
Varian’s hand lay where it had fallen from his in the relaxation of sleep. Tor had placed a dim light
somewhere in the shuttle, probably for Kai’s reassurance since the Thek did not require light to see. Kai
touched Varian’s hand, still cold and rigid in the thrall of cryogenic sleep. He watched, holding his own
breath, until he saw the slight rise and fall of her diaphragm in its much reduced life-rhythm. Then he
relaxed, exhaling.
He turned back to Tor but sensed its complete withdrawal: it had become a large smooth rock, flattened
on the bottom to conform to the deck, extruding not so much as a lump, bump, or pseudopod. This was
the Thek contemplative state and Kai knew better than to interrupt it.
He lay there until his nose began to itch. He stifled a sneeze with a finger under his nose, and then felt
foolish. A sneeze couldn’t rouse a Thek. Much less the sleepers. That desire to sneeze was the prelude
to a growing twitchy restlessness in Kai which he recognized as the result of the stimulants Tor had
injected. The Thek had not said that he couldn’t move: it had only said to rest. Surely he had done
enough of that.
Kai began the muscle toning Discipline and, although he worked up a fine sweat, he soon realized that
cold sleep had done him no discernible harm. Even the healed wrist responded perfectly. The plaskin
Lunzie had used to set the break had long since flaked away. That meant they’d been asleep at least four
or five months.
He looked at his wrist chronometer, but the device was blank. Even ‘long-life’ battery tabs wear out.
How long ago?
Exercise produced another effect and Kai, rising carefully, found his way through the cold-sleep mist that
shrouded the shuttle to the toilet. Returning, he checked each of the sleepers, observing the curious
transformation sleep worked on faces. Bonnard, for instance, in the middle of his second decade, looked
more adult than Dimenon, twice the boy’s age. Portegin looked as if he still worried about the
effectiveness of the beacon he had contrived. Lunzie, the pragmatic medic, was smiling, a rare sight while
she was awake, and her face had assumed a gentleness at odds with her ascorbic temperament. She’d
admitted to having undergone sleep suspension before: her records had listed her chronological age but
there had always been that detachment about Lunzie that struck Kai as bemused tolerance: as if she’d
already seen most of what the universe had to offer and wouldn’t spare the energy to be excited by
anything anymore.
Triv, the other team member trained in Discipline, had a forbidding expression in sleep, a surprising
strength in mouth, jawline and brow that had not been so apparent as the man went quietly about his
normal duties.
Since Tor was still motionless, Kai sat down by Varian, feeling companionship even with her sleeping
self. She was beautiful. Then he noticed that one side of her face slanted down, the other more or less up,
leaving one eyebrow higher than the other, as if the cold sleep had surprised her. Suddenly he wanted
very much to have the cheerfulness of her conscious company. Who knew how long Tor would remain
an uncommunicative lump? He needed someone he could talk to, before his perspective was warped by
self-accusative reflection in the gloomy silence. Varian was co-leader: she should have been revived as a
matter of course. Kai then realized that he ought to be relieved that Tor had been able to single him out.
If the Thek had revived, say, Aulia, she would have gone into hysterics just being close to a Thek—and
then convulsions when she realized that she’d been put in cryogenic suspension without being consulted!
As a geologist, Aulia was very good, but she failed in areas of personal adjustments.
Kai looked about the dimly lit area for the revival kit and saw it in the dust just beyond the clean outline
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html