Down to Earth

15

David Goldfarb had thought Ottawa’s climate unfortunate. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t just thought it-he’d been right. But compared to the weather Edmonton enjoyed-or rather, didn’t enjoy-Ottawa might as well have been the earthly paradise. Blizzards came down off the Rockies one after another. Only some truly amazing machinery kept the city from coagulating for days at a time after a storm swept through.

But, of all the places in the Dominion of Canada, this was the one where electronics were booming. And so it was the place to which Goldfarb had moved his family, once he was finally able to move them anywhere. Escaping from the detention center near the Ministry of Defense felt so good, he was willing to overlook a few minor deficiencies in the weather.

As he crunched through snow on his way to work, he did wonder why Edmonton, of all places, had become Canada’s electronic heartland. One answer readily springing to mind was that it was the most northerly big city Canada boasted, and so the one least likely to attract the Lizards’ attention.

He almost got killed when he crossed 103rd Street while walking along Jasper Avenue. He was still in the habit of looking right first when crossing the street-but Canadians, like their American cousins to the south, drove on the right. They drove big American cars, too. The Chevrolet that came to a halt with blasting horn and a rattle of tire chains probably could have smashed the life out of Goldfarb without even getting dented.

He sprang back up onto the curb. “Sorry,” he said with a weak smile. The fellow who’d almost run him down couldn’t have heard him; the Chevy’s windows were all up to give the heater a fighting chance. The car rolled on.

On his second try, Goldfarb got across 103rd Street without nearly committing suicide. He made a point of looking left first. When he made a point of it, he had no trouble. When he didn’t, he acted from habit, and habit didn’t work here.

The Saskatchewan River Widget Works, Ltd., operated out of a second-floor-Goldfarb would have called it a first-floor-suite of offices on Jasper near 102nd Street. The name of the firm had drawn him even before he had the faintest notion what a widget was. The short answer was that it was anything some ingenious engineer said it was.

He shed his overcoat with a sigh of relief. “Hello, Goldfarb,” said Hal Walsh, the ingenious engineer who’d founded the firm. “Isn’t it a lovely day out?”

“If you’re a polar bear, possibly,” Goldfarb said. “Otherwise, no.”

Walsh and several other engineers, all of them Edmontonians, jeered at him. They took their beastly climate for granted. Goldfarb, used to something approaching moderation in his weather, didn’t and couldn’t. He jeered back.

One of the engineers, an alarmingly clever young fellow named Jack Devereaux, said, “It’s bracing, that’s what it is. Puts hair on your chest.”

“Fur would do better,” Goldfarb retorted. “And I’m sure the Eskimos up at the North Pole say the same thing, Jack. That’s only a couple of miles outside of town, isn’t it? We could go and check for ourselves.”

The chaffing went on as he fixed himself a cup of tea and got to work. He’d thought that, coming out of the RAF, he would know more about electronics than these civilians did. It hadn’t worked out like that. They took Lizard technology for granted in ways he didn’t.

“But you’ll learn,” Walsh had told him, not unkindly, a few days after he was hired. “The difference is, the military-yours, mine, everybody’s-has spent the past twenty years grafting the Lizards’ technology onto our own to keep some sort of continuity with what we had before.”

“Well, of course,” said Goldfarb, who’d watched that happen-and who’d helped make it happen. “How else would you go about it?”

“Junk what we had before,” his new boss had answered. “The more we steal from the Race, the more we develop what we’ve stolen from the Race, the better the widgets we come up with. That other stuff, that stuff we used to have, all belongs in the museum-with buggy whips and gas lamps and whalebone corsets.”

Goldfarb hadn’t thought of it like that. He didn’t care to think of it like that. But the Saskatchewan River Widget Works came up with gadgets he wouldn’t have imagined possible in his long years with the RAF The one that hooked up a little electronic gizmo-adapted from one the Lizards used-to a battery hardly bigger-stolen from a Lizard pattern-to make a children’s book that included sound effects when the right buttons were pressed left him shaking his head. He wasn’t surprised to find it had been Jack Devereaux’s idea.

“Hardly seems right to use all that fancy technology for something to keep three-year-olds happy for a few hours,” he remarked.

“Why not?” Devereaux asked around a big mouthful of lunchtime sandwich. “That’s what this stuff is for, for heaven’s sake. The military uses are all very well, but the Lizards live with these electronics every minute of the day and night. They make their lives better. They make them more interesting. They make them more fun, too. They can do the same for us.”

He sounded very sure of himself, like a missionary spreading the word of God to the benighted heathen. And, the longer Goldfarb thought about it, the more convinced he was that the brash young engineer had a point. Britain had been a garrison state, arming itself to the teeth against the Lizards-and, incidentally, to make sure the Reich stayed friendly ally and mentor, not conqueror. Canada was different. Shielded by the USA from danger at the hands of the Race, Canadians could, as Devereaux said, have fun with the new technology. They could, and they did.

Sitting there at a drawing board with bins of electronic parts all around for him to play with, Goldfarb had to work at the notion that having fun was all right, that he wasn’t betraying mankind by not working on some weapon that would make every Lizard on Earth shrivel up and turn purple. Designing a little plastic top that lit up and played music when you spun it struck him as absurdly frivolous.

When he said as much, Hal Walsh gave him an odd look and asked, “Are you sure you’re not a Protestant?”

Goldfarb snorted. “I’m not sure of a great many things, but that’s one of them.”

“Well, okay.” His boss laughed. “But look at it from a different angle. Suppose you took that top you’re working on back to your radar station in 1940. Suppose you spun it on the floor there and it did what it’s supposed to do. What would your chums have thought of it? What would you have thought of it back then?”

“Hmm.” Goldfarb rubbed his chin. “The battery would have been impossible. The sound square would have been impossible. The light and the plastic would just have been improbable. Offhand, I’d say we’d have thought the Martians had landed.”

“You wouldn’t have been so far wrong, either, would you?” Walsh laughed some more. “Now suppose you gave it to your father when he was a little boy. What would his mother and father have thought?”

“Back in Warsaw before the turn of the century?” Goldfarb thought about that. “Jews don’t burn people at the stake for witchcraft, but that’s about the only thing that would have kept me in one piece.” He got another chuckle from Walsh, but he hadn’t been joking.

His boss was about to say something more when the telephone by Goldfarb’s table rang. Walsh waved and went off. Goldfarb picked up the phone. Before he could even say hello, the fellow on the other end of the line announced, “It’s not over yet. You may think it’s over, but it’s not.”

“What?” Goldfarb said. “Who is this?”

“Who do you suppose?” the caller answered. “We don’t forget. We do get even. You’ll find out.” The line went dead.

Goldfarb stared at the phone for a moment, then put the handset back in its cradle. “Who was that?” Walsh asked. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“Maybe I did,” Goldfarb said.

He waited for his boss to ask more questions, but Walsh surprised him by doing nothing of the kind, but turning away and going back to his own work. An Englishman might have done that, but Goldfarb hadn’t expected it on this side of the Atlantic. From all the American films he’d seen, people over here were a lot more brash about sticking their noses into other people’s business.

After a moment, he realized American films came out of the United States, not Canada. The Canadians who’d grilled him had done it out of duty, not because they were personally nosy. The reserve wasn’t quite so strong as the notorious British stiff upper lip, but it was there.

He got back to work waiting all the while for the phone to ring again. That was how these things worked, wasn’t it? The bad eggs played on their victim’s fear, and sometimes managed to drive him round the bend without even doing anything to him.

And, sure as the devil, the phone did ring again half an hour later. When Goldfarb picked it up, all he heard on the other end was silence. He listened for a little while, then hung up. Nobody’d drive him round the bend, by God, but someone had made a good start on getting his goat.

Somebody… He had no idea who, though whoever it was had to be a Canadian pal of Basil Roundbush’s. Suddenly, he grinned and turned to Hal Walsh. “Mr. Widget, sir!”

Walsh grinned back. “At your service, Mr. Goldfarb. And what can I do for you today?”

“You’re in the widget business,” Goldfarb said. “Can you tell me if anyone’s ever invented a widget that shows the number a telephone call is made from?”

“A fast and easy kind of tracer, you mean?” Walsh asked. “Something better than the police and the telephone company use?”

Goldfarb nodded. “That’s what I’m talking about. Shouldn’t be too hard, not if we put some of the Lizards’ information-processing gadgets on the job. Suppose you could see at a glance it was your brother-in-law on the other end of the line, and you didn’t want to talk to him because you owed him twenty quid-uh, fifty dollars. It’d be handy.”

“You’re right. It would.” If Walsh was wondering why Goldfarb chose this exact moment to ask about that invention, he didn’t let on. “And no, I don’t think anything like that is on sale now, and yes, I can see how it might be popular.” He looked past Goldfarb, or maybe through him. “I can see how you might do it, too.”

“So can I,” Goldfarb said, excitement kindling in him. Roundbush’s nasty friends might have thought they were putting a scare in him, but, with a little luck, they’d just gone a long way toward making him a rich man. He started bouncing ideas off his boss, who also had some good ones of his own. Goldfarb was a tinkerer, and largely self-taught; Hal Walsh understood more about theory than he would if he lived to be ninety.

Both men started scribbling notes after the first couple of minutes. After half an hour, Goldfarb was hoping the nasty boys would call back again, and do it soon. Once he had their telephone number, he could pass it on to the police. Then they’d be out of his hair for good. From an office full of people who thought the same way he did, everything looked very simple.

When the telephone rang, Kathe Drucker answered it. After a moment, she turned and said, “It’s for you, Hans.”

“Who?” Johannes Drucker asked, setting down his newspaper and getting to his feet. His wife shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t anybody she knew. Drucker tried to hide his worries as he walked to the phone. If that damned Gunther Grillparzer was raising more trouble… If Grillparzer was doing that, he’d just have to deal with it as best he could. He took the phone from Kathe. “Drucker here.”

“Your leave is canceled,” said a crisp voice on the other end of the line. “All leaves are canceled, by order of the Committee of Eight. Report to your duty station at Peenemunde immediately.”

“Jawohl!” Drucker said, fighting the urge to come to attention. The line went dead. He hung up the telephone.

“What is it?” Kathe asked-she could see it was something. When he told her, her eyes went wide. “Does that mean what I’m afraid it means?”

“That the balloon’s going up on account of Poland?” he asked, and she nodded. He answered the only way he could: with a shrug. “I don’t know. No one tells me anything. I’ll say this-I hope not. But whether it is or not, I have to report in.” He raised his voice: “Heinrich!”

“What is it, Father?” His elder son’s reply floated down from upstairs.

“Keep an eye on your brother and sister for a while. I have to report to the base, and your mother will come along so she can drive the car back here. Have you got that?”

“Yes, Father,” Heinrich said, and then asked essentially the same question Kathe had: “Will it be war?” The difference was, he sounded excited, not afraid.

He’s too young to know better, Drucker thought, remembering how enthusiastic a Hitler Youth he’d made at the same age. Not much later, he’d gone into the Wehrmacht, and he’d been there ever since. Did that mean he didn’t know better, either? Maybe it did. He had no time to worry about it now.

Reliable no matter how ugly it was, the Volkswagen roared to life right away. Drucker didn’t want to think about what he would have done if it hadn’t started. Called for a taxi, he supposed-an order to report immediately meant that and nothing else. No one cared about excuses; the idea was that there shouldn’t be any.

Drucker drove out of Greifswald and east across the flat, muddy ground toward Peenemunde. He cursed every car that got in his way. At the barbed-wire perimeter around the base, he showed the sentries his identification card. They shot out their arms in salute and let him by.

He stopped in front of the barracks where he spent almost as much time as he did with his family. When he jumped out of the Volkswagen, he started to take the keys with him. Kathe coughed reproachfully. Feeling foolish, Drucker left the keys alone. His wife got out, too, to come around to the driver’s side. He took her in his arms and kissed her. He wasn’t the only soldier doing such things; the road in front of the barracks was clogged with stopped cars and men saying goodbye to wives and sweethearts.

Kathe got back into the VW and drove away. Drucker hurried into the barracks and threw on the uniform that hung in the closet. “What’s up?” he called to another space flier who was dressing with as much frantic haste as he.

“Damned if I know,” his comrade answered. “Whatever it is, though, it can’t be good. I’d bet on that.”

“Not with me, you wouldn’t, because I think you’re right,” Drucker told him.

They hurried toward the administrative center. Drucker looked at his wristwatch. Less than half an hour had gone by since the telephone rang. He couldn’t get in trouble for being late, not when he’d had to come from Greifswald… could he? He resolved to raise a big stink if anyone complained.

No one did. He checked off his name on the duty roster and hurried into the auditorium to which soldiers in military-police metal gorgets were directing people. The auditorium was already almost full; even though he’d done everything as fast as he could, he remained a latecomer. He slid into a chair near the back of the hall and shot disapproving glances at the men who came in after him.

General Dornberger stepped up onto the stage. Even from his distant seat, Drucker thought the commandant at Peenemunde looked worried. He couldn’t have been the only man who thought so, either; the buzz in the hail rose abruptly, then died as Dornberger held up his hand for quiet.

“Soldiers of the Reich, our beloved fatherland is in danger,” Dornberger said into that silence. “In their arrogance, the Lizards in Poland have attempted to impose limits on our sovereignty, the first step toward bringing the Reich under their rule. The Committee of Eight has warned them that their demands are intolerable to a free and independent people, but they have paid no attention to our just and proper protests.”

He building up toward a declaration of war, Drucker thought. Ice ran through him. He knew the Reich could hurt the Race. But, probably better than any man who’d never been into space, he also know what the Race could do to the Reich. He felt like a dead man walking. The only hope he had for his family’s survival was the wind blowing the fallout from Peenemunde out to sea or toward Poland rather than onto Greifswald. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

“No state of war as yet exists between the Greater German Reich and the Race,” Dornberger went on, “but we must show the Lizards that we are not to be intimidated by their threats and impositions. Accordingly, the Reich is now formally placed on a footing of Kriegsgefahr. Because of this war danger order, the armed forces are being brought to a maximum alert-which is why you are here.”

It won’t happen right this minute, then, Drucker thought. Thank God for so much. His wasn’t the only soft sigh of relief in the auditorium.

“If the worst should befall, we shall not stand alone,” General Dornberger said. “The governments of Hungary and Romania and Slovakia stand foursquare behind us, as loyal allies should. And we have also received an expression of support and best wishes from the British government.”

That mixed good news and bad. Of course the allies stood by the Reich: if they didn’t, they’d fall over, and in a hurry, too. If England really was supporting Germany, that was good news, very good indeed. The English were bastards, but they were tough bastards, no two ways about it.

But Dornberger hadn’t said a word about Finland and Sweden. What were they doing? Sitting on their hands, Drucker thought. Hoping that when the axe falls, it doesn’t land on their necks.

Sitting where they were, he might have done the same thing. That didn’t mean he was happy they were staying quiet-far from it. But they had a better chance of coming through an all-out exchange between the Race and the Reich in one piece than a place like Greifswald did. Damn them.

“We are going to put as many men into space as fast as we can,” the commandant said. “Once up there, they will await orders or await developments. If we down here fall, they shall avenge us. Heil — ” He broke off, looking confused for a moment. He couldn’t say “Heil Himmler!” any more, and “Heil the Committee of Eight!” sounded absurd. But he found a way around the difficulty: “Heil the Reich!”

“Heil!” Along with everyone else in the hall, Drucker gave back the acclamation. And, no doubt along with everyone else, he wondered what would happen next.

The enormous roar of an A-45 blasting off penetrated the auditorium’s soundprooflng. Sure enough, the Reich wasn’t wasting any time getting its pieces on the board so it could play them. Those upper stages wouldn’t do Germany any good if they got destroyed on the ground.

“Have we got a schedule yet for who’s going into orbit when?” Drucker asked, hoping someone around him would know.

A couple of people said, “No.” A couple of others laughed. Somebody remarked, “The way things are right now, we’re damned lucky we know which side we’re on.” That brought a couple of more laughs, and told Drucker everything he needed to know. He wondered why everyone had been summoned so urgently if things were no better organized than this. We might as well be Frenchmen, he thought scornfully.

Major Neufeld pushed through the crowd toward him. General Dornberger’s adjutant looked dyspeptic even when he was happy. When he wasn’t, as now, he looked as if he belonged in the hospital. “Drucker!” he called urgently.

Drucker waved to show he’d heard. “What is it?” he asked. Whatever it was, he would have bet it wasn’t anything good. Had it been good, Neufeld would have left him alone to do his job, just as the dour major was doing with everyone else.

Sure enough, Neufeld said, “The commandant wants to see you in his office right this minute.”

“Jawohl!” Drucker obeyed without asking why. That was the Army way. Asking why wouldn’t have done him any good, anyhow. He knew that only too well. Several people gave him curious looks as he left the auditorium. Hardly anyone knew why he’d had run-ins with higher-ups, but practically everyone knew that he’d had them.

“Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said when he got to Dornberger’s office.

“Come in, Drucker.” Walter Dornberger took a puff on one of the fat cigars he favored, then set it in the ashtray. “Sit down, if you care to.”

“Thank you, sir.” As Drucker sat, he wondered if the commandant was going to offer him a blindfold and a cigarette next. Dornberger was usually brusque. Today he seemed almost courtly. Drucker asked, “What’s up, sir?” He’d been asking that since he got to Peenemunde. If anyone knew, if anyone would tell him, the commandant was the man.

Dornberger picked up the cigar, looked at it, and set it down without putting it in his mouth. In conversational tones, he remarked, “I wish Field Marshal Manstein were as good a politician as he is a soldier.”

“Do you?” Drucker asked, nothing at all in his voice. He didn’t need a road map to see where that led. “The SS is in charge of the Committee of Eight?”

“And the Party, and Goebbels’ lapdogs,” General Dornberger answered. “Manstein knows better than to provoke the Lizards, or I assume he does. This-this is madness. We can defend ourselves against the Race, yes, certainly. But win an offensive struggle? Anyone who has dealt with them knows better.”

“Yes, sir,” Drucker said. Why was the commandant telling him this? Most likely because no one in authority trusted him, which, in an odd sort of way, made him safe. “Anyone who’s been in space knows what they’ve got up there, that’s for sure.”

“Of course.” Dornberger’s nod was jerky. “Yes. Of course. And that brings me to the main reason I called you here, Lieutenant Colonel. Changes in the alignment of the Committee of Eight affect more than the broad foreign policy of the Reich. I must tell you that you will not be allowed into space during this crisis. I am sorry, but you are reckoned to be politically unreliable.”

Drucker supposed he should have expected that, but it hit like a blow in the belly even so. Bitterly, he asked, “Why bother calling me here, then? I might as well have stayed at home with my family.” We could all die together then, ran through his mind.

“Why? Because I am still working to get the restriction lifted. I know what a good man you are in space, regardless of your troubles on the ground,” Dornberger answered. “Meanwhile… You may be lucky, you know.”

“If we’re all lucky, none of this will matter. We’d better be.” Drucker got up and walked out without bothering to ask for permission. Normally, that was as close to lese majesty as made no difference. Today, General Dornberger said not a word.

“They are serious!” Vyacheslav Molotov sounded indignant. That, in its own way, was a prodigy. Andrei Gromyko knew as much. His shaggy eyebrows twitched in astonishment. Molotov was so agitated, he hardly noticed. “The Germans are serious, I tell you, Andrei Andreyevich.”

“So it would seem,” the foreign commissar answered. “You already told them we wanted no part of this madness. Past that, what can we do?”

“Prepare as best we can to have the western regions of the Soviet Union devastated by radioactive fallout,” Molotov answered. “Past that, we can do nothing. We are one of the four greatest powers on the face of the Earth and above it, and we can do nothing. Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.”

From a convinced Marxist-Leninist, that was almost blasphemy. It was also a telling measure of Molotov’s agitation, perhaps even more telling than raising his voice. Gromyko understood as much. Nodding, he commented, “And it was a German who said those words. He knew his people all too well.”

“Was it?” Molotov had long since forgotten the source of the quotation. “Well, whoever it was, we are about to watch all of Europe west of our border go into the fire, and the only thing we can do is stand back and watch.”

Gromyko lit a cigarette. After a couple of meditative drags, he said, “We could go in on the side of the Reich. That is the only action we have available to us. The Lizards will not want our assistance.”

“No, we would only ruin ourselves by joining the Germans. I can see that,” Molotov said. “But, damn it, we need the Reich. Can you imagine me saying such a thing? I can hardly imagine it, but it’s true. We need every single counterbalance to the Lizards we can find. Without the Nazis, mankind is weaker.” He grimaced, hating the words.

“I agree with you, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” Gromyko said. “Unfortunately.”

“Yes, unfortunately,” Molotov said. “I have sent certain operatives into Poland, to give us contacts with the human groups there. I do not know how much good that will do, or whether it can do anything to minimize the destruction war will bring, but I am making the effort.” He had control of himself again. He hated giving way to alarm, but there was so much about which to be alarmed here.

“Let us hope it will help.” Gromyko didn’t sound as if he thought it would. Molotov didn’t really think it would, either, but David Nussboym had volunteered for the mission, and Molotov let him go. He owed Nussboym a debt; without the Jewish NKVD man, Beria would surely have liquidated him before Marshal Zhukov put paid to the spymaster’s coup.

And, if the worst did happen in Poland, odds were that Nussboym wouldn’t come back to claim any more payments on that debt. Molotov made such calculations almost without conscious thought.

Gromyko said, “The Americans are concerned about this crisis, too. Do you suppose President Warren can get the Germans to see reason? The Nazis do not automatically hate and disbelieve the United States, as they do with us.”

“I have had consultations with the American ambassador, but they were less satisfactory than I would have liked,” Molotov answered. “I could be wrong, but I have the feeling the USA would not be sorry to see the Reich removed from the scene. The Americans, of course, would suffer far less incidental damage from a conflict over Poland than would we.”

“They are shortsighted, though. Having the Reich on the board strengthens all of humanity, as you said, Comrade General Secretary.” Gromyko was not going to contradict his boss. Molotov remembered trembling when he’d had to try to steer Stalin away from a course whose danger was obvious to everyone but the Great Leader. Molotov knew he wasn’t so frightful as Stalin had been, but even so… His foreign commissar sighed. “I don’t suppose they would be Americans if they were not shortsighted.”

“They also would not be Americans if they did not seek to profit from others’ misfortunes,” Molotov said. “Before the Lizards came, they were happy enough to send us aid against the Nazis, but how many soldiers in American uniform did you see? None. We did the dying for them.” As Stalin had, he remembered that, remembered and resented it. Like Stalin, he’d been unable to avenge it.

Gromyko said, “If the Americans will not act, if the Nazis will not heed us, what about the Lizards themselves? Have they not warned the Reich of the dangers inherent in its provocative course?”

“I am given to understand that they have,” Molotov said. “But telling a German something and getting him to listen are two quite different things.” He drummed his fingers on the polished wood desktop in front of him. “Do you suppose we might be able to suggest ways in which the Race might gain the Nazis’ attention?”

“I don’t know,” Gromyko answered. “But at this point, what have we got to lose?”

Molotov considered. “Nothing whatever. We might even worm our way into the good graces of the Race. A good suggestion, if I say so myself. I shall arrange a meeting with Queek.”

The ease with which he arranged the meeting told him the Lizards were grasping at straws, too. And the Polish interpreter for the Race’s ambassador to the Soviet Union showed none of his usual toploftiness. Plainly, he was worried about what might happen to his homeland.

Queek gave forth with a series of hisses and pops and coughs. The interpreter turned them into rhythmic, Polish-accented Russian: “The ambassador says he is grateful for your good offices, Comrade General Secretary, and welcomes any suggestions you have on how to keep this crisis from hatching into full-scale conflict.”

“Tell him that the best way to make sure the Germans do not attack is to convince them they have no hope of winning,” Molotov answered. “They do respect strength, if nothing else.”

“That is not apparent in the present situation,” Queek said. “We have repeatedly warned them what will happen if they attack Poland. They cannot help but know the strength at our command. And yet, to all appearances, they continue preparations to attack. I am baffled. The Race is baffled. If the Reich breaks the truce that has held so long, we shall not be gentle.”

“I understand.” Had Molotov been in Queek’s position, he would have said the same thing. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t like the position he was in. He went on, “My own concern is not least related to the damage a conflict over Poland will cause to the peace-loving people of the Soviet Union, who do not deserve to be sacrificed because of the folly of others.”

Queek shrugged as if he were a man. “I am not responsible for the geography of Tosev 3,” he said. “If your not-empire does not provoke us, we shall do it no direct harm. What we need to do to defeat and punish the Reich, however, that, I assure you, we shall do.”

Again, Molotov might have said the same thing in the same position. Again, he didn’t like hearing it. He cast about for ways to head off the catastrophe he saw looming ahead. Here, he did not feel the dialectic was operating on his side. The dialectic… He didn’t smile, but he felt like it. “Your ambassador in Nuremberg might tell the Germans that we hope they do attack Poland, because we expect to profit from their overthrow at your hands.”

“Why do you say this?” Even in his own language, which Molotov couldn’t understand, Queek sounded suspicious. The translation proved the Soviet leader had gauged the Lizard’s tone aright. The ambassador went on, “I know that you and your not-empire love neither the Race nor the Reich.”

“No, we do not,” Molotov agreed, glad he didn’t have to bother with hypocrisy here. “But a war would be almost as disastrous for us as for either side fighting, even if we are not directly involved. The Germans will not pay any attention to what we tell them, for they do not love us, either. But if they think we want them to do one thing, they might do the opposite to annoy us.”

Before answering Molotov, Queek spoke back and forth with his interpreter in the language of the Race. Again, Molotov didn’t understand, but he could guess what was going on: the ambassador wanted to know if the interpreter thought what he’d said was true. The Pole could damage the Soviet Union by saying no, but he would damage his own homeland worse.

Queek said, “Perhaps we shall try this. It cannot make things worse, and it may make them better. I thank you for the suggestion.”

“I do it in my self-interest, not yours,” Molotov said.

“I understand that,” the Lizard replied. “Against the Reich, your self-interest and that of the Race coincide. You may rest assured, I also understand this is not the case in other areas where we impinge.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Molotov said, lying through his teeth. “Our relations with the Race are correct in all regards.”

Again, Queek and his interpreter conferred. “ ‘Correct,’ I am given to understand, is a euphemism for ‘chilly,’ ” the Lizard said at last. “This strikes me as an accurate summation. Before I go, I shall repay you for your assistance, however self-interested it may have been, by strongly suggesting that you should under no circumstances give the Chinese rebels an explosive-metal bomb. If they use one against us, you will be held responsible. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Molotov said. “Since I had no intention of doing any such thing, the warning is pointless, but I accept it in the spirit in which it was offered.” That sounded polite, and committed him to nothing.

After Queek and the interpreter left, Molotov stepped out of the office, too, by the side door that led to the changing room. There he took off his clothes and put on fresh ones brought in for the purpose. Only after he was sure he wasn’t bringing along any electronic hangers-on did he return to the office where he handled everything except meetings with the Race.

He was about to call Marshal Zhukov when the telephone rang. He was something less than astonished when his secretary told him the marshal waited on the other end of the line. “Put him through, Pyotr Maksimovich,” he said, and then, a moment later, “Good day, Comrade Marshal.” Best to remind Zhukov he was still supposed to be subservient to the Party. Molotov wished theory and practice coincided more closely.

Sure enough, all Zhukov said was, “Well?”

Suppressing a sigh, Molotov summarized the conversation with Queek. He added, “This means, of course, that we cannot even think about Operation Proletarian Vengeance for some time. It would not be safe.”

“No. It was always risky.” Zhukov agreed. “We would have had to blame the bomb on the Nazis or the Americans, and we might well not have been believed. Now we can only hope the Germans don’t give Mao a bomb and blame it on us.” That was a horrifying thought. Before Molotov could do more than note it, Zhukov went on, “The west is more important. We are prepared for anything, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, as best we can be.”

“Good. Very good,” Molotov said. “Now we hope the preparations are needless.” He hung up. Zhukov let him get away with it. Why not? If things went wrong, who would get the blame? Molotov would, and he knew it.

Reuven Russie was examining the cyst on the back of a stocky old lady’s calf when the air-raid sirens began to howl. “Gevalt!” the woman exclaimed, startled back into Yiddish from the Hebrew they’d been using. “Is it starting all over again, God forbid?”

“It’s probably just a drill, Mrs. Zylbring,” Reuven answered the reassuring tones that came in so handy in medicine were useful in other ways, too. “We’ve been having a lot of them lately, you know, just in case.”

“And would we have them if we didn’t need them?” Mrs. Zylbring retorted, to which he lacked such a reassuring comeback.

Yetta the receptionist said, “No matter what it is, we’d better head for the basement.” She’d stayed in the examining room to make sure Reuven didn’t get fresh with Mrs. Zylbring. He couldn’t imagine himself that desperate, but protocol was protocol. He also had no comeback for her.

His father and the fat, middle-aged man Moishe Russie’d been looking at came out of the other examination room. They too headed for the basement. As Reuven went down the steps, he wondered if hiding down there would save him from an explosive-metal bomb. He doubted it. He’d been a little boy on a freighter outside of Rome when the Germans smuggled in a bomb and blew the Eternal City’s Lizard occupiers-and, incidentally, the papacy-to radioactive dust. That had been a horror from a lot of kilometers away. Close up? He didn’t like to think about it.

He’d just gone into the shelter when the all-clear sounded. His father’s patient said several pungent things in Arabic, from which the Jews of Palestine had borrowed most of their swear words: as a language used mostly in prayer for two thousand years, Hebrew had lost much of its own nastiness.

“It could be worse,” Reuven told him. “It might have been the real thing.”

“If they keep having alarms when no one’s there, though, nobody will take shelter when it is the real thing:” the man answered, which was also true.

He kept on grumbling as they all went back upstairs. Once they’d returned to the examination room, Mrs. Zylbring asked Reuven, “Well, what can you do about my leg?”

“You have two choices,” he answered. “We can take out the cyst, which will hurt for a while, or we can leave it in there. It’s not malignant; it won’t get worse. It’ll just stay the way it is.”

“But it’s an ugly lump!” Mrs. Zylbring said.

“Getting rid of it is a minor surgical procedure,” Reuven said. “We’d do it under local anesthetic. It wouldn’t hurt at all while it was happening.”

“But it would hurt afterwards. You said so.” Mrs. Zylbring made a sour face. “And it would be expensive, too.”

Reuven nodded politely. The training he’d had at the Lizards’ medical college hadn’t prepared him for dealing with dilemmas like this. He suspected he was a good deal more highly trained than he needed to be to join his father’s practice. No, he didn’t suspect it: he knew it. But he was also trained in some of the wrong things.

The old lady waggled a finger at him. “If it were your leg, Doctor, what would you do?”

He almost burst out laughing. The Lizards had never asked him a question like that. But it wasn’t a bad question, not really. Mrs. Zylbring assumed he had all the answers. That was what a doctor was for, wasn’t it-having answers? Answering what kind of condition she had was easy. Knowing what to do about it was a different question, a different kind of question, one Shpaaka and the other physicians from the Race hadn’t got him ready to handle.

He temporized: “If the fact that it doesn’t disturb function satisfies you, leave it alone. If the way it looks bothers you, I can get rid of it inside half an hour.”

“Of course the way it looks bothers me,” she said. “If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have come here. But I don’t like the idea of you cutting on me, and I don’t have a whole lot of money, either. I don’t know what to do.”

In the hope Yetta would have a good idea, Reuven glanced over to her. She rolled her eyes in a way suggesting she’d seen patients like Mrs. Zylbring a million times before but didn’t know what to do about them, either. In the end, the old woman went home with her cyst. Reuven wished he’d tried harder to talk her into getting rid of it; his urge was always to do something, to intervene. If he hadn’t had that urge, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps.

But when he said as much to his father, Moishe Russie shook his head. “If it’s not really hurting the woman, it doesn’t matter one way or another. She’d have been unhappy at the pain afterwards, too, mark my words. If she’d wanted you to do it, that would have been different.”

“The pain would be the same either way,” Reuven said.

“Yes-but at the same time no, too,” his father said. “The difference is, she’d have accepted it better if she’d been the one urging you to have the thing out. She wouldn’t blame you for it, if you know what I mean.”

“I suppose so,” Reuven said. “Things aren’t so cut-and-dried here as they were back in the medical college. You were always supposed to come up with the one right answer there, and you got into trouble if you didn’t.”

His father’s chuckle had a reminiscent feel to it. “Oh, yes. But the real world is more complicated than school, and you’d better believe it.” He got up from behind his desk, came around it, and clapped Reuven on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go home. You haven’t got homework any more, anyhow.”

“That’s true.” Reuven grinned. “I knew I must have had some good reason for getting out of there.”

Moishe Russie laughed, but soon sobered. “You did have a good reason, a very good one. And I’m proud of you.”

“Can’t you get the fleet lord to do anything about that?” Reuven asked as they left the office-Moishe Russie locked up behind them-and started for home.

Late-afternoon sunlight gleamed off Moishe Russie’s bald crown as he shook his head. “I’ve tried. He won’t listen. He wants everybody to reverence the spirits of Emperors past”-he said the phrase in the Lizards’ language-“so we’ll get used to bowing down to the Race.”

“He’d better not hold his breath, or he’ll be the bluest Lizard ever hatched,” Reuven said.

“I hope you’re right. With all my heart, I hope you’re right,” his father said. “But the Race is stubborn, and the Race is very patient, too. That worries me.”

“How much is patience worth if we all blow up tomorrow?” Reuven asked. “That’s what worries me.”

Moishe Russie started to step off the curb, then jumped back in a hurry to avoid an Arab hurtling past on a bicycle. “It worries me, too,” he said quietly, and then switched to Yiddish to add, “God damn the stupid Nazis.”

“Everyone’s been saying that for the past thirty years,” Reuven said. “If He’s going to do it, He’s taking His own sweet time about it.”

“He works at His speed, not ours,” Moishe Russie answered.

“If He’s there at all,” Reuven said. There were days-commonly days when people were more stupid or vicious than usual-when belief came hard.

His father sighed. “The night the Lizards came to Earth, I was-we all were-starving to death in the Warsaw ghetto. Your sister Sarah already had. I’d gone out to trade some of the family silver for a pork bone. I threw a candlestick over the wall around the ghetto, and the Pole threw me the bone. He could have just cheated me, but he didn’t. As I was walking back to our flat, I prayed to God for a sign, and an explosive-metal bomb went off high in the sky. I thought I was a prophet, and other people did, too, for a while.”

“Sarah…” Reuven felt a sudden rush of shame. He hadn’t thought about his dead sister in years. “I hardly remember her.” He couldn’t have been more than three when she died. All he really had was a confused recollection of not being the only child in the family. Unlike his parents, he brought little in the way of memories with him from Poland.

“She was very sweet and very mischievous, and I think she would have been beautiful,” Moishe Russie said, which was about as much as he’d ever talked about the girl who’d died before the Lizards came.

“She sounds like the twins,” Reuven said. He walked on again.

“Nu? Why not?” his father said. “There’s something to this genetics business, you know. But maybe God really was giving me a sign, there in Warsaw that night. If the Lizards hadn’t come, we’d surely be dead now. So would all the Jews in Poland-all the Jews in Europe, come to that.”

“Instead, it’s only a big chunk that are, and the rest who are liable to be,” Reuven said. “Maybe that’s better, but it’s a long way from good.”

Moishe Russie raised an eyebrow. “So what you’re accusing God of, then, is sloppy workmanship?”

Reuven thought about it. “Well, when you get right down to it, yes. If I do a sloppy job of something, I’m only human. I make mistakes. I know I’ll make mistakes. But I expect better from God, somehow.”

“Maybe He expects better from you, too.” His father didn’t sound reproachful. He just sounded thoughtful, thoughtful and a little sad.

“I don’t like riddles.” Reuven, now, Reuven sounded reproachful.

“No?” Moishe Russie’s laugh came out sad, too. “What is life, then? You won’t find the answer to that one till you can’t tell anybody.” He quoted from the Psalms: “ ‘What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?’ God has riddles, too.”

“Words,” Reuven fleered, sounding even more secular than he felt. “Nothing but words. Where’s the reality behind them? When I work with patients, I know what is and what isn’t.” He scowled, remembering Mrs. Zylbring. Things weren’t always simple with patients, either.

From the Bible, his father swung to Kipling, whom he quoted in Yiddish translation: “ ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.’ ” He laughed again. “Or more likely you’re just a younger man. We’re almost home. I wonder what your mother’s making for supper.” He set a hand on Reuven’s shoulder, hurrying him along as if he were a little boy. Reuven started to shrug it off, but in the end let it stay.

When they got home, the odor of roasting lamb filled their nostrils. So did the excitement of the twins, who, like Jacob with the angel of the Lord, were wrestling with algebra. “It’s fun,” Judith said.

“It’s fun after you figure out what’s going on, anyhow,” Esther amended.

“Till then, your head wants to fall off,” Judith agreed. “But we’ve got it now.”

“Good,” Reuven said; he hadn’t liked mathematics that much himself. “Will you still have it next week, when they show you something new?”

“Of course we will,” Esther declared, and Judith nodded confidently. He started to laugh at them, then caught himself. All at once, he understood why his father had trouble taking his cocksure certainty seriously.

As Einstein had been, the Race was convinced nothing could travel faster than light. The crew of the Lewis and Clark, though, had discovered something that did: rumor. And so, having caught the news from someone who knew someone who knew a radio operator, Glen Johnson felt no hesitation in asking Mickey Flynn, “Do you think it’s true?”

“Oh, probably,” the number-two pilot answered. “But I’d have a better notion if I knew what we were talking about.”

“That the Germans have sent Hermann Goring out this way,” Johnson said.

“Last I heard, he was dead,” Flynn remarked.

If he didn’t have the deadest pan on the ship, Johnson was damned if he knew who did. He restrained himself from any of several obvious comments, and contented himself with saying, “No, the spaceship.”

“Oh, the spaceship,” Flynn said in artfully sudden enlightenment. “No, I hadn’t heard that. I hadn’t heard that it’s not heading for this stretch of the asteroid belt, either, so you’d better tell me that, too.”

Johnson snorted. That propelled him ever so slowly away from Flynn as they hung weightless just outside the control room. “I didn’t think they could get it moving so soon,” he said, reaching for a handhold.

“Life is full of surprises,” Flynn said. “So is Look, but Life has more of them in color.”

“You’re impossible,” Johnson said. Flynn regally inclined his head, acknowledging the compliment. Johnson went on, “What do you think it means that they pushed their schedule so hard? Do you think they think the hammer’s going to drop back home, and they’re sending the ship out so they don’t have all their eggs in one basket?”

Maybe the number-two pilot considered launching another joke. Johnson couldn’t tell, not with his poker face. If Flynn was considering it, he didn’t do it. Some things were too big to joke about. After a few seconds, Flynn said, “If they do think that way, they’re fools. The Lizards can go after them out here, too.”

“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.”

Flynn nodded. “Okay, say they’re twice as good as we are at knocking down whatever the Race sends after ’em. How often are you taking out the Lizards’ missiles in our drills?”

“A little more than half the time.”

“Sounds about right.” Flynn nodded again. “Suppose they’re getting eighty percent, then. I don’t think they can do that well myself, but suppose. Now suppose the Lizards send ten pursuit missiles after them. How many are the Aryan supermen likely to stop?” He looked around, as if at an imaginary audience. “Come on, come on, don’t everybody speak up at once. Did I make the statistics too hard?”

Fighting back laughter, Johnson said, “Odds are they’ll knock down eight.”

“That’s true. Which leaves how many likely to get through?” Mickey Flynn held up two fingers, giving a broad hint. Before Johnson could suggest what he might do with those fingers, he went on, “And how many of those missiles need to get through to give everybody an unhappy afternoon?” Johnson wondered if he’d fold down his index finger to give the answer, but he decorously lowered his middle finger instead, getting the message across by implication rather than overtly.

“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,” Flynn broke in.

“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.” Flynn paused meditatively, then added, “And the Germans are liable to be looking over their shoulders all the way out here, anyhow. We took the Race by surprise. They had to be pretty sure of what the master race was up to.”

“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.”

Flynn pondered that. “The two questions are, how badly do we-people, I mean-get hurt if everything west of Poland goes up in smoke, and how badly can the Germans hurt the Lizards before they go down swinging?”

“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 whinny whenever they played Deutschland uber Alles. “Missiles inside the Reich. Submarines in the Mediterranean and prowling off Arabia and Australia, and every one of ’em loaded for bear. Not all the missiles would get through…”

“No. The Race has better defenses, and more of ’em, than we do,” Flynn said. “But building missiles has been the German national sport for a long time.”

“Heh,” Johnson said, though it was anything but funny. “And the Nazis aren’t the sort to stop shooting as long as they’ve got any bullets in the gun, either. They’d just as soon go out in a blaze of glory.”

“I wish I could say I thought you were wrong.” Flynn answered. “Actually, I can say it, but it would sully my reputation for truthfulness. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to earn my paycheck.” He pushed off from his own handhold and glided into the control room.

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 Hermann Goring, what would they do about the Lewis and Clark? Doing anything would get them into a war with the USA, but would they care if they were already fighting the Reich? In for a penny, in for a pound.

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?”

“If this stuff won’t kill ’em, what will?” She drank about as much as he had, then yanked out the cork, put on the lid, and stowed away the scotch. An amber globule the size of a pea still floated in the air in the middle of the cubicle. Lucy and Johnson both moved toward it at the same time.

Johnson nodded to her. “Go ahead. It’s yours.”

“A gentleman.” Lucy opened her mouth. The droplet of scotch disappeared. Then she leaned forward a couple of inches farther and kissed him.

Seemingly of themselves, his arms slipped around her. The kiss went on and on. “Jesus,” he said when they finally broke apart. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

“So have I,” Lucy said. “Now I have a better notion that I can… I don’t know, trust you isn’t quite right, but it’s close enough.”

He wondered what she would have done-if she’d have done anything-had he been a pig with the bottle or stolen that floating drop of Cutty for himself. Then he stopped wondering, because she unzipped her coverall and wriggled out of it. She wore bra and panties underneath. A lot of women had stopped bothering with brassieres-what point to them in weightlessness? — but not her. Either she was too stubborn to care or she didn’t want to put herself on display like that. Johnson was too busy getting out of his own clothes to worry about it.

They caressed each other and stroked each other and kissed each other all over. Floating free as they did, who was on top was a matter of opinion, unimportant opinion. Presently, a little awkwardly, he went into her. She wrapped her arms and legs around his back. He used one hand to snag a handhold and the other to keep on stroking her down where they were joined.

That brought her along about as quickly as he came himself: he’d gone without a long time. Then, before long, there were other little moist, sticky droplets floating in the air. They both hunted them down with rags. “Messy,” he said with a grin, as happy and relaxed as he’d been for a long time.

“It always is,” Lucy said. “Usually, though, men don’t have to pay attention to it.” He shrugged and snagged another drop before it hit a wall. The world was still every bit as liable to blow up as it had been half an hour before, but that didn’t seem to matter nearly so much.

Kassquit read each day’s news reports with mounting alarm. The Race had made it very plain to the Deutsche that any aggression the Big Uglies tried would be punished manyfold. The Deutsche had to understand that. But here they were, sounding fiercer and more determined every day.

“Are they addled?” she demanded of Ttomalss in the starship’s refectory. “They must know what will happen to them if they go on. You were among them for a while. Why do they not believe us?”

“Tosevites have a greater capacity for self-delusion than do males and females of the Race,” Ttomalss answered, and Kassquit knew no small pride that he spoke to her as if she were a female of the Race. He went on, “Past that, I will only say that fathoming their motivations remains difficult if not impossible.”

“They cannot hope to defeat us,” Kassquit exclaimed.

Ttomalss waved at the males and females (mostly males, for this ship had orbited Tosev 3 since the arrival of the conquest fleet, and still carried a large part of its old crew) of the Race in the refectory with them. “Our kind is relatively homogeneous,” he said. “Big Uglies are more variable. We come from one culture; they still have many very different cultures. We are discovering that cultural differences can be almost as important as genetic variation. We had some evidence of this in the assimilation of the Hallessi, but it is much more striking here.”

“I can see how it might be.” Kassquit looked down at her soft, scaleless arms; at the preposterous organs on her chest that secreted, or could secrete, nutritive fluid; at the itchy stubble between her legs that reminded her she would soon need to shave it off again. “After all, what am I but a Big Ugly with cultural differences?”

“Exactly so,” Ttomalss said, which was the last thing she wanted to hear. More often than not, Ttomalss hadn’t the faintest idea he’d upset her; this time, for a wonder, he noticed, and amended his words: “You are a Tosevite citizen of the Empire, the first but surely not the last.”

“There are times-there are many times-when I wish I could be altogether of the Race,” Kassquit said wistfully.

“Culturally, you are,” Ttomalss said, which she couldn’t deny. He went on, “Physiologically, you are not, and you cannot be. But that has not stopped either the Rabotevs or the Hallessi from becoming full participants in imperial life.”

That was also a truth. But it was only a partial truth. Kassquit said, “Both the Rabotevs and the Hallessi are more similar to the Race-physiologically and psychologically-than Big Uglies are.”

“We have known from the beginning that assimilating this planet would be harder than incorporating Rabotev 2 or Halless 1,” Ttomalss answered. “But we are willing-indeed, we have no choice but-to expend the time and effort necessary to do what must be done.” He let his mouth fall open and waggled his lower jaw: wry laughter. “They are very perturbed back on Home. We have just received answers to some of our early communications after we discovered the true nature of this world. They are wondering if any of us still survive.”

“Considering the attitude of the Deutsche, they have a right to be worried,” Kassquit said. “If the Reich has a missile targeted on this ship, we could die in the next instant, probably before we even knew we were hit.”

“If that happens-if anything like that happens-the Reich will cease to exist,” Ttomalss said. “The Deutsche have to know as much. They have to.” He sounded as if he was trying to reassure himself as well as Kassquit.

“But do they truly grasp it?” Kassquit persisted. “They have shown no sign of doing so. And even if they are smashed, can they weaken us enough to leave us vulnerable to uprisings from the areas we rule, or to attacks from the SSSR or the USA?”

“I am not the fleetlord; I do not know such things,” Ttomalss said. “What I do know is that we will destroy all the Tosevites if we ever appear to be in danger of being conquered ourselves.”

What felt like a lump of ice formed in Kassquit’s belly. She tried to call up a word, and could not. “In ancient days, when incurable disease was spreading-”

“Quarantine,” Ttomalss said, this time following her thought well. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. The male who had reared her continued, “Yes, that is the planned strategy. Tosevites here in this solar system can be managed, one way or another. Tosevites who might travel between the stars in their own ships… We cannot permit it. We shall not permit it.”

That made sense. If it meant exterminating Kassquit’s biological species… it still made sense. She could see as much. The idea of wild Big Uglies with starships-in essence, wild Big Uglies with a conquest fleet of their own-was truly horrifying. What might they do to Home or other planets of the Empire, all of which were essentially undefended? Far worse than the Race had done on Tosev 3: she was sure of that. They wouldn’t want to colonize Home-they’d want to smash it.

Alternatives? Well, she herself was one of the alternatives. “We have to do everything we can to keep them from seeking such a thing, which means we have to do everything we can to assimilate them before they are technically able to do such a thing.”

“Truth.” Ttomalss added an emphatic cough.

“In aid of which,” Kassquit said, “how are the arrangements going for another meeting between the American Tosevites and me?”

“Fairly well,” her mentor answered. “For some reason, the Americans seem more hesitant now than they were before, but I still expect matters to be resolved before long.”

“Who among the Americans is hesitant?” Kassquit asked in some surprise. “In my communications with Sam Yeager, he expresses eagerness, and says his hatchling feels the same way.”

“In the hatchling’s case, if not in that of the elder Yeager, such eagerness may in part be related to sexual desire,” Ttomalss said dryly.

Not for the first time, Kassquit was glad her face didn’t show what she felt. A pang of longing? It startled her. It embarrassed her. But it was there. She didn’t want to think about it, and so, resolutely, she didn’t. All she said was, “They showed no signs of it at the last meeting. And, if it is a factor, it is certainly not the only one involved.”

“There I would agree with you,” Ttomalss replied. “And, so long as you want them, I also want these meetings to go forward, as I have said. I shall do everything I can to resolve the difficulties, which appear to be bureaucratic in nature.”

“I thank you, superior sir.” Kassquit got to her feet, towering over the males and females in the refectory. She set her tray and bowl and utensils on the conveyor that took them off to be washed and reused, then went back to her cubicle. That little space gave her as much privacy as she could get aboard the starship. Somewhere, though, a tiny camera recorded everything she did. She was a Tosevite citizen of the Empire, true. But she was also a specimen for the Race to study.

She wished Ttomalss hadn’t told her about the camera. Now, when she felt the overpowering need to stroke her private parts-as she sometimes did-she also felt even more constraint and guilt than she had before. It wasn’t just that her biology made her different from the Race, not any more. It was also that Ttomalss-and other males and females-could watch her being different, and could scorn her for the differences.

As she checked for electronic messages, though, she let her mouth fall open in a laugh. The idea that struck her wasn’t funny enough to make her laugh out loud-another difference rooted in Tosevite biology. But ginger had made the Race’s reproductive behavior more like that prevailing down on Tosev 3. Ttomalss and other males and females-especially Felless, whom she intensely disliked-were no longer in such a good position to criticize what she did.

Sure enough, a couple of messages awaited her. One, assuming she truly did belong to the Race, tried to sell her a new, improved fingerclaw trimmer. She wondered how, after so many millennia of civilization, a fingerclaw trimmer could possibly be improved. Most likely, the merchant selling it had been on Tosev 3 so long, he’d acquired Tosevite notions of extravagant advertising. Kassquit deleted that one without a qualm.

The other message came from Sam Yeager. Your people are being kind of picky about letting Jonathan and me come up for a second visit, he wrote. Seems they do not want an American spacecraft linking up with one of your starships. Hard to blame them, with the Deutsche making such nuisances of themselves, but we Americans are still mostly harmless.

Kassquit pondered that. How was she supposed to take it? Tone was hard to gauge on electronic messages anyhow, and she had all the more trouble because Sam Yeager was a Big Ugly. She also noted that the story he told was different from the one she’d got from Ttomalss. She didn’t suppose that should have surprised her; Tosevites were even more reluctant to admit they could be at fault than were males or females of the Race.

Would it be possible for you and your hatchling to fly here in one of our shuttlecraft? she asked.

No immediate answer came back, which didn’t surprise her. Sam Yeager’s message wasn’t very recent, and he’d doubtless gone off to do other things instead of sitting at his computer waiting for her reply. She read for a while, then returned to the computer to check the news-the Deutsche still sounded as bellicose as ever-and then, in an act that brought her as much pleasure from defiance as from physical sensation, turned off the lights in the cubicle and caressed herself.

No doubt the camera monitored infrared. The watchers would know what she was doing even with the lights out. While she was doing it, she didn’t care. That was a mixture of defiance and physical sensation, too. She’d seen videos of Big Uglies mating-more products of the Race’s research on Tosevites. She wasn’t usually in the habit of imagining herself in one of those videos, but today she did: another act of defiance. And she imagined the male with which she was doing the improbable deed had Jonathan Yeager’s face.

After the pleasure faded, the shame for what she’d done seemed all the greater. As she turned the lights back on and washed her hands, she sighed. She wished her body wouldn’t drive her to such extremes. But it did, and she had to come to terms with that.

A fair stretch of the day went by before Sam Yeager answered her. I think you have a good idea there, he wrote. I will pass it on to my superiors. You do the same on your side of the fence, and we shall see what happens next.

Good enough, Kassquit wrote back, adding, I hope your own superiors will not prove difficult, to see how he would respond.

Well, they may, he answered, this time promptly. They do not trust me so far as I would like, it seems. But I am useful to them, and so they just have to put up with me.

That sounds like my own position here, Kassquit wrote in some surprise. She wondered how Sam Yeager had fallen foul of his own kind. Not through looking the wrong way, anyhow: he looked like a typical Big Ugly. Maybe he would explain if he did come up to the starship again.