Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“That’s not funny,” Goldfarb said. As if to contradict himself, he started laughing.

Then he choked on his laughter. Something screamed past overhead at just above treetop height. He grabbed for the field telephone, cranked as if his life depended on it while more Lizard planes streaked northwest above him. He shouted out his warning over the yowl of their engines.

“If it’s London again, the bastards will be there in a minute,” Jones yelled at the top of his lungs. He might as well have been whispering; Goldfarb had to read his lips.

Goldfarb did his best to sound hopeful: “Doesn’t take long to scramble the Spitfire squadrons.”

“Maybe not, but we can’t catch their planes even if we do manage to get ours up.”

“What’s worked best is loitering alongside, their return routes, then striking at them as they go past.”

“Dogging and pouncing,” Jones said, dropping his voice as the Lizard aircraft receded in the distance. Goldfarb raised that eyebrow again. His friend went on, “I did a bit of history at Cambridge along with the maths. The old Byzantines would let the Arabs into Asia Minor, you see, then wait at the passes for them to come out with their loot.”

“Ah,” Goldfarb said. “And did it work?”

“Sometimes. But even when it did, of course, Asia Minor took a bit of a hiding.”

“Yes. Well, we’ve had hidings before. I hope we can ride out another one,” Goldfarb said. “Not that we’ve much choice in the matter.”

Neither of them said much after that. Goldfarb dug a finger into one ear, trying to make it stop ringing. He had little luck-the Lizards’ engines were just too loud. He wondered if the RAF was having any luck, and wished he could be up in a Spitfire himself. His abilities didn’t lie there, though. He consoled himself with the thought that he’d done what he could by spotting the flight of bombers.

He peered south, out over the English Channel. The springtime air-almost summer now, he reminded himself-was sweet and mild and clear. The French coast was a low, dark smear on the horizon. He raised the binoculars to his eyes. France leapt closer. Three years ago, that coast had been England’s shield. Then, horribly, unexpectedly, the shield fell over, and it served as a base for a thrust at England’s heart.

And now-what? Another thrust at England’s heart, but one at Germany’s as well. Goldfarb wished the Lizards would leave his country alone and go after the Nazis with everything they had. The wish changed the situation about as much as wishes commonly do.

He sighed. “It’s a rum world, sure enough.”

“Aye, it is.” Jones looked at his watch. “Our reliefs should be here any minute now. When we’re off, shall we head over to the White Horse? What they call best bitter’s gone to the dogs since the war (gone through their kidneys, by the taste of it), but there’s always Daphne to stare at, maybe even to chat, up.”

“Why not?” Goldfarb intended to try Sylvia again-his own taste ran to redheads. She wasn’t a Jewish girl to bring home to his family (he’d thought a lot more about that since the war started), but he didn’t aim to marry her-however attractive some of the concomitants of that relationship might be.

He laughed at himself. The next interest in him Sylvia showed would be her first. Well, he thought, she can’t very well show interest if I’m not there to be interesting.

“Something else to thank the Lizards for,” Jones said. “If they hadn’t smashed up the radar set, we’d be spending all these idle hours fiddling with it instead of chasing skirt. Radar’s all very well, but next to skirt-”

“Right,” Goldfarb said. He pointed. “And here come Reg and Steven, so let’s be off.”

As Jones got up from his canvas chair, he asked, “Can you lend me ten bob?”

Goldfarb stared at him. He grinned back, cheekily confident. Goldfarb got out his wallet, passed over a note. “If you had the gall with Daphne that you do with me…”

“With ten bob in my pocket, maybe I will.”

“Come on, then.” There was a war on-there were, these last few crazed days, two wars on-but life went on, too. Goldfarb hurried through his report to the next watch crew, then hurried off with Jerome Jones toward the White Horse Inn.

I am flying toward my death. George Bagnall had had that thought every time the Lancaster made its ungainly leap off the tarmac for a run into Germany. Now, flying against the Lizards, it was much more tightly focused. Death lurked in the air over Germany, yes, but random death: a flak shell that happened to burst just where you were, or a night fighter coming close enough to spot your exhaust.

Going against the Lizards, death was not random. This was Bagnall’s third sortie into France, and he had seen that for himself. If the Lizards chose your plane, you would go down. Their rockets came after you as if they knew your home address. You couldn’t run; shooting at the missiles did no good to speak of; Bagnall wanted to hide.

He glanced over at Ken Embry. The pilot’s face was set, the skin stretched tight across his cheekbones, his mouth nothing but a bloodless slash. They were coming in low tonight, too low to bother with oxygen, so Embry’s whole face was visible. Going in high just made them better targets. The RAF had learned that lesson the hard way.

Bagnall sighed. “Pity we couldn’t have come down with a case of magneto drop or some such, eh?”

“You’re the engineer, Mr. Bagnall,” Embry said. “Arranging a convenient mechanical failure should be your speciality.”

“Pity I didn’t think of it as we were running through the checklists,” Bagnall murmured. Embry’s answering grin stretched his mouth wider, but did nothing to banish the look of haunted determination from his features. Like Bagnall, he knew what the odds were. They’d been lucky twice-three times, if you counted the wild melee in the air over Cologne on what everyone was starting to call The Night the Martians Landed. But how long could luck hold?”

Embry said, “Feels odd, flying out of formation.”

“It did seem rather like lining up all the ducks to be knocked over one by one,” Bagnall said. The first attack on the Lizards-in which, fortunately, his Lanc had not been involved-had been a failure horrific enough to make Bomber Command change tactics in a hurry, something the flight engineer hadn’t previously imagined possible.

And attacking low and dispersed did work better than pouring in high and in formation, as if the Lizards were nothing but Germans to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Bagnall’s bomber had made it back to England twice.

“Five miles to commencement of target area,” the navigator announced over the intercom.

“Thank you, Alf,” Ken Embry said. Ahead of them, streaks of fire began leaping up from the ground. Fully laden bombers exploded in midair, one after another, blazing through the night like great orange chrysanthemums of flame. They would have been even more beautiful bad each one not meant the deaths of so many men.

Bagnall waited for one of those fiery streaks to burn straight for his Lanc. It hadn’t happened yet, but-

Embry whooped, pounded his thigh with a fist. “Did you see that? Did you bloody see that? One of them missed. Somebody dodged it.” Sure enough, one of the rockets kept flying up and up, then went off in a blast not much more impressive than a Guy Fawkes Day firework Embry quickly sobered. “But there’s so many that don’t miss.”

From his glassed-in window in the bottom front of the Lanc’s nose, Douglas Bell said, “Coming up on something that looks like it belongs to the Lizards.”

That was good enough for Embry. “Commencing bombing run under your direction, Bomb-Aimer.”