A Century of Progress Read Online Free PDF Page B

had read them aloud or not.

1933
    There was traffic again on the road outside, a motorcycle blatting. Norlund had raised his eyes to the face of Ginny Butler.
    “Alan, I promised you an explanation of how we were able to help Sandy. She was treated by medical techniques of the year two thousand and thirty. Exactly how treatment was administered, I’m not free to say, but that’s what she’s getting. She’s a very fortunate little girl. Lucky for her that we wanted to recruit her grandpa.”
    Norlund shook his head, feeling stupid. He didn’t know what he thought, and he certainly couldn’t find anything to say. He was slumping slightly now, leaning back on the conference table for support. With a feeling of relief he gave up and let himself sit down.
    Ginny came closer, peering into his face. She nodded slightly, like a doctor satisfied with the progress that a patient was making.
    “Your heart’s in good shape,” she murmured, half to herself. “And we don’t have a whole lot of time locally. Alan, I’m going to prove to you that we can travel in time. I’m going to bring in someone you’ll remember.”
    Norlund felt a new clutch of unreasoning fear as Ginny turned toward the door where the whispered conference had been conducted. “Come in!” she called in a clear voice, and phantoms of the dead chased through his imagination . . .
    The door opened. The figure that entered was not one of the phantoms, but a young man of about nineteen. He moved tentatively, hesitantly closer. He was wearing ordinary modern jeans and a long-sleeved sport shirt, and he kept staring at Norlund with a strange expression.
    Norlund found himself getting to his feet, the connections of dream or madness finally being made deep in his memory. That voice, when he’d heard it outside the door . . . but . . .
    The youth who had entered was no taller than Norlund, and thin with the springiness of youth. His light brown hair was just starting to grow out of a crewcut. His right arm, Norlund saw with a shock like that of fear, ended in what was either an odd glove or a very advanced type of artificial hand. The arm lay in a supporting sling at elbow level.
    Norlund managed to take in all these things while hardly taking his eyes from the young man’s face. He kept on staring at that face, and it was as if the last forty years had gone by in some strange, distorted dream, gone by overnight . . .
    The world had turned gray in front of Norlund, and then briefly disappeared. He was aware of Ginny Butler guiding him, supporting him, helping him back to a chair.
    Presently the world was steady again and he looked up. The young man was still there. He was standing even closer now and peering down at Norlund anxiously.
    “Al?” the young man asked. It was a familiar voice. Just a minute ago, from outside the door, it had nagged at Norlund’s subconscious with its familiarity. The youth leaned a little closer. Norlund felt like an accident victim, with this face looming over him with a look of pity and muffled terror. “Al? It’s me. Andy.”
    “Andy.” Norlund nodded. It wasn’t that Andy had been hard to recognize. The problem was that he couldn’t help recognizing him. And that was a very great problem indeed, requiring some adjustment. Andy Burns stood before him, solid and three-dimensional, as real as he had been that day over Regensburg in nineteen forty-three when Alan Norlund had tried to tighten the tourniquet on the stump of Andy Burns’ right arm, then had tightened up his chute harness for him, clamped his left hand on the D-ring and then had put him out through the right waist gun opening of the burning Fortress. And Andy was not only still alive but not a day older than he was that day forty years ago. Or not many days older; his hair had grown longer . . .
    Norlund didn’t know that he had finally completely fainted. He knew only that he was coming out of a faint, and that he was once more alone in the room with Ginny