Текст книги "The Martian"

Автор книги: Andy Weir

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The three tanks combined had 3000 milliliters to start with. A lot of that was used to maintain pressure while the airlock was leaking. Also, my breathing turned some oxygen into carbon dioxide, which was captured by the suit’s CO₂ filters.

Checking the readouts, I see that I have 410 milliliters of oxygen, 738 milliliters of nitrogen. Together, they make almost 1150 milliliters to work with. That, divided by 285 milliliters lost per minute…

Once I’m out of the airlock, this EVA suit will only last four minutes.

Fuck.

AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 119 (7)

Okay, I’ve been thinking some more.

What good is going to the rover? I’d just be trapped there instead. The extra room would be nice, but I’d still die eventually. No water reclaimer, no oxygenator, no food. Take your pick; all of those problems are fatal.

I need to fix the Hab. I know what to do; we practiced it in training. But it’ll take a long time. I’ll have to scrounge around in the now-collapsed canvas to get the spare material for patching. Then I have to find the breach and seal-strip a patch in place.

But it’ll take hours to repair, and my EVA suit is useless.

I’ll need another suit. Martinez’s used to be in the rover. I hauled it all the way to the Pathfinder site and back, just in case I needed a spare. But when I returned, I put it back in the Hab.

Damn it!

All right, so I’ll need to get another suit before going to the rover. Which one? Johanssen’s is too small for me (tiny little gal, our Johanssen). Lewis’s is full of water. Actually, by now it’s full of slowly sublimating ice. The mangled, glued-together suit I have with me is my original one. That leaves just Martinez, Vogel, and Beck’s.

I left Martinez’s near my bunk, in case I needed a suit in a hurry. Of course, after that sudden decompression, it could be anywhere. Still, it’s a place to start.

Next problem: I’m like 50 meters from the Hab. Running in 0.4 g while wearing a bulky EVA suit isn’t easy. At best, I can trundle 2 meters per second. That’s a precious 25 seconds; almost an eighth of my four minutes. I’ve got to bring that down.

But how?

AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 119 (8)

I’ll roll the damn airlock.

It’s basically a phone booth on its side. I did some experiments.

I figured if I want it to roll, I’ll need to hit the wall as hard as possible. And I have to be in the air at the time. I can’t press against some other part of the airlock. The forces would cancel each other out and it wouldn’t move at all.

First I tried launching myself off one wall and slamming into the other. The airlock slid a little, but that’s it.

Next, I tried doing a super-push-up to get airborne (0.4 g yay!) then kicking the wall with both feet. Again, it just slid.

The third time, I got it right. The trick was to plant both my feet on the ground, near the wall, then launch myself to the top of the opposite wall and hit with my back. When I tried that just now, it gave me enough force and leverage to tip the airlock and roll it one face toward the Hab.

The airlock is a meter wide, so…sigh…I have to do it like fifty more times.

I’m gonna have a hell of a backache after this.

AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 120

I have a hell of a backache.

The subtle and refined “hurl my body at the wall” technique had some flaws. It worked only one out of every ten tries, and it hurt a lot. I had to take breaks, stretch out, and generally convince myself to body-slam the wall again and again.

It took all damn night, but I made it.

I’m ten meters from the Hab now. I can’t get any closer, ’cause the debris from the decompression is all over the place. This isn’t an “all-terrain” airlock. I can’t roll over that shit.

It was morning when the Hab popped. Now it’s morning again. I’ve been in this damn box for an entire day. But I’m leaving soon.

I’m in the EVA suit now, and ready to roll.

All right…Okay…Once more through the plan: Use the manual valves to equalize the airlock. Get out and hurry to the Hab. Wander around under the collapsed canvas. Find Martinez’s suit (or Vogel’s if I run into it first). Get to the rover. Then I’m safe.

If I run out of time before finding a suit, I’ll just run to the rover. I’ll be in trouble, but I’ll have time to think and materials to work with.

Deep breath…here we go!

LOG ENTRY: SOL 120

I’m alive! And I’m in the rover!

Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but I’m not dead, so it’s a win.

Equalizing the airlock went fine. I was out on the surface within thirty seconds. Skipping toward the Hab (the fastest way to move in this gravity), I passed through the field of debris. The rupture had really sent things flying, myself included.

It was hard to see; my faceplate was covered by the makeshift patch. Fortunately, my arm had a camera. NASA discovered that turning your whole EVA-suited body to look at something was a strenuous waste of time. So they mounted a small camera on the right arm. The feed is projected on the inner faceplate. This allows us to look at things just by pointing at them.

The faceplate patch wasn’t exactly smooth or reflective, so I had to look at a rippled, messed-up version of the camera feed. Still, it was enough to see what was going on.

I beelined for where the airlock used to be. I knew there had to be a pretty big hole there, so I’d be able to get in. I found it easily. And boy is it a nasty rip! It’s going to be a pain in the ass to fix it.

That’s when the flaws in my plan started to reveal themselves. I only had one arm to work with. My left arm was pinned against my body, while the stumpy arm of the suit bounced freely. So as I moved around under the canvas, I had to use my one good arm to hold the canvas up. It slowed me down.

From what I could see, the interior of the Hab is chaos. Everything’s moved. Entire tables and bunks are meters away from where they started. Lighter objects are wildly jumbled, many of them out on the surface. Everything’s covered in soil and mangled potato plants.

Trudging onward, I got to where I’d left Martinez’s suit. To my shock, it was still there!

“Yay!” I naively thought. “Problem solved.”

Unfortunately, the suit was pinned under a table, which was held down by the collapsed canvas. If I’d had both arms, I could have pulled it free, but with only one, I just couldn’t do it.

Running low on time, I detached the helmet. Setting it aside, I reached past the table to get Martinez’s patch kit. I found it with the help of the arm-camera. I dropped it in the helmet and hauled ass out of there.

I barely made it to the rover in time. My ears were popping from pressure loss just as the rover’s airlock filled with wonderful 1-atmosphere air.

Crawling in, I collapsed and panted for a moment.

So I’m back in the rover. Just like I was back on the Great Pathfinder Recovery Expedition. Ugh. At least this time it smells a little better.

NASA’s probably pretty worried about me by now. They probably saw the airlock move back to the Hab, so they know I’m alive, but they’ll want status. And as it happens, it’s the rover that communicates with Pathfinder.

I tried to send a message, but Pathfinder isn’t responding. That’s not a big surprise. It’s powered directly from the Hab, and the Hab is offline. During my brief, panicked scramble outside, I saw that Pathfinder was right where I left it, and the debris didn’t reach that far out. It should be fine, once I get it some power.

As for my current situation, the big gain is the helmet. They’re interchangeable, so I can replace my broken-ass one with Martinez’s. The stumpy arm is still an issue, but the faceplate was the main source of leaks. And with the fresh patch kit, I can seal the arm with more resin.

But that can wait. I’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours. I’m not in any immediate danger, so I’m going to sleep.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 121

Got a good night’s sleep and made real progress today.

First thing I did was reseal the arm. Last time, I had to spread the resin pretty thin; I’d used most of it for the faceplate patch. But this time I had a whole patch kit just for the arm. I got a perfect seal.

I still only had a one-armed suit, but at least it didn’t leak.

I’d lost most of my air yesterday, but I had a half hour of oxygen left. Like I said earlier, a human body doesn’t need much oxygen. Maintaining pressure was the problem.

With that much time, I was able to take advantage of the rover’s EVA tank-refill. Something I couldn’t do with the leaky suit.

The tank-refill is an emergency measure. The expected use of the rover is to start with full EVA suits and come back with air to spare. It wasn’t designed for long trips, or even overnighters. But, just in case of emergency, it has refill hoses mounted on the exterior. Inside space was limited already, and NASA concluded that most air-related emergencies would be outdoors.

But refilling is slow, slower than my suit was leaking. So it wasn’t any use to me until I swapped helmets. Now, with a solid suit capable of holding pressure, refilling the tanks was a breeze.

After refilling, and making sure the suit was still not leaking, I had a few immediate tasks to take care of. Much as I trust my handiwork, I wanted a two-armed suit.

I ventured back into the Hab. This time, not being rushed, I was able to use a pole to leverage the table off Martinez’s suit. Pulling it loose, I dragged it back to the rover.

After a thorough diagnostic to be sure, I finally had a fully functional EVA suit! It took me two trips to get it, but I got it.

Tomorrow, I’ll fix the Hab.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 122

The first thing I did today was line up rocks near the rover to spell “A-okay.” That should make NASA happy.

I went into the Hab again to assess damage. My priority will be to get the structure intact and holding pressure. From there, I can work on fixing stuff that broke.

The Hab is normally a dome, with flexible support poles maintaining the arch and rigid, folding floor material to keep its base flat. The internal pressure was a vital part of its support. Without it, the whole thing collapsed. I inspected the poles, and none of them had broken. They’re just lying flat is all. I’ll have to re-couple a few of them, but that’ll be easy.

The hole where Airlock 1 used to be is huge, but surmountable. I have seal-strips and spare canvas. It’ll be a lot of work, but I can get the Hab together again. Once I do, I’ll reestablish power and get Pathfinder back online. From there, NASA can tell me how to fix anything I can’t figure out on my own.

I’m not worried about any of that. I have a much bigger problem.

The farm is dead.

With a complete loss of pressure, most of the water boiled off. Also, the temperature is well below freezing. Not even the bacteria in the soil can survive a catastrophe like that. Some of the crops were in pop-tents off the Hab. But they’re dead, too. I had them connected directly to the Hab via hoses to maintain air supply and temperature. When the Hab blew, the pop-tents depressurized as well. Even if they hadn’t, the freezing cold would have killed the crops.

Potatoes are now extinct on Mars.

So is the soil bacteria. I’ll never grow another plant so long as I’m here.

We had it all planned out. My farm would give me food till Sol 900. A supply probe would get here on Sol 856; way before I ran out. With the farm dead, that plan is history.

The ration packs won’t have been affected by the explosion. And the potatoes I’ve already grown may be dead, but they’re still food. I was just about to harvest, so it was a good time for this to happen, I guess.

The rations will last me till Sol 400. I can’t say for sure how long the potatoes will last, until I see how many I got. But I can estimate. I had 400 plants, probably averaging 5 potatoes each: 2000 taters. At 150 calories each, I’ll need to eat 10 per sol to survive. That means they’ll last me 200 sols. Grand total: I have enough food to last till Sol 600.

By Sol 856 I’ll be long dead.

CHAPTER 15

[08:12] WATNEY: Test.

[08:25] JPL: Received! You gave us quite a scare there. Thanks for the “A-okay” message. Our analysis of satellite imagery shows a complete detachment of Airlock 1. Is that correct? What’s your status?

[08:39] WATNEY: If by “detachment” you mean “shot me out like a cannon” then yeah. Minor cut on my forehead. Had some issues with my EVA suit (I’ll explain later). I patched up the Hab and repressurized it (main air tanks were intact). I just got power back online. The farm is dead. I’ve recovered as many potatoes as I could and stored them outside. I count 1841. That will last me 184 days. Including the remaining mission rations, I’ll start starving on Sol 584.

[08:52] JPL: Yeah, we figured. We’re working on solutions to the food issue. What’s the status of the Hab systems?

[09:05] WATNEY: Primary air and water tanks were unharmed. The rover, solar array, and Pathfinder were out of the blast range. I’ll run diagnostics on the Hab’s systems while I wait for your next reply. By the way, who am I talking to?

[09:18] JPL: Venkat Kapoor in Houston. Pasadena relays my messages. I’m going to handle all direct communication with you from now on. Check the oxygenator and water reclaimer first. They’re the most important.

[09:31] WATNEY: Duh. Oxygenator functioning perfectly. Water reclaimer is completely offline. Best guess is water froze up inside and burst some tubing. I’m sure I can fix it. The Hab’s main computer is also functioning without any problems. Any idea what caused the Hab to blow up?

[09:44] JPL: Best guess is fatigue on the canvas near Airlock 1. The pressurization cycle stressed it until it failed. From now on, alternate Airlock 2 and 3 for all EVAs. Also, we’ll be getting you a checklist and procedures for a full canvas exam.

[09:57] WATNEY: Yay, I get to stare at a wall for several hours! Let me know if you come up with a way for me to not starve.

[10:11] JPL: Will do.

•••

“IT’S SOL 122,” Bruce said. “We have until Sol 584 to get a probe to Mars. That’s four hundred and sixty-two sols, which is four hundred and seventy-five days.”

The assembled department heads of JPL furrowed their brows and rubbed their eyes.

He stood from his chair. “The positions of Earth and Mars aren’t ideal. The trip will take four hundred and fourteen days. Mounting the probe to the booster and dealing with inspections will take thirteen days. That leaves us with just forty-eight days to make this probe.”

Sounds of whispered exasperation filled the room. “Jesus,” someone said.

“It’s a whole new ball game,” Bruce continued. “Our focus is food. Anything else is a luxury. We don’t have time to make a powered-descent lander. It’ll have to be a tumbler. So we can’t put anything delicate inside. Say good-bye to all the other crap we’d planned to send.”

“Where’s the booster coming from?” asked Norm Toshi, who was in charge of the reentry process.

“The EagleEye 3 Saturn probe,” Bruce said. “It was scheduled to launch next month. NASA put it on hold so we can have the booster.”

“I bet the EagleEye team was pissed about that,” Norm said.

“I’m sure they were,” Bruce said. “But it’s the only booster we have that’s big enough. Which brings me to my next point: We only get one shot at this. If we fail, Mark Watney dies.”

He looked around the room and let that sink in.

“We do have some things going for us,” he finally said. “We have some of the parts built for the Ares 4 presupply missions. We can steal from them, and that’ll save us some time. Also, we’re sending food, which is pretty robust. Even if there’s a reentry problem and the probe impacts at high velocity, food is still food.

“And we don’t need a precision landing. Watney can travel hundreds of kilometers if necessary. We just need to land close enough for him to reach it. This ends up being a standard tumble-land presupply. All we have to do is make it quickly. So let’s get to it.”

•••

[08:02] JPL: We’ve spun up a project to get you food. It’s been in progress for a week or so. We can get it to you before you starve, but it’ll be tight. It’ll just be food and a radio. We can’t send an oxygenator, water reclaimer, or any of that other stuff without powered descent.

[08:16] WATNEY: No complaints here! You get me the food, I’ll be a happy camper. I’ve got all Hab systems up and running again. The water reclaimer is working fine now that I replaced the burst hoses. As for water supply, I have 620 liters remaining. I started with 900 liters (300 to start with, 600 more from reducing hydrazine). So I lost almost 300 liters to sublimation. Still, with the water reclaimer operational again, it’s plenty.

[08:31] JPL: Good, keep us posted on any mechanical or electronic problems. By the way, the name of the probe we’re sending is Iris. Named after the Greek goddess who traveled the heavens with the speed of wind. She’s also the goddess of rainbows.

[08:47] WATNEY: Gay probe coming to save me. Got it.

•••

RICH PURNELL sipped coffee in the silent building. He ran a final test on the software he’d written. It passed. With a relieved sigh, he sank back in his chair. Checking the clock on his computer, he shook his head. 3:42 a.m.

As an astrodynamicist, Rich rarely had to work late. His job was to find the exact orbits and course corrections needed for any given mission. Usually, it was one of the first parts of a project, all the other steps being based on the orbit.

But this time, things were reversed. Iris needed an orbital path, and nobody knew when it would launch.

Planets move as time goes by. A course calculated for a specific launch date will work only for that date. Even a single day’s difference would result in missing Mars entirely.

So Rich had to calculate many courses. He had a range of twenty-five days during which Iris might launch. He calculated one course for each.

He began an e-mail to his boss.

Mike, he typed, Attached are the courses for Iris, in 1-day increments. We should start peer review and vetting so they can be officially accepted. And you were right, I was here almost all night.

It wasn’t that bad. Nowhere near the pain of calculating orbits for Hermes. I know you get bored when I go into the math, so I’ll summarize: The small, constant thrust of Hermes’s ion drives is much harder to deal with than the large point-thrusts of presupply probes.

All 25 of the courses take 414 days, and vary only slightly in thrust duration and angle. The fuel requirement is nearly identical for the orbits and is well within the capacity of EagleEye’s booster.

It’s too bad. Earth and Mars are really badly positioned. Heck, it’s almost easier to—

He stopped typing.

Furrowing his brow, he stared into the distance.

“Hmm,” he said.

He grabbed his coffee cup and went to the break room for a refill.

•••

TEDDY SCANNED the crowded conference room. It was rare to see such an assembly of NASA’s most important people all in one place. He squared a small stack of notes he’d prepared and placed them neatly in front of him.

“I know you’re all busy,” Teddy said. “Thank you for making time for this meeting. I need status on Project Iris from all departments. Venkat, let’s start with you.”

“The mission team’s ready,” Venkat said, looking at spreadsheets on his laptop. “There was a minor turf war between the Ares 3 and Ares 4 presupply control teams. The Ares 3 guys said they should run it, because while Watney’s on Mars, Ares 3 is still in progress. The Ares 4 team points out it’s their coopted probe in the first place. I ended up going with Ares 3.”

“Did that upset Ares 4?” Teddy asked.

“Yes, but they’ll get over it. They have thirteen other presupply missions coming up. They won’t have time to be pissy.”

“Mitch,” Teddy said to the flight controller, “what about the launch?”

Mitch pulled the earpiece from his ear. “We’ve got a control room ready,” he said. “I’ll oversee the launch, then hand cruise and landing over to Venkat’s guys.”

“Media?” Teddy said, turning to Annie.

“I’m giving daily updates to the press,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Everyone knows Watney’s fucked if this doesn’t work. The public hasn’t been this engaged in ship construction since Apollo 11. CNN’s The Watney Report has been the number one show in its time slot for the past two weeks.”

“The attention is good,” Teddy said. “It’ll help get us emergency funding from Congress.” He looked up to a man standing near the entrance. “Maurice, thanks for flying out on short notice.”

Maurice nodded.

Teddy gestured to him and addressed the room. “For those who don’t know him, this is Maurice Stein from Cape Canaveral. He was the scheduled pad leader for EagleEye 3, so he inherited the role for Iris. Sorry for the bait and switch, Maurice.”

“No problem,” said Maurice. “Glad I can help out.”

Teddy flipped the top page of his notes facedown beside the stack. “How’s the booster?”

“It’s all right for now,” said Maurice. “But it’s not ideal. EagleEye 3 was set to launch. Boosters aren’t designed to stand upright and bear the stress of gravity for long periods. We’re adding external supports that we’ll remove before launch. It’s easier than disassembly. Also the fuel is corrosive to the internal tanks, so we had to drain it. In the meantime, we’re performing inspections on all systems every three days.”

“Good, thank you,” Teddy said. He turned his attention to Bruce Ng, who stared back at him with heavy bloodshot eyes.

“Bruce, thank you for flying out, too. How’s the weather in California these days?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Bruce said. “I rarely see the outdoors.”

Subdued laughter filled the room for a few seconds.

Teddy flipped another page. “Time for the big question, Bruce. How’s Iris coming along?”

“We’re behind,” Bruce said with a tired shake of his head. “We’re going as fast as we can, but it’s just not fast enough.”

“I can find money for overtime,” Teddy offered.

“We’re already working around the clock.”

“How far behind are we talking about?” Teddy asked.

Bruce rubbed his eyes and sighed. “We’ve been at it twenty-nine days; so we only have nineteen left. After that, the Pad needs thirteen days to mount it on the booster. We’re at least two weeks behind.”

“Is that as far behind as you’re going to get?” Teddy asked, writing a note on his papers. “Or will you slip more?”

Bruce shrugged. “If we don’t have any more problems, it’ll be two weeks late. But we always have problems.”

“Give me a number,” Teddy said.

“Fifteen days,” Bruce responded. “If we had another fifteen days, I’m sure we could get it done in time.”

“All right,” Teddy said, taking another note. “Let’s create fifteen days.”

Turning his attention to the Ares 3 flight surgeon, Teddy asked, “Dr. Keller, can we reduce Watney’s food intake to make the rations last longer?”

“Sorry, but no,” Keller said. “He’s already at a minimal calorie count. In fact, considering the amount of physical labor he does, he’s eating far less than he should. And it’s only going to get worse. Soon his entire diet will be potatoes and vitamin supplements. He’s been saving protein-rich rations for later use, but he’ll still be malnourished.”

“Once he runs out of food, how long until he starves to death?” Teddy asked.

“Presuming an ample water supply, he might last three weeks. Shorter than a typical hunger strike, but remember he’ll be malnourished and thin to begin with.”

Venkat raised a hand and caught their attention. “Remember, Iris is a tumbler; he might have to drive a few days to get it. And I’m guessing it’s hard to control a rover when you’re literally starving to death.”

“He’s right,” Dr. Keller confirmed. “Within four days of running out of food, he’ll barely be able to stand up, let alone control a rover. Plus, his mental faculties will rapidly decline. He’d have a hard time even staying awake.”

“So the landing date’s firm,” Teddy said. “Maurice, can you get Iris on the booster in less than thirteen days?”

Maurice leaned against the wall and pinched his chin. “Well…it only takes three days to actually mount it. The following ten are for testing and inspections.”

“How much can you reduce those?”

“With enough overtime, I could get the mounting down to two days. That includes transport from Pasadena to Cape Canaveral. But the inspections can’t be shortened. They’re time-based. We do checks and rechecks with set intervals between them to see if something deforms or warps. If you shorten the intervals, you invalidate the inspections.”

“How often do those inspections reveal a problem?” Teddy asked.

A silence fell over the room.

“Uh,” Maurice stammered. “Are you suggesting we don’t do the inspections?”

“No,” said Teddy. “Right now I’m asking how often they reveal a problem.”

“About one in twenty launches.”

Teddy wrote that down. “And how often is the problem they find something that would have caused a mission failure?”

“I’m, uh, not sure. Maybe half the time?”

He wrote that down as well. “So if we skip inspections and testing, we have a one in forty chance of mission failure?” Teddy asked.

“That’s two point five percent,” Venkat said, stepping in. “Normally, that’s grounds for a countdown halt. We can’t take a chance like that.”

“‘Normally’ was a long time ago,” Teddy said. “Ninety-seven point five percent is better than zero. Can anyone think of a safer way to get more time?”

He scanned the room. Blank faces stared back.

“All right, then,” he said, circling something on his notes. “Speeding up the mounting process and skipping inspections buys us eleven days. If Bruce can pull a rabbit out of a hat and get done sooner, Maurice can do some inspections.”

“What about the other four days?” Venkat asked.

“I’m sure Watney can stretch the food to last four extra days, malnutrition notwithstanding,” Teddy said, looking to Dr. Keller.

“I—” Keller started. “I can’t recommend—”

“Hang on,” Teddy interrupted. He stood and straightened his blazer. “Everyone, I understand your positions. We have procedures. Skipping those procedures means risk. Risk means trouble for your department. But now isn’t the time to cover our asses. We have to take risks or Mark Watney dies.”

Turning to Keller, he said, “Make the food last another four days.”

Keller nodded.

•••

“RICH,” said Mike.

Rich Purnell concentrated on his computer screen. His cubicle was a landfill of printouts, charts, and reference books. Empty coffee cups rested on every surface; take-out packaging littered the ground.

“Rich,” Mike said, more forcefully.

Rich looked up. “Yeah?”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Just a little side project. Something I wanted to check up on.”

“Well…that’s fine, I guess,” Mike said, “but you need to do your assigned work first. I asked for those satellite adjustments two weeks ago and you still haven’t done them.”

“I need some supercomputer time,” Rich said.

“You need supercomputer time to calculate routine satellite adjustments?”

“No, it’s for this other thing I’m working on,” Rich said.

“Rich, seriously. You have to do your job.”

Rich thought for a moment. “Would now be a good time for a vacation?” he asked.

Mike sighed. “You know what, Rich? I think now would be an ideal time for you to take a vacation.”

“Great!” Rich smiled. “I’ll start right now.”

“Sure,” Mike said. “Go on home. Get some rest.”

“Oh, I’m not going home,” said Rich, returning to his calculations.

Mike rubbed his eyes. “Okay, whatever. About those satellite orbits…?”

“I’m on vacation,” Rich said without looking up.

Mike shrugged and walked away.

•••

[08:01] WATNEY: How’s my care package coming along?

[08:16] JPL: A little behind schedule, but we’ll get it done. In the meantime, we want you to get back to work. We’re satisfied the Hab is in good condition. Maintenance only takes you twelve hours per week. We’re going to pack the rest of your time with research and experiments.

[08:31] WATNEY: Great! I’m sick of sitting on my ass. I’m going to be here for years. You may as well make use of me.

[08:47] JPL: That’s what we’re thinking. We’ll get you a schedule as soon as the science team puts it together. It’ll be mostly EVAs, geological sampling, soil tests, and weekly self-administered medical tests. Honestly, this is the best “bonus Mars time” we’ve had since the Opportunity lander.

[09:02] WATNEY: Opportunity never went back to Earth.

[09:17] JPL: Sorry. Bad analogy.

•••

THE JPL Spacecraft Assembly Facility, known as the “clean room,” was the little-known birthplace of the most famous spacecraft in Mars exploration history. Mariner, Viking, Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity, just to name a few, had all been born in this one room.

Today, the room was abuzz with activity as technicians sealed Iris into the specially designed shipping container.

The off-duty techs watched the procedure from the observation deck. They had rarely seen their homes in the last two months; a makeshift bunk room had been set up in the cafeteria. Fully a third of them would normally be asleep at this hour, but they did not want to miss this moment.

The shift leader tightened the final bolt. As he retracted the wrench, the engineers broke into applause. Many of them were in tears.

After sixty-three days of grueling work, Iris was complete.

•••

ANNIE TOOK the podium and adjusted the microphone. “The launch preparations are complete,” she said. “Iris is ready to go. The scheduled launch is 9:14 a.m.

“Once launched, it will stay in orbit for at least three hours. During that time, Mission Control will gather exact telemetry in preparation for the trans-Mars injection burn. When that’s complete, the mission will be handed off to the Ares 3 presupply team, who will monitor its progress over the following months. It will take four hundred and fourteen days to reach Mars.”

“About the payload,” a reporter asked, “I hear there’s more than just food?”

“That’s true.” Annie smiled. “We allocated one hundred grams for luxury items. There are some handwritten letters from Mark’s family, a note from the President, and a USB drive filled with music from all ages.”

“Any disco?” someone asked.

“No disco,” Annie said, as chuckles cascaded through the room.

CNN’s Cathy Warner spoke up. “If this launch fails, is there any recourse for Watney?”