An hour had passed by since Francesca and Dina's conversation in the navigation room.
In the meantime, Cass, who wore a cyan-coloured spacesuit, made her way into the cafeteria. It had been a long morning. She had spent most of the time looking through the spacecraft's log to check for signs of suspicious activity.
Fortunately, she hadn't found any. At least, not yet.
Nonetheless, Cass knew that it was important to keep track of these things. With a mind-altering virus present on both Earth and potentially onboard the spacecraft, too, it was important to ensure that nothing suspicious had taken place.
Cass Roses had been an astronaut for five years now. However, her current mission was the one that she considered to be her most important one. Going to Mars was no easy venture. It was an incredibly important one and it deserved to be treated as such, too. She knew that not everyone onboard the space craft didn't take the mission quite as seriously as she did, but that wasn't going to stop her for a single second.
Before she had left, which felt like decades ago now, her father had instructed her carefully. "Cass Lily Roses, make sure that you know exactly what you're doing. This mission could potentially change our lives forever. It could potentially find a cure for this devastating virus. You know, no pressure, but we're all counting on you. We all believe in you."
Cass' mind had repeated those words over and over for some time now. She would be naïve to not have realised just how important all of this was.
"C," a voice spoke and Cass turned to see that she had been joined by Belle. "Is everything okay?" she asked.
Cass gave a nod of her head at that. She was usually okay. She had to be. As one of the older members of the crew, she took it upon herself to look out for the others. Of course, Cass was only twenty-four years old. She had always considered herself to be fairly mature, though.
"Yeah, I'm okay," Cass said, as she forced a smile onto her face.
After that, Belle gave a nod of her head too and then bid her farewell.
Cass hadn't been left alone for too long before another crewmate became present in the cafeteria.
This one wore a baby pink suit and her name was Penelope.
Cass had always enjoyed having Penelope around. She had a kind temperament about her which made her very easy to get along with. Cass was certain that Penelope got on well with most people onboard the ship, actually. Most people apart from Blake Way, that is to say. For one reason or another, the two of them had never seemed to get on very well. It was unfortunate but Cass knew that Penelope had many friends anyway for it to not bother her too much. Cass liked to consider herself one of Penelope's friends, but she knew that with Penelope's popularity, she wasn't sure whether she was considered one of hers.
"Hey Cass! It's good to see you," Penelope said with warmth behind her smile.
It was the sort of smile that made Cass instantly feel more at peace, even though the notion that they would be landing upon Mars in the next hour or so still played in the back of her mind.
Cass managed to smile back at Penelope before she replied.
"It's good to see you too, Penelope," she said with a kind tone of voice. Cass was one of the friendlier crew mates onboard the Starbound 20, that was one of the reasons why Penelope always appreciated their conversations.
"Cass, you know how you're a really good friend..." Penelope began to say.
Well, that answered Cass' previous question.
"Yeah?" she asked, as her blue eyes brightened slightly.
"Can you come and fix some of the wires with me? I was meant to do it earlier but I ended up sleeping in and you know that Blake will be sufficiently pissed off if I don't do it soon," Penelope said, with a concerned expression upon her face.
Cass sighed before she replied.
"Right, right. Of course. Yeah. Let's go," she said.
The two of them walked down one of the main corridors until they reached one of the panels on the wall. Cass took the door of it off and Penelope got to work on reconnecting the wires to the right colours.
The two of them weren't alone for long before they were joined by a man who wore a purple space suit- Parker.
"Hey, you two okay?" Parker asked, as his violet-coloured eyes settled on the two of them with interest.
The two girls nodded. They had almost completed their task of fixing the wires, which was just as well because Penelope was beginning to get hungry.
"Good," Parker said with a kind smile. He was one of the more compassionate crew members and had always got on well with Cass and Penelope.
For the most part, he avoided Blake and Ryder, they could be a little mean when they wanted to be. At least, that was the way Parker had always seen it. He wasn't sure if it was necessarily intentional but regardless, he liked to spend most of his time with people who were friendly towards him.
"Just a little anxious," Penelope admitted, as her mind went towards the matter of their arrival on Mars.
"I can understand that," Parker said, "It's sort of a big deal. We've been waiting for this for a long time..."
"And I can't help but worry that something could go wrong-"
"Hey, nothing is going to go wrong!" Cass replied with a friendly glint in her ocean-blue eyes. "We'll get through this," she said. "It shouldn't be that difficult. Not really."
"Right," Parker said, "We're going to get this done and then we'll be home soon enough," he said supportively. "Everything will work out in the end. I believe in us," he said.