In the Balance

The little scaly devil didn’t act as if it was funny. It gestured with the gun, pointing back toward the dragonfly planes. Some other villagers were already being marched aboard them. Liu Han knew she had no choice but to go in that direction. As she walked past the devil, it stepped back to make sure she didn’t come within arm’s length. If it wasn’t afraid of her, Liu Han couldn’t figure out why it was so cautious.

Before she climbed up the ramp into the dragonfly plane, another devil tied her hands together in front of her. It followed her inside, then motioned her into a seat with its gun.

The seat was uncomfortable, being both the wrong shape for her backside and too small; she had to draw her knees up to her chin to fit her legs into a space that would have been fine for one of the little scaly devils. In the seat beside her sat Yi Min, who looked even more cramped than she felt.

The apothecary looked up dully as she joined him. His face was bloody from a cut by one eye. “So they got you, too, did they?” he said.

“Yes,” Liu Han answered. By village standards, Yi Min was an educated man, so she asked him, “What sort of devils are these? I’ve never seen or heard of anything like them.”

“Neither have I,” he said. “In fact, I hardly believed in devils-I thought they were superstitious rubbish. They-”

The little scaly devil with the gun said something. It put one hand over its muzzle, holding its toothy mouth closed. Then it pointed to Liu Han and Yi Min. After it did that two or three times, she figured out that it didn’t want them to talk. She set a hand over her own mouth. The devil made a noise like a bubbling pot and. sat down. Liu Han decided she’d satisfied it.

The dragonfly plane’s engine began to roar. The blades that sprouted from the top of it started spinning, first slowly, then faster and faster until they looked like one of the flickering disks she’d noticed above the dragonfly planes when she was still out in the woods.

Without warning, the machine climbed into the air. Liu Han’s stomach lurched. She let out a frightened, involuntary squeak. The little scaly devil swung both its turreted eyes toward her. “Sorry, master devil,” she said. It kept on glaring. She realized she’d made a new mistake, clapped a hand to her mouth to try to set it right. The devil made that boiling noise again, let its eyes wander away. Had she room, she would have sagged with relief.

She looked out the little window by Yi Min. Through it she could see, frighteningly far below, the burning ruins of her village. Then the dragonfly plane spun in the, air and flew off, taking her away from everything she had ever known.

The train had just rolled south past Dixon when everything went to hell. Sam Yeager read the last letter in his Astounding, set the magazine down on the seat beside him-Bobby Fiore had woken up and was back in the dining car. Yeager hoped he’d finish soon. He was getting sleepy himself, but how could he doze off when his roommate was going to step over him-or on him-any time now?

Stymied by a complete lack of facts, the Decatur Commodores had given up arguing about, what the light in the sky had been. Several of them were sleeping, some with caps or hats over their eyes to keep out the overhead lights. Yeager yawned, stretched, thought about doing the same thing. Maybe he’d be out by the time Bobby got back.

He’d just decided he would go to sleep when something roared past overhead, so loud it woke up everyone who had been resting. Yeager leaned over and jammed his face against the window, wondering if he’d see an airplane go down in flames. That roar sounded as if it had come from just above the train, and he’d never heard a healthy engine sound anything like it.

Sure enough, a moment later a tremendous bang came from in front of the train, and then another one, even louder. “Jesus,” Yeager said softly. On the other side of the aisle, Joe Sullivan crossed himself.

While Yeager’s head was still ringing from the explosions, the train hit the brakes for all they were worth. He slammed into the seat in front of him. Iron screamed as wheels clenched track. Sparks shot up high enough for him to see them through the window.

The brakes were not worth enough. The passenger car suddenly flipped onto its side. Yeager dropped like a stone, landed on top of Sullivan. The pitcher yelled. Yeager yelled, too, as his head hit what had been the far wall of the car and was now abruptly the floor. His teeth dug into his lip. The hot, metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He ran his tongue around in there. Luckily, his dentures hadn’t broken.

Through the cries of his teammates and the other people in the car, he listened to the rest of the train derailing. The receding string of crashes and bumps made him think of an earthquake bought on the installment plan.

He tested each limb as he untangled himself from Joe Sullivan. “You all right, kid?” he asked.