<div class="floatleft">(http://www.zen90682.zen.co.uk/marsjulie.jpg)</div><br/><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td> Juliet Franklin </td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td>Leaving the Shuttle</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td> Everyone</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td> Arriving on the Red Planet</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/><br/>Julie muttered quietly to herself, her helmet radio un-keyed her words were not relayed, "I am the furthest man from home." which wasn't strictly speaking true, yet, well, it certainly -felt- that way, and what else really mattered but your own rough and ready perceptions?<br/><br/>She followed some of the other white suits down the boarding ramp somewhat unsteadily. The gravity was wrong. You could train and train and train for something like this yet the actual reality of it was very much an 'otherness'. There was a wonderful and terrible wholeness of reality to the whole deal that was a little distracting. It would take a little bedding in and she would have to be extra careful for the next few hours, though with the differences so stark compared to what she was used to it wasn't like she was going to forget to take her time and not rush things.<br/><br/>The whole thing was like a strange dream really. She kind of knew why she had been picked, she was young, fertile, had skills that were valuable and necessary, a sense of adventure, was one to keep her head in a crisis and so on and so forth. It just frankly amazed her that she had even been asked to be a part of the program in the first place, let alone make it through to the first wave of people sent to the red planet.<br/><br/>ANOTHER BLOODY PLANET! Her breath caught for a moment, her chest tight, she closed her eyes, stopped walking forward for just a moment, held that breath, let it out slowly. The tingling sensation in her skin just wouldn't go away no matter how hard she willed it to. Started walking again. Down the edge of the ramp and onto the shuttle pad.<br/><br/>Glancing around she looked around for her assembly point, found it and oriented herself to it very carefully. She had been assured, along with everyone else, that she would become used to how different things are, the lower gravity, the strangeness of the light living in a pressurized bubble on a planet that most certainly would kill her stone dead if given the opportunity. Yet right at this moment it seemed like a lie. This was all so very strange, as she made her way to her assigned area Julie reflected that this was to be her home, likely for good and all. That she would certainly never see her old shipmates or family again. Her mind went back to the 'living wake' that they had thrown for her and a little smile crept its way across her face.<br/><br/>Arriving next to the Orange suited figure that represented her group Julie waited till she had been recognised and given the hand signal to wait and stood just staring up at the sky, down at the ground and over at the strange human built humps in the ground that were to be her home, her life. It was going to take a little while before her brain adapted to thinking of this as completely real and not just another in the long, long line of training and exercises.<br/><br/>Whatever else this was going to turn out to be, however things went from this moment, this second, on. It was truly amazing that she had ever, could ever, have made it this far.<br/><br/>Julie smiled despite herself, stood waiting for everyone of her group to assemble just staring around, trying to take it all in, grinning like a loon.<br/><br/>She must have looked for all the world like the proverbial kid in the candy store.