In the Balance (31 page)

One of the Lizards took the bandage pack in its small hand. As it used its claws to tear open the wrapping, it hissed something at Yeager. It and all its companions, even the two injured ones, lowered their turreted eyes to the floor of the bus for a second or two. Then it deftly began to bandage a gash in a wounded Lizard’s flank.

“Paw through those belts,” Yeager said over his shoulder. “See if you can find some more bandages.” He was afraid the others would argue more, but they didn’t He heard their feet shift. Somebody—he didn’t look back to see who—handed him another pack and then another. He passed them on to the Lizards.

By the time the bus pulled up in front of the Mills and Petrie Memorial Center in Ashton, the injured Lizards were swathed in enough gauze to make them look like something halfway between real wounded soldiers and Boris Karloff as the Mummy. Men in Army khaki, civilian denim and plaid flannel, and every possible combination thereof milled around in front of the stone and yellow brick building.

Through the open driver’s window, Mutt Daniels yelled, “We got Lizard prisoners in here. What the devil we supposed to do with ’em?”

That drew all the attention he wanted and then some. People converged on the school bus at a dead run. Some pushing and elbowing followed, as men of higher rank made those below them give way. The first officer who actually got into the bus was a full colonel, the highest-ranking fellow Yeager had seen in Ashton (when he’d joined up a couple of weeks before, Sergeant Schneider had been the highest-ranking soldier in Ashton).

“Tell me how you took them, soldier,” he said in a drawl almost as thick as Mutt’s. “They’re some of the very first Lizard captives we’ve managed to get our hands on.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel Collins,” Daniels answered, reading the name badge on the officer’s right breast pocket. He ended up telling only part of the story, though, for the rest of the men, Yeager among them, kept interrupting with details of their
own
. Sam knew that wasn’t showing proper military discipline, but he didn’t care. If this Colonel Collins, whoever he was, didn’t want to listen to Americans speaking their minds, to hell with him.

Collins listened without complaint. When the story was done, he said, “You boys had the luck of the devil—I hope you know that. Hadn’t been for those Warhawks takin’ out the enemy helicopters”
(So that’s the right name for them
, Yeager thought), “you could’ve had a mighty thin time of it.”

The colonel strode down the center aisle of the bus to get a closer look at the Lizards; like almost everyone else in the still free part of the United States, he hadn’t yet really seen any of them. He brushed past Yeager, studied the prisoners for a couple of minutes, then turned back to their captors. “Don’t look like so much, do they?”

“No, sir,” Yeager said, in chorus with the other Americans. Collins, he thought, looked like quite a lot. The colonel was about Mutt’s age, but with that and their accents the resemblance between them ceased. Collins was tall, still slim, handsome, with a full head of silver hair. He didn’t keep a chaw in his cheek. Without the uniform, Yeager would have guessed him a politician, say, the mayor of a medium-sized and prosperous city.

He said, “You boys did somethin’ special here; I’ll see you’re all promoted for it.”

All the men grinned. Mutt said, “Sergeant Schneider, back there in Amboy, he deserves a big part o’ the credit, sir.” Yeager nodded vigorously.

“I’ll see that he gets it, then,” Collins promised. “Any time privates speak well of a sergeant when he’s not around to hear it, I reckon he’s some sort of special man.” As the soldiers chuckled, Collins went on, “Now the thing we have to do is get these Lizards someplace where they can be studied by people who have a chance of figuring out what they’re all about and what they’re up to.”

Yeager spoke up. “I’ll help get ’em there, sir.”

Colonel Collins fixed him with a cold gray stare. “You so eager to get out of the front line, eh, soldier?”

“No, sir, that doesn’t have a thing to do with it,” Yeager said, first flustered and then angry. He wondered if Collins had ever been
in
the front line. Maybe during the First World War, he admitted to himself. He didn’t know how to read the fruit salad of service ribbons on the colonel’s left breast.

“Why should I pick you in particular, then?” Collins demanded.

“Best reason I can think of, sir, is that I’ve been reading science fiction for a long time. I’ve been thinking about men from Mars and invaders from space a lot longer and harder than anybody else you’re likely to find, sir.”

Collins was still staring at him, but not in the same way. “Damned if I know what kind of answer I expected, but that’s not it. You’re saying you’re more likely to be mentally flexible around these—things—than someone chosen at random, are you?”

“Yes, sir.” Yeager hadn’t been in the Army long, but he’d learned in a hurry not to promise too much, so he hedged: “I hope so, sir, anyhow.”

Like managers, officers earn their pay by making up their minds in a hurry and then following through. After what couldn’t have been more than
a ten-second pause, Collins said, “Okay, soldier, you want it so bad, you’ve got it. Your name is—?”

“Samuel Yeager, sir,” Yeager said, saluting. He could hardly keep the grin off his face as he spelled Yeager.

The colonel pulled out a little notebook and a gold-plated mechanical pencil. He was, Yeager saw, a southpaw. He put the notebook away as soon as he’d jotted down Sam’s name. “All right, Private. Yeager—”

Mutt Daniels spoke up: “Ought to be Co’poral Yeager, sir, or at least PFC.” When Collins turned to frown at him, he went on blandly, “You did say you were promotin’ us.”

Yeager wished Mutt had kept his mouth shut, and waited for Colonel Collins to get angry. Instead, the colonel burst out laughing. “I know an old soldier when I hear one. Tell me you weren’t in France and I’ll call you a liar.”

“Can’t do it, sir,” Mutt said with a wide, ingratiating smile that kept a lot of umpires from throwing him out of the game no matter how outrageously he carried on.

“You better not try.” Collins gave his attention back to Sam. “All right,
PFC
Yeager, you will serve as liaison to these Lizard prisoners until they are delivered to competent authorities in Chicago.” He took out his notebook again, wrote rapidly. As he tore out a couple of sheets, he added, “These orders give discretion to your superiors in Chicago. They may send you back here, or they may let you stay on with the Lizards if you show you’re more valuable in that role.”

“Thank you, sir,” Yeager exclaimed, pocketing the orders Collins gave him. They reminded him of Bobby Fiore’s brief tryout with Albany—if he didn’t perform right away, they’d ship him out and never give him another chance to show he could do the job. But he wouldn’t even get as long as Bobby’d had; they’d likely be in Chicago tonight, though God only knew who competent authorities were or how long it would take to find them. Still, he had to get on the Lizards’ good side in a hurry. One way to do that seemed obvious: “Sir, if there’s a doctor or medic out there, to see to the wounds on these two …”

Collins nodded crisply. He strode back to the door of the bus. As if that were a signal, all the lower-ranking officers waiting outside swarmed toward it Collins’ upraised hand did what King Canute only dreamed of: it held back the tide. The colonel stuck his head out of the bus and shouted, “Finkelstein!”

“Sir!” A skinny fellow with glasses and a thick head of uncombed curly black hair pushed his way through the crowd.

“He’s a Jew,” Coffins remarked, “but he’s a damned fine doctor.”

Yeager would not have cared—much—if Finkelstein were a Negro. It didn’t matter one way or the other to the Lizards, that was for sure. Black
bag in hand, the doctor scrambled up into the bus. “Who’s hurt?” he asked in a thick New York accent. Then his eyes went wide. “Oh.”

“Come on,” Yeager said; if he was going to be Lizard liaison, he had to get on with the job. He led Finkelstein back to the Lizards, who had sat quietly through the colloquy with Collins. He hoped the creatures from another planet recognized him as the man who had let them have the bandages to bind up their wounds. Maybe they did; they showed no agitation when he brought the doctor right up to them.

But when Finkelstein made as if to tug at one of those bandages, the unhurt Lizards let out a volley of evil-sounding hisses. One of them stood up from his seat, clawed hands outstretched. “How can you let them know I’m not going to do anything bad to them?”

Sam thought,
How the devil do I know?
But if he couldn’t invent an answer, somebody else would end up trying. He hoped for inspiration, and for once it came. He handed his rifle to Otto Chase, rolled up a sleeve. “Make like you’re putting a bandage on my arm, then take it off again. Maybe they’ll get the idea that that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“Yeah, that might work,” Finkelstein said enthusiastically. He opened his medical bag, took out a paper-wrapped bandage. “Hate to waste anything sterile,” he muttered as he opened it. He wrapped it around Yeager’s arm. His hands were deft and quick and gentle. The Lizards watched him intently.

Yeager sighed and did his best to pantomime relief. He had no idea whether he got the idea across to the Lizards. Finkelstein undid the bandage. Then he tried moving toward one of the wounded prisoners again. This time, their uninjured companions, though they hissed among themselves, made no move to stop him.

The edge of a bandage came up easily. “It’s not tape,” the doctor said, as much to himself as to Yeager. “I wonder how it stays on.” He peeled it back farther, looked at the wound in the Lizard’s side. He let out a hiss of his own. “Shell fragment, I’d guess. Give me my bag, soldier.” He grabbed a probe. “Warn him this may hurt.”

Who, me?
But this was what Yeager had asked for. He got the Lizards’ attention, pinched himself, did his best to imitate the noises the wounded captives had made. Then he pointed to Finkelstein, the probe, and the injury. He looked at that as briefly as he could; he found torn flesh to be torn flesh, whether it belonged to man or Lizard.

Finkelstein slowly inserted the probe. The wounded Lizard sat very still, then hissed and quivered at the same moment as the doctor exclaimed, “Found it! Not too big and not too deep.” He withdrew the probe, took out a pair of long, thin grasping tongs. “Almost there, almost there … got it!” His hands drew back; the tongs came out of the wound clenched on a half-inch
sliver of metal. A drop of the Lizard’s blood fell from it to the floor of the bus.

All the alien prisoners, even the wounded one, spoke excitedly in their own language. The one who had threatened the doctor with claws lowered his weird eyes toward the ground and stood very still. Yeager had seen the captives do that before. It had to be a kind of salute, he thought.

The doctor started to replace the bandage, then paused and glanced toward Yeager. “Think I ought to dust the wound with sulfa? Can Earth germs live on a thing from God knows where? Or would I be running a bigger risk of poisoning the Lizard?”

Again, Yeager’s first thought was,
How should I know?
Why was a doctor asking medical questions of a minor league outfielder without a high school diploma? Then he realized that when it came to Lizards, he might not know a whole lot less than Finkelstein. After a few seconds’ thought, he answered, “Seems to me they must come from a planet that isn’t too different than ours, or they wouldn’t want Earth in the first place. So maybe our germs would like them.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I’ll do it.” The doctor poured the yellow powder into the wound, patted the bandage down. It clung as well as it had before.

Colonel Collins walked to the back of the bus. “How are you doing, Doctor?”

“Well enough, sir, thank you.” Finkelstein nodded at Yeager. “This is one sharp man you have here.”

“Is he? Good.” Collins headed up to the bus door again.

“I’m sorry, soldier,” the doctor said. “I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m Sam Yeager. Pleased to meet you, sir.”

“There’s a kick in the head for you—I’m Sam Finkelstein. Well, Sam, shall we see what we can do for this other Lizard here?”

“Okay by me, Sam,” Yeager said.

Of all the places Jens Larssen had ever expected to end up when he set out from Chicago to warn the government how important the Metallurgical Laboratory’s work was, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, might have been the last. Staying at the same hotel as the German chargé d’affaires hadn’t been high on his list of things to anticipate, either.

But here he was at the Greenbrier Hotel by the famous springs, and here—again—was Hans Thomsen. The German had been interned here, along with diplomats from Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Japan, when the United States entered the war. Thomsen had sailed back to Germany on a Swedish ship, lit up to keep it safe from U-boats, in exchange for Americans interned in Germany.

Now Thomsen was back again. In fact, he had a room right across the hall from Larssen’s. Down in the hotel dining room, he’d boomed, in excellent English, “I was worried going home, yes. But coming back here once more, on a dreadful little scow too small and ugly, God be thanked, for the Lizards to notice, then I was not worried. I was far too seasick to think for a moment of being worried.”

Everyone who heard him laughed uproariously, Jens included. Having Thomsen back in the United States was a forcible reminder that humanity had more important things to do than slaughtering itself. It still made Larssen nervous. As far as he was concerned, Germany remained an enemy even if it happened to be forced into the same camp as the United States. It was the same feeling he’d had about allying with the Russians against Hitler, but even stronger here.

Not everybody in White Sulphur Springs agreed with him, not by a long shot. A lot of important people were here, fled from Washington when the government dispersed in the face of Lizard air raids. Larssen had heard that Roosevelt was here. He didn’t know whether it was true. Every new rumor put the President somewhere else: back in Washington, in New York, in Philadelphia (W. C. Fields would not have approved), even in San Francisco (though how he was supposed to travel cross-country with the Lizards running loose was beyond Jens).