“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…**
XXII
Utterly Supreme Admiral Heimmerschlitzer was just about to boil over with fury. No message had come in the past half-hour from that addle-pated nincompoop, Grauschmitz, and although Heimmerschlitzer had called repeatedly, no reply was forthcoming. The Supreme Commander of the Ring Patrol, that incompetent cretin, was about to hurl his entire forces against the elusive planetoid-ship when he signed off during their last communication. So what had happened?
If the Admiral had been fortunately gifted with legs, he would have paced like a caged lion. Unfortunately—being naught but a foul-smelling blob of protoplasm—he could do nothing but sit in his saddle-hammock and fume. He fumed, however, very effectively. In fact, the entire Command Bridge of Prime Base reeked like a slime pit.
Down below, half the Saturnian fleet sat ready at their entry ports, prepared at the drop of an eye-stalk to blast into space, loaded to the gills with seventeen-thousand-six-hundred-forty-nine of Saturn’s leading scientists, mathematicians, linguists, engineers, physicists, naval officers of flag rank and even that sterling worthy and member of the Imperial Royal Family, the Heir Obvious, His Indescribably Superior Lordship, Crown Prince Zarfbladder, Minister of Imperial Space Affairs—every last one of them primed and ready to start picking apart the scientific treasures of Ajaxia. And where was Grauschmitz and his go-ahead signal?