It was an enormous theater-in-the-round with a circular stage. There were seats for a thousand in the amphitheater, all filled with U-Con brass and politicos doing their best to keep JPL happy and paying taxes in the state. Fee seated us in the reserved section and went down to the floor to join Guess, who was standing at a huge control console alongside the stage. I thought she was behaving with poise and assurance. Either the Chief had kept his promise or she’d found her identity. Either way or both, I had to admire her.
Guess took stage center, looked around, and spoke. “Senoras, gemmum, soul hermanos, ah gone esplain brief, you know, what this esperiment mean, dig? You got like any preguntas, right, ax da man.”
He motioned to Fee, who did something at the console. Projectors flashed on and there were three bods on the stage alongside Guess, bowing and smiling. They were smallish but looked strong and tough.
“These are the three courageous volunteers,” Guess said (in translation), “who have taken the first cryogenic flight in history. This is in preparation for the Pluto mission and eventually the stars. The constraints are time and payload. It will take the mission many years to reach Pluto, even at maximum acceleration. It will take centuries to reach the stars. It would be impossible to freight enough supplies for these men. There is only one answer, the cryonic technique.”
He motioned to Fee again. The projectors flicked and there were the cryonauts, naked, being helped into transparent coffins by technicians. Quick cuts of them being injected, variously attached to tendrils, given some sort of sterile wash. The coffin lids were bolted.
“We lowered the temperature in the cryocoffins one degree Celsius per hour and increased the pressure one atmosphere per hour until we produced the effect of Ice III, which is denser than water and forms above the freezing point. Mid-twentieth-century cryonics failed because it was not known that suspended animation could not be achieved through freezing alone; it requires a combination of low temperature and high pressure. Details are in your fact-tapes.”
Shot of the coffins being tenderly loaded into a capsule. Cut to interior of capsule and techs hooking up complicated plumbing.
“We launched them on a ninety-day orbit, a deep ellipse.” Long shot of the launch; a gentle liftoff and then, at altitude, flames roaring down from the rocket vehicle carrying the capsule, and acceleration to out-of-sight. The usual. Edison looked bored.
“Now they’re returning. We’ll trap the craft in a projected kinorep cone, center it with its lateral gas jets, and let the offset of kinorep and gravity bring it down slowly. For those of you who aren’t tech-oriented, kinotrac and kinorep are our abbreviations for kinetic electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. That’s how the craft you travel on take off and land without shaking you up.
“The cryonauts will arrive in about ten minutes and be brought up to nominal metabolism so slowly that I’m afraid you’ll have to wait quite a few days before interviewing them — not that they’ll have much to tell you. For them, no time has passed at all. Now, are there any questions?”
There were some smart-ass questions from civilians: Where was the orbit of the capsule? (In the plane of the Earth’s orbit. All in your fact-tapes.) Why not a comet orbit around the sun? (Refrigeration constraints plus the fact that it would be thrust into a no-return parabola. All in your fact-tapes.) What are the names and qualifications of the cryonauts? (All in your fact-tapes.) How do you personally feel about this dangerous experiment? (Accountable.) He looked around. “Three more minutes. Any further questions?”
“Yes,” I called. “What’s an Ugly Poppy?”
He gave me a look that made me feel for George Armstrong Custer (West Point, ‘61) and returned to the console. “Iris open,” he ordered. Fee touched something and the entire roof above the stage leafed back. “Kino trap.” She nodded, concentrating so hard that her teeth were fastened on the tip of her tongue.
We waited. We waited. We waited. There was a loud bleep from the console. “In contact,” murmured Guess. He took the controls. “Each time the craft contacts the kinorep wall we reverse it with its lateral jets, trying to pin it to the center of the cone.” He thought he was thinking out loud. In the anxious hush it sounded like a shout. His hands flickered over the console controls and the bleeps merged into a sustained discord. “Centered and descending.” It was obvious to me that pokerface was under a tremendous strain even though he showed nothing. He began a droning count: “Diez. Nueve. Ocho. Siete. Seis. Cinco. Cuatro. Tres. Dos. Uno. Minuto.” He was peering up through the iris and down at the console radar screen. He went on counting and it sounded like a Latin mass. What a hell of an accountability.
Then the ass end of the capsule crept silently through the iris and inched down with the speed of a snail. We couldn’t see the kinorep repulsion but it raised a small storm of dust and paper debris on the stage. There was cheering from the audience. Guess paid no attention; he was completely concentrated on the console controls and the capsule.
He nodded to Fee, who ran to the edge of the stage, knelt, and began making hand signals indicating how much farther the capsule had to drop. We knew it had landed when we saw the stage give slightly. Guess switched off the console, drew a deep, shuddering breath, and suddenly electrified us with a Comanche whoop. We all yelled and laughed and applauded; even Edison, who was consumed by professional jealousy.
Three techs, realsies this time, appeared and unsealed the capsule. Guess stepped to the hatch. “As I said, you won’t be able to talk to them but you can look at them. Think of it. They won’t be aware of any time lapse.” He poked his head into the hatch and his voice was muffled. “Frozen ninety days in orbit and—” He stopped abruptly. We waited. Nothing. He didn’t speak; he didn’t move. One of the techs touched his back. No response. The two others joined him, muttering anxiously, and then slowly pulled him back. He moved like a sleepwalker and when they let go he simply stood, frozen. The techs looked into the capsule and when their heads reappeared they were white and dumbfounded.
I had to see what had happened. I scrambled with the crowd to the capsule. When I finally got a chance to look in I saw the three coffins. There were no cryonauts inside. There was nothing inside the coffins except three pasty, naked rats. The mob pushed me aside. Through the bedlam I heard Fee-5 shrilling, “Guig! Here! Guig! Please! Guig!” She was alongside the console. I fought my way to her. She was standing over Guess, who was on the floor behind the console in the throes of a classic epileptic seizure.
“All right, Fee, I’ve got him.” I did what had to be done. The tongue. The foam. Loosening the clothes. Easing the thrashing arms and legs. She was appalled; a seizure is always terrifying. Then I stood up and shouted, “Group! Here!” All four materialized. “Guard of honor,” I said. “Don’t let anyone see him. Are you in control, Fee?”
“No.”
“Sorry. You’ll have to be. Does the Chief have an office? Any private sanctum?” She nodded. “Good. Instructions: My friends will carry him. Show them where to take him. Then come right back. At once, understand? You’ll have to front for Guess when the mob gets around to asking questions. I’ll stand by you. My friends will stand by the Chief. Go!”
She was back in five minutes, out of breath, carrying a lab coat. “Put this on, Guig. You be one of his assistants.”
“No. You’ll have to do this on your own.”
“But you’ll stand by me?”
“I’m here.”
“What do I do? What do I say? I’m not so smart.”
“Yes you are, and I haven’t trained you for three years for nothing. Now — with great assurance and great style — are you ready?”
“Not yet. Tell me what threw the Chief.”
“The cryonauts aren’t in their coffins. They’ve disappeared. There’s nothing in each coffin but something that looks like a naked rat.”