A wide plain lay spread out in front of them, patches of green and yellow interspersed with the winding curves of rivers and straighter lines that had to be irrigation channels, or tracks, or QuantLev routes. The sun shone directly into her eyes, making details difficult to pick out, glinting off the waterways. She could see round patches that were clearly settlements: a cluster of buildings here that might have been a farm, larger areas further afield that had to be villages and towns and cities.
It all appeared normal, a scene from a thousand different planets across the galaxy – except for two things: the lack of movement and the lack of noise. She would have expected to hear the growing roar of machinery, see people moving around, catch trains flashing along the QuantLev tracks, hear
