Second Contact

The Lizards who controlled Africa did not give him so hard a time as the Americans had done. Part of that was because they were more polite than Americans had ever imagined being. The other part was that they didn’t know how to get under his skin as well as a fellow human did.

American and German radio stations were full of reports of what the Lizards had done. All the German commentators said the same thing. Dr. Goebbels would never have permitted anything less. Some of the American broadcasters presented a generally similar line, but not all. Some even said the Lizards had the right to do what they’d done. In the Reich, anyone who dared utter such a disloyal sentiment in public-let alone on the radio-would have vanished into night and fog, very likely never to be seen again. Joha

Radio Moscow played Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky. The Russian news report, when it finally came on the air, bragged of the overfulfillment of the steel quota set forth in the latest Five-Year Plan and of the anticipated bountiful harvest. As far as the broadcaster was concerned, the Lizards might as well not have existed. Drucker snorted. The Russians put him in mind of so many ostriches, burying their heads in the sand.

He squeezed meat paste out of a tinfoil tube onto a slice of dark bread. After he ate, a few crumbs floated in the air. Eventually, the blower pushed them into one filter or another. Drucker drank fruit juice from a bladder of synthetic rubber that left a harsh, chemical taste. He wished the powers that be would let pilots take beer into space, though he understood why they didn’t.

He sighed. “The beer would taste lousy, too, if I had to drink it out of one of those miserable squeeze toys,” he muttered. But even bad beer looked good to him now.

He sighed again. Times were changing. He knew the Lizards didn’t like that. Trouble was, he didn’t like it, either. He’d lived most of his adult life at wary peace with the Lizards. Now that the colonization fleet was finally here, how could the peace survive?

Rance Auerbach peered west from his bedroom window toward the great pillar of smoke rising from Carswell Air and Space Force Base, over past the outskirts of Fort Worth. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a bitch! The Lizards really went and did it, God damn them to hell and gone.”

Pe

“Oh, I know that.” Auerbach shook his head, which sent pain shooting through his ruined shoulder. “What really riles me is that we didn’t fire a shot when they came down and shot up the field-just lay there with our legs in the air like a yellow dog and let ’em do it.” Talking hurt, too, but he didn’t much care. He was too full of rage to care. If he didn’t let it out, it would fester like an abscess at the base of a tooth. He sucked in another breath of air.

Before he could let it out again, the telephone rang. He limped over to the nightstand and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Cut the broad loose, Auerbach,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Cut her loose, or else your place will end up looking just like that airstrip out there.” The man who’d called hung up. Auerbach listened to the click, and then to the dial tone that followed it. Slowly, he hung up, too.

“Who was that?” Pe

“Friend of yours, I reckon,” he answered.

For a moment, she simply accepted that. Then alarm washed over her face, leaving her looking older and harder than she had. “I haven’t got any friends, except maybe you,” she said bleakly. “If anybody knows I’m here, I better get the hell out. What did they say they’d do if I didn’t?” She sounded very sure they’d said something along those lines.

And, of course, she was right. Auerbach said, “Burn the building down. You’ve gotten to know some really nice folks since you walked out on me the first time, haven’t you, Pe

“You might say so,” she answered. “Yeah, you just might say so. Okay, Rance. I don’t want to put you on the spot, not if they know I’m here. This isn’t turning out to be as easy to fix as I figured it would. I’ll be out of here in an hour’s time.” Her laugh came brittle. “It’s not like I’ve got a lot to pack.”

“You aren’t going anywhere.” Auerbach opened the nightstand drawer, took out a.45, and stuck it in the waistband of his trousers. Then he pulled out another one and offered it to Pe

“I know how,” she said. “I don’t need it. I’ve got a.357 magnum in my handbag. But I still ought to leave. What can you do if they pour gasoline all over the downstairs and toss in a match?”

“Not much,” he admitted. “You really made some people like you a hell of a lot, didn’t you?” Without waiting for an answer, he went on, “If you leave, where will you go?”

“Somewhere,” Pe

“Yeah, I’ve seen that,” Rance agreed. “It doesn’t do a dead person much good, though. How long can you last on the run? You’ve got no place to run to, and you know it. You may as well stay here. You’ll have somebody to cover your back.”

Pe

“Gentleman, hell.” Auerbach felt himself flushing; he hadn’t been so embarrassed since the day he’d found out where babies came from. “All I am is a broken-down, busted-up cavalry captain who knows better than to let his troops get out of line.”

Pe

“You won’t,” he answered. “Worst thing your pals can do is kill me, and two weeks out of every month I’d reckon they were doing me a favor if they did the job. I haven’t been afraid of anything since the night the Lizards shot me. Oh, I know how that sounds, but it’s the Lord’s truth.”

“I believe you,” Pe

Cautiously, he touched his shattered leg. “If this here’s a miracle, God’s got a nasty sense of humor,” he said. He glanced toward her. “You gave me the bedpan, too.”

“When you needed it.”

He laughed his ruined laugh. “Every once in a while, you made like you were giving me the bedpan and then you did something else instead.”

“When you needed it,” Pe

Pe

“Sweetheart”-she looked up again for a moment-“when I’m through with you, you’re going to feel like they set off an explosive-metal bomb inside of you.” After that, she stopped talking for the next few minutes. And she turned out to be exactly right.