“Yes, but I’ve seen you make totally harmless things explode. Remember the blender back in the guest quarters on Meditreme Station?”

“Who makes a blender that shatters when you pour hot soup into it? That’s just bad design. Don’t blame the user.” Ashok unplugged his cable from the computer and ventured deeper into the ship.

Callie activated her suit radio. “Drake, Janice – Stephen and I are coming back, and we’re bringing a castaway.”

Elena Oh woke, shivering, in a dark room that grew bright the moment she gasped. She sat up, bedclothes spilling away from her, and that was strange, because the only blankets on the Anjou were in the cargo hold, and…

She put her hand on the curved white wall beside the bunk and steadied herself. There was gravity, or something like it, but the air had the recycled tang she associated with space flight, so she was probably in a ship under thrust. Her memories were a jumble with no continuity, but disorientation was a known side effect of waking from cryogenic sleep, and she resolved not to let panic overwhelm her. Soon enough, her mental model of herself and the world around her would be reassembled.

Why was she on a different ship? Her crew was on a one-way voyage to a place where there were no ships. Had the Anjou been disabled before it reached its destination? Was she on a rescue vessel? She remembered… a space station? A hangar? Some vast dark space, where repairs were being made to the Anjou, except it seemed more like the ship was being torn apart by great articulated mechanical arms–

“You are Doctor Elena Oh?” The voice was a warm tenor, and seemed to emerge from the walls and the ceiling. “That’s our best guess, based on the data we recovered from your ship, but the personnel files were a bit corrupted.”

Elena tested her voice. Her throat felt raw, as if she’d been screaming. Night terrors? But you weren’t supposed to dream in cryosleep. “I’m Elena. Who are you? Am I in quarantine?” They’d been concerned about encountering alien microorganisms at their destination. Even a basically habitable planet could be lethal in a million ways.

“Not at all. You’re perfectly healthy, for someone who was frozen for centuries, thawed out briefly, and then frozen again. You can call me Shall. Most of the crew does.”

The “centuries” part was no surprise – it was a long trip, and a longshot one. But… “Frozen again?” She tried to stand, and found it no more difficult than it had been most mornings in grad school after a long night in the lab. The pods were supposed to maintain muscle tone, and they seemed to have done their work.

“Yes. You don’t remember waking up recently? It was just a few days ago, if the data on your ship is accurate. Which it might not be.”