Captain Antonille

CAPTAIN ANTONILLE

By Andrew Paul Grell

“Because I’m three billion years old, you big oaf, that’s why. Your years. Oaf is the correct word? We haven’t had extra-large or overly-clumsy people in quite a long time. How would you describe that process? Darwined out? Is that two n’s or one? What kind of language have you got going on? On Kapteyn A we have seven billion years of language and by now we know how to spell.”

“Nice neologism, Yip. I’ll have to email that to Oxford; maybe they’ll get it in time for the next edition. And it doesn’t matter how old you are, Yip. You can’t fuse nothing, and that’s what we got in this stretch. We got plenty o' nothin’. Anyone ever tell you that you look like an Elf on a Shelf?”

“Au contraire, mon ami. I predate the elves. What you call Homo habilis.  I prefer Mensch on a Bench.”

“Either way. You’re not all that much bigger than that doll and you’re sitting, legs a-dangle, on the bar. And either way, we’re out of gas, my little living doll.”

“We’re the cultural attachés, it’s not up to us. Trust Captain Antonille, he’s even older than I am, and Captain Crunch, she’s older than him.”

“Oh, great. That’s right, diminish the human crew in favor of your tiny Kapteyn’s Star people from that diminutive planet you call home.

“It’s not like that, Dick. Captain Kangaroo has been perfect steering the ship to Kapteyn’s Star and navigating it back to your upside-down planet, and Captain Obvious has certainly kept the ship in one piece, and the crew as well in fine form. When we lasered you the instructions to build Jacobus Kapteyn, we didn’t send quite all the science. Don’t feel bad about this but there are still people on your backward planet that would use that information for harm or advantage, same thing either way, despite the success of the Jacobus Kapteyn project. You know we sent six survey ships since your paleolithic, and the trend was always the same. Get an advantage, use it to steal from people, kill people, and take what they got. Is that not correct? Maybe except for a few years in a run from time to time. It’s too bad your planet is upside down. you were broadcasting to the bottom of the galaxy. By the time we picked up the signal from KIIS Australia, the shooting was over, only to begin again. How does it feel to live on a planet that’s upside down, Dick?”

“I can ask you the same thing, how does it feel to live on a little tiny planet whizzing by, never finding a home? You know we discovered you by accident, right?”

“Just a nanosecond there, oaf. We discovered you first! Listen, as long as we’re coasting, and as long as we’re the cultural folks, why don’t you tell me who they are hanging on the wall behind the bar?”

“Bien sur, mon petite chou. The first one is Agamemnon. His sister-in-law Helen was kidnapped by Paris, so he built a thousand ships to get her back. Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world, the face that launched a thousand ships. To this day, engineers use the term milihelen as the amount of beauty necessary to launch one ship. Do you have those, in-laws?”

“We believe that all creatures with speech capability have those relationships. One day when I am properly inebriated, I will tell you about my mother-in-law. She has been my mother-in-law for two billion years. Beat that, oaf!”

“Hey, no oafing while I’m teaching. Next is Chin Bao, known in our west as Sinbad the Sailor. Opened up sea trade between east and west Asia. Then Lief Ericson, part navigator, but more real estate speculator. First to sail from Europe to North America. Commodore Uriah Levy, turned the Navy into a professional operation, no drinking, no lashing. Commodore Grace Hopper, invented computer language programming. Laika the dog, first terrestrial being in space. Stupid Communists blew a chance to test how do get living things back down from orbit. They let that cute little dog die in space. Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on a heavenly body. Then there’s Pizzaro and Cooke. The locals thought they were gods. For a while. Cooke didn’t make it, but Pizzaro hit it big time.”

“Interesting mix of conquering and bridge building. That’s how we see you. Now tell me about this bar. We do it differently. Seven billion years ago, Halp was gardening, tending to the ju-ju berries. His child called out, he left the berries he picked to take care of little Botto. It rained before he could get back to the garden. The berries were mush. For some reason, Halp decided to taste the water with the mushed berries. It was terrible, but he loved it, the juice made him feel free. He showed it to his friends; they all hated the taste but loved the effect. Then Dr. Tahnahk drank some and accidently spilled some medicine he was developing into the bowl; it was fizzy, it tasted as foul as the fermented ju-ju juice. But together, the concoction was delicious. There can be no better libation, oaf, I tell you true. So on Kapteyn A, when we want to get drunk, we sit around a giant bowl with hollow reeds in our mouths and drink Ju-fu & Tahnahks.”

“Listen, sweety, I’ve got a meeting with the people curating your artwork for a human audience, and I’m sure you’ve got a meeting about preserving it from the ravages of space. My quarters, six bells?”

“I’ll be there with more than six bells on. Little elf shoe bells.”

 # # #

“My dear Captain Kangaroo.”

“My dear friend, Captain Antonille. Thank you for receiving me in your in space cabin. We seem to be adrift. Nice collection you’ve got there. Is it a complete set?”

“Of course, my dear Captain Kangaroo. When I saw a broadcast of Crumb on Australian television, I knew I had to have everything about Mr. Natural. So I put it on the request list. You can see the similarities in the feet and in the facial hair. But I really would have loved to meet Crumb’s brother. Interesting character study. He’s what you call OCD?”

“Most likely, my dear Captain Antonille. But I believe our agenda involves hydrogen, specifically the lack thereof. And I have pilfered precious moments of our time on comic books.”

No need to apologize, my dear Captain Kangaroo. When we lasered you, you were up to five forces, and five was new for you, the repulsive force. Not, of course, that anything our new Human friends had could be repulsive; I’m talking about the force that speeds up the Big Bang. We gave you the sixth force to power the ship. Now we find ourselves in the doldrums. The seventh and a half force has a way of attracting hydrogen. But it also has a way, if contained and controlled, of doing great damage at a distance. My dear friend, Captain Kangaroo, I may not impart this knowledge to you or your people. Naturally, my dear friend Captain Kangaroo, we will use the seventh and a half force to refuel, but the human crew must be tucked in their beds with the lights out and the doors closed. No sign-stealing, as they say in your baseball. In our version, we slap the ball with our bare hands. Less to cheat with. Not that there are many Kapteynians who would cheat. My dear Captain Kangaroo, do we have an understanding?”

“Captain Antonille, I believe we do.”

# # #

“Why not go out instead of staying in your cabin? The didymium viewing bubble? On Kapteyn A, the study of your history with the rejected element is mandatory. Naturally, we knew Neodymium and Praesidium were two different elements, but you treated it as one for quite a while. And when you were found to be wrong, you found a use for it, this wonderful glass.”

“The dome it is, my sweet babou. Let’s take the Centrifugal River route, perhaps a canoe ride to the bubble.

“This is quite romantic, you big oaf. Tell me, Dick, when you get back home, will our relationship be a subject of male privilege?”

“Why so, my pet?” 

“Ancephalic humans. Oy vey, as you say. This only works with human males and female Kapteynians. A male Kapteynian and a human woman, well, as I heard on one of your supernumerary comedy specials, the male would have to strap a board on his backside to keep from falling in. But this is quite romantic, Dick, thank you for taking me. A little to the left, buddy. You got it. That’s it. Hey, is that Captain Crunch? Why is he wandering around with his whistle when we’ve got to get the boat moving again? He should on the bridge!”

“ATTENTION, ATTENTION. ALL HANDS PREPARE FOR ACCELERATION COMMENICNG IN FIVE MINUTES. PROCEDE TO THE NEAREST GRAVITY COUCHES IMMEDIATELY. ATTENTION, ATTENTION.”

“Probably a drill, Dick.”

“Get on a viewing chair, I’ll get on top of you.”

“Big oaf, trying to get some action when we may be killed at any moment.”

“ATTENTION, ATTENTION. PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE MOMENT-ARM QUAKE.”

“Wow. If my grandparents could have something like that, they’d still be together. Whew. Hey, Dick, what is that?”

“Dunno. Wait. It looks like the thing that nobody knew what it does. Hold the phone. It’s starting to get longer. And longer. It’s got the checkerboard pattern we used to use to observe spin rates. See? now it’s spinning. Idiot. I know what that is.”

“Care to enlighten me, big boy?”

“Einstein’s time machine. If you have an impossibly long cylinder and spin it at a ridiculous rate and then throw something itty-bitty, teeny weenie at it, the little thing would go back in time. Never got tested, of course. Do we think this is part of the tech you couldn’t reveal?”

“Could be. How should I know? I’m an art professor.

“Ow! Hey! Oooh. Ouch.”

“Yip, you OK?”

“I think the radius of my radius has been altered in a very painful way.”

“C’mon, I’m getting you out of here. There’s an exit. I know it’s undignified, but I’m carrying you.”

“Yutz? Putz? JonJon? What are you idiots doing here? There’s an acceleration warning.”

“We could ask you the same thing. And what are you doing here, praying to his imaginary god of his for hydrogen? And what are you doing with him?”

“We’re enjoying the show. Now get your toe bells down to where you’re needed if this isn’t a drill.”

“Dick, I don’t like this. They were perfectly normal engineers when we boarded. It looks like, well, I hate to see us acting like, well, you folks. Present company excepted, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Those three are too normal. I think someone is winding them up. We should probably strap down before they weigh anchor and get going. Last one to your cabin is a batch of rotten ju-ju berry mush.”

“Good thing the ship was designed to have g-couches for both species in each cabin. Whoa, there we go.”

“OMG; I would say that if I thought there were a G. Wow, that was even better than the moment-arm quake. By the way, you make a great comfy pillow for a great big oaf. Mmmm…”

# # #

“Now hear this. This is Captain Obvious. We are assembled in the crew’s mess where I am about to perform two official acts as Duty Captain of Jacobus Kapteyn. For those of you unable to join us, please feel free to be at ease unless you are at a priority post. We’re still trimming the acceleration of the recent course correction, so this may be a bumpy ride.

“Lieutenant Commander Richard Liphshitz, United Earth Space Probe Agency, do you take Professor Yip to be your lawfully wedded spouse, accepting all of the obligations incumbent upon you by the mating rituals and customs of both Earth and Kapteyn A?”

“I do.”

“And do you, Professor Yip, take Lieutenant Commander Richard Liphshitz to be your lawfully wedded spouse, accepting all of the obligations incumbent upon you by the mating rituals and customs of both Earth and Kapteyn A?”

“You bet I’ll take that big oaf, skipper!”

“I’m not religious man, but I once heard a bit of ancient Hebrew advice. If you have a short wife, bend down to whisper in he ear. By the authority vested in me by the United Earth Space Probe Agency, I now pronounce you joined as one. Dick, bend down in kiss your bride, then stomp on tht glass. I want to hear it tinkle, Sailor.”

“Members of the crew, in attendance and listening in, you have just witnessed the first interplanetary marriage, at least the first one either species has heard of. And now it is my sad duty to perform my second act as Duty Captain. Captain Crunch, front and center. Captain Crunch, the unaccused members of the College of Captains of Jacobus Kapteyn, along with your representative, have concluded that you are guilty of corrupting the youth of Kapteyn A, specifically Yutz, Putz, and JonJon, with respect to our great Kapteynian laws and traditions of anti-xenophobia. Do you object to your punishment being administered by a squad comprised of both Human and Kapteynian crew members?”

“I have no objection, alien.”

“Do you have anything to say before punishment is administered?”

“I have plenty to say. This mixing of species is not going to end well. They will infect us with their louche habits and their barbaric ways. Mark my words.”

“Punishment team, Attention. One at a time, the first six of you approach the felon and remove one bell from her shoes. Seventh squad member, cut off her beard. Commander of the squad, break her whistle.”

“Punishment squad, rejoin ranks.”

“Punishment squad, report.”

“Aye, Aye, Sir. Punishment has been duly and justly meted out.”

“Captain Crunch, you have been punished. Return to your post and continue to make sure this ship gets where it’s going safely.

“Dismissed!”