Everyone around her was panicking, but though she felt concerned at the danger, part of her was thrilling to the adrenalin in her bloodstream. She had joined the expansion program in the hope of excitement, and her profiling must have shown that she was a seeker after novelty and sensation. Yet so far she had spent two boring years sealed up in a space ship, and then had made a landing on what had to be the galaxy’s most boring planet. At least, it had been ‘til now. Even the emergencies before this one had been boring, restrictive Saunder’s World emergencies. The plasma breach at the quarry had been a perfect example of this; it hadn’t meant any exciting, desperate adventures, or even any pulling together of the colony in a spirit of camaraderie. it had just meant that the supply of raw materials had been interrupted, and that she had lost her lover for a week. Even contacting him had been too risky, the comm link they had given him had been a public one, far too easy to monitor.
