“Well, you wouldn’t want to generalize from such a small sample—twelve went in and nine survived—unless they all had died of the same thing, which wasn’t the case. All of them but Double-H were pretty old at the start, which in retrospect was a mistake. But I’m sure all but one lived to be at least ninety, not counting the forty-eight years’ cryptobiosis. One died on Earth, murdered.”

“Did they have any sensation of passing time while they were in the tanks?” Sam asked. “Dreams?”

“It’s hard to separate fact from fancy. A lot of them had more elaborate recollections after they’d had time to think about it and talk to one another.”

“Elaborate?” Sam said.

“One man was very upset. He claimed he could remember every minute of the forty-eight years.”

“I remember him,” O’Hara said. “But it wasn’t true.”

“He was fantasizing, trying to get attention. After a few months he admitted it. But we’d made the mistake of not isolating them from each other—it seemed to make sense to keep them all in the same ward; compare their recovery signs.”

“And this guy’s craziness was infectious?” Sam said.

Hagen nodded. “Or maybe it just jogged people’s memories, to be fair. But people who had initially said it was like a dreamless sleep later came up with descriptions of dreams, even nightmares, that came and went for a half-century.

“It doesn’t seem likely at all, since during suspension there’s almost no electrical activity in the brain. Any normal patient who came up with the signs of a cryptobiote would go straight to the recycle chute. Waking them up is like reviving the dead, except that these are dead people who’ve been specially prepared.”

“I heard they can even survive exposure to vacuum,” O’Hara said.

“The animals have; we never did the experiment on humans. And they can handle ten thousand times as much hard radiation as we can. They’re basically inert. Dried-out mummies.”

“How were they mentally when they came out?” Sam said. “Besides the crazy one.”

“Of course we gave them standardized tests, before and after. They all came in within the predicted standard deviation—even the crazy one. His problem was emotional, not mental. And I’m sure that problem was firmly in place before he volunteered. Getting freeze-dried didn’t cause it.”

Dan checked his watch. “So what would you like us to do for you? Don’t be realistic—if we had all the power people seem to think we have, what could we do?”

Hagen smiled politely, tiredly. “Like everyone, we need more information specialist help. Reconstructing our library. Beyond that … I guess the main thing would be to move us up the totem pole of priorities. Both Engineering and Policy. We’re treated like some exotic biotech specialty—which was true enough before Launch. Now we’re actually more a part of Life Support.”