Striking the Balance

Atvar and Kirel looked at each other again, this time in consternation. They and their analysts had been confident the SSSR had achieved its one nuclear detonation with radioactives stolen from the Race, and that its technology was too backwards to let it develop its own bombs, as had Deutschland and the United States. Once again, the analysts had not known everything there was to know.

Heavily, Atvar said, “I acknowledge receipt of the news, Adjutant. I shall begin the selection process for a Soviet site to be destroyed in retaliation. And, past that”-he looked toward Kirel for a third time, mindful of the discussion they’d been having-“well, past that, right now I don’t know what we shall do.”

XIV

The typewriter spat out machine-gun bursts of letters: clack-clack-clack, clack-clack-clack, clackety-clack The line-end bell dinged. Barbara Yeager flicked the return lever; the carriage moved with an oiled whir to let her type another line.

She stared in dissatisfaction at the one she’d just finished. “That ribbon is getting too light to read any more,” she said. “I wish they’d scavenge some fresh ones.”

“Not easy to come by anything these days,” Sam Yeager answered. “I hear tell one of our foraging parties got shot at the other day.”

“I heard something about that, but not much,” Barbara said. “Was it the Lizards?”

Sam shook his head. “Nothing to do with the Lizards. It was foragers out from Little Rock, after the same kinds of stuff our boys were. There’s less and less stuff left to find, and we aren’t making much these days that doesn’t go straight out the barrel of a gun. I think it’ll get worse before it gets better, too.”

“I know,” Barbara said. “The way we get excited over little things now, like that tobacco you bought-” She shook her head. “And I wonder how many people have starved because crops either didn’t get planted or didn’t get raised or couldn’t get from the farm to a town.”

“Lots,” Sam said. “Remember that little town in Minnesota we went through on the way to Denver? They were already starting to slaughter their livestock because they couldn’t bring in all the feed they had to have-and that was a year and a half ago. And Denver’s going to go hungry now. The Lizards have tromped on the farms that were feeding it, and wrecked the railroads, too. One more thing to put on their bill, if we ever get around to giving it to them.”

“We’re lucky to be where we are,” Barbara agreed. “It gets down to that, we’re lucky to be anywhere.”

“Yeah.” Sam tapped a front tooth with a fingernail. “I’ve been lucky I haven’t broken a plate, too.” He reached out and rapped on the wooden desk behind which Barbara sat. “Way things are now, a dentist would have a heck of a time fixing my dentures if anything did break.” He shrugged. “One more thing to worry about.”

“We’ve got plenty.” Barbara pointed to the sheet of paper in the typewriter. “I’d better get back to this report, honey, not that anybody’ll be able to read it when I’m through.” She hesitated, then went on, “Is Dr. Goddard all right, Sam? When he gave me these notes to type up, his voice was as faint and gray as the letters I’m getting from this ribbon.”

Sam wouldn’t have put it that way, but Sam hadn’t gone in for literature in college, either. Slowly, he answered, “I’ve noticed it for a while now myself, hon. I think it’s getting worse, too. I know he saw some of the docs here, but I don’t know what they told him. I couldn’t hardly ask, and he didn’t say anything.” He corrected himself: “I take that back. He did say one thing: “We’ve gone far enough now that no one man matters much any more.’ “

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Barbara said.

“Now that I think about it, I don’t, either,” Sam said. “Sort of sounds like a man writing his own what-do-you-call-it-obituary-doesn’t it?” Barbara nodded. Sam went on, “Thing is, he’s right. Pretty much everything we’ve done with rockets so far has come out of his head-either that or we’ve stolen it from the Lizards or borrowed it from the Nazis. But we can go on without him now if we have to, even if we won’t go as fast or as straight.”

Barbara nodded again. She patted the handwritten originals she was typing. “Do you know what he’s doing here? He’s trying to scale up-that’s the term he uses-the design for the rockets we have so they’ll be big enough and powerful enough to carry an atomic bomb instead of TNT or whatever goes into them now.”

“Yeah, he’s talked about that with me,” Sam said. “The Nazis have the same kind of project going, too, he thinks, and they’re liable to be ahead of us. I don’t think they have a Lizard who knows as much as Vesstil, but their people were making rockets a lot bigger than Dr. Goddard’s before the Lizards came. We’re doing what we can, that’s all. Can’t do more than that.”