User Guide

ness of her long hair. Pria. She looked so peaceful, so far away … he still
remembered her gentleness, and their last strong kiss before the cryotechs
closed the cell, locking her away from him.
His practiced eyes scanned the small console above her cell. Everything
appeared normal; she had survived. His eyes flickered once across the manual
release key, and then he saw the red warning lights flashing at the far end of
the cryobay. The ship … he had almost forgotten the danger. He brushed Pria’s
cell with his fingers one more time and then turned away.
From a metal shelf at the foot of his vacated cell he lifted a folded uniform …
sleek, comfortable, in the sky blue of the mission’s Chief of Surgery, with the
U.N. seal on the breast and no country-of-origin markings visible. The Captain
had lobbied strongly for that.
He slipped into the uniform and flipped on the small computer sewn into the
uniform’s sleeve. Status report: the Captain would emerge from cryosleep
shortly, along with other core officers and some emergency support staff. It
appeared that large portions of the ship’s hull had been damaged, along with
two of the three hydroponics modules. The fusion drive had shut down.
Pravin entered the Returned to Duty code and headed for the command bay.
The ship was racing towards Centauri system at tremendous speed, and with-
out the fusion drive there was no way to stop.
Log Entry Received,
Pravin Lal, Chief of Surgery.
I have awakened to find the mission in jeopardy. I go now to join
my Captain in the command bay, ready to learn what has gone awry.
I pray the integrity of the ship’s datacore remains true. It is the last
hope of humankind...all of our knowledge digitized for transit to
the new world. If Earth has not survived these last 40 years, then
our future lies in the heart of this damaged ship.
A NEW SUN
APPENDIX 5
232