There was something . . . not right . . . about how Sly felt as she sped up the dataline. Some sense of . . . disconnection, though that didn’t quite describe it either. At first she thought it was a mental artifact, some kind of aftereffect of her combat with Jurgensen, with the golems. But then she realized it had to be the time delay that T. S. had mentioned. Depending on the geometry of the link—the number of sidelinks necessary to communicate with the Zurich-Orbital habitat—the light-speed lag could be three-quarters of a second, an eternity at computer speeds. She tried to imagine what it would be like without the compensator chip that T. S. said was installed in the deck, then gave up; this disconnected feeling was disturbing enough.