Destination: Saturn

VI

Time passed slowly. The worst thing about space trips was not the odorless, recycled air or the queasiness of artificial gravity, but the boredom… the sheer, enervating sameness of travel. Back on Earth a couple of centuries ago, sea voyages had been of comparable length, and even longer; but there was the constantly changing variety of the sea and sky to watch, so that you didn’t notice the slow passage of time. Things were different in space: there was nothing to look at. Unless you were almost within landing orbit of a planet or moon, the worlds were simply blank spots of light against the unrelieved blackness of space, only slightly larger than the tiny pin-pricks of light that were the stars.

Back in the pre-space era, there used to be a form of entertainment-narrative the ancients called “Science Fiction.” A major portion of it dealt with the wonders of interplanetary flight. According to these antique writers, space was a region of bewildering beauty and wondrous splendor. After all (they must have reasoned), look how gorgeous the night sky is, laced and dusted with the glittering patterns of twinkling stars! Their tales portrayed space vehicles of odd and amusing types flashing at immense speed through this dazzling profusion of stellar bodies, the duration of the flight made constantly exciting by near-collisions with spectacular comets, or flaming clouds of meteors, all set against the stupendous backdrop of the mighty planets—golden-yellow Saturn with her scintillating rings, brown-and-orange Jupiter, his titanic bulk banded and mottled, crimson Mars, cross-hatched with the mysterious canals… all bosh.

Without an atmosphere to make them “twinkle,” the stars are simply minute flecks of colorless, unwavering light, almost swallowed up and submerged in the dense blackness of the void. Comets enter the Solar System at the rate of one or two every year or so, but are completely invisible until close enough for the Sun to cause the spectacular “comet’s tail” effect: otherwise, they are just hurtling chunks or clumps of rock and ice. Meteor swarms infest the plane of the ecliptic, quite true, but they are past your ship and out of sight before you know they are near, so colossal are the speeds at which they travel. So much for the wonders of space!

But a trip takes a certain period of time, and that time must be passed. Since there is hardly ever any “scenery” to look at, other pastimes had to be invented. Hence each ship commissioned for space contains a comprehensive library of books, films, and music, all preserved on tape.

Once safely clear of the double-planet orbit of Earth and Luna, Ajax put the ship on autopilot, instructing the computer-brain to select a seldom-used, out-of-the-way course. Since it had been sundown when they left, it was now well into late evening, even though they felt too excited and worried to be sleepy. A nightcap of blended tranquilizers took care of that, and then Ajax said goodnight to Emily, put her in one of the three compact but comfy suites the Destiny’s designer had arranged, and went to bed himself.

After breakfast next morning, they busied themselves with the tape library. Emily, a devotee of pre-space cinema, watched an ancient George Arliss film called Disraeli, while Ajax read a new biography of Napoleon.

Time passed… slowly, yes… but it did pass.

They traversed the orbit of Mars without seeing the Red Planet; it was on the other side of the Sun during this season, as were most of the asteroids. Lunch and dinner were consumed in turn, and after a period of time Ajaxia hove into view.

Or, rather, it should have hoved, but didn’t.

It wasn’t there—not at all.

Seething with frustration, Ajax ran the computer tapes again. Could the Destiny’s autopilot-brain have slipped a cog or dropped a decimal somewhere? Perhaps the planetoid was on the other side of its orbit, like Mars.

But no… the computer was quite firm on this point: Ajaxia should have been dead ahead, right smack in the center of the radarscopes. But it wasn’t; space was as empty as a spinster’s heart, and twice as cold.

Emily gave him an unsympathetic fish-eye.

“What’s gone wrong this time, O Royal Man of Action, O Man of Steely Eyed Determination, O Superbly Competent One? Any Idea?”

“Now cut that out!” he groaned. “It’s not my fault—I don’t know what happened. Ajaxia just plain ain’t where it ought to be!”

She sneered. “I suppose your kingdom just got up and walked away… Gakk!”

“Of course not—Ulpp!”

The same thought occurred to both of them almost simultaneously. Again Ajax felt that sensation of queasy vertigo, as the bottom dropped out of his plans. Of course … Ajaxia had gotten up and walked away! That is, the planetoid-ship was equipped with stupendous drive-engines and jet-tubes, being a ship, not a real planetoid, and…

“… The Saturnians must have figured out how the engines worked!” Emily gasped.

“And they’ve started it up! They’re driving my kingdom straight to Saturn!”

They exchanged a hopeless look.

“Well, if one of the most important bodies in the Asteroid Zone left its orbit and zipped off for outer space, I should think there’d be something about it on the news broadcasts,” Emily mused.

“Good idea! Let’s see …”

Ajax tuned in the ship’s set.

*… ministration officials state. The EMSA/Ajaxian treaty thus declared null and void, Minister Fotheringay further points out that, by thus defecting to the hostile Saturnian Interplanetary Empire, former Earth-citizen Ajax Calkins, playboy-heir of the Calkins billions and self-styled ‘King of Ajaxia’—has automatically made himself a renegade and outlaw. The Space Minister’s further comments on the Ajaxian situation reveal that EMSA’s own ambassadress to the so-called ‘Kingdom of Ajaxia,’ Miss Emily Hackenschmidt, voluntarily joined her lover, Ajax Calkins, in defecting from Earth citizenship, thus also falling under the automatic ban. No word has yet been received from Vice Admiral Kreplach, commanding the squadron of pursuit ships dispatched one hour and forty minutes ago, as to whether they have caught up with the renegade ship. As our commentator, Conrad Wintersmith, remarked in his last broadcast on the Ajaxian defection, if the pursuit-squadron does not come back at the EMSA/Saturnian border, it will constitute an act of war against the Saturnians …”

Ajax turned off the newscaster in mid-perjoration, and sat rubbing his brow with numb fingertips. It was bad enough to have a couple of giant economy-size amoebas assume his identity and Emily’s, replace them in the affections of the Third Least Wuj, and denounce them as criminal impostors. Now they were defectors, traitors, renegades, outlaws, to boot! Gad! Just when things look as if they’ve reached the bottom of the barrel of bad breaks, and couldn’t possibly get worse—whammo! Fate up and smacks you with a superduper calamity she’s had warming up in the wings for just such a moment…