Destination: Saturn

XXIII

No one could possibly hold to the opinion that Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach was anything else but a fair man, and in the Earth-Mars Space Administration he had a fine reputation as being an officer noted for scrupulous self-control. In fact, his self-discipline was such that he was affectionately known to his subalterns as “Old Cast-Iron Head.”

However, even the mildest observer of recent events would have to admit that if ever a man—even an officer of Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach’s standing—ever had cause to get a bit riled, maybe even to blow his top, it was Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach.

No one in EMSA had anything bad to say concerning the very honest way Kreplach had comported himself during the recent and distressing affair of the defection of Ajaxia to the Saturnian side. No one could feel anything but sheer admiration as to his self-restraint in not attempting to pursue the fleeting planetoid-ship across the interplanetary border and into Saturnian space. Of course, an observer must realize how very frustrating it was to chase the defecting planetoid that far and then have to turn back with empty hands so to speak. But everyone in the know was well aware that for Vice Admiral Kreplach to have crossed the border between EMSA and Saturnian space would have been to cause an interplanetary incident and perhaps even precipitate war. So Kreplach turned back, after watching Ajaxia happily sail off in the general direction of the Ringed Planet. And no one could much blame the Admiral if he had not cussed every foot of the way back to his base on Ceres in the Asteroid Zone. And cuss he did. Some of his younger lieutenants, surreptitiously overhearing his marvelous wealth of colorful profanity on the intercom system, went so far in their admiration for the Admiral’s remarkably inventive grasp of Creative Linguistics as to turn on portable tape recorders so that at least a portion of his philological expertise could be preserved for history.

Experts in invective were particularly admiring of his analysis of Ajax Calkins and his ancestry, both paternal and maternal, going back some seventeen generations. In this genealogical survey, it was noted that the Admiral did not once stoop to repeating himself. This feat awoke awe even in the breast of the most eloquent top sergeants in EMSA’s Space Corps!

Once back on Ceres, Admiral Kreplach locked himself in his quarters for twenty-four hours with no external solace beyond a half-case of a liquid refreshment affectionately known to the Space Corps as “Old Paint-Remover.”

And he sulked. It little mattered to Kreplach that his own actions were wholly irreproachable—in fact, highly admirable. It did not matter a smidgeon to him that no one in the System had a single bad word to say about his conduct of la affair Ajaxia. For he condemned himself.

News Commentator Conrad Wintersmith referred to his actions as “commendable self-restraint.” Kreplach’s comment (or as much of it as we may print) was: “Blank that blanking Wintersmith right in his fat blank!”

Now, some days later, and almost at the bottom of the case of his liquid solace, Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach was annoyed by a buzzer from the intercom.

He had been, well, not dozing, but day-dreaming when the rude, jarring note of the intercom jarred him from his delicious reverie. He had been pretending that Ajax Calkins was strapped down to a table… helpless… and, although Admiral Kreplach had not been part of the audience when Utterly Supreme Admiral Heimmerschlitzer had threatened the late Supreme Commander Grauschmitz with a pretty variety of disciplinary treatment, running the gamut from the searing chambers to the electric needles, and the Acid Tanks to (shudder!) The Giggling Hooks, his own ingenuity was not far behind that of the Saturnian.

Growling, he snapped on the intercom and focused a fuzzy but searing glare on the pinkcheeked young lieutenant in the screen.

“Well?” he snarled. “I thought I told you goons not to disturb me unless you had Ajax Calkins in chains!”

The young lieutenant flinched from the vision of Kreplach’s blueblack jowls and bloodshot eyes, but gamely rose to the occasion.

“Sorry, sir, but we do have Ajax Calkins in chains!”

Kreplach boggled. He clutched at the intercom dial as a thirsty man clutches a straw.

“What? Did I hear you correctly, Lieutenant?” He leaned closer to the screen, breathing heavily. “Lieutenant… you wouldn’t lie to poor old Kreplach, would you? Tell me you wouldn’t deceive an old man, Lieutenant!”

“Of course not, sir,” the lieutenant said, uncomfortably. “It’s true, sir.”

Milton A. Kreplach’s eyes blazed with an unholy light.

“You mean you have him … Ajax Calkins… a p-p-prisoner? Calkins in chains?”

“Yes, sir! Well… not in chains, exactly. Not yet, I mean, sir. But we’ve just received a call from Calkins aboard the Ajaxian planetoid. He has just surrendered to EMSA and requests we meet him at the planetoid’s former orbit in the Fore-Trojan Group between Jupiter and the edge of the Asteroid Zone.”

The lieutenant flushed, averted his eyes, and switched off. It was embarrassing to see an Admiral cry.

It took Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach about fifteen quick minutes to recover his usual self-possession, shower, shave, climb into a freshly starched uniform, and zip up to the communications center of Ceres Base. He came into the large room looking none the worse for his ordeal, although a close observer might have noticed the rabid luster of his eyes—they gleamed with a gloating expression comparable to that of a cannibal at a Cub Scout camp—and a sort of pinched-in, white look around the corners of the mouth.

He strode up to the commo desk and sat down carefully in front of a screen. To the flustered lieutenant in charge of external relays, he said, in a mild, sweet voice:

“Oh, Lieutenant. Would you… would you kindly call Mr. Calkins aboard the Ajaxian planetoid for me? I’d like to speak to him,” he said in a masterpiece of understatement.

“Yessir, certainly sir,” the lieutenant stammered, making the connection. Behind him, he could see a flock of Junior officers gathering excitedly; they had all listened with ill-concealed awe to the bootleg tapes of Kreplach’s recent virtuoso performance in plain and fancy cussing; they looked forward to an All-Time Championship outburst.

The screen blurred, sparkled, and cleared, showing Ajax lazily sprawled out in the pilot’s chair of the bridge, glancing through a slim volume of verse. The young man glanced up, recognized Kreplach’s apoplectic features and smiled.

“Ah, there. You must be Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach. I thought you’d be calling pretty soon.”

Kreplach smiled like a grizzly preparing to devour a succulent but unwary hunter. “And you must be Ajax Calkins,” he said tenderly. Saliva glistened on bared incisors.

“Right-oh: H.M., Ajax the First, King of Ajaxia,” the young man said complacently. “How’s everything on jolly old Ceres?”

The faintest flush of crimson suffused Kreplach’s new-shaven jowls.

“Things are, well, rather quiet around here right now, Mr. Calkins… but I think they’ll warm up rather soon… when do you estimate you’ll arrive at the Ajaxian orbit?”

Calkins lazily consulted a clipboard to which were fastened several strips of computer-tape.

“Oh, a couple hours or so. I say, Kreplach, old man, you will have some ships there to meet us, won’t you? Knew I could count on EMSA to come through!”