"Kimball Trent is also dead, frozen to death by an explosion in the Refrigerator Room, Number One; therefore his knowledge must be replaced by the minds of those among you."
A surge of terrible wracking coughing sounded, followed by the sobbing gasps of a man dying of an agonizing wound. Then:
"One final word. Fight the Gharrians, blast them from the face of Earth, drive them back into hell-space that spawned them. Battle them with every weapon and scheme within your power to use. My blessings upon all of you. Go with God—"
There was only the faintest of thudding sounds, and then silence.
Kimball Trent leaned back in the chair, twisting the ring over and over in his fingers, horror piling upon horror in his mind. His gaze flicked to the perpetual radi-calendar beside the screen, and he read the date, June 9, 2735.
He gasped, knowing now the answer to many things, his mind accepting the thought that he would not believe before, one that he had stifled with all his will because it was so fantastic. He shuddered, gaze racing about the crypt-stillness of the room, and fear knotted the muscles of his heart.
He knew now why his beard and hair had been so uncannily long and why his body had withered and grown emaciated through the passage of what had seemed a few hours. He knew now why the dust had been throughout the room, and he knew why the ring had been in the greater dust pile that lay before the screen.
He knew that he had been held in frozen thrall, had been kept miraculously alive, like a fish frozen in a block of ice, by the instantaneous freezing of his body by the refrigerant. He knew that the primitive water-wheel attached to the machinery of the refrigerating room had kept the room at a below zero temperature until it had stopped when the water flow had dropped below the wheel by slow degrees.
Yes, he had the answers to everything now.
This was June 2735—and the accident had befallen him in August 2210.