“—and suggest that you seek help from the specialists in ’Home. Strongly suggest it.”

Dan spoke up from the corner where he was leaning, watching. “That’s ridiculous. She’s the sanest person in this room.”

“You’re not the best judge of that,” Dennison said.

I appealed to Bishop. “What do you think, Doctor? Can a person respond to physical trauma with a sequence of ‘completely convincing hallucinations’?”

Bishop started to speak, but Dennison interrupted. “Maybe not a normal person, but Dr. O’Hara is not normal! Her alien torturer supposedly made a big deal of that!”

“Alien torturer, come on—”

“And one very significant way she is not normal is a half-century of dependence on virtual reality machines. A dream world is natural to her.”

“That’s a stupid libel. I’m not dependent on VR or anything else.”

He leaned back with a smug smile. “I have access to ’Home’s dream room logs. You essentially had your own private machine for most of the time you were Entertainment Director. No one alive has logged even half the VR time you have. Can you deny that?”

“I have no reason to. Most of that use was job related. If I were addicted to the damned thing, why would I have worked so hard to be assigned down here, where there aren’t any of them? If I’m addicted, why haven’t I been bouncing off the walls for two years?”

“You go back to ’Home all the time,” he said. “I assume that you—”

“Assume away. Try to find one time I used the dream room in the past two years. You won’t.” I stood up and turned my back to him. “This isn’t productive. Dan, how long will it take to cook off the shuttle?”

“Thirty-four minutes.” He checked his watch and pushed a button. “We can rendezvous with ’Home in seventy-two minutes.”

“Let’s go.”

“I can’t authorize that,” Dennison said.

I turned around and planted both hands on his desk and leaned down. “Read the fine print, Raleigh. You’re temporarily in charge of this settlement, but you don’t outrank me. That shuttle belongs to ’Home, and on ’Home’s table of organization I’m a twelve, and you’re a ten. I’ll let you come along, if you want. You might want to talk to some people about a new job.”

He leaned away, almost comically. “Hold on, now. Let’s not be hasty.”

“We have eight hours to save the lives of everybody here and on Earth, and you don’t want to be hasty. We don’t have time for you.”

“All right, all right!” He put on a headset and asked it for Channel 12. “This is Dennison, anybody there?” He pushed a button and we heard the response through a desk speaker.

“Niels here. What’s up?”