In the Balance

On the north side of the river, the gleaming white Wrigley Building looked intact but for broken windows. Across the street, though, the Tribune Tower had been gutted. Yeager found a certain amount of poetic justice in that. Even when reduced to a skinny weekly by paper shortages, the Chicago Tribune hadn’t stopped laying into Roosevelt for not Doing Something about the Lizards. Just what he was supposed to be Doing was never quite clear-but he obviously’ wasn’t Doing it, so the paper piled scorn on him.

Yeager felt like thumbing his nose at the ruined building. About all anyone could do about the Lizards was fight them as hard as he could for as long as he could. The United States was doing as well as any other country on Earth, and better than most. But Sam wondered if that would be enough.

Along with the rest of the convoy, the bus turned right on Grand Avenue toward the Navy Pier. The morning sun gleamed off Lake Michigan, which seemed illimitable as the sea.

The pier stretched more than half a mile into the lake. The bus rattled past sheds once full of merchandise, now mostly bombed-out shells. At the east end of the pier were playgrounds, a dance hail, an auditorium, a promenade-all reminders of happier times. Waiting at what had been the excursion landing was a rusty old freighter that looked like the maritime equivalent of the beat-up buses Yeager had been riding all his adult life.

Also waiting were a couple of companies of troops. Antiaircraft guns poked their noses into the sky. If Lizard planes swooped down on the convoy, they’d get a warm reception. Even so, Yeager wished the guns were someplace else-from everything he’d seen, they were better at attracting the Lizards than shooting them down.

But he wasn’t the one who gave the orders-except to his Lizardy charges. “Come on, boys,” he told them, and let them precede him, off the bus and onto the pier. At his urging, Ullhass and Ristin headed toward the freighter, on whose side was painted the name Caledonia.

The gathered soldiers swarmed onto the convoy vehicle like army ants-Yeager smiled as the comparison struck him. One truck after another was emptied and sped back down Navy Pier toward Chicago. Working transport of any sort was precious these days. Watching them head west, Yeager got an excellent view of the proud city skyline-and of the gaps the Lizards had torn in it.

Barbara Larssen came over and stood by him. “They just want us small fry out of the way,” she said unhappily. “They put the physicists on board first, and now the equipment they need. Afterward, if there’s any room and any time, they’ll let people like us get on.”

Given the military needs of the moment, those priorities made sense to Yeager. But Barbara wanted sympathy, not sense. He said, “You know what they say-there’s the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.”

She laughed, maybe a little more than the tired joke deserved. A chilly gust of wind off the lake tried to flip up her pleated skirt. she defeated it with the quick two-hand clutch women seem to learn as a tribal gesture, but shivered just the same. “Brr! I wish I were wearing pants.”

“Why don’t you?” he said. “With all the heaters to hell and gone, I bet you’d be a lot more comfortable. I wouldn’t want to freeze my-well, I wouldn’t want to freeze myself in a skirt just on account of fashion.”

If she’d noticed what he started to say, she didn’t let on. “If I find some that fit me, I think I will,” she said. “Long johns, too.”

Yeager let himself indulge in the fantasy of peeling her out of a pair of long johns until somebody bawled, “Come on, get those goddamn Lizards on board. We ain’t got all day.”

He urged Ullhass and Ristin ahead of him, then had a happy afterthought. Grabbing Barbara’s hand, he said, “Make like you’re a Lizard-keeper, too?” She caught on fast and fell into step behind him. she didn’t shake off his hand, either.

The two Lizard POWs hissed in alarm as the gangplank swayed under their weight. “It’s all right,” Barbara reassured them, playing her part to the hilt. “If humans carrying heavy equipment didn’t break this, you won’t.” Yeager had come to know Ullhass and Ristin well enough to tell how unhappy they were, but they kept walking.

They hissed again when they got up onto the deck of the Caledonia and discovered the ship was still shifting slightly to and fro. “It will fall over and put us all at the bottom of the water,” Ristin said angrily. He didn’t know nautical English, but got his meaning across.

Yeager looked around at the faded paint, the rust that streaked down from rivets, the worn woodwork, the grease-stained dungarees and old wool sweaters the crew wore. “I don’t think so,” he told the Lizards. “This boat’s done a lot more sailing in its day. I expect it’s good for some more yet.”

“I think you’re right, Sam,” Barbara said, perhaps as much to reassure herself as to console Ristin.