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I looked at hiive up How can that be possible?"

"Mr Tanner," he said, "have you ever heard of cryonics?"

Well, of course I had Based on the notion that biological processes ground to a halt at a lower teht be frozen for years on end, then thahen science had advanced to the point of finding a cure for whatever it was that had killed theht be a mere nuisance twenty or fifty or a hundred years froical procedure could ain

There had been rumors, I remembered, that various prominent persons had had themselves frozen after death It seeh I couldn’t be sure whether he was ulti to be thawed or simply animated

It sounded nice in theory It was a nerinkle in the hopeless war against ht not extend the norainst early death If your heart failed, well, we’ll just freeze you until artificial hearts have been perfected Sa with you, sooner or later medical science ork out a way to fix it, and when that happens we’ll warht

The trouble was that it was still highly theoretical While various cryonic facilities around the country had various deceased citizens as clients – "Many are cold and a few are frozen" was the phrase which leapt unbidden to mind – no one had as yet been thawed out to see if it was possible to restart his engine (Some of the frozen ones were disembodied brains, the doctor told me It seemed that it was considerably less expensive to have your brain frozen than to have them do your whole body It strucka frozen brain, and what on earth would you do with it? You needed a body for it, and where would you go for a volunteer? I suppose you could transplant it into the body of a horse, say, but would you really want to return to life as Mister Ed?)

And it was still as theoretical as ever, the fact notwithstanding that I had a pulse once again after a quarter-century in the deep freeze All my pulse proved was that you could successfully freeze and thaw the living, soh experi at least a few human volunteers Such volunteers had never spent more than a day or two frozen stiff, but, if tiot low enough, then a few days and a couple of dozen years were all one

That was the theory, anyway, and I looked to be the living proof of it Dramatic proof at that, if I said soat that, nobody was ever able to tell me the precise temperature at which I was maintained – twenty-five years, by God, and I didn’t even need a shave

How had this happened to me? That’s what I wanted to know, and Dr Fischbinder wasn’t much help on that point (That was his name, Warner Fischbinder, and he was an MD and a specialist in heroic procedures At first I thought that s, but it turned out his specialty involved treating patients brought back from the very brink of death His associate, the sallow blonde, was Laura Westerley, and she was a doctor as well, specializing in internal ht to take in just about everything but dery I’d assumed she was a nurse, because most women in white had been nurses when I was frozen That was just one of the things that were not the same anymore)

"You were found," Fischbinder told me, "in a frozen-food locker in the sub-basement of a house in Union City, New Jersey"

"At 673 Parkside Avenue," I said

"You remember the address after all these years?"

"As if it were yesterday As far as I’m concerned, it was yesterday"

"Yes, of course For years the house ned and occupied by a family named Akesson"

"Swedish Danes," I said "Or Danish Swedes"

"You know thestro a drink he poured forat a friend’s house, and Akesson must have been the friend And I wound up in the fae juice"

"Not the family freezer"

"Well, I didn’t exactly mean-"

"I doubt the family could have known about it," he explained "This was a special hi-tech unit, state-of-the-art in 1972 and still impressive all these years later And it was installed in a sub-basement of the Akesson house, a sh a trapdoor in the floor of the furnace room Someone had run an electrical line to the cha and you well frozen And there was also a backup systeenerator that would kick in and power the chamber if the power lines were down in a stor any chances that you would thaw prematurely"

"Then how come I’m not still there?"

"The faed hands a couple of ti so, and had reason to take up the tile floor in the base new tile on top of it And in the course of it they discovered the trapdoor, and went to see where it led"

"They were probably expecting buried treasure," I said, "and found me instead But how did they know to call someone ould knohat to do?"

"There was a notice posted," he said "Hand lettered in block capitals I don’t recall the wording, but the point of it was that the unit contained a living hu in a frozen state, and that it should not be opened or the power shut off except under the supervision of qualified medical personnel"

"And that’s where the two of you coht me here, or someone did, anyway Where’s here, anyway? Where are we?"

" New York University Medical Center"