Tom Godwin's short story "The Cold Equations" opens with suspense because the reader immediately knows an unidentified being is in the ship with pilot Barton. However, the conflict does not develop until the end of the second page when the stowaway emerges from the closet to reveal she is a girl. Barton was expecting a man and, as an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) pilot, is very accustomed to seeing men die in the new frontier and very ready to jettison the male stowaway to ensure the many lives he is heading to the planet Woden to save are indeed saved. His realization the stowaway is a young girl, innocent of the fierce new frontier laws, creates significant internal conflict within Barton.

However, based on the details Godwin explains concerning circumstances of distance and travel in the new frontier, even by the second page of the story when the conflict is revealed, the reader knows the story can only have one possible outcome--the girl must die to ensure the lives of many others are saved. Specifically, Godwin informs the reader that, since the galaxy is so spread out, the distance between the different colonies and explorers had caused a significant problem. Large hyperspace cruisers were built to transport colonists and explorers and to visit the colonies to check up on them, but the cruisers were too large and expensive to be able to make unscheduled emergency stops at colonies when need arose. Therefore, officials needed to design small, fast ships that could deliver emergency supplies and aid, but the ships were too small to be able to carry any more than the amount of fuel necessary to reach their emergency destinations. An extra person on-board the ship would burn up too much carefully calculated fuel supply, rendering it impossible for the emergency vehicle to reach its destination, costing the lives of many; therefore, authorities issued the law that stowaways aboard EDS vehicles "shall be jettisoned immediately following discovery."

Since the reader knows from the start of the story that, by the laws of physics, one life must be sacrificed to save the lives many, the reader can easily predict the outcome of the story and is never surprised by the outcome. The reader is saddened, even heartbroken by the outcome just as Barton is heartbroken, but never surprised.