Think Blue, Count Two

"Think Blue, Count Two" is a science fiction short story by Cordwainer Smith, set in his Instrumentality of Mankind future history. The story revolves around a psychological trip-wire installed to prevent an atrocity on a sleeper ship.

Originally published in Galaxy Magazine in February 1963, it was awarded the 1990 Seiun Award for Best Foreign Language Short Story of the Year.
In the early days of space travel, when the speed of light was still a limiting factor, interstellar travellers "knew nothing, except for going to sleep on earth and waking up on a strange new world forty, fifty or two hundred years later." Of course, things could happen during these gigantic voyages...