Chapter 13
Woven carbon thread ran slowly through the press, which sandwiched it between polymer sheets. The completed material was folded four times and glued together. The resulting thick sheet was then coated with soft resin and taken to the hot-room to set.
Now that NASA can talk to me, they won’t shut the hell up.
They want constant updates on every Hab system, and they’ve got a room full of people trying to micromanage my crops. It’s awesome to have a bunch of dipshits on Earth telling me, a botanist, how to grow plants.
I mostly ignore them. I don’t want to come off as arrogant here, but I’m the best botanist on the planet.
One big bonus: e-mail! Just like the days back on Hermes , I get data dumps. Of course, they relay e-mail from friends and family, but NASA also sends along choice messages from the public. I’ve gotten e-mail from rock stars, athletes, actors and actresses, and even the President.
One of them was from my alma mater, the University of Chicago. They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially “colonized” it. So technically, I colonized Mars.
In your face , Neil Armstrong!
But my favorite e-mail was the one from my mother. It’s exactly what you’d expect. Thank God you’re alive, stay strong, don’t die, your father says hello, etc.
I read it fifty times in a row. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a mama’s boy or anything.
I’m a full-grown man who only occasionally wears diapers (you have to in an EVA suit).
It’s totally manly and normal for me to cling to a letter from my mom.
It’s not like I’m some homesick kid at camp, right?
Admittedly, I have to schlep to the rover five times a day to check e-mail. They can get a message from Earth to Mars, but they can’t get it another ten meters to the Hab. But hey, I can’t bitch. My odds of living through this are way higher now.
Last I heard, they’d solved the weight problem on Ares 4’s MDV.
Once it lands here, they’ll ditch the heat shield, all the life support stuff, and a bunch of empty fuel tanks.
Then they can take the seven of us (Ares 4’s crew plus me) all the way to Schiaparelli.
They’re already working on my duties for the surface ops. How cool is that?
In other news, I’m learning Morse code. Why? Because it’s our backup communications system. NASA figured a decades-old probe isn’t ideal as a sole means of communication.
If Pathfinder craps out, I’ll spell messages with rocks, which NASA will see with satellites. They can’t reply, but at least we’d have one-way communication. Why Morse code? Because making dots and dashes with rocks is a lot easier than making letters.
It’s a shitty way to communicate. Hopefully it won’t come up.
—
All chemical reactions complete, the sheet was sterilized and moved to a clean room. There, a worker cut a strip off the edge, divided it into squares, and put each through a series of rigorous tests.
Having passed inspection, the sheet was then cut to shape. The edges were folded over, sewn, and resealed with resin. A man with a clipboard made final inspections, independently verifying the measurements, then approved it for use.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 115
The meddling botanists have grudgingly admitted I did a good job. They agree I’ll have enough food to last till Sol 900. Bearing that in mind, NASA has fleshed out the mission details of the supply probe.
At first, they were working on a desperate plan to get a probe here before Sol 400. But I bought another five hundred sols of life with my potato farm, so they have more time to work on it.
They’ll launch next year during the Hohmann Transfer Window, and it’ll take almost nine months to get here.
It should arrive around Sol 856. It’ll have plenty of food, a spare oxygenator, water reclaimer, and comm system.
Three comm systems, actually. I guess they aren’t taking any chances, what with my habit of being nearby when radios break.
Got my first e-mail from Hermes today. NASA’s been limiting direct contact.
I guess they’re afraid I’ll say something like “You abandoned me on Mars, you assholes!” I know the crew was surprised to hear from the Ghost of Mars Missions Past, but c’mon!
I wish NASA was less of a nanny sometimes.
Anyway, they finally let one e-mail through from the Commander:
Watney, obviously we’re very happy to hear you survived.
As the person responsible for your situation, I wish there was more I could do to directly help.
But it looks like NASA has a good rescue plan.
I’m sure you’ll continue to show your incredible resourcefulness and get through this.
Looking forward to buying you a beer back on Earth.
—Lewis
My reply:
Commander, pure bad luck is responsible for my situation, not you. You made the right call and saved everyone else. I know it must have been a tough decision, but any analysis of that day will show it was the right one. Get everyone else home and I’ll be happy.
I will take you up on that beer, though.
—Watney
The employees carefully folded the sheet and placed it in an argon-filled airtight shipping container. The man with the clipboard placed a sticker on the package. “Project Ares 3; Hab Canvas; Sheet AL102.”
The package was placed on a charter plane and flown to Edwards Air Force Base in California. It flew abnormally high, at great cost of fuel, to ensure a smoother flight.
Upon arrival, the package was carefully transported by special convoy to Pasadena. Once there, it was moved to the JPL Spacecraft Assembly Facility. Over the next five weeks, engineers in white bodysuits assembled Presupply 309. It contained AL102 as well as twelve other Hab Canvas packages.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 116
It’s almost time for the second harvest.
Ayup.
I wish I had a straw hat and some suspenders.
My reseed of the potatoes went well. I’m beginning to see that crops on Mars are extremely prolific, thanks to the billions of dollars’ worth of life support equipment around me.
I now have four hundred healthy potato plants, each one making lots of calorie-filled taters for my dining enjoyment. In just ten days they’ll be ripe!
And this time, I’m not replanting them as seed. This is my food supply. All natural, organic, Martian-grown potatoes. Don’t hear that every day, do you?
You may be wondering how I’ll store them. I can’t just pile them up; most of them would go bad before I got around to eating them. So instead, I’ll do something that wouldn’t work at all on Earth: throw them outside.
Most of the water will be sucked out by the near-vacuum; what’s left will freeze solid. Any bacteria planning to rot my taters will die screaming.
In other news, I got an e-mail from Venkat Kapoor:
Mark, some answers to your earlier questions:
No, we will not tell our Botany Team to “Go fuck themselves.” I understand you’ve been on your own for a long time, but we’re in the loop now, and it’s best if you listen to what we have to say.
The Cubs finished the season at the bottom of the NL Central.
The data transfer rate just isn’t good enough for the size of music files, even in compressed formats. So your request for “Anything, oh God, ANYTHING but Disco” is denied. Enjoy your boogie fever.
Also, an uncomfortable side note…NASA is putting together a committee. They want to see if there were any avoidable mistakes that led you to being stranded. Just a heads-up. They may have questions for you later on.
Keep us posted on your activities.
—Kapoor
My reply:
Venkat, tell the investigation committee they’ll have to do their witch hunt without me. And when they inevitably blame Commander Lewis, be advised I’ll publicly refute it. I’m sure the rest of the crew will do the same.
Also, please tell them that each and every one of their mothers is a prostitute.
—Watney
PS: Their sisters, too.
The presupply probes for Ares 3 launched on fourteen consecutive days during the Hohmann Transfer Window. Presupply 309 was launched third. The 251-day trip to Mars was uneventful, needing only two minor course adjustments.
After several aerobraking maneuvers to slow down, it made its final descent toward Acidalia Planitia. First, it endured reentry via a heat shield. Later, it released a parachute and detached the now-expended shield.
Once its onboard radar detected it was thirty meters from the ground, it cut loose the parachute and inflated balloons all around its hull. It fell unceremoniously to the surface, bouncing and rolling, until it finally came to rest.
Deflating its balloons, the onboard computer reported the successful landing back to Earth.
Then it waited twenty-three months.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 117
The water reclaimer is acting up.
Six people will go through 18 liters of water per day. So it’s made to process 20. But lately, it hasn’t been keeping up. It’s doing 10, tops.
Do I generate 10 liters of water per day? No, I’m not the urinating champion of all time. It’s the crops. The humidity inside the Hab is a lot higher than it was designed for, so the water reclaimer is constantly filtering it out of the air.
I’m not worried about it. If need be, I can piss directly onto the plants. The plants will take their share of water and the rest will condense on the walls. I could make something to collect the condensation, I’m sure. Thing is, the water can’t go anywhere. It’s a closed system.
Okay, technically I’m lying. The plants aren’t entirely water-neutral.
They strip the hydrogen from some of it (releasing the oxygen) and use it to make the complex hydrocarbons that are the plant itself.
But it’s a very small loss and I made like 600 liters of water from MDV fuel.
I could take baths and still have plenty left over.