A Cold Black Wave Read Online Free PDF Page A

that carried their bodies forth, a feat of great engineering ability, was constructed with precious metals that required the exploitation of men and land to extract, and which wars had been fought over to retain so that a select few could escape a dying planet.  It was a sacrifice only the privileged were capable of bestowing upon the less fortunate for the greater good.
     
    As the years quietly passed, the shuttle maintained its energy reserves by capturing radiant solar waves, regardless of how miniscule and faint they may have been.   In order to conserve energy, only the shuttle’s sensors and transmissions operated, along with sustaining the cryonic chambers that were maintaining optimum living conditions for Josh and Leah’s frozen stasis.   Larger energy requirements were reserved for course adjustments and collision avoidance.
     
    At one point, over the course of thirty six years, the shuttle passed through a dead zone that couldn't provide enough energy to replenish what was being consumed.   The shuttle went into hibernation which, had Josh and Lea h been conscious to know, was the closest they had   come to death.   Everything was shut down except to provide energy for the cryonic chambers.   No transmissions would be sent, no scanning of nearby planets for hospitable conditions, no collision avoidance.   It floated along in its last pre-planned course completely blind until, eventually, a sun that was   eighty three light-years away began providing increasing levels of solar atoms needed to restore its energy cells.
     
    After that dark period the shuttle became swallowed by the mystery of space, a dark and strange world of colliding galaxies, fantastic supernovas and expanding volumes of amber-colored   gas so large it would take them a thousand light years to travel through had they passed into it.  In this void there was timelessness, with time only kept by the light of a trillion stars, quasars and planets that have been traveling through space for billions of years since their inception and even after their death.
     
    The long-dormant console on the shuttle booted to life as information was relayed to its mainframe from the shuttle's outboard sensor.   A reading that had been picked up had drawn the shuttle towards a planet with promising conditions for life.   Enough detail had been downloaded to begin analysis on the planet's surface,   water, and type of atmosphere.
     
    This was the only time the shuttle had ever picked up on anything considered worthy of further analysis.   The myriad planets it had passed were too cold, too hot, too violent, too dry, or   too toxic to sustain human life.     Countless trillions   of these rocks were all settled into a purposeful orbit among the universe, useless to humans, mere debris that had formed in the cataclysm of creation.
     
    Until now.   One possible bright light that was submerged in the abyss.   The shuttle corrected its course to take it into proximity of   a planet capable of sustaining human life.   A program aboard the shuttle, written ages ago by a long dead development team   from earth, began executing its programming to take the shuttle into orbit,   calculating a course for entry and a location to land its precious cargo.
     
    Inside the cryonic chambers Josh and Leah remained frozen in time, Leah’s hand still slightly outstretched towards Josh as it had been those many years ago in her last cognitive moment.   It would take days to fully reverse the cryonic process without damaging their tissue, including their brain cells and vital organs.   While the cryonic chamber had been designed to operate for decades, even centuries, it had been impossible to test the effects on organic tissue for that length of time.
     
    There was no guarantee they could be revived at this point or that no permanent physical or mental damage had developed in that time.   Humanity's desperate attempt to avoid extinction had taken a long,