Tilting The Balance (6 page)

“He is a better mechanic than anyone else at the airstrip. Germans understand machinery better than we do, I think. But as far as I am concerned, he is only a mechanic,” Ludmila insisted.

“He is a German. They are both Germans.” So much for Lidov’s words about the solidarity of peoples with progressive economic systems. His flat, hard tone made Ludmila think of a trip to Siberia on an unheated cattle car, or of a bullet in the back of the neck. The
NKVD
man went on, “It is likely that Comrade Molotov will dispense with the services of a pilot who forms such un-Soviet attachments.”

“I am sorry to hear that, Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel,” Ludmila said, though she knew Molotov would have been glad to dispense with the services of any pilot, given his attitude about flying. But she insisted, “I have no attachments to Georg Schultz save those of the struggle against the Lizards.”

“And to Colonel Jager?” Lidov said with the air of a man calling checkmate. Ludmila did not answer, she knew she was checkmated. The lieutenant-colonel spoke as if pronouncing sentence: “Because of this conduct of yours, you are to be returned to your former duties without promotion. Dismissed, Comrade Senior Lieutenant.”

Ludmila had been braced for ten years in the gulag and another five of internal exile. She needed a moment to take in what she’d just heard. She jumped to her feet. “I serve the Soviet state, Comrade Lieutenant-Colonel!” Whether you believe me or not, she added to herself.

“Prepare yourself for immediate departure for the airport,” Lidov said, as if her mere presence polluted Moscow. An
NKVD
flunky must have been listening outside the door or to a concealed microphone, for in under half a minute a fellow in green collar tabs brought in a canvas bag full of her worldly goods.

Before long, a troika was taking her from the Kremlin to the airport on the edge of Moscow. The sleigh’s runners and the hooves of the three horses that drew it kicked up snow gone from white to gray thanks to city soot. Only when her beloved little U-2 biplane came into view on the runway did she realize she’d been returned to this duty, which she wanted more than any other, as if it were a punishment. She chewed on that a long time, even after she was in the air.

“I’m bloody lost,” David Goldfarb said as he pedaled his
RAF
bicycle through the countryside south of Leicester. The radarman came to an intersection. He looked for signs to tell him where he was – and looked in vain, because the signs taken down in 1940 to hinder a feared German invasion had never gone back up.

He was trying to get to the Research and Development Test Flying Aerodrome at Bruntingthorpe, to which he’d been ordered to report. South from the village ofPeatling Magna, his directions read. The only trouble was, nobody had bothered to tell him (for all he knew, nobody was aware) two roads ran south from Peatling Magna. He’d taken the right-hand track, and was beginning to regret it.

Peatling Magna hadn’t looked magna enough to boast two roads when he rolled through it; he wondered if there could possibly be a Peatling Minima, and, if so, whether it was visible to the naked eye.

Ten minutes of steady pedaling brought him into another village. He looked around hopefully for anything resembling an aerodrome, but nothing he saw matched that description. A matronly woman in a scarf and a heavy wool coat was trudging down the street. “Begging your pardon, madam,” he called to her, “but is this Bruntingthorpe?”

The woman’s head whipped around – his London accent automatically made him out to be a stranger. She relaxed, a little, when she saw he was in
RAF
dark blue and thus had an excuse for poking his good-sized nose into a place where he didn’t belong. But even though she used the broader vowels of the East Midlands, her voice was sharp as she answered, “Bruntingthorpe? I should say not, young man. This is Peatling Parva. Bruntingthorpe lies down that road.” She pointed east.

“Thank you, madam,” Goldfarb said gravely. He bent low over his bicycle, rode away fast so she wouldn’t hear him start to snicker. Not Peatling Minima – Peatling Parva. The name fit; it had looked a pretty parva excuse for a village. Now,

though, he was on the right track and – he looked at his watch – near enough on time that he could blame his tardiness on the train’s getting into Leicester late, which it had.

He hadn’t gone far toward Bruntingthorpe when he heard a screaming roar, saw an airplane streak across the sky at what seemed an impossible speed. Alarm and fury coursed through him – had he come here just in time to see the Lizards bomb and wreck the aerodrome?

Then he played in his mind the film of the aircraft he’d just seen. After the Lizards destroyed the radar station at Dover, he’d been an aircraft spotter the old-fashioned way, with binoculars and field telephone, for a while. He recognized the Lizards’ fighters and fighter-bombers. This aircraft, even if it flew on jets, didn’t match any of them. Either they’d come up with something new or the plane was English.

Hope replaced anger. Where was he more likely to find English jet aircraft than at a research and development aerodrome? He wondered why the powers that be wanted him there. He’d find out soon.

The village of Bruntingthorpe was no more prepossessing than either of the Peatlings. Not far away, though, a collection of tents, corrugated-iron Nissen huts, and macadamized runways marred the gently rolling fields that surrounded the hamlets. A soldier with a tin hat and a Sten gun demanded to see Goldfarb’s papers when he pedaled up to the barbed-wire fence and gate around the
RAF
facility.

He surrendered them, but could not help remarking, “Seems a fairish waste of time, if anyone wants to know. Not bloody likely I’m a Lizard in disguise, is it?”

“Never can tell, chum,” the soldier answered. “Besides, you might be a Jerry in disguise, and we’re not dead keen on that even if the match there won’t be played to a finish.”

“Can’t say I blame you.” Goldfarb’s parents had got out of Russian-ruled Poland to escape pogroms against the Jews. By all accounts, the Nazis’ pogroms after they conquered Poland had been a hundred times worse, bad enough for the Jews there to make common cause with the Lizards against the Germans. Now, from the reports that leaked out, the Lizards were beginning to make things tough on the Jews. Goldfarb sighed. Being a Jew wasn’t easy anywhere.

The sentry opened the gate, waved him through. He rode over to the nearest Nissen hut, got off his bicycle, pushed down the kickstand, and went into the hut. Several
RAF
men were gathered round a large table there, studying some drawings by the light of a paraffin lamp hung overhead. “Yes?” one of them said.

Goldfarb stiffened to attention: the casual questioner, though just a couple of inches over five feet tall, wore the four narrow stripes of a group captain. Saluting, Goldfarb gave his name, specialization, and service number, then added, “Reporting as ordered sir!”

The officer returned the salute. “Good to have you with us, Goldfarb. We’ve had excellent reports of you, and we’re confident you’ll make a valuable member of the team. I am Group Captain Fred Hippie; I shall be your commanding officer. My speciality is jet propulsion. Here we have Wing Commander Peary, Flight Lieutenant Kennan, and Flight Officer Roundbush.”

The junior officers all towered over Hippie, but he dominated nonetheless. He was a dapper little fellow who held himself very erect; he had slicked-down wavy hair, a closely trimmed mustache, and heavy eyebrows. He spoke with almost professional precision: “I am told that you have been flying patrols aboard a radar-equipped Lancaster bomber in an effort to detect Lizard aircraft prior to their reaching our shores.”

“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” Goldfarb said.

“Capital. We shall make great use of your experience, I assure you. What we are engaged in here, Radarman, is developing a jet-propelled fighter aeroplane to be similarly equipped with radar, thus facilitating the acquisition and tracking of targets and, it is to be hoped, their destruction.”

“That’s – splendid, sir.” Goldfarb had always thought of radar as a defensive weapon, one to use to detect the enemy and send properly armed planes after him. But to mount it on a fighter already formidably armed in its own right… He smiled. This was a project in which he would gladly take part.

Flight Officer Roundbush shook his head. He was as big and blond and blocky as Hippie was spare and dark. He said, “It’d be a lot more splendid if we could make the bloody thing fit in the space we have for it.”

“Which is, at the moment, essentially nil,” Ripple said with a rueful nod. “The jet fighter you may have seen taking off a few moments ago, that little Gloster Pioneer, is not what one would call lavishly equipped with room. It was, in fact, in the air more than a year before the Lizards came.” Bitterness creased his face. “As I had produced a working jet engine as far back as 1937,1 find the delay unfortunate, but no help for it now. When the Lizards descended, the Pioneer, though intended only as an experimental aircraft, was rushed into production to give us as much of an equalizer as was possible.”

“Might as well be tanks,” Roundbush murmured. Both the German invasion of France and the fighting in the North African desert had shown severe deficiencies in British armor, but the same old obsolescent models kept getting made because they did work, after a fashion, and England had no time to tool up to build anything better.

Group Captain Hippie shook his head. “It’s not as bad as that, Basil. We have managed to get the Meteor off the ground, after all.” He turned back to Goldfarb. “The Meteor is more a proper fighter than the Pioneer. The latter carries a single jet engine placed in back of the cockpit, whereas the former has two, of an improved design, mounted on the wings. The improvement in performance is considerable.”

“We also have a considerable production program laid on for the Meteor,” Flight Lieutenant Kennan said. “With luck, we should be able to put large numbers of jet fighters into the air by this time next year.”

“Yes, that’s so, Maurice,” Hippie agreed. “Of all the great powers, we and the Japanese have proved most fortunate, in that the Lizards did not invade either island nation. From the depths of space, I suppose we seemed too small to be worth troubling over. We’ve endured a worse blitz than the Jerries gave us, but life does go on despite a blitz. You should know that, eh, Goldfarb?”

“Yes, sir,” Goldfarb said. “It got a bit lively at Dover now and again, but we came through.” Though only a first-generation Englishman, he had a knack for understatement.

“Exactly.” Hippie’s nod was vehement, as If Goldfarb had said something important. The group captain went on, “As Flight Lieutenant Kennan and I have noted, our industrial capacity is still respectable, and we shall be able to get considerable numbers of Meteors airborne within a relatively short period. What point to it, however, if,once airborne, they are shot down again in short order?”

“Which is where you come in, Goldfarb,” Wing Commander Peary said. He was a slim fellow of medium height with sandy hair starting to go gray; his startling bass voice seemed better suited to a man of twice his bulk.

“Exactly,” Hippie said again. “Julian – the wing commander – means we need a chap with practical experience in airborne radar to help us plan its installation in Meteors as quickly as possible. Our pilots must be able to detect the enemy’s presence at a distance comparable to that at which he can ‘see’ us. D’you follow?”

“I believe so, sir,” Goldfarb said. “From what you say, I gather you intend the Meteor to have a two-man cockpit, pilot and radar observer. With the sets we have, sir, a pilot would be hard-pressed to tend to them and fly the aircraft at the same time.”

The four
RAF
officers exchanged glances. Goldfarb wondered if he’d just stuck his foot in it. That would be lovely, a lowly radarman affronting all his superiors within five minutes of arriving at a new posting.

Then Julian Peary rumbled, “This is a point which was much debated during the design of the aircraft. You may be interested to know that the view you just expressed is the one which prevailed.”

“I’m – pleased to hear that, sir,” Goldfarb said, with such transparent relief that Basil Roundbush, who seemed not overburdened with military formality, broke into a large, toothy grin.

Group Captain Hippie said, “Having established your level of expertise with such dispatch, Radarman, you give me hope you will also be able to assist us in reducing the size of the radar set to be carried. The fuselage of the Meteor is rather less spacious than the bomb bay of the Lancaster where you were previously ensconced. Perhaps you’ll have a look at these drawings with us so you can get a notion of the volume involved-”

Goldfarb stepped up to the table. With no more fanfare than that, he found himself a part of the team. He said, “I don’t know the solution to one problem we faced in the Lane.”

“Which is?” Ripple asked.

“Of course, the Lizards’ guided rockets can knock down a plane at longer range than any guns that we have can hit back. One of those rockets definitely seems to home in on our radar transmissions – probably the same sort the Lizards used to knock out our ground stations. Turning off the set made that particular rocket go wild, but it also left us blind – something I shouldn’t fancy if I were in the midst of a dogfight.”

“Indeed not.” Ripple nodded vigorously. “Even under ideal circumstances, the Meteor does not pull us level with the Lizards; it merely reduces our disadvantage. We remain deficient in speed and, as you say, in armament as well. To have to engage enemy aircraft without being able to detect them past the range of the pilot’s eye would be a dreadful handicap. I do not pretend to be an expert in radar; as I said, engines are my speciality.” He turned to the other officers. “Suggestions, gentlemen?”

Basil Roundbush said, “Can your airborne radar set emit more than one frequency, Goldfarb? If so, perhaps switching between one and the next might, ah, confuse the rocket and cause it to miss without losing radar capacity.”