Unlike Ajax, she recognized her surroundings.
She was on Ajaxia. She knew it, because she had once helped clean up this very corridor. She couldn’t be mistaken: there was that Utah-shaped patch of rust below the stern-cock outlet, and that white patch where she’d forgotten to mop up all the detergent from the corners.
Not only that, but she picked up a long-since-fallen hairpin she knew at a glance for her own.
Her brows frowned in puzzlement.
It was crazy: surely this was Ajaxia—but it couldn’t be Ajaxia! Because Ajaxia was out there in space, hopping about, being chased hither and thither by a flock of frothing mad Saturnians. She had been watching it elude the Amoeba-Men, while waiting for Stupid to return; there had been no doubt about it. There was only one planetoid-sized spaceship known, and she would have bet her bottom credit on it!
Miss Emily Hackenschmidt was a practical young lady of great strength of character. She was not given much to a study of philosophical problems, or puzzles in logic. If she were standing on Ajaxia, and if Ajaxia seemed to be way out in space, then it only seemed to be. Emily could not debate the reliability of evidence at hand, or underfoot, rather. Hence the elusive planetoid-ship which was keeping the Saturnian patrol hopping was only some kind of a mirage… an illusion… projected from the stationary Ajaxia, rendered invisible by some unknown process.
There was little difficulty in accepting such a theory. After all, the planetoid-ship was packed to the walls with unknown and mysterious machinery created at a high level of technological sophistication by the lost Asteroidal civilization of yore. Obviously, the Wuj, or whoever was running the kingdom at the moment, had fiddled around and figured out how to use some of the machines. It was that simple.
Emily pressed forward. She thought of using the intercom on the wall to phone the Wuj, but then decided to see if she couldn’t find Ajax first. He’d be poking about here somewhere. She’d be running into him any moment now.
Emily went down the corridor, and past a series of unused rooms, down a cross-walk and into another main artery—and spotted a spacesuited figure ahead. Ajax… ?
She was about to call him over her suit-phone, when she saw it was not one figure—but two.
The second one looked for all the world like a sort of robot octopus, with a globular body from which protruded eight jointed legs like a mass of waterpipes.
Not more robots! Not on Ajaxia!
Then she noticed an odd fact: the steel-plated octopus was sneaking up behind the human figure, with a gun.
The figure looked like Ajax, so far as she could tell from behind; at least, the spacesuit was similar. Anyway, Emily had to do something—something—she couldn’t just stand helplessly by and watch a human spacesuit be shot down by a mechanical octopus…
What could she do? Shoot down the octopus!
She drew her own pistol gingerly. During her EMSA training, Emily had received many hours of experience with a blaster, and she could pick off a robot octopus at this range with the best of them. She lifted her pistol.
Wait a minute. What’s a robot octopus doing on Ajaxia?
She stopped short.
Her mind whirling, she tried to think of who might be on Ajaxia who would in any way look like a robot octopus. Although the circle of her acquaintances was large and varied, there was only one candidate who could possibly qualify on both points…
That was no robot octopus; that was the Wuj.
Sneaking up behind Ajax with a drawn blaster? Why should the Wuj attack his beloved monarch, fearless leader, kindly sovereign, and dearest friend?
Anyway, what could Emily do about it? Shoot the Wuj? Of course not! Shoot Ajax! Don’t be silly!
Being a woman, she did the only logical thing, under the circumstances. She yelled her head off.
XXI
Of course Emily was still wearing her space-helmet, so she almost deafened herself. Nor had she happened to think of switching on her suit-phone so Ajax might hear. But, as it turned out, her hair-raising screech was clearly audible both to Ajax and the Wuj, for they both stiffened as if pole-axed, and jerked around to stare at her.
What it was, of course, was that this corridor was still “tight.” When the Destiny breached the hull of the planetoid-ship, much air had whooshed into the vacuum of the void. But the ancient Asteroidal builders had thought of the possibility of an accidental hull-breach—although they were thinking more of meteors than of space yachts. They had built a simple alarm system: on hull-puncture, atmospheric pressure-drop automatically activated the compartment doors, closing and sealing off the stricken area. Hence the part of the ship they were presently in was still air-tight. Emily and Ajax had both come through several sealed doors which cycled them through just like airlocks. They had been too busy puzzling about their environment to notice or pay much attention. Hence, though muffled by the helmet, Emily’s scream reached them and they spun about—simultaneously seeing each other.
“Wuj! Dear old Wuj!—Quit yelling, Emily. And what in the name of Space are you doing here, anyway? I thought I told you to stay in the ship—I say, Wuj, that’s a gun. Pointing at me… don’t you recognize your beloved monarch?”
“S-stay where you are, both of you. I don’t know how you escaped from the refrigerator, but…” The Wuj wavered, his gun wobbling back and forth between Emily and Ajax. He could not blast both down at the same time, and both were armed. Whichever one he picked to sizzle first, the other would blast him in the next second.
“Escaped from the refrigerator? What are you talking about? Don’t you recognize us? I say, Emily, the old Wuj has cracked up—he seems to think we’re a couple of frozen foods or something!”
The Wuj’s compound eyes glinted madly.
“You can’t fool me with your clever talk, you despicable Saturnians, you!”
“Ajax, you idiot!” Emily snapped. “Wake up! Don’t you see what’s happening—the Wuj is mistaking us for those two phonies, just like when we phoned him from Calkins Hall back on Earth.”
“Oh, that’s it, of course!” Ajax sounded relieved. “I say, Wuj, if that’s what’s troubling you, then take a look in the old viewer here. The impersonators are still in the ice box, all right. Emily and I are the genuine article—go ahead take a look, if you don’t believe me!”
The Wuj shot him a suspicious glance, but edged over to the wall screen and peered in with his left eye, while his right eye kept a keen gaze on the two of them. This sounds difficult, I’ll admit, but with compound eyes such as a Martian spider-being has, it’s quite practical.
And there they were, pseudo-Ajax and pseudo-Emily, frozen stiff; even their lasers were frozen in the middle of beaming through the door. The brand of synthetic rubies used by the Saturnians crack under extremely low temperatures, but the two were quite stiff and covered with frost. He relaxed, pistol drooping with relief.
“Oh, dear leader… Miss Hackenschmidt, ma’am!” he quavered. “That I, your loyal subject and Prime Minister should mistake you for vile Saturnian spies! That I should lift a weapon against you! Oh, the ancestral Web will vibrate with my eternal shame, and all my eggs will be sc-scrambled!”
“Tut, tut,” Ajax said soothingly. “Never you mind. Mistakes will happen—don’t blame yourself—there’s a good fellow!”