“48… 47… 46…” Tom’s number two, Dr. Valerie Thomas, is a General Practitioner, with training in Psychology, making her the ship’s onboard councilor. Valerie is also a certified Master Gardener, her favorite hobby. As a result, Valerie can cultivate and grow many of the specialized herbs and plants needed to concoct some of their medications. In addition to her horticultural skills, she is cross-trained in Physical Therapy, some Eastern medicine, and General Dentistry.
“45… 44… 43…” Valerie honed her horticultural skills aboard the International Space Station (ISS), back in 2011. At that time, Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts were growing crops as a test bed for long-term space missions. Back then, the lack of gravity demanded shoebox sized gardens using Arcillite and grains of clay enriched with time-released nutrients. These minuscule gardens will not be needed on this mission to Mars due to the use of artificial gravity to keep the plants in place during the transit.
“42… 41… 40…” Valerie is a petite, slender lady in her late thirties with medium brown hair, curling softly to her shoulders. She is not what you would call a ‘looker’, rather plain in fact. Valerie has been married to her second husband (Steve Thomas, a covert ops group leader) for four and a half years. It isn’t that she was hard to get along with; she was simply too absorbed in her career to maintain a relationship, until she met Steve.
“39… 38… 37…” The next member of the crew is Dr. Carl Wilson. He’s a short, rather stocky, blonde kid, 24 years of age, and named after the Astronomer / Astrophysicist, Dr. Carl Sagan. Dr. Carl Wilson is the crew’s Mechanical Engineer / Geochemist.
“36… 35… 34…” Tom jokes that Carl is as smart as a whip, but not very bright: he still has a lot to learn about life. One of those ‘whiz kids’ you hear tell about, he received his Masters in Mechanical Engineering at the tender age of eighteen. But, it was the Doctorate in Geochemistry that won him a berth on this first Mars mission. While still in college, Carl met the love of his life, Mary Croft.