Upsetting the Balance

As with the males who’d left the first personnel carrier, most of them didn’t get away from the vehicle, but some skittered off behind bushes and returned fire. At Auerbach’s urgently shouted orders, flanking parties moved out on both wings to envelop the Lizards. They had to be wiped out quickly, or-

Auerbach didn’t want to believe he heard the rotor blades of a helicopter chewing their way through the air, not so soon. It was coming from out of the west, from Cheyenne Wells. His mouth went dry. Killing two infantry fighting vehicles was splendid, but a bad bargain if it cost him his whole company-and himself.

Fire rippled from the weapons pod under the belly of the flying beast. The Lizards didn’t know exactly where his men were positioned, but a rocket salvo made precision anything but mandatory. Auerbach dug his face into the musty ground as the rockets flailed the prairie. Blast picked him up, flipped him onto his back, and slammed him down, hard. Through stunned ears, he heard screams amidst the explosions.

Nose-mounted Gatling twinkling like some malign star, the helicopter bored in to finish exterminating the humans who had presumed to challenge the might of the Lizards. Auerbach and his comrades-those still alive and unwounded-returned fire. He imagined the helicopter crew laughing in the cockpit; their machine was armored against rifle-caliber rounds.

Perhaps because they were so close to US 40, the bazooka team had not drawn the helicopter’s notice. As it hovered not far from the burning armored personnel carrier, an antitank rocket drew a trail of flame in the air toward it.

A bazooka was not supposed to be an antiaircraft weapon. If it hit, though, it was going to do damage. It hit. The helicopter staggered, as if it had run into an invisible wall up there in the air. Then it heeled over onto its side and crashed down on US 40. For good measure, the bazooka team put another round into its belly as it lay there. Ammunition started cooking off, tracer rounds going up like fireworks.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Auerbach yelled, his voice blurry even to himself. A few Lizards were still shouting, but the Americans made short work of them. Collecting the human wounded took longer and hurt more, spiritually as well as physically. Auerbach’s driving urge was speed. He wanted to be away and under cover before the Lizards sent any more aircraft after his men.

“Even if they nail the whole lot of us, they won’t have bought anything cheap today,” he muttered. While that was undeniably true, he still wanted to escape. Victory was a lot sweeter if you lived to enjoy it. And once he go back to Lamar, he’d have some fine stories to tell Rachel Hines… and Penny Summers, too.

Returning to Dover made David Goldfarb feel he’d stepped back into an earlier time in the war. Things had been simpler then, with only the Jerries to worry about. And Hitler’s finest, after all, hadn’t managed to invade England in spite of all theFuhrer ’s threats and promises: “Don’t worry… he’s coming.” But he and theWehrmacht hadn’t come. The Lizards had.

Basil Roundbush came into the little room in the natural sciences building at Dover College where the radarman was working. The mustachioed pilot was whistling something whose words Goldfarb didn’t recognize; whatever it was, it sounded as if it ought to be bawdy.

Working again with Roundbush brought the months at Bruntingthorpe back to the top of Goldfarb’s mind. He looked up from his oscilloscope and said in mock disgust, “All the time I was playing at infantryman, I felt sure you’d be dead and out of my hair for good.” After a moment too long, he added, “Sir.”

Roundbush took the chaffing in good part. With a grin that made him look like a lion that had just brought down its zebra, he said, “Dead? Something even worse than that happened: I got promoted.”

“Yes, sir, most illustrious Flight Lieutenant Roundbush, sir!” Goldfarb cried, springing to his feet to deliver a salute so vehement it threatened to snap off his arm.

“Oh, put a sock in it,” Roundbush said genially. “Let’s get down to work, shall we?”

“Right,” Goldfarb said. His sportiveness covered an admiration for the flier that fell only a little short of awe. He’d been through danger enough and to spare in his stint at ground combat His own fighting skill had had little to do with coming out the other side intact, though. Bullets and shell fragments flew through the air almost at random. If you were lucky, they missed you. If you weren’t you ended up dead or crippled.

But Basil Roundbush had survived flying mission after mission against the Lizards while in an aircraft and with weapons far inferior to theirs. Luck undoubtedly had something to do with that. But a fighter pilot, unlike a ground-pounder, needed more than luck. You had to be good at what you did, or you wouldn’t keep doing it long.