Tilting the Balance

She pounded him on the back as any other soldier would have. He wouldn’t have tried to kiss another soldier, though. She let him do it, but she didn’t do much in the way of kissing back. He didn’t worry about that; he popped up out of the foxhole and started blazing away at the fleeing Lizard tank crew and the foot soldiers, who were much less terrifying without armor to back them up.

The Lizards fell back. The tank kept burning. A Sherman would have brewed up a hell of a lot faster than it did, but eventually its ammunition and its fuel tank went up in a spectacular blast.

Mutt felt as if he’d been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. “Lord!” he exclaimed. “You couldn’t make a fancier explosion in the movies.”

“No, probably not,” Lucille Potter agreed, “nor one that did more for us. We’ll hold Randolph a while longer now, I expect. That was a wonderful throw; I’ve never seen a better one. You must have been a very fine baseball player.”

“You don’t make the majors unless you’re pretty fair,” he said, shrugging. “You don’t stick there unless you’re better’n that, and I wasn’t.” He brushed a hand across the front of his shirt, as if he’d been a pitcher shaking off a sign rather than a catcher; baseball wasn’t what he wanted to talk about at the moment. After a couple of tentative coughs, he said, “Miss Lucille, I hope you don’t think I was too forward there.”

“When you kissed me, you mean? I didn’t mind,” she said, but not in a way that encouraged him to try it again; by her tone, once had been okay but twice wouldn’t be. He kicked at the churned-up dirt inside the foxhole. Lucille added, “I’m not interested, Mutt, not that way. It’s not you-you’re a good man. But I’m just not.”

“Okay,” he said; he was too old to let his pecker do his thinking for him. But that didn’t mean he’d forgotten he had one. He pushed up his helmet so he could scratch his head above one ear. “If you like me, why-” He broke off there. If she didn’t want to talk about it, that was her business.

For the first time since he’d met her, he found her at a loss for words. She frowned, obviously not caring for that herself. Slowly, she said, “Mutt, it’s not something I can easily explain, or care to. I-”

Easily or not, she didn’t get the chance to explain. Following a cry of “Miss Lucille!” a soldier from another squad in the platoon came scrambling over to the foxhole and gasped out, “Miss Lucille, we’ve got two men down, one hit in the shoulder, the other in the chest. Peters-the guy with the chest wound-he’s in bad shape.”

“I’m coming,” she said briskly, and climbed out of the hole she’d shared with Mutt. As she hurried away, he scratched his head again.

Even in these times, David Goldfarb had expected things to be handled with more ceremony. The Prime Minister, after all, did not visit the Bruntingthorpe Research and Development Test Flying Aerodrome every day.

But there was no line of RAF men in blue serge standing to attention for Winston Churchill to inspect, no flyby of a squadron of Pioneers or Meteors to impress him with what Fred Hipple and his team had accomplished in jet propulsion. In fact, up until an hour before Churchill got to Bruntingthorpe, no one knew he was coming.

Group Captain Hipple brought the news back from the administrative section’s Nissen hut. It produced a brief, startled silence from his subordinates, who were laboring mightily to pull secrets from the wreckage of the Lizard fighter-bomber that had been brought down not far from the aerodrome.

Typically, Flight Officer Basil Roundbush was first to break that silence: “Generous of him to give us notice enough to make sure our flies are closed.”

“I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be confident yours is, dear boy,” Hipple returned. Roundbush covered his face with his hands, acknowledging the hit. The group captain might have been shorter than his subordinates, but gave away nothing in wit. He continued, “I gather no one knew until moments ago: quite a lot of security laid on, for reasons which should be plain enough.”

“Wouldn’t do for the Lizards to pay us a visit just now, would it, sir?” Goldfarb said.

“Yes, that would prove-embarrassing,” Hipple said, an understatement Roundbush might have coveted.

And so, just as Goldfarb had, the Prime Minister came down from Leicester by bicycle, pedaling along on an elderly model like a grandfather out for a constitutional. He dismounted outside the meteorology hut, where Hipple and his team still labored after the latest Lizard bombing raid. When Goldfarb saw the round pink face and the familiar cigar through the window, he gulped. He’d never expected to meet the leader of the British Empire.

Wing Commander Julian Peary’s reaction was more prosaic. In the big deep voice that went so oddly with his slight physique, he said, “I do hope he’s not damaged any of the beets.”