The War That Came Early: The Big Switch by Harry Turtledove Page A

fighter all but filled Peggy’s window.
“Mon Dieu!”
a French speaker said.
“Merde alors!”
another added. The 109 could have hacked the airliner out of the sky with the greatest of ease. Instead, the fighter pilot waved, waggled his wings, and zoomed away.
    “This is the captain speaking.” A voice came out of the DC-3’s intercom, first in German, then in French, and finally in English. “The plane was confirming that we are who we claim to be. We may, I am told, expect the same reception as we near Great Britain.”
    Sure enough, a Hurricane came out and looked them over. It seemed less deadly than the Messerschmitt, though by all accounts it was a match for the German fighter—one of the few planes that were.As the 109’s pilot had before, the Englishman in the cockpit waved when he was satisfied and flew off.
    That snow-dappled brown and green ahead—that was England. Tears filled Peggy’s eyes. She’d made it! Well, almost. She still had to cross the Atlantic without getting torpedoed. If you were going to worry about every little thing …
    More clunks from below said the wheels were going down again. The plane descended toward London. Peggy looked for bomb craters. The Nazis had boasted about blasting the British capital back to the stone age. One more lie from Goebbels, because she saw little damage.
    And then she was down. The DC-3 came in with hardly a bounce. She felt like yelling
Yippee!
again, but she didn’t. No point to making all the other people on the plane sure she was a lunatic. If she was, she could claim she was out of her mind with joy. At last—at sweet last!—she’d got to a place from which she could go straight to the States. She didn’t care if she booked the fastest liner or some wallowing scow. She’d still get there.
    Barring U-boats, of course. The Nazis still claimed England had sunk the
Athenia
to enrage America and drag her into the war. Maybe they believed that in Germany. Peggy didn’t think it was good for anything but making flowers grow.
    But the odds were still with her. Most ships traveling between England and the USA got where they were going. She really did figure hers would, too. She had every intention of taking the chance.
    Stuffing
Gone with the Wind
into her purse, she stood up and headed back toward the door at the left rear of the cabin. Down a few steps after that, and then her own personal feet touched English soil. That, too, seemed just about good enough for a
Yippee!
Again, though, she refrained. Herb would have admired her restraint.
    Herb! My God! She’d have to get used to having a husband around again. And she was going to have to keep her big mouth shut forever about a drunken night in Berlin. She’d guessed Constantine Jenkins was a fairy. Wrong! So wrong!
    After she got her suitcase, she had to clear customs. The inspector frowned at all the stamps that bore the German eagle and swastika. “You’ve had a busy time of it, what?” he said.
    “Buddy, you don’t know the half of it!” Peggy exclaimed.
    Something in her voice brought a thin smile out on his face—the only kind he had, she suspected. “I daresay I ought to give you to the matrons for a strip search and slit the lining of your bag here,” he remarked. “I ought to, but I shan’t.” He plied his rubber stamp with might and main. “Welcome to the United Kingdom, Mrs. Druce. Welcome to freedom.”
    “Freedom!” Peggy echoed dreamily. “I remember that—I think.” The customs inspector laughed, for all the world as if she were joking.
    NOW THAT ALISTAIR Walsh had got to know him, Dr. Murdoch turned out to be a good source of information. “They’re going to extract us,” he told Walsh one freezing night—as if Namsos came equipped with any other kind. “Sounds like dentistry, eh?”
    Walsh’s shiver had nothing to do with the weather. He remembered—painfully remembered—wisdom teeth with which he’d parted company. Army dentists had never heard of the