"When I need your help I'll ask for it!" snorted the little professor. He turned to Jeff. "What are they doing here? You know I don't like to be interrupted when I'm making observations!"
Jeff smiled slowly. "They've been assigned to work with you, sir. They're your new assistants."
"My assistants!" screamed Sykes. "What space-blasting idiot got the idea that I needed any assistants?"
"The lieutenant governor, sir," said Jeff.
"Oh, he did, did he!" Sykes turned to the teleceiver, flipped it on, and waited impatiently for the machine to warm up.
In a moment Vidac's face came into view. Before the lieutenant governor could say a word, Sykes began to scream at him.
"What's the idea of sending these brainless Space Cadets to me! Assistants—bah! Can't you find something else for them to do?" bawled Sykes. "Is my work considered so unimportant that I should be impeded by these—these—" He sputtered and turned to wave at Tom, Roger, and Astro who still stood at rigid attention.
Sykes got no further. Vidac simply cut off his teleceiver and left the professor staring into a blank screen. His face became beet red, and he screamed at Jeff Marshall. "Get them out of here! Put them to work—scrubbing the decks, cleaning up the place, anything! But keep them out of my way!" Then wagging a finger in Roger's face, he screamed his last warning. "Don't ever speak to me again, unless I speak to you first!"
Smarting under the continuous blast of anger from the professor, Roger could no longer restrain himself. Slowly, with the calm deliberate manner and slow casual drawl that characterized him at his sarcastic best, the cadet stepped forward. He saluted, and with his face a bare six inches from Sykes, said evenly, "To speak to you, sir, under any conditions, sir, would be such a stroke of bad luck, sir, that I wouldn't wish it on the last spaceman in the world, sir." With another curt salute he wheeled smartly and walked out of the room.