In the Balance

“I’ve seen the country, all right,” he muttered. He’d rolled through just about every piece of it, with swings into Canada and Mexico to boot. Rubbernecking for one more swing through the staid flatlands of Illinois no longer meant as much as it once had.

He remembered the sun rising over the arid mountains near Salt Lake City, shining off the lake and the white salt flats straight into his dazzled eyes. Now that had been scenery worth looking at; he’d carry the picture to his grave with him. Fields and barns and ponds just couldn’t compete, though he wouldn’t have lived in Salt Lake City for Joe DiMaggio’s salary. Well, maybe for DiMaggio’s salary, he thought.

A lot of the Commodores had headed off to the dining car. Across the aisle, Joe Sullivan was staring out the window with the same avidity Yeager had known in his early days. The pitcher’s lips moved as he softly read a Burma Shave sign to himself. That made Yeager smile. Sullivan needed to lather up maybe twice a week.

Suddenly, bright light streamed in through the windows on the pitcher’s side of the car. He craned his neck. “Funny thing in the sky,” he reported. “Looks like a Fourth of July firework, but it’s an awful damn bright one.”

Mutt Daniels was sitting on that side of the train, too. “Awful damn bright one is right,” the manager said. “Never seen one like that in all my born days. It just keeps hangin’ up there, don’t seem to move a-tall. Kind of pretty, matter of fact.”

The light went from white to yellow to orange to red, fading little by little over several minutes. Yeager thought about getting up and having a look at where it was coming from. He might have done it if Sullivan hadn’t compared it to something you’d see on the Fourth of July. Ever since the Fourth when he broke his ankle, he’d had no use for fireworks. He stuck his nose back into his Astounding.

The rising sun snuck under Heinrich Jager’s eyelids, pried his eyes open. He groaned, shook a few of the cobwebs out of his head, got slowly to his feet. Moving as if every joint in his body were rusty, he got in line for breakfast. More kasha stew, his nose told him. He shrugged. It would keep him full.

“No more lights in the sky?” he asked Ernst Riecke, who looked as tired as he felt.

“No, sir,” the captain answered. “I don’t know if I should have bothered you, but-”

“You did the right thing,” Jager said, mentally adding, even if it did cost me another hour in my blanket. “I don’t know what the devil that was. It looked like one of our recognition flares, but it was a million times as big and bright. And it didn’t fall, either. It stayed in one place till it went out. I wonder what it was.”

“One of Ivan’s tricks, maybe,” Riecke suggested.

“Maybe,” But Jager didn’t believe it. “If it was, though, he should have followed it up. No bombers, no artillery… If the Russians were trying something, it didn’t work.”

Like the rest of the tankmen, Jager gulped down his stew. When everyone was fed, he reluctantly sent the field kitchen on its way. He hated to part with it, but it wouldn’t be able to keep up with the tanks.

One after another, the Panzer IIIs rumbled into life. The whole company let out a cheer when the motor of the twelfth tank caught. Jager shouted as loud as anybody. He didn’t think they’d be facing enemy armor today, but you never could tell in Russia. And if not today, then one day before too long.

He clambered up into the turret of the tank he personally commanded, radioed division headquarters to see if orders had changed since yesterday. “No, we still want you to shift to map square B-9,” the signal lieutenant answered. “How do you read my transmission, by the way?”

“Well enough,” Jager said. “Why?”

“We had some trouble earlier,” the signalman answered. “After that explosion in the sky, reception went into the toilet for a while. Glad it didn’t trouble you.”

“Me, too,” Jager said. “Out.” He unfolded his map, studied it. If he was where he thought he was, he and his panzers needed to make about twenty kilometers to get to where they were supposed to be. He leaned down into the crew compartment of the tank, called to the driver. “Let’s go. East.”

“East it is.” Dieter Schmidt put the Panzer III into gear. The roar of the Maybach HL12OTR engine changed pitch. The tank began to roll ahead, chewing two lines through the grass and dirt of the steppe. The engine went up the scale and down, up and down, as Schmidt worked his way through the six forward speeds of the gearbox.