"I'm trying. I know the ship is familiar, but I've looked it over.
Maybe I'm trying too hard."
"You flew her from earth until we went into suspension," he said.
"I can't remember when," I said. I held the trembling girl against me,
shaking my head.
He glanced at the girl. "If the calculations are right it was more than
a hundred years ago."
We assembled in the control room for a council. We were all a little
better for being together. John Croft named the others for me. I
searched each face without recognition. The blond man was Carl Herrick,
a metallurgist. His lean face was white from his spell but he was
better. Paul Sample was a biologist, John said. He was lithe and
restless, with dark eyes that studied the rest of us. I looked at the
girl. She was staring out of the ports, her hands pressed against the
transparent break in the smooth wall. Karen Thiesen was a chemist, now
frightened and trying to remember.
I wasn't in much better condition. "Look, if it comes too fast for me,
for any of us, we'll stop. John, you can lead off."
"You ask the questions," he said.