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Butler. He was lying slumped back in his chair, and his belt had been loosened, and there was dampness on his face and in his hair as if someone had just sprinkled him with water. The old man can’t take it any longer, he thought with momentary shame.
    Then that feeling was swallowed up in wonder. He stirred under Ginny’s touch on his hair, and sat upright. “That was . . .”
    She waited for him to complete the statement. When he didn’t, she said: “You know who it was. You recognized him instantly.”
    “Where’d he go?”
    “He was called away. You can talk to him again later.” Ginny paused. “Like your granddaughter, Andy’s very lucky that we need you for a job. You’re the main reason that we went back and saved him, out of the air over Germany. It cost to do that.”
    “Andy Burns.” Norlund was sitting a little forward now, leaning his face in his hands.
    “I hope that, having seen him, you’ll be ready to believe we can send you to the Century of Progress.”
    “I guess I have to.” Norlund looked up. Andy Burns. Two proofs, Sandy and Andy. It sounded like the title of a Thirties comic strip. “I put him out of the aircraft myself, but I never saw his chute open . . .” His voice trailed off. “My war story,” he concluded.
    “You flew twenty missions as a waist gunner,” Ginny said. “I’m sure there’s more than one war story you could tell.” For a moment she looked at Norlund almost tenderly. The moment ended in a return to briskness. “However, there’s another job to be done now.”
    She led Norlund out of what he thought of as the planning room, down a rather long hallway to a small bedroom. There was an attached bath, making the quarters look rather like a room in a modern motel.
    “Your medical checkup is next, Alan, so get undressed if you will. The doctor will be along in a minute.” The room’s door closed behind her.
    He followed orders in a daze, still too much in shock for examining-room embarrassment. Andy Burns . . .
    The door opened again, without a knock. The white-coated man who entered was in his seventies, if appearance could be relied upon after today, but erect and trim. He wasted no time in introductions or other chitchat, but issued terse instructions and began to administer a physical.
    In addition to making tests, he took some of Norlund’s body measurements, as if he might be fitting him for a suit of clothes. He checked Norlund’s teeth, which were still original issue. Some of the instruments that were used in the exam looked strange and unfamiliar to the patient, but that was nothing out of the ordinary these days. When the examiner had finished, he brusquely told Norlund to get dressed, advised him to get a haircut within the next few days, and departed as uninformatively as he had entered.
    Ginny returned not long after the silent man’s departure, knocking before she entered.
    “How’d I do?” Norlund asked.
    “Fine. You’re in good health.”
    “I thought I was. What was that about a haircut? He told me I ought to get one.”
    “Oh. Well, men’s hairstyles are somewhat different in the Thirties, as I’m sure you’ll remember. Not that yours is very long, but—”
    “Oh.” And somehow the whole prospect suddenly became real.
    Ginny was holding open the door to the hall. “Let’s get moving,” she murmured abstractedly. “We’ve got to speed things up.”
    She led him down again to the garage where the old truck waited. “Let’s see how you start the truck, Alan. Then put it in gear and ease it backward and forward a foot or so. We can’t open the garage doors just now, but don’t worry about the carbon monoxide. We’re well ventilated.”
    “If you say so.” He climbed aboard the truck, while Ginny watched from the center of the floor. “Shouldn’t be much different from driving a modern stickshift,” he told her out the window. “Except here you have a hand choke to fool with too. And a hand brake, I see.”
    But he