Snippet #2696899

In the control room, the day before they went to the planet's surface, Helen was brought out of her thoughts when Kevin seemed to materialise out of nowhere. To be fair, she was dimly aware that he'd been there the whole time, but her mind had for some reason been occupied.

“How great is this?! I’m so happy for you, too bad I’m not allowed to join you. I would like to, but I will probably never head down to the surface, why would I? There is nothing I could do to help.”

"Don't say that, dude." She grinned at him. "If nothing else you could've kept me company."

She noted his laugh, but it sounded almost as sad as the words he were saying. She could imagine why– it had to be quite a blow to be so close to undiscovered territory, and only get to look at it from a distance. Though they'd only known each other for the extent of the mission, she found herself wishing that Kevin would soon be joining them on the surface, so they could experience it together.

“Just picture me down there! There is too many things that are more exciting than working down there, like getting lost on Mars. Who else in the world would be able to boast about having such a bad sense of direction that they got lost on a whole other planet? No one! That would be awesome. Such a great way to start a conversation.”

"Amazing," she answered with a half-smile. "I can imagine it. 'Have I told you about that time I was among the first group of people on Mars, and got completely lost?' I bet Piper would have ordered the crew to leave you behind. I imagine expending resources on lost crewmembers would be a bit of a stretch."

Helen gave a laugh, shaking her head. "Nah, that's mean of me. I should give her more credit than that."

Before she could say anything more than that, however, Piper's voice rang out and she realised she'd probably chatted through the rest of her debriefing.

"Alright, I guess that was all the questions then. In that case I will get back to my other duties and so should you."

She watched the captain leave, shaking her head slightly. After that, she quickly sought out any information she might have missed from the other crewmembers, before spending most of the evening in the common area with a glass of whisky and a boardgame.