Read Upsetting the Balance for Free Online

Groves said, returning the salute. He waved to the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down if you care to.” When Sam had, Groves went on, “Is it your opinion that we’ve wrung just about everything your two scaly accomplices know about nuclear physics out of them?”
    “Yes, sir, I’d say that’s probably true,” Yeager answered after a moment’s thought.
    “Good. I’d have thrown you out of here on your ear if you’d tried to tell me anything else,” Groves said. By the way the muscles shifted in his big shoulders, he’d meant it literally. “The United States can still learn a lot about the Lizards from Ullhass and Ristin, though, even if what we learn has nothing directly to do with the Metallurgical Laboratory. Wouldn’t you agree with that?”
    “No doubt about it, sir,” Yeager said. “The more we know about the Lizards, the better. They’ll still be around from now on even if we manage to beat them, and that’s not counting this colonization fleet of theirs. It’s due in—what?—twenty years?”
    “That’s about right, yes.” General Groves looked intently across the desk at Sam. “The way you answered that last question convinced me these are absolutely the right orders for you: you casually came to the same conclusion a staff of government experts has needed months to reach.”
    Probably comes from reading science fiction,
Yeager thought. He didn’t say that out loud; he had no idea how Groves felt about that Buck Rogers stuff. He did say, “You haven’t told me what the orders are, sir.”
    “So I haven’t.” Groves glanced down at some papers behind his IN basket that Yeager couldn’t see. “We’ve established a center for interrogation and research on Lizard POWs down in Arkansas. I’m going to send Ristin and Ullhass there, and I’m ordering you to accompany them. I think you can best serve your country by using your rapport with the Lizards, and that’s the place for you to do it.”
    “Yes, sir,” Sam said. He’d been traded, all right, but to a place he didn’t mind going . . . assuming he could get there. “Uh, sir, what sort of transportation will we have? There’s a lot of Lizards between here and Arkansas that aren’t prisoners, if you know what I mean.”
    “I know exactly what you mean. Nevertheless, you’ll fly,” Groves answered.
    “Sir?” Yeager did his best to keep the surprise—to say nothing of the dismay—he felt from showing. His best, he feared, was none too good. He figured he’d better explain: “They shoot down an awful lot of our planes, sir.” That would do for an understatement until a better one came along. The Lizards’ aircraft had the same sort of advantage against the planes the Americans flew as a Lightning or a Warhawk would have against a World War I-vintage Sopwith Camel.
    But Groves nodded his big head and said, “You’ll fly anyhow—and what’s more, the Lizards will know you’re coming.” Yeager must have looked as if he’d just been smacked in the kisser with a large carp, for the general chuckled a little before continuing, “We always inform them before we move prisoners by air, and we paint the planes we fly them in bright yellow. It’s worked pretty well; they don’t like shooting at their own people any more than we would.”
    “Oh,” Yeager said. “I guess that’s okay, then.” And if there were no such arrangement between Lizards and men and Groves had told him to fly anyway, he’d have damn well flown: that’s what the Army was about. As it was, though, he asked, “Do you think it’s safe enough for my wife to come along, sir? Really, I’m not just asking for the sake of having her with me; she knows just about as much about the Lizards as I do. She’d be useful at this Arkansas place, at least until she has her baby.”
    “Under normal circumstances, Sergeant, I’d say no,” Groves answered. He grimaced. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as normal circumstances any more. As