One Thousand Years by Randolph Beck Page B

cola.”
    Almost
immediately, the food emerged from the dispenser in the center of the
table. But he was less surprised than he would have been the
previous day.
    Dale
ordered something in German, which looked like a salad.
    “Where
is everybody else?” he asked.
    She
smiled. “Most of us eat at our stations, but there are also
several break rooms where we can relax.”
    “You
guys must work a lot.”
    “We
do.”
    He
was still surprised. “Every single day? All you people do is
work from morning to night?”
    Now
she was surprised. She looked in his eyes. “Don't you know?
We work twenty-four hours a day — with breaks, of course.”
    McHenry
eyed her warily. “You don't sleep?”
    “Not
since we were teenagers. Nobody does unless there is a special
medical need.”
    He
looked down at his steak and wondered if it was real, then cursed
himself for even thinking that it could be.
    “Don't
fret so,” said Dale, consoling him. “Hasn't your
sleeping gone well?”
    “Only
too well,” he said, very conscious of the odd way she said
that. He continued eating, no longer caring whether it could ever
have been real. “Just tell me one thing...”
    “What's
that?”
    He
set his fork down and straightened up. “If I'm the only one
who sleeps around here, then why does everyone need their own
quarters?”
    She raised an eyebrow. “We don't.”
    “But what about those other rooms near...?”
His voice trailed off, suddenly realizing he may know the answer.
    She picked up his meaning. “The other rooms near yours? Those are
for the other people we will be picking up —
more people from the past. You are only the first where we were
successful.”
    McHenry
perked up. “Anybody I know?”
    “No. If there were, I probably would have told you already.
We check all the backgrounds for convergences.
There are only three other Americans.
The first is a scientist who will be killed in an industrial accident.
But that's a difficult one. We may not be able to do it.
And we don't get him for another six months anyway.”
    “When
do you get the next one?”
    “Next
week,” she said. “And it's an easy one. He'll be in the
water, just like you were.”
    “I
see,” he said. “Another downed pilot?”
    “No.
He's an Italian naval officer. His ship is going to sink.”
    McHenry
pondered the image in his mind. “Why just one? Won't there be
a whole ship full of people you can rescue?”
    “I
wish it were so,” she replied. “It just isn't that
simple. There are a lot of variables we need to consider. He's the
only one we can safely recover.”
    “I
see,” he said again. Then he got back to his steak and
wondered if the day would come when he doesn't need to sleep.
    *
    McHenry
spotted Vinson and Barr having coffee in the pilots' mess.
    “I
see the prince is back from his tour,” chided Barr. McHenry
wondered momentarily about that mustache, and what he needed to do in
order to grow one, although it certainly wouldn't be a Hitler
mustache. He had already accepted Otto Barr as being both black and
a Luftwaffe pilot.
    “Did
you see very much?” asked Vinson.
    McHenry
nodded and took a seat. “The main watch room.”
    Barr
and Vinson raised their eyebrows in unison.
    “You
know the watch room?” McHenry asked, seeing their blank
expressions.
    “We
do not go into that part of the ship,” said Barr. “The
SS has their job to do, and we have ours.”
    “So
I've been told. Aren't you curious?”
    Vinson
looked like he was looking for an answer, but Barr kept the point.
“Perhaps a little, but we understand the security
considerations. As pilots, we are more susceptible to capture than
most people aboard the ship. They cannot tell us more than we need
to know for the mission.”
    “I
understand that all too well,” McHenry replied. “But
what about Dale? She goes on flights.”
    Barr nodded.
“We do take an SS officer on most missions.
They use a side-panel to access separate information.
But I am certain they