Upsetting the Balance

He shook himself, bringing the real world back into focus. “Johannes, how are your eyes?” he asked over the intercom.

“I’ll be all right, sir, I think,” the driver answered. “It was like the world’s biggest flashbulb went off a centimeter in front of my nose. I still see a big ring of smeary color; but it’s getting smaller and dimmer.”

“That’s good,” Jager said. “Think of it like this: for the Lizards over there in Oels, it’s as if the sun went off a centimeter in front of their snouts-and they’ll never see anything again.”

More cheers rang out Gunther Grillparzer said, “You know what, sir? I have to apologize to the mucky-mucks. Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“I tell you what, Corporal,” Jager said: “I won’t tell them. That way they won’t die of shock.” The gunner laughed loud and long. Jager added, “I thought they’d gone round the bend myself, and I’m not ashamed to say so. But it makes sense now: they let the Lizards concentrate in Oels, didn’t shell the town itself, both to hold the Lizards there and to make sure the bomb didn’t get hit by accident, and then-”

“Yes, sir,” Grillparzer agreed enthusiastically. “And then!”

In color and shape, the cloud rising from the explosive-metal bomb put Jager in mind of Caesar’s amanita. It was more nearly the hue of apricot flesh than the rich, bright orange of the mushroom prized for its flavor since Roman days, but that was a detail. He wondered how many kilometers into the sky the cap of the mushroom rose.

“Well,” he said, half to himself, “I think Breslau has held.”

Gunther Grillparzer heard him.“Jawohl!” the gunner said.

An alarm hissed insistently. Atvar thrashed and twisted in free fall, fighting to stay asleep. Before long, he knew the fight was lost. As consciousness returned, fear came with it. You didn’t wake the fleetlord to report good news.

One of his eye turrets swiveled toward the communications screen. Sure enough, Pshing’s face stared out of it. The adjutant’s mouth worked, but no sound emerged. He looked extraordinarily ugly that way, or perhaps Atvar was grumpy at being roused so suddenly.

“Activate two-way voice,” he told the computer in his rest chamber, and then addressed Pshing: “Here I am. What’s the commotion?”

“Exalted Fleetlord!” Pshing cried. “The Big Uglies-the Deutsch Big Uglies-set off a fission bomb as we were about to overrun their fortified position at the town called Breslau. We had been concentrating males and equipment in the forward area for the assault on their works immediately outside the city, and suffered large losses in the blast.”

Atvar bared his teeth in a grimace of anguish a Tosevite who knew a little about the Race might have taken for laughter. His plan for the attack on Deutschland had allowed for the Deutsch Big Uglies’ having better weapons than the Race knew them to possess, but had not anticipated their having atomic bombs.

Tensely, he asked, “Is this a case like that of the SSSR, where they’ve shaped a device from plutonium they stole from us?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, results of analysis are at present both preliminary and ambiguous,” Pshing answered. “First approximation is that some of the fissile material was indeed taken from us, but that some may well have been independently produced.”

Atvar grimaced again, if that report was accurate, it was what he’d dreaded most. The SSSR had used the one bomb, apparently of plutonium stolen from the Race, but had shown no signs of being able to produce its own. That was bad, but could be lived with. If the Deutsche knew not only how to exploit radioactives that fell into their hands but also how to produce those radioactives, the war against the Big Uglies had just taken a new and altogether revolting turn.

“What are your orders, Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing asked. “Shall we bomb the Deutsch positions in Breslau, and avenge ourselves in that fashion?”

“Do you mean with our own nuclear weapons?” Atvar said. When his adjutant made the affirmative gesture, he went on, “No. What would be the point of that? It would only create more nuclear zones for our males to cross, and the fallout, given Tosev 3 weather patterns, would adversely affect forces farther east. Unfortunately, we have not succeeded in tracking down the area where the Deutsche are conducting their nuclear experiments.”

“That is not surprising,” Pshing answered. “They so contaminated a stretch of their own territory when a pile went out of control that the radioactivity in the area could mask a successful experiment on their part”

“Truth,” Atvar said bitterly. “Even their incompetence may work in their favor. And, after the lesson we taught the Nipponese, they must know we respond severely to nuclear development efforts on the part of Big Uglies. They will be shielding their program as well as they can.”

“Surely you will not leave them unpunished merely because we cannot locate their nuclear reactors,” Pshing exclaimed.