“Perfectly so.” Falise told her with a deadly smile as she struggled to keep from staggering in the planet’s increased gravity. A Taglioni was always “all right.”

Another crewman opened the cabin airlock and extended the stairs. A shaft of daylight came shining through. Light from Capella. For the first time it sank in: I am on a planet thirty light-years from Solar System!

Falise walked to the door with carefully placed steps. How long had it been since she’d stood in planetary gravity? Five years, six?

She stopped at the hatch to stare out and get her bearings. A haze of red dust was vanishing, and the first thing she saw was the high patchwork of ugly fence backlit by an afternoon sun. Before people could pile up behind her, she made her way down the stairs in mincing steps so as not to trip. As she did she triggered her dress to shift from crimson to blaze orange.

But where was the reception committee? A line of planetary dignitaries should be at the foot of the stairs. Instead, there was just bare dirt. Only the crewwoman stood waiting, ready to offer assistance.

At the bottom, she stepped firmly onto the heat-glazed red soil of Capella III. Striding forth in her elevated shoes, it was all she could do to keep from wobbling on the uneven clay. She shot furtive glances in all directions and dared not windmill her arms for balance.

If I were to fall. . . . ? The humiliation would be unbearable.

The stacked containers, the parked equipment, the remarkable darker blue sky with its clouds. And the smell. Through the stink of burned fuel, she could detect a cardamom, saffron, vanilla scent. Something almost musical filled the air. Had to be the famous chime.

That’s when she realized that her net had gone quiet. Try as she might, her implants couldn’t access anything. A switch in her skull might have been flipped. And all that was left was silence. It was one thing to be told that she could access the memory in her implants, but that they couldn’t communicate with the net? In an instant, access to a universe of knowledge had just vanished.

So, this is what it’s like to be alone inside one’s own head.