In the Balance

And now-what? Another thrust at England’s heart, but one at Germany’s as well. Goldfarb wished the Lizards would leave his country alone and go after the Nazis with everything they had. The wish changed the situation about as much as wishes commonly do.

He sighed. “It’s a rum world, sure enough.”

“Aye, it is.” Jones looked at his watch. “Our reliefs should be here any minute now. When we’re off, shall we head over to the White Horse? What they call best bitter’s gone to the dogs since the war (gone through their kidneys, by the taste of it), but there’s always Daphne to stare at, maybe even to chat, up.”

“Why not?” Goldfarb intended to try Sylvia again-his own taste ran to redheads. She wasn’t a Jewish girl to bring home to his family (he’d thought a lot more about that since the war started), but he didn’t aim to marry her-however attractive some of the concomitants of that relationship might be.

He laughed at himself. The next interest in him Sylvia showed would be her first. Well, he thought, she can’t very well show interest if I’m not there to be interesting.

“Something else to thank the Lizards for,” Jones said. “If they hadn’t smashed up the radar set, we’d be spending all these idle hours fiddling with it instead of chasing skirt. Radar’s all very well, but next to skirt-”

“Right,” Goldfarb said. He pointed. “And here come Reg and Steven, so let’s be off.”

As Jones got up from his canvas chair, he asked, “Can you lend me ten bob?”

Goldfarb stared at him. He grinned back, cheekily confident. Goldfarb got out his wallet, passed over a note. “If you had the gall with Daphne that you do with me…”

“With ten bob in my pocket, maybe I will.”

“Come on, then.” There was a war on-there were, these last few crazed days, two wars on-but life went on, too. Goldfarb hurried through his report to the next watch crew, then hurried off with Jerome Jones toward the White Horse Inn.

I am flying toward my death. George Bagnall had had that thought every time the Lancaster made its ungainly leap off the tarmac for a run into Germany. Now, flying against the Lizards, it was much more tightly focused. Death lurked in the air over Germany, yes, but random death: a flak shell that happened to burst just where you were, or a night fighter coming close enough to spot your exhaust.

Going against the Lizards, death was not random. This was Bagnall’s third sortie into France, and he had seen that for himself. If the Lizards chose your plane, you would go down. Their rockets came after you as if they knew your home address. You couldn’t run; shooting at the missiles did no good to speak of; Bagnall wanted to hide.

He glanced over at Ken Embry. The pilot’s face was set, the skin stretched tight across his cheekbones, his mouth nothing but a bloodless slash. They were coming in low tonight, too low to bother with oxygen, so Embry’s whole face was visible. Going in high just made them better targets. The RAF had learned that lesson the hard way.

Bagnall sighed. “Pity we couldn’t have come down with a case of magneto drop or some such, eh?”

“You’re the engineer, Mr. Bagnall,” Embry said. “Arranging a convenient mechanical failure should be your speciality.”

“Pity I didn’t think of it as we were running through the checklists,” Bagnall murmured. Embry’s answering grin stretched his mouth wider, but did nothing to banish the look of haunted determination from his features. Like Bagnall, he knew what the odds were. They’d been lucky twice-three times, if you counted the wild melee in the air over Cologne on what everyone was starting to call The Night the Martians Landed. But how long could luck hold?”

Embry said, “Feels odd, flying out of formation.”

“It did seem rather like lining up all the ducks to be knocked over one by one,” Bagnall said. The first attack on the Lizards-in which, fortunately, his Lanc had not been involved-had been a failure horrific enough to make Bomber Command change tactics in a hurry, something the flight engineer hadn’t previously imagined possible.

And attacking low and dispersed did work better than pouring in high and in formation, as if the Lizards were nothing but Germans to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Bagnall’s bomber had made it back to England twice.

“Five miles to commencement of target area,” the navigator announced over the intercom.

“Thank you, Alf,” Ken Embry said. Ahead of them, streaks of fire began leaping up from the ground. Fully laden bombers exploded in midair, one after another, blazing through the night like great orange chrysanthemums of flame. They would have been even more beautiful bad each one not meant the deaths of so many men.

Bagnall waited for one of those fiery streaks to burn straight for his Lanc. It hadn’t happened yet, but-