In the Balance

“So will I,” Larssen heard himself saying. He blinked in surprise; he hadn’t known he was going to volunteer until the words were out of his mouth. But speaking up turned out to make sense, even to him: “Walt Zinn can ride herd, on the gang of hooligans working on the pile.”

Zinn nodded. “As long as I can keep ’em out of jail, I’ll get along all right.” He gave away his Canadian origins by saying oat for out.

“Then it is settled.” Szilard rubbed his hands in satisfaction. Fermi also looked pleased. Szilard went on, “You will leave as soon as possible. One of you will go by car-Larssen, that will be you, I think. Gerald, you will take the train. I hope both of you get to Washington safe and sound-and I hope Washington will still be in human hands when you arrive.”

That sent a nasty chill through Larssen. He hadn’t imagined Lizards marching up Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House. But if they could move on Chicago, they could surely move on Washington. He wondered if the invaders from another world had figured out it was the capital of the United States.

Looking at Szilard’s smug expression, he realized the Hungarian had gotten exactly what he wanted. For all his devotion to democracy, Szilard had maneuvered the meeting like a Chicago wardheeler. Larssen chuckled. Well, if that wasn’t democracy, what was it? A question better left unanswered in Chicago, perhaps.

The chuckle turned into a guffaw that Larssen fortunately managed to strangle before it got loose. If you played with the letters in Dr. Szilard’s name just a little… Larssen wondered if Szilard himself had noticed, and how one said lizard in Magyar.

I can report one riddle solved, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said.

“That will be a pleasant novelty;” Atvar snapped; the longer he wrestled with Tosev 3; the testier he became. But he could not afford to irk Kirel excessively. All bowed to the Emperor, yes, but those below him competed. Even officers’ cabals were not unknown. And so Atvar softened his tone: “What new things have you learned of the Big Uglies, then?”

“Our technicians have discovered why the high-burst nuclear weapons of our initial bombardment failed to completely disrupt their radio communications.”

Kirel beckoned to, one of those technicians, who floated up with a captured Tosevite radio set. Atvar opened his jaws in mocking laughter. “Big and ugly and clumsy, just like the Tosevites themselves,” he said.

“You speak truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” the technician said. “Also clumsy and primitive. The electronics are not even solid-state, as ours have been through almost all our recorded history. The Tosevites use as clumsy makeshifts these large vacuum-filled tubes here.” He pulled off the back plate of the set to point to the parts he meant. “They are bulky, as you see, Exalted Fleetlord, and the amount of waste heat they produce is appalling-they are most inefficient. But exactly because they are so large and so-so gross, if I may use an imprecise word, they are much less susceptible to electromagnetic pulse than unshielded integrated circuits would be.”

“Thank you, Technician-Second,” Atvar said, reading the male’s body paint for his rank. “Your data are valuable. Service to the Emperor.” Hearing himself dismissed, the technician cast down his eyes in salute to the sovereign, then took back the radio set and pushed himself away from the fleetlord’s presence.

“You see, Exalted Fleetlord, the Tosevites’ communications system retained its utility only because it is so primitive,” Kirel said.

“Their radios are primitive, and that ends up being useful to them. They don’t yet know how to make decent missiles, so they fling outsized artillery shells instead, and that ends up being useful. Now they are trying to build missiles. Where will it end, Shiplord?”

“In our victory,” Kirel said stoutly.

Atvar gave him a grateful look. Maybe the only reason Kirel was acting so loyally was that he did not want command of what looked like an effort that promised more in the way of trouble than glory. At the moment, Atvar didn’t care. Just having someone to whom he could complain worked wonders.

And complain he did: “When the Tosevites aren’t primitive, they hurt us, too. By the memories of all the ancient Emperors, who would have been mad enough to imagine making boats big enough to put airplanes on them? Who but the Big Uglies, I mean?”

Home, Rabotev 2, and Halless 1 all had free water, yes, but in the form of rivers and ponds and lakes (Rabotev 2 even had a couple of smallish seas). None of them was troubled by the vast, world-bestriding oceans of Tosev 3, and neither the Race, the Rabotevs, nor the Hallessi used their waters to anything like the extent the Big Uglies did. Having planes appear out of nowhere, as when they raided the base on the Chinese Coast, was a rude surprise. So were the ships with big guns that pounded bases anywhere near water.