One Thousand Years by Randolph Beck

attention with his right arm extended in salute.
    “Heil
Renard!” Dale responded, saluting with a raised hand, curtly.
“Good morning, Hauptsturmführer .
We're speaking English for Herr McHenry here.
He is an American of the twentieth-century and does not speak German.”
    “Good
morning then,” the man said, speaking with a flawless American
accent.
    “Good
morning,” said McHenry, eyeing the troops. With the exception
of the one who spoke, the rest were too rigid to be normal men, as
though frozen in place. “May I ask what's going on?”
    “I
was not briefed,” said the strange man.
    “Nothing
is going on, Herr Hauptsturmführer ,”
said Dale. “This is Lieutenant Sam McHenry. He's an American
pilot. I am giving him a tour of the facilities.”
    “Welcome,
Lieutenant.” The man clicked his heels again and reached out
to shake McHenry's hand.
    “Thanks,”
said McHenry. It was a firm and warm handshake.
    Dale
smiled deviously. “Sam,” she said, “the Hauptsturmführer is a robot.”
    McHenry
stepped back and let his eyes sweep the room again. “A robot?”
he asked, dumbfounded, though not entirely surprised. “I just
assumed Hauptsturmführer was another one of your SS
ranks.”
    “Yes, Hauptsturmführer is an SS rank.” said Dale. “It
would be equivalent to a Hauptmann in the Luftwaffe or a
Captain in the American army. But these are our SS troops.”
    “Does
that surprise you?” asked the robot. He, or it — McHenry
wasn't quite sure — had remained standing with the rigidity of
a well disciplined German SS officer, but not that of a machine.
    “I
thought I've seen too many surprises already, but yes, I am
surprised.”
    “Really?”
The robot's expression feigned puzzlement. “But we know that
twentieth-century Americans have already discussed the possibility of
mechanical men.”
    “Maybe
so, but it's different to see one.” McHenry gave another look
to the robot's platoon. Unlike the Hauptsturmführer , the
rest stood stiff like mannequins. “Are you planning to
invade?”
    “We
stand ready to follow orders, whatever they may be.”
    “These
mechanical troops are here just as a precaution,” said Dale.
“It is technically a unit of Fallschirmjäger , the
German word for paratrooper. If some kind of accident happened, like
a Tiger crash, or anything that might change history, we can mobilize
them to set things right again.”
    McHenry
turned back to the robot. “Does that mean you can parachute
down from orbit?”
    The
robot looked to Dale as though awaiting permission to reveal a
secret.
    “Yes,”
Dale answered, nodding to the robot. “It is more complicated
than that.” Then, after a pause, she laughed and pointed a
finger down at his chest. “If you're thinking of stealing a
parachute, forget it. Humans can't survive that trip with the ones
that our Fallschirmjäger use. And you don't have access to the exits. The ship's main
rechner will see to that.”
    “You
don't leave much to chance,” McHenry said, glumly.
    “Sam,
you ought to know by now that we leave nothing to chance.”
    McHenry
saw she was beaming with pride. A boastful, Nazi pride. He didn't
like it. He would not accept such perfection. He scanned the robot,
looking for flaws.
    “Why
are the others so rigid?”
    “They
are not active,” said the robot. “Their memories are
blank. Mine would also be reset if I were sent to the planet's
surface.”
    “Reset?”
    “They
will be given fresh instructions when needed.”
    McHenry's
face expressed shock.
    “One
thing you have to realize,” she interrupted, “is that we
don't want them to have any more information than necessary. Their
memories can be scanned by the Grauen if they're captured.”
    “Yes,”
added the robot. “I am alert now only as a backup measure. If Göring and her crew are disabled, I can use whatever
means are available to either save or destroy the ship. But my
primary function is emergency intervention. If I go to the