The Martian (35 page)

Starting tomorrow, I can go directly toward Schiaparelli. Which is good, cause I lost a lot of time. I went 540km due south while avoiding that storm. I'm catastrophically off course.

Mind you, it hasn't been that bad. I'm well in to Terra Meridiani now, and the driving is a little easier here than the rugged ass-kicking terrain of Arabia Terra. Schiaparelli is almost due east, and if my sextant and Phobos calculations are correct, I've got another 1030km to get there.  

Accounting for air days and presuming 90km of travel per sol, I should arrive on Sol 505. Not too bad, really. The Nearly-Mark-Killin' storm only ended up delaying me by 7 sols.

I'll still have 44 sols to do whatever MAV modifications NASA has in mind.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 487

I have an interesting opportunity here. And by “opportunity” I mean Opportunity.

I got pushed so far off course, I'm actually not far from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It's about 300km away. I could actually get there and pull a Pathfinder on it. It would take about 4 sols.

Thing is, it's not worth it. I'm only 13 sols away from the MAV. Why go out of my way to dig up another broken-ass rover to use as a makeshift radio when I'll have a brand new, fully functional communication system within a couple of weeks.

So, while it's kind of neat that I'm within striking range of another rover (man we really littered this planet with them, didn't we?) it's not relevant.

Besides, I've defiled enough future historical sites for now.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 492

I need to put some thought in to the bedroom.

Right now, I can only have it set up when I'm inside the rover. It attaches to the airlock, so I can't get out if it's there. During my road trip that didn't matter, because I had to furl it every day anyway. But once I get to the MAV, I won't have to drive around anymore. Each decompress/recompress of the bedroom stresses the seams (I learned that lesson the hard way when the Hab blew up) so it's best if I can find a way to leave it out.

Holy shit. I just realized I actually believe I'll get to the MAV. See what I did there? I casually talked about what I'll do after I get to the MAV. Like it was nothing. No big deal. I'm just going to pop over to Schiaparelli and hang with the MAV there.

Nice.

Anyway, I don't have another airlock. I've got one on the rover and one on the trailer and that's it. They're firmly fixed in place, so it's not like I can detach one and attach it to the bedroom.

But I can seal the bedroom entirely. I don't even have to do any bullshit hatchet jobs on it. The airlock attachment point has a flap I can unroll seal the opening with. Remember, I stole the airlock attachment from a pop-tent. It's an emergency feature for pressure loss while in the rover. It'd be pretty useless if it couldn't seal itself off.

Unfortunately, as an emergency device, it was never intended to be reusable. The idea was people seal themselves in the pop tent, then the rest of the crew drives to wherever they are in the other rover and rescues them. The crew of the good rover detaches the pop tent from the breached rover, and re-attaches it to theirs. Then they cut through the seal from their side to recover their crewmates.

To make sure this would always be an option, mission rules dictated no more than 3 people could be in a rover at once, and both rovers had to be fully functional or we couldn't use either.

So here's my brilliant plan: I won't use the bedroom as a bedroom anymore once I get to the MAV. I'll use it to house the Oxygenator and Atmospheric Regulator. Then I'll use the trailer as my bedroom. Neat, eh?

The trailer has tons of space. I put a fuckton of work in to making that happen. The balloon gives plenty of headroom. Not a lot of floor space, but still lots of vertical area.

Also, the bedroom has several valve apertures in its canvas. I have the pop-tents to thank for that again. I just needed swaths of canvas so I stole it from wherever I could. I stole a lot from the pop tents, and they had valve apertures (triple redundant ones, actually). NASA wanted to make sure the emergency shelter allows the crew on the outside to get air in to the crew on the inside.

In the end, I'll have the bedroom sealed with the Oxygenator and Atmospheric Regulator inside. It'll be attached to the trailer via hoses to share the same atmosphere and I'll run a power line through one of the hoses. The rover will serve as storage (because I won't need to get to the driving controls any more) and the trailer will be completely empty. Then I'll have a permanent bedroom. I'll even be able to use it as a workshop for whatever MAV modifications I need to do on parts that can fit through the trailer's airlock.

Of course, if the Atmospheric Regulator or Oxygenator have problems, I'll need to cut in to the bedroom to get to them. But I've been here 492 sols and they've worked fine the whole time, so I'll take that risk.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 497

I'll be at the entrance to Schiaparelli crater tomorrow!

Presuming nothing goes wrong, that is. But hey, everything else has gone smoothly this mission, right? (That was sarcasm.)

Today's an Air Day and for once, I don't want it. I'm so close to Schiaparelli, I can taste it. I guess it would taste like sand, mostly, but that's not the point.

Of course, that won't be the end of the trip. It'll take another 3 sols to get from the entrance to the MAV, but hot damn! I'm almost there!

I think I can even see the rim of Schiaparelli. It's way the hell off in the distance and it might just be my imagination. It's 62km away, so if I'm seeing it, I'm only just barely seeing it.

Tomorrow, once I get to Entrance Crater, I'll turn south and enter the Schiaparelli Basin via the “Entrance Ramp.” I did some back-of-the-napkin math and the slope should be pretty safe. The elevation change from the rim to the basin is 1.5km, and the Ramp is at least 45km long. That makes for a 2-degree grade. No problem.

Tomorrow night, I'll sink to an all new low!

Lemme rephrase that...

Tomorrow night, I'll be at rock bottom!

No, that doesn't sound good either...

Tomorrow night, I'll be in Giovanni Schiaparelli's favorite hole!

Ok, I admit I'm just fucking around now.

For millions of years, the rim of the crater had been under constant attack from wind. It eroded the rocky crest like a river cuts through a mountain range. After aeons, it finally breached the edge.

The high pressure zone created by the wind now had an avenue to drain. The breach widened more and more with each passing millennium. As it widened, dust and sand particles carried along with the attack settled in the basin below.

Eventually, a balance point was reached. The sand had piled up high enough to be flush with the land outside the crater. It no longer built upward, but now outward. The slope lengthened until a new balance point was reached, one defined by the complex interactions of countless tiny particles and their ability to maintain an angled shape. Entrance Ramp had been born.

The weather brought dunes and desert terrain. Nearby crater impacts brought rocks and boulders. The shape became uneven.

Gravity did its work. The ramp compressed over time. But it did not compress evenly. Differing densities shrunk at different rates. Some areas became hard as rock while others remained as soft as talc.

While providing a small
average
slope into the crater, the ramp itself was rugged and bitterly uneven.

Upon reaching Entrance Crater, the lone inhabitant of Mars turned his vehicle toward the Schiaparelli Basin. The difficult terrain was unexpected, but looked no worse than other terrain he routinely navigated.

He went around the smaller dunes, and carefully crested the larger ones. He took care with every turn, every rise or fall in elevation, and every boulder in his path. He thought through every course and considered all alternatives.

But it wasn't enough.

The rover, while descending down a seemingly ordinary slope, drove off an invisible ridge. The dense, hard soil suddenly gave way to soft powder. With the entire surface covered by at least 5cm of dust, there were no visual hints to the sudden change.

The rover's left front wheel sank. The sudden tilt brought the right rear wheel completely off the ground. This in turn put more weight on the left rear wheel, which slipped from it's precarious purchase into the powder as well.

Before the traveler could react, the rover rolled on to its side. As it did, the solar cells neatly stacked on the roof flew off and scattered like a dropped deck of cards.

The trailer, attached to the rover with a tow clamp, was dragged along. The torsion on the clamp snapped the strong composite like a brittle twig. The hoses connecting the two vehicles also snapped. The trailer plunged head-long in to the soft soil and flipped over on to its balloon-roof, shuddering to an abrupt halt.

The rover was not so lucky. It continued tumbling down the hill, bouncing the traveler around like clothes in a dryer. After 20 meters, the soft powder gave way to more solid sand and it shuddered to a halt.

The rover had come to rest on its side. The valves leading to the now missing hoses had detected the sudden pressure drop and closed. The pressure seal was not breached.

The traveler was alive for now.

The department heads stared at the satellite image on the projection screen.

"Jesus," Mitch said. "What the hell happened?"

"The rover's on its side," Mindy said, pointing to the screen. "The trailer's upside down. Those rectangles scattered around are solar cells."

Venkat put a hand on his chin. "Do we have any information on the state of the rover pressure vessel?"

"Nothing obvious," Mindy said.

"Any signs of Watney doing something after the accident? An EVA maybe?"

"No EVA," Mindy said. "The weather's clear. If he'd come out there'd be visible footsteps."

"Is this the entire crash site?" Bruce Ng asked.

"I think so," Mindy said. "Up toward the top of the photo, which is North, there are ordinary wheel tracks. Right here," she pointed to a large disturbance in the soil, "is where I think things went wrong. Judging by where that ditch is, I'd say the rover rolled and slid from there. You can see the trench it left behind. The trailer flipped forward on to its roof."

"I'm not saying everything's ok," Bruce said, "but I don't think it's as bad as it looks."

"Go on," Venkat said.

"The rover's designed to handle a roll," Bruce explained. "And if there'd been pressure loss there'd be a starburst pattern in the sand. I don't see anything like that."

"Watney may still be hurt inside," Mitch said. "He could have banged his head or broken an arm or something."

"Sure," Bruce said. "I'm just saying the rover is probably ok."

"When was this taken?"

Mindy checked her watch. "We got it 17 minutes ago. We’ll get another pic in 9 minutes when MGS4’s orbit brings it in view.”

“First thing he’ll do is an EVA to assess damage,” Venkat said. “Mindy, keep us posted on any changes.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 498

Hmm.

Yeah.

Things don't go well on the descent in to Schiaparelli Basin. To give you some indication of how unwell they went, I'm reaching up to the computer to type this. Because it's still mounted near the control panel, and the rover is on its side.

I got bounced around a lot, but I'm a well-honed machine in times of crisis. As soon as the rover toppled, I curled in to a ball and cowered. That's the kind of action hero I am.

It worked, too. Cause I'm not hurt.

The pressure vessel is intact, so that's a plus. The valves that lead to the trailer hoses are shut. Probably means the hoses disconnected. And that means the trailer junction snapped. Wonderful.

Looking around the interior here, I don't think anything is broken. The water tanks stayed sealed. There aren't any visible leaks in the air tanks. The bedroom came unfolded and it's all over the place, but it's just canvas so it can't have gotten too hurt.

The driving controls are ok, and the Nav Computer is telling me the rover is at an "unacceptably dangerous tilt." Thanks, Nav!

So I rolled. That's not the end of the world. I'm alive and the rover's fine. I'm more worried about the solar cells I probably rolled over. Also, since the trailer detached there's a good chance it's fucked up, too. The balloon roof it has isn't exactly durable. If it popped, the shit inside will have flung out in all directions and I'll have to go find it. That's my critical life support.

Speaking of life support, the rover switched over to the local tanks when the valves shut. Good boy, Rover! Here's a Scooby-Snack.

I've got 20L of oxygen (enough to keep me breathing for 40 days) but without the Regulator (which is in the trailer) I'm back to chemical CO2 absorption. I have 312 hours of filters left. Plus I have another 171 hours of EVA suit CO2 filters as well. All told, they'll last 483 hours, which is close to 20 sols. So I have time to get things working again.

I'm really damn close to the MAV now. About 220km. I'm not going to let something like this stop me from getting there. And I don't need everything to work at top form anymore. I just need the rover to work for 220 more kilometers and the life support to work for 51 more sols. That's it.

Time to suit up and look for the trailer.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 498 (2)

I had an EVA and things aren't too bad. Mind you, they're not good.

I trashed 3 solar cells. They're under the rover and cracked all to hell. They might still be able to piss out out a few watts, but I'm not holding out much hope. I did come in to this with one extra solar cell. I needed 28 for my daily operations and I brought 29 (14 on the rover's roof, 7on the trailer's roof, and 8 on the makeshift shelves I installed on the sides of both vehicles.)

I tried pushing the rover over, but I wasn't strong enough. I'll need to rig something to get a leverage advantage. Other than being on its side, I don't see any real problems.