Читаем Upsetting the Balance полностью

And Roundbush had not merely survived. The Distinguished Flying Cross he wore on the front of his tunic testified to that. He wasn’t commonly given to boasting-most often when chatting up a barmaid-but Goldfarb had heath he’d brought down one of the Lizards’ immense transport aircraft, the ones that, when roaring overhead, looked as if they could carry a regiment. They made the Dakotas the RAF had started getting from the Americans not long before the Lizards came seem like children’s models of wood and paper by comparison-and the Dakotas had far outclassed anything the British had before them.

That kill had earned Roundbush his DFC. What he’d said about it was to the point: “Pack of ruddy fools back in London. The lasses must hate them, one and all-they think size is more important than technique. Even if it was the size of a whale, the transport couldn’t shoot back. Their fighter planes are another piece of business altogether.”

Goldfarb looked out at the rain splashing down from a leaden sky and said, “If the Lizards had been smart, they would have come now. We’d have been all but blind to them in the air, what with the autumn clouds and mist and rain, but their radars are good enough to let them carry on as if this were high summer.”

“They don’t fancy cold weather,” Roundbush said, “and I’ve heard it said they invaded us to get some of their own back after the Reds lit off that explosive-metal bomb under their scaly snouts.” He snorted. “Letting the politicians set strategy for their own reasons will make you sorry, no matter whether you’re a human being or a Lizard.”

“Now that we’ve won, I’m glad they did it.” Goldfarb waved to the electronic apparatus filling the shelves and tables of the room in which he and Roundbush labored. Some of it, like the gear they’d been analyzing at Bruntingthorpe, was wreckage, but some was intact, taken from aircraft and vehicles either captured after minimal damage or else abandoned in the retreat.

Basil Roundbush’s wave was similar but more extravagant, seeming to take in not just what was in the room but all the Lizard equipment the British had captured. He said, “As I see it, we have two jobs of work ahead of us. The first is putting to use the devices we’ve captured that are still in working order. After that comes cannibalizing the damaged ones for parts so that, say, we can build two working ones from the hulks of four.”

“Understanding how the bleeding things work as well as what they do might also be a good notion,” Goldfarb observed.

To his surprise, Roundbush shook his head. “Not necessary, not insofar as what we’re about now. The Red Indians hadn’t the faintest notion how to smelt iron or make gunpowder, but when they got muskets in their hands, they had no trouble shooting at the colonials in America. That’s where we are right now: we need to use the Lizards’ devices against them. Understanding can come at its own pace.”

“The Red Indians never did understand how firearms work,” Goldfarb said, “and look what became of them.”

“The Red Indians didn’t have the concept of research and development, and we do,” Roundbush said. “For that matter, we were on the edge of our own discoveries in these areas before the Lizards came. We had radar: not so good as what the Lizards use, I grant you, but we had it-you’d know more of that than I. And both we and the Jerries seem to have been playing about with the notion of jet propulsion. I’d love to fly one of their Messerschmitts, see how it stands against a Meteor.”

“I wonder where Fred Hipple is these days,” Goldfarb said, and then, more somberly, “I wonder if he’s alive.”

“I fear not,” Roundbush said. He too sounded more serious than was his wont. “I’ve not seen the little fellow, nor heard word of him, since the Lizards raided Bruntingthorpe. My guess is that he was one of the officers killed in the barracks. He wasn’t among those who reassembled afterwards: that much I know.”

“Well, neither was I,” Goldfarb answered. “I got separated in the fighting and ended up in the army.”

“They’d not have commandeered a group captain in quite so cavalier a fashion, nor would Fred Hipple have been shy about pointing out the error of their ways had they made the attempt,” Roundbush said. Then he sighed. “On the other hand, they might not have listened to him. No one paid the jet engine much heed before the war, and that’s a melancholy fact.”

“Why not?” Goldfarb asked. “Do you know, sir? It seems so obviously a better way of doing things. Try as you will, you’ll never tweak a Spitfire to the point where it can match a Meteor’s performance.”