SOL 192
And just like that, he was back in the game.
As soon as Kapoor had started detailing the new plan, Mark had broken out into a huge grin, feeling as lighthearted and happy as he had on the launchpad. A plan. An actual, workable, plausible-sounding plan. It was euphoric, even, to think that he'd be off this rock in a year and some change. So much sooner than he'd ever thought possible.
And oh, to not have to worry any more about that sketchy-sounding overland journey in the Ares IV MDV; that was bliss, right there. And the even sketchier-sounding Iris 2 idea, with the hastily-constructed crash-lander. That hadn't even made sense. It was like a breath of fresh air, to not have the likely odds of failure for that plan running through his head.
Hermes was coming back for him.
Rich Purnell was not a name that he'd ever heard before, but fuck if he wasn't going to name his first kid in that guy's honor, if he ever got the chance. But first, he was buying the guy a beer.
He had a renewed sense of hope and purpose again, as NASA and JPL began to lay out their plans for him to get to the Ares 4 MAV.
The rovers would need to be extensively modified, naturally. And the MAV itself would need to be modified once he actually got to Schiaparelli.
Months of work and schedules to keep to; it was just what he needed right now. It would all boil down to one epic road trip to Schiaparelli Crater, and Mark was already full of ideas on how he'd get himself through it.
Houston
May 24, 2036
"I think I've pretty much got the basic idea," Caroline was saying, as the three of them, (four of them, if one counted Henry, asleep on Mindy's shoulder) enjoyed a late dinner together. "But what's a steely-eyed missile man?"
"Um," Mindy started, trying to think how to explain that particular bit of NASA lore. "That one goes back to the Apollo program. Right after launch, Apollo 12 got struck by lightning, and then the ship started malfunctioning. John Aaron, one of the flight controller guys on the ground had an idea that fixed it."
"Yeah, I remember seeing a movie about that," Richard noted. "Houston, we have a problem!" he quoted, holding one hand over his mouth, imitating the staticky voice of James Lovell.
"Well, actually," Mindy smirked, "wrong Apollo mission, there. Nice voiceover, though."
"Thanks," he grinned, taking a quick bow. "But why did that make him a 'steely-eyed missile man'? Where'd that saying even come from?"
"Oh, um, well, you know, 'steely-eyed' means like, he was really determined, and cool under pressure. And 'missile man', well, that was just what they called the rocket engine guys back then. They were all "missile men", the guys who worked on the Apollo Program."
"So it was a compliment?"
"Yeah, basically. More than that, though. The guys in the Apollo capsule wouldn't have gotten to continue their mission, if Aaron on the ground hadn't told them to flip some weird little switch that they didn't normally mess with. So, he saved the mission, for sure, and probably their lives. 'Cause I don't think it would have been fun to try and guide Apollo 12 back home with no telemetry."
"Probably not," Caroline smiled.
"So this guy, Aaron, kind of became a legend around NASA for solving the big problem with the little fix and saving the day, and people always remembered him as the 'steely-eyed missile man'. And then, a year later, the next Apollo mission was the one that had the famous 'Houston we've had a problem' moment. And again, a guy on the ground saved the day. Another steely-eyed missile man. So now, it's kind of like, evolved into the ultimate thank-you-for-saving-our-bacon compliment, within NASA."
"Just think though, Mark will be home in…" Caroline paused to think for a moment, "a year and a half," she said smiling, eyes wide.
Mindy still found it pretty shocking to think of it that way; when she thought of Mark returning home, she'd always imagined it as four years from now with the Ares IV crew.
"Henry won't have any memories of Mark ever being gone," she ventured.
"Good," Richard commented, and then Caroline gasped, as she looked at a message she'd apparently just received.
"We can tell him," she reported. "Shields has okayed it."
The three of them looked at each other. The sudden change of events had left them reeling.
Hermes
"Unbelievable," Chris muttered under his breath, incredulously, reading to himself.
"Hmm?" Beth sipped her coffee in the Rec, over breakfast.
Chris held the tablet he'd been looking at out to her, gesturing to it.
"This…" he trailed off, looking at it again, aghast, "Henderson passed along the log packet? Four hundred pages of Watney's mission logs and data from SOL 6 until NASA was back in contact with him?"
"Yeah, I was looking over that too, last night," Martinez agreed, from across the table. "I got through the first hundred pages. Man, that shit was enough to give me nightmares."
Beck nodded, emphatically.
"We knew he'd brought Martian soil into the Hab, and washed the perchlorate levels down, right?"
Beth smiled. "Sounds like he was scaling up the Botany lab surface experiments."
"Yeah. Basically. But he used… his own shit, and ours, from the Hab toilet, as fertilizer."
Mouths fell open.
"I really don't think I needed to know that," Beth said, honestly, shaking her head and grimacing.
"Tell them how he came up with the extra water he needed," prompted Rick.
"Oh, yeah, I know," Chris nodded at him, shuddering. "Vogel, you'll love this."
Vogel looked up from the far end of the table, from his usual packet of breakfast sausage.
"He brought the unused canisters of hydrazine into the Hab,"
"What?!" Beth's voice was practically a squeak.
"And he reduced it by burning it slowly over a catalyst,"
Vogel's eyes were round.
"And he burned it into six hundred liters of water so that he could farm potatoes."
"In his own shit," Rick repeated, shaking his head, as Vogel and Johanssen stared at him. "And ours," he added, as an afterthought.
"How did he not blow himself up?" Beth asked, finally.
"Well, according to his log here, he did blow himself up," Beck offered, "but he was only thrown halfway across the Hab and burned three layers of clothing, suffering no major injuries."
"Jesus Christ."
Rick made a forced kind of laugh. "Funny you should mention that guy. Watney needed something flammable for the reaction?" He made the sign of the cross with one hand and made a quick glance upwards. "He used my crucifix to start the fire. Carved it up into splinters, like matchsticks."
"Mein Gott, how is that man still alive?" Vogel asked.
"And do we really want that pyro back on Hermes?" Rick joked.
"Well, we're going back for him, either way," Beck observed. "I might have some choice words for Watney, though, once we get him back."
Lewis entered the Rec.
"Morning, Commander," Johanssen greeted her, passing her a packet of hot coffee. Cream, sugar, and a dash of cinnamon, for Lewis. Not a huge fan of breakfast, herself, Beth often wound up serving as the ship barista. Nobody else could handle the rather complex espresso machine that Flight Supplies had installed, nearly as well as she could. Johanssen had become a master of the twenty-second shot.
"Thanks," Lewis said, taking the coffee and holding it carefully by the edges as she opened the galley cabinet to find something for breakfast.
"How far into Watney's adventures did you get, last night?" Martinez asked her.
"Read the whole thing," she replied, evenly.
The crew gaped.
"You read four hundred pages in one night?" Beth felt obliged to confirm.
"Damn, Commander!" Martinez grinned, clearly in awe.
"Rhodes Scholar," Beck noted, dryly.
"Actually, I read it twice," she confirmed.
The crew fell silent, impressed, as always, by the astonishing intellect possessed by Lewis.
"I only got as far as the hydrogen mishap," Chris admitted. "Did our wayward astronaut get up to anything else crazy after that? I'm kind of scared to ask."
"It was quite a page-turner," Lewis admitted. "I think it could be a bestseller," she quipped.
"No kidding," Johanssen agreed.
"I think my favorite part though," Lewis continued, "had to be when he drove over and picked up the old Pathfinder lander and brought it back to the Hab."
"Say what!?"
"Oh, spoiler alert!" Martinez scolded her.
"Think I'll wait for the movie, now." Johanssen grinned.
"Ruined it!" Beck laughed.
"Worse than the clickbait!" Vogel chimed in, laughing.
Houston
So much for privacy, Mindy thought, ruefully. She didn't know exactly how many people had already read Mark's message from his parents, detailing again, exactly how he'd managed to make himself a father, in absentia. Too many, for sure. Rumors about Watney having a child that he was unaware of had been quietly spreading through NASA for weeks now. But so long as these rumors did not have her name attached to them, Mindy found that she didn't really give a fuck.
She was relieved, actually.
Finally.
Finally, the long battle was over; Shields had okayed the email to go through, and Henderson had personally approved it for the next data dump. Which had been scheduled to go out, Mindy checked the time, three hours ago.
He knows, she thought, shocked.
He knows.
The message would have been waiting for him in the Rover, probably during the middle of his work day, when he took a break from drilling holes, she thought, amused.
She couldn't help giggling a little, thinking about his reaction, as she drove to work. Poor guy, she thought. What a crazy, terrible, way to learn about something like this.
The thought occurred to her, that depending on his reaction, she could be finding herself on the receiving end of a message from Mars at any moment. First he'd have to read the message from his parents, and show that he was handling it well by continuing his normal work schedule and asking appropriate questions. Dr. Shields would have the final say in whether or not he was acclimating well. After that, well; all he had to do at that point was include, in any of his messages to his parents or Dr. Shields, that he wanted to be able to send messages to Mindy directly.
And that would be it.
The hours were counting down, until she'd finally know his reaction. Angry? Excited? General disbelief and a demand for a DNA test?
She'd played them all out, in her head, and at this point, frankly, she just wanted it to be over with.
So when she smiled to the guy at the gate, who waved her on through, she had a weird feeling of déjà vu, but she didn't think anything of it.
When she'd gotten to her desk, however, and there was a jumbled mess of emergency imaging requests from people at JPL waiting in her inbox, that feeling of freefall had totally taken over. Again.
Her heart sank, when Dr. Kapoor told her the reason why.
Pathfinder had gone dark.
All of JPL's attempts to reacquire signal had been for naught, and as morning approached, they were losing hope. They didn't know what else to try, from their end; obviously the problem was with the receiver on Mars. They still had ideas, but no way to tell Watney about them.
Watney seemed to be merrily going about his business, drilling; was he still unaware?
He had to be, or else he'd be trying to fix it.
The grey square of the little lander didn't look any different when she pulled focus on it, despite JPL's repeated urging that she order more images of it, anyway.
By late that afternoon, Mark could no longer be seen drilling.
Instead, he was laying out rocks. Morse Code.
Shit. Mindy pulled up a website so that she could decode, as the satellites returned the images, a handful of letters at a time. She'd need to report back to Dr. Kapoor with what he'd said, right away.
PF… FRIED… WITH 9… AMPS...
She called Venkat on his cell, who relayed this unwanted information to Bruce Ng. Their worst suspicions were confirmed. So were Mindy's.
Mark was on his own.
He'd never gotten the news about Henry.
DEAD… 4EVER…
Oh no, she thought, starting to get a little hysterical, until she realized that he was talking about Pathfinder, not himself.
PLAN… UNCHA… NGED… WILL GET… 2 MAV…
And that seemed to be the end of the message.
It was also the end of her hopes, for a response.
It was early morning when she got home. In Earth time, anyway. She'd sleep the day away, and leave for work again at 8.
First, though, she had to tell Mark's parents, yet again, that something had gone wrong. She sighed, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders, as she climbed the stairs.
Caroline was in the rocking chair with Henry cuddled on her shoulder, when she looked up to see the sorrowful expression on Mindy's face. Her eyes widened in fear, and she stiffened, with a horrified look on her face. One hand came up, to cover her mouth.
"He's alive," she began, hastily, stumbling over the words. "But Pathfinder is dead." She held out her arms for Henry, as Caroline handed the baby to her, digesting this information.
Early the next morning, at breakfast, Richard had placed a pile of index cards next to her plate.
Morse Code flashcards.
"You made these for me?" she said, touched.
"Only thing I could think of-"
She cut him off, with a fierce hug.
"Oof!" he let out, "You're welcome, jeez. Don't hurt me."