In the Balance

13

The latest storm had finally blown out of Chicago leaving a fine dusting of snow on the ground. The Lizards stared at it in swivel-eyed wonder as Sam Yeager marched them along toward the Metallurgical Laboratory. He was comfortable enough in a wool sweater, but they shivered in too-large peacoats scrounged from the Great Lakes Naval Base Their breath, hotter than his made puffs of steam in the crisp air.

In spite of intermittent Lizard air raids, a couple of students were playing catch on the dying grass by the walk. Doing their best to pretend everything’s normal, Yeager thought. He envied them their deternunation.

As athletes, they weren’t much. One of them flat-out missed the ball when it came to him It skidded through the slush and stopped almost at Yeager’s feet. He set down the rifle he was still required to carry scooped up the baseball and fired it back to the student who’d thrown it. If the kid hadn’t caught it, it would have hit him right in the middle of the chest. He stared at Yeager, as if to say Who is this old guy? Yeager just grinned, picked up his piece, and started shepherding the Lizards down the walk again.

Ristin said, “You”-he followed it with a Lizard word Yeager didn’t know-“very well.”

As best he could, Yeager echoed the croaked word. “Not understanding,” he added in the Lizards’ language. Ristin obligingly gestured while repeating the word. A light went on in Yeager’s head. He dropped back into English. “Oh, you mean throw.” He made as if to throw again, this time without a baseball. “Throw.”

“Ssrow,” Ristin agreed. He tried English himself: “You-ssrow-good.”

“Thanks,” Yeager said, and let it go at that. How was he supposed to explain to an alien that he’d made a living (not much of a living, sometimes, but he’d never gone hungry) because he could throw and hit a baseball? If he didn’t have a better arm than a couple of half-assed college kids, he’d better leave town.

It wasn’t much warmer inside Eckhart Hall than it had been outside. Heat was as hard to come by as electricity these days. Army engineers did a marvelous job of repairing bomb damage, but the Lizards could wreck things faster than they could fix them. Since the elevator wasn’t running, Yeager took Ristin and Ullhass up the stairs to Enrico Fermi’s office. He didn’t know about them, but the exercise made him warmer.

Fermi bounced up out of his chair when Yeager walked the Lizards through his open door. “So good to see you and your friends here,” he said effusively. Yeager nodded, hiding a smile at the physicist’s heavy accent. He would have bet Bobby Fiore’s father sounded the same way.

Fermi had a glass coffeepot set up above a tin of canned heat. Heavy china mugs, cafeteria-style, stood beside the Sterno. The physicist gestured for Yeager to take one. “Thank you, sir,” Yeager said. He hadn’t noticed little things like cigarettes and coffee until he couldn’t get them whenever he wanted. Scarcity made them precious-and besides, the coffee was hot.

He glanced at Ullhass and Ristin. They’d tried coffee, too, but found it too bitter to stand. That was their tough luck, he thought; it cut them off from something that could heat them up from the inside out. He took another sip from his cup, felt his eyes opening wider. Coffee hit harder when you couldn’t have it every day. So did tobacco; he remembered how Barbara Larssen had reacted to her first smoke in a while.

At Fermi’s gesture, the Lizards perched themselves on a couple of chairs in front of the desk. Their feet barely touched the ground; human furniture was too big for them. Yeager sat down too, off to one side, his Springfield resting in his lap. He was still on guard duty, though that wasn’t his chief reason for being here. Enrico Fermi had more important things to do than learning the Lizards’ language, so Yeager interpreted whenever Ristin and Ullhass ran out of English.

Till the past few weeks, everything he knew about nuclear physics had come from the pages of Astounding. If stories like “Blowups Happen” and “Nerves” hadn’t had good science in them as well as good fiction, he would have been no use to Fermi-not because he couldn’t understand the Lizards, but because he wouldn’t have been able to understand the physicist.

Fermi asked the Lizards, “How long have your people known how to control and release the energy contained within the atomic nucleus?”

Yeager translated. He knew he didn’t do perfectly for nucleus; the word he used actually meant something closer to center. But the Lizards understood him well enough. They chattered back and forth between themselves for a few seconds before Ullhass said, “Somewhere between seventy and eighty thousand years, we think.”

Ristin added, “That’s our years, of course. Yours are about twice as long.”

Yeager did the arithmetic in his head. Even after dividing by two, it was still an ungodly long time. If Ristin and Ullhass were telling the truth, the Lizards had known about atomic power since humanity’s newest superweapon was fire against cave bears. If-He turned to Fermi. “Do you believe them, Professor?”

“Let me say that I know of no reason for them to lie,” Fermi answered. He looked like the fellow you’d find behind the counter of a delicatessen in half the medium-sized towns in the United States. He sounded like him, too, until you listened to what he had to say. Now he went on, “I think if we had had this power for so long, we would have accomplished more with it than they have.”

What the Lizards had done looked like plenty to Yeager. They’d crossed space to land on Earth, they’d kicked the tar out of every army they’d come up against, and they’d blown Berlin and Washington clean off the map. What did Fermi want, egg in his beer?

The physicist gave his attention back to the aliens. “How do you proceed in separating the useful U-235 from the much more abundant U-238?” In one form or another, he’d been asking that same question since he first set eyes on the Lizards.

As usual, they left him frustrated. Ullhass spread his clawed hands in a very human-seeming gesture of frustration. “You keep pestering us about this. We have told you before-we are soldiers. We do not know all the fine details of our technology.”

This time, Fermi turned to Yeager. “Can you credit what they say?”

Not for the first time, Yeager wondered why the devil the cxperts were asking him questions. All at once, though, he realized he too was an expert of sorts: an expert on the Lizards. That made him chuckle; the only thing on which he’d been an expert before was hitting the cutoff man. He certainly hadn’t been an expert at hitting a curve ball, or he’d have played at fields a lot fancier than the ones in the Three-I League.

He still didn’t believe he had much expertise, but he did know more about the Lizards than most people. Mixing what he did know with his common sense (which, except for keeping him at a baseball career, had always been pretty good), he answered, “Professor, I think maybe I do believe them. You yank a couple of privates out of the American army and they might not be able to tell you everything you want to know about how an electrical generator works.”

Fermi’s sigh was melodramatic. “Si, this may be so. And yet I have learned a great deal from what they do know: they take for granted so many things which are for us on the cutting edge of physics-or beyond it. Just by examining what they know ‘of course’ to be true, we have tremendously refined our own lines of investigation. This will help us a great deal when we relocate our program.”

“I’m glad you’ve-” Yeager broke off. “When you what?”

“When we move away from here,” Fermi said. Sadness filled his liquid brown eyes. “It will be very hard, this I know. But how are we to do physics in a city, where we have not even electricity most of the day? How are we to proceed when the Lizards may bomb us at any time, may even capture Chicago before long? The line, I hear, is nearly to Aurora now. Under these circumstances, what is there to do but go?”

“Where will you go to?” Yeager asked.

“It is not yet decided. We will leave the city by ship, surely-much the safest way to go, as your little friends”-Fernii nodded toward Ullhass and Ristin-“do not seem to have grasped the importance of travel by water on this world. But where we shall try to set down new roots, that is still a matter for debate.”

Yeager looked at the Lizards, too. “Are you going to want to take them with you?” he asked. If the answer was yes, he’d have to figure out whether he should try to finagle a way to come, too. He supposed he should; he couldn’t think of any way in which he’d be more useful to the war effort.

But he seemed to have taken Fermi by surprise. The physicist rubbed his chin. Like most men’s in Chicago, it was poorly shaven and had a couple of nicks; no new razor blades had made it into town for a long time. Yeager felt smug for using a straight razor, which required only stropping to keep its edge. That also endeared him to his sergeant, who was an old-time graduate of the cleanliness-is-one-step-ahead-of-godliness school.

After a moment, Fermi said, “It may well be that we shall.” He glanced at Yeager. In.a lot of science fiction, scientists were supposed to be so involved in research that they took no notice of the world around them. Yeager’s little while at the University of Chicago had shown him it didn’t usually work that way in real life. Now Fermi confirmed that yet again, saying, “This affects you, no?”

“This affects me, yes,” Yeager said.

“We do not leave tomorrow, or even the day after,” Fermi said. “You will have time to make whatever arrangements you must. Ah! Would you like me to send a request for your services to your commanding officer? This will help you with your military formalities, not so?”

“Professor, if you’d do that, it would save me from a lot of red tape,” Yeager said.

“I will see to it.” To make sure he did see to it, Fermi jotted a note to himself. His head might have been in the clouds much of-the time, but his feet were firmly on the ground. He also shifted gears as smoothly as a chauffeur. “At our last session, Ullhass was telling what he knew of the cooling systems employed by the Lizards’ atomic power plants. Perhaps he will elaborate a little more on these.” His poised his pencil above a fresh sheet of paper. Questions flew, one after another.

Finally Yeager had to call time. “I’m sorry, Professor, but I’ve got to take our friends here on to their next appointment.”

“Si, si,” Fermi said. “I understand. You do what you must do, Mr. Yeager. You have been helpful to us here. I want you to know that, and know you will be very welcome to come with us as we depart to-who knows where we are to depart to?”

“Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me.” A proud smile stretched itself across Yeager’s face. He gave Ullhass and Ristin a grateful look-if it hadn’t been for them, he’d have been reading about scientists for the rest of his life without ever meeting one, let alone being useful to one. He got up, gestured with the rifle that had lain half-forgotten across his lap. “Come on, you two. Let’s go. Time for us to be on our way.”

One nice thing about the Lizards was that, unlike most people he knew, they didn’t give him any back talk. Ullhass said, “It shall be done, superior sir,” and that was that. They preceded him out the door. He’d long since been convinced that his standing orders never to let them get behind him were foolish, but he obeyed anyhow. Army orders were like baseball fundamentals: you couldn’t go far wrong with them and you couldn’t do anything right without them.

He almost bumped into Andy Reilly, the custodian, when he came out the door, and he and his charges hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps down the hall when someone else called, “Hi, Sam!”

He couldn’t just turn around; that would have put the Lizards at his back. So he went around behind them before he answered, “Hi, Barbara. What are you doing up here?”

She smiled as she came up; she wasn’t skittish about Ullhass and Ristin any more. “I’m here a lot. My husband works for the Met Lab, remember?”

“Yeah, you did tell me. I forgot.” Yeager wondered if Barbara Larssen knew how big a misnomer “Metallurgical Laboratory” was. Maybe, maybe not. Secrecy about atomic energy research wasn’t as tight as it had been before the Lizards proved it worked, but he’d been warned in no uncertain terms about what would happen to him if he talked too much. He didn’t want a cigarette bad enough to get a blindfold with it. He didn’t even want to think about that. He asked, “Any word?”

“Of Jens? No, none.” Barbara kept up a brave front, but it was getting tattered. Worry-no, fear-showed in her voice as she went on, “He should have been back weeks ago-you know he was long overdue the first time you brought these little fellows into Dr. Burkett’s office. And if he doesn’t get back soon-”

From the way she stopped short, he thought he scented the great god Security. He said, “Professor Fermi told me the project is going to pull out of Chicago.”

“I wasn’t sure if you knew, and I didn’t want to say too much if you didn’t,” Barbara answered: security, sure enough. “Wouldn’t it be awful if he did make it here, only to find out there isn’t any Met Lab to come hack to?”

“There may not be any Chicago to come back to,” Yeager answered. “From what Fermi said, the line’s just outside Aurora now.”

“I hadn’t heard that.” Her lips thinned; a small vertical worry line appeared between her eyes. “They’re-getting close.”

“What will you do?” he asked. “Will you go with the Met Lab people when they pull out?”

“I just don’t know,” Barbara said. “That’s what I came up here to talk about, as a matter of fact. They’re holding a slot for me, but I don’t know if I should use it. If I were sure Jens was coming back, I’d stay no matter what. But he’s been gone so long, I have trouble believing that anymore. I try, but-” She broke off again. This time, security had nothing to do with it. She groped in her purse for a hanky.

Yeager wanted to put an arm around her. With the two Lizards standing between them, that wasn’t practical. Even without them, it probably would have been stupid. she’d just think he was coming on to her, and she’d be at least half right. He didn’t even tell her Fermi had asked him to evacuate with the Metallurgical Lab staff. Feeling awkward and useless, he said, “I hope he makes it back soon, Barbara.”

“Oh, God, so do I.” Her hands shaped themselves into claws; her red nail polish made them look like bloody claws. Her face twisted. “God damn the Lizards for coming down here and wrecking everything people have tried to do for as long as there’ve been people. Even the bad things-they’re our bad things, nobody else’s.”

Ullhass and Ristin had picked up almost as much English as Yeager had learned of their language. They flinched away from Barbara’s fury. “It’s all right,” Yeager told them. “Nothing’s going to happen to you two.” He understood how Barbara felt; he knew much of that same rage himself. But constantly being around the Lizard POWs had made him start thinking of them as people, too-sometimes almost as friends. He hated the Lizards collectively but not individually. It got confusing.

Barbara seemed to share some of that confusion. she’d gotten to the point where she could tell one of the captive Lizards apart from another. “Don’t worry,” she said to Yeager’s two charges. “I know it’s not your fault in particular.”

“Yes, you know this,” Ullhass said in his hissing voice. “But what can we do if you not know this? No thing. We are-how you say it? — in your grisp?”

“Grip, maybe,” Yeager. answered. “Or do you mean grasp?”

“I do not know what I mean,” Ullhass declared. “It is your speech. You teach, we learn.”

“They’re like that,” Yeager said to Barbara, trying to find less emotionally charged things to talk about. “Now that they’re our prisoners, it’s like we’ve become their superior officers and anything we say goes.”

“Dr. Burkett has talked about the same thing,” she said, nodding. She turned back to the Lizards. “Your people are trying to take our whole world into their grasp. Do you wonder that we don’t like you?”

“But we are the Race,” Ristin said. “It is our right.”

Yeager had got pretty good at reading tone in the Lizards’ voices. Ristin sounded surprised Barbara would question that “right.” Yeager clicked his tongue between his teeth. Both Lizard POWs swung their eyes toward him; it was something he did when he wanted to get their attention. He said, “You’ll find not everybody on this planet agrees with you about that”

Teerts wished his ejection seat had malfunctioned. Better to have crashed with his aircraft than to fall into the hands of the Nipponese. Those hands lacked the Race’s claws, but were no less cruel for that.

He’d found out about the Nipponese in a hurry. Even before they’d got him to Harbin, his illusion that they treated prisoners decently had been shattered. From what he’d seen of the way they treated their own kind, that shouldn’t have come as a surprise to him.

The rest of the Tosevite empires were barbarous, yes, but their leaders had the sense to recognize that war was a risky business in which things could go wrong, and that both sides were liable to lose prisoners when things did go wrong. Nipponese soldiers, however, were supposed to commit suicide before they let themselves be captured. That was bad enough. Worse, they expected their foes to play by the same set of rules, and scorned captives as cowards who deserved whatever happened to them.

Teerts looked down at himself. From his neck all the way down to his groin, every rib was clearly visible. The food they gave him was vile, and they didn’t give him very much of it. He had the feeling that if they hadn’t been interrogating him, they might not have bothered to feed him at all.

The door to the little room where they kept him swung noisily open on rusty hinges. A couple of armed guards came in. Teerts jumped to his feet and bowed to them. They’d beaten him once for forgetting. After that, he didn’t forget.

The officer who had brought him to Harbin followed the guards into the smelly little cell. Teerts bowed again, deeper this time; the Nipponese made a point of being insanely punctilious about such things. Teerts said, “Good day, Major Okamoto. I hope you are well?”

“I am well.” Okamoto did not ask how Teerts was; a prisoner’s health was beneath his notice. He shifted from Nipponese to the tongue of the Race. Despite a heavy accent, he was growing fluent: “You shall come with me at once.”

“It shall be done,” Teerts said.

Okamoto turned his back and walked out of the chamber. Short for a Tosevite, he still towered over Teerts. So did the Nipponese guards; the knives mounted on the ends of their rifles looked very long and cold and sharp. They gestured with the guns for Teerts to precede them. He was already in motion. By now, captivity had become a routine like any other.

Cold smote him when he left the building where he was imprisoned. He was always chilly, even inside; what the Tosevites called heat was arctic to the Race. Outside, the weather really was arctic, with frozen water falling from the sky in feathery flakes. It clung to the ground, to trees, to buildings, coating everything with a layer of white that helped mask its inherent ugliness.

Teerts began to shiver violently. Okamoto paused, snapped an order to the guards. One of them set down his rifle for a moment, pulled a blanket out of his pack, and draped it over Teerts. The captured pilot pulled it as tight around himself as he could. Slowly, the shivers subsided.

Okamoto said, “You lucky you important prisoner. Otherwise, we let you freeze.”

Teerts would willingly have forgone such luck. A truer measure of his importance was the vehicle that waited outside his prison to take him to his next interrogation session. It was noisy and smelly and had a ride like a killercraft out of control and about to crash, but at least it boasted an engine rather than a Big Ugly pedaling hard enough to grow warm even in this frigid weather. Better yet, it also had an enclosed cabin.

One of the guards drove. The other sat beside him in the front seat. Major Okamoto sat behind the driver, Teerts behind the other guard. Okamoto did not have a rifle with a long knife on the end, but he did carry both a sword and a pistol. And even if Teerts could somehow have overcome him, what was the point? How could he flee out of this teeming den of Big Uglies without getting caught and meeting a fate even worse than the one he was now suffering?

Den was the right word for Harbin, he thought as the military vehicle made its slow way through the narrow, twisting streets of Harbin. It was a city in size, but not, to his mind, in design. Indeed, it didn’t seem to have a design. Streets ran every which way. Big, important buildings sprawled next to appalling hovels. Here and there, piles of rubble testified to the effectiveness of the Race’s bombardment. Half-naked Big Uglies labored at the piles, clearing them away a brick at a time.

Teerts thought longingly of Rosspan, the city back on Home where he’d grown up. Sunshine, warmth, cleanliness, streets wide enough for traffic, sidewalks wide enough for pedestrians-he’d taken all those things for granted till he came to Tosev 3. Now, by dreadful counterexample, he knew how lucky he’d been to enjoy them.

The truck rumbling along in front of Teerts’ vehicle ran over one of the scavenger beasts that roamed the streets of Harbin. The animal’s yelp of agony pierced the deep engine rattle that was the main traffic noise in Harbin. The truck never slowed as the animal passed under its wheels. It had somewhere important to go; what did one animal matter? Teerts got the idea it wouldn’t have paused after running over a Big Ugly, either.

It could have, easily enough. If Harbin owned any traffic rules, Teerts hadn’t discovered them. Vehicles with engines pushed their way as best they could through swarms of animal-drawn wagons and carts and even thicker swarms of Tosevites-Tosevites on foot, Tosevites carrying burdens on poles balanced on their shoulders, Tosevites riding two-wheeled contraptions that looked as if they ought to fall over but never did, Tosevites pedaling other Tosevites about in bigger contraptions or pulling them in carts as if they were beasts of burden themselves. Sometimes, at a particularly insane intersection, a Nipponese with white gloves and a swagger stick would try to bring a little order into the chaos. The next Big Ugly Teerts saw obeying any of them would be the first.

He got the idea Harbin was a peculiar kind of place even by Tosevite standards, which was saying a good deal. Nipponese troops were the most aggressively visible piece of the blend; in a town near a fighting front, that was not surprising. What was surprising was the way they knocked around Big Uglies not in uniform, natives who, to Teerts’ inexperienced eyes, looked no different from themselves save in clothing.

The farther east Teerts’ vehicle went, the more he saw of another variety of Big Ugly: pink-skinned, with light-colored-brown or even yellow-tufts of fluff or fur or whatever it was on top of their heads. They seemed less voluble than the darker natives who made up most of the local population, and went about their business with a stolid determination-that impressed Teerts.

He turned to Major Okamoto. “These pale Tosevites”-he’d learned, by painful experience, never to say Big Ugly to a Big Ugly’s face-“may I ask where they come from?”

“No,” Okamoto answered at once. “Prisoners may not spy. No questions from you, do you hear me? Obey!”

“It shall be done,” Teerts said, anxious not to anger his captor. The small part of him that was not hungry and afraid insisted the Big Ugly was being foolish: he would never escape to tell what he knew. But Okamoto tolerated no argument, so Teerts gave him none.

The vehicle pulled up in front of a building from which flew Nipponese flags, red ball on white ground. Several antiaircraft guns poked their noses into the sky from sandbagged installations around it. When Teerts was flying killercraft, he’d laughed at such puny opposition. He’d stopped laughing when the Big Uglies shot him down. He hadn’t laughed since.

The guards got out of the vehicle. One unlocked Teerts’ door and pulled it open, then jumped back so the other could level-his rifle at the pilot. “Out!” they yelled together in Nipponese. Out Teerts came, marveling as usual that the Big Uglies could find his unarmed and miserable self so dangerous. He. only wished they were right.

Since they were unfortunately mistaken, he let them lead him into the building. The stairs did not fit his size or his gait. He climbed them anyhow; the interrogation chamber was on the third floor. He walked. in with trepidation. Some very unpleasant things had happened to him in there.

Today, though, the three Big Uglies behind the desk all wore pilot’s wings. That relieved Teerts, a little. If these questioners were pilots, they’d presumably ask him about his killercraft. At least he would know the answers to their questions. Other interrogators had grilled him about the Race’s landcruisers, ground tactics, automatic weapons, even its diplomatic dealings with other Tosevite empires. He’d pleaded ignorance, and they’d punished him for it even though he told the truth.

As he’d learned, he bowed low to the interrogation team and then to Major Okamoto, who interpreted for them. They didn’t bow back; he gathered a prisoner forfeited the right to any gesture of respect.

The Big Ugly in the middle turned loose a torrent of barking Nipponese. Okamoto translated: “Colonel Doi is interested in the tactics you use with your killercraft against our planes.”

Teerts bowed to the Tosevite who had asked the question. “Tactics are simple: you approach the enemy as closely as you can, preferably from behind and above so you are not detected, then you destroy him with missiles or cannon shells.”

Doi said, “True, this is the basis of any successful fighter run. But how do you achieve it? Where precisely do you deploy your wing man? What is his role in the attack?”

“We commonly fly in groups of three,” Teerts answered: “a leader and two trailers. But once in combat, we fly independent missions.”

“What? That is nonsense,” Doi exclaimed.

Teerts turned and bowed nervously to Okamoto, hoping to appease him. “Please tell the colonel that, while it would be nonsense for his aircraft, ours are superior enough to those you Tosevites fly to make my words the truth.”

He didn’t like the grunt that came from the colonel. Of itself, one of his eye turrets swiveled to the collection of nasty tools hung on the wall behind him. When the Race needed to interrogate one of its own, or a Rabotev, or a Hallessi, they pumped the suspected offender full of drugs and then pumped him dry. No doubt physicians were hard at work developing drugs that would let them do the same for the Big Uglies.

The Nipponese were more primitive and more brutal. Techniques to gain information by inflicting pain were lost in the mists of the Race’s ancient history. The Nipponese, however, had proved intimately familiar with such techniques. Teerts suspected they could have hurt him much worse had he been one of their own kind. Since he was strange and valuable, they’d gone easy for fear of killing him before they’d wrung out everything they wanted to know. What they had done was quite ingenious enough.

He felt like cheering when the Big Ugly named Doi changed the subject: “How do these missiles of yours continue to follow aircraft even through the most violent evasive actions?”

“Two ways,” Teerts answered. “Some of them home on the heat from the target aircraft’s engine, while others use radar.”

The Nipponese translation of that took a good deal longer to say than Teerts’ words had. Colonel Doi’s answer was also lengthy, and Major Okamoto fumbled a good deal in putting it into the language of the Race. What he did say sounded like a paraphrase: “The colonel instructs you to give us more information on this radar.”

“Do you mean he doesn’t know what it is?” Teerts asked.

“Do not be insolent, or you shall be punished,” Okamoto snapped. “He instructs you to give us more information on radar. Do so.”

“The Deutsche, the Americans, and the British use it,” Teerts said, as innocently as he could. When that got translated, all three of his interrogators let out excited exclamations. He just stood quietly, waiting for the hubbub to die down. He thought-he hoped-he’d managed to. imply the Nipponese were barbarous even by Tosevite standards.

Eventually, Doi said, “Go on, prisoner. Speak of this device as you use it.”

“It shall be done.” Teerts bowed, granting the Big Ugly reluctant respect for not conceding Nipponese ignorance. “We shoot out a beam of rays like light but of longer wavelength, then detect those that reflect back from the objects they strike. From these we learn distance, speed, altitude, and bearing of targets.”

The Nipponese chattered among themselves again before the one on- the left directly addressed Teerts. Okamoto translated: “Lieutenant Colonel Kobayashi says you are to help our technicians build one of these radar machines.”

“I can’t do that!” Teerts blurted, staring appalled at Kobayashi. Did the Big Ugly have any idea what he was asking for? Teerts couldn’t have built, or even serviced, a radar set with the Race’s tools, parts, and instruments. To expect him to do it with the garbage that passed for electronics among the Tosevites was insane.

Kobayashi spoke a few ominous-sounding words. They sounded even more ominous when Okamoto turned them into the language of the Race: “You refuse?”

Again, Teerts’ eyes involuntarily swung back to the instruments of pain on the wall behind him. “No, I don’t refuse, I am not able,” he said, so quickly that Okamoto had to force him to repeat himself. “I have not the knowledge either of radar itself or of your forms of apparatus. I am a pilot, not a radar technician.”

“Honto?” Kobayashi asked Okamoto. That was one Nipponese word Teerts had learned; it meant Is it true? He waited fearfully for the interpreter’s reply. If Okamoto thought he was lying, he would likely renew his acquaintance with some of those instruments.

“Honto, hai,” Okamoto said: “Yes, it is true.” Teerts did his best not to show his relief, as he had tried not to reveal fear before.

Kobayashi said, “What good is this Lizard if he can only babble of marvels without being able to share them?” Teerts took the return ride from relief to fear. The Nipponese kept him alive mainly because they were interested in what he could teach them. If they decided they weren’t learning, they wouldn’t hesitate to dispose of him.

Colonel Doi spoke at some length. Teerts had no idea what he said; instead of interpreting, Okamoto joined the discussion that came when the senior officer stopped talking. It grew loud. Several times, stubby Tosevite fingers stabbed out at Teerts. He did his best not to flinch. Any one of those gestures could have meant his death.

All at once, the antiaircraft cannon outside the tower where he was being interrogated began to roar. The scream of killercraft overhead was incredibly loud and incredibly terrifying. The jolting thud of bombs going off made the floor shiver as if in an earthquake. If the Race had targeted this hall for destruction, it could kill Teerts along with the Nipponese. How dreadful, to die from the weapons of one’s friends!

He had to admit the Big Ugly officers showed courage. They sat unmoving while the building shook around them. Colonel Doi looked at Teerts and said something in his own language. Major Okamoto translated: “The colonel says that if he joins his ancestors in the next little while, he will have the happy-no, the pleasure-that you go with him.”

Maybe Doi’s words were intended to make Teerts afraid. Instead, they gave him one of the very few moments of pleasure he’d had since his aircraft swallowed those indigestible Nipponese bullets. He bowed first to Doi, then to Okamoto. “Tell the colonel I feel exactly the same way, with roles reversed.” Too late to regret the defiant words; they were already spoken.

Okamoto turned them into Nipponese. Instead of getting angry, Colonel Doi leaned forward in his chair, a sign of interest. Ignoring the dreadful racket all around, he said, “Is that so? What do you believe happens to you when you die?”

Had Teerts’ face been flexible like a Tosevite’s, he would have grinned enormously. At last, a question he could answer without fear of getting himself into deeper trouble! He said, “When we are through here, our spirits join those of the Emperors who guided the Race in the past so that we may go on serving them.” He didn’t just believe that, he was as sure of it as he was that this part of Tosev 3 would turn away from its star tonight. Billions of individuals of three species on three worlds shared that certainty.

When his remarks had been translated, Colonel Doi made that mouth-motion of amiability, the first time Teerts had seen it from an interrogator. The officer said, “We have much the same belief. I shall be honored to serve my emperor in death as I have in life. I wonder if the spirits of our dead war against those of your kind.”

The notion made Teerts queasy; material Tosevites were quite troublesome enough, and he didn’t care to think of Emperors past being compelled to struggle against their spiritual counterparts. Then he brightened. Up until a handful of years before, the Big Uglies had enjoyed no industrial technology. If their barbarous spirits dared assail those of the Race, surely they would be smashed.

He did not say that to Colonel Doi. “It may be so,” seemed a much safer answer. Then he swung his eyes toward Okamoto. “Please ask the colonel if I may ask him a question that has nothing to do with spying.”

“Hai,” Doi said.

Teerts asked, “Do all Tosevites hold the same idea about what will happen after you die?”

Even in the midst of chaos, that sent the Nipponese officers into gales of their barking laughter. Through Major Okamoto, Doi said, “We have as many beliefs as we have different empires, maybe more. That of us Nipponese is the correct one, however.”

Teerts bowed politely. He did not presume to contradict his captors, but Doi’s answer left him unsurprised. Of course the Big Uglies were divided in opinion about the world to come. The Big Uglies, as far as he could see, were divided about everything. Their little makeshift empires had all been fighting one another when the Race came; no doubt their little makeshift beliefs fought one another, too.

Then his scorn faded. In an odd way, the Big Uglies’ innumerable different beliefs and languages and empires might have proved a source of strength for them. They competed so savagely among themselves that less effective methods fell by the wayside. Maybe that was why the sword-swinging savages the Race had expected to meet no longer inhabited Tosev 3.

Like any right-thinking member of the Race, Teerts automatically assumed unity and stability desirable in and of themselves. Until he came to Tosev 3, he’d never had any reason to assume otherwise. Now, as if a cold breeze blew through his thoughts, he wondered what price his species, and the Hallessi and Rabotevs with them, paid for their secure, comfortable lives.

Until the Race came to Tosev 3, it hadn’t mattered. Now it did. Even if the exalted fleetlord Atvar were to pull every starship off this chilly mudball tomorrow (which of course the exalted fleetlord would not do), the Race would not be finished with the Tosevites. One fine day-surely sooner than anyone back on Home would expect-starships full of fierce, savage Big Uglies would follow where Atvar had gone.

What did that leave? The only thing that occurred to Teerts was conquering the Tosevites and so thoroughly integrating them into the Empire that their competitiveness would be stifled for good. Failing that… he didn’t want to think about failing that. The next best choice he came up with was sterilizing the planet altogether. That would keep the Empire safe, no matter how hard it was on the Big Uglies. All other choices looked worse.

Bombs stopped falling; the turbofans of the Race’s killercraft faded into the distance. In the streets of Harbin, a few Nipponese still fired rifles into the air at imaginary targets. “It is over,” Lieutenant Colonel Kobayashi said. “Until the next time they come back.”

“Let us resume the questioning, then,” Colonel Doi said. He turned his face toward Teerts once more; his poor immobile eyes could not do the job by themselves. Whatever friendliness and recognition of Teerts as a fellow intelligent being he had shown while discussing the nature of the world to come now vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. “We were speaking of radar machines. I find your answer evasive and unsatisfactory. If you do not prove more forthcoming, you will be punished. Major Okamoto…”

Teerts braced for what he knew was coming. Okamoto bowed to Doi, then stepped forward and slapped Teerts across the muzzle, just in front of his left eye turret. He staggered. When he regained his balance, he bowed to Okamoto, though he would sooner have killed him. “Please tell the colonel I will do my best to answer his question, but I am ignorant of the knowledge he seeks.”

Okamoto translated that. Doi said, “Ha! More likely you are a liar. Major…” Okamoto slapped Teerts again. While he desperately tried to think of something that might satisfy Doi, Okamoto drew back his hand for yet another blow. Teerts began to think that being killed by bombs from the Race might not have been so dreadful after all.

Atvar said, “We can now take it as certain that the Big Uglies know enough to covet nuclear weapons of their own.” His voice had the dreadful finality of a physician’s when telling a patient only a little time was left.

The assembled shiplords stirred restlessly. Atvar tried to think of worse news he might have given them. Maybe that the Big Ughes had exploded a nuclear weapon under one of the Race’s landed ships. Of course, they would have found out about that without his telling them.

Straha said, “Exalted Fleetlord how did our secunty procedures fail so abominably as to permit the Tosevites to raid a nuclear recovery team?”

Atvar wondered how his own security procedures had failed so abominably as to permit Straha to find out just what the Big Ugliest had done. He said, “Investigations are continuing, Shiplord.” He was also investigating how Straha had learned what had happened but forbore to mention it.

The shiplord said, “Forgive me, Exalted Fleetlord, but I would be grateful for somewhat more detail than you have furnished.”

“Forgive me, Shiplord, but I have difficulty in providing it.” Before Straha could come back with more sarcasm, Atvar went on, “One of the unfortunate things we have observed about the Big Uglies is that, while we have better technology, they are better soldiers than we in tactical terms. We have practiced and studied war; they have lived it. To our cost, we are discovering what a difference that makes.”

“Let me give an example of this,” Kirel said, supporting the fleetlord. “In and around several of our positions, we installed sensors that detected Tosevites by sniffing out the uric acid that is one of the wastes they excrete. The concentration of it in the air lets us gauge the number of Big Uglies in the vicinity.”

“This is adapted from standard techniques we use back on Home,” Straha said in challenging tones. “Why do you mention it now? What relevance has it to our failure?”

“Its relevance is that the Tosevites do not think in our standard terms,” Kirel answered. “They must somehow have become aware of our sensors-possibly by stumbling over one of them-and learned how they functioned.”

“So?” Straha said. “I assume this story has a point.”

“It does,” Kirel assured him. “The Tosevites began discharging their liquid wastes directly onto the sensors.”

“Disgusting,” Straha said. There if nowhere else, Atvar agreed with him. Having evolved on a hotter, drier planet than Tosev 3, the Race did not casually cast off water, but passed all its excreta in neat, solid form. Big Ugly prisoners had strained the fleet’s plumbing systems.

“Disgusting, true, but also informative,” Kirel said. “Some of our technicians suddenly began screaming in panic that four billion Tosevites were heading straight for their position. By our best estimates, that is about double the total population of Tosev 3, but it is also what the drenched, befouled, and overloaded sensors were reporting. And while we reacted to these frightening data, the Big Uglies worked mischief elsewhere. Is this a ploy that would have occurred to any of us?”

Straha did not answer. None of the other shiplords said anything, either, though a few let their mouths fall open in amusement. Atvar thought the story was funny, too, in a scatological way, but it also had a point. He drove that point home: “The Big Uglies are ignorant, but they are far from stupid. Within their limits, they can be very dangerous. They have learned better than to stand up to us in large-scale combat, but at these little pinprick raids they excel.”

“This raid was more than a pinprick,” Straha insisted.

“Strategically, yes, but not tactically,” Atvar said. “The Big Uglies also use this world’s revolting weather to good advantage. They are accustomed to wet and cold, even to the various forms of frozen water which occur on Tosev 3. We have to learn to deal with these case by case, and they are making our education expensive.”

Straha said, “In my opinion, this world may not be worth our settling. The weather is not its only revolting feature: the Big Uglies themselves certainly merit that description.”

“As may be,” Atvar said. “The Emperor has ordained that we bring Tosev 3 into the Empire, and so it shall be done.” That statement of unconditional obedience to the Emperor’s will brought up short the shiplords who before had plainly agreed with Straha. Atvar went on, “Many parts of this world will suit us well, and its resources, which the Big Uglies exploit only inefficiently, will be most valuable to us.”

“If this be so, let us use its resources as if they were on a lifeless planet of one of our own solar systems,” Straha said, “Kill all the Big Uglies and we solve most of our problems with Tosev 3.”

Atvar did not like the number of shiplords who looked as though they agreed with Straha. He said, “You forget one thing: the colonizing fleet is already on its way behind us. It will be here in less than forty years-twenty turns for this planet-and its commander will not thank us for presenting him with a dead world.”

“Given a choice between presenting him with a dead world and a lost war wherein the Big Uglies learn of nuclear weapons, Exalted Fleetlord, which would you prefer?” Straha demanded. Even the shiplords of his aggressive faction stirred restlessly at that; such acid sarcasm was rare among the Race.

The best way to defuse it, Atvar thought, was to pretend not to recognize it. He said, “Shiplord, I do not believe those are the only choices left to us. I intend to present the commander of the colonizing fleet a planet ready for his settlers.”

If the war went well, that still remained possible. Even Atvar, though, was beginning to doubt whether Tosev 3 would be as ready for the colonists as the plans back Home called for. Conditions on the planet were too different from what the Race had expected: too many Big Uglies here with too many of their own factories.

And Straha, curse him, would not shut up. He said, “Exalted Fleetlord, how can we claim to be winning this war, conquering this world, when even the little gimcrack Tosevite empires which have allegedly surrendered to us continue to maintain armed resistance to our occupying forces?”

“If the sagacious shiplord has a solution to this difficulty, hearing it would gladden my spirit,” Atvar replied. “We continue to defend ourselves, of course, and to strike back against raiders as we may. What else would you have us do?”

Straha was never short on opinions. He said, “Retaliate massively for every act of banditry and sabotage. Slay ten Big Uglies for every truck damaged, a hundred for every soldier of the Race harmed. Force them to respect us-and eventually they will”

“Exalted Fleetlord, may I speak to this issue?” Kirel asked.

“Speak,” Atvar said.

“I thank you, Exalted Fleetlord. Straha, I want you to know I formerly held a view similar to yours; as you may or may not have heard, I strongly advocated the destruction of the Big Ugly city called Washington to terrify the Tosevites of the United States into ceasing their resistance to us. The strategy likely would have succeeded against the Hallessi or Rabotevs, or even against the Race. Against the Tosevites, it has failed.”

Straha started to interrupt; Kirel stuck out his tongue to stop him. “Let me finish, if you please. I do not claim we have failed to cow many of the Big Uglies by massive shows of force. But there also exists among the Tosevites a strong minority impelled to ever greater resistance by such acts on our part. Your policy plays into the hands of these fanatics.”

“Why should the Big Uglies be different from any civilized species?” Straha said.

“Our scholars will be debating that for thousands of years to come, as they review the records of this campaign,” Kirel said. Mouths lolled open here and there among the assembled shiplords; the Race’s scholars were notoriously more sure but slow than slow but sure. Kirel went on, “I, however, lack the luxury of leisure, as is true of everyone here on Tosev 3. Were I to speculate, I would say the Big Uglies’ differences go back to their peculiar-I might say unique-mating patterns.”

Straha made a disgusted noise. “Always we come back to mating. Do the miserable Big Uglies think of nothing else?”

“The answer to this may be no,” Atvar said. “The intense emotional bonds they form with sexual partners and with offspring make them willing to take risks any member of the Race would reckon insane, and also provoke them to take vengeance should partners or offspring be harmed.”

“There may even be more to it than that,” Kirel added. “Some of our scholars speculate that the Big Uglies, because of the familial attachments they are accustomed to forming, also are predisposed toward forming equally strong attachments to the causes of their little empires and their implausible religious systems. We are in effect dealing with a species full of fanatics-and fanatics, by definition, are not to be constrained by threats of force which would deter more rational individuals.”

“Let me see if I understand you, Honored Shiplord,” Straha said. “You are advancing the hypothesis that Tosev 3 may never be as fully pacified as Halless 1 and Rabotev 2 are, and that the Big Uglies may continue suicidal resistance to us even after overall military victory is achieved.”

“You extrapolate further than I have been willing to go, but the answer is basically yes,” Kirel said unhappily.

Atvar said, “Let us eat the worms ahead of the soup, Shiplords. Before we can discuss ways to reduce harassment of our forces after we conquer, we must first complete our conquest. The truly atrocious winter weather prevailing over much of the northern hemisphere of Tosev 3 makes matters no easier for us.”

“Our males should have been better trained to withstand such conditions,” Straha said.

The fleetlord wished one of the fearsome Tosevite snipers would draw a bead right in the middle of Straha’s snout. All he did was complain and intrigue; he didn’t care for solving the problems he pointed out. Atvar said, “I might remind the shiplord that no territory within the Empire closely simulates the climate of the Tosevite lands wherein, to our misfortune, our most formidable opponents dwell.”

Several males even of Straha’s faction showed their agreement with that. It relieved Atvar a little. He was coming to dread these assemblages. Too often he had bad news to report, and news bad in ways he never would have imagined before the fleet left Home. He’d expected his principal concern on this campaign to be how many soldiers carelessly got hurt in traffic accidents, not whether the Big Uglies would soon be fighting him with nuclear weapons of their own.

He’d also expected much better data from the Race’s probes. He’d already resigned himself to their missing the weird technological jump the Tosevites had taken after they departed: that was the Big Uglies’ fault, not theirs. But they should have done a better job of reporting on Tosevite social and sexual habits, so Kirel’s research crews wouldn’t have had to start learning about them from scratch.

What really worried him was the thought that maybe the probes had sent accurate data back to Home, only to have those data ignored, misinterpreted, or downright disbelieved by scholars who analyzed them from a Race-centered perspective. If similar mistakes had been made before the conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi, the Race not only got by with them but didn’t even notice them-the subject species really weren’t very different from their overlords. But the Big Uglies were… and finding out how much so was proving more costly than anyone could have imagined.

“Exalted Fleetlord, how shall we minimize the mischief the Tosevites may cause with nuclear material in their possession?” Kirel asked.

“I shall summarize for the shiplords new orders which will soon reach them in written form,” Atvar answered. “In essence, we will increase our bombardment of major urban centers in which important scientific research is likeliest to take place. Let us see how well they do at such research if, for instance, their facilities lack electrical power.”

Horrep, one of the males of Straha’s faction, waggled his tailstump to ask to be recognized. When Atvar turned both eyes in his direction, he said, “I would respectfully remind the exalted fleetlord that our own stockpiles of munitions are not so high as they might be. We have used far more than we anticipated when we set out from Home, and our replenishment facilities have not been established here at the pace originally planned, due to both commitment of our resources to the actual fighting and unexpectedly heavy damage from Tosevite resistance.”

Several other males spoke up to support Horrep. Again Atvar had that unsettling mental image of expending his last round of ammunition, only to see one more Big Ugly landcruiser crawl out from behind a pile of rubble. “Do you say you cannot obey the forthcoming order?” he demanded.

“No, Exalted Fleetlord-it shall be done,” Horrep answered. “But I must warn you that such a program cannot be sustained indefinitely. I very much hope the results it achieves will be in proportion to the munitions it expends.”

So do I, Atvar thought. He thanked the forethoughtful spirits of Emperors past that the Race had brought far more weapons of war to Tosev 3 than would have been necessary to conquer the semisavages they’d expected to find here. If his people had done things hastily, they might have walked headlong into ignominious defeat.

On the other hand, if the Race had been hasty and come to Tosev 3 a few hundred years sooner, the Big Uglies would have been much easier prey, because they wouldn’t have had the time to develop their own technology. Did that mean haste would have been advisable here? The harder one looked at a complicated question, the more complicated it generally became.

The fleetlord reluctantly decided to scrap for the time being another part of the order he’d intended to issue: he’d wanted to command increased efforts against the boats on which the Big Uglies lavished so much effort and ingenuity. Because Tosev 3 had so much water, the locals made much more use of it than any species within the Empire. Atvar had the feeling they used water transport enough to make suppressing it worthwhile for the Race… but with munitions in shorter supply than he would have liked, he’d have to preserve as much as he could for targets of the highest priority.

He sighed. Back on Home, the aptitude tests had said he might make a successful architect as well as a soldier. The choice had been his. He’d always been an idealist, eager to serve the Emperor and the Race as fully as possible. Only when confronted with the unending morass of the conquest of Tosev 3 had he seriously started wondering whether he wouldn’t have been happier putting up buildings after all.

He sighed again. That choice was dead for him now. He had to do the best he could with the one he’d made. He said, “Shiplords, I know this meeting bas been imperfectly satisfying. The Big Uglies have shown a revolting knack for making everything we do appear unsatisfactory. Before I dismiss you back to your commands, has any of you anything further to note?”

More often than not, the formal question went unanswered. This time, however, a male named Relek signaled for recognition. When Atvar acknowledged him, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, my vessel, the 16th Emperor Osjess, is grounded in the eastern part of Tosev 3’s main continental mass, in the Big Ugly empire called China. Lately a fair number of males have made themselves unfit for duty due to excessive consumption of some local herb which apparently has a stimulant and addictive effect on them.”

“My ship is based in the center of that continental mass, and I’ve had the same experience with a handful of my troopers,” said another shiplord, this one called Tetter. “I thought I was the only shiplord so affected.”

“You are not,” said Mozzten, a shiplord whose vessel was based in the U.S.A. portion of the smaller continental mass-Atvar took notice of that. Mozzten went on, “The Big Ugly name-a Big Ugly name, I should say-for the herb is ‘ginger.’ Its effects on the males in my command have been deleterious.”

“I shall issue a general order condemning this herb in no uncertain terms,” Atvar declared. “To add to its effectiveness, I would have each shiplord-especially you three who have indicated a problem-issue his own order forbidding the individuals under his jurisdiction from having anything to do with this-ginger, was that the name I heard?”

“It shall be done,” the shiplords chorused.

“Excellent,” Atvar said. “There’s one problem settled, at least.”

The mechanic spread his thick-fingered, greasy hands, shook his head helplessly. “I am very sorry, Comrade Pilot,” he said, “but I cannot find the cause of the trouble. As best I can tell, the devil’s grandmother has set up shop in your engine.”

“Move out of the way, then, and I will see for myself,” Ludmila Gorbunova snapped. She wanted to kick some sense into the stupid muzhik, but both his head and his arse were probably hard enough to break her foot. She wished she still had her old mechanic; unlike this oaf, Katya Kuznetsova had actually understood engines and gone after problems instead of babbling about the devil and his stupid relatives.

It wasn’t as if the little five-cylinder Shvetsov radial was the most complicated piece of machinery ever built, either. It was about as simple as an engine could be and still work, and as reliable as anything that didn’t walk on all fours.

As soon as she got a good look at the engine, she became certain this idiot mechanic walked on all fours. She reached up, asked, “Do you think this loose spark-plug wire might have something to do with the aircraft’s poor performance of late?” As she spoke, she connected the wire firmly.

The mechanic’s head bobbed up and down, as if on a string. “Da, Comrade Pilot, very likely it could.”

She wheeled on him. “Why didn’t you see it, then?” she shouted shrilly. She wished she were a man; she wanted to bellow like a bull.

“I’m sorry, Comrade Pilot.” The mechanic’s voice was humble, as if she were a priest who had caught him at some sordid little sin. “I am trying. I do the best I can.”

With that, Ludmila’s rage evaporated. She knew the fellow was telling the truth. The trouble was, his best just wasn’t good enough. The Soviet Union’s pool of skilled manpower had never been big enough to meet the country’s needs. The purges of the 1930s hadn’t helped, either; sometimes simply knowing something was enough to make one an object of suspicion. Then the Germans came, and after them the Lizards… Ludmila supposed it was a miracle any reliable technicians were left alive. If any were-she knew she hadn’t seen one lately.

She said, “We have here manuals for the Kukuruznik and its engine. Study them carefully, so we won’t have this kind of problem any more.”

“Da, Comrade Pilot.” The mechanic’s head bobbed up and down again. Ludimila was dully certain they wouldn’t have this kind of problem any less, either. She wondered if the mechanic could read the manuals. Before the war, he’d probably been a tinker or a blacksmith at a kolkhoz, good enough at patching a pot or hammering out a new blade for a shovel. Whatever he’d been, he was hopelessly out of his depth when it came to engines.

“Do the best you can,” she told him, and left the shelter of the U-2’s enclosure. It had been cold in there. Away from the heaped banks of earth that shielded from blast, away from the roof of camouflage netting covered over with dead grass, the wind bit with full force, driving sleet into her face. She was glad for her flying clothes of fur and leather and thick cotton padding, for the oversized felt valenki that kept her feet from freezing. Now that winter was here, she seldom took anything off.

The valenki acted almost like snowshoes, spreading her weight as she squelched along the muddy edge of the equally muddy landing strip. Only the slush-filled ruts from her plane and others distinguished the runway from any other part of the steppe. Even more than most Soviet aircraft, the Kukuruznik was made to operate from landing fields that were fields in truth.

Her head came up; her right hand went to the pistol she wore on her hip. Someone not part of the battered Red Air Force detachment was trudging across the airstrip, very likely without realizing it was one. A Red Army man, maybe-he had a rifle slung across his back.

No, not a Red Army man: he wasn’t dressed warmly enough, and the cut of his clothes was wrong. Ludmila needed only a moment to recognize the nature of the wrongness; she’d seen it enough. “Germanski!” she yelled, half to call to the fellow, half to warn the rest of the Russians on the little base.

The German spun, grabbed for his rifle, flopped down on his belly in the mud. A combat veteran, Ludmila thought, unsurprised: most of the German soldiers still alive in the Soviet Union were the ones with reactions honed by battle. This one was also smart enough not to start blazing away before he knew what he’d walked into, even if his thick red whiskers gave him the look of a bandit.

Ludmila frowned. she’d seen whiskers like those before. On the kolkhoz, that’s right, she thought What had the fellow’s name been. “Schultz,” she murmured to herself. Then she shouted it, going on in German, “Is that you?”

“Ja. Who are you?” the red-bearded man yelled back: like her, he needed a few seconds to make the connection. When he did, he exclaimed, “You’re the pilot, right?” As it had back at the collective farm, the word sounded exotic with a feminine ending tacked onto it.

She waved for him to approach. He got to his feet; though he didn’t resling his rifle, he didn’t point it at her, either. He was grimy and ragged and looked cold: if not quite the pathetic Winter Fritz of Soviet propaganda, still a long way from the deadly-dangerous figure he’d seemed back in the summer. she’d forgotten how tall he was. He was skinnier than he had been, too, which further exaggerated his height.”

He asked, “What are you doing here, out in the middle of nowhere?”

“This isn’t nowhere. This is an airfield,” she answered.

He looked around. There wasn’t much to see. He grinned impudently. “You Ivans really know how to camouflage things.”

She let that pass; she wasn’t sure whether it was a compliment or he was saying there wasn’t anything here worth hiding. She said, “I didn’t expect to see you again. I thought you and your major were on your way to Moscow.” As she spoke, she saw out of the corner of her eye that several pilots and mechanics had come out of their shelters and were watching her talk with the German. They all carried guns. No one who had fought the Nazis was inclined to trust them, not even now when the Soviet Union and Germany both faced the same foe.

“We were there,” Schultz agreed. He saw the Russians, too. His eyes were never still, not even for a second; he scanned everything around him, all the time. He unobtrusively shifted, his feet so Ludmila stood between him and most of her countrymen. With a wry smile, he went on, “Your people decided they’d rather have us go out and work for a living than sit around eating their kasha and borscht. So we did-and here I am.”

“Here you are,” she said, nodding. “Where is the major?”

“He was alive last I saw him,” Schultz answered. “We got separated; it was part of the operation. I hope he’s all right.”

“Yes,” Ludmila said. She still kept the letter Jager had sent her. she’d thought about answering, but hadn’t done it. Not only did she have no idea how to address a reply, but writing to a German would make another suspicious mark go down in her dossier. she’d never seen that dossier-she never would, unless charges were brought against her-but it felt as real as the sheepskin collar of her flying jacket.

Schultz said, “Anything to eat here? After what I’ve been stealing lately, even kasha and borscht would seem mighty fine.”

“We haven’t much for ourselves,” Ludmila answered. she didn’t mind feeding Schultz once or twice, but she didn’t want to turn him into a parasite, either. Then she had a new thought. “How good a mechanic are you?”

“Pretty good,” he said, not arrogant but confident enough. “I had to help keep my panzer running, after all.”

“Do you think you could work on an aircraft engine?”

He pursed his lips. “I don’t know. I never tried. Do you have the manuals for it?”

“Yes. They’re in Russian, though.” Ludmila switched to her own language: “You didn’t know any back at the kolkhoz. Do you understand it better now?”

“Da, a little,” Schultz answered in Russian, his accent not too scurrilous. But he dropped back into German with every sign of relief: “I still can’t read it worth a damn, though. But numbers don’t change, and I can make sense out of pictures. Let me see what you have.”

“All right.” Ludmila led him back toward the U-2 she’d just left. Members of the ground crew watched with hard, mistrustful stares as she approached. Some of that mistrust was aimed at Ludmila, for having anything to do with a German. She thought about her dossier again. But she said, “I think he can help us. He knows engines.”

“Ah,” everyone said, almost in unison. Ludmila didn’t care for that much more than she liked the mistrustful stares. Along with hating and fearing Germans, too many Russians were in the habit of attributing nearly magical abilities to them just because they came from the west. She hoped she knew better. They were good soldiers, yes, but they weren’t supermen.

When Georg Schultz saw the Kukuruznik, he rocked back on his heels and started to laugh. “You’re still flying these little bastards, are you?”

“What about it?” Ludmila said hotly. He’d have done better to insult her family than her beloved U-2.

But the panzer man answered, “We hated these stupid things. Every time I had to go out and take a dump, I figured one of ’em would fly by and shoot my ass off. I swear they could stand on tiptoe and peek in through a window, and I bet the Lizards don’t like ’em one bit better’n we did.”

Ludmila translated that into Russian. As if by magic, the ground crew’s hostility melted. Hands fell away from weapons. Somebody dug out a pouch of makhorka and passed it to Schultz. He had some old newspaper in an inside pocket that hadn’t got wet. When he’d rolled himself a cigarette, a Russian gave him a light.

He shielded it with one hand from the drips that splattered down off the camouflage netting, walked around so he could get a good look at the engine and two-bladed wooden prop on the nose of the Wheatcutter. When he turned around, he wore a disbelieving grin. “It really flies?”

“It really flies,” Ludmila agreed gravely, hiding her own smile. She said it again in her own language. A couple of the mechanics laughed out loud. She returned to German: “Do you think you can help keep it flying?”

“Why not?” he said. “It doesn’t look near as bad as keeping a panzer going. And if that engine were any simpler, you’d run it off a rubber band like a kid’s toy.”

“Hmm,” Ludmila said, not sure she cared for the comparison. The little Shvetsov was made to be rugged as a mule, but surely that was something to be proud of, not to scorn. She pointed to Schultz. “Turn your back.”

“Jawohl!” He clicked his heels as if she were a field marshal in red-striped trousers, and performed a smart about-turn.

She gestured for a couple of Russians to stand behind him so he couldn’t see what she was doing, then loosened the sparkplug wire she’d noticed and her alleged mechanic hadn’t. “You can turn back now. Find out what’s wrong with the machine.”

Schultz walked over to the U-2, inspected the engine for perhaps fifteen seconds, and fixed the wire Ludmila had tampered with. His smile seemed to say, Why don’t you ask me a hard one next time? The mechanic who had failed to find the same defect glared at the German as if suspecting the devil’s grandmother had somehow migrated from the Shvetsov to him.

“This man will be useful on this base,” Ludmila said. Her eyes dared the ground crew to argue with her. None of the men said anything, though several looked ready to burst with what they weren’t saying.

The German panzer sergeant seemed at least as bemused as his Soviet counterparts. “First I fight alongside a bunch of Jewish partisans, and now I’m joining the Red Air Force,” he said, maybe more to himself than to Ludmila. “I hope to God none of this ever shows up in my file.”

So the Nazis worried about dossiers, too. The thought gave Ludmila something in common with Schultz, though it wasn’t one she’d be able to share with him. Somehow that didn’t matter, either. They both knew what was safe to talk about and what wasn’t.

Schultz also knew what the hostile looks he was getting meant. He undid his canteen, tossed it to the mechanic who was glaring hardest. “Vodka, russki vodka,” he said in his pidgin Russian. He smacked his lips. “Ochen khorosho.”

The startled groundcrew man undid the stopper, sniffed, then grinned and enfolded Schultz in a bear hug. “That was clever,” Ludmila said as the ground crew passed the flask from one eager hand to the next. A moment later, she added, “Your Major Jager would have approved.”

“Do you think so?” she’d found the right praise with which to reach him-his long, bony face glowed as if he were a small boy who’d just been told he’d written his school’s prize essay for the year. He went on, “The major, miss, I think he’s one hell of a man.”

“Yes,” Ludmila said, and realized she and Schultz might have something else in common after all.