Guinevere stood inside the entryway, looking through the portal window, admiring the view of the Martian landscape interrupted here and there by landing pods.

“What is fear?”

She rolled the question around and around in her thoughts, thinking back over the last decade of her life, the years of education, more years of training for this moment.

A terrible automobile smashup had slowed her down temporarily.

A small leg injury had lightened her steps on the dance floor once.

Missile design and rocket propulsion classes had ended.

Her new life began.

She welcomed the new change, relished the challenges, climbing the rungs of the ladder of life that disappeared into infinity.

What is fear?  Fear is the type of insanity where you wanted things to remain the same when you knew they were not in your possession or in your control to begin with, subject to change without notice.

Guinevere knew no fear.

She lived on borrowed time.

Guinevere looked out the portal window and asked a question out loud to no one in particular.

“How far do you want to go exploring tomorrow?”

After thousands of hours in simulator training and millions of miles of travel, she was ready to take off right now, no moment wasted, but knew she needed to help the crew unload the rest of the gear.

After all, they had the rest of their lives to spend here on this pioneering outpost.

What was one last night together with everyone before they branched out into separate scientific teams and work crews?