Resurrection Seven

The seventh tub shook gently, stimulating the hypothalamic region of Eric's brain for the first time in almost two centuries. After a time, his limbs trembled and his body began to shiver. The liquid in which he floated boiled off at a temperature still far below that which would permit his body to function.
By the time all the liquid was gone he had uncurled and lay at the bottom of the tub. Now his heart pumped three hundred times a minute, generating warmth and activating his central nervous system. It took many hours for his heart to slow—not back to the one beat every two minutes it had known for a hundred-seventy-five years, but to the normal rate of about seventy per minute. By then his body temperature had climbed from below freezing to 98° F.
Eric lay in stupor for a week, while fluids flowed into the tub and massaged his muscles, while fatty tissue slowly turned into strength. Finally, he climbed from his tub.
He found the locker which bore his name, and opened it. Six other lockers were open and empty, as were six tubs. He found that hard to believe. It had seemed only a night of deep and dreamless sleep, no more. But each empty tub stood for twenty-five years, each open locker meant a man had gone and lived his time with the new generations of the ship, perhaps had sired children, had died with old age.
At intervals of twenty-five years, they would arise to police the ship.
Eric found his clothing on a hook, took it down. Yesterday—he laughed mirthlessly when he realized that had been almost two hundred years ago—Clair had told him something about a note. He found it in the breast pocket of his jumper, stiff and yellow. He read:
Darling: I will be ashes in the void between the stars when you read this. That sounds silly, but it's the truth—unless I can give old Methuselah a run for his money; I sadden when I think that you will be gone tomorrow, the same as dead. But if they need ten and if you are one who can withstand suspension—what can we do? Know that my love goes with you across the ages, Eric.