Down to Earth

18

Much as he would have liked to, Straha hadn’t passed on to the Race what he’d learned about the hatchlings Sam Yeager was raising. In an odd sort of way, he was loyal to the United States. After all, if this not-empire hadn’t taken him in, Atvar would have given him a very hard time. And Yeager was a friend, even if he was a Big Ugly.

But those weren’t the main reasons he’d kept quiet about that business. His main concern was that he wouldn’t get the reward he most desired: a return to the society of the Race. After all, his own kind had done the same sort of thing with a Tosevite hatchling. How could they condemn the Americans without condemning themselves at the same time?

His driver walked into the kitchen. “I greet you, Shiplord,” he said casually. “Looks as if the sun is finally coming out.”

“You knew!” Straha said angrily. “You knew all along, and you said not a thing-not a single, solitary thing.”

Had the Big Ugly asked what he was talking about, Straha thought he would have taken a bite out of him. But his driver didn’t bother affecting innocence. “I was following the orders of my superiors, Shiplord. They wanted this secret kept, and so it was. I am surprised Sam Yeager obtained permission to have you visit his home, as a matter of fact.”

“How do you know he even asked permission?” Straha asked. “I do not know that he did,” the driver answered. “I know that he should have. If he did not, it will be one more black mark in the book against him.”

That was an English idiom, translated literally into the language of the Race. Straha had little trouble figuring out what it meant. He said, “Yeager is a good officer. He should not have difficulties with his superiors.”

“If he obeyed orders, if he did as he was told to do, he would not have difficulties with his superiors,” the Big Ugly said. Then he let out a couple of grunts of Tosevite laughter. “Of course, if he acted in that fashion, he might not be such a good officer, either.”

Straha would have reckoned a perfectly obedient officer a good officer. Or would he? He thought of himself as a good officer, and yet he was one of the most disobedient males in the history of the Race. This planet corrupts everyone, he thought.

His driver dropped into English. “You know what Yeager’s problem is, Shiplord? Yeager’s got too goddamn much initiative, that’s what.”

“Initiative is desirable, isn’t it?” Straha switched to English, too.

“Yes and no,” his driver replied. “Yes if you’re going after what your superiors tell you to go after. No if you go off on your own. Especially no if you keep sticking your nose into places they told you to stay away from.”

“Yeager does this?” Straha made a mental leap of his own. “Is that why he has had trouble with Tosevites trying to harm him and his family?”

“I really couldn’t tell you anything about that,” his driver said. “It might just be a run of bad luck, you know.”

Like any male of the Race, Straha read Big Uglies imperfectly. But he’d been associating with this one for a longtime. He had a fair notion when the Tosevite tried to lie by misdirection. This felt like one of those times.

He started to press his driver, to try to learn more from him: for he was sure the Big Ugly knew more. Instead, though, he left unuttered the questions he might have asked. He doubted the driver would have told him much; the Tosevite’s first loyalty was to his American superiors, not to Straha. And if word got back to them that Straha had been asking such questions, Sam Yeager might land in more trouble still. The exiled shiplord didn’t want that.

Maybe the Big Ugly had expected Straha to ask such questions. Eyeing him, the Tosevite asked, “Is there anything else, Shiplord?” He returned to the language of the Race, and with it to formality.

“No, nothing else,” Straha replied, also in his own language. “How you Big Uglies conduct your affairs is of no great consequence to me.”

That made his driver relax. Males of the Race-and females, too, these days-had a reputation among the Big Uglies for being contemptuous of everything pertaining to Tosev 3. Straha was contemptuous of a great deal about the Tosevites, but not of everything, and not about all Big Uglies. But he used the reputation to his own advantage here, to conceal a genuine interest.

With a laugh, his driver said, “After all, it’s not as if Yeager were a male of the Race,”

“It certainly is not,” Straha agreed. The driver nodded and went off making the small, somewhat musical noises the Big Uglies called whistling. That was a sign he was amused and unconcerned and happy.

Or maybe he wanted Straha to think it was a sign he was amused and unconcerned and happy. Big Uglies could be devious creatures. Straha knew from experience that his driver could be a devious creature. If he were to pick up the telephone now and call Sam Yeager, he had no doubt the driver would listen to every word he said. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Americans listened to every word he said whenever he picked up the telephone.

He waited till he was using the limited access to the Race’s computer network a fellow male in exile had illicitly obtained for him before sending an electronic message to Maargyees, the false name Sam Yeager used on the network. In case you did not know it, your own curiosity has amused curiosity in others, he wrote. Yeager was a clever male. He would have no trouble figuring out what that meant.

Having written the message, Straha erased it from his own computer. It would, of course, remain in the network’s storage system, but the Americans didn’t have access to that. He hoped with all his liver that the Americans didn’t have access to it, anyhow. They’d known next to nothing about computers when the Race first came to Tosev 3. They knew a great deal more than that these days, worse luck.

The Race had phased in computers ever so gradually in the couple of millennia following the unification of Home. Devices with such important influence on society had to be phased in gradually, to minimize disruption. That was the way the Race looked at things, anyhow. The Big Uglies had other ideas.

Straha didn’t suppose he should have been surprised. When the Tosevites found a new technology, no matter what it was, they always felt they had to do as much with it as they could as soon as they could. Even if the troubles that would hatch as a result of rapid change were obvious, they went ahead all the same. They’d done as much with computers in a generation as the Race had in centuries.

Not all American Tosevites had the education they needed to use computer systems to best advantage-or at all. That didn’t deter the Big Uglies. Those of them who could use the new technology did… and flourished. Those who didn’t might as well have stayed inside their eggshells. Their failure, their falling behind, bothered the others not at all.

And if upheaval followed because some Tosevites gained more advantages than others-they didn’t seem to care. That struck Straha as madness, but it was as much dogma to the Americans as reverencing the spirits of Emperors past was to the Race. Straha knew an American saying: look out for yourself and let the devil take the hindmost. To him, that was individualism to the point of addlement, survival of the fittest made into a law of society. To the Americans, it seemed common sense. Those who succeeded in the United States succeeded spectacularly. Those who failed-and there were, by the nature of things, many who did-failed the same way.

“And, all things considered, I am one of the ones who have succeeded,” Straha murmured. He had less than he would have had back on Home, but he had everything with which the Big Uglies could supply him.

The sliding glass door at the back of the house was open. The spring air was chillier than he found ideal, but no worse than a brisk winter’s day back on Home. He didn’t even bother bundling up before he pushed open the sliding screen that kept little flying and crawling pests out of the house and walked out into the backyard.

He looked around with a certain amount of pride. Bare ground and sand and succulents, some smooth, some spiky, put him in mind of a landscape back on Home, though details differed. Here, even more than inside — the house, he’d shaped things to suit himself. Inside, the place was built to suit Tosevites, and many of the devices he used every day-telephone, stove, refrigerator-were perforce of American manufacture, different from and usually inferior to their equivalents on his native world. They always reminded him what an alien he was.

Out here, though, he could look around and imagine himself somewhere on Home, somewhere a long way from his native city. Few Big Uglies cared for the effect, any more than he was enamored of the boring green lawns they so admired.

The dog next door started barking. It often did when he came outside; it probably disliked his odor. For that matter, he wasn’t fond of the scent of its droppings, which the breeze sometimes wafted to his scent receptors. He didn’t like the noise it made, either. Nothing on Home sounded remotely like a dog, and its yaps and growls spoiled the illusion the yard gave him.

A small bird with a bright green back and an even brighter red head buzzed among the flowers; red ones particularly attracted it. It too reminded him he wasn’t on Home any more. Flying creatures there had bare, leathery wings, and none of them came close to matching the aerial gymnastics of a hummingbird. But, even though the flying creature was alien, it didn’t irk him the way the dog did. It was small and quiet and attractive, not loud and annoying.

Suddenly the hummingbird, which had been swooping low, darted away as if something had startled it. Straha strode closer, and saw a scaly, four-legged creature a little longer than the distance between his wrist and the end of his middle fingerclaw. It was a brown not much different from the color of the dirt, with darker stripes to break up its outline. Like the succulents among which it crawled, it looked familiar without being identical to anything on Home.

It stuck out a short, dark tongue. Then, as if nervous about coming out into the open, it scuttled back under some of the plants and disappeared. Straha started to root around after it, but decided not to bother. It was living where it belonged and doing what it was supposed to do. He wished he could say the same.

Maybe he could return to the society of the Race… if he betrayed Sam Yeager. Maybe. His mouth fell open in a laugh that held little in the way of real mirth. He’d just warned his friend of danger from other Big Uglies, but he hadn’t warned of danger from himself.

Of course, Yeager understood the Race about as well as any Tosevite could. He would have to understand that Straha might be able to buy his way back into Atvar’s good graces by passing on the story of the hatchlings… wouldn’t he?

From the exile that wasn’t quite comfortable, from the garden that wasn’t quite Home, Straha made the negative gesture. “If I have to buy my way back into Atvar’s good graces, they are not worth having,” the ex-shiplord said aloud. “Spirits of Emperors past turn their backs on him.” He feared those spirits would reject him when he came before them, but he’d feared that ever since ordering his shuttlecraft pilot to take him down to the USA. Yet those spirits wouldn’t approve of him if he betrayed a friend, either, not even if that friend was a Big Ugly. Now he made the affirmative gesture. He would stay quiet, and stay here.

“Okay, let’s give it a try,” Hal Walsh said. “David, would you like to do the honors?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” David Goldfarb said. “I want to get the bloody call. I don’t want to make it. I want to see the numbers light up on the gadget here. You don’t know how much I want that.”

His boss at the Saskatchewan River Widget Works eyed him. “Oh, maybe I do,” he said. He dug in his pocket and tossed a dime to Jack Devereaux. “Go find a phone booth and call David.”

“All right,” Devereaux said. He put on his overcoat before leaving the office. The calendar said spring had come to Edmonton, but the weather paid no attention. “I’ll even note the phone number, so we can see if it works the way it’s supposed to.”

“It had better.” Walsh spoke as if a failed widget were a personal affront. That was how he thought, too, which probably went a long way toward making him such a good engineer.

Devereaux slammed the door behind him. David Goldfarb knew a phone booth-a far flimsier phone booth than the solid, red-painted British sort-stood around the corner. With this ghastly weather, he didn’t understand why booths in Canada were so flimsy, but they were. It helped remind him he was in a foreign country. Waiting for Devereaux to call reminded him of the same thing. On the other side of the Atlantic, he’d be waiting for his colleague to ring.

The telephone rang. It did the same thing regardless of where it was. He picked it up. “Hullo-Goldfarb here.” Numbers appeared on the screen of the widget hooked up to the phone, a widget that sent electronic tendrils through the telephone lines to the instrument the person on the other end of the connection was using.

“Yes, I’d like to order some pirogis to go.” That was Devereaux’s voice, even if he was trying to get Ukrainian dumplings.

“Bravo-you just wasted Hal’s dime,” Goldfarb said. Devereaux laughed and hung up on him.

Walsh came over and looked at the numbers, which remained on the screen. “I think we’ve got something here. Police, fire departments-this beats the hell out of having an operator try to trace a call.”

“Businesses will use it, too,” Goldfarb said. “If you have customers ringing you, you’ll be able to ring back whenever you’ve got something on special.” Walsh understood ring, just as Goldfarb understood call; he didn’t bother using the North American term instead of the one he’d grown up with.

Jack Devereaux came back into the office. He was waving a scrap of paper. Goldfarb snatched it out of his hand. He compared it to the number he’d written down. They matched. Solemnly, Goldfarb, Walsh, and Devereaux shook hands. “We’re in business,” Hal Walsh said.

Devereaux said. “Not yet, we’re not,” he said. “We have a useful widget. Now we’ve got to convince people they really want to use it.”

Walsh beamed at him. “You’d be handy to have around if you didn’t know a slide rule from a skelkwank light,” he said. “You’ve always got your eye on the main chance.”

“I should hope so,” Devereaux replied with dignity. “As for slide rules, another five years and they’ll be nothing but antiques. Why get eyestrain trying to read a third significant figure when an electronic calculator will give you eight or ten just as fast?” He turned to Goldfarb. “Isn’t that right, David?” he asked, as if Hal Walsh had challenged him.

“I expect it is,” Goldfarb said in what he feared was a hollow voice. “I’ll miss ’em, though.” He felt very much an antique himself, remembering how proud he’d been when he learned to multiply and divide on a slide rule and how he’d been even prouder after he’d found a couple of tricks for keeping track of the decimal point-unlike a calculator, the slide rule wouldn’t do it for him. He also knew he had no great head for business. That didn’t make him a stereotypical Jew, but it did make him a man who’d spent his entire adult life in the RAF. He hadn’t had to worry about what things cost, or about the best ways to sell them to a public that didn’t know what it was missing by doing without them.

“So will I,” Walsh said. “And you never have to worry about the batteries going dead with a slide rule, either. But if the calculator gives better results, you’d have to be a fool to want to use anything else, eh?”

Devereaux grinned a sassy grin. “David doesn’t think like that. He’s an Englishman, remember. They hang on to things because they’re old, not because they’re any good. Isn’t that right?” he said again.

“Something to it, I shouldn’t wonder,” Goldfarb said. To the Canadians, he was an Englishman. To most of the Englishmen he’d known, he’d been nothing but a Jew. Perspective changed things, sure enough. Before he could say as much, the telephone rang. He picked it up. “Goldfarb here,” he answered, as he had before.

“Hello, Goldfarb.” That was his wife calling. “Can you pick up a loaf of bread on the way home tonight?”

“No, not a chance,” he said, just to hear Naomi snort. “See you when I see you, sweetheart.” He hung up. Even before he did that, he craned his neck to see the number displayed on the small screen of the Widget Works’ latest widget.

His boss and Jack Devereaux were doing the same thing. “Is that your home number?” Hal Walsh asked, which somewhat surprised David-his working assumption was that, if it had to do with numbers in any way, Walsh already knew it without needing to check.

“Yes, that’s it,” Goldfarb agreed. “And I’d say we’re really on to something here.”

“I’d say you’re right.” Walsh looked as if he wanted to blow canary feathers off his chin. The Saskatchewan River Widget Works was his company; even though the phone-number-reading gadget hadn’t been altogether his idea, the greater share of the profits from it would end up in his pocket. He might have picked that thought out of Goldfarb’s mind, for he said, “Nobody will be poor on account of this, I promise you all. I think it’ll be a big enough pie for everybody to have a big slice.”

“Hal, you’ve played straight with us right from the start,” Devereaux said. “I don’t think anybody’s worried you’re going to pull a fast one this time.”

“That’s right,” David Goldfarb said, though he hadn’t been with the Widget Works right from the start. Walsh was the sort of boss who inspired confidence.

He laughed at his employees now. “In the old days, the days before the Race came, I could have turned everything into cash and headed down to Rio. Well, I still could, if I felt like living under the Lizards for the rest of my days. Since I don’t, I suppose I’d have to go to Los Angeles instead.”

“They’d ship you back from the USA,” Devereaux pointed out.

“But at least you’d have decent weather while you were there,” Goldfarb said with undisguised longing. By what he was used to, Los Angeles was liable to be beastly hot, but he preferred that to too bloody cold, which was how Canadian weather struck him.

Jack Devereaux said, “I wonder where the jet stream is this year, and where it’ll take the fallout.”

“Not that much from the Japanese test,” Hal Walsh said. “Of course, they may set off some more.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Devereaux said. “I was thinking of the big dose, when the Nazis and the Race start going after each other.”

“God forbid,” Goldfarb said. “I’ve got family in Poland.” The others wouldn’t think of him as an Englishman anymore, but too bad. He tried to look on the bright side of things: “Maybe the war won’t happen after all. The Germans have been thumping their chests for a while now, but that’s all they’ve been doing.”

“There’s a big part of me that would love to see Germany smashed to smithereens,” Devereaux said, and Goldfarb could no more help nodding than he could help breathing. His colleague went on, “All the same, though, I hope you’re right. There’d be too much damage to the rest of the world to make the war worthwhile.”

“I think they’re going to fight,” Hal Walsh said. “I think they’ve done too much posturing to back down without looking yellow, and they don’t dare do that. It’d be asking half the countries they’re sitting on to rise up against ’em.”

“That makes sense,” Goldfarb said. “I wish it didn’t.” Before he could go on, his telephone rang yet again. He picked up the handset. “Hullo-Goldfarb here.”

“You lousy, stinking kike,” the voice on the other end of the line replied. “You think you’re too goddamn good to play with us, do you? You’ll pay for that, and so will your whole family. The Nazis have the right idea.” Slam! The phone went dead.

“Who was that?” Walsh asked.

“Nobody I know,” Goldfarb answered. “Nobody I want to know, either.” He glanced over at the little screen attached to the telephone and jotted down the number it displayed. “But the police may be interested in doing something about it.”

“Oh, really?” That was Jack Devereaux. “One of your charming friends?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” David Goldfarb held up the telephone number he’d just noted. “And I have an excellent notion of how to go about helping myself and getting some publicity for the Widget Works, both at the same time.”

He called the Edmonton police and reported the threat he’d just received. “You got this by telephone, sir?” the policeman asked. “I’m afraid we can’t do much about that-you do understand the difficulty.”

“Not in this case, no,” Goldfarb answered, and gave the number from which the threatening call had been placed.

After a long pause, the policeman asked, “How could you possibly know the call came from that number, sir?”

And Goldfarb spent the next ten minutes explaining who he was, for whom he worked, and exactly how he knew what he knew. He finished, “I assume you can find out which numbers go with which houses? If you can, you might find it worth your while to pay a visit to that particular one. Do be careful, though. These are not nice people.”

“I make no promises,” the policeman said, and hung up.

After David reported the other end of the conversation to his boss, Hal Walsh grinned from ear to ear. “If they go, and if they find things worth finding, we’ve just made our mark in big letters,” he said, and held up an imaginary advertising signboard. “ ‘As endorsed by the Edmonton Police Department.’ ”

“Unless that number turns out to be another phone booth, of course,” Goldfarb said. Walsh crossed his forefingers, as if to avert a vampire. David laughed. “That doesn’t work. I’m Jewish, remember?”

Nobody at the Widget Works got much work done till Goldfarb’s telephone rang again a couple of hours later. When he answered it, the Edmonton copper said, “Mr. Goldfarb, my hat’s off to you. Thanks to your call and your device, we have four very nasty fellows in custody. We also have several illegal firearms, some illegal drugs, and a large quantity of ginger, which is, of course, not illegal-here. Now, if you would be so kind as to let me speak to Mr.-Welsh, was it? — about the possibility of acquiring this device for ourselves…”

“Walsh,” Goldfarb corrected happily. “Hal Walsh.” He gave his boss the phone. With his hand over the mouthpiece, he said, “We are in business.”

Felless said, “I think it is extremely unfortunate that we should have to prepare to evacuate this area as a result of threats from these Tosevite savages.”

Kazzop, the science officer at the Race’s consulate in Marseille, waggled his eye turrets ever so slightly to show his bemusement. “Correct me if I am wrong, superior female,” he said, “but is this evacuation not the only way in which you are likely to be able to return to territory ruled by the Race? Without it, would you not remain indefinitely in the Greater German Reich?”

“Well, yes, so I would,” she admitted. “Ambassador Veffani holds a grudge against me.” She preferred not to dwell on whether her disgrace had given the ambassador good reason to hold a grudge against her, but continued, “Still, I would sooner the Race were strong enough to make it safe for me to stay here than to have to go.”

“We are strong. We are stronger than we were when the conquest fleet arrived,” Kazzop said. As he was a male from that fleet, he knew whereof he spoke. He went on, “The trouble lies not in ourselves or in our strength, but in the Big Uglies. They are far stronger now than they were when we first came here, too, and infinitely stronger than we imagined they could be when we left Home.”

“It is humiliating that the males of the conquest fleet cannot guarantee our safety here,” Felless said. “Humiliating and disgraceful.”

“Superior female, we are not being evacuated from Marseille because we are in any particular danger from the Deutsche,” Kazzop said. “The Big Uglies will not harm us even in the event of war. They know we could retaliate against their males and females serving as diplomats or otherwise living in parts of Tosev 3 ruled by the Race. The Tosevites have developed elaborate and surprisingly sophisticated rules for exchanging individuals under these circumstances. Because of their own frequent conflicts, they have needed such rules.”

“What then?” Felless said. “Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps I truly do not understand why we are being evacuated.”

“I will make the eggshell clear, so you may see the hatching truth within.” Kazzop sounded as if he was taking an almost Tosevite glee in explaining things to a superior as if she were a hatchling. “We are being evacuated because Marseille will make an important target for the Race if war breaks out. Explosive-metal bombs, unfortunately, are not very selective.”

“Oh,” Felless said in a small voice. “Please understand that I am new to the idea of war and to everything involved with it. I expected the conquest would have been completed before I woke from cold sleep.”

“Life on Tosev 3 is full of surprises,” the science officer said dryly.

“That is also a truth-and how I wish it weren’t,” Felless said. “Of course, Veffani also gets to leave the Reich. Since he has been stuck here much longer than I have, I am sure he will welcome the opportunity to escape.”

But Kazzop made the negative gesture. “Veffani will not leave, any more than the Deutsche will call their ambassador back from Cairo. By Tosevite custom, ambassadors do not leave other lands until war breaks out.”

Of all the things Felless had never imagined, a reason to feel sympathy toward Veffani certainly ranked high on the list. “Poor fellow,” she said, and then, “But the only announcement of the war is liable to be the launch of missiles tipped with explosive-metal bombs. How can he be sure of safe evacuation?”

“He cannot,” Kazzop answered, which surprised Felless all over again.

She said, “You males of the conquest fleet cannot always have had an easy time of it.” She could hear the surprise in her own voice. She spent most of the time resenting the males of the conquest fleet because they hadn’t given the colonization fleet so completely subdued a world as the newcomers had anticipated. Only rarely, as now, did she stop to think about the difficulties the males had faced and continued to face.

“Superior female, that is a great truth,” Kazzop said. “It is also a truth few females or males of the colonization fleet ever realize. I am glad you have realized it, and I hope you will cling to the memory here.”

“I shall not forget,” Felless said. And then, as she sometimes did, she thought about the clutch of eggs she’d laid at Nuremberg. “I presume arrangements have been made to bring hatchlings out of the Reich.”

“I believe so, yes,” Kazzop said. “Some of us have to be responsible for them, or the species would perish, after all.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Felless agreed. “I have never felt the urge to any great degree myself. Slomikk, the science officer at the embassy, did a far better job with the hatchlings than I could have. As far as I am concerned, he is welcome to it. Adults, now, adults are interesting. Hatchlings?” After the interrogative cough, she used the negative hand gesture.

“Slomikk is a very capable male in many ways. I have known him for a long time,” Kazzop said. “I can see how he would be good with hatchlings. My own attitude, I confess, is more like yours. You do of course realize that the Tosevites are far more centered on their offspring than we are on ours.”

“I have gathered that, yes.” This time, Felless used the affirmative gesture. “I gather also that the reasons behind it are primarily biological. When the Big Uglies hatch, or rather, when they emerge from the bodies of the females who bear them”-Felless spoke with fastidious disgust-“they are much less developed, much less able to care for themselves, than are our hatchlings. If adult Big Uglies were not genetically programmed to care for them, they would perish in short order.”

“Just so,” Kazzop said. “These strong personal bonds permeate Tosevite society to a degree we can understand only intellectually, not emotionally. They are no small part of what makes the Big Uglies so vengeance-prone and so generally difficult to administer.”

“I have also heard this from Senior Researcher Ttomalss,” Felless said.

“Ah. Yes, I can see how you would have,” Kazzop replied. “Ttomalss is very sound, very sound indeed, when it comes to Tosevite psychology. Why, he might almost be a Big Ugly himself, he understands Tosevites so well.”

Having had her share of problems with Ttomalss, Felless did not care to hear him praised in such extravagant terms. “I have heard this about the Big Uglies,” she repeated, “but I am not altogether convinced it is truth. It seems a very foolish principle on which to organize a society.”

“But the Big Uglies use it constantly,” Kazzop said. “Take the Reich, for example. You must know that its ruling ideology holds the Deutsche to be superior to other Tosevites by reason of their genetics.”

“From every available bit of evidence, this is an ideology unsupported by truth,” Felless pointed out.

“Oh, of course,” the male from the conquest fleet said. “But the existence and popularity of an ideology are truths of their own, independent of the truth-if any-at the yolk of the ideology. And this one asserts that the Deutsche are part of a large family grouping descended from a common ancestor-derived, you see, from Tosevite family patterns.”

“Well, perhaps,” Felless admitted. “This is certainly not an organizing principle we would use for ourselves.”

“No, among us it would be madness,” Kazzop said. “Our matings are nonexclusive, after all. We could not tell family lines even if we wanted to, in most instances. But if you ignore the ways the Big Uglies differ from us, you will never come to a satisfactory understanding of them. That is where Ttomalss’ insights have proved so useful, so valuable.”

“Is it?” Felless said tonelessly.

Before she could add anything less complimentary to Ttomalss, and before Kazzop could further irritate her by praising him, the consul-general spoke over the intercom, his voice filling the entire building: “We must evacuate! We must evacuate! We can delay no longer. I am told negotiations between the Race and the Reich have broken down. It is no longer safe for us to remain here. We must evacuate.”

Kazzop sighed. “So many opportunities for research going to waste.”

“Oh, indeed,” Felless said. “And so many opportunities for getting killed now becoming available.” Kazzop started to answer, but thought better of it. Instead, he went off to see to his packing.

Felless had already seen to hers. She had little in the way of personal belongings, having pruned her possessions before coming from Nuremberg to Marseille. Body paint took up far less room than the wrappings traveling Tosevites had to bring with them. All the data she’d collected in the Greater German Reich had already gone into the Race’s electronic storage system; they were safer than she was. All she really had to worry about was…

She checked. As she’d thought, she had plenty of ginger. She wanted a taste, but restrained herself. She knew she would get in trouble if she started mating with males on the way out of Marseille. I can wait, she thought. I will not have to wait forever. The herb will be there when we get wherever we are going. She’d long since given up the idea of telling herself she would never taste again. It was a lie, as she knew all too well. Telling herself she would wait, though, worked well enough. Sooner or later, she could enjoy the herb she craved.

“Report to the front entrance immediately!” the intercom bellowed, adding a loud emphatic cough. “Repeat, report to the front entrance immediately! Ground transportation to our aircraft is now waiting.”

Armed and uniformed Big Uglies stood guard outside the consulate. Felless had seen their like in Nuremberg. They put her in mind of trained tsiongyu waiting to bite anyone who went where he shouldn’t. One after another, the males and females from the consulate boarded buses and motorcars under their cold, watchful stares.

And a good many males and females of the Race who were not part of the consular staff were also boarding those buses and motorcars. Kazzop said, “If anyone wants to know my opinion, we ought to leave most of those fast-talking cheats and thieves behind. They come to Marseille to buy ginger and to sell drugs to the Big Uglies. Even if an explosive-metal bomb vaporized them all, the Race would be just as well off, and probably better.”

Felless knew she would have felt the same way if she weren’t a ginger taster herself. She said, “Some of them may have legitimate business here. We cannot be sure which ones are criminals and rogues?”

“Few who have only legitimate business come to Marseille,” Kazzop replied. But he said no more than that. The fast-talking males and females got aboard, which made all the vehicles taking the Race out of Marseille more crowded than they would have been otherwise. Deutsch soldiers on motorized cycles that made a dreadful racket escorted the procession to the aircraft waiting at the field outside the city.

Because so many interlopers were fleeing Marseille, the aircraft was as crowded as the ground transportation had been. But it had no trouble taking off. Felless let out a long, happy sigh. “Going back to civilization at last,” she murmured. The male sitting next to her made the affirmative gesture. She laughed. Going off to somewhere I can taste again, too. From looking at that male, she thought he would have agreed with her, but she didn’t try to find out.

Walter Stone looked pleased with himself as he peered out from the control room of the Lewis and Clark. “We’re spreading out.” he said, as if he’d done all the spreading himself, possibly with a manure cart.

Most times, Glen Johnson would have laughed at the senior pilot. Now he just nodded. “The more spread out we are, the more working bases we’ve got on every little chunk of rock near Ceres, the better off we’ll be, because every separate base makes it that much harder for the Lizards to wipe us off the map.”

“We always knew we’d be up against that,” Stone said.

Johnson nodded. “Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “But we didn’t figure we’d be up against it so hard so soon. Stupid goddamn Nazis.”

“Those bastards seem bound and determined to go out in a blaze of glory, don’t they?” Stone said.

“They’ve sure got a wild hair up their ass about Poland, anyhow, if half of what we hear on the radio is true,” Johnson said. “And I’ll tell you something else: I wouldn’t give you a plug nickel to be aboard the Hermann Goring right now, either.”

Stone’s chuckle was not a happy sound. “Me, neither. Can you say ‘bull’s-eye’? How many missiles do you suppose the Lizards have aimed at that baby?”

Remembering his conversation with Mickey Flynn, Johnson answered, “Enough to do the job-and probably about another ten more besides.”

“That sounds about right,” Stone agreed. “The Race doesn’t like doing things by halves-which is one reason it’s God’s own miracle they didn’t finish the fight back in the Forties.”

“It was a question of who’d finish who,” Johnson said. “They wanted the colonization fleet to have a planet worth landing on.” His chuckle didn’t show much in the way of good humor, either. “So now they can blow things up with the colonists here. Hot damn.”

“Hot damn is right,” Stone said. “Real hot.”

“What worries me is, they might decide to go after us if they’re going after the Hermann Goring,” Johnson said. “In for a penny, in for a pound, you know what I mean? As long as they’ve got a war on their hands…”

“It’d be a lot bigger one if they’re fighting us, too,” Stone said. “Yeah, but if you’re a Lizard, the other question is, how big is too big if you’re already fighting the Nazis?” Johnson said. “The only answer I can think of is, if it’s big enough to blow up the planet, it’s probably too big. Otherwise, who knows?”

Walter Stone looked at him. “You’re in a nice, cheerful mood today, aren’t you?”

“Wouldn’t you be, the way things are now?” Glen Johnson returned. “Remember, you spent all the time before we left learning to fly the Lewis and Clark. I spend a lot of my duty time in orbit, watching the Race and the Nazis and the Russians. I know how fast things can go wrong. They almost did a few times.”

“You tried to help make things go wrong, poking your nose in where it didn’t belong,” Stone said.

“And look what it got me,” Johnson said. “I’m stuck for life with people like you.” Before Stone could answer, a bell chimed the hour. Johnson sighed. “And I’m stuck on an exercise bicycle for the next hour.”

“Have fun,” Stone said. “I already did my bit today.”

“Fun,” Johnson said, as if it were a four-letter word. But he didn’t have time to do any more complaining than that, not if he wanted to get to the gym on time. He didn’t give two whoops in hell about getting to the gym on time, but he didn’t want to listen to the lecture he’d get for missing some of his exercise period, either. And so he swung out of the control room and down the halls to the gymnasium. When he got there, he signed the sheet to log in, changed into sweat clothes in the little men’s room off the gym, and then got onto a bike and got to work.

One of the main-engine technicians who’d started exercising before him grinned and said, “You sure you’re really here, sir?”

“I think so, Bob,” Johnson answered, grinning back. “I look like I’m here, don’t I?”

“You never can tell,” Bob said, and they both laughed. The joke was only funny if you looked at it the right way. Not very long before, the Lewis and Clark had gone through its first really juicy scandal. A good many people, including several of high rank, had got in the habit of signing their names on the sheet and then going off and doing something else instead of getting in their work. Brigadier General Healey had not been happy when word of what they were doing finally got to him. And when the commandant wasn’t happy, nobody else was happy, either.

“One thing you’ve got to give Healey,” Bob said: “he’s fair. He came down on everybody, and who didn’t matter.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Johnson’s considered opinion was that the commandant hated everybody impartially, and that the crew of the Lewis and Clark returned the favor. He realized he wasn’t objective, but he didn’t much care. As far as he was concerned, Healey didn’t rate objectivity.

Johnson’s legs pumped hard as he did his best to keep calcium in his bones. He didn’t want to think about gravity, not any more. The idea of having weight, of moving his muscles against resistance, seemed alien and repugnant. He pedaled on anyhow. When his body was working hard, he could stop thinking about the troubles back on Earth and, indeed, about everything else. Exercise wasn’t as much fun as sex, but it did the job of distraction almost as well.

Thinking about sex made him think about Lucy Vegetti-and thinking about her was certainly more enjoyable than not thinking about anything at all. Trouble was, he couldn’t do anything but think about Lucy right now. She was down on Ceres, helping to set up a habitat there. He missed her. He hoped she missed him. If she didn’t, she could find plenty of guys to take his place.

He wondered if she’d taken her bottle of Cutty down to the surface of the asteroid. A jolt of scotch was almost enough to tempt him into some breaking and entering-almost, but not quite.

And then, before he let himself get more tempted than he should have, the intercom came to noisy life. “Lieutenant Colonel Johnson! Lieutenant Colonel Glen Johnson! Report to the commandant’s office immediately! Lieutenant Colonel Glen Johnson! Report to the-”

“I’m coming,” Johnson muttered. “Keep your shirt on.” The intercom went right on bellowing.

“Lucky son of a gun,” Bob said.

“Going to see the commandant?” Johnson shook his head. “I’d sooner keep exercising.”

He unhooked the belt that tethered him to the bicycle and pushed off toward the nearest handhold. He didn’t bother changing out of his exercise togs. If Healey wanted him immediately, that would be how the commandant got him. And if he was a little sweaty, a little smelly, what better proof he’d been doing his work like a good little boy?

He sailed right past Brigadier General Healey’s adjutant and into the commandant’s office, catching himself on a handhold there. “Reporting as ordered, sir,” he said, saluting.

“Yes.” Healey eyed him. “There are times when you find following orders to the letter more amusing than others, aren’t there, Lieutenant Colonel?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Johnson said with the air of a maiden whose virtue had been questioned.

“Tell me another one,” Healey said. “I shanghaied you, and you’ve been trying to make me sorry ever since. Sometimes you’ve even done it. But not today. This doesn’t bother me, not a bit.”

Johnson shrugged. “That’s the way it goes, sir.” If he was disappointed-and he was, a little-he’d be damned if he’d admit it. “Did you want me for anything else besides seeing how fast I could get here?”

Brigadier General Healey, unlike Mickey Flynn, had the stereotypical Irishman’s fair skin. When he got angry, he turned red. Johnson watched him flush now, and carefully pretended not to notice a thing. Biting off his words one at a time, the commandant said, “As a matter of fact, I did.”

“All right, sir,” Johnson said. “What is it?”

Healey leaned forward across his desk, for all the world as if he were back on Earth. Nobody else aboard the Lewis and Clark was so good at pretending weightlessness didn’t exist. He said, “You’re the one with the orbital patrol experience. If the Germans and the Lizards start slugging it out, which way do you think the Russians are likely to jump?”

That was a real question, all right. Johnson went from insolent to serious in the blink of an eye. “Sir, my best guess is, they sit on their hands. They hate the Nazis, and the Lizards scare the hell out of them. That’d be a war where they hope both sides lose, so they can pick up the pieces. If there are any pieces left to pick up, I mean.”

Healey’s jowls wobbled slightly as he nodded. “Okay. That makes pretty good sense. Matches up pretty well with what I’ve been hearing from back on Earth, too.” As much to himself as to Johnson, he added, “You always like to get things from more than one source if you can.”

You don’t trust anybody, Johnson realized. It’s not just me. You don’t trust the bigwigs who sent you out here, either. “Besides, sir,” he said, “the Russians fly tin cans. That’s compared to what we’ve got and what the Germans have. Compared to what the Lizards have…” He shook his head.

To his surprise, Healey laughed. “What they fly doesn’t matter much, not for this game. They’ve got their missiles aimed at the Lizards-and at the Nazis-and they’ve got their submarines. As long as those work, everything else is gravy.”

Johnson didn’t like to hear what he’d spent his career doing belittled. He could have argued about it; several relevant points occurred to him. Most times, he would have done it. At the moment, he had something more urgent on his mind. “Ask you a question, sir?” When Brigadier General Healey’s bulldog head bobbed up and down, Johnson said, “If the Nazis and the Lizards go at it, sir, will we stay out of it?”

Healey’s eyebrows sprang upward. “We’d damn well better, or this mission will fail. We still need resupply missions from home. We’ll need more people, too, sooner or later.”

“Yes, I understand all that.” Johnson couldn’t very well misunderstand it, not after so much time aboard the Lewis and Clark. “But will we stay out of it if it heats up?”

“I’m hoping it won’t,” the commandant said. “If the Germans were going to jump, they would have jumped by now-that’s what the consensus back home is, anyhow.” He paused and coughed, realizing he hadn’t answered the question Johnson asked. With another cough, he did: “As far as I know, we aren’t going to go to war unless we’re attacked. Will that do?”

“Yes, sir,” Johnson said. “It’ll have to, won’t it?” Brigadier General Healey nodded again.

Vyacheslav Molotov nodded to Paul Schmidt. “Good day,” the Soviet leader said. “Be seated; take tea, if you care to.” He gestured toward the samovar that stood on a table in a corner of his office.

“No thank you, Comrade General Secretary,” the German ambassador said in his good Russian. “I suppose you are curious as to why I asked to see you on such short notice.”

“Somewhat,” Molotov said, and said no more. No matter how curious he was, he didn’t intend to show Schmidt anything.

Rather to his annoyance (which he didn’t show, either), the German ambassador smiled. Paul Schmidt had known him a long time-since before the Lizards came-and might well guess how much he was concealing. Schmidt said, “My government has charged me with announcing the dissolution of the Committee of Eight and the selection of a new Fuhrer to guide the destiny of the Greater German Reich.”

That was indeed news. It was news Molotov had awaited with a curious mixture of hope and dread. He concealed both of those, too, asking only, “And to whom are congratulations due?” Who’s come out on top in the intrigue and backstage bloodletting?

“Why, to Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, inheritor of the great mantle formerly worn by Hitler and Himmler,” Schmidt replied.

“Please convey to him my heartiest and most sincere felicitations, and the hope that he will have a long, successful, and peaceful tenure at the head of the Reich,” Molotov said.

Not even his legendary self-control could keep him from putting a little extra stress on the word peaceful. It did, however, keep his most sincere felicitations from sounding too dreadfully insincere. Kaltenbrunner was the man he had hoped would not rise to the top in Germany, and would surely have been Himmler’s chosen successor had Himmler not dropped dead before choosing anyone. A big Austrian with cold eyes, Kaltenbrunner had stepped into Reinhard Heydrich’s shoes after the British arranged Heydrich’s untimely demise in Prague, and filled them all too well.

No one noticed him for a while, either, Molotov thought. Heydrich had been assassinated just as the Lizard invasion began, and the chaos that followed masked many things for a long time. But, when the dust settled, there was Kaltenbrunner, as much of a right-hand man as Himmler allowed himself.

Now Molotov asked the question he had to ask: “What will-Doctor, did you say? — yes, Dr. Kaltenbrunner’s policies be?”

“I expect him to continue on the path laid down by his illustrious predecessor and continued by the Committee of Eight,” the German ambassador said.

That was the answer Molotov had expected. It was also the answer he dreaded. Picking his words with some care, he said, “A change of leaders can sometimes lead to a change in policy with no disrespect for what has gone before.” I have not been nearly such a mad adventurist as Stalin, for instance.

But Schmidt shook his head. “The new Fuhrer is convinced his predecessor followed the proper course. Our neighbors ignore the legitimate claims of the Reich at their peril.”

“At their peril, certainly,” Molotov said. “But also at yours. I hope the new Fuhrer bears that in mind as well.”

Unlike the leaders he served, Schmidt was a man of culture. Molotov had thought so for many years. But the German did serve the ruffians who led the Reich, and served them loyally. He said, “The Fuhrer does indeed have that in his mind. Because he does, he sent me to renew the offer his predecessor, Reichs Chancellor Himmler, extended to the Soviet Union in regard to the illegally occupied Polish regions.”

“He wants us to join him in an attack on the Race, you are telling me,” Molotov said.

“Yes.” Schmidt nodded. “After all, part of the territory between our states was formerly occupied by the Soviet Union.”

“So it was-till 22 June, 1941,” Molotov said with a savage irony he did not try to hide. “I asked you once, and now I ask you again: if our borders marched with each other, how long would it be till the Reich was at the Soviet Union’s throat again?”

“Perhaps longer than it would take for the Soviet Union to be at the Reich ’s throat,” Schmidt answered tartly. “Or perhaps-and it is certainly the new Fuhrer ’s earnest hope-we could live at peace with each other once the victory has been won.”

“Living at peace with each other if our borders touched would take a small miracle,” said Molotov, using the language of the religion in which he had not believed since youth. “Living in peace with the Race after attacking Poland, however, would take a large miracle.”

“As Reichs Chancellor Himmler did not, Dr. Kaltenbrunner does not share this view,” Schmidt said.

“As I told Himmler through you, so I tell Kaltenbrunner: if he wants to attack Poland on his own, that is his affair,” Molotov said. “I do not think, however, he will be pleased with the result.”

But did that matter to the Nazis? Molotov doubted it. Fascists wanted what they wanted because they imagined they were entitled to it. Whether their desires inconvenienced or infuriated anyone else mattered very little to them. What they wanted, after all, was legitimate. What anyone else wanted was nothing but the twisted desires of subhumans or, in the case of the Lizards, nonhumans.

They couldn’t even see that. Not even the clever, able ones among them, of whom there were a depressing number, could see it. Paul Schmidt, for instance, only shrugged and said, “I obey the Fuhrer.”

“Take him my answer, then. It is the same one I gave to Himmler: no.” Molotov spoke the word nyet with more than a little relish. “And now I will tell you something on a personal level-I think you are fortunate to be here in Moscow. If this war begins, you would not want to be in Germany.”

“I am not worried,” Schmidt said, and for once Molotov had met his match in obscurity. Did the ambassador mean he wasn’t worried because he was in Moscow or because he did not fear what would happen to his homeland? Not even the Soviet leader quite had the crust to ask him.

What Molotov did ask was, “Have we any other issues to discuss?”

“No, Comrade General Secretary,” Schmidt replied.

“Very well.” Molotov said, in lieu of screaming, You’re mad! Your Fuhrer is mad! Your whole country is mad! You are going to wreck yourselves, you won’t beat the Lizards, and you’ll hurt the USSR with the radioactive waste from the explosive-metal bombs you use and the ones the Race will use on you.

Schmidt rose to his feet. He bowed to Molotov. “Good day, then. Be of good cheer. Everything will turn out for the best.” Before Molotov could answer, the diplomat bowed again and left.

Molotov sat behind his desk for some time, silent and unmoving. His secretary looked in, saw him there, and silently withdrew. A few minutes later, though, the telephone jangled. Molotov picked it up. “Marshal Zhukov on the line,” the secretary said.

“Put him through, Pyotr Maksimovich,” Molotov said.

Without preamble, Zhukov demanded, “What did the German have to say?”

As bluntly, Molotov told him, “It’s Kaltenbrunner.”

“Is it?” After that, Zhukov said nothing for perhaps half a minute. As Molotov had been, he was adding up what that meant. When he did speak again, it was with one explosive word: “Shit.”

“My thought exactly.” Molotov’s voice was dry. “As before, Schmidt felt me out for a joint attack on the Race in Poland.”

“And what did you tell him?” Zhukov sounded worried.

“Georgi Konstantinovich, I am not suicidal,” Molotov said. “You may rest assured that I declined the generous offer.”

“I am ever so glad to hear it,” the marshal replied. “The next question is, do you think that matters to the Germans, even in the slightest?”

“No,” Molotov answered.

“Shit,” Zhukov said again. “Comrade General Secretary, if they go at it, the western part of this country takes it on the chin.”

“I am painfully aware of that,” Molotov said. “If you have discovered some secret weapon that will stop a fool from acting like a fool, I suggest that you start using it. It may well be the most powerful weapon in the world today, including explosive-metal bombs.”

“No such luck.” Zhukov sounded like an angry peasant now; a peasant watching his cattle die without being able to do anything about it.

Molotov decided to match his tone: “Things could be worse, you know: if we did go along with the Nazis, the whole country would take it on the chin.”

“Don’t remind me,” Marshal Zhukov said. His laugh was anything but pleasant. “I’m glad I didn’t dispose of you when you turned up alive while the Army was smashing Beria’s men. I thought about it, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich-believe me, I thought about it.”

“You would have been an idiot not to think about it. Whatever else you are, you are no idiot.” Molotov had discussed the liquidation of a great many other people-ever so coldly, ever so dispassionately. He knew a certain amount of pride in being able to discuss his own the same way. “But why bring this up now?”

“Because, if I’d got rid of you, then I’d be the one left with nothing to do but watch while the Reich and the Race throw brickbats at each other,” Zhukov answered. “This way, if anybody ends up needing to take the blame, you’re the one.”

“Yes, having a scapegoat around is always handy,” Molotov agreed. “Stalin was a master at it. The only trouble is, the Reich and the Lizards have nastier things than brickbats to throw.”

“That’s the only trouble, is it?” Zhukov chuckled. “Have you got any nerves at all, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich?”

“I try not to,” Molotov said. “If you purge me, Marshal, you purge me. I cannot do anything about it.” Not yet. I wish I could. I’m working on it. “I cannot do anything about the Nazis and the Lizards, either. If I get excited about what I cannot help, that doesn’t change the situation, and it leaves me more liable to make a mistake.”

“You would not have made the worst soldier in the world,” Zhukov remarked after a few seconds’ thought.

He meant it as a compliment; of that Molotov was sure. And so he said, “Spasebo,” though he was not at all sure he wanted to thank Zhukov. To him, soldiers were crude and unsubtle men, relying on force because they lacked the brains to do anything else. They were necessary, no doubt about it. But so were ditchdiggers and embalmers.

“You’re welcome, Comrade General Secretary,” the marshal answered. “Here, for the sake of the rodina, the motherland, we have to pull together.”

When the Nazis invaded, Stalin had said the same thing. He’d practiced what he preached, too. He’d even cozied up to the Russian Orthodox Church after beating it about the head and shoulders for almost twenty years. In an emergency, he’d been willing to jettison a lot of ideology. And hadn’t Lenin done the same when he’d instituted the New Economic Policy to keep the country from starving after the end of the civil war?

“Yes, we all have to pull together. We all have to do everything we can,” Molotov agreed. And then, because he could speak as frankly to Zhukov as to anyone save possibly Gromyko, he added, “For the life of me, though, I don’t know how much good it will do, or if it will do any good whatever.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.

When Johannes Drucker strolled into the mess hall at Peenemunde, he discovered that the powers that be had wasted little time. Here it was, only two days after Ernst Kaltenbrunner had been named Fuhrer, and a color photograph of him now occupied the frame that had held Heinrich Himmler’s picture for years.

Drucker wasn’t the only man studying it. From behind him, somebody said, “He looks like a tough son of a bitch. We need one of those right now.”

That struck Drucker as a pretty fair assessment, though he was less sure about the need. Kaltenbrunner was in his vigorous early sixties, with a big head and heavy features. He was leaning forward, so that he seemed to stare out through the camera lens at whoever was looking at him. Even with the advantage of twenty years, Drucker wouldn’t have cared to meet him in a dark alley.

Till Himmler’s death and even afterwards, Drucker hadn’t paid Kaltenbrunner much attention. Himmler kept his strength by not letting anyone around him be strong; the man who now led the Greater German Reich had been just another official in a fancy uniform standing at the old Fuhrer ’s back in Party rallies and state functions. Now the whole world would find out what sort of man had been inhabiting that uniform.

Grabbing a mess tray, Drucker got into line. Cooks’ helpers spooned sauerkraut, boiled potatoes, and blood sausage onto the tray. Another helper gave him a small mug of beer. He carried the full tray to a table and sat down to eat.

Nobody sat near him. He’d got used to that. He knew he suffered from political unreliability, a disease always dangerous and often fatal-and highly contagious. He’d stayed away from men with such an illness in the days before the SS got curious about Kathe’s racial purity, and before Gunther Grillparzer had tried blaming him for the murders during the fighting of which he was, unfortunately, guilty. No one had proved anything-he was still here, still breathing. Even so…

No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than the loudspeaker in the mess hall blared out his name: “Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker! Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker! Report to the base commandant’s office! You are ordered to report to the base commandant’s office!”

Drucker took a last bite of blood sausage. It might really be the last bite I ever take, he thought as he got to his feet. Most of the men in the hall looked down at their own mess trays. Sure enough, they thought political unreliability was contagious. A few stared avidly. They wanted him to get a noodle in the back of the neck.

He hurried to General Dornberger’s office, wondering if a couple of hulking fellows in SS black would be waiting for him in the antechamber. If they were-well, he still had his service pistol on his hip. But what would they do to his family if he made them kill him fast instead of taking him away to do a lingering, nasty job?

With such thoughts going through his mind, he wondered why he kept heading toward the commandant’s office instead of running. Because you know damn well they’d catch you, that’s why. And maybe he wasn’t in a whole lot of trouble. He laughed. Fat chance.

When he got to the antechamber, he saw no bully boys in black shirts, only Dornberger’s dyspeptic adjutant. Shooting out his arm in salute, he said, “Reporting as ordered.”

“Yes.” Major Neufeld eyed him. “I rather wondered if you would. The general expected you, though. Go on in.”

“Reporting as ordered,” Drucker said again after he’d saluted General Dornberger.

Dornberger puffed on his cigar, then set it in the glass ashtray on his desk. He now had a photo of Dr. Kaltenbrunner in his office, too. “Drucker, you are a man who does his duty,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Drucker said.

“In spite of everything,” Dornberger went on, and then waved a hand to show Drucker didn’t need to answer that. The base commandant drew on the cigar again. “I have an A-45 on the gantry, fueled and ready for launch. Are you prepared to go into space within the hour?”

“Jawohl!” Drucker saluted again. Then he went from military automaton to honestly confused human being. “Sir, am I allowed? Has my grounding been rescinded?”

Instead of answering, General Dornberger picked up a flimsy sheet of yellow paper. “I have here an order for your immediate arrest and incarceration. I got it half an hour ago. I have spent that half hour documenting how I ordered your launch last night because of shortages of pilots. I will finish the documentation in the time remaining until the rocket goes up. Then, of course, just too late, I will receive this telegram. How unfortunate that I could not obey the order, don’t you agree?”

Try as he would, Drucker couldn’t hold his stiff brace. His knees sagged. He stared at Walter Dornberger. “My God, sir,” he breathed. “Won’t they put your head on the block instead of mine?”

“Not a chance,” Dornberger said calmly. “They haven’t got anyone else who can run Peenemunde even a quarter as well, and they bloody well know it. They’ll yell at me and tell me I was a naughty boy, and I’ll go on about my business for as long as I can go on about it.”

“For as long as you can go on about it,” Drucker echoed. “What about me? What do I do if they order me to land?”

“Ignore them,” General Dornberger told him. “You’re carrying two missiles with explosive-metal bombs. They can’t argue too hard-or they’d better not.”

“But I can’t stay up forever, even so,” Drucker said. “What do I do when I run low on oxygen?”

“Maybe I can fix things by then,” Dornberger replied. “if you hear the phrase ‘served with honor’ in any communication, you will know I have done it. If you do not hear that phrase, you would do better to land somewhere outside the Greater German Reich.”

Drucker gulped. What would they do to his family if he did that?

Before he could speak, Dornberger held up a hand. “I do not expect any of this to matter, Lieutenant Colonel. When you go up there, I think you will have every opportunity to make yourself a hero for the Vaterland.”

That could mean only one thing. In a small voice, Drucker said, “The balloon is going up?”

“With him at the helm?” Dornberger jerked a contemptuous thumb at the new color photograph on the wall behind him. “Yes, the balloon is going up. If he weren’t the Fuhrer, he’d make a good butcher’s assistant. But he is, and we must obey.” He might have been speaking more to himself than to Drucker. Then he grew brisk once more. “A motorcar will be waiting outside. It will take you to the gantry. And Drucker-”

“Yes, sir?”

“If we must go down, let the Lizards know they’ve been in a brawl.”

“Yes, sir!” Drucker saluted, spun on his heel, and marched out of the office. He saluted Major Neufeld, too, even though he outranked the commandant’s adjutant.

The Volkswagen was there. The driver said, “To the gantry sir?” Drucker nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Air-cooled engine roaring flatulently, the VW sped off.

At the gantry the crew had Drucker’s pressure suit, tailored to his measure, ready and waiting. The upper stage of the A-45 there wasn’t Kathe; he could tell that at a glance. Someone else had his baby. This upper stage looked older, more battered, almost of an earlier generation. In the crisis, the Reich was using anything that could fly.

A couple of the technicians gave Drucker curious or hostile looks as they helped him into his pressure suit. His fellow pilots weren’t the only ones who knew about his troubles with the higher-ups, of course. But then one of the techs said, “Good to see you cleared for launch again, sir.”

“Thanks, Helmut,” Drucker answered. “I’ve been away too long. Going back will feel good.” It will certainly feel a hell of a lot better than getting thrown in the guardhouse and handed over to the blackshirts for interrogation.

But, as he rode the elevator to the upper stage of the A-45, he wondered about that. If the new Fuhrer really was crazy enough to go to war with the Lizards over Poland, how long would the German spacecraft in Earth orbit last? For that matter, how much longer would the Hermann Goring last, out in the asteroid belt?

He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about that. And if the Race blew him out of orbit, odds were he’d be dead before he knew it. He wouldn’t be able to say that if the SS got its hooks into him.

Hans-Ulrich’s Bus. That was the name painted on the upper stage’s flank. When Drucker climbed into the bus, he discovered it had seen better days. Everything looked worn, shabby; he half expected to find cigarette butts under the leather-covered acceleration couch. But, as he went through the checks, he found everything in working order. A good thing, too, because they were going to launch him any which way. A technician slammed the entry port shut. Drucker dogged it. Conversations with the launch crew were quicker, more perfunctory, than they had been before the crisis. They wanted to get him out there, and only some obviously looming disaster would keep them from doing it.

It would be a disaster for me if they aborted, all right, Drucker thought.

But they didn’t. The last numbers of the countdown sounded in his earphones, and then the great thunder of the A-45’s main engine sounded in every fiber of his body. Acceleration slammed him back into the seat. He wondered whether Hans Ulrich’s Bus had an old-model seat, or if it was simply that he hadn’t gone up for a while. Whichever it was, the kick in the pants seemed harder than usual.

All the instruments read as they should have. As far as they could judge, the flight was perfect. When acceleration cut off, with the upper stage in its proper orbit, Drucker’s stomach lurched a couple of times before settling down. I’ve been away too long, he thought with something approaching horror. He was normally one of the minority who enjoyed weightlessness.

And then, as he’d known it would, the radio squawked into life: “Lieutenant Colonel Drucker! Lieutenant Colonel Drucker! Do you read me, Lieutenant Colonel Drucker?”

“Not very well-your signal is breaking up,” he lied.

It didn’t matter. The radio operator on the other end of the circuit went right on talking: “You are to land your upper stage immediately, Lieutenant Colonel. Ground telemetry has discovered an oxygen-line leak. Your safety is endangered.”

In normal times, that would have got him down in a hurry. Now he smiled and said, “My instruments say everything is normal. The Reich needs me here. I’ll take the chance and stay.”

“Your patriotism is appreciated”-I’ll bet, Drucker thought-“but we cannot take the risk. You are ordered to return to Earth as soon as possible.”

“For the sake of the Vaterland, I must disobey this order.” Drucker’s smile got bigger. Two hypocrites were trying to outlie each other.

The radioman cajoled. He talked about the blemish on Drucker’s sterling service record. He talked about disciplinary action after Drucker did land. Before very long, he faded out of range. Another one would pick up the thread soon. Drucker was sure of it. But that didn’t matter. They couldn’t talk him down. He didn’t think they’d have another flier in an upper stage try to shoot him down. His smile slipped then. No, they’d save that for the Lizards-and the Lizards were all too likely to be able to pull it off.