In the Balance (7 page)

Tears poured from his dazzled eyes, ran down his dirty, hollow cheeks into the curls of his beard. He sagged against a torn poster that said
Piwo
. He wondered how long it had been since beer came into the ghetto.

But none of that mattered, not in any real sense of the word. He had asked God for a sign, and God gave him one. He did not know how he could pay God back, but he promised to spend the rest of his life finding out.

Fleetlord Atvar stood before the holographic projection of Tosev 3. As he watched, points of light blinked into being here and there above the world’s ridiculously small landmasses. He wondered if, once Tosev 3 came under the dominion of the Race, manipulation of plate tectonics might bring up more usable territory.

That was a question for the future, though, for five hundred years hence, or five thousand, or twenty-five thousand. Eventually, when everything was decided and planned down to the last detail, the Race would act. That way had served it well for centuries piled on centuries.

Atvar was uneasily aware he lacked the luxury of time. Herd expected to enjoy it, but the Tosevites, having somehow developed with indecent haste the rudiments of an industrial civilization, posed a greater challenge to his forces than he or anyone else back Home had anticipated. If he failed to meet the challenge, only his failure would be remembered.

Accordingly, it was with some concern that he turned to Shiplord Kirel and said, “These devices were properly placed?”

“It is so, Fleetlord,” Kirel replied. “All placing vessels report success and have returned safely to the fleet; instruments confirm proper targeting of the thermonuclear devices and their simultaneous ignition above the principal radio communications centers of Tosev 3.”

“Excellent.” Atvar knew the Tosevites had no way to reach even a fraction of the altitude of the placing vessels. Nevertheless, actually hearing that matters had proceeded as designed was always a relief. “Their systems should be thoroughly scrambled, then.”

“As the exalted fleetlord says,” Kirel agreed. “Better still, many parts of those systems should be permanently destroyed. Unshielded transistors and microprocessors are extremely vulnerable to electromagnetic pulse and, since the Tosevites have no nuclear power of their own, they will never have seen the necessity for shielding.”

“Excellent,” Atvar repeated. “Our own shielded aircraft, meanwhile, should have rare sport against them while they writhe like roadscuttlers with fractured vertebrae. We should have no problem clearing areas for landing, and once our troops are on the ground, conquest becomes inevitable.” Saying the words brought fresh confidence to the commander. Nothing reassured the Race more than a plan that was going well.

Kirel said, “May it please the exalted fleetlord, as we land, shall we broadcast demands for surrender to be picked up by whatever receivers remain intact down below?”

That was not part of the plan as formulated. Of course, the plan as formulated went back in its essentials to the days when no one thought the Tosevites had any technology worth mentioning. Nevertheless, Atvar felt an almost instinctive reluctance to deviate from it. He said, “No, let them come to us. They will surrender soon enough when they feel the weight of our metal.”

“It shall be done as the fleetlord wishes,” Kirel said formally. Atvar knew the shiplord had ambition of his own, and that Kirel would make careful note of any and all mistakes and failures, especially those he had argued against. Let Kirel do as he would. Atvar felt sure this was no mistake.

Flight Leader Teerts stared in disbelieving wonder at the head-Up display reflected against the inside of his windshield. Never in training had he imagined sorties in such a target-rich environment. The great herd of Tosevite aircraft crawled along below and ahead of him, blissfully unaware he was so much as in their solar system.

The voice of one of the other two pilots in the flight rang in the audio button taped to his hearing diaphragm: “Pity we have no more killers to assign to this area. They’d enjoy themselves.”

Before he answered, Teerts checked the radio frequency. As ordered, it wasn’t one the Tosevites used. Relaxing, he answered, “We’re taking on an entire world, Rolvar; we don’t have enough killers to knock down all the native junk at once. We’ll just have to do the best we can with what we have.”

That best gave every sign of being spectacular. All six of his missiles had already selected targets from the herd. He ripple-fired them, one after another. His killercraft bucked slightly under him as the missiles dropped
away. Their motors kicked in and spat orange flame; they sprinted downward toward the ungainly Tosevite flying machines.

Even had the locals known they were under attack, they could have done little, not when his missiles had ten times the speed of their aircraft. The head-up display showed his salvo and those of his wingmates streaking home. Then, suddenly, Teerts needed no head-up, display to gauge what was happening: gouts of fire suddenly filled, the darkness below as aircraft tumbled out of the sky.

Rolvar yowled in Teerts’ audio button. “Look at them fall! Every shot a clean hit!”

Killercraft pilots were chosen for aggressiveness. Teerts had won flightleader paint because he also kept track of details. After a glance at the display, he said, “I show only seventeen kills. Either a missile was defective or two went after the same target.”

“Who cares?” said Gefron, the other member of the flight. Gefron would not make flight leader if he lived to be a thousand, even counting by double-length Tosevite years. He was a good pilot, though. He went on, “We still have our cannon. Let’s use them.”

“Right.” Teerts led the flight down into gun range. The natives still didn’t know what had happened to them, but they knew something horrible had. Like a flock of frenni beset by wild botor, they were scattering, doing their feeble best to get out of harm’s way. Teerts’ jaws opened in mirth. Their best would not suffice.

His engines changed pitch as they breathed thicker alt Servos squealed, adjusting the sweep of his wings. His speed dropped to little more than that of sound. A target filled his windshield. He stabbed the firing button with the thumbclaw of his stick hand. The nose of his plane disappeared for a moment in the glare of the muzzle blast. When his vision cleared, the Tosevite aircraft, one wing sheared away, was already spinning out of control toward the ground.

He’d never been among so many aircraft in his life. He bled off still more speed, to avoid collision. Another target, another burst, another kill. A few moments later, another and another.

Off to one side, he saw brief spurts of flame. He turned one eye that way. A Tosevite aircraft was shooting back at him. He abstractly admired the natives’ courage. Once pacified, they would serve the Race well. They weren’t even bad pilots, given the limitations of the lumbering aircraft they flew. They were maneuvering with everything they had, trying to break contact and escape. But that was his choice, not theirs.

He shot out the front of the aircraft pack, began to circle back toward it for another run. As he did so, a flash on the head-up display made him slew both eyes toward it. Somewhere out there in the night, a native aircraft with
better performance than those of the herd was turning in his direction and away from it.

An escorting killercraft? An enemy who thought him a better target? Teerts neither knew nor cared. Whoever the native was, he’d pay for his presumption.

Teerts’ cannon was radar-controlled. He fired a burst. Flames sprang from the Tosevite killercraft. At the same moment, it shot back at him. The shells fell short. The native, all afire now, plunged out of the sky.

Teerts raked the stampeding herd of aircraft twice more before his ammunition ran low. Rolvar and Gefron had also done all the damage they could. They streaked for low orbital pickup; soon enough, the Race would have landing strips on the ground. Then the slaughter of Tosevite aircraft would be great indeed.

“Easy as a female in the middle of her season,” Gefron exulted.

“They’re brave enough, though,” Rolvar said. “A couple of their killercraft came right for me; I might even have a hole or two. I’m not so sure I got both of them, either; they’re so little and slow, they’re a lot more maneuverable than I am.”

“I know I got mine,” Teerts said. “We’ll snatch some sleep and then come down and do it again.” His flightmates hissed approval.

One second, the Lancaster below and to the right of George Bagnall’s was flying along serenely as you please. The next, it exploded in midair. For a moment, Bagnall saw men and pieces of machine hang suspended, as if on strings from heaven. Then they were gone.

“Jesus!” he said fervently. “I think the whole ruddy world’s gone mad. First that great light in the sky—”

“Lit us up like a milliard star shells all at once, didn’t it?” Ken Embry agreed. “I wonder how the devil Jerry managed that? If it had stayed lit much longer, every bloody Nazi fighter in the world would have been able to spy us up here.”

Another Lane blew up, not far away. “What was that?” Bagnall demanded. “Anybody see a Jerry plane?”

None of the gunners answered. Neither did the bomb-aimer. Embry spoke to the radioman: “Any better luck there, Ted?”

“Not a bit of it,” Edward Lane answered. “Ever since that light, I’m getting nothing but hash on every frequency.”

“Bloody balls-up, that’s what it is,” Embry said. As if to italicize his words, two more bombers went up in flames. His voice rose to near a scream: “What’s doing that? It’s not flak and it’s not planes, so what the hell is it?”

Next to the pilot, Bagnall shivered in his seat. Flying missions over Germany was frightening enough in and of itself, but when Lanes started
getting blown out of the sky for no reason at all … His heart shrank to a small, frozen lump in his chest. His head turned this way and that, trying to see what the devil was murdering his friends. Beyond the polished Perspex, the night remained inscrutable.

Then the big, heavy Lancaster shook in the air for an instant like a leaf on a rippling stream. Even through the growl of the plane’s four Merlins, he heard a shrieking roar that made every hair on his body try to stand erect. A lean shark-shape swept past, impossibly swift, impossibly graceful. Two huge exhausts glared like the red eyes of a beast of prey. One gunner had enough presence of mind to fire at it, but it vanished ahead of the Lane in the blink of an eye.

“Did you—see that?” Ken Embry asked in a tiny voice.

“I—think so,” Bagnall answered as cautiously. He wasn’t quite sure he believed in the terrible apparition himself. “Where did the Germans come up with it?”

“Can’t be German,” the pilot said. “We know what they have, same as they know about us. My dad in a Spitfire above the Somme is likelier than a Jerry in—that.”

“Well, if he’s not a German, who the devil is he?” Bagnall asked.

“Damned if I know, and I don’t care to hang about and learn, in case he decides to come back.” Embry banked away from, the track of the impossible fighter.

“Ground flak—” Bagnall said as he watched the altimeter unwind. Embry ignored him. He shut up, feeling foolish. When set against this monster that swept bombers from the sky like a charwoman wielding her broom against spilled salt, ground flak was hardly worth worrying about.

Jens Larssen’s thumb throbbed fiercely. The nail was already turning black; he suspected he’d lose it. He scowled as darkly as his fair, sunny features allowed. He was a physicist, damn it, not a carpenter. What hurt worse than his maimed digit was the snickers from the young punks who made up most of the work crew that was building strange things in the west stands of Stagg Field.

The evening sun at his back, he tramped along Fifty-seventh Street toward the Quadrangle Club. His appetite wasn’t what it had been before he’d tried driving his thumbnail into a two-by-four, but food and coffee kept him going in place of sleep. As soon as he’d gulped his meal, he’d be back at the pile again, hammering away—this time, with luck, a little more carefully.

He sucked in a lungful of muggy Chicago air. Having been born and raised in San Francisco, he wondered why three million people chose to live in a place that was too hot and sticky half the time and too damned cold most of the rest.

“They have to be crazy,” he said aloud.

A student going the other way gave him an odd look. He felt himself flush. Dressed as he was in a dirty undershirt and a pair of chinos, he didn’t look like anyone who belonged on the University of Chicago campus, let alone a faculty member. He’d draw more looks in the Quadrangle Club.
Too bad for the Latin professors in their moth-eaten Harris tweeds
, he thought.

He walked past Cobb Gate; the grotesques carved on the big stone pile that was the northern entrance to Hull Court always made him smile. Botany Pond, surrounded on three sides by the Hull Biological Laboratories, was a nice place to sit and read when he had the time. Lately, he hadn’t had the time very often.

He was coming up to Mitchell Tower when his shadow disappeared. One second it stretched out ahead of him, all fine and proper, the next it was gone. The tower, modeled after that of Magdalen College at Oxford, was suddenly bathed in harsh white light.

Larssen stared up into the sky. The glowing spot there grew and faded and changed color as he watched. Everyone around was pointing at it and exclaiming: “What’s that?” “What could it be?” “Have you ever seen anything like that in all your life?” People stuck their heads out of windows and came running outside to see.

The physicist watched and gaped with everyone else. Little by little, the new light dimmed and his old, familiar shadow reasserted itself. Before it had fully recovered, Larssen wheeled and began running back the way he had come. He dodged past dozens of people who were still just standing and gawking. “Where’s the fire, buddy?” one of them yelled.

He didn’t answer. He just ran harder toward Stagg Field. The fire was in the sky. He knew what sort of fire it had to be, too: the fire he and his colleagues were seeking to call forth from the uranium atom. So far, no atomic pile in the United States had even managed a self-sustaining chain reaction. The crew in the west stands was trying to put together one that would.