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Hail To The Chief
by
James Cannon wiped a palm over his forehead and sat down heavily on one of the beds. “Right. Sit down. Fine. Now; listen: We–the United States–have a space drive that compares to the rocket in the same way that the jet engine compares to the horse. We’ve been keeping it under wraps that are comparable to those the Manhattan Project was kept under ‘way back during World War II. Maybe more so. But–” He stopped, watching Fisher’s face. Then: “Can you see it from there?”
“I think so,” Fisher said. “The Soviet Government knows that we have something … in fact, they’ve known it for a long time. They don’t know what, though.” He found a heavy briar in his pocket, pulled it out, and began absently stuffing it with tobacco from a pouch he’d pulled out with the pipe. “Our ship didn’t shoot at their base. Couldn’t, wouldn’t have. Um. They shot it down to try to look it over. Purposely made a near-miss with an atomic warhead.” He struck a match and puffed the pipe alight.
“Hm-m-m. The Soviet Government,” he went on, “must have known that we had something ‘way back when they signed the Greenston Agreement.” Fisher blew out a cloud of smoke. “They wanted to change the wording of that, as I remember.”
“That’s right,” Cannon said. “We wanted it to read that ‘any advances in rocket engineering shall be shared equally among the Members of the United Nations’, but the Soviet delegation wanted to change that to ‘any advances in space travel‘. We only beat them out by a verbal quibble; we insisted that the word ‘space’, as used, could apply equally to the space between continents or cities or, for that matter, between any two points. By the time we got through arguing, the UN had given up on the Soviet amendment, and the agreement was passed as was.”
“Yeah,” said Fisher, “I remember. So now we have a space drive that doesn’t depend on rockets, and the USSR wants it.” He stared at the bowl of his briar for a moment, then looked up at Cannon. “The point is that they’ve brought down one of our ships, and we have to get it out of there before the Russians get to it. Even if we manage to keep them from finding out anything about the drive, they can raise a lot of fuss in the UN if they can prove that it’s our ship.”
“Right. They’ll ring in the Greenston Agreement even if the ship technically isn’t a rocket,” Cannon said. “Typical Soviet tactics. They try to time these things to hit at the most embarrassing moments. Four years ago, our worthy opponent got into office because our administration was embarrassed by the Madagascar Crisis. They simply try to show the rest of the world that, no matter which party is in, the United states is run by a bunch of inept fools.” He slapped his hand down on the newssheet that lay near him. “This may win us the election,” he said angrily, “but it will do us more harm in the long run than if our worthy opponent stayed in the White House.”
“Of what avail to win an election and lose the whole Solar System,” Fisher paraphrased. “It looks as though the President has a hot potato.”
“‘Hot’ is the word. Pure californium-254.” Cannon lit a cigarette and looked moodily at the glowing end. “But this puts us in a hole, too. Do we, or don’t we, mention it on the TV debate this evening? If we don’t, the public will wonder why; if we do, we’ll put the country on the spot.”
Matt Fisher thought for a few seconds. Then he said, “The ship must have already been having trouble. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been hovering in plain sight of the Soviet radar. How many men does one of those ships hold?”
“Two,” the senator told him.