“You say we’ll be frozen until there’s another war,” one man said. “What if there isn’t another one?”
The remark drew a general laugh and assorted catcalls, but the soldier persisted. “No, I’m serious. What if there’s a sort of uneasy peace from now on and no real fighting breaks out? Do we just stay frozen forever?”
“There is a definite maximum term,” Captain Dukakis replied. “We would revive you in no more than fifteen years, whether there’s a war or not.”
“They probably couldn’t afford more than that,” Hawker’s neighbor whispered. “I’d have to check a table of compound interest for exact numbers, but even if they only kept us out for ten years, we’d each wake up with a small fortune—and we’d still be young enough to enjoy it, if we survived that war too.”
Another soldier stood up wi
