Callie hit the button by the door, but nothing happened, not even the whine of a mechanical failure. The ship was pulling power from somewhere, for something, but apparently not for opening doors. Ashok shrugged, then worked the fingers of his prosthetic hand into the minuscule crack where the door met the wall. He could exert a startling amount of pressure with those fingers, and the metal squealed and shrieked as it slid forcibly along its groove and disappeared into the wall. The room beyond wasn’t entirely dark: a faint blue glow shone off to the left. Most of the cryopods were dark, but the instrument panel on the last one in the row was illuminated.

“Do you think they made the pods look like coffins on purpose?” Ashok took a step inside. “As a way of getting the people inside used to the idea that they were probably going to die on the trip?”

There were six pods, each roughly rectangular and big enough to hold a human, but they didn’t make her think of coffins. They reminded her more of big chest freezers – which, in a way, they were. Five of the pods were open and empty, which gave her a chill right up her spine and into her backbrain. She couldn’t help but imagine dead crew members, blue-skinned, frost rimed on their faces, lurching through the black corridors of the ship, eager to steal the heat of the living.

“There’s someone on ice over here.” Ashok stood by the last container, its glowing blue control panel casting weird shadows on his already weird face. “Most of the power on the ship has been diverted to maintaining life support and keeping this pod functional, I think.”

Callie joined him and looked into the pod. There was a window over the inhabitant’s face, and the glass wasn’t even foggy or covered in ice, the way cryopod windows inevitably appeared in historical immersives. Artistic license. The figure inside was a petite woman with straight black hair, dressed in white coveralls. She looked like a sleeping princess (peasant garb aside), and something in Callie sparkled at the sight of her. Uh oh, she thought.

“Can we wake her up?” she said. Not with a kiss, of course. This wasn’t a fairy tale, despite the glass casket.

Ashok shrugged. “Sure. We can try, anyway. The mechanisms all seem to be intact, and Shall says the diagnostics on the cryonic suspension system came back clean. Want me to pop the seal?”

“Let’s get Stephen over here first in case she needs medical attention.” Callie activated her radio. “XO, get suited up and come over. We’ve got a live one on ice.”