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Maybe the number-two pilot considered launching another joke. Johnson couldn’t tell, not with his poker face. If Fly
“Sure they can,” Johnson agreed. “But we have defenses. The Nazis’ll have ’em, too. They might even have better ones than ours-the bastards are awfully damn good with rockets.”
Fly
“A little more than half the time.”
“Sounds about right.” Fly
Fighting back laughter, Johnson said, “Odds are they’ll knock down eight.”
“That’s true. Which leaves how many likely to get through?” Mickey Fly
“And even if they knock down all ten-” Johnson began.
“Chances of that are a little better than ten percent, on the assumptions we’re using,” Fly
“If you say so. Remind me not to shoot craps with you, if we ever get somewhere we can shoot craps.” Johnson tried to remember where he’d been going. “Oh, yeah. Even if the Germans knockdown all ten, the Lizards have a lot more than ten to send after ’em. And they only have to screw up once. They don’t get a second chance.”
“That’s about the size of it, I’d say. The Germans can run, but it’ll be a long time before they can hide.” Fly
“If the Lizards were human, I’d stand up and cheer if they whaled the stuffing out of the Nazis, you know what I mean?” Johnson said. “Even though they aren’t, I don’t think my heart would break.”
Fly
“Bombs in orbit.” Johnson spoke with authority there; he’d kept an eye on the Nazis and Reds as well as the Lizards. Idly, he wondered how Hans Drucker was doing; he hadn’t been a bad fellow, even if he did have a tendency to paw the air with his hooves and whi
“No. The Race has better defenses, and more of ’em, than we do,” Fly
“Heh,” Johnson said, though it was anything but fu
“I wish I could say I thought you were wrong.” Fly
Gloomily, Johnson went in the opposite direction, into the bowels of the Lewis and Clark. He hated war with the sincerity of a man who’d known it face-to-face. Even if it was a couple of hundred million miles away, even if it wouldn’t directly involve the United States, he still hated it. And a war between the Lizards and the Germans would be big enough and nasty enough that the USA couldn’t possibly be unaffected even if no American soldiers went into battle.
And, if the Lizards decided to get rid of the Herma
He wished the Lewis and Clark had a bar. He would have liked to go and sit and have a couple of drinks. Things would have looked better after that. So far as he knew, nobody had rigged up a still yet. It was probably only a matter of time. Brigadier General Healey would pitch a fit, but not even he could stop human nature.
“Human nature,” Johnson muttered. If that wasn’t what was pushing the Nazis into trouble, what was? Original sin? Was there any difference?
Human nature reared its head in a different way when Lucy Vegetti came swinging down an intersecting corridor. The Lewis and Clark ’s traffic rules had grown up from those back in the USA. Little octagonal STOP signs were painted on the walls at every corner, to warn people to be alert when crossing. Johnson always paid attention to them; you got going fast enough to hurt somebody when you barreled along without a care in the world-and some people did just that.
Lucy stopped, too. She smiled at Johnson. “Hi, Glen. How are you?” Before he could answer, she took a second look at him and said, “You don’t seem very happy.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been better-sort of wondering whether things would blow up back home.”
“Doesn’t sound good, does it?” she said soberly. “Maybe we’re lucky to be way out here-unless the Lizards decide to clean us up as long as they’re busy back on Earth. Sooner or later, we’ll spread out too much to make that easy, but-”
“But we haven’t done it yet,” Johnson broke in. “Yeah.” His chuckle was flat and harsh. “Can’t even go out and get drunk. Nothing to do but sit tight and wait and see.”
“I know what you mean.” Lucy hesitated, then said, “When I came up from Earth, I brought along a quart of scotch. If you promise not to be a pig, you can have a sip with me. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”
Solemnly, Johnson crossed his heart “Hope to die,” he said. He hadn’t brought anything with him when he came up from Earth. Of course, he hadn’t intended to stay aboard the Lewis and Clark, and she had.
“Come on, then.” She swung off toward her tiny cubicle. Johnson followed. He knew the way, even though they still weren’t anything more than friends. But if she asks me in for a drink… I can hope, can’t I?
Lucy opened the door to the cubicle, then closed it after them. The place was crowded for two-hell, it was crowded for one. But closing the door didn’t have to mean anything except that Lucy didn’t want to advertise her whiskey. Johnson wouldn’t have.
She took the bottle out of a duffel bag mostly full of clothes. Cutty Sark-not great scotch, but a hell of a lot better than no scotch. The bottle was almost full. She undid the screw top and replaced it with a perforated cork with a piece of glass tubing doing duty for a straw. “Go ahead,” she said, and passed him the bottle.
“Thanks,” he said from the bottom of his heart. He sucked up what he judged to be not quite a shot’s worth of whiskey. It tasted so good, he wanted a lot more. Instead, he put his thumb over the top of the tubing and gave the bottle back to Lucy Vegetti. “Trust my germs?”