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.”
“All true. I’ve flown both; I should know.” Roundbush thought for a moment. When he put his mind to it, he was quite a clever chap. He was also handsome and brave. When Goldfarb was in an intolerant mood, he found the combination depressing. Roundbush went on, “A couple of things went into it, I think. We had a large investment in piston engines, an investment not just in the factories that made them but also in close to forty years’ thinking they were the right and proper way to go about powering aircraft. The other factor is, piston engines wereproved by those forty years. It takes a bold man, or a desperate one, to make the leap into the unknown and abandon the tried and true.”
“Something to that, I expect,” Goldfarb said. “Against the Germans, we could make gains by squeezing out an extra fifty horsepower here or a hundred there. They were doing the same against us, I expect, or those jet Messerschmitts of theirs would have started showing up over England a year ago and more. But against the Lizards, it’s pretty clear we had to try something new or go under.”
“There you have it in a nutshell,” Basil Roundbush agreed. “Now, to business: are we going to be able to mount these Lizard radars in any of our aircraft? They’re small and light enough, that’s certain, and we’ll finally be able to see as far as the Lizards can.”
“I think it should be possible, if we have enough sets,” Goldfarb answered. “They don’t draw a lot of power, and we’ve figured out the voltage and cycles per second they use-about two-thirds of the way from our standard down towards what the Americans prefer. We are still working to calibrate their ranges, though, and we still have to decide how many we want to mount on the ground to add to our air defense. Seeing the Lizards counts there, too.”
“That’s so,” Roundbush admitted reluctantly. “The other side of the coin is, the Lizards’ radar should be less susceptible to being tracked by their missiles and confused by their interference. That matters a great deal when you’re up past Angels twenty.”
“It matters when you’re on the ground, too.” Goldfarb remembered the opening days of the Lizards’ invasion of Earth, when their missiles had homed unerringly on radar transmitters throughout the British Isles, knocking them out again and again. “Try tracking their fighter-bombers with binoculars, if you want a treat for yourself.”
“Binoculars? Old chap, try tracking them with the Mark One eyeball.” Roundbush could also deliver a convincing impersonation of an overbred, underbrained aristocratic twit, of the sort who made Bertie Wooster seem a philosopher-king by comparison. Now he leered horribly, aiming a pair of Mark One eyeballs (rather bloodshot) at Goldfarb. “Bit of a bore in the cockpit, don’t you know?”
“I know you’re quite mad,” Goldfarb retorted. “Sir.”
Roundbush stopped twisting his features into that bucktoothed grimace and let his voice lose the nasal whine he’d affected. “What I know is that I need a pint or three after we knock off today. What’s the name of that pub you dragged me to, the one with the blonde and the redhead?”
“That’s the White Horse Inn, sir. I don’t think Daphne, the blond one, works there any more; she was just visiting old friends.” From what he’d heard, Daphne was in a family way, but he kept that to himself. He hadn’t done it, and in any case he’d been sweet on Sylvia when last he was in Dover.
“The White Horse Inn, that’s it Couldn’t recall the name for love nor money.” Roundbush coughed significantly. “Only thing about the place I’m likely to forget though. The beer’s not bad-made locally, I’d say-and that little redhead… Ah!” He kissed his fingertips, like an actor playing a comic Italian. “She’s quite a piece of work, she is.”