Upsetting the Balance

“I wish you weren’t going away,” Barbara said. She was a trouper; that was as close as she would come to reminding him things didn’t always work out exactly as planned. Just because the baby was due around Christmastime didn’t mean it had to wait that long.

He shrugged. “They gave me my orders, hon. It’s not like I have a whole lot of choice.” He patted the stripes on his shirtsleeve.

“You don’t fool me one bit, Sam Yeager,” Barbara said, laughing at him. Maybe they’d been married only seven months or so, but she read him like a book. “You’re champing at the bit, and you know it. You and your pulp fiction.”

She said it affectionately, so it didn’t sting, or not much. But he’d heard similar noises from so many people that his response sounded more nettled than it was: “It’s science fiction, not just any pulp fiction. And with the Lizards here, it’s not fiction any more, it’s the straight goods, same as… what the Met Lab was working on.” They were alone in their room, but he didn’t mention atomic bombs by name.

Barbara spread her hands. “That’s all true, and I admit every word of it. But you’re as excited about working with a real live spaceship as a little kid would be with an all-day sucker.”

“Well, what if I am?” he said, yielding the point. “I earned this chance, and I want to make the most of it. If I do a good job here, the way I did with the work on that light-amplifier gadget, maybe-just maybe-they’ll turn me into an officer. And that’s not minor league at all. I spent too much time in the bushes, babe-I want to hit the bigs.”

“I know,” Barbara answered. “I think that’s good-I think it’s better than good, as a matter of fact. But as I said, you can’t fool me. If we start building spaceships of our own, you want to ride one, don’t you?”

Sam hugged her. The way her belly pressed against his reminded him again of the child growing within her. He said, “Having a wife who understands me is a darn good thing. Sure, I’d love that, if it ever happens. And the only way it will is if I get real good at talking with the Lizards about how rockets work and what you’re supposed to do with ’em. I don’t have the education to know how to make ’em myself, or the training-and the reflexes-to be a pilot.”

“I understand all that,” she said, and kissed him fiercely. “And I’m proud of you for it, and I love you for working hard to make something of yourself-and I wish you weren’t going.”

“But I’ve got to.” He started to show her his wristwatch. Before he could, somebody knocked on the door. He quickly kissed her. “I’ve got to go now, hon.” She nodded. He opened the door.

Standing in the hall were an Army major and a Lizard with pretty fancy body paint. “Morning, Yeager,” the major said. He wore horn-rimmed glasses and a thin, sandy mustache. The name tag above his right breast pocket saidTOMPKINS.

“Morning, sir.”

The major glanced toward the Lizard. “And you’ll know Vesstil, I expect-Straha’s pilot for his flight down here.”

“Oh, sure.” Sam shifted into the Lizards’ language: “In the name of the Emperor, I greet you and wish you health.” Every time he talked with a male of the Race, he was reminded of just how informal a language English was. He’d never thought about that till he started picking up Lizard talk.

“I return your wishes in the Emperor’s name,” Vesstil said in fair English. Even using English, he lowered his eyes at the mention of his sovereign.

“Okay, let’s go.” Tompkins sounded like a man in a hurry. Yeager waved to Barbara one last time and set off behind him. To Vesstil, Tompkins said, “We have clothes downstairs for you, to make you look like a human being if your friends upstairs are watching.”

“They are not my friends, not now,” the Lizard pilot said. “If they were my friends, I should not be here assisting you.” The remark held an unmistakable note of reproof. Sam wondered if Tompkins heard it.

A Lizard in trousers and shirt and wide-brimmed hat could not help looking anything but ridiculous, not at close range. From the air, though, he’d seem just another Big Ugly, which was the point of the exercise. He and his human companions got into a buckboard. A driver dressed like a hayseed clucked to the horses and flicked the reins. The wagon rattled off.

“We’d go faster if we were riding horses,” Sam said. “We would if Vesstil here could ride one, anyway.” He translated the remark for the Lizard’s benefit.

“I am willing to teach you how to fly the shuttlecraft the Race has made,” Vesstil said with dignity. “I am not willing to learn to barbarously balance myself on the back of a beast. These creatures strike me as being more dangerous than flying between the stars, which is but a matter of routine. Beasts are unpredictable.” By the way he said it, that was an inexpiable sin.