Destination: Saturn

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?

The acid-pit was much too good for such a blithering nogoodnik. The electric whips would be a favor. The nuclear needles, or even the radioactive centipedes would hardly be sufficient to alleviate Grauschmitz’s crime against The State. Some incredibly ingenious new torment… some ferociously clever and original punishment would be needed… hmm.

The Admiral was deep in the pleasant paths of creative imagination, when a sub-lieutenant came up to him, quaking with terror, squeaking quickly to get his message out before the Admiral’s notorious temper would explode upon being so interrupted.

“Y-your Ul-Ul-Ulp!-Ultimacy!” he clacked, “a message from the p-planetoid-ship!”

The Admiral bent an icy eye-stalk upon the quivering amoeba.

“You mean a message from that brainless blackguard, Grauschmitz, fool!” he corrected. “Thirty lashes for your stupid error, cretin!”

Almost collapsing into a deck puddle from terror, the sublieutenant clacked on.

“N-no, Ultimacy, I don’t mean the Supreme Commander—the message is from the Ajaxian vessel!”

“Hmm. Very well. Plug it into my board and wobble off. And make that forty lashes—the extra ten are for daring to correct a Superior Officer! Discipline! Must have discipline! Entire service going to rot,” he grumbled as the quavering blob plugged the cable into his board and wobbled off, eye-stalks drooping forlornly, headed to the Disciplinary Chamber.

As the screen cleared, the face of Ajax Calkins filled in—expressionless and wooden.

“Utterly Supreme Admiral Heimmerschlitzer, I am the Saturnian posing as Ajax Calkins, as you know,” his voice crackled coldly over the receiver.

“Ah! Secret Agent F-109-X, is that you? Good! What in the name of Ten Thousand Cosmic Hells has been going on—where is Grauschmitz and his squadron?”

“Dead, Admiral. Gone to glory in the service of the heroic Saturnian Interplanetary Empire,” said the face in the viewer. “Tricked by this fiendish devil of a Martian spider-being, the one Calkins left behind in command of the planetoid-ship.” The face of Ajax faded back to show a tense scene in the rear of the Ajaxian bridge: poor Wuj, tied up in plastic cable, held at gunpoint by a stiffly wooden Emily Hackenschmidt, who saluted mechanically as the Admiral’s eye-stalks filled the screen.

“Tricked, F-109-X? How?”

Ajax shrugged. “Somehow the spider-being discovered that my comrade-agent and myself were not truly the humans, Calkins and Hackenschmidt. He tricked us into a refrigerator-room, lowering the temperature to such a degree he hoped would freeze our amoeboid bodies solid. Then he deluded the Grauschmitzian patrol with a clever mirage-effect—one of the ancient Asteroidal machines recently discovered here—and led them to their glorious doom. However, the spider-being was not quite clever enough. He did not know our pseudo-bodies contained laser equipment. We cut our way out of the refrigerator before freezing, and took him prisoner, shutting off his malicious device. Unfortunately, we were not in time to save Commander Grauschmitz and his squadron from plunging to a hideous flaming doom.”

“Well, we can’t have everything,” the Admiral grunted placidly. “Then I presume all is prepared for our scientific experts to board the craft?”

“All is ready—I am maneuvering the planetoid to orbit just beyond the moon the Earthlings call Phoebe,” Ajax said woodenly. “My comrade awaits your coming, as do I, with great anticipation: it will be a truly historic moment!”

“Ah! Good! Heimmerschlitzer signing off—good work, F-109-X! I have no doubt that His Indescribably Superior Lordship, the Crown Prince Zarfbladder, Heir Obvious to the Imperial Saturnian Crown, will agree with me that you deserve the ultimate honor: elevation to the rank of Secret Agent G-109-X! Congratulations!”

“My thanks to your Admiralship!” Ajax said sweetly. “And it is the sincere wish of myself and my comrade-agent, here, that your Admiralship will shortly receive the reward you deserve, too!”

Glowing with pleasure, Admiral Heimmerschlitzer cut the beam, and switched to Full Circuit.

“Attention!” His gloating voice thundered through every hall, chamber, suite and conduit of the entirety of Grand Ineffable Prime Base. “Due to my own highly superior grasp of space tactics and heroic leadership abilities, I take pleasure in reporting that the recalcitrant planetoid-ship, Ajaxia, has at last fallen into our pseudopods and is even now held by two of our finest Secret Agents! Scientific and engineering personnel, and distinguished military observers and Royalty may now disembark for the planetoid, according to System Red! I will myself join the vanguard in my private gig! Another magnificent chapter has been added to the heroic and glorious annals of our Beloved Saturnian Empire! That is all!”

Within moments ships by the dozen, the score and even more, began blasting up out of the entry-ports sunk like huge torpedo tubes in the rocky surface of Saturn’s tenth moon. They blazed a fiery arc against the splendor of the mighty rings, and hurtled towards the orbit of Phoebe where the planetoid-ship awaited them.

Another glorious chapter of history was about to be written, true. But in whose history?