One Thousand Years Read Online Free

their Tiger
neared the destination.
    She smiled back. His confidence was infectious.
    And why shouldn't it be? Others from the starship had twice tried to
recover twentieth-century men, but they failed each time.
Operational parameters required caution in such abundant quantities
that failure was almost guaranteed. Yet, they were so close now it
seemed as though nothing could go wrong.
    “We are there!” said Vinson excitedly.
    Dale sent the grappler after the primitive airplane fuselage,
stopping it from sinking further.
Now she just needed to extract the American. A second arm
tore away the canopy, and then cut the seat belts.
    “It goes well,” said Vinson.
    “Do not say that yet,” she said, pulling the near-lifeless body
toward the medical container in the small cargo bay. The main
grappler released the airplane and pulled back inside.
    “No!”
she sighed. The arm was too large and unwieldy to manipulate the
container. She stifled a derogatory comment about the lack of more
suitable equipment. With years for careful planning, they should not
have needed to rely on the Luftwaffe.
    “They
are designed for heavy work under combat conditions,” Vinson
explained.
    She
tried to ignore him, focusing her attention on the task and making
several more attempts to transfer the unconscious man into the
container that could preserve his life. “He's dying out
there!” she gasped.
    Vinson
released the restraint on his seat and snapped up. “How much
time is there?”
    “Maybe
two minutes.”
    “We are deep enough to avoid that ship.
You can still take us deeper if you feel the need to.”
    “You
can't go out there” she said, incredulous.
    “I
have my emergency pack,” he reminded her, holding one hand on
the harness strapped across his chest. “I will not put the
mission at risk but you may activate it if I do.”
    He stepped toward the door without waiting for a response,
but then turned once more.
“I really mean that.
Do not feel any guilt if you need to do this.”
And then he ran out of the cockpit, disappearing from view.
    Dale
turned back toward the front end of the dome and cursed herself for
not being more assertive. She held the authority, after all.
Besides that, he was only a Leutnant in the Luftwaffe. She was a Sturmbannführer in the SS. Then she looked at the rapidly fading life signs for the
American, and was a little bit glad that Vinson could be so reckless.
    Was
he really going to swim out there? she wondered. Her familiarity with the Tiger was rudimentary at
best. She had been trained to fly them in an emergency, but the
workings of the small airlock underwater was a different matter. She
didn't know how long it would take to cycle
and they were definitely running out of time.
    Then
there was the question of the emergency pack Vinson wore, an awkward
term for a personal self-destruct device. They were very efficient,
and she was certain it could do the job even underwater. Vinson
would be killed, his body dissolved in milliseconds. There was no
doubt in her mind that she would indeed activate it if necessary, and
that she would feel no guilt, only regretful sadness. They were in
the twentieth-century. History was something she understood only too
well. She would do anything to protect it. That's why she was here.
    The seconds would tick by
slowly before she saw the hatch open. Vinson's head popped out. She
was surprised to see he wore no spacesuit. He climbed toward the
American's body, crawling along
the mechanical arm, careful to avoid the hazardous materials
surrounding the ship. He worked like a man who knew what he was
doing, but she reminded herself of the dangers. Those dangers were
not just to Vinson alone. Were he to introduce some kind of change
into the present, the change could be magnified through time. This
would affect the Führer ,
the Reich and all mankind. She watched the indicators on her SS
side-panel, reminding herself that she knew what she was doing, too.
Everything