Snippet #1338719

Jerry spotted the students coming from various directions, all more or less at the same time. How efficient of medical! He was determined to make this as big a deal as possible. He knew how excited they must all be, and he wasn't about to let them down just because Marius-Jacobs couldn't be bothered spending a bit of extra money on a more auspacious departure.

Abi, for her part, closed up the laptop and stood up alongside Jerry. Not too close...she liked him just fine, but it seemed like only hours ago that she had been on the shuttle from Europa with him...a long enough journey, and he was the sort of guy who took a lot of energy to be around. She smiled as the students approached, and stood professionally, allowing Jerry to make the formal greetings.

"Hey guys", said Jerry warmly as Vincent was the first to approach. "Great to see you, I'm sure you all aced the medical test. I told them to make sure it was only multiple choice questions."

He paused after the 'joke' and turned to Isabel who was standing off a little. He waved her over, saying "Come right on in, we just got a few things to sign and patch up before we all get going."

Then came the classic Irish greeting from the medical bay doors, Jerry turned immediately with a broad grin, holding up a noteboard and ticking a box off.

"OK well at least one of these is going to be easy to guess...Seamus am I right?"

As he ticked off Seamus' name, Henri came through the door also and Jerry whistled to himself. A full compliment of four, excellent. After such a disappointing response to the invites, at least all the acceptees had shown up.

"Alright!" Jerry said loudly, taking a step back towards the departure gate and ushering everyone to stand near. "My name's Jerry Miner, this is my colleague Abigail Khöller...yeah I know took me a while to say it right too...we're gonna run through a little introductory guffer here but first I gotta get my paperwork in order since you're all here. So talk among yourselves just a minute and we'll be with you right away."

Abi forced a smile at the joke Jerry made about her name. She was more or less used to it by now, and she appreciated German umlaut vowels were tricky. Jerry busied himself flicking through some papers on his board and filling in some boxes, so she decided to step towards Isabel.

"Hey," she said, "congratulations on getting your invite. It's really great to see that everyone's getting an equal opportunity. I read your resumé, it was very impressive."

She was referring of course to the fact that Isabel did not come from a privaliged background, and had yet managed to secure a place at an emminent university and achieve referrences sufficient to get the attention of someone at Marius-Jacobs.

That was true of all four of the students. There was little doubt in her mind that they all had the right stuff to contribute something useful to this trip.