In the Balance

by Harry Turtledove

  Up and down the English coast, the story was the same: wherever there’d been an active radar, a rocket came along and took it out. That meant only one thing: rockets able to home in on radar beams, even the new shortwave ones Jerry still hadn’t figured out.

  “Who’d have thought the Lizards could be so much smarter than the Germans?” Goldfarb said; no matter how much he loathed Hitler and the Nazis, he had a solid respect for the technical ability of the enemy across the Channel.

  “Wireless says we knocked down a couple of their planes over London,” Jones remarked hopefully.

  “Good,” Goldfarb said; any news of that sort was encouraging. “How many did we lose?”

  “The commentator did not announce the full score of the match,” Jones said. “Military security, don’t you know?”

  “Oh indeed,” Goldfarb said. “I wonder if their batsman made his century; no doubt it’s a cricket score set against one footballers might make. God help us all.”

  “They’ve not tried a landing here,” Jones said, still looking on the bright side.

  “It’s only a very small island.” Goldfarb pictured a world globe in his mind, and realized all at once just how small England had to look from space.

  Not small enough to keep them from bombing us Jones said bitterly. He and Goldfarb both shook their heads. They’d helped their country beat back the most savage air assault the world had ever known, then helped start paying the Germans back. Now they were under attack again. It hardly seemed fair.

  “There’s something!” Goldfarb exclaimed, pointing. He and Jones both swung their field glasses toward, the moving specks in the sky. The specks—even through binoculars, they were little more than that—were southbound. “Ours, I think,” Goldfarb said, “bound for the Lizards’ lair in France.”

  “Lizards and Frogs.” Jones laughed at his own wit, but quickly sobered. “I wonder how many of the poor brave buggers’ll fly back north again after their run. Worse than the flak over Berlin, they say.”

  “I wonder if Jerry’s hitting back at the Lizards, too.” Something else occurred to Goldfarb. “If his planes and ours are both trying to hit them at the same time, do we shoot at each other, too?”

  “I hope not,” Jones exclaimed. “Wouldn’t that be a balls-up?”

  “It would indeed,” Goldfarb said. “I hope not, too.” He laughed, not altogether comfortably. “First time in donkey’s years I’ve wished the Germans anything but a fast trip to the devil.”

  “The Germans, they’re human beings. Stack ’em against things from Mars and I know where my choice lies,” Jones said.

  Goldfarb answered with a grunt. He was reluctant to concede anything to the Nazis; he agreed completely with Churchill’s quip that, should Satan declare war on Hitler, he would at least give the Devil a favorable mention in the House of Commons. But quips came easy. Now the whole world faced devils it didn’t know. Britain had allied with Red Russia when Germany invaded: Germany was worse. If the Lizards were worse than Germany, would alliances swing again?

  He scowled. “I’m damned if I want to see us in bed with the Nazis.” He wondered again at the fate of his cousins in Poland.

  “Would you rather end up in bed with the Lizards?” Jones demanded. Before it could turn into an argument, he added, “Me, I’d rather end up in bed with the barmaid down at the White Horse Inn.”

  That sufficed to distract Goldfarb. “Which one?” he asked. “Daphne or Sylvia?”

  “Daphne by choice. I’m rather keen on blondes, and she has more to hold on to.” Jones’s hands illustrated just which parts he had in mind. “But, of course, were Sylvia to smile at me in exactly the proper fashion—redheads are interesting because they’re unusual, what?”

  “They both fancy pilots,” Goldfarb said morosely. Along with, no doubt, a great many other nonflying RAF men, he’d had his advances turned into retreats by both girls. For that matter, so had Jerome Jones.

  The other radar man said, “Now there’s something to say for the Lizards, at any rate.” Goldfarb raised an interrogative eyebrow. Jones explained: “if they keep on as they’ve been doing, we’ll soon have no pilots left.”

  “That’s not funny,” Goldfarb said. As if to contradict himself, he started laughing.

  Then he choked on his laughter. Something screamed past overhead at just above treetop height. He grabbed for the field telephone, cranked as if his life depended on it while more Lizard planes streaked northwest above him. He shouted out his warning over the yowl of their engines.

  “If it’s London again, the bastards will be there in a minute,” Jones yelled at the top of his lungs. He might as well have been whispering; Goldfarb had to read his lips.

  Goldfarb did his best to sound hopeful: “Doesn’t take long to scramble the Spitfire squadrons.”

  “Maybe not, but we can’t catch their planes even if we do manage to get ours up.”

  “What’s worked best is loitering alongside, their return routes, then striking at them as they go past.”

  “Dogging and pouncing,” Jones said, dropping his voice as the Lizard aircraft receded in the distance. Goldfarb raised that eyebrow again. His friend went on, “I did a bit of history at Cambridge along with the maths. The old Byzantines would let the Arabs into Asia Minor, you see, then wait at the passes for them to come out with their loot.”

  “Ah,” Goldfarb said. “And did it work?”

  “Sometimes. But even when it did, of course, Asia Minor took a bit of a hiding.”

  “Yes. Well, we’ve had hidings before. I hope we can ride out another one,” Goldfarb said. “Not that we’ve much choice in the matter.”

  Neither of them said much after that. Goldfarb dug a finger into one ear, trying to make it stop ringing. He had little luck—the Lizards’ engines were just too loud. He wondered if the RAF was having any luck, and wished he could be up in a Spitfire himself. His abilities didn’t lie there, though. He consoled himself with the thought that he’d done what he could by spotting the flight of bombers.

  He peered south, out over the English Channel. The springtime air—almost summer now, he reminded himself—was sweet and mild and clear. The French coast was a low, dark smear on the horizon. He raised the binoculars to his eyes. France leapt closer. Three years ago, that coast had been England’s shield. Then, horribly, unexpectedly, the shield fell over, and it served as a base for a thrust at England’s heart.

  And now—what? Another thrust at England’s heart, but one at Germany’s as well. Goldfarb wished the Lizards would leave his country alone and go after the Nazis with everything they had. The wish changed the situation about as much as wishes commonly do.

  He sighed. “It’s a rum world, sure enough.”

  “Aye, it is.” Jones looked at his watch. “Our reliefs should be here any minute now. When we’re off, shall we head over to the White Horse? What they call best bitter’s gone to the dogs since the war (gone through their kidneys, by the taste of it), but there’s always Daphne to stare at, maybe even to chat, up.”

  “Why not?” Goldfarb intended to try Sylvia again—his own taste ran to redheads. She wasn’t a Jewish girl to bring home to his family (he’d thought a lot more about that since the war started), but he didn’t aim to marry her—however attractive some of the concomitants of that relationship might be.

  He laughed at himself. The next interest in him Sylvia showed would be her first. Well, he thought, she can’t very well show interest if I’m not there to be interesting.

  “Something else to thank the Lizards for,” Jones said. “If they hadn’t smashed up the radar set, we’d be spending all these idle hours fiddling with it instead of chasing skirt. Radar’s all very well, but next to skirt—”

  “Right,” Goldfarb said. He pointed. “And here come Reg and Steven, so let’s be off.”

  As Jones got up from his canvas chair, he asked, “Can you lend me ten bob?”

  Goldfarb stared at him. He grinned back, cheekily confident
. Goldfarb got out his wallet, passed over a note. “If you had the gall with Daphne that you do with me …”

  “With ten bob in my pocket, maybe I will.”

  “Come on, then.” There was a war on—there were, these last few crazed days, two wars on—but life went on, too. Goldfarb hurried through his report to the next watch crew, then hurried off with Jerome Jones toward the White Horse Inn.

  I am flying toward my death. George Bagnall had had that thought every time the Lancaster made its ungainly leap off the tarmac for a run into Germany. Now, flying against the Lizards, it was much more tightly focused. Death lurked in the air over Germany, yes, but random death: a flak shell that happened to burst just where you were, or a night fighter coming close enough to spot your exhaust.

  Going against the Lizards, death was not random. This was Bagnall’s third sortie into France, and he had seen that for himself. If the Lizards chose your plane, you would go down. Their rockets came after you as if they knew your home address. You couldn’t run; shooting at the missiles did no good to speak of; Bagnall wanted to hide.

  He glanced over at Ken Embry. The pilot’s face was set, the skin stretched tight across his cheekbones, his mouth nothing but a bloodless slash. They were coming in low tonight, too low to bother with oxygen, so Embry’s whole face was visible. Going in high just made them better targets. The RAP had learned that lesson the hard way.

  Bagnall sighed. “Pity we couldn’t have come down with a case of magneto drop or some such, eh?”

  “You’re the engineer, Mr. Bagnall,” Embry said. “Arranging a convenient mechanical failure should be your speciality.”

  “Pity I didn’t think of it as we were running through the checklists,” Bagnall murmured. Embry’s answering grin stretched his mouth wider, but did nothing to banish the look of haunted determination from his features. Like Bagnall, he knew what the odds were. They’d been lucky twice—three times, if you counted the wild melee in the air over Cologne on what everyone was starting to call The Night the Martians Landed. But how long could luck hold?”

  Embry said, “Feels odd, flying out of formation.”

  “It did seem rather like lining up all the ducks to be knocked over one by one,” Bagnall said. The first attack on the Lizards—in which, fortunately, his Lanc had not been involved—had been a failure horrific enough to make Bomber Command change tactics in a hurry, something the flight engineer hadn’t previously imagined possible.

  And attacking low and dispersed did work better than pouring in high and in formation, as if the Lizards were nothing but Germans to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Bagnall’s bomber had made it back to England twice.

  “Five miles to commencement of target area,” the navigator announced over the intercom.

  “Thank you, Alf,” Ken Embry said. Ahead of them, streaks of fire began leaping up from the ground. Fully laden bombers exploded in midair, one after another, blazing through the night like great orange chrysanthemums of flame. They would have been even more beautiful had each one not meant the deaths of so many men.

  Bagnall waited for one of those fiery streaks to burn straight for his Lanc. It hadn’t happened yet, but—

  Embry whooped, pounded his thigh with a fist. “Did you see that? Did you bloody see that? One of them missed. Somebody dodged it.” Sure enough, one of the rockets kept flying up and up, then went off in a blast not much more impressive than a Guy Fawkes Day firework. Embry quickly sobered. “But there’s so many that don’t miss.”

  From his glassed-in window in the bottom front of the Lanc’s nose, Douglas Bell said, “Coming up on something that looks like it belongs to the Lizards.”

  That was good enough for Embry. “Commencing bombing run under your direction, Bomb-Aimer.”

  “Very good,” Bell said. “Steer slightly west, toward that—bloody hell, I don’t know what it is, but it never came from Earth.”

  “Slightly west; straightening my course on the object ahead,” the pilot acknowledged.

  Peering ahead through the Perspex, Bagnall too saw against the horizon the great tower ahead. It looked more like a pregnant skyscraper than anything else he could think of, though even the Yankees’ famous Empire State Building might have shrunk by comparison, for the tower was still miles ahead. It assuredly did not belong in the French countryside, a good long way south and east of Paris.

  It was not the only tower—spaceship, Bagnall supposed the proper word was—in the neighborhood, either. The Lizards kept setting down more and more of them. And to attack the spaceships themselves was certain death. Nobody had succeeded in knocking one out; nobody had come back from trying, either.

  The bomb-aimer, while as brave a man as could be hoped for—he was up here, after all, wasn’t be?—was not actively trying to kill himself. He said, “Slightly more to the west, if you please, sir—three degrees or so. I think that’s the tank park we were told of in the briefing, don’t you?”

  Embry and Bagnall both leaned forward to look now. Something big and orderly was going on down on the ground, that was certain. If it wasn’t German, it had to belong to the Lizards. And if it was German, Bagnall thought, well, too bad for Jerry. His eyes flicked over to Embry’s. The pilot nodded, said, “I think you’re right, Bomb-Aimer. Carry on.”

  “Very good,” Bell repeated. “Steady course, steady …” His voice rose to a shout. “Commence bombing!” The fuselage rattled and groaned as bombs rained down on the target. Bagnall took a moment to pity the poor French peasants below. They were, after all, his allies, now suffering under the double yoke of the Nazis and the Lizards, and some of them were only too likely to die in the bombardment that was at the moment the only hope of getting them free.

  The Lanc staggered in the air. For a dreadful instant, Bagnall thought it was hit. But it was only plowing through the turbulence kicked up by exploding bombs—the plane was usually two or three miles higher above them when they went off.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Embry heeled the bomber over and swung its nose toward England. “Give us a course for home, Mr. Whyte.”

  “Due north will do for now; I’ll fine it up momentarily,” the navigator said.

  “Due north it is. I wonder how many will land with us,” Embry said.

  I wonder if we’ll be lucky enough to land, Bagnall thought. He would not give the evil omen strength by speaking it aloud. Green-yellow tracers zipped past the windscreen, too close for comfort. Along with their rockets, the Lizards boasted formidable light flak. Embry threw the Lancaster into a series of evasive jinks and jerks that rattled everyone’s teeth.

  The rear gunner called, “We’ve a fighter to starboard, looking us over.”

  Whatever spit was left in Bagnall’s mouth dried up as his eyes swung rightward. But the plane there, a deeper blackness against black night, was not a Lizard jet, only—only!—a Focke-Wulf 190. It waggled its wings at the Lanc and darted away at a speed the British bomber could not hope to match.

  When he breathed again Bagnall discovered he’d forgotten to for some time. Then another Lizard flak battery started up below. With a sound like a giant poking his fist through a tin roof shells slammed into, the Lancaster’s left wing. Flames spurted from both engines there. To his subsequent amazement, the flight engineer performed exactly as he’d been trained. A glance at the gauges told him those Merlins would never fly again. He shut them down, shut down the fuel feed to them, feathered the props.

  Embry flicked a toggle, made a face. “Flaps aren’t responding on that side.”

  “No hydraulic pressure,” Bagnall said after another check of his instruments. He watched the pilot fight the controls; already the Lanc was trying to swing in an anticlockwise circle. “Appears we have a bit of a problem.”

  “A bit, yes,” Embry said, nodding. “Look for a field or a road. I’m going to try to set her down.” Still sounding calm, he went on, “Sooner pick my time for it than have the aircraft choose for me, eh?”

  “As you say,”
Bagnall agreed. The pilot’s couple of sentences told the same story as his own bank of instruments: the aircraft would not make it back to England. He pointed. “There’s as likely a stretch of highway as we’re apt to find. One thing for the war—we’re not likely to run over Uncle Pierre’s Citroën.”

  “Right.” Embry raised his voice. “Crew prepare for crash landing. Mr. Bagnall, lower the landing gear, if you please.”

  The right wheel descended smoothly; without hydraulics, the left refused to budge. Bagnall worked the hand crank. From the belly turret, a gunner said, “It’s down. I can see it.”

  “One thing fewer to worry about,” Embry remarked, with what seemed to Bagnall to be quite excessive good cheer. Then the pilot added, “That leaves only two or three hundred thousand, unless I miss my count.”

  “We could be trying this up in Normandy, where the hedge-rows grow right alongside the roadbed,” Bagnall said helpfully.

  Embry corrected himself: “Two things fewer. You do so relieve my mind, George.”

  “Happy to be of service,” Bagnall answered. Joking about what was going to happen was easier than just sitting back and watching it. A forced landing in a damaged aircraft on a French road in the middle of the night without lights was not easy to contemplate in cold blood.

  As if to underscore that, Embry said, “Aircrew may bail out if they find that preferable to attempting a landing. I shall endeavor to remain airborne an extra minute or two to allow them to avail themselves of the opportunity. Had we suffered this misfortune a month ago, I would bail out myself and permit the aircraft to crash, thus denying it to the Germans. As you have seen this evening, however, that situation has for the moment changed. If you do intend to, parachute, please so inform me at this time.”

  The intercom stayed silent until someone in the back of the plane said, “You’ll get us down all right, sir.”

  “Let us hope such touching confidence is not misplaced,” Embry said. “Thank you, gentlemen, one and all, and good luck to you.” He brought the stick forward, reduced power to the two surviving Merlins.