Typically for its use in the park, the scanner's readings were more peculiar than helpful. Held outside the door, the data being received concerned everything but the space on the other side: it provided perfectly normal detail about everything to the last molecule on the edge of the opening, but beyond that was nothing. And not the same sort of nothing that was beyond the gates, where "nothing" had been the data received; this was simply a sort of goodnatured utter refusal on the instrument's part to believe that she meant to scan further beyond that point.

When pushed out into the space, though it remained as fully visible as her hand, its effective range shrank instantly to zero. Of the environment it was now in, it reported a temperature of 37 degrees centigrade and a balmy radiation level of 108, the chemical composition being similar to the air outside with a very slightly higher amount of nitrogen and oxygen. But as to what lay before it, or around it, the scanner flatly declined to speculate.