“What are you doing?” I asked.
She pointed to the row of cartons stacked along one of the walls of the galley and stacked on the tables. “I am stowing the supplies,” she said. “I am also rotating the stock here. We might have to stretch the food a bit since we have two people here and your planners only planned to supply the base for one.”
“There is plenty here,” I said.
“I agree,” she said, “but I didn’t find that out until I started to inventory the food. Although if worse comes to worse and we are out here longer without resupply, we can take the shuttle back up to the Fortune and raid the galley there. You got proper suits and stuff and according to the chart, the Fortune is in a stable orbit of Neptune.”
I looked around. She made a lot of progress on unpacking the food supplies. “You’ve thought quite a bit about this,” I said.
She reached for my hand, which I took, and then jumped from the counter. “Of course,” she said. “I also should try to earn my keep.”
I was please her restocking effort, but I also felt a little guilty for not doing it myself. It was not like there was anything else for me to do and I was required to restock instead of letting the supplies sit in the hallway. The only thing I had done besides parking the dry goods on the tables and against the wall was pulling the pallet of frozen goods into the freezer.
That evening we ate a feast. The proper ingredients were easier to find and Alison gave the meal a woman’s touch. We even had a salad before the meal and she had crawled through the frozen foods to find some ice cream for dessert.
She stuck her fork in the lettuce and held it up. “This is pretty good,” she said. “Where do you get green lettuce?”
“Um,” I said, “all lettuce is green. That is how it grows on Earth, except there it is greener and not freeze-dried.”
“Lettuce is black on Epsilon Eridani III. Most plants are black there. You can only see the amazing color patterns if you wear infrared glasses. Most animals and insects see in infrared on Eridani III, so no plants are really colorful to humans.”
“Sounds depressing,” I said.
“Well, I grew up that way. How much difference can colorful plants make?” she asked.
“Women like to get colorful flowers,” I said. “In fact my wife used to love it when I brought her flowers, especially when there wasn’t a holiday. I brought them to her because I loved her.”
A wave of disappointment washed across Alison’s face. “You’re married?”
“She died in an aircar accident,” I whispered. It was all I could do not to cry. “We argued the last time she and I spoke, and now she is gone.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Alison. She paused for a moment, but apparently thought it was okay to say what she was going to say. “I know how you feel. I argued with my parents before I left on the Fortune. With time dilation, I thought I wouldn’t see them again. I don’t know what happened to them or anyone else I left behind. I felt guilty about it for the whole trip to Earth. That’s probably the reason I started wetting.”
“But now you can go back home in about six months and see them within the year,” I said.
“That’s true, but Mom and Dad are almost seventy. I hope they are still around when I visit again.”