Mica waited. Though there existed in her a primal fear of stepping off the safety of the ship and out into the black, she cared deeply about her crew. She took her role seriously. It was her responsibility to bring up the rear and keep her eyes peeled, to make sure that everyone got home again safely. Technically speaking, this particular outing wasn't classified as "high risk," but the reality was that this far out in space, even "low risk" endeavors were risky enough. She waited until each of the other crew members - women she respected, whom she had begun to think of as her family - stepped off into nothing. Then she stood at the brink, took a deep breath to steady herself, disengaged her boots, and pushed off. She let herself float for a few seconds, acclimating herself to the foreign sensation. It was unsettling to say the least. She had the sense that she was very high up, even though this far out, there really was no "up" or "down" to speak of, except in relation to objects. She tried not to dwell on that thought for too long. For a moment, her stomach did an unpleasant little flip. In the close, brightly illuminated space of her own helmet, she could hear the anxious hammer of her own pulse.<br/><br/>She was most at home in small spaces. Maybe it was because of her upbringing, slinking through narrow alleyways and hiding in cramped little rooms, stowing away among the cargo on small planetary ferries. Or maybe something in her unknown, distant alien genetics made her predisposed to being comfortable in small, dark environs. Either way, her first real spacewalk was the opposite of that. Out here, there were no walls, no borders, no edges. Nowhere to hide. Nothing to hold onto. When she stood on the<i>Rabbit's </i>observation deck, looking out at the vast expanse of stars, distant blinking planets surrounded by haloes of satellites, and swirling belts of strangely colored dust and ice and gas, she felt a bewildered awe for its beauty. But being out in it was entirely different. She didn't look around.<br/><br/>She kept her eyes glued to the backs of her charges as they drifted purposefully forward, one after the other. She watched their O2 monitors, and the instinctive cycling movements of their legs in airless space. Until her feet hit solid metal again, they were her anchor to reality. Her own animal fear could be compartmentalized. She could bring it out again and feel it later, when she was alone in her small curtained cubby-bed in the sickbay, where she wouldn't risk embarrassing herself by being afraid. Right now, she needed to focus on the needs of her crewmates. She steeled herself, hands clenching at her sides.