In the Balance

10

Vyacheslav Molotov glanced around the room. Here was a sight that would have been impossible to imagine a few months before: diplomats from Allies and Axis, imperialists and progressives, fascists and Communists and capitalists, all gathered together to seek a common strategy against a common foe.

Had Molotov been a different man, he might have smiled. As it was, his expression never wavered. He had been in a place more unimaginable than this when he floated feather-light in the Lizard leader’s bake-oven of a chamber hundreds of kilometers above the Earth. But this London room was remarkable enough.

The room might have been anywhere in the world It was in London because Great Britain lay relatively close to all the powers here save only Japan because the Lizards hadn’t invaded the islands, and because their attacks on shipping were haphazard enough to have given everyone a reasonable chance of arriving safely. And, indeed, everyone had arrived safely, though the conference was starting late because the Japanese foreign minister had been delayed zigzagging around the Lizard-held areas of North America.

The only disadvantage Molotov could see to meeting in London was that it gave Winston Churchill the right to preside. Molotov had nothing personal against Churchill-though imperialist, he was a staunch anti-fascist, and without him Britain might well have folded up and come to terms with the Hitlerites in 1940. That would have left the Soviet Union in a bad way when the Nazis turned east the next year.

No, it wasn’t personal animosity. But Churchill did have a habit of going on and on. He was by all accounts a master orator in English. Molotov, unfortunately, spoke no English; even masterful oratory, when understood only through the murmurs of an interpreter, soon palled.

That didn’t bother Churchill. Round and plump and ruddy-faced, waving a long cigar, he looked the very picture of a capitalist oppressor. But his words were defiant: “We cannot yield another inch of ground to these creatures. It would mean slavery for the human race forevermore.”

“If we didn’t all agree in this, we would not be here today,” Cordell Hull said. The U.S. secretary of state raised a wry eyebrow. “Count Ciano isn’t, for instance.”

Molotov appreciated the dig at the Italians, who had given up even pretending to fight the Lizards a couple of weeks before. The Italians had named fascism, and now they showed its bankruptcy by yielding essentially at the first blow. The Germans at least had the courage of their convictions; Mussolini seemed to lack, both.

Translators murmured to their principals. Joachim von Ribbentrop spoke fluent English, so the five leaders got along with three languages and thus only two interpreters per man. That made the talks cumbersome, but not unmanageably so.

Shigenori Togo said, “I feel our primary goal here is not so much to affirm the fight against the Lizards, with which we all agree, but to ensure that we do not allow the hostilities previously existing among ourselves adversely to affect our struggle.”

“That is a good point,” Molotov said. The Soviet Union and Japan had been neutral, which allowed each of them to devote its full energies to foes it reckoned more important (though Japan’s foes were the USSR’s allies in its battle against Germany, Japan’s Axis partner-diplomacy could be a strange business).

“Yes, it is,” Cordell Hull said. “We have come a long way in that direction, Mr. Togo-a short while ago, you’d not have been welcome in London, and even less welcome traveling across the United States to get here.” Togo bowed in his seat, politely acknowledging the American’s reply.

Churchill said, “Another point we must address is the trouble we have rendering aid to one another. As matters now stand, we must sneak about on our own world like so many mice fearing the cat. It is intolerable; it shall not stand.”

“Bravely spoken as usual, Comrade Prime Minister,” Molotov said. “You set forth an important and inspiring principle, but unfortunately offer no means of putting it into effect.”

“To find such a means is the reason we have agreed to meet in spite of past differences,” Ribbentrop said.

Molotov did not dignify that with a reply. If Churchill’s gift was for inspiration, the Nazi foreign minister’s was for stating the obvious. Molotov wondered why the pompous, posturing fool couldn’t have been in Berlin, when it disappeared from the face of the earth. Hitler might have had to replace him with a capable diplomat.

Air-raid sirens began to wail. Lizard jets shrieked by on low-level attack runs. Antiaircraft guns pounded-not as many as warded Moscow, Molotov thought, but a goodly number. None of the diplomats at the table moved. Everyone looked at everyone, else for signs of fear and tried not to give any of his own. They had all come under air attack before.

“Times like these make me wish I were back in the wine business,” Ribbentrop said, lightly. He had animal courage, if nothing else; he’d been decorated for bravery during the First World War.

“I want those God-damned planes shot down,” Churchill said, as if giving someone unseen an order. If only it were that easy, Molotov thought. If Stalin could have done it by giving-an order, the Lizards would long since have ceased to trouble us-as would the Hitlerites Some things unfortunately yielded to no man’s orders. Maybe that was why foolish people imagined gods into being: to have someone whose orders were sure to be obeyed.

A stick of bombs crashed down not far from the Foreign Office building. The noise was cataclysmic. Windows rattled. One broke and fell in tinkling shards to the floor. The interpreters were less obliged to show sangfroid than the men they served. Several of them muttered; one of Ribbentrop’s aides crossed himself and began fingering a rosary.

More bombs fell. Another window broke, or rather blew inward. A fragment of glass flew past Molotov’s head and shattered against the wall. The translator who’d been praying cried out and clapped a hand to his cheek. Blood leaked between his fingers. So much for your imaginary God, Molotov thought. As usual, though, his face revealed nothing of what went on in his mind.

“If you like, gentlemen, we can adjourn to the shelter in the basement,” Churchill said.

Interpreters looked hopefully at foreign ministers. Molotov checked his confreres. None of them said anything, in spite of the suggestion’s obvious good sense. Molotov took the bull by the horns. “Yes, let us do that, Comrade Prime Minister. In all candor, our lives are valuable to the nations we serve. Foolish displays of bravado gain us nothing, if we can keep safe, we should do so.”

Almost as one, the diplomats and interpreters rose from their seats and moved toward the door. No one thanked Molotov for cutting through the facade of bourgeois manners, but he’d expected no thanks from class enemies. As the Soviet foreign minister set foot on the stairs leading down, another irony struck him. For all their advanced technology, the Lizards appeared in Marxist-Leninist terms still to be in the ancient economic organizational system, using slave labor and plunder from captive races to maintain their imperial superstructure. Next to them, even Churchill-even Ribbentrop! — was progressive. The thought amused and appalled Molotov at the same time.

Another stick of bombs shook the Foreign Office as the diplomats descended to the cellar. Cordell Hull slipped and almost fell, catching himself at the last instant by grabbing the shoulder of the Japanese interpreter in front of him.

“Jesus Christ!” the secretary of state exclaimed. Molotov understood that without translation, though the American pronounced Christ as if it were Chwist. Hull followed it with several more sharp-sounding remarks.

“What is he saying?” Molotov asked his English-speaking translator.

“Oaths,” the man answered. “Forgive me, Comrade Foreign Commissar, but I do not follow them easily. The American’s accent is different from Churchill’s, with which I am more familiar. When he speaks deliberately, I have no trouble understanding him, but the twang he gives his words when he is excited makes them difficult for me.”

“Do your utmost,” Molotov said. He hadn’t thought about there being more than one dialect of English; to him it was all equally incomprehensible. Stalin and Mikoyan spoke Russian with an accent, of course, but that was because the one came from Georgia and the other from Armenia. The interpreter seemed to imply something else, more like the differences between the Russian of a kolkhoznik near the Polish border (the former Polish border Molotov thought) and that of a Moscow factory worker.

The shelter proved low-roofed, crowded, and smelly. Molotov looked around scornfully: was this the best the British could protect their essential personnel? Corresponding quarters in Moscow were farther underground, surely better armored, and much more spacious.

Clerks and officials gave the diplomats as much room as they could, which was not a great deal. Churchill said, “Shall we continue, gentlemen?”

Molotov wondered if he had lost his mind. Resume, in front of all these people? Then he reflected that what happened here was not likely to be reported back to the Lizards; unlike the powers negotiating today, the invaders had no long-established spy network to pick up their rivals’ every word.

But then he realized that might not matter. He said, “I make no secret”-which meant Stalin had told him to make no secret-“of the fact that I have met the enemy’s commanding officer in his ship above the Earth. As I expected, those negotiations proved fruitless, the Lizards demanding nothing less than the unconditional surrender we all find unacceptable. In the course of the meeting, however, I also learned the German foreign minister had held talks with this Atvar creature. I desire to know now whether this also holds true for Great Britain, the United States, and Japan. If so, I desire to know the status of their conversations with the Lizards. In short, are we in danger of betrayal from within?”

Joachim von Ribbentrop spluttered something indignant in German, then switched to English. The translator murmured into Molotov’s ear: “Yes, I discussed certain matters with the Lizards. After the fire that fell on Berlin, this is surely understandable, not so? I betrayed nothing, however, and resent the imputation. As proof I offer the Reich’s continuing struggle against the invading forces.”

“No imputation was intended,” Molotov said, though he remembered Atvar had implied Ribbentrop was more pliable than the German painted himself. Of course, it was as likely the Lizard lied for his own advantage as that Ribbentrop did so. More likely still, they both lied. Molotov resumed: “What of the rest of you?”

Cordell Hull said, “I haven’t done any of this Buck Rogers stuff.” (“By which he means he has not traveled into space,” the interpreter glossed.) “No one from the government of the United States has. We have held lower-level talks with the Lizards on our soil regarding such matters as transportation of food and other noncombat supplies to areas they control, and we are also attempting to arrange exchanges of prisoners of war.”

Soft, Molotov thought. The handful of prisoners the Soviets had taken from the invaders were interrogated until no longer useful and then disposed of, just as if they were Germans or kulaks with important information. As for supplying food to Lizard-held areas, Moscow had enough trouble feeding the people it still ruled. Those the Lizards had overrun made useful partisans and spies, but that was all.

Shigenori Togo spoke in German; Molotov remembered he had a German wife. The Soviet foreign minister’s English-speaking interpreter also knew German. He translated for Molotov: “He says there is no excuse for treating with this enemy.”

Ribbentrop scowled at the Japanese representative. Ignoring the glare, Togo switched to his own language and went on for some time. Molotov’s other translator took over: “The Emperor Hirohito’s government has consistently refused to deal with the Lizards except on the battlefield. We see no reason to discontinue this policy. We shall continue to fight until events prove favorable for us. We understand this fight will be difficult; that is why I am here today. But Japan will fight on regardless of the course any other nation may take.”

“The same holds true for Britain,” Churchill declared. “We may talk with the foe, consistent with the usages of war, but we shall not surrender to him. Resistance is our sacred duty to our children.”

“You say this now,” Ribbentrop said. “But what will you say when the Lizards strike London or Washington or Tokyo or Moscow with the same dreadful weapon that destroyed Berlin?”

Silence reigned for the next several seconds. It was a better question than Molotov had expected from the plump, prosperous, foolish Ribbentrop. He did notice the Nazi foreign minister had put the Soviet capital last on his list. Annoyed by that, he said, “Comrade Stalin has pledged a fight to the finish, and the Soviet workers and people shall hold to the pledge, come what may. In any case, if I may use a bourgeois analogy, having continued to resist despite wholesale murder at the hands of Germany, we shall not quail at the prospect of retail murder from the Lizards.”

Ribbentrop’s protuberant blue eyes glared balefully. Shigenori Togo, whose nation had been at war with neither the Soviet Union nor Germany when the Lizards came, was in the best position to address both their representatives: “Such talk as this, gentlemen, aids no one but the invaders. Of course we remember our own quarrels, but to use them to interfere with the struggle against the Lizards is shortsighted.”

He could not have picked a better word to gain Molotov’s attention. The ineluctable nature of the historical dialectic made Marxist-Leninists long-term planners almost by instinct. The Five-Year Plans that had made the Soviet Union an industrial match for Germany were a case in point.

Molotov said, “I merely used the analogy to demonstrate that we shall not be intimidated by brute force. In fact, the Soviet Union and Germany are even now cooperating in areas where our two states can effectively bring combined resources to bear against the common enemy.” He stopped there. Another word would have been too much.

Ribbentrop nodded. “We will do what we must do to secure final victory.”

Glee danced behind Molotov’s unchanging visage. He would have bet a prewar Crimean dacha against a trip to the gulag that Ribbentrop had no idea what sort of cooperation he’d meant. He knew perfectly well that he would never have told the pompous ass anything important.

“Instead of bemoaning the dreadful weapons the Lizards have, one of the things we should be doing is discovering how to make them for ourselves,” Cordell Hull said. “I am authorized by President Roosevelt to tell you all that the United States has such a program in progress, and that we will share resources with our allies in the struggle.”

“The United States and Britain are already operating under such an arrangement,” Churchill said, adding with a touch of smugness, “nor is the sharing to which Secretary Hull referred by any means a one-way street.”

Now Molotov’s stony facade trapped amazement. Had he been as indiscreet as Hull, he’d have earned-and deserved-a bullet in the back of the head. Yet the American secretary of state spoke at his president’s orders. Astonishing! Molotov more easily understood the Lizards than the United States. Combining the technical expertise implicit in Hull’s words with such unbelievable naivete… Incredible-and dangerous.

Ribbentrop said, “We are prepared to cooperate with any nation against the Lizards.”

“As are we,” Togo said.

Everyone looked at Molotov. Seeing silence would not serve here, he said, “I have already stated that the Soviet Union is currently working with Germany on projects of benefit to both nations. We have no objection in principle to pursuing similar collaborative efforts with other states actively resisting the Lizards.”

He glanced round the tight circle of diplomats. Ribbentrop actually smiled at him. Churchill, Hull, and Togo remained expressionless, save that one of Churchill’s eyebrows rose a little. Unlike the Nazi buffoon, they’d noticed he hadn’t really promised anything. A wide gap lay between “no objection in principle” and genuine cooperation. Well, too bad. If they wanted to keep fighting the Lizards, they were in no position to call him on it.

Cordell Hull said, “Another area of concern for all of us is dealing with nations which have, for whatever reasons, made devil’s bargains with the Lizards.” He ran a hand through the strands of gray hair he’d combed over the top of a mostly bald skull. The Americas had a lot of nations like that.

“Many of them will have done so only under compulsion, and may well remain willing to carry on the fight and to work with us even while nominally under the invaders’ yoke,” Churchill said.

“That may be true in some cases,” Molotov agreed. His own judgment was that Churchill kept the cockeyed optimism which he’d demonstrated in defying Hitler after British forces were booted out of Europe in 1940. That kind of optimism often led to disaster, but sometimes it saved nations. Bourgeois military “experts” hadn’t given the Red Army six weeks of life against the Wehrmacht-but the Soviets were still fighting almost a year later when the Lizards came to complicate the situation yet again.

Molotov went on, “Partisan movements against both the invaders and the governments collaborating with them should also be organized and armed as expeditiously as possible. Leaders who favor submission must be removed by whatever means prove necessary.” He said the last with a hard look at Joachim von Ribbentrop.

The German foreign minister was dense, but not too dense to miss that message. “The Fuhrer still feels a personal fondness for Mussolini,” he said, sounding more than a little embarrassed.

“No accounting for taste,” Churchill rumbled. “Still, Minister Molotov is correct: we are past the stage where personal likes and dislikes ought to influence policy. The sooner Mussolini is dead and buried, the better for all of us. Some German forces remain in Italy. They might well be the ones to give him the boot, or rather take him from it for good.”

The interpreter stumbled over the idioms in the last sentence, but Molotov got the gist. He added, “Having the Pope join Mussolini in the grave would also be a progressive development. Since the Lizards do not interfere with his bleating preachments, he fawns on them like a cur.”

“But would a successor prove any better?” Shigenori Togo asked. “Along with this, we must also ask ourselves whether making the Pope into a martyr would in the long run prove harmful by generating hatred for our cause among Catholics all over the world.”

“This may perhaps need to be considered,” Molotov admitted at last. His own instinct was to strike at organized religion wherever and however he could. But the Japanese foreign minister had a point-the political repercussions might be severe. The Pope had no divisions, but many more followed him than had backed Leon Trotsky, now dead with an ice ax in his brain. Not one to yield ground lightly, Molotov added, “Perhaps the Pope could be eliminated in a way which makes the Lizards appear responsible.”

Cordell Hull screwed up his face. “This talk of assassination is repugnant to me.”

Soft, Molotov thought again. The United States, large, rich, powerful, and shielded by broad oceans east and west, had long enjoyed the historical luxury of softness. Not even two world wars had made Americans feel in their guts how dangerous a place the world was. But if they could not awake to reality with the Lizards in their own back yard, they would never have another chance.

“In war, one does what one must,” Churchill said, as if gently reproving the secretary of state. The British prime minister could see past his button of a nose.

The all-clear sirens began to wail. Molotov listened to the long sigh of relief that came from the Foreign Office workers all around. They’d got through to the far side of another raid. None of them thought that only meant they’d have the dubious privilege of facing another soon.

The office staff formed a neat queue to leave the shelter and get back to work. Molotov had seen endless queues in the Soviet Union, but this one seemed somehow different. He needed a few seconds to put his finger on why Soviet citizens queued up with a mixture of anger and resignation, because they had no other way to get what they needed. (and because they suspected even queuing up often did no good). The English were more polite about it, as if they’d silently decided it was the one proper thing to do.

Their revolution is coming, too, Molotov thought, to sweep away such bourgeois affectations. Meanwhile, affected bourgeois though they were, they seemed likely to stay in the fight against the Lizards. So did the other three powers, though Molotov still had his doubts about Germany: any nation that let a nonentity like Ribbentrop become foreign minister had something inherently wrong with it. But the chief capitalist states were not giving up yet, even if Italy had stabbed them in the back. That was what he’d needed to learn, and that was the word he would take back to Stalin.

Sam Yeager shepherded two Lizards down the corridor of the Zoology Building of the Hull Biological Laboratories. He still carried his rifle and wore a tin hat, but that was more because he’d grown used to them than because he thought he’d need them. The Lizards made docile prisoners-more docile than he’d have been if they’d caught him, he thought.

He stopped in front of room 227A. The Lizards stopped, too. “In here, Samyeager?” one of them asked in hissing English. All the Lizard POWs pronounced his own name as if it were one word; what their mouths did to Sam Finkelstein was purely a caution.

Yeager got the idea his command of their tongue was as villainous as their English. He was doing his best with it, though, and answered, “Yes, in here, Ullhass, Ristin, brave males.” He opened the door with the frosted-glass window, gestured with the barrel of the rifle for them to precede him.

In the outer office, a girl was clattering away on a noisy old Underwood. She stopped when the door opened. Her smile of greeting froze when she saw the two Lizards. “It’s all right, ma’m,” Yeager said quickly. “They’re here to see Dr. Burkett. You must be new, or else you’d know about them.”

“Yes, it’s my first day on the job,” answered the girl-actually, Yeager saw with a second look, she was probably in her late twenties, maybe even early thirties. His eyes flicked automatically to the third finger of her left hand. It had a ring. Too bad.

Dr. Burkett came out of his sanctum. He greeted Ullhass and Ristin in their own language; he was more fluent than Yeager, though he hadn’t been learning for nearly as long. That’s why he’s a fancy-pants professor and I’m a bush-league outfielder, Yeager thought without much resentment. Besides, the Lizards liked him better than they did Burkett; they said so every time they went back to their own quarters.

Now, though, Burkett waved them into his office, shut the door behind them. “Isn’t that dangerous?” the girl asked nervously.

“Shouldn’t be,” Yeager answered. “The Lizards aren’t troublemakers. Besides, Burkett’s window, is barred, so they can’t get away. And besides one more time”-he pulled out a chair-“I sit here until they come out, and I go in and get ’em if they don’t come out inside of a couple of hours.” He reached into his shirt pocket, drew out a pack of Chesterfields (not his brand, but you took what you could get these days) and a Zippo. “Would you like a cigarette, uh-?”

“I’m sorry. I’m Barbara Larssen. Yes, I’d love one, thanks.” She tapped it against the desk, put it in her mouth, leaned forward to let him light it. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked in smoke. She held it, then blew a long plume at the ceiling. “Oh, that’s nice. I haven’t had one in a couple of days.” She took another long drag.

Yeager introduced himself before he lit his own smoke. “Don’t let me get in your way if you’re busy,” he said. “Just pretend I’m part of the furniture.”

“I’ve been typing nonstop since half past seven this morning, so I could use a break,” Barbara said, smiling again.

“Okay,” Yeager said agreeably. He leaned back in his chair, watched her. She was worth watching: not a movie-star beauty or anything like that, but pretty all the same, with a round, smiling face, green eyes, and dark blond hair that was growing out straight though its ends still showed permanent waves. To make conversation, he said, “Your husband off fighting?”

“No.” That should have been good news, but her smile faded anyhow. She went on: “He was working here at the university-at the Metallurgical Laboratory, as a matter of fact. But he drove to Washington a few weeks ago. He should have been back long since, but-” She finished the cigarette with three quick savage puffs, ground it out in a square glass ashtray that sat by her typewriter.

“I hope he’s all right.” Yeager meant it. If the fellow needed to travel bad enough to do it with the Lizards on the loose, he was up to something important. For that matter, Yeager wasn’t the sort to wish bad luck on anybody.

“So do I.” Barbara Larssen did a game best to hold fear out of her voice, but he heard it all the same. She pointed to the pack of Chesterfields. “I hope you won’t think I’m just scrounging off you, but could I have another one of those?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks.” She nodded to herself as she started to smoke the second cigarette. “That is good.” She tapped ash into the ashtray. When she saw Yeager’s eyes follow the motion of her hand, she let out a rueful laugh. “Typing is hell on my nails; I’ve already broken one and chipped the polish on three others. But after a while I got to the point where I couldn’t stand just sitting around cooped up in my apartment any more, so I thought I’d try to do something useful instead.”

“Makes sense to me.” Yeager got up, stubbed out his own smoke. He didn’t light another for himself; he wasn’t sure where his next pack was coming from. He said, “I suppose keeping busy helps take your mind off things, too.”

“It does, some, but not as much as I hoped it would.” Barbara pointed to the door behind which Dr. Burkett was studying the Lizards. “How did you end up standing guard over those-things?”

“I was part of the unit that captured them, out west of here,” he answered.

“Good for you. But how did you get picked to stay with them, I mean? Did you draw the short straw, or what?”

Yeager chuckled. “Nope. Matter of fact, I broke an old Army rule-I volunteered.”

“You did?” Her eyebrows shot upward. “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

Rather sheepishly, he explained about his fondness for science fiction. Her eyebrows moved again; this time, their inner ends came together in a tight little knot above her nose. He’d seen that expression before, more times than he could easily count. “You don’t care for the stuff,” he said.

“No, not really,” Barbara said. “I was doing graduate work in medieval English literature before Jens had to move here from Berkeley, so it’s not my cup of tea.” But then she paused and looked thoughtful. “Still, I suppose it’s done a better job of preparing you for what’s happening here than Chaucer has for me.”

“Mmm-maybe so.” Sam had been ready with his usual hot defense of what he read for pleasure; finding out he didn’t need it left him feeling like a portable phonograph that had been wound up and forgotten without a record on its turntable.

Barbara said, “As for me, if I couldn’t type, I’d still be stuck in that Bronzeville flat.”

“Bronzeville?” Now Yeager’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t know a lot about Chicago”-If I’d ever played here, I would (the thought was there and gone fast as a Lizard jet)-“but I do know that’s not the real good part of town.”

“Nobody’s ever bothered me,” Barbara said. “With the Lizards here, the differences between whites and Negroes look pretty small all of a sudden, don’t they?”

“I suppose so,” Yeager said, though he didn’t sound convinced even to himself. “But whatever color they are, you’ll find more than its share of crooks in Bronzeville. Hmm-tell you what. What time do you get off here?”

“Whenever Dr. Burkett feels like turning me loose, it sounds like,” she answered. “I already told you, I’m new on the job. Why?”

“I’d walk you home, if you like… Hey, what’s so darn funny?”

Laughing still, Barbara Larssen threw back her head and made a noise that might have been a wolf’s howl. Yeager’s cheeks turned hot. Barbara said, “I think my husband might approve of that idea in the abstract, but not walking along the concrete, if you know what I mean.”

“That’s not what I had in mind at all,” Yeager protested. Not until the words were out of his mouth did he realize he wasn’t telling the whole truth. The front of his mind had made the offer innocently enough, but some deeper part knew he might have kept quiet if he hadn’t found her attractive. He was embarrassed that she’d seen through him faster than he saw through himself.

“No harm in your asking, and I’m sure it was kindly meant,” she said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. “Men only turn really annoying when they can’t hear ‘no thank you’ or don’t believe it, and I see you’re not like that.”

“Okay,” he said, as noncommittal a noise as he could come up with.

Barbara put out her second cigarette, looked at her wristwatch (the electric clock on the wall wasn’t running), and said, “I’d better get back to work.” She bent over the typewriter. Her fingers flew; the keys made machine-gun bursts of noise. Yeager had known a few reporters who could crank more words a minute than Barbara was putting out now, but not many.

He leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t imagine an easier duty: unless something went wrong inside Dr. Burkett’s office, or unless Burkett needed to ask him something (not likely, since the scientist seemed convinced he already knew everything himself), he had nothing to do but sit around and wait.

A lot of people would have got bored in a hurry. Being a veteran of long hours on trains and buses, Yeager was made of tougher stuff than that. He thought about baseball, about the science fiction he read to kill time between one town and the next, about the Lizards, about his small taste of combat (plenty to last him a lifetime if he got his way, which he probably wouldn’t).

And he thought about Barbara Larssen. There she sat in front of him, after all. She wasn’t ignoring him, either; every so often, she’d look up from her work and smile. Some of his thoughts were the pleasant but meaningless ones with which any man will while away the time in the presence of a pretty girl. Others had a bitter edge to them: he wished his former wife had cared about him while he was traveling the way Barbara obviously cared about her husband. What was his name? Jens, that was it. Whether he knew it or not, Jens Larssen was one lucky fellow.

After a while, the door to Dr. Burkett’s office opened. Out came Burkett, looking plump and pleased with himself. Out came Ristin and Ullhass. Yeager wasn’t so good at figuring out what their expressions meant, but they weren’t in any obvious distress. Burkett said, “I’ll want to see them again same time tomorrow, soldier.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Yeager, who was not sorry at all, “but they’re scheduled to spend all day tomorrow with a Doctor, uh, Fermi. You’ll have to try another time.”

“I know Dr. Fermi!” Barbara Larssen exclaimed. “Jens works with him.”

“This is most inconvenient,” Dr. Burkett said. “I shall complain to the appropriate military authorities. How is one to conduct a proper experimental program when one’s subjects are snatched away at inconvenient and arbitrary times?”

What that meant, Sam thought, was that Burkett hadn’t bothered to check the schedule before he made his list of experiments. Too bad for him. Aloud, Yeager said, “I’m sorry, sir, but since we have a lot more experts than we do Lizards, we have to spread the Lizards around as best we can.”

“Bah!” Burkett said. “Fermi is just a physicist. What can they possibly have to teach him?”

He plainly meant it as a rhetorical question, but Yeager answered it anyhow: “Don’t you think he might be a little interested in how they came to Earth in the first place, sir?” Burkett stared at, him; maybe he’d assumed joining the Army precluded a man from having a mind of his own.

Barbara said, “Shall I schedule you for another session with the Lizards as soon as they’re available, Dr. Burkett?”

“Yes, do that,” he answered, as if she were part of the furniture. He stamped back into his private chamber, slamming the door behind him. Barbara Larssen and Yeager looked at each other. He grinned; she started to giggle.

“I hope your husband comes home safe, Barbara,” he said quietly.

Her laughter stopped as abruptly as if cut by a knife. “So do I,” she answered. “I’m worried. He’s been gone longer than he said he would.” Her gaze settled on the two Lizards, who stood waiting for Yeager to tell them what to do next. He nodded. Everyone’s life would have been simpler without the Lizards.

“Anybody gives you a bad time because he’s not around, you let me know,” he said. He’d never had a reputation for being a hard case while he was playing ball, but he hadn’t carried around a bayonet-tipped rifle then, either.

“Thanks, Sam; I may do that,” she said. Her tone was just cool enough to let him know again that he shouldn’t be the one who gave her a bad time. He answered with a sober expression that let her know he got the message.

He turned to the Lizards, gestured with his gun. “Come on, you lugs.” He stood aside to let them precede him out of the office. Barbara Larssen picked up the telephone on her desk, made a face, put it down. No dial tone, Yeager guessed-everything was erratic these days. Burkett’s next go-round with the Lizards would have to wait a while.

The Plymouth’s engine made a sudden, dreadful racket, as if it had just been hit by machine-gun fire. Jens Larssen knew a mechanical death rattle when he heard one. On the dashboard panel in front of him, the battery and temperature lights both glowed red. He wasn’t overheated and he knew he still had juice. What he didn’t have any more was a car. It rolled forward another couple of hundred yards, until he pulled off onto the shoulder to keep from blocking Highway 250 for anyone else.

“Shit,” he said as he sat and stared at the dashboard lights. If he hadn’t had to use garbage for fuel so much of the time, if he hadn’t had to try to make his way over bombed-out roads or sometimes over no roads at all, if the damned Lizards had never come… he wouldn’t have been stuck here somewhere in eastern Ohio, two whole states away from where he was supposed to be.

He raised his eyes and looked out through the dusty, bug-splashed windshield. Up ahead, the buildings of a small town dented the skyline. Small-town mechanics had helped keep the car going more than once before. Maybe they could do it again. He had his doubts-the, Plymouth had never made a noise like this one before-but it was something he had to try.

He left the key in the ignition when he got out-good luck to anybody who tried to drive the car away. Slamming the driver’s side door relieved his anger a little. He took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, and started up the road toward the town.

There wasn’t much traffic. In fact, there wasn’t any traffic. He tramped past a couple of cars that looked as if they’d been sitting on the shoulder a lot longer than his, and past a burnt-out wreck that must have been strafed from the air and then shoved over to the roadside, but no cars passed him. All he could hear was his own footfalls on asphalt.

Just outside the outskirts of town, he came to a signboard: WELCOME TO STRASBURG, HOME OF GARVER BROTHERS-WORLD’S BIGGEST LITTLE STORE. Below that, in smaller letters, it said POPULATION (1930), 1,305.

Jens blew air out between his lips to make a snuffling noise. Here was Smalltown U.S.A., all right: even though the “new” census was already two years old, the mayor or whoever hadn’t got around to fixing the numbers yet. Why bother, when they probably hadn’t changed by more than a couple of dozen?

He walked on. The first gas station he came to was closed and locked. A big fat spider was sitting in a web spun between two of the gas pumps, so it had likely been closed for a while. That didn’t look encouraging.

The drugstore half a block farther on had its door open. He decided to go in and see what they had at their soda fountain. At the moment, he wouldn’t have turned down anything cold and wet, or even warm and wet. He still had some money in his pocket; Colonel Groves had been generous down in White Sulphur Springs. Being treated as a national resource was something he’d have no trouble getting used to.

Gloom filled the inside of the drugstore; the electricity was out. “Anybody in here?” Larssen called, peering, down the aisles.

“Back here,” a woman answered. But that wasn’t the only answer he got. From much closer came startled hisses. Two Lizards walked around a display of Wildroot Creme Oil that was taller than they were. One carried a gun; the other had his arms full of flashlights and batteries.

Larssen’s first impulse was to turn around and run like hell. He hadn’t known he’d blundered into enemy-held territory. He felt as if he were carrying a sign that said DANGEROUS HUMAN-NUCLEAR PHYSICIST in letters three feet high. Fortunately, he didn’t give in to the impulse. As he realized after a moment, to the Lizards he was just another person: for all they knew, he might have lived in Strasburg.

The Lizards skittered out of the drugstore with their loot. “They didn’t pay for it!” Jens exclaimed. It was, on reflection, the stupidest thing he’d ever said in his life.

The woman back near the pharmacy had too much sense even to notice idiocy. “They didn’t shoot me, either, so I guess it’s square,” she said. “Now what can I do for you?”

Confronted by such unshakable matter-of-factness, Larssen responded in kind: “My car broke down outside of town. I’m looking for somebody to fix it. And if you have a Coca-Cola or something like that, I’ll buy it from you.”

“I have Pepsi-Cola,” the woman said. “Five dollars.”

That was robbery worse than back at White Sulphur Springs, but Larssen paid without a whimper. The Pepsi-Cola, unrefrigerated and fizzy, went down like nectar of the gods. It tried to come up again, too; Jens wondered if you could explode from containing carbonation. When his eyes stopped watering, he said, “Now, about my car…”

“Charlie Tompkins runs a garage up on North Wooster, just past Garver Brothers.” The woman pointed to show him where North Wooster was. “If anybody can help you, he’s probably the one. Thank you for shopping at Walgreen’s, sir.”

He wondered if she’d have said that to the Lizards had he not come in and interrupted her. Very likely, he thought; nothing seemed to faze her. When he handed her the empty soda bottle, she rang up NO SALE on the cash register, reached in, and took out a penny, which she handed to him. “Your deposit, sir.”

Bemused, he pocketed the coin. Deposits hadn’t gone up with prices. Of course not, he thought-shopkeepers have to pay out deposits.

Strasburg wasn’t big enough to get lost in; he found North Wooster without difficulty. An enormous sign proclaimed the presence of the Garver Brothers store. The signboard outside of town, unlike a lot of small-town signboards, hadn’t exaggerated: the store sprawled over a couple of acres. The parking lot off to one side had room for hundreds of cars. At the moment, it held none.

That did not mean it was empty. Trucks ignored the white lines painted on concrete. They were not trucks of a sort Jens had seen before: they were bigger, somehow smoother of outline, quieter. When one of them rolled away, it didn’t rattle or rumble or roar. No smoke belched from its exhaust.

The Lizards were plundering Garver Brothers.

A couple of them stood in front of the store, guns at the ready, in case the small crowd of people across the street got boisterous. In the face of that firepower, and of everything the Lizards had behind it, nobody seemed inclined toward boisterousness.

Jens joined the crowd. Two or three people gave him sidelong looks: he was a Stranger, with a capital S. He’d grown up in a small town before he went off to college; he knew he could live here for twenty years and still be thought a stranger, though perhaps by then a lower-case one.

“Damn shame,” somebody said. Somebody else nodded. Larssen didn’t. As someone from out of town, his opinion was, automatically less than worthless. He just stood and watched.

The Lizards knew the kinds of goods they wanted. They came out of Garver Brothers with coils of copper wire slung over their scaly shoulders, with hand tools of all sorts, with an electric generator trundled along on a wheeled cart, with a lathe on another cart.

Jens tried to find a pattern to their depredations. At first he saw none. Then he realized most of what the Lizards were taking was tools that would help them make things of their own rather than already finished products of Earthly manufacture.

He scratched his head, not quite knowing what to make of that. It might have been a sign the invaders were settling in for a long stay. On the other hand, it might also have meant their own resources were short and they were having to eke them out with whatever they could steal. If that was so, it was encouraging.

“They’re just a bunch of damn chicken thieves, that’s what they are,” someone in the crowd said as another truck rolled away. Most of the rest of the people murmured agreement. This time, Larssen did let himself nod. Whatever their reasons for cleaning out Garver Brothers, the Lizards were doing a good, workmanlike job of it.

A vehicle came up Wooster Street toward the store. It was about as far removed as possible from the smooth, silent trucks the Lizards ran: it was a horse-drawn buggy, driven by a bearded man with a broad-brimmed black hat. He pulled into the parking lot as casually as if it had been filled with Fords and De Sotos, put a feed bag on his horse’s nose, and strode toward the guarded front door.

“The Amish have been coming to Garver Brothers for years,” someone observed.

“I wish I had me a buggy like that,” somebody else said. “A horse’ll run on grass, but my car sure as hell won’t.”

The Lizards with guns blocked the Amish farmer’s path into the store. He spoke to them; since he didn’t raise his voice and his back was turned, Larssen couldn’t make out what he said. He braced himself for trouble all the same.

Another Lizard came bounding up to the doorway. Maybe he spoke English, because the farmer started talking to him instead of to the guards. And then, to Jens’ surprise, the aliens stood aside and let him go in. He emerged a few minutes later with a shovel, a pickax, and a bolt of black cloth. Nodding politely to the Lizards as he passed them he returned to his wagon climbed in and rolled away.

He didn’ t want anything the Lizards needed so they let him have his stuff, Jens thought. That was smart of them. As for the farmer, he might not have seen them as being that different from anyone else who failed to share his own rigorous faith. The idea of living in a simple, orderly world with strict laws held no small appeal for Larssen: as a physicist, he thought well of order and law and predictability. But the tools he used to seek them were necessarily more complex than pick and shovel, horse and buggy.

That reminded him why he’d come this way in the first place. “Does anybody know if Charlie Tompkins’ garage is open?” he asked.

“Not right now it isn’t,” said the fellow who’d called the Lizards chicken thieves, “on account of I’m Charlie Tompkins. What can I do for you, stranger?”

“My car broke down about a mile outside of town,” Larssen answered. “Any chance you can take a look at it?”

The mechanic laughed. “Don’t see why not. I’m not what you’d call real busy these days-I expect you can tell that by lookin’. What’s your machine doin’, anyhow?” When Jens described the symptoms, Tompkins looked grave. “That doesn’t sound so good. Well, we’ll go see. Come on up to my shop so as I can get some tools.”

As the woman at the drugstore had said, the garage lay just a little past the Garver Brothers store. Tompkins picked up his tool kit. It didn’t look light, so Larssen said, “I’ll carry it for you, if you like. We’ve got a ways to walk.”

“Don’t worry about it. Here, come on with me.” The mechanic led Larssen over to a bicycle which had a bracket welded to the head tube. The handle of the tool kit fit neatly over the bracket. Tompkins climbed onto the saddle, gestured to Larssen. “You ride behind me. I don’t use any gas this way, a bike’s got fewer parts than a car, and they’re easier for somebody like me to fix if they do break.”

All that made perfect sense, but Jens hadn’t ridden on one of those little flat racks since about the third grade. “Will it carry both of us?” he asked.

Tompkins laughed. “I’ve put bigger men than you back there, my friend. Sure, you’re tall, but you’re built like a pencil. We won’t have any trouble, I promise.”

They didn’t have much. What there was, came because Larssen hadn’t been on any bicycle at all for a good many years, and needed a little while before his body remembered how to balance. Charlie Tompkins compensated for his lurches without saying a word. In a way, that only made them more embarrassing: weren’t you never supposed to forget how to stay on a bicycle? Jens sighed as he did his best not to maim himself while exploding the cliche.

“Whereabouts you from, mister?” Tompkins asked as they rolled past the sign welcoming people to Strasburg.

“Chicago,” Larssen answered.

The mechanic twisted his head. That struck Larssen as foolhardy, but he kept his mouth shut. After a moment, Tompkins turned back to watch where he was going. He spoke over his shoulder: “And you were heading back there, were you, from wherever you were coming from?”

“That’s right. What about it?”

“Nothing, really.” Tompkins pedaled along for a few more seconds, then went on in a sad tone, “Thing is, though, you might not want to say that to just anybody around here who asks. Chicago’s still free, right? Sure it is. I’m not asking whether you would or you wouldn’t, mind, but I can see where you might not want the Lizards to get wind of whatever reasons you’ve got for going that way.”

“How would the Lizards…” Larssen’s voice trailed away. “You don’t mean people would tell them?” He knew the Lizards had human collaborators: the Warsaw Jews, Chinese, Italians, Brazilians. Up till this second, though, he’d never imagined there could be such a thing as an American collaborator. He supposed that was naive of him.

Evidently it was. Tompkins said, “Some people, they’ll do anything to get in good with the boss, no matter who the boss is. Some other people have gotten hurt on account of it.” He didn’t seem to care for the subject, either. Instead of giving details, he took one hand off the handlebars and pointed. “That your car up ahead there, that Plymouth?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.” Tompkins stopped the bike with the soles of his shoes against the asphalt. He and Jens both got off. The mechanic unhooked the tool box, walked over to the deceased automobile, reached through the grill, and popped the hood latch. Once the long piece of sheet metal was up and out of the way, he bent over and peered into the engine compartment.

A low, mournful whistle floated up. “Mister, I hate to tell you, but you got yourself a cracked block.” Another whistle, not much later. “Your valves are shot to shit, too, pardon my French. What the hell you been burnin’ in this machine, anyhow?”

“Whatever I could get my hands on that would burn,” Larssen answered honestly.

“Well, I know how that goes, what with the way things are, but Jesus, even if times were good I couldn’t fix this poor bastard by my lonesome. What with the way things are, I don’t think I can fix her at all. Hate to have to tell you that, but I’m not gonna lie to you, either.”

“How am I supposed to get back to Chicago, then?” Larssen wasn’t really asking Tompkins; it was more a cry to the unhearing gods. When he’d come east through Ohio, the Lizards hadn’t been anywhere near this far north. When he’d come east through Ohio, his car had been in reasonably good shape, too.

“Wouldn’t take you forever to walk there,” Tompkins said. “What is it, maybe three, four hundred miles? Could be done.”

Jens stared at the mechanic in dismay. At least two weeks on shank’s mare, more likely a month? Dodging in and out of the Lizards’ territory? Dodging bandits, too, likely enough (one more thing he’d never expected in America, at least outside the vanished Wild West)? Winter was on the way, too; already the sky had lost the perfect, transparent blue of summer. Barbara would think he was dead by the time he got back-if he got back.

His eye fell on Tompkins’ bicycle. He pointed. “Tell you what-I’ll trade you my set of wheels for yours. You can use the parts that are still good to keep other cars running.” Before the Lizards came, swapping a two-year-old Plymouth for an elderly bicycle would have been insane. Before the Lizards came, of course, his car could have been fixed if it broke down. Before the Lizards came, his car wouldn’t have broken down because he wouldn’t have had to abuse it so.

Now-Now Charlie Tompkins looked from the bike to the Plymouth, slowly shook his head. “What’s the point to that, mister? You take off for Chicago, you gonna carry your car on your back? I’ll get to scavenge it whether I give you my bike or not.”

“Why, you-” Larssen wanted to murder the mechanic. The force of the feeling frightened him, left him almost sick. He wondered how many killings had sprung from the chaos the Lizards spread across the United States, across the world. Times grew ever more desperate, the risk of getting caught shrank… so why not kill, if you needed to?

To fight the temptation, he jammed his hands deep into his trouser pockets. Amidst keys and small change, the fingers of his right hand closed round his cigarette lighter. The Zippo, unlike the Plymouth, would work forever, or at least as long as he could keep coming up with flints. It would also burn moonshine a lot better than the car had.

He yanked out the buffed steel case, flipped open the top. His thumb went to the lighter’s wheel. “You don’t trade me your bike, Charlie, I’ll burn the goddamn car. Let’s see how you like that.”

The mechanic started to grab for a wrench from his tool kit. Larssen’s mouth went dry-maybe he hadn’t been the only one thinking of murder. Then Tompkins’ hand stopped suddenly. His high-pitched laugh sounded unnatural, but it was a laugh. “Godawful times,” he said, to which Jens could only nod. “All right, Larssen, take the bike. I expect I’ll be able to come up with another one from somewheres.”

Larssen relaxed, but not very far. His Zippo might torch the Plymouth, but it didn’t stack up very well against a monkey wrench. He walked over to the rear end of the car, opened the trunk. He took out the smaller of the two suitcases there and a ball of twine, slammed the trunk shut. He did the best job he could of tying the suitcase to the rack on which he’d ridden, then pulled the trunk key off the ring and tossed it to Charlie Tompkins.

He swung his right leg over the bicycle saddle, as if he were mounting a horse. If he’d wobbled as a passenger, he was even more unsteady up there by himself. But he managed to stay upright and keep the bike rolling forward. After a couple of hundred yards, he took a chance and looked back over his shoulder. Tompkins was already going through the suitcase he’d had to leave behind. He scowled and kept pedaling.

The U-2 buzzed through the night, so low that an instant’s inattention or simply a hillock she’d forgotten would have cost Ludmila Gorbunova her life. The Kukuruznik was proving the Soviet Union’s ace in the hole in the war against the Lizards. Newer Red Air Force planes with greater speed and better guns, but also with more metal in their airframes and higher minimum ceilings, had all but vanished from the skies. The obsolescent little biplane trainer, too small, too slow, and too low to be noticed, soldiered on.

The slipstream blew chilly over Ludmila’s goggled face. Fall was in the air. The rains would start any day now. Her lips curled upward in a mirthless smile. The rasputitsa, the time of mud, had hurt the fascists badly last year. She wondered how the Lizards’ armored vehicles would enjoy trying to push forward through slimy porridge.

She also wondered, just for a moment, what her superiors had done with the two Germans she’d delivered to them from the Ukrainian collective farm. Having deadly foes suddenly turn into allies was disconcerting, as was the realization the Nazis were human beings like her own side. Better when they’d seemed only small field-gray shapes scurrying like lice before the bullets from her machine guns.

She glanced down at the map book balanced on her knees. The lights from her instrument panel bet her trace her assigned flight path. She flew over a rivet A quick peek at her watch told her how long she’d been in the alt Yes, it ought to be the Slovechna, which meant she needed to swing farther south… now.

Her breath came short and fast when she spotted lights on the horizon ahead. Some of the Lizards still kept the stupid habit of lighting up their campsites at night. Maybe they thought it made them safer from ground attack. Given the range and power of their weapons, maybe it even did; Ludmila was no Marshal of the Soviet Union, to know everything there was to know about ground tactics. she did know being able to see what she was shooting at made her own job easier.

She couldn’t gain altitude and then glide silently to the attack, as she had against the Nazis. Aircraft that attacked the Lizards from anything much above ground height came down in pieces, a lesson learned from bitter experience. Stay low and you had a chance.

It wasn’t always a good chance. Her air regiment was chewed to bits. She knew of only three or four other pilots from it still flying. The regiment was long since broken up, of course-large concentrations of aircraft on the ground drew the Lizards’ wrath like nothing else. These days, the Kukuruzniks flew by ones and twos, not in formation.

The lighted area swelled ahead of her. Her finger went to the firing button for the machine guns. She spied what looked at first like bumpy ground but proved as she drew nearer to be some sort of vehicles under camouflage netting. Trucks, she thought-Lizard tanks, being almost impervious to human weapons, were seldom concealed so carefully.

She started her firing run. The machine guns hammered under her wings. The little U-2 shook like a leaf in an autumn wind. The flying sparks of tracer bullets helped guide her aim.

Almost in the same instant, the Lizards began shooting back. They owned more firepower than the Germans had been able to bring to bear; by the muzzle flashes on the ground, Ludmila thought ten thousand automatic weapons had opened up on her all at once. The fabric skin of the Kukuruznik’s wings made cheerful popping noises as bullets pierced it.

Then one of the trucks blew up in a blue-white ball of hydrogen fire, so different from the orange flames of blazing petrol. The blast of heat seared Ludmila’s cheeks as she flew past; it tried to fling her aircraft tumbling out of control. She wrestled with stick and pedals, held it steady in the air.

Touched off by the first, more trucks exploded behind her. She gave the U-2 all the meager power it had, banked away toward the friendly darkness. A few Lizards kept shooting at her, but only a few; more ran to fight the fires she’d touched off. As night drew its cloak around her, she took one hand off the stick for a moment, pounded fist against thigh. she’d hurt them this time.

Now to find her way home. Even without flying a combat mission, navigating at night was anything but easy. She straightened onto compass course 047. That would bring her somewhere close to the airstrip from which she’d been operating. She checked her watch and her airspeed indicator, the other vital tools of night flying. After about-hmm-fifty minutes, she’d begin to circle and look for landing lights.

Just surviving a mission was enough to make her proud-and to make her remember all her friends who would never fly again. That thought quickly leached joy from her, leaving behind only weariness and the jittery residue of terror.

Either she was a better navigator than she’d thought or much luckier than usual, for she spotted the dim banding lanterns after only a couple of circles. They were hooded so as not to be visible from high overhead. The Red Air Force had learned the dangers of that from the Luftwaffe; the lesson was all the more vital against the Lizards.

Her approach in the dark was tentative, the makeshift airstrip anything but smooth. The landing she made would have earned only scorn from her Osoaviakhim instructor (she wondered if the man was still alive). she didn’t care. She was down and among her own people and safe-until her next mission. she didn’t even have to think about that, not yet.

As soon as she got out of the U-2, groundcrew started dragging it to cover. A woman mechanic pointed to the bullet holes. Ludmila shrugged. “Patch them as you get the chance, comrade. I’m all right and so is the aircraft.”

“Good,” the mechanic said. “Oh-you have a letter down in the bunker.”

“A letter?” The Soviet post, erratic since the start of the war, had grown frankly chaotic once the Lizards added their ravages to those of the Nazis. Eagerly, Ludmila asked, “From whom?”

“I don’t know. It’s in an envelope, and it doesn’t say on the outside,” the mechanic answered.

“An envelope? Really?” The very occasional letters Ludmila had had from her brothers and her father and mother were all written on folded single sheets of paper, with her name and unit scrawled on the reverse. she’d had only one note since the Lizards came, three hasty lines, from her younger brother Igor, letting her know he was alive. She trotted for the shelter bunker, saying, “I’ll have to see who’s gotten rich.”

Curtains and doglegs in the entry passage kept candlelight from leaking out. Yevdokia Kasherina looked up from the tunic she was darning. “How did it go?” she asked with a fellow pilot’s concern. It was a long way from the formal debriefings of earlier missions, but the Soviet Air Force was too dispersed and battered to have much room for formalities these days.

“Well enough,” Ludmila said. “I shot up some trucks that weren’t hidden well enough, and I got back here alive. Now what’s this I hear about a letter?”

“It’s over there on your blankets,” Yevdokia said, pointing. “You don’t think anyone would dare do anything with it, do you?”

“Better not,” Ludmila said fiercely. Both women laughed. Ludmila hurried over to where she slept. The clean, white envelope gleamed against the dark blue wool of the blankets. She snatched it up, carried it over to a candle.

she’d expected to recognize the script on the envelope at a glance, and thus know who had written to her before she started the letter itself. Hearing from any of her family would be so good… But, to her surprise and disappointment, the handwriting was unfamiliar to her. Indeed, handwriting was too good a word for it; her name and unit were printed in large copybook letters of the sort a bright eight-year-old might make.

“Who’s it from?” Yevdokia asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Ludmila said.

The other pilot laughed. “A secret admirer, Ludmila Gorbunova?”

“Hush.” Ludmila tore open the envelope, pulled out the piece of paper inside. The words on that were also printed rather than written. For a moment, they seemed utterly meaningless to her. Then she realized she had to switch languages and even alphabets: the letter was in German.

Her first reaction was fright. Before the Lizards came, a letter in German would have been delivered by a harsh-faced NKVD man certain she was guilty of treason. But censors must have seen this note and decided to let it go through. Reading it probably would not endanger her.

To the brave flier who plucked me from the kolkhoz, it began. Flier had a feminine ending tacked on, and kolkhoz was spelled out in those copybook Cyrillic letters. I hope you are well and safe and hitting back against the Lizards. I write this as simply as I can, as I know your German is slow, though much better than my Russian. I am now in Moscow, where I work with your government to hurt the Lizards in new ways. These will-

A few words were neatly clipped out of the letter. A censor had been at it, then. Some of Ludmila’s fear returned: somewhere in Moscow, her name appeared in a dossier for getting mail from a German. As long as Germany and the Soviet Union kept on working together against the Lizards, that dossier would not matter. If they had a falling out…

Ludmila read on: I hope one day we may see each other again. This may be so, because-The censor had excised another section. The letter finished, Your country and mine have been enemies, allies, enemies, and now allies again. Life is strange, not so? I hope we shall not be enemies ourselves, you and I. The signature was a scrawl that looked to her eyes nothing like Heinrich Jager, but that was surely what it said. Underneath, in the clear printing that marked the rest of the note, he had appended Major, 16th Panzer, as if she were unlikely to remember him without being reminded.

She stared at the piece of paper for a long time, trying to sort out her own feelings. He was polite, he was well-spoken, he was not the ugliest man she had ever seen… he was a Nazi. If she answered his letter, another note would go down in the dossier. She was as certain of that as of tomorrow’s sunrise.

“Well?” Yevgenia said when she did not comment.

“You were right, Yevgenia Gavrilovna-it is from a secret admirer.”

The other pilot made a rude noise. “The Devil’s nephew, no doubt.”

“How did you guess?”