"You realize that you"ll be recruiting children, don"t you?"
she asked.
"Of course," said a new voice, deep and booming and definitely not human. "We are recruiting children deliberately."
Benny looked round, saw a large, furry shape lumbering out of the shadows. Two green, pupil-less eyes stared at her.
For a moment she thought that this was the big brother of Charles"s teddy bear, somehow come to life. Then she saw the three-fingered hands, the blue-andbrown uniform covering the furry body. Alien, then: but although she recognized the species, she couldn"t immediately put a name to it. She knew so many species. Too many, she sometimes thought.
Whoever they were, Benny decided, they weren"t the sort she"d invite to dinner. "Why?" she pleaded, letting the anger show in her voice. "Why children children?"
"Children make better soldiers," said the teddy bear.
"They kill without compunction." It reached behind it, picked up a silver object which looked like an electric drill, then went on, "That is, once they are suitably adjusted.
Adjustment is more difficult if the subject is an adult, but success rates are still very high."
The electric drill began to whine: a soft, almost whispery noise, that spoke of finer tolerances and higher technology than anything else Benny could see around her. She opened her mouth to ask about it, but before she could speak her arms were grabbed from behind.
Now hold on!" she said. "I"m not sure I want to be - "
The teddy bear stepped forward and put its free hand over her mouth. Something wet and cold spread over the lower part of Benny"s face, and her lungs filled with a cold, pungent gas. She struggled, but it was too late.
The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was the silver tip of the drill bit approaching her face.
Chapter 6.
Gabrielle wiped the oily sleeve of her overalls across her forehead, careless of the mark it would leave on her skin.
She could have a bath after the flight: that was one of her privileges. Then she looked again at the dull metal of the crank, touched her finger to the pivot where the piston-rod joined it, felt the tiny crack there. If she didn"t get that replaced, there might not be any "after the flight".
"Engineer!" she shouted. There was no response.
Gabrielle hauled herself out from under the engine and looked around. There were four other aircraft, monoplanes like her own, parked out on the concrete strip that ran from the hangars to the runway, their blue and brown colours dull under the grey blanket of morning cloud. The rest of the s.p.a.ce was empty, a bare expanse of concrete, mottled here and there with filled-in bomb craters.
Gabrielle hated that empty s.p.a.ce. She knew that the pilots had died because they hadn"t been as good as her, or as clever as her; but none the less she missed their talk, their boasting, their simple noisy presence on the airfield.
She shouted for the engineer again, cupping her hands so that the sound would carry, but there was still no response. She trotted across the concrete to the parked planes, saw Oni, the only other human on the base, sitting in the c.o.c.kpit of his plane in his grey flying leathers, testing the controls. He waved a gloved hand at her. She waved back, called, "Seen Elreek?"
Oni made an elaborate shrug. "Haven"t seen him today, ma"am." Oni always called her "ma"am" even though there was no difference in rank. Perhaps, Gabrielle thought, it was because he was relatively new - only three weeks on the base. Or perhaps it was because he was two years younger than her. Either way, she rather liked it.
"Who checked your plane out then?" she asked him.
Oni shrugged again. "I"m checking it now. It"ll be all right."
Gabrielle shook her head. "It won"t be all right, Oni. You know that. You should have everything checked by an engineer before you fly."
"I"ll be all right, ma"am. Don"t you worry."
I"m not worried, thought Gabrielle. I"m just trying to save your life. If you"d rather fall out of the sky because of a loose bolt on the propeller mounting, that"s fine by me.
Aloud she said, "If I find Elreek I"ll get him to look your plane over."
But as she"d expected, Oni only shrugged again and resumed his casual check of the controls. Gabrielle sighed and crossed the runway to the main hangar, a low building with a brick base and a roof made of three curves of rusty corrugated metal. She pulled back one of the heavy doors, looked inside. There was a single monoplane in the hangar, the one flown by the Kreeta, Jeekeel. The engine cowling was open, the propeller had been removed. Behind the plane, the electric light from the machine-shop door made a blurred rectangle on the oil-stained concrete.
Gabrielle called for the engineer again, was rewarded by a movement within the machine shop and the pattering of hooves on the stone floor. She smiled as the blue-skinned Kreeta trotted towards her from the machine shop, his huge black eyes gleaming in the light from the open door; then frowned as she realized that it wasn"t Elreek at all, but the new engineer, Freeneek.
"Where"s Elreek?"
Freeneek"s huge black eyes blinked once. "Rea.s.signed,"
he squeaked simply.
Gabrielle pursed her lips. "Rea.s.signed? Where? How?"
"I don"t know." Freeneek waved his four long, thin arms around in a gesture of uncertainty. "Just gone."
Just gone? thought Gabrielle. But engineers were supposed to be safe. They didn"t go near the front line. And she"d have known about it - would have heard it herself - if there had been an enemy raid here. Perhaps he wasn"t dead, perhaps he had really been rea.s.signed. But that was strange, since his area of expertise was aeroplane engines. He wouldn"t be much use anywhere else. Perhaps she should check with the flight sergeant No. Best not to ask, Gabrielle decided. Best not to think about it. There was a job to get on with. She told Freeneek about the damaged crank. They crossed the airfield together, past Oni"s plane which was taxiing slowly towards the end of the runway, with a couple of rabbit-like Ajeesks acting as ground crew and supporting the tail. She waved to Oni, watched as the plane gathered speed and lumbered into the air.
"The engine doesn"t sound right," she said to Freeneek.
The Kreeta blinked his eyes slowly, the equivalent of a shrug. Gabrielle stared after the plane for a moment, sighed.
She did rather like being called "ma"am", and having another human to talk to, even if he was infuriatingly stupid. It would be a shame if he didn"t come back.
Best not to think about it. There was a job to do.
Standing by her own plane, leaning on the side of the c.o.c.kpit, she watched closely as the Kreeta crawled underneath the engine and explored the metal with his long, multi-jointed fingers. "There is a flaw," he said after a while.
"But the engine will function for today"s flight, at least. Maybe for several days."
"I want the crank replaced anyway," said Gabrielle. She remembered arguments like this with Elreek. She"d always won them. In the end, he"d given up arguing.
"It"s impossible to replace it. There aren"t any parts available."
Gabrielle stared at the two thin legs projecting from under the engine housing, resisted an urge to kick them. "Yes there are! Elreek had a whole rack of cranks in the machine shop yesterday, he showed them to me."
"The spare parts have also been rea.s.signed," said Freeneek.
"What?" Gabrielle stared over the nose of her plane, across the airfield to the main hangar. She could see the machine shop building behind it, a sloping roof ending in a serrated edge. It certainly hadn"t been taken away, bombed or rea.s.signed - anyway, Freeneek had been standing there less than five minutes ago. She stormed across the concrete, heard the Kreeta"s hooves clattering in pursuit.
In the main hangar, she stopped at the door that led to the workshop, stared in amazement.
Bare benches, a few vices clamped to them, a few drills and metal saws scattered about. A single propeller mounted on the wall. But Elreek"s neat racks of spare parts, labelled, their tolerances marked down in a pencilled notebook - they were gone. Gone with Elreek. Rea.s.signed.
"I just found it like this," said Freeneek from behind her, his voice even smaller and squeakier than usual for a Kreeta.
"Perhaps they need the parts to build more planes, to replace the ones we"ve lost. I don"t know."
Gabrielle swallowed. "But how are we supposed to keep the planes flying?"
"It"s been cleared with Flight Sergeant Purdeek," said the Kreeta.
Gabrielle"s body began to shake. I"m not taking my plane up with a cracked part, she thought. I"m not going to die just because - Her brain refused to complete the thought. She would have to speak to Flight Sergeant Purdeek. She would have to speak to him now, before she took off.
"There is something I could do," said Freeneek quietly.
Gabrielle turned and looked at him. "Yes?"
He gestured at Jeekeel"s plane. "I could take a crank from that one," he said. "Swap them."
Gabrielle thought about it. Kreetas, with their huge eyes, usually flew at night, hara.s.sing enemy trenches, reporting their positions. So Jeekeel wouldn"t be needing the plane for twelve, perhaps fourteen hours. But the engine was identical to her own. And swapping the cranks would be quicker and more effective than re-rigging the controls for two-armed human use. On the other hand - "That"s a new engine. The crank won"t be worn in as much. It"ll run rough."
The big dark eyes met hers. "I can file it down."
Gabrielle nodded. "Do it."
She thought: if anything goes wrong, I"ll be leaving Jeekeel with a potentially dangerous plane. And: even if nothing goes wrong, and the parts are swapped back, his his engine will run rough tonight. engine will run rough tonight.
She shrugged. There wasn"t anything she could do about it. She was more experienced than Jeekeel: she had more kills to her credit. She was ent.i.tled to the best possible support.
As Freeneek went to work on Jeekeel"s plane, she trotted back across the airfield to her own hangar, her own plane. She re-examined the fuselage, the narrow struts that supported the wings. The bomb cradle, the release mechanism. Linkages, control cables, flaps, rudder. She barely noticed when Freeneek came in and began working under the engine cowling, replacing the damaged crank.
But before he began rea.s.sembling the engine, she was down on the floor, watching, turning the crankshaft by hand, making sure.
It was good enough. She went to her locker at the edge of the hangar, took off her overalls and put on the thick padded grey leathers of her flight suit.
She was in the c.o.c.kpit, fitting her mask, with the engine already running, when Flight Sergeant Purdeek came out from the hangar. He waved at her, two-handed, Kreeta fashion; she waved back, then frowned under her mask.
There was something she"d been going to ask him. Was it important?
No, she decided. It couldn"t be anything important. If it had been important, she would have remembered it.
She finished fitting her mask, then pulled open the throttle and taxied towards the open hangar door.
Josef wiped at the periscope eyepiece with the sleeve of his shirt, but he still couldn"t see anything through it except the vague shadows of a dark ground and a pale sky. He bled pressure from the boiler, chocked the legs, felt the engine steady underneath him.
"What"s up?" asked Ingrid.
"The periscope lens has steamed up again."
"Is it safe to go out and clean it?" she asked.
Josef laughed. "How do I know? I can"t see anything!"
More soberly, he added: "We"re behind our own lines, I think.
But it"s hard to tell." He paused. "I"ll go."
Ingrid shook her head. She was already opening the door. "You"re more important than I am," she said simply.
It was true, of course: Josef was a driver, Ingrid just a stoker. Even so, they were both replaceable. Only the ground-engine itself was important.
He began to say something, but Ingrid was gone. He heard her scrambling over the cabin roof. He drew his handgun from the holster above the fire box and leaned out of the door to give her cover. The churned-up mud of the battlefield was almost white under the hot morning sun. Josef had trouble seeing anything in the fierce glare. But there was a sound - a distant, steady, mechanical thudding, barely audible over the hisses and clicks of the leg joints.
With a shock, Josef realized what it must be.
At the same time, Ingrid shouted something. Josef heard her clatter back across the roof, and ducked back in just as she jumped down.
"Enemy ground-engines!" she yelled. "Two!"
"I heard them," he said, shoving the handgun back into its holster and putting his eyes to the periscope. The lens was still grubby, streaked with dirt, but he could see through it. He rotated it, searching for the enemy, saw them striding across the harsh landscape. They were almost within range already.
The forward gun on one of the enemy ground-engines flickered, and bullets clattered off the boiler. Josef heard an ominous popping sound, followed by a loud hiss.
Ingrid"s hand touched his shoulder. "Pressure"s dropping!"
I know, thought Josef. He wondered how the enemy had managed to hole them from so far away. Were their guns better than his?
But it didn"t matter. It was best not to think about it.
With the boiler holed, they weren"t going anywhere: all he could hope to do was destroy one of the enemy engines before they destroyed his.