Larry found that he was bending over the shoulder of the seated technician. He straightened up and glanced at the life support screens on the next console. They were blank, dead.

Fifty people in there. Dan’s father… and my own.

“Larry… look.”

He turned his attention back to the viewscreen. The Damage Control group was trudging wearily back into the corridor. Their faces’ were smudged, their coveralls blackened. The foamers and other fire-fighting equipment they dragged seemed to weigh tons.

There was hardly any smoke coming from the hatch now. The last man to step out into the corridor slowly unclipped his smoke mask. Larry recognized him as Mort Campbell stocky, slow-moving but always sure of himself, one of the oldest men working on this shift—nearly thirty.

Then Dan Christopher came dashing into view. He pushed wordlessly past the first few men of the Damage Control group, his eyes wild, his mouth open in silent frenzy.

Campbell stopped him at the hatch. Dan tried to dodge around him, but Campbell grabbed Dan by his slim shoulders and held him firmly.

“Don’t go in there. It’s not pretty.”

“My father…”

“They’re all dead.”

Watching them in the viewscreen, Larry felt his insides sink. You knew he was dead, he told himself. But knowing it in your head and feeling it in your guts are two entirely different things.

He knew all the technicians, all up and down the long row of consoles, were staring at him now. He stood unmoved, his face frozen into a mask of concentration, and kept his eyes on the viewscreen. Inside his head, he was telling himself over and over, You never knew him. He was frozen before you were old enough to remember him. There’s no reason for you to break up.

Dan’s reaction was very different.

“NO!” he screamed, and he twisted out of Campbell’s grasp and darted into the still smoky cryonics area. The older man slipped his face mask back on and went in after him.