In the Balance

3

The Kukuruznik’s engine complained about the thin air it was breathing; at four thousand meters, it was way over its proper cruising altitude-up near its ceiling, as a matter of fact. Ludmila Gorbunova’s lungs complained, too. The little biplane was not equipped with oxygen, and even sitting in the cockpit made her feel as if she’d just finished a twenty-kilometer run.

She would have gone higher if she could, though. At such a height, the U-2 was hardly more than a speck in the sky-but the Lizards were proving even more skilled than the fascists at spotting such specks and knocking them down.

Ludmila did not even try to fly directly over the new invaders’ base. Planes that did that quite simply never came back. The base, a giant ringworm on the smooth skin of the steppe, was visible enough even at the greater distance an oblique view gave.

She counted the huge flying towers that formed the perimeter of the base, shook her head, counted them again. She still got twenty-seven. That was four more than she’d spotted on her last flight, the day before yesterday. From four thousand meters, most things on the ground looked tiny as ants. The towers, though, still bulked large, their shadows darkening great strips of grassland.

They were large, too; from them poured the impossibly deadly planes and tanks that were wresting great tracts of land not only from the. Russians who owned it but from the Germans as well Ludmila still did not know how to feel about that. She hated the Germans with all her soul, but against them one could contend with hope of victory. How could mere men fight the Lizards and their marvels?

Mere men kept trying. Even now, if the radio was to be believed, Soviet tank columns were engaging the Lizards’ armor and pushing, it back in disarray. Ludmila wondered if anyone believed the radio any more. The year before, the radio had said the Germans were being pushed back from Minsk, then from Kiev, then from Smolensk…

Such thoughts were dangerous. Ludmila knew that, too. The purges of the thirties had swept through Kiev as they had everywhere else in the Soviet Union. One day a teacher would be there, the next day vanished. You learned not to ask where he’d gone, not unless you wanted to join him there.

Ludmila shook her head, as if to drive the worries out of it. She peered down at the ground again, squinted to sharpen her vision as much as she could. That plume of dust there in the distance-she squinted harder. “Yes, those are tanks down at the bottom of it, may the Devil’s grandmother run away with them,” she said.

The Kukuruznik had had a radio fitted when Ludmila went from night harassment to reco

She banked away from the Lizards’ base. She wondered if her own base would still be there when she landed. The new invaders, like the old, pounded every airstrip they could find. But the so-called strip had been only a length of smooth steppe, and she could find another such strip at need. The U-2 didn’t need much room in which to set down.

Even when she got to the airstrip, she had to circle twice to be sure it was there. Camouflage nettings and sod roofs disguised the few buildings. A couple of kilometers away stood a strip camouflaged not quite so well. The Lizards had already bombed it twice. That was all right, or better than all right. The planes there were dummies, the buildings repaired every night but uninhabited.

Her teeth clicked together as the Wheatcutter bounced to a halt. Ludmila scrambled down to the ground while the prop was still spi

Ludmila pulled up a corner of, the command shack’s camouflage net, hurried through the doorless entrance, let the net fall behind her. With netting over all the windows, the interior of the shack was gloomy. “I return, Comrade Major,” she a

“So you do, Comrade Pilot,” Major Yelena Popova said, returning her salute. “You are most skilled, or most fortunate, or both.” In the space of a sentence, she went from mild greeting to pure business: “Tell me at once what you saw.”

Ludmila obeyed. Major Popova scowled when she mentioned the four new flying towers on the ground. “These-creatures-swarm onto the soil of the rodina-the motherland-like locusts.”

“Yes, Comrade Major, and they consume all before them like locusts, too.” Ludmila described the column of tanks she’d observed.

The squadron commander’s frown, never pleasant, grew downright fearsome. “This is vital information. Those above us must learn of it at once. I shall use the radio. Repeat your statement to me, that I may be sure to report it accurately.”

As Ludmila obeyed, Major Popova wrote down what she said, then repeated it back. When Ludmila nodded to show it was right, the major went over to the radio. It and its battery were stowed in a wheelbarrow and covered with hay. Yelena took the wheelbarrow out through the door, started in the direction of the dummy airstrip. To anyone-say, a Lizard-in a plane, she looked like a peasant shambling along.

Ludmila watched her slow progress across the plain. Then the tiny shape that was she disappeared into one of the Potemkin sheds. She emerged a bare minute later, moving much faster than she had on the way over.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a rocket slammed into the empty shed. Flames leapt up from it. The deception team would have, a lot of work to do tonight, Ludmila thought. After the rocket hit, Major Popova slowed down again. Ludmila did not blame her. Weighted down by radio and battery, the wheelbarrow was heavy.

“The Lizards are very good at picking up radio signals,” the major said as she arrived at the real airstrip. She wiped her forehead. Her sleeve came away dark with sweat. But her eyes, narrow and black like a Tatar’s, gleamed in triumph.

Even though the breeze was chilly against his muzzle, landcruiser driver Ussmak preferred moving along unbuttoned when he could. The periscopes didn’t give him nearly the view he enjoyed with his head out. Besides, being cooped up in the driver’s compartment reminded him too much of the cold-sleep coffin in which he’d hibernated away the years between Home and Tosev 3.

He had an audio button taped to one hearing diaphragm. “Better get down, Ussmak,” said Votal, the landcruiser commander. “Airscouts report Big Ugly landcruisers ahead.”

“It shall be done,” Ussmak said, and slid back down into his compartment. Even as he dogged the hatch over his head, he wondered why he was bothering. The Big Uglies, especially this set that used a red star as its emblem, had lots of landcruisers, but they weren’t very good ones or used very well. But his commander had given the order, so he obeyed. That had been ingrained in him since his hatching day.

Gu

“We may have some work,” Votal said. “The farther away from base we move the thi

Two landcruisers in the formation fired missiles after it. However fast it was, they were faster. It tumbled to the ground; dust flew from the brown track it plowed through the green. Brave, Ussmak thought, brave but stupid. The Tosevites seemed like that.