Upsetting the Balance

“I don’t know,” Moishe said. “I’ve never seen one before. But I don’t know what else it could be, either. Only the one blast and-that.” He nodded toward the glowing, growing cloud of dust and fire. “If God is kind, I’ll never see such a thing again.”

Captain Mavrogordato pointed out over the water. A large wave was approaching theNaxos at unnatural speed, as if flying through the air rather than being part of the sea. The freighter’s bow rose sharply, then plunged into the trough behind. The wave sped past them, out toward Corsica and Sardinia and Sicily. Moishe wondered if it would wash up against distant Gibraltar.

Mavrogordato shouted orders in Greek. TheNaxos’ engine began to work harder, the deck thrummed under Moishe’s feet and thick clouds of black smoke rose from the stack. Those clouds, though, were misshapen dwarfs when set alongside the one still swelling above Rome. Moishe could not tear his eyes away from that terrible beauty. He wondered how many people-and how many Lizards-had perished in the blast.

“There goes the Pope,” Mavrogordato said, one step ahead of him. “I’m no Catholic, but that’s a hell of a thing to do to him.”

How the Poles would wail when the news reached them! And, if they could find a way, they’d blame it on the Jews. This time, though, the Lizards and the Nazis looked to be much more likely candidates. Now, too, the Jews had guns (Moishe wondered briefly bow Mordechai Anielewicz fared these days). If the Poles started trouble, they’d get trouble back.

The bow of theNaxos began swinging away from what had been its destination. Russie glanced toward Mavrogordato, a question in his eyes. The merchant captain said, “Nobody’s going to take delivery of what we were bringing, not here, not now. I want to get as far away as I can, as fast as I can. If the Lizards were hunting ships before, what will they do after this?”

“Gevalt!”Moishe said; he hadn’t thought of that.

Maybe the Greek had heard that bit of Yiddish before, or maybe tone and context let him figure out what it meant. He said, “It’ll be better once we get away from Italy; Lizard planes don’t range quite so widely in the eastern half of the Mediterranean as they do here. Only trouble is, I’m going to have to coal once before we make Athens. I would have done it at Rome, but now-”

“Will they let you go into an Italian port after this?” Moishe asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Mavrogordato answered, “and that’s to try it. I know some people-and some Lizards-in Naples. I could unload the ginger there,theou thelontos, and take on the fuel I need to get you to where you’re going. All we have to worry about is getting sunk before we make it that far. Well, friend, did you want life to be dull?”

“What difference does it make?” Moishe said. “Life hasn’t cared what I want ever since the war started.” After a moment’s thought, the Greek solemnly nodded.

Like all the other landcruiser drivers at the Siberian base, Ussmak had installed grids of electrically heated wire over his vision slits. They melted the frozen water that accumulated on the slits and let him see what he was doing. Nejas had mounted similar grids over the panoramic periscopes in the cupola. The local mechanics had slapped white paint on the landcruiser, too, to make it less visible as it ranged across the icy landscape.

Ussmak let his mouth fall slightly open in a bitter laugh. Making the landcruiser less visible was a long way from making it invisible. The Big Uglies might not realize it was there quite so soon as they would have otherwise, but they’d get the idea too quickly to suit him any which way.

“Steer a couple of hundredths closer to due south, driver,” Nejas said.

“It shall be done.” Ussmak adjusted his course. Along with two others, his landcruiser was rumbling down to smash a Soviet convoy trying to cross from one end of the break in their railroad to the other. The Russkis had probably hoped to get away with it while camouflaged by the usual Siberian blizzards, but a spell of good weather had betrayed them. Now they would pay.

Clear weather,Ussmak corrected himself.Not goodweather. From what the males unlucky enough to be longtimers at the base said, good weather in Siberia was measured in moments each long Tosevite year.

“Let’s slaughter them and get back to the barracks,” Ussmak said. “The faster we do that, the happier I’ll be.” He was warm enough inside the landcruiser, but the machine was buttoned up at the moment, too. If the action got heavy, Nejas, good landcruiser commander that he was, would open up the cupola and look around-and all that lovely heat would get sucked right out All the crewmales had on their cold-weather gear in case of that dreadful eventuality.

Wham!Ussmak felt as if he’d been kicked in the side of the head. The round from the Soviet landcruiser hadn’t penetrated the side armor of his own machine, but it did make the inside of the land-cruiser ring like a bell.