Striking the Balance Read Online Free PDF

his language; you have a real feel for what he’s trying to get across.”
    “Thanks,” Sam said, feeling about ten feet tall. “Soon as I got the chance to have anything to do with the Lizards besides shooting at ’em, I knew that’s what I wanted. They’re—fascinating, you know what I mean?”
    Goddard shook his head. “What they know, the experience they have—that’s fascinating. But them—” He laughed self-consciously. “A good thing Vesstil’s not around right now. He’d be insulted if he knew he gave me the creeps.”
    “He probably wouldn’t, sir,” Yeager said. “The Lizards mostly don’t make any bones about us giving them the creeps.” He paused. “Hmm, come to think of it, he might be insulted at that, sort of like if a Ku-Kluxer found out some Negroes looked down their noses at white men.”
    “As if we don’t have the right to think Lizards are creepy, you mean.”
    “That’s right.” Sam nodded. “But snakes and things like that, they never bothered me, not even when I was a kid. And the Lizards, every time I’m with one of them, I’m liable to learn something new: not just new for me, I mean, but something nobody, no human being, ever knew before. That’s pretty special. In a way, it’s even more special than Jonathan.” Now he laughed the nervous laugh Goddard had used before. “Don’t let Barbara found out I said that.”
    “You have my word,” the rocket scientist said solemnly. “But I do understand what you mean. Your son is an unknown to you, but he’s not the first baby that ever was. Really discovering something for the first time is a thrill almost as addictive as—as ginger, shall we say?”
    “As long as we don’t let the Lizards hear us say it, sure,” Yeager answered. “They sure do like that stuff, don’t they?” He hesitated again, then went on, “Sir, I’m mighty glad you decided to move operations back here to Hot Springs. Gives me the chance to be with my family, lets me help Barbara out every now and then. I mean, we haven’t even been married a year yet, and—”
    “I’m glad it’s worked out well for you, Sergeant,” Goddard said, “but that’s not the reason I came down here from Couch—”
    “Oh, I know it’s not, sir,” Sam said hastily.
    As if he hadn’t spoken, Goddard went on, “Hot Springs is a decent-sized city, with at least a little light manufacturing. We’re not far from Little Rock, which has more. And we have all the Lizards at the Army and Navy General Hospital here, upon whom we can draw for expertise. That has proved much more convenient than transferring the Lizards up to southern Missouri one by one.”
    “Like I said, it’s great by me,” Yeager told him. “And we’ve moved an awful lot of pieces of the Lizard shuttlecraft down here so we can study ’em better.”
    “I worried about that,” Goddard said. “The Lizards always knew about where Vesstil brought Straha down. We were lucky we concealed and stripped the shuttlecraft as fast as we did, because they tried their hardest to destroy it. They easily could have sent in troops by air to make sure they’d done the job, and we’d have had the devil’s own time stopping them.”
    “They don’t go poking their snouts into everything the way they did when they first landed here,” Sam said. “I guess that’s because we’ve hurt ’em a few times when they tried it.”
    “A good thing, too, or I fear we’d have lost the war by now.” Goddard rose and stretched, though from his grimace that hurt more than it made him feel good. “Another incidental reason for coming to Hot Springs is the springs. I’m going to my room to draw myself a hot bath. I’d gotten used to doing without such things, and almost forgot how wonderful they are.”
    “Yes, sir,” Yeager said enthusiastically. The fourth-floor room in the Army and Navy General Hospital he shared with Barbara—and now Jonathan—didn’t have a tub of its own; washing facilities were