Striking the Balance

“Okay. Next question: you’re in the rocket business, too, with Goddard. Can we load this thing on a rocket and shoot it where we want it to go? It weighs ten tons, give or take a little.”

“No, sir,” Sam answered at once. “Next rocket we make that’ll throw one ton’ll be the first. Dr. Goddard’s working on ways to scale up what we’ve got, but…” His voice trailed away.

“But he’s sick, and who knows how long he’ll last?” Donovan finished for him. “And who knows how long it’ll take to build a big rocket even if it gets designed, hey? Okay. Any chance of making atomic bombs small enough to go on the rockets we have? That’d be the other way to solve the problem.”

“I plain don’t know, sir. If it can be done, I bet they’re working on it back in Denver. But I have no idea whether they can do it or not.”

“Okay, Sergeant That’s a good answer,” Donovan said. “If I told you how many people try to make like bigshots and pretend they know more than they do-Well, hell, I don’t need to burden you with that. You’re dismissed. If I need to pick your brain some more about this miserable infernal device, I’ll call you again. I hope I don’t”

“I hope you don’t, too,” Sam said. “That’d mean the cease-fire broke down.” He saluted and left Donovan’s office. The major general hadn’t gigged him about his uniform after all.Pretty good fellow, he thought.

The German major at the port of Kristiansand shuffled through an enormous box of file cards. “Bagnall, George,” he said, pulling one out. “Your pay number, please.”

Bagnall rattled it off in English, then repeated it more slowly in German.

“Danke,”said the major-his name was Kapellmeister, though he had a singularly unmusical voice. “Now, Flight Engineer Bagnall, have you violated in any way the parole you furnished to Lieutenant-Colonel Hocker in Paris year before last? Have you, that is, taken up arms against the GermanReich in pursuance of the war existing between Germany and England prior to the coming of the Lizards? Speak only the truth; I have the answer before me.”

“No, I have not,” Bagnall answered. He almost believed Kapellmeister; that a Nazi officer in an out-of-the-way Norwegian town could, at the pull of a card, come up with the name of the man to whom he’d given that parole, or even the fact that he’d given such a parole, struck him as Teutonic efficiency run mad.

Apparently satisfied, the German scribbled something on the card and stuck it back in the file. Then he went through the same rigmarole with Ken Embry. Having done that, he pulled out several more cards and rattled off the names on them-the names of the Lancaster crewmen with whom Embry and Bagnall had formerly served-at Jerome Jones before asking, “Which of the above are you?”

“None of the above, sir,” Jones replied, and gave his own name and pay number.

Major Kapellmeister went through his file. “Every third Englishman is named Jones,” he muttered. After a couple of minutes, he looked up. “I do not find a Jones to match you, however. Very well. Before you may proceed to England, you must sign a parole agreeing not to oppose the GermanReich in arms at any further time. If you are captured while you violate or after you have violated the terms of the parole, it will go hard for you. Do you understand?”

“I understand what you said,” Jones answered. “I don’t understand why you said it. Aren’t we allies against the Lizards?”

“There is at present a cease-fire between theReich

and the Lizards,” Kapellmeister answered. His smile was unpleasant. “There may eventually be a peace. At that time, our relations with your country will have to be defined, would you not agree?”

The three Englishmen looked at one another. Bagnall hadn’t thought about what the cease-fire might mean in purely human terms. By their expressions, neither had Embry or Jones. The more you looked at things, the more complicated they got. Jones asked, “If I don’t sign the parole, what happens?”

“You will be treated as a prisoner of war, with all courtesies and privileges extended to such prisoners,” the German major said.

Jones looked unhappier yet. Those courtesies and privileges were mighty thin on the ground. “Give me the bloody pen,” he said, and scrawled his name on the card Kapellmeister handed him.

“Danke schon,”Major Kapellmeister said when he returned card and pen. “For now, as you rightly point out, we are allies, and you have been treated as such thus far. Is this not so?” Jones had to nod, as did Bagnall and Embry. The journey across German ally Finland, Sweden (neutral but ever so polite to German wishes), and German-held Norway had been fast, efficient, and as pleasant as such a journey could be in times of hardship.

As Kapellmeister disposed of the card, Bagnall had a vision of copies of it making journeys of their own, to every hamlet where Nazi soldiers and Nazi bureaucrats stood guard. If Jerome Jones ever stepped off the straight and narrow anywhere theReich held sway, he was in trouble.