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Hail To The Chief
by
At four thirty-five the next morning, the telephone rang in the senator’s suite. Cannon had been waiting for it, and he was quick to answer.
The face that appeared on the screen was that of the President of the United 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 hair less coolness. “What happened?”
“Your surmise that the Soviet officials did not realize the potential of the new craft was apparently correct,” the President said. “General Thayer had already sent another ship in to rescue the crew of the disabled vessel, staying low, below the horizon of the Russian radar. The disabled ship had had some trouble with its drive mechanism; it would never have deliberately exposed itself to Russian detection. General Thayer had already asked my permission to destroy the disabled vessel rather than let the Soviets get their hands on it, and, but for your suggestion, I would have given him a go-ahead.
“But making a replica of the ship in plastic was less than a two-hour job. The materials were at hand; a special foam plastic is used as insulation from the chill of the lunar substrata. The foam plastic was impregnated with ammonium nitrate and foamed up with pure oxygen; since it is catalyst-setting, that could be done at low temperatures. The outside of the form was covered with metallized plastic, also impregnated with ammonium nitrate. I understand that the thing burned like unconfined gunpowder after it was planted in the path of the Soviet moon-cats and set off. The Soviet vehicles are on their way back to their base now.”
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 ship. 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 ship 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 glasses. “The way it stands now, the ship 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 glasses 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.”