How does one tell time when there is no darkening and everything is the same? I awake and it’s morning. When I sleep it becomes night. How long is the day? Yesterday felt short. I was inside the Praetor for forty years. My cabin looked like it had been destroyed for longer than that. And what made the sun so angry…

Béla’s disassociated thoughts were interrupted when her father stepped into his lab. Béla asked the question she was thinking.

‘Why does the sun hurt me?’

‘Are you in pain?’ her father asked, suddenly concerned.

He picked up her crystal and gazed at it as though he could see her life energy permeating it.

‘No. When I went home, back to Earth, the sun hurt inside my head. And I don’t even have a head.’

She broadcast the image of her arrival at her ruined cabin.

‘The Praetor has the data and the history required for you to understand the answer to that question.’ Sibilius informed her.

‘The Praetor has been restored?’ Béla asked anxiously. ‘Is it all right? Is it angry with me?’

‘The Praetor is a machine. It does not get angry,’ her father said. ‘I have not brought it in here out of respect for you. You had not inquired about the Praetor, so I assumed you were not ready to have it in your presence.

‘But, to answer your questions; yes, the Praetor is all right. There was a problem with its power supply, but that has been corrected and features have been added that will prevent that problem from recurring.’

‘Bring it in!’ Béla broadcast to him, cheerfully.

Sibilius set her back on the shelf and turned toward the door.

‘Daaaddy…’ Béla called out to him.

Sibilius turned around and looked at her crystal, confused by the mixed annoyance and humor she was broadcasting at him.

‘I’m upside down,’ she informed him, sending him an image of a smiley face.

Sibilius actually laughed, then turned her crystal over. Béla, although trapped in the crystal chamber, could have turned over by herself by simply deciding that the bottom of the crystal was now its new top, but she saw no reason why she should.

A few minutes later, she and the Praetor were mind-linked.

‘Do you have a question?’ the Praetor asked her.

‘Several,’ Béla replied.