But it would be an easy matter to turn on too much power, so much power that his body would be pounded to a pulp against the heavy quartz.

Shrugging at the thought, he stretched flat on the plate, hands folded under him with fingers on the tube controls. Slowly he turned the buttons. The rockets thrust at his body, jamming him against the quartz. He snapped the studs shut. It had seemed, for a moment, that the plate had given just a little.

Drawing in a deep breath, he twisted the studs again. Once more his body slammed against the plate, driven by the flaming tubes.

Suddenly the plate gave way, swung in and plunged him down into the laboratory. Savagely he snapped the studs shut. He struck hard against the floor, cracked his helmet soundly.

Groggily he groped his way to his feet. The thin whine of escaping atmosphere came to his ears and unsteadily he made his way forward. Leaping at the plate, he slammed it back into place again. It closed with a thud, driven deep into its frame by the force of rushing air.

A chair stood beside a table and he swung around, sat down in it, still dizzy from the fall. He shook his head to clear away the cobwebs.

There was atmosphere here. That meant that an atmosphere generator still was operating, that the ship had developed no leaks and was still airtight.

He raised his helmet slightly. Fresh pure air swirled into his nostrils, better air than he had inside his suit. A little highly oxygenated, perhaps, but that was all. If the atmosphere machine had run for a long time unattended, it might have gotten out of adjustment slightly, might be mixing a bit too much oxygen with the air output.

He swung the helmet back and let it dangle on the hinge at the back of the neck, gulped in great mouthfuls of the atmosphere. His head cleared rapidly.

He looked around the room. There was little that he had not already seen. A practical, well-equipped laboratory, but much of the equipment, he now realized, was old.

Some of it was obsolete and that fitted in with all the rest of it.

A framed document hung above a cabinet and getting to his feet, he walked across the room to look at it. Bending close, he read it. It was a diploma from the College of Science at Alkatoon, Mars, one of the most outstanding of several universities on the Red Planet. The diploma had been issued to one Caroline Martin.

Gary read the name a second time. It seemed that he should know it. It raised some memory in his brain, but just what it was he couldn't say, an elusive recognition that eluded him by the faintest margin.

He looked around the room.

Caroline Martin.

A girl who had left a diploma in this cabin, a pitiful reminder of many years ago. He bent again and looked at the date upon the sheep-skin. It was 5976. He whistled softly. A thousand years ago!

A thousand years. And if Caroline Martin had left this diploma here a thousand years ago, where was Caroline Martin now? What had happened to her? Dead in what strange corner of the solar system? Dead in this very ship?

He swung about and strode toward the door that led into the living quarters. His hand reached out and seized the door and pushed it open. He took one step across the threshold and then he stopped, halted in his stride.

In the center of the room was the oblong box that he had seen from the port. But instead of a box, it was a tank, bolted securely to the floor by heavy steel brackets.

The tank was filled with a greenish fluid and in the fluid lay a woman, a woman dressed in metallic robes that sparkled in the light from the single radium bulb in the ceiling just above the tank.

Breathlessly, Gary moved closer, peered over the edge of the tank, down through the clear green liquid into the face of the woman. Her eyes were closed and long, curling black lashes lay against the whiteness of her cheeks. Her forehead was high and long braids of raven hair were bound about her head. Slim black eyebrows arched to almost meet above the delicately modeled nose. Her mouth was a thought too large, a trace of the patrician in the thin, red lips. Her arms were laid straight along her sides and the metallic gown swept in flowing curves from chin to ankles.

Beside her right hand, lying in the bottom of the tank, was a hypodermic syringe, bright and shining despite the green fluid which covered it.

Gary's breath caught in his throat.

She looked alive and yet she couldn't be alive. Still there was a flush of youth and beauty in her cheeks, as if she merely slept.

Laid out as if for death and still with the lie to death in her very look. Her face was calm, serene… and something else. Expectancy, perhaps. As if she only waited for a thing she hoped to happen.

Caroline Martin was the name on the diploma out in the laboratory. Could this be Caroline Martin? Could this be the girl who had graduated from the college of science at Alkatoon ten centuries ago?

Gary shook his head uneasily.

He stepped back from the tank and as he did he saw the copper plate affixed to its metal side. He stooped to read.

Another simple message, etched in copper… a message from the girl who lay inside the tank.

I am not dead. I am in suspended animation. Drain the tank by opening the valve. Use the syringe you find in the medicine cabinet.

Gary glanced across the room, saw a medicine chest on the wall above a washbowl. He looked back at the tank and mopped his brow with his coat sleeve.

"It isn't possible," he whispered.

Like a man in a dream, he stumbled to the medicine chest. The syringe was there. He broke it and saw that it was loaded with a cartridge filled with a reddish substance. A drug, undoubtedly, to overcome suspended animation.

Replacing the syringe, he went back to the tank and found the valve. It was stubborn with the years, defying all the strength in his arms. He kicked it with a heavy boot and jarred it loose. With nervous hands he opened it and watched the level of the green fluid slowly recede.

Watching, an odd calm came upon him, a steadying calm that made him hard and machine-like to do the thing that faced him. One little slip might spoil it. One fumbling move might undo the work of a thousand years. What if the drug in the hypodermic had lost its strength? There were so many things that might happen.

But there was only one thing to do. He raised a hand in front of him and looked at it. It was a steady hand.

He wasted no time in wondering what it was about. This was not the time for that. Frantic questionings clutched at his thoughts and he shook them off. Time enough to wonder and to speculate and question when this thing was done.

When the fluid was level with the girl's body, he waited no longer. He leaned over the rim of the tank and lifted her in his arms. For a moment he hesitated, then turned and went to the laboratory and placed her on one of the work tables. The fluid, dripping off the rustling metallic dress, left a trail of wet across the floor.

From the medicine chest he took the hypodermic and went back to the girl. He lifted her left arm and peered closely at it. There were little punctures, betraying previous use of the needle.

Perspiration stood out on his forehead. If only he knew a little more about this. If only he had some idea of what he was supposed to do.

Awkwardly he shoved the needle into a vein, depressed the plunger. It was done and he stepped back.

Nothing happened. He waited.

Minutes passed and she took a shallow breath. He watched in fascination, saw her come to life again… saw the breath deepen, the eyelids flicker, the right hand twitch.

Then she was looking at him out of deep blue eyes.

"You are all right?" he asked.

It was, he knew, a rather foolish question.

Her speech was broken. Her tongue and lips refused to work the way they should, but he understood what she tried to say.