The Martian: Johannsen Decides
Aw, my muse insists on this. In the novel she just says to Lewis, "If you think it'll work, I trust you." My muse insists, however, that - with all due respect to Andy Weir and his terrific writing - this isn't enough. So...
Hermes, Vogel's quarters
Vogel checked the position and orientation of Hermes against the projected path. It matched, as usual. In addition to being the mission's chemist, he was also an accomplished astrophysicist. Though his duties as navigator were laughably easy. The computer knew the course. It knew when to angle the ship so the ion engines would be aimed correctly. And it knew the location of the ship at all times (easily calculated from the position of the sun and Earth, and knowing the exact time from an on-board atomic clock). Barring a complete computer failure or other critical event, Vogel's vast knowledge of astrodynamics would never come into play.
After completing the check, he ran a diagnostic on the engines. They were functioning at peak. He did all this from his quarters. All onboard computers could control all ships' functions. Gone were the days of physically visiting the engines to check up on them. Having completed his work for the day, he finally had time to read e-mail. Sorting through the messages NASA deemed worthy to upload, he read the most interesting first and responded when necessary. His responses were cached and would be sent to Earth with Johanssen's next uplink.
A message from his wife caught his attention. Titled "unsere kinder" ("our children"), it contained nothing but an image attachment. He raised an eyebrow. Several things stood out at once. First, "kinder" should have been capitalised. Helena, a grammar school teacher in Bremen, was very unlikely to make that mistake.
Also, to each other, they affectionately called their kids die Affen.
When he tried to open the image, his viewer reported that the file was unreadable.
It could easily be corrected, he decided; Beth Johannsen was their computer expert.
He walked down the narrow hallway. The crew quarters stood against the outer hull of the constantly spinning ship to maximise simulated gravity. Johanssen's door was open, as usual. "Johanssen. Good evening," Vogel said politely. 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 (his English wasn't 100%, but he'd found during his training that it was sufficient for him to be understood). "I wonder if you will help."
"Sure," she said pleasantly.
"You are in the personal time," Vogel observed. "Perhaps tomorrow when you are on the duty is better?"
But she shook her head. "Now's fine," she said. "And," she smiled, "it's just 'on duty'. No need for 'the'. What's wrong?"
"It is a file. It is an image, but my computer cannot view."
"Where's the file?" she asked, typing on her keyboard.
"It is on my shared space. The name is 'kinder'. It is a jpg file."
"Let's take a look," she said. Except for private messages or, in Commander Lewis' case, NASA mission directives, everyone could view any computer file. Technically a personal e-mail was private, but Vogel had effectively given her permission by asking her for help. She typed in a low-priority override. Her fingers flew over her keyboard as windows opened and closed on her screen.
"Definitely a bad JPEG header," she said on examining it. "Probably mangled in the download. JPEG files are prone to this," she sighed, "being a lossy protocol. WEBP and PNG are better..." She stopped and smiled. "Sorry. Geeking out on you."
Vogel also smiled.
"Lemme look with a hex editor, see if we got anything at all..."
After a few moments she said, "This isn't a JPEG. It's a plain ASCII text file." She uploaded it to a text reader. "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 manoeuvre for Hermes. It says the name is 'Rich Purnell Manoeuvre'."
"What's that?" Johanssen asked. It meant no more to her than it did to him, geek or not.
"I have not heard of this manoeuvre," he said, frowning at the unfamiliar formulae. He looked at the tables. "It is complicated...very complicated..."
He froze.
"Sol 549?!" he exclaimed. "Mein Gott!"
Hermes, The Rec
Shortly afterwards
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. Its position amidships granted it a mere 0.2 g. Still, it was enough to keep everyone in a seat as they pondered what Vogel told them. "...and then mission would conclude with Earth intercept two hundred and eleven 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. It was a lot to take in.
"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. "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 into Vogel's e-mail obviously disagreed."
"So," Martinez said, "we're talking about going directly against NASA's decision?"
"Yes," Lewis confirmed, "that's exactly what we're talking about. If we go through with the manoeuvre, 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; she owed them the truth...which up until now they hadn't had much of since Sol 6. "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 five hundred and thirty-three days to our mission. Five hundred and thirty-three 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, faintly amused at his Marine-like gung-ho attitude. "You and I are military. There's a good chance we'd be court-martialled when we got home. As for the rest of you, I guarantee they'll never send you up again if we do it."
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 decided, "it would be over one thousand 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.
At first Johannsen didn't reply. Lewis gently prodded, "Johannsen? You're the last holdout. As I said, we will not do this unless we all agree." She smiled. "No pressure other than that."
"Before I answer, Commander," Johannsen said slowly, "I might point out that you are the Commander, so -"
"No," Lewis said, shaking her head. "I cannot in all good conscience order a mutiny. No. No orders, Beth. I can't. I won't. If you think about it, that's a cop-out, lumbering me with all the responsibility by your saying you were 'only following orders'. Given that this involves mutiny, I'm sure we can all agree that that isn't really fair."
"Okay. So there's something I need to know, sir. As a geek - yes," she barely smiled, "Mark was right about that - I trust the numbers, and," she nodded to Vogel, "I trust Alex. But sir...do you believe it will work?"
Lewis didn't reply straight away; she didn't want Johannsen's question to sound trivial. The answer was clearly important to her. So Lewis carefully considered all the facts. She weighed what would be required of them against what was planned. The latter was predictable, had been predicted.
But the former...
This crew, she decided, was the best she'd ever worked with in NASA. Her ship was the most expensive thing ever built...and the most reliable. Yes, things might - probably would - go wrong. But her crew could cope. They had so far.
So she could answer confidently. She did.
"Yes," she said simply.
Johannsen nodded. "Sir, you are the best CO I have ever worked with. Guys, do you agree?"
"Absolutely," Martinez grinned, "not to suck up or anything."
"Nein," Vogel said, deadpan. "You would never do that." Martinez and Beck chuckled. But she'd earned their respect even before they left Earth, and they hers, and their subsequent service had only deepened it. "I say Ja, Commander."
"Like I said," Beck told them, "let's do it."
"We all trust you, Commander," Johannsen grinned. "I say yes. If you say it'll work, then I say it'll work."
Lewis looked at each in turn, humbled by their faith in her. They might and probably would be the last crew she ever commanded, but by God they were the best. "Thank you all." Now she grinned. "Let's go get our boy."
There were cheers.
THE END
"Unscheduled status update from Hermes."
With Hermes ninety 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?"
"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."
- The Martian