User Guide

A NEW SUN
APPENDIX 5
231
He waited, helpless, while the ship hurled on and the warning klaxons sound-
ed their three beat sequence.
After interminable moments he heard a click and a hiss, and then a storm
exploded beneath him.
Transmission Received,
U.N.S. Unity Central Processor.
Impact Detected.
Fusion drive shut down.
Severe Damage Hydroponics Mods 2, 3; cryobay 7.
Triggering automatic wakeup of core staff per coded instructions.
v v v
Pravin Lal awakened to the hiss of the transparent capsule door breaking its
seal and the feel of the ship’s foundation shaking beneath him. His heart
began to pound and he closed his eyes, breathing deeply, seeking calm.
When his heartbeat slowed he opened his eyes once more. His training had pre-
pared him for this: disorientation, sleep sickness, a deep fatigue that seemed to
nest in his bones. He spit the respirator from his mouth and pulled the IVs from
his arm, then lifted his hands, placed them on the glass lid above, and pushed.
The cryocell opened. He was alive.
Around him stretched the expanse of Cryobay Two, silent and vast, filled with
over a thousand identical glass capsules, each one bathed in a pale blue light,
each with tubes and cables snaking down to conduits in the floor. Over a
thousand crew, but his eyes immediately, reflexively, turned to the cell at his
left. He climbed to his feet and, ignoring the chill, crossed to it.
He looked down through the glass. There, beneath the frost and bluish tint of
the cryogel, he could make out her soft brown shape, indistinct, and the dark-