Part 3 (1/2)

After a moment's hesitation, he went on: ”Senator, in spite of our political differences, I want to say that I appreciate a man who can put his 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 an inflammable plastic replica was not my idea; it was Matt Fisher's.”

”Oh? My compliments to Mr. Fisher.” He smiled then. It was obviously forced, but, just as obviously, there was sincerity behind it. ”I hope the best team wins. But if it does not, I am secure in the knowledge that the second best team is quite competent.”

Firmly repressing a desire to say, _I am sorry that I don't feel any such security myself_, Cannon merely said: ”Thank you again, Mr.

President.”

When the connection was cut, Cannon grinned at Matthew Fisher. ”That's it. We've saved a s.h.i.+p. It can be repaired where it is without a fleet of Soviet moon-cats prowling around and interfering. And we've scotched any attempts at propagandizing that the Soviets may have had in mind.”

He chuckled. ”I'd like to have seen their faces when that thing started to burn in a vacuum. And I'd like to see the reports that are being flashed back and forth between Moscow and Soviet Moon Base One.”

”I wasn't so much worried about the loss of the disabled s.h.i.+p as the _way_ we'd lose it,” Matthew Fisher said.

”The Soviets getting it?” Cannon asked. ”We didn't have to worry about that. You heard him say that Thayer was going to destroy it.”

”That's exactly what I meant,” said Fisher. ”_How_ were we going to destroy it? TNT or dynamite or Radex-3 would have still left enough behind for a good Soviet team to make some kind of sense out of it--some kind of hint would be there, unless an awful lot of it were used. A fission or a thermonuclear bomb would have vaporized it, but that would have been a violation of the East-West Agreement. We'd be flatly in the wrong.”

Senator Cannon walked over to the sideboard and poured Scotch into two gla.s.ses. ”The way it stands now, the s.h.i.+p will at least be able to limp out of there before anyone in Moscow can figure out what happened and transmit orders back to Luna.” He walked back with the gla.s.ses and handed one to Fisher. ”Let's have a drink and go to bed. We have to be in Philadelphia tomorrow, and I'm dead tired.”

”That's a pair of us,” said Fisher, taking the gla.s.s.

Another month of campaigning, involving both televised and personal appearances, went by without unusual incidents. The prophets, seers, and pollsters were having themselves a grand time. Some of them--the predicting-by-past-performances men--were pointing out that only four Presidents had failed to succeed themselves when they ran for a second term: Martin Van Buren, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and Herbert Hoover. They argued that this presaged little chance of success for Senator James Cannon. The pollsters said that their samplings had shown a strong leaning toward the President at first, but that eight weeks of campaigning had started a switch toward Cannon, and that the movement seemed to be accelerating. The antipollsters, as usual, simply smiled smugly 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 b.u.t.ton worn by those who supported him--who called themselves ”Cannoneers.” Their opponents sneeringly 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; when Senator 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, and printed headlines on the order of CANNON FIRES BLAST AT FOREIGN POLICY, CANNON HOT OVER CIA ORDER, BUDGET BUREAU SHAKEN BY CANNON REPORT, and TREASURY IS LATEST CANNON TARGET.

The various newspaper columnists, expanding on the theme, made even more atrocious puns. When the senator praised his running mate, a columnist said that Fisher had been ”Cannonized,” and proceeded to call him ”Saint” Matthew. The senator's ability to remember the names and faces of his const.i.tuents caused one pundit to remark that ”it's a wise Cannon that knows its own fodder.”

They whooped with joy when the senator's plane was delayed by bad weather; causing him to arrive several hours late to a bonfire rally in Texas. Only a strong headline writer could resist: CANNON MISSES FIRE!

As a result, the senator's name hit the headlines more frequently than his rival's did. And the laughter was _with_ Cannon, not _at_ him.

Nothing more was heard about the ”mysterious craft” that the Soviet claimed to have shot down, except a terse report that said it had ”probably been destroyed.” It was impossible to know whether or not they had deduced what had happened, or whether they realized that the new craft was as maneuverable over the surface of the moon as a helicopter was over the surface of Earth.

Instead, the Sino-Soviet bloc had again s.h.i.+fted the world's attention to Africa. Like the Balkan States of nearly a century before, the small, independent nations that covered the still-dark continent were a continuing source of trouble. In spite of decades of ”civilization,”

the thoughts and actions of the majority of Africans were still cast in the matrix of tribal taboos. The changes of government, the internal strife, and the petty brush wars between nations made Central and South America appear rigidly stable by comparison. It had been suggested that the revolutions in Africa occurred so often that only a tachometer could keep up with them.

If nothing else, the situation had succeeded in forcing the organization of a permanent UN police force; since back in 1960, there had not been a time when the UN Police were not needed somewhere in Africa.

In mid-October, a border dispute between North Uganda and South Uganda broke out, and within a week it looked as though the Commonwealth of Victorian Kenya, the Republic of Upper Tanganyika, and the Free and Independent Popular Monarchy of Ruanda-Urundi were all going to try to jump in and grab a piece of territory if possible.

The Soviet Representative to the United Nations charged that ”this is a purely internal situation in Uganda, caused by imperialist _agents provocateur_ financed by the Western Bloc.” He insisted that UN intervention was unnecessary unless the ”warmongering” neighbors of Uganda got into the sc.r.a.p.

In a televised press interview, Vice Presidential Candidate Matthew Fisher was asked what he thought of the situation in East Africa.