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!”
XXIV
The crimson deepened through the spectrum to a lovely shade of lavender. Kreplach’s voice broke a little on the high notes, but his remarkable self-control held firm.
“Oh, yes, we’ll have some ships there, waiting for you—yes, sir, quite a few ships. Waiting for you.”
Ajax smiled. “Good-oh! Make sure you have a goodly Flock of empty personnel-carriers will you, Kreplach old man?”
The Admiral blinked; his smile wavered.
“Empty personnel-carriers?”
“That’s right: empty.”
“What for, you mealy-mouthed, pig-snouted, lard-hearted, milk-livered…”
“Temper! Temper!” Ajax reproved with a wagging finger. “Apoplexy one of these days, Kreplach. Self-control’s the thing, you know.”
“… swine-gutted, pea-brained, pox-ridden, donkey-faced, jug-eared, jelly-spined…”
“But, to answer your question, for the prisoners, of course,” Ajax added with superb nonchalance.
“… quarter-witted, fat-headed, cross-eyed, milk-hearted, snake-… hmm? What prisoners?”
Ajax absently examined the polish on his fingernails. “The prisoners I am bringing back from Saturn, of course,” he said casually.
The delicate lavender hue which embued Vice Admiral Milton A. Kreplach’s jowls deepened into a rich, turgid purple. Ajax viewed it admiringly.
“I say! Wish I could capture that shade in my prize odontoglossums, Kreplach. What’s your secret, man? I’d take home every prize ribbon in the Shanghai Flower Show if I could…”
“What prisoners from Saturn?” Kreplach roared, rattling every loose object in the entire room.
“Little gift for our gallant boys in EMSA,” Ajax said modestly. “After all, you couldn’t expect the likes of Ajax Calkins to make a daring raid behind enemy lines—all the way to the enemy’s home planet—without bringing back a few prisoners, could you?”
The rich purple suffusing Kreplach’s jowly visage became mottled with patches of leaden gray, all except for the pinched white about his lips and nostrils. His eyes goggled and glared as if about to burst free of their sockets and bounce about the room like two blood-shot Ping-pong balls. He clenched his teeth so hard the blood drained from his gums.