8/ DEEPSLEEP
In 10 minutes I would be medically dead. According to instructions I lay loosely relaxed on the contour couch and listened to the soporific strains of hypno-music. Poised over my skull was the probe helmet of the pulsator. My normal vital rhythm was gradually slowing down.
Still to come was the automatic injection of preservative serum, a technique that my worthy race had known for a long time. Healthy subjects were able to survive biomedical deepsleep for more than 500 years entirely without harm. Life functions, such as metabolism, were reduced almost to zero.
The pressure dome had been fitted out with the necessary equipment. Formerly the installation had been on board a hospital ship belonging to my full squadron but we had transferred it here.
I relaxed my will completely in order to yield to the insinuating effects of the music. The time had come for me to retreat into the absolute calm and peace of deepsleep if I didn’t want to lose my reason. I had become the loneliest living being on the planet.
It had taken about 4 months before the elements had subsided enough for us to even consider emerging to the surface. After that we had begun our long and futile search.
I had not been able to discover either Arkonide or native Atlantean. The protective fortresses and pyramid silos erected by Feltif still existed but the people had disappeared.
A sense of despair had driven Cunor and myself from place to place in senseless haste. We finally located life here and there but they were creatures of such a frightfully primitive state that we avoided making any contact with them. The barbarians of the icy North had been spared but our truly intelligent Atlanteans and the colonists in the East and West were no longer there. Either they had been killed by the mountainous tidal waves or they had been drawn up into the numerous time-fronts.
For 6 long months we had searched, sent out radio calls, searched some more and signalled again and again. Arkon appeared to have forgotten us completely. The irreplaceable radio stations of Atlantis and the 2 southern continents had been destroyed by the effects of enemy action. The transmitting capability of the undersea dome was comparatively weak and could never bridge the gulf between the home worlds and us. I came to regret not having installed a powerful, major class transmitter in the submarine stronghold. At the time it had seemed purposeless, since hyperwave installations had no business being under the surface of the sea. The dome was supposed to be a refuge only a provisional shelter on a short time basis. Why should we install such large, space-consuming equipment when we needed every corner, so to speak, for the really vital installations?
So it was that we flew over every continent in the glider. The face of the 3rd planet had changed. Great islands had sunk and new oceans had come into being. Among the sunken lands was Atlantis, which was only marked now by a small archipelago of islands that were actually the mountaintops.
Our pressure dome base of operations had finally come to rest at a depth of 9,348 feet, which was more than 1,500 fathoms below the surface.
Then, shortly before our time of final resignation, Lt. Cunor was struck down with a stone hand-axe by a stupid barbarian of the North. I had stood dry-eyed over the grave of my last companion for a long time, finally flying away in a state of inexpressible weariness and exhaustion.
My one last measure of precaution was taken solely on the basis of a stubborn ember of hope that still lay smouldering deep within me. At some time or another certainly somebody would have to investigate what had become of Admiral Atlan. Somewhere along the way someone would have to process—ergo, become aware of the hypercom message I broadcasted shortly before the explosion of the Paito. Arkon was certainly not dead yet and after all I was a member of the ruling house.
On the basis of these considerations I mounted a small super-sensitive apparatus on the highest island mountain peak. Capable of reacting to disturbances such as a spacewarp, it was designed to hail any chance spaceship coming out of transition within reasonable cosmic distances. In which case a relay transmitter would notify the robot brain in the sea dome and as a consequence I would be awakened at once from deepsleep.
I had cautiously set the maximum limit of sleep for 500 years but was quite certain that my comrades would come before then, if only in a miserable courier cruiser.
So I had given myself over to the sleep couch with a certain sense of reassurance. It would have been senseless and dangerous to my mental health if I had waited day after day and night after night. In deepsleep time became negligible and my detector was reliable.
I became sleepy. Next to me stood my servant robot, a special model with which I could converse because of its excellent positronic brain.
"How long now, Rico?" I asked in a whisper.
"Immediately, Your Eminence, you will go to your rest at once," said the medmachine. This time I was not disturbed by the metallic timbre of its mechanical vocal cords.
"Go to rest?" I repeated hesitantly. "Rest—peace—freedom! From whom or what? My conscience?"
"Relax yourself, Eminence," came the insistent words from the mouth of the robot.
Fiery pinwheels began to spin before my vision. Suddenly I saw Tarth’s deeply lined face. He smiled at me encouragingly. Then came Inkar, Cunor, Kosol, Cerbus and all the many friends whom I had driven to their deaths.
I wanted to cry out but couldn’t. Why had I chosen to defend this world? Why?
"Rico, do you think an intelligent race will ever develop out of the barbarian survivors?"
"Relax, my prince—the time of sleep begins…"
Time!
I had underestimated it. I had overlooked the facts of time. That which was to follow would not be contaminated by the same mistakes. I swore it to myself and in the name of the Greater Empire and my revered ancestral house.