Tilting the Balance

“Control what you can, know what you can’t, and don’t worry about it. ” Lucille nodded. “It’s a good way to live. ”

Before Mutt could answer, a burst of firing came from the front line. “That’s Lizard small arms, ” be said, breaking into a trot and then into a run. “I better get back there. ” He was afraid they’d need Lucille’s talents, too, but he didn’t say that, any more than he would have told a pitcher he had a no-hitter going. You didn’t want to put the jinx on.

Running through the corn made his heart pound in his throat, partly from exertion and partly for fear he’d blunder in among the Lizards and get himself shot before he even knew they were there. But the sound of the gunfire and a pretty good sense of direction brought him back to the right place. He flopped down in the sweet-smelling dirt, scraped out a bare minimum of a foxhole with his entrenching tool, and started firing short bursts from his tommy gun toward the racket from the Lizards’ automatics. Not for the first time, he wished he had a weapon like theirs. As he’d said to Lucille Potter, though, some things you couldn’t do anything about.

The Lizards were pushing hard; firing started to come from both flanks as well as straight ahead; “We gotta fall back, ” Mutt yelled, hating the words. “Dracula, you ‘n’ me’ll stay here to cover the rest. When they’re clear, we back up, too. ”

“Right, Sarge. ” To show he had the idea, Dracula Szabo squeezed off a burst from his BAR.

When you advanced, if you were smart, you split into groups, one group firing while the other one moved. You had to be even smarter to carry out that fire-and-move routine while you gave ground. What you wanted to do at a time like that was run like hell. It was the worst thing you could do, but you always had a devil of a time making your body believe it.

The guys in Daniels’ squad were veterans; they knew what they had to do. As soon as they found decent positions, they hunkered down and started firing again. “Back! ” Mutt shouted to Szabo. Shooting as they went, they retreated through the rest of the squad. The Lizards kept pressing. Another couple of rounds of fire and fall back brought the Americans into the town of Danforth.

It had held three or four hundred people before the fighting started; if the locals had any brains, they’d abandoned their trim white and green houses a while ago. A lot of the houses weren’t so trim any more, not after artillery and air strikes. The sour odor of old smoke hung in the air.

Mutt pounded on a front door. When nobody answered, he kicked it open and ran inside. One of the windows gave him a good field of fire to the south, the direction from which the Lizards were coming. He crouched down behind it and got ready to give them a warm welcome.

“Mind if I join you? ” Lucille Potter’s question made him jump and start to point his gun toward the doorway, but he stopped in a hurry and waved her in.

Freight-train noises overhead and a series of loud bursts a few hundred yards south of town made Mutt whoop with delight “About time our artillery got off the dime, ” he said. “Feed the Lizards a taste of what they give us. ”

Before long, northbound roars and whistles balanced those coming from out of the north. “They’re awfully quick with counterbattery fire, ” Lucille said. “Awfully accurate, too. ”

“Yeah, I know, ” Daniels said. “But-heck, come to that, all their equipment is better’n ours-artillery and planes and tanks and even the rifles their dogfaces carry. Whenever they want to bad enough, they can move us out of the way. But it’s like they don’t want to all the time. ”

“Unless I miss my guess, they’re stretched thin, ” Lucille Potter answered. “They aren’t just fighting in Illinois or fighting against the United States; they’re trying to take over the whole world. And the world is a big place. Trying to hold it all down can’t be easy for them. ”

“Lord, I hope it’s not. ” Grateful for talk to help get him through the lull without worrying about what would happen when it stopped, Mutt gave her an admiring glance. “Miss Lucille, you got a good way of lookin’ at things. ” He hesitated, then added, “Matter of fact, you look right good yourself. ”

“Mutt…” Lucille hesitated, too. Finally, with exasperation in her voice, she said, “Is this really the right time or place to be talking about things like that? ”

“Far as I can see, you don’t think there’s ever any right time or place, ” Mutt said, also with some annoyance. “I ain’t no caveman, Miss Lucille, I just-”

The lull ended at that moment: some of the Lizard artillery, instead of going after its American opposite number, started coming in on Danforth. The rising whistle of shells warned Mutt they were going to hit just about on top of him. He threw himself flat even before Lucille yelled “Get down! ” and also jammed her face into the floorboards.

The barrage put Daniels in mind of France in 1918. The windows of the house, those that weren’t broken already, blew in, scattering broken glass all over the room. A glittering shard dug into the floor and stuck like a spear, maybe six inches from Mutt s nose. He stared at it, cross-eyed.

The shells kept falling till the blast of each was lost in the collective din. Bricks fell from the chimney and crashed on the roof. Shell fragments punched through the walls of the house as if they were made of cardboard. In spite of his helmet, Mutt felt naked. You could take only so many heavy shellings before something in you started to crack. You didn’t want it to happen, but it did. Once you got your quota, you weren’t worth a whole lot.