[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
June 1957
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Coming up out of five centuries of sleep was like fighting my way up
from the bottom of the sea. I was blind, I was choking, I was mangled
by the pressure. All I could think was that I had to get up and out, up
and out.
My sleep-cramped brain battled toward consciousness. The blackness
around me gave way to deep violet, then gray, then a vague colorless
dinginess as I rose to wakefulness. I moved my arms, tentatively,
feeling the centuries-old numbness starting to give way. _This is what
it feels like to be born_, my mind said.
Then, voices. Loud, strident, horribly painful to nerves that hadn't
felt the impact of sound in five hundred years. A kind of terror ran
through me; I cringed at the thought of the unknown future into which
I had so boldly plunged. It had seemed like a joke, once--but I had
slept away half a millennium, and time for awakening was here.