Light, bright and blinding.

Darkness, obscuring and just as blinding as the light had been.

Light.

Dark.

Light again, followed by darkness once more.

“She’s coming around.” A man’s soothing, gentle voice.

The next time she opened her eyes, she made an effort to keep them open for more than a fraction of a second. She saw the gentle curve of the medical bay ceiling above her and realized that she was lying on her back on a table. She blinked against the brightness of the overhead light. They must have taken her back aboard after-

“Angela? Angela Threadgill?” the voice asked, cutting into her thoughts. She managed to cut through the fog that enveloped her mind and attached a name to the voice: Dr. Theodore Kemper.

“Huh?” she grunted. It was hard to move her jaw to speak, as if she’d forgotten how. The monosyllable came out slurred.

Dr. Kemper moved into her line of sight. His forehead wrinkled beneath his receding hairline as he gave her a worried frown. “How are you feeling?”

Angela tried to snort with derisive laughter. The noise that came out sounded akin to an animal coughing. “I’ve been better,” she managed to say after a moment.

“You blacked out,” Dr. Kemper told her.

Someone new moved into Angela’s vision. After a brief moment she recognized him. Carson Mizner. A xenoarcheologist, same as her, Carson was part of her team. The simple act of identifying the man helped Angela focus a bit more.

Carson ran a hand through his shaggy red hair. “You passed out while we were examining the monolith.”

Angela turned her head and saw the other two members of the team standing nearby. Both Guy Meriwether and Gabrielle Devaney nodded agreement with Carson. Angela turned her gaze back to Carson and frowned in thought. Then it all came back to her in a rush.

The Retrospection has arrived at the planet several weeks before. The planet was known as Solitude due to the fact that it was alone; no other planets shared the two suns that made up the binary system. Solitude was thought to have once sustained some form of intelligent life. However, its isolation and unpleasant surface conditions made most people rethink any plans to search for evidence to prove that point. The planet was mostly desert wasteland, its sand hard, coarse, and dark as coal. The two suns that it orbited baked the black deserts, the temperatures rising to intolerable levels. Even when the temperatures dropped during the all-too-brief nights, Solitude was still unbearably hot for humans.