Destination: Saturn

III

Dinner was a moody, silent Affair. Jenkins had put together a few snacks from the pantry, with the aid of Tompkins the robo-chef: roast brisket of Martian land-eel in sandberry cream sauce, Venusian swamp-cabbage stuffed with chives, the whole washed down with a bottle of antique Taylor’s port of the fabulous 1967 vintage, worth a bureaucrat’s ransom. Despite the elaborate, gourmet-tempting variety of this modest little “snack,” neither Ajax nor Emily did more than pick at their meal. The torrent of questions seething through their minds, distracted them from their appetites.

Why had the Saturnian spy been lurking about the grounds of Ajax Calkins’ country cottage (as he thought of it)?

When had the mechanical moose first begun spying on the wealthy monarch of Ajaxia?

What was this overtly hostile act of electronic espionage a prelude to?

Heaving a heartfelt sigh, Ajax pushed aside the heavily laden plate of now-cooling food, and permitted the solicitous Jenkins to pour him a snifter of after-dinner brandy. He took a heavy gulp of it with no more attention to its tender bouquet than if it had been plain cold water and not a rare vintage of Martian snow-grape brandy, fetched hither at enormous expense from the Calkins’ vineyards in the snowcap region of the South Pole of Mars.

Standing up, he gestured listlessly toward an adjoining room.

“Well… shall we adjourn to the conservatory?”

Emily shrugged, but rose and joined him.

“I still think you…”

“I know, I know.” He nodded wearily. “You think I should videophone the Wuj and ask if everything is all right in my kingdom of Ajaxia.”

“Yes I do,” she bristled. “And I can’t for the life of me understand why you don’t!”

Preceding the girl into the conservatory (a royal prerogative), he collapsed limply in a large contour chair that conformed pneumatically to his position with a wheeze of compressed air. She sat down across from him, setting her crystal brandy goblet down on the bench with an angry little clack.

“My dear Miss Hackenschmidt…” he began.

“A-jax! I warned you not to call me that. I am your fiancee, you know.”

“Miss Hackenschmidt, my dear,” he corrected with vast aplomb, “in my absence, the Wuj is acting Prime Minister of the kingdom and perfectly capable of making all decisions of state needed in such small matters as may arise.”

“But… !”

“But,” he added amiably, “it behooves me, as his beloved leader and sovereign, to bestow my trust in the Wuj. It is the first duty of a monarch to permit his ministers to perform their duties without constant supervision. How can I encourage the executive abilities of my underlings, if I constantly peer over his—over their—shoulders every moment?”

She stamped a small booted foot angrily.

“Ajax, you are just impossible! You live in this dreamworld where you are some kind of latter-day Kublai Khan… At first, I thought it was just a gag, but I’m beginning to think you’re really serious. You really believe in this guff about owning a kingdom, don’t you?”

Shocked from his reverie, he flashed her a wrathful look.

“Believe in it? Of course I believe in it—the EMSA-Ajaxian Treaty…”

She waved a hand as if to clear the air.

“Oh, stop. Of course—legally, technically—you are a king. But I’m talking about facts! This kingdom of yours is nothing more than a big, fat antique spaceship left over from pre-explosion days—the largest surviving artifact of the unknown Asteroidal civilization that was destroyed when the fifth planet was exploded aeons ago and its pieces formed the asteroids. And these ‘underlings’ and ‘ministers’ you keep yammering on about just—don’t—exist! There’s nothing to your flacking ‘royal kingdom’ but one forlorn little spiderman sitting up there all alone. Come down to Earth, Ajax, and talk facts.”

“All right!” he exclaimed, stung by her blunt talk. “I will talk facts. There is no conceivable link between this crazy mechanized moose that’s been lurking around the begonias and your hypothetical, purely imaginary Saturnian plot to invade and conquer Ajaxia during my absense. You, my dear Miss Hackenschmidt, are the one who is talking guff, not I! Where’s your proof the Saturnian fleet—if they still have a fleet (and I doubt it, after we used the Asteroidal telepathically-aimed projectiles to smash their fleet during the heroic and glorious Battle of Ajaxia)—where’s your proof they intend striking at my kingdom? How would they dare face such terrible weapons again?”

Equally stung, she lashed back at him furiously:

“Ajax, you blithering idiot, we used up the projectiles—all of them—in destroying the fleet!”

He smiled again, that utterly infuriating “cooler heads than thine, my fiery miss (etc.)” smile of his, and, toying with the brandy goblet, said: “Of course we did. But the Saturnians don’t know it.”

Baffled, she turned away and took an enormous gulp of the potent liqueur as if to soothe inward fires. Unfortunately, the brandy was powerful stuff; unable to swallow it, her cheeks bulged, her eyes watered, and she flushed crimson.

He watched with absorbed fascination as she jumped up and ran over to the nearest group of potted plants with which the conservatory was crowded in exotic profusion. She spat the brandy out in a huge orchid bush, paying no attention to his anguished yelp.

“Not in my prize Tibetan odontoglossums—please!”

Too late; the lush orchids throbbed from root to blossom as the Martian brandy bubbled into their soil. He watched with suspended breath to see if the fiery fluid would have any adverse affect on the rare blooms, but instead of wilting into seared shadows of their former selves, the flowers opened even wider than before, lifting higher as their stalks drew taller and straighter. A gorgeous purple flush spread slowly over the flaring petals.

Marveling open-mouthed, Ajax reached out and stroked the radio-sensitive globe suspended beside the contour chair. When Jenkins appeared in the doorway, Ajax said absently: “Oh, Jenkins—fetch a glass of cold water for Miss Hackenschmidt. And order another case of that snowgrape brandy flown in, will you?… Better make it two cases, now that I think of it… I think we’ll have another gold-ribbon championship in next year’s Shanghai Flower Show, Jenkins! I’ve just discovered the most marvelous orchid-invigorator…”

“Very good, sir. And my congratulations!”

Emily drank the water down greedily and subsided, gasping and speechless, on the bench. Ajax smiled at her distractedly.

“Very good Emily! You’ll make a fine mistress for Calkins Hall… and a first-rate Queen of Ajaxia. Come along, now. Into my study.”

“What for?”

“I’m going to call the Wuj, dear, just as you’ve been suggesting. I’m going to show you just how wrong you are about these Saturnians.”