Upsetting the Balance

“All true. I’ve flown both; I should know.” Roundbush thought for a moment. When he put his mind to it, he was quite a clever chap. He was also handsome and brave. When Goldfarb was in an intolerant mood, he found the combination depressing. Roundbush went on, “A couple of things went into it, I think. We had a large investment in piston engines, an investment not just in the factories that made them but also in close to forty years’ thinking they were the right and proper way to go about powering aircraft. The other factor is, piston engines wereproved by those forty years. It takes a bold man, or a desperate one, to make the leap into the unknown and abandon the tried and true.”

“Something to that, I expect,” Goldfarb said. “Against the Germans, we could make gains by squeezing out an extra fifty horsepower here or a hundred there. They were doing the same against us, I expect, or those jet Messerschmitts of theirs would have started showing up over England a year ago and more. But against the Lizards, it’s pretty clear we had to try something new or go under.”

“There you have it in a nutshell,” Basil Roundbush agreed. “Now, to business: are we going to be able to mount these Lizard radars in any of our aircraft? They’re small and light enough, that’s certain, and we’ll finally be able to see as far as the Lizards can.”

“I think it should be possible, if we have enough sets,” Goldfarb answered. “They don’t draw a lot of power, and we’ve figured out the voltage and cycles per second they use-about two-thirds of the way from our standard down towards what the Americans prefer. We are still working to calibrate their ranges, though, and we still have to decide how many we want to mount on the ground to add to our air defense. Seeing the Lizards counts there, too.”

“That’s so,” Roundbush admitted reluctantly. “The other side of the coin is, the Lizards’ radar should be less susceptible to being tracked by their missiles and confused by their interference. That matters a great deal when you’re up past Angels twenty.”

“It matters when you’re on the ground, too.” Goldfarb remembered the opening days of the Lizards’ invasion of Earth, when their missiles had homed unerringly on radar transmitters throughout the British Isles, knocking them out again and again. “Try tracking their fighter-bombers with binoculars, if you want a treat for yourself.”

“Binoculars? Old chap, try tracking them with the Mark One eyeball.” Roundbush could also deliver a convincing impersonation of an overbred, underbrained aristocratic twit, of the sort who made Bertie Wooster seem a philosopher-king by comparison. Now he leered horribly, aiming a pair of Mark One eyeballs (rather bloodshot) at Goldfarb. “Bit of a bore in the cockpit, don’t you know?”

“I know you’re quite mad,” Goldfarb retorted. “Sir.”

Roundbush stopped twisting his features into that bucktoothed grimace and let his voice lose the nasal whine he’d affected. “What I know is that I need a pint or three after we knock off today. What’s the name of that pub you dragged me to, the one with the blonde and the redhead?”

“That’s the White Horse Inn, sir. I don’t think Daphne, the blond one, works there any more; she was just visiting old friends.” From what he’d heard, Daphne was in a family way, but he kept that to himself. He hadn’t done it, and in any case he’d been sweet on Sylvia when last he was in Dover.

“The White Horse Inn, that’s it Couldn’t recall the name for love nor money.” Roundbush coughed significantly. “Only thing about the place I’m likely to forget though. The beer’s not bad-made locally, I’d say-and that little redhead… Ah!” He kissed his fingertips, like an actor playing a comic Italian. “She’s quite a piece of work, she is.”

“Can’t argue with you there, sir.” Goldfarb had been trying to get back into Sylvia’s good graces-to say nothing of her bed-ever since he returned to Dover. He’d been making progress with the one, if not the other. Now he waved a fond farewell to any hope of seeing the inside of Sylvia’s flat again. Women had a way of throwing themselves at Basil Roundbush-his problem wasn’t in catching them but in throwing back the ones he didn’t want. If he did want Sylvia, odds for anyone else’s drawing her notice were abysmally poor.

Sighing, Goldfarb bent low over the radar he’d been working on when Roundbush came in. Work couldn’t make you forget your sorrows, but if you kept at it you found yourself too busy to do much fussing over them. In a world that showed itself more imperfect with every passing day, that was about as much as any man had a right to expect.

Because it was large and round, the Met Lab crew had dubbed their first completed bomb the Fat Lady. Leslie Groves eyed the metal casing’s curves with as much admiration as if they belonged to Rita Hayworth. “Gentlemen, I’m prouder than I can say of every one of you,” he declared. “Now we have only one thing left to do-build another one.”