Ajax set his jaw hard, and jiggled the controls, trying to squeeze every possible erg out of the rapidly diminishing supply of go-juice in the cans. The trouble was, Alcmene was so flacking small—only 14 miles in diameter—that her gravity field was trifling compared to the giant pull of that ravenous glutton down there. They would have to get very, very close to the mysterious little moonlet before the jets ran dry, or Jupiter would get them yet.
He sweated the short journey every painful, suspenseful mile of the way.
Alcmene grew in the screens, but with torturous slowness. The lumpy little chunk of asteroid-rock would certainly… Hmmm, that was odd, that sound…
“Ajax!” Emily shrieked as the ship gave a sickening lurch to one side. Simultaneously, the jets died to a wheeze… a whisper… then to a silence that roared deafeningly. Ajax felt his heart, or whatever the large lumpy organ was, rise into his throat, then drop like a lead balloon into his boots.
Close, but no cigar…
“Courage, Miss Hackenwhacken,” he said.
They fell like a stone… or did they?
He did a double-take at the meters, and felt his heart lurch back to its accustomed roost. They were no longer falling!
“What’s happening?” Emily demanded.
“Search me! But we’re being pulled into Alcmene’s gravity field—although no moon that small ought to have a gravity field one fiftieth this strong…” His eyes gleamed with sudden curiosity.
“Now what?” she snapped.
“Don’t ask me! But these geigers have either gone stark, staring mad, or there’s enough radio-activity out there to fry a carload of ostrich eggs!”
“Well,” she said, somewhat baffled, “there’s supposed to be a lot of radioactivity in space, isn’t there?”
“Sure—but not enough to slam these meter-needles over into the red!” Swiftly, he activated the dampener. This device projected a series of overlapping, heterodyning magnetic fields that enveloped the Destiny like a vast “sponge,” trapping and repelling on magnetic currents the alpha, beta, or gamma particles which were disturbing the geigers so. Without this kind of protection, the very fabric of the ship would soon become dangerously contaminated, so intense was the radiation now bombarding the ship.
Ahead of them, filling the heavens, tiny Alcmene loomed like a flying cliff, Jove-light gilding its jagged circumference with orange luminance. They drifted to it. As they came very near, Ajax set the gyros into action and revolved the ship about into a new position. He had exhausted only the lateral steering jets on one side; now he used those on the other side, to bring the ship floating into a “soft” landing on the worldlet. Its gravity was mighty feeble by Earth-measure, but incredibly powerful when you stopped to consider how very weak it should have been, by all the laws of 21st Century physics.
Mysterious little Alcmene was certainly living up to her reputation…
“Well, here we are.” Ajax sighed with relief. “And here we stay, without a bucketful of plutonium nuggets to speed us on our way. Shall we call EMSA and ask for help?”
Emily made a sour face. “I suppose so, Ajax. There’s no other way we… what is that?”
“That” was a twenty-foot robot which stood up against the nose of the ship and peered in the control-room port. Ajax almost fainted. Emily wrapped one arm around his neck and managed to keep him on his feet.
“Ajax, you idiot! Don’t pass out now—do something!”
“Ikk, gikk,” he said, commenting on the strangle hold she had on his throat. When she let go, he collapsed into the pilot seat and tumbled the vision screens to front/full.
Yes, there it was. And maybe more like twenty-five feet tall. It had several arms—or appendages of some kind—radiating in a circle about the middle of its thorax. The “head” looked more like a television camera than anything else, with a multiplicity of lensed tubes protruding from the front and sides. It had three legs—a tripod effect—which made it look, when walking, something like a drunken praying mantis. It was altogether a grisly bit of animated hardware. So far, at least, it wasn’t doing anything in particular—just looking in. But if it had a mind to crack open this mysterious steel walnut, it certainly had the equipment to hand. In fact, two at least of the robot’s arms looked very much like power drills, and there was a third hand in back that bore a spine-chilling resemblance to a 30-power laser torch.
Ajax made flapping motions. “Shoo! Go ‘way!” he said.
“A lot of good that’s going to do,” Emily commented scathingly.
“Well, would you rather I went out there and wrestled that scrap-iron King Kong two falls out of three?” He took another shuddersome look…
“Hey! Look—it did work! Monstro is going off in a huff!” And so he was. Within moments, the gigantic robot vanished behind some jagged rocks. Ajax got very busy.
“What are you doing now?” she demanded.
“Getting ready to call EMSA and give up. Better a few years in Deimos Prison, than any more of Alcmene’s little surprises. I’ll bet I’ve aged twenty years in the last half-hour. Emily, check the back of my head for gray hairs…”
“Oh, stop clowning and be serious for a change.”
“Boy, am I serious! We’re getting out of here just as soon as EMSA can dispatch a nice safe prison ship…”
Emily patted him soothingly on one flushed cheek. “Now, now, relax, Ajax, and turn off that flacking radio. Plenty of time to call EMSA if trouble comes…”
“Yeah? Well, there won’t be much time to yell for help if that walking junkyard comes back with a few of his pals and decides to open us up for inspection!”
“No, listen, Ajax, I’ve been thinking…”
“Well?” he demanded suspiciously. He didn’t like that speculative tone in her voice.
“If there’s as much radioactivity outside as you say there is… and if the only reason we’re marooned helplessly here is lack of plutonium…” She arched an eyebrow at him.
His mouth fell open. Awe shone in his wide eyes.
“Migawd, Emily, you’re a genius! Why didn’t I think of that? We’ll run a soil-analysis and see. Maybe, if the deposits are high-grade enough, we can get out of here after all—and by ourselves.”
He jumped up and strode back into the store compartments.
“Ajax? You’re not putting on a suit and going out there, are you? What about the radioactivity?”
“I’ve got a repairs robot back here with complete visual hookups. Ordered a few of them made back when I decided to have the Destiny completely automated. The robot has a radio-link with the ship’s computer, and can be controlled manually from within. Ah—here he is!”
XII
Before very long, they had the robot ready to go. It was considerably smaller than the Alcmenian monster who had gazed in the port and then stalked away, but only a little taller than Ajax. He settled himself down in a reclining chair, and slid the visor-cowl down until it enveloped his face. The robot’s control panel rested on Ajax’s stomach. He fiddled with the controls a bit, warming up, then rapidly punched a series of keys. The robot walked into the airlock, cycled, and went out onto the surface.