for one, would enjoy it if somebody could tell me how we happen to be on Ajaxia—an invisible Ajaxia—while I clearly saw Ajaxia out there by Saturn, dodging around being chased helter-skelter by a horde of Saturnian ships… ?”

On the bridge they unsuited and relaxed, exchanging stories. The Wuj told of the accidental discovery of the mysterious mirage-maker. This instrument, a weird conglomeration of tilted mirrors and splitting light beams, did some peculiar things to an object’s visual image through an astounding variety of maneuvers at considerable distance, while rendering the object itself totally invisible to ordinary light or even radar. With it, the Wuj had stood off some distance from Saturn and put the Ring Patrol through their paces, resulting in the final destruction of the patrol fleet.

He told them how he had at last discovered that the “Ajax” and “Emily” were Saturnian impostors, and how he tricked them into the giant refrigerator and plunged the temperature into sub-Saturnian levels. Below minus 250deg, the Saturnian Amoeba-Men automatically hibernate, which is how they withstood the super-Arctic Saturnian winters before reaching a city-building technology. While the two impostors were trying to laser their way out of the ‘frig, the temperature dropped to hibernation-level and the two spies went to sleep in mid-laser. Thus, with the local enemies safely “on ice,” all they now had to worry about was Saturn itself.

“And, dear master, it won’t be long until more ships come up to investigate. I intercepted and overheard a conversation between the patrol leader, Supreme Commander Grauschmitz and his superior, Utterly Supreme Admiral Heimmerschlitzer, calling from Grand Ineffable Prime Base on one of the Saturnian moons, threatening to have Grauschmitz broiled in the acid-pits or subjected to even worse punishments, if he didn’t succeed in capturing Ajaxia! Now that Commander Grauschmitz has destroyed his own patrol, and himself, the Admiral will be coming into the picture promptly, I have no doubt.”

Emily looked sad. “Poor Grauschmitz, he went down with his ships! Still, I guess it was quicker than the acid-pits…”

“Quite,” the Wuj agreed soberly.

“Never mind all this sympathy,” Ajax said, “we’d better think about getting out of here before the Admiral shows up. The Wuj was smart enough to trick one squadron into wrecking itself, but we can hardly expect to keep that sort of thing up indefinitely—and, don’t forget, the planetoid-ship has no defensive weapons or armament.”

Emily snapped open her compact and did some cosmetic repairs. “Is there any reason why we can’t just keep the invisibility-illusion turned on, and fly back to EMSA-controlled space, leaving the Saturnian fleet to chase a mirage of Ajaxia headed the opposite direction?”

The Wuj agreed with her reasonable suggestion. Ajax did not seem to be listening.

“Say Wuj…”

“Yes, fearless monarch?” replied that faithful subject.

“Where is this Grand Ineffable Prime Base, anyway? Where did Utterly Supreme Admiral Heimmerschlitzer call from?”

The Wuj smiled. “I thought that information might come in handy, so I traced the Admiral’s beam. Prime Base is on Saturn’s tenth moon—I forget its name—the one that orbits just above the outermost edge of the rings.”

“Why all these fancy titles, I wonder?” Emily wondered, although it was not relevant. “And where did the slimy old jellyfish-men get all these German names from?”

“Earth history, pre-space age,” Ajax said abstractedly. “They were fascinated by the grand old days of Kaiser Wilhelm and the German Empire. Their whole civilization is built in imitation of Prussian imperialism. If they had heads, instead of just being blobs, I imagine they’d wear spiked helmets and that sort of thing… The tenth moon, eh, Wuj? That’s the one discovered way back in 1967 by that French astronomer—whatzizname?—Audorium Dollfus.” He cleared his throat, complacently, for as a Monarch he felt it the first obligation of Royalty to be well-informed. “It has an eighteen-hour orbit and is middling in size, under two hundred miles in diameter, as I recall. They could be here in no time…”

“Well”—Emily snapped her compact shut—“let’s get hopping, I’m ready. Why wait around for the Utterly Admiral or whatever he is?”

Ajax turned a solemn, thoughtful face on her. Just a hint—a glint—of deviltry danced in his eyes.

“Not quite yet, dear. I have a jolly idea… you know, we’re wanted for treason, desertion and everything in the book from barratry to nepotism back home. When we show up in EMSA space, we’d better have a good hefty argument for being defectors.”

“But we didn’t defect—it was two other people!”

Ajax smiled calmly.

“Yes, dear. You know that—I know that—even our very good friend and loyal Prime Minister the Wuj knows that. But EMSA doesn’t know it, and could reasonably be expected to doubt our story.”

“Well, we’ll just have to take our chances,” Emily snapped.

“After all, we’ve got those two stiffs in the freezer to back us up.”

“Yes, that’s true… but I have an idea. We’d be a lot welcomer (if there is such a word?) back home, if we brought EMSA a little present.”

Emily eyed him dubiously. “What kind of ‘little present” do you have in mind, Ajax?” she asked doubtfully. Ajax’s ideas usually resulted in cataclysmic disasters; she was not at all inclined to listen to another one at this late date.

“It’s a very good idea,” Ajax said calmly, “and I think it has a good chance of working. Now, Wuj, Emily, listen carefully. Here’s my plan…**