Kordov pointed to it. “That’s for you, Santee-built for a big boy. You’re lighter, Dard. We’ll fit you in on top over on the other side.”
A second rack stood against the farther wall with four more of the coffins ready and waiting. Dard shivered, but it was not only imagination-disturbed nerves which roughened his skin, there was a chill in the air-coming from the open boxes.
Kordov explained. “You go to sleep and then you freeze.”
Santee chuckled. “Just so you thaw us out again, Tas. I ain’t aimin’ to spend the rest of my life an icicle, so you brainy boys can prove somethin’ or other. Now what do we do climb in?”
“Strip first,” ordered the First Scientist. “And then you get a couple of shots.”
He pulled along a small rolling tray-table on which were laid a series of hypodermics. Carefully he selected two, one filled with a red brown liquid, the other with a colorless substance.
As Dard fumbled at the fastenings of the torn uniform he still wore, Santee asked a question for them both.
“An’ how do we wake up when the right time comes?
Got any alarms set in these contraptions?”
Those three—” Kordov indicated the three lower coffins on the far rack, “are especially fitted. Arranged to waken those inside, Kimber, Lui, and me, when the ship signals that it has reached the end of the course set, which will be when the instruments raise a sun enough like Sol to nourish earth-type planets. We feed that into her robot controls once we are free in space. During the voyage she may vary the pattern-to make evasion of meteors or for other reasons. But she will always come back on the set course, If we are close to a solar system when we are awakened, and Kimber has done everything possible to assure that, then we shall arouse any others needed to bring the ship down. Most of you won’t be awakened until after we land-there isn’t enough room.”