Second Contact by Harry Turtledove

She threw in an emphatic cough to show how much she wasn’t the devil-boy’s business.
    Instead of deflating, he laughed and folded himself into the scaly devils’ posture of respect. “It shall not be done, superior female!” he said, with an emphatic cough of his own.
    That was when he began to interest Liu Han. “You speak the little scaly devils’ language well,” she said in Chinese. “What is your name?”
    “I ought to say, ‘None of your business,’ ” the devil-boy replied. That was apt to be true in more ways than one; people who asked such questions could put those who answered them in danger. But the devil-boy went on, “It does not much matter, though, for everyone knows I am Tao Sheng-Ming.” He returned to the scaly devils’ tongue: “Is that not a foolish name for a male of the Race?”
    Those of his friends who understood whooped with glee and slapped their thighs with the palms of their hands. In spite of herself, Liu Han smiled. Tao Sheng-Ming seemed to take nothing seriously, not his own Chinese blood and not the little devils he aped, either. But he was plainly bright; if he discovered the proper ideology, he might become very valuable.
    Thoughtfully, Liu Han said, “Well, Tao Sheng-Ming, if you are ever on Nan Yang Shih K’uo —South Sheep Market Mouth—in the eastern part of the city, you might look for Ma’s brocade shop there.”
    “And what would I find in it?” Tao asked.
    “Why, brocade, of course,” Liu Han answered innocently. “Ask for Old Lin. He will show you everything you need.”
    If Tao Sheng-Ming did ask for Old Lin, he would be recruited. Maybe he would pay attention. Maybe, being a devil-boy with an itch for trouble, he wouldn’t. Still, Liu Han judged the effort worth making.

    Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker was one of the lucky ones who went out into space: he enjoyed being weightless. Some of the men in the Reich Rocket Force had to nurse their stomachs through every tour in orbit. Not Drucker. His problem was working hard enough on the exercise bicycle to keep from coming home a couple of kilos heavier than when he’d gone up.
    And the view from up here was beyond compare. Right now, his orbit was carrying him southeast across the United States, toward the Gulf of Mexico. Through swirling clouds, he could see plains and forests and, coming up swiftly, the deep blue of the sea. And, when he lifted his eyes to the stars blazing in the black sky of space, that was just as fine in a different way.
    But he couldn’t gawp for too long. His eyes flicked to the instruments that monitored oxygen, CO 2 , the batteries—literally, the things that kept him breathing. Everything there was fine. And he’d used very little fuel from the maneuvering rockets so far this tour. He could change his orbit considerably if he had to.
    Then he was looking out the window again, this time to the sides and rear. Like its smaller predecessors, the A-45 was an Army project, but the Focke-Wulf design bureau had given the manned upper stage a cockpit view a fighter pilot might have envied. He needed it; he depended far more on his own senses than did Lizard pilots, who had fancier electronics to help them.
    Below and to either side were the bulges of his missile tubes, a thermonuclear sting in each of them. If he got the order, he could blow a couple of Lizards or Russians or Americans out of the sky—or, for that matter, aim the missiles at land targets.
    Sun sparkled off the titanium wings on which he’d ride back to Earth. The swastikas on the wings were due for repainting; this upper stage had made several landings since the last time they’d been slapped on. He shrugged. That sort of stuff was for people down on the ground to worry about. Up here, as in any combat assignment, what you did counted. What you looked like didn’t.
    Drucker lightly touched the control stick. “Just a damn driver,” he muttered. “That’s all I’ve ever been, just a damn driver.”