Striking the Balance

The refugee shiplord went on, “Nor is yielding to the Tosevites your only choice. I have heard reports of brave males in Siberia who, tired at last of endless orders to do the impossible, struck a blow for freedom against their own misguided commanders, and who now rule their base independent of foolish plans formulated by males who float in comfort high above Tosev 3 and who think that makes them wise. You who hear my voice, ignore orders whose senselessness you can see with one eye turret and with the nictitating membrane over that eye. Remonstrate with your officers. If all else fails, imitate the brave Siberians and reclaim liberty for yourselves. I, Straha, have spoken.”

Static replaced the shiplord’s voice. Ussmak felt stronger, more alive, than even ginger could make him. However much he enjoyed that intoxication, he knew it was artflicial. What Straha had said, though, was real, every word of it. Males on the ground had been treated shabbily, had been sacrfliced for no good purpose-for no purpose at all, as far as Ussmak could tell.

Straha had also told him something he badly needed to know. When he’d spoken with the males up in orbit, he’d threatened to surrender the base to the local Big Uglies if the Race didn’t meet his demands or attacked him. He’d hesitated about doing anything more than threatening, since he didn’t know how the Soviets would treat males they captured. But Straha had set his mind at ease. He didn’t know much about Tosevite geography, but he did know the United States and the SSSR were two of the biggest, strongest not-empires on Tosev 3.

If the United States treated its captured males well, no doubt the SSSR would do the same. Ussmak hissed in satisfaction. “We now have a new weapon against you,” he said, and turned both eye turrets up toward the starships still in orbit around Tosev 3.

His mouth dropped open. Those males up there certainly didn’t know much about the Big Uglies.

Sam Yeager looked at the rocket motor painfully assembled from parts made in small-town machine shops all over Arkansas and southern Missouri. It looked-well,crude was the politest word that came to mind. He sighed. “Once you see what the Lizards can do, anything people turn out is small potatoes alongside it. No offense, sir,” he added hastily.

“None taken,” Robert Goddard answered. “As a matter of fact, I agree with you. We do the best we can, that’s all.” His gray, worn face said he was doing more than that: he was busy working himself to death. Yeager worried about him.

He walked around the motor. If you set it alongside the pieces of the one from the Lizard shuttlecraft that had brought Straha down to exile, it was a kid’s toy. He took off his service cap, scratched at his blond hair. “You think it’ll fly, sir?”

“The only way to find out is to light it up and see what happens,” Goddard answered. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get to test-fire it on the ground before we wrap sheet metal around it and stick some explosives on top. The trouble is, test-firing a rocket motor isn’t what you’d call inconspicuous, and we’d probably have a visit from the Lizards in short order.”

“It’s a straight scaledown from the motor in the Lizard shuttlecraft,” Yeager said. “Vesstil thinks that should be a pretty good guarantee it’ll work the right way.”

“Vesstil knows more about flying rockets than anyone human,” Goddard said with a weary smile. “Seeing as he flew Straha down from his starship when he defected, that goes without saying. But Vesstil doesn’t know beans about engineering, at least the cut-and-try kind. Everything else changes when you scale up or down, and you have to try the new model to see what the devil you’ve got.” He chuckled wryly. “And it’s notquite a straight scaledown anyhow, Sergeant: we’ve had to adapt the design to what we like to do and what we’re able to do.”

“Well, yes, sir.” Sam felt his ears heat with embarrassment. Since his skin was very fair, he feared Goddard could watch him flush. “Hell of a thing for me to even think of arguing with you.” Goddard had more experience with rockets than anybody who wasn’t a Lizard or a German, and he was gaining on the Germans. Yeager went on, “If I hadn’t read the pulps before the war, I wouldn’t be here working with you now.”

“You’ve taken advantage of what you read,” Goddard answered. “If you hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t be of any use to me.”

“You spend as much time bouncing around as I’ve done, sir, and you know that if you see a chance, you’d better grab for it with both hands, ’cause odds are you’ll never see it again.” Yeager scratched his head once more. He’d spent his whole adult life, up till the Lizards came, playing minor-league ball. A broken ankle ten years before had effectively ended whatever chance he’d had of making the majors, but he’d hung in there anyhow. And on the endless bus and train trips from one small or medium-sized town to the next, he’d killed time withAstounding and any other science-fiction magazines he’d found on the newsstands. His teammates had laughed at him for reading about bug-eyed monsters from another planet. NowNow Robert Goddard said, “I’m glad you grabbed this one, Sergeant. I don’t think I could have gotten nearly so much information out of Vesstil with a different interpreter. It’s not just that you know his language; you have a real feel for what he’s trying to get across.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, feeling about ten feet tall. “Soon as I got the chance to have anything to do with the Lizards besides shooting at ’em, I knew that’s what I wanted. They’re-fascinating, you know what I mean?”

Goddard shook his head. “What they know, the experience they have-that’s fascinating. But them-” He laughed self-consciously. “A good thing Vesstil’s not around right now. He’d be insulted if he knew he gave me the creeps.”

“He probably wouldn’t, sir,” Yeager said. “The Lizards mostly don’t make any bones about us giving them the creeps.” He paused. “Hmm, come to think of it, he might be insulted at that, sort of like if a Ku-Kluxer found out some Negroes looked down their noses at white men.”

“As if we don’t have the right to think Lizards are creepy, you mean.”

“That’s right.” Sam nodded. “But snakes and things like that, they never bothered me, not even when I was a kid. And the Lizards, every time I’m with one of them, I’m liable to learn something new: not just new for me, I mean, but something nobody, no human being, ever knew before. That’s pretty special. In a way, it’s even more special than Jonathan.” Now he laughed the nervous laugh Goddard had used before. “Don’t let Barbara found out I said that.”

“You have my word,” the rocket scientist said solemnly. “But I do understand what you mean. Your son is an unknown to you, but he’s not the first baby that ever was. Really discovering something for the first time is a thrill almost as addictive as-as ginger, shall we say?”

“As long as we don’t let the Lizards hear us say it, sure,” Yeager answered. “They sure do like that stuff, don’t they?” He hesitated again, then went on, “Sir, I’m mighty glad you decided to move operations back here to Hot Springs. Gives me the chance to be with my family, lets me help Barbara out every now and then. I mean, we haven’t even been married a year yet, and-”

“I’m glad it’s worked out well for you, Sergeant,” Goddard said, “but that’s not the reason I came down here from Couch-”

“Oh, I know it’s not, sir,” Sam said hastily.

As if he hadn’t spoken, Goddard went on, “Hot Springs is a decent-sized city, with at least a little light manufacturing. We’re not far from Little Rock, which has more. And we have all the Lizards at the Army and Navy General Hospital here, upon whom we can draw for expertise. That has proved much more convenient than transferring the Lizards up to southern Missouri one by one.”

“Like I said, it’s great by me,” Yeager told him. “And we’ve moved an awful lot of pieces of the Lizard shuttlecraft down here so we can study ’em better.”