There was a slow rhythmic pulsing that registered in the diaphragm more than the ears, a subsonic thrum like a leviathan’s heartbeat, for long years it had been that alone serving as the lullaby to the sleepers.
But a faint urgent call had reached the goliath’s electronic senses, and it stirred. Routines and sub-routines cascading through long frozen pathways checking and triangulating, seeking confirmations and authorisations that opened buried orders that few knew existed.
Lights flickered through frosted consols, and the thrum increased incrementally as the deep space tug The Nostrillo, hauling its vast refining cargo shifted course, initiating a week’s long procedure to thaw the craft safely.
And the dreamers slept on.
All bar one, but then they never dreamt, and the bone chilling cold did not bother them, it alone would be awake for the rendezvous and back in their pod when all surfaced to consciousness.
In space, no one can hear you squawk.