“You’re in a hell of a mood,” Tanya Ramirez said as McGregor threw himself into his chair. “Joanne on the rag?”

“Ha-ha,” he replied. He had no intention of talking about his feelings to Ramirez. She didn’t give a damn whether this was a funeral run or one of the truly upbeat correction jobs, like the times they inserted top-of-the-line medical teams to save important lives. Only jerks got involved with the subjects; she’d said that once. So now, out of pride, McGregor pretended to be as blasйas she was and of course felt like a jerk for pretending.

“Who have we got today?” he asked, trying to sound breezy.

Ramirez waved her hand at McGregor’s display screen, where separate windows showed the official correction authorization, temporal navigation charts, the latest chronal flux reports, and background data on the people in the time chamber. “We have your typical funeral-run volunteers,” Ramirez said. “Afflicted with your usual grab bag of terminal conditions, none contagious, and also afflicted with your garden-variety burning need to do something meaningful before they sink down the gravity well. If you want more details, read the History Thanks notices in  Corrections Daily.”

“Forget it,” McGregor told her. He had his newsreader programmed to skip the History Thanks column. After he’d sent someone on a funeral run, he didn’t need to know that the deceased did needlework or had once dreamed of being an architect. “What time are we trying to hit?” he asked.

“Early January 1970, late December 1969 if we have to,” Ramirez replied. “The correction goes down May 4, 1970, but we have to insert them early enough to establish camouflage.”