Harry Turtledove - Down to Earth

There were several boxes. They’d fallen off their shelf, but a woman brought one to him. He lit it and closed his lighter with a snap. The candle flame was pallid, but ever so much better than being stuck in the dark. Monique was still afraid, but much less than she had been.

Pierre went right on speaking with authority: “Now we wait. We wait as long as we have air and food and water-or, better, wine-and even this little light. The longer we wait, the safer it will be when we have to come out. I do not know if it will be safe-we will be taking a chance, of that there is no doubt-but it will be safer.”

From everything Monique knew about explosive-metal weapons, he was speaking the gospel truth. Even now, radiation would be entering the shelter, but she didn’t know what she could do about that. Or rather, she did know: nothing. She turned to-turned on-her brother and snarled, “No, they won’t bomb Marseille. You have friends in high places. You know these things.”

From the way the candlelight filled the lines of his face with shadow, he looked to have aged twenty years. He said, “I was wrong. Shall I tell you I was right? I have some hope. If we had been closer to where the bomb burst, we would already be dead.”

Out of the darkness where the candlelight didn’t reach, someone said, “Now we have to see whether radiation sickness kills us in the next day or two. If it doesn’t kill us, we have to see how many years it takes off our lives.”

“Shut up,” Monique said fiercely. She didn’t want to think about that; she wanted to remember she’d stayed alive so far. “We have to see how much there is to eat, and how much to drink, as my brother said. And we have to see how many buckets and pails we can find.” Her nose wrinkled. The shelter would be a nasty place before long. Something else occurred to her. “And we’ll need shovels and poles and picks, if there are any, to dig our way out when we can’t stay here any more. If there aren’t, we’ll have to do it with our bare hands.” If we can. She didn’t want to think about that, about being entombed here forever. And she didn’t want to think about what they would find when they did-if they did-dig themselves out. She stood there in the cellar, and stared and stared at the candle. With her classical training, the flickering flame put her in mind of her own life. But if the candle went out, they could light another. If she went out…

One more thing she didn’t want to think about.

Johannes Drucker had done everything he could with Hans-Ulrich’s Bus, but he wasn’t going to be able to stay in space much longer. He’d managed to make the air purifier go a lot further than it was designed to, but he’d be eating his underwear before too long-though by now, after four mortal weeks, it was far too filthy to be appetizing.

He knew why he was still alive, when most if not all of his comrades up here had died: he’d never got orders to attack the Lizards. After a while, the Reich had stopped ordering him to land. But no one down on the ground had included him in the assault on the Race. Maybe the powers that be had thought him too unreliable to be trusted in the fight. Maybe, too, they’d just forgotten about him by now. He wasn’t sure who, if anybody, was in charge down on the ground these days.

Maybe I should have done what I could to hurt the Lizards, even without orders, he thought, for about the five hundredth time. But the war was madness. As far as he was concerned, Poland wasn’t worth having. He’d fought there, and did not hold the place in high esteem. But Himmler and then Kaltenbrunner had thought otherwise, and the new Fuhrer threw the Wehrmacht over the border, as Hitler had in 1939.

“We did better then,” Drucker muttered. The Poles hadn’t been able to fight worth a damn, no matter how brave they were. The Race, on the other hand…

The Race, he realized, had decided to use the Reich ’s attack as an excuse to smash Germany. The Lizards had warned they would do just that, but nobody in authority seemed to have listened to them. They hadn’t been kidding.

“German upper stage!” The radio crackled to life-in English. “Anybody home in there, German upper stage? Over.”

“Am I an idiot, that I’m going to answer you?” Drucker asked. He’d maintained radio silence ever since the slugging started. If he started transmitting, the Lizards would get a fix on him and blow him out of the sky. He’d known Americans were naive, but this struck him as excessive.

“German upper stage! German upper stage! If you’re alive in there, you might as well give up,” the American flier said. “What’s the point to you ending up dead, and maybe more Lizards, too? You aren’t going to win the war all by yourself.” Silence for a few seconds, then, “Over and out.”

Silence returned. Drucker grimaced. He scratched his chin. He’d grown quite a beard this past month. The American made good sense, in a way-but only in a way. As a soldier, he was supposed to strike at the enemy, wasn’t he?

Then why haven’t you? He pondered that, as he had so often before. He came up with the same answers he had before, too: “Nobody gave me any orders. And it’s a goddamn stupid war, too.”

He glanced down toward the Earth. He was approaching Europe, though clouds hid much of the continent. Even if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to see much. From 350 kilometers up, even massive devastation was invisible. But he’d seen bombs blazing like suns as they burst at night. And he knew there had been many more he hadn’t seen.

Every time he passed above the wreckage of the Reich, he wondered if he would get orders at last, though by now he’d almost given up on it. If he did get them, this would be the place-the only place. The Lizards had knocked out all the German relay ships. It had taken them a while: longer than it should have, even if the delay worked to the Reich ’s advantage. They never had paid as much attention to the seas as they should have. But they’d finally got round to it.

Did the Reich have any working radars these days? If not, his superiors wouldn’t even know he was up here. Of course, all his superiors might well be dead. His family all too likely was. He’d cried himself sick about that the day the missiles started flying. He blamed Kaltenbrunner much more than the Lizards. The Race had been content with the status quo. The Fuhrer hadn’t.

“He should have been, damn him,” Drucker said. He’d cursed himself sick that first day, too.

A burst of static came from the radio. “Spacecraft of the Greater German Reich ! All spacecraft of the Greater German Reich ! The fight for justice in Europe continues,” a voice said in clear German. “Punish the Lizard aggressors however and wherever you may. Your sacrifice will not be in vain!”

When the message finished, it began repeating. As far as Drucker could tell, it was identical the second time around. A recording? He wouldn’t have been surprised. Was anyone alive down there to give orders to the remaining German spacecraft? Could anybody down there be alive at all?

Millions, tens of millions, of people down there were surely dead. But what about the high command? He had to admit that he wasn’t sure. Party and military leadership had known for a long time that a war with the Race might be coming. They would have done everything they could to make sure they could go on fighting it.

In the middle of the recorded message’s third repetition, it suddenly broke off. A different voice came on the air, one that sounded both military and tired unto death: “Be it known that all charges against Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker are rescinded and that he is raised in grade to colonel. By order of Walter Dornberger, acting Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich .”