After walking for five minutes, they came to a large room, filled with cryopods. Apparently the door he had chosen was not the way out.
“There must be fifty pods in this room alone!” Max called. “So we’re definitely still inside the ship, as opposed to on the top of it climbing back up the tunnel.”
“All the doors looked the same, as well as the hallways,” he said in his defense. He walked up and down the rows of chambers. The status screens on each chamber reported that it was in perfect functioning order, and in standby, waiting for an occupant. All but one.
“Max, there’s someone in this pod!” Mark shouted to Max, who was also wandering around in the room trying to remember which door he came in through upon entry to the computer room.
Max looked into the pod, and a frozen face was staring back at him. The face looked familiar, although he could not remember who it reminded him of.
“Shall we thaw him?” Mark asked.
“The pod is still functioning?” he asked, still confused as to why the face sparked dormant memories.
“That’s what they are supposed to do,” Mark replied.
“Go ahead,” Max said. He wanted to know who this person was, and why he was still frozen in the cryogenic chamber.
Mark pushed a few buttons, and the pod slowly began to that and reanimate the person inside. After half an hour of waiting, the pod opened and the man stepped out.
“Who are you, and what are you doing on my ship?” he asked, looking slightly confused and angered at the same time. If they were robbers, he did not intend to draw attention to the fact that he could barely see, a side effect that he and a few other suffered temporarily after being brought out of a frozen state.
“I am Max, this is Mark. We are shipwrecked on Moon. Who are you?”
“I am the captain of this vessel. If you are shipwrecked, then why are you bothering me?”
“We needed to borrow your ship,” Mark answered.
“You don’t need to borrow my ship if you’re shipwrecked. You need to contact the civil authorities here, and they will take care if you,” he gruffly answered.
“There are no civil authorities that we can find who can help us,” Max answered.
“What?” the man said in disbelief. He had been frozen after all for quite some time.
“There are no people on the moon except for a few people below the surface.”
“Now I know you’re joking. The Moon currently has the largest populations for a celestial body with no natural atmosphere.”
“Not anymore,” Mark said. “There was some sort of accident several hundred years ago that disrupted the order which led to a dramatic population decline over a short period of time.”