Tilting the Balance

Schultz, Sholudenko, and Karpov stood on the ground waving to her. She waved back, wondering if she would ever see them again. Suddenly, instead of being, the one who flew dangerous combat missions, she was the one who could escape the oncoming Lizards: If they were only an hour away, they had a good chance of overrunning the humans trying to escape from the air base.

She checked her airspeed indicator and her watch At the U-2’s piddling turn of speed, Collective Farm 139 was about half an hour away. She hoped she’d be able to spot the new base, and then hoped she wouldn’t: if the maskirovka was bad, the Lizards would notice it.

Of course, if the maskirovka was good, she’d fly around and around and probably have to set down in the wrong place because she was running out of fuel. Airspeed indicator, watch, and compass were not the most sophisticated navigational instruments around, but they were what she had.

A Lizard warplane shot by, far overhead. The howl of its jet engines put her in mind of wolves deep in the forest baying at the moon. She patted the fabric sides of her U-2. It was also an effective combat aircraft, no matter how puny and absurd alongside the jet. It had seemed puny and absurd alongside an Me-l09, too.

She was still flying along when the Lizard plane came shrieking back on the reciprocal to its former course. She wasn’t even done shifting bases, and it had already finished its mission of destruction.

Speed. The word tolled in Ludmila’s mind, a mournful bell. The Lizards had more of it at their disposal than people did: their tanks rolled faster, their planes flew faster. Because of that, they held the initiative, at least while the weather was good. Fighting them was like fighting the Germans, only worse. Nobody ever won a war by reacting to what the other fellow did.

A bullet cracked past her head, rudely slaughtering that line of thought. She shook her fist at the ground, not that it would do any good. The stupid muzhik down there was no doubt convinced that anything so clever as an airplane had to belong to the enemy. Had Stalin had the chance to continue peacefully building socialism in the Soviet Union, such ignorance might have become a thing of the past in a generation’s time. As it was…

A peasant working in a newly sown field of barley took off his jacket and waved it as she buzzed over him. The jacket had a red lining. Ludmila started to fly on by, then exclaimed, “Bozhemoi, I’m an idiot!” The Red Air Force wouldn’t send up a flare, literally or figuratively, to let her know exactly where the new base was. If they did, the Lizards would make sure said base didn’t last long. She could credit good navigation-or more likely good luck-for finding her target at all.

She wheeled the Kukuruznik through the sky. As she bled off speed and what little altitude she had, she spotted marks that cut across plowed furrows. They told her where planes were landing and taking off. She brought the U-2 around one more time, landed it in more or less the same place.

As if by magic, men appeared where she had been willing to swear only grain grew. They sprinted toward the biplane, bawling, “Out! Out! Out!”

Ludmila scrambled out. As her booted feet dug into the still-muddy ground, she began, “Senior Lieutenant Gorbunova reporting as-”

“Tell us all that shit later,” said one of the fellows who was hauling the U-2 away toward concealment, though of what sort Ludmila couldn’t imagine. He turned to a comrade. “Tolya, get her under cover, too.”

Tolya needed a shave and smelled as if he hadn’t seen soap and water in a long time. Ludmila didn’t hold it against him; she was probably just as rank, but didn’t notice it on herself any longer. “Come on, Comrade Pilot,” Tolya said. If he noticed she was a woman, or cared, he didn’t let on.

Some of his friends unrolled a broad stretch of matting that so cunningly mimicked the surrounding ground, she hadn’t even noticed it (she was glad she hadn’t tried taxiing across it). It covered a trench wide and deep enough to swallow an airplane. As soon as the Kukuruznik vanished into the trench, the mats went back on.

Tolya led Ludmila toward some battered buildings perhaps half a kilometer away. “We don’t have to do anything special for people,” he explained, “not with the stuff for the kolkhozniki still standing.”

“I’ve flown from bases where people lived underground, too,” Ludmila said.

“We didn’t have much digging time here,” her guide said, “and machines come first.”

Somebody unrolled another strip of matting and ducked under it carrying a lighted torch. “Is he starting a fire, down there?” Ludmila asked. Tolya nodded. “Why?” she said.

“More maskirovka,” he answered. “We found out the Lizards like to paste things that are warm. We don’t know how they spot them, but they do. If we give them some they can’t really hurt-”

“They waste munitions.” Ludmila nodded. “Ochen khorosho-very good.”