In th Balance

by neetha Napew

  ignored logistics died.

  Of course, the Tosevites had fuel problems of their own. They'd stockpiled the noxious stuff their machines burned for this campaign, but the facilities that produced it were vulnerable to assault. Relhost looked at the map again. He hoped the Race would assault them soon.

  A couple of Big Uglies in long black coats and wide-brimmed black hats pushed an ordnance cart toward the flight of killercraft. Gefron took no notice of them; Tosevites were doing a lot of menial work these days, to let males of the Race get on with the business of conquering Tosev 3.

  Gefron gave Rolvar and Xarol, his fellow pilots in the flight, their last few instructions: "Remember, this one is important. We really have to plaster that Ploesti place; the Big

  Uglies of Deutschland draw much of their fuel from it."

  "It shall be done," the other two males chorused together.

  Gefron went on, "So much I have been ordered to tell you. But for myself, I would like to dedicate this mission to the spirit of my predecessor as head of this unit, Flight Leader Teerts. We shall aid in making it impossible for the Big Uglies to kill or capture — we still do not know his exact fate— any more brave males like Teerts. Thanks to us, the conquest of Tosev 3 shall grow nearer its completion."

  "It shall be done," the pilots chorused again.

  * * *

  Mordechai Anielewicz walked along Nowolipie Street between closed armaments plants,

  listening to Nathan Brodsky. The Jewish fighting leader had long since grown used to taking promenades through Warsaw to listen to things he didn't want to take the chance of having the Lizards overhear. This was one of those things: Brodsky, who worked as a laborer at the airport, had picked up a lot of the Lizards' language.

  "No doubt about it," Brodsky was saying. The hem of his coat flapped around his ankles as be walked beside Anielewicz. "Their destination is Ploesti; they were talking about knocking out all the Nazis' oil. Nu, I know that's important, so I told the Lizard boss I was sick and came straight to you."

  "Nu, nu,"Anielewicz answered. "You're not wrong; it is important. Now I have to figure out what to do about it." He stopped. "Let's head back toward my headquarters."

  Brodsky obediently turned. Now Anielewicz

  walked with his head down, hands jammed into his pockets against the cold. He was thinking very hard indeed. Cooperating with the Germans in any way still left the worst of bad tastes in his mouth. He kept having second thoughts about letting that damned panzer major through with even half his saddlebag of explosive metal.

  And now again. If the Lizards wrecked Ploesti, the Nazi war machine was liable to grind to a halt; the Germans, without oil of their own, desperately needed what they got from Romania. The Nazis were still fighting hard against the Lizards; and even hurting them now and again: no one could deny they turned out capable soldiers and clever engineers.

  Suppose in the end the Germans won. Would they rest content inside their own borders? Anielewicz snorted. Not bloody likely! But suppose the Germans— suppose mankind— lost. Would the Lizards ever use human

  beings as anything but hewers of wood and drawers of water? That wasn't bloody likely, either.

  The Jewish fighting leader came around the last corner before the office building his men occupied. Among many others, his bicycle stood out in front of it. Seeing it there helped him make up his mind. He slapped Brodsky on the back. "Thank you for letting me know, Nathan. I'll take care of it."

  "What will you do?" Brodsky asked.

  Anielewicz didn't answer; unlike Brodsky, he'd come to appreciate the need for tight security. What the other Jew didn't know, he couldn't tell. Anielewicz hopped on his bicycle, rode rapidly to a house outside the ghetto. He knocked on the door. A Polish woman opened it. "May I use your telephone?" he said. "I'm sorry; I'm afraid it's quite urgent."

  Her eyes went wide: few people who are part of contingency plans ever expect the contingencies to arrive. But after a moment she nodded. "Yes, of course. Come in. It's in the parlor."

  Anielewicz knew where the phone was; his men had installed it. He cranked it, waited for an operator to answer. When she did, he said, "Give me Operator Three-Two-Seven, please."

  "One moment." He heard clicks from the switchboard, then: "Three-Two-Seven speaking."

  "Yes. This is Yitzhak Bauer. I need to place a call to my uncle Michael in Satu Mare, please. It's urgent."

  The operator was one of his people. The false name was one for which she was supposed to be alert. And she was. Without a second's

  hesitation, she said, "I will try to put you through. It may take some time."

  "As fast as you can, please." At full stretch from where he stood, Anielewicz could just reach a chair. He snagged it, sank into it. Polish long-distance phone service had been bad before the war started. It was worse now. He kept the receiver pressed to his ear. What he mostly heard was silence. Every so often, there would be more switchboard clicks or operators' voices at the very limit of hearing.

  Time crawled by. The Polish woman brought him a cup of coffee, or rather the burnt-kasha brew that substituted for it. He'd long since grown used to the ersatz, and besides, it was warm. But if the call didn't get through pretty soon, he wouldn't have needed to bother making it: the Lizards would have bombed Ploesti and headed back.

  How long to finish arming their planes? he

  wondered. That was the biggest variable; the flight from here to a little north of Bucharest wouldn't take long, especially not at the speeds the Lizards' aircraft used.

  More clicks, more distant chatter, and then, sounding almost as clear as if she were sitting in his lap, Operator Three-Two-Seven said, "I am through to Sate Mare, sir." He heard another operator's voice, more distant, speaking oddly accented German rather than Polish or Yiddish:. "Go ahead, Warsaw. To whom do you wish to speak?"

  "My uncle Michael— Michael Spiegel, that is," Anielewicz said. "Tell him it's his nephew Yitzhak." Lieutenant Colonel Michael Spiegel, he was given to understand, commanded the Nazi garrison at Sate Mare, the northernmost Romanian town still in German hands.

  "I will connect you. Please wait," the distant operator said.

  Anielewicz listened to still more clicks, and then at last a ringing phone. Someone picked it up; he heard a brisk male voice say, "Bitte?" The operator explained who he claimed to be. A long pause followed, and then, "Yitzhak? Is that you? I hadn't expected to hear from you."

  / hadn't expected to call, either, you Nazi bastard Anielewicz thought; Spiegel's clear German set his teeth on edge by conditioned reflex. But he made himself say, "Yes, it's me, Uncle Michael. I thought you ought to know that our friends will want some cooking grease from your family— as much as you can spare."

  He felt how crude the improvised code was. Spiegel, fortunately, proved quick on the uptake. Hardly missing a beat, the German said, "We'll have to get it ready for them. Do you know when they're coming?"

  "I shouldn't be surprised if they'd already left," Anielewicz answered. "I'm sorry, but I just found out they felt like getting it myself."

  "Such is life. We'll do what we can. He/— Good-bye." The line went dead.

  He started to say Heil Hitler, Anielewicz thought. Damn good thing he caught himself in case the Lizards are listening in.

  As soon as he replaced the receiver, the Polish woman stuck her head into the parlor. "Is everything all right?" she asked anxiously.

  "I— hope so," he answered, but felt he had to add, "If you have relatives you can stay with, that might be a good idea."

  Her pale blue eyes went wide. She nodded. "I'll arrange to have someone get word to my husband," she said. "Now you'd better go."

  Anielewicz left in a hurry. He felt bad about endangering a noncombatant family, and even worse about endangering them to benefit the Nazis. / hope I did the right thing, he thought as he climbed onto his bicycle. / wonder if I'll ever be sure.

  Blips appeared on the head-up display that reflected into Gefron's
eyes from the inside of the killercraft's windscreen. "Some of the Big Uglies on the ground must have spotted us," the flight leader said. "They're sending aircraft up to try to keep us away from Ploesti." His mouth fell open in amusement at the absurdity of the idea.

  The other two pilots in the flight confirmed that their electronics saw the Tosevite aircraft, too. Xarol observed, "They're sending up a lot of aircraft."

  "This fuel is important to them," Gefron answered. "They know they have to try to protect it. What they don't know is that they can't. We'll have to show them."

  He studied the velocity vectors of the planes the Big Uglies were flying. A couple were the new jets the Deutsche had started throwing into the air. They were fast enough to have been troublesome if they were equipped with radar. As it was, he knew they were there while they still groped for him.

  "I'll take the jets," he told the other males. "You two handle the ones with the revolving airfoils. Knock down a few and keep going; we haven't any time to waste toying with them."

  He chose targets for his missiles, gave them to the computer.

  When the tone from the speaker taped to his hearing diaphragm told him the computer had

  acquired them, he touched the firing button. The killercraft bucked slightly as the wingtip missiles leapt away.

  One of the jets never knew what hit it. He watched electronically as a missile swatted it out of the air. The other Tosevite pilot must have spotted the missile meant for him. He tried to dive away from it, but his aircraft wasn't fast enough for that. He went down, too.

  Gefron's wingmales salvoed all their missiles, wingtip and pylon both, at the Deutsch aircraft That blasted a gaping hole in their formation, through which the killercraft flew. Rolvar and Xarol shouted excitedly; they hadn't seen so much opposition since the war was new.

  Gefron was pleased, too, but also a little worried. The Big Ugly pilots weren't fleeing; they were trying to regroup in the wake of the killercraft. Returning to base, only he would have missiles left to fire at them.

  It shouldn't matter, Gefron told himself. If we can't get by them with our speed, altitude, radar and cannon, we don't deserve to conquer this planet. But it was one more thing to worry about.

  He studied the radar display. "Approaching target," he said. "Remember, the Deutsche have set up a dummy target north of the real installation. If you bomb that one, by mistake, I promise that you'll never get your, tailstumps into a killercraft again as long as you live."

  The real Ploesti lay in a little vale. Gefron had it on his radar set. He peered through the windscreen, ready to paint the assigned refineries with his laser to guide the bombs in. But instead of the towers of the refineries and petroleum wells, the big squat cylinders that stored refined hydrocarbons, all he saw was a spreading, thickening cloud of gray-black smoke. He hissed. The Deutsche weren't

  playing fair.

  His wingmales noticed the problem at the same time he did. "What are we stupposed to do now?" Rolyar asked. "How can we light up the targets through all that junk?"

  Gefron wanted to abort the mission and fly back to base. But, because he was the flight leader, anything that went wrong would get blamed on him. "We'll bomb anyway," he declared. "Whatever in the smoke we hit will hurt the Deutsche somehow."

  "Truth," Xarol declared. The flight went on. Gefron turned on the laser targeting system in the hope it would penetrate the smoke or find some clear patches through which to acquire accurate targets for the bombs his killercraft carried under its wings. No luck— instead of the steady tone he wanted to hear, all he got was the complaintng warble of a system that couldn't lock on.

  The Deutsch antiaircraft guns that lined the ridges on either side of the petroleum wells and refineries opened up with everything they had. More smoke dotted the sky, now in big black puffs around and mostly behind the flight of killercraft: the Big Uglies at the guns weren't leading the Race's aircraft quite enough.

  Even so, the display of firepower was impressive. The bursts from exploding Tosevite shells seemed close enough together for Gefron to get out of his aircraft and walk across them. Once or twice he heard sharp rattles, like gravel bouncing off sheet metal. It wasn't gravel, though; it was fragments of shell casing punching holes in his fuselage and wing. He anxiously scanned the instrument panel for damage lights. None came on.

  The Deutsche were defending Ploesti every way they knew how. Above the clotted smoke

  floated balloons tethered to stout cables that might wreck an aircraft that ran into them. More antiaircraft guns, some cannons like those on the high ground to either side, others mere machine guns that spat glowing tracers, fired out of the smoke. They had no radar control and so could not see what they hoped to hit, but they added more metal to an already crowded sky.

  "Does anyone have laser lock-on?" Gefron asked hopefully. Both wingmales denied it. Gefron sighed. The results would not be what his superiors had hoped for. "Proceed on purely visual bombing run."

  "It shall be done, Flight Leader," Xarol and Rolvar chorused.

  Then they were over the billowing smoke. Gefron poised a claw at the bomb-release button. The killercraft lost both weight and drag as the ordnance fell away. All at once it

  seemed a much better performer.

  "We did hurt them, by the spirits of departed Emperors!" Xarol said exultantly.

  The wingmale was right. Sudden new angry clouds of black, greasy smoke roiled up through the screen the Deutsche had stretched above Ploesti. Through new smoke and old, Gefron saw sullen orange fireballs blooming like so many huge, terrible flowers.

  "The Big Uglies will be a long time repairing that," the flight leader agreed happily. He radioed a report of success to the base from which he'd set out, then returned to the intraflight frequency: "Now we go home."

  "As if we had any real home on this cold ball of mud," Rolvar said.

  "Part of it— the more southerly latitudes— can be quite pleasant," Gefron replied. "And

  even this area's not too bad in local summer. Present conditions, of course, are something else again— I assure you, I find frozen water as revolting as does any other male in his right mind."

  He brought his killercraft onto the reciprocal of the course he'd flown to Ploesti. As he did so, his radar picked up the Big Ugly aircraft through which his flight had barreled on the way to the refinery complex. They hadn't come straight after the killercraft; instead, they'd loitered along the likely return route and used the time while he and his wingmales were making their bombing run to gain altitude.

  Gefron would have been just as glad to scoot past unnoticed, but one of the Big Uglies spotted him and his comrades. They might have been radarless, but they had radios. What one of them saw, the others learned in moments. Their aircraft turned toward the

  flight for an attack run.

  The range closed frighteningly fast. The Big Uglies flew inadequate aircraft, but they flew them with panache and courage, darting straight at Gefron and his wingmales. The flight leader fired his next-to-last missile and then, a moment later, his last one. Two Tosevite planes tumbled in ruins. The rest kept coming.

  On the head-up display, Gefron saw another enemy aircraft break up, and yet another: Rolvar and Xarol were using their cannon to good effect. But the Big Uglies were firing, too; through the windscreen, past the head-up display, the flight leader watched the pale flashes from their guns. He turned the nose of his killercraft toward the nearest Big Ugly, fired a short burst. Smoke poured from the enemy's engine; the plane began to fall.

  Then the flight was through the horde of

  Tosevites. Gefron let out a long sigh of relief: the Big Uglies could not hope to pursue. He keyed his radio: "All well, wingmales?"

  "All well, Flight Leader," Rolvar answered. But Xarol said, "Not all well, superior sir. I took several hits as we mixed it up with the Big Uglies. I've lost electrical power to some of my control surfaces, and I'm losing hydraulic pressure in the backup system. I am not certain I will
be able to complete return to base."

  "I will inspect visually." Gefron gained altitude and lost speed, letting Xarol pull ahead of him: What he saw made him hiss in dismay: part of the tail surface of his wingmale's killercraft had been shot away, and two lines of dismayingly large holes stitched the right wing and fuselage. "You didn't just take several hits; you got yourself chewed up. Can you keep it flying?"

  "For the time being, superior sir, but altitude control grows increasingly difficult."

  "Do the best you can. If you are able to set down on one of our airstrips, the Race will have the opportunity to repair your aircraft rather than writing it off."

  "I understand, superior sir."

  The Race had lost far more equipment on Tosev 3 than even the most pessimistic forecasts allowed for. Keeping what was left operational was a priority that grew higher every day.