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pinkgothic:
For someone who had grown up back on Earth, it was always a strange feeling to be outside on Martian terrain, wearing a clunky space suit inside a cramped rover, the sky of pale ash suddenly so much more lifeless now that it was more obviously hermetically sealed away from one's lungs.
Somehow all of this was supposed to turn into a living planet, but for the time being all they were doing was sitting in a rover that cut through a landscape of inhospitable desert that, had they been exposed to it, would have poisoned them in record time.
Nyarai was driving. There weren't really roads - no one had bothered to make them - but there were, shall we say, beaten paths that were better to drive along than at random. The jostling, shaking and vibrating of their tin can was nonetheless a unpleasant, constant companion, and it took about an hour for them to reach their chosen outpost.
They were all aching by the time they got there, beset upon by mild bruises from the trip.
No time to rest, though. Nyarai rolled the rover into the garage air lock and triggered the cycle. There was always a chance it wouldn't work, but that was why they were all in their suits - it would have been an inconvenience, not a deal-breaker, to get out and use human-sized airlocks, leaving the rover exposed. If they couldn't fix an issue like that, it meant heading home without the assurance of two layers of insulation, which was risky, but probably hardly worth noting to her sorcerer companions given their professions.
Nothing went wrong, though, and as the inner door of the garage unlocked, allowing human access to the outpost itself, Nyarai took off her helmet and started to strip off the suit, revealing her slightly sweaty slacks underneath.
The joys of space life.