The Martian (32 page)

“How can that happen?” Lewis asked. “They're outside the craft. There's nothing for them to react with.”

“I think they picked up dust or small air leaks from Hermes itself. One way or another, they're definitely tarnishing. The tarnish is connecting the micro-lattice, and that reduces the surface area. Less surface area means less heat dissipation. So I limited the reactor enough that we weren't getting positive heat.”

“Any chance of repairing the cooling vanes?”

“It's on the microscopic scale,” Johanssen said. “We'd need a lab. Usually they replace the veins after each mission.”

“Will we be able to maintain engine power for the rest of the mission?”

“Yes, if the rate of tarnishing doesn't increase.”

“All right, keep an eye on it. Beck, how's life support?”

“Limping,” Beck said. “We've been in space way longer than it was designed to handle. There are a bunch of filters that would normally be replaced each mission. I found a way to clean them with a chemical bath I made in the lab, but it eats away at the filters themselves. We're ok right now, but who knows what'll break next?”

“We knew this would happen,” Lewis said. “This ship is designed for a 396 day mission, and we need to make it last 898. We've got all of NASA to help when things break. We just need to stay on top of maintenance. Martinez, what's the deal with your bunkroom?”

Martinez furrowed his brow. “It's still trying to cook me. The climate control just isn't keeping up. I think it's the tubing in the walls that brings the coolant. I can't get at them because they're built in to the hull. We can use the room for storage of non-temperature-sensitive cargo, but that's about it.”

“Where have you been sleeping?”

“In Airlock 2. It's the only place I can be without people tripping over me.”

“No good,” Lewis said, shaking her head. “If one seal breaks, you die.”

“I can't think of anywhere else to sleep,” he said. “The ship is pretty cramped, and if I sleep in a hallway I'll be in people's way.”

“Ok, from now on, sleep in Beck's room. Beck can sleep with Johanssen.”

Johanssen blushed and looked down awkwardly.

“So...” Beck said, “You know about that?”

“You thought I didn't?” Lewis said. “It's a small ship.”

“You're not mad?”

“If it were a normal mission, I would be,” Lewis said. “But we're way off-script now. Just keep it from interfering with your duties and I'm happy.”

“Million-mile-high club,” Martinez said. “Nice!”

Johanssen blushed deeper and buried her face in her hands.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 444

I'm getting pretty good at this. Maybe when all this is over I could be a product-tester for Mars rovers.

Things went well. I spent five sols driving in circles; I averaged 93 km per sol. That's a little better than I'd expected. The terrain here is flat and smooth, so it's pretty much a best-case scenario. Once I'm going up hills and around boulders it won't be nearly that good.

The bedroom is awesome. Large, spacious, and comfortable. On the first night, I ran in to a little problem with the temperature. It was fucking cold. The rover and trailer regulate their own temperatures just fine, but things weren't hot enough in the bedroom.

Story of my life.

The rover has an electric heater that pushes air with a small fan. I don't use it for anything because the RTG provides all the heat I need. I liberated the fan and wired it in to a power line near the airlock. Once it had power all I had to do was point it at the bedroom.

It's a low-tech solution, but it worked. There's plenty of heat, thanks to the RTG. I just needed to get it evenly spread out. For once, entropy was on my side.

I fell in to a routine pretty quickly. In fact, it was hauntingly familiar. I did it for 22 miserable days on the Pathfinder trip. But this time, I had the bedroom and that makes all the difference. Instead of being cooped up in the rover, I have my own little Hab.

The procedure is what you'd expect. After waking up, I have a potato for breakfast. Then, I deflate the bedroom from the inside. It's kind of tricky, but I worked out how.

First, I put on an EVA suit. Then I close the inner airlock door, leaving the outer door (which the bedroom is attached to) open. This isolates the bedroom, with me in it, from the rest of the rover. Then I tell the airlock to depressurize. It thinks it's just pumping the air out of a small area, but it's actually deflating the whole bedroom.

Once the pressure is gone, I pull the canvas in and fold it. Then I detach it from the outer hatch and close the outer door. This is the most cramped part. I have to share the airlock with the entire folded up bedroom while it repressurizes. Once I have pressure again, I open the inner door and more-or-less fall in to the rover. Then I stow the bedroom, and go back to the airlock for a normal egress to Mars.

It's a complicated process, but it detaches the bedroom without having to depressurize the rover cabin. Remember, the rover has all my stuff that doesn't play well with vacuum.

The next step is to gather up the solar cells I'd laid out the day before and stow them on the rover and trailer. Then I do a quick check on the trailer. I go in through its airlock and basically take a quick look at all the equipment. I don't even take off my EVA suit. I just want to make sure nothing's obviously wrong.

Then, back to the rover. Once inside, I take off the EVA suit and start driving. I drive for almost 4 hours, and then I'm out of power.

Once I park, it's back in to the EVA suit for me, and out to Mars again. I lay the solar panels out and get the batteries charging.

Then I set up the bedroom. Pretty much the reverse of the sequence I use to stow it. Ultimately it's the airlock that inflates it. In a way, the bedroom is just an extension of the airlock.

Even though it's possible, I don't rapid-inflate the bedroom. I did that to test it because I wanted to find where it'll leak. But it's not a good idea. Rapid inflation puts a lot of shock and pressure on it. It would eventually rupture. I didn't enjoy that time the Hab launched me like a cannonball. I'm not eager to repeat it.

Once the bedroom is set up again, I can take off my EVA suit and relax the rest of the day. I mostly watch crappy 70's TV. I'm indistinguishable from an unemployed guy for most of the day.

I followed that process for four sols, and then it was time for an “Air Day”.

An Air Day turns out to be pretty much the same as any other day, but without the 4 hour drive. Once I set up the solar panels, I fired up the Oxygenator and let it work through the backlog of CO2 the Regulator had stored up.

Once it was done, my test run was complete. It converted all the CO2 to oxygen, and used up the day's power generation to do it.

The test was a success. I'll be ready on time.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 449

Today's the big day. I'm leaving for Schiaparelli.

The rover and trailer are all packed. They've been mostly packed since the test run. But now I even have the water aboard.

I spent the last several days running full diagnostics on everything. The Regulator, Oxygenator, RTG, AREC, batteries, rover life support (in case I need a backup), solar cells, rover computer, airlocks, and everything else with a moving part or electronic component. I even checked each of the motors. Eight in all, one for each wheel, four on the rover, four on the trailer. The trailer's motors won't be powered, but it's nice to have backups.

It's all good to go. No problems that I can see.

The Hab is a shell of its former self. I've robbed it of all critical components and a big chunk of its canvas. I've looted that poor Hab for everything it could give me, and in return it's kept me alive for a year and a half. It's like The Giving Tree.

I performed the final shutdown today. The heaters, lighting, main computer, etc. All the components I didn't steal for the trip to Schiaparelli.

I could have left them on. It's not like anyone would care. But the original procedure for Sol 31 (which was supposed to be the last day of the surface mission) was to completely shut down the Hab and deflate it. NASA didn't want a big tent full of combustible oxygen next to  the MAV when it launched, so they added the shutdown process to the mission.

I guess I did it as an homage to the mission Ares 3 could have been. A small piece of the Sol 31 I never got to have.

Once I shut everything down, an eerie silence was all that remained. I've spent 449 sols listening to the heaters, vents, and fans. But now it was dead quiet. It's a creepy, eerie kind of quiet that's hard to describe. I've been away from the Hab before, but always in the rover or an EVA suit. There's always some kind of machinery in operation.

But now there was nothing. I never realized how utterly silent Mars is. It's a desert world with practically no atmosphere to convey sound. I could hear my own heartbeat.

Anyway, enough waxing philosophical.

I'm in the rover right now. (That should be obvious, with the Hab main computer offline forever.) I've got 2 full batteries, all systems are go and I've got 45 sols of driving ahead of me.

Schiaparelli or bust!

LOG ENTRY: SOL 458

Mawrth Vallis! I'm finally here!

Actually, it's not an impressive accomplishment. I've only been traveling 10 sols. But it's a good psychological milestone.

So far, the rover and my ghetto life support are working admirably. At least, as well as can be expected for equipment being used ten times longer than intended.

Today is my second Air Day (the first was 5 sols ago). When I put this scheme together, I figured Air Days would be godawful boring. But now I look forward to them. They're my days off.

On a normal day I get up, fold up the bedroom, stack the solar cells, drive four hours, set up the solar cells, unfurl the bedroom, check all my equipment (especially the rover chassis and wheels), then make a Morse Code status report for NASA if I can find enough nearby rocks.

On an Air Day, I wake up and turn on the Oxygenator. The solar panels are already out from the day before. Everything's ready to go. Then I chill out in the bedroom or rover. I have the whole day to myself. The bedroom gives me enough space that I don't feel cooped up, and the computer has plenty of shitty TV reruns for me to enjoy.

Technically, I entered Mawrth Vallis yesterday. But I only knew that by looking at a map. The entrance to the valley is wide enough that I couldn't see the canyon walls in either direction.

But now I'm definitely in a canyon. And the bottom is nice and flat. Exactly what I was hoping for. It's amazing; this valley wasn't made by a river slowly carving it away. It was made by a mega-flood in a single day. It would have been a hell of a thing to see.  

Weird thought: I'm not in Acidalia Planitia any more. I spent 457 sols there, almost a year and a half, and I'll never go back. I wonder if I'll be nostalgic about that later in life.

If there is a “later in life,” I'll be happy to endure a little nostalgia in return. But for now I just want to go home.

“Welcome back to CNN's Mark Watney Report,” Cathy said to the camera. “We're speaking with our frequent guest, Dr. Venkat Kapoor. Dr. Kapoor, I guess what people want to know is: Is Mark Watney doomed?”

“We hope not,” Venkat responded. “But he's got a real challenge ahead of him.”

“According to your latest satellite data, the dust storm in Arabia Terra isn't abating at all, and will block 80% of the sunlight?”

“That's correct.”

“And can Watney's only source of energy is his solar panels, correct?”

“Yes, that's right.”

“Can his makeshift rover operate at 20% power?”

“We haven't found any way to make that happen, no. His life support alone takes more energy than that.”

“How long until he enters the Tau Event.”

“He's just entered Mawrth Vallis now. At his current rate of travel, he'll be at the edge of the Tau Event on Sol 471. That's 12 days from now.”

“Surely he'll see something is wrong,” Cathy said. “With such low visibility, it won't take long for him to realize his solar cells will have a problem. Couldn't he just turn around at that point?”

“Unfortunately, everything's working against him,” Venkat said. “The edge of the storm isn't a magic line. It's just an area where the dust gets a little more dense. It'll keep getting more and more dense as he travels onward. It'll be really subtle; every day will be slightly darker than the last. Too subtle to notice.”

Venkat sighed. “He'll go hundreds of kilometers, wondering why his solar panel efficiency is going down, before he's notices any visibility problems. And the storm is moving west as he moves east. He'll be too deep in to get out.”

“Are we just watching a tragedy play out?” Cathy asked.

“There's always hope,” Venkat said. “Maybe he'll figure it out faster than we think and turn around in time. Maybe the storm will dissipate unexpectedly. Maybe he'll find a way to keep his life support going on less energy than we thought was possible. Mark Watney is now an expert at surviving on Mars. If anyone can do it, it's him.”

“Twelve days,” Cathy said to the camera. “All of Earth is watching, but powerless to help.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 462

Another uneventful sol. Tomorrow is an Air Day, so this is kind of my Friday night.

I'm about half-way through Mawrth Vallis now. Just as I'd hoped, the going has been easy. No major elevation changes. Hardly any obstacles. Just smooth sand with rocks smaller than half a meter.

You may be wondering how I navigate. When I went to Pathfinder, I watched Phobos transit the sky to figure out the east-west axis. But Pathfinder was an easy trip compared to this, and I did it mostly with landmarks.

I can't get away with that this time. My “map” (such as it is) consists of satellite images far too low-resolution to be of any use. They just never expected me to be out this far. The only reason I had high-res images of the Pathfinder region is because they were included for landing purposes; in case Martinez had to land way long of our target.