One Thousand Years Read Online Free Page A

was still safe. She worried
anyway. That was her job at this moment.
    Vinson
had moved the American's inert body into place, gingerly but firmly.
The capsule closed immediately, and he rushed back toward the
airlock. It was then that she realized she had been holding her
breath all this time until the hatch had sealed.
    She
guided the Tiger to a safe distance. Her side-panel showed the
American's body being put into the resuscitating phase of its
program. The man would recover. The capsule will keep him alive
until a medical officer revives him.
    “He's
going to make it,” she said as Vinson entered. His uniform had
dried itself quickly, such was the material of the modern Third Reich,
but his face and hair were still wet. And his nose was bleeding. She
guessed the quick change of pressure to be painful, but he was still
grinning.
    “I'd
better get the medical kit,” she said, grinning back. “You
came out too fast. Maybe I should have increased the cabin
pressure.”
    “No,”
he said. “I could have waited in the airlock. I wanted to see
how he is doing.”
    “You
got him in time.” She wanted to be mad at Vinson, but
couldn't. He was willing to give his life for the Reich, the
mission, and for someone he didn't even know. That was worth
something.
    She
thought about the moment that would arrive later, when the records
were ejected, and the recording was off. She knew better than to
imagine giving him that kiss. Perhaps another squeeze of the hand
would suffice until that day when they finally return to their own time.
    *

Chapter 4
“On this morning of
hope we may speak of our firm conviction. We may hope because we are
strong, because we believe. Our hope is in the victory and freedom
of the Fatherland, in the message of our sword.”
— Nazi Party message on Easter morning, (April 9, 1944)
Sunday, April 9, 1944
    McHenry's
eyes fluttered open and looked up in the bright light. His
mind was still in mid-dream, but he sensed that this light was
different from the one in the other dream. It was a harsh light and
he didn't like it.
    He
heard a man's voice. It was in German.
    Another
man stepped over to the equipment encasing McHenry's body and peered
down into his patient's eyes. The man said something in German to
the young officer standing beside him. He took a quick glance at the
charts on the large screen behind the patient, as though to confirm
his reasoning. McHenry was dazed but coming around. “Do not
be alarmed,” the second said, in English with only a slight
German accent. “You are still healing but you will be fine.
Breathe deep.”
    McHenry
was groggy and slow, yet alert enough to guess from the white tunic
that the young-looking man hovering above him was a doctor. “Where?”
he stammered. The word from his lips had somehow startled him —
as though another part of his brain was surprised to hear himself
talk.
    “You
must breathe deep,” the doctor insisted. McHenry took the deep
breath and some of the fog lifted. The doctor could see the results
on a panel. “That is good. Take two more deep breaths.”
    McHenry
couldn't remember where he was last, or how he got here, but he knew
this wasn't a good place to be. He was thinking more clearly now.
His worst suspicions were quickly confirmed when he saw the crooked
cross of a swastika on the man's collar. He took another deep breath
and turned his head to examine the other man.
    The
doctor appeared youthful, tall and muscular, but the blond-headed
first man looked even more like a picture straight out of Nazi
propaganda imagery. He wore a light blue uniform. It wasn't exactly
like the Luftwaffe uniforms McHenry had seen black-and-white photos
of, but there were pilot wings on the man's lapel and, of course, the
swastika emblem on a button below his collar.
    A
third man stepped into view. It was a black man in a black SS
uniform, armband and all — or something like an armband.
McHenry took another deep breath. A
black Nazi! That didn't
make