your idea?"
"Well, it's pretty rough right now; we can't fill in the details untilwe get more information, but--" He knocked the dottle from his pipe andbegan outlining his scheme to the senator.
* * * * *
Major Valentin Udovichenko peered through the "windshield" of hismoon-cat and slowed the vehicle down as he saw the glint of metal on theEarthlit plain ahead. "Captain!" he snapped. "What does that look liketo you?" He pointed with a gloved hand.
The other officer looked. "I should say," he said after a moment, "thatwe have found what we have been looking for, major."
"So would I. It's a little closer to our base than the radarmencalculated, but it certainly could have swerved after it dropped belowthe horizon. And we know there hasn't been another ship in thisvicinity."
The captain was focusing a pair of powerful field glasses on the object."That's it!" he said bridling his excitement. "Egg-shaped, and no signof rocket exhausts. Big dent in one side."
Major Udovichenko had his own binoculars out. "It's as plain as day inthis Earthlight. No sign of life, either. We shouldn't have anytrouble." He lowered the binoculars and picked up a microphone to givethe other nine moon-cats their instructions.
Eight of the vehicles stayed well back, ready to launch rockets directlyat the fallen spacecraft if there were any sign of hostility, while twomore crept carefully up on her.
They were less than a hundred and fifty yards away when the object theywere heading for caught fire. The major braked his vehicle to a suddenhalt and stared at the bright blaze that was growing and spreading overthe metallic shape ahead. Bursts of flame sprayed out in everydirection, the hot gases meeting no resistance from the near-vacuum intowhich they spread.
Major Udovichenko shouted orders into his microphone and gunned his ownmotor into life again. The caterpillar treads crunched against the lunarsurface as both moon-cats wheeled about and fled. Four hundred yardsfrom the blaze, they stopped again and watched.
By this time, the blaze had eaten away more than half of the hulk, andit was surrounded by a haze of smoke and hot gas that was spreadingrapidly away from it. The flare of light far outshone the lightreflected from the sun by the Earth overhead.
"Get those cameras going!" the major snapped. He knew that the eightmoon-cats that formed the distant perimeter had been recording steadily,but he wanted close-ups, if possible.
None of the cameras got much of anything. The blaze didn't last long,fierce as it was. When it finally died, and the smoke particles settledslowly to the lunar surface, there was only a blackened spot where thebulk of a spaceship had been.
"Well ... I ... will ... be--," said Major Valentin Udovichenko.
* * * * *
The TV debate was over. The senator and the President had gone at eachother hot and heavy, hammer and tongs, with the senator clearly emergingas the victor. But no mention whatever had been made of the Sovietannouncement from Luna.
At four thirty-five the next morning, the telephone rang in thesenator's suite. Cannon had been waiting for it, and he was quick toanswer.
The face that appeared on the screen was that of the President of theUnited States. "Your scheme worked, senator," he said without preamble.There was an aloofness, a coolness in his voice. Which was only natural,considering the heat of the debate the previous evening.
"I'm glad to hear it, Mr. President," the senator said, with only a hairless coolness. "What happened?"
"Your surmise that the Soviet officials did not realize the potential ofthe new craft was apparently correct," the President said. "GeneralThayer had already sent another ship in to rescue the crew of thedisabled vessel, staying low, below the horizon of the Russian radar.The disabled ship had had some trouble with its drive mechanism; itwould never have deliberately exposed itself to Russian detection.General Thayer had already asked my permission to destroy the disabledvessel rather than let the Soviets get their hands on it, and, but foryour suggestion, I would have given him a go-ahead.
"But making a replica of the ship in plastic was less than a two-hourjob. The materials were at hand; a special foam plastic is used asinsulation from the chill of the lunar substrata. The foam plastic wasimpregnated with ammonium nitrate and foamed up with pure oxygen; sinceit is catalyst-setting, that could be done at low temperatures. Theoutside of the form was covered with metallized plastic, alsoimpregnated with ammonium nitrate. I understand that the thing burnedlike unconfined gunpowder after it was planted in the path of the Sovietmoon-cats and set off. The Soviet vehicles are on their way back totheir base now."
After a moment's hesitation, he went on: "Senator, in spite of ourpolitical differences, I want to say that I appreciate a man who can puthis country's welfare ahead of his political ambitions."
"Thank you, Mr. President. That is a compliment I appreciate and accept.But I want you to know that the notion of decoying them away with aninflammable plastic replica was not my idea; it was Matt Fisher's."
"Oh? My compliments to Mr. Fisher." He smiled then. It was obviouslyforced, but, just as obviously, there was sincerity behind it. "I hopethe best team wins. But if it does not, I am secure in the knowledgethat the second best team is quite competent."
Firmly repressing a desire to say, _I am sorry that I don't feel anysuch security myself_, Cannon merely said: "Thank you again, Mr.President."
When the connection was cut, Cannon grinned at Matthew Fisher. "That'sit. We've saved a ship. It can be repaired where it is without a fleetof Soviet moon-cats prowling around and interfering. And we've scotchedany attempts at propagandizing that the Soviets may have had in mind."He chuckled. "I'd like to have seen their faces when that thing startedto burn in a vacuum. And I'd like to see the reports that are beingflashed back and forth between Moscow and Soviet Moon Base One."
"I wasn't so much worried about the loss of the disabled ship as the_way_ we'd lose it," Matthew Fisher said.
"The Soviets getting it?" Cannon asked. "We didn't have to worry aboutthat. You heard him say that Thayer was going to destroy it."
"That's exactly what I meant," said Fisher. "_How_ were we going todestroy it? TNT or dynamite or Radex-3 would have still left enoughbehind for a good Soviet team to make some kind of sense out of it--somekind of hint would be there, unless an awful lot of it were used. Afission or a thermonuclear bomb would have vaporized it, but that wouldhave been a violation of the East-West Agreement. We'd be flatly in thewrong."
Senator Cannon walked over to the sideboard and poured Scotch into twoglasses. "The way it stands now, the ship will at least be able to limpout of there before anyone in Moscow can figure out what happened andtransmit orders back to Luna." He walked back with the glasses andhanded one to Fisher. "Let's have a drink and go to bed. We have to bein Philadelphia tomorrow, and I'm dead tired."
"That's a pair of us," said Fisher, taking the glass.
* * * * *
Another month of campaigning, involving both televised and personalappearances, went by without unusual incidents. The prophets, seers,and pollsters were having themselves a grand time. Some of them--thepredicting-by-past-performances men--were pointing out that only fourPresidents had failed to succeed themselves when they ran for a secondterm: Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and HerbertHoover. They argued that this presaged little chance of success forSenator James Cannon. The pollsters said that their samplings had showna strong leaning toward the President at first, but that eight weeks ofcampaigning had started a switch toward Cannon, and that the movementseemed to be accelerating. The antipollsters, as usual, simply smiledsmugly and said: "Remember Dewey in '48?"
Plays on Cannon's name had caught the popular fancy. The slogan "Blast'em With Cannon" now appeared on every button worn by those whosupported him--who called themselves "Cannoneers." Their opponentssneeringly referred to them as "Cannon fodder," and made jokes about"that big bore Cannon."
The latter joke
was pure epithet, with no meaning behind it; whenSenator James Cannon spoke, either in person or over the TV networks,even his opponents listened with grudging interest.
The less conservative newspapers couldn't resist the gag, either, andprinted headlines on the order of CANNON FIRES BLAST AT FOREIGN POLICY,CANNON HOT OVER CIA ORDER, BUDGET BUREAU SHAKEN BY CANNON REPORT, andTREASURY IS LATEST CANNON TARGET.
The various newspaper columnists, expanding on the theme, made even moreatrocious puns. When the senator praised his running mate, a columnistsaid that Fisher had been "Cannonized," and proceeded to call him"Saint"
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