sleeve.
“It isn’t possible,” he whispered.
Like a man in a dream, he stumbled to the medicine chest. The syringe was
there. He broke it and saw that it was loaded with a cartridge filled with
a reddish substance. A drug, undoubtedly, to overcome suspended animation.
Replacing the syringe, he went back to the tank and found the valve. It was
stubborn with the years, defying all the strength in his arms. He kicked it
with a heavy boot and jarred it loose. With nervous hands he opened it and
watched the level of the green fluid slowly recede.
Watching, an odd calm came upon him, a steadying calm that made him hard
and machine-like to do the thing that faced him. One little slip might
spoil it. One fumbling move might undo the work of a thousand years. What
if the drug in the hypodermic had lost its strength? There were so many
things that might happen.
But there was only one thing to do. He raised a hand in front of him and
looked at it. It was a steady hand.
He wasted no time in wondering what it was about. This was not the time for
that. Frantic questionings clutched at his thoughts and he shook them off.
Time enough to wonder and to speculate and question when this thing was
done.
When the fluid was level with the girl’s body, he waited no longer. He
leaned over the rim of the tank and lifted her in his arms. For a moment he
hesitated, then turned and went to the laboratory and placed her on one of
the work tables. The fluid, dripping off the rustling metallic dress, left
a trail of wet across the floor.
From the medicine chest he took the hypodermic and went back to the girl.
He lifted her left arm and peered closely at it. There were little
punctures, betraying previous use of the needle.
Perspiration stood out on his forehead. If only he knew a little more about
this. If only he had some idea of what he was supposed to do.
Awkwardly he shoved the needle into a vein, depressed the plunger. It was
done and he stepped back.
Nothing happened. He waited.
Minutes passed and she took a shallow breath. He watched in fascination,
saw her come to life again… saw the breath deepen, the eyelids flicker,
the right hand twitch.
Then she was looking at him out of deep blue eyes.
“You are all right?” he asked.
It was, he knew, a rather foolish question.
Her speech was broken. Her tongue and lips refused to work the way they
should, but he understood what she tried to say.
“Yes, I’m all right.” She lay quietly on the table. “What year is this?”
she asked.
“It’s 6948,” he told her.
Her eyes widened and she looked at him with a startled glance. “Almost a
thousand years,” she said. “You are sure of the year?”
He nodded. “That is about the only thing that I am really sure of.”
“How is that?”
“Why, finding you here,” said Gary, “and reviving you again. I still don’t
believe it happened.”
She laughed, a funny, discordant laugh because her muscles, inactive for
years, had forgotten how to function rightly.
“You are Caroline Martin, aren’t you?” asked Gary.
She gave him a quick look of surprise and rose to a sitting position.
“I am Caroline Martin,” she answered. “But how did you know that?”
Gary gestured at the diploma. “I read it.”
“Oh,” she said. “I’d forgotten all about it.”
“I am Gary Nelson,” he told her. “Newsman on the loose. My pal’s out there
in a spaceship waiting for us.”
“I suppose,” she said, “that I should thank you, but I don’t know how. Just
ordinary thanks aren’t quite enough.”
“Skip it,” said Gary, tersely.
She stretched her arms above her head.
“It’s good to be alive again,” she said. “Good to know there’s life ahead
of you.”
“But,” said Gary, “you always were alive. It must have been just like going
to sleep.”
“It wasn’t sleep,” she said. “It was worse than death. Because, you see, I
made one mistake.”
“One mistake?”
“Yes, just one mistake. One you’d never think of. At least, I didn’t. You
see, when animation was suspended every physical process was reduced to
almost zero, metabolism slowed down to almost nothing. But with one
exception. My brain kept right on working.”
The horror of it sank into Gary slowly. “You mean you knew?”
She nodded. “I couldn’t hear or see or feel. I had no bodily sensation. But
I could think. I’ve thought for almost ten centuries. I tried to stop
thinking, but I never could.
I prayed something would go wrong and I would die. Anything at all to end
that eternity of thought.”
She saw the pity in his eyes.
“Don’t waste sympathy on me,” she said and there was a note of hardness in
her voice. “I brought it on myself. Stubbornness, perhaps. I played a long
shot. I took a gamble.”
He chuckled in his throat. “And won.”
“A billion to one shot,” she said. “Probably greater odds than that. It was
madness itself to do it. This shell is a tiny speck in space. There wasn’t,
I don’t suppose, a billion-to-one chance, if you figured it out on paper,
that anyone would find me. I had some hope. Hope that would have reduced
those odds somewhat. I placed my faith on someone and I guess they failed
me. Perhaps it wasn’t their fault. Maybe they died before they could even
hunt for me.”
“But how did you do it?” asked Gary. “Even today suspended animation has
our scientists stumped. They’ve made some progress but not much. And you
made it work a thousand years ago.”
“Drugs,” she said. “Certain Martian drugs. Rare ones. And they have to be
combined correctly. Slow metabolism to a point where it is almost
non-existent. But you have to be careful. Slow it down too far and
metabolism stops. That’s death.”
Gary gestured toward the hypodermic. “And that,” be said, “reacts against
the other drug.”
She nodded gravely.
“The fluid in the tank,” he said. “That was to prevent dehydration and held
some food value? You wouldn’t need much food with metabolism at nearly
zero. But how about your mouth and nostrils? The fluid…”
“A mask,” she said. “Chemical paste that held up under moisture. Evaporated
as soon as it was struck by air.”
“You thought of everything.”
“I had to,” she declared. “There was no one else to do my thinking for me.”
She slid off the table and walked slowly toward him.
“You told me a minute ago,” she said, “that the scientists of today haven’t
satisfactorily solved suspended animation.”
He nodded.
“You mean to say they still don’t know about these drugs?”
“There are some of them,” he said, “who’d give their good right arm to know
about them.”
“We knew about them a thousand years ago,” the girl said. “Myself and one
other. I wonder…”
She whirled on Gary. “Let’s get out of here,” she cried. “I have a horror
of this place.”
“Anything you want to take?” he asked. “Anything I can get together for
you?”
She made an impatient gesture.
“No,” she said. “I want to forget this place.”
Chapter Three
The Space Pup arrowed steadily toward Pluto. From the engine room came the
subdued hum of the geosectors. The vision plate looked out on ebon space
with its far-flung way posts of tiny, steely stars. The needle was climbing
up near the thousand-miles-a-second mark.
Caroline Martin leaned forward in her chair and stared out at the vastness
that stretched eternally ahead. “I could stay and watch forever,” she
exulted.
Gary, lounging back in the pilot’s seat, said quietly:
“I’ve been thinking about that name of yours. It seems to me I’ve heard it
somewhere. Read it in a book.”
She glanced at him swiftly and then stared out into space.
“Perhaps you have,” she said finally.
There was a silence, unbroken except by the humming of the geosectors.
The girl turned back to Gary, chin cupped in her hands. “Probably you have
read about me;” she said. ‘Perhaps the name of Caroline Martin is mentioned
in your histories. You see, I was a member of the old Mars-Earth Research
commission during the war with Jupiter. I was so proud of the appointment.
Just four years out of school and I was trying so hard to get a good job in
some scientific research work. I wanted to earn money to go back to school
again.”
“I’m beginning to remember now,” said Gary, “but there must be something
wrong. The histories say you were a traitor. They say you were condemned to
death.”
“I was a traitor,” she said and there was a thread of ancient bitterness in
the words she spoke. “I refused to turn over a discovery I made, a
discovery that would have won the war. It also would have wrecked the solar