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grew from invisibility to an ellipse the size of her head in a matter of seconds, rushing toward her like the mouth of an oncoming tunnel as seen from a speeding train. In and around that tunnel mouth she saw many flickering green curves — circles, ellipses, and parabolas representing the orbits of artificial satellites.

    One of those was the Sagan space telescope, poised at the L2 point on the far side of the Earth from the Sun, well beyond the Moon. And that was where Jeremy was.

    Dana’s heart beat harder at the thought.

    Her brain knew this was only a simulation, that Jeremy wasn’t really there. But her heart ached for him.

    They’d been apart for so many months, and now … now she was about to die. Her simulated body was going to slam into the solid simulated Earth, far denser and proportionally much bigger than the galaxy that had grazed her leg so painfully. She didn’t know what would happen to her then, but her terrified screaming monkey mind insisted that she would go
splat
, and between the bugs and the drugs she couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t.

    The Moon’s orbit was now a skinny ellipse as long as her arm. She must be about five light-seconds tall, and coming in just above the plane of the ecliptic. The Sun was to her left, so Jeremy would be off to her right, on the far side of the Sun from the Earth and about four times farther from Earth than the Moon … just
there
.

    And there he was. A tiny, tiny green ellipse, no bigger than her fingertip, represented the Sagan telescope’s station-keeping orbit around the L2 point. She had already nearly passed it.

    Desperately she reached out to the speeding ellipse.
I love you, Jeremy
, she thought…

    …and her hand struck something hard and cool.

    The control panel. When it had flown out of her reach, it must have automatically returned to its default position by her right hand. But it was still invisible, and she hadn’t thought to look for it there.

    Heart pounding, Dana ran her clumsy right hand around the panel’s smooth rounded edge, fumbling for the Hide button in the upper right. She found it and pressed it.

    The control panel appeared.

    Beyond it, the Earth was already the size of a basketball, and growing rapidly. The simulation was cloudless, a photorealistic globe surrounded by the green circles of artificial satellites. She fell toward it, slowing but still moving at killing speed.

    The Earth shimmered in her drug-addled vision, huge and bold and powerful. The home of all humankind. So small in the immensity of the universe, yet so immense to her.

    As terrified as she was, she was overcome with awe.

    She couldn’t wait to tell Jeremy about this…

    Jeremy!

    Dana slammed the Stop button with her thumb. Immediately she halted her downward plunge.

    She hung, gasping, in space. She must be no more than five percent of a light-second tall; the Earth was now a sphere bigger in diameter than her height, its surface just an arm’s length away.

    She reached out and touched it. It was cool and smooth and very hard.

    Dana leaned against the Earth and sobbed with relief.

    * * *

    Dana peered anxiously at the people coming off the flight from Florida. There he was! Moving slowly, still unaccustomed to gravity, but she’d never mistake Jeremy’s face.

    And she could see it so clearly! Even only twenty days into the experimental treatment, she was already detecting an improvement in her vision.

    She ran to Jeremy and embraced him with a shriek of joy. “Did you bring me anything?” she teased.

    “Just a head full of stars,” he said, and kissed her. “How about you?”

    “Well…” Her headlong plummet through space had, amazingly, taken only five minutes of her HVF time. Once she’d recovered her composure, she’d gone on to complete her researches as planned … in fact, her unexpected side trip had given her some very interesting insights. “Actually, I have some important results to share. But first, I want to