The story opens with Eric Taine awakening from a 175-year suspended animation, his body slowly reviving in a tub that stimulates his hypothalamus. The process is described in clinical detail: liquid boils off, heart rate spikes from one beat every two minutes to seventy per minute, body temperature climbs from below freezing. This precise, almost medical attention to revival sets the tone for a narrative that balances hard science fiction with human drama.

Eric finds six empty tubs and lockers, each representing a man who awakened, lived, and died over the centuries. A note from Clair, left two hundred years ago, reveals the personal cost: she will be "ashes in the void between the stars" when he reads it. The juxtaposition of technical suspension mechanics with intimate loss establishes the story's core tension.

Suspended Animation and Its Costs

The revival process is rendered with unusual specificity. Eric's heart pumps "three hundred times a minute" to generate warmth, then slows to normal. Fatty tissue turns into strength. He lies in stupor for a week. This isn't a simple waking; it's a biological recalibration. The story uses this process to measure time: each empty tub stands for twenty-five years, each open locker means a man has lived and died. Clair's note, stiff and yellow, personalizes the cosmic scale. She imagines her great-grandchildren might be Eric's age. The narrative treats suspended animation not as a miracle but as a lonely, disorienting technology that fractures human relationships across centuries.

The Ship as a Closed Society

When Eric emerges, the ship's society has transformed. Generations have passed, and the original mission—reaching a Centaurian planet—has been forgotten or perverted. Larkin, a ruler who fears Eric's weapon, whimpers as he runs. The crew chants "Lazarus" and "death" when confronting the revived sleepers. Eric observes that the ship's inhabitants might "get back to Earth someday—their progeny a bunch of savages." The story presents a society that has regressed, where knowledge of astrogation is nearly lost and the control room is defended by guards with clubs. The ship itself becomes a microcosm of cultural decay, with the original purpose buried under generations of superstition.

Alliances and the Question of Violence

Eric doesn't act alone. He revives three more sleepers—Chambers, Striker, Richardson—who become his allies. Their first confrontation is violent: Striker shoots two men with clubs. But the turning point comes when Laurie leads a group of believers who fight alongside them. "I told you there were some who believed, Eric Taine," she says. The final assault on the control room uses a metal post as a battering ram. Larkin threatens to burn astrogation charts. The story raises but doesn't resolve the ethics of killing: Eric argues they must kill if necessary to restore the mission, but the actual fighting is chaotic, using guns as clubs. The narrative leaves open whether force or persuasion ultimately prevails.

The excerpts break off during the climactic struggle for the control room, leaving the fate of the mission uncertain. Readers should note how the story uses the revival process as both plot mechanism and emotional anchor—each awakening is a rebirth into a world that has moved on. The tension between the original scientific purpose and the society that has grown indifferent or hostile to it drives the conflict, making this a meditation on progress, memory, and the cost of long journeys.