Under certain circumstances being bored to death might be the preferable alternative. But you’ve got no options in deep sleep. The cold, the regulated atmosphere, the needles that poke and probe according to the preset medical programs, rule your body, if not your life. When you lie down in deep sleep you surrender volition to the care of mechanicals, trusting in them, relying on them. And why not? Over the decades they’ve proven themselves a helluva lot more reliable than the people who designed them. Machines bear no grudges, engage in no animosity. The judgments they render are based solely on observation and analysis. Emotion is something they’re not required to quantify, much less act upon.

The machine that was the Sulaco was doing its job. The four sleepers on board alternately dreamt and rested, speeding along their preprogrammed course coddled by v

the best technology civilization could devise. It kept them alive, regulated their vitals, treated momentary blips in their systems. Ripley, Hicks, Newt, even Bishop, though what was left of Bishop was easy to maintain. He was used to being turned on and off. Of the four he was the only one who didn’t dream, didn’t have nightmares. It was something he regretted. It seemed like such a waste of time, to sleep but not to dream. However, the designers of the advanced android series to which he belonged would have regarded dreaming as an expensive frivolity, and therefore did not apply themselves to the resolution of the problem.

Naturally no one thought to inquire of the androids what they thought of the situation.

After Bishop, who technically was part of the ship and not the crew and therefore did not count, Hicks was the worst off of the sleepers. Not because his nightmares were any more severe than those of his companions, but because the injuries he had recently suffered did not lend themselves to extended neglect. He needed the attention of a modern, full-service medical facility, of which the closest example lay another two years travel time and an enormous distance away.

Ripley had done what she could for him, leaving final diagnosis and prescription to the efficient judgment of the Sulaco’s medical instrumentation, but as none of the ship’s medical personnel had survived the trouble on Acheron, his treatment was perforce minimal. A couple of years locked in deep sleep were not conducive to rapid healing. There was little she’d been able to do except watch him slide into protective unconsciousness and hope.

While the ship did its best his body labored to repair the damage. Slowing down his vitals helped because that vi

likewise slowed down the spread of potential infection, but about the internal injuries he’d suffered, the ship could do nothing. He’d survived this long on determination, living off his reserves. Now he needed surgery.