Tilting the Balance

“Ah, capital,” Roundbush said in relief. “That means I can include my distinguished gray-haired superior in that letter to my MP; perhaps I can arrange to have his tongue ruled a noxious substance and shipped out of the country, or at least possibly rabid and so subject to six months’ quarantine.”

Julian Peary was not about to let himself be upstaged: “If we inquire at all closely into what your tongue has been doing, Basil old boy, I dare say we’d find it needs more quarantine than a mere six months.” Roundbush had turned pink at Hipple’s gibe; now he went brick-red.

“Torpedoed at the waterline,” Goldfarb whispered to Leo Horton. “He’s sinking fast.” The other radarman grinned and nodded.

Hipple turned to the two of them. Goldfarb was afraid he’d overheard, but he just said, “How are we coming at fitting a radar set into the Meteor fuselage, gentlemen?”

“As long as we don’t fly with fuel tanks in there, we’ll be fine, sir,” Goldfarb answered, deadpan. Hipple gave him a fishy stare, then laughed-warily-and nodded. Goldfarb went on, “Horton, though, has made some exciting finds about which part of the circuitry controls signal amplitude.”

He’d expected that to excite Hipple, who had been almost as eager to learn about radar as he had been to tinker with his beloved jet engines. But Ripple just asked, “Is it something we can apply immediately?”

“No, sir,” Horton answered. “I know what they do, but not how they do it.”

“Then we’ll just have to leave it,” Ripple said. “For now, we must be as utilitarian as possible.”

Goldfarb and Horton exchanged glances. That didn’t sound like the Fred Ripple they’d come to know. “What’s up, sir?”’ Goldfarb asked. Roundbush and the other RAF officers who worked directly under the group captain also paid close attention.

But Hipple just said, “Time is not running in our favor at the moment,” and buried his nose in an engineering drawing. ‘Time for what?” Goldfarb asked Horton in a tiny voice. The other radarman shrugged. One more thing to worry about Goldfarb thought, and went back to work.

Except for being illuminated only by sunlight, Dr. Hiram Sharp’s office in Ogden didn’t seem much different from any other Jens Larssen had visited. Dr. Sharp himself, a round little man with gold-rimmed glasses, looked at Jens over the- tops of them and said, “Son, you’ve got the clap.”

“I knew that, thanks,” Jens said. Somehow he hadn’t expected such forthrightness from a doctor in Mormon, Utah. He supposed doctors saw everything, even here. After that hesitation, he went on, “Can you do anything about it?”

“Not much,” Dr. Sharp answered, altogether too cheerfully for Jens’ taste. “If I had sulfa, I could give you some of that and cure you like nobody’s business. If I had acriflavine, I could squirt it up your pipe in a bulb syringe. You wouldn’t like that for beans, but it would do you some good. But since I don’t, no point fretting over it.”

The mere thought of somebody squirting medicine up his pipe made Larssen want to cover his crotch with both hands.

“Well, what do you have that will do me some good?” he demanded.

Dr. Sharp opened a drawer, pulled out several little foil-wrapped packets, and handed them to him. “Rubbers,” he said, as if Jens couldn’t figure that out for himself. “Keep you from passing it along for a while, anyway.” He pulled out a fountain pen and a book full of ruled pages. “Where’d you get it? You know? Have to keep records, even with everything all gone to hell these days.”

“A waitress named Mary, back in Idaho Springs, Colorado.”

“Well, well.” The doctor scribbled a note. “You do get around, don’t you, son? You know this here waitress’ last name?”

“It was, uh, Cooley, I think.”

“You think? You got to know her pretty well some ways, though, didn’t you?” Dr. Sharp whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “Okay, never mind that for now. You screw anybody else between there and here?”

“No.” Jens looked down at the rubbers in his hand. Next time he did end up in the sack with a woman, he might use one… or he might not. After what the bitches had done to him, he figured he was entitled to get some of his own back. “Just been a Boy Scout since you got your dose, have you?” Sharp said. “Bet you wish you were a Boy Scout when you got it, too.”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Larssen said dryly. The doctor chuckled. Jens went on, “Truth is, I’ve been moving too much to spend time chasing skirt. I’m on government business.”

“Who isn’t, these days?” Dr. Sharp said. “Government’s just about the last thing left that’s working-and it isn’t working what you’d call well. God only knows how we’re supposed to hold an election for President next year, what with the Lizards holding down half the country and beating the tar out of the half.”