He’d gone to bed on Lowdown and when he woke the gravity was different. They were on another world. Despite having been in hibernation before, he couldn’t wrap his head around it. It all seemed too easy. After breakfast in what looked like a windowless airport lounge, he and his new friends had walked a few short corridors and come to a glass-walled elevator. Along with Ammond and Persea and the usual crowd of household bots, he was now descending in this. Their plunge into the depths seemed endless, but he knew this is what you had to do on the coldest worlds: dig deep. “I don’t feel any different,” he said to Persea. “I mean, I feel like I just slept an ordinary night. Cold sleep—when we did it before, waking up was like getting over a dose of the flu.” Persea nodded. “What’s the flu?—Never mind. We’ve had a little time to perfect cold sleep. But…I don’t know, should we tell him?” Free of Lowdown’s strange air, her voice was a soft soprano.
