"Could try, though," Ryan insisted, fascinated by the thought that the gleaming capsules might contain men and women from a hundred years ago, people with all the scientific knowledge and wisdom that they'd had in those days. Who knew what information they might be able to convey?
"I think not. To tamper with such things, far beyond our wisdom, Ryan... This could be a fearful Pandora's box of evil or disease. How can we take on that weighty responsibility?"
"We got every right, Doc. There's nobody else here but us. I say let's try and defrost 'em."
The old-timer sighed. "This is madness, my friend. Madness. But we don't even know how to begin to release them from their eternal durance."
"Ounce of plas-ex and they'll pop open like the belly of a drowned dog," J.B. said.
"Here," Krysty called. "Sealed panel says Emergency Mass Release Controls. This has got to be it."
They all gathered around.
The control was on what looked to be the master console. Certainly the chair in front of it was larger and more plush than any of the others. And smack in the center was the panel that Krysty had noticed. It was locked and had an intricate sec key attached to it by a steel chain.
"One key and three locks," observed Krysty.
"Not uncommon, my dear. Many high-security establishments will have a similar system. It prevents a single fit of schizoid psychotic madness. No one person can operate the master key. Or press the red button reading 'Do not pass Go and do not destroy the world.' We'll probably find a time delay on a single key that will shut down the whole override system."
"So where's other keys, Doc?" Jak asked. "Round here?"
"In the ruins of what was once the Pentagon? Or Washington? Camp David? Nevada? Air Force One? I can tell you, my snow-headed colleague, that those missing keys will remain missing until Gabriel blows his horn. And probably after that as well."
"Plas-ex time," J.B. announced, fumbling in the lining of his leather jacket.
Ryan was about to warn the Armorer to be careful, then decided to keep his mouth shut. J.B. would be as careful as he could be without needing to be told about it.
He teased out a tiny piece of the gray explosive, rolling it between his fingers. He worked the thin worm of plas-ex into a triangular shape, pressing it to the top of the sec-locked control. He took out a detonator, which was no larger than a thumbtack, and pushed one end into the gray strip.
"Ten seconds," he said. "Ready? Go." The Armorer tweaked the end of the detonator to activate its timing mechanism.
They all ducked behind the desks for protection, though the explosion was barely noticeable.
But it did the trick.
A three-sided section of the cover had been lifted off, exposing a single red switch beneath it. On the console, a number of lights flashed furiously.
Doc laughed. "One hundred years ago, a whole peck of telephones would have been ringing all over the shop. This must have been one of the most secret places on the planet."
"Not anymore. You figure this'll start to thaw out the freezies, Doc?"
"Kill or cure," the old man replied.
"Do it, Ryan," Lori said imperiously.
Moving carefully to avoid cutting his hand on the sharp edges of the torn cover, Ryan gripped the red switch and pulled it firmly toward himself, hearing the solid click of the contact being made, somewhere beneath the top of the desk.
"There she blows," J.B. shouted, taking off his fedora and waving it in the air in a most uncharacteristic display of enthusiasm. Lights flashed above each of the nine silver pods that the companions had assumed were occupied. What looked like steam was released in hissing, blinding clouds, concealing everything behind the great glass wall of the control chamber.
"Coolant release," Doc shouted. "Guess it must have been something like liquid nitrogen after all. It's being vented right now. My stars, but this is exciting!"
"Others opening too," Jak called, pointing to the rest of the capsules, whose lids were visibly beginning to lift.
"What are they going to be like?" Krysty asked nobody in particular.
Doc fielded the question. "Those that have already ceased the cryogenic process will obviously be exceedingly defunct. Dead. Gone before. Joined the choir celestial. Sleeping with their Maker. Resting the rest that has no awakening. Dived into the last great darkness. Savoring the enigma of the journey from which no man has yet returned. Plucking at the harp where..."
"Doc," Krysty interrupted irritably, "answer the bastard question, will you? What are they going to be like? The ones that unfreeze?"
"Ah, yes. Bear in mind that the probability is that they will have been frozen either at a point near death or at a point where a disease had them severely in its grip. Perhaps some illness that had not yet run its course, but for which medical science had, then, no hope of cure."
"Fucking sickies, Doc?" Jak said.
"In a word... yes."
"What if it's catching?"
Krysty's question stopped everyone in their tracks. Suppose these illnesses from before sky-dark were hideously contagious? None of them had thought about that.
"Can't be," Ryan denied with a positive degree of false confidence.
She persisted. "Why, lover?"
"Too much risk to anyone here or in the freezing part of the redoubt."
"Ever hear of LIDS?" Doc asked thoughtfully. "Perhaps not. Lethal Immune Deficiency Syndrome. The government suppressed the facts about it, trying to avoid a panic."
"What was?.." asked Jak.
"Your body's resistance to illness vanished overnight. Caught by walking through someone's sneeze. Easy as that. And you reallycould get it from toilet seats. If the nukes hadn't ended civilization, it could have chilled more people than the Black Death."
"What if one of them in those there are got it?" Lori asked, glancing toward the exit.
"As I said. There were many ways you could pick it up. Any sort of contact, no matter how casual, spread the virus, which was always a hundred percent terminal. But it was easily detected, as I recall. So, they'd not have let anyone in here with it. At least I remember from some of the scuttlebutt whispers at the time... Where was I? Oh, yes. When the sons of bitches fired me forward, they were talking about concentration camps and portable crematoria and even IE."
"What was that, Doc?" Krysty asked. The old man's horror tale from the past had caught everyone's attention. Nobody was even bothering to look at the fog-filled cubicles and the ponderously opening streamlined freezing chambers.
"Involuntary Euthanasia. It never got quite that bad, but there was martial law in the air, my friends, and a cold hand around your heart if you tested positive. Bad days."
He shook his head sadly, tapping at the floor with the metal ferrule of his cane. The dismal insight that he'd given into the past of their country held everyone in silence, a silence that was broken by a yelp from Lori.
"Look!"
The inactive or malfunctioned capsules were now completely open. The other nine were still hidden behind the veiling torrents of released coolant.
The blond teenager led the way to peer into the open containers, her spurs jingling merrily as she ran. The others joined her, staring into the padded interiors of the frozen coffins.
Some were quite empty.
Some were not.
"Bones, bones, dried lazy bones," Doc Tanner whispered, turning away with a sigh.
Hermetically sealed for a hundred years, the failures of the cryogenic experiments had become perfectly mummified. The skulls were encased in a tight mask of brown leather, the eyes long vanished into the shadowed sockets. The jaw gaped, held in place only by shreds of gristle, like old whipcord. The bodies had been wrapped in a shroud of thin plasticized cloth that had probably been white but had deteriorated to a patchy yellow. The skeletal hands and feet emerged from under the bindings, hooked and sere.