The trip from the greenhouse to McReady’s lab was relatively short, as they were right next to each other. Blair’s lab was situated on the opposite end of the greenhouse from McReady’s, but it didn’t really matter as Blair wasn’t trying to go back to work. She was pretty sure the lieutenant would kill her if she tried.

Blair entered the lab with Jellybean in tow and marveled at all the charts and diagrams on the walls. While McReady was tasked with helping the captain in leading the ragtag group of astronauts, she was also in charge of weather analysis and prediction.

On a board in the center of the lab, there was a large chart of Kypros’ geography with color coded arrows all over it delineating the air and water currents. Even without knowing a lot about meteorology or geography, Blair could tell it was an absolute masterpiece. It had taken weeks for McReady and Van Wall to put it together, with Van Wall sending out numerous rovers and McReady analyzing all of the collected data.

On the far wall was a large screen that showed an image of the base with a representation of the weather patterns in the area. There was a lot of blue on the map, indicating that there were a lot of clouds but no rain. The presence of water on Kypros was a very fortunate discovery that was great news for the potential terraforming, but the percentage of surface that was water was only about 65%. Rain was less common than on Earth, but extreme weather was still a risk that the team had to account for.

Seeing that McReady was busy working with something on a computer, Blair decided not to take up much of her time. She cleared her throat to get the lieutenant’s attention, and McReady’s head shot up.

“Oh, hell,” she jumped. “When did you come in?”

“Just now,” Blair said casually. “You were pretty lost in your work.”

“Sorry, I do that a lot. So, what can I help you with?” McReady was always offering to help even when she hadn’t finished her own work.

“Oh, I just wanted to return Jellybean to you. He was really helpful to have around, but I feel like a bad babysitter…” She thought back to the movie marathon where they just sat down for hours before she continued. “I guess I feel like I’m wasting both of your time.”

“That’s fine, don’t worry about it. I’ll take him off your hands then.” She beckoned Jellybean, and he rushed over to give her a hug. After she put him down again, she asked Blair how she was holding up.

“I think I’m good.” Blair felt a lot better than that morning. Some of the emotional fatigue was still there, but she felt a little hopeful in her situation. “I’m not great, but I think I will be okay.”

“One day at a time, right?” McReady sounded like she spoke from experience.

“Yeah.”

McReady told Blair to feel free to contact her at any time, reminding her that she had left her comms device back in her lab. It was a lightweight tablet that could be used on its own or be connected to the headset built into the TLS suit’s helmet. Luckily, the headset was powered by a separate system from the rest of the suit so that someone could call for help in the case of a malfunction. It was pretty important to have it on hand, so Blair decided to stop by her lab on the way to... wherever it is she decided to go. She didn’t really know what to do for the rest of the day.

At a loss for what to do, she suddenly realized she was hungry again. Not a lot, but it was a noticeable amount. After she picked up her tablet, she figured she might as well see if she could grab something to eat. She had missed lunch, but she was sure that Kinner would be fine with her grabbing a bite from the community fridge. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to work a little past lunchtime, so the cook always took a headcount and set aside portions for everyone who missed it.

Blair’s lab wasn’t technically far from McReady’s, but she did have to walk all the way around the greenhouse to get to the other side. Once she got there, she quickly ducked in and grabbed her tablet. McReady was right when she said it would smell like bleach for a while. There was a faint blue spot over in the corner where it happened, but Blair could only tell because she was looking for it. She shrugged, put on her helmet, and walked out.

She took the same path to the cafeteria as that morning, but this time she took note of the large pen next to her lab as she left. It was an enclosed space outside that had a few coppershells and a couple other assorted creatures from the wild. They were all caught and tagged by Van Wall for her to study, but they had to be kept outside because they couldn’t stand the low oxygen inside for longer than a day. Looking at them now, Blair’s mouth was starting to water. The coppershell she ate that morning was just a mimic and she ate it too fast to really taste it, so she found herself wondering how the real thing would taste.

She bit her tongue to snap herself out of it and found that it hurt a lot more than she expected it to. Without realizing it, her teeth had become sharp again. She forced them to shift back to normal and turned away from the menagerie. Those were a limited supply, and Van Wall would get suspicious if she started asking for him to find more specimens every week.

She lamented the loss and kept going. If normal food didn’t help, she was going to have to find a way to hunt on her own without anyone noticing her absence. She could try to do it at night when the crew was asleep, but the constant late nights would probably make her tired, not to mention the fact that one meal a day would leave her really hungry. The idea of going hungry for a whole work day accompanied her all the way to the cafeteria, and she tried to put it out of her mind. With any luck, plain old human food would work just fine.

20 minutes and a canned chicken sandwich later, she could tell it wouldn’t work. In total, she had the sandwich and a large salad, which was more than she normally ate, yet it did nothing to satisfy her. She sighed, thinking again about how hard it will be to secure an alien food source. She was going to have to sneak off camp.