Striking the Balance

“Will you look at that?” Leslie Groves said softly, craning his neck back to look up and up and up at the cloud whose top, now spreading out like the canopy of an umbrella, towered far higher into the sky than any of the Rockies. He shook his head in awe and wonder. The Lizard fighter plane burning not far away, normally cause for a celebration, now wasn’t worth noticing. “Will you justlook at that?”

“I’d heard what they were like,” General Bradley answered. “I’ve been through the ruins of Washington, so I know what they can do. But I never imagined the blast itself. Until you’ve seen it-” He didn’t go on. He didn’t need to go on.

“-and heard it,” Groves added. They were some miles back toward Denver: the one thing you didn’t want to be was too close to an atomic bomb when it went off. Even so, the roar of the blast had sounded like the end of the world, and the earth had jumped beneath Groves’ feet. Wind tore past, then quickly stilled.

“I hope we pulled all our men back far enough so the blast didn’t harm them,” Bradley said. “Hard to gauge that, when we don’t have enough experience with these weapons.”

“Yes, sir,” Groves said, and then, “Well, we’re learning more all the time, and I expect we’ll know quite a lot before this war is through.”

“I’m very much afraid you’re right, General,” Bradley said, scowling. “Now we have to see where and how the Lizards will reply. The price we’ve paid to stop this drive is a city given over to the fire. I pray it will prove a good bargain in the end.”

“So do I, sir,” Groves replied. “But if we don’t hold Denver, we can’t hang on to the rest of the U.S.A.”

“So I tell myself,” Bradley said. “It lets me fall asleep at night.” He paused. His features grew so grim and taut, Groves was easily able to imagine what he’d look like if he lived to eighty. “It lets me fall asleep,” he repeated, “but it doesn’t let me stay that way.”

Atvar had been used to getting bad news up in his chamber aboard the127th Emperor Hetto

or in the bannership’s command center. Receiving it in this Tosevite room more or less adapted for the comfort of the Race was somehow harder. The furnishings and electronics were familiar. The design of the windows, the Tosevite cityscape he saw through them, the very size of the chamber-reminding him why the Race called TosevitesBig Uglies-all shouted at him that this was not his world, that he did not belong here.

“Outside Denver, is it?” he said dully, and stared at the damage estimates coming up on the computer screen. The numbers were still preliminary, but they didn’t look good. The Americans, fighting ferociously from prepared positions, had already taken a heavy toll on his males. And now, just when he thought his forces had achieved a breakthrough-“Exalted Fleetlord, they tricked us,” Kirel said. “They conducted an attack in that sector, but so clumsily that they used themselves up in the process, leaving inadequate force to hold the line there. When the local commander sought to exploit what he perceived as a blunder-”

“It was a blunder. Indeed it was,” Atvar said. “It was a blunder on our part. They are subtle, the Big Uglies, full of guile and deceit. They did not simply pull back and invite us forward, as they have with past nuclear weapons. We have warned our males against that. But no. They executed what seemed a legitimate if foolish tactical maneuver-and deceived us again.”

“Truth,” Kirel said, his voice as worn and filled with pain as that of the fleetlord. “How shall we avenge ourselves now? Destroying their cities does not seem to deter the Big Uglies from employing the nuclear weapons they build.”

“Do you suggest a change in policy, Shiplord?” Atvar asked. That could have been a very dangerous question, one all but ordering Kirel to deny he’d suggested any such thing. It wasn’t, not the way the fleetlord phrased it. He meant it seriously.

Even so, Kirel’s voice was cautious as he answered, “Exalted Fleetlord, perhaps we might be wiser to respond in kind and destroy Tosevite military formations in the field against us. This may have more effect than our present policy of devastating civilian centers, and could hardly have less.”

“That does appear to be truth.” Atvar called up a situation map of the fighting in the United States. That let him banish the damage reports from the computer screen. If not from his mind. He pointed to the narrow peninsula stabbing out into the water in the southeastern region of the not-empire. “Here! This Florida place is made for such exploitation. Not only is the fighting on a confined front where nuclear weapons can be particularly effective, striking the Big Uglies in this area will also let us avenge ourselves on the dark-skinned Tosevites who treacherously feigned allegiance to us.”