Imperial Stars 2-Republic and Empire Read Online Free PDF Page B

you knew ben Ezra was after him?" snapped Olivera.
    Peter Reed smiled thinly. "Time enough for that between now and Deep Sleep. That's a whole week. I think the strategic time to spring it is just before he goes into Deep Sleep. Impending Deep Sleep makes a man realize just how dependent he can be."
    "You'd better loosen him up by then," said Olivera, "because it's just possible that when we wake up, we'll find ben Ezra right on our tails."
     
    A three minute burst on the huge reaction rockets kicked the Outward Bound out of orbit.
    As she drifted slowly outward, the huge triangular photon sails were reeled out onto the mile-long spars, blotting out whole sectors of stars.
    The pale, almost invisible, blue stream of the ion drive shot noiselessly, vibrationlessly out of the nozzles.
    The Outward Bound was on her way to Nuova Italia.
    During the next week, the ship would be secured, the automatic systems checked, re-checked, and finally given command of the ship. There would be a final course correction, and then the thousand men, women and children who made up the crew of the Outward Bound would go into Deep Sleep.
    Deep Sleep was the technique that had given Man that insignificant portion of the Galaxy which he possessed. A starship could accelerate to nearly three-quarters the speed of light, but this took over a year, and, although it had been proven true that subjective time on a fast-moving starship did contract, as Einstein had predicted, the factor was still far too short. The spaces between the suns would still eat up lifespans.
    Deep Sleep had been developed to deal with this dilemma. Partly it was a technique developed from yoga, partly it was simply a careful, controlled lowering of the body temperature, till life slowed down to the barest crawl. The elements of the technique had been known even before rudimentary spaceflight. But it took the technical integration of all the factors to make Deep Sleep an effective and relatively safe form of suspended animation, and to give Man the stars.
     
    Peter Reed was getting disgusted. It was now time to go into Deep Sleep, and still no one had been able to get anything out of Ching. Clearly, the man was scared silly.
    Well, thought Reed, maybe I can shock him out of it now.
    He was standing in one of the Deep Sleep chambers.
    The walls were lined with transparent plastic cubicles, coffin-sized, honey-combed with passages, through which liquid oxygen was passed.
    Another of the ship's economies, thought the captain. The same oxygen that served as the ship's air supply was cooled by the cold of space, and used to freeze the Deep Sleep chambers. It took a lot of liquid oxygen, in fact, the entire ship's supply, but since no one would be needing it while the crew was in Deep Sleep, and since it was re-usable, it made a neat saving.
    Most of the crew were already in Deep Sleep. The cubicles were filled with frozen crewmembers, the Environment Masks snugly fitted over their faces. Only the skeleton Deep Sleep detail, the captain and Dr. Ching remained unfrozen. Now, the captain and the passenger would take their places, and then the automatics would handle the Deep Sleep detail.
    A crewman was escorting Ching to his cubicle. The mathematician's face was pasty and pale. His eyes flickered furiously over the frozen figures in the plastic coffins.
    Reed smiled, half in sympathy, half in satisfaction. He had spent a total time of nearly seven hundred years in those cubicles. Still, it always made him shudder a bit. But Ching had only experienced Deep Sleep once, and somehow, the second time was always the hardest.
    "Well, Dr. Ching," he called out, "how do you feel?"
    "A bit foolish, captain. I must admit that I am afraid, and yet there is really nothing to be afraid of."
    For a moment, Reed's distaste for Ching was washed away. The Grand Admiral of Earth's fleet had hounded him across fifty light-years, and now he was facing what must to him be a great irrational fear. And yet,