Striking the Balance

“He probably wouldn’t, sir,” Yeager said. “The Lizards mostly don’t make any bones about us giving them the creeps.” He paused. “Hmm, come to think of it, he might be insulted at that, sort of like if a Ku-Kluxer found out some Negroes looked down their noses at white men.”

“As if we don’t have the right to think Lizards are creepy, you mean.”

“That’s right.” Sam nodded. “But snakes and things like that, they never bothered me, not even when I was a kid. And the Lizards, every time I’m with one of them, I’m liable to learn something new: not just new for me, I mean, but something nobody, no human being, ever knew before. That’s pretty special. In a way, it’s even more special than Jonathan.” Now he laughed the nervous laugh Goddard had used before. “Don’t let Barbara found out I said that.”

“You have my word,” the rocket scientist said solemnly. “But I do understand what you mean. Your son is an unknown to you, but he’s not the first baby that ever was. Really discovering something for the first time is a thrill almost as addictive as-as ginger, shall we say?”

“As long as we don’t let the Lizards hear us say it, sure,” Yeager answered. “They sure do like that stuff, don’t they?” He hesitated again, then went on, “Sir, I’m mighty glad you decided to move operations back here to Hot Springs. Gives me the chance to be with my family, lets me help Barbara out every now and then. I mean, we haven’t even been married a year yet, and-”

“I’m glad it’s worked out well for you, Sergeant,” Goddard said, “but that’s not the reason I came down here from Couch-”

“Oh, I know it’s not, sir,” Sam said hastily.

As if he hadn’t spoken, Goddard went on, “Hot Springs is a decent-sized city, with at least a little light manufacturing. We’re not far from Little Rock, which has more. And we have all the Lizards at the Army and Navy General Hospital here, upon whom we can draw for expertise. That has proved much more convenient than transferring the Lizards up to southern Missouri one by one.”

“Like I said, it’s great by me,” Yeager told him. “And we’ve moved an awful lot of pieces of the Lizard shuttlecraft down here so we can study ’em better.”

“I worried about that,” Goddard said. “The Lizards always knew about where Vesstil brought Straha down. We were lucky we concealed and stripped the shuttlecraft as fast as we did, because they tried their hardest to destroy it. They easily could have sent in troops by air to make sure they’d done the job, and we’d have had the devil’s own time stopping them.”

“They don’t go poking their snouts into everything the way they did when they first landed here,” Sam said. “I guess that’s because we’ve hurt ’em a few times when they tried it.”

“A good thing, too, or I fear we’d have lost the war by now.” Goddard rose and stretched, though from his grimace that hurt more than it made him feel good. “Another incidental reason for coming to Hot Springs is the springs. I’m going to my room to draw myself a hot bath. I’d gotten used to doing without such things, and almost forgot how wonderful they are.”

“Yes, sir,” Yeager said enthusiastically. The fourth-floor room in the Army and Navy General Hospital he shared with Barbara-and now Jonathan-didn’t have a tub of its own; washing facilities were down at the end of the hall. That didn’t bother him. For one thing, Goddard was a VIP, while he was just an enlisted man doing what he could for the war effort. For another, the plumbing on the Nebraska farm where he’d grown up had consisted of a well and a two-holer out back of the house. He didn’t take running water, cold or especially hot, for granted.

Walking up to his room was a lot more comfortable in winter than it had been in summertime, when you didn’t need to soak in the local springs to get hot and wet. As he headed down the hall toward room 429, he heard Jonathan kicking up a ruckus in there. He sighed and hurried a little faster. Barbara would be feeling harassed. So would the Lizard POWs who also lived on this floor.

When he opened the door, Barbara sent him a look that went from hunted to relieved when she saw who he was. She thrust the baby at him. “Would you try holding him, please?” she said. “No matter what I do, he doesn’t want to keep quiet.”

“Okay, hon,” he said. “Let’s see if there’s a burp hiding in there.” He got Jonathan up on his shoulder and started thumping the kid’s back. He did it hard enough to make it sound as if he were working out on the drums. Barbara, who had a gentler touch, frowned at that the way she usually did, but he got results with it. As now-Jonathan gave forth with an almost baritone belch and a fair volume of half-digested milk. Then he blinked and looked much happier with himself.

“Oh, good!” Barbara exclaimed when the burp came out. She dabbed at Sam’s uniform tunic with a diaper. “There. I got most of it, but I’m afraid you’re going to smell like sour milk for a while.”