<div align="center"><strong><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 18pt;">MARS DATE 07/01/0001, 09:45:16</span></strong></div><br/>It had been a hectic week and Louise was not so much exhausted as feeling drained. Everything was finally up and running smoothly, the holographic images of trees were actually working, the bio-cultures in the farm were growing, and construction had started on the new habitat modules. The ones that should have been completed on her first visit to the red planet. And the ore processing plant was under way too. That would be completed sooner, because it was mostly a surface construction with only a few pressurised chambers below ground.<br/><br/>The missing articles had been found - back on earth, and heads had rolled at a middle management level in MarsCorp. Various research projects were under way, and so, amazingly, was the first native Martian! Louise giggled. Some people worked fast, and one couple had just plane gotten lucky with the timing. Her own DNA had been sampled and modified into a male vector and now Laura was fretting about timing, wanting desperately to get pregnant. At least, that was how it seemed to Louise....<br/><br/>That was a problem for another day, though. Right now there was something far more pressing to do. This was the day when the first major surface expedition since their arrival would take place.  Louise checked the time repeater in her im plant and grinned. Time to get ready. She shut down her desk terminal and accessed the base AI.<em><tt class="bbc_tt">Command override: Give me base wide address...</tt></em><br/><br/><tt class="bbc_tt">Base wide address is online</tt>, came the response from the computer.<br/><br/>"<strong>Attention please</strong>", Louise grimaced slightly as she heard her voice echoing back down the bustling corridors. "<strong>This is the base commander. Would all personnel assigned to the Olympus expedition, please report at once to the suiting room. That is all.</strong>"<br/><br/>It had been tough deciding who should go and who shouldn't. There was limited space on the aircraft, and in the end, once the obviously essential personnel like the geological team, the astronomy team, the prospecting team, medical team and the security team had been assigned, it had come down to a lottery draw to see who else would get to go on the mission.<br/><br/>Louise herself was going along as a passenger, command of the expedition being in Laura's capable hands, but she was not going to miss this for all the tea in china!