Pumyra found herself treading through winded, abandoned streets of an ancient city. She had left Bengali and Lynxo in charge of the Tower of Omens when she received the invite to attend a demonstration. Tygra, Panthro, Liono and many other third earthers were also scheduled to come see the events that would unfold in the ruins of that first earth museum.

Hers was not a pleasant walk. The buildings were old and loomed darkly over the narrow streets. No lights, there were no lights only dust-encrusted lamp posts. Large moths and flying cockroaches fluttered through the scene to add to the air of decay that clung about that ancient city of death.

The moon hid behind clouds that streaked across the sky to block out the stars. The night was oddly warm for autumn, with only the slightest touch of an unexpected chill. She shuddered more than once when a sudden breeze slithered across her face around a dreary corner. She increased her pace, she looked more suspiciously.

She stopped and in the silence she heard footsteps faraway.

When she turned her head to see, all she found was a passing shadow fading into oblivion. In any event, at last she came free from the dangerous streets to the open square where the museum stood. The change was total. Everything was open, even the could-cover had let up.

The marble facade of the museum stood out, the cleanness of it stood out as something too new, as something exceedingly out of place.

There were more shadows, shadows of eerie, smoky shapes, of only the faintest suggestions of actual, physical forms -- arms, heads -- that dotted into and out of view, that seemed to come closer from everywhere around the museum. She walked swiftly thought the open square, up stone steps to the entrance. Quickly she thrust open the side door and hurried in to escape the disturbances of the forgotten city outside.

A dark hall, barely lit by the bulb above the front doors and the other at the opposite end of the passage. She looked around, tried to catch her bearings, she walked briskly across the vast length of the chamber to the open doors of a ‘brighter,’ gray stone passage. She did not cast one glance side to side but there were unavoidable glimpses of sarcophagi, carved idols and -- her imagination supplied the rest.

Through that second hallway, a turn to the right and she reached the tall staircase that seemed to go up and up forever with only slight bends or crinks along the walls.

Tapping -- the sound of tapping came from above.

She caught her breath and regained her composure. She climbed up, for footsteps resonated noiselessly in her caution. It seemed her ascent would have no end but at last she came upon a set metal doors -- doors almost the exact replica of those of the refrigerators of Cat’s Lair. Behind them was the room set aside for the night’s demonstration. She stood a moment uncharacteristically nervous and pushed the doors open.

On the other side was a nearly empty room, without furnishings.

Pumyra knew most who were present: Liono, Panthro, Tygra, Willa, Mandora, RoboBear and several Wolos. They greeted her, they drew her into a close circle. All stood, there were no chairs, only a couple of instrument racks and the main object.

The main object.

The room was dominated by a long, low table upon which rested a six-foot bundle of dull gray cloth. Familiar, but just then she realized why. It was an Egyptian mummy, removed from its coffin. It awaited unraveling, no doubt.

Tygra raised his hand for silence.

"Most of you know what is about to happen tonight. I will only outline the procedure of the demonstration for convenience." He looked down on the mummy and stepped around the table. "This is an Egyptian mummy but we hope different from all other mummies previously uncovered.

"According to our painstaking translation of the hieroglyphics of the sarcophagus where this body came, this marks an attempt of the priesthood of Egypt to send one of their number alive into the lands to come. The unique part of it and that which occupies us tonight, is that this priest did not die, nor was his body in any way mutilated. Instead, according to the inscriptions, he was fed and bathed in certain compounds that would suspend -- indefinitely -- the actions of his body cells. He was then put to sleep and prepared for a slumber very similar to death, yet not truly death. In this state he could remain for years, yet still be reawakened to walk again, a living man.

"In brief and using our terminology, these people of what we call first earth, claim to have solved the secret of suspended animation. Whether or not they did is for us now to determine."

Pumyra felt herself grow cold while the knowledge penetrated her being. The past had indeed reached out to the present. She would witness that night the end of an experiment started millennia of millennia ago. Perhaps she would speak to and hear speak an inhabitant of that long lost age.

She raised her eyes from the object on the table, let her gaze fall upon the window and what was revealed through it. The clouds were gone and the cold, bright stars shone through. Space, she remembered the lonely vastness, the complete emptiness and the total isolation. So alone, she thought, so alone. To have been ‘suspended’ for so long seemed a worse and crueler sentence.

Tygra and Panthro began to unwrap the. Rolls and rolls of old, crumbling cloth unwound from the figure on the table. Grainy dust filled the air to tickle her nose. Several coughs were heard when the last of the windings fell away.

The body lay uncovered in a fine state of preservation. The skin was not hard, no, it had not hardened. The arms and legs were still movable for they had never stiffened in rigor mortis. Tygra seemed pleased by that.

In horror she noted several grayish-blue patches on the face and body which she recognized to be mold without asking. The tiger bent over and carefully scraped off the old growths. They left nasty reddish pitted scars.

She wanted to rush out of the building into the clean night air but the fascination kept her glance fixed in hypnosis on the me object before her.

"We are ready," Panthro said in a low voice.

The two Thundercats began to bathe the body with a sharp-smelling antiseptic to clean off all remaining traces of the preservatives used. Finished and at last the way was open for the work of revival. Large pads were brought out, laid out all over the body. A current was sent through them mostly to raise the body temperature to more normal warmth. Arteries and veins were opened, tubes clamped to them from apparatus under the table. She understood that artificial blood was being pumped into the body revive the internal organs and open the flow of blood again.

Tygra announced that he was about to attempt the final operation, the final work toward actually bringing the corpse to life. Already the body seemed to be that of a living man, the flush of red tingling its skin and its cheeks.

"Blood flows again through his veins and arteries," whispered Liono.

"It is time to turn off the mechanical heart and attempt to revive his own."

A needle was plunged into the chest, a substance injected into the dormant, cardiac apparatus of the body. Adrenaline, she assumed.

Over the mouth and nostrils of the former mummy a bellows was placed, air forced into the lungs at regular periods. For a while there was no result. She began fervently to hope that there would be no result. The air was supercharged with tension, horror mixed with scientific zeal. Through the chamber, the wheeze of the bellows was the only sound.

"Look!"

Someone cried out the word, electrifying all in the room of resurrection. A hand pointed shakily at the chest of the thing on the table. There was more action: the chest rose and fell more vigorously. Quietly Tygra reached over and pulled away the face mask and stopped the pumps.

The chest of the Egyptian still moved, up and down in a ghastly rhythm of its own. To their ears came an oddly noticeable sound -- the sound of air being sucked in and out of a sleeping man.

"He breathes." Panthro reached out and laid a finger on the body's wrists. "The heart beats."

"He lives again!"

Their eyes stared at what had been done. There, on the table, lay a man, a light-brown-skinned, sharp-Semitic-featured man, appearing to be in early middle age. He lay there quietly asleep.

She shook her head disbelievingly. "Who will waken him?" she whispered above the pounding of her heart.

"He will awaken soon," was the answer. "He will rise and walk if nothing had happened at all."

Then the Egyptian moved. His hand shook slightly. His eyes opened with a jerk.

Spellbound the witnesses approached the table. In shocked silence they watched the Egyptian sit up slowly, painfully. His features reacted grotesquely, his face was a horribly contorted mask ready to come off. His body moved jerkily.

The ancient's eyes roved over the assembly.

Pumyra fled from the room in frightful terror. The others followed. Behind rang out a terrible, hoarse bellow, a gurgling that thankfully could barely be heard. Everyone fought to be the first out of that museum, out the doors into streets and away.

The Egyptian had moved his body and opened his mouth to speak but instead his face had fallen in like termite-infested wood. Parts of the body that, having never been alive, could not be preserved in suspended animation. The bones, strong in death, could not defy the crushing passage of time. Soft, fragile, crumbled bones tore through.

The whole body shook suddenly, trembled suddenly in violent heaves of spasms. With the swing of the arm, the body transformed itself into a shapeless mass -- a quivering puddle -- of flesh and blood that projected innumerable jagged fragments of darkened bones.