"Excellently deduced, my little bitty pretty one. A positive Hercules of the intellect. A veritable Napoleon of... No, that's not it. But, Lori is right. This is what we must take care with. Richard Ginsberg will think he has been thawed out to be cured of whatever it is that ails him. In a future world of peace and wonder."

"What's sickness?" Jak asked. The heating of the can of soup had been put on the back burner until Ginsberg recovered again.

"It was obvious — painfully so in both cases — what was wrong with the other freezies. Here, it is less so. Perhaps leukemia, or some associated blood disease. Looking at him, I can see no evidence of any particular illness. Since he has been frozen for a hundred years, his muscle tone is, understandably, not good. Or, might there have been some progressive sickness there? I have no doubt that he will be able to tell us himself, when he finally recovers. But, I say again, be cautious about how we break the news of the long winters. It could topple his frail hold on sanity forever."

The next time that Richard Ginsberg opened his eyes, he waited a long time before risking speech, trying to formulate a concept that would explain what he was seeing.

He recognized from the layout of the room that he appeared to be somewhere in one of the large underground fortresses known as redoubts. Reaching that deduction was the easy part. The six people that he saw around him were much more difficult.

It seemed possible that some kind of bizarre bunch of terrorists had infiltrated the complex and were taking him hostage. That fitted the facts as he saw them. He decided that the best opening gambit was simply to tell them his name. Ginsberg opened his mouth, ready to speak.

"Richard Ginsberg."

Shit. Things were even worse than in his worst imaginings. Though he'd opened his mouth, the voice had come from somewhere else, from the sinister fellow with only one eye. He'd said his name for him.

"Your name is Richard Ginsberg, isn't it?"

No response.

"I asked if your name was Richard Ginsberg? Can you hear me?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, you can hear or yeah your name's Richard Ginsberg?"

"Both."

"Good. We're getting some soup for you and some water. Guess you must be hungry after... after so long."

The tall blond nurse spoke. "I'll be hungry after a..."

"Lori!" the one-eyed man snapped. "Can the talk! Remember?"

"Sorry, Ryan," she said, pouting and grinning like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

Ginsberg cleared his throat and tried again. "You unfroze me?"

"Yeah."

"How do you know my name?"

Krysty answered him. "It's on the comp-console screen. Date of birth. Everything else was classified, and we couldn't access it."

He nodded. "Figures. Did you find any clothes? And my glasses?"

J.B. handed over the spectacles and Ginsberg slipped them on. "Clothes are in the locker."

The freezie blinked owlishly around. The six fuzzy figures now sharpened and became distinct. But none of the bewilderment eased.

"You know who I am. Who on the green earth are you?"

Ryan made the introductions. "This is Krysty Wroth, Doc Tanner, J.B. Dix, Lori Quint. Jak Lauren's getting the soup. I'm Ryan Cawdor."

Ginsberg coughed, struggled for breath for a moment. "Oh, that's... Must be all the stuff I've been full of for... Hell! I guess I have to ask you now. Why push it across the tracks? You aren't doctors and... But you said he was a doctor?"

"Science, son. Not medicine."

The man in the bed nodded. "Right. Got that clear. Now, if you aren't doctors and you all... look the way you do, then I figure something's gone very, very wrong with things."

"Things?" Krysty said.

"Things," he repeated, waving his hands in a vague gesture. "This isn't what I kind of expected, you know. Not guys with guns. I'm supposed to be brought out of it so I can be cured."

"What ails you?" Doc asked, moving out of the way as Jak brought in a bowl of steaming soup.

"Thanks." Ginsberg sat up and took a sip. "Wow! That's hot. And... I can't really taste it. Guess that could take some time to return."

"It's tomatoes," Jak said helpfully.

"Could be watermelon for all I can tell, kid."

"Don't call me 'kid,'" the albino boy warned, angrily.

"Sorry. You asked about what my illness was, didn't you? Mind's still fogged. Like a Frisco evening. Funny. I can remember watching the mist come rolling in over the hills into the bay when I was only about nine years old. Now, I can't remember things about what I was doing before they..." The words tailed off and he sat, sipping at the soup.

Ryan prompted him gently. "What was wrong with you?"

"Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis," Ginsberg replied, stumbling over the long syllables. "Something like that."

"Sounds real bad," Krysty said. "What is it?"

"It's Lou Gehrig's disease," Doc told her. "That's what it was known as."

"Right!" Ginsberg exclaimed. "You're kidding me, aren't you, Doc? You really are a doctor, and this is some kind of hospital. Right?"

"Wrong," Ryan corrected. "Who's this Lou Gehrig guy, Doc? Some kind of scientist?"

"Ball player. First baseman for the Yankees way back in the... way back when. It's a kind of progressive muscular weakness."

Ginsberg gave the half-empty bowl back to Jak. "Thanks. Guess I wasn't as hungry as I thought I was. Yeah, Doc, you're right. Lou Gehrig. When they diagnosed what I'd got, I kept hearing the name. Read up about him, some."

"What's it do, this sickness?" Jak asked.

Ginsberg sighed. "I always thought, when they started to talk about cryogenics, that I'd wake up and some guy in a white coat would pat me on the shoulder and tell me I was cured. Not have some... not get asked what my illness was."

"No," Ryan said. "I'm real double-sorry, but you have to know this clear from the start. None of us knows nothing... anything... about your sickness. We can do nothing for you."

Ginsberg took off his spectacles and polished them on the sheet, not saying anything for several moments. He peered at the light through the glasses, wiping away a small smear. Finally he nodded.

"I appreciate your honesty, Mr. Cawdor. Truly I do. When they confirmed the diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS they called it, I'd known something was wrong. My coordination had been off for some weeks. I'd stumble, or I'd drop something. Spill food. I'd played baseball, like Gehrig, and suddenly I started to miss the pitches. Fumble it when I was out in right field. Lots of silly things. I felt tired. Weak. Wanted to lie down and rest a lot. They did all the tests on me."

He stopped and put his glasses back on. The others still stood around him, listening to his story, crowding the small cubicle.

He carried on. "They tried everything. Digitalis. Didn't help. Androstenolone. Same. I was getting steadily weaker."

"Did they know what caused this sickness," Krysty asked.

"Nerve cells in my brain and in my spine were just sort of giving up the ghost. Degeneration is the name. No cure. No hope. Fetch the coolant and pop the boy in the freezer. Thaw him out in a thousand years when we can save him."

The bitterness reached the front of his voice, and he buried his face in his hands. "That string of operations and tests and then the actual freezing. Having to say goodbye to all my friends. My parents. All of them. Like I was an astronaut going boldly off to brave the new frontiers. Now I come around and I'm in some military base with a half-dozen people who I don't know."

Lori sat on the bed and patted Ginsberg on the arm. "Could be badder," she said. "You can be dead and it's badder."

"You think so? You get what I got, young lady, and you sometimes think death is going to come in with a blessing."