The Haunted Traveler May 2017 Edition

49
one of the pods and someone would be looking in at
her. She had traveled in pods for months before, but this
would be the first time doing so for a year. And while
most pods were alike, these were the first she had seen
where the body was kept in a standing position the entire
time. Even with knowing that you were supposed
to come out of one feeling stronger than in pods where
you lay down the entire time, she couldn’t shake the
feeling that sleeping shouldn’t be done standing up. As
she reached Jack Moran’s pod she looked at his face,
heard a whisper behind her, and turned around and
saw him standing there. She looked at his face in the
pod again, then back at his face behind her. Then the
Commander of the other team, Commander Wilson,
stepped out of his pod without opening the pod door.
Bill Thompson did the same thing.
Marcie froze.
Shih Tou had gotten out of Beijing just before terrorists
blew the city up with a nuclear device. Being young
and with his entire family obliterated by the blast and
with nowhere else to go, he quickly finished his degree
at China’s University on Mars. He was hired for
his first long journey space flight as a cargo specialist
aboard the Polaris. Two years to the developing colony
on Jupiter’s moon Europa with a return to Mars didn’t
seem such a long time, especially knowing he would
be asleep for half of the trip. The Commanders, he and
Marslow, the other cargo specialist currently in a sleep
pod, were the only ones with experience in doing space
walks. Every few weeks he left the safety of the interior
of the Polaris and traveled along a guide wire the entire