Maeve takes off her helmet and hears the hustle of the space station. A crowd gathers around her and her companions. Women stare and whisper to each other about what happened with her ship and how it landed.
“Maeve!” A familiar voice comes from behind her. Elated, she turns to face Derek.
And there he is with hazel eyes and short-cropped, black hair, sitting in a wheelchair.
That is what the comment was about.
She walks forward and throws her arms around him. As their faces meet, there is a pleasant smell of deodorant. “Thank you, Derek. Without you, a safe landing would have been impossible. You saved me and my family.”
She stood back up. He was smiling now. “I have to go do some sort of debrief?”
Derek’s eyes flittered. “Standard procedure after an emergency landing. It’s nothing to be worried about; it should take forty minutes or so.”
Maeve pursed her lips. “How do I contact you later?”
“Oh, now you’re on the moon, that’s really simple. You will be given a communications device that you wear over your ear. Just instruct it to contact C2222. It will put you straight through to me.”
“Ok, chat again real soon.”
Mark's Writing Corner 