"How's that data dump coming along," Rick asked Johanssen, via the com channel that sounded throughout the ship. He probably figured that everyone, not just himself, would be interested in her answer.

"Just finished," Johanssen replied, with a hint of a smile in her voice.

After nearly seven weeks aboard Hermes, the arrival of the daily data dump was quickly becoming their lifeline, the highlight of their mission day.

At least for the other crew members, anyway.

Mark got one personal email every week or so, from his parents; he hadn't thought to ask any of his friends or coworkers to send him personal emails on Hermes. It was the 2030s, for crying out loud. People his age didn't send personal emails; they texted. Back during training he'd figured he'd be too busy to read little letters detailing how everyone was doing back home; also, he'd figured that he wouldn't much care, anyway. He'd have plenty of time to catch up on their stuff when he got back. It just sounded like a big waste of time.

He'd been wrong about that, as it turned out.

As the other crew members scrambled to read their messages, Mark checked his station too, just in case, but no. Nothing new for him, today.

The married crew members got daily replies from their spouses; in the case of Vogel, he also got messages from his kids more often than not. Martinez had a wife and baby back home, and his wife faithfully deluged Rick with more details than anyone could possibly want to know about the day-to-day existence of a two-year old. Lewis's husband was a high school English teacher and always sent along amusing anecdotes and daily happenings, suitable for sharing.

The rest of the crew ate that shit up, too, Mark thought.

Over practically every meal that they took together in the Rec, the conversation inevitably turned to What Is Going On Back Home. And everyone on board faithfully followed the saga of all of the crew's loved ones back home as though it was the most interesting part of their day. People on a fucking spaceship headed to Mars.

Little David fed the ducks at the park today? Oh, that is just so cute, they all agreed. There was a picture attachment!? Even better! Vogel's kid had won first chair in the school orchestra? Good for Victor! Send him our congratulations, they all urged Vogel as though it were a matter of life and death. Marissa thought that David might have an earache? Oh, that was a week's worth of drama (at least!) right there.

It was so stupid, he thought. But so necessary. And it bothered him, more than he'd ever expected, that he didn't ever have much of anything to add. Just "Mom and Dad send their regards to the crew," and only once a week, at that.

Beck and Johanssen had each other, whether or not they cared to admit it to anyone; the other crew had their spouses and children back home. But what did he have?

Being on Hermes, going to Mars, all of it, suddenly seemed like a really empty achievement when he didn't have anyone to share it with.

Now that the cat was out of the bag, Beck kept right on with it, seeking Mark out, whenever he wanted to talk with someone about Johanssen. Tonight was no exception, as the two of them played a few rounds of backgammon on one of Hermes' tablet computers after dinner.

Mark had always counted Rick Martinez as his closest friend among the crew, but to his surprise he found that he and Chris clicked, just as well. Or maybe it was just that they shared a secret, now.

Either way, Mark didn't mind; the evenings got boring. Rick tended to spend his personal time writing to his wife, or going to bed early.

Chris was a good company, he had to admit. And a damned decent backgammon player, as it turned out. He played with a certain competitive edge, almost as though half his paycheck were riding on the game's outcome.

"Dance, fucker," he grinned as he finally managed a blockade.

His strategy brilliantly backfired, two rolls later.

Chris, the luckiest guy in the galaxy, Mark was starting to think, rolled doubles and neatly bounced him with a perfect blockade, in response.

"Double," Chris reached for the tablet to tap the die, but Mark merrily snatched it away and resigned, before he could. "Loser," he laughed, as Mark reset the game, chuckling.

"Loser? I'm not the one who chose backgammon over personal time with the only single woman on the ship, here" Mark observed.

Chris shook his head.

"She's watching some sports thing with Lewis, tonight." He looked rueful. "And anyway, we can't hang out every night."

"Why's that," Mark chuckled. "Afraid she'll get sick of you before you get a chance to make your move?"

"Zip it," Chris laughed, as he opened the new game with a 6-1 roll.

"Getting lucky, huh?" Mark rolled his eyes, "But not getting that lucky, am I right?" He waggled his eyebrows. It was fun, messing with Chris.

Somehow, the conversation had devolved into a rather ungentlemanly discussion of firsts on Mars.

"Listen, I hate to break it to you," Mark laughed, "But even if you and Johanssen did make an attempt at, umm, colonizing the planet, you wouldn't be the first."

Beck's smile was a little bit patronizing.

"Man. I had no idea you were this gullible," he fired back, grinning. "That thing about Hendricks is an urban legend."

"It's not, though," Mark replied, chuckling. "It's a fact."

"And you would know this, how?"

"Well," he mumbled, a little embarrassed, "It is."

"Hendricks told you?" Chris asked, shaking his head, doubtful. "Man, he's told that tall tale to any number of AssCans in the pool over the last eight years. Doesn't make it true."

"Karen Rhodes is a friend of mine," he replied, smirking a bit. "And she was the woman in question."

Silence, then, as Chris digested this bombshell, the hottest piece of NASA gossip confirmed. He shook his head in disbelief.

"And how long have you known about this?"

"Years," he grinned. "Discretion is my middle name."

"I hope so," Chris grinned.

Houston

Things were still pretty calm. So far, anyway. The night shift at SatCon, with Hermes still a couple of months away from Mars, was a pretty pleasant workplace overall. Mindy had been told by some of the office veterans that there would be lots of overtime and a much more hectic atmosphere during the actual surface mission, however. Her shift was nearly over, and she was grateful for that. She was tired; she felt half-asleep, despite the coffee she'd just finished a half-hour before.

Tonight's duties were imaging the various touchdown locations for Ares IV again, just to make sure nothing had changed in the last sixteen hours, Mindy smiled wryly. It was Mars; it didn't change much. When Hermes arrived, however, one of their first duties, before they began their surface mission, would be to officially kick off the party for the Ares IV crew by carefully landing their future MAV.

Ares IV did not officially even have a crew yet, of course, although office gossip usually had a rotating "short list" of likely candidates that might be selected. At any rate, there were a great many interested parties within NASA that would be watching that MAV touchdown, hoping that nothing went wrong.

Once the Ares III pilot had landed it, far away from the crew's own surface mission location in the Acidalia Planitia, there it would sit, for the next four years. It would be silently producing its own fuel during that time, eventually joined by the thirteen supply probes that would complete the cache of surface mission supplies.

Most of the probes were designed to carry redundant supplies, of course. Just in case. There would be two sets of almost everything, except for the Hab itself, which would arrive, split between three probes. An Ares pre-supply array included two rovers, two sets of tools, two pallets of food, two sets of cargo equipment, and three sets of solar panels, only two of which were strictly necessary for the mission. All of the sets were split between the different probes, so that if one or two of them were damaged, or even, a total loss, the surface mission would carry on, unimpeded. There could be only one MAV, however.

The MAV, of course, was mission critical. Should anything go wrong, there would be no recourse; none at all. Ares IV would simply be delayed for four years while they awaited another one to be built and launched and landed and fueled. A bad MAV landing would cause problems that would echo all the way down the food chain, even to Mindy herself. It had never happened thus far; each Ares mission had, so far, managed a flawless touchdown of the next mission's MAV.

That was the big advantage to having a skilled pilot in orbit, to carefully guide the lander to the surface. The Ares I pilot had flawlessly landed the MAV for Ares II, and Ares II had paid it forward by landing the MAV for Ares III.

If disaster should strike; if something went wrong and the MAV was lost, NASA would be doing the exact same thing in four years, only remotely from Earth this time, which had an even larger chance of failure.

And then, funding that was meant to last four years would be stretched onwards to eight. There would be layoffs, furloughs, and other creative methods of encouraging the contract employees to find other employment for a few years. Nobody wanted any of that to happen. And all of it balanced on the all-important MAV landing.

No pressure there, Martinez, Mindy thought, wryly.

But of course, they had to give him the best topographic data they could, to work with, so even SatCon peons like herself played a part. It was like being a small cog in a big machine, sometimes. Working for NASA, sometimes you didn't know which department was in charge of what, exactly, and the chain-of-command could get murky amongst all of the layers of management. But the bigger picture was a really beautiful one.

It was just after one in the morning when Mindy got home, exhausted. Getting used to working second shift was taking a surprisingly long time, she thought. Or maybe it was just that she'd had those nagging flu-like symptoms all week, and it was dragging her down.

She kicked off her boots at the front door and made her way upstairs and collapsed on her bed, too tired to even think about dinner. Too tired to even get undressed or get under the covers.

Why was she this tired, anyway, she wondered, already half-asleep.

It didn't make any sense. She had to figure this out, though, because things that didn't make sense bothered her, and she'd never get any sleep unless she focused, right now, and got a handle on whatever had been causing this.

Was it the move? All the packing and unpacking, carrying boxes around and… No, she didn't think so. That had been done with for a couple of days, and she wasn't sore or anything. She'd gotten a decent amount of sleep the night before. Did she actually have the flu? It wasn't flu season, was it? Nobody at work had called in, with it. And when she stopped to think about it, didn't the flu cause congestion and coughing? She'd had neither.

She sat bolt upright in her bed, suddenly, as another possibility suddenly occurred to her.

What if… she didn't even really want to think about the consequences, but was it even possible? Could she be pregnant?

Of course not. That's silly, she thought. I haven't even had sex in ages. That was the last thing she needed to worry about. Well, except for that one night with Mark Watney, but what were the odds of…

"Oh my fucking God," she said, to the empty room, now completely awake.

Still fully dressed, she bolted down the stairs and headed back out to the car.

One visit to the local all-night pharmacy later, she was standing in her brand-new bathroom, awaiting the results of the pregnancy test she'd just bought.

The test didn't even have the decency to try to be hard-to-read. It was as clear as a bell. Where an empty white space had been, thirty seconds ago, there was now a bright clear line of sky blue, the color still deepening as she stared down at it.

This had to be the one time in her life that she was not thrilled to have passed a test without studying.

Positive.

"Yeah," she said to herself, in the mirror. Blue eyes blinked back at her, wide and shocked. "I'm fucked."