And why, the reader asks, were not at least some of those named persons arrested before Election Day? And your historian must answer frankly that he does not know. He is not a lawyer. It would be of interest—to some few of us—to follow in detail at least one of those days of legal battling in one of the high courts of the land; to quote verbatim at least a few of the many thousands of pages of transcript: but to most of us the technicalities involved would be boring in the extreme.
But couldn't the voters tell easily enough which side was on the offensive and which on the defensive? Which pressed for action and which insisted on postponement and delay? They could have, easily enough, if they had cared enough about the basic issues involved to make the necessary mental effort, but almost everyone was too busy doing something else. And it was so much easier to take somebody else's word for it. And finally, thinking is an exercise to which all too few brains are accustomed.
But Morgan neither ranted nor raved nor blustered when he sat in conference with his faintly-blue superior, who had come storming in as soon as he had learned of the crushing defeat of the Black fleet. The Kalonian was very highly concerned; so much so that the undertone of his peculiar complexion was turning slowly to a delicate shade of green.
"How did that happen? How could it happen? Why was I not informed of the Patrol's real power—how could you be guilty of such stupidity? Now I'll have to report to Scrwan of the Eich. He's pure, undiluted poison—and if word of this catastrophe ever gets up to Ploor...!!!"
"Come down out of the stratosphere, Fernald," Morgan countered, bitingly. "Don't try to make me the goat—I won't sit still for it. It happened because they could build a bigger fleet than we could. You were in on that—all of it. You knew what we were doing, and approved it—all of it. You were as badly fooled as I was. You were not informed because I could find out nothing—I could learn no more of their Bennett than they could of our Petrine. As to reporting, you will of course do as you please; but I would advise you not to cry too much before you're really hurt. This battle isn't over yet, my friend."
The Kalonian had been a badly shaken entity; it was a measure of his state of mind that he did not liquidate the temerarious Tellurian then and there. But since Morgan was as undisturbed as ever, and as sure of himself, he began to regain his wonted aplomb. His color became again its normal pale blue.
"I will forgive your insubordination this time, since there were no witnesses, but use no more such language to me," he said, stiffly. "I fail to perceive any basis for your optimism. The only chance now remaining is for you to win the election, and how can you do that? You are—must be—losing ground steadily and rapidly."
"Not as much as you might think." Morgan pulled down a large, carefully-drawn chart. "This line represents the hide-bound Nationalists, whom nothing we can do will alienate from the party; this one the equally hide-bound Cosmocrats. The balance of power lies, as always, with the independents—these here. And many of them are not as independent as is supposed. We can buy or bring pressure to bear on half of them—that cuts them down to this size here. So, no matter what the Patrol does, it can affect only this relatively small block here, and it is this block we are fighting for. We are losing a little ground, and steadily, yes; since we can't conceal from anybody with half a brain the fact that we're doing our best to keep the cases from ever coming to trial. But here's the actual observed line of sentiment, as determined from psychological indices up to yesterday; here is the extrapolation of that line to Election Day. It forecasts us to get just under forty nine percent of the total vote."
"And is there anything cheerful about that?" Fernald asked frostily.
"I'll say there is!" Morgan's big face assumed a sneering smile, an expression never seen by any voter. "This chart deals only with living, legally registered, bona-fide voters. Now if we can come that close to winning an absolutely honest election, how do you figure we can possibly lose the kind this one is going to be? We're in power, you know. We've got this machine and we know how to use it."