awareness, already slipping away into emptiness. There were dreams of falling, of flame and battle and death in the night, and of an endless, empty gulf between the stars. …
He drew a breath and felt that terrifying no-air feeling you got when the wind was knocked out of you. He tried to inhale, harder, and a flash of white-hot pain stabbed at both sides of his chest.
He was drowning.
Garroway tried to breathe through the blockage and felt his body convulse in paroxysms of coughing and retching. A viscous jelly clogged his nose, mouth, and windpipe. A giant’s hand pressed down on his chest; another closed about his throat. Damn it, he couldn’t breathe. …
Then, with a final, explosive cough, the jelly was expelled from his lungs and he managed his first ragged, burning lungful of air. He managed a second breath, and a third. The pain and the strangling sensation faded.
There was something wrong with his vision, he thought. He could see … a pale, faint green glow that nonetheless hurt the eyes, but there was nothing to see, save a flat, smooth, plastic-looking surface a few centimeters above his face. For a moment claustrophobia threatened, and his breathing became harsh, rapid, and painful once more.
Something stung his arm at the angle of his elbow. A robotic injector arm pulled back, vanishing into a side compartment. “Lie still and breathe deeply,” a voice that was neither male nor female told him in his thoughts. “Do not try to leave your cell. A transition medical team will be with you momentarily.”
Memories began surfacing, as other sensations besides pain and strangulation returned to his body. He’d been through this before. He was in a cybehibe tube and he was awakening once more after years of cybernetically induced hibernation. The voice in his head was coming from his own cerebral implant, which meant they were monitoring his revival.
He was awake. He was okay. …
The gel that had moments before filled the narrow tube, providing, among other things, protection from several years’ worth of bed sores as well as a conduit for oxygen and cell-repair nano, was draining away now into the plastic padding beneath his back. Garroway concentrated on breathing, gulping down sweet air … and ignoring the stench that had collected inside the coffin-sized compartment for the past ten years or so. His empty and shrunken stomach threatened to rebel. He tried to focus on remembering.
He could remember … yeah … he could remember.
He remembered the shuttle flight up from the surface of Ishtar, and boarding a European Union transport—the Jules Verne. He remembered being told to remove all clothing and personal articles and log them with the clerk, of lying down on a metal slab barely softened by a thin plastic mattress, of a woman speaking to him in French as the first injection hit his bloodstream and turned the world fuzzy.
Ishtar. He’d been at Ishtar. And now … Now? They must be at Earth.
Earth!
The thought brought a sudden snap of energy and he thumped his head painfully against the plastic surface of the hybe tube as he tried to sit up.
Earth! …
Or … possibly one of the LaGrange stations. The pull of gravity felt about right for Earth, but that could be due to the rotation of a large habitat. He might even still be on the EU ship.
Gods and goddesses, no. He didn’t want to have to deal with them again. Let this be Earth!
The end of his hybe cell just above his head hissed open, and his pallet slid out into light. Two Marines in utility fatigues peered down at him. “What’s your name, buddy?” one asked him.
“Garroway,” he replied automatically. “John. Lance Corporal, serial number 19283-336-6959.”
“That’s a roger,” the other said, reading from a comp-board. “He’s tracking.”
“How ya feeling?”
“A bit muzzy,” he admitted. He tried to concentrate on his own body. The sensations were … odd. Unfamiliar. “Hungry, I think.”
“Not surprising after ten years with nothing but keepergel in your gut. You’ll be able to get some chow soon.”
“Ten years? What … what year is it?”
“Welcome to 2159, Marine.”
He held up both hands, turning them, looking at them a bit wonderingly. They were still wet with dissolving gel. “2159?”
“Don’t freak it, gramps,” the other Marine told him. “You’re all there. The nano even stopped your hair and nails from growing.”
“Yeah. It just feels … odd. Where are we?”
“The Marine Corps Cybernetic Hibernation Receiving Facility,” the Marine with the board said. “Twentynine Palms.”
“Then I’m home.”
The other Marine laughed. “Don’t make any quick judgments, timer. You’ll null your prog.”
“Huh?”
“Just lie there for a minute, guy. Don’t sweat the net. If you gotta puke, puke on the deck. The auts’ll take care of it. When you feel ready, sit up … but slow, understand? Don’t push your body too hard just yet. You need time to vam all the hibenano out of your system. When you feel like moving, make your way to the shower, get clean, and rec yourself some utilities.”
Garroway was already sitting up, swinging his legs off the pallet. “I’ve done this before,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” the Marine said. They were already moving away, beginning to cycle open the next cybehibe capsule in line, a few meters away. As the hatch cycled open and the pallet extruded itself from the bulkhead, Garroway could see the slowly moving form of Corporal Womicki half-smothered in green nanogel.
“What’s your name, buddy?” one of the revival techs asked.
“Wo-Womicki, Timothy. Lance Corporal, serial number 15521-119—”
“He’s tracking.”
“Welcome to 2159, Marine.”
The routine continued.
Elsewhere around the circular, fluorescent-lit compartment, other Marine revival techs were working with men and women emerging from cybehibe, dozens in this one room alone. Some, nude and pasty-looking, were already standing or making their way toward a door marked showers, but most remained on their pallets.
“Hey, Gare!” Womicki’s voice was weak, but he was sitting up. “We made it, huh?”
“I guess we did.”
“Whatcha think the pool number is?”
His stomach gave an unpleasant twist. “Dunno. Guess we’ll find out.”
The deathwatch pool was a kind of lottery, with the Marines betting on how many would
