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stand-by,” Anton explains. “It would
have woken up and monitored any activity. And it wouldn’t have gone
to sleep to begin with if Colonel Copeland was awake and
working.”
    “Unless he ordered it to,” Matthew lets us know what
he’s been thinking.
    “Why?” Ryder presses.
    “Maybe he thought we’d be down awhile,” Anton offers,
though doesn’t sound like he believes the possibility. “Maybe he
thought he needed to conserve resources.”
    “Or MAI did,” Matthew throws out another worrisome
possibility.
    “How are the post-sleep evals coming?” I ask Ryder,
partially changing the subject.
    “Everyone reports the same. We made it through the
worst. Eleven-hundred and ninety-seven souls, all alive and
breathing…” But I watch her lips purse, her eyes get moist. She’s
thinking about her husband. General Ryder was on Phobos.
    “Despite the power issue, it looks like MAI put
priority on keeping us healthy,” she continues after taking a
moment to compose herself. “No sign of significant tissue damage in
any of the personnel I’ve examined. Everybody is stable. We’ll need
time to do more detailed workups to be sure.”
    “But no idea how long we’ve been out?” Matthew asks
one of the big questions, one we’ve all been asking for days.
    “I know it feels worse than the average shuttle
sleep,” she admits the obvious. “And it looks worse, too. The
problem is I don’t have access to the research they were doing for
flights to the outer planets—that was still going on when we got
cut off. We don’t know what more than a year deep-under looks
like.”
    “You think we could have been out more than a year?”
I ask before anyone else can.
    “It…” She looks like she isn’t sure what to say, like
she’s reluctant to tell a patient that he’s terminal. “It looks
like MAI adjusted the chemical dosing somewhere along the line. But
MAI also lost—or erased—the system logs along with every other
record of what happened since we went under. I haven’t had the
energy yet to get a team into the system and take a look at the
drug and nutrient tanks—that would tell us how much juice we used,
which could tell us approximately how long we’ve been out.”
    “What about physical exams you’ve done? Can they give
us any indication of time down?”
    She looks tired. “The tissue scans are
automatic—protocol as soon as the system brings you out. Beyond
that, I’ve only been able to do some basic workups—I’ve never had
to do a post-sleep exam on myself, much less on several hundred
others while I’m still in Stage Two rehab. Like I said: we need
time to look at everybody thoroughly. But there is unusually high
demineralization in the bones I’ve been scanning, even though
Hiber-Sleep is supposed to slow that way down.”
    Nobody says anything for awhile. I watch bodies move
in their seats, shifting, stretching—carefully, like they’re not
sure if they can trust their bones not to spontaneously break.
Matthew looks like he’s going to make another joke about how old he
feels, but keeps it to himself.
    “Back to the good news,” Staley tries. “Internal
pressure is good. No apparent atmosphere leaks in any of the
sections I’ve managed to scan, but we do need to start doing a
room-by-room survey because some of the individual section sensors
are down. It’s warm, so environment controls are working. And we’ve
got food—rations and supplements—to last us at least a year, more
if we want to try using those nano-recyclers the Tranquility Group
gave us. It won’t be tasty, and we won’t get fat, but we’ll have
basic nutrients to get through as long as we can stand eating the
stuff. Water recycling is impacted by the power issue just like the
air systems, but we should be okay if we’re reasonably careful.
”
    “Too bad,” Matthew grumbles. “Barring the appearance
of a good steak, the thought of a good hot soak was the only thing
I was looking forward