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So much of it was glass that, although it was enclosed, she had a much better all-around view than she did in the open cabin of aKukuruznik. She wondered how she’d like flying without the slipstream blasting her in the face. Then she brought the candle up to the instrument panel and studied it in amazement. So many dials, so many gauges… how were you supposed to do any flying if you tried to keep track of all of them at once?
Everything was finished to a much higher standard than she was used to. She’d seen that before with German equipment; the Nazis made their machines as if they were fine watches. The Soviet approach, contrariwise, was to turn out as many tanks and planes and guns as possible. If they were crude, so what? They were going to get destroyed anyhow.
“You can fly it?” Ignacy repeated as Ludmila, rather reluctantly, descended from the cabin.
“Yes, I really think I can,” Ludmila answered. The candle was burning low. She and Ignacy started back out toward the netting under which they would leave. She glanced back at theStorch, hoping to be a rider worthy of her steed.
Soviet artillery boomed south of Moscow, flinging shells toward Lizard positions. Distantly, the reports reverberated even in the Kremlin. Listening to them, Iosef Stalin made a sour face. “The Lizards grow bolder, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” he said.
Vyacheslav Molotov did not care for the implication behind the words.It’s your fault, Stalin seemed to be saying. “As soon as we can produce another explosive-metal bomb, Iosef Vissarionovich, we shall remind them we deserve respect,” he answered.
“Yes, but when will that be?” Stalin demanded. “These so called scientists have been telling me lies all along. And if they don’t move faster, they will regret it-and so will you.”
“So will the entire Soviet Union, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said. Stalin always thought everyone lied to him. A lot of the time, people did, simply because they were too afraid to tell him the truth. Molotov had tried to tell him that, after using the bomb made from the Lizards’ explosive metal, the USSR would not be able to make anymore for a long time to come. He hadn’t wanted to listen. He seldom wanted to listen. Molotov went on, “It seems, however, that we shall soon have more of these weapons.”
“I have heard this promise before,” Stalin said. “I grow weary of it.When exactly will the new bombs appear in our arsenal?”
“The first by summer,” Molotov answered. That made Stalin sit up and take notice, as he’d thought it would. He continued, “Work at thekolkhoz has made remarkable progress lately, I’m happy to report.”
“Yes, Lavrenti Pavlovich tells me the same. I am glad to hear it,” Stalin said, his expression hooded. “I will be gladder to hear it if it turns out to be true.”
“It will,” Molotov said.It had better. But now he began to believe that it would-and so, evidently, did Beria. Getting that American toKolkhoz 118 had proved a master stroke. His presence and his ideas proved, sometimes painfully, just how far behind that of the capitalist West the Soviet nuclear research program had been. He took for granted both theory and engineering practice toward which Kurchatov, Flerov, and their colleagues were only beginning to grope. But, with his knowledge, the Soviet program was finally advancing at a decent pace.
“I am glad to hear we shall have these weapons,” Stalin repeated, “glad for your sake, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich.”
“I serve the Soviet Union!” Molotov said. He picked up the glass of vodka in front of him, knocked it back, and filled it again from the bottle that stood beside it. He knew what Stalin meant. If the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union did not soon have an explosive-metal bomb, they would soon have a new foreign commissar. He would get the blame for the failure, not Stalin’s Georgian crony, Beria. Stalin was not allergic to scribbling the initials VMN on the case files of those marked for liquidation, any more than Molotov had been.
“When we have our second bomb, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said, resolutely not thinking about what would happen-to the USSR and to him-if they didn’t have it, “I recommend that we use it at once.”
Stalin puffed on his pipe, sending up unreadable smoke signals. “With the first bomb, you advised against using it. Why now the change of mind?”
“Because when we used the first, we had no second with which to back it, and I feared that would become obvious,” Molotov answered. “Now, though, by using the new bomb, we not only prove we do have it, but also give the promise of producing many more after it.”
More nasty smoke rose. “There is method in this,” Stalin said with a slow nod. “Not only does it serve warning on the Lizards, it also warns the Hitlerites we are not to be trifled with. And it sends the same signal to the Americans. Not bad, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich.”
“First priority, as you say, is the Lizards.” Molotov stuck strictly to the business at hand. He had not let Stalin see his fear at the threat he’d received, though the General Secretary surely knew it was there. He did not show his relief, either. Again, sham or not, Stalin could hardly be ignorant of it. He played his subordinates’ emotions as if they were violin strings, and set one man against another like an orchestra conductor developing and exploiting opposing themes.
Now Stalin said, “In remembering the first priority, we must also remember it is not the only one. After the Lizards make peace with therodina-” He stopped and puffed meditatively on the pipe.
Molotov was used to listening for subtle nuances in the General Secretary’s speech. “After the Lizards make peace, Iosef Vissarionovich? Not, after the Lizards are defeated or exterminated or driven from this world?”
“Comrade Foreign Commissar, for your ears only, I do not think this within our power,” Stalin said. “We shall use the bomb-if the scientists deign to give it to us. We shall destroy whatever concentration of Lizards we can with it. They, in turn, will destroy one of our cities: this is the exchange they make. We cannot win at this rate. Our goal now must be to convince the aliens they cannot win, either, but face only ruin if the war goes on.”
“Under these circumstances, what terms do you intend to seek?” Molotov asked.How long do you intend to honor them? also came to mind, but he did not have the nerve to put that question to Stalin. The General Secretary was ruthlessly pragmatic; he’d wrung every bit of advantage he could from his pact with Hitler. The one thing he hadn’t expected there was Hitler’s outdoing him in ruthlessness and striking first. Any peace with the Lizards was liable to be similarly temporary.
“I want them out of the USSR,” Stalin said, “beyond the frontiers of 22 June 1941. Past that, everything is negotiable. Let the fascists and capitalists dicker for their own countries. If they fail, I shall not lift a finger to help them. They would not help me, as you know.”
Molotov nodded, first in agreement to that and then in slow consideration of the General Secretary’s reasoning. It fit with what Stalin had done in the past. Rather than trying to foment world revolution, as the Trotskyites urged, Stalin had concentrated on building socialism in one country. Now he would take the same approach toward building independent human power.
“The Lizards are imperialists,” Molotov said. “Can they be made to accept something less than their full, planned scope of conquest? This is my principal concern, Iosef Vissarionovich.”
“We can make the Soviet Union not worth their having.” By Stalin’s tone, he was prepared to do exactly what he said. Molotov did not think the General Secretary was bluffing. He had the will to do such a thing if he was given the ability. The physicists were giving him that ability. Could the Lizard fleetlord match the General Secretary’s driving will? The only humans Molotov had met who came up to that standard were Lenin, Churchill, and Hitler. Could Atvar come up to it? Stalin was betting the fate of his country that the alien could not.
Molotov would have been more confident had Stalin not so disastrously misjudged Hitler. He-and the USSR-had come close to perishing from that mistake. If he made a similar one against a foe with explosive-metal bombs,
neither he, the Soviet Union, nor Marxism-Leninism would survive.
How to tell Stalin of his misgivings? Molotov drained the second glass of vodka. He could find no way.
XI
Out to the front again. If it hadn’t been for the honor of the thing, Brigadier General Leslie Groves would have greatly preferred to stay back at the University of Denver and tend to his knitting: which is to say, making sure atomic bombs got made and the Lizards weren’t any the wiser.
But when the general commanding the front ordered you to get your fanny out there, that was what you did. Omar Bradley, in a new-style pot helmet with three gold stars painted on it, pointed from his observation post out toward the fighting line and said, “General, we’re hurting them, there’s no two ways about that. They’re paying for every inch of ground they take-paying more than they can afford. If our Intelligence estimates are even close to being right. We’re hurting them, as I said, but they keep taking inches, and we can’t afford that at all. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, sir,” Groves answered. “We are going to have to use a nuclear device to stop them.”
“Or two, or three, or as many as we have, or as many as it takes,” Bradley said. “They must not break into Denver. That, right now, is our sine qua non.”
