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The doctor started to replace the bandage, then paused and glanced toward Yeager. “Think I ought to dust the wound with sulfa? Can Earth germs live on a thing from God knows where? Or would I be running a bigger risk of poisoning the Lizard?”
Again, Yeager’s first thought was, How should I know? Why was a doctor asking medical questions of a minor league outfielder without a high school diploma? Then he realized that when it came to Lizards, he might not know a whole lot less than Finkelstein. After a few seconds’ thought, he answered, “Seems to me they must come from a planet that isn’t too different than ours, or they wouldn’t want Earth in the first place. So maybe our germs would like them.”
“Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I’ll do it.” The doctor poured the yellow powder into the wound, patted the bandage down. It clung as well as it had before.
Colonel Collins walked to the back of the bus. “How are you doing, Doctor?”
“Well enough, sir, thank you.” Finkelstein nodded at Yeager. “This is one sharp man you have here.”
“Is he? Good.” Collins headed up to the bus door again.
“I’m sorry, soldier,” the doctor said. “I don’t even know your name.”
“I’m Sam Yeager. Pleased to meet you, sir.”
“There’s a kick in the head for you-I’m Sam Finkelstein. Well, Sam, shall we see what we can do for this other Lizard here?”
“Okay by me, Sam,” Yeager said.
Of all the places Jens Larssen had ever expected to end up when he set out from Chicago to warn the government how important the Metallurgical Laboratory’s work was, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, might have been the last. Staying at the same hotel as the German charge d’affaires hadn’t been high on his list of things to anticipate, either.
But here he was at the Greenbrier Hotel by the famous springs, and here-again-was Hans Thomsen. The German had been interned here, along with diplomats from Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Japan, when the United States entered the war. Thomsen had sailed back to Germany on a Swedish ship, lit up to keep it safe from U-boats, in exchange for Americans interned in Germany.
Now Thomsen was back again. In fact, he had a room right across the hall from Larssen’s. Down in the hotel dining room, he’d boomed, in excellent English, “I was worried going home, yes. But coming back here once more, on a dreadful little scow too small and ugly, God be thanked, for the Lizards to notice, then I was not worried. I was far too seasick to think for a moment of being worried.”
Everyone who heard him laughed uproariously, Jens included. Having Thomsen back in the United States was a forcible reminder that humanity had more important things to do than slaughtering itself. It still made Larssen nervous. As far as he was concerned, Germany remained an enemy even if it happened to be forced into the same camp as the United States. It was the same feeling he’d had about allying with the Russians against Hitler, but even stronger here.
Not everybody in White Sulphur Springs agreed with him, not by a long shot. A lot of important people were here, fled from Washington when the government dispersed in the face of Lizard air raids. Larssen had heard that Roosevelt was here. He didn’t know whether it was true. Every new rumor put the President somewhere else: back in Washington, in New York, in Philadelphia (W. C. Fields would not have approved), even in San Francisco (though how he was supposed to travel cross-country with the Lizards running loose was beyond Jens).
Larssen sighed, walked over to the sink in his room to see if he’d get any hot water. He waited and waited, but the stream stayed cold. Sighing, he scraped whiskers off his face with that cold water, lather from a hotel-sized bar of Lifebuoy soap, and a razor blade that had definitely seen better days. The resulting nicks tempted him to cultivate a beard.
His suits were wrinkled. Even his ties were wrinkled. He’d spent a long time getting here, and service at the hotel ranged from lousy on down. At that, he knew damned well he was lucky. No one in Washington or White Sulphur Springs had heard from Gerald Sebring, who’d headed east from Chicago by train instead of by car.
Larssen stooped to tie his shoelaces. One of them broke when he pulled at it. Swearing under his breath, he got down on one knee and tied the lace back together, then made his bow. It was ugly; but he’d already found out how badly picked over the Greenbrier’s little sundries store was: it had been plundered first by Axis diplomats and then by invading American bureaucrats. He knew the place didn’t have shoelaces. Maybe somebody in town did.
His nose wrinkled when he went out into the hail. Along with the brimstone odor of the springs, it still smelled of the dogs and cats the interned diplomats had brought with them from Washington. Really gives me an appetite for breakfast, he thought as he headed downstairs to the dining room.
Breakfast didn’t rate much of an appetite. His choice was between stale toast with jam and corn flakes floating in reconstituted powdered milk. Either one cost $3.75. Jens suspected he might have to declare bankruptcy before he got out of White Sulphur Springs. He’d been making good money by wartime standards-great money by the lean standards of the 1930s-but inflation headed straight for the roof when the Lizards landed. Demand stayed high, and they played merry hell with supply.
He ended up eating toast; one taste of the powdered milk had been enough to last him a lifetime. He left a niggardly tip, and begrudged even that. Escaping quickly, before the waiter could see how he’d been stiffed, Larssen got his car and drove five miles into town, to the Methodist church to which he’d been directed to report.
White Sulphur Springs was a beautiful little town. It had probably been even more beautiful before herds of olive-drab trucks fouled the air with their exhaust and honked at each other like bellowing bulls disputing the right of way. The antiaircraft guns which blossomed on every streetcorner also did little for the decor.
But even so, the rolling, green-clad slopes of the Alleghenies, the clear water of nearby Sherwood Lake, and the fuming springs that gave the place its name made it easy for Jens to understand why White Sulphur Springs had been a presidential resort in the days before the Civil War, when it was part of Virginia and no one had ever imagined West Virginia would become a separate state.
On the outside, the white-painted church with its tall steeple maintained the serenity the town sought to project. One step through the door told Larssen he had entered another world. The pastor retained half his office, but that was all. From everywhere else came the clatter of typewriters, the raucous chatter of people with too much to do and not enough time to do it, and the purposeful clomp of government-issue footgear on a hardwood floor.
A harassed corporal looked up from whatever he was typing. Seeing a veritable civilian before him, he dispensed with even military politeness: “Watcha want, mac? Make it snappy.”
“I have a nine o’clock appointment to see Colonel Groves.” Larssen looked down at his watch. He was five minutes early.
“Oh.” The corporal visibly shifted gears as he reassessed this civilian’s likely importance. A good piece of his big-city tough-guy accent disappeared when he spoke again: “You want to come along with me, sir?”
“Thank you.” Larssen followed the noncom through the pews on which more enlisted men were awkwardly working rather than praying, crabwise down a hallway pinched by mountains of file boxes that clung like clots to either wall, and into what had been the pastor’s sanctum. New plywood partitions restricted that worthy to a fraction of his former domain-the fraction thereof that lacked a telephone.
Colonel Leslie Groves sat behind a desk that held said telephone. He employed the instrument with vim and gusto: “What the hell do you mean, you can’t ship those tracks up to Detroit?… So the bridge is out and the road has a hole in it? So what? Get ’em on a barge. The Lizards aren’t blasting half the shipping they might, the stupid bastards. We have to get those tanks made, or we can kiss everything good-bye… I’ll call you tonight, so I can keep up with what you’re doing. Get it done, Fred, I don’t care how.?
??
He hung up with no more of a good-bye than that, fixed Larssen with an intense blue stare. “You’re from that Chicago project.” It was not a question. A flick of the colonel’s left hand dismissed the corporal.
“That’s right.” Larssen wondered how much Groves knew about it, and how much he ought to tell him. More than he wanted to; he was already sure of that. “After Berlin, sir, you have to know how important that project is. And the Lizards are advancing on Chicago.”
“Son, we all got troubles,” Groves rumbled. He was a big man with auburn hair cut short, a thin mustache, and blunt, competent features. He filled the pastor’s chair to overflowing and sat well back from the desk; a hefty belly kept him from getting any closer.
“I know it,” Jens said. “I mean, I drove here from Chicago, after all.”
“Sit down; tell me about that,” Groves urged. “I’ve been holed up here almost since the Lizards came. I ought to know more about the world outside than what I can find out over a phone line.” As if on cue, the telephone jangled. “Excuse me.”
