So she did what she always did. She shut her eyes, took in several deep, deep breaths, pushed down the bad memories that resurfaced behind her closed eyes, and tried to immerse herself in the pleasure of breathing without a helmet.

“Any strong feelings about space travel?”

“Not really.” Rosalyn had lied her way through her evals at the Merchantia Solutions headquarters back on Earth. Even hooked up to a lie detector apparatus, she had managed to get through the questions without raising any eyebrows.

“Paranoia? Claustrophobia?”

“Nope, nope . . .” More lies. Harmless, she decided; she was only mildly claustrophobic.

It came naturally, lying. She had gotten plenty of practice at her first job. It was a high-stress environment; drug tests and harsh evaluations were frequent. They were designing and engineering the future of memory medicine, of longevity, for God’s sake, and you didn’t get to perform a job like that if you couldn’t handle a little stress.

Or a shitload of it.

Paranoia. Claustrophobia. She wasn’t hooked up to an eval machine now, so she let the sweat bead on her forehead and her jaw grind back and forth. Rosalyn kept her eyes shut, forcing herself not to think about the tiny ship and its tiny confines and the tiny helmet that would lock over her head any second. Then her eyes snapped open, and she went rigid, the early, ugly rigor of an anxiety attack. A familiar tug in her guts, a familiar icy numbness in the tips of her fingers . . .

She was so engrossed in trying not to break down and dissolve into her panic that she didn’t hear the footsteps approaching. An old AR advertisement had bugged out on her display and wouldn’t refresh, blinking in the upper right corner above her eye. It was for Red Mars Mud Masques. Wear it, remove it, reveal your inner goddess, read the ad’s text, scrolling by in a tiny window. You’re just five minutes away from the new you! She stared at it, trying to pull herself back from a precipice that emptied onto a fall with no bottom. It was just the withdrawal, some nausea, nothing to be worried about.

“Jesus, eat something bad at lunch? You look terrible, Devar.”

Walters. Her eyes snapped open and she let out a stale breath.

“Maybe the cheese was off,” she said with a shrug. “Just a stomachache. It’ll pass in a minute.”

“Not that time of the month, is it? I’m sure they can find a replacement.” Walters chuckled and leaned against the wall across from her. He had a lean, freckled, punchable face, a constellation of old acne scars and a narrow chin.