Chapter 11
“Something’s coming in …yes…yes! It’s Pathfinder !”
The crowded room burst into applause and cheers. Venkat slapped an unknown technician on the back while Bruce pumped his fist in the air.
The ad-hoc Pathfinder control center was an accomplishment in itself.
Over the last twenty days, a team of JPL engineers had worked around the clock to piece together antiquated computers, repair broken components, network everything, and install hastily made software that allowed the old systems to interact with the modern Deep Space Network.
The room itself was formerly a conference room; JPL had no space ready for the sudden need. Already jam-packed with computers and equipment, the cramped space had turned positively claustrophobic with the many spectators now squeezing into it.
One Associated Press camera team pressed against the back wall, trying—and failing—to stay out of everyone’s way while recording the auspicious moment. The rest of the media would have to satisfy themselves with the live AP feed, and await a press conference.
Venkat turned to Bruce. “God damn, Bruce. You really pulled a rabbit out of your hat this time! Good work!”
“I’m just the director,” Bruce said modestly. “Thank the guys who got all this stuff working.”
“Oh I will!” Venkat beamed. “But first I have to talk to my new best friend!”
Turning to the headsetted man at the communications console, Venkat asked, “What’s your name, new best friend?”
“Tim,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“What now?” Venkat asked.
“We sent the return telemetry automatically. It’ll get there in just over eleven minutes. Once it does, Pathfinder will start high-gain transmissions. So it’ll be twenty-two minutes till we hear from it again.”
“Venkat’s got a doctorate in physics, Tim,” Bruce said. “You don’t need to explain transmission time to him.”
Tim shrugged. “You can never tell with managers.”
“What was in the transmission we got?” Venkat asked.
“Just the bare bones. A hardware self-check. It’s got a lot of ‘nonfunctional’ systems, ’cause they were on the panels Watney removed.”
“What about the camera?”
“It says the imager’s working. We’ll have it take a panorama as soon as we can.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 97
It worked!
Holy shit, it worked!
I just suited up and checked the lander. The high-gain antenna is angled directly at Earth! Pathfinder has no way of knowing where it is, so it has no way of knowing where Earth is. The only way for it to find out is getting a signal.
They know I’m alive!
I don’t even know what to say. This was an insane plan and somehow it worked! I’m going to be talking to someone again. I spent three months as the loneliest man in history and it’s finally over.
Sure, I might not get rescued. But I won’t be alone.
The whole time I was recovering Pathfinder, I imagined what this moment would be like.
I figured I’d jump up and down a bit, cheer, maybe flip off the ground (because this whole damn planet is my enemy), but that’s not what happened.
When I got back to the Hab and took off the EVA suit, I sat down in the dirt and cried.
Bawled like a little kid for several minutes.
I finally settled down to mild sniffling and then felt a deep calm.
It was a good calm.
It occurs to me: Now that I might live, I have to be more careful about logging embarrassing moments. How do I delete log entries? There’s no obvious way….I’ll get to it later. I’ve got more important things to do.
I’ve got people to talk to!
■■■
Venkat grinned as he took the podium in the JPL press room.
“We received the high-gain response just over half an hour ago,” he said to the assembled press. “We immediately directed Pathfinder to take a panoramic image. Hopefully, Watney has some kind of message for us. Questions?”
The sea of reporters raised their hands.
“Cathy, let’s start with you,” Venkat said, pointing to the CNN reporter.
“Thanks,” she said. “Have you had any contact with the Sojourner rover?”
“Unfortunately, no,” he replied. “The lander hasn’t been able to connect to Sojourner, and we have no way to contact it directly.”
“What might be wrong with Sojourner?”
“I can’t even speculate,” Venkat said. “After spending that long on Mars, anything could be wrong with it.”
“Best guess?”
“Our best guess is he took it into the Hab. The lander’s signal wouldn’t be able to reach Sojourner through Hab canvas.” Pointing to another reporter, he said, “You, there.”
“Marty West, NBC News,” Marty said. “How will you communicate with Watney once everything’s up and running?”
“That’ll be up to Watney,” said Venkat. “All we have to work with is the camera. He can write notes and hold them up. But how we talk back is trickier.”
“How so?” Marty asked.
“Because all we have is the camera platform. That’s the only moving part. There are plenty of ways to get information across with just the platform’s rotation, but no way to tell Watney about them. He’ll have to come up with something and tell us. We’ll follow his lead.”
Pointing to the next reporter, he said, “Go ahead.”
“Jill Holbrook, BBC. With a twenty-two-minute round-trip and nothing but a single rotating platform to talk with, it’ll be a dreadfully slow conversation, won’t it?”
“Yes it will,” Venkat confirmed. “It’s early morning in Acidalia Planitia right now, and just past three a.m. here in Pasadena. We’ll be here all night, and that’s just for a start. No more questions for now. The panorama is due back in a few minutes. We’ll keep you posted.”
Before anyone could ask a follow-up, Venkat strode out the side door and hurried down the hall to the makeshift Pathfinder control center. He pressed through the throng to the communications console.
“Anything, Tim?”
“Totally,” he replied. “But we’re staring at this black screen because it’s way more interesting than pictures from Mars.”
“You’re a smart-ass, Tim,” Venkat said.
“Noted.”
Bruce pushed his way forward. “Still another few seconds on the clock,” he said.
The time passed in silence.
“Getting something,” Tim said. “Yup. It’s the panoramic.”
Sighs of relief and muted conversation replaced tense silence as the image began coming through. It filled out from left to right at a snail’s pace due to the bandwidth limitations of the antique probe sendingit.
“Martian surface…,” Venkat said as the lines slowly filled in. “More surface…”
“Edge of the Hab!” Bruce said, pointing to the screen.
“Hab.” Venkat smiled. “More Hab now…more Hab…Is that a message? That’s a message!”
As the image grew, it revealed a handwritten note, suspended at the camera’s height by a thin metal rod.
“We got a note from Mark!” Venkat announced to the room.
Applause filled the room, then quickly died down. “What’s it say?” someone asked.
Venkat leaned closer to the screen. “It says…‘I’ll write questions here—Are you receiving?’?”
“Okay…?” said Bruce.
“That’s what it says.” Venkat shrugged.
“Another note,” said Tim, pointing to the screen as more of the image came through.
Venkat leaned in again. “This one says ‘Point here for yes.’?”
He folded his arms. “All right. We have communication with Mark. Tim, point the camera at ‘Yes.’ Then, start taking pictures at ten-minute intervals until he puts another question up.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 97 (2)
“Yes!” They said, “Yes!”
I haven’t been this excited about a “yes” since prom night!
Okay, calm down.
I have limited paper to work with. These cards were intended to label batches of samples. I have about fifty cards. I can use both sides, and if it comes down to it, I can re-use them by scratching out the old question.
The Sharpie I’m using will last much longer than the cards, so ink isn’t a problem. But I have to do all my writing in the Hab. I don’t know what kind of hallucinogenic crap that ink is made of, but I’m pretty sure it would boil off in Mars’s atmosphere.
I’m using old parts of the antenna array to hold the cards up. There’s a certain irony in that.
We’ll need to talk faster than yes/no questions every half hour.
The camera can rotate 360 degrees, and I have plenty of antenna parts.
Time to make an alphabet. But I can’t just use the letters A through Z.
Twenty-six letters plus my question card would be twenty-seven cards around the lander.
Each one would only get 13 degrees of arc.
Even if JPL points the camera perfectly, there’s a good chance I won’t know which letter they meant.
So I’ll have to use ASCII. That’s how computers manage characters. Each character has a numerical code between 0 and 255. Values between 0 and 255 can be expressed as 2 hexadecimal digits. By giving me pairs of hex digits, they can send any character they like, including numbers, punctuation, etc.
How do I know which values go with which characters? Because Johanssen’s laptop is a wealth of information. I knew she’d have an ASCII table in there somewhere. All computer geeks do.
So I’ll make cards for 0 through 9, and A through F. That makes 16 cards to place around the camera, plus the question card. Seventeen cards means over 21 degrees each. Much easier to deal with.
Time to get to work!
Spell with ASCII. 0–F at 21-degree increments. Will watch camera starting 11:00 my time. When message done, return to this position. Wait 20 minutes after completion to take picture (so I can write and post reply). Repeat process at top of every hour.
S…T…A…T…U…S
No physical problems. All Hab components functional. Eating 3/4 rations. Successfully growing crops in Hab with cultivated soil. Note: Situation not Ares 3 crew’s fault. Bad luck.
H…O…W…A…L…I…V…E
Impaled by antenna fragment. Knocked out by decompression. Landed facedown, blood sealed hole. Woke up after crew left. Bio-monitor computer destroyed by puncture. Crew had reason to think me dead. Not their fault.
C…R…O…P…S…?