"David Grinnell & Lin Carter - Destination Saturn" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grinnell David)

"stout Cortez" and even a pinch of the White Rajah of Sarawak for seasoning.

Alas, he was none of these… only the richest young man on Earth, or anywhere else for that
matter. But filthy lucre (even when you have it by the trainload) cannot assuage the pangs that
afflict one born to a high, heroic destiny yet lacking the means wherewith to implement it.

Abandoning all sense of pride, Ajax had even sunk so low as to advertise for a kingdom.
Much to his delighted surprise, just as he was about to give up all hope, one of his "Kingdom
Wanted, Price No Object" ads in the Syrtis Major Sentinel actually brought in a customer! One
Anton Smallways, on behalf of a group of miners and space-prospectors, invited him to come
out to the Zone and be king of their tiny world. You can imagine the alacrity with which Ajax
Calkins sped to the Asteroid Zone in his private spaceyacht, the Destiny … Clive of India—hah!
He was going to be Ajax of the Asteroids!

Sadly, though, his glorious dreams fell through. His private world, the Imperial Kingdom
of Ajaxia, proved to be no natural planetoid at all, but a stupendous prehistoric spaceship left
over from some lost, primordial Asteroidal civilization. And on top of that, Anton Smallways
and the other miners, his royal subjects, proved to be phonies. They were revealed as agents of
the clever, ambitious Saturnians, and not human beings at all.

Out of this disillusionment, however, Ajax had salvaged a little something. Due to its
strategic position at the edge of EMSA—in a sort of "no-man's space" between the territory
controlled by the Earth-Mars Space Administration and the hostile and cunning Interplanetary
Empire of Saturn—and due to the enormous potential value of the mysterious machines and
instruments with which the planetoid-spaceship was crammed, King Ajax the First had been
able to bulldoze EMSA into officially recognizing him as an independent monarch, in exchange
for all scientific rights to the Asteroidal machines. This concession, while it rescued his prestige,
still left him in a sorry position… a King without subjects, a ruler without a realm over which
to reign.

It was over details of the terms of the EMSA/Ajaxian Treaty that King Ajax the First was
quarreling on the afternoon in question. From his hilltop observation post, the inquisitive
moose could see quite clearly both the angry young monarch and his equally vehement
opponent, Miss Emily Hackenschmidt, former Field Investigator for the North American
Sector of EMSA, now Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Royal Court of Ajaxia, and fiancée of
Ajax Calkins.

Like Calkins Hall, she was also an eye-popper, and although she did not occupy a fraction
of the house's acreage, her architecture was equally admirable and even more symmetrical. She
had deep-blue eyes (glaring, at the moment, in a determined frown); warm pink lips, obviously
designed with osculation in mind, and an appealing tousled mop of short black curls arranged
in poodlelike bangs. Her slim figure, with its superb collection of breath-taking curves
arranged in just the right places, was at a disadvantage in the severe and workmanlike maroon
service uniform of EMSA's women's division, although the knee-length culottes did succeed in
displaying tantalizing glimpses of her long, graceful legs which were clad in lacy satinelle
pettipants and calf-high boots. All-in-all, as the curiosity-smitten moose might have observed,
Emily was a fitting future consort for this 21st Century Alexander of Macedon.

At the moment, however, her views of Ajax Calkins were anything but consort-like.