He also wondered what it would be like in one of their spaceships, cruising along far above the surface of the Earth, flying between planets, perhaps even between stars. They were the ones who could literally have the world under their feet. Cold, clear envy pierced him.
Despite his musings, he was only a beat slow in answering Groves: “Unless you’ve got FDR up your sleeve there, Leslie, I think you’ve done as much as any man could. Thanks more than I can say for all your help.”
“My pleasure.” Groves stuck out a hand. He had a grip like a hydraulic press. “You convinced me you and your group are on to something important, and my superiors need to understand that, too, so they can factor it into their calculations. As for Roosevelt, hmm…” He actually did look up his sleeve. “Sorry, no. He seems to have stepped out.”
“Too bad. If you do happen to see him”-Larssen had no idea how probable that was, but believed in covering his bets-“mention the project if you get the chance.”
“I’ll do that, Jens.” Groves glanced at his wrist again, this time just to check his watch. “I’d best get back to it. I’ve been away too long already. God only knows what’s stacking up on my desk. No rest for the weary, as they say.” With a last nod, he turned and headed back toward the Methodist church. Larssen hadn’t been able to park any closer than several blocks away. Watching Groves’ broad back recede, he concluded the colonel got results from those around him by working twice as hard as any of them. In that, he would have fit in well at the Metallurgical Lab.
The physicist looked at his own watch. Nearly noon-no wonder his stomach was sounding reveille. He wondered what epicurean delight the Greenbrier was offering for lunch. Yesterday it had been canned pork and beans, canned corn, and canned fruit cocktail. Wryly shaking his head, he wondered about the consequences of excessive tin in the diet.
Today’s menu, he discovered when he got to the hotel restaurant, was extravagant by current standards: Spam and canned peas. The peas were more nearly olive drab than green, but he ate them all the same, hoping they retained at least some of their vitamins. He also put down an extra buck and a half for a nickel bottle of Coke-that, nobody could snafu. The bottle, he noted, was closer to the color peas ought to be than the peas themselves were.
As he was chasing the last sad, soft, overcooked peas with his fork, there was a stir at the entrance to the dining room. A couple of people started to clap. Larssen looked up, saw a short, pale, bullet-headed man wearing a homburg, steel-rimmed spectacles, and a suit of European cut. That face had looked out at him from countless newsreels, but he’d never thought to encounter Vyacheslav Molotov in the flesh.
Something else occurred to him. His gaze flicked from table to table. Sure enough, there sat Hans Thomsen, also with a plate of Spam. The German charge d’affaires was affable, genial, a fluent English-speaker who’d worked hard to put the best face on the activities of the Nazi government until Hitler declared war on the United States. Larssen wondered how he felt to be in the presence of the Soviet foreign minister after Germany’s unprovoked invasion of Russia. He also wondered how Molotov would react to finding a Nazi representative here in the heart of the American government in refuge.
Nor was his the only such curiosity. The dining room grew silent for a few seconds as people stopped talking and suspended forks in midair to see what would happen next Thomsen, Jens thought, recognized Molotov before the latter saw him. Maybe Molotov would not have noticed him at all but for the Nazi party badge he wore on his left lapel.
The Russian had a face as impassive as any Larssen had ever seen. He did not change expression now, but he did hesitate be-fore proceeding into the dining room. Then he turned to the man beside him, a squarely built fellow whose suit was similar in cut to his own but much more poorly fitted. He spoke a single sentence of Russian.
From the explosive coughs that went up, a few people understood what he had to say in the original. The squarely built man’s function was then revealed; he translated Molotov’s words into elegant, Oxford-accented English: “The foreign commissar of the USSR observes that, having already entered into diplomatic discussions with the Lizards, he has no objection to speaking to serpents as well.”
More coughs rose, Larssen’s among them. His eyes swung back to Hans Thomsen. He doubted he could have been as politely insulting as Molotov, given what the Nazis had done to the Soviet Union. On the other hand, all of humanity was supposed to be joining together to resist the invaders from another planet. If everyone kept remembering what was going on before the Lizards came, the united front would come crashing down. And if it did, that literally handed the Lizards the world.
Thomsen was a trained diplomat. If he noticed Molotov had given him the glove, he never let on. He was smiling as he replied, “There is in English an old saying about the enemy of one’s enemy.”
The interpreter murmured to Molotov. Now the Communist official looked straight back at the German. “It was on this basis, no doubt, that the imperialist powers of Great Britain and the United States allied with the peace-loving people of the USSR against the Hitlerite regime.”
Watch out for this guy, Jens thought. He’s dangerous. Thomsen kept his smile, but it looked held in place by force of will Still, he had a counterthrust ready: “No doubt it was also on this basis that Finland allied with Germany after being invaded by the peace-loving people of the USSR.”
As if at a tennis match, Larssen turned his head to look at Molotov. The match here, though, he thought, used a live hand grenade for a ball. Molotov’s lips might have drawn back from his teeth a millimeter or two. Through his interpreter, the Soviet foreign minister replied, “As we have both noted, the principle admits of broad application. Thus I am willing to discuss our own differences at another time.”
The sigh of relief that filled the dining room was quite audible. Larssen didn’t consciously notice; he was too busy adding to it.
8
The hologram of Tosev 3 hung in space above its projector, just as it had before the Race began to add a fourth world to the Empire. Today, though, Atvar did not urge Kirel to project the image of the ferocious Tosevite warrior with his sword and chain mail that the Race’s probes had brought Home. Like everyone else in the fleet, Atvar had found out more about Tosevite warriors than he’d ever wanted to learn.
The fleetlord turned to the assembled shiplords. “We are met here, today, valiant males, to evaluate the results of the first half-year’s fighting”-he used the Race’s chronology, of course; sluggish Tosev 3 had completed only a fourth of its orbit-“and to discuss our plans for the combat yet to come.”
The shiplords accepted the introduction better than he’d dared hope. When the schedule for the conquest of Tosev 3 was drawn up back on Home, the half-year meeting was the last one included. After half a year, everyone was certain, Tosev 3 would be firmly attached to the Empire. The Race lived by schedules and plans drawn up long before they were carried out. That Atvar’s chief underlings recognized the need for much more work was a measure of how much the Tosevites had shaken them.
“We make progress,” Atvar insisted. “Large parts of Tosev 3 are under our virtually complete control.” On the hologram, portions of the planet’s land area changed color from their natural greens and browns to a bright golden hue: the southern half of the smaller continental mass, much of the southwestern part of the main continental mass. “The natives in these areas, while not as primitive as previously available data led us to believe, have been unable to offer resistance much above the nuisance level.”