Turtledove, Harry - Worldwar 01 by Turtledove Harry

Author:Turtledove, Harry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2004-12-29T00:40:52+00:00

"10 the best you can," she told him, and left the shelter of the U2's enclosure. It had been cold in there. Away from the heaped banks of earth that shielded from blast, away from the roof of camouflage netting covered over with dead grass, the wind bit with full force, driving sleet into her face. She was glad for her flying clothes of fur and leather and thick cotton padding, for the oversized felt ualenki that kept her feet from freezing.

Now that winter was here, she seldom took anything off.

The ualenki acted almost like snowshoes, spreading her weight as she squelched along the muddy edge of the equally muddy landing strip. Only the slush-filled ruts from her plane and others distinguished the runway from any other part of the steppe. Even more than most Soviet aircraft, the Kukuruznik was made to operate from landing fields that were fields in

truth.

Her head came up; her right hand went to the pistol she wore on her hip. Someone not part of the battered Red Air Force detachment was file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...Worldwar%2001%20-%20In%20the%20Balance.txt (318 of 508) [12/29/2004 12:42:14 AM]

Harry Turtledove

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trudging across the airstrip, very likely without realizing it was one. A Red Army man, maybe--he had a rifle slung across his back.

No, not a Red Army man: he wasn't dressed warmly enough, and the cut of his clothes was wrong. Ludmila needed only a moment to recognize the nature of the wrongness; she'd seen it enough. "Germanski!" she yelled, half to call to the fellow, half to warn the rest of the Russians on the little base.

The German spun, grabbed for his rifle, flopped down on his belly in the mud. A combat veteran, Ludmila thought, unsurprised: most of the German soldiers still alive in the Soviet Union were the ones with reactions honed by battle. This one was also smart enough not to start blazing away before he knew what he'd walked into, even if his thick red whiskers gave him the look of a bandit.

Ludmila frowned. She'd seen whiskers like those before. On the kolkhoz, that's right, she thought.

What had the fellow's name been.

"Schultz," she murmured to herself. Then she shouted it, going on in German,

"Is that you?"

"Ja. Who are you?" the red-bearded man yelled back: like her, he needed a few seconds to make the connection. When he did, he exclaimed,

"You're the pilot, right?" As it had back at the collective farm, the word sounded exotic with a feminine ending tacked onto it.

She waved for him to approach. He got to his feet; though he didn't resling his rifle, he didn't point it at her, either. He was grimy and ragged and looked cold: if not quite the pathetic Winter Fritz of Soviet propaganda, still a long way from the deadly-dangerous figure he'd seemed back in the summer. She'd forgotten how tall he was. He was skinnier than he had been, too, which further exaggerated his height.

He asked, "What are you doing here, out in the middle of nowhere?"

"This isn't nowhere. This is an airfield," she answered.

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