Rogers shot him a look. “Joke?”

“Yes.”

Rogers nodded. “Not bad, Deet. Not bad.”

The Legend of Ticket

“Are you absolutely sure we need to talk to him?” Rogers asked.

“I am certain,” Deet said as they plodded along the command deck towards Klein’s room, Rogers hurriedly deploying his anti-saluting sling. “Had I not been occupied with other matters at the time, I would have advised you during the planning phase of this operation. Admiral Klein is the only person on this ship with the access codes to perform such a large override.”

Rogers sighed. “Fine. But it’s going to be really hard to convince him to come along with all the, uh, bugs.”

“Bugs,” Deet said. “Right. I think I can help with that.”

Someone who wasn’t paying attention attempted to salute Rogers, noticing the sling too late. She—a starman third class—stood there, frozen in the hallway with her arm up, unsure of what to do. Rogers gave her an apologetic shrug.

“I hope you’re as brilliant as you think you are,” Rogers said, his hand on the door control, “because if I have to listen to one more string of buzzwords, I am going to go light a match in the engineering bay.”

Admiral Klein’s face leapt out of nowhere as the door slid open.

“Gah!” Rogers cried, jumping back.

“Rogers!” Klein said. “Where have you been? Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through up here?” He looked at Rogers’ sling. “Agoraphobia acting up again?”

“Yes, sir,” Rogers said, his heart slowly going down to a normal rate. “Why were you standing so close to the door like that?”

“I was trying to see if I could open it with my mind,” Klein said as though it should have been very simple. He turned around and motioned for Rogers to follow him into the room. “I’ve got all of these new posters around here that say that I can open my mind and open new doors or something. I don’t understand them. Did you ever talk to Ralph?”

Rogers stopped as soon as he stepped into the room, his mouth open. All of the propaganda posters—every single one—had been replaced, somehow, though Rogers was almost certain that Klein and his execs were the only ones that entered Klein’s stateroom. Rogers immediately realized why Klein had been trying to open doors with his mind; there was a poster of a giant bleeding eyeball surrounded by pastel rainbows which said exactly that: YOU CAN OPEN DOORS WITH YOUR MIND.

“As a matter of fact,” Rogers said, closing the door behind him, “I did talk to Ralph. He was charming.”

Deet was hurriedly walking around the room, his metallic legs clanking against the floor. Rogers assumed he was setting up some sort of sophisticated net of interference transmitters to jam the listening devices posted all over the room. How many were there? Was it really safe to try and do this here? The up-line was an option, but he also wanted to avoid being ambushed by any more haircutting personnel.