The Martian (24 page)

Attempting to open the image, his viewer reported the file was unreadable.

He walked down the narrow hallway. The crew quarters stood against the outer hull of the constantly-spinning ship to maximize simulated gravity. Johanssen's door was open, as usual.

“Johanssen. Good evening,” Vogel said. The crew kept the same sleep schedule, and it was nearing bedtime.

“Oh, hello,” Johanssen said, looking up from her computer.

“I have the computer problem,” Vogel explained. “I wonder if you will help.”

“Sure,” she said.

“You are in the personal time,” Vogel said. “Perhaps tomorrow when you are on the duty is better?”

“Now's fine,” she said. “What's wrong?”

“It is a file. It is an image, but my computer can not view.”

“Where's the file?” she asked, typing on her keyboard.

“It is on my shared space. The name is 'kinder.jpg'.”

“Let's take a look,” she said.

Her fingers flew over her keyboard as windows opened and closed on her screen. “Definitely a bad jpg header,” she said. “Probably mangled in the download. Lemme look with a hex editor, see if we got anything at all...”

After a few moments she said. “This isn't a jpg. It's a plain ASCII text file. Looks like... well I don't know what it is. Looks like a bunch of math formulae.” She gestured to the screen. “Does any of this make sense to you?”

Vogel leaned in, looking at the text. “Ja,” he said. “It is a course maneuver for Hermes. It says the name is 'Rich Purnell Maneuver'.”

“What's that?” Johanssen asked.

“I have not heard of this maneuver.” He looked at the tables. “It is complicated... very complicated...”

He froze. “Sol 549!?” he exclaimed. “Mein Gott!”

The Hermes crew enjoyed their scant personal time in an area called “The Rec”. Consisting of a table and barely room to seat six, it ranked low in gravity priority. It's position amidships granted it a mere 0.2g.

Still, it was enough to keep everyone in their seats as they pondered what Vogel told them.

“...and then mission would conclude with Earth intercept 211 days later,” he finished up.

“Thank you, Vogel,” Lewis said. She'd heard the explanation earlier when Vogel came to her, but Johanssen, Martinez, and Beck were hearing it for the first time. She gave them a moment to digest.

“Would this really work?” Martinez asked.

“Ja,” Vogel nodded. “I ran the numbers. They all check out. It is brilliant course. Amazing.”

“How would he get off Mars?” Martinez asked.

Lewis leaned forward. “There was more in the message,” she began. “The maneuver is part of an overall idea NASA had to rescue Watney. We'd have to pick up a supply near Earth, and he'd have to get to Ares-4's MAV.”

“Why all the cloak and dagger?” Beck asked.

“According to the message,” Lewis explained. “NASA rejected the idea. They'd rather take a big risk on Watney than a small risk on all of us. Whoever snuck it in to Vogel's email obviously disagreed.”

“So,” Martinez said, “We're talking about going directly against NASA's decision?”

“Yes,” Lewis confirmed, “That's what we're talking about. If we do the maneuver, they'll have to send the supply ship or we'll die. We have the opportunity to force their hand.”

“Are we going to do it?” Johanssen asked.

They all looked to Lewis.

“I won't lie,” she said. “I'd sure as hell like to. But this isn't a normal decision. This is something NASA expressly rejected. We're talking about mutiny. And that's not a word I throw around lightly.”

She stood and paced slowly around the table. “We'll only do it if we all agree. And before you answer, consider the consequences. If we mess up the supply rendezvous, we die. If we mess up the Earth gravity assist, we die.

“If we do everything perfectly, we add 533 days to our mission. 533 days of unplanned space travel where anything could go wrong. Maintenance will be a hassle. Something might break that we can't fix. If it's life-critical, we die.”

“Sign me up!” Martinez smiled.

“Easy, cowboy,” Lewis said. “You and I are military. There's a good chance we'd be court-martialed when we got home. As for the rest of you, I guarantee they'll never send you up again.”

Martinez leaned against the wall, arms folded with a half grin on his face. The rest silently considered what their commander had said.

“If we do this,” Vogel said. “It would be over 1000 days of space. This is enough space for a life. I do not need to return.”

“Sounds like Vogel's in,” Martinez grinned. “Me, too, obviously.”

“Let's do it,” Beck said.

“If you think it'll work,” Johanssen said to Lewis, “I trust you.”

“Ok,” Lewis said. “If we go for it, what's involved?”

Vogel shrugged. “I plot the course and execute it,” he said. “What else?”

“Remote Override,” Johanssen said. “It's designed to get the ship back if we all die or something. They can take over Hermes from Mission Control.”

“But we're right here,” Lewis said. “We can undo whatever they try, right?”

“Not really,” Johanssen said. “Remote Override takes priority over any on-board controls. Its assumes there's been a disaster and the ship's control panels can't be trusted.”

“Can you disable it?” Lewis asked.

“Hmm...” Johanssen pondered. “Hermes has four redundant flight computers, each connected to three redundant comm systems. If any computer gets signal from any comm system, Mission Control can take over. We can't shut down the comms; we'd lose telemetry and guidance. We can't shut down the computers; we need them to control the ship. I'll have to disable the Remote Override on each system... It's part of the OS, I'll have to jump over the code... yes. I can do it.”

“You're sure?” Lewis asked. “You can turn it off?”

“Shouldn't be hard,” Johanssen said. “It's an emergency feature, not a security program. It isn't protected against malicious code.”

“Malicious code?” Beck smiled. “So... you'll be a hacker?”

“Yeah,” Johanssen smiled back. “I guess I will.”

“All right,” Lewis said. “Looks like we can do it. But I don't want peer pressure forcing anyone into it. We'll wait for 24 hours. During that time, anyone can change their mind. Just talk to me in private or send me an email. I'll call it off and never tell anyone who it was.”

Lewis stayed behind as the rest filed out. Watching them leave, she saw they were smiling. All four of them. For the first time since leaving Mars, they were back to their old selves. She knew right then no one would change their mind.

They were going back to Mars.

Everyone knew Brendan Hutch would be running missions soon.

He rose through the ranks as fast as one could in the large, inertia-bound organization. Known as a diligent worker, his skill and leadership qualities were plain to all his subordinates.

Brendan was in charge of Mission Control from 1am to 9am every night. Continued excellent performance in this role would certainly net him a promotion. It was already announced he'd be back-up Flight Controller for Ares-4, and he had a good shot at the top job for Ares-5.

“Flight, CAPCOM,” came a voice through his headset.

“Go CAPCOM,” Brendan responded. Though they were in the same room, radio protocol was observed at all times.

“Unscheduled status update from Hermes.”

With Hermes 90 light-seconds away, back-and-forth voice communication was impractical. Other than media relations, Hermes would communicate via text until they were much closer.

“Roger,” Brendan said. “Read it out.”

“I... I don't get it, Flight,” came the confused reply. “No real status, just a single sentence.”

“What's it say?”

“Message reads: 'Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man.'”

“What?” Brendan asked. “Who the hell is Rich Purnell?”

“Flight, Telemetry,” came another voice.

“Go Telemetry,” Brendan said.

“Hermes is off-course.”

“CAPCOM, advise Hermes they're drifting. Telemetry, get a correction vector ready-”

“Negative, Flight,” Telemetry interrupted. “It's not drift. They adjusted course. Instrumentation uplink shows a deliberate 27.812 degree rotation.”

“What the hell?” Brendan stammered. “CAPCOM, ask them what the hell.”

“Roger Flight... message sent. Minimum reply time 3 minutes, 4 seconds.”

“Telemetry, any chance this is instrumentation failure?”

“Negative, Flight. We're tracking them with SatCon. Observed position is consistent with the course change.”

“CAPCOM, Read your logs and see what the previous shift did. See if a massive course change was ordered and somehow nobody told us.”

“Roger, Flight.”

“Guidance, Flight.” Brendan said.

“Go Flight,” came the reply from the Guidance Controller.

“Work out how long they can stay on this course before it's irreversible. At what point will they no longer be able to intercept Earth?”

“Working on that now, Flight.”

“And somebody find out who the hell Rich Purnell is!”

Mitch sat comfortably in Teddy's office.

“Why'd you do it, Mitch?” Teddy demanded.

“Do what?” Mitch asked.

“You know damn well what I'm talking about.”

“Oh, you mean the Hermes mutiny?” Mitch said innocently. “You know, that'd make a good movie title. 'The Hermes Mutiny.' Got a nice ring to it.”

“We know you did it,” Teddy said sternly. “We don't know how, but we know you sent them the maneuver.”

“I suppose you have proof, then?”

Teddy glared. “No. Not yet, but we're working on it.”

“Really?” Mitch said. “Is that
really
the best use of our time? I mean, we have a near-Earth resupply to plan, not to mention figuring out how to get Watney to Schiaparelli.  We've got a lot on our plates.”

“You're damn right we have a lot on our plates!” Teddy fumed. “After your little stunt, we're committed to this thing.”

“
Alleged
stunt,” Mitch said. “I suppose Annie will tell the media we decided to try this risky maneuver? And she'll leave out the mutiny part?”

“Of course,” Teddy said. “Otherwise we'd look like idiots.”

“Guess that's me off the hook then!” Mitch smiled. “Can't fire me for enacting NASA policy.
Allegedly
enacting it, that is. I guess Lewis is off the hook, too. And maybe Watney gets to live. Happy endings all around!”

“You may have killed the whole crew,” Teddy countered. “Ever think of that?”

“
Whomever
gave them the maneuver,” Mitch said, “only passed along information. Lewis made the decision to act on it. If she let emotion cloud her judgment, she'd be a shitty commander. And she's not a shitty commander.”

“If I can ever prove it was you, I'll find a way to fire you for it.” Teddy warned.

“Sure,” Mitch shrugged. “But if I wasn't willing to take risks to save lives, I'd...” He thought for a moment. “Well, I guess I'd be you.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 192

Holy shit!

They're coming back for me!

I don't even know how to react. I'm choked up!

And I've got a
shitload
of work to do before I catch that bus home.

They can't orbit. If I'm not in space when they pass by, all they can do is wave.

I have to get to Ares-4's MAV. Even NASA accepts that. And when the nannies at NASA recommend a 3200km overland drive, you know you're trouble.

Schiaparelli Crater here I come!

Well... not right away. I still have to do the aforementioned shitload of work.

My trip to Pathfinder was a quick jaunt compared to the epic journey that's coming up. I got away with a lot of shortcuts because I only had to survive 18 sols. This time, things are different.

I averaged 80km/sol on my way to Pathfinder. If I do that well toward Schiaparelli it'll take 40 sols. Call it 50 to be safe.

But there's more to it than just travel. Once I get there, I'll need to set up camp and do a bunch of MAV modifications. NASA estimates they'll take 30 sols, 45 to be safe. Between the trip and the MAV mods, that's 95 sols. Call it 100 because “95” cries out to be approximated.

So I'll need to survive away from the Hab for 100 sols.

“What about the MAV?” I hear you ask (in my fevered imagination). “Won't it have some supplies? Air and water at the very least?”

Nope. It's got dick-all.

It does have air tanks, but they're empty. An Ares mission needs lots of O2, N2 and water anyway. Why send more with the MAV? Easier to have the crew top off the MAV from the Hab. Fortunately for my crewmates, the mission plan had Martinez fill the MAV tanks on Sol 1.

The flyby is on Sol 549, so I'll need to leave by 449. That gives me 257 sols to get my shit in gear.

Seems like a long time, doesn't it?

In that time, I need to modify the rover to carry the Atmospheric Regulator, Oxygenator, and Water Reclaimer. I call them “The Big Three”. All three need to be in the pressurized area, but the rover isn't big enough. All three need to be running at all times, but the rover's batteries can't handle that load for long.

The rover will also need to carry all my food, water, solar cells, extra battery, my tools, some spare parts, and Pathfinder. As my sole means of communication with NASA, Pathfinder gets to ride on the roof, Granny Clampett style.

I have a lot of problems to solve, but I have a lot of smart people to solve them. Pretty much the whole planet Earth.

NASA is still working on the details, but the idea is to use both rovers. One to drive around, the other to act as a trailer for all the shit I have to bring.

I'll have to make structural changes to that trailer. And by “structural changes” I mean “cut a big hole in the hull.” Then I can move the Big Three in and use Hab canvas to loosely cover the hole. It'll balloon out when I pressurize the rover, but it'll hold.

How will I cut a big chunk out of a rover's hull? I'll let my lovely assistant Venkat Kapoor explain further:

[14:38]JPL: I'm sure you're wondering how to cut a hole in the rover.