The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet

Rating: teen
Tags: Science Fiction, Cherry Berry, Starlight Glimmer, Dragons, Profanity, Adventure, Crossover, Sex, Spitfire, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Human, Changelings
Length: 529067

Mark Watney is stranded- the only human on Mars. But he's not alone- five astronauts from a magical kingdom are shipwrecked with him.

Twilight Sparkle's experimental interplanetary drive has malfunctioned, stranding Starlight Glimmer, Spitfire, Cherry Berry, a changeling and a dragon on a hostile planet in another universe. With limited food supplies, very little magic, no communications with home, and no way to leave the planet, they must survive until somepony rescues them.

Fortunately they crashed right next door to another creature with the exact same problem- a creature named Mark Watney.

They're going to science the buck out of everything- and do whatever it takes to survive Mars and get everybody home.

TVTropes page here! Thanks to GymQuirk for making it!

Commissioned art and fan works from the readers! Thanks, everybody!

This experiment in an updates-daily story was made possible by a generous grant from Canary in the Coal Mine and viewers like you.

(Sex tag for crude talk about sex, but no actual sex in the story.)

Published 2018-01-02 01:10:07 UTC
Last updated 2019-04-01 05:28:09 UTC

Sol 6

The Maretian
by Kris Overstreet

with thanks to Lauren Faust, Andy Weir, and Admiral Tigerclaw for the ideas that I’m blending together for this

The Sparkle Drive was the most brilliant advance in Equestrian applied thaumaturgy in history- even more brilliant than the most advanced of Starswirl the Bearded’s spells, as the old time-displaced pony himself grudgingly admitted.

At its core it was a simple teleportation spell. Teleporting from Equus to the moon required immense, almost unmeasurable amounts of magic, as only the Elements of Harmony or similar artifacts could produce. But shorter jumps required exponentially less power, to the point that a sufficiently powerful unicorn could teleport from one end of a large room to the other without even blinking. All of this had been known since the founding of Equestria, but Twilight Sparkle was the one who realized that a million little jumps could make the same journey as one mighty jump for a lot less cumulative energy- and who, with the help of Starlight Glimmer, created an enchanted artifact to make it happen.

The limiting factors for the Sparkle Drive were energy generation and storage (how much magic it could produce in a steady stream) and frequency (how many times per second the spell could fire). The first drive, on a small unmared probe, had only a trickle of magic power and a quartz oscillation system, giving it a jump of about six feet about 32,000 times per second. It flew from Equus orbit to moon orbit- a trip which required two days by conventional rockets- in two hours. The second drive, test-flown by Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle in a standard three-mare capsule, tripled the power and used a computer microprocessor instead of a quartz crystal, made the same trip in twenty minutes. Both flights ended with no mishaps or malfunctions of any kind.

For the third flight the Amicitas, the vessel which had made the first mared trip to lunar orbit, got a total refit. The chemical rocket systems were removed and replaced with mana-propulsion systems, making room for an engineering deck to house the Sparkle Drive and a massive crystal energy storage system. A standard docking port was installed along the dorsal side, allowing the ship to visit the CSP space station and to dock with other ships. The ship would have the most powerful computer available, which could directly control the Sparkle Drive up to a maximum cycle speed of one-quarter megahortz., or one-eighth of the computer’s total potential runtime.

It wasn’t lightspeed. It wasn’t even a percentage of lightspeed. But it was fast enough that, instead of requiring six months for a one-way flight from Equus to the planet Bucephalous under optimal conditions, the Amicitas could fly almost directly there in a little over a day- which was the test chosen for the refitted ship.

The crew of Amicitas Flight Three consisted of two Equestrian Space Agency members, two Changeling Space Program members, and one member of the various lesser agencies which, as the space race had reached its conclusion, folded themselves into one or the other of the two organizations. Cherry Berry, the world’s most experienced space pilot, commanded the flight, with the changeling Dragonfly serving as chief engineer and computer officer. Starlight Glimmer, as one of the two designers behind the Sparkle Drive, came along to make sure nothing went wrong with it, doubling as second in command and science officer. Fireball, the world’s only dragon astronaut, was chosen as third in command for his EVA and survival experience. The final seat went to Spitfire, the only member of the crew with no space flight experience, as the only pegasus member of ESA available for a multi-day flight outside of Equus local space.

The launch, via conventional rockets attached to the ship, went flawlessly, as did the docking with CSP’s space station to test the new docking port. After a brief visit, the ship detached, used its magic-powered thrusters to separate itself from the station, and waited until its orbit brought it into line with the distant red dot which was Bucephalous before activating the Sparkle Drive and streaming away in a blur of magical light.

For seventeen hours everything went perfectly. The drive teleported the massive ship and its crew four meters at a time, two hundred and fifty thousand times per second, across the interplanetary void. The crew ate, slept, arose, and ate again, taking watch in shifts in case something went wrong, which it didn’t.

Until it did.

The flight ought to have been perfectly safe. The Sparkle Drive didn’t actually alter the non-magical momentum of the ship; between every teleport it moved at only orbital speeds, limiting potential damage from space dust and micrometeorites. As a double protection, the standard teleportation spell the drive used contained safeguards that would ensure that the destination was empty, thus avoiding either collisions (bad) or two objects sharing the same point in spacetime (worse). The spell would automatically displace the ship just far enough in whatever direction to avoid an encounter.

Unfortunately the ship, and the Sparkle Drive, had three flaws, one which should have been caught by the drive’s designers, one which nobody could have predicted or recognized until it struck, and one which nobody could have done anything about in any case.

Flaw #1: while the spell used by unicorns and alicorns limited itself to three dimensions of motion for its emergency displacement, that limitation had accidentally been left out of the Sparkle Drive’s spell matrix.

Flaw #2: the Sparkle Drive, and indeed every single propulsion system on the refitted ship, depended upon the rules of physics and metaphysics in Equus’s high-magic universe, and no one had taken into account how they would function if those rules suddenly changed.

Flaw #3: all contingency plans for the ship, and indeed for all space flight since the beginning of Equus’s space race, depended upon the instant, constant, never-failed communications with the ground provided by the telepresence spell installed on all ships.

A microasteroid, about the size of a coarse bit of beach sand, floated into the Amicitas’s flight path.

The Sparkle Drive’s teleportation spell automatically displaced the ship to avoid it.

And all Tartarus broke loose.

AMICITAS FLIGHT 3 MISSION DAY 2

Spitfire’s head spun as Amicitas bucked like a stallion stung by a hornet and almost every light in the bridge went out, along with three-quarters of the control displays. She moved automatically as she heard the order to suit up, floating over to her suit’s storage locker along the back wall, removing it from the recharging systems, and sliding herself into it. Drill after drill after drill on the ground had left them all able to go from street wear to full pressurization in under a minute, even under the most disorienting conditions the boffins could think up.

“Suit clear!” Dragonfly, as always, was the first to report finished. In drills Spitfire had regarded changelings shapeshifting during the process as dirty rotten cheaters, but now she was more concerned in finding out what had just happened to the ship.

“Suit clear!” That was Fireball, the dragon. Thumbs helped.

“Suit clear!” Cherry Berry. Experience helped; this was, after all, the only mare who had landed a ship on two different bodies besides Equus.

“Suit clear!” That was her own voice, piping up from sheer, well-drilled habit.

“Ugh… ugh… suit clear!” And that was Starlight Glimmer, who as a unicorn ought to have been faster.

“Emergency power!” Cherry Berry’s ability to put steel into what was normally a squeaky, inoffensive voice never ceased to amaze Spitfire. She’d seen the pony on the ground panic just like your average pony, scream and run and be totally useless… but put her in a ship and she became the proverbial steely-eyed missile mare.

Under any other circumstances, Spitfire thought, I’d be in command. I’m a major in the Equestrian military with so much pegasus flight experience, so much leadership experience, it’s not worth counting. And here I am, the oldest pony on the ship, and the only rookie. Even Starlight’s flown once before. So my proper role is to sit down and shut up until and unless somepony gets hurt.

From squadron commander to field medic. How the mighty have fallen.

The emergency lights came on around the bridge, relieving but not eliminating the gloom. Cherry Berry returned to the commander’s seat, while Spitfire eased herself into the pilot’s chair. The names were misleading: the commander flew the ship unless and until she needed the pilot to take over, and in the meantime the pilot monitored readouts and called the commander’s attention to anything that needed it. “Baltimare, this is Amicitas,” Cherry said, activating her headset. “We’ve had a problem, over.”

Silence.

“Baltimare, this is Amicitas, please respond, over.”

Nothing.

“Horseton, this is Amicitas, can you hear me?”

Not even static.

“Shoot.” Cherry Berry shifted in her seat. “Starlight, Fireball, check the ship. I want to know if we’re losing air.”

Dragonfly tapped one of the displays. “Cabin pressure holding steady at one atmosphere, Cherry,” she said. “Life support exchange crystal working at standard volume.”

“Check the ship anyway. Fireball, you may end up going outside, so be ready. Spitfire, keep trying to contact the ground. Dragonfly, I want a diagnostic on the telepresence matrix.”

As Starlight and Fireball went aft to check the engines, Spitfire split her attention between repeating calls to the ground, first via telepresence, then via the backup radio. “Baltimare, this is Amicitas, comms check…. Baltimare, this is Amicitas, comms check… Baltimare tracking, this is Amicitas comms check on backup… wait…” She went silent, then ran the radio through all its preset frequency settings to verify what she thought she saw. “Commander? I’m not picking up the ESA satellite network. At all.”

“Do you think we lost the antenna?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Indicator light is green,” Spitfire replied. “And I’m getting all sorts of static. Just no signals from the satellites.”

Dragonfly peeked out from under the control console, closing the panel she’d been looking into. “Telepresence crystal is intact,” she said. “But it’s got no power.”

“Isn’t the spell supposed to work so long as either side is getting mana?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Yeah,” Dragonfly nodded, hissing softly. “I really don’t like this.”

“Spitfire to engine bay,” Fireball’s voice rasped over their headsets. “Medical emergency. Spitfire to engine bay for medical emergency.”

Before Spitfire could do more than undo her straps, Starlight Glimmer’s voice cut in, gasping, “Belay that… I’m all right… Dragonfly, have you tried to use any magic since… whatever… happened?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Don’t. I just gave myself a mild case of magic exhaustion by trying to cast three spells at once. Commander?”

“Yes?” Cherry Berry asked. “I’m here.”

“We’re in serious trouble,” Starlight Glimmer’s voice grew a little stronger as she continued. “The drive crystal’s intact, but my scan failed before I could verify it as undamaged. The electronics and power feeds all look intact. But every single power crystal is shattered. Worse than shattered. Gone to dust.”

“There are a couple of bolts floating around back here,” Fireball added. “And I see some distortion in the walls. That bang we felt was probably all those gems going bang.” A low growl, and then, “Waste of a couple days’ meals.”

“Break out the spares, then,” Cherry Berry ordered.

“We haven’t got any,” Starlight moaned. “The power array was massively redundant. Twilight and I figured that we’d be fine if a few of them burned out or even blew out. We never imagined they’d all blow up at the same time…”

Cherry Berry groaned. Spitfire felt surprised at how good that groan made her feel. She’d expected a whimper. “Okay, so what have we got left, then?”

“Two backup mana batteries for bridge systems,” Dragonfly recited. “Eight mana batteries for the maneuvering thruster blocks. And the batteries in the suit thruster packs.”

“What about the main thrusters?” Cherry Berry asked.

“They were powered from the drive’s supply,” Starlight Glimmer groaned. “Consider them dead.”

“Wonderful,” Cherry Berry grumbled. “Well, we’ll think of something. Get up here and strap back in.” She leaned back in her flight chair, taking a couple of deep breaths. “At least we have air and water still, so that still works. And we still have thirty days worth of food.”

“More than that,” Spitfire said. “Amicitas was originally a seven-mare vessel. We have thirty days of rations for Fireball, and then thirty days for six ponies. And there’s only four of us.”

“Three,” Dragonfly added. “I'm a changeling, not a pony. I don’t have to eat normal food. Not much, anyway.”

“Good,” Cherry Berry said. “But Fireball can eat our food if he needs to. So we can wait a while for rescue. How are our other consumables?”

“Thrusters show 100% mana levels and steady,” Dragonfly reported. “Electric… er…” The changeling hit a switch, and somewhere amidships something whirred. “Deploying backup solar arrays,” she said. “Electric charge was dropping like a brick.”

The rear doors to the bridge opened to admit Fireball, who pulled himself through the hatch with one arm while dragging a limp Starlight Glimmer with the other. Spitfire was out of her chair at once, ignoring Starlight’s protests and helping Fireball guide her to her flight chair. “Hold still,” she said, going to the first aid cabinet to fetch basic tools.

“Never mind that,” Starlight said weakly. “You’d need me to unsuit for most of that anyway. I just need time to recover my magic.”

Spitfire blinked. She wasn’t exactly a close friend of Twilight Sparkle’s student and collaborator, but she knew full well she was one of the most powerful unicorns in Equestria, with an almost bottomless supply of magic. Her recovery times from powerful spells were so close to instant as… “How much time?”

“Commander,” Starlight said, ignoring the question, “we need to shut down all non-essential magic-powered equipment right now. I think we’re in a magic-poor environment for some reason.”

“Um, yeah,” Dragonfly muttered, looking at the console. “That lines up with what I’m seeing here. The bridge magic batteries are down to about one-third capacity.”

“Do it.”

Cherry Berry, Dragonfly and Spitfire began hitting switches, deactivating the telepresence spell, most of the remaining interior lights, and various other little systems that made life on the ship nicer but didn’t contribute to staying alive. Finally Dragonfly said, “OK, we’re stable enough… nothing’s drawing magic now except the nav-ball and control systems… but we’re not gaining anything back.”

“That’s impossible,” Cherry Berry said irritably. “Magic permeates the universe. It’s stronger around life, but we ought to be getting more mana than just barely enough to run that.” She threw a hoof at the one thing remaining illuminated on the control panels, the mostly-brown navigation ball.

The words mostly brown echoed in Spitfire’s head, looking for something to connect to.

“Mana permeates the universe around Equestria,” Starlight Glimmer replied. “It’s possible that there are magic-rich and magic-poor places-“

“But Bucephalous isn’t one of them!” Cherry Berry insisted. “We sent a probe to orbit it! We know it had more than enough magic for the telepresence spells to work!”

The word orbit echoed in Spitfire’s head, looking for something to connect to.

“Bucephalous was in a different place in its orbit!” Starlight Glimmer snapped, getting a little of her energy back. “There’s so much about this universe we don’t know that-“

Spitfire’s hooves reached for the controls, activating the reaction wheels and putting the ship into a slow tumble. Almost immediately something big and rust-red appeared in the windows in front of the ship.

“Spitfire, what are you- oh sweet Celestia!” Cherry Berry gasped, looking out the window. “That’s Bucephalous! We shouldn’t be anywhere near that close!” The red planet almost filled the windows.

“I noticed the nav-ball,” Spitfire said shortly. “Prograde marker’s well in the brown. If we were still in solar orbit, as we should have been, it would have been in the blue. So I-“

“That’s NOT Bucephalous!” Starlight Glimmer shouted, the edge of terror creeping into her voice. “Those volcanoes are all in the wrong place!”

Dragonfly leaned up and activated the backup map systems. Normally the course projections would be relayed from the ground, but Amicitas was the first Equestrian spaceship to have an on-board backup. The map showed a single sun and a single planetary orbit, the computer redrawing that orbit several times a second in a most doubtful dance. Dragonfly zoomed the map down to the planetary level. “Definitely not Bucephalous,” she said. “Alexander’s missing, and instead there’s two asteroids orbiting really close… and whoa,” she gasped. “At least eleven satellites where there should be only one.”

“Not important now,” Cherry groaned. The projected trajectory showed the ship on a head-on collision with the planet in about forty minutes. “Starlight, is there any way to feed bridge power to the main engines?”

“We’re not in our own solar system anymore!” Starlight moaned. “We might not even be in the same universe!! Oh, what have I gotten us all into now?!?”

“Stay WITH me, Starlight,” Cherry Berry said in a tone that Spitfire, military to the core, couldn’t help but admire. “Work the problem! Can we get power to the engines?”

Starlight Glimmer spent a couple of seconds panting for breath, doing a rapid in-out motion with her left forehoof as she did so. “Right. Um. Yes. It would take about ten minutes. But both batteries at full charge would only power the engines at full throttle for about three seconds. The batteries are backups. They were only meant to power the bridge, not the engines.”

“And we don’t have anything close to full charge,” Cherry Berry finished. “And we’d lose most of the controls to do it. So all we have left is the RCS system. Can we at least dump bridge power to those?”

“Not without a spacewalk,” Starlight said. “The thrusters replaced chemical thrusters and are similarly self-contained.”

“Okay. Good news is, that makes things simple,” Cherry Berry replied in a truly military moment of black humor. Part of Spitfire found time to wonder if the earth pony’s parents had worn the uniform at some point in the past. “Okay. Spitfire, watch the levels in the thrusters. I want to know if they drop below twenty percent. That’s my safety margin. We’re going to shallow out our approach enough so that, if we’re lucky, we skip off the atmosphere and back out into space. If we’re less lucky, we make a controlled landing.”

“And if our luck’s out,” Dragonfly muttered, “we have a Bad Day.”

“Bad day?” Fireball asked, not having heard the capital letters. “You mean this doesn’t already qualify as a bad day?”

“We are NOT having a Bad Day!” Cherry Berry growled. “I am going to land this ship and we are all going to be rescued and everything is going to work out just fine!”

Spitfire took a deep breath and let it out again slowly. On the one hand, Cherry was saying and doing all the right things, shutting down panic, presenting as much confidence as possible under the circumstances, and working the problem.

On the other hand, numbers didn’t lie. The planet, the not-Bucephalous or whatever it was, was dead in the way of a ship going at Equus-orbital speed and accelerating. It would take a Faust-delivered miracle to save their lives.

“Starlight, remove one of the batteries and get me back the main engines,” Cherry said. “Even a few seconds at low thrust is better than nothing, and we might regenerate a little bit of power. Fireball, secure everything as tightly as you can. Then both of you get back here and strap in. It’s going to be a very bumpy ride.”

Spitfire tightened her straps and nodded agreement. It would, indeed, be a very rough ride… and they could only hope the stop at the end wasn’t lethally sudden.

Magic thrusters in an alien environment had unpredictable consequences.

Below and ahead of the ship, as it struggled to convert vertical speed into horizontal, a dust storm already quite powerful by standards of the tiny desert world’s meager atmosphere blew to titanic proportions, bearing down on the largest artificial structure then currently standing on the planet. Millions of miles away, observers on another planet noted the sudden and inexplicable change in the storm and warned the occupants of that artificial structure to prepare to evacuate both it and the planet it stood on.

Knowing none of this, the ship’s pilot used every trick she’d learned or guessed at from dozens of re-entries in various craft, goosing the thrusters as gingerly as possible and tapping her hooves in insuppressible anxiety waiting for their charge levels to creep back up. By skill, by luck, and by urgent prayers addressed To Whom It May Concern, she managed the miraculous by converting a collision course into a clean atmospheric re-entry. But the impossible eluded her, as the drag of the planet’s sparse air and dust grabbed the ship and refused to let go. The ship’s lifting body slowed too rapidly to remain aloft, but not rapidly enough to permit a controlled landing on the uneven terrain below.

In desperation the emergency solar panels, stowed early in re-entry, were redeployed. They ripped away from their moorings almost instantly, barely slowing the craft.

The emergency drogue chute was deployed, and then the emergency landing parachutes. All lasted only a couple of seconds before being ripped to pieces.

Finally, with no options remaining, the pilot raised the nose as high as she could and tried to stall the craft. The thrusters, taxed beyond their power to regenerate charge, sputtered and died. The reaction wheels, kept in constant use, drained the electrical batteries to zero and automatically shut down. The ship, with no further active control systems, nosed forwards again of its own accord, gaining just enough lift to bear it over the rim of a shallow canyon.

And then there was the ground, and the ship no longer had power to lower its landing gear, to operate its controls, to do anything.

With a crash loud enough to actually just be audible in the sandstorm outside, the ship belly-flopped at high speed onto the alien soil, skidding along on a rising wave of loose dust and small rocks. Boulders clipped the stubby fin-wings, sending the ship rotating first one way and then the other as it skidded on, but somehow or other none rose directly in its path.

A low slope rose underneath the ship, and the nose began to dig into the dirt, braking the vessel until at last, with a final tortured scream of metal, it shuddered to a halt, having left a scar several kilometers long behind it.

Five space travelers, secure in their spacesuits, survived, in a ship without power, without air, without water, without magic.

And as they recovered, all five noticed a blinking beacon on the tiny nav-balls built into the displays of their space helmets…

The last man on Mars sat in his habitat, all alone, and typed.

So that’s the situation. I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m in a Hab designed to last thirty-one days.

If the oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the water reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happens, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death.

So yeah. I’m fucked.

He paused, deciding that was as good a place to end the log entry as any, and moved the cursor to the save button.

There was a knock at the door.

His fingers returned to the keyboard.

And apparently I’m also insane. Must be blood loss. I thought I just heard someone knocking on Airlock One. But that’s impossible, because everybody else left on the MAV, and that’s a one-way trip.

There was another knock, more insistent.

Holy shit. It happened again. Something is actually knocking on the airlock door.

Mark Watney saved the entry, got up from his chair (ignoring the freshly stapled wound in his side) and went to answer it.

Author's Note

The Sparkle Drive is how the FTL system works in Admiral Tigerclaw's Arrow 18, one of my favorite stories on FimFiction. It's also how telekinesis works in that story's universe, but that doesn't carry over here.

You don't have to read Changeling Space Program to follow this story. I do, however, strongly suggest you get a copy of the book The Martian by Andy Weir- both on general principle, and because I'm going by that and not the movie. (Watney had it EASY in the movie compared with the book.) I'm deliberately going to avoid going over any of the same ground Watney-as-narrator covers in the book- the quoted bit in this chapter excepted. (Of course, adding five ponies to the mix changes Watney's specific problems almost totally, which means that the particular adventures he has will be totally different... but he'll still have to solve the daily issues of air, water, food, warmth, communications, getting home... and, of course, sanity.)

Some chapters will be long (though none as long as the longest CSP chapters) and some very short. Each chapter will be a day- rather, a sol- in the lives of the characters. And, since it seems to be a thing, I'm going to try to post one chapter a day, even when I'm on the road for my business. Hopefully I can keep that up; we'll see.

If you like this, PATREON! (Seriously, I can't devote time to this if I have other activities that help pay my bills and debts, so your contributions mean more pony words.) https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet

Sol 7

On what should have been the morning of Sol 7 and what, instead, was past midday of Mission Day 131, the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) carrying the five surviving members of the Ares III expedition docked with Hermes, the ship that had brought them to Mars and which would carry them back to Earth.

NASA mission protocol in case of a mission abort like this one was strict, and such aborts had been simulated multiple times during the crew’s years of training. The Sol 2 rock samples, taken from the landing site and loaded in the MAV immediately so the mission wouldn’t be a total loss in case of abort, would be offloaded- twenty-five kilograms, or about one-twentieth the amount allotted for the mission. The MAV would be undocked and programmed for station-keeping, becoming yet another communications relay satellite in Martian orbit. Then Hermes would engage one of the pre-calculated burns to carry it back to Earth as quickly as possible. The sooner Hermes left Mars, the less time and energy would be required for the long trip home.

First off the MAV was Beth Johannsen, mission systems operations officer and computer technician. It was her job to inspect Hermes and make sure the most expensive ship ever constructed by mankind was ready for flight. Normally she would have a second crewman to assist with these inspections, but circumstances had changed.

Next came Alexander Vogel of the European Space Agency, mission chemist and navigator. The German scientist pushed one of the two plastic bins of rock and soil samples ahead of him, floating his way towards the science lab where they would be stowed. The samples, strictly speaking, were not his job, but again circumstances had changed.

Major Rick Martinez, US Air Force, mission pilot and second in command, came next, pushing the other sample container. Martinez had been the practical joker of the crew, reveling in the stereotype of irrepressible flyboy. Today he was as grim and focused as the strictest drill sergeant could ask for. He had saved the MAV from tipping over in the unprecedented storm that had forced the mission abort, and he would perform any orbital maneuvers required for Hermes’s trip home.

Finally, reluctantly, the last two crewmembers emerged. Commander Melissa Lewis, US Navy, mission commander and mission geologist, floated through the airlock followed by Chris Beck, mission doctor and EVA specialist. Lewis hadn’t said a word when Vogel had offered to take the soil samples to the lab in her place. In fact, she’d said precious few words to anyone after ordering the launch of the MAV. Beck, worried for her mental health, had decided to stick like glue to her at least until Hermes completed its Earth transfer orbital burn- a maneuver which would require three orbits of Mars and take most of an Earth day to complete.

Lewis barely noticed him, nor cared, but she was aware enough of her surroundings that she cared about not caring.

Buck up, Melissa, she chided herself. You’re the mission commander, and you still have four other astronauts to get home safely. They’re depending on you for leadership and morale. They need certainty right now, not a skipper whose head is in the clouds!

Yeah. Four other astronauts. Five minus one.

Her mind still gnawed on the empty sixth chair in the MAV, the one reserved for Mark Watney, mission engineer and botanist. So Johannsen saw Watney knocked flying by the antenna that impaled him. So Watney’s biomonitor showed his life signs at zero just before going dead. That’s no excuse. I should be bringing five astronauts back, not four. I failed.

No. Freak accident. Freak storm. You broke mission protocols trying to find him. You did everything possible.

Did I? Did I really? There must have been something else I could have done. I could have ordered abort sooner. I could have kept us closer together. I could have ordered tethers.

Based on what? You had no way of knowing. It could have been Johannsen, or Beck, or you. There was nothing…

… there had to be something…

Absorbed in her mental loop, she allowed Beck to guide her to the bridge. Once there, she found her own workstation- Beck knew better than to go so far as to help her sit down and strap in. The incoming-message light flashed on her terminal. No surprise there. NASA, after all, had listened to their comm chatter throughout the abort and launch, even if they couldn’t contribute anything in real-time from four light-minutes away. NASA had received their first (terse) report on the loss of Watney, and now doubtless they wanted to respond.

Without waiting for Johannsen, whose duties included message downloads, she keyed up the message to her station’s terminal and hit play.

The image of Mitch Henderson- the square-headed, square-jawed flight director and head of Mission Control for Ares I, II and III- popped up onto the screen. That’s odd, Lewis thought. Way outside protocol. Where’s our normal CAPCOM?

“Hermes, this is Mitch Henderson,” he said. “We know the loss of Mark Watney has hit you all very hard. Mark was a very special man and a true astronaut, and he will be sorely missed by everyone in the program.”

Beck let out a soft sigh at these words. Lewis ignored him and forced herself to breathe normally. Commanding officers maintained discipline, after all, no matter the provocation.

“Normally our focus at this point would be solely on getting the rest of you safely home to Earth as fast as possible,” Mitch continued. “But Dr. Kapoor-“ Venkat Kapoor, the overall head of Project Ares- “-has a new mission task for you.” He paused, looking down at a fistful of papers in his hand. “We ordered a scan of all satellite photos from the period immediately before and during the mission abort. One of our satellite operations workers, a…” Mitch squinted at the page. “… a Mindy Parks… spotted something in photos taken by two different satellites. We’re sending you hi-res files of the pictures, but for now, here’s the first pic.”

Mitch’s face was replaced by a full-color satellite photo. Mars filled the background- an entirely different region of the planet from Ares III’s Acidalia Planitia.

But in the foreground, where nothing ought to have been, there was something pink. Pink and, insofar as the handful of pixels could determine, pointy- two things that no asteroid or meteor known to man ever was. The brilliant pastel color of the… whatever it was… stuck out like healthy skin in front of Mars’s eternal smashed thumb.

“The second picture isn’t as good,” Mitch said, “so we’re not going to embed it in this video, but it shows an object about the size of an MAV during landing phase entering the dust storm about seven minutes prior to your abort. According to Parks, the times of the two pictures give a rough trajectory for the object that should have had it impacting Mars about ten kilometers northwest of the Hab about two minutes prior to your abort, with an uncertainty radius of about thirty kilometers. Obviously that didn’t happen.”

Lewis’s eyes had focused so hard on the little pink thing in the photo that she could still see it when the screen switched back to Mitch Henderson.

“To be blunt, we don’t know what this is, and we’re afraid to guess,” Mitch continued. “But Dr. Kapoor persuaded Teddy Sanders-“ that was the current NASA chief- “-that, at minimum, this would be an unprecedented chance to observe the immediate aftermath of a meteor strike on the Martian surface. Anything more than that,” he added, his lips compressed in obvious disapproval of what he was saying, “is considered unwarranted speculation at this time.”

Unwarranted speculation? Lewis thought. That’s obviously no asteroid fragment. It’s just possible a Kuiper Belt object would be that color, but we would have seen its cometary trail months ago, if it could even survive this long. So, what are you left with if the thing can’t be natural?

“I personally want to emphasize,” Mitch added, “that this is not our idea of a prank or joke. Nobody here at NASA would do any such thing immediately after the loss of one of our own. The attached pictures are legitimate and unretouched, taken directly as we received them from the satellites. This is very real and very serious.

“It’s so serious that we’re not bringing you back home yet.” Mitch pulled one of the papers out of his hand and took a closer look at it. “Included in this message is a series of possible orbital adjustment programs for you to select from, depending on how soon you can complete Hermes’ pre-flight checklist. We’re going to put you in as low an orbit as we dare. Hermes’s cameras are as good or better than anything on the satellites, and with your ion engines you can dip into the fringes of Mars’s atmosphere without serious risk of deorbit, at least for the week or so we’re extending your mission by.

“Your mission will be to examine the area where we project the object came down, to a range of double the computed cone of error. Once you find it, get all the pictures you can and send them back to us.” Mitch cleared his throat, looking obviously discomfited, and added, “Obviously this will also include the area of the Hab. Dr. Kapoor also wants pictures of the hab with an eye towards re-using the site and unused supplies for a future Ares mission. But in light of the loss of Mark Watney, that task is strictly optional. If you feel uncomfortable with it, we’ll leave that to the satellites.

“Also,” Mitch said, raising his tone a little and saying each word with slow, careful weight, “you are not, I repeat not, to detach the MAV at this time. We want to use Hermes to put it into an orbit that overflies the search area as frequently as possible. We’re still working on the procedure for that, but we’ll have it for you as soon as it’s ready.

“Again, we are grieved to hear about Mark Watney, and if there’s anything any of us at NASA can do to help, let us know. I’ll be here at CAPCOM for the rest of the day to answer any questions you have. Henderson out.”

The video ended. Lewis shook her head, shocked, confused, sad and excited all at once. This might be the thing that every astronaut hoped for, above all else… but… but!!

“Commander, you want me to gather the rest of the crew?” Beck asked quietly. “I think they all need to see that.”

Lewis nodded. “Yes. Please. At once.” She stifled a sob, taking deep breaths again as she keyed up the two images Mitch had mentioned in his message and displaying them on her screen. The little pointy thing in one picture, the less obviously pink speck pushing a massive shock wave in front of it through the trailing edges of the dust storm.

Why, she thought, why is it that the biggest discovery in the history of space flight has to happen at a time like this?

ARES III LOG ENTRY: SOL 7

Isn’t this just my luck? Here I am, Mark Watney, the first human being to meet intelligent life from another world. Lucky me. Problem is, nobody will ever know until both me and the intelligent life are all long dead.

I’m typing this while we eat a late breakfast or early lunch. None of us know whether or not my guests can handle Earth food, but from what I understand we don’t have much choice. Anyway, it balances out- my five crewmates leave for Hermes, and hey presto, five aliens show up to take their places at the dinner table.

I know what you’re thinking; I ought to be rationing my food to make it last, not giving it away to interplanetary hoboes. And you’re not wrong. But if I understand the pictures these guys have been drawing, these guys are just as marooned as I am, and I figure our mutual odds of survival increase if we work together.

And if worse comes to worse, I can kill them and eat them, right?

Ugh. I just looked one of them in the big, adorable, trusting eyes, and I felt so guilty about that stupid joke. No, I’m not going to eat anybody, not even if they drop dead of natural causes. (Or of NASA’s cooking, which is a distinct possibility, but nobody’s grabbing their throat and choking yet.)

Obviously we don’t speak each other’s language. They speak something that sounds a little like Welsh. Well, like I imagine Welsh sounds, anyway- I’ve never heard it. But the alien language is all high nasal vowels and gargles, and every other consonant is L.

So we’re communicating by whiteboard. Sort of like the party game Pictionary, except we’re all on the same team and we’re playing for keeps.

Did I mention that four out of the five aliens can only hold a marker with their teeth? I don’t even want to think about how many brain cells they’re losing to marker fumes every time they draw a picture.

As near as I can figure it, this is their story. They come from a planet that looks a lot like Earth, but the continents are all different. They took off in their ship headed for the next planet out in their solar system, just like we did in Hermes.

But their ship broke somehow. I don’t know how. The alien drawing the picture just drew black smoke trailing from the back of their little rocket, and one of the other aliens got into a big argument about it. I guess she wanted to make the point that smoke doesn’t look like that in space, and the one drawing the picture wanted to keep it simple. Me, I thought these aliens must be really similar to us if a trail of black smoke means “my aircraft is broken” in their culture like in ours.

I wonder what else is common in our cultures.

I wonder if I should delete my web browser history just in case.

Anyway, whatever broke on their ship, it sent the ship to Mars instead of where they were going. And boom, they crash-landed.

The next part is kind of fuzzy, though. All the aliens tried two or three different pictures to tell me the next part, but none of it made sense. My best guess is, the crash took out their ship life support somehow. Maybe there’s a hole in the hull, maybe their oxygen tanks ruptured, I don’t know. But then they showed me the displays inside their space suits, including what looks almost exactly like an old Apollo-era navigation ball, and then drew that with a blinking light on it, followed by the aliens, single file, walking up to a crude drawing of the Hab.

So, obviously the Hab beacon still works. It’s probably the only communications device that does. The radio produces nothing but static. Not surprising, since I was impaled by a piece that broke off from the antenna farm during the storm. I already know the main satellite dish is gone from my walk back to the Hab yesterday. So all that’s left is the beacon, which has its own internal antenna. But it’s only rated for about twenty-five kilometers, and it’s send-only, because duh.

So, my best guess is, they’re stranded, and they’re stuck living with me for the duration. The last time I had roomies picked for me like this was my first year in the dorms back at the University of Chicago. Down side: no privacy for when my nonexistent Martian girlfriend who lives in Canada comes over. Up side: no problem finding players for my D&D campaign!

Damn, now I wish I’d brought my dice.

So, who are my new roomies, you ask? Well, I don’t have their names yet, but I can describe them pretty well, so you can look at the pictures I’ve taken and know who I’m talking about.

Four of them are quadrupeds, ungulates to be exact- that’s right, they have four hooves and no hands. And not split hooves either- what they have is kind of like horse hooves, except instead of being black and shiny they’re the same color as their pelt. And speaking of, three of the four are covered in fur of colors not normally associated with animal life. But then again, it’s aliens, so what do I know?

Hell, I watched these creatures remove spacesuits with locking seals and zippers and the whole nine yards- spacesuits nowhere near as advanced in design as mine, by the way- with no help from me or from each other. No thumbs, no fingers, and no fuss. And I still don’t understand how the fuck they did it. Somehow they can grab a zipper with a hoof and pull it, because aliens.

I get the feeling I’m gonna be saying “because aliens” a lot.

The first of these little horse alien things is pink- pink like your kid sister’s Pretty Pansy Princess Playroom Set- with a kind of poofy blonde mane and tail hair. She’s the friendliest of the bunch. She also did most of the drawing during our attempts at communication. Every time there the aliens had a discussion or argument, she had the last word, so I’m guessing she’s their leader- their equivalent of Commander Lewis. There’s this sort of brand or something on her butt- I’m reluctant to examine it too closely, lest I start the first interstellar sexual harassment lawsuit- but it kind of looks like a cluster of cherries.

“But Mark,” I hear you say, “this is an alien! Its planet’s biosphere must be completely different to Earth’s! How can it have a picture of a cherry on its ass?” To which I reply: that’s what it looks like, so that’s what I’m calling her. Cherry.

Then there’s the second one- the one who fussed over drawing black smoke pluming out of a spaceship. This one has a unicorn horn, which I’m guessing makes her a different species. I could be wrong. Maybe it falls off like antlers out of season, or maybe she’s a genetically altered uber-whatever, or maybe it’s a sex toy she had surgically implanted for whatever reason. But I’m going with unicorn horn because her brand isn’t cherries, it’s a really abstract wavy magical spark thing. So I’m calling her Magica for now.

Anyway, besides the horn, Magica’s coat is this really pale violet I don’t know the name for. Her mane and tail are dark purple with streaks through it, kind of either turquoise or teal, I don’t know which. She kind of looks tired all the time, and the other aliens are all a bit worried about her. I hope she didn’t have internal injuries during the crash.

One other thing about Magica. The first thing my visitors did after they came in and took off their suits was look for the bathroom. (And can you blame them? Their last potty break was in another solar system!) But after that, Magica came to me and used her hoof to go through numbers with me, then prime numbers, then squares, then cubes, then Fibonacci’s sequence- all by stomping her foot. Obviously this can only mean one thing: she’s a sci-fi geek who’s read all the classic first-contact stories. Guess the good things are truly universal!

Now onto the third alien. Remember how I said the pink one was sort of like Lewis? Well the third alien acts like Lewis. She’s the only one I haven’t seen smile even once. She’s always looking so serious, so on-duty. I don’t know how quadrupeds come to attention, but I think she’s doing it all the time. About the only thing that spoils it is her eyelids. They tend to stay half-closed all the time, which would give her a sleepy look if she didn’t have the alien equivalent of resting bitch-face.

Instead of a unicorn horn, this one has wings. That’s right, wings. Six limbs. I don’t know what for- last night she tried flying in the Hab, and she was barely able to get into the air flapping like a chicken the whole time. They’re clearly too small for sustained flight. She’s got pale orange fur and hair that’s brilliant orange at the roots but dark orange at the ends, and her brand is of a fireball, so I’m calling her Fireball.

Now for the fourth one. Everybody’s seen at least one Alien movie, right? Well, imagine a xenomorph crossed with Cherry or Magica or Fireball. That gives you some idea of the fourth alien. It has huge glowing pale-blue bug-eyes- not compound eyes, but no irises or pupils like the other aliens have. It’s black from horn to toe except for its eyes and a pair of bug-wings (which work even worse than Fireball’s- the bug tried to get airborne until her wings sounded like an outboard motor and never left the floor). And, strangely enough, it has holes all through its extremities- holes like her grandmother was a block of Swiss cheese or something.

Buggy (as I’m calling her for now) poked her nose into absolutely everything. She was the one who found the toilet and showed the others how to use it. She didn’t use it herself, and even more strangely, she refused a meal-pack last night and today too, though she did steal my cup of coffee. I’ve had to gently guide her away from more sensitive things several times, including twice while I’ve been typing this.

And then the last one, whose sole resemblance to any of the others is that he speaks the same language. For one thing, he’s a he- or so I assume, since his voice is like two octaves deeper than any of the others. Also, he’s not a quadrupedal ungulate, he’s a bipedal reptilian, standing on two long rear legs that would be almost human except for a few minor differences, like clawed feet, scales, digitigrade legs- you know, trivial stuff like that. The others occasionally stand on their hind legs to reach things or even take a few steps upright in a sort of awkward way, but he’s the only one who stays like that all the time. He also has a spiked tail, about half the length of his legs; his spacesuit is the only one that has a special limb made just to hold the tail.

He’s slightly taller than me- which makes him about a head and a half taller than Johannsen or any of the other aliens standing on their hind legs. He makes up for it by being skinny as hell- like a snake with arms and legs, but a dragon’s face. He’s mostly white with a red trim along the sides of his body and in a sort of V around his neck. He has dark yellow ridges down his head and spine, like Godzilla’s only rounded and blunt. The top ridge is fat and kind of leans forward over his forehead, making it kind of look like combed-back hair. I haven’t decided yet whether to call him Puff or Kirk because of that.

The other aliens being ungulates, I’m treating them as herbivores until I learn differently, and so I’ve been giving them the vegetarian dinners. About one-quarter of all the meal packs have vegetable protein instead of meat; it keeps better longer and it’s cheaper, a double win for NASA. But Puff is an omnivore, and by omnivore I mean that he didn’t even unwrap or heat up the meal packet. He just bit into it and ate the whole thing. Though to be honest, he might have been showing off. The guy just exudes machismo.

Okay, I’ve blown more than half an hour writing this up, and I need to stop for now. If all six of us are going to live together, I need to make sure everything’s up to scratch. That means cleaning the solar panels and making sure they survived the storm OK and then doing diagnostics on all the mission-critical equipment- the oxygenator, the atmospheric regulator, the water reclaimer.

And I also need to clear off at least one of the rovers. If the Hab systems check out, then tomorrow I’m going to have my guests take me back to their ship. If anything can be salvaged from it- especially food- that needs to be done sooner than later.

I just hope it’s within the ten kilometer limit specified by mission regs. If the rover runs out of juice away from the Hab, it’s going to be a mighty long wait for AAA service to show up with the jumper cables.

Author's Note

I'm trying to maintain a buffer- right now it's a one-day buffer, but we'll see if it increases once the big bricks of exposition are past. There are a lot of not-much-happened days in the book, and a ton of days skipped over entirely, so we'll see.

Pony language being Welsh is a reference to Gulliver's Travels. And yes, that makes Watney a Yahoo.

Some of you may think I'm painting Commander Lewis a little dark in this and the following few chapters. In the original book we don't get to meet her or the rest of the crew until four months after the abort, except for a chapter that flashes back to the crew's viewpoint of the abort itself, and so we don't get to see how the crew coped immediately after losing Watney. But we do know that four months later Lewis's first reaction to learning Watney survived was crippling guilt, so I can only imagine that it was at LEAST as intense the day after the abort as four months after.

And just to cut short speculation: no, Hermes isn't sticking around to rescue Watney. The Ares IV MAV has just barely begun making the fuel it needs to launch, the Ares III MAV can't land back on Mars (no fuel, heat shield, parachutes, etc. left), and Hermes hasn't got the supplies to wait around. But I have a couple of reasons for keeping them around for the moment...

Sol 8

HERMES – ARES III MISSION DAY 132

“Found it.”

Martinez’s words yanked Lewis’s attention from her own terminal. “Where?”

“Site Epsilon,” Martinez said, setting the telescopic stills camera to photo-taking mode. “It left a scar a good three kilometers long leading up to it. Led me right to it.”

Lewis’s hands flashed across her terminal. “Site Epsilon? But that’s ten kilometers due east from the Hab! NASA’s projection said northwest of the Hab. That’s out on the edge of the error cone!”

“I know, right?” Martinez grinned as he watched the photos coming in. As low as Hermes was orbiting, they had only a couple of minutes before the site passed out of range. Mars’s rotation would carry the site away by the next orbital pass, which meant the next window for photos of the site would be the following sol. “This thing definitely wasn’t a dumb rock. Somebody was flying it.”

“Found it,” Lewis said. “You weren’t kidding about that scar. The darker substrate stands out like- whoa.”

“Yeah, what I thought too,” Martinez replied. “That’s definitely a spaceship of some kind.”

“Was a spaceship,” Lewis corrected. “Nothing we could build would ever fly again after that kind of impact.”

“I don’t think it was an impact,” Martinez replied. “An impact would have made a crater just like a meteorite. I think whoever was in that attempted a controlled crash landing. And they might have succeeded.”

“What makes you say that?”

“No debris field,” Martinez replied. “Or not much of one anyway- just a few bits and pieces mixed in the furrow.”

“That can’t be right,” Lewis said, shaking her head. “How fast do you think they were going to leave a furrow that long?”

“I’m gonna leave that to the eggheads back at NASA,” Martinez said. “On Earth I could calculate it, but lower gravity? One five-hundredth the air pressure? I’d be guessing and you know it.”

“I suppose,” Lewis nodded. “We’re passing out of range. Send NASA the map coordinates and-“ Her eye caught something in her screen. “Pan east from the crash site. Due east about five kilometers, quick!”

Martinez ordered the camera to do so, snapping fresh digital photos all the while. “All right, done, but why?” One photo, now barely as good as any of the survey satellites in normal orbits could produce, caught his attention, and he flipped back to it. “What is that?”

Lewis held the video camera on the site as steadily as she could manage, despite orbital velocities carrying Hermes away faster than a bullet. “It’s a rover,” she gasped. “That’s one of our rovers!”

“Nah,” Martinez said. “Can’t be.” He studied the picture more closely. “Can it?”

Lewis groaned in frustration as the site passed beyond the video camera’s ability to pivot. “We both trained to recognize the rovers from overhead,” she said, “so we could optimize our landing position. I know that silhouette anywhere.”

“If it is…” Martinez’s sallow face went pale. “Oh, God. You know there’s only one person who could be driving it.”

Lewis leaned back in her seat. “No,” she whispered. “Johannsen saw him blown away, His life signs went zero. The alien ship must have had survivors, and they salvaged the rover from the hab.”

“They figured out the rover’s computer operating system?” Martinez asked. “The airlock controls, the driver unlock system, the whole thing?”

“Yes, I know it’s improbable,” Lewis said. “But Watney surviving is impossible. So that’s the only explanation.”

Martinez looked at his commander’s face and decided to let the matter rest for now. “I’ll make the report to NASA,” he said. “Why don’t you put in some time in the gym?”

“Can’t,” Lewis replied. “We might need to do a burn to maintain this orbit. I need to be on the bridge for that.”

“That ain’t happenin’ in the next hour, commander,” Martinez said. “Go blow off some steam. You’ll feel better for it.”

Lewis opened her mouth to say something, then settled for unstrapping herself. “I’ll be back in one hour,” she said. “You have the bridge.”

Martinez acknowledged, watching her leave, then shaking his head as he tried to figure out how to tell NASA…

… and, in fact, what to tell NASA. Good news- we found Mark! didn’t seem like a winner.

Besides, Lewis might be right. Sufficiently advanced aliens in a pinch could, given the incentive of being shipwrecked on Mars, learn how to drive a rover really, really quick.

But in his gut Martinez knew better.

And what I think, Commander, he thought to himself, is that you know it too.

When he began typing, it wasn’t the report to NASA, but an intraship message to Dr. Beck.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 4

ARES III – SOL 8

Dragonfly allowed herself a sigh of relief as the air from the emergency tanks filled the cabin of the Amicitas without leaking away. They couldn’t remove their space suits- the ship might have canned air, but it didn’t have heat, and the natural temperature on this planet was so far below freezing that even brief exposure might mean frostbite.

The backup air tanks and the manual pump to put as much as possible of the air back into said tanks were Changeling Space Program ideas, ideas Dragonfly was very proud of. Changeling ideas were smart ideas. It had been a pony idea to put the main air and water supply systems in the engineering bay, on the theory that a crash would always be nose-first and that survivors would be safest in the back of the ship.

As it happened the tail of the ship had struck first, cracking the bottom of the hull open like an egg and venting the engineering deck to the outside. The life support crystals, sensing loss of containment, had automatically shut down. And since the system that teleported warm air and hot water from Baltimare directly to the ship drew its power from the Equus end of the connection, it could only be reactivated from that end. Without communications, that wasn’t going to happen.

But the good news was, the airtight hatches between compartments- another CSP idea, thank you very much, even if it had come from a minotaur and not actually a changeling- had held and were holding. The habitat and docking chamber and the bridge both would hold air. And an inspection of the wrecked engineering bay revealed that the main life support system and its crystals were also intact, so if they could ever contact Equus again, they could be reactivated.

Unfortunately that was about the only thing positive about the engineering bay. The impact had shattered the Sparkle Drive’s main crystal, destroying the spell array. The crash had damaged two of the three main drive thrusters, making them unsafe for future use even if they could recover enough magic to get them to fire. The hole in the lower deck revealed a break in one of the main structural girders- which meant, all other considerations aside, the ship would never fly again.

She couldn’t see the monkey-alien’s face through his reflective visor, but she could feel his emotions, and she knew he agreed with her.

She’d watched the stranger constantly during the slow ride from his little dome back to the ship. There hadn’t been that much else to watch. The planet, or at least this part of it, was flatter than the Appleoosa prairies, with only a random network of little gullies and the occasional small crater or hillock to break the monotony. (Of course, their ship had managed to plow straight into the one hill of any size, a flat round thing mostly covered by loose soil about a kilometer across and maybe eighty meters taller than the surrounding plain at its highest point.)

The alien had gabbled along for the whole trip in its rover, never mind that Fireball and Dragonfly couldn’t understand a word he said. Wabbapeepa babaraba, over and over for half an hour. Cherry Berry, lucky pony, had led the way on hoof and so hadn’t had to listen to him. But on the whole the alien seemed friendly to a fault, cheerful and jovial in a way that simply went against Dragonfly’s common sense.

Still, she hadn’t minded much. As ship’s engineer it was her job to show him around the ship. The engineering bay, where most of the damage was, had been the first stop. Now that that inspection was concluded, they could repressurize the ship long enough to check the ship’s stores, especially the stuff in the small refrigerated compartment (yet another pony idea).

Standard food packs were vacuum-sealed to prevent spoilage, which had the side effect of also protecting the contents from near-vacuum and extreme temperatures. But the ponies had insisted on a little fridge to store perishables from home as a morale booster. Dragonfly herself had insisted the ice box be airtight and thermally sealed because, as she’d said at the time, accidents happen. Thus, those perishables were probably safe- were probably the warmest things on the ship by now except for the four astronauts- so long as noling opened the door before the habitat compartment was repressurized.

“Six PSI air pressure,” Dragonfly said, shutting the air valve. “That’s enough to operate in.”

“Good,” Cherry Berry nodded, her broad grin visible through her helmet. “I’m going to take our guest with me to help inventory the food stores. Check and see if the mana batteries have recharged.”

“Tell him to keep away from my sapphires,” Fireball grumbled. “Reserve battery two is back in place.”

As the monkey-thing and Cherry Berry stepped through the hatch to the habitat compartment (left open to allow the emergency air in), Dragonfly trotted to her station and opened up the tool compartment. The thaumometer ran on environmental magic, so it didn’t surprise Dragonfly that it failed to activate when she pulled it out, but once its leads were connected to the points on a mana battery it should show some reaction.

When she attached the leads to battery #2, the one retrieved from the engineering bay, nothing happened. That battery was dry, if it still functioned at all- it had come loose during the crash and tumbled all over the place. Starlight Glimmer would be able to test it properly, but she still hadn’t recovered fully from her magic exhaustion, and so Spitfire had kept her back at the Monkey House to watch over her.

When the thaumometer was attached to battery #1, the indicators flickered and the needle twitched for just a second. Then they too died. So battery #1 had recharged at some point- but only a very, very little, so little that the thaumometer had eaten two days’ worth of recharge in one second.

That… that was bad news.

And there was only one thing to do with bad news, but since there wasn’t any place safe for Dragonfly to hide on the planet, she went to tell Cherry Berry instead.

In the habitat compartment the monkey was gingerly examining the reference books and flight manuals on the bookshelf. One by one he put them in one of the two big plastic bins he’d brought from his dome. Obviously he found them fascinating, almost as fascinating as he’d found the dead instrument panels and computer displays on the bridge.

Meanwhile Cherry Berry was carefully bringing out the small sealed carton of fresh cherries from the fridge. Dragonfly didn’t need changeling empathy to know that the pony was simply longing to taste them. Noticing her, the pink pony said, “So, what did you find out?”

The sound of Cherry’s voice caught the attention of the alien, who turned to face her. Dragonfly sensed shock running through him, and she heard, muffled by his space suit and hers, something that sounded like, “Wubba yuck?” Gently but firmly he reached down and plucked the clear plastic carton of cherries from the commander’s hoof, holding them up at eye level and staring.

“Jairease,” Dragonfly thought the monkey-thing said. “Buddy gumby jairease.” He opened the carton, ignoring the loud protest from Cherry Berry, and took a single cherry out, rolling it between his suited thumb and forefinger. Then he pushed a couple of buttons on the front of his spacesuit, reached up…

… and unlocked his helmet locking ring and, with one hand, pulled the helmet off his head.

“What’s he doing with my cherries??” Cherry Berry bellowed. “They’re going to freeze! They get all mushy when they thaw out!”

Dragonfly was shocked for better reasons than stupid cherries. The temperature inside the Amicitas was the same as outside- roughly twenty-five degrees below. Only an idiot would deliberately expose themselves to that…

… just to eat a cherry. Which he did, idly closing the carton as he chewed. “Isha jairee,” he muttered. He swallowed, spat the pit into one of the tubs, and then added, “Buckets goal,” tossing his head as he handed the carton back to Cherry Berry before jamming his helmet back onto his head, locking the seal, and reactivating his life support. “Weerhe buckum goal.”

Wasting no time, Cherry Berry swiftly put the carton and its twin from the fridge into the second plastic tub. “That’s all you get, you… you… you cherry thief!” she snapped.

The monkey paid her no attention. Kneeling down to examine the little fridge, he pulled out the other delicacies within- a basket of sapphires, which he tossed into a bin without a second glance, five wrapped sandwiches, a small birthday cake (Pinkie Pie had insisted, as a precaution against “birthday emergencies”), and then, finally, the salads. Those he pulled out and examined very carefully.

“Luscious,” he muttered. “Mommapo. Googumbra. Mabre garrot?” One salad aside. “Slaa. Fuggum goal slaa.” Another. “Afafwa spous. Chess lye girf!!”

And then Dragonfly felt the alien’s emotions shift from shock and disbelief to wild, almost insane enthusiasm. “Spous. Afafwa spous. Afafwa fuggim SPOUS!!”

There were half a dozen alfalfa sprout salads, unseasoned, in the fridge- the ponies all liked them but didn’t agree on seasonings. The alien took them all and slammed them into the plastic tub as quickly as he could, putting the other salads back in place. He closed the tub, double-checked the seal for tightness, and picked it up, hauling it as quickly as he could in this weird planet’s light gravity. “Gummon!” he shouted. “Weega taco! Arrieup!”

Cherry Berry looked at Dragonfly. “Do you think we got a defective alien or something?” she asked.

“I think I’d better start pumping the air back into the tank,” Dragonfly said, shutting the fridge door again. “Our ride back to fresh air is about to leave with or without us.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 8

I saw their ship today. Bright pink, 1950s style curved fins, and heart shaped overlays on its windows. Pretty Pretty Princess Goes to Mars. I could feel my testosterone screaming as it died in agony from the sheer cuteness of it.

Nothing that cute deserves to be wrecked like that.

The ship skidded along the surface for a couple miles before it hit Site Epsilon. Site Epsilon is a mud volcano, or at least that’s what we think it is. It was going to be our last geology activity of the mission if everything else went according to plan, scheduled for Sol 28. Lewis, Vogel and I were going to do geology, chemistry, and soil samples there. There’s a slightly larger mud volcano another ten kilometers northeast of Epsilon, but that’s outside the mission operational radius of our rovers.

New, in addition to looking like a Care Bear threw up on it, it probably kind of resembled a cross between a cartoon rocket and the space shuttle. I don’t know how it worked- there’s nothing inside but habitat and engines, no fuel storage of any kind that I could see. Sufficiently advanced technology, I guess. I always called bullshit on that sort of thing when I read it in a book, but now that I’m face to face with aliens on a daily basis, it makes more sense.

Of course Mars did a number on the thing. The outer hull is crumpled like an accordion all along the bottom where it skidded along the ground. Two of the three engine bells in back are dented and cracked. The inside isn’t much better. The rear airtight compartment, what looks like their warp-drive section, has a crack about four feet long and a foot wide at its longest point. Using suit lights I can see Martian soil through the crack. Worse, I can see a metal structural member sheared in two, with one loose end half a foot higher than the other. You don’t have to have a masters’ degree in engineering like I do to know that this ship is totally unsafe to fly again.

That said, I spent a couple minutes examining the torn metal, and I’m impressed. The aliens built their ship like a fucking tank. And I don’t mean like an air tank or a water tank, I mean slap some treads on this thing and put a gun turret on their upper docking port and you could take on an entire panzer division in this thing. I found a small bit of loose hull metal and carefully fished it out of the crack, careful not to tear my suit on the jagged edges. When I get time I’m going to use Vogel’s chemistry lab to analyze it, but I can say now, it’s an alloy I don’t remember seeing before- looks like iron, light as aluminum, tougher than both.

That probably explains why the rest of the ship is in as good condition as it is. The other two sections of the interior are still airtight. No power, but the aliens had a manual emergency air system for situations like this, along with a manual air lock. After we re-sealed the hatch to the engine room, they opened a valve and let a thin atmosphere of pure O2 into the ship. It was still cold as hell- Mars laughs at ship insulation- but we had air if we needed it.

I only took a brief glance at the control systems, but everything looks distinctly Apollo-era, or maybe very early shuttle era. There’s only two very small computer screens, but a ton of digital readouts. Most of the gauges are simple mechanical dials. There are a ton of switches and push-buttons.

Strangest of all, there’s two joysticks, for pilot and co-pilot. How do aliens use a flight stick with hooves? And how does Strong Bad type with boxing gloves on? Tune in next time, when these questions may or may not be answered!

But as I said, I only took a brief glance at all that. I did notice that five of the seven flight couches are shot to hell. That is, the emergency impact protection systems, what would be crumple zones on your car, gave their all to protect the aliens when they crashed. Two of the couches were intact, and going by the number of alien house guests I have and the lack of gruesome dismembered alien bodies on the floor, I’m guessing they were empty.

But all that was completely unimportant once I got a look at their pantry.

Like NASA, the aliens included a small refrigerated compartment to keep comfort food fresh for the crew. In our case, NASA sent us some refrigerated Idaho potatoes. The plan was to use them as part of a freshly cooked Thanksgiving meal somewhere around Sol 16 or 17. In the aliens’s case it was a basket of rocks (seriously, does Puff need to prove his manliness on a daily basis? “I’m so tough I eat rocks for breakfast! And I don’t mean that metaphorically!”) and a bunch of salads.

Earth style salads. With Earth type veggies.

Cherry’s butt has cherries on it because there are actual cherries where she comes from. I stole one from her (and you better believe that pissed her off), took off my helmet in that goddamn freezing cold ship, and ate it.

(Hey, I checked my suit readouts first. If six PSI of pure oxygen was good enough for the Mercury 7, it’s good enough for me. But on second thought, it was also good enough for Apollo One, so maybe that’s not such a good benchmark.)

It was the best fucking cherry I have ever eaten, and speaking as a master of botany, that is an expert opinion.

It wasn’t just cherries. They also had garden salads with lettuce and cucumber and tomato and that. They had a couple tubs of cole slaw. I couldn’t believe it- how in the hell could aliens from another star have the same rabbit food we do?

(I shouldn’t say that. They're herbivores. It’s probably speciesist. Mark Watney, interstellar diplomat, that’s me.)

And then my mind focused on the other salads… which were plain alfalfa sprouts.

On Earth I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Alfalfa is the preferred horse feed because it’s a perennial plant that produces forage several times a year and provides the best nutrition per pound for hay that you can imagine. Within its limits it’s a hardy plant that can be grown, with care, in a broad range of environments. It would only make sense that, if horse aliens had Earth roughage, they’d prefer alfalfa two to one.

(Of course, I could be wrong. I can just imagine alien kids now whining, “I hate alfalfa! I wanna cupcake!” And Momma Alien is saying, “You don’t get any dessert until you clean your feedbag! And have you finished your homework yet?”)

But the thing is, these were fresh alfalfa sprouts. Really fresh. Like, on your local supermarket shelves today fresh. And they’d been kept in an airtight, temperature-controlled container.

Which means they might still be viable.

So I slapped them in one of the airtight sample tubs and rushed for the airlock.

I chivvied the aliens back out of their ship somehow- God, how I hated waiting while the bug and the dragon worked a pump handle, of all things, to try to recycle as much as they could of the emergency air. If we do this again I’m going to bring a tank from the Hab to use. Once we were all back in the rover I lead-footed it back to the Hab, with Cherry sitting on the tub with her cherries in it all the way, giving me dirty looks all the time.

The first thing I did when we got back, after plugging the rover in to recharge, was unpack the alfalfa sprouts. There’s about fifteen cups worth of sprouts, and even after however long in that container they smelled sweet and fresh. I washed them carefully, got out the Earth soil that was supposed to be the control for my botany experiments, and planted them all very carefully.

If this works… if this works there’s a chance we might just survive long enough for Ares IV or for the aliens’ buddies to come rescue us. We’ll know in about seven sols.

I ought to be rationing my food packs, but today was special. The ponies loaded a couple dozen of their own food packs into the other tub, and so we’re sharing a meal without actually, y’know, sharing meals. For myself, I grabbed a Salisbury steak meal with mashed potatoes and green beans.

I gave Cherry my cherry cobbler. All is apparently forgiven.

Author's Note

Still maintaining a one-day buffer. Couldn't go for two because I do a weekly streaming-radio show Wednesday nights (for more info, check http://dementiaradio.org ) and I have to prepare.

Lewis and Martinez are both military pilots, and odds are they've done some test pilot work. All the first three groups of astronauts were test pilots. They know what a crash site and a debris field looks like.

I hadn't planned on Watney to plant anything yet- in the original book that plan is still sols away- but the shock of seeing that the ponies have Earth food, plus the opportunity to grow something, has rushed affairs. Will the sprouts be viable? Can Watney force-multiply them into a crop large enough to support the ponies? Time will tell.

Dragonfly is intensely loyal to the hive and to CSP, so she's a bit biased.

There are structures in Acidalia Planitia (which isn't actually as pancake-flat as the novel portrays - Andy Weir was working from 1990s era orbital photos, and we have higher-quality ones now that show the cracked ancient ocean bed and thousands of little craters) that look like mud volcanoes on Earth. It's not totally impossible that they're live, occasionally spewing melted ice during the Martian summers, but it's not likely. Two of them are close enough to the coordinates given for Ares III in the novel that I decided to include it.

Mercury, Gemini and Apollo did not actually use six pounds per square inch of 100% oxygen for cabin pressure. They used FIVE PSI. Yes, Apollo used a 60/40 mix of oxygen/nitrogen at launch, but it replaced outgassed atmosphere with pure oxygen, so it was as close as never mind to 100% O2 by the time they got to lunar orbit.

Yes, Watney's Earth has Care Bears, but not MLP Gen1.

The durability of Amicitas isn't just a plot device to get the ponies down safely. It's a carryover from Kerbal Space Program, in which rocket and plane parts withstand forces that would rip them apart in real life... until, suddenly they fail, which always results in explosions, even parts that can't possibly explode, even in dead vacuum. In Changeling Space Program the logic is that everything is built to be changeling-proof, and that construction carried over to ESA projects like the Amicitas.

And Watney is lucky that Cherry Berry doesn't hold grudges.

Sol 9

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY FIVE
ARES III SOL 9

Starlight Glimmer ate her cheesy mushroom omelet with delight. She’d let the alien- Mahrq, she thought he called himself- have a little taste, and his eyes had gone wide with shock. That suited Starlight just fine, because as grateful as she was for his generosity with his food supplies, she was already tired of one bean-based item after another.

Maybe his species, whatever it was, depended on legumes. (He looked like a human from Sunset Shimmer's mirror world, but his coloring was all wrong and he wasn't skinny enough. Besides, the mirror world was supposed to be a secret.) Or maybe he just really, really liked them. That might explain why he stole all the remaining alfalfa salads and planted them in what looked like a Manehattan window-box made of clear plastic.

And what was he even doing with a window box in his little space base? He wasn’t using plants to clear carbon dioxide- he had a machine for that. He’d explained it using pictures on a whiteboard after pulling Dragonfly away from its controls… just as he’d done with the water machine… and the air purifying machine… and practically everything else that had a button, a switch, or a screen on it. The changeling had found them all that first night.

They needed to understand what their host was thinking- understand how he thought in general. Starlight Glimmer was certain of that, and she’d spent most of her enforced bed rest focused on that problem. So long as they were dependent on the strange biped, they needed to do their best to understand him…

… and when their food supplies ran out, they would be really, really dependent on him. And that subject needed to be brought up sooner rather than later.

“Cherry?” she asked, calling the mission commander’s attention from her bowl of cereal (Health Nut brand Frosted Mini-Haybales, with a single sad cherry lingering on top, being saved for last). “I think we need a crew meeting. Now, please.”

Cherry sighed, jamming her muzzle into her bowl and gulping down the remaining cereal, cherry and all. “Fine,” she said. “Everypony, huddle up by the bunks.”

Spitfire had already been next to Starlight, enjoying her usual power breakfast (scrambled eggs and alfalfa-seed muesli) as she watched over her patient. Fireball, who had been dithering between adding one of his limited supply of sapphires to his otherwise mostly ordinary pony-style breakfast and warning the alien away from his tiny hoard, left his breakfast on a worktable and walked over. Dragonfly, who had been watching Mahrq dividing up his own breakfast and putting a bit of it in the dome’s refrigerator, wandered over to them last, completing the group.

The alien noticed the gathering and reached for a whiteboard and marker. Starlight held up a hoof and shook her head, and Mahrq shrugged and returned his attention to breakfast. That was another mystery Starlight wanted to explore: why did the alien have such similar body language to the rest of them? Nopony really needed Dragonfly’s buzzed hints to know how he was feeling about something, and simple signals like yes and no and stop and don’t were perfectly clear between them.

“Okay, everypony,” Cherry Berry said, “Starlight has something she wants to talk with us about.”

“Er, yes,” Starlight said, bringing her attention back to the most urgent matter. “You did say the food stores on the ship were in good shape, right?”

“So far as I could tell, yeah,” Cherry Berry nodded. “The crash didn’t break anything there that I could find.”

“Right. So, follow me on this. We had lunch and dinner and then breakfast before the incident,” Starlight said. “And then dinner last night and breakfast this morning came from our supplies, and lunch again. So we’ve used up two days of rations for three ponies and a dragon, right?”

“I see where you’re going with this,” Cherry Berry said. “I’ve been worried about it too. Amicitas launched with thirty days’ rations for seven crew pre-packed, according to standard procedure.”

“Yeah, I nearly learned how important that was the hard way,” Fireball interrupted.

“Ahem.” Cherry shot the young dragon a look before continuing, “We replaced one set of thirty days with dragon-specific rations, but that still leaves us a pretty good surplus, right?”

Starlight shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. Look at the situation. We can’t talk to Cape Friendship or Horseton Space Center. We don’t really know where we are, and we couldn’t tell them if we did. That means…” She paused, suddenly realizing that saying help may never come was about the least helpful possible thing she could say. She edited it to, “We could be waiting for a really long time for rescue. At least as long as it takes to build a rescue ship.”

Cherry Berry nodded slowly. In addition to her astromare duties, she’d spent a lot of time overseeing rocket construction. “Okay. So we have to ration our food, is what you’re saying?”

“That’s not a problem for me,” Dragonfly said. “If you can spare me a couple heartfelt hugs a day, I’ll be fine on a bit of water.”

“Grrrr,” Fireball rumbled. “But it’s a big problem for the rest of us. I need at least a little gem content every day to stay healthy, and I can’t eat raw hay like you ponies can. So some of your food packs are useless to me, and all of my food packs are useless to you.”

“So you need more rocks,” Dragonfly hissed. “Go outside, there’s plenty of rocks.”

“Yeah, I could eat those.” Fireball’s voice rose, causing Mahrq to look up from his breakfast again. “And you ponies could eat fresh roadapples, too. How healthy would that be?”

“Eyuck,” Spitfire said, making a face. “I know what you mean, I read up on dragon first aid and all, but did you have to say that while I’m still eating?”

Fireball slumped, sighed, and muttered a not terribly sincere, “Sorry.” After a moment he added, “But you get my point. Dragons need gems. No substitutes.”

“How many sapphires do you have?” Starlight asked.

“Thirteen. I could eat all that for a single meal and still have room, but I need to space them out for when my food packs run out.” The dragon slumped a bit more, which looked all the more dramatic given his slender build, and added, “If I can stop myself from eating ‘em, that is.”

“Is that why you ate the alien food packs whole like that?” Starlight asked.

“Nah. The wrappers actually give me indigestion. I just wanted to freak out Monkeyboy over there.”

“So, not a substitute?”

“Not even close.”

“Right. That means Fireball begins to suffer malnutrition in about a moon unless we ration. Sooner if we depend too heavily on Mahrq’s food. As for the rest of us,” she added, “we began with what amounts to sixty days of full meals for the three of us, designed for full active days, as if we were spacewalking or re-entering every day, right?”

“That’s right,” Spitfire nodded, having crammed hard to learn the ins and outs of pony, changeling and dragon nutrition for the mission.

“We can cut that by a third- or a quarter at least- and if we restrict our physical activity, we should be fine,” Starlight said. “That would buy us fourteen or fifteen more days. But after that,” she sighed, “we’ll be totally dependent on our host. And I get the feeling he can’t afford to be so generous with us as he’s been these last three days.”

The others nodded. That first night, when the six of them had been drawing pictures to communicate, the alien had made it clear he’d originally arrived with five others of his species; that the storm had forced them all to leave; and that he’d been injured, lost, and left behind. He was now marooned and awaiting rescue. That was why the shipwrecked pony crew got bunks to sleep on, and why the alien had so much more food than he could eat at once… and it was also why he needed every bit of that food.

“I don’t see the problem,” Spitfire said. “Look, that thing he spends half his time typing on-“

“I think it’s a computer,” Dragonfly interrupted. “It kind of looks like my video games back home.”

“It might be,” Spitfire admitted, “or it might be two-way television, or something else, but whatever it is it’s way ahead of anything we can make back home. And the lights?” She pointed at the overhead canvas and network of plastic poles, all brilliantly lit by strings of tiny bulbs. “It even feels like sunlight! We can’t do that back home without magic! His people are obviously way ahead of us. Why don’t we just hitch a ride with him when he leaves? Just get on with it and ask him to take us with? Wherever he comes from, it can’t be more hostile than out there!” She pointed a hoof vaguely outwards.

“Spitfire, how long would it have taken us to make a round trip from Equus to Bucephalous without the Sparkle Drive?” Starlight asked. “Twilight and Dr. von Brawn told us this in training, you should know.”

“Best alignment of the planets? Six months round trip if we only do a fly-by,” Spitfire rattled off from memory. “Longer if we orbit. So? More advanced aliens!”

“We can’t assume that,” Starlight said. With a grunt of effort she wrapped Spitfire’s plastic spoon in her magic and lifted it up, setting it down again a few seconds later. “The ambient magic in this room, right now, is just enough for me to do that without tapping my reserves,” she said. “Between that and what Dragonfly reported, I’m thinking that this world- possibly this universe- doesn’t have a universal magic field. All it has is whatever magic energy is given off by life itself. And that isn’t enough to run the Sparkle Drive on, or anything like it. Which means rescue is at least months away.”

“Our suit systems work just fine,” Spitfire insisted.

“Those systems,” Dragonfly put in, “are specifically designed to run from a pony’s own magic field. They even work for changelings, and we leak very little magic, believe me. It doesn’t take much power at all to do that.”

“And I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Starlight said, “but your suits have been dipping into the EVA thruster batteries all the time we’ve been here. Our magic fields are weaker, too. They’re not strong enough even to run the suit systems alone.

“Back home we could stay in the suits for days, with air and water from the ground and everything else regenerating itself. Here? I recommend limiting EVAs to eight hours maximum. After that navigation and comms are dead until you recharge. And don't even think of using the thrusters.”

Fireball shrugged. “And where are we going to go?” he asked. “Walking for my health here doesn’t really appeal to me.”

“My point is this,” Starlight said. “We need to think long-term. All we have or ever will have is our ship, Mahrq’s base here and the junk the storm left behind, and whatever we can scavenge from this frozen Tartarus of a world. And we need to make it all stretch as long as possible, and use as little as possible as we can.”

“At least we’ll have plenty of air and water,” Cherry Berry said, “so long as our suit life support works.”

“And above all else,” Starlight continued, “we need to learn to communicate with our host. I have an idea for that,” she added, looking at Spitfire, “but it might mean another couple days of bed rest.” She turned her gaze to Cherry and added, “The next time somepony goes to the ship, we need to bring back one of the batteries. It should recharge here with all of us together, and we might need-“

Mahrq had disposed of his meal pack, and he was pulling one of the space suits from the recharging rack.

“Where’s he going?” Dragonfly asked. “He feels a bit worried and depressed.”

“I’ll ask,” Starlight said, pushing the lap-tray she had been using aside and dropping off her bunk onto all fours. “Spitfire, be ready to catch me.”

“What are you doing?” Spitfire asked in a tone that added, whatever it is, you shouldn’t.

“An adaptation of Bit Lead’s Universal Decryptor,” Starlight said, walking over to the alien. “The spell gives you the meaning of a coded message even if you haven’t got the code. I just have to broaden the parameters and make it two way. I just hope it works.”

“You’ll wind up back in that bunk,” Spitfire warned.

Starlight Glimmer ignored her. The whiteboard Mahrq had picked up earlier was still on a nearby worktable, as was the marker. Taking a deep breath, she ignited her magic, picked up the marker, and levitated it over to where Mahrq was slipping into his spacesuit, tapping him on the shoulder with it.

The alien flinched, looked behind him. His eyes widened as he saw the perfectly ordinary marker surrounded in a turquoise glow, as it floated back to where Starlight Glimmer stood and dropped back onto the worktable. Leaving his helmet behind and his suit only half-secured, he walked over to where she stood, sweating slightly and taking deep breaths.

She obviously had his full and undivided attention. She still didn’t understand his language, but she was pretty sure the first word out of his mouth was some form of How.

Okay, Starlight Glimmer. You’re the most powerful unicorn in Equestria. Deepest magical reserves known since Starswirl’s prime. You’re able to go horn to horn against an alicorn princess and win. You can do this.

I can do this.

I hope I hope I hope.

Her horn lit up again, this time a lot brighter, and the field enveloped both Starlight and the alien. The drain was intense from the start, and Starlight’s knees wobbled. Have to make this quick. “Can you understand me?” she asked. “Keep it simple- I can’t do this for long.”

The alien gabbled something, and overlaid on top of the nonsense Starlight heard the words, “How doing this you?”

Success! The spell would need refining, but success! “No time to explain,” she said. “Where are you going?”

More gabble. “Out the side. Stupid is you.”

Look who’s talking! No, that’s unfair, the answer was obvious. “Why?”

Gabble, gabble. “Looking for orbit plate. Radio breaking. Fix without cannot it.”

She was coming close to the end of her reserves. She had to cut off the spell or pass out. “Draw it, we’ll help,” she gasped, and then killed the spell, falling to her knees.

In an instant Spitfire was beside her, having leaped across the room. Yay, low gravity, Starlight thought idly as the Wonderbolt picked her up on her back and carried her back to the bunk.

Mahrq moved to follow, then stopped, picked up the whiteboard and marker again, and drew something quick and rough. He turned the whiteboard to show them.

Cherry recognized it first. “That’s a tracking dish,” she said.

“Parabolic radio antenna,” Dragonfly corrected, “but yeah.”

“He said his radio was broken,” Starlight said, still a bit shaky. “Spitfire, I’m fine. I didn’t trigger a magic exhaustion relapse.” But it had been a close thing. She had to find some way to reduce the power consumption of that spell. So much tweaking…

“You mean he’s not talking with his people?” Spitfire asked.

Starlight Glimmer sighed and allowed Spitfire to put her back in the bunk. It was easier than fighting it. “To be honest,” she said, “I don’t think his people even know he’s still here.”

HERMES – MISSION DAY 133

“Okay, everyone stand by,” Lewis said. “Martinez, once we lock cameras on the Hab, engage the roll program.”

“Roger,” Martinez said.

“Johannsen, Vogel, you have the cameras. Vogel, we want a survey of the site. Johannsen, focus on the Hab with the video camera. We want to know if there’s anything moving down there. It’s a long shot, but if the aliens are using the hab for shelter, it’s our best shot at getting pictures of them.”

“Ja, commander,” Vogel replied. Johannsen nodded.

Dr. Chris Beck, who had no role in what was about to happen, floated by the bridge doors with one hand on the railing and watched. For the first time in days, Ares III was a tightly functioning team again. Lewis had pulled completely out of her fugue, kicking ass and taking names, and everyone else’s morale had risen along with hers. And all it had taken was the possibility of live aliens on the surface.

Well… that, and the other possibility, but Martinez had warned Beck, and Beck had warned Vogel and Johannsen, not to bring it up around Lewis. That other possibility was now the eight hundred pound gorilla, or rather the one hundred seventy pound botanist, not on the bridge.

After yesterday’s brief glimpse of the rover approaching the alien crash site, Lewis had put together a plan and gained NASA’s approval. Hermes would be put into a slow forward tumble in its orbit, carefully calibrated to keep the cameras pointed at the landing site as long as possible. Today in particular Hermes’ sky-skimming orbit passed almost perfectly over the Hab, making it a better choice for focus than the alien ship, as eager as NASA was to get more images of the latter location.

“Video camera lock,” Johannsen reported. “Recording.”

“Stills camera lock,” Vogel reported. “Receiving data.” He looked at the pictures as they came in, just as Johannsen’s eyes were locked on the rapidly magnifying image on her own terminal.

“Pitch program engaged,” Martinez said from his station, as Hermes echoed with the soft thumps of attitude jets firing across the immense vessel. “Executed nominally. No corrections required.”

“Getting clear pictures of the antenna farm,” Vogel reported. “Is very scattered debris, rocks and sand. Total destruction.”

“Focused on the hab,” Johannsen said. “Rover 2 is parked by the recharging port near Airlock One. Rover 1 is still partially covered in sand.”

“MAV landing stage is intact,” Vogel reported. “MDV is missing- no. MDV moved laterally some two hundred meters. Obvious hull damage.”

“Two minutes to closest approach,” Martinez reported.

Beck couldn’t help smiling. This was almost how it had been before Sol 6. This was how a crew ought to function- especially a crew eight months from home.

“Movement!”

All heads turned to Johannsen, though Vogel’s turned right back to his own terminal as Johannsen continued, “Movement at Airlock One- somebody’s coming out!”

“Refocusing on Airlock One,” Vogel reported.

“One… two… three suits,” Johannsen reported. “One orange, two white. Two of them look… really odd…”

“One minute to closest approach,” Martinez said.

“The orange suit and one of the white suits seem long,” Vogel said, looking at the first pictures of the airlock. “Perhaps extra large backpacks? Very hard to see from above.”

“Fourth suit!” Johannsen said, followed by a gasp. “White and red! It’s one of ours!”

“On my screen,” Lewis ordered. Beck, uninvited, guided himself to the commander’s station so he could look over her shoulder. There, on the screen, a tiny dot reached even tinier arms towards the airlock controls, obviously keying the doors shut again.

“Mein Gott,” whispered Vogel.

“I knew it!!” Martinez cheered triumphantly.

“Mark,” Johannsen murmured.

Beck was right next to the commander, and thus he was the only one who heard her moan, “Oh God, I left him behind.”

“Minds on task, people,” he said, startling Lewis. “There’s a lot of pencil-pushers back on Earth who are going to want to see all of this.”

But it was too late. The mood was broken, and Beck could sense they were back to being five people instead of one team.

And for all he wanted to celebrate- hey, that was his best friend back from the dead!- he couldn’t help worrying about the others.

Especially Commander Lewis.

Author's Note

No, I'm not letting up on Lewis.

So yes, our first deliberate use of magic on Mars- and it's obviously not going to be the easy fix to everything. A running translation is obviously out of the question, though the quality of translation will get better with practice.

Mark didn't actually call Starlight stupid. "Out the side. Stupid is you." was how the spell renders, "Outside, duh." Even so, it's obvious Mark is not going to be joining the diplomatic corps as a second career.

Finally; wrote two chapters today, so I now have a two-day buffer. Which is good, because there's no way I can average 4,000 words a day every day once my convention season picks up again. The two chapters I wrote today, with breaks, took me six hours for 5300 words combined. Once I have other urgent work to do, that production level is going to drop like a brick. Sigh.

But I've not missed a day yet, so there's still hope.

Sol 10

LOG ENTRY – SOL 10

It’s a shame the History Channel changed its name to RealTV. I have the perfect concept for a show: the Psychic Aliens Show. (Because as we all know, psychic aliens are responsible for everything, from the Egyptian pyramids to the Indian pyramids to the Mayan pyramids to Stonehenge to the Nazca Lines to why the Bulls have sucked rocks ever since Michael Jordan’s final retirement.)

And the best part is: we could film it all right here in the Hab!

Sorry, but I’m still just overwhelmed by the stuff I told you about in yesterday’s entry. At least one of the aliens has telekinesis and some form of telepathy that translates their language. But I’ve gotta say, the translator is a long way from Star Trek. For one thing, here’s a transcript of my chat this morning with Magica, which lasted about ninety seconds before she fell over again:

MAGICA: Healthy sunrise. Where we?

WATNEY: This is the Hab, mission Ares Three, in Acidalia Planitia, on Mars.

MAGICA: (shakes head adorably, probably got a long string of absolute gibberish) Identity yours?

WATNEY: My name is Mark Watney. Call me Mark. What’s your name?

MAGICA: (gives me a funny look) You identified on behalf of planet? (Note: I’d forgotten, but I looked it up as a kid, and sure enough, “Mark” comes from the Latin Marcus, ‘dedicated to Mars’. Nobody knows what Watney means.)

WATNEY: (shakes head) What are your names?

MAGICA: (points to self) Starwhite Mirage. (points to Cherry) Very Cherry. (points to Fireball) Slobberflame. (points to Puff Brannigan) Ball of Fire. (points to Buggy) Flying Dragon.

WATNEY: (sighs, because nothing can ever be easy, can it?) I’m going back out to try one more time to find the comms dish and see what I can do with the antenna farm.

MAGICA: Okay. Help we. (falls over, translation ends)

And in exchange for that incredible insight into alien language, psychology, and mental prowess, Fireball (the fuzzy one) gave me the ugliest looks for the whole damn day. This time she went out with me and Puff (or Fireball, or whatever- Macho Lizard) for the final search for the missing dish, I think to make sure I stayed the fuck away from Magica.

But seriously, let’s talk about names for a minute. Starwhite Mirage? Very Cherry? Those make as much sense as Mark Watney, I get that. The psychic translator probably just had an advanced-aliens brain fart. (If sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, what does that make a sufficiently advanced brain fart?) But Slobberflame? Who would name their daughter anything like that? And Ball of Fire- or Fireball? Yes, it’s a good name for a dragon, I admit that, but it’s inconvenient that his name just happens to be what I’m calling the flame-pony. And Flying Dragon? Why is that a name for a bug, when there’s an actual dragon right here?

Yes, I know, I’m ranting about silly things. The sad thing is, it’s the most productive thing I’ve done today.

It’s time to face facts: the dish is gone, and the communications array, all of it, is trashed beyond repair. I could wire the remaining pieces together, but there’s no point. There’s not enough bits of the array to pick up a signal from Earth all put together. The thing had a lot of pieces and took up a lot of ground for good reason.

And I could make a replacement dish from scrap around the Hab, but that’s not the big problem. When the dish sheared off it took the motor with it- the motor that points the thing at Earth and keeps it pointed there while Earth and Mars move and rotate. Even if I could replace that, and I can’t, the aiming software for the antenna wouldn’t know what to do with it.

I’ll have to ask my new friends if they have help on the way, but otherwise I’m on my own, which means it’s time to think long-term survival.

Thankfully the Hab itself is perfectly intact after the storm, as is everything inside it. I have air, water, food and shelter for a good long time. I can even share all the veggie meals with my new herbivorous friends and still have over two hundred sols of food without rationing.

The problem: it’s four years until Ares IV shows up. The math is a little complicated, but it works out like this: four years is a fuckton more than two hundred sols. Metric or imperial fuckton, it doesn’t matter, because I’ll be over a thousand sols dead either way.

Of course, if NASA doesn’t know I’m still alive, Ares IV won’t be prepared to rescue me. And Ares IV sure as hell won’t be ready to rescue five aliens, assuming Big Momma Alien hasn’t already come to take them home.

So I have two major priorities: restore communications with Earth, and find some way to keep eating until Ares IV arrives. Once I solve those, I can solve the third problem: getting to Schiaparelli Crater, where the Ares IV MAV is. It’s about 3200 kilometers away, and the current maximum range of my rovers is 35 kilometers.

Your homework for tonight, class, is to do the math and tell me how well that works. Be sure to show your proofs step by step.

In the meantime I’m going to start rationing food- actually I already began yesterday. Our meal packs are calibrated to provide plenty of energy for highly active astronauts in a hostile environment. That means they have a lot more calories than a bare survival level, and a lot more protein than you’d normally need on Earth. That’s good, because although I have all the vitamins I’ll ever need thanks to the medical stores, I am really going to need protein and calories for the long haul to keep from starving or wasting away in Mars’s subtly lethal 0.4 g.

If I restrict my physical activity to only the absolutely essential effort- only the stuff that keeps me alive- I can cut my rations to three-quarters without suffering any serious ill effects. In particular I need to put some protein aside for rainy days. If I were alone that would extend my food supplies to about Sol 400.

I need to figure out a simple way to explain this to my guests in less than a minute. I don’t think it’ll take too much explaining. They have a lot less food than I do, even if Buggy still refuses to eat more than a bread scrap or two off my plate. (And I think she was only humoring me doing that. She’s obviously trying to act adorable for my benefit. The scary thing is, it’s working.)

But rationing the food packs isn’t going to be enough. I’m working on a plan for that, and those alfalfa sprouts I put in the experimental soil are just the start of it. Half a cubic meter of loose Earth topsoil is not going to feed six people for four years no matter what you plant in it. I’m going to need more.

And I have an idea for how to get more… though I think my guests really aren’t going to like it.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY SIX

Ponies, changeling and dragon looked at the large plastic sample tub, at the recycled and already rather grody sponge wipe sitting on a smaller closed tub next to it, and at the picture the alien- Martian Redbarrel? What a bizarre name- had drawn on the whiteboard.

The picture was very graphic, very disgusting, and very obvious in its meaning.

Still, despite that, and despite the language barrier, Cherry Berry spoke for her entire crew when she asked the question.

“You want us to whaaaaat?”

Author's Note

Yeah, the second time I read The Martian I caught the bit about assuming that astronaut meals are the same 2000 calories as the recommended daily allowance for an average, mostly sedentary human being. They're not. They're REALLY not.

Interesting note: one of the reasons the Japanese Army during World War II had a hard time against smaller numbers of American soldiers was supply. In World War II American soldiers had a diet of 4,150 calories per man per day. German and British soldiers averaged 4,000 per day, and Italian and Russian solders between 3000 and 3500 per day.

Japan provided their soldiers an average of only 1,000 calories per day and made them forage for the rest. There are multiple cases of Japanese garrisons either growing their own food or enslaving natives to grow it for them. The entire army was either looting or on the brink of starvation, depending on where they were stationed- and that was BEFORE America ditched its defective torpedo warheads and our anti-shipping campaign actually became effective in 1943. After that it got much, much worse- to the point that some banzai charges weren't so much about honor or glory as getting rid of soldiers the generals simply couldn't feed any more.

I learned this just a couple years ago, and ever since then I've had a greater respect for just how important diet is to anyone with a really active lifestyle...

... and believe it or not, astronauts burn a lot more calories in space than on Earth. Zero gravity is hard. Spacewalking is really, really hard. So NASA's diets run between 3200 and 3500 calories per day- not the 2000 Andy Weir used in the book.

If the Mars rations had really been 2000, and Mark Watney cut them down to 1500, and then spent almost the entire last 120 days of his time on Mars eating nothing but potatoes and vitamins, he would have looked like a concentration camp prisoner on VJ Day when he got rescued- assuming he survived the 12G launch at all in his weakened condition. A lot of other fanfics have made that point, some in gruesome detail.

So, I make a minor correction here, which incidentally allows Watney the same level of health the book gave him. And, most likely, I'll never mention it again.

This is the shortest chapter yet. There will probably be shorter chapters in the future, especially as I have other things I need to do. The one I wrote today is one such. But I'll try to make 'em all worth reading.

Sol 12

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY EIGHT
ARES III SOL 12

“Spitfire,” Starlight Glimmer said, the sound of fraying nerves popping through her low-toned voice, “if you try to put me back in bed I will bucking well use my last ounce of magic reserves to throw you through the airlock. Without opening it!”

“Spitfire, please, back off a bit,” Cherry Berry said, stepping between the other two ponies. “And Starlight, I know you’re tired, but we shouldn’t argue in front of Mark.”

Once nudged to neutral corners, the pegasus and the unicorn mumbled brief apologies. Cherry let out a sigh of relief. I’m so not cut out for this, she thought. I fly the ship. That’s all I do, I fly the ship. I’m not a leader!

She so wanted another cherry just then. She’d had one fifteen minutes before. She now had fifty-two left, and once gone there would be no others, and she’d had her one for the day, but how she so very badly wanted one. In truth she wanted a whole basket, enough to wash the stress of being a fake leader away. But even one would steady her nerves.

But no. There would be bad days in the future when there were no cherries left. And they wouldn’t keep forever in the human’s ice box, so sometime in the next week or two she would probably have to scarf them all anyway. So she needed to learn to handle life without cherries.

Life without cherries. It hardly seemed worth the effort.

Focus. Everypony’s looking at you, even Mark. They’re waiting on you, Cherry. “What did he say, Starlight?”

“He says alfalfa and potatoes,” Starlight said. “He’s a farmer- at least I think he said he’s a farmer. He said he had parts of plants and tinkering. For some reason he thinks that will make it work, but our alfalfa sprouts and seeds and his fresh potatoes are the only viable crops he can find.”

“So, is he going to go out and plant them today?” Cherry asked.

“No. ‘Need plan,’ he said, so I’m guessing he’s going to stay in today.” Starlight Glimmer’s mouth curled into a frown as she added, “He also said he’s working on a plan to move the ship.”

“What??”

“That ship’s not going anywhere!” Spitfire insisted.

“It’s half buried in the ground!” Fireball added.

“And there’s a break in the rear quarter that could make the whole back of the ship fall off!” Dragonfly finished.

“That’s what he said!” Starlight snapped. “And it makes sense, too. We can’t keep going miles back and forth every day, especially if we’re going to limit EVAs to eight hours or less. We lose over an hour just for the round trip!”

“But it’s impossible without magic!” Spitfire insisted.

“Then we’ll just have to use magic,” Starlight Glimmer said, smiling. “Both the emergency mana batteries still work. They’re up to just over one percent charge now. If we all spend the day here doing nothing, and if I push magic into one of them-“

“What is WRONG with you??” Spitfire shouted. “Are you TRYING to kill yourself? Every day you cast that spell to talk with Mark, you get mostly nonsense back, and end up flat on your flank! You need to rest, for Faust’s sake!!”

“Spitfire,” Cherry Berry said, bringing the Wonderbolt to attention.

“No, let her talk,” Starlight Glimmer said. “She has a point. But I can’t rest.” She forced herself to stand a bit straighter, to pretend she wasn’t as tired as she obviously was. “Look at all the things our host has! Machines to make this place livable! Cameras and recording devices and computers unimaginably superior to our own! Power tools and spare equipment-“

“Yeah,” Dragonfly butted in, “and the only time he was ever angry at me was when I found his tools and began poking through them. I just wanted to see what I could recognize.”

“And what do we bring to the table?” Starlight asked. “A pile of alfalfa seeds, a broken spaceship, and magic. Dragon magic. Changeling magic. Pegasus magic. Earth pony magic. And unicorn magic. That’s all we have. Spitfire’s right that we don’t have much, and that we risk hurting ourselves if we use it. But if we don’t use it at all, we die. That’s all there is to it.”

The group went silent, so silent that Mark got out of his chair and walked over to them, an inquisitive look on his strange flat face.

“Is that the deal?” Cherry Berry finally asked.

“That’s the deal,” Starlight said flatly, her temporary energy burned out, as she finally allowed her rump to touch the cool Hab floor. “No magic, no ponies. As it is, I think Mark would have a better chance at survival if we weren’t here at all.” She stared Spitfire in the eyes as she added, “We have an obligation to do everything possible to be less of a burden on him.”

Cherry Berry tried to keep her face blank, but in her head she thought: Wow. I think I know how she persuaded all those ponies to give up their cutie marks now.

Spitfire was the first to break eye contact, but only for a moment. “My official duty,” she said slowly, “is to ensure the health of the crew of Amicitas.”

“Precisely my point,” Starlight began again, but Cherry Berry put a hoof on her shoulder. It was time to stop this.

“Okay, that’s all I need to hear,” the pink earth pony said. “Spitfire, if any of us shows actual symptoms of magic exhaustion, you can make us take a break. But we’re going to use Starlight’s plan.” There. Decision made. Cherry turned to Starlight and said, “So what is your plan?”

“Life generates a magic field,” Starlight said. “The more life, the more magic. Growing crops means a lot more life and a lot more magic, so we want to help Mark as much as possible with that.”

“But how is he going to grow anything?” Fireball asked, waving a clawed hand at the airlock. “That isn’t exactly central Fillynois out there!”

“I don’t know,” Starlight admitted. “I’ll ask him when I get a chance. But he’s going to need a lot more compost to make it happen.” She looked straight at Cherry Berry as she said this, leaning a little forward on her forehooves.

“What are you looking at me for?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Earth pony magic,” Starlight replied.

“What? What does that…” The light dawned. “Oh no. Ooooooooh, no. Nononononono.”

“You’re an earth pony. You have a unique connection with the soil.”

“Growing cherries is not my special talent! Eating cherries is my special talent! That was why I left the family farm!”

“But you can still make things grow, right?”

“Well… kind of, yeah,” Cherry admitted. “But nothing like other ponies!”

“Better than any of us?”

Cherry looked around, sighed, and slumped in defeat. “But I hate messing with night soil!” she moaned.

“Twilight tells me you used to do it all the time,” Starlight said. “When you used to do all those odd jobs around Ponyville.”

“But then I was chasing a dream!” Cherry insisted. “My dream of flying!”

“Well, now we’re all chasing a dream,” Starlight replied. “A dream of not dying. So put on your big-horse saddle and get composting.”

“You did say,” Fireball chipped in, his voice dripping with amusement, “that we’re going to use Starlight’s plan.”

“Well… shoot,” Cherry Berry swore.

“Close,” Dragonfly said, and everypony, even Cherry, chuckled at that.

“But we need to keep at least two ponies here,” Starlight said. “I’ll go with Mark and take one battery with me. I think I can get the ship out of the hole if we can get a twenty percent charge to start with. But the other battery needs to be here recharging, and the more ponies present, the better.”

“Not it,” Dragonfly said immediately.

“Double not it,” Fireball added.

“You’ll need me to lower the landing gear,” Dragonfly continued, “and to fix the wheels if they’re broken.”

“I’m the strongest one here,” Fireball said. “I can help dig out the ship, at least. But I’d probably sterilize the cra... the compost.”

Starlight looked at the two of them, then at Spitfire. “I wanted Spitfire with me,” she said at last. “She’s not wrong about the risk. And… I’m not very good at judging risk.”

The Wonderbolt considered this, then shook her head. “They’re both right,” she said, shaking her head towards Dragonfly and Fireball. “You’ll need them to move the ship. I’ll help with the KP.” She smiled a little and added, “Usually I’m handing out the punishment details, not taking them.”

Cherry Berry let out her breath. Thank Faust for crises that averted themselves. If only all their arguments dissolved that easily. She so hated when these conflicts popped up. If she were in a flying machine, any flying machine, she’d know exactly what to do. Otherwise… otherwise she just wanted a princess to show up, or even Queen Chrysalis on a good day, to tell her and everypony else what to do.

Look at Spitfire. She was backing down to prevent conflict and taking responsibility. She’d been a leader for years. She knew how to handle fractious ponies. Okay, there was her short temper and lack of patience with civilians… and all four of the others were either civilians or Dragonfly…

Or Starlight Glimmer! She knew what needed to be done, and she could persuade the other ponies to do it! Okay, so she once persuaded a whole village into giving up their individuality and making her their supreme leader… and she thought magic was the solution to absolutely everything, like the time she swapped the princesses’ cutie marks… or brainwashed Twilight’s friends… or almost destroyed all of space and- yeah, maybe not…

And what about Fireball? He’s big… and loud… and large… and really surly and grumpy all the time… and, well, not Fireball then.

And Dragonfly? Intelligent, experienced, tough… flighty, adrenalin-addicted, so self-centered it was a miracle they didn’t need to account for her ego in orbital trajectory calculations…

Oh, buck me, I really am stuck with this job, aren’t I?

“Okay, if we’re agreed,” she said, “I’ll go get the markers and show Mark what we intend to do.”

“Tell him about the landing gear!” Dragonfly insisted. “We never dropped them, and the wheel well covers are reinforced for re-entry heat. They’re probably still good!”

New crisis, Cherry Berry thought. How do I draw a picture that says our spaceship probably doesn’t have a flat tire?

Author's Note

Another short one; I had to go grocery shopping after writing this one.

Not much to add here, except to point out that Imposter Syndrome is a thing. Neil Gaiman has a story about how he discovered that Neil Armstrong suffered from it: "Look at all these people. They've created and discovered such wonderful things. I just went where they told me to go."

Cherry Berry isn't flying things anymore, and so she feels very much out of her depth.

Sols 13-15

HERMES – MISSION DAY 138

The image of Mitch Henderson appeared on all the workstations on the bridge for the second time in about eight minutes.

“Mitch Henderson here,” he said. “Commander Lewis, we’ve already taken into account your arguments about the durability of Hermes and the superiority of the pictures you’re taking over anything the satellites can perform. And believe me when I say this was a very hard decision to take. But Mr. Sanders and Dr. Kapoor have decided that the ongoing risk to Hermes is no longer worth the images you’re getting.”

The flight director took a deep breath and added, “And I have to say I agree fully with this decision. It might be different if we could use Hermes and the MAV as a combined communications platform, but yesterday’s experiment shows that it just won’t work. The range is too great, and either Watney’s rover can’t receive or he’s turned the radio off to save power. Either way, we feel further monitoring of Acidalia can be conducted adequately by the survey satellites, and that top priority is now bringing you and Hermes home.”

Mitch leaned into the camera for this part. “I fully agree with you that an astronaut’s whole career is about risk. And I admire your willingness to continue to risk your lives for Watney and his guests. But you’re also risking Hermes, and the best chance we have for rescuing Watney requires Hermes intact, functional, and back in Earth orbit for refit. The sooner we do that, the better prepared we’ll be to rescue Watney.

“That’s not saying that you’re unimportant. We’re bringing you back because your lives are our top priority. But if we put Watney’s life ahead of yours, we’d still make the same decision. That’s what I’m saying.”

Mitch took a deep breath and leaned back. “At the top of the hour Houston time we’ll be transmitting the trajectory programs for the two orbital burns required to raise Hermes back to a safe circular orbit,” he said. “After that you’ll set the MAV to satellite mode and deploy it, and then begin your Earth injection orbit burn, which we’ll send you once you acknowledge receipt of the orbit adjustment programs. Charlie will be back in the CAPCOM seat for those.

“We know you want to help, but facts are facts. You can’t get back down to Watney. Watney can’t get back up to you. The Ares IV MAV won’t make enough fuel for even the missed orbit emergency scenario until at least Sol 443, and Watney can’t reach it right now anyway. And you can’t talk to Watney. You’ve done what you can. It’s time to come home.”

Mitch’s lips moved for a second or two longer, as if he wanted to say something else, but all that came out in the end was, “Henderson out.”

The video ended.

Vogel sighed and leaned back in his seat. “So,” he said, “we tried.” He hadn’t expected Lewis’s protest to change NASA’s decision, but he’d been silently impressed at how much passion she’d put into her message while remaining quiet, clinical and professional in her speech. Vogel approved; it was almost German.

And, truth be told, he wanted to stay longer himself… if only… if only…

“There should be something we can do,” Johannsen murmured.

“You know there isn’t,” Martinez said, slapping the armrest of his flight seat. “We’re separated just as much as the rich man from Lazarus.”

“It bought us one more pass,” Lewis said at last. “Cameras ready?”

“Video camera all green,” Johannsen said.

“Stills camera ready,” Vogel said.

“Closest pass in seven minutes… mark,” Martinez reported.

“Focus on the crash site,” Lewis said. “Mark was out there yesterday. That’s our best chance to find him… and say goodbye.”

“Not goodbye,” Vogel said, and to his own surprise his normally soft voice came out with a harder edge than he’d intended. He forced himself to relax as he added, “Say auf Wiedersehen. Until next we meet.”

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 10
ARES III SOL 14

“You know,” Fireball admitted to his copilot for the day, “I never thought I’d be using this seat again.”

Through a lot of digging and a truly idiotic display of unicorn stubbornness, what was left of Amicitas had been pulled from the Martian surface the previous day. For a wonder the landing gear had been mostly intact, with only one tire requiring an emergency repair. Cranking the gear down had taken the whole morning, with Fireball helping lift one corner of the ship after another while the alien stink-ape and Dragonfly worked the manual cranks.

Even with Starlight Glimmer trying to help lift again with her telekinesis (again? As if yesterday hadn’t been enough), there was still a little charge left in the mana battery, so Dragonfly had reinstalled it into the ship. The mana-to-electric converter still worked, but they’d shut down absolutely every system on the ship, working or not, to spare power for the one system they didn’t shut off: the steering system for the front landing gear.

Now they crawled along behind the ape’s little scooty-car. To be fair, the rover was towing something so many times its own weight that even Fireball, for all his contempt for the alien, was almost impressed. Almost. Actual impressedness failed because, apparently, the combined car and spaceship couldn’t move any faster than Crackle after she ran her head into a stalagmite… again.

Something plugged Fireball’s sinuses, and he mustered up a tiny bit of flame to clear them out. Am I actually missing Crackle? he asked himself. This place is getting to me.

“What’s wrong?” Dragonfly asked from the copilot position.

“Nothing,” Fireball lied. “Just the scenery reminds me of home. Nothing important.”

“Not me,” Dragonfly said. “The Badlands are desert, but at least it’s an indifferent desert. This place actively hates us.”

“You’re imagining things,” Fireball grumbled.

“I don’t know,” Dragonfly said, the changeling never taking her eyes off the rover ahead of and below them. “The queen always says that when she’s in orbit she can feel something that loves her unconditionally. I never got that. But here I can feel this… this…” The changeling’s face scrunched in concentration. “I guess it’s like a whisper, or maybe a really thin haze of pure hate. We don’t belong here. We aren’t wanted.”

“That suits me fine,” Fireball said. “I don’t like this place very much either, and I’m leaving first chance we get.”

“I wonder if Bucephalous is like this?” Dragonfly muttered.

“But what I was saying,” Fireball said, not liking the touchy-feely direction Dragonfly wanted to go with the conversation, “was this looks like a lot of the dragon lands. It just needs a couple more cliffs and some volcanoes, and some breathable air, and it’d be just like home.”

“Amicitas, Starlight Glimmer.” The suit communications systems, being totally magical, wouldn’t talk to the alien’s electronics, but suit to suit communications among Amicitas’s crew functioned perfectly. “Rock ahead on the right side. Mark’s steering left.”

“Amicitas copies steer left,” Fireball replied, nudging the flight stick. The sudden sound of the motors that rotated the front landing gear echoed through the otherwise silent ship.

“While I’m on,” Starlight added, “suit battery check. Forty percent here.”

Fireball checked his. “Fifty-two percent.”

“Thir… that can’t be right!” Dragonfly tapped her own visor, but the projected numbers didn’t change. “Thirty-one percent here, Starlight.”

“Roger. I’ll tell Mark we need to abort the tow and return to his base in one hour.”

“Starlight, how much farther is it?” Fireball asked.

“I can’t read Mark’s controls yet. At a guess, we’re a little more than halfway there. Straighten wheels.”

“Straightening wheels,” Fireball reported.

“Thirty-one percent,” Dragonfly muttered. “And I’ve been doing the least work of the three of us.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Fireball chuckled. “Got the munchies for juice instead of love?”

“Don’t laugh,” Dragonfly said. “To us changelings it’s one and the same thing. And it’s not like I get much of a snack off of you.”

Fireball laughed anyway. “So why do you keep hanging around me anyway?” he asked. “If you’re not playing with that ape, it seems like you’re my shadow.”

“I spend time with everyling,” Dragonfly replied. “But you don’t. You keep your distance from everyone.”

“Yeah, I do,” Fireball grumbled, “I don’t particularly like any of you. I think you’re all nuts.”

“Even the alien?”

“Especially the alien. No dragon would keep giving his limited food to strangers.”

“He is kinda pony-like, isn’t he?” Dragonfly said.

Fireball thought about this. The alien smiled a lot, he kept trying to talk to people who didn’t understand him, he didn’t give a toss about gems (and that, in Fireball’s book, was pure insanity), and he seemed to enjoy tinkering with broken things and playing in mud. “Now that you say it,” he said, “I can kinda see it, yeah.”

“Crazy like the rest of ‘em.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“And we non-ponies gotta stick together.”

Now that Fireball wasn’t necessarily on-board with. “Is that why you keep bothering me?” he asked.

“Mm,” Dragonfly hummed, and her suit’s thruster pack shook as her wings vibrated unconsciously under her suit. “It’s more that you look lonely, and out of all of us, you dislike me the least.”

“Well… um, yeah.” Darn it. The bug had steered the conversation into downtown Feelingsville anyway. “I owe you. I owe you big time.” He smirked a bit and added, “I might even actually like you if you weren’t crazier than all the ponies put together.”

“I resemble that- oh, no,” Dragonfly moaned. “Not another bucking one.”

In front of the rover another shallow gully stretched across their path.

“Starlight, Amicitas,” Fireball said, “applying brakes.”

“Thanks, Amicitas,” Starlight said. “You know the drill.”

“Yeah, I know,” Fireball grumbled. “We’ve only done it three times today. Ohhh, my back.” As the ship went from crawling speed to dead stop behind the rover, he added, “Whose bright idea was it to make the landing wheels on this thing so bucking small?”

“Pony ideas,” Dragonfly hissed as she shut off the power.

LOG ENTRY – SOL 15

I think that might have been the worst three days of my life.

It took three days of incredible hard work and concentration, but we finally got the alien ship back to the Hab. The morning of Sol 13, I didn’t think we could do it. The morning of Sol 14, I could see how we were going to do it. And by the time we got back to the Hab, I was wondering why we were doing it.

And let me be plain, what we accomplished was a miracle. Only the alien obsession with making their ship as unbreakable as possible and damn the weight kept the landing gear intact and deployable. Even so, without Macho Dragon and Starlight, we’d still be shoveling dirt and rocks with our hands. (Yes, hands. I have a couple of rock and soil sampling tools, but they aren’t built for moving large amounts of material. For removing loose debris, hands turned out to be faster.)

First… I should probably treat Fireball with more respect. He is so much stronger than he looks. I don’t even want to think about how many tons that ship weighs, but time and again he was able to pick up the nose or one fin just high enough for long enough for someone else to wedge a rock underneath or crank down those landing gear. If he offers to arm-wrestle me, I’m going to pretend I sprained my wrist. I just hope he doesn’t start demanding my lunch money. I can’t take that kind of wedgie.

And then there’s Starlight, my little psychic horsie genius. I found out during this trip that I’ve been spending a week and more living with Yoda and Captain Caveman wearing a two-man horse costume.

On Sol 13 we’d spent half our EVA time shoveling rubble and getting nowhere when Starlight hauls out one of those boxes salvaged from their ship and says the alien equivalent of, “Hold my haybale, I got this.” And then she lights up her psychic power and picks up that huge ship just like Luke’s X-Wing, I shit you not.

And then, just as the ship is in the air and turning its nose our way, the sparkly light flickers, and I can just hear Captain Caveman saying, “unga-bunga- magic power give out,” and the ship drops at a glorious slo-mo 3.7 meters per second per second right back onto the dirt. (You want to know how loud a sound has to be for you to hear it in the thin Martian atmosphere? That loud.) And then we carry her back to the rover and drive back to the Hab to let her sleep it off.

And then she got to do it again, and again, and again, and so did Fireball, all the way back to the Hab. It’s only ten kilometers, but it ended up taking us most of two sols.

Why, you ask? First, because I couldn’t use the rover’s built-in towhook. The towhook assembly is specifically designed so the two rovers can link together. In addition to mechanical clamps it includes power cords and air hoses so they can share electricity and life support. It was designed that way in case one rover broke down on an EVA. But the practical upshot is that there’s a lot of things there designed to withstand the kind of forces produced by towing one rover’s mass across the Martian surface.

At a very rough guess, the alien ship weighs anywhere between twelve and twenty times as much as one rover. So after about ten seconds of careful and deliberate consideration I said “fuck it” and decided to tie the tow ropes directly to the rover’s frame.

Now, rope of the kind you would buy at your local hardware store was not considered a mission-critical supply by NASA’s mission planners, an oversight I hope you historians of the future will correct for future interplanetary missions. I didn’t have any.

But I did have a lot of power cable of various lengths as redundant replacements for practically everything, from solar panels to field equipment to Hab systems. I was going to braid them together for strength and use them to tow the ship, but it turned out I didn’t need to. The aliens apparently had emergency parachutes as a fail-safe. I think the ones they used during landing automatically detached and blew away during the storm. But they were so crazy-prepared that they actually had duplicate parachutes on board the ship so the chutes could be re-packed for future use! Even NASA doesn’t go that far.

That gave me all the rope I needed, though it’s really weird rope. The substance it’s made out of feels all rubbery. It kind of looks like rubber too- black with ugly green streaks running through it. But it doesn’t get brittle like rubber would in the dry, freezing Martian environment, and it was plenty strong once I found tie-off points inside the front landing gear well.

But let’s face it, it was still rope and not a proper trailer hitch, and the only thing securing rover and ship together was some knots based on what I remembered from Boy Scouts and astronaut survival training. No way I could risk top speed in that.

So, that was the first problem. The second problem? Power. I’m lucky we’re in Acidalia Planitia, which is mostly flat. If we’d had any serious long upgrades to navigate- or worse yet, downgrades- it would have been game over. The rover’s four wheels each have their own electric motors that put out incredible torque, but they were working to overcome absurd amounts of inertia. And inertia is a constant. Earth gravity or Mars gravity, doesn’t matter, it’s the same either place.

So I spun the wheels a lot until I kind of learned just how to feather the accelerator. And since we couldn’t rely on the alien ship’s brakes to be reliable, once we got started at all, we didn’t dare move more than about one kilometer an hour.

Which brings us to the third problem: wheels. The rover is a big, jacked-up vehicle with a high ground clearance and independent suspension that enables it to drive across or even over some pretty large rocks without trouble. The wheels are 1.3 meters tall each.

The alien ship’s landing gear, on the other hand, are about half that- smaller than the tires you’d see on an eighteen-wheeler, and way smaller than the tires on a jet liner or the old Space Shuttle. And although the rear landing gear were just barely long enough to allow the wheels to drop out, the front landing gear is long and spindly by comparison, and I don’t care what kind of unobtanium they use to build their ship, hitting even a small rock square with that would ruin your day.

Thankfully, somehow or other, the dragon and the bug were able to get their ship’s steering working, which made dodging rocks easier. But it also meant I couldn’t go very fast, because I had to steer around rocks I normally wouldn’t give a second thought about to keep the ship on flat, solid ground.

And that brings us to the last, and worst, problem: the surface.

From a distance Acidalia looks flat as a pancake. It’s one of the least cratered regions of Mars. We specifically landed here not far from Mawrth Valles because it’s part of an ancient alluvial fan, where runoff from Arabia Terra flowed into what was once Mars’s biggest ocean and deposited all sorts of sediments.

But the thing is, that ocean dried up when Mars froze. And just like you see pictures of cracked soil like in all the news coverage of the Second Dust Bowl, when Acidalia dried up it cracked too… on a huge scale. So today the surface is large sections of almost perfectly flat ground (save for a crater or two and the resulting ejecta) broken up by broad but (thankfully) shallow ravines. The banks are about a meter tall on average, and the exposed soil is really crumbly. That surprised me, considering how solid the surface is under the top layer of loose dust and sand, but then I wasn’t the mission geologist. Lewis was.

The rover alone can handle those gullies without even slowing down. (25 kilometers per hour top speed, remember? I could pedal a dirt bike faster than the rover.) But towing the alien ship? Not a chance in Hell.

We crossed ten of the things between the Hab and Site Epsilon, and without Super Lizard and Captain Caveyoda the first one would have been the last. Every time we had to stop, carefully plan the descent into the ravine to keep the alien ship from rolling over, tow it as close as we could to the other bank, untie the rover, run the rover up the far bank, and retie the rover. And then, with Fireball pushing from behind and Starlight using the Force to lift the ship’s nose until the front landing gear cleared the rim, we hauled the thing up through all that loose, wheel-grabbing soil. Then we’d carry our little unicorn heroine back to the rover to recover and spend another hour or so creeping along the Martian surface to the next gully, at which point we started all over again.

We didn’t even consider doing it all in one go. We came back to the Hab every night to recharge the rover and the EVA suits, not to mention us. We really needed it. Thank God it’s over. Now, instead of driving the rover for half an hour to reach the alien ship, we can walk just past the solar farm to the north- three minutes of EVA at most.

Starlight’s in her bunk now, and Spitfire looks like she’s considering tying her to it. I don’t think that would slow her down much. Between lifts she rode with me in the rover. She didn’t use her mind-meld on me at all the last three days- probably saving herself for all the lifting- but she smuggled a whiteboard and marker onto the rover on Sol 14 for communication.

The good thing about driving at one kilometer per hour on Mars is, you’re highly unlikely to hit a dog or something when you aren’t paying attention to the road. So when Starlight and I weren’t reinventing hieroglyphs, we began teaching each other math.

That’s where things get really weird. Because not only do the aliens have Earth food, they have Earth numbers.

Well, close enough, anyway. Their 2 and 3 are slightly different, using sharp angles instead of curves. But it’s still a base-10 counting system using recognizably Indo-Arabic numerals. Their basic mathematical operators are the same. We had to get into calculus before some of the symbols became different, and even then they have some close variation on the Greek alphabet. She recognized most of what I was doing and jumped ahead of me a lot.

It didn’t work the other way. She threw several things at me that I didn’t recognize and still don’t. Apparently they were advanced enough concepts that explaining them through simple pictures wasn’t going to work, because every time we hit that point Starlight would move on to something else.

I took a photo of the last board full of math. Half of it is a circle surrounding a seven-pointed star. It looks like something you’d use to summon a demon with, if you were willing to sell your soul for an A in trigonometry. Instead of runes it’s full of equations using symbols only half of which are even vaguely familiar with me. However many years it is before you find this log, o intrepid reader, I suspect it’ll be at least that long again before anybody on Earth understands this.

But that’s all over with. That alien ship is parked on its wheels with a nice adorable landing ladder deployed from under its airlock doors just a short walk away, all the better to eventually raid it for spare parts. The rover is hooked up to Hab power to recharge. And I’m sitting down to my first full meal pack in days because, Goddamn it, I’ve earned it.

Dragonfly still hasn’t eaten a full meal pack of any kind since we’ve been here. I offered her a share of this meal pack, but she waved a hoof no, and then thanked me anyway with a hug. It was so cute, in a nightmare-from-hell-wants-cuddles way, that it left me weak in the knees.

But what’s her deal? Is it guilt? I mean, sure she didn’t perform miracles like her unicorn and dragon buddies, but she worked at least as hard as I did. I really need to ask Starlight about that.

But first food and bed. I’m hungry and I’m really, really tired. I think tomorrow I’ll take it easy and do something fun.

Playing in the dirt comes to mind.

Author's Note

Yep, the first chapter that covers more than one day on Mars.

Hermes is flying out of the story for now. I'm still divided in my mind on whether or not they'll return.

A couple of readers suggested that the Hermes crew dump a bunch of food into the MAV and send it back to Mars. The problem with that plan, if you haven't read the comments, is that there's no good reason for NASA to have any system that would allow a used-up MAV to safely re-enter the atmosphere, and several good reasons for them not to have such systems. Also, unless they were somehow able to precisely pinpoint the landing zone, Mark would never know it was there... and pinpointing the landing zone runs the risk of the MAV crashing onto the Hab and killing everybody.

Salvaging Amicitas is, I admit, the least probable part of the story so far, but you know Watney would at least make the attempt. Fortunately he has magic on his side... kind of. In fits and starts.

It isn't just Watney that Dragonfly is working.

When Andy Weir wrote the book he was working from 1990s era photographs of Mars. We've taken better pictures since. It turns out there are a lot more craters than Weir counted on, and of course the cracks in the surface (which are actually a lot more rugged than I'm making them in this story). The best guess as to why the cracks exist are as I said: an ancient ocean drying up some three billion years ago. (Also, in the book Mark makes multiple remarks about the featureless plains the Hab sits on... when, as it turns out, the exact coordinates he gives in the book turn out to be just inside a small, mostly silted up crater.)

The math Watney doesn't get is magic-related. I just wrote a chapter today that will give him a better view of what it means, and that should appear Wednesday.

Sol 16

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 12
ARES III SOL 16

“We’re supposed to be rationing, you know,” Starlight protested as Spitfire pushed the full, uncut meal (Horseton Special Blend Spicy Gumbo with Beans and Rice) in front of her.

“Patients get full nutrition,” Spitfire said coldly. “Now put your nose in that and eat. If I see that horn light up even for a second I’ll play with it like a foal with a doorstop.” A moment later one of Mark’s glasses, filled with a white liquid that was probably reconstituted milk, got set next to the plate.

Starlight set aside the whiteboard and began eating lunch. The food didn’t take her mind off the urgent problem she’d spent the past hour going round and round in circles over. In fact, she barely tasted the food at all. (Fortunately for her, her body had more sense than her mind, pausing every thirty seconds or so to grab the glass in her hooves and take deep swigs of the vile spice-quenching liquid that might have once been milk before it was captured by the princesses and sent to Tartarus for its crimes.)

She hadn’t spoken to Mark at breakfast; her horn was sore and she was tired, both signs of another bout of magical exhaustion. But she’d been curious when he took two shovels, the two largest plastic bins in the base, and Cherry, Dragonfly and Fireball out the airlock after breakfast. Obviously something had been planned while she was still asleep, and she didn’t know what it was.

She didn’t figure it out until the airlock reopened some time later to admit Mark and Fireball, each carrying one bin filled with Martian soil. Together they took the bins to the far corner of the base… well, not that far- Mark’s shelter was about the size of a modest one-story family cottage- and dumped them out into an area of the floor Mark had carefully cleared.

After seeing that she’d used her magic, you bet, sore horn or not, to ask very specific questions.

Q: Why are you bringing dirt in here?

A (allowing for the spell’s hit-or-miss translations): To grow food in.

Okay, that made sense in one way, but in another way not. Nothing could grow outside, true… but this was a small habitat with six beings living in it, and the box that nopony wanted to talk about, currently hidden behind a privacy curtain at the back of the bunks, made it smell more like sixty persons even with the lid closed. The available space wouldn’t even make a good hobby garden.

Q: Show me on the whiteboard how much alfalfa you think you can grow.

A (translation spell off, Mark used his typing screen thing for a moment, then wrote the answer on the whiteboard using the numbers Mark and Starlight had practiced during the Great Towing): 1.5 kg / m2 / 65 days. (Mark drew a sunrise to indicate “day”.)

Starlight recognized the “kg” as one of the symbols on a device Mark kept on one of the worktables. She’d dragged him to it and pointed, and Mark had put his coffee mug on it. (She assumed it was a coffee mug- it was almost the right shape, but the handle was far too small to slip a hoof inside.) A display on the side lit up with a number next to the “kg” symbol. Ah! So this was a scale, and kg was a unit of weight. She wondered what it stood for.

That left one part of the equation unexplained, so she’d lit up her horn again.

Q: Draw me how big one of these is (pointing at “m2” on the whiteboard).

A: (spell off, Mark draws a picture of the outside of his base, then an equals sign, and the symbols, “92 m2”)

Starlight had thanked him, taken the whiteboard in her forehooves, and staggered along on her hind legs back to her bunk, using one last bit of magic to bring the marker after her. Halfway back Spitfire had taken both whiteboard (in her wings) and marker (in her teeth) away from her, growling dire imprecations about ponies who didn’t know when to quit. Meanwhile Mark and Fireball, taking a couple of smaller bins with them, went back out for more digging.

Once back in her bunk Starlight had wheedled her grouchy nursemaid into taking three random food packs from their supply and putting them on the alien scale. The numbers were large enough to read from across the room, and when Spitfire dropped the third pack onto the scale they read 1.2. So, Starlight mused to herself, whatever kg stands for, it looks pretty close to a pony kilogram. It might even be a kilogram. I wonder if the old kingdom system of measurements line up as well? Do Mark’s people have pounds and quarts and hooves? We really need to work on the language barrier.

But that was idle thought. For simplicity’s sake she used Mark’s numbers, taking the marker in her teeth and sketching out the math on the whiteboard.

The astromare rations were high-energy meals that provided considerably more calories than your average pony required. An ordinary working pony needed about two pounds, or one kilogram, of food per day and could get by on slightly less if they didn’t do much. (Starlight still wondered how Pinkie Pie lived on a diet of almost all sugars and starches in quantities double what any other pony consumed without becoming a blimp. Somehow she stayed only slightly chubbier than her friends… and skinnier than certain other citizens of Ponyville like, for example, Spoiled Rich… or, she noted with chagrin, herself.)

So, call it a dead minimum diet. Eight-tenths of a kilogram per pony per day. Leave Fireball and Dragonfly out of the equation; Dragonfly didn’t need solid food, and Fireball claimed he could eat raw hay but couldn't digest it. Just keep it simple: three ponies equaled 2.4 kg of alfalfa every day, if they sat around doing nothing.

Mark specified 1.5 almost-kilograms per em-two, whatever m was, per sixty-five days. In sixty-five days the three ponies would eat a total, on rations, of 156 kilograms in that period of time.

One and a half kilograms multiplied by ninety-two em-twos equaled… 138 kilograms.

That left a shortfall of eighteen kilograms of food that would have to be made up from food packs. And the ponies wouldn’t have any left. At a rough estimate, Starlight thought they had just barely enough food left from ship’s stores to make it to the first hay harvest… if it was planted today. And from the pitifully small area of the floor the first load of dirt covered, that certainly wasn’t going to happen.

That meant dipping into Mark’s food again… and this plan left nothing whatever for Mark, even assuming he could eat alfalfa. Mark was larger than any of them except Fireball, and so presumably he’d need more, which meant a larger shortfall, which…

Oh, Fireball. Growing crops does nothing for Fireball at all.

This isn’t going to work.

And as Starlight automatically finished off her lunch, her mind kept coming back to that point, again and again.

This isn’t going to work. We need more land. And we need crops Fireball and Mark can eat. Mark might be a farmer, but is he a rock farmer? Can you even grow rocks in a low-magic environment?

Fireball had eaten a sapphire each night the previous two nights. He had eleven left. On the other hoof, he’d been rationing a bit before that, so he had twenty-one days of food packs at full rations, twenty-six at reduced rations, remaining. But once those ran out, he would be on the pony food packs or on Mark’s, and from that point on he’d begin to get sick from malnutrition. How sick and how fast, she didn’t know.

Just as she licked the last bit of uncomfortably spicy food off her muzzle, Starlight heard the sound of the airlock repressurizing. Another load of dirt was coming in, and given the time, the others were probably also coming in for their lunches.

Starlight really hoped that was the case. She wanted another crew meeting. She didn’t feel up for any more magical conversations with Mark, but this was a problem everypony needed to be working on.

If they didn’t find a solution fast, somepony would die- possibly everypony.

She stared at the planting box, where a small forest of tiny alfalfa shoots had begun to rise from the soil. A few flecks of green peeked out from a tiny forest of white.

It wasn’t even a start.

LOG ENTRY – SOL 16

Ugh! This is backbreaking work! But it’s better than towing a spaceship, and at least I had a lot of help.

We divided our labor once we figured out the right way to do things. Cherry Berry and Dragonfly can sort of handle a shovel, but Fireball and I can do it more effectively- yay thumbs- and we only have two sample shovels. So he and I did most of the digging while the other two scraped up surface material with their hooves, kind of like dogs in spacesuits. We filled up small sample containers, and then Dragonfly or Cherry would carry the full containers to the airlock and dumped them into the two largest bins I could find. When those got full Fireball and I would cycle the airlock (which takes about ten minutes to pump out or trickle in the air, depending), take the dirt into the Hab, and dump it.

We could have just dug a big hole right next to the airlock, but I don’t want to do that. For one thing, I don’t want to risk being half-awake one morning, going out to clean the solar panels, and falling into a big-ass hole and breaking my neck. I’d spend eternity in Heaven with every Mercury, Gemini and Apollo astronaut laughing their asses off at me.

I can see it now. "How did you die, Bassett?" "I missed a runway and flew a jet straight into a factory I was supposed to be inspecting. They found my head in the parking lot." "That sucks. How did you die, White?" "I was martyred in the name of space flight by North American's shoddy construction of Apollo One." "Yeah, that really sucked. What about you, Watney?" "I fell in a hole on Mars." "Watney, you're a schmuck. Hey, go get Gene Cernan, he needs to meet this schmuck, like, yesterday."

But more to the point, once you get more than a few inches into the topsoil you hit the permafrost layer. The topsoil’s dry as hell, but get deep enough and you find more ice than you’d believe possible, and digging through it is a bitch. Our sample drills are built to do it for very short bursts, but shovels? Forget it.

Of course, getting more water with my soil might sound like it’s worth the backbreaking work to ship out the permafrost. Unfortunately along with the water ice you also find a lot of a certain nasty class of substances called perchlorate salts- mostly potassium perchlorate and magnesium perchlorate. I don’t know what they do to aliens, but they’re mildly toxic to humans, and magnesium perchlorate in particular is an oxidizer and color agent used in some fireworks.

Perchlorates are hydrophilic, which means they suck water out of their environment and act as a sort of antifreeze. That's why every now and again you see a new rivulet or some other sign of recent water flow. Ares I and Ares II found concentrations as high as 2% in their subsurface samples, so I’m sticking with the easy-to-dig stuff.

We got fifteen square meters of the Hab floor covered in dirt today. I’m going to try to fill the entire floor space of the Hab to a depth of ten centimeters. Anything more than that and I get too close to the access panels of all the machinery that keeps me alive.

I’m doing more physical labor than I did during the tow, but I’m happier. I’m doing what I was trained for on a scale NASA’s mission planners never imagined. By the time I’m done Mars will learn the true power of the botany side!

I’m happy, but my back isn’t. I just raided the medical supplies for pain killers, skipped right over the acetaminophen and ibuprofen and went straight for the Vicodin. It should kick in just in time for dinner. (Three-quarter ration, sigh; I’m regretting my celebration yesterday, because after today I really need a full meal. But I can’t splurge two days in a row.)

No time to eat yet, though. I have to wet down the soil we brought in. Remember those perchlorates? They’re all over the surface too, anywhere from 0.2% to 1.4% depending on what part of Mars you’re on. Acidalia’s topsoil has a lower than average concentration, but it’s still 0.3% by weight- way above what would be considered safe back home.

Fortunately the proper way to dispose of perchlorates is- da da daah!- just add water! Which I was going to do anyway for the plants!

Diluting the perchlorates reduces their risk and, coincidentally, makes it easier for Earth soil bacteria to eat them up. There are lots of perchlorate-eating bugs on Earth, and one of my scheduled experiments was to introduce them to Mars soil and see how they performed. It should add extra potassium to the soil- which is good, because alfalfa requires a lot of potassium for maximum yield.

I just realized: today is Thanksgiving. I wonder what my family is thinking. Well, that’s not quite accurate. I know what they’re thinking- they’re thinking I’m dead. Which means the annual feast at my parents’ house is going to be anything but jolly. I just hope NASA didn’t wait too long to declare me dead. I’d hate to think they’d hold my memorial service on Thanksgiving Day. God, that would totally suck.

I’d been looking forward to Thanksgiving. We were going to all cook a communal meal, my crewmates and me. NASA didn’t send us a full kitchen or a whole unboned turkey, but they developed this whole rigamarole to use the microwave, the chemistry lab, and even part of the oxygenator to either heat up or cook from scratch several traditional Thanksgiving dishes.

Sitting in food storage, right now, is a big boneless roll of reconstituted turkey meat with a layer of pre-made stuffing inside. We actually cooked one as part of the training for this mission. It’s not bad- nothing like grandma made, but not bad. But I don’t dare break it out now. I can’t exactly serve meat (okay, meat by-product) to a bunch of obligate herbivores and whatever Fireball is. (Or Dragonfly, for that matter. I keep forgetting she has fangs, but she must have teeth that sharp for a reason.)

But at least I’m not alone today. It’s not my family, and it’s not my crew, but me and the aliens, we’re together, and that counts for something.

I better get to adding that water. I’ve already rolled up a lot of the Ares crew’s abandoned uniforms to make a sort of garden box around my garden, so all I have to do is pour in… let’s see, twelve square meters X 0.1 meter deep = 1.2 cubic meters, which requires 48 liters of water, so…

… wait a minute…

… I need to check my math. I may have a problem.

Author's Note

I wrote about 1800 words before I had to go run errands... and the first thing I did was yank 1300 of them out and set them aside for another day. The conversation was rushing a character development point far too fast. It needs time to develop more. I wrote a replacement, but it's not as good, and I may substantially rewrite it on posting day (Thursday, boys and girls!).

The #1 critique everybody had about the book and the movie was, "Air doesn't work like that, Andy. Mars never has that strong a storm. The airlock won't go flying fifty yards. A hull breach won't produce twenty meters per second of thrust."

The #2 critique everybody had was, "You left out perchlorates."

To be fair, Weir didn't know. Perchlorates had been discovered on Mars by Spirit and Opportunity, but we didn't know they were a global problem until we specifically sent an orbiter capable of spectroanalysis of the Martian surface. They're everywhere, and unless the Mars soil was specially treated to break them down or get rid of them, anything grown in it would be chock full of 'em.

Long-term exposure to perchlorates does all sorts of bad things, but the most immediate effect is as a thyroid inhibitor. Your thyroid gland is important- you need it for things. After the first major dose Watney would have muscle fatigue and cramps and possibly irregular heartbeat, among other issues. His digestive tract would declare war on the rest of his body. He'd suffer from anemia and possibly even internal bleeding. Suffice it to say that snacking on potatoes loaded with perchlorates all the way to Schiaparelli Crater would be suicidal.

And that's potassium perchlorate, about 60% of the perchlorates on Mars. Almost all the remaining 40% is magnesium perchlorate, which is not only more toxic but, in the right conditions, actively explosive. And for a bit of snark about what happens when you substitute even heavier metals for potassium and magnesium, read this: Things I Won't Work With- Frisky Perchlorates My favorite line, re: fluorine perchlorate: "It’s easily synthesized, if you’re tired of this earthly existence, by passing fluorine gas over concentrated perchloric acid."

In real life, even collecting soil and rock samples will require careful planning, because the perchlorates are quite literally everywhere.

But there is a simple long-term solution: soil bacteria. As Watney points out, there are a lot of bacteria that loves them some nummy yummy potassium perchlorate. That's why Earth's soil isn't as toxic as Mars's- we have life to clean up the mess. Bacteria won't replace air filtering and decontamination methods for future Mars scientists, but my guess is they'll be indispensable for long-term colonization.

I've gone into slightly more detail about the aborted Thanksgiving than the book provides. In the book the feast is just an excuse to give Mark viable potatoes. Here it has Mark losing his whimsy to a bout of melancholy, as he's reminded of just how far from everyone else he is.

He doesn't know that tomorrow he's going to learn that his friends have it even worse...

Sol 17

LOG ENTRY – SOL 17

Wow. Just… wow.

It’s been hours, and I still… yeah, just… wow.

Okay, Watney, pull it together. Generations of historians, scientists, and flat Earth nuts are waiting for you to say something coherent enough to pick apart. And future psychologists are going to have a field day, so don’t disappoint them.

Let’s start with that little problem I mentioned. It’s water. NASA sent along a water reclaimer that filters and distills used water- not just piss, but also shower and decontamination water and excess humidity from sweat and exhalation- and renders it not just drinkable but absolutely pure. It’s a heavy and expensive piece of equipment, but it’s not as heavy or expensive as it would have been to haul up two liters per day per astronaut to drink for a thirty-one day scheduled mission plus emergency reserves, hygiene allowance, and decontamination shower use.

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s technically lots of water under the Martian surface. Problem: it’s hard to get out, and it’s contaminated with perchlorates. Experimenting with means of using local water instead of shipping it up is a large part of the whole Ares program, as a first step towards possible colonization and terraforming. All of that is a fancy way of saying we can’t do it yet, at least not safely.

NASA actually sent us fifty liters per person, about half what they would have sent us if we didn’t have the water reclaimer. That’s three hundred liters total, or about eighty gallons. That sounds like a lot, but it’s really only twice as much as your average hot water heater holds.

Prime Earth topsoil requires about forty liters of water per cubic meter to stay healthy- just to start with. The plants will continually suck that water out of the soil to make food for me and my guests, so that water will have to be constantly replaced. But just the starting water for my thirsty, thirsty Martian dust is three hundred and sixty-eight liters- a lot more than what we started the mission with. There are a lot of other problems with my plan to grow food, but that’s the first and most urgent one.

Is? I meant was, because it isn’t anymore. Turns out I have all the water I could ever want or need, if I’m patient enough to get it about twelve ounces at a time.

And the reason that problem has gone away is a word I’ve been dancing around in this log, because NASA would have a shit fit if it saw it. To be honest I’m uncomfortable with it myself.

That word is: magic.

I played a lot of D&D as a kid. (Yes, Mark Watney, master’s degrees in botany and mechanical engineering, a geek- who would have guessed? Go figure.) My favorite character was this cleric, and among the spells I had was “Create Water”. I always thought it was a stupid spell, and I never used it. Our DM was smart enough to know that bashing monsters in the head with a mace was fun, but counting every ration to see if you would live long enough to get back to town wasn’t.

(News flash: it still isn’t.)

But as a kid I just didn’t have the imagination or the training to understand just how useful such a spell was. Imagine building a space suit, for example, with that spell built into the life support? Or “Create Breathable Air,” even better! No need to carry around big tanks, no complicated plumbing- just flip a switch and away you go!

Can you imagine that? Good. Now stop imagining, because five of exactly that kind of spacesuit is sharing the Hab with me right now.

Under any ordinary circumstances (for I’m-going-to-die-on-Mars-if-I-don’t-think-of-something values of ordinary) that by itself would be worth a “Wow” or two. But that was the least of my discoveries for the day. And now that I’ve given you all that background, I think I’m able to explain it all without spacing out.

Last night I went ahead and dumped forty-eight liters of water into the dirt in the Hab. Then I added a bit more to replace some runoff that trickled out the bottom and sides, even with my improvised planting-box made of old clothes. I then sopped up the overflow, no doubt rich in those nasty perchlorates, and wrung it out into the water reclaimer to purify. I had to do all that regardless to prepare the soil and to reduce the perchlorate levels in the Hab.

This morning, to the utter disgust of my alien roommates, I began turning the Mars dirt into something that would grow a crop. I began by skimming off the top portion of the planter box, with all its happy, healthy little alfalfa sprouts that full-grown might provide one lunch for an anorexic donkey, and put it in the far corner of the dirt. I then took the rest of the Earth soil, about three-quarters of the total, and spread it in a thin layer across what we brought in yesterday. So far so good.

Next comes the compost. Even on rations my four-legged friends have produced a shit-pot load (see what I did there?) of raw compost material. I’d contributed my own part, of course. I thought it stank before, but when I began stirring it up and spreading it on top of the Mars soil, I almost puked. The smell died down a little once I began stirring the shit, Earth soil and Mars dirt together with a shovel, but it’s persistent. The atmospheric regulator only removes particles beyond a certain size, and the thiols that make shit stink are way too small for that.

Cherry helped me with the disgusting chore. The other aliens made one or two remarks, but otherwise they stayed quiet, mostly because they were trying to keep their own breakfasts down. Cherry didn’t say a word, though when one particularly ripe bit of compost gave off a bubble of concentrated stench she snorted and stomped her foot exactly like a pissed-off horse. It was adorable, and I wish I’d had a camera for that part.

(What was less adorable was Cherry beating me to the decon shower and using a triple ration of water to clean off. I’m beginning to wish I’d never showed them how to use the thing, and I dread the day when the very limited supply of soap and sanitary wipes runs out.)

And that was our morning- playing in shit and smelling the sweet, stinky smell of survival. Let’s just say it was no trouble at all to eat only a half-meal ration for lunch, for any of us.

After lunch I sat down and began thinking about ways to get more water. Using the perchlorate-laden ice from the permafrost layer of the Martian soil was the safest option, but it was also the most labor-intensive and least likely to work. I could raid the hydrogen fuel-cell batteries the Hab uses and burn it to make water, but I don’t want to risk my electricity supply, which is the one thing I don’t have to worry about if I leave it alone.

And there’s one other option so suicidally insane that, now that the problem is solved, I’m leaving it out of this log. Sure, it would probably have gotten me the water I need, but it could also kill me and my little friends about five ways from Sunday. I am so glad I don’t need to try it, and I hope it never comes up again.

I was looking over my options, just about to decide that maybe I didn’t need to fill the whole hab with dirt after all, when Starlight came over for our daily chat. It’s pathetic how much I’m coming to look forward to a minute or so of badly mangled English every day (not counting the far-too-many times a day my buddies repeat and mangle Beatles lyrics).

STARLIGHT: Food we have problem. (Note: this almost sent me into a hysterical laughing fit- and not entirely for good reasons.)

ME: I know. I’m working on it.

STARLIGHT (insistent): No! Earth not enough! Not enough Earth everybody feed!

ME (trying not to think about that- one impossible thing at a time): We have a worse water problem.

STARLIGHT (puzzled): Water problem?

ME: Yeah. I need to find more water to grow things.

STARLIGHT: Is that all? Need you how much?

ME: You have some in your ship?

STARLIGHT (getting tired and shaky again): This watch!

Her horn stopped glowing, and she called the other aliens into one of their little huddles. They do that every once in a while, and usually there’s at least a brief bit of shouting, but this time the conversation was really short. Then each of them pulled their suits out of the neat little piles they made beneath the recharging rack where all my redundant suits live. Fireball fetched a couple of flasks from the chemistry lab and brought them over… and then two more… and then another.

And about a minute later, sitting in a row on the table in front of me were five flasks full of water. Well, not perfectly full, but the amount added up to a little less than two liters.

And I knew that none of them had gone anywhere near the water reclaimer valve or any of the Hab’s water taps.

There weren’t enough flasks left in the chemistry lab for a repeat performance, so Fireball grabbed a plastic tub and took it over to the suit area. Meanwhile I took the water and put it in the water reclaimer- might as well store it somewhere, right?

The tub took longer to fill, but Fireball eventually carried a plastic bin full of lovely, clean H2O over to me, set it at my feet, and gestured to it. I took it, slowly poured it into the water reclaimer, and set it down- and immediately Fireball took the bin back to the suit area.

Now I got curious. The Ares III suits hold two liters of water each for astronauts to sip on during EVAs. I’d assumed the alien suits had a similar function and that they were draining their suits to contribute to the cause. But the flasks plus the tub added up to about what I’d expect to see if you drained all the water out of six EVA suits- and more than I’d expected to come out of the smaller alien suits, even with those huge backpacks.

The tub was half-full again when I got over there. The aliens had the helmets off their suits and were holding the neckholes over the tub. Each suit had a little hamster-feeder nozzle, just like ours, where a thirsty alien could turn its head slightly and take a sip whenever needed. The nozzles on the five suits were being turned on and off, about thirty seconds at a time, to spray thin streams of water into the tub.

The language barrier is cracking enough for us to understand a few words- basic things like “yes”, “no,” “don’t” (I get a lot of mileage out of “don’t”), and “draw.” Another one we’ve figured out is “how.” So when I asked how they were doing that, Cherry handed me her suit, even unfastening the snaps on the back of the backpack so I could see its workings.

There are no tanks of any kind in the suit. Not water, not air, nothing. Not one.

The backpack isn’t for life support. It’s a complex thruster pack like a compact MMU, with armrests and hand (hoof) controls that pop out when the wearer’s arms are in a certain position. There’s not even a fuel tank for the thrusters, though: the little thrusters are all connected to a large slice of pink crystal, solid all the way through.

Unbelievably, all the life support fits in a little bitty box on the front of their suit, about the size of my two fists put together.

And all the while I was examining that suit, the four others kept pouring water, a squirt at a time, into that tub.

I babbled something like, “This is impossible, how can anything do this?”

Starlight lit up her horn and said one word. The translation came through as: “Magic.”

I tried to explain that there was no such thing as magic. Magic is just something you don’t understand how it works yet. But of course the translator was off again, and Starlight wasn’t listening anyway. Instead she was saying something to the others in an enthusiastic tone. Cherry looked doubtful, but she nodded her head, and while the others put their suits away again Starlight dragged out one of those boxes salvaged from their ship.

I’d already guessed it was some sort of battery, and what happened next confirmed it. She stuck a couple of broken antenna pieces from the destroyed communications array (I don’t know when she brought them in) onto what looked like power leads. She then made a sign with her hooves as if she were holding a camera. She had to make it twice before I figured out she wanted me to record what she was about to do. I got one of the hand-held video cameras out and set it to record. Once she was sure I was watching, Starlight flipped a switch on the battery, and things changed.

You’ve seen a Jacob’s ladder before- you know, the things in mad scientist labs that have arcs of electricity rising up the two antennas? Well, this began sort of like that, except instead of an electrical arc it was a rainbow, one sparkly happy rainbow after another. When the first rainbow hit the tips of the antennas it burst, and the light in the Hab changed. Colors became brighter, with a strong lean towards primary colors and pastels. Even the mix of shit and Mars dirt changed color, looking… well, shittier.

All of the aliens smiled, stretching their limbs and turning this way and that as if basking in sunshine. Spitfire spread her wings, and with a single flap she took off, making laps around the Hab, faster than I could follow her with the camera. Dragonfly took off next, chasing the pegasus around and around until I got dizzy. I must have got dizzy, because after the second pass I lost Dragonfly and began seeing aliens I never met- a blue pegasus with rainbow hair, a dark pegasus-unicorn hybrid, and what looked like a hawk made of fire.

Then Fireball rose slowly into the air. I haven’t mentioned the tiny wings on his back because I thought they were vestigial and unimportant, but they lifted him up, one beat per second or so picking him off the ground and letting him hover. All the time he stared at me with this smug bet-you-can’t-do-this expression on that pointy face of his.

Starlight made a noise, and I turned the camera to her just in time for her to vanish in a flash of light. I felt a tap on my knee, and there she was. Somehow she’d just… well… jumped… about four meters instantly. Giggling, she did it again, reappearing back by the box.

Sitting on the memory card of the camera right now is mankind’s first positive proof that teleportation is possible. Think about that.

Then the arcs coming out of the battery began to sputter. The flyers all made hasty landings, and Starlight turned off the switch. The colors in the hab immediately went back to normal, the pale NASA-psychologist-approved colors unenhanced by any unnatural effects.

Starlight staggered, leaning on that box to keep her feet. The others sort of wilted, sad expressions replacing the happy ones from just a moment before. It broke my heart to watch. Then Cherry walked over to Starlight and hugged her tight, and after a moment I heard her sobbing. The other aliens joined the hug, even Fireball, who obviously had to force himself into it… but I saw tears on his face, too.

We pulled out the markers and whiteboards after that for a really intense session of Pictionary. I now have a clearer idea of what happened to these aliens than I did before.

The aliens all look different, but they come from the same world, and it is quite literally and unironically a magical land full of rainbows and clouds and sunshine and candy, not to mention every mythical creature you can imagine. They drew me unicorns and pegasi and bug-horse things and dragons, but they also drew griffons, hippogriffs (not the same thing as pegasi, apparently), a hydra, a manticore, a minotaur, and a couple of other things I don’t recognize without my Monster Manual handy.

Starlight did most of the drawing for the aliens. At one pont she filled the whiteboard trying to explain magic. She used her translation spell to give the name for her race, and it came across as “pony”. Makes sense. But apparently all ponies have magic. Unicorns like her cast spells, but pegasi like Spitfire use their magic to fly and, apparently, make clouds. And ordinary ponies like Cherry work with the soil, farming or mining, apparently- and their magic makes them extra strong.

Once I’d taken a photo of that (she insisted- she’s big on having all of this documented for some reason) Starlight took both the whiteboards and drew a big circle and a little circle on each. On one board the big circle was their world- loaded with the six-sided stars she used to mean “magic”- and a Mars-like world, also with some magic, and with more magic in space between them.

On the other board she drew a couple of stick-figure men and a tree in the big circle, plus a couple of six-pointed stars. That, apparently, was Earth. She added a couple of craters to the small circle, then drew a stick figure with a space helmet. That was Mars.

And then she drew a big X across Mars and another big X in the empty space between.

Finally, she drew a little spaceship rising off of the first whiteboard’s Earth, making a dotted line to show its path towards the other Mars. And then she drew a cluster of radiating lines and made a “poof” noise as she spread her hands- hooves, I mean. Teleportation, or so I guess.

When I nodded, she drew the ship again on the second whiteboard, near to the Mars with the stick-Watney on it. She drew the plume of black smoke, the same black smoke she’d complained about when Cherry had drawn it. She drew a magic star, then X’d it out savagely, then drew a spiraling doodle down onto Mars.

I took photos, the whiteboards were erased, and Starlight began drawing again. On one whiteboard she drew the flag-emblem that was on the shoulder of her suit and Spitfire’s; on the other she drew an American flag. Then, below the flags, she drew a column of images: a single pony or human, a pair of ponies/humans, and a large collection of plants, animals and people.

On the pony-flag whiteboard, she drew a large magic star next to the solo pony. The pair of ponies got a marginally larger star. The group of ponies and tree and critters got a significantly larger star than that.

The stick-man on the American whiteboard got an asterisk. Two stick-men got a blotch that was just barely recognizable as a star if you squinted. The collection of people, plants and animals got a star less than half the size that the other whiteboard had for the solo pony.

I took photos of that, and of one other drawing; of magic stars flowing into the box and coming out again through the power leads.

There were a lot of other drawings, by some of the other aliens and quite a few by me, but you won’t find those on this computer, so there’s no point in my describing them to you. That was all trying to work out details and asking questions back and forth.

I will describe one, though- the one that I drew that solved the problem for me. All it was was a standard x-y-z corner axis diagram… and then, going off in its own direction, a fourth axis, a w axis. When I drew that Starlight nodded, smiled, and tapped her nose with a hoof. (So apparently we also share at least some metaphors.)

Starlight and her friends didn’t come from another world across the galaxy. They came from Earth- not our Earth, but an alternate one, in an alternate parallel universe. In that universe what we call magic is a fundamental force of nature, and it has rules and laws that can be studied and exploited. Starlight’s people built their ship to run almost entirely on magic, with some electronic backup systems.

But somehow, some way, their ship glitched and jumped from their universe into ours. And our universe’s physical laws are different- a lot different.

They’re not totally incompatible. Apparently magic does exist here, or something close, but it’s really thin compared to what the aliens are used to. Back home it’s a universal constant; here, the only source is life.

And Mars, outside this Hab, is dead, dead, dead. No magic… except for what we, here in the Hab, produce with our every breath.

For the minute and a half or so that battery was running, the interior of the Hab had more or less the same universal conditions that the aliens took for granted. And that minute and a half, according to Dragonfly, ate up two entire days worth of recharging.

I asked about the group hug. If I understood the answer, they’re homesick. It was the first time they’d realized just how far from home they really were, and how different this universe is. Before now they were overwhelmed with surviving or getting to know me.

Man, I thought I was fucked. I'm never more than two astronomical units from home. Gravity aside, everything works the same here as at home. I haven’t lost an entire vital physical function. No wonder my guests are on edge half the time. I don’t blame them.

And now I understand why Starlight is always wobbly after our brief chats, and why the others are worried about her. She was the magic specialist in the crew, and she’s used to doing absolutely everything with magic. And apparently trying to do magic without any energy is like running on a strained ankle, only a lot worse.

But there is good news. The ponies can’t talk with home, but they’re not one hundred percent cut off. If they were their life support wouldn’t work, and they’d have died probably before they crashed. But their air and water are automatically teleported from their homeworld to here through a couple of crystals which, small favors, are powered from the magic-rich end of the trip. On this end they burn no magic at all, but they provide a quite literally unlimited supply of air and water.

The ship had one of these systems too. When the ship crashed and the engine room broke open, the sudden rush of air was detected on the other end, and the connection was shut down. The suits have a similar fail-safe, which is why the ponies turned off their water taps every thirty seconds or so. If they ran them longer the other end would think something was broken and turn off the system. And since they can’t actually talk to the other end, that would leave the pony in question without a working spacesuit.

I asked about the box. Their ship had dozens, maybe hundreds, of them to power their main engines. The crash destroyed them all. They’re down to the two emergency batteries now, and neither one has had a full charge since they salvaged them. But two is better than none, as Starlight proved all the times she lifted their ship during the salvage operation. It means that, if it’s important enough, they can still use their magic for brief periods.

That’s pretty much where we left off. It’s past dinner time now. Drawing pictures, even line-art sketches and stick figures, takes a lot of time. I need to find time to work with Starlight on learning their language. I’m outnumbered five to one, so it makes more sense for me to learn theirs than for them to learn mine. I’m not looking forward to it. I barely got by with French in high school and college, and I’ve forgotten most of it since. All I really remember is the bad language, which aside from “Merde!” is mostly religious.

But still… magic! Wow!

Skeptic Mark is still complaining there’s no such thing, but Scientist Mark wants to know how it works and Geek Mark wants to cast Magic Missile, and Doesn't Want to Die on Mars Mark will use anything no matter how incredible to live until rescue comes, so Skeptic Mark is outvoted three to one.

So… yeah. Wow!

Author's Note

Yeah.

I'm particularly fond of the part where the crew gets a moment to play in the magic field. It may be self-indulgent on my part, but who else is going to indulge me?

Also, no hydrazine conversion to water, which means no hydrogen scare in the hab.

No boom. No boom today. Boom tomorrow. And if you can complete that quote, you're a geek old enough to remember previous generations of MLP first-run.

A lot of the second half of this chapter is material you the readers have had before, but Mark is just now getting it, or at least getting it clearly. There's no way of getting round it. But if you read The Martian, you know that Watney loves his info-dumps.

So why do ponies have magic life support, besides the fact that, if they could, anybody making a space suit would? Well, remember that this is a follow-on to Changeling Space Program, which has at its core a play-through of early career mode in Kerbal Space Program. KSP is a solid armchair rocket-science game with a huge sandbox element. (I don't explore that part much- I am no good at putting things together creatively like many more famous players have done. I just like flying rockets.)

And since few people actually enjoy counting out life support logistics, the makers of the game decided to eliminate them completely. You can get a mission to rescue someone trapped in orbit with a mission expiration time of five in-game YEARS. The default is infinite air and, apparently, food.

Infinite food is too much even for me to justify, which is why I specify thirty days as being SOP food storage for any flight. And, of course, I had to work around the fact that fuel is still very much limited. Thus the magic life support system, as invented by Purple Smart herself (in the CSP universe) and adopted by all space programs from the very start.

The next two chapters will be very much on the short side, due to personal doings the last couple days. I got a start on the third chapter after this today, but I need to knock off, update Peter is the Wolf, and do my streaming comedy-music show (plug plug DementiaRadio.org plug!).

Sol 18

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 14
ARES III SOL 18

“I can do that,” Dragonfly said, watching over Mark’s shoulder as he dismantled the pre-launch power supply plug next to Amicitas's main airlock.

“Didn’t you say he was happier doing it?” Starlight Glimmer asked from inside the open airlock. For the time being the ship was depressurized, at least until the alien finished patching Amicitas into his base’s electrical system. After examining options and considering safety, the launch plug had been considered the best place to tap in- safer to get to than the exposed stump of the emergency solar array on top of the ship, less trouble to work around than a direct cable into the control cabin.

It was a working day for everyone. It had begun with Starlight using her spell to suggest that Amicitas would provide more growing space for crops. The hole in the engineering deck had grown substantially during the Great Tow, but the other two compartments remained airtight and, at least theoretically, capable of supporting life.

So everyone had gone outside and, after Mark spent a few minutes cleaning off the solar panels, they had pushed and pulled the ship around the solar farm and right up to Airlock Three and its power outlets. After that, while Cherry Berry, Spitfire and Fireball worked on bringing more dirt into Mark’s base, Mark, Dragonfly and Starlight had cracked down on figuring out how to get electricity from the base to the ship.

The solution had been reasonably simple, and it was all Mark’s idea. He pulled a voltometer out of his tools and showed it to Dragonfly, who produced the pony version of the same device. The two then took readings of the rover recharge station, the rover heater, the broken stump of the communications dish, and a base power outlet. The readings weren’t quite identical, but they were close enough and consistent enough that you could convert one to the other by a very simple calculation.

The three of them had gone back into the base for a short period of time so Dragonfly and Starlight could check the brittle freeze-dried ship manuals for precise power requirements for the various devices on board and communicate the numbers to Mark. Then, armed with knowledge and a large box full of electrical parts, the three went back out, and there they had remained.

“Yeah, he’s happier this way,” Dragonfly said, “but I’m not. He won’t even let me touch his tools. All I do is make sure he doesn’t fall off the boarding ladder.”

“Put yourself in his place,” Starlight said reasonably. “Would you let another changeling touch your tools?”

“What? No!” What a silly question! “They’d only break them and you know it!”

“And I’m sure Mark feels the same way.”

“But it’s not the same thing at all!” Dragonfly pointed out. “I’m not just any changeling! I’m a trained engineer and pilot! I’m responsible! I would never break someling else’s tools!”

“You know,” Starlight said, watching nervously as Mark perched on a bit of metal he’d clamped to the top stair of the boarding ladder, “for an empath you’re not very good at understanding what the other person feels.”

“Not true,” Dragonfly said firmly. “I understand what you feel just fine.” Let’s see… as tempting as it was for Dragonfly to lie at this point, the short-term push in the desired direction wasn’t worth the long-term damage to a relationship that circumstances required be maintained. “You’re pleased with yourself because you’ve figured out ways to help us survive, and nopony else has.”

“Yes, I- wait, WHAT?” Starlight lunged out of the airlock, almost shoving Dragonfly off the ladder. “Would you care to repeat that insinuation, please?”

“Well, look at the facts,” Dragonfly said. “Spitfire’s too focused on taking care of you, Fireball doesn’t do anything unless someone asks him, I’m getting nowhere with my efforts to cultivate Mark as a source of information, and Cherry Berry spends so much time keeping everypony on speaking terms she can’t think straight.”

“Those aren’t facts, those are gross exaggerations,” Starlight said without thinking. A moment later she added, in a softer tone, “What was that about Cherry Berry again?”

“Well, you know the arguments you and Spitfire are always having?”

“Yes, because she treats me like I’m her baby chick instead of a grown unicorn!”

“And you know how Fireball is always getting on everyling else’s nerves?”

“He’s a dragon. Spike excepted, that’s what you’d expect from a dragon.”

“Well, Boss Mare’s always the one who settles the arguments, right?”

“Well, sure,” Starlight said. “She’s the leader. Of course she settles the arguments.”

“And then later she comes to you and talks to you, right? Says something about cheering up or relaxing or something and some bug-barf about understanding how the other pony feels.”

“It’s not bug-barf!” Starlight insisted.

“Yeah, well, she does that with everyone. In fact, that’s all she does!” Dragonfly insisted. “At least when she’s not playing in this monkey’s mucked-up sand. By the way, let me tell you that even by changeling standards-“

“I am not having a conversation about the smell in the base,” Starlight insisted. “We can’t do anything about that. Get back to Cherry Berry.”

“All right,” Dragonfly said agreeably. “What I’m saying is, she wastes so much time trying to get the rest of us to play nice that she isn’t coming up with any ideas herself. You know that. You’re the only one besides Mark coming up with ideas to save us all.”

“Look, that just isn’t true,” Starlight insisted.

“Is.”

“Isn’t.”

“Is.”

“ARGH! Stop it!” Starlight snapped.

“It’s a good thing our suits are on the private channel,” Dragonfly said. “Otherwise Cherry would be on her way over here to break us up.”

Starlight stifled some particularly irate horse noises with difficulty, took a deep breath, and said, “I am pleased with myself, yes. I’m also worried because we aren’t even close to safe yet. And I am most definitely not pleased at being the only smart pony in this crew, because I’m not! Dumb ponies don’t fly rockets!” She glared right into Dragonfly’s unblinking eyes. “Not even you, as much as you act stupid to get on everypony’s good side.”

“Is it working?” Dragonfly asked, grinning her toothiest changeling grin.

“Oh, I give up.” Shaking her head, Starlight looked at Mark. “Is he done yet?”

Dragonfly looked back at Mark. “Looks like he’s got the voltage regulator hooked up to our power feed… ah, and he’s splicing a spare power plug on a line so he doesn’t have to hard-wire the ship in to his power. Good idea! Yeah, he should be done any minute.”

“Good,” Starlight said. “I’m going to check the switches in the cabin and make sure everything’s disabled. Don’t let him plug that in until I’m finished.”

Dragonfly had done that earlier during their first EVA, and had done it before that during the tow, but she didn’t mention that. “OK, will do.”

Starlight glared at the changeling. “You better not forget,” she warned.

“Didn’t you just say there weren’t any stupid ponies or changelings on this ship?” Dragonfly asked.

“Whatever.” Starlight turned and marched back through the open airlock into the ship.

There we go, Dragonfly thought. Seed planted. It’ll cost me a bit of love in the short term until Starlight gets over her annoyance. I’ll have to make it up from the alien. Meantime I better let Starlight take the lead on showing the alien how the ship works. I’ve pushed her as hard as I dare for now.

I just hope this gets her to be more aware of the others, and especially to lighten up on Spitfire and Fireball. All this butting heads is making me sick, and Cherry’s worry tastes almost as bad as what she spends an hour every day wading in.

Mark stopped working, turning on hands and knees and motioning Dragonfly to make room for him to get off the improvised scaffold.

Dragonfly, drawing herself up into the absolute picture of eagerness-to-please, stretched a hoof out to take the toolbox from Mark's hand. Mark drew the toolbox back towards himself and gestured, a bit more firmly, for Dragonfly to please move over.

Darn. I never get to do anything fun around here.

Author's Note

A bit of filler today, although what was originally two-thirds of this chapter has been pulled aside for possible future use.

Changelings gotta ling, is all I'm saying for today's note.

(Oh- and the chapter that should go up on Saturday is now drafted, and it represents the single biggest stretch I'm going to make on the science side of this story. I'm not proud of it, but given the limitations I set for myself plus the limitations Mark Watney faced in his source material, it was absolutely necessary to prevent this story from being a lot shorter than I expect it to be- and, to be honest, to prevent the "Tragedy" tag from appearing on the story listing. But prepare yourselves, because in a couple of days I expect to hear a lot of variations on, "What? Bullshit.")

Sol 19

LOG ENTRY - SOL 19

It was kind of chilly this morning. The Hab is built to run off of half the solar cells it actually has and only four of the twelve renewable fuel-cell batteries in case a presupply flight crashes, but it wasn’t built to recharge the batteries on something the size of Skylab or the space shuttle. We went into low-power mode not long after I hooked up the electricity to the alien ship, and Mars and thermodynamics did the rest. Even with the atmospheric regulator and oxygenator providing heat, it wasn’t much above freezing when we woke up.

I did a quick EVA to unhook the power long enough to warm the Hab back up and make breakfast. The aliens- you know, I’m going to stop calling them aliens. They’re three ponies, a dragon… and whatever Dragonfly is. Starlight’s tried five different times to tell me what the bug is, and I get five different answers- “bug”, “fairy”, “changer,” “exchanged,” and “Doris.” Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the idea.

So, the pony crew gathered together in another meeting during breakfast, and sure enough they had another of their little squabbles. This time, though, it was Cherry against the four others, and for a moment I thought there was going to be a mutiny. Then they quieted down and began working with the whiteboards, writing in their language.

I haven’t mentioned their writing yet, except to mention that they have more or less our numbers and something very similar to Greek letters. Well, it turns out their regular alphabet has twenty-six letters, same as the English version of the Roman alphabet. The letters are similar, but not identical, so every time I look at their writing I have the feeling that if I squint I can read it. I tried. It doesn’t work.

Anyway, Starlight and Dragonfly did most of the writing, with occasional questions from Cherry. Spitfire never said a word after the writing began. Fireball held his peace until the end, when he said something very long and grumpy-sounding. Funny thing is, he didn’t look annoyed. If anything, he looked worried. I’ve never seen a worried dragon before. Considering how tough he is, I wondered what dragons have to be worried about.

Well, I found out. As soon as the meeting broke up, Starlight and Spitfire came over to me. Apparently it was time for our daily mutual dose of babelfish.

Transcript of the conversation:

STARLIGHT: Benign pre-noon.

WATNEY: Good morning to you too, Starlight. What were you talking about?

STARLIGHT: Need stones.

WATNEY: Okay, we can-

STARLIGHT: Is important: Stones. Gems. Crystals. Rocks. (Note: under the translation spell I heard Starlight say the same word in her language four times running. The spell offered a different translation each time.)

WATNEY: What for?

STARLIGHT: Cherry fix ship wants, need engine crystals. I magic more want, need gems batteries. Fireball gems eats, almost out.

She turned off the spell at that point and showed me the other whiteboard, the one with the big pretty pictures for pre-K students and ignorant aliens. It showed a drawing of what had to be their warp drive or whatever with a big wedge of crystal surrounded by gadgets. Next to that was a cutaway diagram of one of the magic batteries the ponies had salvaged from their ship. Finally, there was a cute drawing of a little green and purple dragon- definitely not Fireball, who is white and red with rounded gold spines- snacking from a bowl of cartoony faceted gemstones.

We erased the board (after I took a photo- Starlight wouldn’t let me otherwise) and got to picture-talking, while Cherry and Dragonfly went out to do systems checks on their ship and Fireball and Spitfire worked on bringing in more dirt.

I tried to supplement the pictures with the few words of their language I’ve picked up, but Starlight kept looking at me funny. Eventually she made an eating motion with her hooves and mouth and repeated a word I’m not even going to try to transcribe. Its vowel sound was somewhere between a short U and the sound a horse makes when it’s begging for sugar or apple slices.

I couldn’t even come close to reproducing it. Starlight had no problem with “eat”, though. Typical. First I had to deal with sufficiently advanced technology, then sufficiently advanced magic, and now I’m confronted with sufficiently advanced nasal passages. My plan to learn the pony language may have just hit its first hurdle.

Aside from that things were pretty grim, especially for Fireball. Turns out that he has at most twenty-five days of food at short rations. His meal packs are specifically formulated to include little bits of gemstone, sort of like onions in meatloaf or sprinkles on a cake.

He also has a few stones as snacks, which he’s been trying not to eat if he can help it. He’s got ten left, all this rich blue color. I think they’re sapphires, but I’m not sure. The smallest one is about the size of a value-menu hamburger, and on Earth would probably be enough by itself to buy me a mansion in River Oaks or some similar swanky neighborhood. Here it’s just food, and food only a dragon can eat.

Once his rations and the gems are gone, Starlight thinks he’s going to begin suffering from malnutrition. He can eat other meal packs- he can technically eat almost anything- but he needs at least a few gems to stay healthy.

I’m not going to question how that even works, especially since I’ve been dealing with the results of his meals for the past week or so. His shit stinks just as bad as the rest of it, and aside from being slightly drier and more powdery inside it’s not all that different. Which doesn’t make any sense, but if NASA wanted someone to make sense of such things they’d have sent up a wizard instead of a botanist.

Come to think of it, I don’t believe NASA has any wizards in the astronaut corps yet. Another thing that needs correction, all you historians and scientists of the future reading this. I’m sure that, given the opportunity, hundreds of candidates with a master’s degree or higher in Applied Thaumaturgy or similar disciplines will jump at the chance to join. Start printing those applications now, is all I’m saying.

But I’m getting away from the problem. The ponies need gems to feed their big muscle man (dragon). They need bigger gems to rebuild their magic batteries. And they need at least one huge gem to replace their warp drive. Why I don’t know- that ship of theirs is about as safe to fly as a cardboard box. But maybe they’re thinking contingency plan, and I can’t blame them.

The thing is, Mars has lots of crystals, at least in theory. Mars rovers and orbiters, and also Ares I and II, have discovered traces of a lot of precious and semi-precious gems, though so far the only crystals we’ve actually found bigger than sand grains are hematite, magnetite, gypsum and olivine. Starlight vetoed them all. Fireball can eat olivine, but it’s too brittle to use for their technology. Gypsum, of course, is worse- you can crumble gypsum in your fingers. And hematite and magnetite, according to Starlight, won’t even take a magic charge because of electric interference.

After spending an hour looking through the geology reference manuals NASA provided us with on my computer, she identified quartz and ruby as the ideal materials. That’s a problem. Ruby is unknown on Mars, and we’ve only found traces of quartz and feldspar from orbit in places where really old volcanoes have eroded away.

The problem is (if I’m remembering my briefings correctly- I was Lewis’s backup for geology work) most of the really hard gems and crystals are associated with either metamorphic rocks or light, slow-cooling granite formations. And the thing about both granite formations and metamorphic rocks is, you usually find them in mountains. And Ares III is in the least mountainous region on the entire planet.

Leaving aside crater ridges, you can see from the hab clear to the horizon 3.4 kilometers away. Even the mud volcano Starlight and her friends crashed into is below the horizon, too low-slung to see from here. The closest known traces of quartz are in Arabia Terra two thousand kilometers away, and the most promising locations for mining are in the two volcanic provinces, Tharsis and Elysium… each halfway around the planet from here.

Instead of mountains, the Hab sits on an unknown depth of ancient alluvial deposits which buried any early volcanoes this area had before the first multicellular life appeared on Earth. There’s some low rock outcrops nearby surrounding a crater, but the first look seems to indicate they’re layered, sedimentary rocks- no good for gems. The only gems larger than a grain of sand we’re likely to find here will be inside meteorites, created by ancient impacts during the dawn of the solar system.

Oh, perfect. As I’m typing this Johannsen’s Beatles collection has cycled round to a particular song. I’m sure you can guess what it is.

Ponies from the skies need diamonds…

That’s it. I found Beck’s personal data stick; let’s see what’s on it…

… medical journals. Directories and directories of nothing but medical journals. Dammit, Beck, you're a cool guy, but you have no life whatever.

So that leaves Lewis’s data stick. I’m a little reluctant to look into it, probably because she was our mission commander. But I’m just about sick enough of the lads from Liverpool to take the plunge.

Food. Water. Gems. And now entertainment.

Mars, could you please give us one little gift?

Author's Note

So today was my 44th birthday, and my uncle took me golfing in 45-degree weather on a soggy course. I had some fun, even if I shot miserably.

I came home about 4:30, intending to write my shortest ever chapter and seriously considering having a chapter be one line: "I wonder what the Bulls are doing." (The book has Mark as a huge Cubs fan, but baseball season is long over; Weir threw the baseball lines in as character-building without sticking tightly to the calendar times he used to calculate Hermes's trajectories. So I'm going to make him a Chicago sports fan in general, thought he's not fond of the Bears, is bored by hockey, and despises the White Sox as any good Cubbie would do.)

And then I got writing with what I expected would be four paragraphs summing up "We went place did science"... and it grew and grew, and now it's almost 2300 words. So yeah, you get a normal sized chapter on Sunday.

Yes, it'd be more realistic if Mark learned Pony, but it's more convenient for this writer if the ponies learn English, so that's what's going to end up happening. So the upshot is, Mark can't whinny fluently.

Don't ask where the green and purple dry-erase markers came from.
It's late, so discussions of gem prospecting on Mars will have to wait for another time...

Sol 20

In the dawn of the solar system dozens of rocky planetoids swarmed inside the orbit of Jupiter, colliding with one another and sweeping up the fragments back into themselves.

One such early planet took a glancing blow from a smaller planetoid, losing its first primordial atmosphere to the impact. The strike carved out a massive basin which filled first with lava and then with water, as volcanoes, comets, and the remaining bits of the smaller planetoid created a new atmosphere, thinner but still substantial. Other fragments coalesced in orbit as a series of moons of varying size in less than stable orbits.

The planet was large enough and hot enough to have a differentiated interior, complete with an iron inner and outer core whose rotations and convections created a magnetic field that protected the atmosphere from the solar winds. Above that a water-rich mantle thrust bubbles of magma up through an already thick crust, finding weak points to vent the little world’s internal heat.

At one such point, not far from the original edge of the great basin, a long rift formed, part of the planet's billion-year flirtation with plate tectonics. A chain of small volcanoes formed, insignificant compared to the titans which would come later. Each had its short three or four thousand years of glory, spewing sulfur and ash and light fractionated lava, before its caldera cooled and sealed. Fresh magma rose from the depths, found no vent, and remained, waiting, deep below the surface. As more magma rose, the subterranean pools collected and joined, the internal heat and fresh supplies of lava from the depths of the young planet keeping the reservoirs hot and fluid.

Millions of years passed. The basin became a great ocean, swallowing up the volcanoes and washing away their ashy layers, replacing them with sediment from a great river. Beneath, the magma chamber cooled and warmed, freezing and melting as fresh lava sought a path to the surface only to be denied by the pressure of uncounted waters.

The ocean water seeped through the compacting sediment, through the remains of the volcanic shield, down to the hot magma chamber. The water eroded pockets in the older volcanic rock around the magma, pockets which filled with gas and then with hypercritical water. The magma rose and fell, its heavier components sinking back through the cracks into the mantle, the lighter components mixing with water to form a mineral-rich mixture. The relatively low gravity of the planet allowed these pockets of air and mineral water to grow larger than on any on its nearby rocky cousins, despite the weight of rock and sediment layered atop them.

The planet cooled, reheated briefly by the impact of its largest moon and uncounted smaller asteroids as the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn migrated outwards in the chaotic dance of planetary orbits. The crust thickened, but for a very long time enough heat flowed through the closing rift to keep the magma chamber viable. With every surge and ebb of fresh magma new pockets were created, merging with one another, filling with mineral-rich water that began, slowly, to redeposit its mineral wealth on the walls of the pockets.

Deep inside the planet the iron core froze completely, ending the magnetic dynamo which had protected the planet. Solar radiation began bombarding the world, breaking apart water and whisking the atmosphere away a whisper at a time. The planet’s orbit widened, slowly tugged away from its star by the gradual migration of the gas giants, eventually bringing it to the edge of the asteroid belt created by the gravitational chaos of the giants’ passing. Receiving less heat from the sun, losing its atmospheric blanket to the vacuum of space, the planet cooled even faster.

The great basin, which was the planet’s first ocean, was also its last, as the poles froze, as the ice retreated into permafrost or into polar deposits that ebbed and grew with the long seasons. Without water the early tectonic plates ceased to move, first seizing up and then freezing up as the rifts connecting to the mantle choked with congealing lava.

As the waters retreated they continued to erode away the remnants of the ancient volcanoes birthed by that first immense impact. But beneath the surface the great magma chamber retained enough heat, even as it died, to create children, a field of new volcanoes that spewed water and ice instead of molten rock.

And under the surface the water remained, still liquid, still dissolving and redepositing its minerals, inside the great gas pockets.

But nothing lasts forever. Even meteor impacts, even the cracks around the boundary of the ancient basin, could no longer sustain the magma chamber. A billion years after its birth it froze solid, never to melt again.

Inside the air pockets, the water drained or froze or sublimated away, leaving behind the work of uncounted millennia.

Billions of years passed. The axis of the planet tilted back and forth. The polar deposits of ice and carbon dioxide thawed, shifted, and refroze. The crust, despite its thickness, flexed and shifted. The giant volcanoes elsewhere on the planet continued to grow, changing the planet's balance on its axis and occasionally unleashing cataclysmic eruptions that launched lava and stones beyond escape velocity, out into the vast gulf between planets.

As the all-but-dead world changed ever so slowly with the eons, the layers of compacted soil and rock eroded away from above the magma chamber. The ever-diminishing winds of an already rust-covered planet blew across the dry ocean floor, carrying away material to form dunes around the poles. Now and again small asteroids would penetrate the wispy atmosphere and strike the surface, one of which penetrated the soil on top of the magma chamber and created a new hole that accelerated the process of erosion.

Slowly, slowly, the frozen magma chamber emerged from its coat of looser material. The crater at its top gave it a superficial resemblance to the nearby dead ice volcanoes it had sired. It shed its remaining detritus at its feet, blending in with the surroundings, its hardened core bidding defiance to the now feeble and tenuous wind of an almost dead world.

And then, as the next world closer to the sun entered a cycle of ice ages punctuated with brief warm periods, one of the great air pockets, with its deposits left behind by the ancient boiling waters of Mars, broke through to the surface. Dust and the occasional runoff of perchlorate-tainted ice water flowed into the open chamber little by little. The winds and dunes sealed the opening, then revealed it, then resealed it, each cycle depositing a bit more soil and ice into the immense chamber below.

The chamber sat, still mostly buried under a gray gravestone itself mostly buried by sand, and waited for its treasure to be discovered.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 16

ARES III SOL 20

For the three thousand four hundredth and umpty-second time Spitfire wished that her space suit had wings.

She’d never really appreciated, even when injured and temporarily grounded, how confining it felt to be required to go everywhere on hoof like an earth pony or unicorn. But that was before she’d spent over two weeks either trapped in her space suit or inside an alien structure some ten yards on a side. That was before she’d spent all that time, except for a couple of minutes, with only the faintest scrap of pegasus magic, unable to fly properly or sense the air properly or, well, do anything properly.

Every day she woke up feeling like somepony had replaced her horseshoes with magic weights that made her feel fifty pounds lighter but held her to the ground like a magnet. She woke up grumpy and went to bed grumpier.

And she couldn’t tell anypony about it, because Wonderbolts don’t whine.

She could have taken it better if she’d had proper duties, a daily schedule, some structure to work in. But Spitfire had been a last-minute addition to the crew, a political decision to keep the balance of pony races and space agencies. She’d been promoted up and out of the Wonderbolts and then been placed at the bottom of the crew seniority rankings. And she’d been given a whole whopping three weeks of supplemental field medic training to go with the standard stuff she’d had when she first joined the Wonderbolts Reserve on her way up.

So this was her life now: standing on a hillside on an alien planet with no magic, almost no air, and with her wings securely bound to her sides by the Celestia-bedamned spacesuit, her only duty something for which she was minimally trained and not in the least talented, shadowing a unicorn ex-con who was such a bucking genius that she kept experimenting with new and innovative ways to commit suicide via magical burnout, and all the time wishing for somepony to either ask her for orders or to give her some.

But the only pony around at the moment was Starlight bucking Glimmer.

“Look,” she said to the unicorn in question, “we brought that battery for a reason. Use that instead of your reserves and maybe we’ll get somewhere before you pass out.”

“I only need to run Rarity’s spell for a couple of seconds at a time,” Starlight Glimmer insisted. “And with just enough power to take a bearing. I can do that easily so long as I don’t keep the spell running.”

“We’ve taken five bearings since we got back to this lump,” Spitfire said. “And it’s kind of hard to triangulate a location when none of the bearings converge.”

A few steps away, the alien Mark, face hidden by the reflective plate of his own spacesuit, stood patiently, one of his little shovels in his hands.

“I’m sure there are gems here somewhere!” Starlight insisted. “The spell’s picking up large deposits! We just have to keep searching!”

Spitfire shook her head. The one duty she’d been given, and half the time her patient and her superior officer wouldn’t let her do it. “Fine, cast it again,” she said. “But we’ve been walking all over this hill for hours! We didn’t find anything in the trench we carved coming down, and we haven’t found anything around the hillside!”

“But the spell says it’s got to be here!” Starlight Glimmer’s horn lit up, and for a second or two the ground around them glowed a faint blue in the dim orange light of Mars’s far-too-distant sun. The unicorn’s head jerked down hard and she cut the spell instantly. “See? This time the spell says it’s right underneath us! Quick, start digging!”

Sighing, Spitfire began pawing at the ground with her forehooves, The top layer of fine dust moved aside easily. The second layer of coarser material compacted by billions of years parted more reluctantly. The third layer, reached far sooner than Spitfire expected… was solid gray rock. “Huh… you may be right, Starlight. Come look at this.” She also waved to Mark, who straightened slightly at the sign of a potential discovery and walked towards them.

Three steps later the tall alien’s leg plunged into the ground, and he flopped back onto his flank, his arms flailing, his shovel flying off to one side.

“Mark!” Starlight Glimmer abandoned the exposed bit of rock and dashed over to where the alien sat on the dirt.

“Don’t move him!” Spitfire urged. “We don’t know what he fell into! His suit might be damaged!”

Starlight pulled up well before reaching him. “Oh. Right.” She carefully worked her away around Mark, avoiding the sand trickling down into the growing cavity around his right leg, until she could approach him from behind. Spitfire was afraid she’d try lifting him out of the hole, which after a day of spellcasting would definitely leave her exhausted or worse- again. But instead the unicorn put her helmet visor gently up against the back of Mark’s helmet. Spitfire heard over their suit-to-suit comms two carefully pronounced words in Mark’s language: “Syuut. Okeh?”

Mark nodded. As Starlight put her helmet back into contact with his, Spitfire heard a distorted noise which sounded vaguely like, “syuut okeh.” With a slight shift of his weight he brought his right knee back above the surface of the sand, then very slowly and carefully scooted himself back, raising the half-buried leg higher until the boot surfaced, leaving him free again. Even then he continued to scoot back, Starlight keeping to his side, until he was a good three pony-lengths from where he’d fallen in.

With Mark’s leg freed, sand poured into the void where it had been. An overhang appeared as the Martian dust shifted into the growing hole and then- thank Celestia!- a row of large white crystals like teeth in a monstrous upper jaw.

“Success!” Starlight Glimmer cheered, stepping forwards. Mark grabbed her with his gloves and hauled her back, pointing to the continual cascade of sand and dirt into the growing chasm.

“Listen to him!” Spitfire said. “Don’t do anything until it stabilizes. That overhang might collapse at any time, or the sands might suck you down into the hole.”

“But I can just-“

“And absolutely no magic!” Spitfire snapped. “We can go get the battery from Mark’s carriage if we need it, but you’ve cast enough spells on your own resources for one day!”

“Fine,” Starlight said grumpily, as Mark finally got to his feet and nudged her farther back from the hole.

After about twenty minutes the small landslide stopped. The sinkhole had grown several hooves wide, the part under the overhang about two hooves high, not high enough to crawl under. Mark retrieved his shovel and gave the now uncovered ledge that had prevented him from falling through a hard strike, and it broke off and crumbled, revealing more of the hole, with a sparkling mixture of crystal fragments mixed with the usual Martian soil. Waving the other two away, the alien began digging, flinging little bits of soil away with the too-small shovel, occasionally inverting it to beat a bit of harder material around the edges of the hole into submission.

Twenty minutes later the hole was large enough for him to stand in, and he did, focusing on scooping dust and sand out of the overhang. After another ten minutes of this he set the shovel on the edge of the hole, turned on the flashlight built into his suit’s right arm, and stuck his arm inside the overhang, waggling it around.

Then the alien stiffened, still with his arm stuck in the ground, unmoving.

“He’s got caught on one of those crystals!” Starlight insisted.

“No, I don’t think so,” Spitfire said cautiously. She didn’t know what he was doing; what was the point of shoving his flashlight into the hole when his eyes weren’t at a level to see what was inside?

Then, very carefully, Mark pulled his arm out, turning off the flashlight. He picked up the shovel again, motioned the ponies to stand back, and then attacked the sand under the overhang with a passion that defied all common sense. Despite the awkwardness of his suit and the small size of the shovel blade, dust flew.

“What is he doing?” Spitfire mused aloud.

“I’m going to get the battery,” Starlight said. “He’ll hurt himself if he keeps going like that. Why does he want to go deeper anyway? We’ve got perfectly good gems right there!”

“Hm… yeah, I think you better do that,” Spitfire said.

It took about fifteen minutes for Starlight to make the round trip from the rover, battery pack strapped to her spacesuit with improvised belts made by Dragonfly for the purpose. (It had cost half a food ration, after which the changeling had spent half an hour behind the Curtain of Infernal Stench before emerging with a changeling-rope harness perfectly fitted for the battery. She’d said, “Don’t ask,” and nopony had wanted to.) “I’m going to tell him what I’m about to do,” she said as soon as she got back.

“Can you spare the charge?” Spitfire asked.

“The battery’s showing thirteen percent charge,” Starlight said. “Twenty percent was enough to pick up the entire Amicitas. All I’ll be doing is shoveling loose dirt.”

“You be careful anyway,” Spitfire warned, knowing it wouldn’t help.

Starlight stood atop the overhang and waved her forehooves until she got Mark’s attention. Only then did she light up her horn again, and then only long enough to tell him to move. Mark waved one of his arms in a gesture Spitfire didn’t recognize, and Starlight responded by pointing a hoof imperiously, ordering him out of the hole. Mark shrugged and picked himself out of the hole, which he’d expanded enough that it was chest-deep to him now.

Satisfied, Starlight unstrapped the battery and set it down. She put one forehoof directly on the exposed leads as she flipped the switch on with the other. Almost instantly a large scoop made of turquoise light appeared in the air above the hole, plunging into the sand and flinging it well downslope and out of the way.

After about a minute of this Mark waved his own arms for attention, and Starlight cancelled her digging spell and shut off the battery, still showing most of its charge. Her horn lit up again, and the unicorn’s magic surrounded her helmet and Mark’s as they exchanged a few more words. Finally Mark pointed into the hole, through the overhang where he’d been digging. It was Starlight’s turn to shrug and obey, a little weak-kneed as she cancelled the translation spell and eased her way down into the hole.

“You’re pushing yourself again,” Spitfire said.

“Spitfire,” Starlight said, sounding quite confused, “he wants me to go into the cave and look at something. And apparently a ‘green lamp’ has something to do with it. I don’t understand.”

“I thought you were working on that translation spell,” Spitfire said.

“It still doesn’t do idioms well,” Starlight admitted. “I don’t know how to fix that, and anyway it’s better if we just learn the language.”

“Mind your hooves,” Spitfire said. “If you get stuck don’t try to free yourself. Mark and I will get you out.”

“It’s all right. The surface is just like a sand dune back home…” Starlight paused. “Gotta turn on my suit lights, it’s dark in h- oooooooh my Faust.”

“What?” Spitfire danced on her hooves, wanting to follow Starlight into the little cave, afraid of what might happen.

“It’s… it’s incredible,” Starlight gasped. “It’s like the caverns under Canterlot!”

Spitfire stopped dancing. “You mean the big, crystal-filled, prime security risk caverns civilians like you aren’t supposed to know exist?” she asked.

“I…. may have learned something about them when I was still a crazy Twilight-Sparkle-stalking supervillain,” Starlight Glimmer admitted. “Anyway, can you bring the battery to the mouth of the cave? I need to make it big enough for Mark to come inside. He needs to see all of this.”

“See what? That we’ve got enough gems to feed Fireball for a while?” Spitfire shook her head and silently damned all geniuses whose brains ran ahead of their mouths. “That’s nice, but what else is there?”

“What else is there?” The unicorn’s voice over the magic comm link was triumphant. “The solution to all our problems, that’s what else!!”

LOG ENTRY – SOL 20

Greetings from the Fortress of Solitude!

Well, not really. I’m writing this from Rover 2. We’ve run out of EVA time for the day, and once I finish writing this down we’re going back to the Hab for more tools, more planning, and probably that birthday cake that was in the ponies’s refrigerator. It’s going to go stale if it sits any longer, and today’s find deserves a celebration!

This morning we went back to the crash site- Starlight, Spitfire and myself. Site Epsilon is the only chance we have without modifying the rover to find the kind of gems or crystals that Starlight wants. When we started out I didn’t think there was any real hope of finding anything of the kind. But it’s critical to the ponies that we get some kind of gems, for Fireball’s sake if nothing else, so I thought we’d give it a try.

We spent a good four hours wandering all over the northeast side of Site Epsilon. Starlight seemed to be dowsing or something for the crystals, but every time she did it she pointed a different direction. So we made circles, digging down in the soil a couple of feet, hitting rock we couldn’t penetrate, and giving up. NASA never imagined a need or desire for an Ares crew to engage in heavy mining operations, so all I had with me was a sample shovel, a hammer for breaking small rocks with, and a chisel for breaking whatever I want with. None of that is going to penetrate bedrock.

Eventually it wasn’t the pony magic that discovered it. It was good old human clumsiness. My right foot found a hollow patch under the soil surface and punched straight through. Fortunately the initial hole was only a bit wider than my suit leg, so I wasn’t swallowed up completely. Even more fortunately, the surface was only moderately compacted sand and nothing harder or sharper, so my suit didn’t get torn or damaged. Otherwise this log would only be continued if the ponies took typing lessons from Strong Bad.

I very carefully extracted myself from the sinkhole. Sand continued to pour in once I removed my leg, and the abrasion widened the hole pretty quickly. Apparently the void under the surface was pretty big, because a good portion of the hillside eventually got swallowed up by it, revealing an overhang that looked kind of like the upper jaw of a troll, complete with diamond teeth. (Okay, not diamond, because diamonds don’t work like that. White quartz. But still very toothy-looking. I wouldn’t want to be bit by that mouth, anyway.)

We’d found what we came for, completely by accident and in spite of every bit of common sense. Which, to be honest, is par for the course for Mars. Every probe and crew that have landed here have found something totally contrary to what they expected, so why should I be any different? Of course, having found it, we immediately explained it away so it wasn’t surprising any more, but hindsight is always easy to peer review.

But I wanted to see just how much we had to work with and how hard we’d have to work to get it. Quartz, if that’s what those crystals are, is really hard stuff- it’s one of the defining levels of the Mohs scale, 7 or 8, I forget which. I don’t think I’ve got anything that’ll cut it, so I went digging, first widening the hole so I could work in it, then working my way under the troll teeth, looking for some broken or fallen bits that we could just pick up and take home.

The dirt that had fallen into the hole had piled up and turned out to be solid enough to stand on. That let me climb into the hole, make it deeper, and then work on clearing out the space under that overhang. There was a danger that the sinkhole would sink further or that I would get trapped in sand again, but I didn't care. We needed those gems, and I was going to get them, one way or another.

Once I had a good sized opening I turned on the camera and flashlight on my right arm. All the Ares surface suits have them. Because our ability to see side to side is restricted by the spacesuits, we have to turn our whole bodies to see things not directly in front of us. The cameras project an image into our helmets so we don’t have to stop and turn all the time. Plus the camera feed can be viewed by the crew still in the Hab and retransmitted to Earth for further review. It’s not a perfect system- I’d have put it on my left arm so I can use the light and have a tool in my right hand at the same time- but it works pretty good.

But if the mission had gone to spec, and if I’d done something like this, NASA would have ordered me strapped to a bunk for the rest of the mission, and Lewis would have done it, because it would have meant I’d gone crazy. NASA never considered the dangers of jumping into a Martian sinkhole and sticking one arm of your spacesuit up to the shoulder into a strange hole on an alien planet because they all expected our mothers would have taught us that when we were five. Really, they’re obvious, as obvious as the sharp pointy crystals right in my faceplate at the top of the hole.

The first view made one thing obvious: the hole was deep and went a long, long way back into the volcano. At first I thought it might be a lava tube, but that didn’t explain the crystals. I don’t know if crystals can grow in a lava tube, but I know I never saw the two together in nature during my training as Lewis’s geology backup. And that training wasn’t all it could have been, because we were so busy training for ten thousand other things, and anyway all NASA really wanted from us was to say what stuff looked like, pack up the really weird bits, and haul five hundred kilograms of it back to Earth for the real geologists to poke at for the next hundred years.

But then I caught sight of the sides of the hole. Crystal. Big-ass crystals. Crystals absolutely everywhere. There were even a couple of shafts of crystal that looked as thick as I am that went from ceiling through the floor.

I began digging the hole out bigger so Starlight could go in and see for herself. After a few minutes of this Starlight pulled out her Box o’ Magic Juice and ordered me out of the hole. In about a minute she’d done more than I’d managed in half an hour with the sample shovel. (Maybe she ought to be supervising the Hab soil project instead of Cherry? Just a thought.) Then she went in (after I told her she needed to go look)… and she stayed in. Spitfire took the battery in to her, then came back out and shoved me until I got the idea that we should, as the saying goes, “de-assify the area”.

Once we were clear, Starlight did something, probably magical, that sent tons of loose dirt flying out of that cave mouth like ammo from a marshmallow gun. When she was done the magic battery was empty, but so was the mouth of what turned out to be a really big cavern once you got past the entrance.

There were a couple of tight spots, but we were able to go back quite a long way- hundreds of meters, anyway. And let me tell you, it’s truly amazing. It looks like a gigantic geode that grew and absorbed smaller geodes. Most of the crystals are white, but there were a lot of yellow and red ones and even some purple. They come in all sizes, and I do mean all, from tiny enough to be set in a ring on up to shafts as big around as I am.

And they’re hard. I had a knife in my tool pouch, so I tried to scratch several with it. No good. After the fifth failed attempt, I scraped the flat of the blade across one of the crystal points, and it left a shallow gouge down the steel. Definitely quartz or something harder.

We didn’t find any loose broken bits on the floor, but there’s a reason for that. The floor is hard-packed Mars soil, sloping down from the entrance. I have to bend a bit to get in without risking a scrape from the troll teeth, but ten paces in I can stand straight with no problems, and twenty paces in I can’t reach the ceiling. Apparently this cave or lava tube or geode or whatever it is opens to the surface periodically. Sand blows or falls into the hole until it fills, and then it hardens by compaction, leaving a brittle shell up top and opening a hole underneath. Eventually something happens- a meteor strike or a dust storm or something- the hole reopens, and the cycle repeats. And every time it does more sand slides further back into the cave, filling it in a bit at a time.

I think I might have seen a twinkle of crystals on the floor on the edge of my suit lights when we finally turned around to get out of the cave. Other than that, there’s at least a thin layer of dirt all the way down. Hell, it could be a really deep layer. We have no way of knowing how deep the original cave went. But any crystals that broke off of the walls and ceiling would have been buried by sand and dust ages ago.

Anyway, we now have crystals. Santa came early this year. I haven’t got a damn thing that will cut them, but Starlight doesn’t seem bothered about that. She’s much more excited about the dirt and the open space inside.

And I think I’m on the same page as she is, but to be sure we need to do a proper exploration of the cave. That means we’re coming back tomorrow. Yes, we retreat for now, but we shall return… armed with SCIENCE!

Author's Note

Yes, this is the "bullshit!" moment in this story, if ever there's going to be one. Andy Weir gave us wind forces that couldn't possibly work (particularly the storm at the start of the story). I'm giving the ponies- potentially- an underground farm and more gems than they'll be able to use.

Now, here's why it's bullshit.

First, as mentioned, Acidalia Planitia is an ancient ocean floor. It's a southern extension of the great Borealia impact basin, formed a bit more than four billion years ago by our best estimates. Debris from the impact that created it formed Phobos and Deimos (recent studies show that they have a mixture of Mars and non-Mars material, making it unlikely that they're captured asteroids) and probably other moons which eventually crashed back into the planet, creating some of the other large basins.

As an ocean floor, and particularly as adjacent to the Mawrth Valles river valley network running off of Arabia Terra, Acidalia is covered in sediment. There are a number of small hills here and there which might be ice volcanoes or remains of rocky prominences that are part of Arabia Terra's geological formations- we don't know for sure and won't know without a closer look. Under no circumstances would you expect volcanic remnants anywhere near the surface, much less conveniently placed for Watney to stick his foot in one.

But that's the lesser of this cave's sins. The really big sin is the difference between basalt and granite.

As a very vague rule of thumb, on Earth granite is what makes up almost all the continents, and basalt is what makes all the ocean floors. Basalt is what happens when lava and magma cool quickly, without having time to form proper crystal structures. Every ash-spewing or lava-spurting volcano you've ever see is a basalt formation in progress. And the crystals you usually get from such volcanoes are small, soft, and prone to rapid erosion in the presence of water.

For hard stones you need either metamorphic rocks- rocks that are melted and re-frozen by tectonic subduction or by the folding and pressing of layers of rock- or granite formations. The heat and pressure over a long period of time has two main effects: it allows liquid rock to fraction into heavier and lighter components (iron, magnesium, etc. settling to the bottom, oxides floating to the top), and it allows crystals to form and to grow for very long periods at a time.

And there's one other ingredient you need for really large crystals to form: water. Because water is how you get geodes. SImplifying the process down, you get an empty pocket in the rocks near a source of heat and minerals, and water seeps in to fill the pocket. So long as the water sticks around, the minerals dissolved inside it will crystallize on the insides of the pocket, forming a geode.

On Earth geodes are really common. Earth's crust is full of silicon, mostly in the form of silicon dioxide (SiO2), more commonly known as quartz. The parts of beach sand that aren't diatoms or shell fragments are mostly quartz, as are the greater part of desert sands. A huge number of precious and semi-precious stones are varieties or forms of quartz, either as crystals or as layered deposits.

On Mars quartz- and granitic formations in general- are rare as hell. We've only detected traces of quartz and feldspar from orbit in a couple of locations, one on Arabia Terra and the other in the caldera of one of Mars's giant volcanoes. The theory is that, since Mars's plate tectonics died over three billion years ago, its remaining volcanoes just sat atop the magma plumes that fed them forever, giving their magma chambers time to settle out into lighter and denser components, which allowed some granite to form in select areas. But the vast majority of Mars is covered in basaltic minerals, and if you found a crystal, you'd have to assume it was olivine or gypsum or something of that sort.

On Mars, so far as we currently know, quartz is rarer than diamonds.

So why am I going this route?

Well, it's not just about Fireball. My first idea was to send Leonid the Yak up as the fifth crewperson and sole male of Amicitas. And with enough improvising I could probably have thought of a way to get all six people off of Mars without a single spare gem, if I absolutely had to.

But the food issue was critical. The Hab farm in the book was barely going to be able to feed Mark, and it was too small to be viable beyond feeding him through Sol 900... if the airlock hadn't blown out. Under no circumstances would it sustain two people, let alone six. So the question was, how to give the characters a larger space to farm in?

The pony ship, which has less interior space than the Hab, was never a serious option. The MDV had part of its hull stove in by flying debris during the Sol 6 storm, so that was out too. The landing stage of the MAV, left behind when it launched, contained the fuel plant that Mark could (and still can) use to compress Mars air if he needs it, but no habitat space. Mark has only six square meters of spare Hab canvas, and in the course of the book he uses practically all of it, the last portion becoming the ragtop roof for his ride home.

So, what's left? He hasn't enough materials to build an airtight enclosure three or four times the surface area of the Hab. All he can do is find a place, a cave of some kind, where he can seal it off, pump it full of air, add some lights and get to work.

So what kind of caves are on Mars at all? Limestone caves, the most common on Earth, are out. Every limestone rock you see is the cemetery marker for billions of ancient diatoms that settled to an ocean floor ages before the first of our ancestors hopped from one shallow pond to another. The odds of finding limestone on Mars are vanishingly small. (But the good news is, if we ever do, it means absolute confirmation of ancient life there.)

Sandstone caves exist- the Anasazi and Pueblo tribes built their homes in sandstone overhangs- but they're structurally weak. Pressure differentials and interior heating to provide a livable environment would destroy such a cave in short order, if such a cave would hold air at all. I doubt it would.

Ice caves are possible, but once exposed to Mars's environment they'd rapidly sublimate away, a process making them inhabitable would accelerate.

So the best, and practically the only, option is volcanic caves- which is why my first idea was for the crew to find an ancient lava tube.

That plan didn't last long. We know lava tubes exist on Mars; we have orbital photographs that let us trace their path. And the reason we can do this is because those tubes have collapsed. Lava tubes are notoriously fragile and unstable. And, being basaltic deposits, they practically never have any crystals worth exploiting.

So I fudged. I fudged big time, and I gave our heroes the biggest geode conceivable, and I made it quartz for its strength, durability, and its comparative ease of making airtight. (No stone is truly airtight, but a quartz geode is as close as I could come up with without going back to college and getting a geology degree.)

Three examples from Earth for your edification:

The Giant's Causeway, Ireland - It looks like giant stone crystals, but it's not, at least not quite. This is a huge ancient lava flow that, when it cooled, split along the rough molecular structure of basalt.

Heineman's Crystal Cave, Ohio, USA - The largest known geode on Earth, which after close to a century of being mined for its mineral wealth is now large enough to allow a couple dozen people inside at a time to ooh and aah at the (somewhat reduced) wonder of nature. It's not quartz- it's a metamorphic geode formed inside a limestone deposit as much as three billion years old.

By comparison, the largest known quartz geode is an amethyst structure just big enough for three people to lie in head to foot.

Cueva de los Crystales (Crystal Cave), Mexico - The cave with the largest crystals known on Earth. Not a geode, though- the deposits are gigantic gypsum crystals, grown for millions of years in a water-filled chamber. The water has been allowed to return, but when it was open scientists could only spend twenty minutes at a time inside, even with protective suits, due to the lethal heat and humidity three hundred meters below the surface.

So, here it is: my one big you-get-to-live gift to Mark and the ponies. They get a not-100%-impossible-but-wildly-improbable quartz cave on a scale dwarfing anything on Earth (just like Olympus Mons dwarfs any mountain on Earth, come to think of it). They get gems for batteries, gems to rebuild the Sparkle Drive if Starlight Glimmer wants, gems for Fireball to eat... but more important, they get a large cave with a narrow entrance and a floor full of soil.

Now they have to make it a farm... and Santa's bag just went empty.

EDIT: And yeah, apparently I got it wrong anyway. You DO get geodes, even quartz geodes, from basaltic formations. Maybe I'll come back and fix this at one point, but in the meantime I'm just going to go watch Mythbusters and wonder why I wasn't this interested in rocks back when I was actually in college...

EDIT2: And I went back to change it this morning, and ended up only adding about twenty words. I mentally had the process wrong (because every source told me quartz is a granitic rock and doesn't appear in volcanoes), but more or less by accident I'd gotten the process that creates geodes almost right. Maybe I should forget the hard science and just have Starlight train Mark as an apprentice wizard.

Sol 21

MISSION LOG – SOL 21

We have returned bearing soil samples and dragon take-out. Fireball gets to choose one from column A (quartz), one from column B (different colored quartz), and one from column C (other different colored quartz). The rest of us have to make do with three-quarters of a technologically advanced microwave dinner each.

Fireball seems to have mixed feelings about the discovery. On the one hand, plain white quartz (which is the clear majority of what’s in the crystal cave) is like tapioca pudding for dragons, according to Starlight. On the other hand, he was thrilled at the small number of yellow, red and purple crystals we brought back with the white… and he was downright giddy at the double handful of dark grey crystals. He’s busy now slowly crushing them into powder with his claws and scooping the dust into one of my test tubes. It kinda looks like a pepper shaker now.

But the key point is, barring a cave-in, he’s set for food for the duration. With fully charged suits and fresh CO2 filters in my case, Starlight and I explored the cave from mouth to back today. I dug out the entrance some more so I don’t have to duck to get in, and that’s still the narrowest point in the cave except for one.

I don’t think the cave is really all one geode. There are places where the crystals change color slowly, like a Photoshop color gradient, but there are also tight points where the crystals are white on one side of the narrowing and orange or purple on the other side. And there are little pockets everywhere, sort of like cubbyholes, with other varieties of crystal. Best guess, a bunch of air pockets opened up in the molten rock, and what with one thing and another the bubbles grew together. Somewhere in the past the barriers between the geodes broke or something, and then mineral deposits sealed them together.

All told, the cave goes back almost to the center of Site Epsilon- a good six hundred meters deep. There’s only a bit of sand and dust at the far end, not enough to cover up the gems, so I’m guessing that the opening hasn’t been open for all that long geologically speaking. Over a billion years this place would have silted up solid. Anyway, we only walked as far as it was safe to, and we didn’t step on any exposed crystals. My light was good enough to see a gray wall barren of crystal at the far end, which I’m guessing is an old magma chamber.

But most of that is academic. Right now we’re focused on practical matters, namely: how can we use this cave?

Well, obviously we can harvest crystals from it. Starlight used her magic and that battery of hers to cut samples enough for two sample boxes off the walls. Seems I was more right about her being Yoda than I knew, considering that her horn makes a dandy lightsaber. Most of one bin is going to be Fireball’s nom-noms for the next month or so, but the other bin has four chunks taken from the really huge crystals, each absolutely flawless and about the same size as the one in her magic battery. No points for guessing what she has planned there.

But that’s a minor issue. The major issue is: can we turn that cave into a farm? The second chamber or so in, about eighty meters from the entrance, is almost perfect for our needs. It’s at least twenty meters wide and a good two hundred meters long- which would probably make it gigantic even among Earth caves, and probably wouldn’t work at all here except for Mars’s 0.4g and a couple of crystal shafts that run from ceiling to floor here and there.

That’s where I took most of my soil samples using the sample drill. I filled up about two dozen sample bags with dirt from ten centimeters, thirty, and even fifty- that’s about twenty inches down in American measurements. I’ll run them through the same soil tests I used on the surface dirt around the Hab, but that won’t happen for a couple days.

While Starlight and I have been raiding Superman’s underwear drawer, everyone else has been finishing the all-important job of covering the Hab with ten centimeters of Martian dirt and soaking it down to flush all the nasty perchlorates to the bottom, where we won’t be breathing toxic dust 24-7. We now have ninety-two square meters of mostly barren soil in the Hab. Tomorrow we add yet more water, but otherwise we rest, because the next day is the first of what I call “dirt-doubling.”

The first batch of dirt we brought in, with its Earth soil and compost mixed in, is coming along nicely. It already looks like well-watered and fertilized reclaimed desert soil… which, well, it is. I’ve checked in the microscope, and the Earth bacteria are coming along nicely. And- best of all- the perchlorate-eating bugs have done their job. Perchlorate levels are down by three-quarters from the levels measured outside.

But that’s only 15 square meters, leaving 77 square meters of mostly raw, bacteria-free, unfertilized soil in the hab. So my plan is to dig up the dirt full of Earth bacteria (except for the bit that’s growing the starter alfalfa crop), spread some of the untreated Mars dirt to cover the bare area, and dump the treated soil on top of it, along with the current contents of our communal shit bucket.

That will be mostly me doing it, with Fireball maybe helping. That leaves the ponies with the most dangerous job: talking Fireball into helping me do it. It’ll also be a long, physically challenging job, so I’m not planning on doing anything else that day. Only after that’s done will I tackle the soil samples from the cave.

It’d take at least two, and more practically three, dirt-doublings before we’re ready to plant. I’ll probably start the potato seed crop after the second doubling- we’ll see how the first one goes. But that’s just for the available floor space in the Hab. We’ll need about half as much again if we try to turn the alien ship into a second area. And if we turn the gem cave into a farm, we’ll need as large a collection of dirt as we can fit into the rover to kick-start the soil already there.

I admit, making a farm in a cave is really ambitious, but Starlight thinks all the major problems can be addressed through low-level magic. I don’t know about that. I’ll try to remember to talk to her about it during Guess the Context Time tomorrow. She’s too tired for more magic tonight.

For my own use, here’s a rundown of all the problems I can think of with growing things in the cave.

1)LIGHT. The cave is dark as hell once you get more than three steps from the entrance. I don’t have any mushroom spores, so we need to get a lot of light in there for edible plants to grow. The Hab lighting is specially designed LEDs tweaked to replicate Earth levels of sunlight, including small amounts of infrared and non-sunburning ultraviolet wavelengths. The pony ship uses, I shit you not, incandescent bulbs.

2)HEAT. The Hab has a full heating system in addition to several systems like the atmospheric regulator, the oxygenator, and the water reclaimer that produce heat as part of normal operation. The polymers of the Hab canvas and floor are efficient insulators designed to reduce the heat lost to Mars’s atmosphere. The cave, on the other hand, is underground and actually a couple of degrees cooler than the surface. The dirt and rock will represent a massive heat sink that will make warming the area enough for plants to live a serious challenge.

3)AIR. Our inspection didn’t reveal any skylights or other openings that might allow air to vent to the surface aside from the entrance, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t cracks or something hidden behind the crystals. And even if there aren't, geodes are porous, so I have to hope the soil on top of the cave makes a good seal. Also, I simply haven’t got enough O2 or N2 in the Hab to fill that vast a space. Assuming we can seal the entrance, which is a big damn if, we either need a large-scale source of breathable air or a source of air the Hab systems can convert to breathable air to replace what we’ll have to steal to fill the cave.

4)WATER. The pony suits are holding up for the Hab dirt project, but a cave farm would be a lot bigger and a lot thirstier. Also, there’s almost certainly permafrost in that soil if it goes as deep as the ceiling is high. Too much water, or contaminated water, might be as big a problem as too little, especially since the cave won’t have a water reclaimer to take the excess out of circulation.

5)ACCESS. We need to get in the cave to tend the farm, and we need to be able to get harvests out. Sealing the cave isn’t enough; we need an airlock. I have materials for Hab canvas repairs which would let me detach one of the Hab’s three airlocks for this purpose, but I think the cargo airlock from the alien ship would be a better bet. It doesn’t risk our safe haven, and it’s currently attached to a section of the ship that can’t hold air anyway. The docking port would also work, except it’s much smaller- I’d have to crawl through on hands and knees- and removing it would make the central compartment of the ship uninhabitable.

6)SOIL. Or more specifically, perchlorates. If the concentrations are like the surface, the Earth bacteria can cope. If they’re higher, there could be problems. And in any case, first we need to create enough Earth-type fertile soil to get started with, or 1 through 5 are all pointless.

That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure the thing I’m forgetting will come round to bite me in the ass.

Even the ponies are beginning to tire of non-stop Beatles. Tonight I’m going to show them Vogel’s family photos. They’re the only non-text thing on his media drive. I figure we can use them to start language lessons and give the ponies a look at what life is like on Earth.

And after the ponies are bored of family photos (which, in my personal case, usually takes about seven minutes), I’ll have no choice but to raid Commander Lewis’s media stash. Please, Commander, have something educational. Something that encourages development of vocabulary. Something. Anything.

MISSION LOG – SOL 21 (2)

I got bored of the photos before the ponies did. They were talking about the pics for a couple of hours, and of course I didn’t understand a word. They were too excited to explain anything by Pictionary. But finally their interest tapered off enough for me to pull Vogel’s stick and slot in Lewis’s.

So what does our esteemed commander, who has been both a carrier pilot and a nuclear submarine officer before joining NASA, bring to the table?

Sitcoms.

1970s sitcoms.

Shitty, terrible, horrible TV sitcoms from the 1970s. And she’s absolutely filled the stick with them.

Well, to be fair, it’s not all sitcoms, but look at the list.

Barney Miller.
The Bionic Woman.
BJ and the Bear. (What?)
The Bob Newhart Show.
The Brady Bunch. (I saw the movies as a kid. I will NEVER be THAT bored.)
CHiPs (apparently only the first three seasons. Hm. Wonder why.)
The Dukes of Hazzard (the whole run, even though it had more 80’s than 70’s seasons).
The Electric Company. (What?)
Grizzly Adams. (No, seriously, what?)
Happy Days.
Kolchak: the Night Stalker (huh, this one actually sounds interesting).
Kung Fu. (Honestly, what were you smoking, and will it grow in Martian soil?)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The Odd Couple (I was in the play in high school. How about the Odd 6? Can a man, a dragon, and four quadrupeds live in the same apartment without driving each other crazy?).
The Partridge Family.
The Rockford Files.
Sanford and Son.
The Six Million Dollar Man.
Starsky and Hutch.
Three’s Company.
And, finally, Wonder Woman. (I have the feeling I’d enjoy this one more if I was alone in the Hab…)

OK, so there’s some action-adventure, but half the stuff here is sitcoms. And no cartoons. Not much sci-fi. And I should be grateful, no variety shows or game shows or anything like that.

But really, Lewis… would it have killed you to have even one season of Sesame Street or something? Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood? Smurfs? (No, wait, Smurfs was 80s, not 70s.)

Oh well. At least I’ve heard of Partridge Family. It’s got music- ponies love music- and it can’t possibly be as bad as the Brady Bunch. Let’s try an episode.

MISSION LOG – SOL 21 (3)

Yes, it can be that bad.

And the ponies are demanding I play it again so they can learn the theme song. They don’t even speak English and they want to learn the theme song.

I think I’ve created several monsters.

Author's Note

I wrote this before I corrected myself on the nature of geodes, but I don't think it matters much. Thanks to Admiral Tigerclaw for suggestions.

I get the feeling that Fireball would enjoy Cajun-blackened fish. Or Cajun-blackened almost anything, come to think of it.

Yes, I've given them a cave, but I've also given them a lot of problems. Magic will have to be the solution for at least some of them- no way around that- but sooner or later magic will bite our crew in the butt. It's a good thing Starlight doesn't know Inspiration Manifestation, for one thing...

Family photos would be a lot more interesting if the family were aliens from a planet and a culture you'd never seen before, don't you think? Doubly so if the photos show trees and open water and things while you're on a planet that has none such.

And yes, the time has come for Lewis's TV trove. I decided not to give them Sesame Street (began 1969). And the only reason she doesn't have all of CHiPs is, she hadn't bought the later seasons when Hermes left Earth.

And yes, I absolutely loathe Partridge Family.

Sol 24

MISSION LOG – SOL 24

Well, the cave farm project just ran into a problem. Actually, problem is the wrong word, because NASA uses the word “problem” to describe an issue that can be overcome. This is more of a “contingency”, which is what NASA calls it when the only thing you can do is sweep up the debris and begin the investigation.

The dirt doubling went well. The ponies have been watering the dirt regularly, twice a day, using their spacesuits. I’ve committed two-thirds of the stockpiled water to the soil- two hundred liters total- but levels in the water reclaimer’s tanks are rising from humidity taken out of the air. If this keeps up we’ll eventually have damp, fertile soil and full water tanks as well.

I’ve been doing a lot of EVAs recently, what with the cave and salvaging the pony ship and all, so I decided to stay indoors today. I had those soil samples from the cave to analyze, and I need to think about how we were going to turn the cave into a farm anyway.

My biggest concern about the cave was air. That cave is a giant geode, and geodes are porous- otherwise the water couldn’t get inside and, duh, you wouldn’t get a geode. The good news is, it’s not Swiss-cheese porous, and most of the cave is buried under several feet of compacted sand and permafrost. But a billion microscopic holes will leak air just as efficiently as one really big hole, and I hadn’t come up with a solution for that. Still haven’t.

But the soil samples changed my priorities. Air is no longer my biggest problem. My biggest problem, to put it in numbers, is 2.3% perchlorates. Or, to be more accurate, 1.5% potassium perchlorate and 0.8% magnesium perchlorate in the two deepest samples, with the more shallow samples tapering off to a low of 1.2% combined perchlorates.

Still: shit.

The perchlorate-eating bacteria in my Earth soil are reducing the perchlorates in the Martian soil we’ve brought in here because the soil is shallow (which allows for oxygen to penetrate through the whole layer) and because the perchlorates are comparatively low. By the time the bacteria manage to get down deep enough to eliminate all those perchlorates thirty centimeters down in the dirt, the ponies will be out of their food packs and possibly out of all the vegetarian options in my food packs. We can’t wait that long.

“But Mark,” you say, “don’t you only need the topsoil?” With potatoes that would be true; their root system is shallow. But alfalfa is just the opposite. A mature alfalfa plant sends down roots an average of five meters in depth, and can go twice that far in search of groundwater if necessary. Here in the Hab I can maybe counter for that by providing tons of water at the surface, but in the cave there’s no Hab floor to stop the roots. They’re going to go down as far as we can heat the soil, and they’re going to bring back up whatever they find- including those toxic perchlorates.

So, right this minute, the cave farm idea isn’t looking so hot. I’m sitting down now considering my non-cave farming options.

The Hab floor is already covered with dirt. I don’t want to fill the airlocks, because in case of emergency I might want to use those as secure storage areas. They all have automatic cutoff valves on their air lines in case the Hab ruptures so that whatever air is inside them will stay there. I could repurpose the bunks and worktables for more surface area at two square meters each, give or take, but that would put the ponies out, and anyway I want a clean bed and a clean worktable for myself.

I need at least one rover operating to get me to the Ares IV MAV four years from now, and for safety’s sake I need to keep both intact. Something in one or the other might break, and the only spares I have are two spare wheels with motors. Farming in them is no go, especially since the interiors are about the same as a large van- not more than three square meters each of space.

But each rover has a pop-tent in case of emergencies. The pop-tent is built to automatically deploy from the rover’s airlock in under a second, using the rover’s air to inflate. And once inflated the pop-tent’s interior is a lot roomier than the rover’s interior- with a floor that almost precisely ten square meters in size. So that’s twenty square meters more farmland.

Problem: thanks to Not Invented Here, the rover and pop-tent airlocks aren’t compatible with the Hab airlocks. I should be grateful, though- pop-tents are for emergency use only and are intended to be used only once. I don’t know if it was NASA paranoia or the contractor’s mix of genius and idiocy that made them give the pop-tents their own independent airlocks, but whatever it was, I’m grateful. They’re crappy airlocks- nothing more than two doors and a couple of hand-valves, and they’re inefficient as hell- but they’ll make it possible for me to convert them into food production.

Better yet, they come with separate air valves that are compatible with the Hab’s exterior air links, because NASA absolutely insisted that all hoses, valves and cables be standardized. That means the pop-tents can run on the Hab’s heat- no supplemental heating required. The interior lighting isn’t as good, but I think it’s good enough. Better than nothing, anyway.

The only other thing I have is the MDV. The storm, and the debris from the antenna farm, absolutely wrecked it. One of the landing legs is collapsed, and there’s four separate holes in the hull. And the space inside is tiny anyway. It was made as light as humanly possible and just barely large enough to get six human beings from Mars orbit to the ground safely, with seventy-two hours of life support in case of major problems setting up the HAB or launching the MAV. I could waste half my spare Hab canvas (6 sq. m, for emergency repairs only) re-sealing the MDV, but considering the small interior and the lack of convenient air and heat, it’s not worth it.

All that leaves is the pony ship. The engineering section has that big hole in the deck, and I can’t patch that without removing the entire outer hull in that section. Even then it could blow out at any time. That leaves the flight deck and the mid-deck. I’ll have to measure to be accurate, but call it forty meters of surface area. It has incandescent bulbs and windows for lighting. It can’t be hooked to the Hab’s air or heat, and I don’t know what heater systems it has with its main life support offline. But if it’s the difference between starving and not starving, we’ll make it work somehow.

So- if the pony ship can be made into a second greenhouse, that brings me up to a total of approximately 152 m2 of farmland. The question is: will that be enough? If not, how much time will it buy us? I’ll work on that tomorrow.

For tonight it’s more Partridge Family. Last night Starlight used her magic to ask me where the people were that were laughing now and again. I had to tell her I didn’t know. Then she asked me why they were laughing, and I had to admit I didn’t know that either.

MISSION LOG – SOL 25

Transcript: conversation between Mark Watney and Starlight Glimmer:

STARLIGHT: Good mor-ning, Mark! (note: spell is not active yet- Starlight actually said this in English! She’s picking up more words! And her pronunciation is pretty good!)

WATNEY (trying to say the pony equivalent of “good morning”: Bo-rIIIYYneduh!

STARLIGHT: (rubs head with hoof, then stands on hind legs to put same hoof on my mouth) Don’t. (Note: English again.)

WATNEY: That bad?

STARLIGHT: Yes. Bad-bad. What do morning?

WATNEY: There’s a big problem with turning the cave into a farm. I’m trying to figure out if we can do without it. (Note: This was too much for Starlight, and she turned on the translation magic. I repeated it.)

STARLIGHT (translation): What was problem? Help I possible?

WATNEY: Not unless you can get several tons of perchlorates out of soil.

STARLIGHT: Say word again. (turns off spell)

WATNEY: Per-chlor-ates.

STARLIGHT (reactivates spell): What be by-made-of-green? Why you want? (Note: Starlight said “perchlorates” in English, and the spell tried to translate it anyway, as “by-made-of-green”.)

WATNEY: Don’t want. I want to get rid of ‘em. They’re toxic chemicals. Poisonous.

STARLIGHT: Chemicals? (turns off spell, fetches whiteboard and marker, draws out chemical notation for sucrose- well, symbol-12, symbol-11, symbol-22, so I assume sucrose- a model of a water molecule, and organic molecule chains for butane and ethyl alcohol) Draw! (Note: Starlight’s favorite English word so far.)

WATNEY (signals for spell, waits): Do you know the periodic table?

STARLIGHT: (shuts off spell, spends a couple moments mumbling to herself, then brightens as she works it out) Yes! (draws a very quick and rough outline that mostly matches the normal periodic table, but no details)

WATNEY: (calls up reference app on computer, pulls up periodic table for Starlight’s benefit, then writes “K Cl O4” and draws a potassium perchlorate graph with the potassium ion hanging off the perchlorate molecule; then: “Mg ((Cl O4) X 2)” and a magnesium ion flanked by two perchlorate molecules)

STARLIGHT: (looks at periodic table, at my drawings, scribbles something in her own language at bottom of whiteboard) Yes fix! (Note: again, no translation spell.)

WATNEY: You mean you can fix this?

STARLIGHT: Slow. (another favorite of Starlight’s in the last couple of days)

WATNEY (spacing words out carefully): You-can-fix-this?

STARLIGHT: Can-fix-this. Yes.

WATNEY: You can remove perchlorates from tons of soil?

STARLIGHT: (turns spell back on): Idea I have. Need work time on it. Done be it can, don’t worry!

(Starlight’s looking tired at the point, so I signal to end the conversation.)

I should have asked her about the air problem. That’s almost as urgent, really. I’ll have to carry air in tanks to the cave and release it, and then I’ll have to bring Mars air into the Hab for the oxygenator and atmospheric reclaimer to make breathable.

I have a plan to do that. The MAV spends years on the surface of Mars making its own fuel by combining hydrogen brought from home with carbon from Mars's atmosphere. The fuel plant is in the landing stage, so the crew left it behind when they launched, and it survived the storm intact. That means I have a machine that will compress Martian air into liquid and store it in a tank. If I want oxygen I have to release the air in the Hab and let the oxygenator work on it, but that's doable. The problem is, it’s a slow process, and if we plug the cave and air still leaks out faster than we can bring it in, there’s no point.

But obviously Starlight has a magic solution on her mind. I’ve noticed that her first reaction to any major problem is to whip out the old Box of Sparkly Lights and Shit. I especially noticed that the other day when she accidentally turned a pebble into a bullet and came within twenty degrees of aim of putting a hole in the Hab canvas. I have no clue what kind of “science” she was trying, but I’m glad she didn’t try it twice.

It’s pretty obvious that her crewmates already know about her magic-mania. A lot of their arguments are making a bit more sense in retrospect. The gauge on those batteries barely rises overnight, and I’ve seen myself just how fast that charge can be burned off. Obviously they want her to save the magic for really important things.

“Aw, but all the other unicorns back in Pony-land get to have neato magic all the time!” “We’re not in Pony-land now, are we? Now eat your gruel and get back to scrubbing the dirt!” “Aw, you never let me have any fun…”

Yeah, I know that’s not up to the usual rapier wit you’ve come to expect from intrepid space explorer Mark Watney. The truth is, I’m not in the mood. I just finished crunching some numbers, and the news is even worse than I thought.

A mature stand of alfalfa, under normal proper care, will produce about three and a half short tons of fodder per acre per harvest. The four ponies, being a lot smaller than Earth horses, only require about two pounds of food per day. (I’m counting Dragonfly, even if she almost never eats. How is she not starving? She looks just as energetic and healthy as the day they arrived. Must ask Starlight.) I did the math, and if I don’t allow for any safety margin whatever, 220 square meters would be enough to feed the four of them from one harvest to the next.

Note I said them, and not them plus me. I can’t eat alfalfa. Oh, I could eat the leaves, but not the stems. My gut can’t digest the cellulose. I’m assuming theirs can, and so far none of them has done anything to discourage me on that point. No, for me it’s potatoes, potatoes, and more potatoes, once the food packs run out.

But the thing is, remember yesterday’s math? If we convert everything that will hold air and carry dirt except for our bunks, our tables, the airlocks and the rovers, that only gets us to roughly 152 square meters. That’s not enough even if Dragonfly turns out to be a magic bug that lives off of sunshine and hugs. And even then, that would leave a grand total of no square meters for me to plant potatoes in.

So, what happens if I go the other direction, abandon the alfalfa, and plant nothing but potatoes? Sure, the plants and non-tuber roots are all poisonous, but I’ve seen the ponies shove their noses into mashed potatoes with gravy from my food packs with no problems. (I haven't told them how the gravy is made.) I’m assuming the tubers are safe for them.

With potatoes the math gets worse. Sure, I can cram potato plants on top of one another until there’s more spud than dirt underfoot come harvest time- it’ll destroy the soil after a few harvests, but I can do it. But absolute best case scenario, I figure, is about 2200 potatoes every sixty to seventy days. That’s about 5500 calories per day between harvests, as long as the soil holds out. It would work fine for just me, and maybe all right for three people if we tightened our belts and spent all day in bed.

But 1100 calories per person is sub-survival levels. It’s starvation. And after a week at that level we wouldn’t be strong enough to tend the plants. So that’s no good.

And, by the way, all of these estimates are based on the most optimistic yield. It’s based on the total absence of parasites or diseases and on constant daily attention to the plants. If I can’t convince the alfalfa to grow properly despite the shallow soil, or if the potatoes refuse to grow tubers because the soil’s too crowded, or if any number of other things go wrong, all the numbers I just threw out there go down, not up.

The goal of all this has to be to grow food faster than we can eat it, so we have a reserve when the food runs out or something happens or, eventually, when the soil depletes itself. That’s the biggest long-term problem. The alfalfa will help with that by fixing nitrogen, but it sucks up loads of potassium and phosphorus. The dirt around the Hab has both of those in abundance in the form of billion-year-old volcanic ash, but it’s not an infinite supply. In deep soil, bacterial action will bring some replacement minerals up from below, but the Hab can’t hold deep soil. When this dirt goes dead, we have to have enough food to last us the rest of the way to rescue.

The Hab won’t be enough. Perchlorates or not, we need that cave.

I just noticed something: Dragonfly can do magic, too. I just saw her levitating a marker like Starlight sometimes does. Her magic is green, not light blue like Starlight’s. Weird.

They’ve taken over the privacy curtain by the shit-box and are sketching out diagrams on it. Looks like they’re working on a procedure to remove the cargo airlock from their ship. Obviously they think they can make the cave airtight. Starlight certainly doesn’t seem to think the perchlorates will be a problem.

I just hope they’re right.

Author's Note

The buffer is now three chapters, despite my having to cut and set aside five hundred words of today's product because it didn't fit with the circumstances of Sols 28-29. Most of it will get recycled sometime after Sol 43.

As you see here, the cave isn't an instant ready-to-go thing. It will take a lot of magic and some science and outright MacGyvering to make the farm work. And if they get it to work, there's no guarantee it will stay working- just like, in the book, Watney found out the hard way when the Hab's warranty expired.

But the math holds up- at least, based on the original book and the sources I looked up. The castaways absolutely need the crop space that cave provides. And going all one crop or all the other isn't going to work.

Those of you familiar with the book may have noticed that the square meters of soil don't line up. The difference is (a) Watney's counting Amicitas as potential planting area, and (b) in the book Watney converted five bunks and two of his three work tables to soil at two square meters each. (Big bunks and tables for a space mission!) Those are all taken up by his guests now, so they're not available for planting.

Sol 26

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 22
ARES III SOL 26

Cherry Berry shifted the limp space suit on her back and switched on the water spigot, counting to fifteen slowly as the trickle of water poured from the drinking-straw onto the reddish-gray dirt at her hooves. For once things were going smoothly. Everypony was too busy to argue or make trouble, which meant she could focus on her own task and relax.

The next three days had been planned out. Tomorrow would be more soil cultivation, digging up the treated soil and spreading it on top of half the remaining Martian dirt. Everypony would be involved in that. For the next two days, the castaways would split into two teams. She, Mark, and Fireball would spend the two days out at the crash site doing a thorough walk-over of the hill atop the crystal cave, looking for cracks, fault lines, or other hazard that might cause trouble once they began work inside. Starlight Glimmer, Dragonfly and Spitfire would stay at base and carefully disassemble the starboard side of the ship’s hull around the engineering deck, removing its airlock and extracting the emergency electric heaters.

Fireball and Spitfire had wanted to exchange mission assignments, and each had made a good case. Fireball’s strength would be useful in disassembling the ship safely, and Spitfire had experience in exploring and inspecting terrain. But Cherry had held firm. Spitfire absolutely had to be wherever risk of physical injury was greater, and in this case that was the salvage project. And since Starlight and Dragonfly were also both needed for any work on the ship, that left no one to fill Fireball’s spot on the site survey team. Thankfully both accepted the assignments without any further argument.

Now, while Cherry and Fireball applied water to the dirt to prepare it for mixing with the live soil (and even Cherry, who lacked her family’s talent for farming, could sense how horribly sterile the dirt brought in from outside was), Dragonfly and Spitfire thrashed out safety protocols for the salvage operation. Starlight was sketching some sort of magic array on a whiteboard, while Mark carefully inspected the double handful of potatoes he’d had in storage. He’d cut two of the twelve apart already, each into four pieces, and he was planning cuts on the third one with the same expression Cherry had seen Rarity use when working with a particularly expensive and hard-to-find fabric.

She eased herself over a few steps, counted to ten, then depressed the switch to pour more water onto the dead soil. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, off. Several feet away Fireball bent to do the same thing, holding his suit over one scaly arm while using the other to guide the neckhole where the water was wanted. Click, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, click. Cherry nodded her head in approval and began her next spray.

A soft whispery hiss reached her ears. She looked up to see Mark set his knife down very carefully, his already pale face going ash white.

Air leak!

“SUIT UP!” As soon as she shouted the command she shrugged her own space suit off her back, pulling down the zipper so she could slip her hind legs in. She rushed to get her legs in and the suit torso pulled up to where she could slip in her forehooves, re-zip the zipper and close the outer seal over the zipper. She reached for her helmet, which wasn’t next to her… because this isn’t a drill and we’re not on the ship, stupid! she thought.

She looked up from her own work to see the rest of her crew in complete chaos.

Fireball, now in his own suit except for the helmet, was bounding across the dirt floor to the alien spacesuit racks, where the others’s suits and all the helmets lay jumbled in a pile. The other three Amicitas crew were already there, trying to untangle the remaining three suits, passing helmets back and forth, trying to find the right one. (Unlike the alien suits, which all had the same size and design of helmet, the pony space suit helmets weren’t interchangeable. Dragonfly and Starlight required helmets different from Cherry and Spitfire’s to make room for their horns, and Fireball’s long neck and head required a different helmet from any of the others.)

“Keep calm!” Cherry shouted, forcing herself not to gallop as she moved over to the total clusterbuck by the suit racks. “Check the helmet! If it’s not yours, find the person it belongs to! And don’t try to find your own helmet until you have your suit on!”

Almost the moment she arrived, a helmet rolled to her hooves. It was hers. She grabbed it in her forehooves, put it on her head, and seated it in the suit’s locking ring. She reached a hoof to the locking ring tab…

… but the ring wouldn’t engage. As she tugged and twisted the metal ring, she heard something softly crunching in the ring’s threads.

Oh buck oh buck oh buck. “Check your locking rings!” she said, keeping her voice firm and steady. The ship’s in a flat spin, but you can pull out if you keep your head and take the recovery one step at a time.... “Make sure they’re clear of dirt and debris! If there’s some inside, get a buddy to help clear it out!’

Two of the other suits had crud inside the suit neck, and a third had dirt on the neck of the helmet. Starlight and Dragonfly used quick bursts of magic to blow away the dirt, and then finally helmets began going on heads.

“Suit clear!” Fireball reported.

After a burst of magic from Dragonfly, Cherry’s own locking ring engaged, clamping down on the base of the helmet to form an airtight seal. She switched the air feed on with one hoof, taking a sweet breath of Equestria-scented air. “Suit clear!” she said.

“Suit clear!”

“Suit clear!”

“Suit clear!”

Cherry did her own rapid visual check- yes, all five of them had their own suits on.

Wait a minute… five?

Turning around carefully, Cherry found Mark watching them with bemusement. At first glance he appeared calm… but Cherry noticed him tapping the work table with the tip of his knife, beating out a most unsteady rhythm.

Anyway, she couldn’t hear that soft hissing anymore through her helmet. “Starlight,” she said, “ask Mark what that sound is.”

Starlight nodded, walking slowly across the dirt to Mark’s worktable. Her helmet and Mark’s head lit up with the usual lights of the translation spell, and the two exchanged words- Starlight’s clearly understood, Mark’s mostly unintelligible.

“What’s that hissing sound? …. What do you mean, not dangerous? … Then why did you turn white when it began? … Say that again, please? … uuuugh… thank you.”

The light ceased, and Starlight flopped on her flank.

“Well?” Cherry asked.

“He says it’s a mild dust storm,” Starlight said. “He says it’s too weak to be dangerous. His house was designed to withstand more. And then some nonsense about rising fissures.”

“So it’s not an air leak?” Cherry asked. Before Starlight answered, she added, “No, don’t ask him again. If it was a leak he would have said so.”

“So, false alarm, then?” Fireball asked.

Cherry gave this a moment’s thought. “No,” she said carefully, “not a false alarm at all.”

“How do you mean?”

Cherry turned her body to face everyone except Starlight. “Look at what just happened,” she said. “It took more than four times as long as it should have for us to get suited! We haven’t been taking care of our equipment, and we haven’t been drilling with it. And if this had been a real emergency, some or all of us might be dead! Remember what happened with the cherry spell a few days ago? If the canvas had breached, would we have been able to get suited in time?”

The room went silent except for the soft crunching of a couple of uncomfortable suit-clad hooves making little gouges in the dirt.

“Starlight,” Cherry continued, “when you feel up to it, talk with Mark. We need a proper place to store our suits when they’re not in use. The bottom of a closet isn’t enough. Dragonfly, you’re in charge of making sure our suits get maintenance. We’ve done multi-day missions before, so you know what to do.”

“Sure thing, boss mare!” Dragonfly said.

“And Spitfire,” Cherry said, “once we have a storage spot for our suits, you’re in charge of safety drills. Work out the new procedure to work with whatever space Mark gives us. You have full authority to call instant drills whenever you like, without warning, however many of us are here, so long as the drill doesn’t interfere with operations.”

Spitfire stood straighter than Cherry could remember her standing since before she was chosen for the mission. One space suit covered foreleg snapped up in a perfect salute. “Yes, ma’am!” she said enthusiastically.

“Right,” Cherry said, returning the salute. “Everypony, suits off. Put your helmets on your bunks for now, until we get our storage space. Suits too, except Fireball and me. Then everypony return to what you were doing.”

“What about me?” Fireball asked, sounding a little put out. “Don’t I get a new job?”

Cherry shook her head. “You had your suit on first,” she said. “Your helmet locking ring didn’t jam. You were prepared, and we weren’t. You don’t need another job.”

“No,” Fireball said flatly. “Maybe I do.” He reached up, twisted open his helmet’s locking ring, and pulled the helmet off. “The only reason my stuff was clean and separate from the others was dragon instinct and luck. My suit is part of my hoard. I didn't actually think about it.” He growled softly to himself before adding, “I don’t trust my instincts. They tell me I’m invincible. This is my third space emergency, and the first two times my instincts made things worse instead of better. I wasn’t good this time,” he finished with a snarl twisting his muzzle, “I was just lucky.”

“We were all lucky,” Cherry said. “Everypony remember that: today we were all lucky. Dismissed.”

Helmets came off, suits were thrown on bunks, and Cherry and Fireball returned to watering the dirt. As Cherry adjusted her suit on her back again, she noticed Fireball staring at her. “Is there something else you wanted?” she asked.

“No, ma’am,” Fireball said, the gruffness in his voice mostly gone. “It’s just good to see the steely-eyed missile mare back again.”

Steely-eyed? Cherry thought. Where do they get these roadapples? I thought we were going to die. I panicked and ordered a suit drill without checking with Mark to see if it was a true emergency. And if it had been an emergency, Fireball would have been the only survivor because I haven’t been looking after my crew properly. I was scared out of my bucking mind the whole time, and if I’m angry now it’s because I almost got myself killed.

“Thank you,” she said dully. She forced her knees not to knock, reached a hoof to the suit controls and switched on the water. She focused her rattled mind on the numbers. One, two, three, four, five…

Author's Note

Yes, Cherry should have restarted suit drills three sols before. But she's not perfect. Again, outside her flight obsession she's a very ordinary pony.

Found out today I'd let two bills go overdue. This project is eating nine-tenths of my mental focus. I'm definitely not going to be able to keep up this production much longer, but I'll keep plugging until forced by circumstances to reduce.

Annoying thing: two days ago I wrote a thousand words for the next chapter of Changeling Space Program, and I'm going to throw every bit of it out. It just plain doesn't work. It's terrible. This sort of thing happens sometimes when you write.

Sol 30

MISSION LOG – SOL 30

It’s been a very busy few days. The dirt-doubling went smoothly. The seed potatoes are in the ground. The pop-tents are up and connected to Hab air. The MAV’s fuel plant is now sitting next to the Hab, ready to compress Mars air into convenient liquid form whenever I want it. The pony ship has been stripped of most of its outer hull, along with the cargo airlock, some associated wiring, the ship’s main environmental system, four heater units, and a ton of plumbing that I have to assume is its cooling system. Site Epsilon has been thoroughly observed and documented by video (see attachments), and no major faults, sinkholes, etc. were discovered.

Today we’re all taking a day off. The ponies just finished what looked like an emergency suit drill, and it looked a lot more orderly than the total clusterfuck during the Sol 26 dust storm. In fact, they looked like a professional, well-trained, and only occasionally lethally negligent team.

I’ve forgiven them for the ballistic pebble, but I haven’t forgotten. And neither has my subconscious. I had a nightmare last night about Dragonfly and Starlight playing laser tag with their horns and me running around to patch holes in the hab canvas because Fireball had stolen all the suit helmets and buried them in a pile of gold coins.

The ponies are beginning to lose interest in the Partridge Family, since the kids stopped touring and mostly became a garage band. Last night we left off at the episode where Danny does something precocious that lands the rest of the family in trouble. I’m going to try something different today- as far from Shirley Jones and the Moppet Show as Lewis’s terrible taste in entertainment will go. After one episode of the Partridges, of course- the ponies still like the show, and it’s going to be a long four years. Any entertainment resource has to be explored.

But I have to choose something really visual for the next show. Starlight Glimmer told me this morning she won’t be using any magic for the next seven days. No more mind-meld spell. No more conversations in almost-English, except for the words she’s already learned. That’s going to make language lessons tough.

Why the cutoff? Because using Starlight’s horn to cut apart that magic metal they made their ship from has used up their batteries again. And Starlight’s plan to deal with the perchlorates in the cave soil apparently requires a lot of magic- more than she used to lift their ship out of its crash site. So she’s going to focus on conserving energy and pumping her own reserves into the batteries to save up for that.

I used our talky time to focus on water. The soil is beginning to dry back out. We’ve all been too busy with EVAs the last couple days to do anything about watering the place, and we’ve fallen behind. We probably shouldn’t even be taking today off, but it’s been one thing after another for days, and we need a breather. Tomorrow we get right back to it, because in three or four days we have to do another dirt-doubling to get the soil needed to fill the pop-tents. Starlight agreed, so tomorrow is going to be all about watering and turning the dirt.

I feel kind of strange today. This would have been my last full sol on Mars, if the mission hadn’t gone to hell on Sol 6. We’d be loading the MAV with the select soil and rock samples and labeling the rest for some future expedition a hundred years from now to pick up. We’d be talking about rendezvous with Hermes on Mission Day 156 and the two hundred and forty day return flight to Earth. Lewis would be in charge, NASA would be looking over our shoulders on a ten minute time delay, and I would be wrapping up my Mars science, following orders, and having the best time of my life.

Instead I’m getting ready to play movie theater operator (without popcorn) for five aliens who are going to run out of food in another fifty-five sols unless we make a whole lot of miracles happen. And I’m doing science while my guests are doing magic, not because NASA says so, but because we want to still be here when Ares IV arrives on Sol 1412.

It’s a melancholy thing to think about.

I mock Lewis’s taste in entertainment, but given how incredibly silly the descriptions are for these shows, maybe she had the right idea.

I just had a thought. Lewis is apparently obsessed with the 1970s, and Johannsen’s Beatles collection plus the collected works of Agatha Christie make it clear she’s an Anglophile. So why couldn’t they have joined forces and brought to Mars the absolute pinnacle of television entertainment- Doctor Who? It’s 1970s kitsch with a British accent and the kind of horror mixed with optimism that would really get an astronaut out of the space hammock every morning. And the 1970s were the time of Jon Pertwee and Tom friggin’ Baker- the two best Doctors ever who weren’t David Tennant!

Not to mention we could really, really use a TARDIS right now. It wouldn’t even need to be able to fly. I’d just want all that interior space, including the giant wardrobe full of clean clothes and- gasp- individual bedrooms.

Individual bedrooms. Such luxury. I could even forego the swimming pool in the middle of the library.

Okay. Enough moping. We’ve done family, so how about some action that doesn’t require much talking to explain? Dukes of Hazzard it is.

MISSION LOG – SOL 30 (2)

Car jumps, dynamite arrows, and humans acting silly. The ponies are a bit confused, but the bug and the dragon love it- especially the dragon.

I have apparently just changed Fireball’s opinion of my entire species. I’m now his best friend in the entire world. (Okay, there’s only five choices he could have, but still…)

Also, I now know the pony word for “car”. I know because Dragonfly said it, and within a second all four of the other aliens said in the same breath the pony word for “NO”. I don’t regret teaching the ponies how to operate the airlocks, but I don’t think I’ll teach them to drive the rovers any time soon…

Author's Note

Wrote just over 3,000 words of Maretian today, but I'm breaking them up into the two shortest chapters yet (sub-1K words) and a slightly longer third chapter. That will bring my buffer up to five installments. Working ahead means you get updates even if I'm too busy or tired to invest energy on writing (or if what I write turns out to be unsalvagable crap).

Shorter chapters are going to be the rule soon, now that the setting is established and the characters have their first bits of definition. As someone said, I've already written more than half the words that were in the original book (99,400 or so). And at about 1000 words per hour when I'm in the groove, plus an hour for research and for these little notes, writing is really time-consuming, and my down time for my business is very nearly up.

With that in mind (and because I don't feel like typing "Chapter Three Hundred Thirty-One" come Thanksgiving) I've retitled the chapters for the sols in question. The original book has only twenty-six chapters (partly because there are some HUGE time skips between the Rich Purnell manuever and Watney leaving the Hab), and I don't feel right calling anything under 1,000 words "Chapter X."

I think Watney's words here speak for themselves. I will just add that in the mobile-phone Martian game (or so I read- I never played it) you are given a choice between sending Watney a message from the President or a message from David Tennant. Watney's morale improves more with Tennant.

Tomorrow's installment is something a lot of you have been expecting for weeks now... and something I've given you no cause to expect, but it worked out that way.

Sol 31

A few tastefully puffy clouds surrounded the bright sun that shone down on the Griffon Sea, Horseshoe Bay, and the long cape that divided the two. That same sun shone down most brilliantly on the complex of glass-walled buildings that stretched across the base of a smaller cape that jutted north from the large one. Five years before the little peninsula had been too modest for even a name… before the space age arrived. Now it was Cape Friendship, home of the Equestrian Space Agency and the crown jewel of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s efforts to advance the boundaries of knowledge for all Equus’s many speaking peoples.

Twilight Sparkle, the founder of the space program, sat at a table in the environmental systems building, going over the plans for the Sparkle Drive yet again. It wasn’t her space program anymore- Moondancer now headed the ESA, just as the changeling Occupant had assumed full control of operations at Horseton. But it had been the ship she’d designed, the engine she’d created, and the spell she’d personally enchanted into the main drive crystal, and so she still felt responsible.

She hadn’t been on the grounds for ten days, because friendship problems and princessly duties waited for no mare, not even the lost crew of Amicitas. But even away from here, she’d spent any time she had alone gnawing at the problem, trying to figure out exactly where she’d gone wrong. And, now that she had a day to spare, it just felt proper to be back on site working hard to solve the problem she’d created.

Her only comfort lay in the knowledge that, wherever they were, the missing astronauts weren’t dead. The moment when the environmental supply system for Amicitas had gone to fail-safe mode had been bad, and the moment when the environmental systems for each of the five space suits had done likewise, all at the same time, even worse. Twilight had wanted to die. Queen Chrysalis, livid at the loss of her changeling and the pony pilot who had made her dreams reality, had been prepared to fulfill her wish. Only Moondancer and Occupant had been able to talk each around into waiting and seeing if the suit systems came back on.

And fifteen hours later, come back on they had, all five of them. When that had happened, Twilight had reactivated Amicitas’s air and water, only for the fail-safe to kick in again almost instantly. And when the suit life support had turned off again on all five suits, they tried the main system a third time, only to see it shut down again. The obvious conclusion was that the crew had found shelter of some kind, but not aboard their own ship… wherever it was.

Wherever they were.

The ship had been tracked by tracking spell and the telepresence spell for its entire flight until, not far from its destination, it had vanished without a trace. The ship hadn’t been destroyed. It hadn’t become invisible. It hadn’t teleported someplace else in one huge bounce. It had simply ceased to exist. Attempts to trace the ship through the life support system had led nowhere- literally so, the traces returning no pings at all. Experiments in using the same connection to re-establish a telepresence connection had been attempted using the space station and a couple of old changeling-built capsules, ending either in failure or in the destruction of the life support crystals on both ends.

Dr. Warner von Brawn at Horseton was already at work designing a rescue ship, to be assembled in orbit using the same sort of infrastructure as the space station. But construction hadn’t even been scheduled… because there was no clue where Amicitas and her crew were or what the conditions were. Were they in orbit or on a planet? Were they alone? Were they free or prisoners? Too much depended on those answers to commit to a ship design that might be useless on arrival.

And, also, before any ship could be launched, the Sparkle Drive had to be fixed. Any rescue ship needed the Sparkle Drive… but not if the Drive would strand the rescue party just like the crew of Amicitas.

“Oh! Excuse me, princess!”

Twilight looked up. A pony she didn’t know, a young earth pony with a cutie mark of what looked like a blotch of some sort of runny liquid, had entered the otherwise empty room, a coffee cup held in one forehoof. Though more expressive than Maude Pie, the newcomer didn’t seem prepared to win any awards for Equestria’s Funniest Face. “Good morning!” she said. “Please don’t mind me, I’m just working.”

“It’s one in the afternoon,” the earth pony said, looking a bit concerned at the purple princess. “How long have you been in here? And where’s Hall Monitor?”

“I told her she could go home for the day,” Twilight said. “I’ll talk with Moondancer about it before I go home… er… I’m sorry, what was your name again?”

“Drying Paint,” the pony replied. “I was hired two weeks ago to watch this room.”

“Oh,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Er, have you had any experience in space flight before?”

“No,” Drying Paint admitted. “My previous job was as line judge for professional snail racing. Before that I was a telegraph operator. Before that I was a volunteer for the Thaum Decay Observation Project.”

“The what?” Twilight asked. “But thaums don’t decay.”

“Professor G. Steven Hawk said they do, only very slowly,” Drying Paint said. “So slowly that the universe isn’t old enough for one to have decayed yet. But he’s sure that, any day now, one will, and he’ll be there to observe it.”

“Riiiiight,” Twilight said. “Well, er, just get on with whatever you were doing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Drying Paint pushed a metal chair up to the table across from the bank of readouts for every environmental support spell currently in use, got up on it, folded her forehooves together on the tabletop, and stared off into space.

Twilight tried to return to her work, but the other pony’s presence distracted her. After about three minutes of failing to read her own notes she looked up to see Paint in exactly the same position. Four minutes after that she looked up again to find the earth pony unmoved and unmoving. She stared at her for two straight minutes before Paint blinked once.

“So,” Twilight said, struggling to find something to say to break an awkward silence, “enjoying the job?”

Paint shrugged almost imperceptibly. “It’s a living,” she said.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 28
ARES III SOL 31

“So,” Dragonfly asked Cherry Berry, “what do you think is the deal with humans and clothes?”

“What do you mean?” Cherry asked, switching off her suit’s water feed.

Dragonfly switched her own suit’s water feed on, releasing a stream that turned to large drops before slowly splattering onto the cultivated Martian dirt. “You notice that when Mark takes a shower- which he does a lot less these days- he always undresses and dresses behind the curtain?” She switched her valve off again.

“No, I haven’t noticed,” Cherry Berry replied in a tone that added the unspoken words or cared. She turned her own suit’s water back on, tapping the seconds off with her hoof.

“And that you never see humans without clothes in those movies Mark shows on his computer?”Dragonfly asked. She switched her water back on. “Granted, that ‘Daisy’ human came pretty close once. If she’d been a pony, you would have been able to see her cutie mark.” She switched the water back off.

Cherry Berry, who had switched her water off midway through Dragonfly’s musings on Daisy Duke’s wardrobe, switched her water back on. “I really haven’t given it any thought,” she insisted. “It just doesn’t seem all that important to me.” She switched the water off and took a couple of steps to the next patch of soil that needed water.

Dragonfly switched her water back on and followed, leaving a trail of spatters behind her. “What I’m thinking is, ponies have fur, right? But Mark doesn’t seem to have any except on his head and face. Maybe he’s ashamed.”

“Dragonfly, your water,” Cherry Berry warned.

“Maybe humans see all the other mammals,” Dragonfly continued, too caught up in her idea to hear the warning, “and think, ‘I must hide my shame, so the other animals never know-‘”

“DRAGONFLY!” Cherry Berry shouted. “Your WATER!”

Dragonfly blinked. “What about my-“

The dribble from Dragonfly’s drinking straw ceased. The lights on her life support system went out.

“-water?” Dragonfly finished, looking down at her suit. “Um… uh oh,” she said. She frantically flicked the switch back and forth, stomach sinking to new depths with every click.

“Please tell me you just switched it off.” Cherry Berry said.

“What’s going on?” Spitfire asked, adding, “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” before switching off her own suit’s water.

“I think…” Dragonfly gulped. “I think I just bucked up… I think I just-“

Twilight Sparkle looked up from her notes. Two of the Amicitas crew suit readouts had lit up- but only the water feed. The air feed remained inactive. For what seemed like a very long time the two water lights remained lit. Then, just as a third water light lit up without its corresponding air light, the first two switched off. “What’s that?” she asked. “Are they really thirsty for some reason?”

“It does that sometimes,” Drying Paint said, not moving her head. “It goes away after a couple of hours.”

“But didn’t you report this to anyone?” Twilight Sparkle insisted.

“I wasn’t hired to report,” Drying Paint said. “I was hired to watch.”

Twilight Sparkle’s jaw dropped. “But… but don’t you ever tell anypony what you see?”

“Of course I do,” Drying Paint said. “Moondancer comes at the end of every shift and asks us what we’ve seen. For example, today I would say that Spitfire, Cherry Berry, Dragonfly and Fireball all took multiple drinks of water averaging twelve seconds per drink every half minute or so for… if it goes like it usually does, about two hours.” She pointed a hoof to another set of lights and said, “I would also tell her that Leonid took normal sips of water five times between 1 PM and 3 PM during his spacewalk and that Rainbow Dash’s respiration suggests she took a nap in her capsule from about 2:15 to 2:40 PM. And-“

“I get the point!” Twilight said hurriedly. “But these lights aren’t normal, are they?”

Drying Paint’s hooves returned to their folded position on the tabletop. “They’re not abnormal.”

Twilight groaned, settling back to her own work. She could go chase down Moondancer and ask for an explanation, but it wouldn’t do much good and it would waste Moondancer’s time. Besides, Paint was probably correct. The water drinking was certainly strange, but by itself it didn’t mean-

A buzzer sounded on the board of lights- the buzzer indicating that the life support spell’s fail-safe had kicked in and shut the valves leading to the transport crystals. A large red light lit up on one of Amicitas’s suit life support indicators.

“Oops,” Drying Paint said. “That’s never happened before. Looks like Dragonfly got a bit too thirsty.”

“Wait a minute,” Twilight mumbled, “Changelings almost never get thirsty.”

“Probably just a careless slip.” The earth pony left her perch on her chair and walked over to the control board, tapping the switches to reset Dragonfly’s life support. The air and water lights flickered on; the air shut off, and after a couple of seconds, so did the water. The alarm didn’t come back on.

“Back to normal,” Drying Paint said, returning to her post.

“-bucked up big time,” Dragonfly said as water suddenly spattered on her forehooves.

Cherry Berry released a huge sigh of relief as the changeling scrambled to turn her suit’s water back off. “I can’t believe how lucky you are sometimes!” she snapped. “You be more careful!”

“In fact,” Spitfire added, “why don’t you go show Mark how to work your suit?” The alien had been walking around the dirt-covered floor with a small sample box full of water, slowly adding water and kneading it into the surface with his fingers. “If you can’t use it responsibly-“

“It shouldn’t have come back on,” Dragonfly said, looking at her suit.

“What?”

Dragonfly pointed to her suit. “My suit life support shouldn’t have come back on,” she insisted. “So far as anypony back home knows, when a suit’s fail-safe trips, it means a dead astronaut. And anyway, all the main crystals are run from the same building in Baltimare. They’re so reliable nopony bothers to watch them any more. So the suit shouldn’t… have… unless…” Pale blue eyes widened, and perforated wings buzzed under the loose space suit fabric.

“Unless what?” Cherry asked.

“Shut up,” Dragonfly said. “Gotta think a bit.” She’d had the training, hadn’t she? Working with Occupant, working at Cherry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs, training to control all the unmared probes and satellites launched by the Changeling Space Agency… but she hadn’t used it in months. Usually some other changeling or pony had their hoof on the key… but…

Keep it short. Keep it very short. What was the most important message she could send, if she could send a message? And how few letters could she make it? ALL SAFE SEND HELP? NOT DEAD YET? PLZ SND MOR SNAX?

Her eyes lit on the Amicitas’s main environmental system, the coupling for the water system and the mount for the ventilation system both disconnected, leaving a simple box with a few switches and lights on its front. She trotted over and switched the feed modes from automatic to manual and switched the manual water switch on.

Yes. Perfect.

She trotted back over to the dirt and said, “This is important. Real important. Listen to my rhythm and copy it exactly, okay? Everyling copy it exactly!” She held her suit carefully over the dirt, put her hoof on the suit’s water switch, and began switching it on and off in a rapid but careful rhythm.

Dash dot dot dash dot dot dot dash dot…

“It’s doing it again!” Twilight Sparkle shouted. “And it’s even weirder this time!”

Dragonfly’s water light was now pulsing in an irregular manner. The flickering on and off almost seemed to have a rhythm, but the only thing Twilight made of it was that something was making the water feed stutter in a way that ought to be impossible.

“There’s no explanation for this!” the princess shouted. “Miss Paint, please go get Moondancer right now!”

“I’m watching the board,” Drying Paint replied, not moving a muscle.

“This is an order from your- now another one’s doing it!!” Twilight pointed to Cherry Berry’s water light, which matched the rhythm of Dragonfly’s light for a few beats, then stopped. “Will you please go get Moondancer?!”

“I am watching the board,” Drying Paint insisted, as Cherry Berry’s light began to match Dragonfly’s pulsing again, this time joined by Spitfire’s. Spitfire’s light dropped out after a few pulses, but Fireball’s light took its place, and it never stopped, matching Dragonfly’s pulse for pulse.

A few seconds later, four of the five Amicitas suits were pulsing the same irregular beat in perfect synchronization.

“If you don’t go get Moondancer, I will!” Twilight insisted. “She needs to know this right now! What do you have to say to that?”

“I,” Drying Paint said. “N. W. A. T.”

“What? You’re not allowed to go crazy now!” Twilight Sparkle shouted, her wings flapping with her agitation. “Give me a straight answer!”

“U. R. N. T. H. E.” Drying Paint swallowed, pointing to the lights, and added quickly, “Writeitdown N. W. A. T. E.”

Twilight’s eyes widened. “Mare’s code,” she gasped. She knew Mare’s code, but she’d never seen it used with lights- only with telegraph or radio. She scrambled for her notes and a pencil, grabbing both with her magic as she said, “Keep calling out the letters! And you just got yourself lifetime employment by the crown!”

Drying Paint read off letters, and Twilight wrote them down until they repeated, then continued writing them down until they repeated again.

TURNTHEMAINWATERON

“Turn the main water on,” Twilight gasped. “Turn the main water on!!”

Sighing, Drying Paint began to leave her chair.

“No!” Twilight shouted, running for the large panel that represented Amicitas’s life support. “I’ve got it! You just keep watching!”

“That’s my job,” Paint said simply.

“How much longer do we have to do this?” Fireball grumbled, keeping his on-off switch in rhythm with the dots and dashes of the rest.

“Just keep going!” Dragonfly shouted. “Somepony’s watching! Somepony has to be watching! We just have to wait for them to figure-“

The lights on Amicitas’s life support pack came on, and a blast of water erupted from the hose nozzle on the front, spraying water halfway across the Hab. Mark, startled, ran to a cabinet to get a bin to catch the water, only to come to a stumbling halt as the water shut off as quickly as it had begun.

“They heard us,” Dragonfly gasped.

Starlight, who had been lying in her bunk napping to conserve energy, jumped out and walked over. “What was that splashing?” she asked.

“They heard us!!” Dragonfly cheered.

“They heard us!!!” Fireball roared.

“They heard us,” Cherry Berry sighed, falling to her knees, then on her rump, on the wet dirt.

The main water activated again, sending another blast of water, then another, then burst after burst of water in short staccato splashes. Mark maneuvered a drawer from one of the Hab cabinets under the falling water, then ran to get a second basin for when the first filled up.

“E-S-A-F-5-4… D-E… B-L-M-E-S-A… K,” Dragonfly said, calling out the letters one at a time. As the rhythm of splashes began to repeat, she said, “Cape Friendship calling ESA Flight Fifty-Four, that’s us!”

A universe away, Twilight Sparkle wrote down letters and numbers as Drying Paint called them out, the latter’s eyes locked on Dragonfly’s water light.

BLM-ESA DE ESA-F54 K

“Yes! Yes Yes YES!!” Twilight Sparkle cheered. “We have communication! They’re TALKING TO US!!” With a surge of magic power she launched a spell bolt through the room’s sole window, smashing its glass out in the process, and causing a flare to light up Cape Friendship like a second sun.

“That’ll get Moondancer here!” she said. “Now to find out what’s going on!”

MISSION LOG – SOL 31

Well, now I’ve seen everything- a musical number featuring three ponies, a horse-bug-thing, a dragon, and the most water I’ve ever seen wasted since Lewis treated us all to a day at Schlitterbahn.

I only caught part of it on camera. Whatever they were doing caused their ship’s main life support system to reactivate, and it was splashing water everywhere- more water in one spot than I wanted. I want moist soil in the Hab, not mud, and I definitely don’t want my nice new topsoil washing itself through the access panels into the delicate electronics of all the machines that keep me from dying a frozen airless death on this planet. But I did catch some of the dancing and singing and, above all, the united rhythm of all five aliens splashing water out of their suits all over the place. Video file attached.

Even Fireball was smiling and laughing. He was even laughing harder than he had when Roscoe put that police cruiser into the pond for the third time in the same episode- and that’s saying something. The dragon really likes his car wrecks.

They’re still celebrating. The waterworks ended with a long series of sputtering splashes from their ship’s water supply. I caught most of that and fed it to the water reclaimer. Before long I’m going to have to improvise a cistern- the main water tanks are virtually full, despite all the water we’ve put into this soil.

But hey- fourth world problems!

Just a minute- Starlight is finally coming over to me. She said she wasn’t going to use her translation spell. I wonder if she’s going to change her mind, or if she’s going to use what little English she has.

MISSION LOG – SOL 31 (2)

Transcript of conversation between Starlight Glimmer and Mark Watney (note: all in English- no translation provided)

STARLIGHT: Mark! We talk home!

WATNEY: You talk home? Your home? You talked with your home world?

STARLIGHT: Yes! Dah dah dah talk! Home knows!

WATNEY: They know you’re alive?

STARLIGHT: Alive! Yes! Home knows alive! Good! Good-good!

WATNEY: That’s wonderful!

STARLIGHT: What word “rundafla”?

WATNEY: Won-der-ful, it means… it means good-GOOD-good!

STARLIGHT: Run-da-fool…

WATNEY (feeling a bit of a killjoy here): ONE-DUUUR-FULLLLL. Wonderful. Talking with home is wonderful!

STARLIGHT: Yes! Wonderful-wonderful talk home!

WATNEY: What did they say?

STARLIGHT (shrugs): Say “how is.” We say how. Talk again day.

WATNEY: That’s it?

STARLIGHT: Bad. (gestures to the churned-up soil)

WATNEY (decides now is not the time for more language lessons): OK, I gotcha. Tell me when next talk.

STARLIGHT: Okay!

Well, shit. They turned their water supply into a telegraph. It’s a very messy and inconvenient telegraph, but it’s something.

They spoke with their home world. Don’t get me wrong, I’m stoked as all hell for them, but I am so fucking jealous right now. Some of us haven’t got magic plumbing that connects us to Venkat Kapoor’s private executive john.

Hell, even if I did, I don’t know Morse code. We had a lot of totally useless survival exercises and training, more for team building than for the extremely tiny chance our landing shuttle came down in the jungles or the Sahara. Unfortunately learning Morse code isn’t much of a bonding experience.

Time to remedy that. Let’s look through the useful information NASA packed along with me to see if there’s a Morse chart…

… yes! Yes, there is, under Emergency Communications Protocols! Thank you, legacy info from seventy years ago! I’ll never make fun of NASA’s ossified bureaucracy ever again!

Now, how do I use it? Radio’s busted, so unless the ponies have something I can repurpose, that’s out. This communication is going to be one-way. I have to focus on something NASA can’t help but receive.

Rocks. There are quite literally tons of rocks out on the surface. And there’s tons more around the edges of Site Epsilon’s slopes. I can spell out dots and dashes with those, and it’ll be a lot easier to read from orbit than Roman letters. Come to think of it, why didn’t I try Roman letters before? “SOS SEND FOOD AND HAY” wouldn’t have been that hard.

Yeah. This is a plan. I’ll make the same message twice- once north of the Hab and once just west of Site Epsilon. A satellite has to catch it at some point.

Now I just have to plan my message. Keep it short, use the texting 1337 5kllz I learned when I was eight. It’ll still take a lot of rocks to be visible from orbit.

But still… a message home! Damn, what a great idea!

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

(note: all standard telegraphy / Mares Code shortcuts and abbreviations translated)

ESA: Amicitas, Baltimare calling, over.

AMICITAS: Baltimare, Amicitas calling, over.

ESA: Status, over.

AMICITAS: Five crew landed safe. Ship wrecked. Hostile planet- no breathable air. At surface base with one alien, also marooned. Rationing food. Alien sharing food, attempting to grow more. Need rescue. Water is messy, will contact again after 24 hours. Over.

ESA: Copied. Stay safe. Out.

Author's Note

Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to show Equestria. And I'm still going to show as little of Equestria as I can help. But when the point on my timeline, which I keep, came up for this bit, I felt it needed explanation why this hadn't been thought of before. So you get some exposition, you get some Twilight being Twilight, and you get a pony who is the Rich Purnell of observing and only observing.

Dragonfly was destined to be the one who came up with this from the word go. She's the only one of the five who's actually worked on communications systems as part of her CSP engineering training. This definitely wasn't a "gotcha!" for those who said it definitely wouldn't be her.

But still... gotcha.

Yeah, the communication system is limited by how much water Mark and the ponies can dispose of at any one time. This is a major change from the book: now Mark is dealing with having too much water. So even with abbreviations- and the ponies will be abbreviating every word they can think of- the daily word count is going to be really limited. The output of the Amicitas's water supply is about twice the diameter of the pipe your garden faucet comes out of, and the contents are at pressure, so each word is a lot of splashing.

Thaum decay is based on the theory of proton decay, which I read about in high school. The last I read, the theory was that protons can decay... but at such a slow rate that it's almost impossible for even one proton to have decayed in the life of our universe to date. If the theory holds up, then after millions of times the amount of time it takes for the very last red dwarf to go cold, matter itself will begin unravelling... very, very, very slowly. (As if the whole concept of "heat death of the universe" wasn't spooky enough.)

Warner von Brawn is a minotaur, Changeling Space Program's head scientist. (Another CPS character, Goddard the Griffon, has retired as of the beginning of this story.)

Mark is trying to conserve soap. The book makes it doubtful that the Hab as Andy Weir envisioned it had a shower, but the danger of contaminating the Hab environment seems too severe to do without one if it could be engineered. So I put it in. Space hygiene has been a constant and chronic problem since Mercury, and one of the lesser-known facts about the Apollo missions is that every single astronaut who went up in Apollo was reported as stinking to high heaven when they got back. Skylab had the first experimental space shower, which worked about as well as you'd expect spraying water in a zero-G environment to work. Anti-stink technology advances one small step at a time.

Notably, no mention is made of Daisy Duke in the book at all. Considering Mark's repeated jokes about his lack of a Martian sex life, it kind of stands out.

I'm not saying anything about ESA's prior fifty-three flights except to point out that the majority of them were unmanned satellites or space probes.

Schlitterbahn was originally a water park in New Braunfels, TX that catered to river-tubers and tourists. There are now multiple Schlitterbahns, including one on Galveston Island on the site of what was, back when I was a little kid, Sea-Arama Marineworld, a bargain-basement Seaworld. Since it's only half an hour from Johnson Space Center, it makes a perfect day outing for astronauts of a mind to get damp. However, there are no longer any dolphins, trained seals, or cobra-kissing idiots. (I used to have an autographed picture of the guy kissing the cobra. It was more impressive when I was eight and didn't question what cobras had to do with the Gulf of Mexico.)

I was sorely tempted to try to describe the musical number, but Watney's point of view is limited to his logs, and anyway I don't think I could do it justice. Just imagine one of those scenes with a dozen people using their immediate surroundings to produce perfectly timed percussive music... except they're also singing, and instead of percussion they're using improvised squirt guns in rhythm. And if you can't do it, good, because I can't describe it.

Wrote about 2000 words today in a little less than two hours- one new chapter and expansions of the two ultra-short ones I wrote yesterday. Now to get to work on long-overdue inventory chores, cooking, and prep for Kami-Con in Birmingham, AL next weekend...

Sol 32

Music crept slowly into the brain of Venkat Kapoor. He rolled over in bed and put a pillow over his head to shut it out. The pillow failed to block his wife’s elbow in his ribs. Prodded into full wakefulness by spouse and ring-tone, he reluctantly pulled himself out of bed and groped for his phone. “Hello?”

“Dr. Kapoor? This is Mindy Park.”

“Is it PM or AM?” Venkat asked drowsily.

“I don’t know. I’m living on Mars time now,” Mindy said. “It’s mid-morning there. But the latest Mars satellite pics show Watney doing something weird. You’d better come in and see.”

Had Venkat been twenty years younger, the sleepiness would have fled instantly. But middle-aged scientists and high-level bureaucrats found sleep hard enough to come by even when the job wasn’t devouring them. “I’ll… be there shortly,” he said around a yawn. “But what can you tell me?”

“He’s rearranging the solar farm,” Mindy said. “He’s made a giant letter M so far. And the aliens are gathering rocks and piling them up just north of the solar panels.”

It wasn’t coffee, but the news made a decent substitute. “Keep everything you’ve got focused on the Hab,” he said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

Teddy flipped through the printed photographs, removing them from the paperclip one at a time and sliding each to the back of the stack as he looked at them. “Morse code,” he said. “Clever.” He made a face as he looked at the last panel. “Leet-speak? I thought we were done with that in the twenty-oughts. I always hated that garbage.”

“It does save on characters,” Mindy said quietly. “Um. And it takes a lot of rocks to make a message readable from space, even with maximum magnification and image enhancement.”

“’Alive Sol 32. Hit by antenna. Freak accident. Not crew’s fault. Better. Rations end Sol 307. Five aliens, food ends Sol 85, Sol 118 with Ares rations. Growing more.'” Teddy looked up from the page. “Sounds pretty bleak for the aliens.”

“Couldn’t he have told us more?” Annie asked. “We already knew all that shit except for the alien food situation.”

“It took him seven hours to lay that message out,” Venkat pointed out. “After he spent an hour moving the Hab solar cells to spell out MORSE. And he had help doing it.”

“And it took almost every rock within two hundred meters of the Hab to make,” Mindy added.

“Well, shit,” Annie snorted. “When will he make another message?”

“He probably won’t,” Venkat said. “He has no way of knowing when we see his message. He doesn’t even know we’re looking.”

“How can he not know?” Annie asked. “Of course we’re fucking looking! Who wouldn’t be fucking looking?”

“Ahem.” Teddy raised his hand. “Annie, if not for the aliens we wouldn’t have been looking. That was my decision and I own it, and I’m glad it wasn’t carried out. But Venkat’s right. Watney has no way of knowing that we’re watching him.” He tapped the paper in his hand. “But I’m most interested in the last two words. ‘Growing more.’ What do you think that means, Venk?”

Venkat shrugged. “I think it means he’s attempting to grow more food,” he said simply. “He’s a botanist. Before he applied to the astronaut corps he was doing field work in Africa reclaiming deserts.”

“It’s one of the reasons we accepted his application,” added Mitch Henderson from where he slumped in a chair.

“Do you think he can do it?” Teddy asked.

“I haven’t a clue,” Venkat said firmly, “but it doesn’t matter what I think. Watney thinks he can.”

“How would he go about doing it?” Teddy asked.

Venkat shrugged. “I can call in some experts if you like,” he said. “My guess is he’d take every container in the Hab, harvest water from the Martian permafrost, and try to build a hydroponic garden.”

“Um,” Mindy interrupted. “I don’t think that’s it. Remember all the EVAs Mark and the aliens did? We couldn’t figure out what they were doing? But they kept going to and from the airlocks. Maybe they were gathering topsoil.”

“That can’t be right,” Venkat said, shaking his head. “Martian soil is poisonous, and anyway the Hab’s not big enough for conventional agriculture.”

“Get in those experts,” Teddy said. “Have them check both scenarios. Ask them if Watney could get enough clean water for a hydroponic garden and if the Hab has enough materials to build one. Ask if Martian soil could grow crops, what Watney would need to do to make it work, and if the Hab could grow enough crops for six people.”

“Will do,” Venkat said, making a note.

Teddy turned to the speakerphone. “Bruce, how soon can we send a resupply mission to Mark?”

“Not soon,” the voice of Bruce Ng, chief of Jet Propulsion Laboratories, replied. “We’ve run rough scenarios ranging from a launch today through the next Hohmann window in twenty-one months. Right now is the worst possible time to send anything to Mars. It’d take four times the usual delta-V from Earth orbit to reach Mars, and nothing we send for the next four or five months will get there any sooner than maybe Sol 570.”

“Talk me through it,” Teddy insisted.

“Right now Earth is ahead of Mars in their orbits around the Sun,” Bruce said. “A direct flight would require cancelling Earth’s orbital momentum and offsetting solar gravity in addition to the acceleration required to reach Mars. Nothing mankind has ever built could do that. So instead whatever we launch has to go up like a mortar, way above Mars’s orbital path, to allow Mars time to catch up in its orbit. The probe would then encounter Mars on its path back down towards the Sun.”

“What are the numbers if we do that?” Teddy asked.

“Still lousy, but doable at least,” Bruce replied. “Launching today, like I said, would take four times the delta-V from orbit that our supply missions usually use. The heaviest lifter we currently have available is the Eagle Eye 3 probe’s booster. Launching today, it could land a three hundred kilogram payload on Mars.” The speakerphone went silent for a moment as Bruce paused for breath. “Note that’s not three hundred kilograms of food. That’s three hundred kilograms of food, the thing the food rides in, and the landing system that gets the food down intact and on target.

“The delta-V numbers improve with every day that passes, because we have to cancel out less and less of the Sun’s gravity on the trajectory. By the time we could actually launch- say in one hundred days- the potential payload goes up to nine hundred kilograms. Again,” Bruce’s voice warned, “that’s probe and food put together.

“But the really bad part,” Bruce finished, “is that the trajectories all end up with an arrival date somewhere between Sol 570 and Sol 610. Nothing we do with Eagle Eye will make that any faster.”

“Keep working the problem,” Teddy said. “If necessary plan for a double resupply mission. We’ll find another booster somewhere. But we need to find some way to get more food to him as soon as possible.”

“It’d help if I knew how large a resupply we were sending,” Bruce pointed out.

“That’s something that confuses me about Watney’s message,” Venkat added. “He says he has food for three hundred days. We already figured that by himself, if he rationed his food, he could last until Sol 400. But he also says that the aliens will run out of food on Sol 85, and then he says ‘Sol 118 with Ares rations.’ But the math doesn’t work. There must be some reason why the aliens only last until Sol 118 but Watney lasts until Sol 300.”

“Maybe ET has a food allergy,” Annie tossed off irritably.

“That’s a good idea,” Teddy said.

“The fuck you say!” Annie snapped. “It was a joke!”

“I’m serious,” Teddy said. “Maybe there’s only a few Earth foods the aliens can eat. Venk, have the Ares dietician go through the surface supplies for Ares III and categorize all the meals for known allergens and by general food type. You’re looking for something that makes three-quarters of the Ares meal packs unsuitable for aliens.”

Venkat made another note and kept quiet. He’d intended to do that anyway, but it never hurt to get your boss’s backing. It especially didn’t hurt when things played out so that the boss thought it was his idea.

“But getting back to the food,” Teddy continued. “The best analysis we have of orbital photos of Watney’s guests suggests that they have similar mass to humans. So assume similar food requirements. Six people, enough food to last until supplies can arrive in the next normal Mars launch window.”

“That’d be Sol 856,” Bruce said. “Let’s assume the probe arrives on Sol 556, I don’t know how. Three hundred fifty days of rations to provide a margin, for six people, at one kilogram per day, is twenty-one hundred kilograms.” The phone just barely picked up the JPL chief whistling through his teeth. “Eagle Eye 3’s Delta IX isn’t going to cut it. How soon can we get SpaceX to prep a Red Falcon first stage?”

“I’ll ask, but don’t get your hopes up,” Teddy said. “When I spoke with them last they were still backlogged on preparing for Ares IV presupply flights.” He paused, then flipped the last page in his hands and replaced the paperclip exactly as it had been when he’d received the photos, setting them down neatly on one corner of his desk blotter. “Speaking of Ares IV, there’s been a change in plans. The president has decided we’re not going to wait for Ares IV to rescue Mark Watney. The chance to make formal diplomatic contact with intelligent alien life makes the rescue mission urgent, assuming an alien rescue mission doesn't happen soon.”

“Excuse me?” Bruce Ng asked. “Does the president think we’re going to just drive there?”

“No. He expects us to take Hermes.” Teddy placed his hands on his desk and leaned forward. “Hermes will dock with the space station for refit in seven months. The next Hermes launch window is in twenty-one months. That gives us fourteen months to refit Hermes to support a crew of nine instead of six.”

“And how does he propose Watney and his friends get to Hermes?” Venkat asked. “The Ares III MAV is currently relaying satellite signals four hundred kilometers over his head.”

“Worst case scenario, he travels to Schiaparelli and uses the Ares IV MAV,” Teddy said. “Ares III-A can take a MAV to Mars to replace it, instead of an MDV. Alternately, if we can contact Watney, maybe he can use the Ares III MAV’s fuel plant to make enough fuel that a MAV can be landed at Ares III, fueled immediately, and launch.”

“I’ll try to find someone to run the numbers on that scenario,” Bruce said doubtfully.

“Don’t let it distract you from our top priority. Supplies for Watney first. Then rescue.” He turned to Mitch Henderson, who had kept unnaturally quiet for most of the meeting. “Mitch, I want you to pick a three-man flight crew for an Ares III-A mission. They won’t be landing, so we don’t need more crew. A pilot, a doctor, and a biologist. The most diplomatic astronauts we have- remember they’ll be dealing with intelligent alien life.”

“They’ll be dealing,” Mitch grunted, “with intelligent alien life that’s spent more than two years living with Mark Watney.”

“Good point,” Venkat said. “Better send a psychologist instead of a biologist.”

Everyone laughed except Teddy, who merely made a note on his blotter.

Sighing, Venkat doodled on his own notepad. “Hermes was built to last a minimum of five missions,” he said. “With regular refits it’s rated for thirty years. And its life support margins are broad enough that the only issue with nine crew would be crowding. It’s doable.”

“Why not just send the Ares-III crew back out again?” Henderson asked. “Lewis, Martinez and Beck, anyway. They have extra motivation to see Watney home safe.”

Teddy shook his head. “When they get home they’ll have been in space a year,” he said. “They need rest and recovery time, not training for a new mission as soon as they touch down. Better a fresh crew. And besides,” he added, leaning on his desk again, “every astronaut in the world already has all the motivation anyone can ask for to bring Watney home.”

Every head nodded agreement with that.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS, AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE MISSION DAY 29

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas. You’re early, over.

AMICITAS: Ready for large amounts of water, over.

ESA: Detailed description of flight and landing. Include any conclusions you have formed. Over.

AMICITAS: SG - Flight normal until mid-morning day 2. System fail-safe shutdown accompanied by shattering of all main engine batteries. Only two emergency magic batteries survived. All locally magic-powered systems shut down due to lack of environmental magic. Performed controlled crash forty minutes later using magic reserves in emergency batteries and thruster batteries. Conclusion: unexpected teleport into parallel world without universal magic field. Over.

ESA: Repeat no universal magic field? Over.

AMICITAS: SG- Confirmed. Only source of magic here is life-field. Currently only life on this planet is Amicitas crew, one alien, few plants. Over.

ESA: Understood. Time check your location? Over.

AMICITAS: DF – One hour before noon local time. Planet’s day longer than normal. Over.

ESA: Copied. Prepare for long message tomorrow beginning twenty-one hours from now. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – Will empty the buckets for you. Out.

Author's Note

I actually contacted Andy Weir on Facebook for this problem- not mentioning ponies. He didn't say more than to point out there are multiple possible trajectories for any flight that would get to Mars from any given point, so simulating them all isn't something a simple commercial app will do well. I didn't push farther than that.

So, instead, I went to a "well I killed a Kerbal so I'm bailing out" old save of KSP and used it to get delta-V changes for a ship from Kerbal (Earth) to Duna (Mars). Fuel expenditures for direct ascent with Earth just past Mars in orbit were astronomical- almost as much delta-V as was required to get from the surface to low orbit. Waiting even a hundred in-game days reduced the burn cost by almost half, but still way above the minimum requirement you'd get in a Hohmann lineup.

However, all three cases I tried ended up with almost the same arrival time, within ten to fifteen in-game days. Trying to make intercept happen sooner required so much extra thrust that it just wasn't plausible. The reasons are what Bruce Ng points out here: the more directly out your trajectory is from the Sun, the more thrust is required to overcome both solar gravity and Earth's existing orbital momentum. Hohmann windows are ideal because they're the points at which you essentially leave Earth at the same vector as it's traveling in its orbit, but faster, which efficiently widens your orbit without the need to cancel out or add to that existing momentum.

The variables involved are final payload to destination, total specific impulse of the craft involved, and how long you're willing to wait to get the payload there. They're all interconnected- the smaller the payload, the faster a set specific impulse will get you there. Currently the NASA bunch are finding that none of their numbers add up to food in time to do any good for Watney (let alone his visitors).

BTW, the dietician will require maybe five minutes to figure out why the food doesn't add up. No other possible factor in the menus sent up could add up to 25% except the vegetable-protein meals. So you're not going to get a scene referring to that until long after the fact.

SpaceX was not much more than a billionaire bragging in 2011 when the book was first written. In the movie SpaceX's name appears on Hermes. I'm bringing in SpaceX here to explain why their rockets aren't available for Watney's lunch pail. (Side note: I originally named the BFR "Blue Falcon", but a reader pointed me to Urban Dictionary, and I've changed it to Red Falcon even though that loses connection with the BFR joke. I'm still thinking Elon Musk will go with Blue Falcon if he keeps the initials, though.)

In the book Watney assumes nobody on Earth knows he's alive until Pathfinder connects with Earth. I see no reason to change that assumption now.

Mitch is JSC Mission Control flight leader, not head of the astronaut office, but in the book he essentially serves both roles. He's the main advocate for the astronauts. I'm maintaining that role in my story.

I haven't written anything yet today- usually I write before I post- but I have business work that absolutely needs finished today, and I should have begun on it four hours ago as it is. I'll try to write a short bit tonight.

Sol 33

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 30
ARES III SOL 33

As a Wonderbolt and a trainer of Wonderbolts, Spitfire had had basic field medic training, though admittedly most of it ended with “get a real doctor as soon as you can”. She’d had a compressed three-week course after she’d been picked for ESA Flight 54, which became the third flight of ESA Amicitas. And these days she spent at least two hours every day swotting up on the contents of her medical textbook, which now had over thirty pieces of the alien’s small supply of transparent tape holding together the brittle pages.

But none of that limited training included one word about what to do with a unicorn who had clearly cracked up.

She watched as Starlight Glimmer spent her tenth consecutive minute banging her head into one of Mark’s storage cabinets. She’d already decided to put Starlight to bed and break open the aspirin bottle once the unicorn wore herself out or knocked herself out- and Spitfire would have taken either end of a bet as to which it would be.

On a whiteboard nearby lay the transcription of a message long enough that Mark had been forced to pull one of his ex-crewmates’ space suits off the rack and begin dumping excess water into it. (Needless to say, the Hab’s soil needed no further watering this day.)

REF S DRV SPECS SHOWS DIM LMTR MSSNG FRM S DRV TPT SP ARRAY. REF YR RPT INCDT HYPOS OBJ AVOID PARAM TRIPPED RSLT UNTRCEBLE 5D JUMP & NOVEL PWR SURGE TO FUEL JUMP. SURGE OVRLD BATT, ATT MORE PWR DRAW COMP, NOVEL MG VACUUM RSLT FAIL CASCADE MN PWR. FAILSAFE FAIL DUE TO NOVEL UNANTCP COND. TRACE OF ENV SYS SP INCONCLUSIVE DUE TO LOW SIGNAL, NOVEL VECTOR. PREP 2ND MSG PROCED CYCLE TELP SP. CT WHN RDY.

Starlight Glimmer had gone straight to the ship manuals after hearing the message, tearing two freeze-dried pages in her rush to look up the Sparkle Drive spell array. Once she did, she dropped the book and began her percussive psychological self-analysis, leaving Dragonfly to translate from geek-speak and abbreviation into proper Equestrian.

Apparently the Sparkle Drive had tried to move out of the way of some unseen object in its path. By some oversight the spell hadn’t been limited to travel in three dimensions, so it made a small five-dimensional jump. That jump soaked up far more energy than normal, essentially draining the engine’s array of over a hundred magic batteries. The batteries, suddenly starved for power, tried to compensate by drawing more power from the universal field. But here, in this universe, there was no such field, and the strain of trying to draw energy from a vacuum, added to the Sparkle Drive’s load on the system, had caused at least one battery to shatter.

With one battery down, the load increased on all the others, and like crystal dominoes they disintegrated in a chain reaction. The fail-safes which should have shut everything down in case of a failure cascade hadn’t worked because they, too, relied on a universal magic field for power. Only the two emergency batteries, being disconnected from the main circuit, had survived.

And now Baltimare waited on them to reply so they could send instructions that might- just might- result in re-establishing the telepresence spell and proper, non-soggy communications.

Mark wandered over, looking with concern at Starlight. “Whut sarong whicker?” he said. Of course it would be their self-designated translator who went nuts first, Spitfire thought. But the first word was probably what.

“Du bahd,” Dragonfly replied. When Mark made a more-please roll of his hand, the changeling added, “Du Roscoe.”

“Dihpstix,” Fireball added.

Mark thought about this a moment, then screwed up his face so his eyes were crossed and the teeth in his upper jaw jutted out. He pointed to his face, then to Starlight. When Dragonfly nodded, Mark sighed, reached over and picked up Starlight and carried her to her bunk, repeating, “Hiss alight, hiss alight…” in a gentle voice.

The others let out their breath. “Well, that’s solved,” Cherry Berry said. “Spitfire, what would you have done?”

Spitfire shrugged. “I’m no shrink. If she were a pegasus, I would have told her to take two laps of the obstacle course and hit the showers.” Actually she would have relieved her of duty and called a psychiatrist in to determine if she should be washed out of the program. In short, she would have hoofed the problem over to somepony else as fast as possible. Which, to be honest, was what she’d just done.

“She’s not crazy,” Dragonfly said. “But she is really ashamed of herself. I think she blames herself for our being here.”

“Yeah, she should,” Fireball growled. When the other three stared at him, he added, “What? It’s true!”

“Not helpful,” Cherry Berry insisted. “Now go get some more of those plastic bins. We’re wasting Twilight Sparkle’s time here.”

Spitfire went to tend to Starlight, who was now babbling something to herself about seeking efficiencies and reduced thaumic churn. She hated being here. She hated being so useless. She hated being so helpless.

Fluttershy should be here, she thought. Fluttershy would have Starlight Glimmer back on her hooves in minutes. Fluttershy would be able to talk to Mark directly. Fluttershy would have the training for her position and the experience to be on an equal level with the others. I’m just a waste of food here.

Then she had a second thought. No, Fluttershy shouldn’t be here. How would she deal with being away from her animals for a month? And how would they cope without her? At least the Wonderbolts are in good hooves back home.

Then a third thought: None of us should be here. Mark ought to be on his way home, and we ought to be getting our third tickertape parade as the heroes who first orbited Bucephalous. And it’s nopony’s fault that we are. This situation is just bucked up, is all.

But I still hate being so helpless.

Maybe, she thought, having Cherry Berry in charge instead of me is a good thing.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

(note: all standard telegraphy / Mares Code shortcuts and abbreviations translated)

AMICITAS: Procedures copied for communications experiment Alpha, experiment Beta, experiment Gamma. Alpha not possible at this time due to conservation of battery power for food production procedure estimated four days from now. Over.

ESA: Understood. Prepare for experiments Beta and Gamma in twenty hours time. Over.

AMICITAS: Negative. First available time for tests three days from now due to food production procedures. Over.

ESA: Explain nature of food production procedures. Over.

AMICITAS: You really don’t want to know. Over.

ESA: Fine. Will expect contact sixty hours from now. Over.

AMICITAS: Copy contact sixty hours, out.

Author's Note

Spitfire wasn't going to be in the story originally. The fifth crew member was Fluttershy, and I think her name might still appear in my notes once or twice. Fluttershy, in addition to being the medic, was going to take the role of chief spokespony that Starlight has ended up with.

But there were problems- Fluttershy's terror of space flight after Rainbow Dash very nearly had a Bad Day in ESA Flight Five, Fluttershy's Element/Castle responsibilites, her animals. I could explain away one, or perhaps two, but three was too much. Fluttershy might make a day trip to the CSP's space station, I don't know why, but never any farther from her non-space commitments.

So in came Rookie Spitfire. who as Wonderbolts commander worked with Twilight Sparkle's program as an astromare reservist and capsule recovery chief, but who never actually went up until now. And although she as a character can't know what I explained above, she does know Fluttershy was potentially the other, more qualified option. She needs something to build her confidence that she's carrying her share of the load, and hopefully I'll come up with it soon.

I read somewhere or other, I forget where, that the military calls their obstacle courses "confidence courses," on the theory that running said courses builds confidence. The doublethink of this concept amuses me, and I used "confidence course" in the first draft, but then edited it out.

My father was a Vietnam vet (USN) who earned a Purple Heart, a minor valor award whose name I forget, and a barely-honorable discharge. Think about that: it was 1970, when the military was seriously bent for manpower and down on morale, and they still gave my dad the Pentagon code for "not suited to military discipline," or in plain English, "incorrigible fuckup but not quite criminally so". A couple months back I found a printed copy of his military record, with a two-page report from some commander or other stating that, although Dad was personally courageous, he routinely questioned orders and essentially tap-danced on the borderline of insubordination. This was written in 1969- see again "manpower shortage and poor morale".

In short, Dad was damn near the platonic example of why a draft during an unpopular war is not often a good idea.

The feelings on the parting of my father and the military were mutual to the effect that I was expressly forbidden from enlisting or even taking up the offers I received in high school from West Point, Annapolis and Colorado Springs. So I never served, and I'm not confident enough about the validity of "confidence course" to use it in the story this time round. I'm sure those of you who did serve will fill in the gap in my knowledge.

After writing one chapter today, did a bit of research. Every once in a while Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun, and for about a two-week period communications range from "very ratty" to "LOS." However, this was never mentioned in the book at all, so I wanted to know where that alignment would fall in the story.

Answer? Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun on roughly Mission Sol 330.

Oh. Well, that explains why the novel didn't mention it, then.

Sol 36

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 33

ARES III SOL 36

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

(note: all standard telegraphy / Mares Code shortcuts and abbreviations translated)

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: DF – go for communications experiment Beta. Over.

ESA: Copy go for comm Beta. Stand by. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – dragonfire spell collapsed this side of air transfer system, leaving small pile of soot and ash. Over.

ESA: Copy no joy on dragonfire. Status on experiment Gamma? Over.

AMICITAS: DF – go for communications experiment Gamma. Over.

ESA: Copy go for comm Gamma. Stand by. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – Unable to decipher message due to disorientation of life support alarm. Could not concentrate on blinking warning light.

ESA: Copy no joy on cycling suit life support. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – our host is annoyed. Too much water. Over.

ESA: Disable water outflow. We can use indicator light as signal. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – unable to disable flow without permanently disconnecting water flow. Water flow needed for future food production procedures. Over.

ESA: Understood. Will await your signal for comm Alpha. Out.

MISSION LOG – SOL 36

Dirt doubling yesterday. It’s a good thing ponies are so resilient, because two days after her breakdown Starlight was able to put in a hard day’s work, and we needed every hand or hoof we could get.

For one thing, I decided to dig up and separate the alfalfa sprouts I’d planted, and that ended up taking me all damn day. I had to let the ponies and dragon do the actual dirt-doubling in the rest of the hab because the sprouts, which are a good two feet tall now, had grown huge root complexes so entangled with each other that I couldn’t pull them apart without killing most of them. My fault- I planted them way too densely and the soil is way too shallow for them- but it was still a lot of delicate, painstaking work.

The alfalfa plants spent the night sitting with their roots in water in a large sample bin. Today I replanted them a little looser to allow them to grow. They’re doing surprisingly well for the non-optimal conditions.

My ultimate plan for these plants isn’t food. In the short term I’ll use these plants to infect the rest of our farm soil, here and in the cave if we get that going, with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the roots. I can’t be sure the alfalfa seeds from the pony packs have those bacteria. They probably do, if they’re viable at all, but I feel better with a second source. Of course alfalfa plants naturally inhibit their own seeds from sprouting right next to them, but I’ll only have them in the ground next to the seeds for a couple of days- just long enough to give the baby alfalfa a nice case of the nitrate cooties.

But beyond that, these plants are seed plants. As long as I have a potato I can grow more potatoes, but our alfalfa seed stock is finite. I figure we have enough for almost an acre, and if we can cultivate an acre of Mars we deserve to go down in history right next to both George Washington Carver and Merlin. But that assumes all the seed is viable and that something doesn’t happen to kill off the plants.

So, if we lose the plants, I want a way to restart the farm. If the Hab and the cave fail at the same time we’re just plain fucked- and not just for food. But if one or the other fails and we can fix it, we can use the soil from the good one to restart the farm- if we have seeds.

So these plants are going to be allowed to flower. Normally you don’t do that, because the optimum balance between nutrition and digestibility of alfalfa is the day the first flower buds begin to open. After that the plants become woody and harder to digest.

Alfalfa requires insects for pollination, but we don’t have any. What we do have are cotton swabs from the geology kit, my medical supplies, and the pony first-aid kit. (Though I’m not sure I’d want a cotton swab after a pony has held it in her teeth…) When these plants bloom we’re going to spend a dull, dull, dull couple of days passing pollen from one itty bitty flower to another, all in the hopes that the mommy pistil and daddy stamen love each other very, very much. And four weeks after that- seeds, dozens of seeds per plant!

Look at me- I’m actually coming up with backup plans. That means I’m moving beyond basic survival. I’m actually feeling good about my situation for once. I think I might even believe I could survive this! So far everything’s been going my way!

Author's Note

Another very short one, written (at the time) to help build up buffer against my coming trip.

Test Alpha is an attempt to re-establish the telepresence spell. That requires the magic batteries, which are spoken for until the upcoming big event (to be revealed soon).

Test Beta was SpikeMail.

Test Gamma was switching suit air flow on and off to use the alarm light as a visual code system. Unfortunately the ponies put in a WAKE UP YOU GOT NO AIR YOU GONNA DIE alarm system that, well, is really distracting and can't be turned off. Oops.

The ponies could probably cap the water feed by salvaging a valve from the plumbing on the ship, but they have plans for every scrap of plumbing they can yank out of that. The only other solution is to crimp the connection closed or shatter the crystal, both of which are very much harder to undo than do.

And Mark... Mark... don't do that.

Sol 37

MISSION LOG: SOL 37

I am fucked, and I’m gonna die, and it’s all the ponies’ fault!

Okay, that’s not fair. It’s not all their fault. It’s not even all Starlight’s fault, even if the whole mess was her idea. I’d assumed that she knew as much chemistry as I did, and so I never pressed her on her brilliant plan to clean the cave of perchlorates. If I had, we wouldn’t be piled in the rover with my foot to the floor retreating back to the Hab, or as I like to call it, “safe blast radius.”

And the hell of it is, we have to go back. Site Epsilon doesn’t have another cave. Even if all else fails, we need the quartz and other gems for Fireball to eat. Which means, oh archaeologist of the distant future, if you find this record inside an ancient rover sitting next to a collapsed cave, it’s because we died trying to clean up the largest spill of pure anhydrous perchlorates in recorded history. The least I can do is tell you why.

Today, after cleaning off the solar cells, I drove Starlight and Spitfire out to the cave. Starlight brought with her one of their magic batteries. The gauge showed almost two-thirds full, which is pretty impressive considering she lifted their entire ship on just about twenty percent. (Hint: if I screw up and trigger a pony-human war, Earth’s best hope is to surrender immediately. If all unicorns are like Starlight we’d never stand a chance. All hail our adorable pony overlords! Let's just hope they don't kill us all by ACCIDENT!)

I had no idea what the ponies had planned. But considering that for almost a week we’d been watering the Hab from an infinite supply of water, plus the other amazing things pony magic can do, I had just sort of imagined that Starlight would raise one mighty hoof and just command all the perchlorate begone. And Starlight saw that it was good, and said it was good, and it was good, etc.

Well… no.

Based on the conversation Starlight and I had after the fact, magic has definite rules and limits. And one of the big ones is, magic can’t create or destroy matter or energy from absolute nothing. In theory enough magic power can be converted into matter, but no single pony is powerful enough for that. Even just moving matter around is pretty costly.

So Starlight’s brilliant idea was to make a magic spell that specifically sought the two compounds that make up 99% of the perchlorates in the soil- potassium perchlorate and magnesium perchlorate. The magic would pull the perchlorates out of the soil and put them someplace where it would be easy to remove them. That would turn a nearly impossible act into merely a lot of hard physical labor.

All of this sounds good, right? Wrong! And it’s because of how perchlorates work. How is it possible that this unicorn, obviously the smartest out of the group of aliens who are all presumably the best and brightest their world has to offer, doesn’t know anything about perchlorates? They’re used in solid rocket fuel, for fuck’s sake!

The perchlorate ion is made of one chlorine atom and four oxygen atoms in a fragile covalent bond. It’s an efficient oxidizer. It’ll make things burn very, very quick and hot.

The problem comes when you want to stop it burning. You can’t. The protocol for a perchlorate fire is to dump sand on it and try to scatter the fire, then wait for it to burn out on its own.

To make things even worse, the perchlorate ion bonds with other ions to form various acids and salts. This means, in addition to oxidizing stuff while burning, the perchlorate dissolves and burns stuff as its (usually metal) ion goes flying off to do other shit.

Now, this isn’t so bad when the perchlorates are diluted with water or other substances- at least not the light perchlorates. Perchlorates of heavy metals are on every chemist’s Nope Fucking Nope list. And the rare organic perchlorates are considered to be bad ideas by any scientist who hopes to go to their grave with all ten fingers still attached.

But Starlight’s spell didn’t say “grab the perchlorates and whatever’s right around them.” Oh no. It said, “Do you swear to fetch the perchlorates, all the perchlorates, and nothing but the perchlorates? I do!”

So Starlight set up on the entrance side of the first big hall, where we’re planning to have our farm, and began sending out pulse after pulse of magic light in strobes down the cave, so far as I know clear to the back. And every pulse brought back fragments of white or yellow powder, which accumulated in a ball floating in midair. And that ball grew… and grew… and kept right on growing.

I tried to stop her, but Starlight was so wrapped up in the spell she didn’t really see me. Spitfire stopped me from shaking her, probably for the same reason you’re not supposed to wake a sleepwalker. And having seen what happens when a spell fails (see the infamous Bullet Bead of Sol 23), I came to my senses and left her alone, watching that giant ball of pure firestarting poison continue to build.

When Starlight shut off her spell there was still juice in her battery. She didn’t even fall over. In fact, she turned to me and looked up at me like a dog I once had. See, Mark? I did the neat trick! Now where’s my Milk-Bone?

And while she was doing that, the enormous pile of perchlorate dust flopped to the ground. It was a short trip, but it took a while for the ball to become more of a mound. When it settled the pile was maybe three meters tall and as wide as the chamber itself.

I don’t think one sand bucket is going to be enough.

Now, if it was just potassium perchlorate, I woudn’t panic. Potassium perchlorate is well-behaved so long as you don’t get above two hundred and fifty degrees Centigrade. It’s mildly toxic and mildly corrosive, but ordinary precautions will handle it.

But forty percent of that ball of death was magnesium perchlorate. Potsassium perchlorate has only one perchlorate ion. Magnesium perchlorate has two, plus that hungry Mg++ ion. On rare occasions magnesium perchlorate has been known to spontaneously combust, or to ignite by friction, just from touching certain substances. The safety rules for magnesium perchlorate tell you to keep it away from acids, all flammable organic compounds, and aluminum.

Problem: my sample shovels are aluminum.

Problem: so are large portions of my space suit.

Problem: all my sample bins are plastic, i. e. organic. (For dilute magnesium perchlorate in Mars soil this would be perfectly safe. All the plastics and carbon composites on the mission are rated non-flammable. For 100% pure perchlorates, though, all bets are off.)

Problem: large portions of all our space suits are also organic. (Fireproof, but pure magnesium perchlorate…)

And big, gigantic, horrible, no-good problem: if the magnesium perchlorate finds something to ignite it, the resulting fire will be more than hot enough to decompose the potassium perchlorate that makes up the other sixty percent of that damn pile.

So I grabbed a pony under each arm (thank you 0.4g Mars!) and fled for the rover, where Starlight and I had what the diplomats call “a frank and open exchange of ideas.”

We can’t give up on the cave. Somehow we have to think of a safe way to get all that crap out without actually touching it. But I’m sure as hell not sticking around while I think about it, not when there’s even a remote chance that the Martian soil itself- chock full of iron oxide, potassium, phosphorus- might be enough to set that crap off.

The gem cave is now a bomb.

Author's Note

Wrote 3600 words today. The buffer is now either six or seven chapters, depending on what I do about three days from now.

I indulged myself here, because, "I am fucked, and I'm gonna die!" was too glorious a line to not allow Watney to deliver again. So this was set up so that a similar threat to Hydrogenville would confront Watney on Sol 37, the same day he discovers it in the book. (And yes, in the book Watney blatantly taunts Murphy by saying, quote, "Things are finally going my way." Which is why he did it last chapter in this story.)

Also, today is the day Mark is once and for all disabused of the notion that the ponies are "more advanced aliens." Starlight made a serious error in judgment that might get them killed immediately, and she's definitely put the castaways' long-term survival in jeopardy.

That said, I'm almost certainly overplaying the explosive dangers of magnesium perchlorate for this sequence. I'm not a chemical expert; I'm learning from warning instructions I find on websites as I search. Magnesium perchlorate is sold as a brand-name industrial dehydrating agent by the barrel. Its fire hazard doesn't rate above 1 or 2 on the scale-of-five used by the warning signs. Potassium perchlorate is even more stable.

But I did read numerous warnings of fire hazard and even spontaneous explosions involving magnesium perchlorate- including a bench which had been soaked with perchlorates for a long time exploding when somebody struck it. I may be exaggerating things, but I'm not making this up out of whole cloth. The warnings repeatedly say "avoid friction", "don't mix with anything flammable," and, "A lot more things are flammable than you might think."

And these warnings are mostly to do with impure perchlorates- the industry standard for commercial use appears to be 83% pure. Starlight, our lovable little obsessive insecure recovering sociopath, has created a pile of 100% pure perchlorate salts, 60% potassium perchlorate and 40% magnesium perchlorate randomly mixed, measurable in tons- and one hell of a lot of tons. Even as stable as these two particular perchlorates are compared to some of their more ill-advised cousins (seriously, who thought mercury perchlorate or friggin' fluorine perchlorate were good ideas?), I'm sure any chemist confronted with a pile of them twice as tall as he was and as wide as a trailer house would find their vocabulary temporarily restricted to, "Oh, shit."

So yes, Mark said some very mean words to Starlight. Can you blame him?

Next time the ponies will make very sure Mark is clued in on the plan before execution.

Why Starlight didn't know about perchlorates' other properties besides toxicity will be explained next chapter. For now, suffice to say that Mark is the end product of over a century of humanity's experiences with rocket flight and rocket accidents, while the changelings first taped a lawn chair to a trash can of fireworks only about four years prior to the story.

Sol 39

MISSION LOG – SOL 39

My back aches and my head hurts. This is worse than the Big Tow.

Remember my bright idea? It turns out the ponies were right there with me. And it works, too, but it took a lot of work to do it. It literally took minutes to find two pieces of the pony ship’s dismembered outer hull large enough to be repurposed as sleds, and minutes more to shape them using careful application of highly advanced Earth technology (beat it with a hammer). The parachute rope used for the tow was repurposed to make towing harnesses for Cherry Berry and Spitfire to haul the sleds with, and that took about five minutes tops.

And then we all spent seven hours out at Site Epsilon. Starlight and Dragonfly used magic to shift perchlorates onto the sled. Fireball and I shoveled using smaller pieces of hull plating with the edges rounded off to prevent our gloves getting sliced up. Cherry and Spitfire hauled sleds out, dumped them downslope away from the rover, and came back in, not quite in perfect sync but close enough.

The pony ship outer hull is chemically indistinguishable from steel- there must be some kind of magic process they use to make it more durable. It’s had some form of rust-proofing or something, so it’s safe to dump a bunch of oxidizer onto. Which, oh my God, we did. Back and forth, shovel it on, dump it off, as fast as possible. We took turns in the rover eating cold food packs- full rations today with this level of work. Even Dragonfly had little nibbles from everyone else. I still need to get the story from Starlight about the bug’s dietary habits.

The hard work paid off, though. I figure we got just past halfway done today, even with all the non-perchlorate soil we had to scoop up along with the perchlorates. I think we made close to ninety trips in and out, and even though Spitfire could only haul half the load Cherry did, it was enough to drop the mound about level with the top of Fireball’s helmet.

By tomorrow we should be done. Of course, after this there will be a large no-go area at the bottom of the hill, until the Martian wind blows it away. Unfortunately, the Hab is downwind of the site, but one crisis at a time.

I am a bit concerned about the rest of our pile of boom. Originally the stuff was absolutely dry, but this morning it was a bit clumpy, and by the time our EVA time ran out there was some sort of slime forming on the surface. My best guess is, what very little water vapor is in the air in the cave is getting sucked up by the perchlorate. That’s what it does, of course, besides make thing burn really hot and fast- it dries the environment.

But for all my worries, the gunk has been very well behaved. We haven’t seen so much as a spark out of it. I guess- I hope- the Martian environment is keeping it too cold to react to anything. By the end of the day I was more worried about the patch on my suit than the perchlorate. You see, I’m using my flight suit- the one that got harpooned on Sol 6 and which I patched after I pulled the antenna out of my pelvis. I figure this is like my second-best clothes, the kind I’d use working on a car. If something happens to damage the suit, assuming I survive somehow, it won’t be my good space suit that got fucked up.

Time to sign off for now. It’s been a long day, and we’ve all earned an evening of relaxation with the Future Washed-Up Child Actors Club followed by a few episodes of Car Chases Without Context. At least tonight I can be guaranteed that Starlight won’t ask me to explain why the police officers are allowed to keep their jobs if they’re (a) crooked and (b) too dumb to realize it’s possible to arrest people when they’re not in a car.

MISSION LOG SOL 39 (2)

TRANSCRIPT: CONVERSATION BETWEEN DRAGONFLY AND MARK WATNEY (note: translation spell not used)

(note: towards the end of an episode of Dukes of Hazzard, some late 1970s/early 1980s country singer is performing, because apparently celebrities drive on two-lane roads in rural Georgia between gigs in the middle of nowhere just so they can be written citations by corrupt deputies)

DRAGONFLY: Good music! Why they make?

WATNEY (torn between Watsonian and Doyleist interpretations and limited by a vocabulary which probably doesn’t go beyond a hundred words): Er… bad cops stop. Say you break law, play or else.

DRAGONFLY: Oooh. What if Partridges stop? They play too?

WATNEY: Um… Partridges in California. Dukes in Georgia. Different places, far apart.

DRAGONFLY: Look same.

WATNEY (head beginning to really hurt, figuring out how to explain): You know it’s not real, right? Make up. Make in same place.

DRAGONFLY: Ooooh. So can do! Rosco make Partridges play!

WATNEY (surrendering): Fine. Whatever. Write your fanfic. I’m sure it’ll get a million hits.

And the hell of it is, I’m writing this at three in the morning because my subconscious decided to write the fic for the bug and show it in my dreams. Apparently some part of me ships Shirley Jones and Denver Pyle. Why? If it was David Cassidy and Catharine Bach it’d make some sense.

God, I’m cracking up. If this keeps up I’ll be writing my own fics in which the eldest Partridge son drives the bus off a cliff and dies as karmic retribution for stealing my Daisy Duke waifu.

That settles it. Tomorrow after we’re done with the perchlorate removal, I break open a new series. Something that doesn’t tie my brain in knots. Six Million Dollar Man, maybe?

Author's Note

I am all but certain that perchlorates do not go slimy when they absorb water. Normally.

But they're doing it in the cave on Sol 39.

And if Queen Chrysalis sees what the naked apes have for television in comparison to what ponies have, she wouldn't be surprised in the least. Brain rot isn't just universal, it's multiversal.

By the way, not damaging your suit gloves is damn important. Spacesuit gloves are individually measured to fit the astronaut's hands precisely. Mark can potentially use any space suit he can fit into, but he can't really use the other crew members' gloves.

Although made several years apart, both the Partridge Family and Dukes of Hazzard used portions of the Warner Ranch for filming. (It's a little sad that I decided Lewis didn't bring MASH, just so Watney's brain could be bent by the General Lee roaring through the Korean War...)
Yesterday I managed to write about 1300 words while killing time sitting in a car waiting for a shirt delivery. Whatever writing I do tonight will be after I post this but before I turn out the lights. I'm in Birmingham now, and if you're in central-to-northern Alabama this weekend you can find me in the dealer's room at Kami-Con (the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Center downtown) hoping to sell enough to pay for what looks like yet more transmission follies, oh fun.

I trust I don't need to wave the lampshade today.

Sols 40-41

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 37
ARES III SOL 40

There wasn’t much left.

In four hours of working the pile of perchlorates had been whittled down only as high as Fireball’s hips and only slightly wider than himself from snout to tail. In another two hours the job would no longer be one for shovels so much as brooms and dustpans.

That was a shame, Fireball thought, all of that spicy stuff getting dumped for the thin Martian wind to carry it off. He wanted some for later. All that bland, flavorless plain quartz was going to get really boring, and Mark was stingy with his ketchup supply. He needed something to make the wait for rescue endurable, and this perchlorate sauce looked perfect for the job.

Of course Mark wasn’t going to give up any of his bins or flasks to hold the stuff. He’d made it clear in no uncertain terms he didn’t want this white-and-yellow-striped gunk anywhere near his shelter. But he couldn’t object if Fireball kept it in the Amicitas galley, could he? The lights were back on over there, and some canned air, and even a little heat. He could just eat his meals on his own ship if he wanted to, and what was the monkey going to do about it?

And besides, if nobody else wanted the stuff, why shouldn’t he take it? It was his, if nobody else wanted it.

Yes. It’s yours, Fireball. Just take some.

It was lunchtime, and everyone prepared to return to the rover for lunch. Mark was working at the knots he’d used to harness the bossmare and the bossy mare to their sleds. Dragonfly was hoisting the magic battery onto her back, while Starlight sat down and trembled after four straight hours of telekinetic shoveling. No one was paying any attention to Fireball.

A small part of Fireball shouted, You idiot, if you’re waiting until nobody can stop you to do a thing, it’s a bad idea!! Leave the crap! The unicorn can summon up more if I want it!

But the rest of his mind shouted back Mine, and Mine is a siren song very few dragons can resist. Also (and this is true of most thinking creatures), the worse the idea you have is, the harder it is for you to not follow through on it.

From one of the tool pouches on his space suit Fireball removed the sturdy plastic wrapper of one of his last few meal packs. He’d saved a couple of the packs for when he just couldn’t stand quartz another day, but he’d also saved some of the containers, partly because he was a dragon, partly because it was just barely possible they could be reused somehow.

Like now, as he walked over to the pile to use it as a scoop for a healthy helping of perchlorate powder.

The meal had been prepared by a changeling chef, who answered with equal ill temper to Carapace or Heavy Frosting, at Horseton Space Center. It had been magically vacuum-sealed in a cheap, airtight plastic, produced by the same Manehattan manufacturing firm used by both Changeling Space Program and the Equestrian Space Agency. They had been stored in fireproof lockers, but no thought had been given to making the packets themselves fireproof, on the grounds that, “If those things are on fire in space, you probably have much bigger worries already.”

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its hundreds of civilian contractors had employed no such laxness. They had gone to absurd lengths to ensure that nothing short of a welding torch at close range would even cause the carbon-fiber and plastic of the mission’s equipment to smoulder. The off-the-counter food bags used for soil samples would burn, but only reluctantly and only after melting. Despite Mark Watney’s intense worries on the subject, had they used the sample bins to bail the perchlorate out of the cave, likely nothing would have happened.

And, likewise, if the perchlorate had remained the same sub-freezing temperature as the rest of the cave, little would have happened. But it hadn’t. Very slowly the perchlorate had been reclaiming the trace amounts of water in the air around it and the soil beneath it. Absorbing water warms up perchlorate considerably. The upper layers of the pile pressed down on the lower layers, adding a tiny fraction more heat. With every shovel, every scoop of magic, every compacting and disturbance and friction on, through, and within the pile, the whole picked up a tiny, tiny fraction more heat.

The pile was still cold, but not cold enough.

The empty packet, while not an active fire risk in normal circumstances, would burn under the right conditions.

Fireball stepped as close to the mound as he could without stepping in it, leaned his sinuous body forwards, and carefully scooped the packet into the slimy dust. On the first pass the packet wouldn’t open enough to let any in. A second attempt achieved little better, as the clingy perchlorate gunk refused to admit the edge of the pack.

On the third attempt, the gunk around the packet began to bubble and pop. Fireball dropped the packet and took a step back, watching in confusion as the bubbling and popping built up.

A flame erupted from the mouth of the packet.

Something surprisingly fast and heavy tackled the dragon and knocked him away from the pile.

A second later, the perchlorate pile exploded.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, over.

BALTIMARE: Baltimare calling Amicitas, where have you been? Over.

AMICITAS: CB – Accident. Alien, two crew injured. Tests postponed indefinitely. Will call. Over.

BALTIMARE: Please repeat, did not copy. Your hoof is too slow. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – Accident. Alien, one crew injured. Teqqq

BALTIMARE: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: DF- Accident. Alien, one and only one crew injured. One other crew very hungry. No tests until next contact. Over.

BALTIMARE: QC – You are all ordered to not die until I get there. Over.

AMICITAS: When? Over.

BALTIMARE: TS – Working on that. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – Going back to bed. Will drill commander more on code. Out.

BALTIMARE: One or two crew injured? Over.

AMICITAS: CB – Two. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – One. Over.

BALTIMARE: Copy two crew injured. Awaiting your signal, out.

MISSION LOG – SOL 41

I’m lying in my bunk. Fireball brought me the laptop to write this on, and also to tell me “sorry, big sorry.” He must have learned the word from Starlight or Dragonfly, because I don’t think he knew it even in his own language.

Good news: I’m alive. I survived a pile of perchlorate decomposing and spraying fragments of itself around like napalm. I survived another breach of my spacesuit, followed by first and second degree burns on my upper right arm where the suit breached.

Bad news: I hurt. I hurt like a motherfucker. Did I mention second degree small blistery burns on my upper arm, requiring me to lie on my back or my left side? How about an even worse decompression headache than I had after waking up on Sol 6?

Here’s how it happened, as well as I can piece it together. It started two sols ago, with Fireball’s re-creation of the Cinnamon Challenge. Apparently he wanted some more, and rather than tell anybody what he was doing, he snuck an empty food pack into his EVA suit to get a stash for later.

I can’t blame him that much. By the time we were knocking off for lunch yesterday, I’d almost forgotten that we were shoveling a combination of two potentially dangerous oxidizers. It just hadn’t done anything. And, after all, he’d eaten some of it with no worse result than one flaming belch. Sure, he forgot the danger. But I had too, so I can’t blame him completely.

Of course, the drugs might have something to do with that. Spitfire gave me some of the really strong painkillers from their medicine kit. Wheeeeeeeee! I’m still feeling some pain, but at the same time I’m feeling so pleasant and well-adjusted towards the world that I almost don’t care. This stuff will be outlawed the minute we establish full diplomatic relations with the pony government, I’m sure. I’d be scared of the danger of addiction, but hey, the main alternative in my medical supplies is your choice of opiates, either pill form or injection. So who am I to judge?

Back to the explosion. I had just untied Spitfire when I noticed Fireball crouched over the mound. We’d really reduced it down and were on pace to get back to base early, but there was still a good bit there at lunchtime. At first I was curious; why was he farting around with that stuff? Had he decided to picnic on the grounds instead of going back to the rover with the rest of us?

I was already walking over to him (carefully, because all appearances to the contrary I hadn’t become a complete idiot) when he sprang back up like something had bit him. Then I saw the food pack. I shouted at him to get away, but of course he couldn’t hear me- their suits can’t hear my suit radio. And then I saw the first flame shoot out of the pack’s open mouth.

Yeah. Open flame around magnesium perchlorate and an organic fuel source.

Can you say, oh shit? Sure, I knew you could. And I’ll be waiting here until your mommies get done washing your mouths out with soap.

I ran three steps to the right to get a good angle and then turned, got a running start, and slammed into Fireball’s side to knock him out of the way. Even taking into account Martian gravity he was surprisingly light. He hit the crystals on the far wall of the cave, fortunately not hard enough to break or puncture his suit.

Unfortunately Sir Isaac Newton is a bastard, because by imparting all my momentum to the dragon I didn’t have much left for myself, and what I did have left me off-balance. So I had just about time to catch myself from falling and take one step forward before the perchlorate pile went up.

It wasn’t a Hollywood explosion. It was more like a mudpot letting off an air bubble, spattering its surroundings with stinky mud. That is, if the mud was on fire. A huge blob of it hit my right side, which was facing the pile, and the part that hit my upper arm was burning.

NASA spacesuits are designed to withstand high temperatures and be extremely fire-resistant, but the slimy perchlorates clung to the suit and ate happily away at my sleeve. I couldn’t drop and roll because there wasn’t enough space around me not covered in decomposing perchlorates, and it only took a couple of seconds for the crap on my arm to eat a hole in my suit.

Then things really got interesting. And painful.

I don’t know how long it was after that, but it can’t have been more than a few seconds, because I’m still alive. I must have passed out at some point, but I can’t remember exactly when. (Reminds me of a couple of parties I attended at the University of Chicago, though I think only one of those involved fire.) When I came to I was in the rover, wearing my grubby jumpsuit but not my spacesuit, my right sleeve half burned off, and an unconscious unicorn in full spacesuit beside me.

Apparently Starlight had the presence of mind to see what was happening, drain all the magic battery’s remaining charge into herself at one shot, rush over and teleport us into the rover, carefully leaving my compromised flight spacesuit and all the perchlorates behind. That quick bit of magic saved my life. It also knocked her flat on her magical little ass.

She’s still sleeping in the bunk next to mine. Cherry Berry says she hasn’t woken up yet. Even through the painkillers, I’m worried.

I don’t remember much of yesterday after that. I think I must have been in shock. (Which, come to think of it, explains why every blanket in the Hab was on me when I woke up this morning, except for the one Starlight was using.) From what I gather from the ponies, I was the only one that got splashed by burning perchlorate. Once Starlight and I were out of the cave, the others hauled ass the non-magical way.

I remember Dragonfly coming in by the rover airlock and coaxing me to the driver’s seat. She even went so far as to imitate the General Lee’s horn to make sure I got the message.

But I may have dreamed that, because I think I also remember Johannsen standing next to me, leaning over my shoulder. “Go, Mark,” she said. “You can do it.”

Come to think of it, it must have been a dream. It’s been over thirty sols since I last saw my crewmates, after all. But there she was, in coveralls as grungy as mine, right next to me. I think I said, “I love you.” (And if Beck ever reads this, he’s going to be pissed, but hey, buddy- if you don’t tell your crush how you feel, what I do with her in my dreams is nobody’s fault but your own.)

And she said something really profound: “Love makes us alive.” I’m going to have that carved on my tombstone, assuming I get one.

On second thought, no, that’s a stupid idea. I just had a mental image of a horde of zombies chanting, “Heeearts… heeeearts…”

Anyway, dreams or hallucinations aside, I got the rover back to the Hab somehow. I remember none of the driving, aside from what I just mentioned. The ponies got back first and brought me my good EVA spacesuit- at least, I remember them coaxing me into it. I definitely remember the pain that woke me up when the right sleeve brushed past the burn on my arm. And I remember the pain again when Fireball grabbed me by the same damn arm to help carry me from the rover airlock into the Hab airlock.

I also remember them carrying Starlight into the Hab. And then Dragonfly. I was a little surprised by that. I saw the bug up and around today, but she’s not looking well. When they first arrived her wings glittered. They’re not glittering anymore, and I think the holes in her wings and legs are a bit larger.

Why have I never got round to asking about how Dragonfly works? Now the only pony I could ask about it is out like a light.

Long story short; it could have been worse. I lost a suit, but it was a suit with a hole in it already, so I don’t miss it much. I’ll have to wear dressings on my arm for a couple of weeks while the burn heals. I might have some scars there that’ll look like chicken pox scars. And I’ll have to limit my activities, let the ponies do more things for me.

And Fireball. Especially Fireball. He owes me big, and I think he knows it, especially considering he’s bringing a steaming meal-pack over to me. I’m so glad I showed the ponies how the microwave works.

Going to eat and rest now, after cuing up something random from Lewis’s 70s TV Hall of Crap. Don’t feel like watching a show about a cyborg right now… the ponies won’t enjoy most of the non-musical sitcoms until they get more language…

“The Electric Company.” No description aside from “PBS 1971-1977.” Well, if it’s PBS, it’s probably good to doze off to.

MISSION LOG – SOL 41 (2)

The ponies have spent all day around my bunk watching this silly, didactic, juvenile, kickass show. This is SO going on the daily rota. Before Partridge Family. Maybe instead of Partridge Family.

And Starlight just woke up. She’s flopped onto her side so she can see the screen. Poor thing, she looks absolutely wiped, but she’s nagging at me in broken English to quit typing and play more.

I think things are going to be okay. But that could just be the drugs again.

Author's Note

I very nearly split this in two chapters, but the first part would have been far too short. So no, no cliffhanger this time.

By the way, spoiler alert: this is more of an injury than Watney suffers in the original book, pretty much ever, until his MAV launch at 12g.

By itself potassium chlorate absolutely would never do this. Magnesium chlorate... just barely might, under perfect conditions. Perfect conditions definitely wouldn't include "significantly hydrated," but... well.

And, of course, it's worth reminding folks that Changeling Space Program in particular cuts corners so radically that a NASA Health and Safety Officer ought to have their will made out in advance, in preparation for the coronary they'll have when they see what's going on. Flammable food packs are definitely legit for them.

Certain vague things will be explained as the story continues, but the more alert will be able to add two and two.

And yes, psychological studies have proven this: the smarter you are, the harder it is for you to change your mind or your plans based on new information. This flavor of stupidity is built in to the human brain, and from all evidence, the pony brain as well. I'm assuming it's very common for any life form that thinks similarly to humans.

Sol 42

“Hello,” said Cathy Warner, using her look of Serious Concern for the four million viewers on the other side of the camera lens. “Thank you for joining us. Tonight on the Watney and Company Report: an update on what happened at Site Epsilon. What is the current condition of Mark Watney? And why are his alien visitors so interested in a mud volcano?

“My first guest this evening, here to discuss today’s breaking news from the surface of Mars, is Dr. Venkat Kapoor, director of Mars operations for NASA. As ever, Dr. Kapoor, thank you for coming.”

“Always a pleasure, Cathy,” Venkat replied.

“I’m sure our viewers already know about the new line added to Watney’s Morse-code message to NASA,” Cathy said. “’Sol 42 Burns, Healing.’ What does that mean in the context of Mark Watney’s survival on Mars?”

“First,” Venkat said, “I’d like to say that we’re all relieved to know he has survived. Mark Watney is demonstrating exceptional resilience in the face of overwhelming odds, and we regard every day he survives as a victory over a very hostile environment.”

“But the reference to burns,” Cathy said. “Doesn’t that mean he was caught in the apparent volcanic eruption at Site Epsilon two days ago?”

“Allow me to correct you, Cathy,” Venkat said. “We don’t know that it was a volcanic eruption at all. We saw a brief plume of smoke, that’s true, and whatever happened forced Mark and his alien friends to evacuate. But we only saw a little bit of heating on satellite infrared scanners, and spectroscopic analysis of the smoke shows mainly chlorine and oxygen gases. No sulfides, no ash, no methane or carbon monoxide- none of the gases you’d normally expect in a volcanic plume.”

“But there was clearly an eruption of some sort at Site Epsilon,” Cathy pressed.

“We’re still figuring out what happened there,” Venkat pressed. “Mark’s new note gives us one bit of data: whatever it was, it burned him somehow. So heat was involved, possibly an eruption of a kind we don’t know about, possibly a steam eruption, possibly an equipment fire, or possibly some Martian phenomenon we don’t yet understand. There is so much we still don’t know about the planet, after all.”

“Does this injury spell a setback for Watney’s efforts to survive until a resupply mission can arrive?” Cathy asked.

“We’re encouraged by the fact that Mark was able to lay out the new message himself,” Venkat said. “The aliens helped him to gather the rocks, but he was clearly outside doing labor himself. That strongly implies that his injuries are neither life-threatening nor crippling, and that he’ll soon be back at full strength.”

“Speaking of the aliens,” Cathy continued, “we noticed that only two of the aliens appeared in the photos with Watney today. Two of the others were photographed walking to Site Epsilon with a large piece of wreckage, presumably from their ship.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Venkat said. “We know one of the ones who went to Epsilon was the alien we refer to as ‘Tall Boy.’ But we don’t know if the other one was Orange Leader or Orange Random. As you see in today’s photograph, whichever of those two went to Epsilon, the other was with Watney. Based on behavior in the photos, we’re pretty sure the second alien with Watney is White Hen. White Boxy doesn’t seem to have left the Hab today.”

As the interviewer and interviewee spoke, an infographic popped up on the jumbo screen behind them, listing the names of the aliens.

NASA TEMPORARY ALIEN DESIGNATIONS

TALL BOY – white suit, bipedal, casts longer shadow than Watney

ORANGE LEADER – orange suit, always in front when walking long distances

ORANGE RANDOM – no regular behavior pattern

WHITE BOXY – white suit, often standing next to or carrying box of some sort

WHITE HEN – usually stays very close to another, usually White Boxy

“Do you think Boxy suffered the same kind of injuries as Watney?” Cathy asked.

“Not enough data,” Venkat shrugged. “It could have been related, or not. We did happen to get a picture of the aliens carrying Orange Random from the rover into the Hab on Sol 40, so it’s possible it was also carried that way. We didn’t see Mark carried in, but he must have been.”

“There’s been some speculation,” Cathy said, “that the irregular driving of the Rover after the Sol 40 evacuation of Site Epsilon was because an alien was at the controls. Can you say anything to that?”

“Not really,” Venkat said. “We think it possible but unlikely. Until Sol 40 Watney was always the last into the rover and the first out, which is in line with his being the driver every time. We’ve seen the aliens use the air locks themselves, but never the rover until Sol 40. And we have no direct evidence that they drove it then. So we’re betting that, despite whatever injuries he suffered, Watney was driving himself home.”

“So the irregular driving would be caused by his injuries?” Cathy asked. “Or shock from the eruption?”

Venkat shrugged yet again. “We’re only speculating,” he said. “But consider this. In order for Watney to be burned, either his suit had to have malfunctioned in a spectacular way, or something hot must have breached the suit. The suit’s flame-resistant and has a sophisticated temperature regulation system to prevent temperature extremes from affecting the wearer. So if we assume a suit breach, then we also have to assume decompression and lack of oxygen. Yet somehow under those circumstances Watney was able to get to the rover before he lost consciousness and trigger the airlock’s emergency mode. That would have taken almost superhuman effort.

“So, given those circumstances. He’s in the rover, recovering from rapid decompression and recompression. He’s probably had at least a brief period of unconsciousness. And he’s burned somehow. Under the circumstances there’s no surprise that his driving would be a little erratic. It would be more surprising if it wasn’t.”

“Now for the big question,” Cathy warned. “Why are Watney and the aliens so interested in Site Epsilon?”

“Presumably they think it holds something key to their survival,” Venkat said. “One of the alternative theories we’re pursuing is that there’s still some vital piece of salvage from their ship, something that was cast well outside the main debris field, that they think or thought would be useful, and that it blew up in their faces when they found it. But until we get some new information, it’s all speculation for now.”

“One final question,” Cathy said. “Can you give us an update on rescue plans for Mark Watney and the aliens?”

“For the aliens,” Venkat said, smiling a little, “you’ll have to ask their head of Mars operations, whoever and wherever they are. We’re still working on details for an eventual rescue mission, but in the meantime we’re putting together a series of resupply missions. SpaceX has repurposed two of their Red Falcons that were scheduled for Ares IV presupply flights, and we’re hoping those boosters will be ready within about five months. Those, plus the Delta-IX we’re borrowing from Eagle Eye 3, should be enough to send three different probes with a year’s provisions for all six beings on Mars, plus two replacement radio systems for the Hab.”

“Provisions for all six?” Cathy asked.

“Yes,” Venkat said. “We know the aliens have been eating at least some of Watney’s supplies. Based on his first message we’ve worked out that he’s set aside all his vegetarian meals for them, and apparently nothing else. So we’re currently assuming all five of the aliens are vegetarians and can safely eat the plant-protein meals included in the Ares III presupply. Most of what we send will be more of those.”

“With ketchup, I hope?” Cathy asked.

“Definitely plenty of ketchup,” Venkat said. “And hot sauce.”

“Thank you, Dr. Kapoor.”

“My pleasure.”

Cathy turned her attention to the camera. “When we come back, a volcanologist explains the probable origins of the ice volcano we call Site Epsilon, and a biologist offers a new speculation on what might be lurking underneath the alien spacesuits… after this.”

Author's Note

I think the chapter pretty much explains itself. This is what the boom looked like from Earth.

As I write this note I'm in Birmingham selling at Kami-Con... and though no warning lights are on, my transmission is acting in ways that worry me. A couple of minor procedures are planned for when I get home, assuming the idiosyncrasies don't get worse. Still, this trip- plus the discouraging noises from the transmission shop that did the last rebuild less than 5,000 miles ago- make it clear I need a replacement van very soon.

And although I'm VERY grateful for you new Patreon supporters and the donations via PayPal and Ko-Fi, conventions are still how my bills get paid. If I can't get to and from the cons, I have no income.

So, with that in mind, a quick reminder:

Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/KrisOverstreet
Ko-Fi - https://ko-fi.com/krisoverstreet
GoFundMe for van repair/replacement - https://www.gofundme.com/help-keep-wlp-on-the-road

And my upcoming conventions: UshiCon in Austin; OwlCon, Rice U., Houston; Texas Furry Fiesta, Dallas; awaiting confirmation or rejection for Mid-South Con, Memphis; CoastCon, Biloxi.

In the meantime, despite the difficulty of concentrating and the fact that the story is getting to the "nothing much happened for weeks at a time" stage, I've written almost 2,000 words today and yesterday. Tomorrow, however, will be a very long day with no writing time possible, so my "days writing every day" end tomorrow. That's what the buffer is for.

Sol 43

MISSION LOG – SOL 43

My arm hurts, and the raw skin under my dressing itches like fuck, but I can’t touch it. I’m off the magic pony pills, and I’m not feeling any withdrawal symptoms, aside from the nagging reminder that aspirin doesn’t do shit.

But survival demands I get off my ass, so I put in a full day’s work today. So did Starlight, who is obviously still in bad shape but won’t stay down. Spitfire’s mad at both of us- especially Starlight, after she snuck around her to make me a magic spacesuit comm that can talk with theirs. It consists of a brick-sized magic battery from their ship, an enchanted gem from Fireball's snacks, and a few other odds and ends, all of which I have to wear inside my suit, but it works.

When she found out we intended to work, Spitfire almost hit the dome, she chicken-flapped so hard. She wanted to ground us, but we insisted: if everybody doesn't work, everybody dies. The pony food packs are counting down to starvation, and once they’re gone I only have a few days’ worth after that before they begin starving. The only way crops will be ready in time is if we get them planted now.

The boom on Sol 40 might have got NASA’s attention, so yesterday I added a couple of words to my doctoral thesis written in Morse code just north of the solar farm. True, “Burned, healing” will make NASA worry if they read it. But if they read my message before seeing smoke coming from the cave, me saying nothing would make them worry a lot more.

Of course, the odds are they haven’t noticed either one. As big as the perchlorate explosion was close up, it was less than a fly’s fart so far as the surface of Mars was concerned. They’d have to have been looking right at Site Epsilon to notice anything. An hour either side of the explosion, there wouldn’t have been anything to see. But there’s a chance, so I updated my rock blog.

Today was a dirt doubling- probably the last, but definitely the most ambitious. All the dirt in the Hab and pop-tents is now fertile, but we need starter dirt for the cave farm, assuming that’s still workable. So today Fireball carried one bin of dirt at a time out to the alien ship for storage. It has air and heat now, thanks to their life support system and Hab power running the one heater they left inside, so the soil bacteria will survive there. Meanwhile Cherry, Dragonfly and Spitfire dragged even more Martian dirt inside to replace all the dirt that got put in storage for the cave.

I should have helped with that, but I had other things to do. Also, I figured I could make Spitfire happy and get out of the way while all sorts of human germs and pony germs and dragon germs and whatever-Dragonfly-is germs get stirred up and tossed into the air. And she’s right to want me out. Burns are really susceptible to infections. I could get tetanus, or e. coli, or flesh-eating bacteria. Or some magical pony super-bug that leaves me perfectly healthy except that my hair turns green and my arm falls off for no apparent reason.

This is a serious concern. If my arm falls off, NASA will kick me out of the space program, and I’ll not only be stranded on Mars, I’ll be stranded and unemployed on Mars. I only hope I can get the unemployment office to do direct-deposit, because I don’t think my bank has a branch out here.

Okay, enough lame jokes. Yes, I spent a couple of days worrying about cross-species infections, all War of the Worlds and shit. But I didn’t mention it here for the same reason that I eventually got over it: we’re all living in the Hab now, so it’s inevitable that we’ll be exposed to each other’s bacteria. Nothing can be done about that, even if we weren’t wading in each other’s shit every week to produce fertile soil for our upcoming crops. We either risk death by disease, or we guarantee death by not working together and doing whatever we can to save our butts.

And, up to now, it’s actually worked out okay. Starlight keeps pushing herself to exhaustion, and Dragonfly appears to be running out of steam, and of course I got myself burned like a stupid action hero, but nobody has actually gotten sick. The Ares-III crew was in strict quarantine for two weeks prior to launch specifically to rule out most contagious diseases hitching a ride and ruining the mission. Maybe the ponies did something similar, or maybe magic pony arm-stealing germs don’t like the taste of poor mundane Mark.

But accepting unavoidable risk is one thing, and tempting fate is another. Even if all the bacteria we have left are the happy healthy kind, the good kind in the wrong place can be just as bad as the bad kind. Since the air in the Hab was full of ‘em today, my burned arm got a fresh sterile dressing and Starlight and I decamped for the cave.

My flight suit is wrecked- no surprise. The right arm is gone completely except for the electronics. Same deal with most of the torso. The helmet might still be good, and my left glove would be salvageable if there were some point to it without the right. The life support systems are charred and probably wrecked, but I might be able to use it for spare parts if I get that desperate. I still have my EVA suit, which was built more rugged to deal with being on a planet instead of a spaceship. I also have several other EVA suits, if it comes to that.

There’s still a good bit of perchlorate left scattered around. The eruption scattered the stuff enough that it dropped below decomposition temperature rapidly once the fuel was gone. What’s left should be easy to clean up. About a quarter of what we dumped down the hill is already blown away or sloughed into the soil. I say good riddance. If I think of some insanely suicidal plan for our survival that requires me to make solid rocket fuel I’ll ask Starlight to revive that spell. Until then I don’t want to see even a speck of pure perchlorate salts ever again.

That wasn’t the reason we went, though. We already knew that from the report Cherry and Fireball gave us. Today was about making the cave airtight.

When we went into the cave we took a magic battery and two ten-liter tanks full of compressed liquid CO2, produced by the MAV descent stage’s fuel plant. Of course, this wasn’t a fart in the wind so far as pressurizing the cave was concerned. The open space inside could be anything from 10,000 to 50,000 cubic meters, and twenty liters of liquid CO2 would only fill forty cubic meters to one atmosphere’s worth of pressure. Releasing it all in the cavern at once would raise the existing air pressure by about one-tenth- call it 0.1 pounds per square inch instead of 0.09 psi. (The Hab’s one atmosphere internal pressure, the same as on Earth at sea level, is 14 psi.)

But Starlight said it was enough, and I guess she was right. She used the battery to create two airtight force fields, sealing off the cave in both directions just far enough for the two of us to stand between. I opened and closed the valves on the CO2 tanks and watched the pressure readings on my suit to keep the area in our slice of cave at one-tenth of an atmosphere (1.4 psi, or fourteen times Mars’s normal pressure).

We walked the length of the cave doing this. Starlight was wobbly on her feet to begin with, and by the time we got to the end of the dirt floor she was ready to pass out again. Still, she used one last burst of magic and all the remaining CO2 in the tanks to get a reading clear to the far end of the cave. I ended up carrying her and the battery back to the rover; I’ll go back for the empty tanks tomorrow.

The news is actually pretty good. In fact, I’d call it suspiciously good. The cave leaks like a sieve at the entrance, but Starlight says she can fix that when the ponies put the airlock in place, ideally tomorrow. And there’s another substantial leak way at the back, almost in the middle of the hill. But most of the cave is actually airtight. I don’t know if the permafrost or compacted soil on top of the cave is creating a seal, or if the air leaking is too low for Starlight or my suit to detect it, or what. But it does mean that, after a couple of magical welding jobs, the cave will hold air.

And doing the math, it’s just now sinking in to me how much air it would require. NASA provided us with 350 liters of compressed oxygen and nitrogen. That’s enough for one atmosphere pressure for the rovers, the space suits, and the approximately 240 cubic meter interior space of the Hab, plus a significant reserve, but it’s not a drop in the bucket for the cave.

Assuming 25,000 cubic meters from entrance to rear, it would require 12,500 liters of compressed liquid air to fill the space to one atmosphere. The most oxygen I can safely transport at a time is fifty liters, and replacing that requires seventy-five hours of run time on the MAV fuel plant plus whatever time the oxygenator needs to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. If I had to fill it myself, I’d run out of food long before there was enough air for my crops.

Luckily I don’t need to. The pony ship’s environmental system is back up and running, complete with its direct connection to their home world’s atmosphere. What would take me over a year will take them a matter of hours. Best yet, their system also provides Earth-levels of carbon dioxide (well, almost- 0.028% CO2 instead of our global-roasting 0.045%, but that’s still plenty for plants). That limits the amount of Mars atmosphere we’ll have to bring in for our farm to thrive.

(Fun fact: plants give off almost as much CO2 at night as they absorb during the day! Photosynthesis turns CO2 and water into oxygen and sugar, but at night plant metabolisms reverse the process and use the sugar to live and grow on. That’s why Earth still has so many green things without requiring CO2 atmospheric levels that would kill most animal life on the planet. But once we really get going with the plants that little difference will swamp whatever the aliens and I contribute with our own lungs, so the occasional hit off a Mars bong will be required to keep our crop nice and mellow.)

Anyway, we’re back at the Hab now, and the dirt doubling is over- probably the last one we’re going to do here. Dragonfly, bless her perforated heart, has just sweet-talked Spitfire away from doing her vulture imitation over Starlight’s bed. I’ve gotta do something nice for that bug soon. But first my three-quarters of a dinner, and then tonight’s line-up of fine quality viewing.

Leading off with The Electric Company. Of course, my mind is still blown by the fact that Morgan Freeman was once young. And, apparently, a hippie. Or a beatnik. Or a hippie beatnik. Or something. I wonder if the bug will write a sequel to her fanfic that has the Duke boys rescue Easy Reader from one of Boss Hogg’s schemes. I’m sure there could never be anything problematic with that idea whatever.

That’s sarcasm, by the way.

Author's Note

No time for an author's note.

Sol 44

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 41
ARES III SOL 44

Even though built from the products of Equestria’s most advanced metallurgy and engineered to withstand the forces of atmospheric re-entry, potential crash landings, and changeling accidents, the Amicitas’s cargo airlock was still breakable. Indeed, under the circumstances, it was quite literally irreplaceable. It couldn’t just be dragged or thrown up the slope to the cave and then crammed into the mouth. It had to be handled delicately.

That was why Starlight had levitated it onto the rover’s cargo rack and why Spitfire and Dragonfly had strapped it down securely and ridden atop the rover with it. It was why Mark had driven the rover at less than half its top speed, taking a gentle hour and ten minutes to drive from the Hab to the cave. And, since Starlight needed to conserve magic for the sealing spell to come, that was why the three strongest people were carrying the massive assembly up the slope by hand and hoof.

Hand, and hoof, and aching, aching back. Cherry Berry hadn’t missed the strength boost earth pony magic normally provided this desperately since the crash.

“Commander,” Fireball said quietly from one end, “I’m pretty sure I could carry this myself if you’ll just-“

“Shut. Up,” Cherry Berry gasped from under over two tons of metal. “Keep. Going.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the dragon said. He’d been very quiet since the explosion- to which Cherry said good. She didn’t know if it was guilt or her truly heroic chewing-out after the fact, and it didn’t really matter. If the accident taught him to be more careful, that was fantastic. But right now, with about half of the weight of the airlock on her spine, shoving her mercifully padded and overengineered suit backpack onto her like a second skin, she was in no mood to appreciate such things.

“Not pfahr nou,” Mark chipped in, trying to lift more on his end of the airlock. The alien voice irritated Cherry right now, too. More and more Mark was using that patronizing, talking-to-children tone of voice with the ponies. Cherry didn’t think he even realized he was doing it. But that same tone of voice was in the adults talking to children on Partridge Herd, and to a lesser extent all over Electric Store. Nopony appreciated being talked down to, even if in an unfamiliar language. Cherry appreciated it least of all from a tall biped who probably wouldn’t last five minutes in a wagon harness.

Yes, Fireball probably could have carried the whole thing on his back with Mark and Cherry to steady the load. And Mark probably only meant to encourage her with his words. But Cherry had grown sick and tired of playing in, put politely, mud. She was tired of sitting back and overseeing things while others did the actual work most of the time. She wanted something she could do, herself, to show her strength, her experience, her value.

So here she was, destroying her vertebrae and wrecking her knees and fetlocks, hauling a super-technological empty metal box up a hill.

“Okay, stop!” By now everypony knew those two words in Mark’s language, so Spitfire said them in English instead of Equestrian. She didn’t know the words for the rest of it, so she switched back to her native tongue for, “Boys, pick up! Up, Mark! Dragonfly, get Cherry out!”

The load rose off Cherry’s back, more due to Fireball’s efforts than Mark’s. Cherry flopped to the Martian sand and gasped for breath as Dragonfly hooked her forelegs with her fetlocks. “Good job, boss!” the changeling said, hauling the exhausted pony out of the way. “Okay, she’s out!”

“Okay, set it down easy, boys. Down slow, Mark!” Spitfire shouted. With a faint crunching noise the airlock touched down, and Fireball and Mark stepped away. Mark stumbled a bit, looking ready to join Cherry prone on the dirt.

Ha, Cherry thought mirthlessly. What did he do to wear himself out? I had most of the weight. On my shoulders. And pelvis. And oh, oh, oh, my back.

Spitfire looked her over and shook her head with disapproval. “You’ve caught Starlight’s insanity,” she said. “Is there something about this planet that makes people suicidally stupid?”

“Is the cave ready?” Cherry gasped, not yet ready to pull herself back onto her hooves. Maybe Fireball could carry her back to the rover. Yes, that sounded like an excellent idea.

“We’ve harvested all the crystals within sixteen hooves of the entrance,” Spitfire said. “We’ve put some in bins to take back today, but most of them will just sit out here until we need them.”

“Good,” Cherry wheezed. “How’s Starlight?”

“Pushing too hard, like usual,” Spitfire grumbled. “Book says she should have been in bed for a week after that level of magic overstrain. She’s risking permanent damage, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Cherry replied. “So’s everypony else. I’m told death is quite permanent.” She groaned. That last sentence was such a Chrysalis thing to say. She’d spent far too long working for the queen-bug, hadn’t she? Yes, she had. She could see it in Spitfire’s face, since the reflective helmet visor was retracted on her suit.

Cherry watched the pegasus swallowing the words Smart aleck and replacing them with a forced, “Yes, ma’am.”

As embarrassing as that yes-ma’am was from the ex-Wonderbolts commander, Cherry hurt too much to care. Anyway, time was pressing. They couldn’t stay out in their suits all day like they could back home. “Okay,” she said. “Get me out of the way, and tell Starlight it’s showtime.”

A minute later, leaning against Dragonfly for support, Cherry Berry watched as the airlock lifted into the air and floated with speed and precision into the cave mouth that had been specifically widened and smoothed and dug out to admit it. Of course, Starlight wasn’t showing off; the speed was absolutely necessary to save power in the magic battery for the more important spell.

Sealing spells were common among the more accomplished mages of Equestria. Dozens of spells created magical doors that couldn’t be opened without the right spell or password. Unfortunately, Starlight had explained, most of those spells were useless here because they were really force-fields that required a constant supply of magic that this Faust-forsaken planet just didn’t provide. But there had been one such spell she’d read once in Twilight’s books that turned the doorframe itself into the door, reshaping the doorway and walls to make it appear as if no door existed. With a minor tweak, she’d said, the spell could seal up all the empty space around the airlock- making the material airtight in the process.

And, for once, it looked like Starlight had gotten the spell right on the first go. Cherry gasped as the now-toothless cave mouth warped and stretched almost like lips, pulling down from above and up through the dust and soil. In about thirty seconds the cave was gone, at least as far as the outside world could tell. In its place sat a smooth low-sloped hillside with a lump jutting out of it and a large metal door cut into the end of the lump.

Spitfire had, of course, spent the whole period of spell-casting right next to Starlight. Cherry could hear her over the suit comms, grumbling, “Okay, that’s two ponies done with work for the day,” as Starlight released the spell and folded like a road map. “Three if you count Mark. Fireball, come get Starlight. Cherry, I recommend lunch break at the rover.”

“Agreed,” she said, still leaning on Dragonfly. “Workers first. Spitfire, Fireball, Dragonfly, go eat.”

“No, ma’am,” Dragonfly insisted. Cherry felt something tapping on her thruster backpack. “I need to open up your suit and make sure nothing’s broken.”

“No,” Cherry said, sighing. “Starlight and I are probably going to spend the rest of the day in the rover. That means we go in last so we won’t be in anypony else’s way.”

“Then I’m staying out with you,” Dragonfly said simply. “Suits aren’t anything to joke about.”

“Fine. Let’s get back. Spitfire, you and Fireball eat with Mark. We’ll wait outside.”

Cherry managed to get off the hillside without being carried. Fireball’s claws were full with Starlight and the magic battery, and Mark was leaning a hand on Spitfire’s helmet to keep his own balance. So long as she could walk, she couldn’t justify burdening anypony else.

Once Mark, Fireball and Spitfire were in the rover, Cherry signaled Starlight and Dragonfly to switch suit comms to the private channel. “Is that the last bit of magic you have to do?” she asked Starlight. “Because you need to lay off for a while, for Spitfire’s sake at least.”

“Can’t stop yet,” Starlight said weakly. “Have to seal the back of the cave. Also need light. If I can cut some prisms off the crystals on the ceiling, I can enchant them to absorb sunlight and beam it into the crystals they came from. It’s an ancient Crystal Empire lighting trick. Uses the sunlight to power the spell- very efficient if it works.”

“If?”

Starlight groaned. “Look, it had better work, all right?” she asked. “We have a total of six light fixtures in the ship, one bulb each, and four spare bulbs that survived the crash. We can’t use them to light the cave. And Mark’s shelter needs all its lights for its farm, so we can’t steal those. And I don’t have the energy to turn the cave roof into a giant airtight skylight.” She sighed. “But I can get the solar enchantment done tomorrow, and once the prisms are enchanted anypony can set them up. Maybe I can rest after that.”

“Okay,” Cherry nodded. “Tomorrow you can do that while the rest of us are turning the soil and preparing the plumbing for the farm. And after tomorrow you’re confined to quarters.”

“Excuse me?” Dragonfly asked. “What do you mean ‘us’? You need to rest too, boss.”

“You need an earth pony to pull the harrow,” Cherry groaned.

“We’ll figure something out,” Dragonfly insisted. “You need to rest.”

“I need to do my share,” Cherry insisted.

Dragonfly shook her head inside her helmet. “Cherry, you don’t have to prove yourself to us,” she said. “’Specially not to me. We’ve been working together for four years. We know you’re doing your job. You always do.”

“My job is getting all of you home,” Cherry said. She waved a hoof at the Martian landscape, the small mounds of ancient ice volcanoes and rock outcrops dotting the orange-tinged horizon. “Is this home? No? Then my job’s not done yet.”

“For today it is, boss,” Dragonfly said quietly. “We can take it from here today. Just relax.”

There was a companionable silence. After several minutes Cherry broke it, asking, “How are you doing for food?”

“Still behind,” Dragonfly admitted. “Becoming that human from Mark’s crew photos and movies took more out of me than I expected. And I didn’t dare feed off of him in that condition. He was in and out like the bird in one of those Germane clocks.” The changeling made a circling gesture with her hoof near her helmet to indicate Mark’s state of non compos mentis. “Becoming that human was the only way I could get him to hear me. And I don’t think I could have fooled him in his right mind. Couldn’t get her voice right from the little we saw of her.”

“How much of his language do you know?” Starlight broke in.

“At least as much as you do, I think,” Dragonfly admitted. “I have more free time than the rest of you, so I spend a lot of it around Mark. And remember, I was one of the queen’s best warriors and infiltrators in the bad old days. Learning how your victims speak is a prime skill for infiltrators. Helps us keep our cover.” She smiled smugly and added, “While you’ve all been laughing at stupid humans or singing words you don’t know, I’ve been working.”

“Good. That kind of working could help us stay alive,” Cherry sighed. “Do you think you can get him to focus on more language lessons? That new silly show of his gives us sounds and written words, but we’re still missing a lot of vocabulary.”

“Maybe,” Dragonfly drawled. “Will I get in trouble for snacking?”

Cherry snorted. “We know you’re already doing it,” she said. “Just don’t suck him dry. I’ve noticed him get dizzy a couple times when you get too close.”

“Sorry. But I’ve never had anyling else think this form,” Dragonfly pointed to herself, “was cute. Well, aside from Ad Astra. And that nutty Canterlot entomologist. And- well, it’s pretty rare, anyway.”

The rover airlock door began cycling, and Cherry motioned the others to switch back to all-call. “Everypony, group hug for Dragonfly when we change meal shifts.”

Cherry half-expected Fireball to make a crack about a lazy bug, or Spitfire to make a remark about Dragonfly getting fat. Instead all she got was, “Yes, ma’am,” from both. A week ago Cherry would have been delighted to do without yet another round of bickering and the inevitable argument to follow. Now she wanted the bickering- and the spirit that came with it- to come back.

Out in the almost-bright Martian noonday, a dark shadow still hovered over the castaways, and Cherry Berry didn’t know what to do about it.

Author's Note

Cherry Berry's confidence issues continue.

Dragonfly's social engineering continues.

Fireball's guilt continues.

I just edited out a typo which I wish I could have made work for real: "Cherry had grown stick and tired of playing in the mud."

I got home at 4:30 AM last night after driving 630+ miles in nine and a half hours. Transmission hasn't gotten obviously worse, but I'll be addressing the cheap issue as soon as possible to see if that clears it up. If not, it might need to go back in the shop. Or out to pasture, depending.

Buffer is down to five, though I intend to do some writing this evening after I deposit the weekend's sales.

Sol 45

MISSION LOG – SOL 45

Another long day of work, another day closer to planting crops. Today was all about turning soil, and all of us were doing that except for Starlight. She was doing this really clever thing with the ceiling crystals, cutting caps off of some of the bigger ones, slicing them into these neat spiky flower shapes, and turning them into some sort of sun relay. Spitfire took them topside and lined them up directly above the cave, and now the cave has light- a lot more light than I’d have expected. Starlight tried to explain- something about extra surface area of the flower-cut crystals- but Spitfire sent her back to the rover before she could finish.

The ponies have done a better job than I’d expected of breaking up the dense Martian soil in the cave. Of course, Starlight’s spell provided a head start, providing a lot of microscopic voids that loosened the dirt enough for our makeshift sled-harrow to get down into it. It also helped Fireball and me shovel out the channels for the ponies’ neat idea for attacking the heat problem in the cave.

On Earth, once you go beyond a certain level below the surface, it begins to get hotter. Our planet has a thin crust and a lot of internal heat. If Mars has any internal heat left, it’s hiding it very, very well. The cave is actually slightly colder than the surface. And since it’s mostly buried under rock, soil and permafrost, warming up the interior means battling one of the worst heat sinks of all time.

The pony solution? Steam heat.

Let me explain the logic. The pony ship mainly relied on their ship’s atmospheric exchange magic for cabin heating. There were only a few emergency space heaters in the ship, and when I tested them they turned out to be just as thirsty for electricity as expected. It’s like they just grabbed a space heater at a flea market or something and stuck it into their ship. Each one sucks up almost 200 watts of electricity. We’re going to use them anyway, because we need all the heat we can get down there.

I could yank the larger heaters from the rovers, but we need those to not freeze driving to and from the cave. Besides, just the little heaters will require eight solar panels from the Hab plus one of my hydrogen fuel cells to keep them running at night. More heaters like that will take the Hab below a safety margin I’m just not ready to exceed yet.

We have the pony ship’s air working again, and I’ve taken advantage of that at the Hab to shut down all the air systems and do a full diagnostic. (Everything checks out, by the way.) That means we can install the pony life support box in the cave and use it to fill it up with nice temperate pony air. Problem solved, right?

Well, not really. There’s hundreds of meters of geode cave beyond this first chamber that will be Fireball’s dinner for the next four years. Also, the roof of the chamber is several meters high at its highest point. The warm air will circulate back in the cave and up to the ceiling, and there’s dick we can do about that. That means the air will cool, sink, and circulate back to freeze the crops.

That’s entropy, folks- even when you get a free lunch, there ain’t no free lunch. All we can do is improvise a thermal blanket from pony ship insulation, hang it over the entrance to the next chamber, and hope for the best.

But in addition to providing air, the pony life support provides water- both cold and hot, because hot water is what the ponies use to reconstitute or heat up meals in flight. The ponies have kept the hot water deactivated because, up to now, all we’ve needed is cold water, and the hot water flow is about one-fifth that of the cold water.

Why is this, you ask? Because although the ship only had a few emergency heaters, it had a lot of cooling hoses and pipes. In space you don’t have air or water to equalize heat. You have one side of your ship baking in the sun (if you’re lucky enough to be near the sun) and the other side freezing in shadow. This heat differential is bad for equipment and can even endanger the crew, so there are ways to deal with it. Insulation works, and the old “barbecue roll” used by Apollo works just fine, but in this case the ponies went with a heat exchanger system tucked between the outer hull and the pressurized compartments- all provided with fluid from the ship’s cold water supply.

Water is definitely not the coolant NASA would have chosen. There are lots of chemicals which have a wider range of liquid states and a greater heat-exchange efficiency. But the ponies have all the water they want practically free and can replenish it in-flight if there’s a leak, and apparently they can’t do that with the other options. (Besides, I can’t help feeling like Dragonfly or Fireball might be tempted to drink the radiator fluid.)

As a result, there are dozens of meters of plumbing, all with fittings designed to fit the cold water terminal on the life control box. And today Dragonfly fitted them all together into long rows, and Fireball and I buried them all a couple feet into the soil. There’s one fitting sticking up at one end to hook to the life support box and another fitting that will have a valve. That’ll be left open to let water circulate through the system, and the outflow will be used to water crops or just allowed to trickle off downstream into the back of the cave.

The neat trick- and the ponies have already arranged for this with their folks back home- is that the cold water and hot water can be switched. All it takes is swapping two crystals back home. So instead of cold water suitable for redistributing heat under a spaceship’s skin, the pipes will be filled with literally boiling water at one end and will release barely-above-freezing water at the other end, if it works.

Net result: the cave will never be tropical, and we’ll probably wear our suits in here just for comfort- not a phrase you normally hear from an astronaut. But the actual ground where the plants will be rooted should be warm enough for them to live. And some of that subsurface heat will spread above the surface and add to what the air, the heaters, and Starlight’s magical sunlight system provide, and that in theory should protect the plants above ground.

The main problem with this system is that it seriously constrains the area we can cultivate. The chamber is twenty-one meters wide at its widest point and about one hundred ten meters from the inner airlock doors to the narrow bit at the back. Eyeballing it, it’s a bit less than half an acre. But the area covered by the improvised hydronic heat system is a lot smaller- an area of about sixteen meters wide by forty long, or six hundred forty square meters.

Granted, that is a huge improvement over the Hab. My math shows that, if the field is one-quarter potatoes and the rest alfalfa, the cave would be enough by itself for an almost indefinitely sustainable food supply. But there are problems, of course, the biggest being that almost three-quarters of the ground in the room will be sucking away heat from the remaining one-quarter. Ironically, this cave is too damn big.

But it’s what we have. The next chamber is a forest of shafts of crystal- there must have been a mineral spring in that chamber for a while before it merged with the others. Getting equipment through that into the next room would be a major pain- and so would getting harvests out again. And if something does go wrong with this cave, we really do want to be as close to the exit as possible.

Tomorrow we hook up the electrical systems and life support, turn it on, and leave. There’s going to be a huge wind when the air comes in, and we really don’t want to be around for that. After that we take a couple of days off to let our brilliant improvisation do whatever it’s going to do, and then- assuming nothing new explodes in our faces- we take the surplus cultured soil out there, mix it with the harrowed topsoil, and begin planting seeds.

Two days in the Hab suits me just fine. I’ve been burning through CO2 filters- curse you cheap idiot government contractors! Staying inside means I’m not using more filters.. Besides, my potato seed crop has sprouted, and I’d like to spend a bit of time giving my future food supply some TLC.

And maybe we can have a marathon TV day and consign the Partridge Family back to the Stygian depths of the 1970s whence they came, never to return. That’s one thing I honestly like about Dukes of Hazzard: no twee children. Seriously, if I want any more overwhelming cuteness, I’ll…

… yeah, who am I kidding? The alien commander is pink and has eyes half the size of her head. Even the insect-like horror has puppy-dog eyes (without pupils). I’m going to be the first human to contract diabetes on Mars.

Author's Note

This is pretty self-explanatory. A combination of magic and kludging makes the cave habitable- if just barely.

Eventually Mark will find out that the most popular form of heating in pony culture is and remains wood-burning fireplaces.

I've had work to do today, and various things have pissed me off to the point I have a headache and a definite lack of concentration, so if I write anything today it will be very, very short.

Buffer is now at four chapters.

Sol 47

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 44
ARES III SOL 47

Starlight Glimmer looked at the whiteboard, which showed two pictures. One was a globe turning on an axis; the other was a sun and a planet orbiting it, a large circle and arrow defining the orbit.

“Day,” Mark said, pointing to the globe. Then, pointing to the orbiting planet, he added, “Year.”

“Day, year, yes,” Starlight responded. This was so tedious, but anything that got words out of Mark. The other Amicitas crew members had their ways to pass the time; Starlight used her free time to wring more English out of their host. She had to, now, since both Spitfire and Cherry Berry had decreed an absolute two-week moratorium on further unicorn magic.

Mark then drew a smaller globe, adding a little Hab and Amicitas to it, then drawing the rotation arrow around it. “Sol,” he said. “Little more than day.”

“Sol.” When Amicitas’s ship clock had been reactivated, Starlight had found out that Equestrian time and this planet’s day didn’t line up. The day here was between thirty-seven and thirty-eight minutes longer. It made sense that Mark had a different name for it, in retrospect.

Then Mark drew a second orbit outside the first, sketched a little Mars next to Earth, and added an arrow, showing it moving in the same direction- counterclockwise- as Earth. “Little less than two years,” he said.

“What days?” Starlight asked.

“How many days,” Mark corrected. “Six hundred eighty-seven.”

That made sense. Longer, slower orbit obviously meant a longer year.

Then Mark drew a funny-looking squiggle by Earth. “Hermes,” he said. “Ares Four.”

Hermes was the name of the ship he’d come by, the one that had left him behind. His crew had been Ares Three. Obviously he was talking about the next mission.

Mark drew a dotted line from the Earth to the Mars on his drawing. “Four years,” he said. He wrote a note by the little Mars: Sol 1412. “Go home four years.”

That… well, that was ridiculous, and no question about it. “Why four years?” Starlight asked. “Why… big…”

“Why so long?” Mark prompted.

“What ‘long?’”

Mark held out his arms as wide as he could vertically. “Tall,” he said. He shifted them to bracket a horizontal space and said, “Wide.” He then held one to his chest and the other as far forward as he could. “Long.” He brought the outstretched hand back almost to his chest and finished, “Short.”

Starlight wasn’t sure she was absorbing all this, but for now she got the idea. “Yes, why long?”

“Home not know we here,” Mark said, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. “Ares move every four years.”

“Need talk home sooner!” Starlight insisted.

“Yeah, no kidding,” Mark muttered.

“What ‘kidding?’”

Mark groaned and shook his head in frustration. “Never mind,” he said. “How soon you home get here?”

Yes, that was the trick, wasn’t it? “Not know how,” Starlight said. “We come accident.” Accident was the longest English word in her vocabulary, but it got a lot of use. “Home not know how come Mars. Here Mars,” she added, pointing down to the ground to emphasize this planet and not another alternate world.

Mark shook his head, sighing. “Damn,” he said.

Starlight didn’t know that word, but she was pretty sure it was profanity of some kind, considering how Mark used it when he got upset. “Yeah, no damn kidding,” she replied, using the same surly undertone he’d used before.

This triggered a laughing fit in Mark which took almost a minute to subside.

“Somebody call lunchtime?” Dragonfly asked, popping up next to Starlight.

“What? No! I mean…” Starlight took a deep breath, deliberately pushed away her annoyance, and focused on her thoughts of Dragonfly the inventor, Dragonfly the pilot, Dragonfly the schmoozer, Dragonfly the buttinksy… no, that was the wrong track. Dragonfly is my crewmate. She’s helped save our lives a couple of times already. She’s clever and concerned and fun to be around. And she needs our love.

Despite her intense concentration, it took quite a long moment before she could embrace the changeling, and the hug only lasted a couple of seconds.

“Er… thanks, I’ll take all I can get…” The changeling’s ear-fins twitched uncertainly. She pointed to Mark, adding, “But I was making a joke about him.”

Mark, meanwhile, watched all of this with interest. “Hello, Dragonfly,” he said slowly.

“Hello, Mark,” Dragonfly replied. “What are you doing?”

Mark’s eyebrows jumped. “Well!” he said.

“Not how are you doing,” Dragonfly corrected, “what are you doing?”

Starlight looked at Dragonfly. “You can make grammatically correct sentences in his language?”

“Some simple ones, yeah,” Dragonfly replied. “I’ve been watching what Mark does with his computer. The last couple nights I’ve been getting up and turning it back on to watch more of that educational show.”

“You what??”

“Don’t let on, he might get upset,” Dragonfly insisted. “So, Mark, what are you doing?”

Mark glanced back and forth between the unicorn and the changeling, looking like he’d rather not be caught between the two. “We are talking about days and years,” he said deliberately, pointing to the whiteboard. “And space.”

“Really? Sounds like fun,” Dragonfly said. “How many years… um… darn it, how do I say this…”

Mark wrote a number on the whiteboard: 41. He pointed to himself. “Forty-one years old,” he said. “How old you?”

“That wasn’t what I was going to ask!” Dragonfly protested.

Starlight Glimmer pointed to herself and said, “Twenty-six.” She nudged Dragonfly. “Tell him how old you are.”

“I don’t know how old I am!” Dragonfly hissed back. “The queen’s only been giving out birth certificates for a few years now! It was years before I ever stuck my head above ground! Anyway, what’s a year to a changeling?”

Starlight narrowed her eyes, smirked, pointed at Dragonfly and said, “Thirty-one!”

“Nark,” Dragonfly grumbled.

“Did I guess it?” Starlight grinned.

“Mark,” Dragonfly said, changing the subject, “how many years space?”

The alien didn’t answer immediately. He leaned back in his chair, twiddling the marker in his fingers, thinking carefully about the question. Finally he took the whiteboard and erased it, then wrote a number on the far right of the board: 2035. “This year,” he said. He drew a line back to the left edge of the map, wrote the number 1957, drew a little ball with antennas- a little like the much-ridiculed Stayputnik- and said, “First make-moon. Satellite.”

“Satellite.” Starlight repeated. An artificial satellite, she guessed. She wondered why Mark’s species began with robots instead of piloted craft. It seemed to her like doing it the hard way round.

A little farther on Mark drew a little rocket and the number 1961. “First man in space.” A little farther on, he drew a little rocket sitting on a planet and the number 1969. “First man on moon.” He drew a little can with wings above a curved line; 1971. “First space station- first place to go that stays in space.” A winged thing vaguely similar to the Amicitas; 1981. “First ship go back space, use again.”

After a bit of thought, Mark back-tracked on the line, drawing a planet-with-Hab for Mars underneath it. 1965. “First make-moon fly past Mars.” A second line to 1969. “First make-moon orbit Mars.” 1974. “First make-moon land Mars.” 1997. “First rover land Mars.” And, finally, 2027. “First man land Mars.”

Starlight wondered about all of this. Mark was the product of over seventy years of his species learning how to fly through space, developing all sorts of technology without the benefit of magic. That was incredible. That was amazing. That was-

“Slow,” Dragonfly said. “Why slow?”

“Slow?” Mark asked, obviously dumbfounded. “Slow because hard, that’s why!” He handed the marker to Dragonfly. “How long for you, then?”

Dragonfly took the marker in her hooves, adjusted it so she could grip it in one perforated fetlock, and drew a new line on the whiteboard. On the right she wrote the number 1009. “Us this year,” she said. On the left of the line she wrote 1006. “First rocket.” She then dragged the marker back and forth above the line several times. “All that,” she said.

Mark’s jaw dropped. “Aro tellyng me you whent phrm your first rocket phlyte to here in four years??”

“Slow, please,” Starlight warned. “All words not have.”

Both Mark and Dragonfly threw up their forelimbs in frustration. “All space, four years?” Mark asked, sarcasm bleeding into his voice.

“By my long-devoured cocoon,” Dragonfly groaned to Starlight over Mark’s simplified response, “you know we sound like stupid little children, right? We have got to -”

“Will you two stop it?!” Starlight shouted in Equestrian.

Mark froze, then bent his head. “Sorry,” he said quietly.

Dragonfly took a moment to follow suit, but the changeling had the good sense to do it before she said anything else. “Yeah, I shouldn’t have said that,” she said. “I’m sorry, Starlight. But we really need to work on learning his language the right way.”

“We’ll start tomorrow,” Starlight sighed. “I don’t have the energy for it right now. But I am curious…” She took the whiteboard and eraser from Dragonfly, cleared the board, and then took the marker in her teeth and began drawing. First Cherry’s cutie mark, then her own, then Spitfire’s; then the emblem off the changeling flag; then a cute little dragon.

“Why do you keep drawing Spike instead of Fireball?” Dragonfly asked.

“Shut up,” Starlight grumbled, adding a drawing of a CSP-style rocket stack launching, complete with flaming clouds of rocket exhaust. At last she showed this to Mark, then turned back to writing with her teeth. This would be so much easier, she thought, if they’d let me use my magic again. I’m feeling much better… my horn only throbs a little now.

Spitfire was easy: a single hash mark.

For herself, three hash marks.

The Spike-and-not-Fireball representation of Fireball got five hash marks. Dragonfly, nine.

And then Cherry Berry. That took some counting, and Starlight made a couple of corrections before settling on twenty-eight.

“Twenty… eight… flights?” Mark gasped. He glanced over at Cherry Berry, who was doing something with the dirt near the mostly-grown alfalfa sprouts.

Starlight nodded. Then she tried to draw a small version of Mark’s flag, messed up, erased it, and drew the swoosh pattern on the patch on his other shoulder. “You?” she asked.

Mark groaned and held up a single finger.

“Ha-HA!” Dragonfly cheered triumphantly. “Ask him his word for ‘rookie,’ Starlight!”

“Ha-HA yerzelph, Dragonfly,” Mark said. “How many days in space, hm?”

Starlight thought about that. According to reports from home via water-telegraph, this was ESA-54 Mission Day 44. She wrote a 44 next to each symbol for the Amicitas crew, then a plus sign, and then paused. For Spitfire she added a zero. Starlight had had one short visit and one three-month shift on the space station, so she added a 96 to her own. Fireball had had one three-month station visit and Dragonfly two station shifts plus her moon flight, so… Starlight did a bit of math… 103 to Fireball, 193 for Dragonfly plus a little circle for her moon landing, plus the word “Moon” spoken.

And then Cherry Berry. Minmus mission. Moon mission. Space station launch. So many other flights, including VIP flights past both the moon and Minmus… It took more calculation, but she finally settled on 198 plus two moons. “Moon, small moon,” she said.

Mark took the marker and wrote next to the swoosh symbol 47 Sols + 124 Days. He then scratched out 47 Sols and wrote instead 49 Days, and then added an equals sign and 173. “Ha HA ha,” he said to Dragonfly as he capped the marker with a deliberate flourish.

“Still want me to ask him for the word ‘rookie’?” Starlight asked smugly.

“Feh,” Dragonfly grumbled. “I still say more launches is a better metric than more days in space.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 47

I learned an interesting factoid from my guests today: they’ve only been flying into space for four years.

That’s right. They went from Sputnik and Mercury to warp drive in four years. And in that four years they have had DOZENS of flights, and apparently half of them included Cherry in some fashion.

In fact, if I’m understanding this right, Cherry has landed on both their homeworld’s moons. That means I’m sharing this Hab with the pony version of Neil Armstrong. Or possibly Alan Shepard. Or, considering the sheer number of launches, the pony version of the Mercury Seven, the New Nine, and the Next Thirteen all at once.

But apparently this is Cherry’s twenty-eighth flight in four years. Let’s say they launched their first rocket on January 1, 1006 and launched the flight that landed them here on December 31, 1009 (their dates). That’s an average of one launch every seven weeks or so.

One launch every seven weeks. For just Cherry Berry.

I don’t think NASA has allowed the same astronaut to launch more than once every two YEARS.

And how much training can you cram into seven weeks? Less, really, since Cherry Berry has apparently got almost two hundred days in space counting her time here. I was training as part of Ares-III for five YEARS.

Much becomes clear about my guests. Many of the questions I’ve been asking about them now have a simple, easy to understand, impossible to refute explanation.

Specifically: these ponies are all CRAZY!

Author's Note

I ought to edit this. Hell, if this was an actual book it'd get the chop entirely, since it advances the plot not one iota. But it amuses me to demonstrate what communications between human and pony are like at this point. Also, I don't have time to edit right now, so you're getting the raw draft.

NASA administration would require EVA-suit protective undergarments after learning about the turn-around schedule of Changeling Space Program. Equestria Space Agency is considerably slower, but not so much as NASA.

I have just got the word: my van needs ANOTHER transmission rebuild. Enough is enough; time to get a replacement, while there aren't any check engine lights on the dash at present. So now I get to figure out what other pennies I can pinch.

Buffer at three, and likely to stay that way, since tonight is KWLP is On the Air night. See some of you at 9 PM CST at dementiaradio.org ! (You can also join in the IRC live chat during the show.)

Sol 48

MISSION LOG – SOL 48

It’s time to begin organized language lessons.

During TV watching time, the same thing happens about twenty times each night. One of the ponies asks Starlight what X word in English means. Before Spitfire made her go cold-turkey on magic, she’d cast her translation spell and ask, and I’ll repeat the word five or six times until Starlight gets the same answer often enough. Sometimes, if the concept is complex or obscure- for example, Danny Partridge talking about royalties- the spell will just choke and Starlight gives up.

Now, with Starlight forbidden from using magic at all, we just bounce around the few words of English we share (sometimes with me guessing at a pony word- that never works out well). That works well enough that, most of the time, we get the idea across without having to resort to whiteboard-talking. I think the ponies have got somewhere between one and five hundred words this way, depending on how much the individual cares. Starlight and Dragonfly are the top students, Fireball the bottom of the class by a mile.

But though this exercise builds vocabulary, it does nothing for grammar, which is why Cherry still said “good-good clobber” when I gave her my cherry cobbler for lunch. (Me, I think the stuff is pretty vile compared to what Mom makes in the summertime. But Cherry is obviously an addict undergoing serious cherry withdrawal symptoms, based on how she savored every single bite. I wonder if there are any Google listings for “cherry rehab clinics on Mars.”)

And after several days of The Electric Company plus Starlight not being allowed to use magic, Starlight and Dragonfly are both beginning to ask about grammatical rules and writing. Starlight didn’t surprise me, but I hadn’t expected Dragonfly to take so eager an interest. So, after thinking about it, I’ve decided to have an hour of English lessons every sol when duties permit. Basically I’ll take one episode of Electric Company and build off of it, so it’ll really be an hour and a half.

Speaking of writing, I’m glad that NASA sent us a couple cases of markers (double redundancy in case a supply ship went missing or a Hab breach caused the opened markers to boil off). In fact, if we get in contact with NASA, I’m going to ask them to send more. None have died yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

My right arm still itches, and by “itches” I mean about ten thousand classically trained tap-dancing fire ants are doing a constant recital between my shoulder and my elbow. Believe it or not, that’s a good sign. All that itching tells me that I haven’t lost nerves along with the outer layer of skin that’s been coming off with every wash over the last couple of days. There’s huge patches of raw, fire-engine red skin on my arm now, but the blisters are gone. So is the actual pain. It looks like I’ll eventually make a full recovery.

Unfortunately I can’t afford to take any more days off. Tomorrow we go to see how the cave is faring. If the temperature in the farm area is above freezing, we’ll start hauling in the soil we banked from the last dirt-doubling. We don’t have time to let it properly infect the cave’s soil, though; once all the cultured dirt is in and rotated into the old soil, we go straight to planting.

Cherry and I went through the food packs, and we’ve revised the numbers. The pony food packs run out on Sol 90 at the current ration, assuming Dragonfly keeps living on nothing but air. After that my meatless food packs extend that to Sol 117. After that I have to start dividing up multiple food packs to provide vegetable content for the three ponies that eat food. There are a lot of reasons why I hope to avoid that, but the biggest reason is that I’ll end up wasting food from spoilage if I do that- and not just any food, but the high-protein stuff that I need to ration the most.

Under perfect conditions it takes a minimum of sixty days for alfalfa to go from seed to first cutting, and ideally you should allow ninety days instead for the root system to develop. These conditions aren’t just less than ideal, they’re barely tolerable.

To give you an idea how bad things are, I’ve just done a quick inspection of the alfalfa starter crop, the one I was going to use for seed. The stalks are surprisingly tall, considering how shallow the soil is. Under normal circumstances they’d almost be ready for harvest. But the plan was to use these plants to make seeds for future crops. In order to get seeds, you need flowers. And before you get flowers, you get buds.

There isn’t a single bud on any of these plants. And given the age of the sprouts, there should be at least the signs of developing buds.

Bear in mind these are alfalfa plants from an alien world in an alternate universe. It’s possible they have some behavior, some requirement, something I’m not aware of. But it looks like alfalfa and smells like alfalfa and grows like alfalfa, so I’m treating it as alfalfa. And when alfalfa does this it usually means the plant is under stress. The alfalfa isn’t budding because it’s pouring all its energy into growing stems and roots and hasn’t got a surplus for reproduction.

I took photos and measurements, and I dug up a few plants to document the roots. Without a control group this isn’t much of a scientific experiment, but whatever data I can collect might be useful for future Mars colonists. (See attached documents.) Long story short, the measurements don’t line up with the lack of flower buds. If the plants were under enough stress to not flower, they shouldn’t have grown as tall as they have. And given the stunted roots, I don’t know how they grew so tall anyway.

So, change of plan. I’m going to let the remaining starter alfalfa grow as it likes. If there’s no sign of buds by the time I harvest the seed potatoes, then I’ll cut the alfalfa at the same time. It should yield almost a day’s food for the ponies. The plants I pulled today will get chopped up (especially the roots) and added to the cave farm soil to make doubly certain the nitrogen-fixing bacteria are there when the alfalfa seeds sprout.

But my point is, with results as odd as this, we can’t rely on Earth or pony benchmarks for growing. We need to plant as quickly as possible, to give the plants all the chance we can give them to prosper. It’s going to take every trick I can think of to make this work in time. And there’s no more time to spare. We have to make this happen now. Every day we lose is lost food, and lost food is lost margin for survival.

Bleargh. This is depressing. I’m going to call the ponies together for some educational television time followed by some probably-less-educational Watney time. I hope it takes my mind off of wondering what the pony words for “I’m hungry” are. If the cave doesn’t work, we’ll know the words soon enough.

Author's Note

Maybe the alfalfa in the cave will do better.

Wrote 2300 words today, keeping the buffer at 3... though the back half of what I wrote today is probably going to have to be expanded a lot to be worth posting.

Sol 50

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 47
ARES III SOL 50

“Dinner time!” Cherry Berry called out.

By now mealtime on rations had become a routine. The meals followed a rotation: Fresh, Halves, Nibbles, and Leftovers. A Fresh meal was a meal pack opened, roughly one-quarter of it plated and set in Mark’s ice box for later, and the rest eaten. Halves was half a meal pack plus the remnant of Fresh. Nibbles was a nibble out of a meal pack plus the rest of Halves. Leftovers, of course, was the end of the cycle, when no new meal pack was opened.

This didn’t apply to Fireball, of course- he got full rations of all the quartz and quartz by-product he cared to eat. The tradeoff, of course, was that Fireball was expected to do more heavy labor than anypony else. But since the explosion- or, as Spitfire called it, the “cave poot”- Fireball hadn’t been eating his limit as he had before. In fact, Cherry had made herself his “dinner buddy” to make sure he ate the equivalent of a full ration.

It also didn’t apply to Dragonfly, for different reasons. Dragonfly’s meal was her fellow crew members- that is, such love as they could donate to her. Thus, before anypony else ate anything, the crew of Amicitas gave Dragonfly a long group hug before each meal, focusing on their love and respect for their fellow astromare.

Under normal circumstances Dragonfly was the first to report for meals, changelings being by nature shameless when it came to their food source. But this time, even after the other four crew and Mark gathered by the galley, Dragonfly didn’t show.

The Hab was not particularly large, and it had no interior walls. It took no time at all to spot the changeling perched on a chair facing the wall next to Airlock 2. “Dragonfly, it’s dinnertime,” Cherry said. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Dragonfly said.

“Time out,” Mark said.

“Time out?” Cherry thought about this for a moment. “What did you do, Dragonfly?”

“Mark caught me using his computer,” Dragonfly said sullenly. “He made me sit here, and every time I tried to get up he sat me back down again. I don’t know why.”

Cherry couldn’t help giggling. “He’s put you in the corner,” she said. “It’s a punishment for very little fillies.”

“Be glad he doesn’t have any paper,” Spitfire added. “You could be wearing a dunce cap.”

Dragonfly blinked, leaning over the back of the chair. “What’s that supposed to do?” she asked. “How is this a punishment?” Her ear-fins flipped back. “Wait a minute, did you say this is a punishment for larvae?”

“If you don’t want to be punished like a child, don’t act like one,” Cherry replied. “Mark, Dragonfly go?”

Mark shrugged. “If she learned her lesson- er, if she know not do again.”

Cherry looked at Starlight. “What’s the Mark-word for ‘incorrigible’?”

MISSION LOG – SOL 50

Apparently I have a hacker in my midst. (Hackers in the Midst, the new nature documentary about computer criminals in their natural habitat, coming soon from National Geographic!)

After we got back from today’s seeding of the cave (four hundred square meters of alfalfa, with about two hundred reserved for potatoes later), I went back out to clean the solar farm. When I came back I found Dragonfly with my computer open, going through my files. I don’t know where she learned how to do it or how long she’s been doing it, but I put her in the corner until dinnertime. I was afraid the other ponies might get upset, but they seemed to find it funny.

The odd thing is, she was watching something I’d missed on Lewis’s playlist of 1970s trash TV. Specifically, Superfriends. I’d thought Lewis didn’t have any cartoons apart from parts of The Electric Company, but if I’d picked one horrible cartoon for Lewis to have in her collection, Superfriends would definitely be it. And Lewis was wise to hide it in a subdirectory, because I would have given her all kinds of shit over it.

After dinner I introduced the ponies to it. And for the first time the ponies, bughorse and dragon all turned their noses up at it. A bit of whiteboard talking explained why. It turns out superhero comics exist on their homeworld, and none of them are fans. Starlight tried to watch with polite interest, but she was the first one to get restless. The others just didn’t care.

I can’t blame them. This isn’t like the Marvel cinematic universe movies from when I was in high school and college. This is pure crap.

The biggest issue I have with Superfriends is that it’s been made so kid-friendly that there’s no conflict- as in none at ALL. Here you have DC Comics’ greatest heroes (plus Aquaman), and they never actually fight anybody. There isn’t an actual bad guy in the entire first-run series. They’re all natural disasters or bumbling scientists.

And even then half the problems are caused by two teenagers with a mental age of about nine and their Scooby-Doo knock-off dog.

Seriously, where are Wendy and Marvin’s parents? When is the call going to come in to Child Protective Services? “Yes, officer, there are two children hanging around superheroes. They’re allowed to go into horrible danger every day! Volcanoes, train tunnels, alien spaceships! And their legal guardians are nowhere in sight!” It’s like Superman and Wonder Woman went to the Albus Dumbledore School of Child-Rearing.

With Batman it makes some sense. There’s Robin, who’s about the same age or slightly older than the kids. We already know Bruce Wayne is into child endangerment. But Jon and Martha Kent didn’t raise Clark that way! And Hippolyta didn’t… um… sculpt Diana that way… I guess?

Anyway, the kids are just too stupid for words. This show is just plain bad, and not so-bad-it’s-good bad.

And don’t get me STARTED on Aquaman…!

Anyway, we did language lessons for an hour, and then we returned to our regularly scheduled programming. We finished up Partridge Family today. Tomorrow night I finally get around to Six Million Dollar Man.

Oh, and since you’re wondering: the planting is going just fine. Tomorrow we plant one-quarter of the Hab in alfalfa. The rest of the Hab, and the pop-tents, will go for potatoes. Taters will do fine in shallow soil, and the alfalfa I’ll maintain here is more for soil nitrates than for the food it’ll provide the ponies. The soil just isn’t deep enough here for alfalfa to prosper anyway.

After tomorrow the farm project will be complete except for tending the crops. I’m thinking about what comes next. I need to talk to Starlight about a few things before I make plans, though.

And then I need to talk Dragonfly into giving the others typing lessons.

Author's Note

More filler. This is all to cover a gag in the book that I didn't want to just copy and paste.

At the end of the first chapter in the book that focuses on NASA, the chief administrator, Teddy Sanders, wonders what goes through the mind of a man stranded on Mars. This is followed by the log entry for Sol 61, which is three short sentences on the nonsense which is Aquaman's power set.

I wanted to reference Aquaman about this time, but I wanted to do it differently, and the result is what you see here- the setup, and then the log entry, in which Mark makes it clear he's a Marvel fanboy more than DC.

1800 words written today, 500 of which is rewrite work on yesterday's effort. Buffer remains three, but I'll need to work harder on the rewrite I mentioned.

Sol 56

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 53
ARES III SOL 56

“Aa, aa, aa,” Mark said, “Hand, an, apple.”

The crew members of Amicitas chanted along with Mark for the sixth day in a row. Usually this ritual came right after an episode or two of The Electric Company, after dinner, but today Mark wanted to do it right after breakfast. Dragonfly wondered what caused the change.

“Eh, eh, eh,” Mark said, leading the next line. “Lend, men, English.”

She could sense Mark’s eagerness for something or other, but Dragonfly was pretty sure it wasn’t eagerness for more English lessons.

“Iih, iih, iih. Hit, tin, pimple. Aah, aah, aah. Top, common, ostrich. Uh. Uh. Uh. Punt, under, cup.”

Mark had explained the ritual by saying that, when he’d been taught another language in school, one of his teachers had drilled them on pronunciation with a daily ritual like this.

“Ay, ay, ay. Made, quaint, mistake. Ee, ee, ee. Heed, sweet, fever.”

None of them knew what three-quarters of the example words meant, but the ponies enjoyed chanting together. Dragonfly enjoyed the enjoyment. And Fireball… didn’t object.

“Eye, eye, eye. Tie, file, crocodile. Oh, oh, oh. Row, over, floor. Yuu, yuu, yuu. Usually, rule, ukulele.”

Fireball didn’t object to much anymore. Dragonfly knew he wanted to, that his guilt trip over almost killing everyone was fading. She could feel him swallowing blunt remarks about this or that thing all the time. In fact, right now, she knew he wanted to say something vulgar. Then he looked at Mark’s earnest face, felt a bit of shame, and chanted a little louder.

“Ur, ur, ur. Hurt, her, bird. Ar, ar, ar. Mark, target, pirates.”

That last word didn’t make sense, but it still made Mark laugh a little inside, so Dragonfly enjoyed the emotional tidbit and didn’t ask for the explanation.

“Or, or, or. More, pork, story. Oi, oi, oi. Foil, oink, spoiled. Ow, ow, ow. Bow, owl, couch. Aw, aw, aw. Raw, maul, awed, Uh, uh, uh. Book, took, nook. Ooo, ooo, ooh. Screw, blue, cockatoo!”

As the last line ended in pony laughter, Dragonfly could only think, How do they get by with so few vowels?

With the introduction over, Mark took out a whiteboard- now a slightly gray board, since even dry-erase markers leave a residue over time. He wrote the word Sols on top of it and then, on the left end, wrote the word 6. “We met on Sol 6,” he said. He then wrote Sol 1412 on the far right end. “Ares IV comes on Sol fourteen-twelve.”

Everyone nodded, including Dragonfly. This had been explained to them before.

“Ares IV is not coming here,” Mark said carefully. This got a couple of blank looks, and he changed it to, “Not. Come. Here.” He wrote a long word, a strange-looking one even in Mark’s alphabet. Schiaparelli. “Come Schiaparelli Basin.” He turned his little thin computer so the screen faced the ponies, showing a satellite map of Mars. “We here,” he said, pointing to a flat, low-lying area in the top center of the map. “Ares IV come here.” He pointed to a very large crater well east and south of where he’d pointed before.

“How many kay?” Starlight asked.

“How far is it?” Mark corrected her, being careful to enunciate clearly. “Thirty-two hundred kilometers.” He drew a long line on the whiteboard, labeling the left end 0 and the right end 3200. “This is what the rover can do,” he added, and made a little mark just barely to the right of the 0, adding the number 35 to it. He pointed to the enormous difference between the two and finished, “Too far to walk.”

Dragonfly could sense that he meant the last line as a joke, but none of the others, herself included, found it funny. Not only was Mark’s ride home not coming for four years, but he’d have to journey halfway across Equestria to meet them. On this planet. The prospects, even for a changeling, were appalling.

“So I need,” Mark continued, once he figured out no smiles were coming, “to change the rover to go farther.” He paused, then wrote several words on the board, reading them aloud. “Change- to make different. Modify- to change something else on purpose.”

Starlight raised a hoof. “Purpose?”

Mark tapped his head. “Intent. Plan. Mean to do it. Not accident.”

Starlight nodded, lowered her hoof, and let Mark proceed.

“Also,” Mark said. He drew a little rocket ship. “Ares IV has six crew.” He drew six little stick Marks. “Six come down. Six go up.” He added a seventh stick-Mark. “Maybe seven. NASA,” he pointed to the swoosh patch on his shoulder, “NASA smart, figure something out. But twelve?” He drew a stick-dragon and four stick ponies, then crossed out all of them plus the seventh stick-Mark. Shaking his head, he said, “Can’t work. People get left behind.”

Now Dragonfly felt real anger rising in Fireball. The dragon leaned forward from his sitting position. “Leave us here?” he rumbled.

Mark, to his credit, didn’t blink. “No,” he said firmly, looking Fireball straight in the eyes. “When we go, all go. To stay here is to die. And nobody dies.”

Dragonfly almost stomped her hooves in pony-style applause. Mark meant every word- she could feel it. There was no joke, no brag, nothing but firm resolve in him.

“But NASA doesn’t know.., um, does not know we are here,” Mark said, forcing himself to slow his speech back down. “We need to tell them, six people here, need rescue. With years to plan, they think of way to get us all home.”

“But you no talk home,” Cherry Berry pointed out.

“I can’t talk with home,” Mark restated correctly, “yes, that is true. The radio,” he drew an antenna with lines radiating from its tip, “was broken on Sol 6. I can’t fix it.” He pointed to Schiaparelli Basin again. “Radio here works now, but there is no Hab there. No food, no cave, no farm. If we go now, we die.”

Starlight raised her hoof again. “Why radio there, if no one can live there?” she asked.

Mark drew a tall triangular object on little legs. “M. A. V.,” he said, and wrote out the words: “Mars, Ascent, Vehicle. Ascent means going up. Vehicle is a thing that carries people, like a car or-“ he almost pronounced the pony word correctly- “Amicitas.”

“M. A. V.” Starlight said, and the others, including Dragonfly, repeated it after her.

“M. A. V. makes its own fuel,” Mark continued. “But it takes time.” He wrote 500 Sols next to the MAV. “So it comes before anything else- er…” Anything else had been a phrase too far for everypony except Dragonfly, and Mark saw it in their faces. “It comes here first, makes fuel, then everything else comes. People come last of all.”

“So no radio here,” Starlight said, pointing to the soil floor. “Radio there, can’t use. So what do?”

Mark clicked a button on his computer, and several spots lit up on the map. “Other radios on Mars,” he said. “Maybe fix one of them. But I have to get to them first.” He set aside the first whiteboard, which was rather full now, and pulled out a second, drawing a very poor sketch of one of his rovers on top of it. “So modify rover now, test it, see it work, then go get radio.”

He smiled at the others and added, “Today we work on plan to do that- all of you and me. Together.”

Dragonfly looked at the numbers on the whiteboard, her mind entirely focused on the problem. She’d always had an un-changeling-like interest in making things work, and this problem was a lot more interesting than designing a self-deploying parachute or a functional space toilet (both of which she’d done). It wasn’t as much fun as pulling seven G’s during a hard re-entry, but she always felt happy and proud of herself when the job was done.

“Rover battery has nine thousand watt-hours,” Mark said. “Don’t ask how much a watt-hour is. Not important.”

The others shrugged and moved on. Dragonfly disagreed- the conversion from Mark power units to pony power units would be important in the future- but for now she realized explaining the conversion would distract from the goal. Since only Mark parts would be used on the rover, only Mark measurements were needed for now.

“NASA made the rover-“

“Made?” Fireball asked.

Dragonfly forced herself not to groan. They’d had the verb conjugation for “make” two days ago. She’d paid attention, because “make such-and-so” was one of the biggest contributors to the larva-talk problem.

“I make today, I made yesterday,” Mark explained. When Fireball nodded and leaned back, he went on, “NASA made the rover to go thirty-five kilometers on one charge. Five hour planned EVA, eight hour at most. Recharge at Hab.”

Charge was a word that had come up when discussing the emergency mana batteries. Dragonfly and Starlight knew it, but the changeling hadn’t known whether or not the others did until she saw them nod understanding.

“If I leave the Hab, I have to take something with me to charge the battery,” Mark continued. “The solar panels-“ Mark had to draw a couple of them, since the phrase wasn’t familiar to the ponies yet- “can be taken from the Hab and used to power… to recharge the rover.”He pointed to the rover. “Problem: can’t fit the panels inside the rover. Need space… need room inside for food, water, potty.”

Everyone else made a face. Potty was a word they all knew far too well. They had grown used to the stench from the compost bin, but nobody liked it.

“Put up on… er…” Cherry Berry reached a forehoof up to pat the top of her own head. “Put here up on rover,” she said.

“Put them on the roof?” Mark asked, pointing to the top of the rover drawing as he said the new word. “Okay, we’ll use the rope for that.”

“Charge while… er… charge while Bo-Luke?” Spitfire struggled.

“Driving,” Mark said gently. “No, can’t charge while driving. Need too many panels. Have to stop, spread like outside Hab, wait.”

Dragonfly reached over to Mark and grabbed the marker in her fetlock. She scribbled the equation 800 / 35. “You say the radio is eight hundred kilometers, yes?” she said slowly, being careful of her pronunciation.

“The closest radio, yes,” Mark said. He held out two hands, bringing them progressively closer together as he added, “Close, closer, closest.”

Dragonfly finished the math; twenty-two and six-sevenths. She scratched that out and wrote 23 instead. “Twenty-three days there, twenty-three back,” she said. “Too slow.”

“Yep- I mean yes, too slow,” Mark nodded. Need to go farther each sol. Need more power.”

“Glue solar panel to outside rover?” Dragonfly suggested.

Mark’s face twisted. “I’d rather not… I mean no,” he said. “I have glue, but it doesn’t come off.” His hands mad a motion of sticking two things together.

Dragonfly made a screwdriver motion with her hoof.

“Definitely no screws or bolts,” Mark insisted.

“But you need more power,” Dragonfly insisted. “Where can you get power?”

“Other rover?” Starlight suggested.

“Yes!” Mark said, pointing at Starlight. “I can take,” he mimed taking something in both hands, “the battery from Rover One.” He scratched out the 9000 on the whiteboard and wrote above it, in smaller numbers, 18,000.

Voila! thought Dragonfly. (Voila, she had heard, was Prench for, “I’m done, now pay me.”) “So now you go… um… two-times… the, er… length?” Her voice faltered, stumbling across words she hadn’t picked up yet.

“Double the distance,” Mark nodded. “Distance is length for a place instead of a thing. The distance from the Hab to the cave is ten kilometers.” He then held up one finger after another, saying, “Single… double… triple.”

The ponies, Dragonfly and Fireball all nodded.

“So, if I use all that power to drive…” Mark did the math on the whiteboard: 18000 / 200 = 180 / 2 = 90 km. “Two hundred watts per kilometer. Ninety kilometers a day,” he said. He sighed, shook his head, and continued, “But I can’t do that.”

“Why can’t?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Rover uses power for other things too,” Mark said. “Lights. Fan.” He made a little whirring sound in his throat, twirling his finger in a circle. “And heater. Especially heater. Heater uses four hundred watts.” More math on the whiteboard:

400 X 24.66 = 4 X 2466 = 9864.

18000 – 9864 = 8136

8136 / 200 = 40.68 km

Dragonfly cocked her head in confusion. "Near thirty-five kilometers again!” she protested.

Mark nodded. “The heater doesn’t run when I’m not in the rover,” he said. “But if I leave the Hab, I’ll… I will be in the rover all the time. So the heater has to run all the time.”

“But thirty-five kilometers is no good!” Dragonfly insisted. “What do?”

Mark shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “Magic? You have ideas?” He tapped his head to remind the ponies what ideas were.

Light flickered in the general direction of Fireball. The dragon, with the first smug expression Dragonfly could remember on him since the gunk went splat, had forced two little flames through his nostrils. For a moment he almost looked like one of the skinny dragons from the lands of the Qi Lin… well, more so than usual, Dragonfly admitted.

Mark’s eyes widened. “Huh,” he said. “Maybe that works.”

“You’re going on a road trip, Fireball,” Spitfire giggled in Equestrian.

It was worth a shot, Dragonfly thought. But she also remembered: dragons dislike the cold even more than ponies. That suggested they weren’t particularly good at warming up the air around them. But on the other hoof, Fireball was volunteering for something and coming up with ideas again- and this one wasn’t likely to get anyling killed.

But there had to be some better way. Maybe suit air could be used to heat the rover? For that matter, would one suit be enough to supply breathable air for two people in the rover cabin?

“Okay, we’ll try that,” Mark said. “We stay close to the Hab until we’re sure it all works. Now, let’s figure out… er… let’s plan how to put the second battery on the rover.”

“Glue?”

Mark gave Dragonfly an annoyed look. “No glue.” Then he paused… “Well, maybe glue. But I hope we find a better idea.”

The planning went into details. The second battery would be a pain, since it was too large for the airlock or the luggage rack. Dragonfly suggested various means of just attaching it to the side of the rover, all of which Mark rejected… until she suggested tying it on with rope. That produced the solution.

Mark had a supply of spare canvas for his base if the existing dome sprung a leak. He also had a supply of glue to hold it together. Put the two together, and you got saddlebags for the rover. The battery would ride in one side, and a bunch of rocks would be counterweight in the other side. The bags could be taken off after the trip, so the second battery wouldn’t be permanently attached to Rover Two.

Other things were discussed. Starlight Glimmer suggested navigation aids, particularly navigating using the sun and Mars’s moons. A slightly smaller sample bin was picked to be Mark’s honey bucket- one with a very secure airtight lid. Another bin was picked for Fireball’s rations for the trip, and another to be filled with enough water for the journey.

It was well past lunchtime by the time the basic plans were completed. Everyone ate their ration and then went to their afternoon chores happy. They had worked together. They had helped.

Except Dragonfly, who watched Mark drawing up plans for the canvas saddlebags on a whiteboard. He wasn’t feeling accomplished or satisfied, not in the same way. She thought he felt… smug.

In fact, the way he felt reminded Dragonfly of the queen just as some particular scheme of hers was paying off big-time. But what scheme? All he did was get us all to talk about figuring out…

… stuff where he came up with most of the answers.

Huh. He didn’t need our help for this, did he?

Dragonfly saw it all in a single flash. He’d taken his own planning time and turned it into an extra-long language lesson. He just brought us in to give us something to do. To give us practice in English. He had most of it worked out already.

Dragonfly stifled a grin. I like Mark, she thought. He thinks like a changeling.

Author's Note

The ponies, especially Cherry Berry, would think Dragonfly just mortally insulted their host, if they knew what she was thinking.

The vowel thing is from my high school days, when our Spanish teacher would begin almost every class with us chanting Spanish vowels and sample words, the last being "bu lu lu". (I don't remember what "bu lu lu" is.) Spanish, by the way, has a LOT fewer vowel sounds- six IIRC as opposed to English's NINETEEN (not counting schwa).

This chapter is mainly, from my end at least, taking an infodump from the book and rewriting it in a totally different fashion that presents the same information. Not the first time, and not the last time, I'll have to do this.

Buffer remains at three. Spent today disposing of trash and assembling grab bags for upcoming conventions.

Sol 57

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 54
ARES III SOL 57

“Dragonfly, what are you- no don’t do that- don’t- no no no- oh fuck SPITFIRE!!”

Spitfire sighed. She had her suit on except for her helmet, ready to join Cherry Berry for the hike to the gem cave. Since the rover wasn’t going to be available for a while, the ponies were going to have to get used to the walk- not quite an hour each way at a leisurely pace, fifteen minutes at a bouncing gallop in Mars’s light gravity. But time was pressing, and the last thing she needed was for some changeling shenanigans to cost them time checking the soil and watering the hopefully-soon-to-sprout crops.

“Spitfire, come here! Dragonfly’s eaten something!”

The last few days, with the regular language lessons and the lack of Starlight Glimmer’s magic to translate, had seen rapid improvements in the ponies’ ability to understand the alien biped. She was pretty sure she knew what he’d just said, if for no other reason than that it made perfect sense for a changeling to eat dangerous things. If a thing was annoying, it made sense for a changeling to do it.

“Yes, Mark?” she asked in his language, walking over to the work table where Mark had been gluing together large strips of canvas to make the rover saddlebags.

“How do you make Dragonfly throw up?” Mark asked, making a hand gesture to convey the idea of tossing one’s cupcakes.

“Dragonfly not throw up,” Spitfire replied, trying to make it clear by tone that Mark was asking for a thing that didn’t happen.

“Shows what you know,” Dragonfly muttered in Equestrian. “I can throw up just fine if I eat too much pony food. Anyway, he’s overreacting.”

“What did you eat?” Spitfire asked, also in Equestrian.

“I tasted a bit of his glue,” Dragonfly said. “A little ball of it. It cures really quick, you know.”

“What?” Spitfire galloped to the box that contained the ship’s library from Amicitas. “What were you thinking? That could have been poison!”

“It isn’t,” Dragonfly said complacently. “I just wanted to know if I could make more of the stuff. I don’t think I can. It doesn’t taste familiar at all. Not like any of the glues we changelings use.”

“Open your mouth.” Spitfire practically wedged her hoof under Dragonfly’s fangs, paying no attention to the come-on-seriously look the changeling gave her. “Say ahh!” Only a moment later did she realize that, even if she had the mouth-light to see by, she couldn’t see down Dragonfly’s throat around her own hoof.

Dragonfly carefully disengaged the pegasus’s hoof from her fangs. “Spitfire, honestly, listen,” she said. “I’m not being silly and I’m not being foalish. There aren’t many things that can poison a changeling, and most of those things are magical. There’s no magic here. Mark’s glue is just a couple of really complex and disgusting-tasting carbon compounds that make a really powerful resin when mixed. It would probably kill a pony, but only because it would permanently glue your mouth or throat shut. I don’t have that problem.”

“Obviously,” Spitfire said.

“Now, just tell Mark I’m fine, okay?” Dragonfly asked. “I know you’ve got a hard job, but you don’t have to worry about me for now.”

Spitfire reached over Dragonfly’s back and hooked a hoof under one of the changeling’s wings. “Those holes are still too big,” she said. “You ought to be recovering better.”

“I was worse off than this a lot of times before the space program,” Dragonfly insisted. “But if you keep caring about me like you do now, I’ll be hole-free in no time!”

Spitfire rubbed her temple with one hoof. This is not the job I wanted, she thought. This is not the job I chose. I should be running Equestria’s top flight team and training the next generation of Celestia’s defenders of the air. I’m a flyer, not a doctor! “Mark?” she said hesitantly.

“Yes, Spitfire?”

“Dragonfly not hurt. Dipsticks not get sick.”

“Aw, now that’s harsh,” Dragonfly complained in Equestrian.

“Dragonfly, don’t do that again,” Mark said. “You scared the sh- you make me afraid. Very much.”

“I won’t do it again,” Dragonfly replied. “I needed to know something.”

Mark’s eyebrows made a run for his shaggy hairline, but the alien refrained from asking. Instead he said, “Please go with Cherry today,” and returned to his work.

“You heard him,” Spitfire said. “You’re going to be farming with us today.”

Dragonfly shrugged. “I could use a walk,” she said.

Spitfire bit her tongue on what she really wanted to say. Ever since crashing on this planet, she’d gradually come to understand why Queen Chrysalis was so grumpy and evil most of the time. Imagine having to deal with thousands of Dragonflies, every single day…

If Cherry Berry can put up with all those changelings for four years, she’s Wonderbolts material. Or maybe we can talk Twilight Sparkle into making her an alicorn. Can she do that? Wouldn’t hurt to-

Spitfire’s thoughts got interrupted by Mark’s voice. “Oh, Spitfire, need to ask: what does Dragonfly eat?”

Spitfire saw the changeling stiffen. Aha, she thought.

The problem was, she didn’t have enough English to explain changeling appetites for emotions. She could only think of one thing to show Mark. She focused on the silly things Dragonfly did every day, the harmless antics, the often useful information, her absolute fearlessness in the air (a trait Spitfire would admire more if she didn’t think it came from pure stupidity)…

… and then, armed with all the positive feelings for a crewmate and wingpony she could muster, she leaned forward and cuddled the changeling tightly. “Dragonfly eat this,” she said over her shoulder.

When she let go and looked at Mark, she couldn’t tell what the expression was on his face. Definitely not belief or understanding, though.

“Whatever,” he said. “I’ll ask Starlight sometime.” Apparently done with ponies for a while, he returned his attention to his pieces of canvas.

Dragonfly let out a slow breath. “He didn’t believe you,” she said.

“I’ll tell him again once I have more words,” Spitfire said.

The changeling’s ear-fins drooped. “Please don’t,” she said quietly. “I need his love too. And you get more love if your… subject… doesn’t know you’re eating it.”

Spitfire’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not getting enough at all, are you?” she asked.

Dragonfly shrugged. “Everyone else is on rations,” she said. “Why not me?”

Voices warred with one another in Spitfire’s head. This is a trick, one voice screamed, a trick for sympathy. Don’t trust changelings! Another voice countered, We aren’t loving her enough! She’s going to starve! And a third voice chimed in, What kind of ponies are we, that we can’t provide enough love for a friend?

“I… have to think about this,” she managed to say.

“Please don’t tell anyling else,” Dragonfly murmured. “Your pity is edible, but your self-anger spoils it. If you tell the others, they'll feel the same way.”

“I’m not much for secrets, changeling,” Spitfire muttered back, no real heat in the words.

“Please?” Dragonfly asked. “Also, try to lighten up a bit on Starlight? Every day you two argue about-“

“Get your suit on,” Spitfire barked, louder this time. “And seal the compost bin. You get to carry it to the cave.”

The changeling trotted over to the spacesuit storage area. Spitfire watched Dragonfly go… and noticed Starlight Glimmer, sitting on a stool on the far side of the Hab working with one of Mark’s spare computers, also following the changeling with her eyes.

Pegasus stare met unicorn stare, and after a long moment, Starlight turned her attention back to the computer.

Yeah, maybe I will lighten up, Spitfire thought. In three days. Starlight’s horn wasn’t sensitive to touch anymore, but a bit more time to heal couldn’t hurt.

In three days, then.

Author's Note

So, is Dragonfly doing fine, or is she falling behind? Which is the lie?

I mainly did this because, as I've hinted before, changelings can secrete a number of useful compounds from their bodies. Given that, it seemed only logical that Dragonfly would be intrigued by the magic resin NASA invented (well, Andy Weir invented, for purposes of plot convenience and Mark Watney not dying half a dozen times in the book).

I drove to Houston to trade in my van this afternoon... and drove it back again. Tomorrow morning I'll know if the van I wanted is available. If it is, it'll be delivered to me up here in the woods. If not, my fallback is a different model (not the one I wanted, but cheaper, newer, and highly recommended by fellow vendors) in Beaumont, half the driving time. But the mostly-useless trip to Houston ate up over five hours of my day.

Despite that, wrote a 850-ish word short chapter and then made a quick stab at expanding a bit I excised from a previous chapter, so the buffer is back up to four now.

Tomorrow's writing will probably consist of a lot of short-short-short chapters (100-words or thereabouts), both because the buffer needs some padding and because Mark's first long drive where not much happens is coming up.

That is, if I decide that just because not much happened in the book, not much will continue to happen here. I might get a brainwave about that. You never know...

Sol 62

“Sorry I’m late,” Teddy said as he entered the room. He walked to his desk, set his briefcase on top of it, removed several folders, and stacked them tidily on one side of his blotter. As he turned to sit down, he looked around the room and froze. “Where’s Miss Park?” he asked.

“Still in SatCom,” Venkat replied. “It’s just past dawn at the Hab. She has to monitor the satellite footage for EVAs.”

“Understood,” Teddy nodded, taking his seat. Everyone else was present. Venkat propped up a wall as per his preference; Mitch sprawled on the couch, his eyes apparently closed but the earbud in his ear turned up so loud that Venkat could hear it buzzing from across the room. Bruce Ng had flown out from Pasadena, and based on the bags under his eyes he was wishing it was dawn here instead of 8:30 PM. And, of course, Annie had her eyes locked to her phone, sending one text after another, putting out media brush fires one at a time.

“Venkat, what’s Watney’s status?” Teddy asked.

“So far as we know, alive and well,” Venkat said. “No EVA yesterday, but Tall Boy went out to clean the solar panels, and the two Oranges and White Hen went to Site Epsilon and back, spending about five hours EVA. It’s two weeks now since we’ve seen White Boxy.”

“Do you think something’s happened to Boxy?”

“No way to know,” Venkat said, shrugging. “Mark hasn’t updated his message, so for the moment we’re just assuming some illness.”

“Any more clues about what the aliens are doing at Site Epsilon?” Teddy asked.

“No idea. But we do have one new bit of data. There’s a small temperature anomaly that shows up on the weather satellites’ infrared sensors. It shows up much better at night than in the daytime.”

“Temperature anomaly?” Annie asked.

“There’s a little spot on the northeastern edge of Site Epsilon that’s a lot warmer than anything else around it,” Venkat said. “In the last few infrared measurements of the site there’s a slight warm spot extending almost to the center of the site, but that one little spot is really warm. As much as twenty degrees above the baseline temperature at night.”

“Something to do with the crash site?” Teddy asked.

“Nope. The crash site is on the southeast edge. Wrong part of the site altogether.”

“Keep working the problem,” Teddy said. “Bruce, any progress on a supply mission?”

“It’s slow,” Bruce said. “We’ve been discussing strapping Delta-IXs onto the sides of a Red Falcon to try to get enough delta-V for a straight shot, but the engineering doesn’t work. Also, we need two to try it, and the only Delta-IX we have is Eagle Eye 3. It’ll be months before ULA can turn out another one.”

“What can we do with what we have?” Teddy pressed.

Bruce shook his head. “For the next two to three months? Nothing. If we launched Eagle Eye 3 to Mars tomorrow, its payload wouldn’t be much more than one box of crackers and a greeting card wishing him good luck. And the earliest that would get to him is Sol 332. If we add enough weight to make it worth the trip, the arrival date gets pushed clear back to Sol 613.

“But Space-X has promised three Red Falcons ready to fly in four months. In an ideal planetary alignment each Falcon could lift thirty-four thousand kilograms to Mars. But with the alignment we have four months from now, we’ll only get about one metric ton each. To feed Mark and his guests, plus a new radio and a couple of other things, we’ll need all three plus Eagle Eye 3. But they won’t arrive until Sol 578 at earliest.”

“By our best estimates Mark and his friends will all be dead by then,” Teddy pointed out.

“I know,” Bruce shrugged. “But I can’t move the planets, and I can’t change gravity. We can get a ship there in time with not enough food to hold out, or we can get enough food there too late for it to do any good.”

“Keep working the problem,” Teddy said. “Have you tried making the final stage lighter?”

“Well, I-“

Bruce was interrupted by Venkat’s phone ringing. Venkat pulled the phone out of his pocket, noticed the name on the screen, and accepted the call. “What is it, Mindy?” he asked. “We’re in a meeting… he is? That’s good, but is there a reason why this couldn’t wait? … Which protocol? … oooooooh, God. Ooooooooh, God. Don’t take any high-magnification photos of anything in that area, but keep watch on the Hab and the area south of there. I’ll be down there in half an hour.”

“What is it, Venkat?” Teddy asked as the director of Mars operations put his phone back in his pocket.

“Watney’s taken the rover south of the Hab,” Venkat said. “Mindy thinks he’s going to where Commander Lewis buried the RTG.”

“He what?” Mitch jumped up from the couch, eyes wide open.

“Oooh, Christ,” Bruce moaned.

“Are you sure about that?” Teddy asked.

“Wait a minute, hold on,” Annie said, looking up from her phone and waving a hand. “Remind me again, what the fuck is an RTG?”

“Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator,” Venkat explained. “It’s what a MAV uses for power while making fuel. We use it because the MAV is too mission-critical to rely on solar power alone. Curiosity also had one, and each of the Viking landers had two.”

“Big whoop,” Annie said. “What’s so bad about it that you look like you’re having a coronary?”

“It’s a fifty pound box that contains a bunch of iridium pellets,” Venkat continued. “Each pellet contains a ball of plutonium-238.”

“Plutonium?” Now it was Annie’s turn to be shocked. “Fuck me! And you let astronauts dick around with that stuff?”

“It’s in iridium-covered pellets inside a graphite-lined case,” Venkat explained. “Both layers have to fail in order for there to be any danger.”

“But it’s almost certain death if both layers do fail,” Teddy pointed out. “Which is why mission protocol is to get the RTG at least four kilometers away from the Hab as soon as duties permit. Commander Lewis performed a solo EVA and did that on Sol 4.”

“But why send it up at all?” Annie said. “And why the fuck does Watney want the damn thing?”

“The RTG does two things,” Venkat said. “It produces one hundred watts of continuous power. That power is generated from heat caused by the plutonium’s natural decay. It’s not an actual reactor. Fifteen hundred watts of heat gets converted into one hundred watts of electricity. He probably wants it for one or the other.”

Bruce was typing on his laptop. “One hundred watts won’t buy Watney much extra distance per day on his trip,” he said. “We’re still assuming he’s modifying the rover for a long journey, right?”

“Right,” Venkat said. “Eventually Ares IV, but we hope not yet.”

“Let me get some people working the numbers on how much more distance he gets if he doesn’t have to run the heater in the rover,” Bruce said. “But just off the top of my head, I think it doubles his daily travel range. If he’s done the same math, then it makes sense.”

“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Venkat said. “Watney knows there’s nothing at Schiaparelli except the MAV. He can’t survive there. So why is he doing this now?”

“I’ll call in Dr. Shields,” Mitch said. “This is a psychological problem. She knows the crew better than any of us. If anyone can guess what’s in his head, it’s her.”

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 60
ARES III SOL 62

Cherry Berry began peeling off her space suit the instant Airlock 1’s inner doors opened into the Hab. “What is he THINKING?” she shouted in Equestrian to anyone who might care.

Starlight, who had been practicing typing on one of Mark’s spare computers, looked up. “He’s standing right behind- SPITFIRE!” She dropped off of her work stool and galloped through the stand of young potato plants towards the sweat-soaked commander. “Cherry, what happened to you?”

“Oh, I just popped back to the Badlands Hive for a few minutes,” Cherry said quietly. “At high noon in mid-summer. Only it wasn’t the Badlands, it was the inside of Mark’s bucking rover!”

Mark hadn’t unsuited. After a brief curious glance at his irate partner for Serious Two (whatever that meant), he walked over to where he kept his tools, selected the largest hammer from the kit, and grabbed a roll of grey tape. This done, he left Cherry in good hooves and stepped back into the airlock, closing it and beginning the depressurization cycle.

Spitfire, meanwhile, had given Cherry the once-over. “It only looks like a lot of lather,” she said. “Some water and a bit of salt and she’ll be fine.”

“How did you get so hot?” Starlight asked.

“You remember that box Mark told us about last night?” Cherry asked.

“Yes,” Spitfire nodded. “He told us it was extremely dangerous and that we absolutely were not allowed to touch it, move it, magic it, or eat it. We were all there, Cherry, of course we remember.”

“He told us it was warm,” Cherry said. “He didn’t tell us you could fry eggs on it!”

“Really?” Starlight asked. “It’s got a metal inside that’s only theoretical to pony science, I know that. But I didn’t know it got hot.”

“Mark had the heater off for the trip back,” Cherry said. “It took less than ten minutes, but in that time it got hot enough in the rover that I wanted to shave my fur off! And I have been to the Badlands in summer, so I know what I’m talking about!”

“Well, he did need heat,” Starlight pointed out reasonably.

“Nopony needs that much heat!” Cherry insisted. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with the shower. A nice cooooold shower.” Ignoring the raised eyebrow this brought from Spitfire, the pink pilot pony stomped across the Hab to the decon shower… until she got to the potato plants, at which point she stepped as lightly as possible.

After that short trip with the alien, staying at base and tending plants definitely looked like the better option to her.

Author's Note

Buffer is back up to five, thanks to two short chapters written just now. Fifteen minutes until showtime (dementiaradio.org, 9-11 Central Wed nights), so I have to make this quick. Sorry about typos in the text, feel free to correct.

In the story, Watney didn't get the RTG before because it's a last resort. The dangers of the RTG, and radiation in general, have been hammered into his head during training and in college before that. For practical purposes, he didn't fetch it before because I was reserving it for this. If the RTG had been a fundamental part of making the cave habitable, then magic solutions used in the cave would have had to be used on the rover. I didn't want to do that.

Annie probably should know about the RTG, since she's been media lead for a while now, and there have been two prior Ares landings. But I'm assuming she remembers only what she needs to for the day's spin.

Sol 63

MISSION LOG – SOL 63

Today we write to you from the rover. We’re halfway through Sirius 3 and things are going well.

I say “we” because, once again, I’m not alone. This time my traveling companion is Starlight. This time there aren’t any clouds of smoke, and there isn’t any gasping for breath in the sudden unexpected heat wave produced by the RTG. The patch of insulation I reassembled is doing its job of keeping just enough heat in the rover to keep things comfy despite it being nighttime on Mars outside. If it gets too hot, I can yank it out again.

We set out just before dawn and drove past the little crater northwest of the Hab and then made large laps of the complex, staying out of the gullies for the most part. The first battery lasted just under two hours. After a quick EVA to switch the cables, we drove until the second battery was down to 10% charge. Result: 82 kilometers in 3 hours and 31 minutes.

Of course, this was the absolute best case scenario. I’ll have to climb down and up through gullies in Acidalia Planitia, and then there’ll be more rugged territory closer to my destination. I can’t even guess how much that’ll eat into my efficiency. And, of course, climbing up onto crater-ridden Arabia Terra on the trip to Ares IV will be much worse.

I was able to stretch the battery a little by turning off the oxygen pump. Starlight’s open suit provides enough oxygen for the both of us and seems to do all right at whisking away carbon dioxide. I keep the circulator fans on to keep the air mixed, because Starlight’s suit system doesn’t have much circulation pressure. It wasn’t built to be the life support for a van-sized pressure vessel. The rover fans prevent the bad air from collecting somewhere and maybe choking us in our sleep.

After the drive I set up the solar cells. Starlight was given permission to use magic again a couple of days ago, but she left the magic batteries in the Hab for this test. Besides, though I’ve seen the ponies do amazing things with hooves in space suits, I don’t want to stake my life on how they handle the solar panels. They’re pretty awkward to handle, and I’m better built to do it.

Then we sat through the long Martian day, with one quick EVA to swap the power cable again. Mostly we stayed quiet. Starlight said nothing at all while I was driving. After we stopped for the day she tried to strike up conversations, but it’s clear she doesn’t trust her English for all the questions she has. We tried talking about who we have back home (her friends, my parents and my fellow crew), but that ran out pretty quickly. We tried describing our worlds, and that ran aground on vocabulary issues pretty fast. Finally she asked me to read aloud from the Agatha Christie book I’m currently on, and I did that for half an hour until my throat got hoarse. (Or was it hoarse got my throat? Rimshot!)

Anyway, the batteries were both fully charged almost exactly at sundown. If I were relying on solar panels alone it might have been iffy, but remember that the RTG is a generator, too. I brought it for the heat, but it also produces one hundred watts all the time whether it’s plugged into anything or not. So why not plug it in?

It’s clear the RTG worries Starlight. Apparently ponies have never felt the need to explore nuclear energy at all. Considering their methods as applied to other technologies as I’ve observed them so far, their world ought to be grateful. But she does understand radioactivity to an extent, to the point that she’s twice tried to find a place for the shitbox farther away from the hotbox. The problem is, there’s very little room to spare in the rover, and I’ve already put the honey bucket as far as I can from the RTG. But it’s still too close for Starlight.

She reacted to it better than Dragonfly, though. Dragonfly took one look at it and bolted back into the Hab. Starlight tells me the bug let out quite a hiss.

With reflexes like that, I think Dragonfly might have a bright future as a NASA safety engineer. It’s a shame that her actual insanely risky thoughts override those reflexes so often.

In a minute I’ll shut this down and declare bedtime. The computer and interior lights don’t burn much electricity, but they do burn some. Even though tomorrow’s drive will be less than a kilometer, I want to start the habit of conserving power for driving.

Tomorrow, once we get back to the Hab, I need to do final prep work for the trip. I need to load food for myself and for Starlight (who I assume will make the trip with me, along with her life support saving suit), water for me, and my tools. But I won’t get to leave the next day, because it’s time to dig up the seed potatoes, replant the plants they grew from, and use the spuds to start the food crops in both the Hab and the cave.

ETD for Sirius 4, to Ares Valles, Carl Sagan Memorial Station, and back, is one hour before dawn three sols from now- Sol 66.

By my math, I’ll get back from the trip almost on the day the pony food packs run out.

God, I hope this trip is worth it.

Author's Note

Time to finish loading the van, then up to Dallas for Texas Furry Fiesta. Much work today, which is why I did my writing this morning.

I have no idea how much time, if any, I'll have for writing this weekend. But I'm going into the weekend with a five day buffer, so there's that.

I think the chapter explains itself.

Sol 64

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 62
ARES III SOL 64

“I’m jealous,” Dragonfly said. “You’re going to spend twenty days all alone with Mark.”

She and Starlight were carrying saddlebags full of Mark’s food packs out to the rover. Mark had picked them out himself, saying that the few remaining pony food packs should remain behind for those who would tend the crops. Mark had his hands full with a large plastic bin full of water.

“You could take my place,” Starlight said. “I think we all know now you know his language better than any of us.”

“Bad idea,” Dragonfly said. “I have to stay with the best source of love, remember? And as nutritious as Mark’s turned out to be, he’s only one person.” She hissed softly and added, “And besides, there’s the Death Box.”

“Are you going to go on about that again?” Starlight grumbled, waiting for Mark to open the rover airlock. “First you were talking about how this planet hates us.”

“It does!”

“Right. And now you’re calling the Artie Gee the Death Box.”

“Starlight, I’ve flirted with the Pale Horse more times than I can count,” Dragonfly said. “It’s fun. But when I look at that box I can see the Pale Horse staring back at me, and she’s saying, I’m not fooling around this time.” Inside her spacesuit, the changeling shuddered. “It’s not that the box wants me dead. Or everyone dead. Or even everything dead. It doesn’t care. It just is death- death in a really thin wrapper.”

“Looked around lately?” Starlight barked back. “We’ve spent the past two months keeping death out by a series of really thin wrappers.”

Dragonfly shook her head. “I still don’t- hey, Mark, let me help!”

“He doesn’t have his crystal on,” Starlight said. “He can’t hear us.”

“But that water’s heavy!” Dragonfly insisted. “I can get it- here, Mark, I have it-“ The changeling tried to shove her way under the tub that Mark was struggling to balance on a spacesuit-padded knee while keying the rover airlock open with his free hand. The shove unbalanced the tub of water, and he fumbled with both hands to keep it from dropping and possibly losing its airtight lid.

“Oops!” Dragonfly reared up, helped steady Mark, and then sat on the rover step, looking obviously contrite. Mark, after a few moments of recovery, set the tub down carefully and then patted Dragonfly’s helmet before motioning her back out of the way.

“What’s wrong with you?” It was Starlight’s turn to shake her head. “What made you think that was helpful in any way?”

“Hey, I’ve got a strong back,” Dragonfly insisted. “I’m not the bossmare, but I’m strong enough! Maybe if I give him another hint-“

“Right, that’s it. I know you’re not that stupid. Can we have a talk?” Starlight pointed back to the Hab. “Inside the airlock?”

Uh-oh. Dragonfly didn’t like that tone. “Why not out here?”

“Because I don’t want Mark to watch us having another fight,” Starlight growled. “Especially since he’s picked up a lot of words in Equestrian, even if he can’t pronounce them.”

“But you said he can’t hear us inside his suit,” Dragonfly insisted.

“Now, bug.” The ice in Starlight’s voice made the ambient temperature (a clear late-winter day of twenty-five below) tropical by comparison.

“Yes, ma’am,” Dragonfly said. She double-checked the settings on her suit to make sure the two of them were still on the private channel instead of the crew-wide channel. Yep. Private conversation. She tapped Mark on the knee, used a hoof to indicate that she and Starlight were going back, and waited for Mark’s wave of understanding before following the unicorn into the airlock.

Starlight didn’t bother beginning the repressurization cycle. The instant the outer door was shut she rounded on Dragonfly, snarling. “All right, you. I spent my formative years learning how to wheedle, ingratiate, manipulate, and intimidate ponies into doing what I wanted. I’m trying to be a better mare, but I remember all the little tricks, and you’ve been using them non-stop ever since we got here.”

“I’ve always thought you’d make an excellent hive-queen,” Dragonfly said.

“See? That!” Starlight pointed an accusing hoof at Dragonfly. “That right there! Gratuitous compliments! Kissing up! Offering to help at every possible opportunity! Acting like an adorable moron! Every chance you get, going off alone with one of us and chatting us up! You even do it with Mark, although in his case you mostly act like a puppy who wants attention!” The unicorn’s eyes narrowed. “What’s your game?”

Dragonfly sighed. “If I tell you, it won’t work anymore,” she said. “And it’s really important that it work.”

“Is it the love thing?” Starlight asked. “We all take turns hugging you twice a day! Three times sometimes! I put all my care and concern into that hug! Isn’t it enough?”

So. No, this wasn’t going to go away, was it? Why did ponies have to be so difficult? “You left home at a young age, didn’t you?” the changeling asked. “And you set up your own village, starting it by yourself, recruiting ponies one by one. You thought it was hard work, right?”

“Of course it was hard work!” Starlight insisted. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Did you ever go days at a time without eating?” Dragonfly asked. “Weeks?”

“Er… no?” Starlight said, confused. “I worked hard so I’d always have something, even if it wasn’t very good.”

“I have,” Dragonfly said, all her ingratiation put away in a box, leaving only pure warrior drone. “Every changeling has. Depending on infiltrators to steal love and bring it back across hundreds of miles to the Hive without getting caught or sidetracked. Living so poor that the only clues we had that there was such a thing as not being poor were the little gadgets, knick-knacks and other things infiltrators would bring back with them. Imagine working hard, day in and day out, and having nothing at the end of the day for it. If you can. I don’t have to imagine, because I lived it!”

“So this is about the love thing,” Starlight said.

“No,” Dragonfly said. “This is about the hate thing. This is about the anger thing. Yes, I’m hungry. All changelings are at least a little hungry all the time. But the hugs you give me would be enough if you weren’t all getting on each other’s nerves all the time and making me burn love to keep from getting sick from your bad feelings!”

Starlight blinked. “Why didn’t you-“

“Fireball doesn’t like us because we’re not dragons,” he said. “He respects Cherry Berry because, well, she’s Cherry Berry. And he respects me because I saved his life. But he doesn’t like any of us, and he resents having to work with us. And he hates himself most of all, because he thinks he doesn’t belong here.”

“Well,” Starlight said, “that’s just-“

“Spitfire rides you about your health because that’s practically her only duty,” Dragonfly said. “She feels useless all the time because she’s trained to be a flyer and a commander, and here her only role is medic- for which she’s had all of six weeks’ training total.”

“How do you-“

“Cherry Berry thinks she’s a fraud,” the changeling pressed on. “She wants a princess to come along and take the responsibility off her shoulders because she doesn’t think she can handle it. That’s why she defers to you so much of the time- you sound like you know better than she does.”

“But… well… I-“

“And you,” Dragonfly said, a little maliciously, “spend all of your time so focused on the problem of the moment or your personal issues that you don’t notice or care what any of the others are feeling or saying. Except me, because you’re worried I’ll go feral and start sucking everyone dry.”

“That is not true!” Starlight stomped a hoof, the otherwise silent motion sending vibrations up Dragonfly’s hooves.

Dragonfly took a deep breath, swallowing a lot more malicious things she wanted to say. No one knew better how to destroy a pony than a changeling, but she didn’t want to destroy this pony right now. “Maybe it’s not,” she admitted quietly. “But going by the emotions I get off you all, it’s not far from it. Cherry in particular is a nervous wreck, and I’ve worked with her for years. I know her pretty well.”

“But Cherry’s the steely eyed missile mare!” Starlight insisted.

“Is she in a rocket right now?” Dragonfly asked.

“Technically-“

“You know what I mean.”

“Well… she isn’t, no,” Starlight admitted.

“Does it look like she’ll get to fly another rocket any time soon?” Dragonfly pressed.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“That’s just it. She has confidence in herself where flying is concerned. Give her a flying problem and you can follow her to Tartarus and back. But in every other respect,” Dragonfly paused for emphasis, “she is an absolutely ordinary pony. She’s not a seventh Element of Harmony.”

Starlight made an odd noise, then shut her mouth firmly. Dragonfly nodded. Good, the pony knows when it’s not time to be pedantic.

“So she needs help holding this crew together,” Dragonfly continued. “We only trained as a unit for, what? Three weeks? Not important, because it was only going to be a five-day flight, right? Just go out to Bucephalous, orbit, take photos of future landing sites, and come back. And all of us were either senior pilots, design geniuses, or experienced leaders. We could do the job for five days.

“Well, it didn’t work out that way. Cherry Berry doesn’t know how to keep us going. Fireball doesn’t care. Spitfire doesn’t want to step out of line. And you’re too wrapped up in numbers and magic to notice.” The changeling shook her head and sighed. “So who’s left?”

“I’m guessing you?” Starlight said.

“Right. I’m doing it for my own benefit, sure- I get more food and less poison this way- but I’m also holding the crew together. I’m the silly crazy bug. I’m the cute adorable alien pet. I’m Miss Helpful, Miss Eager, Miss Comic Relief. And all the time I’m not just making you all like me more, I’m making each of you feel a little better about yourselves and each other.”

Dragonfly dropped her spacesuit-covered rump onto the cold deck and finished, “But that only works so long as the target isn’t aware I’m doing it. Once the victim gets suspicious, it’s over.” She pawed the deck with a forehoof and added, “All of that is Infiltrator 101, by the way. This is how changelings survive- by each of us doing our part for the team.”

Starlight, considerably deflated, stepped back, bumping into the inner airlock door. “I, um, I’m sorry,” she said. “But, well…”

“But changeling, yes, I got that,” Dragonfly snorted. “For the record, I’ve never actually lied to any of you.”

Starlight Glimmer hung her head as much as her suit would allow. “Is it really that bad?” she asked.

“Bad enough,” Dragonfly said. “By the way, you being away is about a wash on the negative emotions thing. You won’t be annoying Spitfire or vice versa, but without you she’s going to feel even more useless than before. I don’t want to think about how bad it would be if Mark wasn’t here to distract us.”

“And in a day or two he won’t be here,” Starlight muttered.

Dragonfly nodded. “Hopefully he’ll leave his television library with us. I think I can keep up the English lessons, and that’ll keep us working together on something besides farming.”

Starlight nodded inside her helmet. “I’ll ask Mark about that…” She froze. “I just had an idea. You know how Cherry wanted to try to build a new ship from the parts here?”

Dragonfly flinched. Now who was acting dumber than they were? “That’s impossible!” she insisted. “Mark’s MDV is smashed half to pieces, and the only thing the MAV base has on it is the fuel plant we’re using for extra carbon dioxide! And neither of them are compatible with what’s left of Amicitas in any way! It took over a week for us to talk Cherry Berry down from that idea!”

“You know it’s impossible and I know it’s impossible,” Starlight said. “But it’s worth suggesting as a busy-making activity. So long as ponies have a job in front of them, they tend not to ask questions. Keep them busy, and they won’t make trouble.”

“I’ll think about it,” Dragonfly admitted.

“In the meantime,” Starlight said, “apology hug.”

Dragonfly was grateful for a snack remarkably free of suspicion for a change, even if there was a decided soggy-raisin-cereal taste to it.

Author's Note

And, because I screwed up and posted what would have been tomorrow's chapter, you get two today.

The core of this was written weeks ago, but I held it back to develop Dragonfly's scheming and Starlight's watching a bit before pulling this on you readers.

Still very busy, but now have need to write tonight if at all possible, since buffer is now at 3.

Sol 65

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 63
ARES III SOL 65

Cherry Berry smirked as Mark spent half the time in the cave staring at and examining the alfalfa shoots that rose from the cultivated soil like shaggy fur. She wasn’t a farmer by talent, but apparently she’d done well enough to make a plant scientist like Mark speechless.

She liked being in the cave. It was still chilly, but no more so than an early spring or late fall morning. The crystals lit up the inside of the cave as bright as the barren world outside, if not more so, thanks to Starlight’s ingenious enchantment. And with the alfalfa sprouting, Cherry felt a little more… alive… than she did in the Hab. And definitely more so than when she poked around Amicitas.

Poor Amicitas. Most of the pretty outer hull had been ripped away in the salvage operation. The hole in the engine bay had stopped growing, but mainly because the weight of the cargo air lock had lightened the load on the airframe there. Two of the three main engines were permanently out of commission. And yet… and yet…

Cherry Berry still spent a fair bit of time sitting on the commander’s crash couch, bent as it was from the crash, thinking and wishing. If only there were some way…

“If bad thing happens to Hab,” Mark was saying, “don’t try to fix it. Come here. Bring food. I can fix Hab when I come back.”

“Yes,” Cherry said, followed by a relatively new phrase, “I understand.”

“Dragonfly asked that I leave the TV… television… with her,” Mark continued. “I’ll set up a computer for that. Keep up on language lessons!”

“Electric Company. Ah, ah, ah, hand, an, apple,” Cherry chanted.

“Right,” Mark said, chuckling. “What else… right, keep Dragonfly away from don’t-touch places. Trim back potato plants so they don’t overlap.” He made a gesture with his hands. “Don’t handle potato plants with mouth. Poison.”

“I know potato plants,” Cherry Berry insisted. “We have potatoes home.”

“Make sure the tents get water. And… er…” Mark threw his hands in the air. “I guess that’s it.”

“Okay, I understand,” Cherry nodded.

“I won’t be back before twenty sols,” Mark said. “Should be back by twenty-four sols.”

“I understand.” Cherry tapped the neck of her space suit; her helmet was set neatly beside the others near the airlock. “I talk Starlight any time. Be good to her.”

“I will.” Mark raised an eyebrow. “What’s the range… um… how far can you talk on your suits?”

Cherry shrugged. “Suits only, three kilometers. But can use ship. With ship, anywhere… well… anywhere back home,” she said. “Here, not know. Never been… er… here everyone same place usually.”

“Never been apart,” Mark said, holding his hands parallel to each other and moving them away from each other.

“A part of… oh, I understand. Apart.” Cherry nodded her comprehension. “We use ship all sundown.”

“Every sundown.”

“Every sundown,” Cherry repeated. “Short message, save power.”

“Good. I understand.” Mark knelt down and ran a hand across a couple of short stalks of alfalfa. “On Earth this would be right,” he said. “If warmer and brighter. How you do it?”

Cherry couldn’t help giggling. “Magic!”

Mark mumbled some nonsense that sounded like, “Tasket sealeak western, gitta seal lianser.”

“Sorry?” Cherry asked.

“Nothing,” Mark replied.

“You’re out of your mind,” Fireball said.

“No, hear me out,” Dragonfly said. “It’s only until Mark gets back. Then we’ll have the radio from that old probe, and it won’t be important anymore.”

“I’m not going to lie to her,” Spitfire insisted. “And she’s our commander, not some cadet I can assign busy-work to.”

“Look, it’s not lying,” Dragonfly said. “It won’t hurt us to at least go through Mark’s lander and the fuel plant and see what can be salvaged. We already know his lander controls were wrecked when the storm sent it tumbling, but we could salvage the rockets, right? Buck, we could salvage the bolts and rivets!”

“Anything we tried to build, if it got off the ground, would shake itself to pieces before we made orbit,” Fireball insisted flatly. “And if you haven’t noticed, none of us are minotaurs or alicorn princesses.”

“Though Mark does look a bit like a skinny albino minotaur,” Spitfire reflected.

“Guys,” Dragonfly said, “would it hurt you any to try? It’d cheer Cherry up. And besides, what else are we doing with our time? Two hours of watering plants each day, alternating between Hab and cave? This gives us something to do. We need something to do, especially Cherry. I thought Starlight was nuts when she suggested it, but the more I think about it the more I think she’s right. We can at least try it.”

The dragon and the pegasus took a long look at Dragonfly, then a long look at Cherry Berry, who stood at the other end of the cave field talking to Mark.

“All right,” Fireball said at last. “We can begin by double-checking the seats in the lander. Ours are in bad shape, and Mark needs one shaped for him anyway.”

“What kind of fuel does the lander use?” Spitfire asked. “Is there any left?”

“You should probably be the one to ask,” Dragonfly said. “I… er… I may have played the ‘cute but crazy alien’ card one too many times with him.”

Fireball and Spitfire looked at each other, then at Dragonfly. “I know exactly how to break this to you, bug,” the dragon said.

“Cute is a matter of opinion,” Spitfire finished. “But crazy is a cold hard fact.”

“Written in stone by Faust Herself,” Fireball agreed.

Dragonfly’s ear-fins drooped. “Really feeling the love, guys,” she mumbled.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, who is this, over?

AMICITAS: SG – Upgraded telepresence array ready for repeat of Comms Alpha. ….. Over.

ESA: Confirm Comms Alpha test? Signal not clear, over.

AMICITAS: Affirm Comms Alpha. Still learning code. Over.

ESA: Stand by. Recommend postponing test until tomorrow, over.

AMICITAS: SG – will not be here tomorrow, over.

ESA: Good. Test postponed for twenty hours mission time, over.

AMICITAS: SG – negative. SG will NOT BE HERE. Over.

ESA: QC – your hoof is terrible. Also, Princess Smart isn’t here today. Friendship or princess things. Over.

AMICITAS: SG – Tell her am going with alien on trip to salvage radio. Estimated duration 23 to 24 mission days, over.

ESA: QC – Please confirm trip with alien, confirm number of passengers, method of travel, over.

AMICITAS: SG – Confirm trip, alien plus SG, alien autocart, over.

ESA: QC – No DF? Over.

AMICITAS: SG – DF remaining at base, reason low love reserves. Urgent perform Comms Alpha today while SG is here to boost power, over.

ESA: QC: Stand by, over.

AMICITAS: SG – Standing by, over.

AMICITAS: SG – Standing by, over.

AMICITAS: SG – Standing by, over.

ESA: QC – Moondancer is here and will operate test on this end. Stand by, over.

AMICITAS: SG – Standing by, over.

ESA: MD – Begin Comms Alpha when ready, over.

AMICITAS: Comms Alpha in progress. No connection. Boosting signal using backup battery, over.

ESA: Confirm no signal. No result on boost, over.

AMICITAS: Boost discontinued, over.

ESA: Discontinue Comms Alpha. Our best assessment further attempts Comms Alpha futile. Dimensional interface either absorbs or blocks connection of telepresence. Over.

AMICITAS: Understood.

ESA: QC – Tell DF scheme harder, over.

AMICITAS: Repeat, please? Over.

ESA: QC says DF needs to scheme harder, over.

AMICITAS: SG – DF is already scheming as hard as she can, over.

ESA: QC – That’s not hard enough. Out.

AMICITAS: SG – back in 24 days, out.

Author's Note

Preparing for departures.

No time for a proper note- barely time for editing, and don't know if I'll have time tonight for writing.

Sol 70

Crates and consoles wrapped in plastic littered the small warehouse on the grounds of Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California. Interspersed among them stood seventeen JPL engineers: software specialists, hardware engineers, testing specialists, and four octogenarians who had been called back from retirement to contribute their expertise as the last surviving members of the original Pathfinder team.

And in the center of it all stood Bruce Ng, standing next to a freshly uncrated, just retrieved from the Smithsonian, duplicate Pathfinder. This had been the fully operational duplicate used to test fixes for problems that came up during the surface mission. Until now it had been a museum piece, part of the grand exhibit celebrating Project Ares and the history of Mars exploration. Now it, like the old men, had been called out of retirement.

“Okay, here’s what we know,” Bruce said, barking out facts machine-gun style. “Mark Watney is driving south-southwest of the Hab. He’s on more or less a direct route to Pathfinder. There’s only one possible reason for him to go there- to salvage the radio. And we have until the day he gets back to the Hab to figure out how to receive whatever message he sends us and send one back he can understand.”

Bruce pointed to Pathfinder. “We’re going to have to assume that Pathfinder isn’t significantly damaged by forty years on the Martian surface and that it’ll reactivate with no problems once it has power again,” he said. “If Pathfinder can’t boot up or produce a signal, we can’t do anything to help, so we aren’t going to test those scenarios. But everything else is fair game.

“In the next two weeks you’re going to put together whatever you need to get this machine working and talking again. Then we’re going to learn the operating system and how to tweak it. We’re going to simulate malfunctions with the memory, with the imagers, with the high-gain antenna tracking system, and Sojourner. We’re going to brainstorm and test ways to produce actions on Pathfinder that Watney might be able to interpret as communication. And we’re going to do it knowing that two-thirds of the original technology we used forty years ago was thrown out as obsolete while most of us were still in grade school.

“All right, everyone,” Bruce sighed, “think of this as the biggest retro-gaming project of your lives. If you can build a MAME arcade cabinet, we can do this. Let’s get started.”

Crates were opened.

Plastic was tossed away.

Things were plugged into wall sockets.

One of the old Pathfinder hands paused when his cel phone rang. He shrugged at Bruce, who gave him an exasperated look little different from his usual look, and took the call. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said. “Grampa’s a bit busy right now.”

The phone’s speaker buzzed in the old man’s ear.

“No, I’m going to have to miss your party,” he said regretfully. “NASA called me in to help them work on something that’ll help that poor man on Mars.”

Excited buzzing.

“Yes, and his cute friends too.”

More excited buzzing.

“Well, I don’t know about that, darling. We don’t even know if Orange Leader speaks our language.”

Buzz, buzz.

“I’m not surprised. Tall Boy is the biggest, and Jimmy always had a love of anything big.”

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

“Honey, there are a lot of people here with me who are going to do their absolute best for all of them. But they’re kind of waiting on me, so-“

Buzz, buzz!

“Well, I haven’t really thought about it,” he said. “I figured I’d wait until we could talk with the astronaut and maybe get better pictures.”

Buzz, buzz.

“Don’t listen to him. For all we know they could be puppy dog aliens. Or kitty aliens too. What does he think they are?”

Buzz.

“Well, it’s possible. Why does he say that?”

Derisive buzz.

“Kitties are not girly. And ponies are not manly. You can like whatever you like, and don’t let Jimmy tell you any different. Now you tell him to behave, and once my job is done here we’ll all go up to the mountains before the ski season ends.”

Buzz buzz!

“Love you too. Bye-bye.”

He put the phone away. “Sorry,” he said.

“Can we get on now?” one of the other engineers said tonelessly.

“Not helpful, Tim,” said Bruce. “Roger, we all understand, but please turn off the phone for now?”

The work of reviving Project Pathfinder resumed.

Author's Note

One buffer chapter left. Going to be busy selling, packing, driving, and sleeping the rest of today.

And here's a taste of the Earth speculation, before the speculation (hopefully) gets ended by facts.

Sol 71

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 71
ARES III SOL 73

“SUIT UP!”

Spitfire spared only a second to watch the dragon, the changeling, and the pony jump from their bunks, abandoning Dukes of Hazzard (and why did they bring in these other cousins, Coy and Vance, who looked almost exactly like Bo and Luke? Made no sense) in a mad scramble for the suit storage locker. Then she was off too, leaping for the locker, opening it, and pulling out her suit and helmet.

No undergarment in an emergency. Suit on. Check seals. Helmet on. Activate life support.

“Suit clear!” Dragonfly.

“Suit clear!” Cherry Berry.

“Suit clear!” Fireball.

“Suit clear!” Herself. She checked the time. One minute eight seconds. Improvement. And the confusion and chaos that had accompanied their earliest suit drills was gone, replaced by quiet efficiency.

Not efficient enough, though. She was certain they could get it in under a minute.

“End drill,” she said. “Good job, everypony.”

“Third time today,” Fireball grumbled, but he left it at that.

“Thank you, Spitfire,” Cherry Berry said, sounding a little winded.

“Need help there, Cherry?” Dragonfly asked.

“I’ll be all right,” Cherry said. “Just having a Ponyville moment.”

Cherry had never explained the phrase, but Dragonfly had figured it out and told Spitfire about it. A “Ponyville moment” in Cherry Berry’s vernacular meant a panic attack that would pass in a few seconds. Ponyville had always had more than its share of minor (and occasionally major) disasters and emergencies, thanks to being on the edge of the Everfree Forest. The citizens’ default procedure in such events was (a) panic, (b) look for somepony else to save them, (c) panic a little more because they were so good at it, (d) start cleaning up the mess because it was already over.

Spitfire wasn’t worried about the commander, though. Cherry Berry had been cool and methodical- and fast- during the drill. The reaction didn’t set in until after, just like after an unusually hairy Wonderbolts flight. And in any case, Dragonfly could handle her.

All in all, Spitfire liked how things had been going. She ran daily (or twice-daily) suit drills, plus evacuation drills to Airlock Three (the closest one to Amicitas) in case of a sudden breach. The plants in the Hab seemed to be prospering, and the alfalfa in the cave was outright thriving. She’d kept Dragonfly under observation, noticing with pleasure that the changeling’s holes were- very slowly- shrinking. Fireball’s flame had come back, though he only used it for very brief bursts. And Cherry Berry…

… well, the commander definitely had a spring in her step after reviewing the options presented by Mark’s few remaining ship parts.

For one thing, four of the six seats in his lander were still intact, after dust and rocks had been cleared out of the breached capsule. They were the wrong shape for ponies, but the shock absorbing systems underneath them could be adapted to repair the flight couches on Amicitas.

For another, although the engine bells on the ground stage of the MAV were considerably smaller than the main engine bells on Amicitas, they were compatible. Dragonfly and Fireball had already removed the lower two Amicitas main engines in their entirety for examination. Full diagnostics would have to wait for Starlight Glimmer’s return, but at a first look it appeared the crash damage had been limited to the bells.

Better yet, the MDV apparently had a bit of fuel remaining- not much, but some. Once Starlight sent messages back reporting the exact nature of the fuel- hydrazine with some sort of metal that allowed it to be used as monopropellant- Dragonfly had been the very first to put the fuel system off limits. Cherry Berry had agreed instantly. Still, any upward thrust potential was welcome.

And finally, removing most of Amicitas’s outer skin had freed up dozens of potential mounting points to connect Mark’s landers to. Hooking the spaceship parts together wouldn’t be completely impossible. Cherry Berry had taken great pleasure from that bit of news.

Spitfire had been sure to keep her grounded, though. The ship’s outer ribs had fractured in two places, along with the pressure vessel of the engineering deck. That would have to be cut away, which also meant losing the entire tail of the ship, including the rear landing gear and the engine housing itself. Starlight hadn’t even begun making replacement magic batteries or a new Sparkle Drive. Neither the Amicitas nor the half-wrecked lander had been designed to control a hodge-podge of unrelated ship bits.

And finally- assuming they somehow got off the surface in whatever they built- once up, the ship could never, ever land again. Without Amicitas’s outer hull, the ship would be less aerodynamic than a brick. It would have little to no resistance to re-entry heat. She’d made it very clear to Cherry that taking off was a one-way affair; if launched, it was success or bust, no turning back.

Cherry Berry had accepted that verdict with perfect equanimity. She knew it was a horrible risk and almost certain to fail, she said, but she wanted the option to be there.

So the days fell into a new routine: mornings spent on EVA, with two ponies at the cave farm every other day. Afternoons were spent either planning possible salvage of this or that bit of spacecraft or else working on the Hab’s farm. Evenings were for English lessons and silly human television. (They were rerunning Partridge Family with Mark gone. They’d tried a couple of the other shows on his computer and learned quickly that their English wasn’t strong enough yet to understand why the invisible people found everything so funny.)

She and Cherry had reduced meals to two-thirds rations in order to stretch out their ship’s supplies a little longer before falling back on Mark's supply. Half a meal for breakfast, a full meal at lunch, and leftovers for supper. Cherry had set back two of her own meal packs for last- her two remaining cherrychanga meals, prepared by Pinkie Pie herself. On one she’d scrawled LAST in English in marker, and on the other MARK THANK YOU FOR THE CLOBBER. (Spitfire was pretty sure the word wasn’t “clobber”, but it wasn’t her place to correct the commander about an unimportant thing.)

Spitfire spent every day busy, as did the others. She had purpose and drive again, as did her commander and crewmates. Yes, everything was going just fine.

Except…

… something felt wrong.

She didn’t know exactly what, but for three nights her sleep had been restless. Whenever she worked on the Hab farm she sensed, in a vague and useless way, that something had changed. When she tried to follow up the sense, though, she ended up with nothing except worry.

That worried Spitfire, especially since she’d never been a pony to worry herself out of a good mood before. She’d been the most confident pony on Equus before becoming an astromare.

Whatever. She still felt good. So good, in fact, that she was going to give Dragonfly a bonus late-night snack-hug. After all, the bug had been the one to push the ship work, even if she refused to take credit for the idea.

And who knew? Impossible might not be.

But for now, suit off and back to the television. She had five bits (to be paid upon return home) riding on who wrecked their police cruiser first this episode, Roscoe or Cletus.

Author's Note

Buffer is at two, although tomorrow's chapter is very, very, VERY short. Not because I had little time or energy for writing (which is true), but because the theme I decided on for the chapter restrained the length of the work.

Anyway, I think this one explains itself. Cherry and Dragonfly have both worked with hydrazine and are quite happy to leave it in the tank now that they know what's inside those tanks.

Sol 74

MISSION LOG – SOL 74

Hello humans who read this! I am Starlight… sorry, I can’t find a good English word for mine last name. Mark lets me write this using the dictionary in his computer.

There is a page with pictures of animals on it. The animal closest to what I am is “horse.” But it’s not quite right. Your horse has a strange face and a really small brain. Too I have a horn and your horse does not.

Mark does not want to write today. He went EVA to walk for a while. He is angry. So am I. We hate this rover. The rover stinks from our bathroom. We have to save it for the farm, but it’s really bad. We can’t move because the rover is too full. We can only get space if we wear our suits and go outside, but that is a lot of trouble. We can’t get more than six hooves away from each other. Mine legs hurt from not moving so long.

Mark thinks we get to Pathfinder in two or three more sols. The ground is different here. Where Mark lives is flat. Here there are hills and valleys and a lot more rocks. Mark can’t drive as fast as he wants. The rover moves when we drive over small rocks. Today we had to back up and go around a field of rocks too big to drive over. We drove seventy-two

“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas.”

kilometers today.

“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas, do you read?”

“Reading you clearly, Amicitas. I’m kind of busy now, over.”

“Just the daily status check, Starlight. How are you doing?”

“About eight words per minute.”

“Sorry, Starlight, I didn’t copy that.”

“I said we’re fine, Cherry. And I know you’re fine, because you would have called sooner if something happened.”

“Oh… well… okay, then. Until tomorrow, Amicitas out.”

Writing this took me half an hour. I am learning to type but I am slow. I need practice. I need to tell humans how our magic works and how our technology works. We need humans to help mine people find us and come get us. For humans to help us we must help humans.

Too this helps me learn more English. It is strange how English and our language are different words but in the same order. Our numbers are near the same. There are other things I can’t talk about now. Maybe

Mark is back in the rover. He wants me to stop now. I hope I talk with you again.

Author's Note

Total immersion is advancing Starlight's language skills. But not her typing skills. This chapter is short because Starlight is still learning to type. (I sympathize; I learned to type hunting and pecking on a Commodore computer back in the day, and even today my 50-60 WPM at full tilt is more two-fingered than ten-fingered.)

Busy day- Sunday night a raccoon tried to cross the highway in front of me, and the little critter did a lot of damage to my front bumper. How I don't know, except that Dodge uses some really crappy plastic in its body panels. I spent this afternoon getting quotes and making the decision whether or not to file insurance and lay out the $500 deductible. (Probably yes.)

One 1000-word chapter written today, so buffer remains at two. We'll see how much I can get written tomorrow.

Sol 77

MISSION LOG – SOL 77

We found it!

It took a bit longer than I wanted, because our navigation system isn’t perfect and there are a lot of small craters and rocks here in Ares Valles. It’s like we’re driving across the face of an immense acne-ridden teenager.

But we found Twin Peaks this morning and drove towards the hills until we saw the lander. Or, at least, the bits of the lander still above the surface.

Forty years ago when Pathfinder landed, it landed on a mostly flat plain surrounded by small hills and craters. Since then, somehow, it’s picked up and held enough wind-blown dust to create its own sand dune. Only the masts were above the dust level when we arrived, and if the sun hadn’t hit one of those bits at just the right time we might have driven past, or even over, the old space probe. And wouldn't that have been the perfect ending to this trip?

Once we were sure what it was, we parked the rover, got out, and set up the solar cells for charging. Sure, we’d only done about twenty kilometers today, but we’d arrived, so why not get the charge back? Once that was done, Starlight and I began carefully moving the Martian dust off of Pathfinder .

Once we’d got down more or less to the tetrahedron panels, I took a moment to find Sojourner. It was almost right next to the lander, as it turned out. It probably used up its battery life in some sort of contingency mode, continually pinging Pathfinder and wondering why the mama ship wouldn’t answer anymore.

I threw Sojourner in the airlock- it’s less than half the height of a pony and a bit less long than one, so it fits easily. Pathfinder is much larger, and getting it home required some careful consideration.

Starlight brought out her magic battery, which she’s barely touched this whole trip. I knew she was going to try to lift the thing, but I had no clue about the actual mechanics of unicorn telekinesis. I didn’t want to risk her hauling the thing up by the antenna or the imager mast and breaking the most vital bits of the lander off. So I stopped her long enough to explain what we were up against.

Pathfinder and Sojourner together were almost six hundred kilograms of mass at launch. That’s not counting the parachute, heat shield, the landing platform with its retrorockets or winch, or any of the other stuff that got it to the surface. Of all of that, the only things still attached were the balloons that inflated long enough for the lander to bounce and tumble to a stop on the surface. Those balloons stayed attached because there was nothing to cut them off.

Once the lander stopped rolling, it unfolded three triangular petals, all covered with solar cells. That done, it unrolled a little ramp and released Sojourner. And that, aside from its high-gain antenna and stereoscopic imager, was the last time Pathfinder moved… until today.

In an ideal world I’d have carried Pathfinder intact back to the Hab, There are a few devices on the side panels, but they’re totally unimportant to me except for the solar panels. If I could have brought those home, it’s just possible I could use them to at least partially power my new radio.

The problem is, I had a choice: keep the old solar panels, or keep the new ones. There just wasn’t room on top of the rover for both my fourteen Hab panels and a fully intact Pathfinder . And I couldn’t fold Pathfinder up again because its central masts are fully extended, and without power I can’t retract them. If I could close the panels, I’d be risking damage to those masts.

It didn’t take me long to decide that the side panels had to go. So, one careful application of a highly technical mechanical engineering tool (prybar) later, the central panel of Pathfinder had been sundered from the rest. Only then, and only after Starlight assured me she would lift from underneath, did I step back and let Captain Caveyoda take over.

To my surprise, she only lifted it briefly, just enough to move it away from the detached side panels. She set it down resting on a rock cluster (I’ve looked it up: it was Half Dome Rock) so she could point out why she stopped: the ancient tumbler balloons. At the same time wind-blown sand had covered Pathfinder , it had also found tears in the balloons and filled them with dirt.

Starlight wasn’t willing to slice and dice the balloons away in the same manner she’d cut the skin off of her ship with her horn-laser. “I don’t know what I might mess up,” is how she put it. So instead of one quick cut, we worked together, me with a knife and Starlight with very short, careful bursts of light, and in about fifteen minutes we had almost all the balloon material cut away.

Then Starlight lifted the core of Pathfinder up onto the rover roof, onto the back part of the luggage rack where the surface samples bag made a sort of cushion for it. There’s just about enough room left in front of it for the solar cells in the morning.

We weren’t in any hurry to go back into the rover. I mean, we really, really were NOT in ANY hurry to go back. We’ve ended up tangled in one another’s limbs half the nights we’ve been on the road, partly because eleven days on the Martian surface in a billion-dollar buggy really drives home how lonely it is here… but mostly because there’s no place else in our cramped quarters TO be except right on top of each other.

And that’s leaving aside the stench, the muscle cramps, and the absolute and total lack of elbow room in the thing. We wanted an excuse to stay outside, even if it meant using up CO2 filters I could have saved for later.

So we discussed salvaging the side panels for about an hour.

With its masts extended, Pathfinder ’s core is a little too large to fit in the rover airlock. The panels might have been doable, but just barely, and only one at a time. To make it work at all, one of us would have to be inside the rover while the other stayed outside. It would have taken a lot of rotating to find an angle that would let both airlock doors close. But it might have been doable if the need was really urgent.

I decided it wasn’t. Even with all the food we’ve eaten, the rover interior is still pretty damn full. I don’t think we could have stowed two of those panels inside, let alone all three. And once I restore the panels to the Hab’s solar farm, I won’t really be in any need of extra electricity.

So we’re going to leave them here, a last memory of Carl Sagan Memorial Station until the dust covers them up again. Sorry, Carl, but if you were alive I’m sure you’d say that I should do whatever is necessary to survive. Besides, they’ll find something else to name after you.

We’re back inside the hell-hole which is Rover 2’s cabin again. Time to think about the future.

This whole exercise has been about getting a working radio. I won’t know if Pathfinder is even repairable until I get back to the Hab, but there’s nothing obviously broken. I can use air from a pressure tank to blow away dust from components. I have a small supply of lubricant for the rover wheels which ought to help the bearings in the high-gain antenna and imager rotors. And for any electrical mishap short of an actual fried CPU or ROM, I have tools and spare parts. I’m confident that I can fix any purely mechanical or electrical issue.

The thing is, what next? It’s been thirty-five years since anyone’s even attempted to contact Pathfinder. The signal is stronger than anything the Hab can produce anymore, but it’s still weak compared to practically any radio on the ground back on Earth. I can only hope that somebody notices a microwave signal coming from someplace really screwy, gets curious, and tells NASA to get a couple dozen radio telescopes pointed towards it.

But say they do that. What next?

To talk to them I can write things on surface sample label cards. I have a pack of fifty, both sides usable. But how do I receive a message back? Pathfinder doesn’t have any obvious lights or anything, so duplicating the pony telegraph isn’t going to work. That leaves making Pathfinder move something for me to see. There are only three things Pathfinder can control like that: Sojourner, the imager, and the hi-gain antenna.

Pathfinder needs to keep the antenna pointed at Earth or its best guess at the source of its commands, so wiggling that to talk is out. The imager can only rotate on its shaft- full 360 rotation, but on only one axis. I can’t make that work for much more than yes or no.

That’s why, despite space issues, Sojourner is in the cabin with us now, taking up another corner of our constrained universe. If I can get both Pathfinder and Sojourner going, I’ve got as many as six moving parts- Sojourner’s wheels- that could be used. I could work out some kind of semaphore, or maybe write letters and numbers on the wheels and have NASA rotate Sojourner’s wheels to the right characters. It’s still a long way from actual conversation, but it’s better than yes and no only.

I’ve still got a lot to think about, but now isn’t the time. Now it’s time for Agatha Christie. There’s a unicorn here eager to hear more about the homicidal intentions of humans. And tonight one or the other of us will probably sleepwalk looking for a less miserable place to sleep.

But I’ll tell you this right now: if I wake up and find Sojourner cuddled up next to me, I’m throwing that fucking robot back out the airlock. It can hitchhike to Acidalia Planitia if it feels like it.

Author's Note

Buffer holds at two. Sorry, but I've just been too busy to get ahead. I'll try to find some time during the convention; UshiCon in Round Rock is a small anime con for those of us who become fans in the late 80's through early 90's, more or less.

Someone commented on how crossover fics of this kind tend to make everything easier for both parties. There's some truth to this. In the book Watney was alone, and so he had to drag the heavy core of Pathfinder up a ramp of rocks he'd assembled... and then he had to disassemble it so he could drive away safely. But with a unicorn available for heavy lifting... well, it just didn't make sense for him to go to all that trouble.

So Mark gains a day from the book's version of the trip. And now it's just a long, boring, smelly, cramped trip back, with a pony in the back seat and disco on the radio.

I'm sure Watney will understand that I'm mostly going to gloss over the trip home. If he'd had the option, he'd have skipped large sections of it too.

Sol 84

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 82
ARES III SOL 84

“There it is.”

Fireball looked up from the section of landing strut he’d brought in the previous day. The storm they’d crash-landed into had ripped it off of Mark’s lander and carried it to the foot of the crater rim northwest of the Hab. It, along with a dozen antenna fragments and other odds and ends, had been the product of a coordinated salvage sweep led by Cherry Berry the day before. Dragonfly had pronounced it non-repairable, and so Fireball was left to carefully disassemble it into its hardware and scrap metal. “There what is?” he asked.

“Didn’t you notice just now?” Spitfire asked. “When the airlock was being pumped out?”

“What, do Cherry Berry and Dragonfly want back in?” Fireball asked.

“No!” Spitfire said. “The air current changed in the hab just now! And when the airlock was empty, it changed back!”

Fireball shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

“Ugh!” Spitfire waved a hoof at Airlock 1. “I’ve been wondering for days what kept bothering me, but now I know! There’s been something wrong in here, and it’s the air currents!”

Fireball spread his tiny wings and flapped them rapidly. His skinny torso stretched slightly, but his feet didn’t leave the ground. He stopped flapping and said, “I don’t feel much difference. Are you sure about this?”

Spitfire nodded. “Now I am,” she said. “I wasn’t before, but now I am. Now we just have to track down what’s changing the air currents in here.”

Fireball sighed and pushed his stool away from the worktable, leaving new furrows in the all-pervasive soil floor. “Okay,” he said. “How strong a change are we talking about? From what direction?”

“It’s just barely there,” Spitfire said. “Not enough to move a dropped feather. But I could feel it.”

“Blockage in the air ducts?” Fireball suggested. “Maybe there’s dust or something in the atmospheric regulator?”

“Hmmmm,” Spitfire thought. “I don’t think so. It feels like it’s coming… coming from…” The pegasus spread her own wings and took flight. She still had to flap her wings hard constantly to stay aloft, but she had a bit more control now, looking less like a frightened chicken than she had on their first day here. After two struggling loops of the Hab interior she landed where she’d been. “Shoot! I can’t tell where it’s coming from!” she said. “My flapping swamps it out!”

Fireball walked carefully over the dirt, through the rows of starter plants and over the ridges of not-yet-sprouted potatoes, to where Spitfire stood. “Hold your breath,” he said, and then he concentrated on his sinuses, forcing his dragonflame through them just so…

A thin gray stream of smoke wafted from his nostrils. It drifted slowly in the air, spreading thinly, until it got sucked up by one of the atmospheric regulator’s nine intakes. Spitfire studied the smoke, moving carefully around the edges of the slow plume, before shaking her head. “It’s no good,” she said. “I can’t see it. But I can still feel it.”

Fireball shrugged and let his flame lapse. The smoke stopped, and in a few moments the atmospheric regulator filters sucked it away.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Spitfire asked sullenly.

“It’s not a matter of believing you,” Fireball said. “I just don’t know what to do about it.”

“But… but… nngh!” Spitfire stamped the dirt with one hoof. “Every instinct I have is telling me that something’s wrong!”

“Good,” Fireball said quietly.

“What?!” Spitfire was in the dragon’s face in a heartbeat, wings flapping like mad to maintain an unsteady hover. “What *gasp* d’ya mean *wheeze* by that?” she panted.

Fireball carefully put a clawed hand on her head and pushed her back to the ground. “My instincts always tell me everything is fine,” he said. “I try to ignore ‘em. But if your instincts are telling you something is wrong, listen.” He smiled a little and added, “I trust your instincts a lot more than I trust mine.”

Spitfire, wings folded again, gave this a little thought. Then she trotted to the suit storage area, plopped her helmet onto her head, and said, “Cherry Berry, this is Spitfire.”

“Go ahead, Spitfire,” Cherry’s voice replied over the suit comms.

“When you and Dragonfly come back from the cave,” she said, “could you use Airlock 3 to re-enter? The one by the ship, I mean?”

“Um… sure, Spitfire,” Cherry answered, her voice full of confusion. “Do you want us back now? We’ve barely left the base.”

“Negative,” Spitfire said. “I’ll explain when you get back. But for now just humor me, all right?”

“I keep trying,” Dragonfly cut in, “but you never laugh.”

“Not funny, Dragonfly.” Cherry Berry cleared her throat and said more loudly into the comms, “Understood, Spitfire. We’ll use the back door coming home. See you at lunchtime.”

“Roger that,” Spitfire replied. “Spitfire out.” She replaced her helmet on her suit. “That should do it for-“

A brief hissing sound came from the direction of Airlock 1. In a couple of seconds it was over, and the sounds of Mark’s base machinery echoed unimpeded inside the Hab.

“… now…” she finished.

“Great,” Fireball muttered. “I guess we have a haunted airlock now.” Shaking his head, he walked back to the landing strut. Undoing nuts and bolts, at least, he understood.

“What do you suppose that was about?” Dragonfly asked.

“No clue,” Cherry said. “But she sure- hey, look at that.”

Dragonfly turned on her hooves to watch. “Aw, it’s just a dust-devil,” she said. “We have those all the time back at the hive.”

The two astromares from Changeling Space Program watched anyway as the small, slender whirlwind, visible only from its cargo of light fine dust and its effects on the dusty soil underneath, shimmied and twisted its way towards the Hab, sucked into the microclimate generated by the inflatable base’s waste heat. The closer it got to the Hab, the faster it moved towards it, until it practically collapsed, dropping its load of silt almost directly on top of Airlock 1.

For the briefest moment, the canvas rippled, and then everything was still once more.

With the show over, earth pony and changeling turned again and resumed their hike to the cave farm.

Author's Note

It's never mentioned in the book, but the Hab has got to generate its own microclimate. It's small, but its interior is at least an average sixty degrees Centigrade warmer than the outside, and that has to have local effects.

No time or energy for writing tonight. Will try to write during the con tomorrow. I have tomorrow's chapter, and then I'm out...

... so yeah, I better write, hadn't I?

Also, found two semi-recent books about Mars exploration at Half Price Books. (Also found a mock user guide for Mars Mission One or somesuch, printed late 1990s, and didn't buy it, because what little factual information it contained I already have elsewhere.) I'll be reading them over the next couple weeks, looking for inspiration. And by inspiration I mean "how can I put Watney and his cute friends in immediate peril of their lives?".)

Sol 86

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 84
ARES III SOL 86

A light flickered on the rover’s dashboard, then shone steady for about a second, flickered again, shone, and winked out.

“What was that?” Starlight Glimmer asked.

“Hab beacon,” Mark answered, not taking his eyes off the mostly flat terrain in front of them. There were still rocks here and there, not to mention the annoying gullies and the very occasional crater rim or hill. The rover had returned to Acidalia Planitia, leaving behind the more visually interesting floodplain of Ares Valles. “We shouldn’t be picking it up yet. Must be some freak Mars weather.”

“Um?” Starlight wanted to look up the word beacon in Mark’s computer dictionary, but the computer was an integral part of the rover’s control system. Yes, there was a steering yoke and a throttle control and brakes, just like a parade autocart back home, but there was so much else that had to be controlled. Mark kept one hand near the keyboard at all times while he was driving. “What’s a beacon?”

“The Hab has two radios,” Mark said. “One was for talking to Earth. The antennas for that were smashed in the storm.” He took his hands off wheel and keyboard just long enough to slam fist into hand, demonstrating the word smash. Grabbing the wheel again, he continued, “The other sends one signal on one frequency only. Remember frequency?”

“Yes,” Starlight nodded. She’d practiced that one a lot. It would come in very handy when the time came to communicate with humans on Earth.

“Can’t change the signal, can’t change the frequency, so can’t use it to talk,” Mark said. “The rovers use it so we always know which direction the Hab is.”

“Oh. So… like a… um…” She didn’t have the word, but the Equestrian word was a compound of two others, and considering how similar in structure their languages were… “Like a light house?” she asked.

Now Mark did take his eyes off the nonexistent road for a second, looking at Starlight with surprise. “Lighthouse? Yes, like that,” he said. “But lighthouses tell ships, danger. A beacon says, come here.”

Oh, a beacon! Now Starlight knew what Mark meant- like the lights used to help guide airships into port after dark, or the ancient mountain bonfires the earth ponies had used to warn their tribes of pegasus or unicorn attacks back in the days before unification.

But how would you do that by radio? There were affinity spells that could guide a pony to a place easily- there were affinity spells strong enough to drag a pony there by sheer force, in fact. But radio didn’t drag. Radio was just lazy light.

Aha! Light! If you were following a light beacon, you’d head towards the origin of the light! If you were on the right track, the light would get brighter! So if you had a directional antenna, like a parabolic dish, then the signal would be received most strongly when the dish pointed right at it!

What a simple, brilliant invention! She couldn’t wait to describe it to Twilight Sparkle over the water-telegraph. It would work like a magic beacon for anypony, not just unicorns or those with a magically enchanted receiver. “Good-good idea!” she said.

Mark shook his head, as he did so often when she praised something he took for granted. “Very good idea?” he suggested. “Maybe great idea?”

“What is great?”

“Great means both ‘very big’ and ‘very good.’” Mark glanced down at his dashboard. “Time to stop for today.” He looked around, decided he liked the ground where he was, and eased the rover to a stop.

Starlight could hardly believe she was looking forward to putting her spacesuit on. The suit was cumbersome, stiff, noisy, and generally annoying. Sometimes the helmet would knock into her horn, which was always painful. But the air inside the suit didn’t stink like the inside of a Manehattan sewer. Once outside the airlock, the suit let her enjoy a whole planet’s worth of open space. And, for an hour or two, she could put distance between herself and her traveling companion.

To be blunt, Mark stank. Starlight had met many, many ponies in her life, including not a few homeless wanderers seeking who knew what, and the most stinky, unwashed, hygiene-exempt pony she’d ever met in her life could have served as a large air freshener if you hung him around Mark’s neck. Beyond the poop smell and the pee smell of the rover, there was the sweaty musk of, not to be unkind, one hundred and seventy pounds of monkey fresh from the tree.

I don’t remember Sunset Shimmer smelling like this, she thought. Or any of her friends. Or even that film freak, whats-her-name. He looks kind of like a human, and the word human is apparently the same in both languages, but… argh!

I can’t even talk about it to anypony else, because the mirror is supposed to be a secret!

“How much farther?” Starlight asked.

Mark made a tipping-back-and-forth motion with his hand. “Hundred kilometers, maybe less,” he said. “Two sols to go.”

Starlight frowned. Without a spacesuit, a pony could cover a hundred kilometers in a day without getting very tired. She was tempted to just go galloping over the sand and rock and dust until she got back to the Hab, where the atmospheric regulator filtered out the worst of the poo-stink and where she had her own bunk and, praise Celestia, there was a shower.

Thinking of the shower, she was tempted to rip a piece of the rover saddlebag arrangement off, turn it into a saddle, and carry Mark, suit and all, along with her, if it meant getting the stink washed off of him sooner.

But no. They were a crew. They were a team. They were friends. And friends don’t abandon one another.

Mark finished locking down the seals of his own spacesuit and looked at Starlight. “Going to collect more rocks,” he said. “I’ll be done in two hours.”

Starlight snorted. Suddenly it became much more tempting to abandon Mark and his bucking rocks. She’d hoped that, as one horrid bean-based meal after another got converted into roadapples, and as the pile of food packs shrank to nothing, the rover might have a little more room in it. No such luck. Mark had come over all moon-landing, wanting to take samples for science. As if the rocks were ever going back to Earth! When rescue came, there wouldn’t be room for anything more than the six of them. Even Starlight knew that!

Calm down, she told herself. He’s trying to keep busy and stay sane, just like you are. And it’s only two more days.

“Okay,” she made herself say, wishing she had enough magic to spare for the Bottle-Up spell. Just take all the rage at spending almost all day in a rolling can with a stinky monkey who told incomprehensible jokes in a language she was just starting to understand and who didn’t know excellent breaking-edge music when he heard it…

… put it in a bottle and leave it on Mars, where nopony would ever find it again.

Of course, in addition to magic power, she’d also need a suitable bottle. The closest thing they had was the containers they were using as bathrooms, both of which were almost full at this point. Starlight did not want to think about what emotionally charged magic might do to such… ingredients.

“Okay,” she said again. “I will just… go… over there.” Way over there. About a country mile or two. “Do you have your crystal?”

Mark patted the front of his spacesuit. “Battery and crystal right here.”

Starlight used her magic to put her helmet on, having already skinnied into her suit. “I’m ready, then.”

Together the two squeezed into the airlock. It was cramped, but little more so than the rest of the horrible smelly rover.

“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas, come in.”

“Amicitas, this is Starlight. We’re about a hundred kilometers south of the Hab. We should return in two days.”

“That’s great! Everything’s okay here… except… there was something I was supposed to tell Mark, but now I’ve forgotten.”

“If you forgot, it can’t be important.”

“No, I’m pretty sure it is. Um… did I tell you we removed four of the seats from Mark’s lander to install in Amicitas?”

“Yes, you did. Mark said okay, but save the old seats. The metal might be useful.”

“We did. And… well, I can’t think of anything else.”

“How’s the mana battery?”

“Thirty percent charge. We only take it to the ship for these sessions. We’ve kept some charge on it.”

“Okay. Save power. Don’t call tomorrow. We should be within trotting distance of the Hab after the next drive.”

“Roger. I’ll think about it. Have your suit ready tomorrow night just in case I call anyway, though.”

“Understood, Cherry. Starlight Glimmer out.”

Author's Note

Last night after I said I hadn't time or energy to write, I managed eight hundred words.

I did another twenty-eight hundred words today between customers at the con, despite the distracting and annoying background noise and the occasional non-buying customer who wanted to tell me about the superiority of shonen anime (fight of the week) over harem comedies.

And once I post this, I will continue to write.

As you see, I decided that a certain Equestria Girls short did indeed happen in this world. As a general rule, all animation is canon to CSP/Maretian unless it directly conflicts with material written prior to the release of the animation. (That is, everything is in except the Series 6 finale and subsequent changeling appearances, including I suspect the Series 8 opener.)

I made a minor edit at one point to one chapter early on, but I haven't seen any need to do otherwise yet. One of the consequences of rotating the viewpoint of the Amicitas crew is that none of the ponies gets a lot of viewpoint time. And since there are many logical reasons for the mirror to be kept secret, or at least unadvertised, it makes sense that Starlight is the only member of the crew who's seen humans before...

... and Mark is different enough from the mirror-world humans that she is right to doubt that they're the same species.

I read once that the odor left behind by barefoot human tracks is one of the most persistent and unpleasant smells among all placental mammals. That may or may not be true, but the possibility that one of the reasons we humans survived long enough to develop civilization is simply that we tasted so bad that only really, really hungry predators would bother us... well, the notion really amuses me.

One of the names of the legendary bigfoot/yeti/sasquatch is "stink ape." Well, I have news; the real stink ape is us.

Sol 88

As winter gave way to spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the prevailing winds of the latitude of the Ares III Hab began to shift. What during the winter ran west to east fluctuated, becoming east to west, with what passed for strong gusts in Mars's attenuated atmosphere.

What is winter in a planet's northern hemisphere is summer in its southern hemisphere. Just before the arrival of the Ares III crew on Mars, the warming of the surface in the south produced an unusually strong dust storm, strong enough to cross the equator. By a series of coincidences and unintended consequences, the ESA Amicitas’s unplanned entry into the Martian atmosphere had amplified this storm to levels not seen on the planet since the last major volcanic eruption. These winds had battered the eastern face of the Hab, in particular Airlock 1. Airlocks 2 and 3, facing southwest and northwest respectively, had been sheltered by the rest of the Hab.

Two much smaller dust storms, brief and feeble, had visited the Hab since the day of the Ares III abort and the Amicitas crash-landing. Smaller events, like the dust devil witnessed by two of Amicitas’s crew on Ares III Sol 84, hit the hab almost all the time. By freaks of the gradually warming northern weather, these almost invariably struck the Hab on its eastern face.

Under normal circumstances none of this should have been cause for alarm. The materials the Hab was constructed of, and the methods of assembly, had been tested by NASA engineers in an Earth environment as well as simulated Martian environments. The canvas which made up the inflatable dome of the Hab, in particular, had been tested to withstand wind forces up to Category 1 hurricane levels in an Earth atmosphere. Even the freak storm of Sol 6 posed only a relatively minor danger to the Hab, and the other storms no danger at all.

But the stress tests had never taken into consideration the constant use and abuse the Hab canvas, particularly near its seams with hard metallic edges, would see over a mission extended beyond the planned 60-day maximum. Just as a man can wear a hole into granite with feathers given infinite time and patience, so also can repeated long-term strain on a particular point break down something tested and proven to hold up to abuse in the short term.

The Sol 6 storm had opened a tiny flaw in the canvas, hidden by the two-piece clamp that held it in place around Airlock 1. The flaw flexed with every airlock use, stretching and relaxing as the airlock pressurized and depressurized. The hab’s final human inhabitant preferred that airlock because it was adjacent to the rover recharge station. Its alien inhabitants preferred it because it was the most direct route to Site Epsilon and its massive crystal cave. Thus Airlock 1 saw repeated use almost every sol, with Airlock 3 used solely for visits to the remaining portion of Amicitas and Airlock 2 relegated to the status of storage closet.

No visual search would have turned up the leak. The flange it was glued to hid it from the outside, and a metal gasket that clamped it against the flange hid it from the inside. But even with metal pressing it on both sides, it allowed air to escape through the canvas’s multiple layers into the vastly lower pressure Martian atmosphere outside, a few molecules at a time. The leak was too slow to trigger the atmospheric regulator’s pressure warning alarms. Furthermore, with the pony space suits being used to replace the oxygenator, the tiny fraction of lost air was constantly replaced. Thus, no obvious warning sign existed to cause the occupants of the Hab to take action.

Even when the leak became noticeable to the most sensitive of the alien crew, she couldn’t even identify it as a leak, let alone locate it. She could only tell that the operation of Airlock 1 seemed to make it worse. In response to her worries the aliens discontinued use of that airlock. They then used airtight sample bins to transfer vacuum-sensitive materials from the Hab to their ship and its independent air supply.

But despite the caution, the aliens had no warning other than a vague premonition of danger- so vague that none of them remembered to pass that warning on to the owner of the Hab.

Thus he, and his sole alien companion on his overland trip, returned in the Martian dawn of Sol 88 without a clue that his preferred airlock might be dangerous in any way.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 86

ARES III SOL 88

“Finally!” Mark cheered as a brownish lump rose on the foreshortened Martian horizon. “Home sweet home!”

Starlight Glimmer couldn’t quite believe she’d heard properly. “I thought Earth is your home,” she said.

“It is,” Mark said. His face went pale- well, paler than usual. “Oh my God. Did I just call the Hab home?”

“Yes.”

“I have got to get out of this rover.”

“Yes,” Starlight said firmly. “We have to get out of this rover.”

Mark had put the rover into motion shortly before dawn, picking up the solar panels from their final campsite and securing them to the rover’s roof in record time. Now, barely an hour later, he slowed down for the final approach to the Hab.

There had been a few changes. The MAV’s descent stage had lost its engine bells. The MDV had been moved much closer to the Hab, with only a bit of it visible beyond Rover 1. The remaining debris from the Sol 6 storm had been cleared away. But the Hab itself looked the same as ever- maybe a little dustier, but otherwise just as Mark and Starlight had left it twenty-two sols before.

The rover came to a stop. The instant Mark shut down the rover systems he grabbed his spacesuit, slipping it on with the ease and speed of long practice and urgent need. Starlight followed his lead, digging out her own suit and shutting down its environmental system long enough for her to step into its legs and seal it up.

Her suit had held up extremely well for the wear and abuse it had seen. The rubber soles were beginning to wear down a little- she’d have to talk with Dragonfly about re-soling the suits for everypony. But the joints were still sound, with no sign of fabric wear, much less rips that might lead to air leaks. Starlight wondered, idly, if the other ponies’ spacesuits were holding up as well.

Mark sealed his helmet, activated his life support, and picked up his huge toolbox, which had hardly been opened the entire trip. Starlight was a little surprised that Mark was bringing anything with him at all. A little, but not much; after watching him interact with Dragonfly, she knew that the tools were Mark’s greatest treasure on the planet.

Speaking of… Her own suit secure and active, Starlight used her magic to lift the mostly depleted mana battery onto her back. She secured its carrying harness, wriggled her body to test it, and nodded. “Ready to go, Mark,” she said.

“I’m past ready,” Mark replied, stepping into the rover airlock. “Let’s go.”

Starlight squeezed in beside him, and the inner airlock door closed behind them.

Spitfire set the remaining half of her breakfast food pack in Mark’s refrigerator and shut and latched its airtight door. Nineteen food packs remained of the entire Amicitas supply, counting Fireball’s remaining inedible-by-pony meals. Dinner of day after tomorrow, she figured, would be the last meal with food brought from Equestria.

The crops in the cave were coming along quite well, but the first alfalfa harvest in bulk lay weeks in the future- weeks during which the ponies would have no choice but to steal from Mark’s supply of food. She’d already inspected some of his food packs, with the help of a dictionary Dragonfly had found on the computer used for their nightly television viewing. She wished she hadn’t, and she hoped the harvest came in before she learned the flavors of things that, back home, she would have greeted by name.

The thought gave her more incentive to work hard that day. It was another day for working the cave farm, and it was her turn to walk out with Cherry Berry to the cave. By the time they returned Mark and Starlight would finally be back from their long trip, and-

The air pumps on Airlock 1 began to whirr.

Almost instantly, Spitfire felt the air inside the Hab change in that subtle, disturbing way.

She looked around the Hab interior for the others. None of them stood anywhere near Airlock 1; Fireball was finishing off his breakfast of plain quartz, Cherry Berry was putting on her spacesuit undergarment, and Dragonfly was at the computer staring at diagrams she’d found for the MDV, trying again to make sense of them. Obviously they didn’t activate the airlock controls.

Obviously Mark and Starlight were early. They hadn't announced their arrival on the suit comms- and why would they, since nopony had their suit on yet? But Spitfire had counted on their arriving while her suit was on, so she could steer them away from Airlock 1.

They had activated the airlock, depressurizing it in preparation for entering the Hab.

And, equally obviously, neither of them had been warned not to use the airlock.

The pumps continued to whirr, drawing air out of the airlock and back into the Hab. Spitfire watched the canvas wall around the airlock. Was it flexing? Was it shifting, or was her imagination making her see things that weren’t there? Every instinct screamed at her that she and her crewmates were in danger, deadly danger, deadly and immediate danger.

But she didn’t want to panic. She still couldn’t be sure of herself. Nopony else could feel the air current, and everypony had had a try at finding possible leaks in the hab.

It wasn’t even her hab. The person who knew the most about the hab was about to come in by the airlock. If he didn’t find anything wrong-

Spitfire’s frantic chain of thought ceased as she felt the air current, stronger than ever before, ruffling the fur on her back.

No more thought. No more doubt. Time to act.

“SUIT UP!!!”

The airlock door opened. Mark and Starlight stepped inside.

“Suit clear!”

“Suit clear!”

“Suit clear!”

“Suit clear!”

Starlight blinked at the series of suit-clear calls flooding her headphones. “Amicitas, Starlight,” she replied. “Guys, we appreciate the welcome home, but shouldn’t the suit drill wait until we’re inside?”

“This is no drill,” Spitfire’s voice replied over the comms. “Does Mark have that crystal you made him on?”

“Yes, he does. What’s going on here?” Starlight looked up at Mark, who had just finished securing the outer airlock door.

“Mark, danger. Maybe hole in Hab. Careful.”

Mark stiffened. “Hole in the Hab?” he asked. “Where? Hold on, we’re coming in.” His hand reached across the small airlock and hit the button to pump air into the chamber.

The Hab canvas was a triumph of NASA engineering, layers of complex polymers reinforced with a weave of carbon fibers. The material combined unprecedented strength, insulation, radiation reflectivity, and lightness. It had been assembled with care by the Ares III crew on Sol 1, using an equally miraculous resin on convenient seal-strips that formed an airtight seal even stronger than the canvas itself.

As miraculous as the canvas was, it was not indestructible.

As Airlock 1 depressurized, two of the fibers around the flaw in the fabric stretched and failed, snapping apart, making the gap in the weave larger. The rest held, under the tension of more than five thousand kilograms per square meter, as the airlock finished depressurizing.

But as the astronaut began the repressurization process, the airlock began to expand again, causing the flawed canvas to slacken for a fraction of a second. The air pressure of the interior of the Hab pulled it taut again almost instantly, tugging harder on the remaining fibers in the process.

This slight tug, atop the strain already present, proved too much. More fibers parted. The failures propagated up and down the edge where canvas met airlock metal. Without its reinforcement, and with thirteen point nine pounds per square inch of differential pressure backing it, the canvas failed, parting enough for an actual hole, visible to the eye, to appear along the edge of the airlock’s flange.

In less time than it would take that eye to blink, the hole propagated around the entire perimeter of the airlock.

On Sol 88, the Ares III Hab suffered sudden eruptive decompression. The wind generated lasted for only a fraction of a second, but for that second thousands of pounds of force exerted themselves against the metal canister which was Airlock 1.

The airlock, and its two occupants, went flying, soaring for twenty meters before tumbling across the Martian surface for thirty more, beating and battering the people inside before finally coming to rest.

The Hab systems, sensing the sudden and total loss of air pressure, enacted an emergency shutdown. Breakers snapped open. Valves snapped shut. Electrical supply died.

Inside the now all-but-airless Hab, things were chaos.

Inside the airlock, things were worse.

AUDIO LOG – WATNEY, M. – SOL 88

RECORDING…

Ooooh… oh, my head… what the hell happened?

….

You fucking kidding me?

For the record, since my suit is recording all of this, Mars has just given me a wonderful welcome-back-fuck-you gift by waiting until the moment I got back to the Hab to have it breach. And by breach I mean send Airlock 1 flying a good fifty meters, with Starlight and I tumbled like socks in a dryer. I’m having to wipe a trickle of blood from my forehead because my stupid fucking idiotic safety-glass faceplate took the brunt of my impact with the airlock inner door when the thing went flying.

The good news is, my suit had more than enough air in it- fresh O2 and N2 tanks- to fill the airlock. The bad news is, I’m hearing a hissing sound, and I’m really hoping it’s a leak in Starlight’s suit. If it’s not, we’re in real trouble.

Checking my suit air tank levels… yeah, we’re fucked. My suit is still backfilling air. The airlock has a small leak somewhere. I know it’s a small leak because if it was a large leak we’d already be dead.

I’m hearing a lot of pony voices over their comm channel. There’s a real sore spot on my chest where the battery for the crystal communicator Starlight made for me rests. In the bouncing around we took I must have banged my chest against something- maybe my arms. Doesn’t feel too bad, though. I don’t think anything’s broken.

I hear Cherry’s voice now. She’s taking charge.

Watney here, Cherry. I mean Mark here. The glass on my helmet is broken, but I think I’m okay.

I don’t know. I’ll check. Starlight? Starlight, are you awake?

Oh. Oh, this is bad. Cherry, Starlight was carrying her battery when the Hab blew out.

Dragonfly, do you understand me? Good, explain it to Cherry. Starlight was carrying the battery. When the Hab blew out we got shaken up hard. The harness shifted on her and pinned one of her legs. The metal on the battery cut a hole in her suit. Also I think her leg is broken. And she’s out cold. Unconscious. Not awake.

That’s right, she has a hole in her suit.

Also, the airlock is leaking.

Leaking. It has a hole in it. Either that or there’s another Dragonfly in here with me.

No, there isn’t really another Dragonfly in here. I just meant it hisses.

Look, I have to find that leak while I still have air in my suit. My suit has a hole in it too.

The lights? The lights on Starlight’s suit are all green.

She does? Good. I’m turning my air off, then.

What? Okay, I’m waiting.

Oh. Okay, I’ll leave it on. But that means I need to find that leak really quick.

No, I don’t want to wake Starlight. We both took a beating. If her leg is broken, she’s really going to hurt.

Okay. I’m going to turn my crystal off now. I’ll call you when I have something to say. Mark out.

Okay. Have to think fast. Starlight’s life depends on it. If the air pressure drops too low in here her life support will shut down automatically. I have to fix the leak while my suit still has air in its tanks.

So. How can I find that leak?

I need a visible vapor of some kind. The only kind I can think of is smoke. What have I got in here that can burn?

Hair. My hair and Starlight’s hair. But I don’t want to disturb her until I have to, so my hair will have to do.

First step, get out of this suit.

RECORDING ENDED

“I found the magic battery, Cherry!” Fireball shouted. His head poked through a curtain of half-collapsed canvas.

“We can hear you fine,” Cherry replied. “Good work. Dragonfly, what about a helmet for Mark?”

“I’m digging out a whole suit for him,” Dragonfly called, her suit barely visible under a collapsed pile of canvas and poles near the bunks. “Just because we know his helmet is shot doesn’t mean there isn’t damage elsewhere. Plus he’ll need more air.”

“Good call,” Cherry replied. “Spitfire, how about first aid?”

“Nothing doing until we can get Starlight somewhere safe,” Spitfire replied from the hole where the airlock had been. “I’ve got our medical kit here, but I’m taking it back to the ship. That should still have air.” Without pausing for permission, she half-trotted, half-bounced out into the Martian morning light.

“It’ll have power, too,” Dragonfly said. “We kept the electrical batteries charged. They should be good for a few hours.”

“Okay. Fireball, give me the magic battery. What’s the charge?”

“One-third, looks like,” Fireball said.

“Good. You take Mark’s new suit and helmet once Dragonfly digs it out. Dragonfly, I want you in the ship. Make sure it can handle all of us. We need to get Starlight and Mark over there as quickly as possible.”

“Okay,” Dragonfly responded. “Fireball, can you give me a claw over here? I’m having trouble getting the suit off its rack. I can’t disconnect the recharge harness.”

“Just a minute. I’ll be with you once I’ve got the battery harnessed to Cherry.”

“Spitfire here.”

“Go ahead, Spitfire,” Cherry said.

“I’m carrying the medical kit up to the Amicitas crew airlock,” Spitfire said. “Just a reminder, we’re probably going to need both Fireball and Mark to get Starlight up the ladder.”

“Got it. Dragonfly, do you think you can patch Starlight’s suit?”

“If it’s only the fabric, sure. But I can’t do it in vacuum. Also, I’ll need a meal pack to make enough goo for the patch.”

“Can you use one of Fireball’s?”

“Hey!” Fireball protested.

“Have something to say, Fireball?” Cherry asked.

“No, ma’am.” The dragon’s voice softened immediately. “Sorry. Force of habit.”

“So long as the gem bits aren’t too large, yeah,” Dragonfly, said. “I can use it.”

“Grab the one marked ‘Rubblerito with Chococoal Fudge,’” Fireball said, seating the battered mana battery on Cherry’s back and fastening the harness around her. “The burrito’s mostly beans and peppers.”

“Will do. Done with the bossmare yet?”

“Yes, he is. Go get that suit, Fireball. Then let’s go help Mark.”

AUDIO LOG – WATNEY, M. – SOL 88 (2)

I owe Dragonfly a great big thank you. If she hadn’t made me paranoid about my tools with all her poking and prying, I wouldn’t have grabbed them first thing when I left the rover, and I wouldn’t have them in the airlock with me. The toolbox came through the tumbling intact, as did everything inside, including the shears I used to cut several locks of hair and the flashlight I’ve just finished breaking so I can make a spark.

If I hadn’t had the tool box… well, I could have pulled a couple of wires on my space suit for the spark. And I could have removed Starlight’s helmet and bit some of her mane hairs off. But the tools make things much easier. Of course, this might get us both killed, so the tools might just be assisting my suicide here. There is that to consider. Mixed blessings and all that.

Anyway, here’s the plan. I’ve closed the nitrogen valve on my suit completely, so it’s now backfilling the airlock with pure oxygen. The higher the oxygen level in the airlock, the more easily my hair will burn. I’ve removed an LED from the flashlight and used a couple short lengths of wire from the supply in the tool box. Now when I switch the flashlight on, I get a little spark. That’s plenty. With enough oxygen, any spark will ignite almost any fuel.

Thing is, I’ve just described Apollo One. Not the parallel I’d like to have here.

Starlight just groaned. She’ll be waking up soon, I think. I need to hurry up and do this. My air levels are dropping pretty rapidly.

Wish me luck…

END RECORDING

Starlight Glimmer opened her eyes. Her head hurt. Her horn really hurt. And her right foreleg…

Starlight opened her eyes again. This time she tried not to think of the leg.

And failed.

For the third time in as many minutes, Starlight opened her eyes again, just in time to hear Mark behind her saying, “Goddammit! Five times!”

“Mark?” she asked, unable to raise her voice much above a croak.

“Starlight, stay absolutely still,” Mark said sternly. “And when I tell you, turn off your suit air and hold your breath. It’s important.”

“What happened?” Starlight asked.

“Starlight, is that you?” a voice asked in her ear.

“The Hab blew out,” Mark said. “We’re in the airlock and it’s leaking.” She heard the sound of a pair of shears working. “Okay. Attempt number six. Suit air off. Starlight, hold your breath now.”

“Starlight, if you’re awake, please respond,” the voice in her ears said.

Starlight, caught between conflicting orders, decided to follow the orders of the person actually in the chamber with her. She pulled her left forehoof under herself and hit the shutoff switch for her suit life support. This done, she held her breath, trying to ignore the gradual ache in her ears as the air pressure in the airlock began to drop.

Silence. More silence. Starlight could hear her heartbeat in her ears.

“Gotcha!” Starlight heard the sound of Mark’s boot hitting the airlock floor. “Starlight, breathe! Air! Now!”

Starlight switched on her suit air again. A warning beep echoed in her headset; the suit sensed the air pressure was below standard pressure. But between her suit and Mark’s the air pressure returned to normal in a few seconds, and the beep cut out.

“Amicitas, Starlight Glimmer,” she said, now that the need for silence was past. “I’m awake. Not happy about it, though.”

“Report,” Cherry said bluntly.

“My right foreleg hurts a lot,” Starlight said. “I think it’s broken. It’s pinned by the mana battery. I can feel air blowing through a gash in the suit there. My head also hurts, but my helmet seems to be intact, I think. We’re losing air, but I think Mark is working on that.”

“Yes, Mark told us that,” Cherry replied. “How much magic is left in the battery?”

“Less than ten percent,” Starlight said. “I used most of it when we recovered Mark’s robot, and I’ve tapped it once or twice for translation spells. I’ve really been working on learning his language.”

“Understood. Now this is important,” Cherry said. “Are you able to cast a forcefield spell to hold the air in for about a minute? We can get Mark a fresh suit if you do. We can also give you the other battery- it’s up to thirty-five percent power.”

The sound of Mark unspooling gray tape from his tool kit echoed through the airlock, momentarily drowning out all other sound.

“I think I can,” Starlight said. “But there’s no point in bringing the other battery. I can’t cast a mending spell on my suit while wearing it.”

“Okay. Dragonfly says she can patch the suit. Are you familiar with changeling goo?”

Starlight found the strength to groan. “I suspect I’m going to be a lot more familiar in a few minutes,” she said.

Before Cherry could continue, Mark spoke up, and his voice echoed in Starlight’s ears as she heard it both from in the room and over her headset. “Watney here,” he said. “Air leak secured for now… I mean, I stopped the leak. Are all of you all right?”

“We are all right,” Cherry said, very carefully, in English. “We have plan. Get you in our ship. Starlight will tell you. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mark said. “I’ll shut up and let you talk.”

“Good. Thank you.” Cherry switched back to Equestrian. “Starlight, when I give the signal you put the air retention forcefield around the inner airlock door. Then tell Mark to open it. Fireball will pass the new spacesuit in for Mark, and Dragonfly will come inside with it. She’ll patch up your suit well enough to hold air. Then Mark and Fireball will carry you over to Amicitas. It still has power and air, and Spitfire’s waiting there to splint your leg. Once we’re all in the ship safe, we can discuss what to do next.”

“Got it,” Starlight said. “I’ll explain it to Mark.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 88 (3)

It’s been a very long, very bad day, but it could have been oh so much worse.

It took two-thirds of the remaining spare hab canvas, but the hole where Airlock 1 was has been patched. Starlight tells me that, once a magic battery is fully recharged, she could properly fix the leak in the airlock, but that could take weeks. We need the hole patched now, so we patched it now. Maybe we’ll find some use for Airlock 1 somewhere down the line, but for now we just have to make do with the two remaining airlocks.

The assembly of the Hab on Sol 1 took four people most of the day. Fortunately I didn’t have to reassemble it by myself; most of it, including the heavy equipment, didn’t move very far. Airlock 1 took most of the blow, with the rest of the debris being small objects like all the open markers we’d been using for whiteboards. I checked four of them; all dead, dried out under their non-airtight caps by the Martian air. Fortunately we have the backup supply, never opened, plus the bundle Starlight brought on the Pathfinder trip.

I owe a lot to the ponies’ foresight, particularly Spitfire. She was the one who first knew something was wrong, or so Cherry tells me. None of the others had a clue that the airlock was about to go, but they were careful enough to move a lot of the potentially air-sensitive material, including most of the medical stores, over to their ship. That included the unused alfalfa seeds, which is a very good thing.

All in all, the hab was open to the Martian environment for about seven hours before we verified a good seal on the repaired canvas. That was more than long enough to kill all the plants in the Hab farm. It’s possible some of the bacteria survived at the bottom of the dirt, but it’ll be days before we know for sure. But the original alfalfa stand is dead at least to the top of the roots, and the potato plants are all goners. The new spuds had just begun sprouting, too. Fuck, what a waste.

It’s not disaster. We have the cave farm. Most of the conditioned soil remained in the Hab, with only the loosest dirt blowing out. We can revive that soil a lot more easily than the effort required to condition it in the first place. We have some spare alfalfa seeds, and we can take some potatoes from the first cave harvest to replant those. But it’s a huge setback.

Every piece of equipment survived the sudden decompression except the computer Dragonfly was using at the time (it took a ten-meter flight across the Hab and hit the ground hard, breaking the monitor) and the water reclaimer. I suspect ice formed in the lines, causing them to burst. That’s not a big problem: I have a lot of hose specifically to repair problems like that. Everything else is working fine, which is how I’m able to type this on a computer plugged into Hab power.

The most serious problem is Starlight. Spitfire did the best she could to splint the broken leg, but that’s all she knows how to do. We haven’t got a doctor to do it properly. The ponies apparently had some magic medicines which accelerate healing, but Spitfire says they’re not working nearly as well as they should. She’s going to be bedridden- all but immobile- for three weeks minimum. Fireball and I are going to get a lot of practice carrying her to and from the john, and I guarantee you all three of us are looking forward to that SO much.

And Starlight’s suit is… well, it’ll still hold air. I got to watch Dragonfly hork up the world’s biggest, blackest loogie right onto the rip in her suit. The suit’s absolutely rigid at that point now- the stuff hardened almost instantly. Starlight tells me it’s permanently bonded to the suit, quoting her, “and magic can’t fix it anymore.” Apparently there are spells that can fix broken things, but not beyond a certain point. Trying the spell now with that goo on would just rip off the patch and make a bigger hole, if I understand correctly.

So, even after Starlight gets out of bed again, her suit is permanently scratched for any further heavy labor. She’s going to be limited to the absolute minimum EVA time. Her suit is compromised, and if it fails irreparably she probably dies here. We can’t risk that.

I need an explanation for how Dragonfly can do things like that suit patch that doesn’t begin or end with the word “magic”. But I haven’t got the time now. I want to get the water reclaimer fixed before bed tonight so I can begin trying to fix Pathfinder tomorrow. That’s going to be a long job if it’s even possible at all, so I don’t want anything else on my plate.

Anyway, summary: today was the worst sol I’ve had on Mars since Sol 6. But it could have been worse. Working together, we got Starlight out of the airlock safely and repaired the Hab in a few hours instead of the couple of days it would take me alone. The Hab farm is dead, but it can be revived- and at least some of the alfalfa will be edible, although freeze-dried alfalfa is going to be a taste pleasure for absolutely nobody.

Mars didn’t kill us today. Life goes on, until tomorrow.

And I’ve taught Spitfire the English words for “suit up.” From now on, when she calls a suit drill, I’m joining in.

Author's Note

Two days ago, not a word of this existed. I wrote nine hundred words Thursday night, deleted two hundred of them Saturday afternoon, and kept pressing on when I could until the chapter was completed.

And today I wrote another 2150 words, so hey! I have a buffer again!

So, for those who haven't read the book, there was no sign or warning of a Hab failure until the chapter opening, which began with a detailed description of the manufacture of one particular canvas panel. The sequence just screams, "This is the thing that's going to kill Mark Watney!" That kind of annoyed me, so although I do something similar here, instead of hammering the reader over the head with it in one chapter, I dropped hints in previous chapters to foreshadow it properly.

Today, as part of writing the next chapter, I did a bit of calculation using the Web. Air flowing from a compressed area to a non-compressed area can't travel faster than the speed of sound (approx. 350 meters per second in Earth's atmosphere), because that's the point where air stops being compressible. Escaping air hits that speed if it's roughly twice or more as dense/compressed as the air where it's escaping to, if I understand the math correctly. There are complications including the size of the hole connecting the two zones of air. But it was enough to go on with.

Suppose that the Hab, instead of being basically an inflatable tent with a rigid floor, was an air cannon with barrel precisely fitted for the airlock. On the inside you have one standard Earth-sea-level atmospheric pressure; on the outside, Mars's barely-there atmosphere. What happens when you pull the trigger and release the air inside the Hab?

What happens is, at least in the first instant, the sudden imbalance of air pressure on the system puts a whopping 172 G's of acceleration on the airlock. To put it mildly, that's not survivable.

I've given a few more words on this in-story to Venkat Kapoor next chapter, but despite all the problems with the scenario and the shakiness of my own math, I now find the ejection of the airlock a lot more plausible than I did before.

This is, again, a moment where the crossover becomes much easier than the original book. On the one hand it's a bit of a dramatic letdown by comparison, but on the other it let me show the Amicitas crew working together as an efficient team under Cherry Berry. Yes, she slipped up. But under the circumstances it was an understandable slip. This, also, will be explored a bit more next chapter.

Note: Amicitas is hooked up to Hab power, but not to Hab air. It was refilled (not including the engine bay) during the tow, and when the ponies are in the ship they leave their suits on except for helmets, so the air stays fresh. Thus the ponies weren't dependent on the rover for shelter when the Hab blew.

The pop-tents, on the other hand, were hooked directly to Hab air. They depressurized too, just like in the book.

So: why did the Hab blow (besides the explanation that Andy Weir and I are both dicks)? The weak spot in the canvas was caused by the Sol 6 freak storm. After that it was a matter of wear... and the ponies have been using the airlock a LOT more than Watney would have done by himself. So the surprise is not that it blew, but that it conveniently waited for the one person who knew how to repair it to get back before doing so. Had it blown earlier Mark and Starlight would have been safe short-term, but the ponies would have had to retreat to Amicitas or the crystal cave, and the Hab would have been exposed to Mars for days or even weeks at a time.

Mark's karma swings tend to peg the needle on both sides of the gauge.

Sol 89

“That should not have happened.”

Venkat leaned over Mindy Park’s shoulder and tapped her computer screen with the back of his pen. The screen showed the immediate aftermath of the previous day’s Hab breach. By day’s end Watney had changed his rock message to read, “Sol 88: Hab breach. Repaired. One injured. Crops set back. Att contact via Pathfinder.” Now NASA was in full post-incident analysis mode, with Mindy leading the image analysis team while Venkat himself took a personal role as investigator.

Venkat liked his new role. Teddy wanted a preliminary report by 3:00 PM today. This gave Venkat an excuse to use his scientific training… and, just as good, an excuse to turn his phone off for the duration.

“Why not?” Mindy asked. “The air pressure not strong enough to lift the airlock?”

“Oh, no,” Venkat shook his head. “There was enough air pressure in the Hab to make the world’s deadliest potato cannon. If the entire force of the escaping air had been applied to the airlock, the acceleration would have turned Watney and White Boxy to soup.”

Venkat tapped the screen again. “But that could only happen if the system were designed to do that, with a rigid gun barrel or at least a collar. But the airlock canvas anchoring system stayed with the airlock. The canvas ripped around it. And an escaping fluid under pressure always seeks the path of least resistance. The escaping air should have shredded the canvas but left the airlock alone.” He traced the outline of the hole in the sagging Hab canvas. “Instead the canvas tears around the airlock as neat as you like, compressing enough of the escaping air to provide about twenty meters per second of acceleration. That’s a lot less than its full potential, but it’s still a lot more than it should have been.”

“It’s not impossible,” Mindy pointed out.

“No,” Venkat admitted. “But we could simulate this a million times and never get anything like this result. I don’t trust it.”

“Okay,” Mindy said. “Can we do anything about it?”

“That’s a question for the engineers,” Venkat said. “I’m a physicist. But there are a couple of obvious things we can do, if Mark gets Pathfinder working and we get a solid communication link. We can give him procedures for inspecting the Hab canvas for other flaws, telling him what to look for. And we can have him alternate between Airlocks 2 and 3 for all future EVAs to reduce stress on the canvas.”

Venkat tapped the screen again. “But this will be more useful for Ares IV and V. We’re going to spend months re-testing the Hab canvas and its connection to the airlocks. We might have to redesign the airlocks themselves, maybe give them the same rock anchors the Hab floor uses. That won’t help Mark, but it might save the lives of future crews when we do extended missions.” He stood up straight, stepping back from his perch over Mindy’s shoulder. “Next image, please.”

Mindy advanced the sequence of photos of the Hab. For several stills, taken at various angles by passing satellites, nothing changed, except for one still in which White Hen was visible walking around the Hab in the direction of the alien wreck. Then a picture showed three of the aliens- Tall Boy and the two Oranges- standing next to the detached airlock. “What’s that red on Tall Boy’s suit?” Venkat asked, pointing to the image.

“No way to tell,” Mindy said. “It’s only a few pixels. But if I had to guess, that red looks a lot like our EVA suit color.”

“Show me the next picture.”

Mindy clicked her mouse, advancing the sequence to the next picture.

“What’s that discoloration on the airlock?” Venkat asked.

“I don’t know,” Mindy said. “I noticed it yesterday when the pictures came in. But it’s not a satellite malfunction. All the other photos taken by that satellite are normal.”

Venkat pointed at the discoloration. “That one little spot makes it impossible to see what’s going on there,” he said. “Any chance of a hack? Of outside interference?”

“The picture went up on the big wall the moment it came in,” Mindy said, pointing to SatCom’s main projection screen. “We all saw it at the same time. If someone altered the image, they did it on the satellite end.”

“Double-check with IT on security anyway,” Venkat ordered. “Next image.”

The picture changed.

“Yes, there’s Mark!” Venkat said. “And that must be White Boxy he’s carrying out. And which Orange is that?”

“Not enough behavior clues to know,” Mindy said. “Leader and Random look exactly the same from orbit.”

“So at some point one of them entered the airlock after it detached,” Venkat murmured. “How does that work?”

“Is something wrong with that?”

“Something big is wrong with that. We were never able to replace those stupid safety-glass helmets for the Ares missions. When the airlock detached it would have been about like getting hit by a semi truck at between forty and fifty miles an hour. No way Mark’s helmet could have withstood that impact. So when the airlock opened, there’s no way he could avoid exposure to Mars atmosphere.”

“He seems to be okay here,” Mindy said. “Maybe he was able to open and close the airlock quickly enough to avoid decompression sickness.”

“Maybe,” Venkat hissed softly. “But how? He reports one injury, and from the look of these photos it was White Boxy. But we’ve known the helmets were flawed for years. We just haven’t been able to get the money for replacements.” He tapped the computer a little more forcefully than the image warranted. “Well, we’ll get it now, for sure! This is exactly the sort of contingency that we need shatterproof helmets to prevent!”

“We can’t confirm that Mark’s helmet was broken in the breach,” Mindy pointed out. “All we know for certain is that the Hab breached, and that Mark and four of his guests are okay, and that Mark walked them through the Hab repair procedure.”

“But we can make some good guesses,” Venkat said. “That red on Tall Boy’s suit. You said it looked like the color of our surface suits. Assume it is. That would suggest that Mark’s suit was damaged in some way. Maybe he repaired it well enough for it to last until he could receive a new suit from the aliens.” He pointed to the screen, which showed five splotches of color around the inner airlock door. “That’s what I’m going to report. It’s the best guess we’ve got until we start testing.”

“If Pathfinder works, we can ask Mark directly,” Mindy said.

“That’s true,” Venkat replied. “But the way Mark’s luck is going, I wouldn’t bet on that.” He considered the bad luck of the Hab breach with the good luck of being suited up when it happened. “One way or the other.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 89

No repairs today. Yesterday hit us all a lot harder than any of us realized.

I didn’t get much sleep last night. We all had repeated training on how to repair the Hab in case of something exactly like this happening. I walked my helpers through the procedures step by step, using the spare hab canvas and the fresh seal-strips and resin to do it right. We tested the repairs for pressure and eliminated any possibility of a leak. The Hab was stronger than ever. But that didn’t stop me from waking up from night terrors and cold sweats, expecting a new blowout at any moment.

But it wasn’t PTSD or whatever that woke me up the fourth time. It was sobbing.

Cherry’s English has improved a lot since Starlight and I left on the Pathfinder trip, but it’s still rudimentary. Starlight’s eagerness for new words and proper grammar spoiled me. But the two of us managed to have a long, quiet conversation in the pre-dawn hour. She blames herself for the accident, for not warning us about the potential leak. I tried to take her mind off of it, to tell her it was an accident, but she wouldn’t hear it.

Right now Cherry reminds me of Lewis more than ever. I can’t imagine what Lewis is going through right now. She has to think she left me behind to die. But whatever is in Lewis’s head is also in this alien pony’s head. I’m pretty sure Lewis wouldn’t break down into tears in front of the rest of us, which is why Cherry saved it until the rest of her crew was asleep. But the threat of losing Starlight and me was too much for her to swallow.

Eventually everybody else woke up. It was almost that time anyway. So I decided to get everyone together by Starlight’s bed for an impromptu post-accident inquiry. I figured it was the best way to get Cherry beyond her guilt and get everyone else moving forward again.

Most of the conversation was in English. Starlight’s getting pretty fluent and Dragonfly’s not far behind her, but the other three are talking in a mix of isolated words and catch phrases from Lewis’s TV collection. Occasionally the conversation broke down into a rapid-fire exchange of pony talk which Starlight or Dragonfly translated after the fact.

The first part of the inquest went over what I was told yesterday, fleshing out details. Cherry still thinks they knew something was wrong with Airlock 1 days ago. The rest of her crew disagrees. They all say they didn’t know anything at all for certain. Spitfire had a strong suspicion for about the past two weeks, but no evidence. Fireball insists that they only stopped using Airlock 1 because of excess caution- my words, not his. And Dragonfly kept repeating that none of them had any way to know in advance what would happen.

They’re right. The seal where the hab canvas panel attaches to an airlock is hidden on one side by the flange that the canvas is glued to and by a locking gasket on the other side. A small tear could form in between the two metal pieces, and it would be totally invisible. The gasket isn’t designed to be removable once clamped down- why would you weaken a seal you want to keep airtight? The metal and resin would slow any air leak that formed to a point that it wouldn’t trigger an alarm on the atmospheric regulator.

And so I told them: if I’d been alone, I would never have seen the accident coming. What happened was just bad luck. Just like the accident that stranded me here was just bad luck. I don’t think Cherry bought it, but it’ll take time. Worst case, her whole crew agrees with me.

Anyway, I knew when it was time to stop beating the not-at-all-dead horse. I moved on and asked the others how Cherry did after the accident. All of them told the same story. Cherry took command immediately. She got her crew organized in seconds and put together a solid plan using the available resources to get me and Starlight out of the broken airlock. She did everything a commander’s supposed to do.

I don’t think we really convinced Cherry. I do think hearing what we all had to say made her feel better, though. She felt even better once we ate breakfast. She gave me one of her meals today. It looks like a chimichanga, but instead of meat it has dried cherries and cheese inside. It’s a long way from delicious- chimichangas are not the kind of food best suited to sit in a vacuum-sealed package for months at a time- but it wasn’t bad. I tried to give her half of it, but she insisted I eat it all.

After the inquest, nopony felt like working. So, as senior NASA personnel on base and King of Mars, I decreed a vacation day today. No work for anybody. I pulled out all the surviving computers and set up a networked game of hearts. (It comes preinstalled with the operating system, along with solitaire and Minesweeper.) We watched some TV, beginning with a marathon of Sanford and Son. The pony language skills are just about up to it, with some occasional translation from Starlight and a bit of explanation about racial issues from me.

And that’s how we pissed away a totally uneventful day. I’m hoping we all sleep better tonight, because it’s back to work tomorrow for certain. Tomorrow’s the end of the pony food packs.

It wasn’t quite a total loss of productivity. I finally got the straight story on Dragonfly today. It began when Fireball asked Dragonfly if she wanted another of his food packs for lunch. I’d been so used to the bug not eating that I asked. It didn’t take long to realize Dragonfly didn’t want to talk about it, but this time I insisted on straight answers, and I got them.

It turns out Dragonfly is actually the most magical creature in this Hab. She doesn’t eat food, except for a few scraps here and there and some water. She lives on- you will not believe this- she lives on love. Now I understand why she acts so puppy-like around me: she thinks she has to in order to get enough to eat.

But, in addition to being some sort of Star Trek emotion alien, Dragonfly is also the next best thing to a 3-D printer. NASA considered sending a printer along with the mission, just like they use on the space station, but they decided the weight wasn’t worth the limited use it’d get during a mission. Well, I haven’t got a printer, but apparently I have all the slime, goo, and rubbery substances I could ever want, provided I give Dragonfly food to make it out of.

We spent a lot of the afternoon talking, with Dragonfly almost glued to my side. Strangely, it was Dragonfly who pushed away from me. I thought it was about my smell- I haven’t fixed the water reclaimer yet, and with that offline so is the decon shower. But although Dragonfly agrees with everyone else that I really, really need to clean up, that wasn’t the reason she put distance between us.

Apparently it’s dangerous when a bug-pony takes too much emotional food from one subject too fast, and Dragonfly doesn’t want to knock me on my ass by overeating. She also said if I find myself feeling tired or “not-want-do-nothing-at-all” (depressed), that’s a warning sign. Ditto with bells on if I find myself unable to think of anything except her.

Well. So Dragonfly is a soul-sucker, and the ponies now know the English word for “parasite”. Good educational moment all around, then.

But given the choice between worrying about a big-eyed bug pony who actually knows which end of a tool is which, and the cold, hostile, impersonal planet just outside the canvas dome, I know which I’m going to waste my energy on. In fact, I’d like a plush Dragonfly to cuddle like a teddy bear while I’m thinking about how we’re all one more Hab canvas failure from sudden painful death.

On second thought, make that a plush Spitfire. Dragonfly might be able to stop the leak, but she’d give me warning.

Ah, who am I kidding? If I could copyright all their images and license them to toy companies, I’d be a billionaire overnight. Cute alien plushies for all!

Anyway, we’re all tired and it’s time for bed. Tomorrow I fix the water reclaimer and begin waking up Pathfinder. In the meantime… g’night.

Author's Note

We haven't heard the last of Cherry's guilt trip yet.

NASA has just begun post-incident investigation on the Hab blowout, but already Venkat has some shrewd questions to ask. And, for the first time, the satellites caught a shot of magic in use... not that that helps the analysts now.

Wrote a 1500 word chapter, so I still have a buffer of 1. Now to finish up the day's sales, pack up, get home, and at least partially unload the van so I can hand it to the body shop tomorrow morning.

And thanks to AdmiralTigerclaw for dinner last night- very nice to meet in person!

Sol 90

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 88
ARES III SOL 90

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS (DF): Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit CB for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS (DF): Long incident report to follow. Report when ready, over.

ESA: Stand by, over.

AMICITAS (CB): I hereby resieeeeeeee-

ESA: Repeat message, not received, over.

AMICITAS (DF): Disregard previous message. Report when ready for incident report, over.

ESA: It’s the middle of the night here, Amicitas. We’re waking ponies up now. Over.

AMICITAS (DF): Standing by, over.

“Let me go!” Cherry Berry demanded over the background noise of water spattering inside the Hab’s decontamination shower.

Dragonfly looked up from where she stood watching Cherry’s spacesuit, lying limply on the Hab’s dirt floor. “Don’t make me build a cocoon for you, boss,” she said. “It would be a huge waste of food and energy, but I’ll do it if I have to.”

Cherry struggled in the grip of Fireball and Spitfire, who struggled to hold the earth pony still. “I order you to let me go!!”

“If you quit, you can’t give me orders,” Fireball said. “If you want to give me orders, obviously you’re not serious about quitting.” He glanced over and down at the pegasus gripping Cherry from the other side. “Or is this pony logic at work again?”

“No,” Spitfire said, “this is just what happens whenever a flyer has a Bad Day and survives. She’ll get over it. We just have to stop her from bucking her career in the meantime.”

“What career?” Cherry shouted. “I’m a pilot, not a leader! If Faust had meant me to be a leader, I’d have a horn and wings!”

“Sounds good to me,” Spitfire replied. “We’ll take ‘em off of Chrysalis. It’d improve things all around, in my opinion.”

“Excuse me!” Dragonfly protested, but only because she’d be expected to at this point.

“I am not a princess!” Cherry thrashed again, almost throwing Spitfire off her foreleg. “I never wanted to be a princess! I just wanted to fly! You’re the leader, you take the job!”

Spitfire wrapped her forelegs tighter around Cherry Berry’s limb. “Commander,” she said in her most formal officer tones, “as chief medical officer of the Amicitas it is my considered opinion that, although you are mentally fit for duty, your current emotional state disqualifies you from making major personal decisions that you might come to regret. It is therefore my duty to refuse your offer of command and to restrain you from resigning said command.”

“Besides,” Fireball said, “Spitfire’s the space rookie here.”

“She was the one who saved our lives,” Cherry pointed out. “I just endangered them.”

“Not my point,” Fireball said. “This is a joint ESA-CSP mission, remember? Starlight Glimmer is second in command.”

“Which she is not physically able to assume,” Spitfire chipped in. “Won’t be for weeks.”

“And after that command follows seniority of first flight,” Fireball continued. “Which means I’d become the next commander. Nobody wants that, least of all me.”

“But Twilight Sparkle and Chrysalis would insist,” Spitire finished. “Everything about this crew is a political compromise, remember? Our bosses won’t want to relitigate all that at this point.”

“They- aren’t- HERE!” Cherry punctuated each word with a powerful twist of her body. This time she managed to shake Spitfire off completely, but this left her dangling in Fireball’s grip.

“They still-“

“You’re right!” Dragonfly interrupted, thinking fast. The pegasus was going for the legalistic argument. That wouldn’t work. Cherry needed more active support. “They aren’t here! They can’t tell us who should be the leader! So it’s up to us to decide, right?” Pause for about a second and half, to give the listeners the illusion that they can agree or disagree. That’s long enough; onward. “So let’s hear it: who else here wants to be the commander? Raise a hoof.”

Dragonfly could feel the mixed feelings coming off of Spitfire. She wouldn’t mind being the commander, but she knew she wasn't the one all the others trusted to lead, here and now. She left her hooves down, and since none of the others wanted the job, no other limbs were raised, except for the one Fireball held in his grip, dangling the commander off the ground.

“All in favor of retaining Cherry Berry as mission commander?” Dragonfly continued.

“Aye,” Spitfire replied immediately. Good, good, Dragonfly thought. She’s backing me up. That should be enough.

“Aye,” Fireball added.

“Aye,” Starlight Glimmer called out softly from her bunk. She hadn’t had her morning painkillers yet, and she was laying on her chest on the bunk so the broken leg could dangle down and keep itself straight.

“And I make it unanimous,” Dragonfly finished. “Your resignation is rejected by the only people who matter. And we’re not going to let you go over our heads with it. You’re the boss, boss.”

The water ceased. A moment later Mark poked his head out, taking a long look at the tableau of Cherry being restrained by Fireball and Spitfire. “What’s all the noise? Mutiny?” he asked.

“What’s mutiny?” Dragonfly asked back.

“Mutiny… is, um…” The decon shower's air dryer kicked in, which forced him to shout to be heard. “Mutiny is when a crew tells the captain, ‘We won’t do what you say anymore!’”

“Oh,” said Dragonfly.

“No,” said Spitfire.

“Yes,” said Fireball.

“Maybe?” Dragonfly asked.

Mark sighed and pulled his head back behind the shower curtain to finish drying and dressing.

“Is it a mutiny when the crew is forcing the captain to keep giving orders?” Dragonfly asked.

“Yes!!” Cherry Berry snapped.

“Look, commander,” Fireball said, “you bucked up. We get that. And I bucked up before you. And Starlight bucked up before that- because I asked her to. But bucking up once doesn’t make you a buck-up.”

Cherry Berry looked up at Fireball, saying nothing.

“Mistakes happen,” Fireball continued. “And this time you weren't the only one to buck up. I didn't warn Starlight and Mark either. Neither did Dragonfly. Neither did Spitfire, and she knew more about the danger than any of us. Do you think we don't feel bad about that? We bucked up exactly as much as you," the dragon said with granite firmness, "so are we all supposed to resign too? ”

“But-“

“No? Good," Fireball said, overriding her. "So the question is, are you a buck-up? No, you’re not. We had that out yesterday with Mark. You had us kicking jack and taking names in seconds after the blowout. You kept us on task during the rescue. And you did what you could to help Mark and me fix the Hab. And you held yourself together until we were all safe and the Hab was fixed.” The dragon stared directly into Cherry’s eyes as he finished, “I couldn’t have done that. So don’t try to stick me with the job the next time it happens. Pull yourself together and get back to work.”

Cherry turned her eyes away.

“Let her go,” Dragonfly said. “She’s not going to try to resign again.”

Fireball nodded, carefully lowering Cherry until her hooves reached the floor again. He straightened up and gave a pony-style guard salute. “Your orders, commander?”

Cherry Berry took a deep breath, wiped her face with one fetlock, and glared up at him. “Report to the medic for your injuries,” she said in a calm, stern voice nothing like her angry shrieks of before.

“What injuries?” Fireball asked.

Dragonfly closed her eyes and closed her ear-fins, but the loud crack of Cherry’s rear hooves delivering a mighty uppercut to Fireball’s snout couldn’t be shut out.

“Consider that summary judgment for dangling one’s commanding officer by the hoof for several minutes,” Cherry said. “Spitfire can fill in the blanks to make it nice and military.” She looked at the pegasus next to her and said, “After you check him out and give Starlight her pain pills, suit up. You’re coming with me to the cave.”

“You broke my tooth!” Fireball wailed, sprawled on his back on the dirt floor.

“I have a pill for that,” Spitfire replied cheerfully. "You'll get over it."

“A pony broke my tooth,” Fireball moaned. “When we get back I’ll never hear the end of this…”

The group broke up. After a couple minutes of no one shouting at one another, Mark shut off the air dryer and emerged from the shower, dressed in the still-stinky cutoff clothes he’d had under his suit when the Hab blew out. “All over?” he asked Dragonfly.

“All okay,” Dragonfly said. “Cherry is still the boss. She tried to quit. We stopped her.”

“Aaaaah,” Mark nodded, finally understanding. “Good. Want to help me fix a robot?”

Dragonfly’s earfins perked up. “Steve Austin?” she asked. “A man barely, barely alive?”

“Er… not exactly,” Mark admitted.

Just then Cherry Berry’s spacesuit began spraying water. “Excuse me,” Dragonfly said. “Talking to home now. Follow you later.”

“No hurry.”

Dragonfly tapped out the code for repeat-signal on her own spacesuit. The morning emergency was over, and the bad emotions had been swamped by a wave of mostly-pure loyalty. And spending a day with Mark would provide more love to wash away the last remaining poisonous guilt.

Maybe the corner really had been turned, at last.

Author's Note

Two things to always remember.

First, Cherry Berry isn't just the pony picked to command Amicitas Flight Three. She is Gagarin, Shepard, Glenn, Armstrong, and Tereshkova all wrapped into one, from the pony point of view. She has more space firsts- first rocket launch, first orbit, and others- than any two other Equus astronauts put together. The others have a deep respect for her which isn't going away by one oversight.

Second, she is an otherwise absolutely ordinary Ponyville pony. And one inquest isn't enough to stop her feeling guilty. One dragon holding her by one arm for several minutes, on the other hand, is quite enough to override guilt with rage, which is why a normally timid pony just busted a half-grown dragon right in the chops.

(Side note: Cherry Berry stars in the new hit from Japony, One Punch Mare! Or not, considering several others have done that with other characters...)

All of that said, I hadn't planned on going here. This was just the first angle that wrote itself. Everything else was either "nope, this goes nowhere" or "nope, this is a direct and boring rehash of the book". So, in order to keep up the schedule and maintain a buffer, this is what you get. If this were for book publication, this is another chapter that would almost certainly get the ax.

In other news, Mark fixed the water reclaimer before working on Pathfinder. (And there was much rejoicing.)

Anyway, take it for granted at this point that Equestria now knows about the Hab breach, and Cherry Berry has been dissuaded from resigning her command for now.

Sol 92

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 90
ARES III SOL 92

Cherry Berry stood by Airlock 3 and waited. She and Fireball had planned to leave the Hab via Airlock 2, but just before they could enter the red light had come on indicating the outer door was open- less than two minutes after Mark had gone out.

With only two airlocks left in the Hab, it had been decided to alternate use of the airlocks, and never to have both of them decompressed at once, in an attempt to reduce wear on the canvas dome. Mark had gone out Airlock 3 before Cherry and Fireball had been ready to go. Now he was coming right back in, which meant Cherry not only had to wait for him to finish entering, but she couldn’t use the same freshly recompressed airlock.

But the petty annoyance vanished the moment she saw Mark staggering in through the airlock, groping for the clamps that kept the helmet assembly sealed to the rest of his suit. “Spitfire!” she shouted. “Bring the medical kit! Something’s wrong with Mark!”

Mark paid no attention to the ponies, changeling and dragon gathering around him. His helmet off, the lower part of his suit still on, he collapsed onto his knees, eyes wide, jaw slack. Tears were running down his face.

“Mark! Talk to us!” Cherry said, her brain racing to put together unfamiliar words and phrases into something useful. “Are you all right? Why… um…” She realized she didn’t know the English word for crying, and her questions ran aground.

“It works,” Mark whispered. “Pathfinder works. It’s pointing towards Earth. It’s getting a signal.” He put his still-gloved hands on Cherry’s shoulders. “Earth is sending a signal. They know Pathfinder’s here. They know I’m alive!!”

A loud, chest-wracking sob struck the human, and he leaned forward, hugging Cherry tightly and burying his face into her mane. “They know I’m alive!!” he repeated, his voice strangled by his tight throat as he cried unashamedly into Cherry’s hair.

Cherry didn’t flinch or hesitate. She reached one forehoof up to hug Mark back, whickering soft comforting sounds as he cried. Moments later Spitfire joined, as did Dragonfly. Fireball, as always, came last, settling for a comforting claw on the human’s shoulder.

“What’s wrong with him?” Starlight called from her bunk. “Talk to me! Don’t make me burn the whole magic battery to levitate myself over there!”

“He just made contact with home,” Cherry said. “He’s no longer alone.”

“What are we, wet straw?” Starlight replied.

“Not the same thing, Starlight,” Dragonfly called back.

This interruption helped Mark get himself back under control, and he straightened up, releasing Cherry. “Sorry,” he said.

“Nothing needs sorry,” Cherry replied. “Go talk to you people.”

“Talk. Yeah.” Mark scrambled to his feet. “Gotta talk. What do I say? How? Um… camera. Stereo imager. Need sign, need message.” He scrambled to the drawer where the markers that hadn’t been dessicated by the breach were kept. Beside them was the precious fifty sample case labels- the only paper in the Hab aside from the pony flight manuals. He began scribbling madly on one; then, finished with that, scribbled shorter messages on two others. “There! Need height, need…” He looked at Fireball. “Where are the antenna scraps?” he asked.

“Scraps?” Fireball asked.

“The bits of antenna you picked up outside,” Dragonfly said in Equestrian. “Where did you stow them?”

“Under Amicitas, outside,” Fireball said.

When Dragonfly repeated this info for Mark, he scrambled to put the upper part of his spacesuit back on. Barely stopping to check the suit’s seal, he leaped to the airlock, then bounded back to grab the three label cards he’d written on.

“I don’t think we’re going to the cave today,” Cherry said quietly.

An hour after posting his first message, Mark had another two-minute EVA. This time his first words upon removing his helmet were, “They said yes!!”

Cherry, Spitfire, and Dragonfly applauded pony fashion, pounding the dirt floor with their hooves. Fireball applauded dragon-style, clapping his paws. Back in the bunks, Starlight Glimmer called out, “Woo-hoo!”

“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Mark asked. “We can talk! We… wait,” he said, sobering up. “We’re not gonna talk very much if all NASA can say is yes or no.” He began pacing, mumbling to himself so that Cherry could only catch about one word in three, something about “both sides” and “three-sixty” and “askie.”

Finally, nodding to himself, he said, “Fireball, I need fourteen more pieces of antenna.”

“Okay,” Fireball said, reaching for his helmet. He hadn’t bothered to unsuit after Mark’s first short EVA of the day.

Mark counted out eight label cards, pulled a pair of shears from his toolbox, and paused. “My shop teacher would throw a fit if he saw me doing this,” he said just before using the shears to cut the stack of cards in half. This done, he dropped the shears on a worktable, grabbed the marker again, and began to label each card with a single symbol.

“What are you doing, Mark?” Cherry asked.

“We have a code called Askie,” Mark said. “A-S-C-I-I. Two hundred fifty-six possible letters, numbers, symbols. Dragonfly, please turn on Computer 4 and search all directories for A-S-C-I-I. I know you know how to do that.”

“Yes, Mark,” Dragonfly said, rushing to the cabinet where the computers were kept when not in use.

“I can use these cards,” Mark said, marking the last one, “to get Askie. Two of these equals one letter of Askie code.”

“Not very…” Cherry didn’t know Mark’s word for efficient. “Not sound very good.”

“Cherry, he’s turning twenty-six letters, ten digits, and I don’t know how much punctuation into sixteen total symbols,” Starlight called from her bunk. “That’s plenty good! Good idea, Mark!”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Mark said. “I just hope NASA does too.”

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.

11:00 S-T-A-T-U-S

I’m all right- no physical problems. One spacesuit destroyed, another suit helmet broken, Airlock 1 detached & leaking from hairline crack. One computer monitor broken. All other Hab equipment fully functional. Five guests, one with broken limb, others healthy. All on 2/3 rations pending harvest of crops.

12:00 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. Freak accident. Crew had reason to think me dead. NOT THEIR FAULT.

13:00 C-R-O-P-S-?

Discovered large cave at Site Epsilon. Full of quartz. Used resources from crashed alien ship to make greenhouse, 600 sq m under cultivation. Add’l 100 sq meters in Hab, lost in Hab breach, will replant using seed & first harvest from cave.

14:00 W-H-O-G-U-E-S-T-S

Aliens from a parallel universe with different physical laws. Experimental FTL drive malfunctioned, change in physics forced them to crash-land here. Need better communication channel to say more.

15:00 A-G-R-E-E- -- - B-R-G-S-J-R-N-R-O-U-T

Sojourner rover brought out, placed 1 meter due north of lander. If you can contact it I can draw hex numbers on the wheels and you can send me six bytes at a time.

16:00 S-J-R-N-R-N-T-R-S-P-N-D

Damn. Any other ideas? Need more bandwidth. Have photos, movies, other documentation of first contact you really need to see.

17:00 W-O-R-K-I-N-G-O-N-I-T

Earth is about to set. Resume 08:00 my time tomorrow morning. Tell family I’m fine. Give crew my best. Tell Commander Lewis four out of five aliens share her horrible taste in music.

Author's Note

I lifted a good bit of the last part of this chapter from the book, because the parallels were impossible to avoid without changing how Mark does it. And there's no reason for Mark to not choose ASCII here. Nothing the ponies bring to the table would change his thought process on that point. Likewise, most of NASA's first questions for Watney would remain unchanged, because of survival being top priority. So I didn't see a good way around this conversation. I did avoid both Mark's logs or NASA's viewpoint, though, to get as far away from the book for the rest of this chapter as I could.

Yes, a more efficient system could have been devised. However, NASA already has ASCII in hand. They don't need Mark to describe it to them. It's a quick solution, and in a space emergency a quick solution is often better than a perfect solution.

Buffer remains at 3. Have to prep for tonight's show on DementiaRadio.org !

Sol 93

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 91
ARES III SOL 93

The large clock that hung above the tiny Hab kitchen area read 07:59.

The Amicitas crew stood ready, spacesuits and headsets on, but helmets off. Dragonfly had one marker stuck through one of her hoof’s holes, waiting for Mark to call out a number or letter in English so she could write it on the whiteboard. Starlight Glimmer, sitting on a stool with her broken and splinted foreleg in a sling, had Computer 4 opened to the ASCII table Dragonfly had looked up the previous day. Fireball, another marker in claw and another whiteboard in front of him, waited for Starlight to call out the translation of each two-symbol code so he could write it on the board. Spitfire sat next to Starlight, watching over her, while Cherry oversaw everything else.

Overseeing, Cherry reflected, means not doing anything yourself.

“Everyone ready?” Mark asked over the suit comms. “It’s time!”

“All go, Mark,” Dragonfly replied.

“Okay, Pathfinder’s moving…” The ponies waited as Mark paused, then called out, “Four!” A few seconds later, “Three.”

Dragonfly marked each down. Starlight called out, “C!”

“Four! Eee!”

“N!”

Fireball wrote it down next to the C.

“Four! … Eight! … Four! … One! … Four! … Three! … Four! … Bee!”

“H……. A……. K …… R …”

And so it went, halves of letters coming every six to ten seconds. Five minutes later, it was done.

“The pointer just returned to the response card,” Mark said. “End of message. What does it say?”

Fireball picked up his whiteboard and brought it to where Starlight and the others could see it clearly. Starlight spoke for them all: “Mark, are you sure they speak English?”

“It’s like the short words we use in water code talk,” Dragonfly added.

“Short words are abbreviations,” Mark said idly. “All right, I’m coming back in. We’ll work it out.”

The letters on Fireball’s whiteboard hadn’t changed by the time Mark finished cycling through Airlock 3. They read: CNHAKRVR2TLK2PTHFDRPRP4LONGMSG.

“You’re right, Dragonfly,” Mark said when he looked at the words. “It is abbreviations. Short words. And they didn’t waste transmission time on using the ASCII code for spaces.” He took the marker from Fireball and wrote “FOR LONG MESSAGE” under the end of the string of characters. He then found the 2’s and wrote “TO” under each, then “TALK” between them. “PATHFINDER” came next, and with that solved PRP became “PREPARE.”

That left CNHAKRVR. Mark thought for a moment, then wrote “ROVER” for RVR, and finally wrote in the two words at the beginning of the message.

CAN HACK ROVER TO TALK TO PATHFINDER PREPARE FOR LONG MESSAGE.

“What’s hack?” Dragonfly asked.

“I thought you said humans don’t have telekinesis,” Starlight asked. “How can they do anything to the rover from Earth?”

“What’s telekinesis?” Cherry Berry asked.

Starlight pointed to her horn. “Unicorn lifting,” she said.

“Ohhhh,” Cherry Berry said.

“Hacking is changing instructions on computer,” Mark said. "Pathfinder was built to talk to Sojourner. But Sojourner is broken. So NASA must want to turn the rover into a new Sojourner.”

“Is that good?” Cherry asked.

“Hell yeah it… um… yes, it’s good,” Mark said, forcing himself to control his choice of words. “If Pathfinder talks with the rover, I can read and write messages on the rover computer. No more need for Askie. Much faster.”

“But NASA is on Earth,” Dragonfly insisted. “How can they change a rover here on Mars?”

“They need me to help,” Mark explained. “The long message coming is probably instructions. Orders,” he added to explain further.

“So,” Dragonfly said carefully, “when you say NASA hack rover, what you mean is, you hack rover.”

Mark mulled this over. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I guess I’m a hacker now. All I need is a virus and a Russian IP address.”

“What’s virus?” Starlight asked.

“What’s Russian?” Dragonfly asked.

“What’s address?” Cherry asked.

Mark groaned, then looked at the dragon. “Aren’t you going to say, ‘what’s IP’?” he asked.

“I know what IP is,” Fireball said. “IP in that bucking box every day.” He pointed to the Curtain of Stench behind the bunks.

“Oy vey,” Mark groaned, rubbing his forehead with thumb and two fingers.

“What’s-“

“No more English lessons today,” he said firmly, rubbing his forehead a little harder.

“Four… eee… four… five… five… three…” Mark stopped calling out symbols. “Message not over, but they’ve paused. What does it say?” It had barely been a minute and a half.

“It says, ‘HELLO FROM HER MESS,’” Dragonfly said. “But they only used one S.”

“Her mess? With one-“ The ponies heard Mark’s voice catch. “It- it’s Hermes,” he gasped. “They’re relaying- whoops, more letters! Four, cee! Four… eee… Four… three… four… eight…”

The rest of the message took over twenty minutes to receive. Once it was done, Mark came back in to translate NASA’s abbreviations again.

“Okay,” he said at last. “They’re sending another message at the top of the hour. We have to get that one exactly right, because I’ve got to put it into the rover computer letter for letter at a certain spot in the rover prog… in its instructions.”

“Orders,” Dragonfly chimed in.

“Eeeeyeah. Also…” Mark tapped Fireball’s whiteboard, squinted at it, and scratched his hair. “For some reason they want us all outside for a picture in less than twenty minutes. God knows why.”

“Who’s God? Can you ask her?”

“Ah… um… not going to explain that. I mean, I don’t know why they want a photo of us.”

“Maybe they want to see that you’re all right,” Starlight said carefully.

“How?” Mark gestured at the lower part of his spacesuit, which he hadn’t taken off. “When I’m outside all you can see of me is my spacesuit! They can’t even see our face! It’s ridicul… it’s really stupid! It’s Roscoe AND Cletus!”

“Starlight, I didn’t catch all that,” Cherry said in Equestrian. “Did Mark say something about a picture outside?”

“That’s right,” Starlight replied. “The rotating thing on Pathfinder that Mark’s using to get messages from Earth? It’s a camera.”

“Ooooh,” Cherry said. “That’s how it can read those cards, right?”

“Well, yeah. How did you think it did it?”

“I… um… magic,” Cherry Berry mumbled, too embarrassed to say it out loud.

“Wait a minute,” Fireball said. “Even if we leave our sun visors up, the sun’s glare might block out our faces. What’s the point of all this?”

Cherry looked at Starlight. “Could you hold a force bubble full of air long enough for us to take our helmets off for the picture?” she asked.

“Could I, yes,” Starlight said. “Would I, heck no! It’s a waste of magic energy, and it puts us all in danger if I lose concentration!”

“What if we say no?” Dragonfly asked.

“We’re guests here,” Cherry Berry said. “Mark’s people could tell us to leave. We should follow their orders whenever we can. It’s only polite, anyway.”

“But they won’t see anything except our spacesuits!” Fireball roared.

Cherry Berry smirked. “Oh, I’m sure we could come up with something,” she said. "Give me that whiteboard."

“What the fuck is this?” Annie Montrose’s voice snarled over Venkat’s phone line. “Is this some sort of space hippie bullshit or something?”

“You got your picture,” Venkat replied, trying to examine JPL’s latest design for a Watney-feeding space probe while he talked. “Quit bitching.”

“’C’mon get happy??’ And a picture of six weird-looking birds?” Annie refused to be mollified, not that Venkat was in much of a mollifying mood. “Is this some alien cultural shit or something?”

“No, it’s American cultural shit,” Venkat said. “and they’re partridges. It’s not my fault you’re too young to remember the reruns.”

“Reruns of- never mind,” Annie said. “Anyway, I can’t see a face on any of them. I need a picture with their faces ASAP.”

“Can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because astronauts without helmets on the surface of Mars tend to die,” Venkat said. “Annie, I have to go, one of the JPL programmers is here and it’s urgent. Bye!”

“But-“

The beep of the disconnected call, Venkat thought, had never sounded so sweet.

Jack Trevor, chief programmer for the revived Pathfinder project, stayed frozen in the doorway. “It’s not urgent,” he said. “I just wanted to say that Johannsen confirmed the 141 bytes that’ll allow the rover to receive the program update. She’s ready to sysop Mark through the process the rest of the way.”

“That’s wonderful,” Venkat said. “Please, have a seat.” The chairs in front of Venkat’s work table were folding chairs stolen from other tables in the rather cramped JPL break room. With all the projects in progress dedicated to saving Mark Watney and his various friends, private work space in the campus had become nigh-unattainable. Venkat was getting tired of answering questions about the contents of the fridge.

“Thanks.” Jack pulled up a folding chair.

“I take it using Hermes as a relay is working well?” Venkat asked.

“Better than expected,” Jack confirmed. “We were getting just under one kilobit per second using Pathfinder’s direct-to-Earth link and tying up the Deep Space Network in the process. Hermes can ping Pathfinder at about thirteen kilobits per second, and of course our uplink to Hermes is much faster. It would be better yet if we could have Pathfinder use the relay satellites around Mars-“

“Yes, but the high-gain antenna can’t track that quickly,” Venkat sighed. “We’re lucky that overjuicing the imager rotor speeds up its rotation. At its designed speed we’d be lucky to transmit fifty characters in a day.”

“Isn’t it amazing what these old probes can do when pushed?” Jack said eagerly. “Speaking of, I’ve got some friends who want to try to revive Opportunity. We haven’t listened for her in four years, and it’s possible the last round of dust storms cleared her solar-“

“On their own time, on their own dime,” Venkat cut him off. “I already crunched the numbers when we first figured out Mark was going for Pathfinder. Three of Opportunity’s wheels were frozen when we last heard from her, and even when all six were working, she couldn’t travel more than a kilometer and a half a day. It’s about three thousand kilometers from Opportunity’s last known position to Ares III. We have too many other, more promising projects to work on.”

“But I can tell them they have permission?” Jack asked, leaning forward. “On their own time and their own money, as you said.”

“Fine,” Venkat said. “But I’m betting they’d have better luck trying to convince a Viking lander to re-launch and fly over to Mark than they ever will reviving Opportunity.”

“You never know,” Jack said as he departed.

Author's Note

The Equestria bunch is getting better at English.

In the book Mark was writing down the half-bytes in the dirt with a piece of antenna. But now that he's got helpers and magic comms that reach through the electromagnetically-insulating Hab canvas, why go through that? Hence the stenographic assembly line.

I'm assuming Opportunity has a long life ahead of it yet. Interesting note: I read yesterday that Viking 1's lander didn't die of natural causes. A glitch in a software update ordered the lander to turn its radio antenna directly towards the ground, breaking contact with Earth. Since there was nothing to order it to reacquire signal, that was it- although the probe had electricity and function to possibly keep going throughout the Reagan administration. Still six years of Martian weather wasn't bad at all, considering they were expecting a sixty-day mission.

In the book, at this point, NASA was keeping Mark's survival from Hermes in order to preserve crew morale. (It was a questionable call, and was presented as such in the book.) Obviously that's not the case, so it only make sense to relay Pathfinder through Hermes. By cutting down on the transmission distance, the signal loss is reduced, which means data can be transmitted faster. Unfortunately I don't know what the upper limit was on Pathfinder's computer for broadcasting data, so I could be wrong about 13 kilobits being possible. But that's what I'm going with.

Why can't Pathfinder use the satellites? Because both the low-gain and high-gain antennas have rotors to keep them tracking their targets. The rotors are slow- too slow for most Mars satellites, which are low and whipping across the sky at a good clip. But from the Martian perspective, Hermes is moving across the sky at more or less the same rate as Earth (i. e. Mars rotation and not orbital velocity). And thanks to trajectories, Hermes should set in the sky AFTER Earth, which opens the transmission window a crack larger.

I'm assuming that none of the Mars satellites in the story is geostationary and that Lagrange point sats aren't a thing. (The L4 and L5 spots are right out, since there are several Trojan asteroids in those spots. The others wouldn't be stable without a good bit of maneuvering fuel.)

Tomorrow I go to Rice U for a small, cheap local con- OwlCon, Houston's oldest tabletop gaming convention. I should have plenty of time for writing, so we'll see what I can do this weekend! Buffer remains at 3.

Sol 94

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 92
ARES III SOL 94

[11:18] JPL: Mark, this is Venkat Kapoor. We’ve been watching you and your alien friends since Sol 8. The whole world’s been rooting for you. Congratulations on reviving Pathfinder and surviving that Hab breach. We’re working on rescue plans now. Hermes will receive a crash refit and mission-specific redesign and launch back out to you in the next Hohmann window with a minimum crew to pick up all six of you using Ares IV’s MAV. We’re working on supply missions to feed you in the meantime.

[11:29] WATNEY: Glad to hear it. Really looking forward to not dying. I want to make it clear that none of this was my crew’s fault. It was a string of freak accidents. What did they say when they found out I was alive? Also, “Hi, Mom!”

[11:41] JPL: We’ll want to know everything about your guests. You’re official first contact with alien life of any kind, you know. But right now we want to get a baseline for survival. Tell us about your crops. We estimated your food packs would sustain you alone until Sol 300 at ¾ ration per meal. Given your activity we don’t recommend you go any lower. We understand you gave your vegetarian meals to your guests. How are your remaining food stocks? How will your crops affect them? As to the crew, they were the ones who spotted you first. We kept them in orbit of Mars for over a week watching you. But when we couldn’t contact you via radio, we had to get them on their way back home. They didn’t want to leave you, but they had to.

[11:54] WATNEY: The aliens come from a sort of parallel Earth, or close enough. Three of them are equines of some kind. They had large stocks of viable alfalfa seed they were eating for breakfast cereal. We’ve converted a cave into an airtight, heated, illuminated greenhouse with 400 sq m of cultivated soil growing alfalfa and 200 sq m set aside for potatoes. First harvest will be around Sol 110, but most of the potatoes will have to be used for re-seeding and to replant the 110 sq m of farm I had in the Hab and pop-tents. The first hay harvest will be more than double what we need to get to the next one, but after the Hab blowout I’m hesitant to make predictions. What the fuck was with that, anyway? BTW, if crops fail, veggie meals for aliens run out on Sol 120. I run out on Sol 308.

[12:08] JPL: We’ll get botanists in to ask detailed questions and double-check your work. With all your lives at stake, we don’t want to take any chances. We understand that you don’t want to make predictions, but we’d like some numbers anyway. Are your guests true obligate herbivores? Also, please watch your language. Everything you type is being broadcast live all over the world.

[12:21] WATNEY: Look! Boobies! (.Y.)

[12:28] HERMES: I see you haven’t changed, Mark. This is Lewis.

[12:35] WATNEY: Hey! It is so good to hear from you! How is everyone?

[12:43] HERMES: We’re all fine. We just wish we could have come back for you. It hurt a lot to be so close and yet unable to do anything.

[12:51] WATNEY: There was nothing you could have done. When my biomonitor went dead, it was your duty to get everyone else off this rock. You did the right thing. Now get your asses home safe and I’ll be happy.

[12:59] HERMES: Mark, this is Chris Beck. How are you holding up?

[13:05] JPL: Please, Mark, the language. Also, Hermes, remember this is not a private line.

[13:08] WATNEY: I’m feeling good, but about ten pounds lighter. I’m taking daily vitamin supplements along with my rations. The redundant supplies NASA sent give me enough for five years by myself. I’ve been thinking about giving some to the aliens, though, especially once they go on an all-alfalfa diet.

[13:16] HERMES: Try to reduce your physical activity a bit. We were accustomed to a 3000-calorie diet and an intense activity schedule that burned all those calories. On rations you’ll risk burning too much of your energy reserves, leaving you vulnerable to injury and illness. Also, I understand one of your friends is injured?

[13:24] WATNEY: Yeah. One of the ponies. Her name is Starlight Something-or-Other; we’ve never got a good translation of her last name. She has a broken right foreleg- what would be the humerus on a human. It’s currently splinted, and she’s on permanent bed rest until Sol 110 at least.

[13:25] JPL: Yes, by the way, Mark, we’ll want details on alien anatomy when you can get them to us.

[13:32] HERMES: Oh, that’s not good, Mark. There are tons of complications with a fracture of the humerus. Also, she needs to move and get exercise or else she’s at risk for bed sores, assuming she’s anything close to human. Do you know if it’s a simple or compound fracture? Did the bone break the skin? Have you applied the inflatable cast in the medical kit? It would immobilize it much better than a splint.

[13:38] WATNEY: I have tons of photos, plus my logs. (Warning: I have a potty mouth. Also I got a bit silly sometimes.) You’ll have to figure out a way for me to transmit them, though.

[13:40] WATNEY: Damn. I completely forgot we had that cast. I’ll talk with Spitfire- she’s their medic- and see if it’ll work. The fracture seems to be simple but very painful. She can’t use that limb at all, but she has feeling all the way down, so we’re hoping no nerve damage.

[13:42] WATNEY: Okay, guys, I’m almost two hours past lunchtime, and I’ve been in this rover all day. I’m so glad to be able to talk to you, but I have to call it here. Try to figure out some way for me to slap together a new antenna for the Hab so the Rover can relay this chat to the indoor comps. Also figure out how I can send you attachments (photos, video, etc.).

[13:50] HERMES: This is Lewis again. Stay safe. I’ll buy you a beer when we’re all back on Earth. Hermes out.

[13:51] JPL: I’m putting our best programmers on that right now. I warn you that our bandwidth is very bad and will get worse as Hermes gets closer to Earth. Video is out, and you’ll probably have to resize your image files to under 500K each. Correction- under 200K each. Smaller if possible.

[13:54] JPL: Oops. Understood, Mark. Go eat something. Tomorrow we’ll ask what you have left of the Hab’s comms system so we can work out a procedure for a relay antenna. Also, we have questions about the alien ship’s communications systems. Please be ready for that tomorrow. Kapoor out.

[14:07] WATNEY: Your order for din-dins received and acknowledged with pleasure. Watney out.

Author's Note

One of the things that bothered me a lot about the book: early on we're told that the dish and the antenna farm were lost on Sol 6, but for the first few days Mark assumes that he can fix the radio if he finds the dish again. That means the apparatus inside the Hab, including the transmitter, is still in operational order. So it should be possible to rig something, ANYTHING, that can get the short distance from Pathfinder or the rover to the Hab interior. But Mark says they can't do it, and never explains why.

So I'm treating it as, they weren't motivated to do it, because Pathfinder worked. But now, with aliens involved, there is motivation. And it's going to happen.

One of the commenters to the previous chapter said that, although Pathfinder could transmit at a peak of 11 kilobits per second, it could only receive at 500 bits per second. I'm choosing to ignore that. First, I'm thinking that some Clever Dan at JPL might figure a software patch to accelerate Pathfinder's receipt of data; second, Pathfinder should be able to relay to the rover at speed if its internal memory is more or less bypassed. And in any case, a twenty-plus megabyte software patch at 500 bits per second would take more than the 12.3 hours Mars would be facing Earth. It would probably take a couple of WEEKS. Yet in the book the patch is begun and ended in one morning with time for elevenses.

So I'm willing to be a bit more realistic than the book when opportunity presents, but not THAT willing. Pathfinder's pipe will be narrow, but it won't be sclerotic.

In the book the lightspeed lag from Mars to Earth is eleven minutes. The worst it ever gets, IIRC, is 28 minutes, during the Mars-Sun conjunction (Mars and Earth on opposite sides of the Sun). The time-stamps are to keep track of how much time is in the day, with a fudge factor for Hermes being kind-of in between the two planets. Of course Mark is annoyed at being stuck in the rover all day for the software patch and the conversation. In the book he was going in and out of the Hab for every exchange, which contributed to the Hab breach.

(Come to think of it, the Hab breach is another motivation for getting a short-range antenna on the Hab comms system. EVAs need to be minimized to preserve the remaining two airlocks and Hab canvas. Mark has very little spare canvas left.)

Sol 95

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 94
ARES III SOL 95

[08:16] WATNEY: Good morning, Earth! This is Mark Watney, but not for very long. It’s been exactly thirty sols since I personally inspected the cave farm last, so I’m taking Rover 1 out there today with two of my guests. But don’t worry. I’m leaving another of my guests to talk with you and answer your questions about them. My beautiful assistant Dragonfly is the second-best at speaking and typing in English. Unfortunately the great wizard Starlight the Untranslatable Last Name, who went with me to Pathfinder, is the one who’s best at English. She’s restricted to the Hab because of that broken limb, which the inflatable cast just fits on. It's a bit long for her, but it works. Getting her suit on for the group photo three sols ago was a pain for everybody but especially her, so we’re not doing that again just for this chat.

I’m really hoping you guys come up with a procedure for me to repair the Hab radio. Here’s the low-down on what’s left. The actual radio unit inside the Hab is intact. The dish, as you probably know, sheared off its mast on Sol 6, taking the rotors with it. I have twenty-seven antenna fragments remaining, of various sizes, from the antenna farm. The cable that led from the farm to the dish mast snapped about thirty centimeters from the mast. The cable from the mast to the Hab is intact. The beacon system is fully functioning, as are the rover radios.

In addition, the alien ship has two communications systems. One works on principles that don’t operate well in this universe and which I don’t want to explain until you can receive photos. Sensitive stuff. The other is an old analog voice-only radio with five preset channels, all in or near the commercial FM bands. I tried using the alien ship’s antenna with the Hab, but it didn’t work.

I’ve used two of the #7 spare power cables and three voltage adapters to connect the alien ship to Hab electricity. That’s enough to run its airlock, remaining lights, and a little heat. I have a #3 power cable running to the MAV fuel plant for use in powering it to bottle CO2 for feeding plants and other uses. Four #2 lines, a solar farm multi-plug adapter, and a #8 line are being used to power a salvaged airlock and some heaters in the cave farm. All other electronics repair resources remain unused at this time.

That’s all I can think of. If you want to know about anything else, ask my beautiful bug assistant. Back around 13:00! – Mark

[08:34] JPL: Thanks, Mark. For future reference it might be a good idea to repeat the Pathfinder procedure on Rover 1 so you can use your modified Rover 2 for your long-distance EVAs.

We notice you don’t list the antenna farm lattice base in your inventory. I assume the dish smashed it into little bits when it sheared off, leaving nothing salvageable. Also, you don’t mention the MDV radio. We know the MDV was breached during the Sol 6 storm. Do you know if the MDV radio was broken? Can you take pictures of the damage if it is?

Based on prior image analysis our first response is to remove the radio from Rover 1, since you’re using it for spare parts, and set it up in one of the pop-tents attached to the Hab. The antenna cable can be run through a patch kit valve and sealed using the spare antenna gasket from the rover repair kit. The procedure may require depressurizing the Hab, but we’re testing to see if we can eliminate that step without risking another breach. I’ll have more for you on that tomorrow.

Anyway, I’m assuming Mark won’t read this until this afternoon. Is Dragonfly on? Please respond.

[08:54] WATNEY: Hello to Earth! I am Dragonfly. I type slow, so please be kind. I make some answers before time this morning so I can ctrl-C ctrl-V them here if they are what you ask about. (Why is it ctrl-V and not ctrl-P? C is for Copy, why is V for Paste?)

[09:06] JPL: Hello, Dragonfly. I am Venkat. My friends tell me Mark drove off around 08:23. We know Mark likes to play pranks, so we had to be sure this wasn’t one. How do you like living with Mark?

[09:22] WATNEY: Mark is good. He is very patient and kind. He has funny television shows. What is pranks? Is it a game? What are the rules?

[09:35] JPL: A prank is a kind of joke. You try to make someone else scared or confused. They can be mean, but Mark isn’t a mean person.

[09:42] HERMES: That’s what you think! – Martinez

[09:49] WATNEY: Ooooh! I know lots of people who like play pranks at home! Mark doesn’t do that to us. Spitfire played a good prank on him a few days ago.

[09:50] JPL: Hermes, you will have your chance to talk with our visitors. Please leave this conversation to us for now.

[09:58] HERMES: Roger. But Martinez is right. You weren’t there the day he had all our name labels changed on our uniforms when they were in the laundry. We had to report to the sims wearing each other’s coveralls, and Mark was there with the camera. – Lewis

[10:02] JPL: Dragonfly, which of the aliens are you? We only know you by satellite pictures. Here is what we’ve been calling you based on those:

TALL BOY – only one with two legs instead of four

ORANGE LEADER – always out in front

WHITE BOXY – almost always has a large box with her

WHITE HEN – usually very close to White Boxy or someone else

ORANGE RANDOM – could do anything

[10:19] WATNEY: Okay! I can ctrl-V now!

OUR CREW

CHERRY BERRY – Boss. Pilot. Earth horse/pony (don’t know which word is right). Best space pilot from our home. Works hard. Loves cherries a lot!

STARLIGHT LIGHT-THAT-DOES-NOT-STAY-THE-SAME-AND-IS-ALMOST-NOT-THERE (we don’t know the word) – Science and magic. Not a pilot. Unicorn. Keeps working on one thing until it is done and can’t see anything else. Helped make the engine that got us here. Her leg is broken now.

FIREBALL – Pilot, space walk boss. Dragon. Really grumpy. Eats shiny rocks.

DRAGONFLY – That’s me! Was pilot, now engineer. Mark calls me bug-pony- not what I am, but we don’t know the word for what I am. I fix things on our ship if they can be fixed. Was a fighter for my ruler before I went to space.

SPITFIRE – Pilot, medic. Pegasus. Used to be boss of top pegasus flying team and high in pony guard. This is her first time in space.

Typing this: I think Tall Boy is Fireball. Orange Leader is Cherry. White Boxy is Starlight. White Hen is Spitfire. I looked up "hen", and I really won't call her that! And I think I’m Orange Random. What is random?

[10:33] JPL: Thank you for having that written in advance. For Starlight’s name try twinkle, glimmer, or shimmer. You use the words unicorn, pegasus and dragon. Did Mark tell you these are myths- not-true things- on our world? Also, given the group picture we took, you are definitely not horses. Pony and ponies are the better words.

[10:35] JPL: Wait- why do you use the word magic?

[10:51] WATNEY: More ctrl-V!

THE KINDS OF HORSES/PONIES

EARTH HORSES/PONIES – No horn, no wings. Earth ponies are very strong and good with plants and animals. They grow the crops. Their magic is mostly in the hooves.

PEGASUS’S – Wings, no horn. A pegasus flies through the air and makes the weather. Their magic is mostly in the wings.

BAT HORSES/PONIES – Bat wings, no horn. Rare. They come out at night. Don't know much about them.

UNICORNS – Horn, no wings. Unicorns make magic with their horns. They make difficult things.

ALL-CORNS – Horn and wings. Most power ponies. There are only five and they rule the pony lands. Starlight’s boss at home is an all-corn.

BUG-HORSES/PONIES – Not really ponies. We have wings and horns but only our ruler is as power as an all-corn. We used to hide and steal love from ponies, but those were the bad days and things are different now. Our ruler was first in space!

OTHER TALKING PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT HORSES/PONIES: dragons, griffins, hippogriffs, yaks, buffalo, cows, minotaurs, many more that I could not find name for in your dictionary and that Mark could not name.

Typing: So my friends are ponies. Go- whoops! New question, more ctrl-V!

WHAT IS MAGIC?

Mark tells me you do not have magic and do not know what it is. Magic is like gravity or electric. It is a thing that moves other things. In our world it is everywhere. Here it is only where things are alive. There is magic in space at home; here there is not, and that is why we crashed. Most of our ship ran on magic. Now we only have magic when all of us are together to fill our battery about 4% each day.

Magic can do many things. Earth horses/ponies use magic to make plants grow faster and to take care of animals. Pegasuss and bug-ponies use magic to fly. Unicorns use magic to lift things and cast spells that change one thing into a new thing.

In our world much runs on magic. Blimps run on magic. Televisions run on magic. Video games are half electric, half magic. Our ship was the first to run all on magic, no chemical rockets after liftoff.

Mark says you will not believe this. He took many pictures of using magic. He wants you to see them so you will know we are not lying. I lie sometimes but not about this.

Typing: What is your next question?

[12:06] JPL: Mark was right. Did he tell you there is no such thing as magic on Earth? How did your ship work?

[12:42] WATNEY: I don’t have ctrl-V for this. I thought it would wait until we send you our ship books with translate. I try to answer.

Yes, Mark tells us you have no magic. You are wrong. If you have life, you have magic. The more life there is, the more magic there is. I don’t know why you can’t use it.

We don’t know how to say the name of our ship in English. The name comes from an old pony language. Starlight’s translate magic doesn’t work on it. We use big chemical rockets to launch it from the ground. They fall off. Magic batterys then run main engines that push us into orbit and from one planet to another. We have magic talk that lets the ground see our ship on a wall and which lets us talk to one another with no light delay. Much faster than this.

Our flight was test new engine magic that goes much faster than regular engines. Blink-jump very short distances many many many times in a short time. There was an accident. We made the new engine wrong. It jumped from our world into yours. When we got here the batterys blew up except for two use-when-bad-thing-happens batterys and small-rocket-turn-ship batterys. We could not go back home. We could not stop from crash on Mars. When we crash, new engine broke.

Cherry wants to try use our ship, MDV, MAV base to try to make new ship that can leave Mars. We can make new new engine using rocks from cave. New batterys too. But don’t know if we can get off ground with them. New engine very bad use on ground.

[12:55] JPL: Can you tell us how much thrust- how much push- your engines and thrusters make? (A thruster is a small rocket that turns a spaceship.) Also, can you tell us the mass of your ship? If you can, we can do the math to find out if your ship can fly again.

[13:07] WATNEY: Mark here again. Dammit, I didn’t want to tell you about the magic until I had proof. It took a long time before I believed it, and I saw it first-hand. I didn’t want you to think I’d gone crazy up here. Also, the pony ship has a big hole in the bottom in its rear airtight compartment. It’s structurally unsound. I didn’t know they were still pursuing this.

[13:20] JPL: Please thank Dragonfly for talking to us. All of us here are looking forward to talking to him again. And right now we’re choosing to believe in Clarke’s Third Law. Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it won’t work. If Dragonfly’s ship still has working or repairable engines, we want to explore that option as a backup plan. Do you have photos of the hole?

[13:32] WATNEY: Affirmative. I also have photos of the cave and its crops as of today. The crops are beautiful. So are the crystals. I can’t wait to send the pics to you. Also, Dragonfly is still here, and she’s a bit miffed. Emphasis on SHE. All my guests are female except Fireball.

[13:43] JPL: We’ll work on that. Add to the task list getting a conversion into newtons for the specific impulse of all the alien ship’s surviving engines and a decent estimate of the ship’s current weight. Also an estimate of MDV hydrazine fuel remaining and available water or other hydrogen source for the MAV. We can send that info to Astrodynamics and get an answer about the flight potential of any combination of the components. Also, sorry, Dragonfly.

[13:55] WATNEY: Will do in my copious free time. I’m going to go eat now.

[14:07] JPL: Bon appétit. Will spend the rest of today transmitting emails. You have quite a fan club down here, Mark. JPL out.

[14:19] WATNEY: Really? Can I join? How many UPC codes for the secret decoder ring? Watney out.

Author's Note

Can't really think of a note for this, except to say that Dragonfly is making use of the digital dictionary, and when that fails Starlight. She's still weak on grammar and participles/gerunds, among other things.

Wrote a chapter today, keeping buffer at 3. Any more writing today will be work on CSP.

EDIT: here's a thing to mention. I have Venkat get Dragonfly's gender wrong because, for some reason, I continually typo Dragonfly's gender as "he". I never made this error writing CSP. It might be because Fireball went by "dragon" in my early notes for so long... I dunno. Anyway, I do it, so I decided to have Venkat do it for once.

Sol 96

MISSION LOG – SOL 96

The ponies have taken excellent care of the cave farm. I went there yesterday. It’s almost warm in there now. I may suggest pulling one or two of the pony ship heaters so we can get some of the solar cells back to the Hab. Hot air rises, and I’m assuming the air seal on the cave depends on a viable permafrost layer on top of the cave, so having it get too warm inside isn’t a good idea. But since I’m in touch with NASA now, I’ll give all the botanists they say they’re recruiting something extra to worry about by throwing the problem at them.

Seriously, looking at the plants, I felt kind of superfluous. They’re growing at about the same rate, maybe slightly faster, that they would on Earth in proper sunlight. The alfalfa looks almost tall enough to harvest already. The potato plants are flourishing. I dug up two and found half-grown tubers aplenty on them already. Still green, so too soon to harvest, but I have a feeling it’ll be a good harvest when the time comes.

And there are eight other little sprouts, which I know I didn’t plant, running down the eastern side of the cave parallel to the planting area. When I asked about them, Cherry looked positively guilty. Apparently she planted some cherry pits, and they’ve sprouted. I’m not mad at her, but I am puzzled, because what she’s done is absolutely impossible. Cherries require winter cold- a whole winter cold spell- before their pits become viable. And then it takes a lot longer than just one month for the pits to germinate. Some cherry pits never germinate at all.

But there they are- eight little leafy twigs, pretty nondescript at the moment. In a garden I wouldn’t think twice about weeding ‘em out. But seventy-five sols ago those were still fresh fruit. Now, thanks to whatever mojo Cherry has going for her, they’re living, photosynthesizing plants. I’m definitely not weeding these out, and not just because it would break Cherry’s heart. This is magic and botany at work doing the impossible, and I want to document every step from here on out. This shit is what I got my degree for.

Anyway, not much conversation with Earth today. They’re still absorbing the bombshell about magic being a thing. All pony questions are on hold until we get photo transfer capacity running.

NASA wants today’s bandwidth for another update of Pathfinder’s software and to send a new app to the rover which will convert photos into a format the Pathfinder-Sojourner parser understands. If it works, I can start sending the photos I’ve got banked up. Video is still out, though. I’ll be limited in my upload time to the afternoons, after a daily check-in and Q&A with the eggheads back home. Even using Hermes as a relay to cut transmission distance and increase bandwidth, the data’s being pushed through a really thin straw. Maybe a coffee stirrer.

Venkat Kapoor’s flying back to Houston today, so I did what talking I did today with Bruce Ng at JPL. He’s got a breakthrough idea on the task of getting the Hab radio working at least long enough that I don’t have to spend all morning suited up in the rover. Instead of using Rover 1’s radio and a new cable through the wall of the Hab, we’re going to use one thing I actually have a surplus of… suit radios!

Each suit helmet has a little antenna on it. The suits can talk to the rovers over a distance of about two kilometers- a bit better than an Earth walkie-talkie. When the Hab had its full antenna farm, it could hear suit radios even farther than that, but two kilometers is plenty to talk to a radio that’s parked right outside. And since the antenna is already vacuum-safe, we don’t have to worry about sticking it in a pop-tent!

The one problem is this: the Hab radio system puts out a lot more power from its transmitter to the antennas than a suit radio sends to its antenna. The excess electricity could melt the itty bitty antenna. So they’re doing tests at Johnson with spare antennas. (They have plenty now: all of the suit helmets for Ares IV and V have been scrapped, and a new contractor is building replacements with visors that don’t shatter into a billion pieces when the Hab front door suddenly comes flying at your face.) If the output is too strong for the conditions, they want to know what the best way is to reduce or step down the power before I dick with it here.

But assuming they find the solution, in a sol or two I’m going to take the antenna off the helmet I left in Airlock 1 and use some comm system spare parts to hook it to the surviving end of the wire leading to the dish mast. Obviously it won’t talk to Earth, and probably won’t talk to any of the satellites, but it can talk to the rover just fine. And the rover can talk to Pathfinder, and Pathfinder can talk to Earth.

I wonder if this was what the first days of the Internet were like. Maybe I should set a camera on my coffee pot and ask NASA to register me for mars_coffee_pot.com.

Anyway, convo’s done for the day. In a bit I’m going to go help Starlight and Dragonfly work on converting their measurement units into ours so they can tell us how powerful their remaining rocket engines are. Also, I need to nail down for certain the pony radio’s power output and wavebands so we can try to use that as a backup or parallel comms system.

But for now I’m enjoying my email! I haven’t had an email dump since Sol 5!

They’re not sending all of it to me at once, of course. There’s too much. NASA wants to parcel out my bandwidth and my personal time, too. They definitely don’t want me to spend all day responding to thousands of emails. So they’re sending me the cream of the crop.

So far there’s two emails from the President (both boilerplate, ho hum), one email from the Pope, half a dozen rock stars, several from movie stars (the one I really love is the one from Chris Evans- Chris Frickin’ Evans!!), several scientists, and other notables.

But the most important to me was the one Mom sent me. It’s exactly what you’d expect, no surprises: thank God you’re alive, don’t die, your father says hello, we didn’t return your Christmas presents, etc.

I keep going back to read it. It reminds me just how important it is that I not die here.

Anyway, I need to get moving. Cherry is dancing on her hooves waiting for NASA to give her the good word on whether or not we can MacGyver our way off this rock.

Right after I read that letter again.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas via suit SG, over.

AMICITAS: DF - Amicitas calling Baltimare, over.

ESA: Prepare for long message to be relayed to Mark’s people. Over.

AMICITAS: Standing by, over.

ESA: People of the planet Earth! Greetings from the people of Equestria! I, Princess Twilight Sparkle, greet you in the name of friendship and harmony between our worlds and thank you for the generous hospitality you have sh

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltmare, over.

ESA: Why did you turn off suit SG’s life support, over?

AMICITAS: How long is that message, over?

ESA: Not that long. Only about twenty-five hooves or so. Over.

AMICITAS: You must be kidding, over.

ESA: Proper diplomatic relations are a vital part of Amicitas’s extended mission, over.

AMICITAS: Can I speak with Spike or Moondancer, please? Over.

ESA: QC – Cutting in here. I got curious and tripped on TS’s scroll. I’ll explain facts to Princess of Prolixity. What are the limits, over?

AMICITAS: DF- Hello my queen! None of us know half the words in English for TS’s speech. We can’t write down anything longer than a paragraph. And floor in Hab is getting very soggy, over.

ESA: QC – Understood. Stand by for much shorter message, a perfect princess speech. Over.

AMICITAS: Standing by, over.

The first item of business at the meeting in Teddy’s office consisted of a message coming from Mars just before the daily transmission window closed.

Annie spoke for almost everyone when she said, “What the fuck IS this?”

The message, printed out on single sheets of paper for all the attendees, read:

[16:11] WATNEY: This is Dragonfly again. Mark told us not to do this, but our bosses back home wanted to say hello to you. Their first message was too long and with too difficult words for us to translate, so my ruler sends this message instead on behalf of Princess Twilight Sparkle, the founder of the pony space program.

“I am Princess Twilight Sparkle. Hello to Earth. I declare this bridge / bank / library / store open.”

I don’t know what it means, but my ruler says it is the best speech for princessessessessess. Sorry, I’m not sure where you stop writing that word.

(P. S. I had to look up “declare.”)

Teddy Sanders, alone of the group, smiled at the message. “I know what it means,” he said. “Venkat, please send the reply: ‘Tell Dragonfly’s ruler some of us understand completely.’” He shook his head and added, "I only wish I could spike some Congressmen like that."

“Okay,” Venkat said drowsily, still recovering from the red-eye from LAX to HOU. “I’ll do that when we remind them about not using bandwidth during software updates.”

“No, don’t do that,” Teddy said. “Mark can handle that. Just send the diplomacy.”

“What kind of alien fucking idea is this,” Annie growled, “for the first step in interplanetary diplomacy?”

“The kind,” Teddy said, still smiling, “that every history book will print verbatim for the rest of time. I guarantee it.”

The meeting moved on to more important business.

Author's Note

No writing today- I just can't concentrate. So the buffer drops back down to 2.

Teddy understands rivalry between organizations. He also understands those who take their jobs too seriously and those who have fun deflating the first kind... even if he himself is the former and not the latter.

Meanwhile, don't be angry at Twilight. She was trying to do it the right and proper way, and so she forgot about the reality of the water telegraph's limits.

And it seems Cherry's every other day work in the farm is paying dividends. And Mark is kicking himself in the figurative ass for not having been there for all of it.

Sol 97

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 96
ARES III SOL 97

[7:49] JPL: Good morning, Mark and friends. This is Venkat Kapoor. JPL is relaying my messages from Houston.

First, regarding the message Dragonfly sent towards the end of our window yesterday: Theodore Sanders, the chief administrator of NASA, asked me to tell you that he understood your message perfectly. For my part, I add: hello to you too, Princess Twilight Sparkle. We hope to meet your subjects in person soon, and yourself as soon as possible.

Mark, you’ll find in your email the detailed procedure for attaching a suit antenna to the communications mast, including the modifications required to step down the transmitter power to a safe level. We anticipate this will require a two-hour EVA assuming the electronics are pre-assembled in the Hab. Once that’s done we’d like you to put together a full report on your farming methods.

The upgrade to the rover’s communications app should be complete. Please install that and respond once the rover computer is rebooted. If reboot fails, leave a message in the ASCII array around Pathfinder. If we don’t hear from you by rover-chat we’ll have Pathfinder run a panoramic at 10:00 your time.

Assuming the upgrade works, please prepare up to six images for transmission to Earth this afternoon, all 200 Kb in size or smaller. For today we want photos of your current farming setup to go with your written report.

Our primary concern is to get a firm estimate of how long you can feed yourselves. The earliest we can get any resupply to you is Sol 500. The positions of Earth and Mars and the limitations of our available boosters make earlier resupply absolutely impossible. We would prefer to target a date not earlier than Sol 580 so we can send enough supplies to be worth the launch. Also, right now we have only one booster available, with two more coming on line in another seventy sols.

We’ve been planning resupply probes since we first learned you were alive, but we’ve just barely begun the actual assembly. One of the delays has been planning for food and other supplies for your guests. With that in mind, we want to spend the rest of the morning talking with Dragonfly or whichever of your guests is available. Please let us know once you’ve finished installing the software update.

[08:09] WATNEY: No small talk? How have you been? Did you sleep well? How’s the wife and kids? My, some weather we’re having, isn’t it?

I’ve copied the basics of the procedure you sent to a whiteboard so I can assemble the transformer. I think I can be done before midday; it’s all commonsense stuff, nice and simple. Once this is done and tested I want to give priority to testing to see if you can receive transmissions from the alien ship’s radio. If so, that gives us a parallel or backup communications channel for when Pathfinder is running data dumps or if it breaks down.

As I said before, I’m a bit reluctant to give firm numbers, but I’m hoping for harvests every fifty-five to sixty sols. Each harvest in the cave farm should produce, in round numbers, about 300 kilograms of alfalfa (about 100 days of food for the ponies) and/or 1800 average-size potatoes (130 days of food for me). Plans to revive the farm in the Hab and re-seed it would produce 15 kilograms of alfalfa (5 days of food for the ponies) and 720 average-size potatoes (50 days of food for me). The Hab farm would have alfalfa primarily for nitrogen fixation; the soil we’ve cultivated in the Hab is too shallow for alfalfa to develop a healthy root system.

The Hab farm won’t be long-term sustainable- not enough soil for rotation. Too soon to know if the larger cave farm can be sustained. I’ll go into more detail in my report.

Starting software update and reboot now. I’ll send Dragonfly out to talk to you once I verify that the update is good, and then I’ll get to work on the radio procedure.

[8:23] WATNEY: Hello! Dragonfly here! Before we talk, our bosses from home have another message for you. This one isn’t so strange. It was short enough that I can remember it all.

“Hello again from (don’t know how to say our home’s name in English). This is Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Being Friends, and Chrysalis, Queen of the Bug-Ponies. Thank you for taking care of our people. We’re sorry we can’t come get them yet, but we’re working on it. Please continue to be their friends. Great things can be done if we work together.”

They also want to know how soon you can rescue us. They want to know all the parts.

Okay, message delivered. What do you want to know?

[8:42] JPL: Hello, Dragonfly. Please thank your bosses for us. We’ll try to set a time aside for direct contact another day. Right now there are two things I want to ask you about today. The first thing I wanted to ask was: how soon can your people come to rescue you? From your message, it doesn’t sound like they’re coming any time soon.

[8:55] WATNEY: We don’t know when rescue comes. I will ask Starlight to contact home so I can give more answer.

[09:07] JPL: How do you talk with home? Mark says you come from a parallel dimension- a different universe.

[09:21] WATNEY: Our air and water comes from home. They are connected by magic. We use a code to turn water on and off and watch the splashes for replies. It’s slow and it makes a mess. We tried many other things but nothing else works.

[09:33] JPL: Did you say your air and water comes from your home? Is there a limit to how much air or water you get?

[09:59] WATNEY: Each life support system has two crystals in it- one for air and one for water. Magic in the crystal connects them to a larger crystal back home- makes them like one crystal. Water is pumped from a tank; air makes a circle back and forth from the air at home. If air pressure on this end drops too low too fast, or if water runs too long, the crystals back home shut off, must be start again by ponies at home. But: main ship life support is made for always-run water flow as we need it. Danger: if life support magic shut off, our space suits do not work. Can’t get more suits.

Starlight has speak with home now. Home builds a big rescue ship now. Twice as big as our ship. Home tests a new engine that can jump from one world to another like how we got here. The first test robot ship did not come back. They also work on a signal a ship can use to find the way back to home. But even if new engine works, home can’t rescue yet because home does not know where we are. They need to know very very good the place or else get wrong world, maybe not get back home again. Until they can find us, can’t rescue.

[10:15] JPL: I understand your answer. We did not think it was possible to travel between worlds as you have done before. We understand that doing it safely and on purpose requires a lot of testing. Tell your people that if we can do anything to help, we will. It will be many hundreds of sols (Mars days) before we can send our own rescue ship. We would be very happy if you could rescue Mark sooner.

[10:18] WATNEY: We would be happy to save Mark too. We don’t know if we could take him straight to Earth. Space in your world has no magic, so it might be danger to stay in your world too long. Home works on it.

[10:30] JPL: I understand. Now for my second question. We want to send more food and other things in case the farm doesn’t work. What kind of food do you eat? Mark mentions alfalfa. Do you have other Earth foods? What can or can’t you eat? Do you eat meat, or only plants?

[10:56] WATNEY: I don’t know all the words. Mark tells us all our food is the same as Earth food he knows. But I will do my best.

The ponies are Cherry Berry, Starlight Glimmer, and Spitfire. Spitfire says they can eat meat if need to, but most ponies get sick think about it. Much like better plants. Spitfire says also eat milk, eggs, but these are not plants.

Fireball is a dragon. Dragons eat almost anything. Can eat meat, but think eat talking people or smart animals is wrong. Can eat some plants, but hay is no good for dragons. Need eat gems, gold at least a little for health. Fireball eats only gems from the cave; cave has gems for very very long time.

I am do not know the word, say bug-pony. Bug-ponies do not need food except very very small bit sometimes. Can use food to make goo, pods, other things. We eat power from good emotions, especially love. Also drink water.

If you send food, send only for Mark and three ponies. Fireball has much food, and I don’t need food. Also please send meals with not so much bean. Cherry doesn’t complain (had to ask Starlight for the word), but Starlight and Spitfire tired of nothing but bean, bean, bean, bean. Spitfire wants to try meat so long as it tastes different than bean and doesn’t come from any person she knows. (Not a joke. She says that.) But Mark is afraid meat might hurt us or make us angry.

[11:08] JPL: You say you eat emotions?

[11:19] WATNEY: Yes, I say that.

[11:30] JPL: Stay there a little while. I need to talk to someone here.

[11:41] WATNEY: OK!

[11:46] JPL: Can you feel the emotions you eat? How is everybody feeling? How is Mark feeling in particular?

[11:59] WATNEY: It is not good to talk about feelings if you don’t need to. It makes people angry. Angry is not an emotion I can eat.

[12:11] JPL: I know, but I am responsible for Mark. I need to know so I can do what I can to make him happy and relaxed and alert.

[12:23] WATNEY: Antenna procedure complete. Mark Watney used to be very happy and relaxed and alert, Venkat, but right now I’m a little annoyed with you. What did Dr. Shields say when you asked her about this?

[12:35] JPL: I apologize, Mark. Dr. Shields was against it, but I overruled her. We’re all very worried about you. You’ve spent almost three months cut off from all human contact, and that has effects. We need to know if something is wrong so we can try to find ways of improving things. Our resources are limited, but we need to at least know what’s wrong if we’re going to do anything.

[12:48] WATNEY: Yeah, I get that. But this is still damn intrusive, and bringing a third party into it crosses a line. I’d be even angrier, but Dragonfly talked me down a bit. By the way, this little chat better not be live to the whole fucking world, understand? Because you and Dr. Shields are one thing, but I don’t want my emotional state in the National Enquirer, and I’m sure the ponies don’t either.

[13:00] JPL: I shut the public feed of your chat off during the rover software update. The entire chat with Dragonfly is confidential for now. Anything about your emotional state will remain confidential permanently. You have my word and Teddy Sanders’ word on it.

[13:11] WATNEY: Good. I just told Dragonfly she has permission to tell you the truth about me. I’m going to go cool off some more. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Stand by for Dragonfly.

[13:26] WATNEY: Okay. Mark is still really upset. Before he was really happy to talk to you. He likes all of us very much. He thinks we are cute. He looks forward to be rescued.

Mark always feels better when he makes things. He likes making plans. He likes it when things work. He likes it less when he has nothing to do. He hates the music disco, but he listens to it because it makes him not think about doing nothing.

I typed more things about my crew, but it got too bad so I deleted it. I don’t have permission from the others and they will be angry if I do it. I will talk with Cherry about it before I do it. You are responsible for Mark but she is responsible for us.

[13:38] JPL: I understand. Please tell Mark I’m sorry again. I won’t ask again about your friends, but please tell us if you think it’s important. Thank you for your help. Please clear this channel and ask Mark to begin the upload. Kapoor out.

[13:49] WATNEY: Okay. Dragonfly out.

Author's Note

It only occurred to me this morning that Twilight wouldn't have let Chrysalis's snark stand. One of the problems of writing one, occasionally two, and at most three little chapters a day is that the chapters tend to get disconnected. So I added a bit with Twilight's second attempt at a diplomatic message, which you'll agree goes a lot better here. And I just finished writing up Wednesday's chapter, which will be an attempt at a semi-live conversation between NASA and ESA/CSP, with our Martian residents acting as relays.

In the book one of the most questionable calls made by NASA was the decision not to tell the Hermes crew that Mark survived for almost four months. The rationale was that losing Mark was bad, but discovering that they left him behind alive would destroy morale and endanger their return flight. And Venkat Kapoor was the one who first made the call, though Teddy Sanders backed him up on it.

Here again Venkat has made a bad call for good intentions. This is by no means out of character for either him or NASA. NASA has a long history of poking and prodding into astronaut minds whenever possible... and there have been instances that proved that all that snooping was fully justified. But the astronauts themselves have always resented it, just as they resent their near-total lack of privacy when in space.

I almost had Dragonfly spill the beans on everyone. It worked fine until it got to Fireball, and it got negative... and more negative... and finally I decided, "Even a dumb changeling would know not to go here, and Dragonfly's one of the smartest. She wouldn't spill this to a human." So about a hundred words got the chop.

The annoying thing is, Venkat's lost sight of the low-down on the food situation, direct from Dragonfly, because of his curiosity and worry about Mark's mental state. Fortunately he has the text log to go back to, so he'll catch it later. But definitely not one of Dr. Kapoor's finer moments.

Sol 98

MISSION LOG – SOL 98

I’m a bit calmer today. I’m sorry to have dumped all my rage into my log entry yesterday. I’m just pissed that Venkat Kapoor tried to get Dragonfly to talk about me behind my back. And yeah, a big part of that is me being angry at somebody prying into my head. But Venkat has the right to do that, up to a point. The mental state of astronauts is really important, especially for long-term missions like Ares. Moral and mental stability are the main reason why I made it into the program at all.

But Venkat doesn’t have the right to bring Dragonfly into it. The ponies are not part of NASA. They’re not under his command. They’re visitors who didn’t ask to be marooned on Mars with me. And it’s not fair to take advantage of her like that.

I haven’t mentioned it, but the ponies can be really naïve sometimes. I think Dragonfly thinks she’s a great manipulator, with her puppy-bug eyes and her goofy behavior. But you’ll notice I still haven’t let her touch any of my tools. A human politician would tie her in knots, and the others would be even more easy prey.

So this morning, at breakfast, I had a talk with my guests. I had Starlight rev up that Google-translate spell of hers long enough to get across the core point. Basically I told them that NASA can’t force them to do anything, and if they feel one of Venkat’s requests is intrusive or suspicious, they should refuse until they’ve talked it out with each other.

I hate to admit it, but we humans can be thoughtless too.

Anyway, after breakfast I had to chat with Venkat again. The mini-antenna works. Once Rover 1 is rigged to accept Pathfinder’s radio relay, I’ll take Rover 2 out on a jaunt to see the exact range, which I suspect will be about four kilometers- just over the horizon. While I’m doing that, I’ll probably dump the RTG back in its hole. I’ve been too busy to deal with it, but just because it was one of my two warm and cuddly friends during the Pathfinder drive doesn’t mean I’m inviting it into my house where it can possibly bring us all that gift that keeps on giving, cancer. And Dragonfly will be happier knowing that Death Box has gone away again. She's already delighted that she no longer has to go outside to chat with Earth.

NASA’s got its trained botanists ready, and they started with basic stuff- how long did I let the shit and table scraps compost before I mixed them into the soil, what procedure did I use to mix composted soil with Martian regolith, etc. You know, all the stuff I went into excruciating, technical detail into the small hours last night writing up my official report. But they couldn’t wait for me to upload that, oh no. They want to waste my time answering questions now.

After almost two hours working on that, I finally got the day’s to-do list from Venkat. I get to take photos of the alien ship’s engines and thruster packs. Fortunately Dragonfly didn’t get round to replacing their good engine’s bell with the third bell they salvaged from our MAV. Today’s uploads were my botany report on the farming methods, a list of performance data for the alien ship engines as best we can estimate, and the photos of the engines and of the ship exterior, plus photos of the MAV base and of the MDV, both exterior and interior.

So I had to take a lot of photos, put them into a computer, and reduce their resolution to make them fit in the four-hour upload window. Fun times. I tried to get the equipment in the right mood- “give me resolute, now do charming, give me your good side, there we go”- but broken rocket parts just don’t make good fashion models. Maybe if I draped the spare alien parachute fabric over them? Must ask NASA if muu-muus are coming back.

Starlight Glimmer (she finally has a last name, yay!) is delighted that she can now communicate with NASA directly. She’s monopolized what used to be Vogel’s computer ever since her accident, writing up reports and translating their ship manuals. She’s constantly asking me for technical words. She says she’s almost done. I told her the top priority was the info about the ship radio. Of course she disagreed- she thinks her article about magic should be top priority. With my luck NASA will break the tie by demanding a translation of the pony medical manuals- which are the ones Starlight hasn’t worked on at all.

Anyway- time for English lessons. We’ve begun reruns on Electric Company. After that it’s Sanford and Son, which isn’t the same since Fred went to St. Louis and left Grady to watch over Lamont, as if he needed it. Redd Foxx really is the life and soul of that show. At least Esther is still around to steal a scene every episode or so. I think Dragonfly agrees with me, but Cherry still loves the show. She, Starlight and Spitfire had an argument the other night about whether unicorns or pegasi are the pony equivalent of “honkies.” Fireball broke it up by pointing out that, from a non-pony point of view, all ponies are honkies. And that was the last time the H-word got used in this Hab, at least so far.

Anyhow, after that we’re going to try Starsky and Hutch. I’m told it’s required viewing in every police academy since 2022. At least, that’s the only reason I can think of for why every cop I saw around the time I applied for the astronaut corps had these huge mustaches.

“Rich? Rich, are you in here?”

Mike wandered through the cubicle maze of Johnson Space Center’s astrodynamics department. Most of the workers had gone home for the day, but Rich could usually be counted upon to be a laggard. Under normal conditions Mike had to tell him it was time to go home about three days in a five-day week.

Conditions had ceased to be normal at NASA the day a Mars satellite spotted an alien ship about to crash-land on Mars. But even so, for the most part astrodynamics had escaped the rush of deferred-payment overtime most of the other departments had engaged in. The most work the department saw in a day came whenever JPL called for yet another rough approximation of the available trajectories for a direct boost to Mars using Delta-IX and Red Falcon boosters. Precise trajectories would take time, but the rough numbers JPL was using for ballpark estimates at this point in their design process could be done on a desktop computer in a couple of hours.

Sure enough, Rich Purnell was parked at his desk, idly ticking away at something or other on his computer. He hadn’t noticed the deep shadows outside the windows or the departure of practically all his coworkers. Mike was the only coworker whose name Rich recognized. The man barely recognized that a world existed outside whatever mathematical problem had his attention at the moment. He understood numbers and equations, and he didn’t understand people.

Rich was Mike’s problem child, but he was also the one he could dump any task on, no matter how hard or how difficult, and never get a complaint about working late and being forced to break previous plans, dates, or appointments. Rich never had any of those. In fact, Rich had never taken a sick day except when Mike had sent him home… and after the first time Rich returned the next day, still with a fever, Mike had learned to send him to a NASA doctor first. And vacations? Rich barely understood the concept, and he had something like six months of accrued vacation time, unused, on the books.

Mike had long since come to the conclusion that, if Rich ever got his own office large enough to have its own toilet and space for a cot, he'd never leave JSC.

“Rich?” Mike asked, finally getting his employee’s attention.

“Oh. Hi, Mike,” Rich said. “Is it time to go home? I lost track.’

“Yes, it is,” Mike said. “But I’ve got something I want you to look at when you get a chance. Fresh from Mars.”

That got Rich’s attention. It wasn’t quite fair to say that Rich had no idea that a universe existed outside his equations. He was very enthusiastic about the universe, except for the part of it that was Earth. His interest in his own planet was mostly limited to knowledge of its effects as a gravity well and the ability to manually dial the number of almost every take-out delivery restaurant within thirty minutes of JSC from memory.

“We’ve got some hard performance data on the alien ship,” Mike continued. “The aliens were looking into combining the remains of their ship and parts from the MDV and MAV landing stage into a sort of life-raft. Kind of like ‘Flight of the Phoenix.’”

“There’s no such thing as a phoenix,” Rich said. “Unless you mean the Phoenix lander, and that was a specially built space probe.”

Mike sighed and handed him the thick sheaf of printouts. He’d learned early on that Rich thought better when he had his data on paper, using the computer only for the actual calculations. Any information you sent him by email or on a transfer drive would end up on paper, so why not print it yourself from the beginning?

Rich began thumbing through the pages, looking at the rather grainy photos. His eye stopped at one point. “Two hundred ninety-two liters of hydrazine monoprop?” he asked. “That wouldn’t get the MDV aloft more than maybe a kilometer in Mars gravity. Thrust-weight ratios are too low.”

“We know, Rich,” Mike said. “But we want the numbers to prove it. Take a look at this, take your time, and get back to me when you have some answers.”

“Okay,” Rich said. As he held the papers in his left hand, still reading, his right hand reached for the phone on his desk. Mike recognized the number being dialed as the take-out desk for the Jimmy Chonga’s on I-45.

“Try not to stay up too late,” Mike said, stepping away from the cubicle.

Rich didn’t notice him leaving.

Author's Note

Only got about 500 words written today. I made the mistake of trying to do an upgrade to my credit card processing system while writing, and the upgrade failed, so I burned up the energy I would have used for writing trying everything I could think of to get around the problem.

Fortunately, tomorrow I will be stuck at a car dealership for a VERY long time with nothing to do but write. Recall service on the wiring harness in the van's steering column.

Racial tension is still a thing in Equestria, but it's got nothing on species tension.

I have no idea if Jimmy Chonga's actually delivers. I just like the name, partly because it occurred to me long before I learned of the restaurant chain. (And I was sad to learn that my brilliant idea for another restaurant name, "Pizza Love, Inc.", was already trademarked.)

And finally... say hello to Rich Purnell.

Sol 99

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 98
ARES III SOL 99

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS (DF): Amicitas calling Baltimare, please reply by main ship life support, over.

BALTIMARE: Baltimare reads you, Amicitas. Why the main water? Are you in the cave? Over.

AMICITAS: Affirmative. Needed someplace where a lot of water wouldn’t hurt. Mark’s people have asked to talk to you live about three and a half hours from now. Over.

BALTIMARE: Understood. That will be mid-morning here. We’ll be ready. Over.

AMICITAS: This is important. We will have to translate for both sides. It takes light just under eleven minutes to get from us to their homeworld and vice-versa. And it takes a long time to decode Mares code. And we will only have about four hours before we lose contact with their world for the day. We won’t get more than maybe eight signal exchanges, so it’s really important that you keep it short. Also we are still learning their language. Please keep it short and simple. Do you read, over?

BALTIMARE: Roger, Amicitas. Short and simple. Twilight says it’s important they understand how magic works so they can help rescue you. Also need a history of our space program, over.

AMICITAS: We’re telling them that stuff already. Don’t waste time on anything we can tell them. If they ask, we’ll handle the question here. Over.

BALTIMARE: Roger. I’ll tell Twilight and Chrysalis, over.

AMICITAS: Who is this? Over.

BALTIMARE: Spike. I just got up to get Twilight breakfast and saw the lights flashing in here. She’s not up yet, over.

AMICITAS: Okay. How’s Thorax? Over.

BALTIMARE: Still doing well in the Crystal Empire. He and Chrysalis met at a summit last month. No casualties, over.

AMICITAS: Thanks. Tell Twilight and the queen that they have one hour to tell us anything long they think we need to know in advance. After that I have to trot back to the Hab. Over.

BALTIMARE: I told her. She says Starlight knows most of it. We’ll be ready. Out.

[14:20] WATNEY: Before we begin, I want to report a bit of good news: the Hab antenna kludge just picked up about ten minutes of signal from the northern weather station. So we know its range is at least a kilometer, and we know that one weather station is at least partially functional. When I get a chance I’ll take the rover on a circuit, inspect the weather stations, clean off their solar panels, and see how many I can restore to operating condition. Just thought you’d like to know you’re in danger of actually getting some, y’know, actual science out of us at some point.

Okay, here’s how the system will work. The chat window is on the Hab projector so we can all see it. I’ll type whatever Starlight Glimmer tells me to type. Any questions she can handle herself, she will. Anything else, she’ll sort of Morse Code on her spacesuit water system, and they will respond using another suit nobody’s wearing at the moment.

To be clear, any questions about their homeworld up to the day they left- history, geography, etc.- should be held for another time. My guests can answer them just as well as a princess, and they won’t have to wait for a turnaround on dot-dot-dot splash-splash-splash translation. Also remember Starlight’s English is still half dependent on the thesaurus function of our computers, and she won’t have one for this chat. And her bosses don’t know any English at all. When in doubt, I’ll be filling in the gaps myself, and I may guess wrong. So please, keep it simple and short so we can get the most in before the window closes.

Once you check in, Starlight will contact them and make sure they’re on. Say the word.

[14:36] JPL: Venkat here. Teddy is running late again. Go ahead and get the chat going. Mars rotation isn’t going to wait on us. Also be aware that this chat is being released to the press live. We’re really serious about it this time, Mark: watch the language.

[14:48] WATNEY: Roger. I’ll keep it PG today. We’re connecting the ponies now: stand by.

[14:55] WATNEY: “Hello from (no translation)! Twilight Sparkle and Queen Chrysalis are here. Good morning, NASA Administrator!”

[15:08] JPL: Hello. This is Theodore Sanders, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. On behalf of the government of the United States of America, I want to say your people are very welcome here. There are a lot of our people rooting for them.

[15:26] WATNEY: “Thank you! We are told the name of your world is Earth, like soil or dirt. What is the United States of America? Does your world have more than one nation?”

[15:38] JPL: Yes, our world is Earth. What is your world’s name? We can’t translate it. There are about 200 nations on our world; the USA is one of the largest. How many nations are on your world?

[16:02] WATNEY: “The word for our world is an ancient name for horses. Our nation is named ‘land of horses’ in the same old language. There are many speaking people and several horse or pony countries, but ours is the largest. How many speaking people do you have?” (Note: by ‘speaking people’ I think they mean ‘intelligent species.’ Remember each of my guests is a different race or species from any of the others. – Watney)

[16:13] JPL: So far as we know we have only one intelligent species, though a few others come close. There are eight billion of us. Who rules your country? Chrysalis?

[16:27] WATNEY: (Oops. Sensitive topic. Dragonfly and Starlight just had a few sharp words in pony talk. Starlight’s going to answer this one herself. – Watney) “We are not as many people as you, of any kind. Land-of-horses is ruled by Princess Heavens (not the right word) and her sister Princess Luna (the right word). Princess Twilight Sparkle was Princess Heavens’ student before she became a princess. Queen Chrysalis is queen only of the bug-ponies. She has tried to conquer us before, but we are currently at peace.” – Starlight

[16:35] WATNEY: “We’re still working out how to live together. How did you get to space without any magic?”

[16:39] JPL: What can we do that might make it easier for you to rescue your crew and Mark?

[16:47] JPL: Re: last question, Mark can answer better than I. It wasn’t easy. Some people died trying. We don’t want Mark to be another one of those. Can you help?

[16:59] WATNEY: “We don’t know yet. Problems we have: finding your exact universe, landing on planet, picking up crew, leaving planet, getting back home. We don’t think you can help with the first or last ones. Any suggestions?” (Note: my guests’s English is almost good enough for a detailed history of Earth space flight. Starlight’s written up a brief history of her world’s space race, waiting on upload time on Pathfinder. – Watney)

[17:05] WATNEY: “We’re trying to help, but it’s not easy. We’re testing changes to our life support systems that would let us send food, magic power, etc. to the crew, but it’s a problem we’ve worked on for years with little progress.”

[17:11] JPL: We’re working on ways to get them off the planet, at least. We have a ship that could possibly get them into orbit in about a year, but someone has to be waiting in orbit to pick them up. Can you be there?

[17:17] JPL: We’re curious about your experimental FTL drive. Mark tells us you think your crew can build a new one. How does it work? How do you adjust it to compensate for burned fuel, dropped stages, etc.? Our scientists have some clever ideas if we can get one of those working…

[17:30] WATNEY: “If we can find your world, we can be there within a day. But we don’t know how to find your world yet.” (Also, had to explain FTL to the ponies. They say it didn’t actually go faster than light yet- would need more energy than their ship had. – Watney)

[17:40] WATNEY: “The egghead just ran for the doors. I think you just gave her an idea. She invented the drive. She’s changed it about a hundred times since the accident. So far as I know it never adjusted for anything- one setting only. – Chrysalis” (Note: Today we learned ponies and humans both have the term “egghead”. In pony language it really is the pony word for egg and the pony word for head put together. – Watney)

[17:42] JPL: Can you tell us how to make our world more visible to you?

[17:52] JPL: Please tell the princess thank you from us. Do you have any questions for us before we end?

[17:58] WATNEY: “I don’t know. – Chrysalis” (Note: I’m willing to bet what she actually said was, “Bleep if I know,” based on how Starlight hesitated before telling me what to type. And based on her face now, I’d call that confirmed. – Watney)

[18:17] WATNEY: “What are the rules for land claims in your universe? I want my subject and my employees to have someplace safe if you kick them out. – Chrysalis”

[18:30] WATNEY: The Earth transmission window is about to close. Time to say good night, all.

[18:31] JPL: International treaty forbids land claims outside of Earth. Treaties also require all people to come to the aid of stranded astronauts. Your people will not be kicked out under any circumstances.

[18:43] JPL: Thank you for your time, Queen Chrysalis. We’ll do everything we can for your people.

[18:50] WATNEY: “They better not be kicked out. One way or another, we are coming for them. Good night. – Chrysalis” (And that’s all, folks… - Watney)

Author's Note

If this seems something of a washout, it is. The fact of the matter is that the highest-ups on both ends of this conversation can't contribute all that much to one another's efforts. What little they can give, the people on Mars can give without intervention from above. And without direct interaction and travel to and from each other's realms, there's not that much room for diplomacy.

So, for the most part, they spend time thrashing around looking for things to ask... and, in the meantime, covering a lot of ground already covered in the story so far.

Why such a short window? Because at this point Hab time is several hours ahead of Houston time by the sun. Right now Venkat, Bruce Ng, or whoever else is on the Earth end of the Pathfinder chat at 0800 hours Hab time is doing so in the by-god-I-ought-to-be-in-bed:30 time of morning. Chief administrators don't keep those hours.

And if it wasn't apparent, Twilight had control of the signal from Equestria until she went running for the nearest quill and parchment. After that it was the Queen Chrysalis Show, at least for the little time remaining.

Wrote not quite 3700 words today, so the buffer's back up to 2. I might burn one of those tomorrow; deadline is Saturday for Everfree Scribblefest, and I've not even begun on my entry.

Sol 101

MISSION LOG – SOL 101

Good morning, log! Today is a busy day for me, because I’m the only one in the Hab with a working space suit! Dragonfly says the suits are still curing after yesterday’s patching work, so none of the pony crew is going outside today. So, in addition to brushing off the solar panels, I get to do a lot of driving today!

Today’s chores: dump the RTG back in its hole; make a circuit of the weather stations and see which ones can be brought back online; go to the farm and check on things there; and bring back some quartz for Fireball, because he’s running low.

Quite a shopping list I have. Eggs, butter, plutonium, quartz.

Luckily I don’t have to worry about NASA giving me new orders today. Pathfinder is still working through the upload backlog, thanks to the photo session getting pushed back while the ponies had their makeover at Spa Watney. (I don’t blame them. I am, after all, the most popular and exclusive spa host on the whole planet.) So until the upload is completed I’m off NASA’s leash.

I gotta say, it feels nice. There’s a world of difference (see what I did there?) between involuntarily cut off from communications and voluntarily cut off. Earth is still there if I want or need them, but for the time being they can’t touch me for some stupid questions about alien rhizomes or percentages of light converted to heat when transmitted through a magic crystal.

Just got around to reading Dr. Shields’ email. Basically she says she told Venkat off when she found out he ignored her advice. She’s put in for time on the chat to talk with Dragonfly to find out her views on doctor-client privilege and trust issues. And she says that if Venkat or anybody else, even Teddy Sanders, tries this shit again, she’ll resign, call a press conference, and blow the whistle so hard I’ll be able to hear it here without Pathfinder.

Irene Shields might be a head-shrink, but she’s all right.

“Watney’s a dead man.”

The words hit Venkat’s ears at the same time a large pile of printouts, neatly held together by a pair of alligator clips, thudded onto his desk. The bearer of this ill tidings, Sue Douglass, was the head of JSC’s Astromaterials Research labs, which among other things included planetary geology. She was the one who determined which research labs did or didn’t get the priceless mineral samples from Ares I and II, and who would do the same for the quick-stow samples from Ares III’s truncated mission.

“Good morning, Sue,” Venkat replied pleasantly. “Good to see you’re on time for your appointment, which I don't remember you making. I trust my secretary made you comfortable while you waited?”

“I said, Watney is a dead man,” Sue replied. “And so are those adorable colorful aliens who are on the front pages of every paper in the world today.”

“I heard you,” Venkat said patiently. “Would you mind explaining why?”

Sue picked her massive report back up, flipped through several pages, and held it open for Venkat to view. It was a photograph of Watney’s cave farm taken from just inside the impossibly installed alien airlock. What appeared to be half the glittering crystals in the ceiling glowed with a bright light, fully illuminating the dark green plants in elongated rows on the dirt below. More crystals coated the walls, with several running completely from floor to ceiling at odd angles- including one that plunged right into the heart of the cultivated area.

“It’s an impressive sight,” Venkat admitted. “So?”

“So?” Sue asked sarcastically. “So it’s a lava tube. It has to be. It’s not even the largest or longest lava tube we’ve spotted on Mars, though how it got attached to a volcano that small will make somebody’s doctoral thesis someday. Obviously it was flooded with water for hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of years. Hot, mineral-rich water, to be exact. And those minerals deposited in all the vugs left behind when the first lava flows cooled, first forming a raw quartz overlay, then the crystals we’re seeing here.”

“If you say so,” Venkat shrugged. “I’m physics, not geology.”

“You’re the top Mars man in NASA,” Sue replied. “Which means you know why we knew lava tubes existed on Mars before now.”

“Remind me.”

“Because we’ve seen them. From orbit.” Sue flipped four pages in the report, then jabbed a finger down at a photo of Tharsis taken by a satellite. “And the reason we can see them from orbit is that they collapsed. Lava tubes always collapse, Venkat. They’re infamous for it. The material is weak and brittle and porous as all hell. That’s how you get geodes in them in the first place.”

Venkat grabbed the report and began flipping through the pages at random. “Are you telling me the roof is going to come in on Mark’s farm?” he asked.

“Nooooooo, no,” Sue said. “That would be too easy. That would be what might happen if the cave had been left alone.” She took the report back from Venkat and flipped to the appropriate page, a page full of equations Venkat recognized. “But that cave is full of one full atmosphere of air pressure. And according to Watney’s log, it’s only definitely airtight at the airlock end and at the far end- where the old tube meets what I’d guess it its old magma chamber.

“So do the math with me, Venkat. We know the material making up the cave walls is porous. The only reason we can guess for there not being any leaks right now is a layer of permafrost and compacted regolith on top of the cave. But the more that system heats up, the more unstable those layers will become. Eventually there will be a leak. And you know what happens then?”

“No. What?”

“The Hab airlock happens, that’s what!” Sue jabbed a finger at the equations again. “Except this time it’s at least fifty times as much air and a much tinier hole… at first.” She turned the page to more equations. “The air will leave through the initial breach at the speed of sound- three hundred sixty meters per second at least, maybe faster. The force of the air will rapidly erode the sides of the breach, causing cracks, faults, and blowouts.

“And then, once the air pressure on both sides is equalized, whatever’s left around the breach will be unsupported by the thick cushion of air it had before. The faults will continue to propagate, and the ceiling will cave in, probably in huge chunks.

“In short,” Sue said, closing the report and slapping it onto Venkat’s desk, “the cave will first blow out, and then cave in. And incidentally, anyone inside at the time will be killed by tornado-scale winds, decompression, or falling rock. Have your pick!” She took a breath, sighed, and added, “And even if they all live, there is absolutely no way they could ever repair the farm.There wouldn’t be a hole in the roof, Venkat. There would just be. No. Roof.”

Venkat nodded. “All right, I believe you,” he said. “But the two questions I have are: what can we do about it, and how long do they have before it happens?”

Sue shrugged. “It could happen tomorrow,” she said. “Or it could happen after Ares 3B arrives. We don’t know enough about the composition of the soil above the cave, or for that matter in and below the cave. We have Watney’s analysis,” she said, nudging the report, “but he geared that analysis towards the immediate task of growing crops in what he found.”

“Do you want him to take new samples?”

“Hell, no!” Sue shouted. “The soil in the cave’s contaminated now, and the last thing in the world we want now is anything disturbing the soil on top of the cave. No,” she said. “What we want, ideally, is for that alien to do whatever she did to seal the ends of the cave for the entire cave. Make the geode absolutely airtight. Do that, and the risk of blowout is eliminated so long as they don’t crack the outer layer of quartz in their mining operations.”

Venkat blinked. “Mining operations?” he asked.

Sue rolled her eyes. “Venkat, how much sleep have you been getting?” she asked. “And have you been reading your own chat logs?”

“Not enough,” Venkat admitted. “What did I miss?”

“God knows,” Sue said with feeling, “but in this case you missed two things. The aliens use gemstones and crystals like quartz for their technology. And the dragon eats gems. Without the quartz crystals he has no food supply at all.”

“Okay,” Venkat said, making some notes on a scratch pad. “I’ll talk to Mark about it tomorrow and see if it’s feasible. What about interim precautions?”

“If possible, lower the air pressure to ten PSI inside the cave,” Sue said. “That’s equivalent to the air pressure in La Paz, Bolivia, and they can grow crops there. And monitor the temperature and keep it as low as cultivation will permit. The lower the temperature and the less the pressure differential between inside and outside the cave, the more time we have before the system literally collapses. Also, tell them to stay the hell away from any of the crystals that go completely across the geode. Up and down, side to side, whatever, leave them the hell alone.

“And above all, tell them to be gentle when cutting crystals off the walls. Don’t bend, push, twist, whatever. Straight cut or nothing. Shear forces on the outer walls of the geode are the worst thing that could happen to that setup.”

“Okay,” Venkat nodded. “Can we test any of this in the lab?”

Sue nodded, “I have some models we can put in the partial-pressure chamber and simulate, yes. We’ve already done computer models, but they’re based on incomplete data.”

“Get a proposal on my desk by tomorrow morning,” Venkat said. “You’ll have funding no later than the end of next week, so start lining up your personnel and materials needs now.” He tapped Sue’s report and added, “Also forward this to Director Sanders and email a copy to Commander Lewis on Hermes. Teddy needs to know, and Lewis was the geology specialist for Ares III. She might have some input on this.”

“Right.” Sue nodded, and then, having said her piece, she turned to leave.

“Wait a moment,” Venkat said. “Wouldn’t you be interested to know what I’ve been reading, that has me forgetting Mars chat logs and other reports?”

He swiveled his computer screen so that Sue could see it. The title of the document showing read: INTRODUCTION TO MAGIC THEORY AND ITS RELATION TO PHYSICAL LAWS – STARLIGHT GLIMMER, ASTRONAUT.

“You would not believe,” Venkat said, unable to keep the hunger out of his voice, “how eager I am to make sense of this. And I have several thousand scientists from every branch of NASA except possibly yours demanding the chance to do so.

“And they all want access yesterday.” Venkat sighed. “I’m going to chat with Starlight tomorrow, so this is my homework. I need to know enough,” he said, tapping the screen, “to get to the point where my questions rise to the level of stupid.”

Author's Note

Yeah. I went back to the cave being a lava tube. Vugs is vugs.

This chapter is to drive home the point: any air leak above the microscopic level won't be bad, it'll be catastrophic. That cave is a bomb now a thousand times more potentially lethal than the perchlorate pile ever could be. And it all comes down to differential air pressure.

I did a ton of writing today. My 3,700 Scribblefest entry lost 700 words, then gained 2400 through rewriting. And then, after I posted it, I wrote another 2000 words for Maretian to keep the 1-chapter buffer alive. (Also, the last two paragraphs of Watney's log here were supposed to go on the end of yesterday's chapter, so I had to rework that to fit here.)

Anyway, my Scribblefest entry, a highly improbable and silly bit about what Rarity is willing to do for her family, is here:

For Love of Love of the Game (or, Rarity Makes an Athletic Supporter)

Note: Rarity does very little sewing in this story.

Enjoy!

Sol 102

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 101
ARES III SOL 102

[08:03] WATNEY: Good morning. Quick report on yesterday’s EVA. Southern and western weather stations are fully operational. Northern weather station has lost its anemometer mast and one solar panel, so I’ve set it to daily data dumps instead of constant transmission. Eastern weather station got smashed by debris. Several parts are missing and the CPU is wrecked. Not repairable. The farm is coming along nicely, on pace for a harvest between Sol 109 and Sol 112. I took out some trash to the green flag, but I doubt Martian raccoons will come along to steal it, so it’ll be there if I need it again.

Dragonfly has pronounced the repairs to the pony spacesuits complete, so all the ponies except Starlight are go for EVAs again. This is good, because I need Dragonfly and Fireball to help with the pony radio tests. You do have a procedure ready for that, right guys?

[08:15] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Venkat Kapoor here. We have the procedure, but there’s something a little more urgent we want you to work on today. Since your friends have space suits that provide unlimited Earth-quality air and circulation, and since you have the water reclaimer tank plus a spacesuit full of surplus water, we want you to power down the atmospheric regulator, the oxygenator, and the water reclaimer and do a complete diagnostic and inspection on all of them. We’ve got some bonus procedures in an email to check against specific issues we think might crop up in an extended mission with as many people in the Hab as you have.

While you’re doing that, I’m going to take this chat private and speak to Starlight Glimmer. She sent us some truly fascinating material, and I’m hoping to get some details straightened out. The diagnostics and other procedures will take you most of the transmission window, so you should probably get on those now.

Oh, and one final thing: Dr. Douglass of Astromaterials Research has some proposed adjustments for your cave farm. I’ve sent them to you in an email. Discuss them with your guests and let us know if you decide to go forward with any of them. This has nothing to do with your botany work, by the way. Our botanists here are still arguing about how many things about your farm are impossible. I signed up for nine in the betting pool.

[08:31] WATNEY: You’re still depositing my pay in the bank, right? Take some out and put me down for zero, because if a thing exists, it can’t be impossible. I’ll go get Starlight on a computer.

[08:43] JPL: Sorry, Mark, but Mitch Henderson beat you to it.

[08:55] WATNEY: Well, shit. Here’s Starlight.

[08:58] WATNEY: Good morning! I am Starlight Glimmer, scientist and wizard for our ship. Please, why does your language have a word for “user of magic” when you say you don’t have magic?

[09:11] JPL: Hello, Starlight. In ancient times anything we couldn’t explain was magic. People who could do things others couldn’t were often called wizards… if they were lucky. The unlucky ones tended not to live long.

I’ve been reading your reports. I only skimmed your history and your technical specs before forwarding them to our engineers. But I’ve been focusing on your treatise on magic. Could you answer some questions about it?

[09:26] WATNEY: I’ll try. Be careful: I’m still learning your vocabulary. Also, most of the theorems and equations in the essay apply to our world, which has a universal magic field.

[09:39] JPL: That’s fascinating by itself, Starlight. Our models of physics recognize either four or five primary physical forces, depending on whether “dark energy” exists. None of them are universally uniform. All of them originate from matter in some fashion. A universal force sounds to us like “aether,” a discredited theory that held that some intangible substance permeated the universe in order for light waves and other forces to travel through it. An energy field that is the same at all points in the universe breaks our physical laws.

[09:44] WATNEY: The four physical laws you mention are gravity, electromagnetism, the nuclear force, and… ?

[09:56] JPL: We divide the nuclear force into strong (holds atoms together) and weak (breaks them apart).

[10:10] WATNEY: I see. We regard strong and weak as poles, just like positive and negative in electricity. Very little work has been done with atom physics in our world apart from magic. We haven’t needed to.

[10:23] JPL: When you get back home, tell your scientists about our theory. I’ll have a colleague of mine send you a simple write-up of the theory. We have experimental data that backs it up solidly.

Speaking of experiment, you claim that all life produces its own magic field. Could you explain that a bit more? We’ve never detected it on Earth.

[10:38] WATNEY: Sure. In our universe the strength of the ambient magical field can never dip below what we call the magical constant. But the presence of life forms strengthens the ambient field through production of new energy. We aren't sure how life produces magic, but it does. These fields are only detectable to non-unicorns by changes in the visible light spectrum within the fields. If the field is really strong, it glows as if a spell is being cast.

[10:42] JPL: That’s interesting. So a spectrograph will show the difference between a zone with magic and a zone without?

[10:55] WATNEY: Pardon me, but the dictionary isn’t helpful. What is a spectrograph?

[11:08] JPL: A spectrograph is a test we do. We put a prism in a beam of light from something, usually a flame. It makes a rainbow. If the rainbow is big enough, it shows little gaps in the spectrum that indicate the presence or absence of certain elements.

[11:23] WATNEY: Oh! That’s a curious test. We don’t use it. Pegasus ponies make rainbows for weather purposes all the time. I think the strength of our magic field makes light operate a lot differently than what you’re used to. I don’t think your “spectrograph” would work for magic.

[11:36] JPL: That’s unfortunate. What do you use to detect magic fields?

[11:51] WATNEY: We have a device. I can’t tell you its name- ***meter or something. The first part of it is our word for the thing that carries magical force from one atom to another. The one we currently have doesn’t work well because it’s set for our home universe, so anything less than the magic constant barely shows.

I hope you don’t mind if I eat lunch while typing? Spitfire is helping.

[12:04] JPL: That’s fine, Starlight. Can you tell us how to make magic-meters of our own, so we can test and see if Earth has magic?

[12:19] WATNEY: Um, that’s pages 21 through 24 of my essay, with pictures. The steps are really simple.

[12:32] JPL: I think the problem is, you’re assuming knowledge we don’t have. For example… what is an array? What does it do?

[12:48] WATNEY: I’m using your word “array” to refer to an organized magical graph that sets out the instructions for a spell. When the array receives a magic charge, it performs the spell.

[13:01] JPL: Okay. Do we engrave the array into the crystal? You use the word “enchant”.

[13:15] WATNEY: It depends. Powerful unicorns can write arrays with chalk, charcoal, etc. for one-time use. Earth ponies sometimes use gold, copper, or glass to create arrays that unicorns can charge many times. But for arrays that run themselves you need to enchant the object that holds the array. It’s a spell that makes the array a part of the whole.

[13:28] JPL: I’m getting a sinking feeling that I know the answer to this next question, Starlight, but I have to ask it. Assume I’m an earth pony who can’t cast spells. How do I charge a drawn array? How do I enchant anything?

[13:42] WATNEY: Um… you don’t. Only unicorns can do that. I know some alchemists who create medicines with magical effect, but I doubt their methods would work in a low-magic environment.

[13:55] JPL: That’s too bad, Starlight. We can’t even test to see if we have magic unless we have some way of using magic. Do you see our problem?

[14:08] WATNEY: Yes. I’ll ask my teacher at home about it. Maybe we can figure something out.

[14:23] JPL: We’d appreciate that. In the meantime, I have a couple of other questions. Do you understand the concept of entropy? In a closed system everything tends towards maximum disorder.

[14:37] WATNEY: Yes! In the absence of magic a closed system will tend towards disorder. But not chaos. I know Chaos personally, and he hates entropy. He says it’s boring. There are lively debates at home about whether or not our world is a closed system.

[14:51] JPL: Remind me another time to ask you about Chaos. Skipping for now. Doesn’t magic violate entropy?

[15:09] WATNEY: We don’t know for sure. The majority opinion is not, because active use of magic requires an act of will plus magic as an outside energy source. We have a theory that magic exists at a sort of higher energy state than normal matter and energy, so when it’s brought down to our level a little goes a long way. Also, we aren’t certain of the way life generates magic, so for all we know energy might be lost converting food or body activity into magic.

[15:24] JPL: Okay. Last question for today. I noticed that one of your devices in your ship converts magic into electricity. How do you reverse the process?

[15:38] WATNEY: You don’t. All attempts to turn electricity or motion into magic without using more magic have failed. We think it’s because magic exists on a higher energy level, and the cost of making enough electricity to push up to that level is too high. Believe me, if I knew how to do that we’d be halfway to your planet already.

[15:52] JPL: I believe you. I was just hoping we could help in some way, but if we can it doesn’t look like we’re going to use magic for it.

[16:07] WATNEY: I’m sorry. I will ask Twilight Sparkle about it. She knows more about everything than I do. She went to the best school in our land and was the personal student of Princess Sky-and-Everything-In-It. I taught myself.

[16:21] JPL: Based on your reports, you’re very good at teaching yourself. Thank you for your help, Starlight. Please ask Mark to email his reports when he’s done. Venkat out.

[16:34] WATNEY: You’re welcome! I wish it was better. Starlight Glimmer out.

Author's Note

Yeah, so I just shot down a bunch of plans. Just call me the Red Baron.

It's worth remembering that the Romans never knew how concrete functioned on a molecular level. They never had equations for the tensile strength of the materials they used to build things. Roman engineering was very Kerbal; "We found a thing that works! Let's throw this solution at EVERYTHING!" And James Watt built his version of the steam engine a century before Boyle formulated the gas laws that explained how steam engines can function at all.

Most sciences, including materials studies, began in an organized fashion less than three hundred years ago- but the materials were in use for millennia before. You don't need to understand the fundamentals of things to use them.

And it's worth noting that we humans are at present able to manipulate at most one of the four basic forces. We can only use gravity by dropping things, and we only use the strong and weak nuclear forces through fission or fusion. If Starlight had told Venkat that magic was the strong nuclear force and that ponies knew how to manipulate it like clay, he'd be up the exact same stump.

Wrote about 1500 words today; if I can find the energy, I'll work on CSP tonight. After that all writing will go to rebuilding the buffer, because I just got pulled off the wait list for a booth at Mid-South Con in Memphis in five days, so I don't have the time off I thought I had anymore.

So... now to go to the kitchen and cook all those groceries I bought for next week...

Sol 103

HERMES – ARES III MISSION DAY 230

As much as they wanted to, the crew of Hermes couldn’t all be present on the bridge for the radio test. Duties and experiments couldn’t wait indefinitely. Vogel had his crystals, Beck had both Watney’s plants and Hermes’ life support to watch over. Lewis had the three kilos of Mars surface samples allotted to her from the case collected and stowed in the MAV before the abort.

So only Martinez and Johannsen were awake and on the bridge during the dog-watch, the time appointed for the first comms check using the alien radio. Johannsen had installed the software which would allow Hermes’s communications systems to recognize an analog voice radio transmission and convert it into a form the computers could process. Now she watched her workstation as she switched from digital reception on the high-gain antenna to analog, waiting for a signal.

Under normal circumstances the current arrangement would be a direct violation of flight protocols. Hermes was supposed to keep the high-gain antenna pointed at Earth at all times to pick up signals and transmit telemetry in the clear. But that had changed when NASA realized that Hermes’s low-gain antenna put out a vastly more powerful signal than the ancient, feeble high-gain antenna on Pathfinder. This led to the inevitable decision to use Hermes as a comms relay, with the high-gain picking up Pathfinder’s signal and the low-gain relaying it, cleaned up slightly, down to Earth. Ever since then the high-gain and low-gain antennas had pointed in almost exactly the opposite directions that the rulebooks laid down for them.

“High-gain tuned to 86.8 megahertz,” Johannsen reported. “Awaiting signal.” The signal would require six minutes to arrive from Mars, assuming it was sent on time.

“So,” Martinez said, “which one is your favorite?”

“Beg pardon?” Johannsen asked.

“Which alien is your favorite?” Martinez asked. “You must have read the report on them.”

“I don’t know,” Johannsen said. “All we have is their photos, their mission profiles and histories, Mark’s logs, and whatever Dragonfly says on the Pathfinder chat. We don’t really know them, do we?”

“My favorite’s Spitfire,” Martinez said.

“Really? And not Cherry Berry?” Johannsen asked. “I would think you’d pick the flight veteran over the rookie.”

“Spitfire’s no rookie,” Martinez said. “She was commander of this ‘Wonderful Thunderbolts’ squadron back in her own world. That’s like a combination of our Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels, if I understand right. Closer to the Blue Angels, since they were the go-to guys for astronaut recovery. That makes her top of the game in flight where she comes from- and she does it with those two itty bitty wings!” Martinez rolled his eyes back and muttered, “Man, I’d love to have wings like that.”

“I see,” Johannsen said.

“Of course,” Martinez continued, a smile slowly spreading across his face, “if I had wings, my wife would need wings, too. What we’d get up to in a cloud! I wonder if it’s like an air mattress or a waterbed!”

“I don’t want to hear it, Rick,” Johannsen warned.

“Fine, fine,” Martinez muttered. “Anyway, it’s not just Spitfire’s record. Look at her face. That alien just oozes confidence. I’m sure Cherry Berry’s the best rocket jock the aliens have, but she looks…” He threw up his hands, helpless to avoid his final verdict, “… kinda goofy.”

“Mmm.”

“Now Beck,” Martinez continued, “Beck prefers Starlight Glimmer. But then you know he thinks flyboys like me are all crazy. He likes a scientist.”

“Have you asked everyone this?” Johannsen asked.

“Yep. Believe it or not, Vogel is a Dragonfly fan. He says she makes him laugh.”

“Really?” Johannsen actually turned in her seat to face Martinez. “Vogel said that?”

“Gotta love those inscrutable Germans,” Martinez grinned. “You wanna guess who Lewis likes?”

“Cherry Berry, obviously.”

“Nope. Try again.”

“Um… Spitfire?”

“Nope! She actually likes Fireball.”

Johannsen’s face screwed up in confusion. “Fireball?” she asked. “Why? Both Dragonfly and Starlight use one word for his personality: ‘grumpy.’”

“She says she’s going to take up painting when she gets back to Earth,” Martinez said. “So she can paint him on the side of a van.”

Johannsen glared at Martinez. “You’re putting me on,” she said.

“Yes, I am,” Martinez said, chuckling.

Shaking her head, Johannsen turned back to her console. “Should be getting a signal starting about twenty seconds from now,” she reported.

“Cool. Cross your fingers,” Martinez said, his smile fading. He leaned a little bit forward in his chair.

The time came, and went. For about a minute, Martinez and Johannsen waited, listening to the hiss from the bridge loudspeakers.

Then a tinny, barely audible voice: “… Hermes, this is Friendship. Hermes, this is Friendship. I am broadcasting on 86.8 megahertz. Please respond for comms check. Hermes, this is Friendship broadcasting on 86.8 megahertz. Please respond for comms check.”

“Mark,” Martinez gasped.

And then a second voice cut in, even more staticky than the first: “Hairmeez, thiz iz Friendship. Hairmeez, thiz iz Friendship. Yi aim broadcazzting on aitty-zix point ait mechaherssz. Pleezze rezzpond for commz check. Thizz iz Drakonfly zzpeaking.”

And, finally, a third voice, clearer and firmer than the other two but squeaky and still rather faint: “Hairmes, this is Friendship Actual. We broadcasting eighty-six point eight. Please reeespond? Respond. Respond for comms check. Repeat. This is Friendship Actual. Hairmes, Friendship Actual, comms check. Over.”

After a pause, Mark’s voice returned. “Um, yeah, guys, I taught her what ‘actual’ meant. They wanted to be part of this. We’ll try again at 10:30 our time if we receive no signal. After that we’ll proceed to 92.2 megahertz for the second signal. Um, over.”

Martinez laughed, not his usual rapid-fire bubbles but a slow, almost sobbing laugh. “Damn, Mark,” he said, “you haven’t changed a bit.”

Johannsen took a couple of breaths, turned on her microphone, and said, “Friendship, this is Hermes. Receiving you about two by five, clear but faint. Can you boost your gain? We also receive Dragonfly and Friendship Actual. It’s good to hear your voices. Over.”

With that done, the bridge crew, both of them, sat in silence as the twelve minute turnaround time failed to pass nearly quickly enough.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 102
ARES III SOL 103

[15:25] JPL: Hello, Dragonfly. I am Irene Shields. I am a doctor who studies minds. Our word for that is “psychologist.” Did Mark tell you why I wanted to talk to you?

[15:39] WATNEY: This is Dragonfly. Yes, he did. He also said he will shut down all computers in the Hab while we had this talk. I am in Rover 2 now. I did not know the word before, but there are psychologists at home. They have (look up word) benches.

[15:53] JPL: Good. Our word for a person who can sense the emotions of others is empath. Outside of stories, you’re the first real empath we’ve met. Can you also read thoughts? (Reading thoughts is telepathy.)

[16:11] WATNEY: I sometimes guess what others think, but I do not know. I only taste emotions, not thoughts, not facts in head.

[16:25] JPL: Okay. I’m trusting you to tell me the truth. Trust is very important with psychologists. It’s hard to earn and easy to destroy. If you feel you can’t tell me the truth about something, don’t lie to me. Just tell me you can’t tell me now. Can you do that for me?

[16:40] WATNEY: I can do that. I understand about trust. My job used to be to hide with ponies and get love to feed us. Trust was very important then. Is even more important in space.

[16:54] JPL: Yes, it is. What Dr. Kapoor did before could have damaged the trust in your crew. It is important that trust be strong. What does your crew know about your ability to sense emotion?

[17:18] WATNEY: All know I can do it. All bug-ponies can do it. It bother them but it cannot be

[17:20] WATNEY: changed.

[17:35] JPL: Is something wrong, Dragonfly? Please tell your crew this. We cannot send Mark a psychologist. I cannot be on chat because there are more important things. But I will send you my email address. NASA is setting up email addresses for you all. Mark will teach you how to use them. If there is something you need to keep secret but tell somebody, you can email it to me. Nobody else will read it but me. I promise. Tell this to all the others, including Mark.

[17:48] WATNEY: Nothing is wrong. I will tell them.

[18:01] JPL: Also, I would appreciate it if all of you sent me an email telling me how you feel. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. Just tell me what you’re comfortable with sharing.

[18:05] WATNEY: I will tell them. Do you have any more questions for me?

[18:18] JPL: Maybe by email, where it’s private. For now, thank you and good night, Dragonfly.

[18:24] WATNEY: Good night, Irene. Dragonfly out.

Author's Note

Her name in the book really is Irene.

Sol 104

TO: Theodore Sanders (tsanders_admin@nasa.gov)
FROM: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Reports on Mark Watney

Attached find the summaries for the reports on the topics you requested. It makes pretty grim reading. If you need the detailed reports I can send them, but I think this pretty much says all that needs to be said.

I’ve instructed everyone involved with the making of these reports that NASA’s official policy is optimism. Mark Watney and our alien visitors WILL survive. We WILL send a ship to bring them home. Even so, I have my doubts that we can keep these facts under our hat indefinitely. When the lid comes off, we need to be ready.

Venk

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Dr. Ethelbert Keller (keller@nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Nutritional Needs of Mark Watney

Report attached.

I’m sorry I can’t do more than make guesses about Watney’s alien guests. We have to take Watney at his word that Dragonfly and Fireball (Orange Random and Tall Boy) are assured of full rations for however long it takes to be rescued. As for the three creatures Watney refers to as ponies, I am told by the veterinarians I've consulted that alfalfa is as close as can be found to a perfect single-crop grazing diet for equines. The diet would still put them in danger of sodium deficiency (no table salt in their diet). Symptoms include craving for salt to the point of licking anything and everything vaguely salty; loss of appetite; fluid retention; and in advanced cases, nerve damage. Watney should expect a lot of tongue baths whether he likes it or not in his future, as he is probably the only safe source of sodium chloride on Mars.

Watney’s own situation is much less amusing. If he relies on potatoes and the vitamin supplements from the Ares III medical store, he will run into serious protein deficiency within thirty sols of switching from meal packs to potatoes. Symptoms include loss of mental acuity, loss of energy, metabolic dysfunction, muscle loss, enlarged heart, proneness to injury, slow healing, and insulin resistance.

Alfalfa is edible by humans and has a high protein content, but we can only digest flowers, leaves and the younger roots and stems. Beyond a certain point the stems become too fibrous to digest. Alfalfa seeds are high in certain amino acids that cause metabolic imbalances and loss of thyroid function. And since human digestion is not evolved to handle cellulose in large quantities, our ability to extract useful protein from alfalfa is limited. Unfortunately, it’s all Mark has once the food packs run out.

Please advise Mark to plant more alfalfa if possible and to cook and eat the leaves and uppermost stems from each harvest (and flowers if available) while fresh. Dried alfalfa is much less useful, but even drinking alfalfa tea would help a little. This will slow, but not prevent, his protein loss. The only certain remedy is to get him high-protein rations as soon as possible. In the meantime, to reduce protein loss and limit risk of injury I recommend Mark’s physical activity be limited to only that absolutely necessary for his survival and rescue.

Keller

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Sue Douglass (douglass517@nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Cave Permafrost Insulation

Preliminary report attached. Long story short: months at best.

Tell Mr. Sanders that he’s correct that the inside of an igloo can be made warm while the outside is quite cold (for Earth values of cold). Ice on Earth is a reasonably effective insulator in the short term. By a process of partial melting and refreezing a freshly built igloo becomes both more airtight and more structurally sound. But Mr. Sanders overlooks a great many factors that render the comparison inaccurate.

First, we know very little about the properties of permafrost and regolith mixes, particularly as they exist at Site Epsilon. We know that lunar regolith makes a very efficient insulator, but testing on Martian regolith to date has not included either pure layers of water ice between regolith layers or a permafrost mix of soil and water, both of which occur on Mars.

Second, the air pressure inside an igloo is roughly the same as outside. This is not the case with the Site Epsilon cave, which the aliens have pressurized to roughly one bar of pressure as opposed to six millibars on the surface.

Third, if a small hole opens in an igloo it doesn’t immediately grow larger through erosion caused by air flow.

Fourth, igloos are primarily warmed by body heat or at most an oil lantern. Igloos with large heating systems installed inside tend not to last very long. The Site Epsilon cave uses a combination of electric heaters, warm air circulation, and a hydronic ground heating system to make the air and ground warm enough for plants to grow- which means raising the temperature an average of seventy degrees Celsius above the mean outdoor Martian summer temperature. In winter it's well over a hundred degrees Celsius above the mean. That’s almost double to triple the temperature extreme most igloos face.

Finally, the permafrost layer above the cave is on a slope. Melted ice will not merely run down the walls and re-freeze. It will seek the lowest available level via the path of least resistance, eroding regolith on its way. Given enough time some of it will find its way to the surface downslope of its origin, possibly causing a landslide of the kind we are already familiar with from Opportunity and Curiosity. Such a landslide would inevitably reduce the layer of regolith and ice protecting the cave farm, leading to further leaks and an eventual breach.

The good news is, the primary cause of igloo collapse is heating from outside. That is practically the only problem Mars isn’t going to throw at us.

I’m currently locating sources of synthesized Martian regolith for heat transfer experiments. Details on those experiments will be on your desk tomorrow. In the meantime, until and unless the cave is rendered truly airtight without regard to regolith or permafrost, my recommendations stand.

Sue Douglass, Ph. D.

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Michael Bendarek (mbender33@nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Gilligan’s Raft

I finally have the numbers for you. Our four-legged alien friends aren’t going to like them much. Break it to them gently.

The attached report is preliminary, but I had to take the man I had working on it off to begin work on finalizing trajectories for Project Sleipnir. It took a while to shake this out of him, because he says it’s not finished. When I stopped him he was analyzing the alien shipwreck and making mass estimates based on how much could be cut off the fuselage. I had to promise him I’d let him finish the job properly once I had the trajectories in hand.

According to the information given, when whole the alien ship had a thrust:weight ratio of about 2:5. Considering its construction, that’s damn impressive. Given infinite fuel, the ship could almost hover on its main thrusters by itself on Mars. With the outer skin ripped off it, plus the other loss of mass due to scavenging, the ship could probably just about lift off right now, given sufficient fuel.

But sufficient fuel is a major problem.

According to the aliens, the ship originally converted a form of energy unknown to us (“magic”) into kinetic energy (thrust). The “magic” was stored in a series of batteries, of which only two survived the crash. Those two are made of a lightweight but durable crystal, type unknown, plus metal and electrodes of some kind, the whole package about 27,000 cubic centimeters in size and massing an estimated seventy kilograms. One hundred such batteries would weigh seven tons. Even with the materials cut off of the wreck, we estimate that extra mass drops the ship back to hovering at best. We are told the original batteries were larger, but we can't verify that from the pictures.

But weight isn’t the killer issue. The issue is the energy you get for that weight. According to the aliens, the two batteries which survived the initial accident were able to power an engine full burn for only three seconds combined. We can therefore estimate that a full array of one hundred such batteries would provide a single burn at full power of two minutes and thirty seconds. As you know, that’s roughly the burn time of an Ares MAV first stage alone. If we could lighten up the ship somehow to get it to orbit in two minutes and thirty seconds, the acceleration would kill any crew inside.

Using what’s left of the Ares III MAV and MDV wouldn’t help. The MAV has no remaining cabin, and the MDV cabin is breached. The MDV thruster thrust:weight ratio is only 1.05 at best, just enough to slow the ship down to a safe landing once the drogues are no longer useful. Its hydrazine monopropellant is hypergolic, but there’s not enough of it and we can’t make more. The MAV descent engines use hydrazine, but its fuel plant produces methane for its two ascent stages.

Finally, two of the ship’s eight maneuvering thruster banks are reported as destroyed in the crash. It might be possible to reposition the remaining six into a configuration that would provide total control, but there would be zero margin for error both in installation and in piloting.

In short, outside some radical alterations to the remains of the alien ship (assuming the engines could be attached to the ship again afterwards), it can’t make orbit without killing the crew. This is going to be a major blow to the aliens, so try to find some way to soften it.

Mike
Astrodynamics

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Mark Watney (mwatney@ares.nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Care to buy a farm?

We’ve looked at the recommendations the geologists sent us. Here’s our responses:

Lowering the air pressure: No go. The pony air supply is a direct link to the atmosphere of their home world. Whatever the pressure is there, it’s going to be here. The only way to lower the pressure on our end is to make a leak somewhere, and doing that will make the air supply shut down. The ponies don’t feel like losing all their atmosphere to Mars, or as I’ve taken to calling it, “Planet Spaceball”.

Lowering the heat: We’re removing two of the space heaters. That’s about all we can do. Again, the air is straight from the pony world’s atmosphere, and we need to keep warming the farm soil to allow the alfalfa roots to penetrate as deeply as possible.

Don’t mess with the support pillars: Duh.

Don’t twist off the crystals from the walls: What, do you think Bruce Banner turned up along with the ponies? Listen, if I had the Hulk here I wouldn't have him picking rocks like fruit. We’d just all load up in the alien ship and have him kick us off Mars! Stupid planet deserves a green gamma-powered kick in the ass anyway.

The crystals are cut by magic laser. Starlight's horn is the only tool we have that can cut them. No torque of any kind involved. The only danger is that removing the weight from the walls might cause a release of tension. There’s nothing we can do about that.

Seal the cave: That’s going to be a long-term project. Starlight’s spell (according to her) was designed to close up existing holes that can be seen. She’s doubtful she can use it on walls where she hasn’t stripped off the crystal layer completely. Also she doesn’t have the energy to do it all at one whack.

But we have a long-term plan that might work. Sol 109 is three weeks from the day the Hab blew out and Starlight broke her arm. It’s also the day we’re due to dig up the cave’s seed potatoes, cut them, and replant them for a full crop in the cave and the Hab. After that we get our first alfalfa harvest. Those things can’t be put off, and we need Starlight’s magic to help with both. The harvest will probably deplete the magic batteries, and after that we need to cut more gems for Fireball’s meals. But after that we can get started on making new magic batteries.

According to Starlight, making magic batteries is one of the easiest spells ever. Practically any magic object is at least part battery, she says. The main difficulty is finding and cutting crystals of the right size, without flaws, for the purpose. Apparently there are places on her homeworld that make the cave farm look dowdy. She was surprised when I told her that the quartz here was gigantic by comparison with Earth crystals.

The more batteries we have, the more magic we potentially have. And beyond a point we’ll have enough magic to seal the cave properly. I don’t know what that point is or how long it’ll take, but it seems like the surest and safest course. In the meantime Starlight's going to work on a better spell for sealing the cave away from the pre-existing holes.

Tell Astromaterials that if they come up with something we can actually do, we’re willing to give it a shot.

Watney

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Beth Johannsen (johannsen@ares.nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Radio test

On Ares III Mission Day 230 Hermes made successful contact with alien spaceship Friendship on all five preset wavebands. 108.4 megahertz produced the clearest signal, but not sufficiently to distinguish it. All signals were faint and with static, but voices were audible and understandable. Full details of all tests, including audio recordings of all transmissions and receptions, attached.

As Hermes approaches Earth the signal from Friendship will grow fainter due to losses from transmission distance. We are currently near the edge of voice communications range. If diagrams of the alien radio wiring are available, I recommend creating a procedure for Mark to build a telegraph key for the radio. I’ve already written a program to allow Hermes to transmit an audio tone that can be used for Morse code. The crew will need drill on identifying and using Morse code for this to be workable.

Beth Johannsen
Ares III systems operator

Author's Note

Buffer is back to two, and I have a little thing which will let me do a number of short installments very quickly, covering this weekend's convention time.

I may have said this before, but the book doesn't make any mention of the effect of not having protein for well over a hundred sols, except for five meal packs held back for special occasions. That is liable to be a problem. The salt is almost as serious, and not in a "God I want salt, Lord please send me salt, also ketchup" way. Yes, probes have found chloride deposits on Mars, but they're mixed up with those perchlorates I mentioned. Salt mining is not something you want to do on Mars without being more careful than Mark has the equipment for.

One wonders if anyone has told Sue Douglass about pykrete.

Rich Purnell's boss is never given a last name in the book. I give him one here. (On the other hand, the Ares III flight surgeon is never given a FIRST name... so I gave him one here, too.)

If you're wondering what good 2:5 thrusters are when it's not even close to liftoff thrust from Earth/Equus ground level... once you're in orbit, you don't need a lot of thrust at once to do things. A little thrust over a long time will work well. That's the principle Hermes works on, and Amicitas's main engines produce a lot more actual acceleration than a VASIMR rig, weight for weight...

... that is, they produce that much thrust in a magic-rich environment. Unfortunately they've been brought to the wrong universe.

Sol 105

Cathy Warner walked out onto the soundstage through a group of life-sized cutouts: five colorful, large-eyed aliens surrounding a single shabby-looking human figure. “Welcome to the Watney and Company Report. Today is the one hundredth Martian day since the freak accident which stranded a member of the Ares III crew and the entire crew of an alien ship from a parallel universe on Mars,” she said. “For one hundred days these six incredibly different people have worked together to survive the hostile Martian environment, cut off from all outside aid from both their homes.

“There have been heartbreaking setbacks, like the explosion which ripped Airlock 1 off the Hab on Sol 88, a little over two weeks ago. And there have been astonishing triumphs, with the aliens establishing a rudimentary telegraph to their home universe on Sol 30 and Mark Watney reviving Pathfinder for a more secure communications route with NASA twelve days ago. And two days ago, for the first time since the Sol 6 accident, the crew of Hermes had voice contact with Mark Watney and two of his fellow castaways.

“But despite these triumphs, the lives of our friends still hang by a thread. The alien food supplies have been expended, and their survival depends on a harvest in the next few days from a farm built in a Martian cave using their alien technology and Mark Watney’s botany expertise. Injuries have taken their toll, with Watney having narrowly escaped crippling burns to his arm, Dragonfly having worked herself to exhaustion bringing Watney back from the fire, and Starlight having broken a limb in the Hab explosion. And who knows what future accidents await them, or Cherry, or Fireball, or Spitfire?

“One hundred days after the Sol 6 accident, the six castaways still do not have a way to escape Mars. NASA administrator Theodore Sanders addressed this issue in a press conference held this morning at Johnson Space Center in Houston.”

Cathy looked up to a dark portion of the studio wall, which lit up with the projection of footage from the presser. Teddy Sanders was his usual perfectly dressed self, standing at the lectern with his usual confidence. “Risk is the business of all astronauts,” he said. “But there is a difference between risks that are taken with careful planning and consideration of the possibilities, and emergencies of the kind Mark Watney and his friends are dealing with today on the surface of Mars. The circumstances they face were entirely unanticipated by anyone here at NASA at any point during the planning for Ares III, and according to the aliens, unanticipated by them as well.

“Our ability to contact the alien homeworld is extremely limited, but I have used that ability to speak directly with my counterparts on their side. And on behalf of them, I can assure you that both they and we at NASA are exerting all our energies to bringing our people to safety- on one world or another.

“Unfortunately the aliens are not yet able to mount a rescue mission. The nature of their accidental trip here means they do not know precisely where our universe is in relation to their own. Thus, they cannot name the day they can send a rescue mission. But today, here and now, I can give you such a day.”

On the screen, for a moment, the gathered reporters rumbled and rustled papers before Sanders could quiet them. “NASA is committed to training and sending an Ares III-B crew on Hermes in the next launch window,” he said. “Thanks to the VASIMR engine on Hermes, we can set a firm date for Hermes to orbit Mars of Sol 768- six hundred and eighty-one days from today.

“That’s almost a hundred days faster than our earlier estimates, but it’s still not what we’d like. As the Hab explosion proved, life on Mars is a precarious thing. The Ares III equipment is now operating well beyond its expected design life, and Mark Watney has to improvise solutions to problems never addressed in our mission planning. Every improvisation uses up resources, both from Ares III and from the alien spaceship, which cannot be replaced. The sooner we can rescue Mark and our alien friends, the less they will have to rely on those very finite resources.

“With that in mind, NASA is offering a prize of twenty-five million dollars to any person or group who can present a workable plan to reach Mars with the capacity to retrieve our six castaways substantially prior to Sol 768 and return them to Earth safely. NASA will award the full prize to the person or group who devises the plan we actually use, and smaller awards to those who present workable plans that, for whatever reason, NASA chooses not to implement. NASA wishes to demonstrate that our top priority is to see Mark Watney and his friends safe on Earth as soon as possible.

“Full details on what we’re calling the Watney Prize will be in the full press release which Annie Montrose will have for all of you after the conference. Questions?”

After a loud roaring scrum for attention, Sanders pointed out one reporter, who asked, “What if the aliens rescue Watney before NASA can launch its rescue?”

Sanders allowed himself a wry little grin. “Then we save a lot of taxpayer dollars and breathe a huge sigh of relief,” he said. “But the difficulties facing the aliens are immense. To give you some idea, until a few months ago our physical models of the universe regarded travel between parallel worlds as impossible. I think the aliens can be forgiven if they find it very difficult to do it again.” A few chuckles, but not many. “So we have to go forward under the most pessimistic expectation: that the aliens will be unable to launch a rescue before we can get there ourselves.”

Another hand, and a voice shouting over the others: “What about the resupply mission?”

“Project Sleipnir is going forward,” Sanders replied. “Thanks to SpaceX, we expect to have three Red Falcon boosters available in fifty days’ time. We are clearing Cape Canaveral’s launch schedule beginning sixty days from now to allow for the mounting, inspection, and launch of three resupply probes with air-bag landing systems, all of which should arrive on Mars with food and supplies well before Sol 600. If the aliens manage a rescue before then, the supplies can be reapplied towards a proposed Ares VI mission to complete the work Ares III was unable to…”

The projection went black, and Cathy looked into the camera. “More on the proposed rescue of Mark Watney and the alien castaways after these messages.”

When the lights came back up on the studio a few minutes later, the cardboard cutouts had been moved to the background to make way for the usual table and chairs. On the studio wall where the NASA press conference had been projected in the first segment, a sequence of drawings, paintings and photographs faded in and out. “The plight of the Martian castaways has captured the global imagination since the first grainy photographs taken by Hermes from orbit showing multiple figures walking the Martian surface,” she said. “But even the most imaginative artist was unprepared for the reality of the photos sent a few days ago, when for the first time we learned what the aliens look like outside their suits. And since then, the Internet has exploded with opinions about the aliens, both positive and negative.

“With me today are Nyota Lincoln, organizer of the #BringThemHome campaign on Twitter and Gemcomm; the Reverend Martin Spenser, whose controversial sermon “Let Them Die” garnered ten million views within a day of being released on streaming video; and John Karoli, founder of the website AresHoax.com. Thank you all for being here.”

The three guests murmured their polite responses. Cathy froze her smile in place long enough to cross some unseen inner fingers and hope that the repeated backstage lectures- “keep it civil or we’ll cut your mike, we don’t care who starts it”- would hold.

Where did her producers come up with some of these people?

“Where do those CNN dickheads come up with these people?” Annie Montrose asked, as the Watney and Company Report descended straight into inanity for what looked like the remainder of the half-hour.

“It’s humanity,” Teddy shrugged. It was after hours, and no one was in his office except Annie, Mitch Henderson, and a worn-out Venkat Kapoor. But Teddy never slumped. Even watching television, with nothing important left on the agenda, he remained seated as rigidly as if they were discussing something vital, like the testing setbacks JPL had encountered with the fabric for the Sleipnir tumbler probes.

“Humanity my ass,” Annie grumbled. “When I was I in college- God I was so green. I decided I was going to bring truth to the masses and improve humanity. By the time I got my degree I’d grown up some, so I came to work at NASA, hoping to make the best humanity has to offer more visible, offer a fucking example to the rest of them. So here I am,” she snarled, jabbing a finger at the screen, “and my job requires me to aid and abet that.”

On the screen, the Reverend Spenser said, “We must always remember that Satan was originally Lucifer, an angel of light. The greatest temptations to evil always come in attractive packages. So these aliens, who are clearly designed to appeal to our most protective natures yet who claim to use the power of witchcraft, are clearly temptations to turn humanity away from the true teachings of God as the end of days approaches.”

“See? You see that bullshit??” Annie snarled. “The better I do my job, the more often shits like him get camera time to smile his plastic smile, brush his plastic hair, and declaim hate and ignorance on fucking live global television. In the name of balanced journalism. Bullshit. And nothing, not the first fucking thing I can do, will prevent thousands of morons from believing every word that asshole says.”

“Should I take this up with CNN?” Teddy asked.

“Fuck no, that’d make it worse,” Annie sighed. “The bastards would attack us for trying to control the media. Again.” She slumped in her own chair and muttered, “Goddamn, but I want a drink.”

“It’s after hours,” Mitch rumbled. “Why don’t you have one?”

“I haven’t had a drop since college,” Annie said. “And these days I don’t dare. If I once crawl into the bottle I don’t think I’d ever come out. Seen too many people fuck themselves that way.”

“How did the speech go over?” Venkat asked, more to change the subject than from any interest. He had to be back in the office at 5:14 AM to match up with Watney’s 08:00 usual chat start. Living on Mars time while juggling all the responsibilities of a NASA project head wrecked sleep cycles.

“Oh, it was a big hit,” Annie said. “Knocked it out of the park. Perfect mix of gravitas, recognition of difficulty, and understated optimism. Everybody bought it except the manned-spaceflight-wastes-tax-dollars crowd and the government-can’t-do-anything-right crowd.” She jabbed a finger at the screen again; why she did so Venkat never understood, because her next words had nothing to do with the conspiracy theorist explaining how NASA’s CGI Mars mission was coming apart due to a disgruntled employee making up cutesy-puke little horsie aliens. “The only problem is that contest is already bringing in get-rich-quick schemes and crackpots. Which I told you it would.”

“It’s still a good idea,” Teddy insisted. “It shows we’re open to outside input, and it might just bring something out we might not otherwise get. I want the word put out to all parts of NASA, by the way. Our top two priorities are, in this order, getting resupply to Mark Watney as soon as possible, and getting Hermes to Mars as soon as possible. Everything else is secondary.”

“Already wrote the memo,” Annie muttered.

“Speaking of secondary,” Venkat asked, “how’s the Eagle Eye 3 launch coming?”

“Re-inspection should be done in another five days,” Mitch said. ”We’re launching a month past the window, but Astrodynamics got us a revised trajectory that actually gets to Saturn only nine weeks late. We give up about ten percent of our post-Saturn-orbit delta-V to get it, but we’ll be well within mission parameters.”

“Good,” Teddy said. “We need to clear that mission out so we can bring in the boosters for Sleipnir 1 and 2 when they’re ready. How firm is the delivery date for Sleipnir 3’s booster?”

“Not very,” Venkat said. “SpaceX has dropped everything to get these boosters ready for space. They’re already warning us that some of the Ares IV presupply launches will be endangered because of it. After all, in order to get a usable payload to Mars with the current position of the planets, re-use of the first stages has to be sacrificed.”

“Secondary priority,” Teddy insisted. “Get us those boosters.”

Venkat nodded. He couldn’t help but yawn as he did so.

“But first,” Teddy said, “get some sleep. You need it.”

“I know,” Venkat said. “I just don’t feel like leaving this chair yet.”

They watched the rest of the show in silence, grateful that for the last eight-minute segment the leading cable news channel stopped insulting the intelligence of its viewership and instead showed pictures found on the Internet based on the recent photos.

The last three pictures caught their attention. Even Mitch sat up as the camera lingered on each for about ten seconds.

There was a picture of the entire Ares III crew, including Watney, drawn as if they were from the alien world. Lewis, a long-necked dragon with a smaller muzzle than Fireball but much larger wings draped protectively around the others; Martinez, a bug-pony with a mischievous smile and glowing brown eyes; Johannsen, a unicorn filly levitating a computer with a ray of light from her horn; Beck, a pegasus with a stethoscope; Vogel, a strange eagle-horse hippogriff hybrid with glasses; and sitting in the front, half-covered with dirt, an earth pony Watney making a silly face at the viewer.

The second picture was the reverse of the first- the five aliens drawn as humans. Cherry Berry, a tall slender blonde with a pink jumpsuit and a space helmet under one arm; Starlight Glimmer, who vaguely resembled Hermione Granger with a Marge Simpson hairdo, in a violet lab coat; Fireball, a tall, strong-featured, hawk-nosed man with a perfect Captain Kirk coif; Dragonfly, a smiling African woman with blue eyes and a tattered jumpsuit; and Spitfire, a redhead in sunglasses dressed like the recruiting poster for the Air Force.

And then, the final picture, a mockery of the Last Supper. The shot panned from left to right, showing first the five Ares III crew members on Hermes in various poses; then, in the center, Mark Watney, looking wryly amused but not particularly holy; then the five alien castaways; and finally, in the position of Judas, a Roman centurion fingering a bloody sword and wearing a most unpleasant smile.

At least one artist believed Mars had more trouble in store for the occupants of the Hab.

Author's Note

I'd originally planned for this chapter to be all CNN, with the full interview with the three people mentioned. But the scene wouldn't write itself, so I took another angle instead, focusing on people who have difficulty leaving their job behind.

Gemcomm is what you get when you don't have Discord.

In the book, Eagle Eye 3 was just a convenient space probe whose booster could be stolen for the doomed Iris probe. That was written before SpaceX had much in the way of success. Times have changed, and so have the needs, and so has the technology, so I don't mind here waving a hand and saying Eagle Eye 3 can go ahead because SpaceX has three refurbished rockets to feed our heroes with. Neither do I mind saying, "they worked around the launch window getting borked because they held on to the booster" because absolutely no details about Eagle Eye 3's actual launch window, planned trajectory, etc. is given in the book.

To my mind it's still early, and public opinion on Earth still doesn't really know Mark's guests all that well. It's been only a month or so Earth time since kids were bickering over the possibility of doggie or kitty aliens. But as we all know, Internet artists work really fast.

(No, I have not commissioned any of those last three art ideas, nor can I afford to. But I'm thinking about commissioning texasuberalles on deviantArt, aka Jason Meador, who I've known since the 1990s, for fresh Maretian cover art like the pic he did for CSP. It depends how things go the next couple weeks, I guess.)

Sol 106

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 105
ARES III SOL 106

[07:48] JPL: Mark, this is Venkat again. Thank your friends for the test emails they sent. We’re already receiving hundreds of thousands of emails for them. Like with your emails, we’re only sending up mission critical messages and the most interesting other items. Nobody will get more than ten emails a day. This isn’t because we think you’ll waste your time. It’s because that’s all the bandwidth we can afford to spare.

Right now we’re operating at a peak of 12.6 kilobits per second by relaying through Hermes. Direct transmission to Earth would drop that to about 1.5 kilobits. By the time Hermes begins aerobraking for Earth orbital insertion, that will be down to 0.8 kilobits per second. At worst, during the three week blackout window of the Mars-Sun conjunction (Sol 328) it’ll be down to 400 bits per second- barely enough to sustain this chat, with a minimum response time of about an hour per message. All of that assumes Pathfinder doesn’t break. We’ll never have more bandwidth than we do now until the replacement radio system arrives with the resupply mission, so we need to prioritize data transfer from your end.

With that in mind, we want you to ask Starlight Glimmer and one of your other guests to send us anything and everything they can that they haven’t already done from their ship-board library. Also, we want photos of Starlight and, if possible, Dragonfly using magic. We have our doubters here, as you already guessed, and any documentation helps. Unfortunately the video you took is useless until and unless we get you a radio that can link up with the communications satellites orbiting Mars.

I say ask them because we know you’re preparing for the cave harvest. That is top priority and mission-critical. Our experts on this end tell me they can’t think of anything else to improve on what you’re already doing, and they’re astonished at the results you’re getting based on your photos. If Cherry Berry can give more explanation for earth pony magic beyond “it just happens”, they’d be delighted.

Finally, our media department has a special request for your guests. While Hermes is still in range of voice communications, we want to set aside some time at the end of the transmission window each day for an interview. Obviously there’s no chance of a live interview with even Hermes being just over a six minute one-way lightspeed lag. Instead we’ll provide a set of written questions. We want your friends to read their answers on the radio so Hermes can record it.

We know their English isn’t the best and their accents are weird, but it’s important that the world hear their voices. We think that, the less the public thinks of them as adorably cute faces and the more they see them as real people with real feelings, the more strongly they’ll support our efforts to bring you all home safely.

That’s it for now. Let me know if I can do anything for you.

[08:28] WATNEY: I’ve passed on the word. Fireball is going to get the camera- hooray thumbs!- while I work on assembling the tools for the harvest. The plan is firm: Sol 109 – potato replanting in cave; Sol 110-111 hay harvest; Sol 112 restarting Hab farm with 90% potatoes.

We’re also going to try planting another fifty square meters of alfalfa seed in the ground downstream of the water outlet from the pony hydronic heating system. No idea how well it’ll work, but we agree with Dr. Keller about the protein issue. I tasted a few alfalfa leaves yesterday: not terrible, but I suspect it’s an acquired taste for non-quadrupeds. Anyway, I’m going to need to acquire it before long.

Reaction to the interview thing is mixed. Cherry is lukewarm to the idea. Spitfire just rolls her eyes. Starlight is interested, and Dragonfly is downright eager in a way that makes me worry. The last time I saw a smile like that was on Martinez just before you called us on the carpet over the thing with the public safety video. The only one who actively hates the idea is Fireball, and I don’t know if it’s because he thinks it’s stupid or because he’s embarrassed. His English is the worst of the group.

Anyway, send the questions. You’ve got at least two takers, and probably four if not all five.

And finally… yes, there is something you can do for me. Send me music. Send lots of music. Send any music at all, country, bluegrass, opera, Himalayan monk chanting, oh God, ANYTHING but disco! I have had it to HERE with fucking disco! And just in case you’re wondering, the Beatles aren’t as much of a disco antidote as you’d think. You said yourself the bandwidth is as wide as it’s ever going to get. So send me some low-fi, high-compression music files, whatever… but NOT DISCO. Okay? Thanks.

[08:37] JPL: I’ll look into it. No promises.

[10:49] HERMES: What’s this I see? A heretic who dares disparage the acme of Boomer culture? Next you’ll be claiming that house music was the coming of the Antichrist.

[10:57] WATNEY: Ha ha, Martinez. You have other options. With me it’s this or silence.

[11:04] HERMES: Guess again. This is Lewis. And you do not diss the groove.

[11:11] WATNEY: Last I looked there were about seventy-five million miles between us, so under the circumstances I can speak my mind. Disco is artificial, commercialized, decadent musical pablum. It is an assault on the ear. It is to good music what Red Baron is to good pizza.

[11:18] HERMES: Guess who went into your room and bundled your personal effects. And who has your personal data storage stick in her fingers right this minute.

[11:25] WATNEY: Blackmail, Lewis? That’s beneath you. Also, everything on that stick is replaceable.

[11:32] HERMES: Let’s see… Minecraft, Orbiter, Universal Sandbox IV… the collected Discworld on e-reader… ah, here’s the music section. “100 Best Sci-Fi Themes of All Time.” “John Williams directs the Boston Pops” about a dozen times. And about a hundred video game soundtracks.

[11:39] WATNEY: I have nothing to be ashamed of. John Williams was the most influential American composer of the twentieth century.

[11:46] HERMES: “The Weird Al Yankovic Penultimate Nursing Home Collection.”

[11:53] WATNEY: Five decades of priceless pop culture treasure.

[12:00] HERMES: And a directory labeled ‘Tom Lehrer.’ I know these songs, Mark. And I’m betting your sweet, innocent friends don’t know half of what’s in here.

[12:06] WATNEY: Don’t you have some commanding to do up there?

[12:13] HERMES: Take it back or explain to your friends what comes after, “All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon.”

[12:21] WATNEY: NNNNRG… all right, you win. There are a few disco songs in your collection that aren’t irredeemable trash. “I Will Survive.” “Hot Stuff.” “Stayin’ Alive.” Those are inspirational right now.

[12:28] HERMES: All obvious, Mark. And I doubt you’ve really listened to the lyrics of “I Will Survive.”

[12:35] WATNEY: Commander, don’t do this to me!

[12:42] HERMES: “He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well…”

[12:49] WATNEY: All right! The Hustle, okay? There aren’t any lyrics, it’s nice and simple, and it sounds like there’s a halfway decent piece of music buried under the bow-chicka-chicka. There exists in the universe one decent disco song. Are you satisfied?

[12:55] HERMES: Three. “Gotta Boogie” by Weird Al and “Dancin’ Fool” by Frank Zappa are both on your flash drive. So you must now admit there are THREE good disco songs.

[13:02] WATNEY: Has anyone told you lately that you are so evil the only reason you don’t eat kittens for breakfast is that NASA hasn’t sent you the procedure yet?

[13:08] HERMES: Not in too long. We miss you here, Mark.

[13:14] WATNEY: I miss you too, boss. All of you. Every day.

[13:15] JPL: We’re still working on the kitten omelet procedure down here. We thought we had it nailed down, but the engineer let the kitten wiggle off the post. You don’t want to know what we did to the engineer.

[13:18] JPL: Kapoor here. I did not write that! That was someone in Pasadena, and they should hope I never find out who it was!

[13:26] HERMES: Give me his name if you find it. I want to buy them a beer when we get home.

[13:33] WATNEY: Two beers.

[13:40] HERMES: I have some things to do, off-day or not. Mark, not all my music is disco. I had some prog-rock on there too.

[13:48] WATNEY: I know. And I may one day forgive you for “Dark Side of the Moon.” It’s like one enormous song except they break it in the middle with that “Money” thing. I get relaxed, get productive, focused on my work, and all of a sudden KA-CHING! Hypnosis broken.

[13:54] HERMES: Suck it up, music lover. Hermes Actual out.

Author's Note

Buffer is up to three, although Friday and Saturday will be quite short. At some point in the near future time-skips will happen again, once I decide how to handle the skip. It's fun seeing where little things go, but this is a lot of padding from a plot point of view.

Tonight is Wednesday night, which means KWLP on DementiaRadio.org at 9 PM Central. I need to finish putting together the brand-new playlist requested by voters on the Dementia Radio Facebook group... "Funky Dementia (comedy) Songs." In other words, tonight's show would be Watney's least favorite, with tons of disco.

In the book Lewis is mostly business, but she has a couple of moments. One is where she has a call to Earth to her husband, where they geek out over a 1970s 8-track in the original packaging. Another is when she reminds Watney through glorious use of sarcasm who the mission commander is. Here I give her some off-duty time to tease Watney.

If you've never heard of Tom Lehrer, you should have. He wrote a couple albums of twisted songs in the 1950s, did a little more work for a short-lived TV show in the 1960s, and submitted a few songs to The Electric Company in the 1970s. It's safe to say that the Amicitas crew have heard Silent E and the OU Song, among others... but definitely have NOT heard "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" or "The Old Dope Peddler", which Lewis references here. And Mark hopes they never do, partly because he thinks the ponies are innocent lambs, and partly because he thinks Dragonfly and/or Fireball might get ideas...

Sol 107

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 106
ARES III SOL 107

“Mark?” Cherry Berry asked. “What means ‘license’?”

“What does ‘license’ mean?” Mark corrected her automatically.

Cherry rolled her eyes. “What does ‘license’ mean?”

“Where do you see it?”

“Here. In email.” Cherry turned the computer screen so Mark could read it. The text read:

Bandai International congratulates you on surviving on a hostile planet. We just thought you’d like to know that there are millions, even billions of people on Earth rooting for you who can’t wait for you to land safe on Earth where we can welcome you properly.

Of course, a great many people, especially children, can’t wait for your rescue. They want to have you in their lives now, and some unscrupulous people are already taking advantage of them by producing unauthorized dolls and other toys using the likenesses of yourself and your crew. These are generally of poor quality and reflect poorly on you- an injustice we at Bandai wish to correct.

If you agree to license your likenesses to Bandai for use in producing official toys for the children of Earth, we can guarantee that the resulting product will be high quality and faithful to the original (i. e. yourselves). Furthermore, Bandai as a license holder would have legal standing to act on your behalf to punish the greedy people who are making the poor-quality knock-off toys we mentioned.

Attached find a draft contract for you to consult. In the absence of your normal legal counsel, we have approached NASA’s legal department to act on your behalf in this matter. Please contact them if you have any questions on the terms and conditions, which we consider very generous.

Mark read it again, frowned, and said, “License is permission to do a thing. In this case, a company wants to buy your name and face.”

“What??” Cherry Berry’s forehooves flew to her face. “You said you have no magic! I still using those!”

“No, no,” Mark reassured her. “Not like that. They’re asking you to give them permission to make toys of you and your crew. Nobody else would be allowed to make those toys.”

“Oh,” Cherry Berry said, and added in Equestrian, “I wonder how Flim and Flam got into this universe.”

“Sorry?” Mark asked. “I understood ‘how’ and ‘got into this.’”

“Nothing,” Cherry Berry sighed, using the same tone she’d heard Mark use about a thousand times when asked to explain something he didn’t want to. “I need ask home.” She left the computer on the work table, dropping down from the stool she’d been seated on and trotting through the bare, moist soil they’d been preparing for replanting. Starlight Glimmer’s spacesuit had been left on a sample case for ease of communications with Equus. “Dragonfly!” she called out. “Important message home. I want your hoof!”

“Aw, bossmare,” Dragonfly giggled, “I never knew you were interested.”

“Ha ha. Get splashing,” Cherry said as she switched on Starlight’s suit life support.

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for replies, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Company from Mark’s world wants to use crew’s names and images to make toys, etc. Please advise. Over.

ESA: Since when did Flim and Flam make it over there, over?

AMICITAS: I know, right? But this is serious. You said cooperate with Mark’s people, keep them happy, over.

ESA: Stand by, will ask Chrysalis, over.

AMICITAS: Standing by, over.

ESA: Open bidding. Ask Mark’s space agency to manage the bids. – C. Also give preference to educational toy makers. – TS Over.

AMICITAS: Thanks for advice, will pass on word. Out.

ESA: Stand by, Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Standing by, what? Over.

ESA: Since Mark gets messages from home, we think it would be good to send crew messages from here. One per day. Over.

AMICITAS: Understood. When? Over.

ESA: First one now if you like. We have 10,000 and more letters here for all of you. We keep best ones in life support room. Prepare for message for Spitfire, over.

AMICITAS: Ready to receive, over.

ESA: Quote. The Wonderbolts team isn’t the same without you. We fly missing-mare at every show and will fly it until we rescue you. You may have left the team, but you never stopped being a Wonderbolt. We’re coming for you as soon as we can, and when you get back your old job is right where you left it. But don’t ask for your old records, because I kinda broke a few. Stay awesome! – Rainbow Dash and the Wonderbolts. End quote. Over.

AMICITAS: Message received. Thank you. Looking forward to tomorrow’s. Out.

Fireball set Starlight Glimmer in the copilot’s seat with a thump. The unicorn grit her teeth to repress a grunt of pain. The bone-knit wasn’t totally ineffective, but it wasn’t the miracle medicine it would have been back in Equestria, either. Her broken forelimb was knitting up, but it was a long way from healed.

“I still think this is stupid,” he grumbled, sitting in the pilot’s seat and reaching over to turn on the backup radio. “Stupid questions. Doesn’t get us any closer to home.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Starlight replied. “And who knows? Friendship can do amazing things. So let’s be friends with Earth, hm?”

Fireball grunted, punched one more button, and spoke. “Hermes, this Friendship on 108.6 maygahurt,” he said. “Hermes, Friendship, comm check.”

“It’s megahertz,” Starlight said. “And repeat it so they get it if they weren’t listening the first time,”

“It’s their stupid idea,” Fireball insisted. “Their idea and their time. They ought to be listening.”

“Repeat it anyway,” Starlight insisted. “Please.”

Fireball rumbled in his throat, but he repeated it, this time pronouncing megahertz correctly.

Five and a half minutes later, both Fireball and Starlight heard in their headsets, “Friendship, this is Hermes, reading you two by five. Ready for scheduled transmission, over.”

Starlight made herself a little more comfortable. This would take a lot longer than the humans were expecting. “Hermes, Friendship, reading you five by five. Broadcast begins…”

Johannsen fought the urge to curl in on herself. She trusted her fellow Ares III crewmembers, even if they were all crowding her station listening to this incredible combination of babble and horse sounds.

“Did Mark say this was Welsh?” Martinez asked. “Because it sounds more like horse-Russian to me.”

“No, it is Welsh,” Vogel insisted. “Or possibly Flemish. It is not guttural enough to be Russian.”

“He was wrong about ‘l’ being every other consonant, though,” Beck added, “ ‘L’ is only every fifth consonant. ‘Ch’ is the one that comes every other one.”

“You’re recording this, right, Johannsen?” Lewis asked. “And not any of us?”

“Affirmative,” Johannsen said.

The babble stopped for a moment. Then, in English, the same voice continued, “Greetings, Earth. This is Starlight Glimmer. Some of you have asked the crew of our ship to answer a few questions so you can know us better. To help with this, I have sent this message first in our own language; now I send it again in yours.

“Since our languages are very similar in grammar, we hope this will help you understand our other communications in the future, and that someday we will be able to talk one to another clearly, with full understanding, as friends do.”

“Oh,” Beck muttered, “that explains it. Good idea.”

“Sehr gut,” Vogel agreed.

The interview began, with Starlight reading both questions and answers, leaving a long pause between the two as requested by NASA.

INTERVIEW #1

What is your name? “Starlight Glimmer.”

What did you do on your ship? “I helped create the Sparkle Drive. I was aboard to observe it and to collect science data from a trip to a nearby planet.”

How did you get into space flight? “My teacher Twilight Sparkle wrote a report explaining that our world orbited the Sun and that the princesses moved the world to keep it from freezing one side to the Sun at all times. Almost everyone thought the world was flat before then. Rocket travel was a fantasy. When everyone decided to make a space flight program, Twilight Sparkle made one for our country, and I helped.”

Who do you have waiting for you back home? “I have a lot of friends, including my best friend Tricky and my childhood friend Sunburst. And of course Twilight and Spike and Small Pink Pie and… well, many others.”

What are your impressions of humans? “Humans are very much like ponies. I think we will be very good friends once we can communicate freely with one another.”

Do you look forward to visiting Earth after your rescue? “I would love to see Earth! Your technology is amazing! I can’t wait to see all the wonders you have to show us!”

What will you do when you finally go home? “I will do what I’ve always tried to do, sometimes not as well as others. I will work to make friends and to make the world a better place for everyone.”

What is your favorite disco song? “Dancing Queen.”

If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? “About a thousand sheets of paper. We don’t have any and it drives me nuts!”

What message do you have for the people of Earth? “Everyone can be friends if everyone works at it. Where I come from friendship is the most powerful force in the world. By working together and thinking of one another, we can accomplish anything.”

“That was sweet,” Johannsen said softly.

“A little saccharine if you ask me,” Martinez said. “And that ‘favorite disco’ question? Commander, was that you?”

“I plead the fifth,” Lewis said, not doing well at suppressing a smile.

Over the speakers, the tinny voice said, “This concludes our transmission. Thank you, Hermes. Thank you, Earth. Until tomorrow, Friendship out.”

Author's Note

Even by filler standards this is filler.

No writing today. What with one thing and another, I've been busy since 8:30 AM, and it's 10:50ish as I hit Publish on this. But MidSouthCon is a small show, so I expect to have surplus writing time.

Sol 108

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 107
ARES III SOL 108

[08:09] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Venkat Kapoor here again. First, I want to let you know that we’re working on some science experiments for you to conduct after your harvest is done. This will be chemical analysis of your cultivated soil from both the Hab and the cave, with surface samples from about one kilometer southeast of the Hab and just downslope of the entrance to the cave to use for controls, plus some other mineralogy and some medical self-checks.

Although one of the JPL techs offered his grandfather’s collection of Jimmy Buffet songs on MIDI, after consultation it has been decided that even low-quality music files are just too large for the limited bandwidth we have. We’ll send a flash drive full of music from around the world of every type except disco on Slepinir 1. Until then, enjoy your boogie fever.

After consultation, the botanists here believe the hay harvest will keep best in the alien ship. It has pressure, some heat, and an atmosphere dry enough to inhibit rotting. Please consult with your friends on this.

Speaking of your friends, I have a number of requests from various departments here for Starlight Glimmer. I’ll begin with those once we confirm you’re up and awake.

[08:25] WATNEY: Good morning, Dr. Kapoor. I know I’ve made some questionable decisions lately, but I just want you to know that I have the greatest confidence and enthusiasm in the mission.

[08:39] JPL: Nice try, Mark, but it’s “greatest enthusiasm and confidence.”

Good morning, Starlight. First, a couple of questions for our media division, following up on your radio interview yesterday evening. Is it true that your people generally thought the world was flat until a few years ago?

[08:53] WATNEY: Good morning, Dr. Kapoor! It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Scholars knew the world was a globe since not long after Chaos ruled the land, but most ponies tended to stay where they were born. And even some scholars thought the sun, moon and stars were part of a sort of dome, beyond which there was nothing. Only after Princess Luna returned, and after Twilight Sparkle became a princess, did we hear the full truth.

[09:07] JPL: Did nobody have a theory that planets, moon, sun, etc. were more than just lights on a wall?

[09:31] WATNEY: No. Why should they? Princess Heavens raised the sun every morning and lowered it every night. You could go to our capital and watch her do it. If she could do that, why not explain anything in the sky as magic lights?

[09:47] JPL: I’m sorry, did you just say your princess raised and lowered the sun?

[10:02] WATNEY: Yes and no. What she really does is grab the sun with her magic and use it as leverage to accelerate the rotation of our world. Since she came back, Princess Luna really does raise and set the moon, though, since it’s so much smaller. She also keeps track of the little stars close to our planet.

[10:15] JPL: This wasn’t in any of the reports you sent. Could you write a new report about your solar system, how it works, and why it works?

[10:31] WATNEY: Sure! I didn’t mention this because it really doesn’t apply to your world. Also, we don’t know what makes our system unstable, so I can’t explain why it is this way.

[10:44] JPL: Thank you. Another request, from Astrodynamics. They’re responsible for plotting orbits and planning how we fly ships. They want to know the following information: the recharge rates of the kind of batteries that you use for your Sparkle Drive; the specific equations for energy input to drive performance; the upper limit on cycles per second; and the limitations on programming the drive for specific coordinates.

[10:58] WATNEY: I can write that for you, yes. Are you going to make your own Sparkle Drive?

[11:11] JPL: I don’t think so. We’re still exploring options for when you rebuild yours, I think. Astrodynamics didn’t say why they wanted the information.

[11:25] WATNEY: We’ll let you know when it’s done. Anything else?

[11:39] JPL: No, thank you. I’ll begin the mail upload to you now; please tell Mark to start your daily uploads as soon as the mail finishes. Venkat out.

ESA:To Starlight Glimmer. Message begins. Quote. The most popular story Tgapt has in her show is how she defeated the attempt by Chrysalis to conquer Equestria, with some slight assistance from yourself. The only thing lacking in my performances is your presence. When you return Tgapt is counting on you to be part of a special show for our fans! Tgapt would have rescued you already, but Twilight Sparkle insists on being the one to do it. Otherwise you know Tgapt would already be there! So stay well until we arrive! End quote. Over.

AMICITAS: Was going to ask what Tgapt was, but we can guess from context. But since when did Trixie defeat Chrysalis? Over.

ESA: In my nightmares. I told her about them, because why not? By the way, you were the hero in the nightmare- Trixie was comic relief. – Chrysalis Out.

INTERVIEW #2

What is your name? Cherry Berry.

What did you do on your ship? I am the commander and pilot.

How did you get into space flight? At home only pegasi fly. But I wanted to fly. I worked hard and began with balloons, then other things. When the space thing happened, I found a program which would let me fly rockets.

Who do you have waiting for you back home? My parents and aunt Celebration, my friend and landlady Gold Harvest- we call her Carrot Top- and all my friends at the Bug-Pony Space Program.

What are your impressions of humans? You look really silly. And you talk down to people a lot.

Do you look forward to visiting Earth after your rescue? Thank you, but I only want to go home.

What will you do when you finally go home? I’ll take time off my job, fly my balloon, rest, and eat all the cherries. ALL THE CHERRIES.

What is your favorite disco song? “Rocket Mare.”

If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? Cherries. Much-much cherries. It’s been eighty days since I had a fresh cherry and two weeks since the last cherry meal.

What message do you have for the people of Earth? With hard work and friendship nothing is impossible. Also, send more cherries.

Author's Note

Only a little writing done- I was doing research between customers for future challenges for Mark & crew nya ha ha- but I'll have the buffer back to two before I go to bed tonight.

Sol 110

MISSION LOG – SOL 110

Forty-nine packs.

On full rations, that’s sixteen days for one person plus one left over.

On three-quarters rations for three people, that’s seven days.

That’s how close we came to extreme measures in feeding the ponies.

Those forty-nine packs are in a separate locker now, all their own, and that’s where they’re going to stay. That’s the emergency reserve for Cherry, Starlight and Spitfire. Along with them are Fireball’s six remaining food packs, which are the only food packs remaining from their ship. (Only he can eat them, because although they’re normal food mostly, they’re liberally sprinkled with chips of rocks, nice and sharp and intestine-destroying for non-dragons.)

Yes, I know they can probably stomach meat if they have to. They shouldn't have to. (Besides, I can still hear Spitfire saying "crunch crunch crunch" in my head. It's really fucking creepy to think about. I suppose I should be grateful we don't have any magic pig aliens in the crew. Earth pigs are cannibalistic given the right circumstances, and I'd never have a good night's sleep again.)

Cutting the hay crop was simplicity itself. Starlight can make her horn-laser turn right angles, because screw the laws of physics, we have a magic unicorn. It took literally the time it takes to walk forty meters to cut the hay more perfectly than any harvester ever did. In fact, the perfectly level remaining stalks look a little creepy sticking out through the fallen cuttings.

No, the time-consuming part of the harvest is hauling our produce back from the cave to the Hab. That’s no surprise- carrying a field of hay twenty-five kilos at a time, as I mentioned before, is bound to be slow. We had two tubs of a size to carry a twenty-five kilo roll of hay each, so we would load those up, cycle out the pony airlock, walk to the rover, cycle that airlock, unload the tubs into the cargo area, cycle airlock, walk up, cycle airlock, start again.

As it was, we got three-quarters of the harvest into the rover before we had to go back to the Hab and end the EVA. We’ll get the rest tomorrow after we unload the rover. Next time, knowing what we know now, we should be able to do it all in one sol.

Yesterday was potato feast; today was alfalfa feast. I even had a small plateful of the stuff, raw and fresh, or as fresh as it could be. The tubs are airtight but not temperature-proof, so it got pretty chilled on the way out to the rover. It doesn’t seem to have hurt. The ponies like this a lot better than what came out of the Hab, though they say it’s pretty bland compared to homemade.

Also they wish they could cook it. Starlight has even given me a word that twists my brain every time I try to figure it out: hayburger. They know what a hamburger is on Earth (and at least two of them would say they know who it is), so Starlight put that word together deliberately. It is a thing that they have, and I’m still wondering how.

But that’s only one of hay’s many uses, apparently. Hay fries (how? And why?). Hay bacon (blasphemy). Hay and anchovy pizza (I think they may have been pulling my leg with that one).

Anyway, I had a little salad dressing, and now I have a little less. It wasn’t that bad. I could get used to an alfalfa and potato diet.

ESA: To Dragonfly. Message begins. Quote. Hello, fellow adrenalin junkie. Finally got yourself in a mess you couldn’t fly your way out of, did you? Just remember, so long as the Pale Horse hasn’t called in all your chips, you’re still ahead of the game. If I could, I’d fly there now and return the favor from years ago. Keep working the problem, and we’ll be there as soon as we can. – Gordon the Griffon. End quote. Over.

AMICITAS: Message received, over.

ESA: Addendum: Like he said, get back to work. I want my flight engineer back – Chrysalis. Out.

INTERVIEW #4

What is your name? Spitfire.

What did you do on your ship? Junior pilot, medical.

How did you get into space flight? I led Won-der-ful Thun-der-bolts team. Bring astronauts back from fly. Train as astronaut, never go up. Spar-kle Drive crew need pegasus, I was best choice.

Who do you have waiting for you back home? Mother and father, fly team, Princess (nAAYYfollII).

What are your impressions of humans? Brave. Can do things. Need di-ci-pline.

Do you look forward to visiting Earth after your rescue? Want see fly machines, cars not on TV. But really want go home.

What will you do when you finally go home? Train. Get healthy. Then fly again.

What is your favorite disco song? “Celebration.”

If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? I want to fly. I was born to fly. I need air to fly, magic too. Sorry not little thing.

What message do you have for the people of Earth? Thank you for having base here when we crash. You save our life. We not forget.

MISSION LOG – SOL 110 (2)

Technically it’s Sol 111, because it’s 03:18 as I type this, using the Hab’s toilet for its proper purpose for the first time in months. I had to. The gas pains were too much to sleep through. Apparently my intestines refused to even try to digest the alfalfa stems.

I know you’re laughing, future historians, NASA engineers, and whoever else reads this. You’re laughing at the mental image of me with my pants around my ankles, seated on a $1.5 million throne, computer on my lap, undergoing extreme intestinal rebellion.

But I don’t care. I am in pain and I want somebody to know, but I don’t want to wake the ponies.

Well, I woke one up anyway. Dragonfly just handed (hoofed?) me a mostly-clean recycled sanitary wipe. I shall be eternally grateful. I want to remember her in my will. Could this log count as a legal codicil?

Author's Note

I think Mark's problem isn't the fiber in the stems so much as the fact that, botanically speaking, alfalfa is a BEAN.

For some reason my memory insists that, in the background of one early story, we see a cartoon ham on a pony buffet table. I grok hayburgers and can just about work out hay bacon, but hay ham is one trotter too far.

And Princess (horse noise) is Spitfire not even trying to say Celestia's name in English. They still don't have a good translation. Try to define "Celestia" as a meaning and see how easy it is for you.

1000 words written. In two hours I begin packing up my booth and driving home, arriving about 2:30 AM. After what I've written today there will come a series of substantial time skips, with occasional filler.

The three Sleipnir probes, after all, are on their way to the lanchpad...

Sol 111

Quite literally a million miles from anything, a metal thing about the size of a small bus appeared. One moment it did not exist; the next, it did.

Electronics inside the metal thing went to work. They checked a meter monitoring the drain on the object’s electric and mana batteries. Finding the electric system charging from the solar panels and the mana batteries discharging at an acceptable rate, it abandoned the emergency-revert program and entered its short protocol of exploration.

The object took a series of photographs of its surrounding area, including two that included the blue-white planet and its large gray moon not too far away. It attempted to connect a telepresence spell and failed. It listened for radio signals and found none. It observed the heat from the local star, the lack of air pressure outside, and a few other minor pieces of scientific equipment.

Finally, it triggered a complex spell, one which had its own separate battery. The magic detected a planet of the proper mass within five percent, oriented the craft so the scanning device faced that world, and conducted a rapid, broad sweep of the world and anything orbiting it. It found only the planet and its one moon, and a host of life forms on the planet’s surface. When its scans were later replayed, they would show continents familiar to the beings that created it.

With all experiments having been completed and with mana batteries still holding sufficient charge, the object shut down all nonessential functions, aligned itself with exquisite precision, and ceased to exist again.

And a few inches away in a direction not perceivable by mortal senses, the space probe ESA-58, also known as Angel Two, reappeared, recharged its mana batteries, and reported success to its creators.

“It worked! It worked! It worked!”

The sight of an alicorn princess doing the most discoordinated happy dance imaginable was restricted to the small group of people in Cape Friendship’s research and development main office. Most of the observers thought this for the best.

“Variable magic environment requires variable magic output for spells! Adjustable spell arrays allow for operation of technomantic systems under multiple conditions and for multiple purposes!” Twilight Sparkle hopped, kicked, stepped, and even pronked around the room, oblivious to the others present.

“And more to the point,” a deep and resonant voice cut through the giggling and babbling, “Angel Two detected the interdimensional beacon and followed it home. The backup system wasn’t required.” Warner von Brawn, the minotaur chief scientist of the Changeling Space Program, stretched his beefy arms and added, “Though we should test the backup system live in the near future.”

“Test, schmest! Let’s just go get them!” The lanky, greasy-maned figure seated next to the minotaur rocket scientist- the person who signed his paychecks- slapped a hoof on the conference table. “We’ve got a robot that can hop from one dimension to another. Just keep hopping until we find the one that has our people in it, and then follow the probe!”

“It’s not that simple,” von Brawn rumbled, not the least ruffled. “Starlight Glimmer’s and Cherry Berry’s reports both make clear that the Bucephalous- like planet they crashed on was much closer than Bucephalous should have been when they made their unplanned hop. We have only a vague upper-dimensional vector to trace them by, determined by scans of their life support connections. We have yet to test a piloted ship making the same hop to ensure the system can be successfully run manually.”

“Blah blah blah,” Queen Chrysalis replied. “We’ll work it out as we go. We always have! So quit stalling and do it!”

“Hold yer horses, Yer Queenship,” Applejack, present as Cape Friendship’s senior flight controller, replied. “We ain’t got Concordia’s Sparkle Drive built yet, much less on orbit an’ docked.”

“Oh. Right.” Chrysalis slumped back in her chair. “How long?”

“More testing,” von Brawn said. “At least a month just for the drive, then two weeks to get the drive unit attached to the rest of Concordia.” The minotaur made an equivocating motion with one massive hand and said, “Call it six weeks. Six weeks from whenever the princess stops dancing.”

The words cut through Twilight’s self-congratulation, and the Princess of Friendship finally remembered where she was. “Oh. Right, sorry,” she said, returning to her own seat. “What is Concordia’s status, anyway?”

“Right where we left it,” Chrysalis muttered. “Rainbow Dash and Occupant go up next week to relieve the station-keeping crew. Their mission will also top off the rocket fuel tanks. Fleetfoot and I relieve them two weeks later. After that all that’s left is the Sparkle Drive unit and to stock the ship with emergency food for twelve.”

The others in the room, a mixture of ESA and CSP senior staff, nodded their heads.

Whereas Amicitas had been based on an existing Equestrian Space Agency ship, Concordia was new construction based mostly on Changeling Space Program modular design. The ship was essentially a second space station, manufactured in pieces, launched on boosters, and assembled in orbit. It was as kludgy and graceless as Amicitas had been sleek and beautiful… but the project had gone from blueprints to orbit in less than eighty days. Now it sat in orbit, conventional rocket engines fully fueled and ready to launch it to the Moon or Bucephalous or wherever. It was the largest thing in orbit over Equus that wasn’t made of rock or ice.

“We should probably select the final crew for the rescue mission,” Twilight Sparkle said. “After all, once Mark’s people have their ascent ship ready, we need to be ready to go at any time. We’ll need to train for the mission, probably including a shake-down cruise for Concordia.”

“What’s to choose?” Chrysalis muttered. “Me for CSP, Rainbow Dash for ESA- our two best remaining pilots. Pick four other names out of a hat. All we’re doing is popping over a universe or three, making a rendezvous, and popping back.”

“We need an experienced commander and a backup pilot,” Twilight Sparkle insisted.

“Myself and Rainbow Dash,” Chrysalis repeated matter-of-factly.

“And an engineer, someone to monitor the Sparkle Drive, a medic for the ponies, and someone to take care of Mark if his people can’t retrieve him,” Twilight said. “With a racial balance-“

“We take the best,” Chrysalis insisted. “This isn’t a publicity stunt this time, princess. We are going to bring back our own. Dash and I are the best pilots. Find the best medic, the best engineer, and your best assistant for that magic hoppy drive of yours-“

“I’m going myself,” Twilight said quietly.

There had been times, and circumstances, when Chrysalis would have delivered some snarky comment, generally attacking Twilight Sparkle’s fitness for space. This time she simply nodded and said, “All right. Three to go, then. Who else?”

Twilight noticed, allowed herself to feel warm and fuzzy at the changeling queen’s tacit endorsement, and began listing options for Concordia’s engineer.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 110
ARES III SOL 111

ESA: To Starlight Glimmer. Message begins. Quote.I know you don’t like to remember this, but we think you need to. You’re very good at making things work even when broken. When you ran Our Little Town, you kept everything running, even after you stole our cutie marks. The food wasn’t good, but we had plenty. The houses weren’t pretty, but we were dry and warm. We lived in a barren wasteland just below the snowline, and we built a town that’s still here. You did that, and you can do it again. We believe you will survive, Starlight, and we’re all rooting for you! – Double Diamond and the ponies of Our Little Town. End quote. Over.

AMICITAS: Message received. Starlight just buried her head in her cot, over.

ESA: Twilight says she believes in Starlight too. And that Starlight doesn’t need to worry about the past. Get her head out of the cot and put it to use, over.

AMICITAS: Who is this, Chrysalis? Moondancer? Over.

ESA: Drying Paint. Just observing. Out.

INTERVIEW #5

What is your name? Fireball.

What did you do on your ship? I was second pilot. Also, if we need go out in space, I go first.

How did you get into space flight? Was ordered to.

Who do you have waiting for you back home? My stuff if no stolen.

What are your impressions of humans? Dipsticks. But you make cool machines.

Do you look forward to visiting Earth after your rescue? Yes. Want to learn to drive a car.

What will you do when you finally go home? Take my stuff back, find cave, tell world to (untranslatable noise).

What is your favorite disco song? The song that plays after turn radio off.

If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? Book of English bad language with pony translation.

What message do you have for the people of Earth? You might be near dragon if you make more car chases.

Author's Note

I left Memphis at 5:25 PM yesterday afternoon. I crawled into my own bed and turned out the light at quarter after 3 AM. The telemarketer woke me almost eight on the dot.

I've been drowsy and half-asleep all day, and I can't focus, so no writing today. On the other hand, I got the mission-critical stuff for this weekend's trip to Biloxi taken care of , so tomorrow is more or less mine.

No, Angel Two didn't make its test run into Watney's universe.

When finished, the ship the ponies are sending to rescue the Amicitas crew will be almost three times the size of what the ponies call their space station. (But then, their space station is only a little bit bigger than Skylab.)

Sol 113

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 112
ARES III SOL 113

[08:14] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Venkat Kapoor here. In your email you’ll find a schedule for your scientific and medical experiments. We’ve highlighted all EVAs required on that schedule so you can ask your friends if they’d be willing to take over as many as they can. We want you to reduce your physical activity and your EVAs wherever possible.

Also please ask permission to take photos and do a close inspection of one of your friends’ EVA suits. We understand all of them were made by the same people. Since they have no spare suits or parts, we want to evaluate the potential for using Hab canvas and sealant for emergency repairs should another accident happen. We want the photos in tomorrow’s upload queue if possible.

In the news today, the Fantastic Four reboot surprised everyone by topping the box office in its debut weekend. The Cubs signed Luis Bautista y Ortega to pitch for them; Grapefruit League play begins tomorrow with the Cubbies facing the Diamondbacks in Tampa.

In less cheerful news, 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.

Finally, although we’re not sending you music, we can send you digital books in text-only format. Today’s download will include a book we think your friends will enjoy. Let us know how it goes over.

[08:31] WATNEY: Venkat, I’ve been playing nice and watching my language for the most part. So it is with deliberate forethought that I tell you that I fucking refuse to cooperate with any motherfucking witch hunt investigation. You’ve got my logs and my incident report, and that’s enough. My flight suit got destroyed in the perchlorate incident before I thought of photographing the damage. I felt guilty before, but now I’m fucking delighted about that, because it’s one thing your inquisition won’t have when they try to nail Lewis to the wall for a freak accident that no amount of chickenshit protocols could have predicted or prevented.

Kindly inform your investigation committee that their mothers were all whores and that their fathers smell of elderberries.

This isn’t a joke and it’s not up for further debate. I’ll do your science and write your reports and poke and prod at my friends here, but where it comes to the investigation I refuse to play. If you want I can put Dragonfly on and let her tell you how sincerely angry I am that this is even a thing.

P. S. Their sisters, too.

[08:53] JPL: Teddy Sanders here, Mark. We understand and commend your loyalty to Melissa Lewis, and we want to make it clear we’re not looking for a scapegoat or a target. We agree that Lewis followed protocol to the letter. Her only error was to spend too long looking for you, and we can’t fault her for that. But we want to be sure that no oversights or misjudgments like the suit helmet visor issue remain which might have protected you from being stranded.

We are coming to rescue you. But once we have you, we have Ares IV, and Ares V after that. A spending bill in Congress is pending to approve Ares VI. We want to make sure that six crew land and six crew leave in each of those missions. So we’re going over the Sol 6 incident with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that what happened to you never happens to anybody else. We won’t ask you to second-guess Lewis and her decisions, but we do have some questions about the MAV, the Hab, the antenna farm, and your flight suit that we hope you’ll answer.

We hope you’ll change your mind.

[09:08] WATNEY: No promises. Thanks for the endorsement of Lewis. I hope you told her all this yourself.

[09:22] JPL: We did. The inquest into Lewis’s actions began on Sol 22 your time and took seventeen days to clear her completely. She was commended for not waiting on Earth to abort the mission, and if she leaves NASA and returns to the Navy she’s been fast-tracked for promotion to captain, depending on a physical fitness review when she lands. We didn’t mention this before because we knew you’d have strong feelings on the subject.

[09:35] WATNEY: No shit. Awaiting downloads. By the way, a quick report: the water reclaimer efficiency is down to 15 liters per day. I’ll be doing a diagnostic this afternoon. It’s not mission critical, since we have unlimited water if we need it via pony life support, but it’s nice to have the system in place.

“Rich.”

Rich Purnell snored.

“Rich.” When raising his voice didn’t work, Mike grabbed Rich’s shoulder and shook it roughly. “Wake up.”

Rich had two means of waking up, when he’d fallen asleep at the cubicle. If he’d only been asleep a short while, he would come to slowly and peacefully. But if he’d had enough sleep to be rested, he would jerk awake with a violent spasm, usually sending limbs flying. If the waker-upper stood too close, they risked an unaimed but surprisingly powerful punch or slap to the face. If they avoided getting hit, they would get their shins barked when Rich’s chair shot back under the sudden shift in his weight. If both those obstacles were avoided, the waker-upper had the dubious pleasure of picking up from the floor Rich, whatever papers or books he’d been using for reference, and somewhere between three and a dozen coffee mugs, mostly other people’s, looted from the break room.

Mike had painful experience of all these things. It was one reason he usually made sure Rich was out of the building no later than six and back in no earlier than nine. But JPL and Kennedy had both requested refinements on the trajectories for the three Sleipnir probes, due immediately, and so Mike had handed the job to Rich.

Luckily, Rich hadn’t been dozing long. His head left the wall of his cubicle slowly, reluctantly. His yawn seemed to echo in the almost-empty Astrodynamics work room; it was still well before shift. The used coffee mugs barely shifted in their huddle (not, Mike was relieved, tower) next to his computer. “Mike?” he asked.

“Do you have those trajectories done?” Mike asked.

“Jus’ got started,” Rich muttered.

Mike’s jaw dropped. “Rich, JPL needs the Sleipnir trajectories now!” he barked.

Rich turned his head and blinked. “Oooooh,” he said. “You meant the Sleipnir trajectories. Yeah, those are done. Just a moment.” His head was moving slowly, but his hands danced across the keyboard, finishing what looked to Mike like an email. Rich clicked Send, and the monitor cleared to desktop. “There. In your email box now.”

Mike didn’t say thank you. “Rich,” he asked carefully, “what other trajectories would there be, besides the Sleipnir ones?”

“The other ones,” Rich muttered. “Is there fresh coffee in the break room?”

Mike weighed his options. Rich got mulish when asked to show incomplete work. It took far too much effort to be worth it most of the time, especially when Rich’s work never failed to check out under peer review. But for some reason Mike wanted to push it now.

But no, he didn’t have time. He couldn’t even send Rich home to sleep and bathe, as he ought to. “Not yet, Rich,” he said. “It’s only seven-thirty. I just got here.”

“Oh.” Rich began looking in the dirty mugs to see what might be left.

“Rich.” Mike put a hand on his best mathematician’s shoulder. “Today I need you to work on adjustments for the Mars recon satellites. We need the best photos we can get of the area around the Ares III Hab for the Sleipnir landings. They’re tumblers, so we can’t drop them directly on Watney. So find me the lowest-energy course corrections to bring the sats in close and straight over, all right?”

“Okay.” Rich picked up a piece of paper to look under it for more coffee mugs, then noticed his own handwriting on the paper. “I need this,” he said, handing the paper to Mike.

Mike read, in Rich’s tiny, sloppy handwriting, under the coffee stains:

To: Dr. S. Glimmer, Mars

From: NASA JSC Astrodynamics Office

Please confirm the following calculations for the Sparkle Drive, assuming a total weight of drive and batteries combined of five hundred kilograms and a power draw of 0.00008% of total battery capacity per second, for the following range of mass of ship…

What followed came a set of seven different numbers in kilograms, each with its own neat sets of data and an equation showing the work.

“Rich, I…” Mike didn’t know how to explain to Rich that he was three levels of management below the minimum level required to get time on the Pathfinder chat with Mark Watney. Rich barely seemed to understand that Mike was one level of management above Rich. “I’ll clean it up and ask Dr. Kapoor to email it to them,” he said instead. “I can’t guarantee they’ll answer.”

“Thanks,” Rich said. “I’m going to need some supercomputer time.”

Mike shrugged. Satellite orbits never needed supercomputer projections- the trajectory tools on the cubicle computers were more than good enough for such simple calculations- but Rich might have something in mind. “Okay, I’ll see about getting it this afternoon,” he said.

“Won’t be ready this afternoon,” Rich said.

“When, then?” Mike asked.

“Don’t know when,” Rich said. “But I’m gonna need it.”

It was too early in the morning, and Mike had skipped breakfast to check on his problem child. “Rich,” he said, “just please get me those satellite orbit adjustments. But first?” He picked up one coffee mug (with the words WORLD’S GREATEST MOM written on the side) and put it in Rich’s hands. “First take all these mugs back to the break room and wash them. Now, please.”

Mike helped Rich carry them only because his next stop was the break room. He needed some fresh coffee… and some donuts.

Instead of a video player, the computer showed a wall of text.

“Where’s the TV, Mark?” Dragonfly asked, on behalf of the rest of them.

“No TV today,” Mark said. “NASA sent a set of books I read when I was a little kid. They’re pretty good. I’m going to read the first part of the first book to you tonight, and then you can decide if you want to continue.”

“More Agatha Christie?” Starlight Glimmer asked from a stool. She'd been regaining mobility, though the inflatable cast remained on her foreleg, and as such she took every opportunity to not be in her bunk.

“Agatha Christie? No,” Mark said. “This is by an author named J. K. Rowling.”

Ears perked up. “Adventure story? Hot forest? Stone buildings? Traps?” Cherry Berry asked eagerly.

Mark considered this. “Maybe?” he asked. “It’s about a boy who goes to a magical place to learn about his past.”

Cherry Berry’s ears drooped a little. “Oh. Was hoping…” She shrugged and quit trying to talk about whatever it was.

Mark looked at the others, who sat up, attentive if not enthusiastic about being read to for an evening. “The book,” he said quietly, “ is called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. A sorcerer is a wizard, like Starlight. This book has lots of wizards in it.” He smiled a little and added, “Just to be clear, it’s a made-up thing. Not real. Just like the TV shows, understand?”

Five heads nodded.

“Chapter One,” Mark began. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense…”

Author's Note

I wrote half of this chapter just now, instead of pushing on. So, as I post this, the buffer is zero. There will be buffer before I go to bed, though.

I'm not happy with how the book handled (mostly ignored, except as an opportunity to show Mark both loyal and balky) the inquest into the Sol 6 incident. It's over and done with in a couple of paragraphs. True, the focus of that book was Watney's work to stay alive and escape Mars, but if an investigating committee was as fearsome as Watney made it out to be, re: Lewis, there should have been more to it. Also, the idea of the committee waiting over a hundred sols before even being picked is ridiculous- particularly in the book, when Mark had been presumed dead for over a month. Dead astronauts equal investigation IMMEDIATELY. There might be reasons for some delay, but not for almost four months.

So I expanded the scene, to show NASA's boss trying to talk Mark down. And yes, there are good reasons why an investigation should go forward. Yes, the Sol 6 storm was a freak, but a long, tall MAV that topples at twelve degrees of tilt? A fragile antenna farm? Durability of flight pressure suits? Protocols for when an astronaut's biomonitor goes dead? Drills for landing abort procedure? There are a lot of potential flaws in the scenario that might lead to a change that would save lives on future Ares missions, and Teddy and Venkat are very correct to want to find out.

And yeah, Harry Potter had to happen to the ponies. Other books might come across the beam, depending...

Sol 114

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 113
ARES III SOL 114

Starlight Glimmer looked up from her work on the whiteboard to see Mark take out a fresh food pack from his supply. “Mark, may I ask something?” she asked. “You haven’t eaten a potato in two days. Why not?”

Mark’s expression told her why not, but Starlight didn’t feel particularly sympathetic. She, Spitfire and Cherry Berry were stuck with alfalfa-and-the-occasional-potato meals three times a day for the duration. Mark still had some variety in his diet.

“Because I need to keep protein in my diet,” Mark said. “Potatoes have some proteins in the skin, but not all and not enough. So I’m saving the potatoes for last.”

Starlight didn’t bother to keep the pull-the-fourth-one-it-has-bells-on look off her face. “Really,” she said.

“Really,” Mark repeated. “The fact that I already dread the day the ketchup runs out has nothing to do with it.”

“If you don’t eat any potatoes until you have to,” Starlight said, “when do your meals run out?”

Mark didn’t even pause for thought. “Sol 302,” he said.

“So what happens,” Starlight said carefully, “if you eat one meal pack a sol and eat the rest in potatoes?”

Mark didn’t answer. He just made the face again, then shrugged and put the unopened meal pack back in its cabinet. Then, thinking again, he opened the cabinet wide and began pulling out trays of meal packs, one after another.

Starlight shrugged and turned her attention back to the equations from Earth. She didn’t know what possible use this could be. Mark’s people wanted performance data for the Sparkle Drive, but apparently not for the remnants of Amicitas. None of the seven different masses matched up with Amicitas, either new or stripped as it was.

They didn’t have another ship to put the Drive in, and without magic you couldn’t build one on Earth, so why did they want the information?

She shrugged to herself and double-checked an annoying bit of long division.

MISSION LOG – SOL 114

I just finished re-counting the food packs that I’m not reserving for the ponies. It’s a good thing I did, too, because between the first several days on full rations, occasional non-ration days, and other cheating here and there, I’m not quite as flush as I thought I was.

I currently have 394 food packs remaining. I thought I had enough to get me to Sol 302 without eating another potato, but at three-quarter rations it’s more like Sol 289. On the one hand, it’s embarrassing that poor management on my part has cost me thirteen days of food. On the other hand, it’s good I caught this now so I can plan around it.

Why did I do this today? Because Starlight gave me a guilt trip. Here I am with hundreds of meals, over sixty different flavors of meal still in inventory. Fireball has one flavor of meal. The ponies have two. But here I am, sticking to the meal packs even though we have close to enough potatoes for me to eat them exclusively until the next harvest, because I don’t feel like eating between fifteen and twenty potatoes a day until I have to.

Yeah, I can be a real chickenshit sometimes. Starlight didn’t call me out on it in words, but she made her point anyway. And she’s right.

But she made a suggestion that I like: if I eat one food pack per day, I still get that pack’s protein (plus the not-a-potato flavor). And if I eat the skins, I get a bit of protein from the potatoes, too. It’s maybe not as good as the meal packs, but it’s better than straight potatoes, and it slows down protein loss… and keeps me from wanting to commit murder over the last ketchup packet, when that day comes.

Three hundred and ninety-four food packs, at one per day, would mean that my last Earth-cooked meal will come up on Sol 508. I’d still have to go about three months on potatoes alone (with a few alfalfa leaves tossed in, maybe), but that’s better than going three hundred sols on potatoes alone. Of course I’m not going to go all the way down to Sol 508; I’ll keep a small reserve of packs, just as I did for the ponies, in case something unforeseen happens. And then, once the resupply lands, I can eat them and forget about the whole thing.

But for now I’m eating my late lunch… of potatoes. And only potatoes. Without even salt. Because guilt. Also to get one sol of that three to four month all-tater diet out of the way now.

And after this delightful repast I get to do the interview thing on the pony radio. NASA says it looks funny that the only one who hasn’t done it is the one native English speaker. So I’ll answer the same questions, and then I’ll hope Hermes’s reception drops below voice before the follow-ups.

INTERVIEW #6

What is your name? Mark Watney.

What did you do on your ship? I was the mission botanist and ship’s engineer for the Ares III Mars mission.

How did you get into space flight? I was finishing up my master’s work in botany when NASA and SpaceX announced the joint Ares program. I figured any decent Mars mission would want a botanist, and I was young and healthy enough to be a good candidate. So instead of getting my doctorate like I’d planned, I got a second master’s in mechanical engineering, because I figured NASA would want someone who could do more than one thing. Turns out I was right.

But when I graduated they’d closed applications for Ares I. So I did field work developing land reclamation systems for high-altitude deserts for a couple of years. I knew there wouldn’t be much botany science on the first two missions, so I didn’t mind sitting on my application. But when they called for more applicants, I put it in.

I was one of two dozen botanists invited for physicals and preliminary training, and I was one of three selected out of the group. And let me tell you, it wasn’t luck. It’s long, hard work becoming an astronaut. You have to have your head in the right place.

Who do you have waiting for you back home? My mom and dad. They really want me to come home safe.

What are your impressions of the aliens? Well, you’ve seen the photos. I wake up every morning and see those innocent, cute little faces. And Fireball’s, but even he’s hard to take seriously. I mean, that big adorable schnozz? C’mon, you can’t help but love him!

But seriously, they’re the strangest mix of grit and goofiness. Some days it’s like I’m the babysitter and they all want me to explain things to them. Other days it’s like being part of a crew, as if the ponies are Ares III that might have been. Part of that is that they come from this magical world where everything’s easier.

Do you look forward to visiting the pony world after your rescue? This may sound chicken to you, but once I have Earth’s atmosphere wrapped around me I don’t plan on ever leaving again. Don’t get me wrong- I’m grateful to NASA for picking me for Ares, and I’ll never forget this experience. But being stranded here for a hundred days has really made it clear just how hostile this place is. Ares was meant to lay the foundation for a future permanent settlement, but as much as we’ve accomplished, we’ve got a long way to go.

Now, if the pony rescue mission gets here first, I’ll gladly go with them to their home. And yeah, I’m curious about their homeworld. But I want to go home one hell of a lot more. And the ponies, well, I’m sure they all want it too.

What will you do when you finally go home? I’m going to eat a pizza. A real, honest-to-God Chicago deep dish pizza. Have you ever had one, a real one I mean? It’s so hot and gooey when it first comes out of the oven. You take one look and you know it’s going to taste SO good. A good Chicago pizza, man, it keeps you warm on a winter night, you know what I mean? And then the next day I pull a leftover slice from the fridge, I stick it in the oven, and it’s just as good as fresh. God, how I want pizza right now.

What is your favorite disco song? “Celebration.” No, seriously, I didn’t know it was disco until I found it in Lewis’s music collection. That song was everywhere when I was a kid. And the ponies all like it, too. I wish you could see Spitfire shaking her butt to the music.

If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? A book called 1001 Recipes When Your Only Ingredient is Potatoes? No, wait, seriously. You know what I really want? I want my bag of D&D dice from home. I haven’t played since college, but the more I’m around unicorns and pegasi and dragons the more I want to play again. I want my dice. I want to feel them in my hands. I’d love to introduce my guests here to that form of human entertainment. Pen, paper, Dew, nachos, and my best friend’s basement- that’s how you make a fun evening.

What message do you have for the people of Earth? I’d like to say this. NASA won’t like me saying this, because we don’t like to remind people that astronauts risk their lives just being up here. But the fact is, I could die up here. We all could. Mars is a dangerous place. But it’s worth it. Space is worth the price.

What I’m doing here, now, is making a path for more people to follow later. My grandchildren will live to see ships flying back and forth from Mars colonies, and I’m a part of that. So if something happens to me, don’t let that stop you. Don’t even let it slow you down.

As crazy as the ponies are sometimes, they understand. They’re not wasting time with their space program. One day they just decided, “Let’s go to space!” And from that day they threw everything they had at it- magic, science, courage, and political will. For most of my lifetime we had the science and the courage, but not the will. Now we’ve got it back. Don’t give it up again.

Author's Note

Today is Allergy Day. I can barely see straight, my sinuses hurt that much.

Wrote almost 2000 words anyway so I'd have tomorrow's entry ready.

Another thing that bugged the hell out of me in the original book: there's no good strategic reason for Mark to not eat potatoes immediately. Yet he saves his spuds until he's almost out of meal packs- despite the fact that the meal packs travel a hell of a lot better than loose, freeze-dried, pre-cooked potatoes, and despite the fact that in the book, when he learns Hermes is returning, he's still got about half his food packs left.

"But protein!" Yeah, but protein. The thing that was brought up in the first couple chapters and then barely mentioned ever again.

Commenters have pointed out that whole potatoes have enough protein to live off of, at least short-term. I'm not sure I buy that, but I buy it a lot more than the idea of Mark going totally protein-less, except for five loose meal packs, for over 140 sols, and still (as of about 15 sols prior to launch day) being able to lift a 400 kilogram hull panel off a tall, skinny rocket ship and toss it far enough over the side that it doesn't wreck anything on the way down.

So, this chapter. Which is a little unfortunate, since Mark didn't take time to pre-write his interview answers, so he just kind of rambled.

Oops.

Sol 116

Author's Note

This chapter is why I added the Sex tag. I wanted to remind people that there is nothing so noble, so honest, and so pure that some shit won't fuck it up just "for the keks." (Or whatever phrase trolls use fifteen years from now.)

EDIT: 12-18-2019 I decided today to put the Filthy Fred transcript (you'll find out) under the Spoiler tag. SERIOUSLY DO NOT HIGHLIGHT IT UNLESS YOU'RE OKAY WITH CRUDE, CRUEL AND VULGAR SO-CALLED HUMOR. IT'S BAD. TAKE MY WORD FOR IT.

I admit I deliberately seeded Mark's interview with compromising material, but in retrospect I didn't need to. I could have done just as well without the easy setup material. I found a ton of things I hadn't intended to be smutty when I began putting together the Filthy Fred bit. It's amazing what can be done with innocent voice clips if you have no shame or ethics.

And if you ask what that makes me, well, that makes me the guy who made the deliberate decision to do this to Mark and not the ponies.

And this might not have been a smart time to rebel against NASA's requests (Annie is NASA's PR chief, after all), but Annie forgot to be tactful with her requests to the ponies. So she gets three camera hogs and a cooperative cameraman protesting what really is a backhanded request.

I just got settled into my hotel room with dinner half an hour ago, so tomorrow's chapter is likely to be quite short... since I'm about to start writing it. Zero buffer, y'all.

Sol 116

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 115
ARES III SOL 116

To: Mark Watney (mwatney@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Annie Montrose (montrose01@nasa.gov)
Subject: Filthy Fred Interview

Mark, I’m contacting you about this in private email to try to keep you from blowing up in public about this.

Yesterday evening an Internet personality who goes by the name Filthy Fred took the audio from your interview spot and used sound bites from it to assemble a fake interview. The joke, if it can be called that, is that you have an alien harem on Mars.

This is Filthy Fred’s usual modus operandi. He’s hit celebrities, politicians, even ex-Presidents. He gets his laugh from shock, and he has a small but fanatical following. It wouldn’t be an issue except, since your name is on top of everybody’s search history, millions of people are watching Filthy Fred’s edit right now.

We want you to remain absolutely silent about this. We discussed just not telling you this thing existed, but I told Teddy and Venkat that the odds that it wouldn’t slip somehow are next to zero. Given that, it makes no sense to allow you to be blindsided when it does pop up. So we’re warning you, and we’re warning you to pretend it never happened.

I’m serious, Mark; direct responses to assholes like Filthy Fred never work. Fred would love to have you protest. It’d be mud-wrestling with a pig. He’d get more publicity, and people would begin to wonder if there’s any truth to it. So let us handle it instead. Our spin is to show photos of the ponies, with their big adorable eyes, and make the point about what kind of person you have to be to turn humanity’s first alien contacts into a crude sex joke.

Finally, I want to say that this wasn’t your fault. We tell you astronauts to be careful in interviews, but Filthy Fred and other dickheads like him will fuck over anything you say no matter how careful you are. So don’t worry over it. And don’t say anything. Just leave it to your aunt Annie. I’ll see the little cocksucker roasted on the fire of public opinion, don’t worry.

Annie

To: Annie Montrose (montrose01@nasa.gov)
From: Mark Watney (mwatney@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: Re: Filthy Fred Interview

I don’t suppose you could sneak a download of the audio past Kapoor’s bandwidth police?

Mark

To: Mark Watney (mwatney@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Annie Montrose (montrose01@nasa.gov)
Subject: Re: Filthy Fred Interview

Nope. Teddy and Venk say the details won’t help you any. But I’m copying this transcript from the departmental report I have on the thing. You’re welcome. (Sorry about the numbers: in the report they link to where in the real interview the sound bites came from. We were hoping he'd added something so we could nail him legally, but he didn't. I don’t have time to delete them all for you.)

Annie

---Attachment: filthy_fred_transcript.txt

FF: Hello, you fucked-up freaks and you freaky fuckers, this is Filthy Fred again- and this time I’ve got the best interview EVER! Yours truly has scored an interview with our favorite Martian himself, Mark Watney! Say hi to our listeners, Mark!

MW: high(1)

FF: Now, I’m given to understand that you’re just hangin’ out on Mars with five aliens, four of which are females who prefer to go around naked. Are you gonna tell me there’s nothin’ goin’ on up there?

MW: No, seriously(2)

FF: That’s what I thought! So, what’s it like, fuckin’ four alien girls?

MW: it keeps you warm on a winter night, you know what I mean?(3)

FF: Yeah, but really- four aliens?

MW: I figured NASA would want someone who could do more than one(4) pony(5). Turns out I was right.(6)

FF: Sounds like you’re having a ball up there!

MW: the ponies all like it, too(7)

FF: Which one of your bunk buddies is your favorite?

MW: I wish you could see Spitfire shaking her butt(8)You take one look and you know it’s going to taste SO good.(9)

FF: Got a thing for butts, eh Mark?

MW: I want to feel them in my hands(10)

FF: Tell us about Spitfire’s butt, Mark.

MW: It’s so hot and gooey(11)

FF: What does that do to your dick when you think about it?

MW: It’s long(12) and(13) hard (14)

FF: So what do you do with it?

MW: I stick it in(15) the right place(16)

FF: And what do you do when you’re done?

MW: C’mon(17) those innocent, cute little faces.(18)

FF: Sounds like you really have fun up there, Mark!

MW: the ponies all like it, too(19)

FF: I guess they must! But what about the dragon guy, what’s his name?

MW: Fireball’s(20)

FF: How does he take your hogging all the girls?

MW: even he’s hard(21)

FF: What?? You mean to say you’ve got a dude doing you too?

MW: I put it in(22) that big adorable schnozz?(23)

FF: Damn, Mark, how long you been swingin’ both ways?

MW: since college(24)

FF: Where did you first experiment with this sort of thing?

MW: everywhere when I was a kid.(25) I was young and healthy enough(26)

FF: What was your favorite place to screw?

MW: my best friend’s basement(27)

FF: Sounds kinky, Mark. What would you say to people who think it’s kind of fucked up to have sex with an alien, never mind five?

MW: don’t let that stop you. Don’t even let it slow you down. (28) that’s how you make a fun evening.(29)

FF: Words of wisdom, Mark. Your transmission’s breaking up. Any last words of wisdom for Earth?

MW: if (30) more people (31) really want (32) to lay(33) the ponies, well, I’m sure they all want it too.(34)

FF: Thanks again, astronaut Mark Watney! And let’s hope you get rescued soon… but not TOO soon! (lewd laughter)

--- end doc

To: Annie Montrose (montrose01@nasa.gov)
From: Mark Watney (mwatney@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: Re: Filthy Fred Interview

… I think I’ve just been permanently cured of making “that’s what s/he said” jokes. I’ve seen this sort of thing done before and laughed my ass off, but I wasn’t the target then- nor were my guests. Especially not my guests. This is like this guy just twisted my words to make me sound like a goddamn pedophile. That's what it feels like to me.

I guess I should consider myself lucky I didn’t say the word “sister” in that interview. As it is, I’m going to go bury my head now and wish for a time machine so I could go back and undo all my words.

… oh God. Starlight just read over my shoulder. She wants an explanation. Excuse me, I have to destroy an adorable unicorn's innocence now.

Mark

To: Mark Watney (mwatney@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Annie Montrose (montrose01@nasa.gov)
Subject: Re: Filthy Fred Interview

Better you than me, Mark. Be sure to tell the others not to talk about it, either.

By the way, special request: we need more pony pics. Spend a day or two and take a fuckton of photos, especially faces, so we can feed them to the press and double down on the cute card.

A few requests for these photos:

(1) Avoid butt shots. Obviously. Even if they’re in suits or undersuit garments, we don’t need any “where is he looking?” bullshit.

(2) Faces, faces, faces.

(3) I know you had to take photos of the composting system you have for the botany boffins down here. Don’t take any fucking more. Ponies half-covered in shit are not cute.

(4) Dragonfly tests much less cute than the other ponies. Only take pics of her if she’s doing something adorable. And don’t take pics of Fireball at all. People think he’s cool, but definitely not cute, and innocent is what we really need right now.

Thanks!

Annie

“People actually DO things like that?”

Cherry Berry couldn’t believe her ears. First Mark had told them what had happened, and then Starlight Glimmer had filled in the gaps for those whose English still lagged behind.

“Yeah, I know!” Starlight Glimmer agreed. “Maybe it’s a monkey thing? The whole species, obsessed with sex?”

“You wish,” Spitfire said, obviously unruffled. “There are reasons why the Wonderbolts stay in the VIP area at public events. The paparazzi are just praying for that photo of you mid-sneeze that makes it look like you’re leering at somepony else’s flank.”

“No, really, I think it might be a species thing,” Starlight insisted. “Remember what I told you about what happened on the trip to get Pathfinder?”

“Pfft,” Spitfire shrugged. “That was nothing. I’ve seen stallion academy cadets at 5 AM surprise assembly, just barely stuffed into their flight suits. And I do mean stuffed.” The ex-Wonderbolts commander waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Cherry Berry held her head in her hooves. She felt like it was going to explode. “I do not want to KNOW these things about people!” she insisted.

“Welcome to my universe,” Fireball growled. “You mammals are all crazy. We dragons deal with sexual issues in the only appropriate way- after a prolonged negotiation of the prenuptial agreement.”

Cherry Berry looked to Dragonfly for support. The changeling sat on a stool, silent and thoughtful-looking. “Dragonfly, you… er, what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” Dragonfly said, not budging from her seat.

“Right,” Cherry said, not believing it. “Well, I’m giving a direct order: nopony, especially not you, Dragonfly, is allowed to-“

“What??”

Mark had rechecked his email after explaining about the disgusting human and his radio show. Now he shoved his chair back from the table his computer sat on, glaring at the screen as if mortally insulted. Then, with a nod, he closed the computer, went to a cabinet to fetch a still camera, and walked over to the pony huddle.

“Earth wants more pictures of you.,” Mark said, holding up the camera. “Cute pictures. But they don’t want pictures of Fireball, and they only want pics of Dragonfly if she’s being silly.” He put on a smile stolen from an alligator as he said, “So the English word for today is: photobomb.”

He explained. The changeling and the dragon grinned.

The pegasus didn’t. “You say Earth want cute pictures?” she said, her English better than it had been but still clumsy. “Earth think we childs or something?” She hopped onto the worktable, crouching so her barrel just barely cleared the tabletop while her rump waggled high in the air. Just to make her meaning clear, she lifted her tail well out of the way. “Shoot me like one of your Fancy girls,” she purred in Equestrian.

“Wow!” Dragonfly said. “I never knew you could change color, Mark! Are you- never mind.”

Mark was indeed blushing like a fire engine, but he continued to smile. “Let’s make some art,” he said.

Annie Montrose looked at the pictures from the Pathfinder link. Every last one had Fireball in the background, for no apparent reason- just walking by, eating a rock, looking at a computer, so forth, in every single goddamn picture.

Every one had Dragonfly doing something silly- making faces, sticking objects through her holes, juggling, even sitting on Cherry Berry’s head.

And almost every one had Spitfire shoving her butt into shot, to the obvious embarrassment of whichever alien the camera had actually been aimed at.

In fact, almost half of the photos lacked either Starlight Glimmer or Cherry Berry entirely.

But all of them, willy-nilly, would get handed over to the press not later than twenty-four hours later.

“God damn you, Watney,” Annie snarled at her computer. “You had one job. ONE FUCKING JOB!!”

To: Annie Montrose (montrose01@nasa.gov)
From: Spitfire (a5_11@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: (no subject)

We are not children. We will not let you act like we are children.

We are a team. We will not let you act like some of us are not team.

Next time remember that. Also tell Earth I show you what none of you will ever have.

Spitfire

Sol 119

MISSION LOG: SOL 119

Yeah. Last night was a bad one. We had our first dust storm since the Hab blew out.

In my head I know that the Hab repairs are sound. The atmospheric regulator checks the air pressure in the hab as constant. Spitfire hasn’t twitched an ear. And I know from training and engineering study that the Hab canvas and resin are just as strong at the repair point, if not stronger, than any other part of the hab.

But every little hiss and rattle of dust hitting the Hab made me twitch in horror. Was that the seal failing again? Was that? Is another tear starting? How would I know? If the Hab breached while I was asleep, would I wake up just long enough to know I was suffocating? Or would I just drift off, never waking up?

So yeah, fun night of not-sleep I had.

Dragonfly woke up and let me hug her for a while. Her chitin is surprisingly pliable. I eventually got back to sleep once the storm blew out, but by then it wasn’t long until dawn anyway.

To make things even better, when I woke up, NASA decided to finally smack my knuckles for the photographic rebellion a couple days ago. I was tired, shaken up, and pissed off, so I just told NASA they could talk to the ponies about it instead, because I hadn’t been able to sleep due to the dust storm. I handed the computer to Spitfire and Starlight and went back to sleep, or pretended to, at least. I kept my eyes shut until NASA and the ponies worked out a compromise statement that, incidentally, let me off the hook.

Of course I traded off one bit of NASA meddling for another. When I woke up there was an email from Dr. Shields asking me to talk about last night. I thought about it while I was cleaning off the solar panels (because dust storm), and eventually I decided to share with her to see if there was anything she could do about it.

The answer? Meditation. It’s not surprising that I’m a prime candidate for PTSD. Yet another thing I have to thank this lovely, welcoming planet for. But the most effective therapies for PTSD can’t really be done long-distance. But Shields provided some mental exercises that might help disconnect the triggers for my anxiety attacks like I had last night. So the next time I have night terrors, I just contemplate my navel until they go away.

She also pointed out that my fears are far from irrational. Goddamn right they’re not irrational. I am, not to belabor the point, on a hostile planet totally unsuitable for life above, if we’re very generous, the bacterial level. It’s freezing cold, there’s almost no air, the soil is toxic, and if I were able to survive all of that, I’d still die of lethal levels of sunburn from UV radiation.

The problem is, my very rational and sensible terror of the conditions I’m living with on a daily basis threatens to paralyze me, and I can’t afford that. But it’s nice to have a psychologist say that I’m not crazy for thinking this planet wants to KILL me.

That’s not paranoia. It’s a perfectly reasonable and justified conclusion based on empirical data.

Anyway, Dr. Shields suggested I would also feel better for writing out all my feelings in this log. She has a point. Even granted I’m going to catch shit from NASA and all you Earthlings who hang on my every word whenever NASA deigns to release my log excerpts (I’m looking at you, Mr. Downey, and I bet you’re regretting that email now), it feels good to share with somebody.

Dragonfly just asked if she didn’t count as somebody, and I had to spend several minutes explaining everything to her. It put her in a thoughtful frame of mind, so that’s something good, at least.

Anyway, all of that is to explain why I’m writing a log about this when normally I wouldn’t bore you with my mental crap. Instead I’d bore you with how I spent my afternoon arguing with NASA about whether or not I should be allowed to open up the water reclaimer and clean the clogs out of the plumbing. All the other diagnostics check out, so it’s clearly a clog from sediment and other crud in the water from the Hab farm. But NASA is afraid I’ll break something unless they give me detailed step-by-step instructions, which will take days.

Long story short, I’ve got a screwdriver in my hand and the wrenches next to the reclaimer, and I’m ready to perform surgery. Next time NASA decides to bitch at me about a breach of protocol, I’ll actually have done something to deserve it.

Still won’t feel guilty, though.

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

Department of Media Relations
Annie Montrose, director
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ARES III HAB OCCUPANTS RESPOND TO FILTHY FRED

NASA regards the recent comedy work by the person calling themselves “Filthy Fred” as in poor taste, considering that the persons involved remain in a situation of potentially deadly peril. Mocking people engaged in a daily struggle for survival and rescue on a hostile planet reflects poorly on humanity in general.

Aside from these points, NASA has no direct comment on the so-called “interview”. The aliens currently sharing the Ares III Hab with astronaut Mark Watney, on the other hand, are not NASA personnel. Two of them, Starlight Glimmer and Spitfire, have issued their own statement, along with the series of photos taken by Mark Watney being released along with this statement. (The photos were withheld beyond their usual time due to the need to ensure the translation of the alien message was accurate.) NASA honors their right to express their own views, but wishes it made clear that their views are not those of NASA.

Quoting Starlight and Spitfire:

Our personal lives are really none of your business. But if Filthy Fred is so interested, Spitfire sees no reason not to show him what he’ll never, never have. Hopefully it will cheer his lonely, lonely life to see it, even if he will never know what it feels like.

For the rest of you humans who weren’t raised in a barn, we have a special message. We are adults and professionals. We are not children to be coddled or mocked. We deserve the same respect you would give Mark Watney or your other astronauts. We have people like Filthy Fred in our world and know how to deal with them. When you try to protect us, you insult us by trying to make us children, and you give Filthy Fred and his friends power they have not earned or deserved.

With this in mind, we refuse to answer any questions of any kind from anybody about any relations between any of us in the Hab. Mind your own business, and try to be less pathetic than Filthy Fred.

-30-

Author's Note

I was going to go one, maybe two more chapters of character filler before getting down to focus on Sleipnir. But this one is growing. And I've also remembered that I need to address Starlight's return to active duty and various survival issues I'm developing. I shovel harder, but the dirt pile in front of me is growing instead of shrinking.

Since I reported "buffer zero" last night, I've written almost 4,000 words- almost all fluff, but it buys me some time. This is important because I've just found out that the odds are very good that I will be on the road for a very prolonged time in the near future, with very little writing time... which means I need to use my time next week for working on as much of my taxes as possible, among other things.

So, this is the first of four filler chapters focusing on communications with Dr. Shields, a character who appears on-screen in precisely one scene in the original book. The original book was much more about problem-solving than people. This story is as much, if not more, a first-contact story than a strict problem-solving exercise. That said, if I had more energy and time I probably wouldn't have bothered with this tangent.

Sol 119 was the day the airlock blew out in the original book. And yes, there was a dust storm the night before. And yes, a few days before Mark had a radio tiff with NASA over the water reclaimer.

-30- is old typographer's code for "this is where the article ends." I don't know if NASA uses it now, never mind twenty years from now, but I like it so I'm using it here.

Sol 120

Dear Dr. Shields,

You said you’d keep anything I emailed to you secret, so that I could tell you anything. Mark talked to you yesterday, and he said you made him feel better. Well, I’m going to try, because I need to talk to someone but I can’t talk to anyone here about this. And anything I send home will be seen by everyone.

First let me teach a few things. It is important that you keep this secret until we are ready to make it public. Else there is danger for me and for others like me who might come to your world in the future.

“Bug-pony” is not a good translation for what my species is. A better word is “changeling”. We change. Our magic lets us look like ponies, or other people, or even things. We can be anything.

This is important because, until a few years ago, we used our change to steal the love we eat. We were hated and feared, and the ponies were right to hate and fear us. We were not their friends. We lived by draining them of their love and other good emotions- by taking away part of who they were.

I’m not sorry about that. We did what we had to to survive. But in those times we were so hungry that we acted like monsters. Sometimes we lost control. A really hungry changeling is DANGER.

Then our queen came up with the brilliant plan of the space race. Now ponies still suspect us, but some respect us and even love us for what we are. We don’t need to steal love anymore. We get enough love to be healthy without hurting any ponies at all.

Until I came to Mars.

The crew know there’s a problem. Three times a day they give me a bit of their love. My reserves were low for a while, but they’re slowly climbing again. The holes in my body have closed up almost to where they were when we crashed.

But I’m hungryer than ever before, and I don’t know why. All Changelings are always hungry a little, but this is different. I’m getting lots of love, but something is missing.

It’s not so bad in the cave. I work on the farm in the cave and feel almost at home. But when I leave the cave I am afraid. I know what changelings do when we go feed-crazy. I am afraid I will hurt my friends, especially Mark, who does not know what I really am.

I do not want to hurt my friends. But I don’t know what I can do to stop it. And you’re the only person I can tell this, because if I tell anyone else they will be afraid too, and they won’t be able to feed me anymore, and things will get bad very fast.

There is one thing you can do. Watch the messages from the others. If you see these things it might mean I am overeating, and you need to warn the others.

Victim suddenly does not want to do anything except be with one person (changeling).

Victim suddenly becomes really stupid, easy to suggest things to.

Victim’s personality really, REALLY changes- obvious change, not little at all.

Victim weak, little strength.

Victim drained, can’t feel any emotion anymore, unable to do anything for themself.

Watch Mark most of all. He doesn’t know. If I tell him he won’t love me anymore. The others know and keep watch over each other and me, but Mark is the tastiest and most giving. If I break, I probably go for him first. If this happens, tell everyone you need to everything. I hope it doesn't happen. I don't want it to happen.

I feel better now, knowing you will watch and warn if something is wrong. Please don’t tell anyone else. Humans will need to know someday, but we need to do it careful or else all humans will hate all changelings.

I will delete this from Mark’s computer once I send it.

Thank you, Irene.

Dragonfly

Dear Dragonfly,

Read this privately, and then delete it if you want to keep it secret.

I did promise to keep your email confidential, and so I will. But this is information NASA needs. More importantly, this is information Mark needs.

I understand your species was forced to live as a parasite on others. I'm guessing you have major problems trusting others. But it’s absolutely vital that crew members trust one another, and right now Mark is part of your crew. The longer you wait before telling him, the more you risk destroying that trust, especially if your fears of losing control of yourself are justified.

Your fear is valid. You are not wrong to be worried about your friends. In fact, being concerned for your friends speaks well of you as a person. The question now is, what are you going to do to deal with that fear and its causes? Here is the advice I can give from a hundred million miles away.

You should also talk to the others from your world about your problem. I’m a human from a world that doesn’t know what magic is. Nothing here eats love. Nothing here changes shapes back and forth like you say you can. I can’t tell you if you’re going to turn into an animal suddenly without warning. But I think the fact that you’re watching yourself for the possibility is a good sign.

I think you underestimate your fellow crew and how valuable you are to them. Trust pays. Seriously consider telling them what you told me. I think you’ll find that they love you more for it, not less. And one of them might have a solution for your problem.

Irene Shields, Ph. D.
Project Ares Chief Psychologist

Author's Note

The buffer's back up to three.

If Dragonfly could have got a private line to Chrysalis, this exchange would never have happened. The fact that it happened at all should tell you how worried she is.

Sol 123

To: Ares III Hab Crew list (*********)
From: Irene Shields (ishields@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: Crew Morale Evaluations

Thank you all for your messages. I won’t address your specific requests here, because that would give away your secrets. I take patient confidentiality (trust to keep secrets) very seriously. But I wanted to tell you all that I will do my best to find a way to help you.

With that in mind, I would like to ask you all a favor. I would like you to privately email me telling you what you think of your other crew mates. You’ve already told me a little of what you think of yourselves. I will keep what you write secret, so please be honest when you write.

I suggest that, after you write the emails, you discuss how you feel with each other. We have a team-building exercise called “Family Time” which allows crew members to air grievances or talk about problems or feelings. It might be a good idea for you now. But please wait until after writing the emails. I don’t want anybody to feel pressured to write something because of the discussion.

I will write you individually once I’ve had time to think about what can be done for each of you.

Irene Shields, Ph. D.
Project Ares Chief Psychologist

Dear Dr. Shields,

Once I was asked to do something like this before. I’m still not saying all I could say. But since we’re all doing this about each other, it will be less bad than before, so I’ll say a few things.

My list:

MARK WATNEY: He’s very nice and gentle. I know sometimes he wants to make jokes about me, and sometimes he gets angry with me, but he always treats me with kindness. He’s as friendly as a pony.

CHERRY BERRY: I call her the boss woman pony. She’s scary when she’s mad. And she’s still a little naive. But I trust no pony more than her.

STARLIGHT GLIMMER: She’s suspicious and single-minded. She feels guilty about her past and wants to think everything is her fault. I wish she’d spend more time thinking like other people instead of thinking of them as problems.

SPITFIRE: She’s a little scary. She means business all the time. It’s hard to get anything past her. She’s not used to not being a leader.

FIREBALL: He’s not as mean as he pretends. He doesn’t like people. He doesn’t like himself. He makes it tough for the others to like him.

Dragonfly

Dear Dr. Shields,

As you asked, here is what I think about the others.

Cherry Berry is an interesting pony. She knows what needs to be done and makes it be done. I’m amazed she doesn’t have a flying cutie mark, as important as flying is to her. She’s done amazing things. It is honor to be on her crew. She shouldn’t be so hard on herself.

We all worry about Dragonfly. She doesn’t know it, but it’s obvious she’s pretending to be all right when she isn’t. I think we all wish she would stop playing the clown and be honest with us. But that’s got to be hard for a bug-pony.

Spitfire is kind of hard to get along with, and not just because she won’t take off my cast yet. She won’t take talking back from anyone except Cherry. She needs to not be so tight around us.

Fireball is smart and a good astronaut, but he rubs everyone the wrong way. In fact he acts like a big jerk. Why can’t he get along with others? I know dragons who don’t have that problem. Well, one dragon.

Mark tries to be considerate. He makes it his job to keep us entertained and happy. But he is a bit too bossy. It’s his Hab and we don’t want to make trouble, but he doesn’t ask us what we want to do most of the time. He acts like we’re his students. He means well, but it gets annoying sometimes.

I hope this helps you.

Starlight Glimmer

Dear Dr. Shields,

Cherry leads good. She care for her crew. Not discipline enough. Shows too much feelings to crew. But good. All trust her.

Dragonfly is problem. No can trust to tell truth about herself. Tries make all love her, love each other. Not her business.

Starlight is problem. Do things herself, not get help, hurt herself. Not good team.

Fireball is big problem. Does work, but not want be team. Worse trust than Dragonfly.

Mark make my head hurt. He think he is command. He is NOT command. Cherry is command. Mark be bad command. Too much talk down to us. Not listen. Need make head smaller.

Spitfire

Dear Dr. Shields,

Here what I think of my crew.

Starlight much much smarter than me. She know what we need do. I just say yes.

Spitfire much better commander than me. Command flight team for years. Know how to command. But won’t command when I here.

Dragonfly I know many years. Sometimes smart, sometimes really dumb. Good heart, loyal, but not a commander.

Fireball do what told. But not friend. I think he work to make us angry.

Mark is kind and polite. He know what to do. He ask me before do anything. Brave and smart. But sometimes… no, I not say that.

Cherry Berry

Dear Dr. Shields,

Cherry big pilot. Brave for pony. Should be braver.

Dragonfly act dipstick but really smart. Should act less dumb. She save my life one.

Starlight magic smart, else dumb. Work too hard, all time hurt.

Spitfire act boss. Not boss. Rookie.

Mark sometimes dumb, sometimes not. Weak, but brave. Save my life too. Not know what think of Mark.

Fireball

Dr. Shields,

I don’t know if you meant to include me in your request, but it’ll look funny if I don’t join the others in this exercise. This feels like poking and prying to me, but I’m assuming you have a good reason.

I noticed you asked us not to describe the others, but to tell you what we think of the others. So instead of repeating my reports, I’ll stick to my opinions.

And… wow, this is tougher than I thought, now that I actually try to write it down. None of the ponies had any problems aside maybe from typing speed and language.

I’ll start with Dragonfly, since I think we have the closest connection. She’s the class clown and isn’t terribly good at hiding the fact that it’s an act. It’s a shame, too, because it hides just how intelligent she really is. She’s not as good at writing English as Starlight, but it's a close race.

Dragonfly also knows her job. She’s obviously familiar with tools and electrical systems. She was the first to figure out how our computer operating systems work, and she spends a lot of free time reading help menus and the like to better understand them. If she’d act less like a goofy little kid around my tools I might actually let her use them. I think if you put me and Johannsen in a blender and poured the mix into a leaky pony mold, you’d get Dragonfly.

Speaking of Ares III comparisons, I’ve compared Cherry Berry to Commander Lewis before. It’s not a perfect comparison. Cherry’s kind of brittle. The less serious the situation is, the less like Lewis she becomes. During off time she’s the cutest and most innocent of all my guests. She obviously isn’t comfortable with being a leader. I try to support her when I can; she looks like she needs it.

Recent events have caused me to reevaluate Spitfire. I thought she was uptight and kind of prissy, but every once in a while she shows her hidden inner Martinez. She has a vile sense of humor, just like Martinez, but she’s usually too professional and military to show it. I don’t think she likes me very much. She says she wants to be treated like an adult, but considering how I treat most adults, I don’t want to be that dickish to her.

There isn’t a good Ares III comparison for either of the other two. Fireball, for example. We spent years learning how to work together in close proximity preparing for Ares III. You know better than I do how we were chosen specifically to be compatible. Well, Fireball goes out of his way to be incompatible. He’s like that loner kid in high school who wants to be part of the group but doesn’t want to look like it, so he’s always out on the edges, orbiting from a safe distance. You once said I wore an armor of laughter; well, Fireball’s armor is sandpaper. I don’t know how much he likes me, but I kind of like him, in a meathead kind of way.

Finally, there’s Starlight Glimmer, our in-house workaholic. She’s almost as adorable as Cherry Berry, except she gets a little scary sometimes when she’s working on a project. She just kind of tunes out everything except her problem of the moment. She has to remind herself to be friendly sometimes- it doesn’t come naturally to her, even less so than it does for Fireball.

Starlight’s easily the most demanding of my guests for my time and attention- and that includes Dragonfly, who eats my surplus affection in order to live. She asks more questions than anyone else here. She resents having spent so much time in her bunk because of injuries and overwork. You have to admire her motivation, but I like her better when she relaxes.

I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you’re looking for, but it’s what I’ve got right now.

Mark

Author's Note

Buffer still at three. I have way too much stuff that needs doing before I hit the road again, so I'm struggling just to maintain the buffer.

I think this chapter is pretty self-explanatory.

Sol 125

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 124
ARES III SOL 125

[07:28] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Bruce Ng here. We’ve got an interesting project for you and your friends, particularly Commander Berry.

[07:41] WATNEY: For Cherry? All right, what’s up?

[07:55] JPL: Check your email for a detailed procedure which should connect the Hab power to the MDV. Long story short, we’re going to get you home one of two ways: either we bring a modified MAV with the Ares III-B mission (if we can build it in time), or we have you and your friends travel to Schiaparelli to use the Ares IV MAV. Either way, the MAV would be piloted remotely from Hermes, but we’d like an experienced pilot in the MAV as a backup. Commander Berry is apparently the most experienced spaceship pilot the alien world has, so we want to bring the MDV computers back online and use the MDV as a flight simulator. The system switches aren’t in the same places, but the pilot controls are exactly the same.

[08:13] WATNEY: Hey, yeah! Cherry will LOVE that! So will most of the others. Dragonfly and Fireball have pilot experience, and Spitfire has training.

[08:27] JPL: That’s what we’re thinking. We also want their input on what alterations would be required to adapt the controls to hooves.

[08:41] WATNEY: Can do. One point, though; we currently have the Hab, the rovers, the MAV fuel plant, and Friendship running on Hab power. How close are we to exceeding the limits of the power system?

[08:55] JPL: Pretty close, but Rover 2, the alien ship, and the MDV all have batteries that should moderate the load. Also, you’re not running the fuel plant all the time, and you won’t be running the MDV systems all the time. Keep an eye on the hydrogen cells and let us know if they show undercharge after 17:00 your time on any day.

[09:09] WATNEY: Wilco.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: SG – cast removed today. Leg is still a little sore when I put weight on it, but I’m resuming normal duties, over.

ESA: Good to hear, over.

AMICITAS: SG – Current priorities: more mana batteries, improving seal on cave farm, making new Sparkle Drive. Need advice on spell to seal pores in cave walls, make completely airtight. Over.

ESA: What spell did you use to install airlock? Over.

AMICITAS: Adapted Occlusion’s Door What Door. But very hard to apply to surfaces caster can’t see. Almost entire cave wall covered by crystals of varying size. Over.

ESA: Why did you choose Occlusion’s spell? Over.

AMICITAS: No upkeep cost. Other spells use power from magic field which we don’t have, over.

ESA: Understood, will research. Is there a leak? Looks like a good seal from here, over.

AMICITAS: Earth worried that seal will fail, cause blowout. They want us to reduce air pressure inside cave by 25% to relieve strain on cave walls and roof, over.

ESA: Repeat reduce cave air pressure 25%? That doesn’t sound right, over.

AMICITAS: Confirmed, over.

ESA: Stand by, calling in expert, over.

AMICITAS: Standing by. Another question: any progress on helping humans use magic?

ESA: Several methods tested, all require magic components, over.

AMICITAS: Suggest experiments with bits of magic creatures (unicorn hair, phoenix feather) in wooden wands. Got idea from human fairy tale, over.

ESA: Does Earth have unicorns, phoenixes? Over.

AMICITAS: No magic creatures of any kind known. But maybe non-magic substitutes would work once the concept is proved, over.

ESA: Hello, Starlight Glimmer. This is Maud Pie. It is good to hear from you. Over.

AMICITAS: Hello, Maud. What’s up? Over.

ESA: The sun, the moon, a number of asteroids, the space station, Cloudsdale, and many other things. But that’s not important right now. Over.

AMICITAS: Was that a joke, over?

ESA: Yes. Ha. Ha. Over.

AMICITAS: Ha! You haven’t changed. Over.

ESA: Regarding your question about your cave: the increased air pressure in the sealed cave has already caused the rock strata to flex around it. Reducing pressure would make the rock flex back, causing additional faulting and a possible breach. If you didn’t know, that’s bad. Over.

AMICITAS: I figured it out, Maud, over.

ESA: TS – So no, we aren’t reducing air pressure. Anything else, over?

AMICITAS: Negative, over.

ESA: OK, will work on sealing cave, wands for humans. Will contact 12:00 your time via ship life support with detailed modifications for Sparkle Drive based on experiments here. Be ready to take notes. Out.

To: Spitfire (a5_11@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Irene Shields (ishields@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: Grown Adults

Please don’t show this to Mark. I want to explain why he might not be giving you the respect you wish, so that you'll be a bit more understanding of his point of view.

On our world humans are among a very small number of creatures that have a protective instinct for animals not of our own species. It isn’t a universal instinct. The more similar to a human child- the cuter it is, in essence- the more we want to protect it. You ponies are actually cuter than any human child in existence, and so you automatically trigger the protective response.

Mark has this problem worse than most, because he sees you as dependent upon him. He has accepted you as guests into his home, in a sense, and he wants to be a good, responsible host.

According to his reports, he sees you as being reckless in space flight and careless of the dangers of a space environment. By human standards this is accurate. We took what we consider appalling risks to go from the first manned space launch to a moon landing in just over eight years. The astronauts involved trained for a year or more before each launch specifically for that one launch. You went from no space flight at all to a moon landing in about two years with training times measured in weeks. You see us as slow; we see you as advancing at breakneck speed.

Finally, Mark is teaching you English, or trying to. He’s not trained as an English teacher. His main experience with being taught English comes from when he was a child, so he will naturally repeat that behavior when teaching the language to others.

These are the reasons Mark has been treating you like children, at least a little. The question is, how can you change that?

I can tell you right away that angry confrontation is your worst option. Mark responds poorly to anger and confrontation. Learning to curse like a sailor (as we say on Earth) won’t make him think of you as an adult- it'll make him act childish to match. Pranks or acts of rebellion such as your photographs will likewise backfire. In fact, if they’re particularly cruel, you risk losing the respect Mark definitely has for you.

And no, I’m not going to step in and order Mark to treat you better. First, I’m on another planet. Second, I’m under doctor-patient confidentiality rules. I’m not going to tell anyone what you told me in secret, not even him.

You need to tell him yourself, seriously and calmly. Don’t order him, but instead explain that you’re upset that he treats you like a child. This will work with Mark. Mark tries to get along with practically everybody he meets, within certain limits. He was picked for Ares III precisely because he helps bring people together. Once you explain your problem, he will try to correct his behavior.

I will warn you that there is one side effect you may not like. Mark tends to tease and joke with people as part of his making friends with them. Yet none of you have mentioned even once Mark doing or saying anything that might in any way hurt your feelings, even in jest. I’m guessing Mark is deliberately restraining himself, partly due to the language barrier, partly to save your feelings. If Mark decides to treat you as grown people, he may revert to his normal personality. He wouldn’t mean to hurt you, but he might out of ignorance of your culture or background.

If you really want a dictionary of bad language, ask Annie to send you one. She can get it past Teddy and Venkat, and after her backhanded photo shoot request, she owes you one. And she’s the expert on bad language around here.

Good luck, and if you need more advice, feel free to email me anytime.

Irene Shields, Ph. D.
Project Ares Chief Psychologist

Author's Note

Buffer now at 4. Which is good, because there will be no writing at all on Thursday. If you want to understand why, go to Google Maps, get instructions for driving from Houston to Columbia, SC, and then consider doing it all in one day. Because that's what I am, in fact, about to do.

Well, obviously Dr. Shields has dropped a big hint on someone at NASA, because things are beginning to change. And she's dropped an even bigger clue on Spitfire. (Obviously the ponies haven't gone the "Family Time" route yet.) And, in the meantime, the ponies come to a diametrically different conclusion than NASA on the cave. (It's worth remembering that NASA scientists do get things wrong on occasion. Whether or not this is one such time? We'll see.)

And, finally, Starlight is out of the cast. She can't carry things yet, but she's on all four legs again.

Power in the Hab was never, never an issue in the book. It was the one thing Mark had more than enough of, at least so long as he was at the Hab. But there are a lot more demands on the system now than there were before...

Finally... tomorrow night, the last thing I do before I head to South Carolina, is KWLP on Dementia Radio... and the theme for the show is PONIES. So go to dementiaradio.org to learn how to tune in, and in the meantime, feel free to request your favorite -funny- pony or pony-related songs!

Sol 129

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 128
ARES III SOL 129

Mark sat and read the message on his computer. While the crew of Amicitas had all gone to the cave farm the day before (Cherry, Dragonfly and Spitfire to farm, Starlight and Fireball to mine crystals), he’d spent the day using up another CO2 filter, disassembling control panels on the MDV in his space suit. The disassembly had revealed damage not previously visible, and so he’d taken photos and sent them back to Earth. Now he was examining the revised procedures to either repair or bypass the broken electrics so that power could be safely restored to the MDV.

Absorbed as he was in reading the detailed instructions and writing them down in tiny letters on one of the few remaining sample box labels, he didn’t notice the two ponies next to him until the second time Starlight tapped him on the knee. Blinking, he looked over at them. “What is it, Starlight?” he asked carefully.

Starlight pointed a hoof at Spitfire, who stood next to her. “Spitfire wants to tell you something,” she said, her words spoken deliberately but not stilted. “And she wants you to listen, so she asked me to translate for her.”

Mark frowned, turning on his stool to face the ponies. “Okay,” he said. “What is it?”

Spitfire’s slightly raspy voice rattled off a soft, calm-voiced stream of pony language. Mark caught bits and pieces of it, but not enough to make it a clear message.

“Spitfire says that you treat her- that you treat all of us- like little children,” Starlight said in English. “You don’t give us the respect we deserve. She’s tried hinting at this, and she’s even said it straight, but you don’t seem to listen.”

Mark nodded, gesturing at Spitfire to continue.

Spitfire said a bit more.

“How many decisions do we get to make?” Starlight translated, a little less calmly. “When do you stop explaining everything to us, like a teacher and a school… school…”

“Schoolgirl?” Mark suggested automatically. “Schoolfilly maybe?”

Spitfire jabbed a hoof at him. “That! THAT!” she barked, followed by rapid-fire pony talk that took Starlight several seconds to silence.

“I think you got that?” she asked, once Spitfire subsided a little.

“Yeah,” Mark nodded, “I got it.”

Spitfire returned to the calm tone of before, but Mark could hear that it was a forced calm. He’d had experience determining the various tones of pony-speak. They weren’t that different from human tones, if you worked around the whinny vowels and the snort consonants.

“You don’t have to teach us like you would children,” Starlight continued. “We may not all speak your language well, but we understand enough of it that we don’t need baby talk anymore.”

“Aa, aa, aa,” Spitfire added mockingly.

“Right,” Starlight said. “We’re all tired of that at this point.”

Spitfire waved a hoof around the Hab and continued her soft words, soft words which were about one small provocation from becoming a rant.

“And it’s not just the teaching,” Starlight continued. “How much are we trusted around here? We can open the doors and work the microwave, we can answer email and watch television. And that’s it. We teach you all about our ship. When are you going to teach us about your Hab? Your rover? Your anything?”

Mark nodded. The ponies had a point.

Spitfire pointed to herself and talked. A plaintive tone crept into the words.

“Spitfire is the oldest of us here,” Starlight continued. “She’s new to space, but she’s a responsible adult. She’s a leader back home. She can understand things. She can take care of herself, if you’d just let her.”

Spitfire’s last sentence came out very softly.

“What will it take,” Starlight said slowly, “for you to treat me like I know what I’m doing?”

Mark gave an inquisitive look at Starlight.

“That’s mostly what she had to say,” Starlight said. “Most of us have similar concerns. Dragonfly doesn’t mind how you treat her, and you and I went to Pathfinder. But the others, yes. And me a little bit.”

Mark took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not a good teacher.” He looked at Spitfire and continued, “I’m not a pilot. I’m not an officer. I’m not even a medic, beyond the emergency training I had. You and I don’t have much in common.”

Spitfire tilted her head, looking a little confused.

“The problem is, I don’t know how to treat you,” Mark said. “If you were human and we spoke the same language, it’d be easy. We’d know how to talk to each other.” He sighed and added, “But you’re not human. You’re the first aliens my species have ever met. Do you know how important that is?”

“I learn,” Spitfire said haltingly. “I learn how talk to you.”

Mark shook his head. “Not the same thing,” he said. “You’re learning a language. That’s just words. But how do I use my words to talk to you?” He held out a hand. “What is a joke? What is an insult? What’s allowed, and what isn’t?” He sighed. “You girls should have had a diplomat, or an anthropologist, or at least a doctor, to meet. What you got was a guy who grows plants and fixes doorknobs.” He put a hand on each pony’s shoulder and added, “You are the single most important thing that’s ever happened to my species. Ever. And I don’t know how not to fuck it up.”

Spitfire’s eyes brightened a little. “What means ‘fuck’?” she asked.

“Ahhh, ah-ah-ah!” Mark admonished, holding up an index finger. “Not fair! Do you want me to treat you like an adult or not? You just said-“

“How I going learn English if you not say?” Spitfire stumbled angrily over the words.

“And how do I teach you without talking down to you?” Mark snapped, equally frustrated.

“You- you- you… you do!” Spitfire stumbled. “You only do! Not hard! I teach all time home! Teach adult pony be best flies!”

Mark couldn’t help squirming. “Starlight, help me out here,” he said.

Starlight rolled her eyes and said something in Pony, in which the word ‘fuck’ popped up three times.

This didn’t calm Spitfire. “Why you tell Starlight and not me?” she demanded.

Mark rubbed his eyebrows just above the bridge of his nose. “We were in the rover for three weeks,” he said. “I watch my mouth around you guys, but it slipped out.”

Starlight added something in Pony to explain it.

Spitfire raised an eyebrow. “Watch mouth?” she asked. “Watch what you say? Why?”

“Didn’t you hear- no, wait.” Mark took a deep breath and forced himself to marshal his thoughts. “You know buck and other pony bad words, right? Do you say them in front of big shots- important people?”

“What? No!” Spitfire said. “Wrong! Not place! Not respect!”

Mark slid off his stool and knelt down to put himself at eye level with Spitfire. “For humans, right now, you five are the most important people in the universe,” he said. “And you’re here in my Hab. I’m responsible for you. I have to keep you healthy and happy-“

“You not-mmff!”

Starlight kept her hoof pressed hard into Spitfire’s muzzle. “Why are you responsible?” she asked over Spitfire’s protests. “We’re just as able to take care of us as you are.”

“I’m responsible because you’re in trouble and I can help you,” Mark said simply. “You’re stuck here on Mars. In my Hab. In my universe. Nobody else is here to help you. And you might die if I don’t. Even if you were humans from Earth, I’d still be responsible.” He added in a solemn tone belied by the corner of his mouth that kept turning up, “With great botany comes great responsibility.”

Spitfire went silent, and Starlight took her hoof off her mouth. “I sorry,” she said once her mouth was unplugged. “I not-“

“No, don’t apologize,” Mark said. “I fucked up- I mean I bucked up.” He let out a long breath of air. “The question is, where do we go from here?”

The three stood and thought about it in silence.

[11:51] WATNEY: Guys, I need some advice. I think I’ve gone about as far as I can with English lessons for my friends here. Starlight and Dragonfly are almost fluent, and the others aren’t getting any better than they were. What can you do for English as a second language classes for adults? (Those last two words are important, guys.)

[12:05] JPL: We’ve had that problem on the back burner for a while, Mark. Do you want us to make it a priority?

[12:20] WATNEY: Please. We need to bring the other three up to speed on English, or else we humans all need to learn how to write and speak a language where we can’t pronounce at least three vowels and four consonants.

[12:35] JPL: Okay. We’ll have something for you in a few days. Right now we need to focus on getting the MDV powered up for flight sims. Any progress on that?

[12:50] WATNEY: Morning repairs got hijacked by a parent-teacher conference. I’m ready to go out and get to work now.

[13:05] JPL: I have one suggestion, Mark. How do the ponies like Potter?

[13:21] WATNEY: They put up with it. Starlight’s divided between “Magic doesn’t work like that” and taking notes on the whiteboard. Spitfire makes me re-read all the quidditch chapters. Fireball hated Hagrid at first, but now he kind of likes him, even if he calls him Hagrid P. Coltrane half the time. Dragonfly… I don’t know if Dragonfly really likes it or is pretending for my sake. Cherry Berry is kind of bored with it.

[13:36] JPL: Have them take turns reading aloud. Don’t correct them. Let them correct each other.

[13:51] WATNEY: I’ll try it, if you think it’ll work.

[14:04] JPL: It worked for my kids. Get back to work, Mark.

Author's Note

No time or energy for writing tonight. Apparently I picked the day before a 1000-mile drive to come down with the crud. By setup time Friday morning I should be nicely spaced out, dammit.

Tomorrow's post might be very, VERY late. Because driving and sick, of course.

But in the meantime, my radio show must go on. (It won't happen next week, because I just haven't got the time to prerecord the show for next week.) DementiaRadio.org, beginning 9 PM Central (almost) every Wednesday night! (And again, tonight's the Pony playlist...)

Sol 134

Teddy didn’t even apologize for being four minutes late. He strode into his office, placed his briefcase on his desk, sat down, and said, “I know you’re all very busy, so let’s make this quick. I need a status update on Project Sleipnir from all departments. Venk, let’s begin with you.”

“Proceeding on schedule here,” Venkat replied. “The only problem I have is that the Ares III and Ares IV presupply crews are competing over cruise and landing control of the probes. I’m letting them make their cases before I decide on one or the other, or whether to assemble a fresh crew. Unless they come up with a compelling reason otherwise, I’m probably going to go with the Ares III team.”

“Mitch,” Teddy continued, “how about the launch?”

The Ares flight controller shrugged. “Eagle Eye 3 cleared out their launch control room, so we’re good to go at Kennedy and here at Johnson. We’ll have Sleipnir 1 on pad 39A and Sleipnir 2 on 39B, so that we can send Sleipnir 3 out on the crawler the minute Sleipnir 1 clears the tower. After launch we’ll turn everything over to Venk’s team for cruise and landing.”

“Media?”

Annie looked up from her phone. “I’m giving daily updates to the media,” she said. “Google reports an uptick in searches on Norse mythology. We’re expecting public interest to peak as we get closer to launch day, so expect a lot more press inquiries in the next six weeks.”

“Encourage them,” Teddy said. “We need pressure on Congress to replace the Ares funds we’re spending on Sleipnir. What about opposition to the rescue- the ‘let them die’ crowd?”

Annie actually smiled. “They’re getting their fucking heads kicked in,” she said. “The BringThemHome tag outperforms them twenty to one. Gallup and Monmouth polls both show over 75% support in the United States for the rescue mission. And the online troll cesspools are actually policing their own on this. Apparently Spitfire has just been elected ‘alien troll queen.’” Her smile turned savage. “And a certain ‘Filthy Fred’ is posting nothing but angry response videos after his fellow shitposters turned on him. My department has counted over fifty videos doing to Fred what Fred does to other people.” Putting on an air of dignity, she added, “Of course, my staff did this research entirely on their own time.”

Teddy didn’t smile. “Of course,” he said. “Moving on.” He turned to face one of the two big monitors in the room. “Maurice, how are the boosters coming?”

Maurice Stein, Director of Pad Operations at Kennedy Space Center, frowned. “We’re behind,” he said bluntly. “Or I should say, SpaceX is behind. We took delivery of the first Red Falcon booster last week, and it’s going through final inspection now. But SpaceX is two weeks behind schedule on refurbishing the second booster, and they’ve barely begun on the third booster. They keep telling me they’ll make deadline, but damn if I see how.”

“So,” Teddy said, “no hope for an early launch?”

Maurice shook his head. “None,” he said. “The betting pool in my team puts the smart money on about a week’s delay of launch on Sleipnir II. Three weeks for Sleipnir III. More if JPL’s schedule slips.”

Teddy looked at the other monitor, where Bruce Ng stood in his office in California. “What about it, Bruce? Is your schedule slipping?”

Bruce shrugged. “We’ve had some setbacks,” he said, “but we had a bit of schedule budgeted for setbacks. We certainly won’t be early, but so long as we avoid any major screwups, we should deliver all three probes on time.”

“Sounds good,” Teddy replied. “What can you tell me about the loadouts?”

“All three Sleipnir probes use identical tumbler-landed supply casings,” Bruce replied. “They all contain transponders that the rover navigation system will identify, allowing Mark to drive his modified rover to each site.

“Each probe will deliver just under one metric ton to Mars- one-tenth the payload of a typical presupply flight. Five hundred kilograms of that will be payload. Four hundred kilograms of that will be food, providing a total of three hundred days of rations for four astronauts at full rations.

“The remaining hundred kilos will include a replacement radio system on both Sleipnir 1 and 3, a replacement flight suit and shatter-proof helmet for Watney on Sleipnir 2, replacement spare Hab canvas and resin on all three ships, plus whatever we can cram in the remaining space and weight.

“And finally, we’re configuring the onboard radio for all three probes so they can take the place of Hermes as radio relays for Pathfinder. It’ll only do any good for the last four months or so of the flight, but it’s better than nothing. After launch we’re planning software adjustments which will let us turn the three probes into a flying radio array that can error-check incoming transmissions and so increase bandwidth from Mars. Unfortunately the time lag between ships won’t let us do that in reverse.”

“Sounds good,” Teddy repeated. “Keep me posted. Dr. Keller,” he continued, turning to look at the Ares III flight surgeon, “what issues will the crew be facing when the supplies land?”

Dr. Keller shrugged. “They need at least one, probably two harvests from their cave farm to even make it to landing,” he said. “We know nothing about nutritional problems for Dragonfly or Fireball. The ponies will probably have a sodium deficiency, but will otherwise be all right. Watney is our major concern.”

Keller adjusted his glasses as he continued, “Watney has gone to one food pack per day plus potatoes and a small amount of alfalfa leaves for his meals. Depending on how rigidly he sticks to this meal plan, his protein deficiency will range from nothing to serious, possibly severe. The biggest danger is that, faced with a monotonous diet, he’ll undereat. There’s very little we can do about that, except encourage the ponies to be his meal-buddies and make sure he eats everything he’s supposed to.”

“How will this affect his ability to retrieve the supplies?” Teddy asked.

“He’ll be weakened,” Keller replied. “How much I can’t say. Also, his judgment will be slightly impaired due to lack of vital fatty acids for repair of neural myelin. He’ll need help bringing the supplies back to the Hab. But in even the worst case scenario he should be able to do the job. Of course, the closer we can drop the supplies to the Hab, the better for everyone.”

“Will this do any permanent damage?”

“No way to know ahead of time,” Keller said. “Once he’s back on full rations for a month, then we’ll know.”

“All right.” Teddy made some notes. “Good work, everyone, and keep it up. And remember, if anybody can find a safe way to speed this up without further risking Mark’s life, I want to know about it immediately.”

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Michael Bendarek (mbender33@nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Satcom Request

Tell Satcom we’ll have their orbital adjustments tomorrow during the day. My best man just went on vacation, and he has months of vacation days banked. It was that or fire him, and normally he’s too reliable to get rid of. But he’s got something in his head and won’t let go of it.

Sorry for the delay.

Mike

Astrodynamics

Author's Note

I lost an hour to horrible traffic west of Lafayette, LA, so the drive to South Carolina took me sixteen hours. And I need to get to sleep pretty much NOW, so no involved notes. I'll just say that the only reason this scene exists is to demonstrate the change in scenario between the original book and Watney Plus Five.

I will point out that SpaceX has made their 24-hour turnaround goal with Falcon 9 precisely once. Every other reflown booster has required more involved refurbishing. It's not impossible that SpaceX will get a 24-hour (or to be more realistic 1-week) turnaround on the BFR, but it's not the way I'd bet.

Sol 137

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 137
ARES III SOL 137

[08:36] JPL: Good morning, everyone. Mark, we show the download for the update to the MDV’s computer as complete. You’ll find the MAV flight software in the Hab computers’ backup files. Copy that to a data stick along with the update file, go out to the MDV, plug the data stick into the main data entry slot, and run the update as an executable. The update will install the MAV flight software in the MDV computer and set it permanently to practice simulation mode. Unfortunately you had to remove the entire sysops work station because of damage from the Sol 6 storm, so setting parameters for the simulation will have to be done from the commander’s station.

Everyone else, we’d like you to use the Hab computers for something. A special program is waiting in your email boxes. Mark will tell you how to make it run. When it launches, you’ll be asked to take an English test, both reading and writing it. We’re doing this so we can focus on what your needs are. We know English is a very hard language to learn, so we want to help all we can.

Any questions?

[08:51] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer here. Where is the closest large deposit of salt? Mark is almost out and we need to get more.

[09:06] JPL: Sorry, Starlight, but the known large sources of table salt are all in craters and basins in the southern hemisphere. Mark’s and Commander Lewis’s experiments with soil samples taken near the Hab show only traces. Our best guess is that the salt deposits in the ocean that once covered where you are either got washed under where the polar ice cap is now or buried by wind-blown dust billions of years ago. And even if there was salt near you, we’d recommend you not touch it, because it’d be mixed with perchlorates and other toxins. You don’t have the equipment to separate it out from the bad stuff.

[09:21] WATNEY: That’s what you think.

[09:24] WATNEY: Watney here. Looks like we’ll be taking a short trip tomorrow- about twenty kilometers west of here. If you check my logs you’ll figure out what the plan is. In the meantime, I’m getting to work on the MDV reprogramming.

“How do I do this?”

Fireball’s voice came out much quieter than normal, and almost an octave higher, but the others heard it quite clearly, even over the slow clacking of the keys of the various Hab computers.

Starlight looked up. “Do what?” she asked. “Did you run the attachment in your email?”

“Yeah.”

“Then answer the questions that come on the screen.”

“How do I do that?”

“Sweet Celestia,” Spitfire grumbled, “you’d think you never took a test before.”

“I haven’t.”

The key-clacking stopped.

“You’ve never took a test before?” Starlight asked.

“Of course not!” Fireball’s tone verged on a whine. “We dragons are nomadic and solitary! How many schools do you think we have? The only reason I know how to read is because my grandmother insisted I learn! She hoarded ancient pony books, and… well, I hardly ever read anything before Ember ordered me to become an astronaut.”

“Wow. We changelings even had a school,” Dragonfly said. “Not much of one, but we had one.”

“But you know how to read,” Cherry said. “You read mission checklists fine. And when you take your turn reading the Potter books…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Fireball stumbled through his chapters of Potter like Berry Punch stumbled through the Ponyville streets at two AM on Hearth’s Warming. It was really painful to listen to, and Mark had stopped correcting their English days ago, so it didn’t get better.

“Yeah, I know how to read,” Fireball grumbled. “Because Mom left me with Grandma for four months, and every time I got a word wrong Grandma whapped me on the head.” He pointed to his uppermost spinal fin and snarled, “That’s how I got this. But I never took a test!”

“How’s your math?” Dragonfly asked, all curiosity.

“Every dragon learns math,” Fireball said. “You have to know what’s in your hoard, of course. Had to learn algebra when I became a pilot, though. But I can add, subtract, multiply, divide.” He waved a claw helplessly at the computer screen. “But I never did this!!”

Starlight sighed. “The first part is multiple choice,” she said. “All you have to do is type A, B, C, or D to pick the right answer out of the four options.”

“Oh. Is that why they put those there?”

“Right. Don’t type anything else until it asks you to.”

“Okay. Which one do I enter first?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you,” Starlight replied. “It’s a test. They want you to do it yourself.”

“But can’t you help? Isn’t helping the pony thing to do?”

“Helping, yes. Doing it for you, no.”

“Oh.” Fireball sank a mountain of disappointment and dread into that one syllable.

The typing resumed, with Starlight Glimmer and Dragonfly producing a lot more keystrokes than the others.

A few minutes later Fireball moaned, “Starlight?”

“Yes?”

“It’s different now. There’s this line in the middle of the question, only it’s not a question anymore. And the ABCD is gone.”

“Okay. That’s fill-in-the-blank. Type the word you think fits in the blank.”

“I can do that?”

“Try it.”

Tappatappa. “Oh. But what do I type in?”

“You have to read the block of text on top of the page. That’s where the answers are.”

“Oh. I skipped that. It didn’t look like a question.”

“It’s part of the question. Read it, and you should be able to answer the next few questions.”

For a few more minutes, silence. Then: “This wasn’t in that text!”

“Did you read the new paragraph?”

“Oh.”

Typetypetype.

“I bet you all think I’m stupid,” Fireball muttered.

Cherry Berry, by good fortune sitting between Dragonfly and Spitfire, stopped typing and put her hooves on her neighbors’ muzzles.

“I think,” Starlight said carefully, “you’re doing something you’re totally unfamiliar with. That you had no reason to know anything about. Everypony has to do everything for the first time.”

“But you all did this years ago. When you were kids.” Fireball slumped on his stool. “Way before me.”

“And you’re doing it now,” Starlight said quietly. “Pardon me.” Her magic flared, and her keyboard sounded out a rain of clicks and clacks. Two minutes later she said, “Done,” and gave the computer one final click, sending the completed test on its way.

“What was that?” Fireball asked, sounding a little scared.

“The last part of the test is an essay question,” Starlight said. “They want you to write one hundred words on what it’s like to live in the Hab.”

Cherry Berry and Spitfire groaned.

Fireball whimpered. “One hundred words??” he asked. “In a row??”

“I know you wrote mission reports,” Dragonfly muttered.

“There was a form for that!” Fireball protested. “And I was able to do it with a pencil, like Faust intended!”

“Take your time,” Starlight said gently. “There’s no clock. No rush. This isn’t like the Pathfinder chat. Wait until you’ve got the right words in your head, then write them down. You’ll get there.”

Fireball didn’t answer, but his claws returned to the keys. Slowly, painfully, he worked his way through the rest of the fill-in-the-blank questions. Dragonfly finished before he even began the essay. Cherry Berry finished her essay a couple of minutes after Fireball began. Spitfire finished her essay a couple of minutes later, with a series of heavy hoofsteps on the keyboard, sounding as if she were trying to break the plastic.

Fireball kept going, very slowly. Click, click, click, click…. Click click…. Click, click, click, click… click.

The others sat and watched for a minute before Starlight silently shooed them away. Fireball, scales furrowed in concentration, didn’t notice. He stared at the screen, clawed fingers occasionally hunting down and pressing keys… click, click, click…. Click-click… click… click.

Finally, agonizingly, he stopped and began counting. “…ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven.” Fireball growled, his forehead furrowing even deeper. Then: click-click-click… click, click, click-click, click… click, click, click… click. “One hundred,” he sighed, slumping forward on the workstool. “Starlight, is this right?”

Starlight reared up to see Fireball’s computer.

Please write one hundred words about your life in the Hab:

I hate the Hab. I want go home. I eat same food every day. The Hab smells bad. It is small room and I not go out for there is no air outside. I watch tv and eat gems and do what I told. I have nothing else do. Outside is like home but cold and no air. Inside is too many people. Sometime I go cave and work. Sometime I work on ship but I know ship is too broken to fly. I not know what else do.I can not think what else to do. You happy now?

“Yes,” Starlight said. “This is what they asked for. Click the ‘Send’ button.”

Fireball did so, then slid off his stool. “Faust, that sucked. I screwed up so bad. What I wrote was crap,” he said.

“It was pretty bad English,” Starlight admitted. “But it wasn’t horseapples. I said pretty much the same thing.” She smirked and added, “Except for the part about eating gems.”

Fireball smirked back. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.

“Don’t bet on it,” Starlight said. “I once visited Maud Pie’s family for dinner.” She rubbed her jaw and added, “I had to ask Zecora for a tooth-mend potion afterwards, too. I sure don’t miss that.”

Fireball chuckled. “You wanna hear about the first time I had a pony-style meal?” he asked. “I got the farts like you would not believe.”

Starlight flinched, then put a hoof on Fireball’s knee. “I think you should save that story for Spitfire,” she said. “I had to listen to her tell me about the time Rainbow Dash tricked Misty Fly into spending a month on an all-burrito diet.”

Fireball smirked. “Oh, this I gotta hear,” he said. “Tell me all about it!”

“Spitfire?” Starlight called out feebly, contemplating the just reward of those who do good deeds.

Author's Note

Only 400 words written so far today; will write more when I get back to my hotel. I need to have the buffer up to 4 by Monday night, because Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are likely to be no-writing-possible days.

You may end up getting drabbles for chapters.

This chapter came from a thought I had not long after deciding that NASA would give the Amicitas crew English aptitude tests: how, exactly, do dragons get their education? I have no trouble believing Garble is illiterate, but what about Ember? And even if they're well educated at home, how would they handle a written test (well, a computer-written test) for the first time?

And looking back, I discover something I didn't know: Fireball wanted to do well on this test. He didn't and he knows it, but he wanted to. He cared, unlike Spitfire, who kind of blew the test off. Huh.

And yeah, what NASA says here is true, at least for now. Most of the major craters in the southern hemisphere of Mars ping pretty strongly for sodium chloride... but nothing for the northern hemisphere. This is really baffling, because if Mars was ever wet on a large scale, the northern third of the planet would be one gigantic ocean. There ought to be huge salt deposits there... but nothing. Maybe it leached deeper into the regolith- there are theories that Mars periodically develops a thick atmosphere and has warm, wet periods, which might explain layering formations in certain craters. Maybe it washed up under the current polar ice cap. Maybe it got converted into perchlorates or other things. When the real Ares missions or whatever go, solving that mystery will be a major priority.

Sol 138

MISSION LOG – SOL 138

Today we went salt-mining. Just me, Starlight, Rover 2, and a lot of Pathfinder trip flashbacks.

We took the rover due west from the Hab about twenty kilometers, then found a decent-sized crater and carefully drove into it. Why so far? Because although the Hab blowout and our own operations have contaminated the Hab site, I don’t want to contaminate it any worse for Ares VI or whoever comes after us. And what we did today pretty much invalidates any soil or rock analysis you can imagine.

You see, the ponies need salt- more salt than they’ll get from alfalfa. They’ve raided every source of it in the Hab at this point, and we’re almost out. This isn’t something we can do without; without salt to supplement the hay, the ponies will begin suffering certain deficiencies, not least of which being loss of judgment. And on Mars you do not want to lose your sense of judgment- nor do you want to be within a mile of someone who has.

(Of course, these ponies have liked 70s music and so-called comedy practically from the word go, so I may be a little late on the poor judgment thing. Just saying.)

Fortunately Starlight has that lovely perchlorate-bomb-making spell handy, which she can tweak so that, instead of pulling all the toxic crap from the soil, it pulls all the salt instead.

And it worked- kind of. When Starlight did it in the cave, she got a giant mound of perchlorates. But here in Mars’s northern hemisphere perchlorate salts vastly outnumber and outweigh sodium chloride. We ended up with two medium-sized sample boxes full of salt, but that required the spell to cover an area a full kilometer in diameter and about five meters deep into the ground. And, of course, that emptied Starlight’s battery for the day. And we’ll have to do this again a few months from now.

There’s another possibility. There’s a bit of sodium chlorate and sodium perchlorate in the soil- trace amounts, but more than the sodium chloride. Get those up to about 400 degrees Celsius in the presence of metallic iron and you get a lot of oxygen and salt. You also get a bit of chlorine gas and some other not-nice things, because chemistry is everybody's Roommate from Hell. Also that stuff is rocket oxidizer just like magnesium and potassium perchlorate are, so I won’t be doing that inside the Hab anytime soon. But it’s a possibility I can work out, or ask NASA to work out, if it becomes necessary.

(You reading this, NASA? Yeah, by all means, tell me about another fun and convenient method I can use to blow up the Hab and maybe kill everybody inside!)

Starlight’s been working on two new magic batteries, by the way, using giant quartz slices from the cave and parts scavenged from the engine room of her ship. They haven’t started charging yet, but every day Starlight tells me she knows what she did wrong, and this time it’ll work. I have faith in her.

Unfortunately for her, she’s going to have less time to work on that than she’d like. When we got back from salt mining, NASA had a message waiting for us. It seems Starlight is officially the best pony at speaking and writing English, so she gets to take over teaching. Dragonfly speaks it a little better, but it was a written test, and Starlight is more careful with her writing.

Bad news for her, but good news for me- I don’t have to think up English lessons anymore. And Spitfire ought to be happy to have me stop talking down to her.

Of course, it’s ironic that the three pilots are the worst at English (Cherry is marginally better than Fireball, and Spitfire got the worst marks by a mile). If they want to use the MDV flight simulator, they’re going to have to learn really quickly. And I will take great delight in saying, “That’s Starlight’s job now- ask her.”

I don’t know what I’ll do with my life when I get back to Earth, but I know one thing: I am not cut out to be an English teacher. And I owe about eleven women and two men sincere apologies. Mr. Lindsay, Mrs. Ventrello, Ms. Vaughn, Mrs. Bryzewski, Mrs. Stockdale, Mrs. Madsen, Mr. Brooks… damn, there’s five or six more I can’t remember at all, but I thought you were all cruel, incompetent bastards determined to make school a torment.

I’m sorry. I never realized how hard your job was. If I’d known, I would have cut the spitballs and paper footballs down maybe fifty percent.

But diagramming sentences still sucks, and I’m not apologizing for telling you that to your faces. The detentions were worth it, especially when Dad told the principal he agreed with me.

Author's Note

Between the growing headache I had today and the distractions from customers, I didn't get much writing done until I got back to the hotel, and to be honest most of what I've written is lousy by my standards. The problem is, I don't want to make a huge time skip because I want to retain a sense of the passage of time that the book lost because it jumped fifty or a couple hundred sols at a time when nothing really interesting was happening. So, although I'd like to jump to Sol 174 now (Sleipnir 1 launch) or at least Sol 162 (the next hay harvest), I'm trying to find little things in between to touch on so we don't have whole months just vanish.

Be prepared for some REALLY short chapters in the near future. One of the bits I wrote today is less than 300 words long, but it's going to post as a chapter. And I'm probably going to do a few more short-shorts tomorrow before I have to pack up the booth so I have enough buffer for the upcoming cross-country drive.

Buffer's back up to three, thanks to that short-short bit.

The bit in yesterday's post about salt on Mars is accurate: for some reason our orbiting probes have spotted sodium chloride in craters and basins all over the Southern hemisphere, but none whatever in the northern hemisphere. I wasn't able to find any articles that would even guess why this is. My best bet is, the salt concentrated in the deepest part of the ancient polar ocean... which is right under where the north polar ice cap is now, more or less.

Starlight's lucky to get as much salt as she did. Maybe if she delved deeper, though...

And yeah, I was shocked to realize I could no longer recall the names of all my old English teachers in school. More time has passed since my high school graduation than before, so I guess it's natural, but it's still a bit of a tap on the shoulder from mortality, you know?

Sol 141

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 141

ARES III SOL 141

Starlight Glimmer regarded the crystals partly wrapped in metal cubes with no love at all. What was she missing?

She’d checked the terminals. She’d checked the contacts. She’d tested the gauges. She’d found microfissures in the casings salvaged from Amicitas’s engine deck and fixed them. She’d even cast a mana-wasting spell just to make sure that the huge amethyst crystals she’d chosen for her first experiment were flawless down to the molecular level.

But the new batteries refused to charge. She’d even tried charging them directly, and so far as the battery gauges or the thaumometer could tell, she’d thrown magic into the void.

That left her where she was- draining one of the working mana batteries in order to conduct a detailed scan of the enchantment, looking for errors.

“Starlight! Cherry wants you on the comms!”

She sighed and dropped the spell. Trying to look for errors, she meant. She levitated her space helmet from the suit storage area, jammed it on her head, and activated the comm system. “Amicitas, Glimmer,” she reported.

“There you are!” Cherry said in her headphones. “We need you to tell us what these checklist items are! We keep bucking up the activation order! I’m sick and tired of this sim giving me a mission abort for a stupid main bus overvolt!”

Starlight sighed. “You could try just turning things on in the order on the checklist, Cherry.”

“We’re trying! Spitfire and I have taken turns doing this, but we keep getting switches mixed up! We need to know what we’re doing out here!”

Starlight sighed. “Cherry, I’m busy with the new batteries right now. We’re going to need them if we have another emergency like the Hab blowout or the perchlorate fire. Can you please just keep trying?”

“Starlight,” Cherry sighed with exasperation, “the worst thing about failing a sim due to electrical system crash is that you get more than halfway though the sim, no matter what you do, and it looks just fine until the moment it crashes!”

“Keep trying anyway,” Starlight sighed. “I’ll try to get Mark to help you. Glimmer out.” She turned off the suit comms, removed her helmet, and reactivated the scan spell. The problem had to be in the enchantment. Once a crystal was enchanted it was virtually impossible to remove the enchantment, but sometimes you could correct-

“Starlight, gimme a hand, willya?”

Starlight growled, turning the mana battery off again. ”What is it, Fireball?”

“This essay you told me to write,” Fireball grumbled. “How do you spell ‘dementors’ again?”

Starlight rubbed the side of her head with one hoof. “The book is on that same computer,” she said. “You can look it up there.”

“Oh.”

“And remember to use your verb tenses,” Starlight added. “I want to see some –eds and –ings.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the dragon grumbled.

Shaking her head, Starlight switched on the battery again, recast the scanning spell, and tried to remember where she had left off. If she was lucky there would be only one little flaw in the enchantment, possibly the same one in both-

“Hey, Starlight? Do you have a minute?” It was Mark. “Since we have enough salt for a while now, I was thinking that we’re running really low on soap, and maybe you could conjure up some potash- that’s potassium hydroxide- and-“

“ENOUGH!” Starlight switched off the battery again and hopped off the workstool. “Dragonfly, would you like to walk with me to the farm? I need to work on this somewhere that I won’t be interrupted!”

Mark looked at Dragonfly, who had trotted up at the sound of her own name. “I caught most of that,” he said, “but what’s incinerate mean?”

“AAAARGH!” Starlight shouted.

“You meant interrupted,” Dragonfly replied quietly. “I’ll show you. Just say a long sentence.”

Mark shrugged. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade,” he quoted. “We choose to go to the-“

Dragonfly shouted, “INTERRUPTED!”

Mark blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You could have just told me.”

“This was funny,” Dragonfly said, unashamed. “And the most important part of com-“

“Timing,” Mark said, grinning. He added, “We have that joke, too.”

This might have continued if Starlight hadn’t thrown Dragonfly’s suit helmet at her.

Mark ended up driving them to the cave. Starlight’s leg was still weak, her EVA suit was still patched with a wad of changeling gunk, and there were four batteries to carry the ten-kilometer distance.

Once inside, while Mark and Dragonfly wasted time on checking the water heating system for leaks, Starlight set up the two old batteries and the two new, nonfunctional batteries as close to the middle of the field as she could manage. The trickle of magic produced by the plants in the room didn’t register on the battery gauges, but it would slow the discharge a bit while she worked.

Finally, settled down with no interruptions, she tuned out the occasional chatter from the two engineers and focused on her scanning spell. Where was the enchantment… where… ah, there it was… and, as she’d expected, it was perfectly intact and correct.

So… nothing wrong with the enchantment, right? And nothing wrong with any other component. So the thing ought to work… but it didn’t.

Why not? What was the difference between the batteries she’d made here on Mars and the batteries she herself had made back in Equestria?

Her attention wavered, and the scanning spell drifted from the new batteries to one of the old.

The next thing she knew, Mark and Dragonfly were standing over her. “Are you all right?” Dragonfly asked.

Starlight tried to sit up. She lay flat on her back in one of the field rows, alfalfa rising on either side of her. Her head hurt from the feedback loop she’d mistakenly locked herself into. She could only hope the battery hadn’t taken any damage.

But it had been worth it. Because, for just an instant, she’d seen.

With help from the other two, Starlight got to her hooves and walked back over to the batteries. The old batteries hadn’t been damaged by the feedback, although the one she’d been locked with had been drained down to a meager 2% charge from its prior 10%. In a proper magical environment, she suspected, the thing would have exploded rather than just knocking her back several ponylengths. The new batteries, naturally, hadn’t been touched.

With Mark’s help she rearranged the batteries, setting the nearly-drained battery next to one of the new ones, leaving the other good battery directly behind her. Tapping this battery, she cast the scanning spell again, switching back and forth between the good-but-drained old battery and the dead new battery.

The difference was as clear as a slap in the face- or a feedback loop spell failure to the face. She had to concentrate to perceive the enchantment on the new battery. The same enchantment on the old battery, by comparison, stood out so boldly that it might as well have been physically etched into the crystal.

So, that was it. The new batteries weren’t charging because the enchantment was too weak. The greater mass of the crystal wasn’t properly attuned to its purpose. The heavy mass of rock might as well be a gemstone in a horn-ring.

But Starlight had cast the new enchantment precisely the same way she’d cast the old. The difference wasn’t her fault. The only differences were Martian crystal and Mars’s no-magic environment… and to be blunt, amethyst is amethyst no matter where it’s mined, right?

Well, if the crystal was different, there was nothing Starlight could do about it. But she could do something about the magical field, at least temporarily. But, unfortunately, not here and now. The rig she’d cobbled together to make the battery project a magic field was back in the Hab.

But… but… but…

… all she really needed was two lengths of metal, right?

“Mark?” she asked quietly. “May I borrow a wrench?”

Half an hour of explanation and cobbling later, it was done.

Mark’s tools had been designed by NASA, who had a profound interest in not having their astronauts electrocute themselves every time they tried to fix something in space, where static electrical buildup was a serious hazard. The handles of every tool he possessed were plastic or rubber.

But Mark suggested a replacement. The cave still had the scraps of hull plate metal the crew had used to clean up the mountain of perchlorate from Starlight’s little misjudgment. They’d been tossed over by the cave wall after their last use (turning soil to mix in compost) and left until wanted again. A quick trim of the edges of the improvised shovels produced makeshift aerials of equal length, which Mark fastened to the terminals of one of the mana batteries.

Starlight carefully balanced the remaining stored mana between the two batteries. One battery would hold the magic required for the spell itself, as far as Starlight could estimate. The rest of the magic would be used by the other battery, poured out to make- for a few seconds- a magic field comparable to Equestria’s.

The experiment would drain the batteries completely. They’d require over two weeks to fully recharge. But one way or another, this experiment would be worth it. Either they’d have one new battery… or they’d know for certain that the batteries they had were all there would ever be.

With this thought in mind. Starlight placed her hooves on the terminals of the battery with the magic for the spell, fixed the matrix for the enchantment in her mind, and nodded to Mark and Dragonfly. The two switched on the good batteries and scrambled back as arcs of magic energy rose from the improvised Jacolt’s ladder, arcing and sparking. The entire cave sparkled and glittered with light reflected and refracted off the crystal-studded walls. Sympathetic sparks danced around Starlight’s hooves as the other working battery tried to tap into the field.

Starlight ignored the light show, ignored the itching of raw magic power striking her hooves. She focused her mind on the target, one of the failed batteries, focusing on the weak enchantment at its core. She gathered magic from the battery under her hooves, wrapped it around her horn, and hammered the crystal with it, giving the enchantment spell everything she had to give.

There. Done.

And, since I just flopped over like a beached fish, it better be done. Hello, empty reserves. I hadn’t missed you. I got used to having spare mana in the batteries.

But, as she struggled to lift her head, she could see little sparks around the terminals of the target battery, just like the ones on the battery she’d drained.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit DF for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: SG- Breakthrough in mana battery work. Recasting enchantment in artificially boosted magic environment produced enchantment strong enough for battery to function in low-magic environment. Over.

ESA: Good news. You’re breaking new experimental ground with enchantments. We’ve never had access to a pure null-magic environment before. Over.

AMICITAS: You can have your null-magic environment. Also my headache from draining reserves down to nil. Again. Over.

ESA: Good job, anyway. Status? Over.

AMICITAS: Emergency mana battery A and B at less than 1% charge. New battery at 2%. Too soon for precise measurements, but EMB C appears to have 40% capacity of A or B due to insufficient environmental magic during casting and interference from existing failed enchantment. Over.

ESA: Understood. Do you have a procedure planned? Over.

AMICITAS: In sixteen days the batteries should all be at or near 90%. Avoid use until then. Then, harvest several battery crystals from cave, mount them in engine battery casings, use EMB A and B for double-strength magic field, use C to cast enchantments until power exhausted. Over.

ESA: Sounds good. Don’t overwork yourself. Out.

AMICITAS: You have no idea. Out.

Author's Note

Ugh. This took two days to write, and I'm really not happy with it.

Buffer is still at 3, because I blew over an hour of today's writing time re-writing some of yesterday's work to make it not suck so bad. But I don't have time to do the same with this, so warts and all, it goes up. I have to start packing up, which will take more than three hours, and then six hours of driving to my overnight stop. That might buy me an hour or two of writing time at home, in addition to whatever I need to do to catch up on things, before I head northwest.

Fireball is writing a hundred words about why using dementors as prison guards and enforcers is just plain dumb. This is only difficult because of Fireball's weakness in English and in writing with general. Fireball has a lot of words on the subject during reading of the books. Starlight assigns homework appropriately.

And no, I've not seen the Season 8 opener yet.

Sol 144

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 144
ARES III SOL 144

[08:48] JPL: Ha ha, Mark, very funny. We handed that last “soil” sample analysis you did to Astromaterials, and they took one look at it and told us it belonged over at Medical. They put two and two together, or perhaps I should say Number Two and Number Two. The only way you could have picked up that soil sample from the surface would be if you figured out a way to drop your pants without dying out there. Well, you’ve had your laugh, so how about the soil sample we asked for?

[09:04] WATNEY: You correctly identified the substance, but not the source. That night soil came from Fireball, so properly speaking the word for it is “fewmets.” Now please tell both Astromaterials and Medical to take a second look at those numbers, because I can’t figure out how someone on a straight silica oxide diet produces droppings whose non-water content is over 80% carbon.

[09:20] JPL: Yeah, I can see how that might seem a little weird. I’m pretty sure none of us have experience with a digestive tract capable of elemental transmutation. Think you can talk your friends into a full medical baseline?

[09:40] WATNEY: We are here and can read all you send us. Try asking us direct. – Spitfire

[09:57] JPL: Hello, Spitfire. Your English is improving. We’d like you to let Mark weigh, measure, and take samples so we have a full baseline of your medical condition. May he do this?

[10:18] WATNEY: I ask my commander. She says yes. Lucky for you. - Spitfire

[10:19] WATNEY: Great. So now I get to do chemical analysis of everybody’s poop.

[10:21] WATNEY: Good luck finding mine! – Dragonfly

[10:22] WATNEY: Now that’s an Easter egg hunt I could stand to miss.

[10:40] JPL: Is it me, or is this chat becoming a little crowded?

[10:47] HERMES: Not our fault this time! – Johannsen

Author's Note

Yeah, this is the short-short I was talking about. I'd originally intended this to go along in a more medical tone, exploring pony and human medicine and taking notes, but I couldn't think of anywhere interesting to take it. So all you get is a poop joke.

For anyone who wants to talk about how transmuting silicon into carbon is impossible, implausible, impwhatever, I will merely point to an animal of flesh and bone with enough bite strength and bone hardness to nom on mineral #7 of 10 on the Mohs scale with no trouble whatever as evidence that the rules of biology, geology and physics have all accepted a politely written letter from Fireball's mother that he is excused from playing.

Buffer's at three, and I'm going to try to punch out one more before I collapse tonight.

My posting schedule for the next three days is not under my control, so I can't even guarantee that my next post will show up as dated tomorrow. I'm foggy enough about the delayed-post feature here that I don't want to mess with it. But by Friday morning, at least, there will be three more posts than there are at the time I post this now.

And for the record, my neighbors and relatives are watching the house and taking care of my pets while I'm gone.

Finally: Sleipnir 1 launches on Sol 174.

Sol 147

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 147
ARES III SOL 147

To: Cherry Berry (a1_48@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Melissa Lewis (mlewis@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: One Commander to Another

I asked Dr. Shields to give me your email address so I could talk to you directly. First, how is Mark doing? He was always a handful to manage when he was on my crew. He always has these ideas he wants to pursue, and even if some of them are good, you have to ease him back on task without discouraging him. And then, of course, there are all the smartass remarks. He doesn’t mean to be disrespectful, but he definitely wouldn’t last long under any military discipline, let’s put it that way. I hope he’s not being too much of a pain.

To be honest, I’m writing you because I miss my sixth crew member. Mark Watney should have evacuated with the rest of us back on Sol 6. It was a very good thing for you and your crew that he didn’t, but I still feel guilty about leaving him behind. It was my duty to see him safely off the planet, and no matter why, I didn’t. I did everything I could, and I can’t think of anything I would have done differently, but the fact is that Mark is down there with you and not up here with me.

It’s a very heavy responsibility being commander of a spaceship, as you know yourself. You have to keep your crew active, motivated, and working together, even though they’re all highly skilled, strong-willed people with their own ideas, plans and hopes. You have to make sure their needs are met before your own. You have to correct them, discipline them, encourage them, and back them to the limit.

But the thing is, leaders aren’t alone. Just as I look out for my crew, so my crew have looked out for me since we left Mars. A good crew will support each other. Yes, they look to their commander for strength and purpose, but they will have your back when you need them.

How are your flight sims coming? I bet our flight systems are a lot different from yours. I wish I could have seen the inside of your ship for myself. From the pictures Mark sent, it must have been a fine ship before the crash. I’m sure you’re still proud of it. You should definitely be proud of your landing. I don’t know any human pilot who could have pulled off that crash-landing with everyone alive.

Write back to me when you have the chance. I want to hear how our systems look like from your point of view.

Cmdr. Melissa Lewis, USN
Mission commander, Ares III

To: Melissa Lewis (mlewis@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Cherry Berry (a1_48@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: Re: One Commander to Another

I am sorry if my English is bad. I type slowly. Starlight helps.

Mark is fine. He tries to take care of us. He says a lot of things we don’t understand. I guess those are jokes, I don’t know.

It’s not the same thing, you and me. You wanted command. I only want to fly. Back home we have princesses to command. Here is only me.

Mark helps much. We follow his orders when in the Hab mostly. Rest of my crew helps too. Sometimes I wish they would help less a little.

Flying your ship is tough. The navigation system is all different. You have so many systems, not work together by themselves. I think your machines work better, but are not built as well as ours. What we build works, every time, or else we don’t fly it.

The main thing I see is that we use all the power, all the rockets, that we might need for the mission. You seem to use the least power, rockets, etc. you can and then hope nothing goes wrong.

Thanks for writing. I will write again.

Cherry Berry
Chief pilot, Bug-pony Space Program

To: Cherry Berry (a1_48@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Melissa Lewis (mlewis@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: Re: One Commander to Another

One question: “Bug-pony Space Program”? Do you not fly for your country’s space agency?

Lewis

To: Melissa Lewis (mlewis@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Cherry Berry (a1_48@ares.nasa.gov)
Subject: Re: One Commander to Another

When we first started flying in space, Pony-Land Space Agency wanted only pegasi for pilots. Bug-ponies were only people need enough to try an earth pony pilot. We made it work. Now all space agencies work together. But I am still proud of what we did at Bug-pony Space Program.

Cherry

Author's Note

Some of you might guess this isn't exactly unprompted, and you'd be right.

More might come of this in the future, or not.

Grabbing six hours of sleep in Denver. Tomorrow, mountains.

Sol 151

“Wait a minute.”

Two of the SpaceX vehicle inspection team members groaned, looking at the third with undisguised annoyance. “Dammit, Mickey,” one said, “ what is it now?”

Michael Hong hated his nickname. As a kid his ears had stuck out perpendicular to the sides of his head, and for this reason his classmates had begun calling him Mickey. When he’d gone to college, he’d made the mistake of staying in-state. By the end of his first semester his high school classmates had spread “Mickey” around his new friends. Ever since then the name seemed unshakable, since even his best references, his favorite professors and bosses, everyone would say, “Michael Hong? Oh, you mean Mickey!” And the name would stick.

This wasn’t the main reason he’d fallen into a job which would keep him both solitary and unloved at his workplace, but in the two years he’d worked as an inspection camera operator at SpaceX he’d learned that he liked being called “that nitpicky bastard Hong” much better than “Mickey.”

Nobody had yet called him his new nickname, “Nitpicky Mouse,” to his face.

And if he leaned a little towards the cautious side sometimes, well, it meant safer flights, and whose business was it if his inner six-year-old jumped up and down cheering revenge against the kids who kept offering him cheese or asking for Donald Duck’s autograph?

“Look at oxygen tank #2,” Hong said, working the camera controls to bring the spot in view. The camera probe had been snaked far, far up into the insides of the Red Falcon first stage slated for the Sleipnir 3 resupply mission to Mars. Now its little light and its little camera focused on the manifold coupling which connected the central oxygen tank to several rocket motors below.

“I looked,” his coworker replied. “It’s fine. No sign of failure.”

“But you see that discoloration just above the coupling?” Hong insisted.

The third inspector groaned again. “Hong,” he said, “Mark Watney and his alien buddies are farming their own shit and eating nothing but potatoes and hay to survive. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, but-“

“They need this supply mission to survive until Ares 3B shows up to rescue them,” the third inspector continued. “Ideally, they should be there yesterday, and we should be sending twice as much.”

“And every day we hold this mission back,” the second inspector added, “is a day Watney and friends wait for their take-out, get me, Mickey?”

“Better that than it not get there at all,” Hong snapped.

“Hong, we have ten days, counting today, to hand this booster and its second stage off to NASA for inspections and final assembly,” the third inspector continued. “We’ve found four issues already which will take six days to correct.”

SpaceX had enjoyed many surprising triumphs over expectations over the years, but their ambitions of routine 24-hour turnover of their reusable first stage rockets had shattered against the unyielding concrete wall of facts. There was only so much good engineering and good materials could do against the extreme forces of rocket exhaust heat, atmospheric compression and friction, acceleration forces, vibration forces, etc. etc. etc. And Red Falcon, the literal BFR, SpaceX’s most complex creation except for the Hermes habitat section, just had that much more that could go wrong.

“But… well, this shouldn’t be like this,” Hong insisted. “Have you ever seen anything like this in inspections before?”

“Nope,” the second inspector said. “Not even in training. It’s not a leak, it's not a thin patch in the pipes or tanks, so it’s not a problem.”

“It’s on the oxygen tank,” Hong insisted. “The main feed line, anyway. This isn’t like the fuel tank. If RP-1 leaks, you might have a fire or you might not. But a compressed LOX leak will ruin your day five times over. We do not mess around with the oxygen tanks, guys!”

“How long,” the third inspector said, “will it take to disassemble the rocket, replace the feed stem and the manifold coupling-“

“Probably the manifold, too, to be thorough,” the second inspector added.

“-and put it all back together again?”

Hong shrugged. “Nine days,” he said. “But the other repairs could be done at the same time, so that would save three days again.”

“It still puts us two days behind,” the second inspector grumbled. “And that’s only if we find nothing else wrong. Really wrong,” he added emphatically.

“And all of NASA, from Teddy Sanders on down, is breathing down our necks,” the third inspector added. “They all think Watney’s farm is going to explode or something and that he’ll run out of food if we don’t get it to him right now. Maybe they’re right, Hong.”

“Look, Mickey,” the second inspector said, trying to adopt the role of voice of reason, “if you can tell us what that particular discoloration is, and how it might lead to a failure in flight, we’ll flag it for remediation. Otherwise, it’s a non-issue and we move on. How about it?”

The other two inspectors stopped and waited for Hong to think it over. They had a point-NASA wanted this booster in on time, after the delays with the booster for Sleipnir 2. And- Hong reminded himself- there wasn’t any definitive sign of a leak or imminent failure. It could be tarnishing from some pre-assembly contact, or it could be thread lubricant used to get the connections tight. He’d passed the booster for the Ares IV MAV, and it had launched without a hitch with three questionable spots more questionable than this.

But again… this was the central oxygen tank.

Hong didn’t want to fail it, but he just didn’t feel right about passing it, either.

But… but the other two were right. He couldn’t pinpoint a known flaw. He could just say, “That metal’s the wrong color.” And it wasn’t a wrong color that matched any known warning signs of oxidization or other issues.

Hong shrugged. “I just have a bad feeling,” he said.

“Bad feeling isn’t good enough,” the third inspector said. “It looks just fine to us.”

Hong sighed. “Okay, if you say so,” he said. “Let’s move on.”

And the other two members of the inspection crew breathed a sigh of relief, congratulated themselves on getting one past Nitpicky Mouse, and moved on. Seriously, each of them thought, with the huge stick up his butt he had, you’d think he worked for NASA.

Author's Note

Tonight, Oregon.

Tomorrow, Orewent.

Sol 157

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 157
ARES III SOL 157

Dragonfly closed her eyes and basked in the feeling of magic, full-strength Equestria-level magic, rolling across and through her body. It was the most peculiar thing; she’d never had any sense of being in magic back home, and even here she didn’t really miss it until moments like these, when Starlight Glimmer had a mana battery rigged to dump its charge into the environment.

Right now, both batteries, or both of the batteries salvaged from Amicitas anyway. She was using the third battery, plus her own reserves and the artificial field, to enchant two more battery-sized amethyst crystals. Colors and rainbows flickered all around the cave farm, which added its tiny, tiny little boost to the field, along with all the Martian castaways present.

Spitfire soared around the heavy crystals embedded in the ceiling, doing rapid figure-eights in the air while she could. Cherry Berry fussed over the cherry saplings, which had started to send out limbs from the leaf-covered central trunks. Fireball and Mark just stood and watched the light show, with Fireball taking still photos while Mark used his video camera to capture it all.

Dragonfly just sat, eyes half-lidded in bliss, enjoying the temporary feeling of… well, not-hungry wasn’t quite it, since her hunger for love was about as sated as a changeling’s hunger ever got. What she felt, at the moment, was complete, as if a piece of her was missing without magic in her life. A hole inside her was being refilled, almost as literally as love surplus filled the holes in her limbs and wings.

But the moment was brief- a couple of minutes at most before Starlight, trembling, shut down the switches on both batteries. Spitfire glided back to the cave floor, Cherry trudged back to the others, and the rest, Dragonfly included, felt the ache of the sudden absence of magic again.

But Dragonfly was pretty sure her ache was worse than the others’. Oh, the brief dose of a proper field helped immensely, just as it had the last time Starlight had done this using only one of the old batteries. She even felt better now than she had at the end of the previous enchantment session, which gave her hope that even the brief exposure had gained back ground she’d lost to the literally soul-sucking environment of Mars.

She’d stopped talking about the feelings the environment gave her. The others laughed, or worse told themselves not to laugh but blew it off anyway. But she still felt them, every day, and she suspected that in some small way the others felt them too.

Certainly everybody felt the planet. She could feel it now, surrounding the currently safe bubble of air and early-spring-chill air in the cave farm. Mars felt something not of itself and wanted it gone, wanted to wipe it out. Dragonfly was convinced of this in her own mind, and even the others could feel, in their dim, unconscious pony/dragon/Mark ways, the world’s inherent hostility.

But Dragonfly could feel other things too, feelings from some of Mark’s equipment. The Hab had a feeling that reminded her of that last moment, during the invasion of Canterlot, before the big shield collapsed, as if it were holding Mars back by some feeble, wavering, but yet unconquered will. I will protect you, it said, not in one weak voice but in a hundred thousand whispers in a cacophony of will. It didn’t inspire as much confidence as it ought to, not to Dragonfly.

Rover 2, the modified one, felt stolid, like a patient donkey; it would go someplace, it would go in its own time, and it would definitely get there. Where? Didn’t matter. How far? Didn’t matter. How long? Give it power, and it didn’t matter. I will get you there.

And Sojourner, the little rover Mark had brought back from his long trip, sitting inert on a Hab workbench, had a very faint aroma of confusion; what happened? Where is everything?

Dragonfly would have to ask Mark for permission to tinker with Sojourner. The technology was years beyond Equestrian electronics, she knew, but she wanted to get it working again, just so she could go, See? Here we are. Here we all are. It’s all right now. It was a very un-changeling thing to want, but the rest of the hive wasn’t here to tease her about it, so she didn’t care.

And then there was the RTG, or as Dragonfly knew it, the Can of Hot Burning Indifferent Death. Unlike the others, it had no sense of doing or intent of any kind. Death just sat there, inert for the moment, and bided its time with the patience of tides.

Not everything of Mark’s had feelings like that, of course. The equipment inside the Hab had no sensation apart from the Hab as a whole. The computers were utterly emotion-dead to Dragonfly, intriguing as they were to play with. Even Mark’s tools, which he’d finally allowed her to inspect under close supervision, had no more emotional scent than any pony workman’s beloved tool kit- less, really, since Mark had only had these tools since he landed on Sol 1 and unpacked them from the supply probe they’d been shipped in.

And then there was Amicitas. Dragonfly hadn’t noticed until one day, while going with Mark to install the circuit board to add a Mares’ Code key to the ship backup radio, she’d felt the quiet weeping of the ship, the scent of regret and shame.

It wasn’t bad enough that Starlight blamed herself for the crash. It wasn’t bad enough that sometimes Cherry blamed herself, when she was feeling really depressed. But even the ship itself blamed itself for stranding its crew on Mars. That, so far as Dragonfly was concerned, was bucked up.

She hadn’t used to feel these things from inanimate objects. Oh, she was the fastest changeling in the hive, one of the best front-line warriors and a skilled infiltrator. She’d learned to be a passable rocket pilot, and then a very good rocket in-flight engineer. And, well, everyone knew there were places in Equestria where even the land itself was, to put it in pony terms, Not Your Friend.

These feelings were different. They weren’t like those moments at the stick, when she could feel the ship responding to controls, the two of them partners in a dance with the Pale Horse. There was something about Mars that awakened her to these… really bizarre sensations. Maybe it was the absence of the magic field, her body reaching out for any possible substitutes? Maybe she was changing somehow, adapting to a new environment? Maybe she, forgive the blasphemy, was becoming more queen-like? Chrysalis always went on about the feelings she had when above atmosphere…

The others would say- in a couple cases had already said- that she was cracking her chitin. She had to admit, it was the simple answer, and not one she could exactly argue against.

Starlight disconnected the Jacolt’s ladder rigs from the batteries, using her hooves and horn to transfer power (with losses, Dragonfly knew- magic had its own forms of entropy) to the new batteries. “Looking good,” she said in English. “I saved a bit of power for the harvest, just in case we need it.”

“Good,” Mark said. “I was afraid I might have to build my own scythe.” Dragonfly didn’t know what the word scythe was, but she could sense Mark was lying. He’d love to build a scythe. He was happier when his hands were doing things.

“One more test…” Starlight switched on the crippled battery, the one she called C, and cast her scanning spell. The light from her horn flicked back and forth across the four batteries in front of her; A, slightly scuffed from use around Mars; B, battered but functional after coming loose during Amicitas’s crash; and the two freshly enchanted batteries, just clamped in the shells salvaged from the Sparkle Drive’s power systems.

The spell shut off, and Starlight allowed herself to flop back onto her rump. “Looks like we have a success,” she said. “I can barely tell the four apart. The new batteries should be at least 95% of the…” She stumbled her way through the next word, “…capacity of the old.”

Dragonfly joined in the cheer with the others. More magic meant more options. And enough batteries might mean… might…

“I’ll need at least twelve fully charged batteries to enchant a new crystal for the Sparkle Drive,” she continued. “I should ask Twilight to work on a way we can meter the output of the field generators. If we could run twelve batteries at twenty percent power instead of two batteries at a time full-out, it would prevent any risk of the enchantment failing from power loss during switch-over.”

The others lost interest as Starlight techno-babbled magic theory to herself. Dragonfly kept listening, or at least pretended to. She was going to be Starlight’s helper every single time she made new batteries. She was too afraid of what might happen to herself if she didn’t. Tartarus take it, she needed that magic field!

But also, she enjoyed being in the farm. Not just for its tiny magic field, which to be honest wasn’t that much larger than the Hab’s now that the potato plants had come up nice and green. People put off more magic than the same mass of plants. But the Hab had that fainting-warrior feeling, that eternal feeling that something might break at any moment.

The cave had its own feeling, the feeling of something very small looking up at the malevolence of Mars and saying, matter-of-factly, I am here.

No bravado. No challenge. Beyond fear, beyond courage. Just the statement of fact: I am here.

Dragonfly liked that feeling. For all the times she’d flipped the high hoof at the Pale Horse, she’d never had the guts to tell Her, I am here.

Author's Note

Buffer is currently 1 3/4.

We'll see what writing I get done tomorrow.

Sol 162

MISSION LOG – SOL 162

Hay.

Half a ton of hay. Or, at least, close enough.

The new planting of alfalfa seed hadn’t prospered quite as well as its older brothers- not surprising, since alfalfa plants generate a chemical that inhibits seed propagation right next to them. But it did well enough to contribute to the overall total. Alfalfa salads for all, even me, tonight! (But this time I’m leaving the stalks out. Leaves only, in a beaker.)

And believe me, we’ve earned the fresh meal tonight, after the work we did today. Shifting half a ton of hay by hand through two airlocks is long, hard, back-breaking, time-consuming work. And tomorrow we shift it through two more. And after a day or two to rest, we go back and harvest the potatoes. More fun.

We’ve been crossing over here and there with the food supplies, so my estimates for food duration aren’t exact. The ponies have been eating mostly alfalfa with a bit of potato and the (very) occasional tidbit from my meal packs. I’ve been eating (mostly) one meal pack per day plus two meals of potatoes with all I can stomach (not much) of dried alfalfa leaves.

I dread the day the food packs run out. Microwaved baked potatoes, even encrusted with salt, are sickening day in and day out. I would happily go back to 19th Century Ireland and trade all my spuds and possibly Fireball too in exchange for one packet of cabbage seeds. Broccoli, cauliflower, mustard, Brussels sprouts all would be nice, but I’d settle for cabbage. Because it’s NOT POTATOES.

Of course, I’d die if I did that, because cabbage has a lot fewer calories per pound than potatoes. All I’m saying is, I am getting really, really sick of potatoes.

But getting back to where I was going before my mental airplane got redirected from O’Hare to Milwaukee. Roughly speaking, if the ponies ate alfalfa and only alfalfa, they would now run out of food on… drum roll please?

…. Sol 360! Not bad when, sixty sols ago, they were down to fifty veggie food packs from starvation!

We can’t quit, though. Assuming Sleipnir 1 launches on time, it’ll arrive here on or about Sol 583. We need at least two more hay harvests, plus at least one really good tater harvest, to get that far. And all sorts of things can go wrong. The list of lost Mars probes is a long one. Granted that none of them have been Ares presupply probes (yet), there’s a first time for everything.

And, of course, the growing things are a major morale booster. Cherry Berry and Dragonfly alternate daily trips to the cave. I go once a week, and even months after we began it takes my breath away. And you should see Spitfire smile when she flies, even if she has to beat her wings like hell to stay up.

In other news, Cherry Berry is beating the MDV flight sims into submission. Her English has improved by leaps and bounds, at least when it comes to pronouncing the words on the preflight checklist. She’s consistently getting the simulated MAV to orbit on manual control from start to finish. It’s about time to start giving her in-flight emergencies, which I’ll coach the others on soon. Spitfire and Fireball have taken their turns as well, but they jump out of the hot seat any time Cherry expresses an interest.

The last couple of days I’ve been using Sojourner to teach Dragonfly how to use my electrical tools. Most of them are familiar to her in a slightly different shape. The main difference is that their computer electronics are way behind ours- at least fifteen years behind what was packed inside Sojourner, at least. But she wants to bring the probe back to life. We’ve cannibalized a battery from one of the weather stations which fits a little loosely inside Sojourner but provides enough power- in theory- to let the little rover run. If it’s fixable, Dragonfly will find it.

Finally, a sad note: the last cleaning wipe was recycled today. We ran out of hand soap a week ago. The only cleaning agents we have from here on are water and friction. I’m exploring other options, but the best ones require fatty acids we don’t have to spare.

In related news, I now know that the longest-running series of horror novels and films on the pony homeworld, going back some two hundred years according to Starlight Glimmer, takes place inside a glue factory.

Yes, a glue factory.

I haven’t decided yet whether to stop making that joke… or to start thinking of novel and unconventional applications.

I still owe Spitfire for “crunch crunch crunch.”

Author's Note

If you're at SakuraCon this weekend and looking for me, I'm working the Pegasus Publishing booth. It's in the far back left-hand corner, across the aisle from the mens' restrooms.

Sols 167-168

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 167
ARES III SOL 167

A year before, if anyone had told Fireball that he’d be digging in the dirt like a common diamond dog, and further that he would be digging not for gems but for pony vegetables, he’d have said they were crazy. Adding the details on a barren planet in another universe under the direction of a mostly hairless monkey would have been superfluous.

But here he was, delicately removing tubers from a rather unpleasant plant, then gently placing the plant’s roots back in the upturned earth so it could produce more of the stupid tubers.

The strangest thing was, he wasn’t even mad. It was a thing he could do. Not even he fell below whatever doofus event horizon made you incompetent to dig up potatoes.

There were certainly a heck of a lot to dig up. It seemed like there were three or four layers of potatoes, their roots tangled together, with barely any dirt separating tuber from tuber. Hundreds, many hundreds, already lay piled up near the cave’s airlock. And, of course, they’d need every single one of them, and a lot more besides.

He’d had potatoes before- before Mars, before Amicitas. Pony-made food packs, even with gem garnishes, had all sorts of vegetable matter, and on several occasions he’d had mashed or baked potatoes with little magnetite sprinkles. They kind of tasted like really mushy quartz… which, all things considered, was ironic.

But that was his only experience with potatoes before now. He’d never seen where they came from. He’d never cared. Growing plants was a stupid pony thing. And even now, after the last couple months of working with the plants for the sake of his crewmates’ survival, he had zero interest in growing anything once they all got home.

But even so, the process of plants growing and eventually becoming food fascinated Fireball, in a way he’d never have believed before.

“Hey, boss.”

Cherry Berry looked up at Fireball’s inquiry. She dropped the potato she had in her teeth into the plastic bin and said, “What’s up?”

“What’s it like, growing things?” Fireball asked.

Cherry Berry blinked. “How should I know?” she asked. “I only have the same earth pony magic as any other earth pony. I’m not like Carrot Top or Applejack. They can make seeds sprout the instant they plant them. Even back home I can only give them a little encouragement.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve told us a million times,” Fireball said, waving the disclaimer away. “But you did farm work all the time before the space race, right?”

“Well, yeah,” Cherry shrugged. “I did a lot of things. And when I get back home I’m going to cash my back pay and spend a year doing nothing but balloon flying.”

“So, what’s it like?” Fireball asked.

Cherry shrugged. “It’s a job,” she said. “You plant seeds. You pull up weeds. You wrangle the local critters to eat the pests, the beetles and weevils and what-not. You make sure the soil’s irrigated. And then you harvest.”

“Yeah, but…” Fireball didn’t have the words in Equestrian, never mind English. “But what’s it like growing stuff?”

Cherry blinked. “It’s… it’s just a thing you do,” she finally said. “I don’t think I understand what you’re asking. Maybe you could try Mark?” She waved her head over at the alien, who was deftly and delicately parting one tuber after another from its parent plant on the other side of the row. “Isn’t he, like, a doctor of growing things?”

“Aw, c’mon, boss,” Fireball moaned, “if I ask him I gotta do it in English.”

“We all need the practice,” Cherry said. “Speaking of, how did you do the last time you tried the MAV sim?”

Fireball had managed to get himself inverted, plowing the ship into the simulated Martian surface in the last sim. Apparently Dragonfly hadn’t spread the word. “I learned something,” he said, not inviting further investigation. “I’ll go try Mark.”

Having successfully separated himself from embarrassment by his commanding officer, he walked over to the strange monkey, concentrated on his words, and said, very slowly, “Mark? What is it like, grow plants?”

Mark grinned. “What’s it like?” he repeated. “It’s a power trip, that’s what it’s like.”

Fireball blinked. Why did there have to be all sorts of weird phrases in English? “What means, power trip?” he asked.

“I mean it’s a big feeling of power,” Mark said. “You take a little seed, or a cutting, or something. You give it fertilizer and water. You keep bugs and other pests out. You find other plants crowding in on its territory, and you weed ‘em out. And then one day you’ve got this beautiful living thing, and you say to yourself, ‘I did that.’ It’s fucking amazing.”

“Really?” Fireball asked.

“No shit,” Mark said. “It’s a great feeling. Food or flower or whatever, it’s always a trip.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Fireball returned to his work, thinking carefully as he used an improvised trowel to turn the soil and unearth more potatoes. He could just about see it, yeah. It was kind of like building a hoard, except instead of digging or stealing it, you took care of it and watched it grow bigger, more valuable, or more delicious.

This farm, this farm was… well… kind of like a shared hoard, in that way. The whole crew contributed their time, their effort, their skills. And here there was life, there was beauty, there was the food that would keep them all alive until rescue came. And yeah, they had made it happen.

When he got home and back to his own personal cave, Fireball decided, he would get a plant. Something easy to work with, something that liked the desert. He had a little skylight above a ledge that caught the sun every morning. It would be perfect.

And no other dragon better give him any crap over it, not unless they spent a year or more stranded on Mars first.

MISSION LOG – SOL 168

Ho-lee shit.

Almost 5100 potatoes, all about twenty percent larger than the first crop.

Fifty-one hundred potatoes.

Or, put it another way, roughly one metric ton of potato, combining the cave and the Hab harvests.

Airlock 1, aka the Tater Shed, is full to bursting. Fireball had to take scrap metal and wire from the alien ship to slap together a second shed. Considering the extreme conditions, this can’t be called anything other than a bumper crop. If I weren’t already so sick of potatoes I could puke, I’d make like Uncle Scrooge and swim in ‘em.

Doing the math, we now have potatoes through Sol 680 (for me only) and hay through Sol 360 (the ponies), with a little fudge factor for cross-munching. I can give the ponies 180 days (for me) of potatoes, which would be 60 days for them, making the balance more like Sol 500 for me, Sol 420 for them.

We’re doing this. We’re really doing this. One more harvest might be enough to see us through to the Sol 768 rescue. Two harvests definitely will. Of course that’s not counting for spoilage, but Mars is the ultimate deep freeze. The potatoes will keep perfectly fine in the sheds, and the hay keeps for a very long time if you keep it dry- not exactly difficult here.

So naturally I’m worried as fuck, because Mars is going to pull some new shit to try to get us all killed. It’s been too damn long since something blew up on us. We’re overdue.

I wonder what it will be? Rover 2 have a wheel lock up? The alien ship breach in one of its two remaining airtight compartments? (A breach in the bridge would be worse, since that’s the only remaining airlock that ship has.) Or maybe a crystal will fall from the ceiling directly onto the cave life support box and smash it flat?

Crap, that last one could actually happen, couldn’t it? I need to talk to the ponies about that- building a roll cage or shield or something to protect the magic life support from a cave-in. That box is just too damn useful to risk losing- especially since if we lose that, we lose our best chance at not starving before Hermes returns.

Author's Note

Going to try to finish tomorrow's chapter tonight. I really have been busy these past few days.

Said chapter, by the by, is the launch of Sleipnir 1, Sol 174.

Sols 174-175

The sun rose on a crystal clear day at Cape Canaveral. On Pads 38A and 38B, two giant towers of metal rose skyward, casting immense shadows across the wetlands. Sleipnir 1 stood on 38A, entering its final prelaunch checks. A smaller crew monitored Sleipnir 2 on pad 38B, from which it would launch on the morrow. Sleipnir 3 sat in the Vehicle Assembly Building on the immense crawler, ready to be transported out to 38A once Sleipnir 1 was on its way.

Just outside the exclusion zones on land and sea, tens of thousands of people gathered. They gathered in cars and trucks and campers. They gathered on fishing boats and yachts and cruise liners. They came as close as they could, keeping security guards and soldiers and navy ships and coast guard cutters busy maintaining the cordon around the space center.

Millions, even billions more, watched on television, on the Internet, by radio and phone and any means they could. The world wanted to know: would the first attempt by man to send an emergency resupply mission to another planet succeed?

HERMES – ARES III MISSION DAY 303

Everyone crowded around Johannsen’s console, listening to the two-minute-delayed audio broadcast of the countdown from Earth. They relayed the signal on to Friendship’s radio, because although the alien ship’s radio signal was no longer clear enough to send voice broadcasts, Hermes’s superior signal strength allowed voice messages to travel the other way.

The crew leaned forward as they heard Mitch Henderson’s voice crackle over the speakers, “This is the Flight Director. Begin launch status check.”

None of the Ares III crew spoke as the Florida launch controller ran down the go/no go list, getting responses of Go from each controller. There was a slight rustling on the bridge as Mitch reported that Sleipnir 1 was go for launch on schedule, as everyone unconsciously shifted against Hermes’s rotation-simulated gravity.

One by one, the countdown callouts rang out. The Red Falcon shifted to internal power, its computers taking over the flight sequence. Fuel lines were disconnected. Final automated checks were made, reported as good. And the count rolled on.

At fifteen seconds the launch timer began reading the seconds out loud. The Hermes crew leaned forward almost as one person.

“Six… five… four…”

Martinez, who had been praying silently, began reciting the Ave Maria aloud.

“Ignition sequence start.”

Beck’s hand grasped Johannsen’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch.

“Three… two…”

Vogel stared at the deck and said nothing.

“Ignition.”

Lewis stood a step behind the others, arms folded, hands gripping her upper arms so her fingers wouldn’t drum on her sleeves.

“one… and liftoff! Liftoff of the SpaceX Red Falcon, carrying the supply probe Sleipnir 1 to the Ares III habitat on Mars.”

None of the crew let out any sighs of relief. They would be premature. No Ares supply mission had failed yet, but they had seen numerous satellite launches fail, for one reason and another. There was no such thing as a guaranteed successful launch.

“Trim?” With liftoff, control of the flight automatically handed off to Mission Control at Houston. Mitch Henderson had taken command.

“Trim’s good, Flight.”

“Course?”

“On course, Flight.”

“Altitude one thousand meters. Safe abort reached.”

“Pitch and roll program commencing.”

“Thirty seconds to max-Q.”

“Getting a little shimmy, Flight.”

That caught everyone’s attention. During launch, the less you heard on the controller channel, the better. The word shimmy should never come up at all.

“Say again?”

“We have a slight longitudinal vibration, Flight. Computer’s handling it.”

One of the multiple engines in the first stage of the Red Falcon booster had a very slight clog in its fuel pump. This caused the engine to sputter slightly, shaking the craft in an unexpected, but not disastrous, manner. It was just one more vibration on top of several sources of buffeting the ship would encounter in the course of a normal ascent.

But inside the rocket’s first stage, one of the wires leading to a control gyro had a weak spot, hidden by insulation and not caught by the inspection many weeks beforehand. The wire stretched and snapped inside the insulation, sending its signal to the first stage computer in weak, sporadic sparks instead of a steady stream of data. This fault, unexpected and previously unencountered outside of simulations, caused the first stage computer to attempt to compensate for what it thought was a sudden and severe change in pitch.

One point five seconds later, the computer recognized the fault, cut the sensor out of its decision loop, and attempted to correct its error. Unfortunately this happened about one second too late.

“WHOA!”

The bottom dropped out of the stomachs of the listening Ares astronauts.

“Flight, the ship just pitched down hard.”

“Can you correct?”

“Getting ratty data here, Flight.”

“Craft’s pulling five G’s and rising.”

“Computer’s attempting to compensate, but we’re still tracking below target trajectory.”

“Get it back on course,” Mitch ordered breathlessly.

“Ten seconds to max Q.”

For a second and a half the flight computer of Sleipnir 1’s first stage had believed that it was pitching up well out of its prograde vector. It compensated as best it could by throttling certain engines and pivoting its engine bells for maximum downward pitch. This put its nose well outside the prograde vector in the opposite direction, just at the moment when the ship was about to experience the highest aerodynamic stress load of the flight- “max Q”.

Air approached the point of incompressibility as the rocket continued to accelerate. The hardening air pushed against the upper side of the imbalanced rocket, shoving it towards the ground, even as the computer tried to bring its nose back in line with its pre-programmed trajectory.

Red Falcon was the most powerful booster system humanity had ever flown successfully. But this time the strength of the rocket worked against it, because the same thrust that tried to compensate for the misalignment also accelerated the ship closer to max Q, harder against the unyielding atmospheric forces.

At almost any other point in the flight the error might have been survivable. Not this time, not this place.

The linkage between the first and the second stage failed, and the giant rocket broke in two. The first stage plowed headlong into the second stage and the probe.

The fireball was visible for miles and miles in the clear skies off the eastern coast of Florida.

On Hermes, the crew listened to the end.

“We’ve lost readings on the probe, Flight.”

“Lost the probe?” Mitch again. “Entirely lost the probe?”

“First stage guidance LOS, Flight.”

“Second stage LOS, Flight.”

“Reestablish.”

Martinez, listening to this, slammed a fist into the bulkhead. “Shit!”

“No luck.”

“Satcon?”

“No satellite acquisition of signal.”

“Ground?”

“Flight, we see a large fireball downrange at the approximate last observed position of Sleipnir 1.”

“Flight, USS Stockton reports debris falling into the exclusion zone.”

A long moment of silence followed, broken by Mitch Henderson’s voice, much subdued, saying, “GC, Flight. Lock the doors.”

Vogel looked at the deck and said nothing.

Beck squeezed Johannsen’s shoulder tighter.

Lewis spoke. “Okay, back on task, people,” she said. “This was only one of three. NASA made these redundant for a reason. Mark and his friends will be fine if they get the other two.”

The next day Sleipnir 2 launched without incident, achieving first Earth orbit and then Mars insertion trajectory with perfect precision. Almost one hundred sols’s worth of food, plus spare hab canvas and other spare parts, were on course for a Sol 585 landing somewhere to the south of the Ares III Hab.

The crew of Hermes listened, relaxed slightly, and crossed their fingers for Sleipnir 3.

Author's Note

Posting this very early because I have to take the first leg of driving home and likely won't be able to post at all tonight.

I have no idea if this would actually work to cause a malfunction on a BFR. It's the best I can do under time pressures and major distractions, including someone who simply cannot understand that I need to NOT be holding a conversation with him while I'm trying to do this sort of thing.

In Kerbal Space Program, if your ship gets out of its aerodynamic profile in thick atmosphere, it will tumble, but it takes a LOT of such forces to break the ship in the game. In real life (at least in our universe) a rocket that tumbles on the short axis will snap like a cheap crushed cigar.

Buffer is now zero. I'll see what I can put together, but I'm scrambling for every two words I can string together at this point.

Sol 177

Rain fell outside the office window, smearing the lights shining from Johnston Space Center and the surrounding homes and businesses. It had been, as it happened, a very long, very busy day.

“All right,” Teddy said, slumping into his chair and leaving his briefcase on the floor beside it. “Give me a status update. First, how is Sleipnir 3 now?”

Venkat cleared his throat. The last couple days, ever since Sleipnir 1’s unexpected failure less than a minute after launch, he hadn’t felt like speaking to anyone, no matter how much he had to. “Sleipnir 3 is in a parking orbit of Earth, safe and secure,” he said. “Solar arrays deployed perfectly. Remaining fuel in the second stage is well below the amount required for the Mars injection burn. I’m waiting for an answer from SpaceX on when they can send a BFR refueler up.” His frown grew deeper as he added, “Since they shut down operations immediately after today’s launch, that could be a while.”

“Yes, about that,” Teddy muttered. Looking at Mitch, who instead of his usual slouch on the couch sat leaning forward on the cushion edge, he asked, “Any idea what caused this one?”

“It’s less mysterious than Sleipnir 1,” Mitch said. “Telemetry shows a sudden increase in the flow of oxygen from tank #2 of the first stage. The onboard computer detected it and immediately went into emergency abort mode, shutting down the main engines and decoupling from the second stage. With the second stage good to go for abort to orbit, the first stage executed a soft splashdown under power before the oxygen ran out. Recovery operations are underway. SpaceX is turning failure investigation of that over to us, since they have their hands full with the Sleipnir 1 investigation.”

“Keep me informed,” Teddy said. “How healthy is the probe itself?”

Bruce Ng, calling in from Pasadena, replied, “Both Sleipnir 2 and 3 show fully operational. Sleipnir 2 is on course with no correction needed at this time. Sleipnir 3 is in standby mode pending the Mars injection burn.”

“Good. Keep it that way.” Teddy sighed and turned to Annie. “I know the answer, but how is this playing in the press?”

“Actually better than expected,” Annie said. “Better for us, anyway. SpaceX is getting absolutely fucked in the media. The pundits are making the point that it was SpaceX systems that failed. NASA and JPL systems all worked.”

“That’s not going to be such a good thing in the short term,” Venkat muttered. “We need at least one more launch out of them to get Sleipnir 3 moving. The more pressure they feel under, the longer that’s going to take.”

“Tough shit,” Annie snapped. “They should have got it right the first time. But the only thing that splashes back on us in any way is that people are talking about the Great Galactic Ghoul again. One twit actually said on camera, ‘I guess God doesn’t want Mark Watney to have a new radio.’ Bullshit like that gets on my fucking nerves.”

Teddy nodded, brushing the point aside with his hand. “Bottom line,” he said quietly. “What does this do to Mark Watney?”

“In terms of food, no immediate change,” Venkat said. “We were shipping almost three hundred days of food for four people. So long as we get Sleipnir 3 refueled within three months or so, he’ll end up with the last two hundred sols before rescue with full food. But Sleipnir 3 needs to arrive by Sol 667 at least in case he has to travel overland to Schiaparelli and the Ares IV MAV. He’ll need extra time for travel and for any modifications to the MAV he might need to make.

“More to the point, he won’t have a reliable radio. We sent two, but we just dragged one out of the Atlantic with the Sleipnir 1 wreckage, and the other is parked in orbit until we can refuel the engine. He’s limited to Pathfinder or the Morse code key he installed on the alien ship’s radio for communications for the duration.”

Teddy pondered this information. “From here it looks like all that’s happened is that we’ve lost our redundancy,” he said. “Which is fine, because that’s why we have redundancy. But if something else goes wrong, Mark is thrown back on his own resources again.”

Venkat nodded. “That’s what it looks like from my desk too. Astromaterials is still demanding that I make Mark and his friends do something to guarantee the air seal on that cave of theirs. I suppose I’ll have to make another stab at it now.”

“Why haven’t they done something?”

“Resource priorities. The alien magic, or whatever it is, is the only effective tool they have for the job. It’s almost impossible to apply a sealant compound on the walls and ceiling inside the cave. And applying some sort of water or ice or other compound to the ground above the cave will only cause erosion and increase the danger of a breach. And they’re using their magic reserves for making new batteries and harvesting crops.” Venkat shrugged and added, “Also, their superiors back home say it’d be more dangerous to change conditions in the cave than to leave them as they are. A couple of my outside consultants agree with them.”

“Hmm.” Teddy ran a finger along his desk blotter. “That farm, and the crops Mark is growing in the Hab, represents the only safety margin he has left,” he said.

“More than that,” Venkat said. “He needs at least one more harvest to have enough food even to get to the arrival of Sleipnir 2.”

“Talk to Mark. No, wait- ask for a direct connection to the alien leaders,” Teddy said. “We need to get through to them just how vital it is that that cave be preserved. And then get with SpaceX and see how quickly we can get two more boosters up. Bruce, get your team working on Sleipnir 4. I want to get our redundancy back.”

“We’ll do what we can,” Bruce said, exhaustion in his voice.

“Moving on,” Teddy said. “It’s two months until Hermes begins aerobraking. How is the crew holding up?”

“They’re worried about their crewmate,” Mitch said flatly. “They’ve all volunteered for Ares 3B. My first pick for that crew remains Martinez, Beck and Johannsen. I’d send Lewis back out if there were room for a fourth crew member.”

“We’ve had this discussion, Mitch,” Teddy said. “Ares III has been in space almost a year. Even with simulated Mars gravity and a monitored diet, there are serious health issues. Exposing them to another year in space so soon is an unacceptable risk. We’re going with your B team.”

“They’re not as good,” Mitch said. “I chose them for backups solely because I didn’t want to bump anyone in line for Ares IV or Ares V.”

“It is what it is,” Teddy said. “I want the best available pilot, doctor, and sysop on that mission. Have you asked for volunteers?”

“Practically the whole astronaut corps volunteered,” Mitch replied. “Even the Ares IV crew. Of course they volunteered. They’re astronauts.”

“They’re astronauts,” Teddy agreed. “I want your revised Ares 3B crew and backups within the week.”

Mitch grumbled but didn’t say anything intelligible.

“One last order of business,” Teddy said. “Are there any new results from the Watney Prize entries?”

“Nothing much,” Venkat said. “About the only useful suggestion we’ve had is using the simulator MAV to speed up assembly of a lander for Ares 3B. We’re still looking into how much that might save, but it’s still not looking good. We doubt we’ll have a special MAV to send on 3B when it leaves Earth. Almost all the other suggestions are impractical at best, ludicrous at worst.”

Teddy sighed. “So, no improvement on Sol 768?” he asked.

Venkat shook his head. “Nothing at this time,” he said.

To: Starlight Glimmer (a2_19@ares.nasa.gov)
From: Rich Purnell (rpurnell01@nasa.gov)
Subject: Magical Laws – Formula Check

I am working on a project and need the following equations checked. These are derivatives of the equations from your previous reports and communications. Any clarification you could give on whether these formulas work would really help…

Author's Note

No time for any notes except this: I'm not burning out. My only creative problem with this project is finding things to put between the main plot advancement points in order to maintain at least a thin sense of passage of time.

My problem with maintaining a buffer is for one reason only; in the past week I have had no time to myself for practically any purpose whatever. I'm stealing moments here and there to get any writing at all done.

Fortunately, the trip is in its final stages. I'm bedding down in Navajo country tonight in New Mexico and will be in Texas tomorrow, though it looks like I won't get home until Wednesday. After that I'm not someone else's employee anymore, at least not for a while. and I can dictate my own schedule again within the limits of the convention circuit.

Sol 178

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 179

ARES III SOL 178

TRANSCRIPT – TELEGRAPHIC EXCHANGE BETWEEN ESA AMICITAS and NASA VESSEL HERMES

AMICITAS: Friendship calling Hermes, comms check, over.

HERMES: Hermes calling Friendship, comms check, reading beeps three by five, over.

AMICITAS: Reading beeps five by five. Johannsen, over?

HERMES: Affirmative, over.

AMICITAS: Need practice keying Morse. Indulge me, over?

HERMES: Of course, Mark. I’ve been practicing too, over.

AMICITAS: How are all of you, over?

HERMES: Fine. We should ask that of you. How are you, over?

AMICITAS: Contemplating hundred days more of taters and hay, over.

HERMES: We’re sorry about that, over.

AMICITAS: Not your fault. Murphy happens. When you guys land, eat a steak for me, over.

HERMES: Will do. Need to get back to work now. Out.

TRANSCRIPT (EXCERPT) – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE BETWEEN EQUESTRIAN SPACE AGENCY AND ESA AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for response, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Have long message consisting of thaumic formulas. Please signal when ready to receive. Also, more urgent we get spell suggestions for airtight cave farm, over.

ESA: Getting Twilight Sparkle now. Why the hurry on the cave spell, over?

AMICITAS: Failure of resupply missions from Mark’s planet, over.

ESA: TS – combine transmutation spell to ceramic and topographical tracing spell. Over.

AMICITAS: SG – Transmute to ceramic? Over.

ESA: TS – it was Trixie’s idea, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, comms check, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas copies. Tell Trixie good idea, we’ll grow crops inside a giant teacup, over.

ESA: Starlight, really, over!

AMICITAS: Sorry, Twilight, over.

ESA: It’s a good idea. You know Jammy Devil’s Torus Tracer, over?

AMICITAS: No, but I know Inside Leg’s Automatic Measure, over.

ESA: That one should work. Thread the transmutation spell in as an overlay on top of the tracing spell. Don’t do an underlay or else you’ll transmute the crystals in the cave, over.

AMICITAS: Roger. Outside only or else find out if Fireball can eat ten million teacups, over.

ESA: Standing by for formulas, over.

AMICITAS: Message begins…

Nobody spoke during dinner in the Hab that night. Mealtimes in the Hab were never jolly, not since about three days after the first hay harvest. But the news of Sleipnir- one probe destroyed, one stranded in Earth orbit, and only one en route with all sorts of potential failure modes between Earth and Mars- dampened spirits.

Cherry Berry wasn’t so much the best cook of the Amicitas crew as the least horrible cook. She’d held a couple of part-time jobs in kitchens, at least. Starlight’s skills were limited to breakfast, tea and toast. Spitfire hadn’t cooked anything since the last time she’d pulled KP duty as a Wonderbolts cadet. Dragonfly and Fireball had never had any inclination to learn.

Under the circumstances, it surprised nobody that the attempt to adapt the atmospheric regulator’s heating elements to toast hay and potatoes failed miserably. The procedure Mark half-remembered from the Sol 16 Thanksgiving that never happened had been intended for pre-packaged dehydrated and reconstituted stuffing, not for cooking from scratch. It took Mark quite some time to explain the term “Cajun blackened,” and by that time nobody was even a little amused.

Prior attempts at hay and potato soup using the electric burners from the chemistry lab had likewise proved a failure. Other experiments tried and failed including fried hay (without oil), salt-baked potatoes (which left a mess in the microwave), and smothered potatoes with alfalfa (the least inedible attempt, but it could only be cooked one meal at a time). About the only success in the cooking experiments came in the form of a weak alfalfa tea, and that had come from a procedure sent up by NASA.

So, another attempt at variety having failed, and with hundreds of sols of the current menu of slightly dried alfalfa and microwave baked potato staring them in the face, the inhabitants of the Hab ate their meals in silence. Mark, for his part, had tried to salvage the evening by offering up the very last bottle of Tabasco sauce in the Hab’s stores. Nobody touched it.

Mark, the ponies noticed, hadn’t opened a meal pack today. He’d had three potatoes for lunch instead and had kind of chewed on a hay stalk during his afternoon soil experiments.

With dinner out of the way, the mood lightened a little for everyone except Mark. He gave his improvised sample-case lid to Starlight to clean, walked through the rows of potato plants interspersed with small clusters of alfalfa, and half-heartedly toyed with them.

“So, which first?” Dragonfly asked. “The TV, or a couple chapters of Order of the Phoenix?”

“Depends. Can we watch some of that Jim Rockford guy tonight?” Fireball asked.

“More Potter for me, please,” Starlight said.

“You only say that because you’re the best reader,” Spitfire grumbled.

Cherry Berry watched Mark squatting among the plants, idly turning over a leaf.

“Yo, boss mare! You with us?” Fireball asked. “We need a tiebreaker.”

Cherry blinked. “Huh?” she asked. “What tiebreaker?”

“Spitfire and Fireball want to watch TV first,” Dragonfly said. “Starlight and I want Potter first.”

Cherry looked at Mark again, who was turning the same leaf on the same potato plant over again. “How about none of the above?” she asked.

“How’s that?” Fireball asked.

“Mark’s been giving us all sorts of stories from his world,” Cherry said.

“Yeah, and some really bad ones, too,” Spitfire muttered. “’The Adventures of Letterman’? Really?”

“I think,” Cherry said, overriding the grumbles, “it’s time we started sharing some of our stories with him. Past time.”

“Past time?” Starlight asked. “We couldn’t speak his language before!”

“We can now,” Cherry Berry said. “At least, you and Dragonfly can, and the rest of us are catching up. And besides, I think Mark can use the distraction.”

“This is going to be pony stories, isn’t it?” Fireball said. “Dragons don’t do story time.”

Spitfire smiled smugly. “Probably because all your stories would be about ponies kicking your asses.”

Fireball raised an eyebrow ridge, looking down his snout at the pegasus. “Really?” he asked. “Because the way I heard it there are a lot of ponies that tangled with dragons and never told anybody about it, because-“

“That’s enough,” Cherry Berry said sternly. “We’re doing story time. That’s an order.”

As Fireball and Spitfire bowed their heads a little contritely, Dragonfly piped up, “We changelings don’t have stories either. Mostly we have after-action reports.”

“How about I pick the story?” Starlight said. “We’ll start with the Legend of the Two Sisters. All of us know that one, right?”

Even Fireball nodded at that.

A few minutes later, as Fireball guided Mark over to the bunks, Starlight Glimmer pulled out the much-used whiteboards and sketched an image of two elegant ponies with wings and horns. A tiny tweak of magic rendered the two princesses in their proper colors, next to the sun and moon they controlled (according to legend, the exact astronomical truth being more complicated).

Starlight had exchanged emails with several humans on Mark’s planet at this time, and the subject of mythology and legend had come up. She’d been particularly fascinated at the sheer number of Equestrian creatures which didn’t exist on Earth, but which did exist in one legend or another. In the process of researching this via email, she’d learned the proper human formula for telling a legend of long ago.

So, when Mark was settled, his gloomy expression replaced by one of pure curiosity, she began recounting the story of Nightmare Moon’s fall and redemption by saying, “Once upon a time, in the magical land of the ponies…”

Author's Note

Not read comments from last chapter yet. Here's today's.

Sol 179

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 180
ARES III SOL 179

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE BETWEEN EQUESTRIAN SPACE AGENCY AND ESA AMICITAS

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: SG - Baltimare WTB?? I was in the airlock! Over!

ESA: Sorry, urgent message. Who is Rich Purnell? Over.

AMICITAS: Someone at Mark’s space agency. Seems to be working on Sparkle Drive applications. Some of the equations were beyond me, over.

ESA: We have mages and scientists from around the world working on those equations! If they’re right, this person solved the energy-mana conversion problem! We always thought that was impossible! Over!

AMICITAS: Repeat conversion of energy to mana is possible, over?

ESA: In theory, if the equations are correct. Practical application could take centuries, over.

AMICITAS: Was not planning on being here for centuries, over.

ESA: Sorry, Amicitas, just so excited. Please find out who Rich Purnell is ASAP, over.

AMICITAS: Fine. By the way, rethinking cave sealing spell options. Are you sure ceramics are a good idea, over?

ESA: Watertight, airtight, mineral. Strong if you make it thick enough. Best idea we have given your conditions, over.

AMICITAS: How many cups have you and Spike broken over the years, over?

ESA: Understood, but still our best idea. Over.

AMICITAS: OK, will contact Mark’s people. Please don’t splash me again. Out.

[10:35] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer here. We’re preparing to seal the cave as you ask. We can change the dirt around the cave to another substance, but we can’t think of anything better than ceramic. Rubber would crack. Do you have a better material that we might know?

Also, please tell Rich Purnell that his equations are being examined very carefully by our best scientists. One of them could revolutionize magic on our world. Who is he? Could you tell us more about him?

[11:08] JPL: We’ll get back to you about the material. I don’t know Rich Purnell personally, but I’ll see to it that your message is passed on.

TO: NASA JSC Human Resources (hr_admin@jsc.nasa.gov)
FROM: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Need to find an employee

Who is Rich Purnell? Please send me the complete employment file ASAP.

Dr. Venkat Kapoor
Director, Project ARES

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Annie Montrose (montrose01@nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Rich Purnell

Who the fuck is Rich Purnell? I’m having to spread a bunch of bullshit to the media about him! And can we do a delay on releasing Pathfinder chat logs in the future? I don’t appreciate being blindsided like this. If you want me to do my fucking job, don’t drop this crap on my head!

Annie

TO: Venkat Kapoor (kapoor@ares.nasa.gov)
FROM: Theodore Sanders (tsanders_admin@nasa.gov)
SUBJECT: Today’s Pathfinder chat

Who is Rich Purnell, and how did he get the direct email address for Starlight Glimmer? And why am I learning this from CNN?

I want answers, Venk. I want them right now.

Teddy

“And tonight on the Watney and Company Report, the question the scientific world is asking tonight: who is Rich Purnell, and what does he know about the mysterious scientific discipline the aliens call ‘magic’? Tonight we’ll be speaking with experts from the paranormal community and renowned mathematician Charles Paravanian…”

Trending on Twitter

BringHimHome

BringThemHome

Star Wars – Birth of the Republic

WhoIsRichPurnell

Yankee Fever

HugABug

Potato Recipes
Tai Yang Shen

Author's Note

Sorry, but I finally got home at 2 PM. I had the KWLP playlist to assemble, and I'm exhausted. This is all I could come up with for today.

This is why I worked to have a buffer. I'll need to rebuild it, but fortunately this weekend's convention is small and relatively local, so I can sleep at home nights.

Sol 180

“Rich.”

Mike stood looking at Rich Purnell’s cubicle. Takeout boxes and scratch paper formed geological layers on either side of Rich’s monitor, with reference book inclusions and coffee mug geodes. The man himself had apparently achieved the perfect mind-meld with his computer monitor, clicking the mouse with his left hand even as he scribbled fresh notes with his right.

“Rich.” Mike put a hand on Rich’s shoulder. Rich in a working trance was much less physically dangerous than Rich sleeping.

Rich straightened up, blinked, and turned in his chair to face Mike. “What?”

“Your vacation is over, Rich. What the hell have you been doing?”

“Just a little side project,” Rich said, not meeting Mike’s eyes. “Something I wanted to-”

“I just got an order from Dr. Kapoor to bring you to his office right now,” Mike said. “Dr. Kapoor is pissed, Rich. He wants explanations. It looks like you’re about to be fired, and there’s nothing I can do about it anymore. Hell, I’m probably about to be fired, too!”

“But it’s not ready yet,” Rich said.

“Rich,” Mike said, taking a deep breath and trying not to think of the limited options his master’s degree in mathematics offered once he was blacklisted from government employment, “stand up and look around the room, please.”

Rich’s stubborn look changed to one of confusion, but he did as he was told. “Okay,” he said, after a quick sweep of the other cubicles with his eyes.

“That’s the rest of your team, Rich,” Mike replied. “Everybody at NASA is part of a team. And teams work together. Nobody tries to do everything themselves. If whatever this is was important enough to risk your job, then you need to tell us about it so we can all be working on it.”

“But it’s not ready,” Rich replied. “It might be a complete waste of time. I don’t want to waste anybody else’s time if it won’t work.”

“Rich, it’s too late for that,” Mike said. “If you or I don’t have something good to show Dr. Kapoor, and I mean really, really good, we are both out on our asses, do you understand me? It’s Judgment Day. What do you have that is good enough to save your job?”

Rich, to his credit, didn’t sulk or flounce back into his chair. He didn’t understand consideration of others or cooperation with others, but he did understand that he was supposed to, and he was generally ashamed when his failure to do so was called to his attention. Instead he clicked a few keys on the computer and stepped back to allow Mike to look more closely.

Mike looked. He scrolled down the screen. He grabbed papers at random, triggering a minor avalanche of trash at one point, and read them.

“Yeah,” he said in a choked voice. “This could be good enough.”

Venkat looked at the printout in his hands. It illustrated a complex trajectory stretching from Earth to Mars, then back to Earth, then back to Mars, then back to Earth a final time. “Sol 551?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Rich said. “Depends on the maximum velocity of the other vehicle, the reaction mass remaining for the VASIMR, the efficiency of the reverse Oberth effect… I’m still refining my estimates.”

Venkat tapped another part of the illustrated trajectory. “Isn’t this inside Venus’s orbit? That’s a flight-rules violation.”

“Hermes’s radiation mitigation systems can handle it,” Rich said. “Within the emergency margins, I mean.”

Venkat pointed back to Mars. “There’s no orbital insertion,” he said.

“Not enough reaction mass,” Rich said. “Also, need the speed to get back to Earth as soon as possible as a backup plan.”

“How will the MAV match speeds?”

Rich fumbled with the crumpled, coffee-stained papers he and Mike had brought with them, eventually pulling out three of them and handing them to Venkat. “Major modifications to the MAV,” he said. “Refueling the descent stage for extra lift. Adding thrusters from the alien ship to increase lift. The numbers are almost there. I just need a little more time.”

“How will Hermes have the supplies to get there?”

“We need another booster,” Rich said. “We could repurpose Sleipnir 3, but that’s not ideal, since so much of the payload is wasted with landing systems and other junk.”

“Okay.” Venkat set the printout down. The time had come to lead up to the big questions. “How did you bypass our approval system for sending emails through Pathfinder?”

“Approval system?” Rich looked blankly at Venkat.

Venkat returned the blank look. “You did know access to the aliens is restricted, right?” he asked. The question was both stupid and pressing. On the one hand, how could he not? On the other, how could he not?

“I didn’t know that,” Rich said simply. “I needed some answers and couldn’t ask Mike because I was on vacation.”

“In your cubicle,” Venkat said, shooting a glare at Mike. “Yes, we’re going to have a talk about that later. But you contacted them anyway. How?”

“I had the reply emails with the data I asked for about the alien ship’s performance,” Rich said. “I stripped out the headers and copied them into my system.”

Venkat blinked. “It can’t be that simple,” he said.

“It can’t be that simple!” Teddy snapped, his normally unruffled appearance breaking down for the first time Venkat could remember.

“Apparently it is,” Venkat said. “IT just added one extra flag in the headers for email requests to Pathfinder. If the flag is set to yes, the system automatically queues the message for transmission without human oversight. They did it that way to preserve privacy for pre-approved accounts. And all messages from Pathfinder automatically set the flag to yes. So when Purnell copied the headers, he got the approval flag without realizing it was even there.”

Teddy pulled himself together, his face returning to the reserved, proper expression he preferred. Only the pen in his hand, knocking against the desk, betrayed his continued agitation. “We’re going to have to re-evaluate that later,” he said. “It’s a tricky subject, but we can’t allow anyone else to do what Rich has done. For now, order all email headers stripped out of emails from Pathfinder except To, From, and Subject.”

“All right,” Venkat agreed.

“Now for the big question,” Teddy asked. “What was he asking about, and why?”

Venkat let out a long breath. “Purnell began with the idea of sending Hermes back to Mars without a refit,” he said. “Which is feasible, since we designed Hermes with a twenty-year operational life. The systems are robust. But the xenon tanks can’t be refilled without a refit. They’re removed and replaced in Earth orbit. There’s a massive safety margin in the tanks, but it’s not enough to break out of Mars orbit after the trip there. So Purnell’s main problem was getting Watney and his friends off of Mars on an escape trajectory that Hermes can rendezvous with.

“His main proposal addresses that, at least theoretically. Those numbers are still vague because Purnell is a trajectory man and theoretician- not an engineer. If we explore this option, we have to bring Bruce in, and maybe SpaceX too, to run the numbers properly. But it’d be tight all the way around, so Purnell wanted a better option- one that would get Mark, the ponies, Hermes, the whole lot of them, back to Earth in a few days.”

Teddy’s reserve broke again, his eyes widening in shocked realization. “The Sparkle Drive,” he said. “Purnell was trying to recreate the Sparkle Drive.”

“Almost,” Venkat said. “I don’t think Purnell ever thought we could build our own Sparkle Drive, or else orbital considerations and time wouldn’t apply. But one of the two designers of that drive is among the castaways, and we already know that crew was working on rebuilding their drive as part of an unworkable emergency-escape plan. And she sent us a pretty comprehensive writeup, complete with detailed equations in human mathematical terms for the underlying principles of the system.

“There are dozens of physicists, myself included, working on those equations, but we have other things on our minds- running Ares, teaching classes, raising families, and so on. But Purnell is pathologically single-minded. He doesn’t have distractions. What he did have was a rubber-stamped authorization to use the JSC supercomputers during low-traffic hours. That, and a good understanding of both Newtonian and quantum physics.

“Purnell was working on the problem of recharging the Sparkle Drive to avoid a repeat of the disaster that brought the aliens to our universe. He saw something in the description of the Drive that reminded him of string theory- he’s not the first to make that connection, by the way. Based on my own interactions with Starlight Glimmer, I’m guessing that the ponies haven’t explored quantum physics at all deeply, having focused instead on the physics of magic. Purnell’s proposed new equations, and the mathematical proofs he sent them, took them completely by surprise.”

“As much as magic took us by surprise?” Teddy asked.

“More so,” Venkat said. “To us magic is still a closed box, a mystery. We can’t relate. But Purnell’s modified equations struck the pony science community like a bomb because they could relate. He’d taken familiar structures and theorems and turned them inside out- and showed his work.

“And the tragic thing,” Venkat added, tapping the mass of papers on Teddy’s desk, “is that the whole thing is a dead end. Purnell thought the ponies already had all of this. He was hoping they would confirm a way of turning electrical current into magic power. But Starlight Glimmer already told me that magic power comes from a higher energy state than the other physical forces, so conversion is a practical impossibility. Purnell showed them a mathematical solution which, in theory, would make it expensive, but not impossibly so. If it checks out.”

“How is that a dead end?” Teddy asked.

“Imagine someone trying to convert matter into energy using Einstein’s equations,” Venkat asked. “In 1905. With no other knowledge than that the math says it should work.”

Teddy nodded. “Okay, I see,” he said. “Decades from now, maybe that would help, but you’re saying it won’t get Watney off Mars now.”

“That’s right.”

“Then what will?” Teddy asked. “Walk me through the proposed mission.”

Venkat pulled out the trajectory printout. “Hermes is due to begin braking thrusts in eleven days,” he said. “Instead of doing that, they accelerate. They fly by Earth to get a gravity assist, flinging them around the Sun inside the orbit of Venus. This puts them at Mars on approximately Sol 551. They take a specific trajectory which uses Mars’s gravity to slow them down relative to the Sun, which drops them back in-system for a new Earth intercept and a standard orbital insertion by aerobraking.

“Again, Hermes won’t orbit Mars. So the Ares IV MAV will have to be heavily modified. Somehow or other the alien ship will have to be hauled there- at least, all its engines and thrusters will, along with new batteries and a new Sparkle Drive. The main engines will be strapped to the outside of the MAV’s descent stage, which will be refueled using the residual hydrazine from the Ares III MDV and whatever other resources we can scrounge. We’ll strip any excess weight we can find from the MAV upper stages to make room for a small Sparkle Drive- Purnell was working within the five hundred kilo weight allowance for surface samples. The whole thing will launch as a three-stage rocket rather than the two stages it normally has.

“Purnell’s math works without the Sparkle Drive, but there’s practically no margin for error. Purnell didn’t like that, since he was using estimates rather than hard numbers. So he proposes three applications for the Sparkle Drive.” Venkat flipped over the trajectory sheet and used a pen to sketch Mars and a rocket leaving it. “First, the drive would be engaged as soon as the rocket lifted off, to get the ship out of atmosphere as fast as possible to reduce losses to air resistance. Then the ship would use Mars’s gravity to pick up speed while accelerating, to give the MAV enough linear momentum to match speeds with Hermes. The Sparkle Drive would then be used to bring the MAV close enough to Hermes for docking.

“And finally,” Venkat said, sketching Hermes next to the little rocket on the paper, “the Sparkle Drive would be adjusted for the addition of Hermes’s mass, and the whole assembly would be projected back to Earth. Given the power limitations of the Drive in our universe, Purnell estimates a month for the return journey if all goes well- eight days if the system recharges faster from the combined presence of the human and alien crews. And if the Drive fails, Hermes would still be on a return trajectory to Earth not later than eight months from the Mars flyby.

“Net result,” Venkat finished, “Mark and friends would be off Mars eight months earlier than scheduled and home at least six months ahead of schedule. Best case scenario, Mark would be home before Ares 3B is currently scheduled to depart.”

Teddy considered this. The pen continued to tap. “How feasible is this?” he asked.

“It has problems,” Venkat said. “Hermes doesn’t have supplies on board for the trip back to Mars, never mind the round trip or the additional mouths to feed. Purnell didn’t know enough about the MAV to make any practical suggestions for modifications. But they’re solvable problems.”

Teddy opened his mouth for another question, then shook his head. “We need a full staff meeting for this,” he said. “And we need to keep this quiet. We don’t want to get the public’s hopes up if we end up deciding not to do this.”

Venkat nodded. “I’ll pass the word discreetly,” he said. “When?”

“Tomorrow morning,” he said. “I want Bruce here in person for this, and it’ll take time to fly him in.”

“Got it,” Venkat said.

“In the meantime,” Teddy continued, “tell Purnell and his boss they’re not fired. His boss will have a reprimand entered into his employment record, and the matter will be closed.” He closed his eyes and added, “I’m picturing Purnell in my mind right now, Venk. I’m guessing a total media disaster if he gets on camera. Am I right?”

“I’m not Annie,” Venkat said. “But my judgment is, yes. Outside of government work or a university research center, he’d be totally unemployable. He’s just barely aware enough of his limitations to know people find him difficult, but he doesn’t know when or why.”

“Then keep a lid on him,” Teddy said. “The press probably have a photo of him by now. He’ll be mobbed the instant he leaves JSC. So do whatever you have to, short of physical force, to see to it he doesn’t leave. If we have to buy him new clothes and a steady diet of takeout, then that’s what we do.”

Venkat never understood why, when he asked Rich Purnell not to leave the space center grounds, Mike broke down laughing for three minutes straight.

Author's Note

Well, here it is.

No, Rich Purnell is not inventing human magic. Nor is he building a human Sparkle Drive. He's doing what he did in the book, what his expertise leads him towards.

The Rich Purnell Maneuver is now on the table for discussion. More on that in later chapters.

If I'd had more time or energy to think things through the past couple weeks, the previous few chapters would have been radically different or nonexistent. But the commitment to daily updates, no matter what, mean half-baked ideas sometimes have to be used. As Teddy Sanders might say, it is what it is, and how do we go forward from here?

I just finished writing this chapter. I have a lot of things to do today, and setup tomorrow in Lake Charles, but I'm going to try to write at least one more bit tonight sometime.

In the book it's never really explained why Hermes can't brake for Mars orbit and then return to Earth normally. There are two reasons. One, orbiting eliminates the free return trajectory to Earth. Two, although it's never explicitly stated. Hermes has limited reaction mass- that is, there's only so much xenon in the tanks for the VASIMR ion engines to hurl out the back of the ship.

And finally, to address complaints about "BFR has to refuel anyway to get to Mars!": in its current design as a Mars colonization ship with a massive payload, yes. Designs change, particularly when you're sending prepackaged, unmanned twenty-ton supply drones like an Ares presupply mission or one-ton landers like Sleipnir. Don't worry too much about whether or not a booster like Red Falcon will exist seventeen years from now or what its specific capabilities are. Andy Weir sure didn't.

Sol 181

Mindy Park examined the satellite photo of the Hab’s solar farm. Even with the Pathfinder link and the Morse-code transmission capability of the alien ship’s radio, Watney still occasionally changed the message spelled out by the rocks just north of the Hab complex. Today, it turned out, had been one such day. Watney and either Cherry Berry or Dragonfly- probably Dragonfly- had gone out together to clean the solar panels, and after that was done they’d moved the rocks.

The new message read: SOL 181 – White Sox suck. Cubs will rally and be above .500 by All-Star Break. DF is a Slytherin.

In other words, Mark was bored. Mindy could relate. Her unofficial job was Chief Watney Watcher, but there wasn’t much to watch. Every day two of the aliens would trot the ten kilometers out to Site Epsilon and back to tend their underground garden; Mark would drive out about once a week in Rover 2 for the same task. There was a little EVA activity around the MDV that had been converted to a flight simulator and around the alien ship which mostly served as a hay crib. And, about once every four or five days depending on dust storm activity, Mark swept off the solar farm. And, so far as satellites could see, that was all.

Demand for satellite photos of the Hab had picked up in the last couple of weeks, ever since bandwidth on the improvised data link via Pathfinder had dropped too low to allow both the vital text chat and photo uploads. Unfortunately people had forgotten how happy they’d been to get a photo of Watney a dozen or so pixels wide, taken from directly overhead, before Pathfinder’s revival. Mindy did the best she could, but nothing came back except complaints.

But she still had top priority over anything and everything orbiting Mars, and she used it to her best ability. In addition to the Hab, she scanned everything for a thirty-kilometer radius around it, looking for changes that might affect Watney and his four-legged friends. So far she’d found an exposed vein of permafrost and, just possibly, a chloride deposit, although an EVA on the ground would be required to confirm if it was sodium chloride.

“Hey, Mindy.”

Deborah Kent had strolled over to Mindy’s workstation. Don’t-Call-Me-Debbie was a member of the team that tracked space junk in Earth orbit for Project Muninn. “Hey, Deborah,” Mindy replied.

“So, what do you know about Project Elrond?” Deborah asked.

“Project what?”

“Oh, come on, everybody’s talking about it,” Deborah said. “The top dogs all had a meeting about it today, but nobody knows what it is.”

“And I’m supposed to know about it why?” Mindy asked.

“Come on, Mindy,” Deborah said. “Everybody knows you run with the big dogs these days. Kapoor comes down here to visit you at least once a week. You’ve spoken with Director Sanders. You’ve got the inside track.”

“Not on this,” Mindy said firmly. “You asking me was the first time I’ve heard of Project Elrond.”

“Hey, I know that’s what you’ve got to say,” Deborah said, smirking. “But you can give me a hint, just between us girls.” This statement ignored the workroom of fourteen other desks, almost all occupied, and the open office door of SatNav’s director beyond them.

Mindy rolled her eyes. “Fine, you caught me,” she said. “We’re going to capture an asteroid, fit it with VASIMR engines, and send it to Saturn so we can take its rings and throw them into the Sun. The probe will be named Baggins.”

Deborah pursed her lips. “That’s not fair. Or funny.”

“You don’t like it? Fine. Then please accept that I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, if that’s the way you want to be about it.”

Deborah walked off, leaving Mindy to her in-depth study of the Hab.

A few minutes later, to her surprise, her email client popped up with a message from Dr. Kapoor.

SUBJECT: Project ELROND – EYES ONLY

Please recommend best overland path from Ares III Hab to Schiaparelli Basin, with priority to shallowest changes in grade and least obstacles for Ares rovers in tow. This task takes priority over all others and MUST be completed by 10:00 AM tomorrow.

Tell absolutely NO ONE of this. Do not ask questions; they will not be answered.

Mindy sighed and typed a quick response:

The time is now 4:12 PM. I’ll have to pull an all-nighter for this. You had better get me overtime.

That done, she pulled up the most recent survey photos of Arabia Terra and set to work finding a shallow way down into Schiaparelli.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 182
ARES III SOL 181

[13:36] JPL: Starlight, this is Venkat Kapoor again. You asked about alternatives to using ceramic to seal the cave. Why can’t you use metal?

[13:57] WATNEY: Um… because we didn’t think of it, I guess? I’ll have to ask Twilight. If I had to guess, it’s because metal conducts heat.

[14:19] JPL: Try aluminum. Lightweight, malleable and elastic. It's conductive and reactive (you did clear out the perchlorates from around the cave, right?), but a thin layer of aluminum oxide on the outsides of the layer will mitigate both problems, like the glaze on porcelain. Is there any magic problem with it?

[14:43] WATNEY: Not that I know of. Transmutation is a tricky high-energy spell, but if you can do it at all the energy and effort is mostly the same for one thing as for another. The difficulty is in making the thing stay changed, but I can handle that with enough power.

[14:46] WATNEY: I should add that our experts still insist that changing anything about the cave poses a danger. Our staff geologist says the system should be stable so long as air pressure and current temperatures are maintained.

[15:07] JPL: Our experts disagree, Starlight. How good is your geologist?

[15:30] WATNEY: Hold on, I need to work out the translation…

[15:42] WATNEY: Depressiona Daisy Pie, graduate Pony-land Institute of Rockology, with molten lava honors, 1007. Her rocktoral thesis was on the effects of magic on metamorphic rocks and crystal deposits.

[16:03] JPL: Do you mean geology, magna cum laude, doctoral?

[16:26] WATNEY: Possibly to the first. Definitely not to the second and third. “Rocktorate” is a literal translation of a portmanteau in our language for “rock doctorate.”

[16:49] JPL: Starlight, I mean no insult to you or your species or your experts, but it’s going to be hard for me to tell my chief geologist that she’s been overruled by a pony with a rocktorate.

[17:12] WATNEY: Would it help if I told you Rr. Pie is also very good at flying kites?

[17:53] WATNEY: I guess not, huh?

Author's Note

I was busier at CyPhaCon than I expected.

Still no buffer. Working on it.

Sol 183

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Teddy said to begin the meeting, “but I’ve decided against the Rich Purnell maneuver. We’ll proceed with Sleipnir 4 and a refueling mission to Sleipnir 3. Hermes will return to Earth and dock with the space station for refit.”

Teddy’s pronouncement was made to utter silence. Mitch Henderson clenched and released his fists, sitting up on the edge of the couch. Annie Montrose made a note on her phone. Bruce Ng slumped a little in his chair.

For his own part, Venkat felt a little disappointed. Yes, there was a lot of risk with the Rich Purnell proposal, but leaving Mark Watney and the aliens on Mars was a lot riskier. “If it’s not too much to ask,” he said, “what made up your mind?”

Teddy sighed. “It’s a matter of risk,” he said. “Right now we have six people on Mars with a source of food and more on the way. They have multiple shelters in case something goes wrong. We have at least limited communications with them. Granted that all of that could change at any time, for the moment they aren’t in direct and immediate danger.

“But the Rich Purnell maneuver puts the crew on Hermes in direct and immediate danger. Something might break that wouldn’t if a proper refit could occur. An error or malfunction with the engines could result in a failed maneuver, stranding them in space. The radiation shielding or heat transfer systems could fail during its close approach to the sun, killing everyone on board. If the resupply mission fails, they would starve, as would anyone they tried to rescue.

“And then there’s the plan’s dependence on the Sparkle Drive for success. Even for the ponies it’s an experimental system. We know practically nothing about it. It might not even work in our universe.”

“Rich Purnell says it should work,” Mitch growled. “And Watney’s reports include multiple cases of Starlight Glimmer teleporting, so we know it’s possible.”

“It’s still an unnecessary risk,” Teddy replied, shaking his head. “It would be different if the trajectory didn’t take Hermes in-system, or if Watney’s food supply were gone, or if Sleipnir 2 had failed. And I’m aware that circumstances could change to make the danger urgent enough that the Rich Purnell maneuver would have been the right call. But under the current situation, with Watney and the aliens sheltered, fed, and in daily communication with us, I can’t justify putting five more people in jeopardy, even to save seven months on the rescue date.”

“You left out something,” Mitch said, his voice raspy. “Watney and his friends are sheltered, fed, in communication, and on Mars. That last item’s the important part. We don’t know what the planet will throw at them next.”

“No, we don’t,” Teddy admitted. “But the same applies to space. And the known risks of the Rich Purnell maneuver outweigh the risks on Mars.”

“Did you even ask the crew?” Mitch said, his hostile tone of voice unmistakable. “We’ve trained them for years for their mission. They’re the foremost experts on what the risk is and how to counter it. Especially the risks to Hermes and the risks of Mars!”

Teddy shook his head. “You know the answer they’d give,” he said. “No matter the risk, they’d say yes. They’re emotionally invested in the answer. But someone has to be able to say no. And that responsibility is ultimately mine.”

“It should be their decision,” Mitch insisted. “You didn’t even ask.”

“It would still be my decision in the end,” Teddy said. “However, we’re not rejecting all of the Purnell plan. I’d still prefer to use a new MAV that can be landed at the Ares III site, but we could re-launch Hermes as much as two months early if we commit to Mark taking an overland route to Schiaparelli and the Ares IV MAV. Bruce, Venkat, I’ll need teams working on modifications to the rovers to carry all six of them there, plus food for the trip and fifty days on-site.”

“Once it’s refueled, we could redirect Sleipnir 3 to Schiaparelli,” Bruce said. “That’d take care of the food at the end of the trip.”

Teddy shook his head. “Too risky,” he said. “Where he is, Mark can grow food right up to the moment he leaves. Once he leaves he gives that up. If he only takes the food he needs for the trip, he has no margin if the food isn’t waiting for him at the end. No,” Teddy said, “food resupplies ship to Acidalia, and Mark judges for himself if it’s usable.”

As the discussion continued into the details of adapting the two Ares rovers for a trip of over 3,000 kilometers, Venkat spared a moment to contemplate the stout figure on the office couch. Mitch looked like he wanted to bite something- possibly galvanized nails. But more to the point, he wasn’t just furious, he was furiously thinking about something. Possibly planning something.

After a bit of thought, Venkat decided to pretend he’d seen nothing. Then the conversation returned to him, and he couldn’t spare any more thought for whatever might be going on behind Mitch’s glaring, squinted eyes.

But when the meeting broke up, Mitch walked out with Venkat. The moment Teddy’s office door closed, Mitch said, “He’s forgotten the urgency of the situation. It’s been too long since the Hab blew out.”

“He’s worried that Hermes might blow out instead,” Venkat said. “It’s a hard job.”

“You agree with him,” Mitch accused.

“I see both sides of the problem,” Venkat said. “And I wouldn’t have asked the Hermes crew either, not when we know the answer. But I don’t think I agree with him, no.”

“So you’d have gone with the Rich Purnell thing?” Mitch asked.

“I don’t know,” Venkat said. “I’d like to say yes, but if I was NASA Director and Teddy was just Project Ares chief, it might look differently.”

“Can you stop waffling for one minute and give a straight answer?”

Venkat stopped walking, thought a moment, and then said, “I think Hermes can make the trip without serious danger. And I think it’s vital to get Mark and his friends off Mars as soon as possible. My only concern is getting them all to Schiaparelli- Mark, the ponies, their food, and all the equipment they’ll need for the MAV modifications. That’s a gigantic challenge. But I think we can do it.”

He resumed walking, saying, “So on balance, I’d say yes, we should have gone with it. But it’s not our decision.”

“Damn right,” Mitch said. “It should be Melissa Lewis’s decision. And Watney’s, and Cherry Berry’s, for that matter.”

“Yes and no,” Venkat said. “I would never order Lewis to spend another year and a half in space. And I won’t order Cherry Berry’s crew to do anything whatever. But the first decision? The decision on whether or not the new mission is too risky? We have to make that decision, Mitch. Us, here on-“

“You just don’t get it, do you?” Mitch growled, brushing past Venkat and striding to the stairs.

Venkat, for himself, waited for the elevator. There were a lot of floors between Teddy Sanders’ office and ground level. He just hoped the long walk down the stairs cooled Mitch off a little, before he did something they’d all regret.

MISSION LOG – SOL 183

No TV tonight, because my guests spent the entire evening arguing about whether or not the Elements of Harmony would have any effect on Dolores Umbridge.

I’m assuming you can find a copy of the Harry Potter series for yourself, so I’ll just point out that the Elements of Harmony are magical artifacts which can purge a target of evil influences. Starlight Glimmer describes them as a “coherent wave of friendship magic produced by the interpersonal bonds between exceptionally close ponies.” Dragonfly describes them as “the rainbow magic hammer.” They’ve been used to save the pony homeland at least three different times.

Anyway, the discussion was mostly in English, although it drifted into Pony-talk towards the end as Spitfire and Fireball got tired of stumbling over their words. Cherry Berry and Spitfire insist that the Elements would cure Umbridge of being Queen High Sadistic Ultra-bitch. Dragonfly and Fireball insist that bitchdom is Umbridge’s default nature, and that the Elements would only banish her to the moon or turn her to stone.

Starlight mostly stayed out of the discussion. She looked really uncomfortable about the whole thing. When I asked her why, she said something about being a “recovering Umbridge” and refused to discuss it further.

That’s kind of strange. If I had to pick one of my guests to be the anti-Umbridge it would be… well, it would be Cherry Berry, because she’s about as malicious as a puppy. But Starlight would be a close second. I just can’t imagine her as a petty tyrant. I need to ask her about that another time, when she’s not feeling so defensive.

In other news, I noticed this morning that I only have three bacon breakfasts left. This is tragic, but it gives me an idea…

Author's Note

Busy again, and tired, and jangled from too much noise.

Buffer will have to be rebuilt on Monday or Tuesday. Can't do it now.

Sol 184

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 185
ARES III SOL 184

Dear Xavier Bustamente,

I suppose I should be honored that you dedicated your grand slam homer in the top of the seventh inning to me. Appropriate, considering that the ballpark that you hit it out of declared yesterday Mark Watney day. And I’m sure you had the best intentions in mind.

But the fact remains that you are a Houston Astro, and the ballpark in question was in Chicago, and the pitcher wore a Chicago Cubs uniform, and that the Cubs went on to lose that game 9 – 4.

It is therefore my duty, as a native Chicagoan and a lifelong follower of the Cubs through good times and bad, to tell you to take your stupid grand slam and shove it up your ass.

I do this with reluctance. I mean no personal disrespect to you, as I am sure you are a worthy soul without a trace of malice or ill will in your body, but my sense of loyalty to the home town team demands it.

Nor do I wish to seem ungrateful. If, today or tomorrow during the remainder of your visit to Chicago, you should hit a pop fly to center field for an easy out, please feel free to dedicate that to me instead.

Alternately, when the Astros visit the Cardinals in July, feel free to hit all the grand slams you want. I suggest dedicating them to (in order of rank) Cherry Berry, Starlight Glimmer, Fireball, Dragonfly, and Spitfire. Once you’ve scored those twenty runs off the Cards, if you are still inclined to honor me, I will gratefully accept any further homers you claim from their worthless asses.

Looking forward to seeing your team face my Cubbies in the World Series.

Sincerely yours,
Mark Watney

Dear Mrs. Rowling,

Thank you for your letter asking us how we like your stories. Thus far we are generally enjoying the Harry Potter series, though at present we are reading through what seems like a terrible time for young Mr. Potter.

We appreciate how the complexity of your story grows with each volume, encouraging us to expand our understanding of your language.

But I just wanted to point out one thing: unicorn blood does not have the properties you ascribe to it. Although we are magical, we are not natural healers, nor can our bodily fluids thwart death. I understand you had no way of knowing this thirty years ago when you wrote these stories, but I hope you will add a note in future editions correcting this. It would ease the minds of unicorns who might visit Earth in the future.

Also, phoenix tears do not cure petrification. If a basilisk or cockatrice turned a phoenix’s friend into stone in our world, the phoenix would perch on the creature’s back and peck its head until it agreed to restore its victim. Or, failing that, the phoenix would go get Fluttershy, who would either shame or out-stare the basilisk or cockatrice into submission. In no case would a phoenix cry. Phoenixes tend not to be, as Ron Weasley might say, soppy.

Thank you again for your letter and for all your work creating this beautiful legend.

Sincerely yours,
Starlight Glimmer

(P. S. Most spells don't require any spoken focus. And those that do don't care if the words are pronounced correctly. Magic is all about intent, not diction. - S. G.)

Dear Entranced on Earth,

My name is not Abby. I don’t know who she is, but if you wanted to write to her this wasn’t the email you should have used. I’m pretty sure she’s not a bug-pony, anyway.

But since you seem to know you were writing to a bug-pony stranded on Mars for some reason, and since I have nothing to do today, here’s my best answer to your question.

I am not much good at giving advice about love. I don’t make love or encourage love. I only eat it. If you want I could forward your question to Princess Cadence, the allcorn Princess of Love (or, as my queen calls her, the Princess of Food- it’s a bug-pony joke).

But my best advice, as someone who has observed a lot of pony relationships, is: ask him out, already! His silence might be lack of interest, but it might also be shyness, or simply that he has other things on his mind. You aren’t going to know unless you find out!

Yes, he might turn you down, but that can’t be helped. Rejection is a fact of life (especially for bug-ponies- most ponies find us kind of scary even now). But right now, by assuming his rejection, you are actually rejecting yourself. Let him make the choice, and quit imagining things. Real love is more delicious than imagined love, and more filling.

My friend Mark just read this and said I shouldn’t pass it on to Princess Cadence because it would “set a president”, whatever that means. I’ll have to ask Starlight about that one. Anyway, good luck!

Dragonfly

Dear Wang Zhu Tao,

I have family at home. My mother worked hard to build a large hoard for us. If she thought you were trying to take her place she would come to this world and burn your house down. So it is better we just be friends. Friends do not have their mothers burn their friend’s’ house’s down.

Fireball

To Lt. Gen. Marcel Blankenship
Sir;

I can not accept your offer to join your “Thunderbirds” team. I hold a job under our princess for our kingdom, and it would be wrong to serve another.

I am honor by your offer. Major Martinez tells me of your history and fame. But one mare can not serve two princesses.

Respecting you,
Spitfire
Major, Pony-land E. U. P. Combined Forces (Air Guard)

P. S. Starlight Glimmer helped with this response.
P. P. S. Fuck the Blue Angels, sir. Major Martinez also told me about them. If the Navy wants to fly, give them blimps.

To: the J. M. Smucker Company of Orville, Ohio
Gentlemares,

Yes, I like cherry preserves much. I would be glad to say your preserves are the best. I only ask one of two conditions before you can say that I said so.

You can send some of your preserves and some of your competitors preserves to Mars. I will taste them and pick the one I like best.

Or you can come get me and my friends and bring us to your store, where I will taste your preserves and your competitors preserves and say which is best. If you cannot come yourself, just send a ship and I will fly it back. I get good at flying your ships.

Let me know which it will be. I look forward to tasting cherry preserves and lots of them.

Yours,
Cherry Berry

P. S. Any preserved cherries will do. I like both sweet and tart.

Author's Note

Got home from a successful convention, exhausted, at 8:30 PM.

Got 500 words into the planned chapter.

Realized I didn't have the energy to continue, began a fluff filler chapter instead.

Very nearly didn't finish the fluff because I couldn't think of anyone important or amusing for Cherry Berry to write back to.

Going to go collapse and try to sleep for ten hours now.

Sol 186

Equestria never found out the final fates of Angel 3, Angel 4, Angel 5, Angel 6, and Angel 7.

Angel 3 made five successful round-trip dimensional hops. This gave the Equestrians a false sense of security, particularly since two of those five were emergency returns from low-magic worlds. The sixth trip ended less than a minute after arrival in the new universe when the local Queen Nightmare Moon sensed an intruder in her eternal night and snuffed it out.

Angel 4 likewise returned five times successfully from interuniversal jaunts, only one of which came from an emergency abort. Unfortunately its sixth jump landed it in a universe that had no magic at all in its laws of physics, and it ceased operating instantly, trapped in a solar orbit millions of miles from the nearest planet, never to be seen again.

Angel 5 returned safely from its maiden jaunt. On its second trip, unfortunately, it was detected by Empress Twilight Twinkle of that universe, who used her magic to teleport it to herself, deactivate it, and then to carefully disassemble it for proper study. Unfortunately when she reassembled it the probe no longer remembered how to return home, and so it remained in that universe, sparking another Equestria’s exploration of the stars.

Angel 6 proved the workhorse of the lot. It returned home seven times, twice due to emergency abort. Once it even detected radio signals from the third planet from the star, but not from the fourth. Sadly, on its eighth voyage it appeared in the midst of a fleet of alien invaders, who swatted the little robot ship like a fly before resuming their campaign of experimentation on humanity.

And Angel 7 launched, reached what had been considered safe operating distance from Equus, and took its first- and last- dimensional hop. The ponies never saw it again. Neither did anyone else. It popped back into existence mere meters above the surface of the moon, and a second later it was nothing but metal confetti strewn across the newest of its millions of craters.

That was yesterday. Today Princess Twilight Sparkle, Moondancer, and Lemon Hearts of the Equestrian Space Agency sat on one side of a conference table while Queen Chrysalis, Occupant, and Warner von Brawn of the Changeling Space Program sat on the other. “So,” Chrysalis said to begin the meeting, “how long until we get Angel 8 on the pad?”

“There isn’t going to be an Angel 8,” Twilight Sparkle said flatly.

“What?” Chrysalis slammed a perforated hoof onto the conference table. “We are not giving up on our people, princess!”

“This isn’t working!!” Twilight Sparkle shouted right back. “It’s taken us over two months to get reports on twenty-three worlds. Twenty-three. And that’s only if you count ‘this world kills probes’ as a report! If you don’t, make that eighteen. And if you don’t count reports that only say 'too little magic to function', then make it thirteen. One world every three to four days. And only infinity minus twenty-three to go!!” It was Twilight’s turn to hit the table. “I am not wasting our resources on an approach which obviously isn’t going to work!”

“Very well,” Chrysalis murmured, a razor edge buried in her candyfloss tones, “and what other ideas do you have?”

“We’re just able to use the Amicitas life support link to get an interdimensional vector,” Twilight replied. “But we don’t know the distance along that vector. We need them to send up a beacon- some really powerful spell whose effect will get through the distortion at the dimensional interface and let us triangulate their exact position!”

Chrysalis raised her eyebrows. “So your brilliant plan,” she said, “is to have Starlight Glimmer cast a truly powerful spell in a world with almost no magic. That is, of course, the brilliance I’ve come to expect from ponies.”

Moondancer jumped out of her chair. “At least we’re trying things!” she snapped. “What have you come up with? What are you contributing to this effort?”

“Money,” Chrysalis replied. “Parts. Tools. My subjects. And my piloting skills, which are not insignificant. I am doing my part, Miss Moondancer. And I expect all of you to do yours!”

“What- why- why you conceited-“

Occupant leaned over the table, waving his hooves frantically, talking around his buck fangs, “Everybody, please, could we calm-“

“I am conceited because I have earned my conceit, little pony!”

“What you’ve earned is a good kick in the-“

And, not for the first time since the loss of Amicitas, inter-agency cooperation broke down, to resume only when all participants were too sore of throat to shout anymore.

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit FB for response, over.

ESA: Roger, Amicitas. Report on transmutation experiment, over.

AMICITAS: DF – SG is lying down. Experiment used one battery, attempted to convert surface of planet within nearby crater to aluminum oxide as per recommendation from Earth. Battery was exhausted after conversion of one-tenth of the crater, and crater reverted to pre-spell composition as soon as the spell ran out of power. Estimate spell will require forty-four batteries at full power to seal the cave plus additional four batteries to make the spell permanent. Our current capacity is eight and a half batteries maximum. By the time we have enough power to cast the spell we won’t need the cave anymore, over.

ESA: Understood. Alternatives?

AMICITAS: Are there any spells to fuse crystals into a single seamless crystal? Would they require less power, over?

ESA: We’ll research it. But can we ask you to repeat the transmutation spell with full power, over?

AMICITAS: SG is flat on her back with an ice pack on her horn, Baltimare. Why do you want her to try again, over?

ESA: We want a really big spell. We’re hoping it’s strong enough that we can detect it here, over.

AMICITAS: CB – We can’t afford to waste magic power on ineffective spells. We need a cave sealing spell that will work with what we can get. Please get back to us on that, over.

ESA: Working the problem. Out.

Author's Note

Huh. I thought I'd written more than this.

There's half a chapter in the buffer, anyway.

And I just found out that not only did my DVD restock order not go through, but it wasn't saved as an incomplete order on my distributor's webpage. I have to rebuild it from scratch... and it's highly unlikely I'll have it in time for this weekend. Fun, fun.

Sol 188

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 189
ARES III SOL 188

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use main life support for response, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: SG - All in cave, ready to cast sealing spell. Standing by for your order to begin, over.

ESA: TS - Tracer spell active. Go for sealing spell, over.

AMICITAS: Casting now, over.

AMICITAS: Spell complete, you didn’t mention the rumbling. At least none of the crystals fell down, over.

ESA: Can you please recast the spell, over?

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, can you recast the spell, over?

AMICITAS: DF - Mare down, Baltimare, stand by, over.

ESA: Who? What cause, over?

AMICITAS: DF - SG, spell exhaustion, again, waiting on SF, stand by. Over.

ESA: Copy. Tell us when you can recast that spell, over.

AMICITAS: CB - We have nine batteries all down to less than ten percent. We have one unicorn flat on her face, SF attending. We have zero caves remaining that need sealing. Cast on what, with what, with who, over?

ESA: We picked up the spell, but it was weak and ended before we could complete the trace. Need bigger spell that lasts longer to pinpoint your position, over.

AMICITAS: DF – Not happening this week, Baltimare. SF says no more magic today. We need to recharge the batteries, we need to recharge SG, and we need more batteries. Over.

ESA: Sh

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, comms check, over?

ESA: Baltimare copies, Amicitas. I guess Chrysalis gets Angel 8 after all, over.

AMICITAS: Didn’t copy that last, what is Angel 8, over?

ESA: Interdimensional probe. Ask Mark’s people to pick a frequency, preferably between 110 and 130 megaHortz, for beacon signals receivable up to ten million kilometers away all around their world. Simple tone will do. If our probe picks up the signal, we’ve found you, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas copies. How close are you to finding us, over?

ESA: Not very. The probe probably won’t work, but until you can send another spell up it’s what we have. Tell us when you have beacons, on what frequency. Over.

AMICITAS: Wilco. Going back to base now. Out.

MISSION LOG – SOL 188

The cave is sealed.

It took all of Starlight’s magic batteries, the old ones and the new ones she’s built, to do it, but apparently it’s done.

The spell is a neat example of magical logic at work. Apparently the ponies were knocking their heads against a wall trying to expand the crystals or turn them into some continuous substance, and that took too much power. But magic can just take the holes away, apparently. That’s right- just pick up holes as if they were things instead of an absence of things, and throw them away.

Question: when you throw away a hole, what do you throw it into?

Anyway, according to Starlight she used a subterranean topological tracing spell to outline the exact boundaries of the giant geode. She then cast the spell so that it would reach about six inches above and below that boundary and eliminate all the empty space within that zone. Below the boundary it would create a single continuous layer of solid, pure silicon dioxide. Above, it’d create a mixed layer of whatever materials are on top of the geode- mostly basaltic regolith, which makes for possibly the strongest concrete you can get without rebar or tension reinforcement.

What the rest of us saw began as a light show that might have come out of TRON- not the remake or the sequel, but the original crappy-CGI cheeseball movie. You know, the classic. The entire farm chamber of the cave, and a lot more I guess, lit up in this sort of grid that erupted from Starlight’s horn and penetrated into the crystal walls, giving us one hell of a laser show for a moment. Then we saw Starlight’s magic surge from her horn, and the whole cave… well, rumble isn’t the right word. It didn’t sound like an avalanche, though we were all spooked for a second. It sounded more like thunder from a way off, like what we get in Houston sometimes when thunderstorms are rolling in off the Gulf. You know, the sound your uncle makes about four hours after the enchiladas. But the echoes took a hell of a long time to die out.

Cherry Berry and Spitfire stood outside the cave and told me there was a slight dust slide off the slope of Site Epsilon (why haven’t we come up with a better name for the thing already?) when Starlight cast her spell, but that’s all. When the spell ended Starlight did her usual Captain Cavepony collapse, and we all had an impatient few minutes waiting on Cherry and Spitfire to cycle through the airlock to make sure she was okay. She is, but she’s going to spend tomorrow in bed. Again.

Tired unicorn aside, we’re all breathing a sigh of relief here. The more NASA worried about that cave blowing out, the more we worried about it, too. The ponies didn’t want to mess with it at first, but after the Sleipnir screw-ups they got on the ball and worked the problem.

And now, well, here we are. If it wouldn’t be such a gigantic pain in the ass to shift everything, we could move into the cave, because it’s the absolute safest place on Mars now.

We called it an early day to celebrate. The ponies told me the story of the Royal Canterlot Wedding (with Dragonfly giving interesting commentary from the other side of the Battle of Canterlot, without shame or regret, adorable little war criminal that she is). We read three chapters of Order of the Phoenix- getting to the really good stuff now. And all that was before supper, which means we have all night for bad 70s TV! Starsky and Hutch, Barney Miller, and Three’s Company is on the schedule…

… and, just before bed, we’re going to try out Kolchak the Night Stalker.

It’s not as scary as a glue factory, but I think we need a bit of horror to keep up the quota, now that “breach cave all die during harvest” is off the menu.

MISSION LOG – SOL 188 (2)

Just got this on the chat from Hermes right before the communications window closed for the night:

[19:41] HERMES: Be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely eyed missile man.

I wonder what the hell that’s all about?

He sat at his computer, “unsere kinder” on his screen once more.

Crunch time was technically tomorrow, but he didn’t think things were going to change by then.

JPL was having problems with the maneuvering thrusters required for course correction on Sleipnir 4’s long cruise to Mars. Certain welds had failed during testing, which meant the faulty thrusters had to be disassembled almost completely and rebuilt, setting the probe back several days. Word from Deva Plastics on production of new hab canvas for the tumbler landing system’s airbags continued to be discouraging. The schedule continued to slide, pushing closer and closer to the date, now eighty-four days away, when the probe had to launch to be of any use to Watney and his friends.

Of course, getting a booster to launch Sleipnir 4 wasn’t looking good either. In fact, refueling Sleipnir 3 for its Mars injection burn looked iffy. Congress was digging in its heels, with Teddy’s play on a sympathetic electorate countered by anti-NASA Congressmen waving letters from voters furious with SpaceX for putting the cute, adorable aliens in danger of their lives. Two of the majority members on the House subcommittee had defected to the minority side, and the chairman was trying to get them back on the team, but in the interim SpaceX was shut down waiting for the ranking minority member to accept eleven names from the list of notables offered by the chairman.

He called up his email client, opened the spoofed email he’d saved, and attached the file.

And still he hesitated. These were only setbacks, not disasters. Watney didn’t have a margin, but by the time Sleipnir 2 arrived he might well have one. His report today that they’d successfully sealed and strengthened the cave roof and walls was the only good news all week. And JPL would probably solve its problems in time to launch, and the minority leader couldn’t keep SpaceX shut down once the committee actually sat and took over the investigation. Sleipnir 4 was far from doomed, though the timing would be very tight.

But, he decided, the events of the past few days showed that the unexpected, the impossible, even the totally stupid could happen at any moment and wreck all your plans. The sooner Watney and his friends were on Earth, the sooner Murphy would be limited to non-lethal things to throw at them.

Was it worth his career, and possibly the careers of the five people currently aboard Hermes? Yes it w-

His phone rang.

Before he picked up the phone, he reached down, put in the earbud he used to listen to the live feed direct from Mission Control, and turned the volume back up.

“… and somebody find out who the hell Rich Purnell is!!”

That was Brendan Hutch’s voice, the graveyard shift flight leader. What the hell?

He picked up the phone. “Henderson,” he said.

“Sir, we have a problem with Hermes. It’s off course and accelerating. We don’t know why, but we think it’s deliberate. We’re trying to institute a computer override now.”

“Any idea what’s causing it?” he asked. “Any contact with the crew?”

“Only one text message,” the voice at the other end said. “Something about Rich Purnell being a steely-eyed missile man. No clue what it means.”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said, and hung up.

The email, unsent, glowed at him from his monitor.

He deleted it. He deleted “unsere kinder” too. He emptied the recycle bin on his desktop.

As he shut down the computer, he thought: I didn’t send it. I didn’t send it!! But how? How??

Who???

Author's Note

Today's writing time got eaten by a late start from home, an unexpected long stop for lunch while addressing issues with a stock delivery for this weekend's con in Amarillo, and supply shopping. What I had left I used on roughly doubling the length of this chapter instead of writing a new one.

But I should have some time on my hands tomorrow.

Twilight's tracing spell is complex. It's not quite true triangulation, since the trace has to thread through the magical singularity/wormhole/whatever that runs the life support system for Amicitas. It uses a combination of varying signal strength and estimate of the ground zero power of the spell itself to guesstimate the distance through "signal" decay. A score on the first try with such a system isn't to be expected, but a stronger signal from Mars plus refinement of the spell and its measurements mean each future attempt will get closer to a lock. The problem, of course, is casting a spell big enough, for long enough, to get that lock-on.

It could take a while.

And in the meantime, back on Earth, I've completely jumped the rails on a plot point from the book. My reasons may or may not be explained later on, dot dot dot.

Sol 189

“Good evening, and welcome to the Watney and Company Report. I’m Cathy Warner, speaking to you live from Johnson Space Center in Houston.”

Venkat sat a little uncomfortably in a chair just off-camera from Cathy, who spoke to the camera with her usual professional tones. Annie had not so much pulled strings as hauled hard on anchor chains to get the CNN crew on-site in less than twelve hours. Cathy had won the prize not just because CNN had the only hour-long show, five days a week, dedicated solely to Mars, but because CNN was the most likely news organization to give NASA a fair shake.

Which was good, because the main job of the day for every NASA manager was to sell a mountain of hooey to the American public, and that sales job required all the sympathetic outlets NASA could find.

“Today we finally learned why Rich Purnell, an ordinary worker in JSC’s Astrodynamics division, is so important to the lives and future of the castaways on Mars,” Cathy continued. “With the cryptic declaration that Rich Purnell is ‘a steely-eyed missile man’, the crew of Hermes executed a prolonged engine burn that eliminates any possibility of returning to Earth as planned two months from now.

“Instead Hermes will slingshot around Earth, picking up additional speed for a tight pass around the sun that will send it back to Mars, arriving there on Ares III Sol 551. If all goes well, this will allow the castaways to escape Mars almost exactly one year from today- almost eight months ahead of the previously scheduled Ares 3B mission.”

As Venkat sat, audio of Teddy’s speech earlier that afternoon played in his ear, as the video of that speech was spliced into the live video feed from the improvised studio in one of JSC’s many conference rooms.

“Rich Purnell was the worker most involved in exploring the ‘lifeboat’ option for using the alien ship and other parts from the Ares III landing site to escape Mars in case of dire emergency,” Teddy said. “He also plotted the orbital paths for the Sleipnir missions, and in the process he realized that Hermes could be diverted onto a path that would give it a flyby of Mars before returning safely to Earth again. This path would rescue Mark Watney and the shipwrecked aliens far earlier than any prior rescue plan.

“But the Hermes flyby, though ingenious, is the least difficult part of the plan. Being a responsible NASA staffer, Rich took a leave of absence to work on the problem in private, exploring the viability of modifying the Ares IV MAV so that it can escape Martian gravity for a rendezvous with Hermes, calculating required supply loads for Hermes and the rescued astronauts, and even consulting the alien science officer on Mars about possible use of their experimental Sparkle Drive to bring Hermes and all its crew back to Earth mere days after its Mars flyby.

“After the failure of Sleipnir 1 and the abort to orbit of Sleipnir 3, Rich came to us with his proposal. His proposal, of course, was full of risks- risks to the castaways and to the Hermes crew- and we had to evaluate in detail the level of risk compared to the risk of eight more months on Mars for Watney and his guests. Not wanting to raise hopes prematurely, we kept these evaluations secret until we could be certain of the decision.

“The final decision came late yesterday afternoon, after the Chinese national space agency contacted me directly to offer the use of the booster built for the Tai Yang Shen solar observatory. With this booster and the SpaceX BFR originally slated to refuel Sleipnir 3, we could guarantee sufficient food supplies to Hermes for the entire flight, even if the Sparkle Drive fails to bring Hermes home ahead of schedule.”

Venkat heard an unfamiliar voice- some reporter or other- break in to ask, “Wasn’t this experimental drive the reason the aliens were stranded on Mars in the first place?”

“Our contact with one of the shipwrecked aliens, who was a designer of that drive, allows me to state that the flaw that caused them to come here has been identified and eliminated,” Teddy said firmly. “The Drive might not bring them to Earth, but it won’t send them anywhere else. If it fails, Hermes will continue on its predetermined course to Earth, arriving 211 days after rescuing Mark and his friends.”

“You mentioned Tai Yang Shen,” another reporter said. “What is NASA giving the Chinese in exchange for this booster?”

“The Chinese are donating the booster in the name of saving people in need and in the hopes of establishing friendly relations with the first intelligent alien culture we’ve ever encountered,” Teddy said. “However, I am recommending to the Presidential Council on Space and to the House and Senate Subcommittees on Space Exploration that the Chinese space program be offered full access to our alien friends once they’re rescued, out of respect for their expertise and demonstrated willingness to cooperate. Also, we have asked China to submit candidates for taikonauts to join the Ares V and Ares VI expeditions.”

The audio in Venkat’s ear faded out, and the spotlight came up on the table where he and Cathy sat. “For more detail on NASA’s new plan, I’m here at JSC to speak with Ares project director, Dr. Venkat Kapoor. Thank you for letting us be here, Doctor.”

“Always a pleasure, Cathy,” Venkat said.

“My first question, of course, has to be: why is this new plan, which has all the appearance of a Hail Mary pass in the fourth quarter, less risky than waiting eight more months for Ares 3B?” Cathy asked. “Especially in light of the report that the aliens have reinforced their underground farm to secure against cave-ins or blowouts.”

“It’s a choice between known risks and unknown risks,” Venkat said. “We know the risks of modifying the MAV to make it capable of escaping Martian gravity. We know the risks of an extended Hermes mission. But as Sleipnir indicates, and as incidents such as the Sol 6 storm and the Sol 88 Hab blowout make clear, the risks of Mark and his friends remaining on Mars and relying on resupply from Earth are unknowable. We don’t know when the next emergency will arise. If we know about a risk, we can plan for it and take precautions. But we can’t plan for the unpredictable. So, paradoxically, it’s less risky to take a risk.”

“One of these known risks is Hermes’s trajectory, which takes it considerably closer to the sun than any prior manned spacecraft,” Cathy continued. “In fact, NASA in the past has had a hard no-fly rule for any craft, manned or robotic, that might travel closer to the sun than Venus. Why are you ignoring this rule?”

“Hermes has multiply redundant heat and radiation mitigation systems,” Venkat said. “It’s required for the on-board reactor that powers the VASIMR ion engines. It also keeps the astronauts safe in case of solar flares during a normal year-long mission. These systems are unique in human space flight, and we designed them to endure the conditions Hermes will encounter on its flight- for precisely contingencies like this.”

That was a fib, and not a small one. Hermes’s flight path would push the safety margins of its magnetic field and hull shielding systems. They’d been designed to specifications that would let it endure the trip, not because NASA had ever imagined even in nightmares allowing the ship get that close to the sun, but because it was simple habit to err on the side of caution when engineering long-term space craft.

“Now, Hermes isn’t going to orbit,” Cathy said.

“That’s correct,” Venkat said. “It’ll be going too fast to brake for orbit. Also, if it orbited, it would lose its free-return trajectory to Earth and basically be stranded until the next Hohmann return window opens.”

“But since it’s a fly-by, that means that Mark Watney and his friends will have exactly one shot to catch them,” Cathy pointed out.

“Also true,” Venkat said. “But the MAV is a robust system, and we’ve checked out the modifications Rich Purnell proposed, and they check out.” Massive lie. The check had been only partial, and the numbers were fuzzy as hell. Purnell’s suggestions hadn’t gone much farther beyond “lose a bit of weight and strap all the pony engines to the first stage.” And Bruce Ng was too busy, first with Sleipnir 4 and now the stripped down cans with thrusters that would be the new Sleipnir 4/5, to do anything about it.

“But what happens if Mark and his friends miss the intercept?”

“The Sparkle Drive will be installed on the MAV,” Venkat said. “It’ll take the place of the five hundred kilograms of rock samples the MAV would carry from a normal Ares mission. If for some reason the MAV misses the rendezvous, they can use the Drive as a backup to either attempt a second rendezvous or limp to Earth. But that’s a contingency we’d prefer to avoid.” And that was the truth. The electrical batteries on the MAV were rated for only seven days of continuous usage. Starlight Glimmer’s report said that it would have taken a day and a half for their ship to go from their home to their Mars-parallel on the Sparkle Drive, when the two worlds were at closest approach. Earth and Mars would be very far apart when the time came to launch, and a direct line back to Earth would bring the lightly shielded MAV far too close to the Sun for anyone’s health.

“So what happens if the rendezvous misses and the Sparkle Drive fails?” Cathy asked.

Rich Purnell had estimated that a working Sparkle Drive was indispensable to a successful rendezvous, unless the MAV became radically lighter somehow. “We’ll spend the coming year doing everything possible to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Venkat evaded smoothly.

“One final question,” Cathy asked. “The timing of this maneuver and announcement, in light of surprising intransigence on the part of certain Congressmen, seems a little convenient for your purposes. Was there any connection between the stand-down at SpaceX and your decision to implement a mission that requires two resupply launches in three weeks’ time?”

“We had faith that Congress would see reason once they were reassured that taxpayer money was being spent in the best way available to ensure the survival of Mark Watney and our alien visitors,” Venkat said. “Our decision to implement the Rich Purnell maneuver was based solely on our judgment of its probable success. Political considerations never entered into it.”

The only reason Venkat didn’t call that the biggest lie of the whole interview was, lying implied that you knew the truth. Someone else might know; he sure didn’t.

Author's Note

Well, the first missed day. Not on purpose; the hotel internet is acting up.

Expect another chapter tonight sometime.

Sol 190

Once again, Teddy wasn’t late. He sat calmly and alertly at his desk, despite having been back in Houston for less than two hours after a pre-dawn flight back from Washington. Venkat looked him over, but couldn’t find a hair out of place or a wrinkle on his suit.

This time Annie arrived last, bashing through the office door with an elbow as she used both hands to work her phone. “You would not believe the amount of Monday-morning quarterbacking out there,” she said rather than apologize. “Every dickhead with an opinion is chiming in today about why we’re going to get everybody on Mars and Hermes killed. Same fuckers would probably be screaming if we’d announced Rich Purnell publicly and then decided not to do it.”

“About that,” Teddy said quietly. “I have a few words I want to say about whoever sent the ‘April 1970’ email to Commander Lewis.” The email had claimed to be from Lewis’s husband on Earth, who shared her interest in all things 70’s. It had contained a complete account of the Rich Purnell maneuver and the discussion over it- things Robert Lewis had no way of knowing.

Teddy folded his hands on his desk and continued to speak quietly. “It’s true that the failure of Sleipnir and the obstruction by certain Congressmen changed the risk factors in regard to choosing between Rich Purnell and Ares 3B. But the decision had been made. The person who sent that email deliberately undermined the decision making process of NASA. Now, this is not a military organization. Insubordination is tolerated to a degree. But this act put the Hermes crew in jeopardy at a time when it was far from certain that we could resupply them in time. That’s not acceptable.”

Teddy pushed himself to his feet, stepping out from behind his desk. “Now, it’s convenient that Tai Yang Shen was offered to us at precisely the right moment for this. And it’s lucky that the Rich Purnell maneuver put enough pressure on Congress to allow SpaceX to return to work for the other booster we’ll need. But being right after the fact doesn’t justify either the risk or the insubordination. And if whoever sent that email is ever discovered, their career at NASA will be over. I just want to make that clear.” As he said this last sentence, his eyes locked on Mitch, who had returned to his usual slump on the office couch.

Mitch, for his part, was completely unconcerned. “All that’s a given,” he said. “But we have more important things to talk about now. Like how to resupply Hermes and how to modify the MAV to reach Hermes when it arrives.”

Teddy nodded. “The resupply mission is the more urgent priority,” he said. “Bruce, what can you tell me?”

“It’s tight, but it looks like we can do it,” Bruce said over the speakerphone. “One resupply would be enough if we knew for a fact the Sparkle Drive would be compatible with Hermes. But we need two if we assume that Mark has to take the long way home. And that’s two resupply payloads with nothing but food, thrusters and fuel, and a shell to hold it all together. We can’t send spare parts, fresh clothes, or anything beyond a limited supply of sanitary supplies. Food, and nothing but food.”

“We’re assembling the food packs now,” Venkat added. “That will include a small supply of semi-precious gems that Fireball can sprinkle on normal meals as a nutritional supplement. That’s more or less what the ponies did to make his original meal packs.”

“The good news,” Bruce added, “is ditching the tumbler landing system not only buys us extra payload for food, it frees up manpower at JPL for the second resupply probe. That’s vital, since we’re having to rebuild the thrusters from the original Sleipnir 4. Working night and day, we should be ready to load the payload fifteen days from now.”

“That’s good,” Venkat said, “since the resupply probes have to launch twenty-five days from today to intercept Hermes just after its Earth fly-by. We need Sleipnir 4 at KSC and Sleipnir 5 at Jiuquan twenty-one days from now for mounting and abbreviated inspection. There’s no schedule slip this time.”

“I know it,” Bruce said. “We’ll be ready.”

“Mitch, you’re going to head straight to Jiuquan to liaise with the Chinese launch crews,” Teddy said. “Make sure the booster’s compatible with the final Sleipnir 5 probe. Do whatever is necessary to ensure Tai Yang Shen is ready for launch when the time comes.”

“No problem,” Mitch said, nodding.

“Resupplying Hermes is only the first step,” Teddy continued. “We have to modify the MAV to reach Hermes. And we have to get Mark, the aliens, and all the equipment needed for the MAV modifications to Schiaparelli in the first place.”

“Why not just fly the MAV to Watney?” Annie asked.

“The only landing struts are on the landing stage,” Venkat said. “The MAV makes its own fuel, but only for the ascent stages- not the landing stage. Also, the heat shield and drogue parachutes are gone, so the MAV can’t make a second atmospheric re-entry. It would have to make a slow flight over and land completely under power, using the residual fuel in the descent stage and nothing else.” Venkat shook his head. “It’s just not doable, Annie.”

“I agree,” Teddy said. “Moving Mark and his friends is a lot less risky than moving the MAV. Whatever happens to them, at least one will have a way off planet so long as the MAV is intact. If it breaks, none of them leave.”

“We’ll work on plans for moving from the Hab to Schiaparelli here at JSC,” Venkat said. “Working out the modifications to the MAV will be Bruce’s job once JPL recovers from Sleipnir.”

“Don’t expect anything too quick from us on that,” Bruce said through the speakerphone. “We’ll need precise numbers on the alien thrusters- weight, thrust, all of it. That means we’ll need Mark to do some more testing.”

“Understood,” Teddy said. “You’ve done astounding work, Bruce. We all appreciate it. Keep it up.” He turned his attention to Annie. “I want any hint that this wasn’t in our plans quashed,” he said. “Before we were proceeding with direct resupply as a hedge in case the Rich Purnell maneuver didn’t pan out. But it was always our preferred option. Now we’re just kicking that option into high gear.”

“Got it,” Annie said brusquely. “I keep following the line Venk took last night?”

“Yes. The safest thing we can do is get Mark and his friends off Mars as soon as possible. That’s been our policy since we re-established contact with them. This is just a logical extension of that.”

“No problem,” Annie said. “Gotta say, I like this better than the shit we’d be going through if the Purnell maneuver leaked after we shitcanned it.”

“We would make it work.” Teddy leaned on his desk for a moment, then added, “Bruce, one more thing. We’re putting eleven crew in Hermes for the trip home. That’s going to strain life support. Can you make any space in the resupply probes for filters, spare parts, anything? At least a few lightweight things to help with the load.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Bruce’s voice gave no encouragement on that point.

“Okay, then,” Teddy said. “We’ve all got a lot of work ahead of us. Let’s get started.”

Venkat and Mitch walked out of the office together. “Officially, I have no idea who sent that email,” Venkat said.

“Fine by me,” Mitch replied.

“Unofficially, why did you do it?”

“I didn’t,” Mitch said. “Wanted to. But somebody beat me to it.”

“Mitch, this is just you and me, off the record,” Venkat insisted. “We all know you wanted to give the astronauts the final decision.”

“And if I’d done it, I wouldn’t be particularly ashamed of it,” Mitch said. “I’d still deny it, because I like my job. But if you want to know who did it, my money’s on Sanders.”

“Teddy?” Venkat couldn’t help himself from looking over his shoulder back at the executive office door. “That’s impossible.”

“Think about it,” Mitch said. “Tai Yang Shen being convenient timing? Hogwash. He sent the email after he got the offer from the Chinese. He wasn’t confident about Sleipnir anymore. The material for tumbler air bags wasn’t meeting schedule. Lockheed was stalling on construction reports for the next MAV. Congress had a sudden attack of being Congress. Rich Purnell gave him an option that put pressure on Congress-“

“No, Mitch,” Venkat said, shaking his head. “Still not buying it. Teddy would never put five more people at that level of risk for a small gain.”

“Would he do it to save eight billion?” Mitch asked.

Venkat looked Mitch in the eyes and said, “Explain.”

“What’s happening on Mars is a new chapter in humanity’s existence,” Mitch said. “Aliens from another frickin’ universe. An entire new school of physics. We’re on the edge of changes we can’t even imagine. But what happens if those five aliens with Watney die, Venk? The best case scenario is that we never meet another alien again so long as our civilization lasts. You know the odds.”

Venkat nodded.

“So maybe Teddy has second thoughts about his decision,” Mitch said. “Then he gets this offer from China. It eases the margins on the Purnell maneuver. And he looks at the bastard on the House Space subcommittee, piously mouthing talk about safety and responsibility while he’s killing Watney and his friends…” Mitch held his hands palms-up, one higher than the other; he then raised the one and lowered the other. “And the balance of risk shifts. Because eight billion humans are more likely to get a long, fruitful relationship with the ponies and such if Hermes gets to Mars eight months early.”

“It still seems a stretch, Mitch.”

“But the kicker is this. Teddy never chews anyone out in public. Ever. If Teddy didn’t do it, he’d have called me on the carpet to threaten me, maybe demand my resignation. Because everybody knows I’d be the one to spill the beans to Hermes, right? But instead he makes a statement to us, the only people who knew about the decision at all, ending with, 'if the person is discovered his career is over.' Not 'if I find out.' 'If the person is discovered.'” Mitch hit the elevator button and smirked. “And that’s why I think Teddy did it.”

Venkat considered it. “It’s still not enough to go on,” he said.

“Don’t care,” Mitch said. “I really don’t care if the angel Gabriel sent that email. For all we know it was. Magic, y’know.” The elevator door opened. “All I care about is that the Hermes crew got to make the decision, and we’re going to save Watney eight months early. Now we just have to make it happen.”

The elevator doors closed, leaving Venkat on the executive office floor, just him and his thoughts.

Author's Note

Not taking a chance this time. If the hotel internet works, I'll fix the italics and such there.

Next chapter we finally get back to Mars.

Sol 191

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 192
ARES III SOL 191

[08:08] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Venkat here. I’m sorry I haven’t been on the last couple of days. It’s been extremely busy here, and it’s going to be busy again today. But I finally have news for you.

[08:32] WATNEY: It’s about f-ing time! If you hadn’t got back to me today I would have begun using this chat to practice my Klingonese profanity. (And don’t tell me there’s no such thing as cussing in Klingonese. If you’re mad enough any language has cussing.)

[08:59] JPL: It’s Klingon. How would anyone tell the profanity apart from the rest of it?

Anyway, here’s the deal. Hermes has executed a maneuver which will slingshot it around Earth and then the sun to return to Mars on Sol 551. The trajectory will bring it back to earth 211 days after that.

The thing is, for all this to work, Hermes can’t orbit. This is strictly a fly-by. That means no Ares 3B MAV. You’re going to have to go to Schiaparelli Crater to the Ares IV MAV, hauling your friends and tons of gear you’re going to need to modify the MAV to make it capable of Mars escape velocity.

We also need your friends to make a new Sparkle Drive capable of running in multiple modes: MAV first ascent stage, MAV second ascent stage, MAV capsule, and Hermes plus docked MAV capsule. If we can get that to work, you could be on Earth as soon as a week after meeting Hermes.

There’s other things we need, but that’s the broad outline.

[09:28] WATNEY: Re: Klingonese: touché.

Re: the rest of it: are you out of your fucking minds??? Is anyone on Hermes listening in right now? Did you choose this? What were you thinking?? I mean, nobody would be happier than me to be off this rock two hundred sols quicker, but not at the risk of the rest of my crew!!

[09:51] HERMES: Lewis here, Watney. First off, it’s MY crew. Second, NASA presented us the facts, and we decided the risk to us was manageable. The risk to you isn’t. The decision was unanimous. We’re coming back to get you, like it or not.

[09:56] JPL: There’s a lot of risk involved, we know, Mark. But there are too many things that can go wrong on Mars. We want you off the planet as soon as possible, and we think the Hermes flyby is the best way to do it.

In the next day or two we’re going to send you procedures for proper and thorough testing of the pony ship’s engines and surviving maneuvering thrusters. In particular we need precise masses for the engine systems and the magic battery systems they use, maximum specific impulse per engine, and physical dimensions. Actually performing these procedures can be slotted into your schedule at your convenience over the next thirty sols or so.

After that our next priority is working out the procedure for the journey. It’s going to be a lot of work- we have to get the six of you, life support for the six of you, food for the trip and for about fifty sols at Schiaparelli, electricity, heat, and all the pony rockets, batteries, and Sparkle Drive components across 3200 kilometers of Mars.

Finally, I have bad news for you. We need you to sequester seven days of food packs for each of you to be stored in the MAV as contingency rations in case the planned rendezvous fails. Our backup plan is to use the Sparkle Drive either to attempt a second rendezvous or make a run for Earth, depending. We also want to reserve all remaining food packs for the trip to Schiaparelli, since they are easier to pack and store than potatoes. That means no more eating from food packs until you leave, Mark. I really am sorry about that.

[10:25] WATNEY: My depression at spending the next 250 sols with no flavor in my life is mitigated by the photo I just put in the upload queue of Cherry Berry dancing and singing, “I’m gonna fly again.”

[10:27] WATNEY: Starlight here. Bear in mind that we need some battery power to make more batteries and other things like that. Every test we run that needs magic power sets back that schedule. Also, Twilight Sparkle developed an adjustable Sparkle Drive about three months ago as part of rescue efforts. Multiple settings are not a problem.

[10:51] HERMES: Looking forward to getting to say, “Ahead Warp Factor 1, Ms. Glimmer, engage.”

[11:17] WATNEY: And that’s story time for tonight sorted out, I guess. Blank stares all around. Thanks for that, Commander.

[11:42] HERMES: You haven’t told them about Kirk, Picard, etc. yet, Watney? Does NASA have rules about dereliction of duty?

[12:06] WATNEY: You can dock my pay for insufficient nerdiness as soon as my feet are back on planet Earth. Looking forward to those procedures, Venk.

Heavy equipment rumbled through JSC Building 5 as the mock-up sets for the space station, the standard Ares HAB setup, and Hermes were rolled away. By tomorrow they would be replaced by two test-bed Ares rovers and a rough mock-up of the half-stripped, battered alien spaceship.

In one of Building 5’s conference rooms, cleaned out for the task, Venkat Kapoor faced a team of NASA’s best engineers- men and women from various teams, experts in habitat construction, in EVA systems and protocols, and in mechanical engineering in general.

“All right,” he said. “here’s the situation. Sometime after Sol 400, Mark Watney and the aliens have to leave the Hab, travel thirty-two hundred kilometers across multiple elevation changes to the Schiaparelli Basin to reach the Ares IV MAV. They have to arrive around Sol 500 to give them plenty of time to modify the MAV to reach Hermes during its Sol 551 fly-by. Those modifications will be JPL’s job to work out. Your job is to get the crew and all the parts needed for the modifications there on time.

“So- six people.” Venkat wrote the item on a whiteboard. “Food for six people for one hundred fifty sols, approximately one ton.” He wrote that down. “Shelter, heat, and electricity for the trip and for their time at Schiaparelli.” He wrote that down, too.

“What about air and water?” one of the engineers asked.

“We’ll be relying on the alien systems for most of that,” Venkat said. “We can steal the main life support systems from the Hab if we have extra cargo capacity, but considering all the other things we have to move, that’s not likely.” He wrote down ALIEN ENGINES next. “We don’t know exactly how much they weigh, but we need them all if they work.” ALIEN BATTERIES came after that. “They weigh about seventy kilograms each, and we need all the aliens can rebuild.” Next came HARDWARE, TOOLS, CABLES, and PATHFINDER.

“All of these are mission critical,” Venkat said. “If anybody sees something I’m missing, speak up.”

“Fuel and tanks for the MAV,” one engineer volunteered. “They’ll need every bit of delta-V they can cram onto the ship to reach escape velocity. And even if the MAV makes extra fuel, it’ll need someplace to put it.”

“Good thinking,” Venkat agreed, and wrote EXTRA FUEL FOR MAV on the list.

“Living space,” said another. “Ask Dr. Shields for confirmation on this, but remember how every Ares crew reacts to the Mars Low Orbit Abort scenario. Three days in the MAV capsule with almost no room to move. The two rovers put together have passenger space for eight astronauts combined except for emergency scenarios. That’s less space than the MAV for fifty times the duration of the Mars Low Orbit simulation. You need to give them elbow room or they’ll kill each other.”

“Is this a luxury we can afford?” Venkat asked.

“It’s a necessity,” the engineer insisted. “Consult Dr. Shields.”

Venkat shrugged and added LIVING SPACE.

“EVA suits,” another engineer piped up. “By Sol 400 their existing suits will be pretty worn out.”

“That’s true.” Venkat recognized the face, but not the name, of the head of EVA Operations. “They’re already patching the pony suits, and Mark’s gone through two suits himself. We’ll need two full suits as spares on the trip in case of a failure that can’t be patched.”

Venkat tapped the whiteboard thoughtfully. “We won’t be able to take spares for everything,” he said.

“You don’t get much more mission-critical than EVA suits,” the EVA Operations chief said.

Venkat shrugged and added it to the list. “Anything else?”

This time none of the engineers spoke up.

“All right,” Venkat said. “Mark Watney and Starlight Glimmer got eighty kilometers per day out of the modified Rover 2 on their trip to Pathfinder. But there was barely room in the rover for the two of them and all the supplies they needed for the trip. Obviously both rovers would have to be used, and most of the supplies for the trip would have to ride on the outside of the rovers. They’d be a lot heavier, and thus a lot less energy-efficient.

“The other alternative is the ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ option the pony commander proposed three months ago. The alien ship can’t make re-entry again, but it might be possible to reconfigure its engines and cut off the engineering section to make a lighter craft capable of VTOL flight. The drawback is that the alien engines rely on magic batteries that, in our universe at least, only recharge in the presence of life. It’d essentially need to be a one-shot flight, and it would take a very long time without the cave farm to recharge those batteries for use on the MAV. The ship also has working landing gear and can be towed, but based on past experience the towing would be extremely slow.”

One of the engineers raised his hand. “We have specifications on the rovers,” he said. “3.5 tons empty, 1.5 tons rated cargo, shock loads of up to 10 tons. Do we have these numbers for the alien ship?”

“Roughly, yes,” Venkat said. “We’re trying to tighten the numbers now. Using the rough conversions worked out by Watney and the ship’s engineer, the ship weighed approximately sixty tons at launch, not counting crew and supplies. Ten tons of that were the original power system and the Sparkle Drive, which were destroyed during the crash-landing. With most of the outer skin removed, the current estimated mass is forty-five tons. The landing gear were built to withstand landing impacts of up to ten meters per second, so a shock load of sixty tons per wheel set is a reasonable estimate.”

The same engineer spoke up again, saying, “But the alien ship isn’t structurally sound as it stands, right? They ripped out their aft airlock. And there’s a hole in the hull underneath.” He shook his head. “A long-distance tow will make that worse.”

“Can they cut off that section?” another engineer spoke up. “We didn’t send welding torches or saws with the Ares supplies.”

“Are we all familiar with the alien claims of ‘magic’?” Venkat asked. After heads nodded, he continued, “Based on Watney’s reports, we can conclude that at the least they have heavy lifting and cutting capabilities, at least for short periods. I assume they also have welding and even transmutation abilities on a limited scale, but we don’t have confirmation of those yet.”

“Okay.” The engineer stepped up beside Venkat, took a marker, and drew a rough outline of the alien ship on the board. “We have them cut off the tail entirely,” he said. “Remove the engines, then scrap everything else aft of the bulkhead for their engine room. Even if we add the engines back on, what does that get us down to? Thirty tons? Thirty-five?”

Another engineer spoke up. “What kind of acceleration can we count on from these engines?”

“Our last rough numbers were four meters per squared second for a fifty-ton ship,” Venkat said. “Those are very rough, and we hope to get better ones soon from Watney.”

“So what kind of acceleration do we get for a thirty-five ton ship?”

The engineer at the whiteboard did a bit of quick math and came up with about 5.6 meters per squared second. “That nets us 1.8 meters per squared second above local gravity,” he said. “What about fuel?”

“Magic power,” Venkat said. “Two seventy-kilogram batteries power the engines at full throttle for three and a quarter seconds.”

The room went silent. “Do the batteries get any lighter when drained?” the engineer at the whiteboard asked.

“No, they do not,” Venkat replied firmly.

“That’s a lot of weight to get any reasonable flight duration, Dr. Kapoor.”

“I know. Previously we scratched the Phoenix flight for that exact reason.”

One of the female engineers pushed her way to the front. “Here’s your solution,” she said. “We don’t fly, and we don’t tow. We build an RV.”

Ignoring the confused mutters of her colleagues, she drew a rover underneath the sketch of the alien ship. “Take Rover 1 and strip it down to the chassis,” she said. “Pressure vessel, gone. Computers, controls, benches, life support, all of it gone. We don’t need it. Leave the linkages for towing, the chassis and the wheels, and you’ve got a two-ton trailer that can carry eight additional tons on-”

“And we pile the equipment on the trailer! Good idea!” one engineer said.

“No, no, no,” the woman said. “You’re forgetting that the testing and checkouts for the loads were all performed on Earth. Mars gravity is two-fifths Earth’s.”

“Mass is mass wherever you go,” another engineer said.

“But in this case that only applies to shock loads,” the woman said. “If we had a flat highway on Mars, that trailer could carry twenty-four tons of mass.”

“Even if what you say is true,” Venkat said, “that’s still less than the ship.”

“We sent two spare wheels for the rovers up with the presupply missions,” the woman said. “We replace the front landing gear wheels with our spares. Mount the ship on the rover chassis backwards so that the nose hangs off the rear and is supported by the landing gear. That supports the full load, keeps us beneath weight limits, and allows the whole caravan to travel at speed. Watney will have to avoid sudden bumps or steep changes in elevation, but if he’s smart he’ll do that anyway.

“We get living space, cargo space, all of it. And bonus, we can bolt solar panels to the roof of the alien ship without compromising the pressure vessel, using all the attachment points for the outer skin and cooling system. That’s more power while rolling and less work on EVAs during recharge cycles. And it gives the crew about the same habitat space as the old space shuttles. This,” she said, tapping her sketches on the board, “is the way to go.”

Venkat looked around the room. “Does this work out?”

Some heads nodded. Some shook negatively. Others weren’t looking up, because they were doing things to phones or scratch pads.

“Well, this sounds like a good idea to me,” Venkat said. “Tell me if the math works. If it does, then start writing up the assembly procedure. Always remember, we can only use what Watney has up there plus cutting power and lifting power. Anything else is questionable. Contact me directly if you need data.”

With that Venkat left engineers to do what engineers do best: argue about why something can’t be done until, suddenly, they’ve done it.

Author's Note

I gave this a lot of serious thought.

Hopping Amicitas to Schiaparelli was always a longshot at best, as prior discussions on the subject made pretty clear. But in the book Watney had both rovers crammed absolutely full of equipment, including the atmospheric regulator, oxygenator, and two hydrogen storage cells from the Hab, for just himself. He even built a double-sized homemade pop tent, using canvas cannibalized from the Hab, so he wouldn't go stir crazy like he did on the Pathfinder trip. Using the two rovers for all six castaways just didn't fly.

But I wasn't at all sure that a rover chassis could handle the weight of even a stripped-down Amicitas, so I did some research.

Back before Constellation was cancelled, NASA paid for the construction of two Surface Exploration Vehicles- the next generation of moon buggies, fully pressurized with docking ports that could link up directly with the next generation lunar landers that, sadly, never got off the design board. The rovers weigh three tons each with a maximum weight load of four tons (not much more than two astronauts in suits), and their performance stats for speed and endurance are roughly half those given in Weir's book for the Ares rovers.

And finally, although the Constellation rovers can handle rough terrain, they do it agonizingly slowly by raising and lowering one wheel at a time. It's anything but a robust design, and I suspect that if Constellation had continued NASA would have gone back to the drawing board with it. It's obvious that the Ares rovers are in every way stronger, faster, and generally beefier than the Constellation rover would have been.

So I decided to make the Ares rovers a bit larger. After all, they have to be able to tow one another, carry large quantities of rock samples, and even drag wayward supply pods to the Hab site if necessary. I didn't go overboard, because one of the other requirements would be keeping it small enough to fit in one of the presupply launches.

Now I come to "shock load," which may not be the proper physics or engineering term for what I'm thinking of.

To explain: every time you stand up, your legs are actively decelerating you at nine point eight meters per squared second. If you're in a chair and you pull your feet up, the material of your chair is doing the exact same thing. That's because every part of you is actively being accelerated towards Earth's center of mass at nine point eight meters per squared second. Your legs, or the chair, and the ground beneath your feet are all resisting that pull, which is what prevents you from being sucked down into the ground by Earth's gravity.

Load ratings for vehicle chassis assume this nine point eight meters per squared second, and no more. That's what weight means, in this sense.

But shock force goes beyond that. Shock force is when you drop something on the vehicle. An object moving at nine point eight meters per squared second when it hits the truck bed (let's say we're talking about a truck) will act, for a moment, as if it weighs twice as much as it actually does. The vehicle has to resist not only gravity but the momentum of the object. A load that your truck could normally handle without a problem, if it hits the bed fast enough, will totally void your warranty, and possibly also your insurance policy, and if you're in or near the truck at the time, possibly your breathing capabilities.

The shock load rating is there because parts or all of the chassis will undergo forces well beyond ordinary gravity every time the vehicle hits a bump or a ditch or something. The vehicle has to be able to withstand such things, especially on Mars, which is full of rocks and bumps and ruts and craters and stuff.

But the thing is, prior to the first Mars landing, NASA has only one option for testing these rovers: Earth. Which means all these requirements have to be fulfilled in a gravity well two and a half times their intended environment. NASA isn't likely to relax their standards on this- after all, more safety margin is more safety.

But although weight changes according to what gravity well you're in, mass is constant. A stationary load in a stationary rover will exert only two-fifths the force on the chassis on Mars as it would on Earth, but that same load in the rover going over a bump at speed will exert almost exactly the same force on Mars as it would on Earth.

Which means, if I don't get a better idea, Watney is going to have to be the kind of driver we all cuss at on the interstate- hell, the kind we cuss at in the suburban development, who treats every "Slow- Speed Bump" sign as a stop sign. In between the extra weight in his rover and the Amicitas-Rover bastard child trailer, the difference between his actual load and his shock load maximum is going to be pretty small.

But I think that kind of driving is the kind you want when you're crossing 3200 kilometers of a planet just waiting to kill you the very first time you fuck up even an itty bitty bit...

Sol 193

MISSION LOG – SOL 193

Went out to the cave farm today. It’s actually warm there now- only a few degrees cooler Centigrade than in the Hab. Apparently sealing the cave properly also insulated it more efficiently. I’ve turned down the remaining space heater. I considered uninstalling it, but even if it is springtime on Acidalia Planitia, outdoor temperatures still hit nearly -80 C at night. We might need that heater in here, and the ones we already pulled out too. Better safe than sorry.

We’re a little more than halfway to the next harvest. The alfalfa is recovering beautifully from the cutting a month ago. The potato plants are prospering, and a few are even flowering. Of course that’s a waste, since we don’t need potato seeds- I’ve kept a few spuds safe from freezing in the Hab just in case, so we can start over. If anything I’d like to see the alfalfa blooming, since we only have about a third of the original seed remaining. I would love to get replacement seed, because the ponies absolutely, positively need alfalfa for continued survival. But no, no signs of flower buds.

Oh, and Cherry Berry’s saplings are bifurcating with amazing speed. They look like they’re a year old, maybe two, already. I could almost believe we might get a harvest out of them before we have to abandon this place. (Not that I’m mentioning that to Cherry Berry, since she spends almost as long with the trees as she does with the hay, never mind that there’s five hundred square meters of alfalfa and only one row of saplings. Whatever keeps her sane and focused is fine by me, and I don’t want to fuck it up.)

After we got back to the Hab I discovered we had some homework from the new team at JSC, who have accepted my suggested name of Project Sirius. Go me! My first step on the ladder of bureaucratic achievement! In five years they’ll be painting my name on Teddy Sanders’ door! Well, no, not likely, since the only things I’ve administered are plants, some Eritrean farmers, and five adorable but unpredictable aliens. But a man can dream.

Anyway, the rest of today was about math and engineering. A lot of the math depends on the procedures NASA sent us for testing the power of Friendship’s engines and maneuvering thrusters. And, of course, all the engineering is about how to actually carry those procedures out.

Here’s how that’s going to work. First we have to dismount all three of the ship’s main engines, complete with the replacement engine bells the ponies stole from the MAV landing stage. I then get to take the three remaining intact landing struts off the MDV and use some scrap metal to make a holding cradle for the engines.

Now, according to the rough unit conversions Dragonfly and I whipped up, each of those engines weighs about one and a half tons, conservative estimate. The large rock sample scale maxes out at 500 kilograms. It’s calibrated to Mars gravity, so the readout will show its mass accurately. We put the scale under one foot of the cradle and, in theory, it will show one-third of the weight of the engine plus the cradle.

In order for that to work, of course, the cradle will have to be perfectly symmetrical and the engine perfectly centered inside it. That means precision craftsmanship. The hammer will have to stay at home and read a book for this one. And then, of course, the cradle will have to be absolutely level after the scale is stuck under the foot, because tipping it will change the center of gravity and throw off the results.

That’s a lot of work, and the numbers will still be fuzzy, but not as fuzzy as they are now. More to the point, this method also gives us the best shot at an accurate measurement of the power of those engines. We’ll have the engine hooked up to a couple of Starlight’s magic batteries and controls from Friendship. We kick the engine on at minimum power and, very gradually, we ramp up the power until the scale reads one-quarter its starting load. We don’t want to go farther than that, because the last thing in the world we want is a liftoff of an engine connected to loose things by long cables.

Once we have a reading of what percentage of full power takes away three-quarters of the weight of the whole, we can extrapolate the maximum power from there. Also, we can monitor the power readout of the batteries and get a good idea of how quickly the power drains out. When that’s done, we power down as slowly as we can before the batteries run out, because we don’t want all that weight coming back onto the scale at once. We can’t fix or replace that scale, and if we fuck it up, our only backup plan is to cobble together a sled, pile rocks on it, and test Friendship to see how good it would do at a tractor pull.

The math as we currently have it is like this: one of Starlight’s batteries will run one of the main engines for about four point four seconds if it doesn’t recharge itself. In the pony universe this wasn’t really a problem. The batteries are also passive energy collectors, and in Pony-land space magic energy is literally everywhere. The thing is, each battery weighs about seventy kilos, so in order to power all three engines for one minute at full throttle, you need forty-one batteries. That’s not quite three tons, or about two-thirds the estimated weight of the engines themselves.

Now, that’s not terrible compared to the weight of a liquid-fueled rocket at takeoff- on the contrary. But the problem is, with a liquid-fueled rocket the ship’s weight decreases the longer you fly, so what’s left becomes more effective. But with magic battery powered flight, the weight remains constant. You’re dragging every ounce the whole flight, and the rocket never gets any more efficient.

So why bother? Because so long as the thrust-weight ratio of the ship these things get attached to is higher than 1, they’re worth having along. It’s positive delta-V, and we’re going to need every bit of delta-V we can cobble together to get off this rock. We estimate that these three engines, at full throttle, could just about allow Friendship as it currently is to hover- an estimated forty-five tons. The three engines plus the batteries for one minute of flight add up to a lot less than forty-five tons, which means all that excess thrust goes into pushing up the rest of the craft- which already has engines with a greater-than-1 thrust-weight ratio.

But, again, that’s seven point four tons, give or take two hundred kilograms, of extra mass on the ship that’s only useful for one minute. After that it’s dead weight. And, of course, adding more batteries for a longer flight also adds more weight, which makes the engines less useful. And, finally, there’s a simple matter of space; all this crap is going to have to be bolted, strapped, or glued to the outside of the MAV, and there’s only so much room for that.

Nobody at NASA has said so out loud yet, but it’s pretty obvious that the only way this works is if we re-use the landing stage. The landing stage engines have a thrust-weight ratio of about 1.1, just enough to land the thing after aerobraking and parachutes have done all they can do. With all tanks full, the landing stage has about three minutes of full power flight. Between the hydrazine monopropellant still in the Ares IV MAV’s tanks, the leftovers in the MAV and MDV here, and maybe a little pony magic, we should be able to get one minute of flight out of it and then activate the first stage ascent engines.

I grant you, one minute of 1.1 plus whatever the pony engines contribute isn’t going to be a hell of a lot of actual speed. But it’s speed we otherwise wouldn’t get.

And the whole point of this rigamarole is this: we need to know exactly, or as close as we can get, how much more speed this will be, so that JPL or JSC or whoever can plan the flight profile of the rest of the launch. We need to know how fast we can expect the MAV to be going when the first ascent stage lights and the landing stage gets dumped. All the other modifications to the MAV- lightening the load, adding fuel, whatever- depend on that information being accurate. Get it too badly wrong either way, and we miss our date with Hermes.

So Dragonfly, Starlight, Fireball and I tiger-teamed that for a while, figuring out how we’re going to build the cradle, dismount the engines and control systems, and so forth. Then I sat down to do some more math, and this is a bit more critical.

Based on the first harvest, the next hay harvest should provide enough to extend the ponies an alfalfa-only diet through Sol 520, taking into account the potatoes they’ve been eating so far to stretch the harvests. We already have more than enough potatoes to carry us through to launch day, even if all the food packs got stolen by Murphy. For food purposes alone, in about three weeks both the cave farm and the Hab farm become superfluous.

But that’s not the only thing we need. The cave provides faster magic recharge now than the Hab, so we store most of the new batteries there until we need them. If we lose the cave, we lose a lot of our magic production. That’s important, because we need roughly five times the batteries we currently have to make the Rich Purnell plan work.

Follow me here. The Rich Purnell plan has the five hundred kilo rock sample bay filled with a new Sparkle Drive. Six batteries is four hundred and twenty kilos, leaving eighty kilos for the Drive itself. Forty-one batteries for one minute’s use of the pony ship’s engines at liftoff. And one battery for emergencies, because God knows Mars isn’t going to stop fucking with us even after we leave.

Forty-eight batteries.

We currently have nine.

And even with the cave, the recharge time from zero to full for those batteries is seventeen sols- and we need at least two full batteries to make up to two new batteries. And sealing the cave a few days ago zeroed out the batteries we have, so it’s going to be another twelve sols before any batteries get built at all- and that’s if we didn’t use any magic at all in the meantime. But we have to use magic, because these tests, dismantling the ship, etc.

Argh.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m not really alive. I’m just an animated sprite in a resource-management video game. Balance your magic reserves, food stocks, and sanity level, and see how long you can keep Mark Watney alive! Buy now and get the Pastel Colored Aliens DLC for only $4.99!

If I am a video game character, I wish the user would go online and download the fan-made Dejah Thoris mod. Just sayin’.

Author's Note

I have to go back into town tomorrow for blood work. Which is going to be so much fun, considering that I'm phobic of needles.

I think today's Watney infodump is clear enough to not require explanation.

I just got the commissioned artwork of the castaways back from TexasUberAlles aka Jason Meador. I'll post it soon, but not today and likely not tomorrow.

Sol 194

“Venk, have you got a minute?”

Venkat looked up from his notepad, where he’d been doodling numbers, graphs, and rough diagrams of the MAV. “Of course, Annie,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

Annie stepped into his office, shutting the door behind her. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”

“Well, for starters you’ve just said two almost grammatically correct sentences in a row in private without any profanity,” Venkat said. “Also, you usually greet me with a demand of some kind or a complaint about how tough your job is. That plus your tone of voice tells me you have tremendously bad news for me, or else you want a special favor.”

“Fucking Sherlock Holmes,” Annie muttered. “Yeah, you’re right. I want a special favor. There’s a reporter who’s done me favors in the past, and she wants a one-on-one interview with the alien captain, Cherry Berry. I want to know when we can get her a day on the Pathfinder chat.”

Venkat dropped his pen. “Annie, do you have any idea what you’re asking?” he said. “Lightspeed lag is well over twenty minutes now. And that’s not counting typing time on both ends. Total bandwidth is well under a kilobit per second. We’d have to push everything aside for that, and your reporter might get ten, eleven questions and answers, tops. Can’t she settle for email and follow-ups?”

“She says she wants a live interview,” Annie grumbled. “I know the problems, Venk, I see the time-stamps on the chat. But this is Berenice MacReady at the Times of London. She’s practically our biggest cheerleader in Europe. Do I need to remind you about all the ESA funding that’s going into the rescue effort? Because Bernie reminded me, Venk. Gave me chapter and fucking verse on it. And she’s done her best to sell our spin on every aspect of this thing, so we owe her big.”

Venkat sighed, leaning back in his chair and considering the logistics. “If we do this, every other news source is going to demand interviews, too,” he said. “Can you deal with that?”

“I’ve been dealing with it for weeks,” Annie said firmly.

“NASA can’t be seen to play favorites,” Venkat continued. “That means the only way we don’t get a black eye from this is if we arrange things so that Cherry requests the interview. You’ll have to make that happen, in secret.”

“Doable.”

“Your friend will have to be on-site either here or at JPL,” Venkat said. “Considering the chaos in Pasadena right now, here would be better. And she’ll have to be here for days until we hit a day with no urgent business. Is she good with that?”

“She’s already part of the press pool here,” Annie said. “She lives in a microsuite hotel down in Texas City. It won’t be a problem.”

“And impress upon her,” Venkat added, “that her time is extremely limited. The first two hours of a day is ours for daily business. She gets nine hours after that, if we don’t need to break in for some kind of emergency. So she’d better get what she needs as quickly as possible, because she won’t get a second chance.”

“I’ll tell her.”

Venkat sighed. “Then set it up,” he said. “And you and she both owe me big time, Annie.”

“Put it on the tab,” Annie replied, utterly without shame or gratitude. She glanced down at the desk and saw Venkat’s scribbles. “What’s this all about?” she asked.

“Drinks-napkin guesstimates,” Venkat said. “Trying to get some idea of how much good it would do to bolt the pony rocket engines onto the landing stage of a MAV.”

“Isn’t that JPL’s job?”

“Yes, but it gnaws at me,” Venkat said. “And it’ll be a couple months before JPL gets serious about it. Their hands are full with Sleipnir right now. So I’m working the numbers for my own satisfaction.”

“How do they work out?” Annie asked. “It seems to me it’d make things worse instead of better. For years you’ve had me explain to reporters how important it was to keep the MDV and MAV as lightweight as possible to save fuel.’

“How much do you know about thrust-weight ratios?”

“If thrust to weight is about one, you hover. If it’s more than one, you fly. If it’s less than one, you either stay on the pad or you crash.” Annie shrugged. “After that it’s egghead territory, and I get lost.”

“Okay.” Venkat pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and began drawing. “The MAV landing stage has a thrust-weight ratio-“ he labeled this TWR- “-of 1.2 in Martian gravity. That’s very little, but it’s all it needs to slow the MAV from about one hundred meters per second to a safe soft landing in under three minutes.”

“Why not more power? Bigger engines? More fuel?”

“The more weight we put on the craft to start with, the more fuel we need to launch it from Earth, and the harder it is to soft-land on Mars,” Venkat said. “That trade-off, by the way, is why the MDV landing is the single greatest point of danger for Ares astronauts. Once an MDV enters atmosphere, there’s no abort scenario. It’s land or die. Building it to include an abort mode back to orbit would make it as big as the MAV.

“But I’m getting away from the MAV. The MAV runs on hydrazine using a catalytic grill to make it hypergolic. The thrusters on the MDV use the same fuel. Between the residue in the Ares IV MAV and the Ares III MDV, we might get one minute of flight out of that stage. In theory that’s bonus acceleration, an early boost to orbit.”

“You say in theory,” Annie replied. “Obviously not in real life. Why?”

“In Mars gravity, a TWR of 1.2 means only 0.76 meters per second of acceleration every second. That means, after one minute, the whole ship would only be going about forty-five meters per second. Coming down that's OK because the MAV uses parachutes and aerobraking to go from orbital velocity down to below 100 meters per second, and the rockets can take it from there.

“But Mark and friends need to get to something like six kilometers per second, and while forty-five meters per second is nice in theory, it's suicidal in practice, given the time required for staging. At the end of one minute, the rocket would just barely be even with the rim of Schiaparelli Crater. In less than ten seconds it would begin falling, and twenty second after that it would hit the ground again. The MAV pilot would have to manually light the first ascent stage engines and release the launch clamps connecting it to the landing stage without a bobble or a hitch, or else they die. Or, if they do it slowly but well, they end up using more fuel in the first stage than if they’d just launched normally.

“So, long story short, re-using the descent stage alone doesn’t buy us enough speed or altitude to be worth the danger to the crew. But if we add the alien ship’s main engines to the mix, the math changes.”

“How so?” Annie asked. “More weight, right?”

“Yes, more weight,” Venkat agreed, “but a hell of a lot more thrust. Our ballpark estimate is that those three engines at full throttle could hover forty-five tons of weight on Mars. That means they produce forty-five Martian tons of thrust, for a TWR of one. But if they’re just lifting themselves, that TWR is a lot better.”

Annie shook her head. “You’ve lost me.”

Venkat tapped his chin with his pen. “Okay, forget the MAV and the ponies for the moment,” he said. “Let me tell you of the thrilling adventures of Captain Buck Watney in his faithful potato-powered spaceship.”

Annie smirked. “Thunderspuds are go?”

Venkat smirked back. “Something like that. Thunderspud 1 weighs fifty-two tons at launch, and its first stage produces sixty-two and a half tons of thrust, for a TWR of about 1.2. But he’s in a hurry, so he needs some boosters to get to space quicker.”

Annie nodded. “Okay, I see that. Kind of like the space shuttle or Falcon Heavy?”

“Exactly. But let’s say a certain ex-president sells Buck Watney a couple of boosters with his name on them.” Venkat drew a couple of missiles next to a more conventional sci-fi rocket shape. “Let's say each of these weighs five tons and produces four tons of thrust, for a TWR of four to five- less than one. What that means is that, launched alone, these so-called rockets wouldn't even leave the pad until half of more of their fuel was expended.

“Strapping two of those onto Thunderspud 1 produces a craft that weighs sixty-two tons and produces seventy point five tons of thrust at liftoff, for a TWR of 1.137.”

“Which is less than 1.2,” Annie nodded. “Congratulations, Watney's just wasted the Space Orphans and Widows Fund in order to fluff an ex-president’s ego.”

“Right. And Buck Watney is upstanding, honest, and not an idiot,” Venkat said, “so he doesn’t do that. Instead he chooses the Rainbow Mustang Sparkly Necklace System. The system weighs seven and a half tons, but produces a whopping forty tons of thrust. Now that’s a different story! Wrap one of these around Thunderspud 1 and you get a ship that weighs 59.5 tons and produces one hundred two and a half tons of thrust at liftoff, for a TWR ratio of about…” Venkat pulled a calculator over and did the math. “…1.72.”

“Which is lots more than 1.2, right?” Annie asked. “Buck Watney must really be moving.”

“Not that much,” Venkat admitted. “To give you an idea, the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle both launched at about 1.5 TWR. But fuel consumption lightens the load, so both vehicles had a peak TWR of about 3. We launch unmanned vessels at a peak TWR of 15 or even higher because, unlike people, probes don't get broken ribs and internal bleeding due to high G loads.

“But getting back to reality,” Venkat said, “those numbers I gave you didn’t come from nowhere. The MAV with landing stage is fifty-two tons, including fuel. On Mars it has a TWR of 1.2. And the pony rockets- the Rainbow Mustang Sparkly Necklace System- weighs four and a half tons, plus about three more tons for the batteries needed to power them all for about a minute. On Mars they can lift about forty-five tons. And one minute of acceleration at 1.72 TWR on Mars comes up to about three meters per second of acceleration. At the end of that minute, the MAV would be going roughly two hundred meters per second at an altitude of almost six kilometers- a safe speed and height to cut loose the landing stage, light the first ascent stage, and really begin moving.”

“Okay, I’m up with you now,” Annie said. “But why not add more batteries or more fuel?”

“For one thing, the ponies only have materials on hand for about a hundred batteries maximum,” Venkat said. “Beyond that they’d have to make the frames, controls and connections from scratch. For another, we’re not one hundred percent sure they can make more hydrazine, and the landing stage engines aren’t compatible with any other fuel they might be able to mix from materials on-site.

“But the biggest reason is weight,” Venkat said. “We can’t extend the pony engines to run for the full burn time of the first ascent stage. That’s just not an option. And we don’t have a safe, non-destructive way of detaching those engines when they burn out. There’s a chance the parts would collide with the engines after release and wreck the ship. So if we put them anyplace other than the descent stage, they’d be dead weight for at least one minute of the ascent. And we can’t afford any dead weight at all on this launch.

“So, if we can find a way of doing it safely, we’re going to attach the pony engines to the landing stage, burn it for a minute, and drop it all and let it crash back to Mars.” Venkat sighed. “It’s a horrible waste, but unless we can figure out a way to replace some of the upper stage engines with the pony engines, it’s the most efficient way to use them.”

“Huh,” Annie said.

“Beyond this, Bruce will tackle the other end of the equation,” Venkat continued. “That means ditching everything Mark and friends can live without to make the ship lighter. Any weight we can strip from the MAV will increase its TWR and make all the engines more efficient. That’s where our real hope for rescuing them lies- that and the Sparkle Drive.” He shook his head and added, “Gods, I hope we don’t need to use it.”

“Huh,” Annie repeated.

“Did I lose you again, Annie?”

“No, no,” Annie said, smirking. “I’m just wondering how Watney will react when I tell him we’re changing the MAV’s name to Thunderspud 1.”

“What?” Venkat glared at Annie. “No. No no, no no no. You are not going to-“

“See you later, Venk,” Annie said, “I have a press conference in seven minutes.”

“Don’t you dare tell him, Annie, I mean it!” Venkat snapped. “Do you hear me? You get back here!”

On Mars, inside the crystal cave extending under Site Epsilon, the temperature warmed.

The alfalfa plants, extending only a foot or so above the surface, delved several meters below, deep below the cultured topsoil painstakingly developed by the castaways and into almost virgin Martian soil, pushing and prying against the gradually melting permafrost. The roots brought with them bacteria from the upper soil levels, mostly beneficial, but a few less so.

The newly reinforced, airtight silicon dioxide and regolith-concrete walls of the cave acted as a superior heat insulator, allowing the heat produced by the solar lighting system, the water heating pipes, and the space heater to remain in the cave. The heat warmed the air, warmed the plants, and gradually warmed the soil, to depths none of the castaways were aware existed.

The castaways thought the lava tube was symmetrical, sloping down as it approached its source at the center of the ancient dead volcano. They were wrong. The dust and soil that had blown in from the surface sloped down, but the rock beneath it sloped up as you reached the rear of the cave. Put another way, the dirt near the entrance was deeper, far deeper, than the vast open area above.

And in its depths, below the plain water ice permafrost, there were more ancient deposits, of water and of other things that welled up from the depths rather than down from the shallow layers of Martian sand and rock.

Trapped in those deposits, where they had remained for uncounted millions of years, were pockets of methane hydrate, ice that contained large amounts of methane in its crystalline lattice.

The alfalfa roots reached down, bringing warmth and bacteria to the depths.

The first of the methane pockets began to thaw.

Tiny trickles of methane gas began, very slowly, to permeate up through the root system, displacing the oxygen in the soil. Beneficial bacteria began to die off.

Less beneficial bacteria tasted the methane and found it good.

They were fruitful, and multiplied.

Author's Note

This is about as close as I'm going to get to putting current politics into this story.

Anyway, yeah, the pony engines going on the descent stage isn't a done deal yet, but it seems like the best option for 'em at the moment. This chapter was originally going to be an explanation of why throwing the pony engines on the MAV at all made sense, in response to a comment to the previous chapter, but I spent so much time on the answer that I said, "screw it, this becomes today's chapter."

As for the other thing... we know Mars periodically lets loose with small releases of methane gas. The combination of trace water vapor and oxygen in the atmosphere plus unshielded ultraviolet radiation means methane doesn't stick around long, and that means that Mars's trace of atmospheric methane has to be continually replaced from somewhere. One theory for where it's coming from is deep subterranean pockets of ancient Martian bacteria, struggling to survive after their original biome died out, releasing methane. Another theory- more probable- is that the methane is bound up in permafrost hydrate/clathrate deposits, which thaw or sublimate every once in a while as they're exposed to the surface. Curiosity's on that case, but we haven't got a definitive answer yet.

But it's probable enough, for purposes of this story, for me to stick that time bomb in the cave.

The sound you hear is the Galactic Ghoul laughing.

EDIT: Venkat's forgot something in his number-crunching. I'm leaving the error in to be caught by Bruce Ng much later in the story.

Sol 195

MISSION LOG – SOL 195

Let’s talk about food.

Today is my fourth day in a row on the strict potatoes-garnished-with-dried-alfalfa diet. I’m sure you’ll understand when I say I have no desire to talk or even think about that now.

I have 313 food packs remaining for myself and 49 reserved for the three ponies. At two-thirds rations, that’s about 140 days for me and seven days for the ponies. Since we have to reserve seven days of food for the MAV in case we have to attempt a run for Earth, all 49 vegetarian food packs have been set aside for that, plus sixteen of my own.

Each pack averages a weight of about 350 grams. That means the total weight of those food packs is 126.7 kilograms, give or take a few. The weight of the food packs for the ship is only 22.75 kilograms, but the gang of geniuses they have working out how to get us to Schiaparelli and into space via the MAV aren’t happy even about that. If they could figure a way for us to live off love like Dragonfly for a week (one week’s supply of love at full rations weighs 0 kilograms), they would.

The thing is, obviously we don’t have enough food packs for the trip to Schiaparelli plus however long it takes to get the MAV ready for liftoff. That means we’ll have to haul hay and potatoes with us- a LOT of hay and potatoes.

The current plan is to get us there on Sol 501, allowing fifty days for whatever modifications we need to make. Right now the dream team at JSC is estimating a trip of one hundred days, what with delays and the extra weight on the rover motors and like that. Their idea is to basically stick the Rover 1 chassis under Friendship, add a couple of wheels, and make it a sort of travel trailer for Rover 2.

Yeah. A really big, really heavy travel trailer. You might even say a Whinnybago.

And that much weight will gut our daily travel range, which is why the boffins are only estimating an average of 35 kilometers per day, even if we use the Schwartz.

So we’re spending the day today completing the strip job on Friendship, ripping off every bit of the outer skin. Once we’ve done that, we build a huge pile of rocks for the middle to rest on, remove the thrusters and main engines from the tail, and then lop off the back half of the ship. That will require magic, and Starlight insists that no major spells get used until the next round of battery making, so that last step won’t happen for a couple weeks yet. But we’re going to get rid of everything we can, inside and out, in the meantime.

Cabinet doors for the living quarters and galley? Gone. We may go for the cabinets themselves later- the compartment was built around them, so getting them out the airlock door will be a challenge. Copilot flight controls? Good-bye. Two spare flight couches? Adios. (Which still leaves five, three of which were rebuilt using MDV flight seat parts, to be installed into the MAV when we get to Schiaparelli.) And as we can think of parts that won’t be needed either on the trip or at its destination, they get dumped too. The less our custom-built Whinnybago weighs, the less power it takes to make it move, and the farther we can go before stopping to recharge.

But the thing is, we need food, and we need space. Space is a more urgent issue, in a sense, because we have very little of it and we need as much as we can get just so we don’t feel like we’re trapped in a rolling sardine can.

Here’s the deal. The food packs we’re taking on the trip, as I mentioned, mass over a quarter of a metric ton. But they’re packed specifically to be compact and to stack perfectly, so they take up as little room as possible. The pony ship originally had storage space for over 600 food packs, so the cabinets will hold the ones we have pretty easily.

Raw alfalfa and frozen potatoes aren’t as compact- or even as light. It takes about a kilo of alfalfa and/or potatoes to equal the calorie load of three-quarter meal pack rations (about 800 grams). The potatoes take up about half again the space that meal packs do. Hay rolls take up double the space of meal packs.

Luckily we also have Fireball, who gets by on a couple bites of quartz because quartz is damn dense and heavy. But we’ll still need a minimum of 157 kilograms of quartz for him for the trip.

So: for one hundred and fifty days, we need to add 607 kg to the load, on top of the 127 kg we already have for the remaining food packs. In round numbers, that’s three quarters of a ton and enough space to fill all the cabinets and the bunks in Friendship’s habitat compartment. And that’s before we load any of the other shit we’re going to need.

That’s too much. We’ve already been told that the trip will rely on the Friendship life support system, linked up through the tow hook couplings to Rover 2. No oxygenator, no water reclaimer, no atmospheric regulator, and not more than fifty liters (50 kg) of water as an emergency backup supply. And if the weight budget for this trip is too tight to carry along the main backup system for a thing that absolutely can’t be repaired if it breaks, that’s when you know NASA has pushed way past safety margins and into Are You Fucked In the Head Land. We can’t afford three-quarters of a ton for food.

I’ve proposed two solutions. First, figure out some way to make the trip shorter. One hundred sols in transit, to be blunt, is an absurd amount of time anyway. And the shorter the transit time, the longer we get to spend in the relative spaciousness and security of the Hab, and the less food we have to haul along on the trip.

The other solution is for me and Starlight to duplicate the Pathfinder trip. Rover 2 as currently modified, plus the fourteen solar panels we used for that trip, can travel twice as far per day as the estimated top range of the Whinnybago. So I carry a bunch of food packs- one hundred days’ worth, basically- and leave them at a cache ten days’ travel towards the MAV (say 700 km or so), someplace where we can find it easily on the trip itself.

(Why a hundred days? Ten days in Rover 2 will be twenty days for the Whinnybago. Five people will be eating meals for those twenty days, which means when the rover and trailer reach the cache, the number of total meals eaten will be one hundred.)

This second solution has problems. For one thing, it only saves a little less than eighty kilograms. It requires me to be shut in the Rover with Starlight (or somebody) for another twenty day stretch, and the first time we did that we might have killed each other if Mars hadn’t tried to kill us both first. And the first time we did that we had sealed meal packs, not loose, prone-to-spoilage hay and potatoes. But the boffins might be able to turn the idea into something workable.

I’d very much prefer that we work out some way to speed up the trip. It’s the more sensible solution. If we cut the transit time in half- averaging 70 km per day, say- that cuts the food weight by one-third. Saving a quarter ton would be great.

But for me, the most critical food-related thought of the day is that I will not be able to consume any non-potato, non-alfalfa food until Sol 412. Two hundred and seventeen sols from now.

That reminds me: I don’t know how much salt weighs. We’re going to need plenty. In fact, we’re running a bit short right now. I need to talk to Starlight about that.

For now, though, back to work stripping Friendship of everything nonessential, like skin, bolts, cabinet doors, landing gear, wings, thrusters… you know, pissant unimportant things of that nature.

I shouldn’t joke about that. I don’t want to even guess what they’re going to ask us to pull off the MAV. I get shivers just thinking about that…

The crystals embedded within the standard life support system used by all Equestrian spacecraft were corundum- ruby for hot water, blue sapphire for cold water, green sapphire for the air. The crystals were durable, non-flammable, and among the most amenable to enchanting, but a strong enough impact or shockwave could cause them to crack or shatter. With this in mind, the life support system of Amicitas included pressure-wave baffles to limit explosions and small shock absorbing springs to protect the crystals in case the ship hit something hard.

Each crystal was mystically linked to a larger crystal from the same cutting back home millions of miles and several universes away. The large crystal took up water or air on one end of the link, and it came out of the smaller crystal at the other end, continuously, without pause, for as long as the system was active. The air crystal went a bit farther, absorbing and sending air through one side of the crystal, returning it through the other side, allowing for air circulation and eliminating any chance of carbon dioxide buildup.

When not active, the spell interrupted itself. The crystals remained magically linked, but the smaller crystals no longer received or transmitted material until reactivated by either end.

Once you got past the brain-melting complexity of the enchantment required to turn the joined crystals into de facto ends of a magic wormhole, the system was simple and effective. It had only one major flaw, a flaw which Twilight and over a dozen unicorns and non-unicorn scientists and wizards had worked without success to eliminate. The magic link, the teleport-turned-wormhole, handled ordinary air, water, and very simple, stable molecules without a problem… but it absolutely hated complex molecules.

Simply put, almost anything that would burn would, sometimes, do so spontaneously at the other end of the link. This didn't mean there was, for example, a thirty percent chance of all of it going bang; the "sometimes" referred to each individual molecule. If you put in, for example, half a gallon of ethyl alcohol on one end, what came out at the other end was about seventy percent alcohol, thirty percent water, molecular hydrogen, carbon dioxide, etc., and enough heat to ignite the remaining alcohol if an oxidizer was present. This was done multiple times, with alcohol, with petrochemicals, with a host of flammable liquids and solids, with varying levels of destruction and/or flame.

One infamous experiment involved actual cupcakes. The heat and waste products of the portion of carbohydrates that decayed in transit turned the portion that didn’t decay into a disgusting hot slurry that spattered all over the receiving end of the link.

Ponies, led by Twilight Sparkle, experimented to turn this into a workable rocket engine. The temperatures involved, plus the shock of ignition and air expansion, tended to shatter the life support crystals within seconds. Four years after the invention of the system, the experiments continued, with only modest results at either making a rocket or preventing the system from becoming a rocket, depending on the aim of the experiment in question.

In early days the air system transmitted a pure 75-25 nitrogen-oxygen blend. Experimentation and refinement of the system later determined that ordinary air would be safe, even with its traces of methane. This was fortunate, considering the effects of prolonged spaceflight rations on the digestive tracts of astromares. Trace methane would partially dissociate, oxidize, and disperse, barely raising the temperature at either end. It was, under normal conditions, a non-problem.

But just in case, each life support system was enchanted on the Equestrian end to shut the valves and power down the other end of the system if the crystal on either end of the link warmed beyond a certain point. This was a safety precaution to prevent either fire or possibly poisonous fumes from spreading across the magical connection. Like all the other failsafes on the system, it could only be overridden on the Equestrian end, where the crystal was that powered the shut-down system.

In the cave on Mars, a pocket of methane hydrate thawed in a bubble within a larger block of permafrost. Unlike the prior trickles of methane, mostly captured by the soil and eaten by bacteria, this large, suddenly liberated bubble of gas erupted through the artificial soil, blowing open a vent hole about five centimeters wide and five meters deep.

The gas circulated in the air, joined by more methane given a route to freedom by the miniscule eruption, and gradually drifted towards the air intake of the life support box.

On the other end, the air crystal, which had warmed only a few degrees above room temperature, began to sputter with a fitful, flickering flame, popping again and again with each fresh ignition.

In moments the crystal reached the temperature marked as the danger point, and the failsafes kicked in.

In the life support building on Cape Friendship in Equestria, alarms went off.

In the cave on Mars, air circulation stopped, and the lights of the life support unit, the only light source in the cave at night, winked out.

The cave went still and silent, as still and silent as it had been for billions of years before the intruders came.

And, unsensed by the one creature who imagined she could hear it, I am here became I am in trouble.

Author's Note

I've explained the life support in detail in comments and in CSP, but I don't think I've done so in The Maretian before.

Georg thought of "Whinnybago" before I did, so props to them.

Sol 196

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 197
ARES III SOL 196

Starlight Glimmer raised her head from her Hab cot, ears twitching at a sound she couldn’t hear. Opening her eyes to the most reluctant sliver of wakefulness, she squinted at the Ares III mission clock, giving the time in terms of Martian midnight. The numbers read 05:48. About an hour before local dawn, and more than that before any of them, except possibly Spitfire, would normally get up.

She craned her head to look at Spitfire’s bunk. The pegasus appeared to be sleeping soundly, snoring in a quiet and rhythmic manner. So, whatever had awakened her, it hadn’t been her preparing to launch a pre-dawn safety drill, as she’d done several times in the past.

She considered going back to sleep. Brain, eyes, and body all seconded the motion.

Her bladder, though, exercised a veto, and grumbling, stumbling in the dim light of the Hab during night mode, she tried to make her way as silently as possible to the Hab’s potty. To the relief of all, Mark had discontinued the collection of wastes for compost after the third round of soil experiments demonstrated that the alfalfa was fixing nitrates into the soil well enough to dispense with further soil cultivation.

It was a doubly relieved Starlight who, after a couple of minutes on the oddly proportioned commode, wended her way back to her bunk.

And then she heard the sound which had awakened her; a quiet trickling that had nothing to do with her bladder at all.

The sound was brief, but Starlight had a very good idea where it came from. Waking up quickly, she trotted to the cupboard the ponies had appropriated to store their spacesuits. When she opened the doors, a constellation of green, blue and red lights shone back at her. All five life support systems had been activated.

She was pretty sure they hadn’t been stored that way. Pretty sure. It was too early in the morning for certainties.

She pulled the top suit out- Dragonfly’s, she guessed, since the changeling was in and out of the Hab more than anypony else. The suit legs sloshed. Carefully she tipped out each booted foot, draining almost a pint of water from each leg out through the neckhole.

Starlight was still half asleep. She knew the suit life support systems wouldn’t turn themselves on under any circumstances, but they could be remote-activated from Equestria. She hadn’t quite got around to the conclusion that they wouldn’t do so if nopony was awake to listen unless it was something truly urgent. So, without thinking much about it, she arranged the suit so she could tap on the drinking spigot just inside the neckhole, and began tapping it, sending little squirts of water into the dirt floor next to a cluster of potato plants.

BLM-ESA DE ESA-F54 OP SG WTB K

Translated, politely: “Amicitas calling Baltimare, this is Starlight Glimmer; kindly tell me why have you been filling our spacesuits with water? Over.”

The response came back almost immediately:

ESA-F54 LSS SCRM FLMB GAS DTCTD CVE II LSS SCRM FLMB GAS DTCTD CVE AA INVSTG ASAP K

By the time the message ended Starlight had wet hooves and absolutely zero sleepiness left. She sent back:

BLM-ESA CFM LSS SCRM AA CFM FLMB GAS K

A moment later:

ESA-F54 U HRD ME K

Starlight felt a sudden return of the need for the potty.

BLM-ESA SN STND BY WL UPDT AR

And, as she tapped in the “out” signal, she shouted, “SUIT UP!”

A muddy, sloshy, sleepy minute or two of absolute confusion followed, but at the end of it Starlight had the undivided attention of five wide-awake, grumpy astronauts.

“Home called,” she said, keeping the conversation in English both for Mark’s sake and for practice. “They’ve been calling half the night, going by the water in our suits. The main life support system turned itself off last night. Home says there was a burnable gas detected.”

“Shit!” Mark snapped before anyone else could speak. “Any idea which flammable gas?”

Starlight shrugged. “The only way we know there’s… flambable anything is by the fire on the Equestrian end of the connection. The system shuts down before the flames get hot enough to hurt anything.”

Cherry Berry leaned forward. “Cave on fire?” she gasped, not bothering to struggle for proper grammar.

“Don’t know,” Starlight said. “You know how our life support works.”

“If the cave is on fire, we’re fucked. Bucked,” Mark added in Equestrian. The fact that buck was the one Equestrian word Mark had no problem pronouncing had become an old in-joke among the castaways, but nobody cracked a smile now.

“Okay. Starlight, Dragonfly, get water from out suits,” Cherry said. “Everyone else, quick breakfast. Mark, can tell your home?”

Mark squinted at the clock. “Not for another two hours, I can’t,” he said. “Earth is still below the horizon- hasn’t risen yet.” He shoved the helmet onto his suit- the only one that hadn’t got wet, making him the least soggy person in the Hab- and grabbed a food pack at random from the cabinet. “I’ll go prep Rover 2.”

“Okay,” Cherry said. “We leave fifteen minutes.”

“C-minus,” Starlight muttered to her commander.

“Whaaaaat?”

Dragonfly had taken a few moments during the drying of the spacesuits to inspect the soles of the feet for weaknesses or cracks. The recently repaired surfaces were all good to go, allowing the changeling to gallop alongside Mark’s rover along with Cherry Berry and Spitfire.

Starlight, whose damaged and patched suit couldn’t withstand a gallop, rode in the rover with Mark and Fireball, wishing the whole time she was out on the pre-dawn Martian surface with the other ponies. Mark had thrown caution to the wind, stripping the rover of its saddlebags and extra battery and running across Acidalia Planitia with the electric motors set to maximum. Each time the rover ran into the gullies that criss-crossed the ancient dried seabed, the front end shot forward, then dropped and slammed onto the downslope… and then, on the other side, the front end slammed into the slope, jumped up, and then took flight as Mars gravity proved insufficient to keep all four wheels on the surface. The front end would slam down again only a moment or two after the rear wheels cleared the top of the gully, jarring the occupants yet again.

The rover usually took a little more than half an hour to make the trip from the Hab to the cave farm. Mark’s reckless (and fortunately wreckless) driving shaved that to twenty-four minutes. At the end, as the three staggered out the rover’s air lock to join the ponies and changeling outside, Fireball said in Equestrian, “You know when I said I wanted to drive a General Lee?”

“Yes,” Starlight replied.

“I take it back. If I’d eaten breakfast, I’d be throwing up right now.”

The tiny sun was just rising over the eastern horizon as the castaways trudged up the slope to the cave entrance. As the cargo airlock salvaged from the Amicitas closed behind them, Mark said, “Keep your suits on. If the air isn’t circulating, there could be pockets of solid gas- no oxygen.”

“What kind of gas do you think it is?’ Dragonfly asked.

“It almost has to be methane,” Mark said. “That’s the only flammable gas we’ve ever found here in any quantity. But usually it’s only a trace- like, five parts per billion. There’s almost a million times more water in the Martian atmosphere than methane. But nothing else fits.”

The airlock finished equalizing, and Starlight opened the inner doors. Inside, the cave loomed down and out away from them, the enchanted crystals overhead just beginning to light up as the receiver crystals on top of the hill began absorbing sunlight and magically relaying it into the cave. Nothing was burning; nothing looked charred; in fact, the cave looked pretty much normal.

Cherry was the first out, ignoring Mark’s precautions, hauling off her helmet and then wriggling out of her suit as soon as she could.

“Cherry!” Mark shouted, trying to chase her.

“I can’t check plants in suit!” Cherry shouted back.

“Let her go,” Spitfire said, her suit still firmly on. “I’ll keep an eye on her.” She walked after the commander, as Fireball silently picked up Cherry’s suit and carried it behind her.

“What is methane?” Dragonfly asked after the interruption.

“CH4,” Mark said. “One atom carbon, four atoms hydrogen. Very flammable. Explosive in confined spaces. The MAV fuel plant makes it.”

“It is poison? Like hydrazine?”

“Not really,” Mark said. “The most dangerous thing about it is that it burns. The second most dangerous thing is, it can suffocate you. It’s not poison, but it’s not oxygen either. A lot of miners died deep underground from methane gas. Both ways.”

“Oooooooh!” Dragonfly’s glowing eyes widened. “You mean… damp-fire? That’s as close as I can get to our word for it. It’s a gas in deep caves and mines. Our diggers used to take…” The changeling glanced at Starlight, then averted her eyes and said carefully, “… things… to tell us when we found some.”

Starlight Glimmer could guess what the “things” were, and it wouldn’t have been canaries. She comforted herself by reminding herself that Dragonfly was speaking of what changelings called the Bad Old Days, Which Are Now Over. And, besides, in her own Bad Old Days Which Are Now Over, she’d done some things almost as bad, so she had no room to judge.

Which didn’t stop her from putting the human between herself and the bug.

The three of them- Mark, Dragonfly, and Starlight- walked over to where the Amicitas’s life support box sat, the main water outlet connected to the hydronic subterranean heating system. All the lights were dark; when the system had shut down, it cut off the hot water too. The cave, which had been comfortably warm just a couple of days before, now felt as chilly and clammy as the first day they began cultivating the soil inside the just-pressurized space.

Mark reached into a pouch on his space suit and brought out a small baggie and a rubber band. He used the band to secure the bag over the air release duct. He brought out a second baggie and rubber band and used those to close off the air intake. “Tell them to turn the system back on,” Mark said. “If it doesn’t work, we might as well go back to the Hab.”

Starlight left that task to Dragonfly, who was definitely the best at using the drinking straw to send Mares code. “Methane,” she said. “One carbon, four hydrogen. You mean like for stoves?”

Starlight could see Mark’s eyebrows go up inside his suit. “You use gas stoves?” he asked.

Starlight shrugged. “Some electric, some gas, some magic,” she said. “In the country, a lot of ponies still use wood stoves.”

“Huh,” Mark said, and muttered in a softer tone, “Learn something new every day.”

The lights on the life support system came on. Both the baggies bulged out; although one side of the air crystal sent and the other received, the two sides weren’t sealed from each other, so the incoming air could pressurize the whole system. The pipes gurgled as fresh hot water poured into the system. Mark breathed a sigh of relief, and Starlight only realized after the fact she’d done the same.

“Okay, we’re still in business,” Mark said. “Now to find out how much methane there is in here.”

“Isn’t any methane bad?” Starlight asked.

“The word of the day,” Mark muttered, pulling out another baggie, “is stoichiometry.” He stepped away from the life support box and into the alfalfa field, continuing, “Stoichiometry is the calculation of balancing out the input and the products from a chemical reaction. In short, it’s the science of how things burn.”

“Stoichiometry,” Starlight pronounced carefully.

“Don’t ask Fireball or Spitfire to say that,” Dragonfly chirped. “They’ll be grumpy for a week.”

“In this particular case,” Mark went on, “methane needs a certain amount of oxygen to burn. The ideal ratio is two oxygen molecules to one methane molecule. Normal Earth air- or your air- is about twenty percent oxygen, or a little more. So for the best burn, methane should be a bit more than nine percent of the air. Too little methane- below six percent of the air- and it can’t burn enough at a time to stay hot enough to keep the fire going. Too much methane- more than about twenty percent- and the oxygen gets crowded out, and the fire suffocates itself.”

“And you’re going to find out how much methane there is using that bag?” Starlight asked.

“Well, I know there’s less than twenty percent,” Mark said. “Because Cherry Berry hasn’t fallen over yet.” Indeed, the earth pony pilot was dashing from one spot to another in the farm, taking a few slow steps here, rushing over there, standing and stepping another moment, then running to another spot. Spitfire and Fireball tailed behind, both obviously expecting a sudden dramatic gasp for air, choking sounds, and a faint, based on their resigned expressions.

“But I’m hoping it’s below six percent,” Mark continued. “Below six percent… well, we’re not safe, because we’ll still be starved for oxygen outside our suits, but we won’t be in immediate danger of a fire or explosion.” The human twitched and added, “That wasn’t fun the first time.”

He handed two baggies to Dragonfly. “Take these to the next two chambers of the cave,” he said. “Do like this,” and he waved another baggie in the air, making it billow outwards, “and then seal it tight.” He held the baggie in his fingertips, closing the airtight zipper shut. “One bag for each chamber. Wait a minute.” He pulled out a marker from his tool belt, made a little mark on his space suit sleeve to test it, and put the letter B on one and C on the other. “B for the next chamber, C for the one beyond that. Can do?”

“Can do!” Dragonfly grinned, fangs gleaming. “Be right back!” With the bags tucked in one foreleg, she galloped off across the immense chamber to the curtain of insulation which hung down over the entrance to the rest of the cave.

As Mark pulled out yet another baggie and walked towards the row of cherry tree saplings along the edge of the farm, Cherry trotted over to them, Spitfire and Fireball in her wake. “Soil is sick,” she said. “Rotting. Worst in center of farm, not so bad at edges.”

Mark grunted. “Yeah, I was afraid of that,” he said. “Spitfire, when did you come here to fly last?”

Spitfire thought about this. “Four, five days?” she guessed. “Day before you came last.”

“Four sols ago,” Mark said. “Notice anything unusual?”

Spitfire shook her head. “Would have said,” she replied.

“Okay. Cherry, would you get back in your suit, please? And Spitfire, could you take a quick fly and see how it feels?”

Spitfire looked at Cherry, and Starlight noticed it took several seconds for the earth pony to realize that the ex-Wonderbolt wanted confirmation of orders. “Oh. Yeah, go ahead,” Cherry said, accepting her space suit back from Fireball and working her way back into it. Meanwhile Spitfire rushed through the same process in reverse.

“Keep an eye on me,” she said to the others as she got her wings free, giving them a test flap. Starlight watched as Spitfire crouched, lifted her wings, and jumped, pounding her wings for all she was worth until she was flying near the crystal-studded ceiling. Slowly, with obvious effort, she made a single loop of the chamber, once or twice swooping down and then climbing back up with intense effort. Finally, a little winded but no worse, she landed where she’d begun.

“Air is…” Spitfire rolled her eyes and switched to Equestrian. “The air doesn’t support me quite like it should. It’s a really small difference, like an altitude change.” She sniffed and added, “And just for a moment, I thought I smelled something rotting, just as I took off. Don’t smell it now.”

Starlight translated this for Mark, who nodded. “Let’s go back to the rover and run these samples through the air testing system,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure I know what it’s gonna tell me.”

Sure enough, the readouts on the rover’s air testing system showed that the samples Mark took around the farm all contained about one percent methane, plus a tiny trace- one or two parts per billion, on the very edge of the equipment’s ability to detect it- of hydrogen sulfide. The two samples Dragonfly took deeper in the cave contained only trace amounts of methane and no hydrogen sulfide.

“Okay,” Mark said, as the Amicitas crew, crammed like sardines in the rover, listened. “I know what’s going on now. Any of you ever heard of methane hydrate?”

Five blank stares answered him. “Not in English,” Dragonfly said for them all.

“Right. Stupid of me. Sorry.” Mark thought a bit and then said, “Sometimes, under the right conditions, ice can freeze in such a way that it traps methane inside the crystals. People have actually been able to burn ice, because what’s burning is the methane trapped inside. And that methane can stay there for millions of years, until the ice melts and releases it.”

“But no ice in cave,” Fireball insisted. “Too warm for ice now.”

Starlight’s heart sank. “Permafrost,” she said, and then added the Equestrian word for it in case the others didn’t know the English one.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “The cave warmed up a lot after Starlight sealed it properly. I’m guessing that heat reached down under the soil to the permafrost inside the cave. And apparently there was a lot of methane in that permafrost. Damn if I know why. But however it got there, it’s been bubbling up through the soil for a while. Guess it’s just now breaking through the surface.

“But that’s not the really bad part.” He pointed to the tiny readout of hydrogen sulfide on the air sampler readout. “Hydrogen sulfide is a lot worse. Unlike methane, it is toxic, and it doesn’t take much. Fortunately, this amount isn’t enough to worry about- it’s less than what you’d make in a fart.”

This failed to get any laughter- to Starlight’s mind deservedly so.

“Thing is,” Mark continued, “you usually don’t find it in a free state on Mars. There’s plenty of sulfur in Martian soil, but hydrogen sulfide breaks down pretty quickly. It reacts with a lot of other things, so it doesn’t stick around too long.” He took a deep breath and added, “Which means it’s being made fresh, and that’s the real bad news.”

“How?” Starlight asked.

“Bacteria,” Mark said. “There are families of soil bacteria that eat methane and fart hydrogen sulfide. And they can kill plants.” He leaned back in the driver’s seat of the rover, bumped heads with Cherry and Dragonfly, and sat up again. “Sorry. I’ve seen it at work before, places where they try to plant decorative plants on top of old landfills. The methane bubbles up through the soil and displaces the oxygen. The bacteria eat the methane and produce hydrogen sulfide gas. The plant roots corrode and rot and die, and the part of the plant that’s above ground usually dies too.”

“You mean the farm is dying??” Cherry almost shrieked the question.

Mark nodded. “You said the soil felt worst in the center of the farm,” he said. “In other words, the warmest soil. That’s where the methane-eating bacteria will have been at work the longest. But it hasn’t been very long since this began. So the plants might recover, but we have to act right now.”

“Kill the bad bachht… baccht… the bad bugs?” Fireball asked.

Mark shook his head. “We’d have to dig up the whole farm to get at them. And they’re not easy to kill. NASA tried to keep them out of the sample soil I brought with me for my experiments. Now we see how well that worked.” He sighed. “No, as much as I hate the idea, I think we’ve got to use the perchlorate spell and get rid of all the methane.”

Starlight would have flinched or flopped on her flanks, had there been room left in the rover cabin to do so. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “Gas is a lot harder to handle than dirt.”

“Sludge,” Dragonfly muttered.

“Hot sauce,” Fireball chipped in.

“Mmm,” Mark said. “Remember when we checked the cave for leaks?”

“Yes,” Starlight admitted. “My horn was sore for days after that.”

“You say- you said you okay next day!” Spitfire protested, struggling to keep it in English.

“I lied!” Starlight snapped back. “I wanted to get back to work!”

“I knew it! I knew you lied! Next time-“

“Cut it out, you two!” The shriek was gone from Cherry’s voice; the Ponyville native had shifted back into missile-mare mode. “Go on, Mark.”

“Okay. Instead of two force fields, you have one, near the entrance.” Mark held up two hands to bracket a space in front of him. “Use the perchlorate spell to grab all the methane and hydrogen sulfide inside the cave and put it there, by the airlock.” He paused. “Dragonfly, what does the airlock do with air when it purges it? Pump it back into the cave?”

“No. No point, when we always get more from home. No, it sends it outside, a little at a time.” Dragonfly thought about this and added, “For capsules we pump most of the air into tanks first, so we don’t go off-course when we vent gas. But real airlocks, not.”

“Okay. We have someone inside the airlock, then. Vent the air in the airlock outside. Then cycle air in from the cave- methane and sulfide. And we keep doing that until the bad air is gone- gone for good.”

On paper it seemed like a good plan.

But on paper the perchlorate spell had seemed like a good plan to Starlight, too.

Starlight connected the final cable. The cave had had six of their nine magic batteries in it, slowly recharging. Now Starlight had them all connected in series, ready to deliver all their magic together without her needing to swap batteries mid-spell.

Ideally, one battery, even one-third full as they all were, would be enough. It had been enough for the air-seal check. It had almost been enough for the perchlorate spell, and there had been lots more of that than there was of methane and hydrogen sulfide.

But Starlight did not feel good about this. This felt rushed. She wanted to ask Twilight. She wanted to ask Dr. Kapoor on Earth. She was even willing to ask Discord, even if she knew he’d find the notion of ridding a cave whose soil was more than half horseapples of fart gases too amusing to interfere with.

Come to think of it, had Twilight asked Discord to intercede for them? What had Discord said? Not that the chaos spirit was likely to be able to help in that way- his powers didn’t get along with science in the least. But it should have been an option…

Starlight shook her head, banishing the tangential thoughts, focusing instead on the spell array for the spell she’d used for perchlorates and salt. She concentrated on the molecular structure Mark had shown her- a slightly stilted pyramid shape for methane, a fat two-legged parasprite for hydrogen sulfide.

Cherry Berry, suited up, stood in the airlock, ready to work the controls. Spitfire and Fireball stood outside the cave, watching and waiting in case something went very, very wrong. Dragonfly and Mark stood beside Starlight, Mark’s spacesuited hand on her shoulder, the changeling leaning against her side.

“It’s okay,” Dragonfly said. “You’re the strongest unicorn in Equestria. You’re the mightiest wizard on this planet. You got this.”

Yeah, Starlight thought. I got this.

I got this.

I better got this.

The force field spell came easy, at first, with the batteries pouring magic through her and into the spell. But then came the casting of the material-gathering spell, which was much more complex and energy-intensive than the force field… and the force field was a power hog by itself.

But she cast the second spell, and immediately she knew she’d done it right. Unlike before, when tiny grains of matter could be seen floating up from the ground, she couldn’t see it working. She caught glimpses of wind rustling through the alfalfa, making the leaves of the potato plants shiver, rippling across the cherry saplings. But that was all.

The pressure on the force field shifted. It bulged back, towards her, away from the airlock. She juggled the two spells, keeping the methane and the tiny, tiny fraction of hydrogen sulfide flowing while pouring more power into the force field. The glowing wall of light held steady for a few moments, then began creeping back towards her, forced back by the pressure of the gases on the other side.

Oh.

Oh, buck.

Now Starlight saw the flaw in the plan. The shielded-off section of the cave already had air in it. It wasn’t empty- it was full of nitrogen and oxygen and water vapor and carbon dioxide. And now it was even fuller, as the spell dumped methane and hydrogen sulfide into the small space in a continuous stream that just kept coming and coming and coming.

Starlight tried to slow the methane spell, to constrict it, to meter it in some way. She couldn’t. Too much of her concentration was invested in reinforcing the force field. The methane spell seemed to laugh, dancing away from her, out of her control, drawing power from her willy-nilly. Once begun it would run its course until the magic ran out or until all the bad gases had been gathered in one place.

The force field pushed ever backwards. Starlight forced it to hold firm just before it would have hit the life support box. The glowing wall, unable to proceed evenly, bulged, leaning over the three of them. The top of the wall approached the first of the sunlight crystals, and Starlight had a horrid thought: was the crystal hot enough to ignite the mixed gases? Was there enough oxygen for an ignition?

She was drawing all the power she could from the batteries now; they couldn’t feed mana to her any faster. She tried to talk, but her entire concentration was required to hold the force field in place, to prevent it from crawling one inch more. “Air…” she gasped… “Vent… air…”

She noticed that Mark and Dragonfly were shouting now. She hadn’t heard them. She couldn’t hear them now. Her mind was in the spells. She practically was the spells.

How much power remained in the batteries? She didn’t know. She couldn’t see.

What would happen if the spells tried to draw power when the batteries ran out? Would the batteries shatter, as they had on Amicitas that horrible day?

Would she shatter?

And when would the cave run out of Faust-damned methane??

Something has to give!

And it did.

The spell Starlight had used to permanently seal the cave hadn’t affected the airlock. Oh, the rock had been reformed (again) to an airtight seal around it, but the metal wasn’t bonded in any way to the rock. That part of the cave’s seal, therefore, was the weakest point of the cave.

And, at three atmospheres worth of pressure on one side and one-one-hundredth of an atmosphere on the other, it failed.

Just like with the Hab, the airlock moved. But the cave was made of compressed stone, not canvas, so the airlock didn’t pop loose all at once. As the thin lip of the original cave mouth crumbled away under the sudden eruption of escaping air, the airlock slid forward, slowly, reluctantly, from its seating, grinding at the rock beside and below it. By the time it was completely forced out of the hole, the air pressure had almost equalized. Cherry Berry, inside the airlock, had seven seconds of absolute spacesuit-undergarment-filling terror, but nothing worse.

On the other hand, this now left a gigantic hole in what needed to be a closed environment. Where moments before Starlight’s entire existence had centered on preventing the force field and its contents from backing up into the cave, now it focused on keeping the force field in the cave- and preventing it from crumbling altogether.

Fortunately- oh, thank Faust thank Celestia thank Luna I’ll even thank you Discord- the methane spell concluded at just that moment. Starlight’s mind resurfaced from its magical submergence into reality once more.

“Get that airlock back in the hole now!!” Dragonfly was shouting. “Mark and I can patch it, but we’ve only got seconds! MOVE!!”

“How are we going to do that??” Mark shouted.

“I’m outside the airlock now,” Cherry’s voice came over the suit comms. “Fireball, get over here and help me push!”

“Dirt! Sand and dirt around the edges! I can glue it together!” Suddenly Starlight’s view was full of Dragonfly’s face. The changeling had taken off her helmet. “You have to let the airlock back through the force field, Starlight! Can you do that?”

“How much power left?” she managed to ask.

“It has to be enough,” Dragonfly said. “Can you do it?”

On the other side of the forcefield, which now stood just barely inside the cave itself, and bulged out as it had bulged in before, the airlock crept agonizingly slowly back where it belonged.

Starlight focused, allowed the force field to push a little farther forwards, and then felt it part like gelatin around the inner end of the airlock. There was still a visible gap above the big metal box, and cracks beside and below. Mark, an armful of loose dirt in the doubled-up arms of his space suit, ran towards it, trailing dust all the way. Dragonfly followed, spitting gunk at the sides of the airlock.

That’s not going to work, Starlight thought. The instant I drop the force field the air will blast all of that away.

She looked down, for the first time in a century, at the battery gauges. Almost empty, all six batteries. Again, darn it.

No time left.

This has to work first time.

Starlight took a deep breath- unnecessary, since she was still in her own space suit- and dropped the force field spell. As expected, the goop and the dirt vanished instantly as the cave’s air rushed out the cracks around the airlock. In a few seconds the cave would be airless, and the plants would die- as would Dragonfly, whose helmet was tumbling towards the doors along with a rain of leaves.

But a half-second was all she needed to cast Door What Door, the spell she’d used to seal the cave entrance the first time.

And a second and a half later, the cave was sealed, and the air stilled.

Starlight stepped back from the batteries- staggered back, more truthfully. She felt like a piece of paper, drifting down to earth after having been blown into the air by a cyclone.

Ha, she thought. Buck you, Mars. I am the mightiest sorceress on you. You are nothing before my might.

But the Sorceress Supreme needs a nap just now.

She wobbled, then remembered something. The lights on the life support box had gone out again. Mark’s baggies had blown off somewhere. Slowly, agonizingly, she used her muzzle to tap out a message on her drinking straw:

BLM-ESADE ESA-F54

Mark and Dragonfly stood beside her again, saying something. Starlight couldn’t hear. She continued to tap at the water spigot with her nose.

TRN ON LSS AGN

Was there anything else that needed saying? Oh, yes.

ALL SAFE

There. That should do it.

Mark had picked her up. How nice of him. She didn’t feel like walking back to the Hab just now. She wanted to get back to her bunk and go back to sleep.

AR

And as soon as she finished signaling “out”, she was, out like the lights on the life support box.

Those came back on about ten seconds later, with a couple of interruptions as automatic shutdowns were overridden until the cave was back up to a full atmosphere of pressure.

Starlight Glimmer’s lights remained out for the remainder of the day, not even dreams disturbing a well-earned rest.

Author's Note

This scene kept changing, and changing, and changing, and changing. It was changing even today as I was writing it.

Methane was always on the menu for the cave farm, pretty much from the beginning. Now that this part is written, I can tell you that I never intended for the cave to merely breach from ordinary air pressure. The Hab already did that. No, I wanted a boom, and I also wanted something that would threaten the plants even if boom didn't cause a breach. Hence methane.

Scenarios I considered, then discarded:

* Methane hits space heater at right mixture, ignites, sudden air pressure increase cracks cave, breach, cave collapses. (Not believable that anyone inside the cave at the time could survive.)

* Methane quietly smothers the plants and kills them. (Cave would never be left alone long enough to do that.)

* Methane kills the plants directly. (I was surprised as hell to learn methane isn't directly toxic. It only kills plants indirectly, mainly by driving oxygen out from the root system and allowing destructive anaerobic bacteria to flourish. Mark, being a botanist, would know all about this.)

* Methane increases the air pressure in the cave, causes breach. (Again, cave wouldn't be left untended long enough for that to happen. Also, the magic life support system.)

* Starlight uses substance-mining spell, but can't control gases. Methane escapes, mixes with air, hits sunlight crystals, ignites, cave breach. (Somebody mentioned the force field spell from sealing the cave in yesterday's comments, for which I thank whoever it was.)

* As per this chapter, except the forcefield gets shoved far enough back to hit the sun crystals and ignite. (By the time I wrote that far, I realized there wouldn't be enough oxygen left in the confined space for the methane to ignite. Also, Mark, Dragonfly and Starlight were in this scenario too close to the ignition point, with no protection aside from their spacesuits; the concussion would almost certainly kill them.)

And now you kind of know how I got from first plans to how it finally turned out.

And yow, it took a lot longer for me to actually write it than I'd expected, no matter how much I planned it out in my head.

We'll see if I can start doing multiple chapters and start building a new buffer tomorrow, now that the big dramatic lump is past.

Sol 197

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 198
ARES III SOL 197

[13:08] WATNEY: system_command: STATUS

[13:08] SYSTEM: Last message sent 04h31m ago. Last message received 04h56m ago. Last ping reply from probe 04h16m ago. WARNING: 50 unanswered pings.

[13:08] WATNEY: system_command: PING

[13:10] SYSTEM: No reply within 100 seconds. Repeat [Y/N]?

[13:11] WATNEY: Y

[13:11] SYSTEM: Reply received in 0.021 seconds.

[13:21] WATNEY: Okay. Venkat, I’m in Rover 2 about midway between the Hab and Site Epsilon. I’m afraid my detailed report on the Sol 196 cave incident will be delayed. I’ll send an abstract tonight.

Starlight Glimmer awoke this morning with a killer headache. According to Spitfire she’s running a fever brought on by magic strain and magic exhaustion. The two of them stayed in the Hab while the rest of us went to the cave to get the deep soil samples I’d need to test for a proper investigation.

We didn’t get any soil samples, at least not the kind I wanted. When we got to the site we found major subsidence and flooding in the farm area. Apparently the permafrost layers that used to be methane hydrate deposits collapsed after we left the cave yesterday. There are sinkholes all over the farm area ranging from ten centimeters to over a meter in depth, width averaging about 1.4 meters. Several of these sinkholes- the biggest ones- formed right dead center of the farm, breaking two of the water heating system lines and allowing water from the lines to fill and overflow the nearby sinkholes.

The farm is currently sludge.

I can’t tell you what bad news that is. The methane release caused a bloom of anaerobic bacteria. Removing the methane would have eventually caused those bugs to die off as oxygen seeped back down through the cultivated Martian soil. But excess water in the soil produces wetland conditions- which anaerobic bacteria love.

The rest of the day, and probably tomorrow and the next, is going to be extremely hard labor, at least up to our eight-hour EVA time limits. Cherry Berry and I spent this morning salvaging all the plants we could from the flooded area and replanting them. It’s probably a lost cause. I’ve already seen signs of root necrosis on the deeper roots of a lot of the alfalfa, and the wet conditions will make it worse. The potatoes aren’t as badly affected- they’re much more shallowly rooted, and their planting area was downslope and in a cooler patch of soil. But if we get much more than half the planned alfalfa harvest, it’ll be a miracle.

Meanwhile Dragonfly and Fireball worked on repairing the heating pipes. Until we get the soil leveled and partially dried out again, the water heating system has to remain offline. We can’t afford to add any more water to the system right now. (God, I remember when I was worried I wouldn’t have enough water to grow food with. Now I’m trying to figure out how to purge the crap from my topsoil…)

The current plan is to dig a well at the back wall of the chamber, as far downslope as we can go. We’ll manually bail out the water from there, which means a lot of backbreaking walks carrying sample bins full of water out to the airlock to dump downslope. In fact, considering all the water we’ve added over the past hundred and fifty sols, that’s probably going to have to be a daily chore from now on. We’ll use the dirt we dig out of the well to refill the sinkholes, once we’ve pulled all the possibly still living plants out of them and replanted them elsewhere.

You know, before I became an astronaut I never believed I would be so desperate as to even attempt to transplant mature alfalfa one fucking plant at a time. That’s how bad it is right now. We don’t have enough seed left to replant the entire affected area. And if any of the plants in the non-subsidence areas die from root necrosis, that loss is permanent. We have to at least try to save every plant we can, even if I know nine-tenths of the plants that got flooded are already dead.

So yeah, it’s fun times here. No magic for at least a week, maybe two. At least half the alfalfa crop wrecked, maybe more. Tons of back-breaking labor staring us all in the face.

So, fun times all around. How are you today?

[13:44] HERMES: We’re all good, thanks.

[13:46] JPL: Us too. Don’t rush the report, Mark. Your survival takes top priority. I’ve got our botany team started on water remediation for your system.

Spitfire watched, impassively, as four muddy, mucky, and smelly space suits exited Airlock 3. Without argument, without a word at all, the four figures, two bipeds and two quadrupeds, lined up for the decontamination shower.

Spitfire and Starlight had spent a very quiet day in the Hab. Starlight had requested one of the computers, sitting up in bed and reading from it for about an hour before she asked for it to be put away again. She’d napped off and on since then for most of the day, not even pretending to be anything other than tired, sleepy, and in a lot of pain. Spitfire had sat on the bunk closest to Starlight’s, watching, and waiting for another request.

She’d offered pain medicine. Starlight had refused, because the bottle was less than half full now. She’d offered fever medicine, not giving Starlight the option to refuse. Starlight took it without a protest.

The Pathfinder chat was up on the hab’s projection screen. They saw Mark’s message of continued disaster in the cave farm. They said nothing.

And now they were back, and the first in the shower, and the first out, was Mark. With his suit mostly clean of muck, he took it off, put it back in its special rack, and walked over to the ponies who’d stayed behind while the work was going on. “How is she?” he asked.

“Sick,” Spitfire said. “Fever. Too much magic.”

“But not too little,” Starlight added, chuckling softly as she rolled over in her cot. “Magic exhaustion from the other side for a change.”

Mark looked up at the projection, which still showed his message to Earth and the brief responses from Hermes and from Dr. Kapoor. “I, uh,” he began, “I see you saw the bad news.”

“How bad?” Spitfire asked.

“Pretty bad,” Mark admitted. “Most of the middle of the farm was gone when we got there- just gone. Sunk and submerged. Most of the water’s seeped down below the surface now, but that’s not a good thing. With the cave sealed above and below, there’s no place for it to go.”

“Sorry,” Starlight said. “My fault.”

“No,” Mark said. “My fault. Twice over. I fucked up.” He sighed and took a seat on the bunk next to Spitfire. “Your people said the cave didn’t need sealing. Now I think they were right. Sealing it raised the temperature, melted the permafrost, released the methane. And we wouldn’t have lost much air through the ground. We could have left it alone, and the water would be draining away to re-freeze somewhere way deep.” He shook his head. “But NASA didn’t want to leave well enough alone, and I trusted them on a question of magic instead of you.”

“Not your fault,” Starlight replied. “If the cave got warm, the methane would have melted anyway.”

“But still my fault,” Mark continued. “I was thinking yesterday that we had to act fast to save as many plants as possible from dying from the bad bacteria in the roots. So I didn’t take time to keep thinking out the plan. I rushed it. And now you’re here in bed, and the farm is half dead, because I forgot about the air already in the room and the space underground the methane took up.” Mark took Starlight’s hoof. “It was a bad plan, and I shouldn’t have dragged you into it. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t think of it either,” Starlight said. “And I’m supposed to be the mission scientist.”

“But it wasn’t your idea,” Mark said. “It was mine. My responsibility.”

Spitfire spoke up, mostly because she didn’t think she could stand another game of My Fault – Not Your Fault. “What we do now?” she said slowly. It was just so hard to think in English. The words ran away and hid from her.

“We rebuild the farm,” Mark said. “We’ll have to plant the last of the seed. We tried to replant alfalfa from the sinkholes, but I think most of them are drowned. We make up the difference in potatoes. We make more batteries, and we get off this rock before its surprises or our stupidity kill us.”

“But we don’t give up,” Starlight said quietly.

“No,” Mark said. “We work the problem. We find a way to live.”

Spitfire nodded. “Not just live. We find a way to fly.”

Mark nodded, getting back in line for a second, spacesuitless pass through the shower.

While Mark was in the shower, Spitfire spoke with her crewmates. They heard her suggestion, and they liked it. They dug through Mark’s food packs and found the thing in question, four times the size of any other food pack. They hid it, putting the rest of the food back in the cabinet just as Mark was drying off.

A couple of hours later, as suppertime neared, Dragonfly stepped forward. “Your attention, please, Mark Watney!” she proclaimed, causing Mark to look up from the computer he’d been idly pecking at for over an hour.

“Huh?”

“I come to you on behalf of a special group of people,” the bug-pony continued, grinning her cute fanged grin. “A group which, one day, everybody will join, but which today it is your turn to join.”

Fireball stepped forward. He’d apparently fashioned a half-dozen used sample labels and some adhesive into a makeshift paper hat, bent and twisted into a cone. “Your hat,” he said.

Mark, puzzled, allowed the short dunce cap to be placed on his head.

“For services to your crew and yourself below and behind the call of duty,” Dragonfly pressed on, “for using your head only as a place to keep your helmet, and for failing to be absolutely perfect at all times, Mark Watney, you are now a member of the Royal Buck-Up Society.”

The ponies pounded the floor with their hooves- pony applause. Fireball settled for clapping his claws the human way.

After a minute, Dragonfly said, “Now the members of the society will step forward and say what they did to get into the Society.” She bowed and added, “I failed to pay attention when operating my space suit and risked breaking it for good.”

Starlight Glimmer stepped forward, having got off her bunk for dinner. “I tried to cast a transmutation spell without sufficient energy, just to see if I could turn a pebble into a cherry, and nearly put a hole in the Hab.”

Fireball stepped forward. “I try… tried… to take home per-chlor-ate,” he said slowly. “It start…ed a fire that might have killed us.”

Spitfire was so impressed by Fireball’s effort to speak properly that she flubbed her own line. “I forget make sure all know…” She shook her head, ignoring the chuckles of the others as she concentrated and began again more slowly. “I forgot to make sure that every one knew the airlock was dangerous,” she said.

“Me too,” Cherry Berry said. “And we all almost died.”

Spitfire watched as Mark realized it was his turn to speak. “I, ah, I pushed you all into implementing a half-baked plan,” he said. “I forgot that matter takes up space. Twice. And we’re still cleaning up the results.”

“Now,” Dragonfly said, bringing forward the large bundle stolen from Mark’s food supplies, “in honor of our newest member, let us prepare the ceremonial feast.”

Mark looked at the oversized pack. “What’s this for?” he asked.

Spitfire reached a wing up and pointed at the label. “It says ‘turkey’,” she says. “Like ‘jive turkey.’”

Fireball grinned and added, “And you are what you eat.”

Mark couldn’t help chuckling. “Okay,” he said. “I accept this honor on one condition: who can tell me what the most important thing is about fu- er, bucking up?”

Dragonfly said it, and the others said it in chorus after her: “Don’t do it again.”

“Yeah.” He looked down at the long-forgotten Thanksgiving turkey and dressing roll. If it was anything like his other meals, Spitfire thought, it would be a year old and would still taste exactly the same as it did new. Military rations never changed in that respect. “Well, I guess I better cook this thing, huh?”

“By the way,” Spitfire asked, “what is turkey? Besides an insult, I mean.”

Mark’s smile vanished again, but he only paused a moment before he said, “A fat, rather stupid bird, barely capable of short flights. Like a really fat, ugly, long-necked, bald-headed chicken.”

It was Spitfire’s turn to stop smiling. “Oh,” she said. For a second she thought she would pass. After all, feathers meant sisters, right? But then… “How bad fly?” she asked.

“Wild ones, fifty to a hundred meters. Farm-raised, not at all.”

Spitfire considered this, and decided that she couldn’t be bothered to be a sister to a stupid ugly bird that couldn’t be bothered to fly away from a predator. “Can I have some?” she asked.

After all, she reasoned, it couldn’t possibly be as horrible as bacon.

And it wasn’t, but even with gravy and stuffing it wasn’t an experience she cared to have twice. After her small sample she went back to the alfalfa and potatoes the others were having.

Mark put most of the roll in the Hab fridge for later, filling up on potatoes. “Just like Thanksgiving,” he muttered. “Leftovers for a week.”

Spitfire didn’t get that- Mark said a lot of things she didn’t get even when she understood all the words.

But if it meant giving thanks none of them had died, that was fine by her.

Author's Note

I ran headlong into a brief spell of writer's block.

I'd originally planned to have this chapter, and maybe the next, be a semi-scientific abstract of Watney's report on the cave blowout. But, at the same time, I wanted the subsidence to happen today, and I only realized after writing up the subsidence that dealing with that would be more important, and honestly more interesting.

But after I wrote the chat bit, I had no ideas where to go with it.

Eventually, after taking my mind off the hook for hours, I decided to move forward Spitfire's team building exercise a day or two.

So, here it is, what I could come up with.

Now I have to figure out what to write tomorrow...

Sol 200

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 201
ARES III SOL 200

Of course there had been more subsidence today. Of course there was, Dragonfly thought. Why wouldn’t there be? More subsidence every single day since the Cave Fart.

It was a good thing they hadn’t turned the water back on after repairing the heating system on Sol 197… or Sol 198, either. The cave would have had been full of water again. As it was, it still stank of black, sticky, gooey mud, which was really weird considering that Mars dirt began either reddish or grayish.

After seeing their work undone again on Sol 199, Dragonfly and Mark had gone into conference. The two of them agreed that re-burying the water heating system wasn’t an option until the soil stabilized, which might not be for months. They also agreed that the cave was losing the war for heat to Mars without the water heating system, even with all the space heaters reinstalled and active. So, the water heating system had to be reinstituted, but it had to be a closed system, or at least mostly a closed system… and, for the time being at least, it couldn’t be reburied.

But the question was, how could they heat the water? Bringing in the Hab’s water reclaimer was out; without that the Hab plumbing didn’t work. (Anyway, it was acting up after three straight days of heavy sludge rinsed down the decon shower drain, and maintenance on it would be top priority after the current project.) Building a fire was out; the only stuff they had that would burn, aside from food, would burn a little too… well… explosively. With toxic gases for by-products. And sticking the heaters into water would just break the heaters.

Then Mark mentioned the one thing he did have that produced heat. It wouldn’t do as good a job as the just-below-boiling water from Equestria had done, but fifteen hundred watts distributed around the area through metal pipes might be enough to, Mark said, “tread water” and stop the cave’s internal temperature from dropping back below freezing.

Which is why, this afternoon, Dragonfly was staring with undisguised fear at the Death Box.

It was in one of the largest clear plastic sample bags, sealed in Mars’s barely-present atmosphere, which made it almost as good as a vacuum seal once brought into the pressurized cave. The bag was submerged in a large plastic tub full of water, one of Mark’s sample containers, with the clear lid modified by Dragonfly to include two pipe attachment points. The evil, therefore, was in a can inside a bag under water inside a box, and this fact didn’t make Dragonfly the least bit happier about being within a mile of the thing.

She’d put it off as long as she could. She and Mark (with Fireball’s help) had turned strips of Amicitas outer hull into combination skids and legs for the pipes to sit on, up in the air about half a meter above the currently uneven surface. This had taken a while, not least because Cherry Berry and Spitfire were dragging dirt from the pit dug at the back of the cave to fill in the new sinkholes, which meant working around the pipes without stepping on the surviving plants. And, when the harvest came in three weeks, the pipes would have to be either reburied or moved to get them out of the way.

(The only one not working in the cave today was Starlight. She, of course, stayed back at the Hab. She was feeling better, but she still had four days of no magic to go before Spitfire would check her over again. And anyway, the less she used her patched suit the better. So she was spending the day reading documents on Mark’s computers while Mark’s people used the idle Pathfinder chat to send more books. Before long Harry Potter would run out, but Dr. Kapoor assured them that he was sending a classic series to follow.)

But the pipes were eventually reassembled (again) and installed on their new feet, and the little pump from Amicitas’s heat control system was installed and wired up to the cave’s solar farm (which now had ten solar panels stolen from the Hab to power everything, plus the Hab battery for nighttime operations).

All that remained was to connect the ingoing and outcoming water feed lines to the box with the RTG in it and turn the whole system on.

Dragonfly felt like there were two spirits by her, the ghost of the cave farm and the ghost of the RTG. The cave farm whispered, I’m sick. I’m cold. Help me.

The RTG rumbled, I don’t care. Do what you like. I’ll kill you eventually.

Dragonfly shook her head. I must be cracking up, she thought. It’s that darn mystery hunger again. It’s making me hear things. And being in the cave isn’t helping much anymore. I wonder if Mark will give up some potatoes to plant the edges of the cave? The plants will be cold, but we don’t need them for food anymore, not really. Anything so long as it’s alive…

“Dragonfly,” Mark said gently, “you’ve been staring at the box for ten minutes. You want me to hook up the system?”

“No, I’m good,” Dragonfly said, adding a moment later, “Thanks, though.” With both hooves she rested each feed line on top of the hookups. She spun each union around in her hooves, down the threads she’d carved herself in the pipe sections salvaged from broken bits. She took a pipe wrench in her fangs and used it to finish tightening the unions until the gasket was fully compressed in each connection. The process took about four minutes total.

Mark, as ever, radiated admiration. He never failed to be impressed at what ponies (or changelings) could do with only hooves and mouth for manipulators. “Okay,” he said. “Cross your fingers.”

Not for the first time, Dragonfly was tempted to perform a partial shapeshift, turning her forelegs into griffon claws, so she could do that exact thing. Instead she stepped over to the life support box and, for the first time since the first sinkholes appeared, she activated the main water flow.

In moments the pipes became hot, too hot to handle comfortably. None of the connections leaked. Good, she thought. Got it right first time.

She’d installed one of the spigots from Amicitas near the life support box, at the highest point in the pipe system, to allow air in the pipes to bleed out. When steaming hot water began coming out, she used her own magic- just a tiny bit, but she felt it drain her- to shut the faucet. The other spigot remained at the lowest end of the pipes, so the system could be drained if and when it got too cold and needed refreshing, or when the crops finally dried out enough to require more water.

Mark reached over and activated the breaker switch in the improvised power cable for the water pump. With a soft little whir the pump came to life, and very softly water began to slosh in a circuit through the pipe system.

“Okay!” Mark said, smiling for the first time in a couple of days. “Looks like we have a winner!”

Dragonfly did not do as she wanted to do and run for the airlock or the rear of the cave. She put her wrench and her other tools back in the Amicitas tool box, ready to take back to the rover and to the Hab. She then joined everyone else in relaying sample boxes of water from the “well” to the airlock, where they would be dumped out down the slope, where the water would freeze and sublimate away. After all, they still had two hours of EVA time before they had to go back to the Hab. Two more hours to do everything they could to salvage their food supply and their magic recharge source.

Two more hours in the close vicinity of a metal can with dozens of fins that kept muttering, in a voice only Dragonfly could hear, Death. Death. Death.

My queen, please come and get me, she thought. I want to come home.

Chrysalis floated in her space suit, about twenty meters away from the actual work being done, and watched as two engineers double-checked the clamps and struts connecting the final piece of CSP Concordia to the rest of the ship.

She regarded the two engineers with… not scorn, exactly, but a particular form of condescension. One was a yeti, wearing the orange of CSP. The other was a hippogriff, wearing the white spacesuit of ESA. Both were rookies; this was their first flight, under Chrysalis’s direct command.

What a strange thing this must be for them, she thought. They weren’t part of the space race. They don’t understand what it was like in the early days. They think this is great adventure. They never experienced the real thing, the true ragged edge of the envelope, when we knew we didn’t know what we were doing.

Today we think we know what we’re doing, and we hope it fools the rest of the universe.

Behind her, and in front of her, and all around her, the spirit Chrysalis usually felt in space- and invariably felt when she went on EVA- giggled indulgently. For a moment Chrysalis thought it would speak- it did that, sometimes- but all she got was the empathic equivalent of a comforting, understanding hoof on her shoulder.

Sighing, Chrysalis turned her attention from the rookies to the new module of the ship- the space station with engines, really. She’d seen it under construction at Cape Friendship. Twilight Sparkle had outdone herself. The one module weighed more than the rest of the ship combined. It had to. It contained the new, adjustable Sparkle Drive and more mana batteries than anyone had ever thought to put together before. Adjusted one way, it could probably do several times the speed of light. Adjusted an entirely different way, it might just go to another universe and get back without stranding its crew… maybe.

And because Chrysalis would never not be Chrysalis, a part of her brain calculated that the magic in those batteries at top draw would let any magic-wielding pony or changeling go hoof to hoof with Celestia herself and likely win, provided that Celestia could be persuaded to remain within a hundred yards of the massive freight train that would be required to haul the things around. But maybe…

No. Schemes another day. My subject and my top pilot need rescuing first, and I suppose so do the others. Now if only they could find them.

There had been a blip, just barely above the level of static, in Twilight’s magic tracking system a few days before. It hadn’t produced meaningful results, so Angel 9 would launch programmed for the same narrow range of possible worlds as Angel 8 had been.

It would help if Angel 8 hadn’t disappeared without a trace on its third hop, checking a universe only an inch and a half away from their own. Chrysalis was beginning to share Twilight’s frustrations with the probe, even if expensive blindfold dart-throwing at universes was better than no clue at all.

I’m ready to save them, Faust take it. Where are they?

Seven figures stood around the scorched metal object that had essentially destroyed Fluttershy’s yard.

Sunset saw the lettering, half-burned, on the side of the probe:

ESA ANGEL EIGHT CSP

Using the flap of her jacket, she grabbed the handle of the least-bent door of what looked like a cabinet and yanked it open. Bits of glittering, razor-sharp precious stones tumbled out. A wire sparked and popped.

“Okay,” she said. “We can’t let the authorities find this. Whose garage can we stuff it inside?”

Twilight Sparkle- still Sci-Twi in Sunset’s mind- bounced up and down on her toes. Even under the streetlights, in the pre-dawn gloom, they could all see the immense grin on her face…

Author's Note

The thing about subsidence is, it keeps going. It almost never ends with just one instance.

I live in sinkhole country. The same salt domes that trapped oil to produce the first Texas gushers also occasionally melt away and produce sinkholes. Often this is with human help, as with the case of the old salt mine which collapsed and essentially swallowed up an entire lake in Louisiana.

Or, much closer to home, this: https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/For-Daisetta-residents-sinkhole-is-just-scenery-4339141.php#photo-4297827 This one stopped growing after a couple of days. Others have grown for a week or more before the subsidence finally ended.

And then, in those cases where people try to fill in the holes, the new earth usually subsides, because it takes time and pressure for moved earth to compact properly.

Thankfully, the cave farm is a much, much, much smaller system, and the damage is limited. But it's still going, and as more water gets very gradually purged from the depths it will settle more. When Starlight's back on magic, something will have to be done to ensure the substrata are stable again.

But in the meantime the ponies are taking a reader suggestion. Having the pipes in the air will be NOWHERE as effective as buried, and the 1500 watts of heat are almost certainly far less than was was pumped through the system from Equestria before. But this stopgap is better than nothing.

In other news, one of my other stories won one of the Everfree Northwest Scribblefest prizes. Check out "For Love of the Love of the Game" if you haven't already.

Sol 201

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 202
ARES III SOL 201

It was about the time that the car chase began that Fireball realized he was dreaming.

There had been little hints. For one thing, although he and Mark were driving a red and white sports car just like Starsky and Hutch, neither of the two main characters had mustaches (unlike a lot of the minor characters), but Mark and Fireball had gigantic ones. Which was doubly weird, because most dragons didn’t have mustaches.

For another, they had been chasing the General Lee, but it had just changed to the Partridge bus without losing any speed or cornering ability.

And, finally, there were dementors, or at least what Fireball imagined dementors to look like- vaguely human shapes hidden under black blankets. On every streetcorner a dementor. There was one carrying groceries home from the corner store. There was another wheeling a baby stroller along. And there was one with a gigantic flat hat with an immense brim lined with fur or something along the edge- solid black, of course, but with a white gold-tipped cane.

Fireball was pretty sure that, in real life, he’d never be able to notice little details like that while driving the mythical California streets at seventy miles per hour. (He knew California was mythical because Mark had told him, repeatedly, that almost all the stuff in the television shows was made-up, couldn’t happen, never would happen. So obviously California, like Hazzard County and Watts and other places, were mythical lands of fable and myth. It threw him off when occasionally the series talked about Houston and Pasadena and Florida, which were real places because Mark’s bosses talked about them all the time.)

But it was when Steve Austin passed the Ford on foot, doing a lot more than seventy, that Fireball realized he was dreaming. Not because it was Steve Austin, or because humans couldn’t run seventy miles per hour. For all Fireball knew, Mark might be some kind of defective human who got sent to Mars because he couldn’t hack it on Earth. It was a thought he’d had several times before.

No, it was the fact that Steve Austin passed the car three times, each time in slower slow motion, without having been passed again by the car in between those times. Fireball had wanted a closer look at Steve, and so the universe had backtracked and let him look again. And then Fireball wanted to see that happen again, and so it had done it a second time.

So. Dreaming. Fair enough. That would explain why Mark had the steering wheel and clutch pedal on the left side of the car, but Fireball had the gas and brake pedals on the right.

But no time to worry about that now. The fact that this was a dream was an unimportant detail. There was no hurry about waking up, but in the meantime the Partridges with their load of moonshine were getting away, and Captain Hogg would have their badges if another run got through to junk and moonshine dealer Fred Sanford.

Fireball gestured to a turnoff. “Hook a right,” he said. “It’s a shortcut.”

“I can’t do that,” Mark protested, “the road’s closed.”

Sure enough, there was a sign: ROAD CLOSED – BRIDGE OUT. The angle was totally wrong, and the speed too fast, for them to be able to read it in any Euclidan universe, but in dreams geometry is optional.

“Trust me,” Fireball said. “We can make it.” One of the things Fireball liked about dreams, he decided, was that he wasn’t stumbling around a jumble of English and Equestrian words trying to figure out how to say things. He just talked, and Mark understood.

The Ford swerved hard right, bashing through the sign and barrier as if they were kindling, and suddenly the crowded city and sidewalks full of dementors going about their quite non-dementorlike daily lives vanished. They were on a dirt road in a forest, still going seventy, and up ahead was the promised broken bridge, with the inevitable sloping dirt ramp in front of it.

The Ford hit the ramp going seventy and took flight.

The dream world slowed to molasses for a moment, as Fireball’s less-than-lucid dreaming took several leaps of logic in quick succession.

The logic chain went like this:

(1) We are cops.

(2) Therefore the car we are in is a cop car.

(3) Forty-nine times out of fifty, when a cop car attempts to jump a broken bridge while in pursuit of noble sympathetic outlaws (and (3a) who could be more sympathetic than a child folk-rock band?), the cop car would end up splashing down and bobbing in the water.

(4) Therefore there is a 98% chance that we are about to get wet and possibly injured.

Given the postulates laid down by 1970s (and early 1980s) television, the logic was faultless.

The far end of the bridge actively shrank away from them. It had been a sleepy pond; now the water below looked more like Manehattan harbor.

No, Fireball thought. We are not going to crash. We’ve got to get the serum through! Fly, you bucket of bolts, fly!

The engine roared.

And then the engine really roared, because it wasn’t a Ford engine anymore; it was a Cherry Berry Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs Mk. 1 Flea, and Fireball was back in his capsule, on his first ill-fated flight, and there was the mountainside dead ahead, barely visible in the tiny, tiny windows.

And, impossibly, sitting beside him in a second seat was Mark, in his EVA suit. The human looked around himself and shouted, “You went to space in THIS??”

And before Fireball could answer, the mountain did.

Fireball sat up, sweating. Dragons can sweat, being magical creatures, but it takes special circumstances. Dying in a dream is one such.

Food poisoning is another, as Fireball noted a few moments later as he began throwing up in the nearby honey tub, which had been resurrected as part of the crash program to save the cave farm. Its contents managed to smell even worse than usual after Fireball's first stomach spasms subsided.

The noise of the dragon bringing up his midnight snack woke Mark, who leaned up from his bunk and asked, “Fireball? What’s wrong?” In a more suspicious tone he added, “Did you eat my leftover turkey?”

“No,” Fireball lied between spasms.

Author's Note

This fluff is all I have, for now. I used up most of today's creativity on this:

You Need Practice

I'd intended today to be Cherry Berry's POV (I'm going through the list, having done Spitfire and Dragonfly so far, with POVs post-Cave Fart). But instead you're getting meaningless crack in a dragon's dreams.

My dreams are often like this. I dream in full color, and in about 2/3s of them I am watching a story more or less like 3-D immersive television. On rare occasions I can even touch and smell things. Also, contrary to a certain Batman: the Animated Series story, I can read in dreams, at least briefly. Dream text doesn't stay put. But the logic is about the same, as is the willingness to roll with it and be entertained/active, even during those periods when I'm dreaming lucidly.

I used to have nightmares, horrible nightmares sometimes, until my late teens. Then one night I began having lucid dreams, and I was able to say, "No. I am not having this dream anymore. Let's do something else." And although I've had a number of anxiety dreams, I've never had dreams of things killing me since. I don't often have the awareness to control a dream, but a lot of that might be because I have no real need or inclination to control them.

None of which has anything to do with getting our heroes off Mars safely. This is a thousand words of pointless comedy. I'll try to get back to melodrama tomorrow before I leave to drive into Houston for a Weird Al concert.

Sol 202

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 203
ARES III SOL 202

“Here. Dig here.”

Mark shrugged and stuck the well-worn sample shovel into the dirt about three feet away from one of the cherry saplings, directly under Cherry Berry’s hoof.

All that could be done for the food crops had been done, which is why Mark and Cherry could spend an hour tending to the saplings, which had escaped the worst aside from losing leaves during the brief blowout. Despite their best efforts, three-quarters of the plants pulled out of the sinkholes and transplanted were dying. A number of the alfalfa plants in the areas that hadn’t actually subsided were also sick, leaves yellowing noticeably despite the best encouragement Cherry Berry could give. Even some of the potato plants had begun to sicken, though those were responding better to transplantation away from the areas where veins of sticky black goo had crawled up the root systems.

The bad bacteria were a problem that had no easy solution. Starlight Glimmer made it clear that she had nothing- no spell at all- that could tell the difference between beneficial and harmful bacteria. She couldn’t pick them out the same way she picked out grains of perchlorate or salt. Yes, she could kill them, in theory, but she could only do that by killing absolutely everything in that zone of soil- good bacteria, bad bacteria, plants, the lot.

And in practice she refused, because most of the spells that could do that were the blackest of dark magic- cheaply cast spells that, the more you cast them, the more they wanted to be cast. Somehow, despite her obsessions, Starlight had managed to avoid casting dark magic during her (ahem) Bad Old Days Which Are Now Over, and she certainly wasn’t going to begin using the stuff now. So no, directly attacking the problem with magic was out.

There weren’t many other ways of addressing it, either. According to Mark, the best solution on Earth would be to change crops to something that would grow in anaerobic (whatever that meant) soils. Failing that, you drained and drained and drained the land and aereated it thoroughly- turning the soil as deep as you could go. Unfortunately you really couldn’t do that and grow things at the same time. And while Cherry Berry’s natural earth pony magic helped a little, growing things wasn’t her special talent, so a little was all it helped.

Aside from the ongoing problem with the sticky black goo, the problems with the cave appeared to be stabilizing. The subsidence seemed to have, well, subsided. And the well, which had been dug down in the back of the chamber until the shovels started striking chunks of crystal and still-thawing permafrost, had stopped seeping water.

Of course, part of that was because the cave was still getting colder. Two days before Mark had set up a cup midway down the row of trees, half full of water, as a temperature test to see how the cave was doing overnight. This morning there had been a thin film of ice on the surface. The Artie Gee just wasn’t keeping up with the sheer dimensions of the cave and the eternally cold rock of the planet that surrounded it.

As a last desperation move they’d asked Equestria to begin heating the air coming through the life support system. That was bad for the crops long-term, because it would dehydrate and stress the plants. But, as Mark pointed out, you had to get through the short term to reach the long term, so Equestria did what it could.

The problem was, the air intakes for all the life support systems in the combined space programs of Equus were housed in a single building, the air coming through at room temperature. For months that had been all right, because it had been spring and then summer back home. But now autumn was more than half over, and Winter Ramp-Up and Hearth’s Warming were not far off, and with them snow and bitter cold in the Baltimare area.

And the best Equestria could do was put a lot of space heaters right next to the air intake for Amicitas and, well, hope for the best. The alternative- moving the intakes somewhere where the air could be heated to useful temperatures- would require building such a facility and then shutting down life support entirely while the Equestrian end of the system was physically moved. Nobody liked that idea.

Ironically, the seasons were moving in the opposite direction on Mars. Acidalia Planitia was midway through its (supposed) spring. The Martian days were now longer than the nights. Each sol the cave got a little more lighting and heating. Come Martian summer, the temperatures would rise from the -30 to -100 range they'd experienced during the first crash to occasional days when the peak temperature might just get into positive digits. But despite all of that, here and now they were still losing the heat battle to an entire frozen planet.

And the plants could sense it.

“Mark,” Cherry Berry said as Mark was digging for the rot-infested root Cherry had sensed, “the plants are sleepy.”

Mark stopped digging. “Sleepy?” he asked. “Sleepy how?”

Cherry put a hoof on the sapling. “This one thinks winter is coming,” she said.

“Great,” Mark said. “So cherry trees are loyal to House Stark.”

Cherry Berry often couldn’t tell if the confusing things Mark said were due to her struggles with English or his bizarre jokes. “The tree is going to sleep soon,” Cherry insisted. “Leaves go brown. Have to run past them to make them fall off.”

Mark looked even more confused. “Excuse me?” he asked. “Make leaves fall off? Leaves fall off by themselves in the fall. That’s why we call it ‘fall’.”

“In Pony-land they don’t,” Cherry said. “We have Run the Leaves. Earth ponies run through trees, through forests, make all leaves fall in the same day. Keeps trees healthy for winter.”

“Uh huh,” Mark said, returning to his digging. After a couple of shovelfuls of dirt he said, “You know we need at least one more good harvest of hay to make it to Sol 551,” he said. “Preferably more.”

“Yes.”

“You know this next harvest isn’t going to be good at all.” Shovel, dump. “In fact, we might need to use most of the harvest to make cuttings and transplant those. We don’t have seed to replace the lost plants, and the conditions suck for starting new seed now anyway.”

“I know all that.” At least, Cherry knew all she understood of what Mark said.

“Which means we can’t afford to have a winter right now.” Mark struck the root, scraped away a bit of black sludge that had crawled its way through the soil to attack the sapling, and chopped away the affected root with the edge of the shovel. “We’re going to have to re-bury the pipes,” he said.

“Yes,” Cherry agreed.

“And let the water run free again.”

“Yes.”

“Which will make the anaerobic bacteria- the black shit here- very happy,” Mark finished.

“I know,” Cherry Berry said. “But it smells like our new compost. Won’t it like that too?”

Mark leaned on his shovel, having spread the gunk-contaminated soil on the surface to dry and air out, killing the bad bacteria. “We’re in deep shit,” he said.

Cherry didn’t respond to that. For one thing, she’d avoided that word ever since Starlight had explained it was equivalent to one of the most crude and primitive expressions in Equestrian. For another, she’d spent far too much of her life deep in… horseapples… and was trying to reduce the remaining part of her life where that would be the case.

The problem was finding a way of doing that without reducing her remaining life, period.

“So, given that we are in deep shit,” Mark said, shoveling healthy, dry dirt into the hole made by the root amputation, “why are we spending time tending trees which we’re going to have to kill years before they bear the first bit of fruit?”

Cherry Berry couldn’t speak. Words just failed her. In fact, her eyesight began to fail too, or at least Mark was looking all blurry all of a sudden.

“Oh,” Mark said. “Yeah, I forgot.” He leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get back to work. Where’s the next tree that needs help?”

It took a shove, but Mark got Cherry Berry back to work. She blinked the tears away and began walking around the next sapling in the row. This one felt a little sleepy too, but it didn’t have any root rot.

Neither Mark nor Cherry Berry spoke of the little moment again.

Author's Note

I wasn't kidding about the melodrama. And sorry, but my brain just didn't have any more character-building moment for Cherry Berry in this situation than this.

It's over two hours each way to the concert venue, and I have other errands to run, so see you either late tonight or tomorrow morning.

Sol 204

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 205
ARES III SOL 204

The castaways named it The Stump.

It was a rough-broken giant end of a quartz crystal at first, sticking out not quite a meter from the surface of the cave floor. One attempt, and only one, had been made to remove it, and that attempt had made clear that it was either still attached to the immense geode wall meters below all the dirt, or else it was so large that it might as well be. So, when the farm had been laid out, it was lopped off level at the top, slightly too large for a stool and too small for a table, but still convenient to set tools and other things on as needed.

The farm had been built around it, the crystal bracketed by two of the hot water lines running the length of the growing area. After the methane blowout, when the sinkholes happened, one sinkhole included the area around The Stump. The dirt had sunk almost two feet; The Stump, not one inch. The refill around The Stump hadn’t quite come up as high as the previous level, so the top of The Stump now rose just above pony chin height, which made it uncomfortable to use as a table.

But Starlight Glimmer had found it quite convenient to use for another purpose, with the aid of one of the mostly-full mana batteries that had been retained at the Hab for emergencies.

Now the air above The Stump lit up with a magical hologram, a three-dimensional chart of the entire cave from its origins near the ancient volcano’s magma chamber to and beyond the hole where the airlock had been sited.

The hole which, it turned out, had been more in the way of a skylight.

The farm chamber of the gem cave was far and away the largest section. Though other sections farther back were wider, the ceiling was taller- and the rock substrate under all the dirt and permafrost much deeper- in that first room. The dirt immediately under the original skylight had compressed over eons into sandstone, and it had been that sandstone that had originally supported the airlock, before the sealing spell had turned it effectively into concrete. Its color had been the same as the grey non-crystal quartz of the cave roof layer, so they hadn’t noticed the difference at the time, thinking it was the cave floor.

Buried under the sandstone, more quartz crystals ran well beyond the modern cave entrance, finally terminating in a jumble of collapsed lava, quartz, and other rocks about twenty feet underneath the regolith at the base of Site Epsilon’s northeast face.

Starlight’s horn flashed, and sections of the cave diagram flared. “The scan of the area shows that most of the subsidence is over,” she said. “There are only a few small patches of the original permafrost remaining under the soil- here, here, and here. Most of it has melted and seeped either to the well, here-“ she pointed to the graph at the recent excavation, “-or to the bottom of the sealed space, where a new foundation of permafrost is freezing back into place with the loss of cave heat.”

Starlight highlighted the area at the base of the farm area, and the soil below the cave entrance, with its still mostly-intact permafrost. “As best I can guess, the runoff from the water heating system ran downstream into the Tangled Hallway-“ (the small second chamber, crowded with floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall crystals that took careful maneuvering around; the first chamber was just The Farm) “-and as far as Lunch Buffet.” (This was the third chamber, about half the size of the farm, with its pockets of different-colored quartz, from which most of the mining for Fireball’s meals had been done.) “This caused some runoff of soil along the way, but only a trickle got into the Crack-“ (the narrow gap between the third and fourth chambers) “-and anything that got farther froze, at least initially.

“But what we never thought about was that the vast majority of that water was gradually seeping down into the soil. It found cracks in the permafrost near the chamber walls and got below it- and a good thing, too.” She traced the downward slope of most of the lower levels of the cave farm soil. “Some water got trapped in the depths of the Hallway and the Buffet, but I’m guessing about half of all we dumped cycled through the sand near the door into Hallway or earlier, through the permafrost cracks- which enlarged in the process- and flowed downslope, into the sandstone here.” She pointed to a disturbing-looking undercut in the strata just beyond the sealed borders of the cave.

“The water was still liquid at this point,” Starlight said. “Which means by Mars standards it was still red-hot. But it was flowing away and dumping its excess heat outside the cave until I sealed it up. It also carried away with it melted water from-“

“Wait a minute,” Mark said. “That’s a breach. Why didn’t we lose air that way?”

“We did. But only a very, very little at a time,” Starlight said. She pointed at the overhang again. “Water is heavier, so it could force a way through where air wouldn’t. But that might have changed if this eroded point had given way entirely. There must be a crack or something that allowed water to flow here like… like…” Starlight tried not to make a face as she ran into a word she still didn’t have in English. Those came less often, but sometimes she found one. “Like a layer of flowing water in rock or sand,” she said in one quick breath.

“Aquifer?” Mark offered. “Where springs come from?”

“I thought springs came from metalworkers,” Dragonfly quipped.

Starlight moved on before futile attempts to correct the changeling ensued. She was pretty sure she only did it to appear silly, anyway. Bad habit. “Show me the word when we return to the Hab, Mark,” she said. “Anyway, the weight of soil and permafrost down slope prevented a rapid blowout. But if this had worn through a bit more, the soil under the entrance might have collapsed. Then we definitely would have had a breach. Or possibly an avalanche.” That was a word she’d learned from an episode of Grizzly Adams. “And most likely at least one of us would have been here, without our suits, when it blew.”

A few moments of silent contemplation of that prospect seemed enough.

“Of course, the modified Instant Foundations spell put an end to that,” Starlight said. “But it also put an end to the outflow of water. And to the outflow of heat. The difference wouldn’t have been much, but it would have been… would have been…” She tossed her head in an involuntary gesture of frustration at not knowing the English for cumulative. “It added up.”

She pointed to the small voids remaining under the cave farm’s surface, then farther back in the cave to the much larger pockets still vacant in the chambers farther back. “The permafrost in the cave was particularly thick all the way through,” she said. “I don’t know how that could be, but-“

“I have an idea,” Mark said. “There’s a theory that about once in a million years or so Mars experiences a brief warm period. Maybe because of a volcanic eruption, maybe orbital eccentricity, maybe a meteorite, whatever. The atmosphere thickens up enough to allow liquid water to flow on the surface. And as dry as Mars is now, it still has a lot of water locked up places- the permafrost layers, the polar caps, and like that. We haven’t got enough proof to support or overturn that theory yet, but it would make permafrost layers in the cave possible.”

“Thank you, Mark,” Starlight said. “Anyway, the lower levels of the permafrost had a lot of methane. The layers of permafrost beyond the cave- all of them, even the one above the cave- still have a lot of it. But so long as the water was flowing, the heat in the lower levels never quite got high enough for a large-scale release. But when the liquid water had nowhere to go…”

“Cave fart,” Fireball rumbled.

“Right.” Starlight tapped the remaining vugs in the chart and said, “I learned a couple of tricks from Maud about moving minerals around, so I can fill these pockets without much trouble. It’ll take most of the rest of this battery,” she tapped the battery at her hooves that powered the display, “to do that. But then what?”

“Must let water run again,” Cherry said carefully. “The farm will die if we don’t. Not enough heat.”

“But if we do,” Mark said, “all the water will build up about twenty meters below us and work back up through the soil until we have a bog.”

“Pump it out?” Spitfire suggested.

“We need some water for the crops,” Mark said.

“Also, no pipe left,” Dragonfly said.

“And we don’t want to breach the cave for an exit point,” Mark added. “The water would be sucked out, and then so would the air.”

“If that happened the water would shut off automatically,” Dragonfly said. “Home won’t let us pull a constant vacuum on the space base water tanks.”

Mark rubbed the small of his back. “But carrying the spent water out a bucket at a time is backbreaking work,” he said. “And not all that effective.”

“We’ll have to let the water run as far to the back of the cave as we can, at first,” Starlight said. “Can we make a trench out of Amicitas hull pieces- not a trench, but a made-thing water runs along? Like on roofs or sidewalks?”

“Gutter,” Mark and Dragonfly said at once.

Spitfire smirked. “That where you minds is?”

Starlight gave the Wonderbolt a look. She knew Spitfire struggled with English more than any of the others. How did she come up with that one? Also, if gutter was the word for gutters, why did so many of those TV shows make it sound like a dirty place? What kind of slovenly pony or underfunded town cleaners would let a gutter get dirty? It wouldn’t do its job-

Starlight shook her head. I wish I could speak to Applejack or Rainbow Dash privately, she thought. I need to know if Twilight Sparkle’s obsessive thinking is contagious. Aloud she said, “Can we build one, and how long?”

Fireball, the self-designated Keeper of the Salvage, thought about it. “Yeah,” he said. “It leak, though. Lay one end on top next piece down, make waterfall, that help. Maybe… maybe two hundred meter?” he said.

“Not quite to the Crack,” Mark muttered.

“Make well by Crack,” Fireball suggested. “Keep it there.”

“It’ll seep down and turn the whole floor of the Buffet to mud,” Mark warned.

“Too cold in there now,” Fireball said, shaking his head. “Freeze up first.”

“Why not make a strip of compressed dirt?” Dragonfly asked. “Use the same spell you sealed the cave with.”

Starlight shook her head. “We need more magic to do everything,” she said. “We need batteries for testing engines and for the Sparkle Drive. We need it so I can teleport the excess water out- it’s the only way I can think of to do it quickly and safely. We need it for magic fields so Cherry can revive the farm. But we can’t get more magic without more batteries, and we’ve used up the batteries twice now on other things.”

She sighed, shaking her head. She’d hoped that making batteries would be an exponential growth process- two batteries, then four, then eight. But as the number of batteries grew, so did the demand for magic. It was just too useful- and too integral to everything the ponies could contribute to survival and escape.

“After today, no magic for ten days,” she said. “Unless life or death emergency. Then I make new batteries –six or eight, depends on how much power I have then. Those batteries get put aside, only to be used to make more batteries. Then I can turn the well,” she pointed to the big hole at the back of the chamber, “into a concrete cistern, with batteries I can use to teleport the contents outside the cave walls when we need to.

“That’s the long-term solution. Once we have enough batteries, the other problems solve themselves. But batteries first.” Starlight tapped the battery under her hoof, causing the diagram to flicker and almost collapse. “Until then, we make do.”

“Okay,” Mark said. “So I guess we fill the voids under the surface to prevent more sinkholes, then go back to base and make plans for a runoff gutter.”

“We?” Starlight raised an eyebrow and smirked. Her horn flared, and a large lump of dirt scooped itself up from the walls of the well. It floated over to a bare spot of the farm, filled back in after a sinkhole, where the chart showed a pumpkin-sized void underneath. She stepped over to the lump of dirt, wrapped her magic around her hoof, and stomped down hard and in a very precise way on the lump.

WHUMP.

She stepped away, the surface perfectly flat again.

Tomorrow she began another ten-day magic fast. Today she still had two-thirds of a battery, and she was going to enjoy it.

Mark looked at Cherry Berry and Dragonfly. “How did she do that?” Starlight heard him ask.

Cherry Berry shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said. “I never work on rock farm.”

“On what?”

Starlight levitated the two sample shovels to Mark and Fireball. “Get digging,” she said. “Outside. We’ll need to bring in dirt for those big voids under the Buffet. And then you need to bury those pipes.”

Author's Note

A week of bed rest has done Starlight a world of good. (And if you're wondering, she looked up "cistern" the night before, while thinking her plans through.)

Half an hour (as I type this) until tonight's KWLP. It's a Weird Al special, since I went to a Weird Al concert last night two and a half hours away... and got home very late.

Sol 207

Author's Note

So in this chapter I was going to have Mark moan about how winter was coming soon and the plants would go to sleep, etc. etc. And I decided I wanted to know exactly how much time before winter solstice Mark had.

Now, according to the trajectories Andy Weir worked out, which required that Ares III be on the surface during Thanksgiving, Sol 6 is November 12, 2035. Sol 206 is June 12, 2036.

As my most recent blog post says, I did some research and found out that November 12, 2035 in Mars's northern hemisphere is the absolute dead of winter.

So I get to spend the rest of the evening going back through four months of daily posting and adjusting every mention of Martian climate- temperatures, length of days, etc.- to what it really should be. Because I have a Twilight Sparkle in my head who's in a tizzy about this.

Thanks very much for your hand-waving on this point, Mr. Weir.

Sol 207

MISSION LOG – SOL 207

Today is a day of rest, and both physically and mentally, we all needed it. We spent ten days doing all we could to salvage the cave farm after the minor case of compartment overpressure on Sol 196, and then I spent yesterday doing a lot of badly overdue maintenance work on the Hab. Today I’m resting my sore back, and the aliens are lounging about except for Dragonfly, who went by herself to the cave to do the daily maintenance check.

So: sitrep time.

THE HAB – No signs of weak spots anywhere in the canvas or around Airlocks 2 and 3. The atmospheric regulator and oxygenator are working at 97% of rated efficiency, which is pretty good considering they’re dealing with, among other things, fur. Cleaning out the filtration system was NOT fun. We’re truly lucky the filter system uses non-disposable, cleanable filters. As it is, I could start a fire with the lint and crap I cleaned out. And I might need to, so I’m storing it in a small sample bin against the day we need it.

Side note: I made the comment about becoming a hoarder, and Fireball asked what was wrong with that. I said nothing if you’re a dragon, but humans generally don’t hoard gold and gems and like that. We tend to hoard old newspapers, used wrapping paper, dirty dishes, old prescription medicine, and cats. Cherry began wishing we had some newspapers, and Starlight wanted wrapping paper, and Spitfire wanted more medicine, old or not, so I don’t think I made my point very well.

Anyway, there is one big problem: the water reclaimer. With all the toxins present or potentially present in Mars soil, a decon shower was an absolute necessity. Ares I proved that. But the decon shower was meant to deal with light to moderate amounts of regolith clinging to spacesuits, clothes or skin. It wasn’t meant to deal with viscous stinking black mud full of bacteria of all kinds. It shut down twice in the past week due to clogs, which I had to locate and clean out before we could wash.

And yesterday it shut down again for an entirely different reason. The wastewater holding tank had silted up.

By wastewater I don’t mean the toilet. The toilet has its own system for extracting the water from urine and feces before vacuum-sealing them and dumping them in little baggies behind the Hab. (Which it doesn’t do anymore, because despite months of crapping and pissing into a bucket, we ran out of the baggies for the toilet ages ago.) No, the wastewater tank is where the drains go from the lab/kitchen sink and the decon shower. And that was mostly full of sand and mud- to the point that it couldn’t hold any more. When the holding tank is full, the reclaimer treats it as a malfunction and shuts down until the engineer (me) addresses the situation.

Getting the muck-filled tank out was a minor adventure. The valve was almost locked up from silt, so it took half an hour to close it so I could disconnect it without dumping water everywhere. I couldn’t lift the thing, and I think I may have hurt my back trying. Eventually I got Fireball to do it. I’ve since replaced it with the only substitute I could find- one of the empty CO2 tanks from the MAV fuel plant. It’s a lot smaller than the water tank, but the valves and couplings are standardized sizes. It works well enough in the short term to get the reclaimer running again.

Once I had the old tank out, there were two ways to address the problem: magic the gunk out with my handy-dandy unicorn (she slices, she dices, she makes julienne fries!), or flush the thing out until the muck is rinsed away. Unfortunately my unicorn is on strike because of the magic battery thing, and she refuses to recognize hygiene as an emergency. (Which, considering how badly we have to stink before we rinse off, isn’t that big a change…)

So, rinse out the tank it was. And rinse. And rinse. And rinse and rinse and rinse.

The problem is that a lot of Martian soil consists of basaltic dust. When you get basaltic dust wet, it clings together, and sometimes it goes so far as to form chemical bonds. The ancient Romans added it to quicklime to make the world’s first underwater concrete. Add to that the discharge from soil bacteria of both the oxygen-breathing and sulfide-breathing kinds, and you get the kind of clogs Drano just won’t touch.

So I ended up contaminating about eighty percent of the Hab’s store of fresh water trying, and mostly failing, to convince the crud in the tank to leave. What came out was invariably black as sin and stank really badly. We took it to the airlocks and dumped it.

We’ll gradually get the water back, of course. The ponies water the Hab farm every day using the nearly infinite supply from their space suits. What the plants don’t turn into more plant material they aspirate through the stomata in their leaves. That puts humidity into the air, which gets absorbed by the atmospheric regulator and shunted over to the water reclaimer, which cleans it and stores it. And if we really need it, we can ask the pony bosses to override the suit shutdown failsafes and- very slowly- refill the Hab’s storage tanks from them. But for right now, no showers for anybody.

I refuse to recognize this as an insoluble (pardon me) problem. I’m looking through the limited inventory of chemical agents in the soil analysis lab, trying to find something that’ll loosen up the crap in the tank without attacking the tank or plumbing. And if worst comes to worst I can just wait until Starlight builds more batteries and decides there’s enough magic sparkles in the bank to empty hardened Mars muck out of a bottle.

But the big problem is, what this stuff did to the holding tank it might also be doing to the innards of the water reclaimer. This is an issue. A short-term reduction in the use of indoor plumbing is inconvenient. A permanent loss of the plumbing approaches mission-critical.

So I reported all of this to NASA, and my dear friend Dr. Venkat Kapoor reacted in the quiet, professional, understanding way we’ve all come to expect.

[16:42] JPL: Mother, look! Our dear sweet Mark has called us for the first time in days! And Mr. Self-Reliant needs some help. Possibly even, just perhaps, a procedure? Why, certainly, son. Did you bring your laundry with you too?

Yeah. Prick. Sarcasm is my job, not his.

Moving on: one other Hab issue. With one-sixth of our electrical production capacity at Site Epsilon warming the cave back up, we’re beginning to get undercharge on the Hab systems. Too much demand (especially by the half-choked water reclaimer) is my guess. I’ve disconnected the MAV fuel plant and, with great reluctance, the MDV turned flight sim. That appears to have righted the balance for now. it's only about a hundred sols to the summer solstice, and after that the days will get shorter again, so it’s something we’re going to have to watch.

ALIEN SHIP: Chilly as fuck, but it refrigerates rather than freeze-drying the hay stored inside. It holds air fine, and the electronic-only systems are holding up like a champ. The only problem is that the ship has no electrical generation of any kind, so it’s another load on the Hab- and its internal batteries are pretty wimpy. Again, something we’re going to have to watch.

ALIEN SPACESUITS: Dragonfly declared another make-and-mend day for the suits yesterday, and tomorrow I’m supposed to trim hooves again. She ate most of the old freeze-dried alfalfa to get raw material for today’s work, re-soling the suit feet inside and out and then putting patches on the inside of Fireball’s back (wing chafing) and her own legs (hole chafing).

Peculiar thing: yesterday Fireball was complaining that his suit had started feeling tight. That’s a potential game-ender for him. Apparently dragons grow slowly throughout their very long lives, but they never stop growing. And furthermore, dragons sometimes experience growth spurts caused by emotional imbalance or the size of their hoards. It’s an inconsistent and non-scientific phenomenon- and it’s a dragon telling me this, so even they admit it’s nuts. But long story short, if Fireball can’t fit into his spacesuit, he’s trapped on Mars- period.

Except… this morning he was roaring about how someone had stolen one of his five remaining sapphires from his homeworld, plus both his remaining food packs. And then, when Dragonfly asked him to shut up and put on his space suit for further adjustments and patches, it was loose on him. I don’t think you need Inspector Poirot, or even Jim Rockford, to figure out whodunit.

CAVE FARM: I admit, I’ve saved the worst for last.

The Hab farm, bear in mind, is doing just fine- let’s get that out of the way. Today I used my free time to take cuttings of the small stands of alfalfa in between the potato plants and prepared the soil planting tub with fresh cultivated soil for rooting them in. We’ll give it a week to see if they root, and then we’ll stuff the survivors in a space suit and take them to the cave for transplant.

And the fact is, we’re going to need to do this.

Between the methane, the black bacteria, the cave blowout, and the sinkholes and flooding, about sixty percent of the alfalfa crop is dead. Of the remainder, about one-third is plants salvaged from the sinkholes that survived the water and transplanting, and none of them are what you’d call healthy. Another third avoided getting flooded but is still fighting off root rot, so they’ve barely grown at all over the past two weeks. So only about twenty percent of the pre-methane alfalfa plants are healthy and on course for a harvest ten sols from now.

I tried making cuttings from plants which were obviously too far gone to root rot for them to survive, but in most cases I was too late. Only about a quarter of my cuttings have rooted, and it’ll take at least sixty days before we can get any good harvest out of them.

The potato plants are in much better shape. We lost only fifteen percent of those to sinkholes and drowning. Their root systems were too shallow for the anaerobic bacteria to bother them much, so the only plants we lost from non-sinkhole issues were the ones that had all their leaves stripped off during the brief blowout. And anyway we already have a massive potato surplus here in the Hab. so we can afford to lose potatoes in the cave.

The cherry trees all survived, although six of them needed minor tending to the roots. They were planted near the walls of the cave, so they were less susceptible to sinkholes. The one tree that was on a sinkhole edge held enough soil in its remaining root system to avoid toppling.

So, on the one hand, about sixty percent of the plant life in the cave survived and will probably recover. That puts a hit in magic battery recharge, to the point that it’s now barely better leaving them in the cave than having them here in the Hab. But we could replant more potatoes, or even more cherry pits, and get that back in about a month.

But on the other hand, more than two-thirds of the main protein and minerals source for the ponies just bit the dust. We absolutely need to get that back if at all possible.

Luckily, we’re moving towards Martian summer here. Heat and light will be less of an issue. Hell, some days we’ll even have surface temperatures that break the freezing mark briefly. But that’s the only thing going for us.

We have enough alfalfa seed left to replant most, but not quite all, of the sinkhole zones. We’re probably going to use all but a tiny emergency reserve of that. The seedlings I’m trying to start from cuttings will have to make up the difference.

The good news, of course, is that once we get that last good harvest it’ll be okay. I’d like two good harvests, so we can give the ponies more calories from protein than from potato starch. And after that we can just let the farm grow until it’s time to leave.

A lot of work behind us, and a lot of work ahead.

Here’s hoping it pays off.

Sol 209

There had been delays. Two more thruster engines and a fuel pump had failed inspections, and they had had to be replaced. The supplier for the probe’s monopropellant fuel had come up short, delaying fueling by a critical thirty-six hours. Parts were put in backwards by half-asleep technicians, costing the next shift more sleep when they had to be removed and remounted correctly.

But the technicians, the assembly people, the engineers of Jet Propulsion Laboratory persevered. Shifts ran round the clock. Then, as it became obvious the original schedule wasn’t going to happen, shifts were abandoned, and people worked almost until they dropped. People bunked in the cafeteria, in conference rooms, in offices, any place with sufficient horizontal surface and dim lighting to allow sleep.

The local businesses that served JPL employees knew what drove this, and they responded. Popular restaurants got together and organized catering, meals and beverages available virtually around the clock, with the owners picking up the tab. Laundries coordinated with workers to swap out clean changes of clothing fetched from their homes and washed the old ones, without charge. And one supermarket manager, who had attended the California Institute of Technology but dropped out a year before graduation, arranged to have half a pallet of liquid soap and air freshener “fall off a truck” near the JPL loading dock early one morning.

And now, four days past schedule, at just past four in the morning, it was done- barely in time, a mere six days before launch.

Bruce Ng, his polo shirt smudged and slightly torn, his eyes almost totally shut from exhaustion, held a ratchet wrench in his hand. Behind him sat two special shipping containers, one already labeled for special flight to Cape Canaveral, Florida, the other bound for China’s space center in Inner Mongolia. Behind him stood the massive freight doors of the Spacecraft Assembly Building, and behind them freight handlers waited to transfer the containers onto trucks, drive them to the airfield, and load the containers on two NASA aircraft for immediate transport to their destinations.

In front of him, and around him, stood hundreds of workers- every permanent or temporary JPL worker who’d so much as lifted a wrench, fired a welding torch, or drawn a line with a pencil. There were even people present from Accounting, who hadn’t needed to put in overtime, but who wanted to be in at the end.

When the three probes of Sleipnir 1, 2, and 3 had been delivered, only about half as many people had been in the room. Now, with assembly done on Sleipnir 4 and 5, everyone who could get in had done so, to witness the completion of their supreme effort.

“People,” Bruce said in the almost totally silent room, “in the past several months you’ve made history. You’ve set records for building probes. We’ve made mistakes, and we’ve corrected them. We’ve hit obstacles, and we’ve worked through them. And as a result, the probes we’ve delivered have functioned perfectly.

“And you know why we did this. Not for the money. Not for the line on the resume. Not for the extra month of paid vacation time. We did it to preserve the lives of eleven very special people. Thanks to you, those eleven people will have a fighting chance to make it home. They’re not here to thank you right now, but I am. Thank you all.”

There was some applause, if perhaps not all that was deserved. The workers were both proud and grateful, but beyond that, they were exhausted.

Bruce took the wrench and ceremonially tightened one bolt in the doors of each container. With that gesture, so far as the builders of JPL were concerned, Project Sleipnir was complete. What happened afterwards was in NASA’s hands.

Bruce turned back to the crowd and said quietly, “Go home.”

They did. When three of them were pulled over by Pasadena police officers for erratic driving, the officers took one look at the employee parking stickers on their cars and said the exact same thing.

And for all practical purposes JPL ceased to exist for the following two days, at least as a collection of conscious human beings in a vertical position.

Meanwhile, Hermes grew closer.

Author's Note

All I have today. I apparently slept poorly last night, since I've been sleepy and a bit spacey all day today.

Sol 210

“Venk! We need to get going!”

Venkat could count the number of times Teddy had visited his office, rather than vice versa, on his fingers. The director of NASA only did it when he didn’t feel like waiting anymore for something he expected an hour ago, and never mind any countervailing conditions.

“I’m almost done with this response to Congresswoman Dubois,” Venkat replied, typing as fast as he could. “Her request hit my desk while I was showing the Ares III families into the conference room for their live video chat with Hermes. I couldn’t let it sit.” And that was while ignoring two dozen other calls for his attention. He knew Teddy had more, tons more, calls on his time; how had he broken away so cleanly?

“Mrs. Dubois is one of our strongest supporters on Capitol Hill,” Teddy said. “I’m sure she would understand if it took a couple of days for you to respond.”

“Teddy,” Venkat said, “the fact that she’s one of our strongest supporters is why I can’t let her wait. I want to keep her a supporter.”

“Venk, it’ll take just over an hour to get to Bush Intercontinental this time of day,” Teddy said. “And even with expedited boarding it’ll take half an hour to get to our seats. And the plane to Beijing takes off in two hours,” Teddy paused to look at his wristwatch, “and fourteen minutes. Where’s your bags?” Teddy had one large suitcase and one small carry-on bag in his hands.

“Suit for photo ops in suit carrier behind door,” Venkat said. “Other clothes and tablet in carry-on bag underneath.”

“Good.” Teddy didn’t dance impatiently in place, nor did he pace back and forth. The man had perfected the art of looking impatient and eager to go without moving a muscle, without allowing himself to look flustered or ruffled in any way.

Venkat cut short his encomiums on NASA and on the Congresswoman’s career to date, expressed regrets that her request could not be accommodated this close to the critical Hermes flyby of Earth, and sent the email. “There,” he said. “My deputy can deal with most of the other things on my desk.”

“The cab’s waiting downstairs,” Teddy said. “Let’s go.”

Rich Purnell had his own office. It was very small, and it didn’t have a shower or personal toilet like he’d requested, but it did have a bunk and a corner painted off on the carpet and a sign reading TRASH ZONE, as he’d requested, so that sanitation services would know the difference between what Rich was done with and what was still important. It also had its own coffee maker and a supply of disposable polystyrene cups, both of which were kept resupplied. Those had been requested by his coworkers, who were tired of going to the dollar store twice a month for new coffee mugs.

The lion’s share of the Watney Prize was going to be his, if it went to anybody. Director Sanders had approved it, but the announcement had been halted by Congress, where the oversight committees had protested that Purnell was ineligible by reason of being a NASA employee. The core of the argument- whether Rich being on vacation counted as “his own time” if he spent said vacation in his cubicle- showed no signs of being settled before the elections.

Rich didn’t care. He was content.

He hadn’t done either of the trajectories that sat displayed on his computer monitor. The Sleipnir 4 and 5 launch trajectories weren’t minor, though. Sleipnir 4 would launch first, from KSC, and enter into orbit, including a long adjustment burn to put the orbital plane in line with the trajectory of Hermes’s flyby. Sleipnir 5, launching from Jiuquan, had too much potential orbital inclination for such an adjustment, so it would launch direct, without an orbital insertion, with Sleipnir 4’s Hermes injection burn timed to match Jiuquan’s launch.

Each probe had about five percent surplus delta-V for corrections or in case of minor glitches during launch. After that they would be on maneuvering thrusters only, converging on Hermes roughly twenty-four hours after Hermes’s closest approach to Earth.

The numbers and simulations checked out. Rich added his name to the peer review approval list, signing off on this final revision of launch plans for the probes. This done, he reopened his simulations of the yet-to-be-modified Ares IV MAV, tweaking variables to see what could be done with the pony thrusters if used on different parts of the ship.

While he did this with his left hand, his right hand called up the delivery-food app on his phone, selecting a restaurant at random, confirming his favorite order for that restaurant, and placing the order, all without looking.

Nobody wished him hello. Nobody broke his chain of thought to ask his opinion on something. Nobody said it was five o’clock. Nobody sang happy birthday or passed around betting sheets about whatever Houston sports team was playing this time of year. No distractions of any kind. Food came, trash went, and Rich more or less did as he pleased.

The square peg was happy in its square hole.

For the first time in months, Mindy Park wasn’t steering Martian satellites or examining pixels on Martian photos. SatCom was too busy. Every pair of eyes and pair of hands were needed. Hermes was coming in hotter than anything in history that wasn’t a rock or an iceball, and it needed a clear path through Earth local space.

For the Rich Purnell maneuver to work, Hermes had to occupy a fairly narrow trajectory slot around Earth, picking up both momentum and a hard turn in-system in order to gain more speed from solar gravity. It would be allowed to maneuver around space debris if any was going to be in its path, and nine-tenths of SatCom was busy double-checking the orbits of the 275,183 bits of space junk larger than a pencil lead that NASA was tracking as of 8 AM that morning. (That didn’t count an equal number of smaller objects floating around up there, but beyond a certain point anything, even Hermes, had to take its chances.)

Hermes was allowed to dodge space junk, which couldn’t move of its own accord. Everything else had to move the hell out of the way, the farther the better. The remaining tenth of SatCom was reviewing forty-six active orbiting satellites (out of over 2400 active machines in Earth orbit) that had more than a 0.1% possibility of intercepting Hermes should something go badly wrong with the trajectory. Remaining thruster fuel on board was a factor; so was stability of orbit, urgency of continuous function of satellite, and potential intercept with other satellites in the course of moving one or the other out of Hermes’s way.

And then, of course, any satellites that had to be moved also had to be kept clear of the quarter-million ballistic bits of electronics-shredding crap that hadn’t had the good luck or sense to fall back to Earth and burn up in atmosphere. An injudicious orbital change to duck Hermes could send the satellite into a stray washer, a broken bit of Russian solar cell, or Mike Collins’s camera from his Gemini spacewalk, creating a debris field that Hermes might plow into, creating the long-anticipated, long-feared Kessler Syndrome event and, incidentally, dooming eleven people to horrible deaths.

It was a ton of work, and if Hermes stuck to its planned course within ten kilometers all of it would be absolutely unnecessary. But NASA couldn’t rely on “probably.” Every contingency had to be addressed, and time was running out.

The media would have to do without its spy-eye shots of Mark and his friends on their spacewalks. Mindy was busy, for once, doing the job she’d applied for. So was everyone else in the department; no gossip, no cake and cookies, no long coffee breaks. Blouses and skirts, shirts and slacks, had largely been replaced with T-shirts and sweats for maximum comfort instead of professionalism.

Occasionally a phone rang or a computer beeped for email received, usually someone from the Department of Defense providing updated data on space junk. Supervisors from four different departments walked the rows of desks, conferring quietly with the satellite herders, getting information and working slowly towards decisions on the fate of forty-six satellites.

But the loudest sound was, and remained, the clicking of mouse buttons and the clacking of keyboards.

Meanwhile, Hermes drew closer.

Author's Note

I don't want to do a direct rehash of the scenes from the book, which kind of eliminates the crew family interviews. I'm trying other angles instead.

If any of you readers don't know what Kessler syndrome is, the short-words explanation is: there's a lot of space junk up there. Any time a satellite gets hit, it creates more space junk, as the satellite gets bits of itself smacked off and scattered in space. Eventually, if you get a collision that makes enough space junk, the bits will hit other satellites and make even more, and so on, and so on, until that level of space above Earth is too full of little bits of space shrapnel for ANYTHING to survive. And once that state of affairs happens, it can take hundreds of years before enough of the crap de-orbits to allow safe space operations again.

Hm, I got this done early. I might even resurrect the buffer tonight.

Sol 211

Su Bin Bao had gone to Beijing to meet the two top men of the American space program, leaving his backup to translate on behalf of the American launch director. Yang Jusheng had known the job was difficult, after shadowing his boss and the Yankee for almost two weeks.

If he’d known how bad it was going to be, though, he would have requested to re-enlist in the People's Liberation Army and get stationed in Xinjiang. It would be less stressful chasing drug smugglers and secessionists in the far western mountains and desert than preventing his co-workers from murdering the loud, tactless American.

“Tell this unlettered dog whelp to leave my people alone!” the vehicle assembly supervisor was shouting at him, pointing at the American in question. “We don’t need some white-bread jerk hovering over our shoulders while we’re trying to do delicate work on heavy machinery!”

Meanwhile, in an entirely different language, Mitch Henderson was shouting, “Tell this lazy bastard to get his crew into gear! This ship has to launch in four days, and we haven’t even begun on final inspections! Why the hell isn’t Sleipnir 5 mounted yet?”

“And if you can pound anything at all into that pig head on that American hog,” the supervisor continued, “try to get him to learn that just because we don’t speak English doesn’t mean we haven’t learned any! And my people know very well when they’re being insulted!”

“And tell him I’m not interested in excuses!” Henderson continued. “There are eleven people up there for whom excuses aren’t going to do any good!”

“We’re moving as fast as we can!” the supervisor continued. “But we’re not going to rush things and risk what happened with Sleipnir 1!”

“WHAT did he say about Sleipnir 1?” Henderson snarled.

Jusheng had had enough for a moment. He held up both hands, palms out, to silence the two older men. “Mister Henderson, I will get a full report on current conditions from the supervisor so I can translate it for you. While I am doing that, I will express your concerns to him. In the meantime, we have prepared fresh coffee in the break room. Perhaps you would like some while you wait?”

After a few moments made it clear that Jusheng wasn’t going to say a word to the supervisor until Henderson left earshot, the American growled, “Four days to launch. Remember that!” Having made his point, he stalked off.

“Boy, I don’t think I can take much more of him,” the supervisor said quietly.

“He is anxious,” Jusheng said. “For us the aliens on Mars are a wonderful thing, a treasure to be rescued from the flood. But for him there are six co-workers- perhaps friends-“

“Does such a man as that know what a friend is?” the supervisor snorted. “How would he keep one long enough to find out?”

“He thinks they are his friends, anyway,” Jusheng said diplomatically. “He knows them personally. Their lives are at stake. He wants them to be saved.”

“It would go much faster if he would restrict himself to assisting when we need his knowledge!” the supervisor said. “I’ve considered denouncing him as an American spy, except he’s obviously not trying to steal our knowledge. He keeps trying to fix it instead. If anything, he’d be a double agent!”

“Does he know what he’s talking about?” Jusheng asked.

“Most of the time, yes,” the supervisor said. “The problem is that he won’t give us credit for knowing what we are talking about- or doing! And every time one of my workers sets down a tool and wipes his face, he’s there, shouting at him, calling him lazy-“

“Sir, please consider,” Jusheng said, trying to derail this rant before it could build up momentum. “Consider that, say, three of our taikonauts were stranded in a capsule in orbit, unable to re-enter. Only a miracle could save them from slow, agonizing death. What would you do to save them?”

“If it would help? I would skin myself alive and dance around the gate of the Forbidden City,” the supervisor said. “I’d climb to the top of the assembly gantry and jump off if it would help. I would do anything. And I understand he’s the same way, boy.” He pointed a finger at the door to the break room and growled, “But I’d be a lot more polite than that pocket-turtle!”

“He is from a different culture,” Jusheng said. “A culture where the politeness you and I take for granted is considered the mark of a weakling.”

“No, he’s just a dick,” the supervisor said bluntly.

“Perhaps.” Jusheng wasn’t like Su Bin Bao. He had a limit to his diplomacy. “But we aren’t, sir.”

“Mm,” the supervisor said, nodding. “Please offer my apologies for… well, find something to apologize for besides my calling him a dick.”

“Yes, sir,” Jusheng said. “How is the assembly proceeding?”

“Couldn’t be better, aside from him,” the supervisor said. “The adapter collar their JPL made lines up perfectly with the mount points for Tai Yang Shen. We should be good to go to roll out to the pad tomorrow, after inspections.” He smiled a little and added, “We might even get ahead of schedule if you could take him somewhere else.”

“Unfortunately I am ordered to go where he goes,” Jusheng sighed. “Hopefully he will be distracted by his colleagues when they arrive tomorrow.”

The supervisor shook his head. “I wouldn’t be, in his position,” he said. “And if I was that boorish.”

“It’ll all be over soon, sir,” Jusheng said soothingly. “Hold on to that thought.”

The supervisor frowned. “We’re going to have to give him a thank-you dinner,” he said. “Hospitality requires it. Boy, my crew and I, and the booster team, we’d all rather give him a short flight off the Great Wall without a mattress at the bottom.”

“Please try not to mistreat him,” Jusheng said. “This is supposed to be a moment of international cooperation between spacefaring nations.”

“Oh, we won’t poison him,” the supervisor said, showing his teeth. “But if he’s not used to the traditional dishes of our back-country work force, well, too bad for him.”

Jusheng sighed. “Could you at least restrain yourselves to one eyeball?”

“No promises, boy. Last I heard, pig embryos come with two eyes anyway.” The supervisor chuckled and added, “I wonder if we can get him to eat the placenta.”

Michael Hong still had his job, though he wasn’t sure he wanted it anymore.

He’d taken a pay cut, lost the little seniority he’d had, and was put under NASA supervision for the duration, but he had his job. The two other inspectors who’d signed off on what had turned out to be a deteriorating coupling on Sleipnir 3 had lost theirs, but only after clearing Hong.

When the special investigating committee had interviewed the inspection crews, Hong hadn’t said a word about his misgivings. After all, he’d signed off on the part along with the other two. Each of his former coworkers, when privately interviewed, had admitted that Hong had noticed something wrong and that they'd pressured him to ignore it. They'd both done it unprompted, whether out of guilt or obligation or something else Hong didn't understand. But for whatever reason, they'd fallen on their swords for him, although he heard both tried to pin final blame on NASA's schedule pressure. Their testimony had resulted in a second, more specific interview for Hong, and that interview had saved his job.

He didn’t deserve it. He’d knuckled under. The reasons didn’t matter; it was still his name on the inspection report that deliberately overlooked the discoloration which was the very beginning of corrosion from an oxygen leak due to the faulty seal. It hadn’t advanced enough to be obvious, to match up to what Hong had been trained to watch for. He’d failed in his job.

But… but if he resigned from SpaceX after this, his engineering career was dead. Gone. Over. No other aerospace firm would hire him. He wouldn’t even be able to get a job repairing thirty-year-old airliners in Africa. He might- might- be able to find a job as a high school science teacher, but that was all. He'd be remembered forever as one of the men who (almost) killed Mark Watney.

So he was still here, doing his job, hating himself the whole time.

Today, to be specific, he was the lone SpaceX man of a three-man final inspection team. The other two men were NASA inspectors, whose names Hong had heard but hadn't registered. Names weren't important; the inspection was. Most of the normal inspections had been tossed, with the launch date and time set and immovable, so this was the only pass they'd get. Fortunately this time the booster was brand new, just off SpaceX’s assembly line, without a refurbished part in it.

The probes went in the inspection ports, the little cameras snaking around the tanks, around the thrusters and guidance systems. Hong’s hands remained on the controls, moving the camera slowly, delicately, not missing one inch of the insides of the giant beast preparing to hurl a comparatively tiny package into deep space.

The longer the inspection went, the more his hands wanted to shake. He kept blinking. Several times he stopped to rub his eyes. Again and again he looked, trying to spot the flaws, the hidden flaws… hell, the obvious flaws.

There weren’t any.

Hong had inspected plenty of SpaceX rockets, some just off the assembly line, others before being refurbished, others after. He’d once sent a second stage that was fresh off the line back for seventeen corrections. There were always problems. ALWAYS problems. And with less than three days to go, there was no time to spare to fix a problem, so he had to find them right now.

He couldn’t find any, and that was impossible.

There was always a problem that needed fixing. Always.

So if he couldn’t find the problem, that meant there was something wrong with him.

“Okay,” one of the NASA men said, removing the probe from the last inspection port and preparing to seal it up again. “I wouldn’t have believed it, but it looks like-“

“I want to check again,” Hong said in a soft voice.

The two NASA men looked at each other, then at the SpaceX inspector standing between them. The second NASA man said quietly, “Did you see something?”

“No,” Hong admitted. “And that’s why I want to check again.”

The two NASA men exchanged another look. Then the first man said, “All right, Michael, I think we can spare a little time.”

Hong felt tears coming to his eyes, and it took a moment for him to realize it wasn’t from the Sleipnir 3 failure or from his terror of missing something on Sleipnir 4. “That’s the first time anyone I’ve worked with has called me Michael,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Er… you’re welcome?” the NASA man said, a bit confused.

“What do they call you?” the second NASA man said.

“Mickey,” Hong squeaked.

“Ah.” The two inspectors shared another look, this one of sympathy. “Michael, we’re both named Richard. Trust me when I say, we understand,” the second one said.

“Restart the inspection from the bottom?” the first man said.

“Thank you,” Hong said again.

Meanwhile, Hermes drew closer.

Author's Note

I'm not dissing China with this entry. I tried to find authentic Chinese insults, but I didn't go overboard on them. And the "eat the placenta" thing comes from the book Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams's companion to the 1980s BBC documentary about several species on the verge of extinction. At the time there were estimated to be about 200 baiji dolphins in the Yangtse River, and efforts to preserve them by the Chinese government were feeble, half-hearted, and more than thwarted by fishermen, cargo boats, and pollution. The species was declared extinct ten years ago.

I bring this up because, after the show aired but before the book was released, Adams received a letter from someone who had visited China and been given a special feast as an honored guest... roast baiji dolphin, including its unborn fetus and, yes, the placenta (or, as the letter-writer called it, the afterbirth).

So, yeah. I didn't make that up.

The buffer stands at one. Today's chapter was written last night, but today was a lazy Sunday, so I only wrote tomorrow's short bit.

Sol 214

HERMES – ARES III MISSION DAY 343

Vogel floated in the small exercise cabin, looking out the little window at the tiny splotch of white and blue in the distance. The half-full Earth looked smaller than a half-moon would on Earth, a tiny blue dot (as Carl Sagan put it) in the vast, hostile reaches of space.

Normally Hermes would be shutting down its main engines about now for a leisurely three-day cruise into Earth’s gravity well, passing by the Moon to shed momentum, then slinging around through its upper atmosphere for the first of three aerobraking passes that would, over the course of a week, reduce its speed enough to drop it into an intercept orbit with the space station.

Now the Moon was well off to one side and out of the way, and come this time tomorrow Earth would not be ahead but beside them, as Hermes slung around its dark side for its gravity and trajectory assist maneuver. And two days from now the half-Earth would be even smaller in Hermes’ aft-facing windows than it was in the forward-facing ones.

Two days before the crew had scoured the ship, securing absolutely everything loose- exercise equipment, kitchen utensils, lab equipment, experiments, all of it. Hermes normally rotated on its long axis to produce artificial Martian-level gravity, but the ship couldn’t both rotate and maneuver on its thrusters. The big ship now had to thread a needle through thousands of satellites and possibly millions of tiny bits of space debris tomorrow and then dock with two resupply ships the next day. That meant the gravity had to go away, and after firing certain thrusters, it did.

But, as they’d learned before, no matter how careful you were, you never did get everything secure, so Lewis had sent the others around the ship to double-check for anything floating free. Beck was checking the vehicle docking bay, docking ports, and spacesuit storage. Martinez was checking the reactor room and labs. Johannsen was checking the living quarters, which left Vogel the recreation area, exercise area, and galley.

He’d done his looking, and he’d found nothing out of place. But with that task done, he had a few minutes to look at Earth, at his home, and to think about many things.

First, that he had agreed, along with the others, to pass by, postponing their homecoming for over a year and a half. Another year and a half without his wife and the monkeys- how much of their lives would he have missed, between training and the mission? Another year and a half with a comparatively fragile metal box his only protection against almost instant death. Another year and a half of muscular and skeletal atrophy. Another year of the only green being in photographs and Watney’s botanical experiments, the only animal sounds being the soft squeaking of the newborn third generation of ship’s lab rats.

But on the other hand, consider the superlatives. The Hermes crew would fly closer to the Sun than any astronauts had ever dared before, testing Hermes’s magnetic field, anti-radiation insulation, and cooling systems to their limits. At perigee during their Earth fly-by they would become the fastest humans in recorded history; they would then set an even higher speed record at perihelion. Their flight would be the longest single space duration ever, the first rescue of someone stranded on Mars, the first time individuals returned to Mars’s sphere of influence for a second visit.

First, fastest, most, best. Vogel wouldn’t be human if he didn’t like the thought.

But there was a dark side to the scenario. If the mission suffered a catastrophic failure, it would likely be a century, if ever, before anyone returned to Mars. Hermes would not, could not be built a second time. The conditions that had made it possible at all, much less in the short timeframe between the program’s beginning and Ares I’s landing, no longer existed.

And if any number of lesser mishaps occurred, Hermes might survive the trip (with or without its crew), but it would end up in the wrong place or at the wrong speed or with insufficient resources to rescue Watney and his aliens. Or, possibly, Watney would dock with Hermes functional but its crew dead, dead of solar heat, dead of micrometeorite impact, dead of failure of the reactor shielding or the magnetic field system…

The risk, when one thought about it for any length of time, sobered a man up and made him put away thoughts of first, fastest, and most.

It wasn’t likely, of course. Hermes had been designed to withstand coronal mass ejections, a threat which would have slain Apollo astronauts without warning had any occurred during that program. It had been built for a thirty-year lifespan, and it was just past its tenth year of operation now. The ship was strong and healthy, and it had a crew to match. The only danger was that the resupply missions might fail, and even then it would require that both missions failed to equal disaster. One failed resupply would merely be very bad, but not absolute doom.

Not likely… but still possible. Thus Alexander Vogel, chemist, astrogation expert, backup EVA technician, stared at the tiny fingernail clipping which was Earth and thought about the other choice.

But not for too long. The duty shift wasn’t over, and there were other preparations to make for the fly-by.

He bumped into Beck on his way down the ladder into Hermes’s central hull. “Pardon me,” he said. “Are the airlocks secure?”

“Huh?” Beck stared at him a moment, probably stunned by the bump. “Oh, yeah, the airlocks. They’re all good. I was just checking my bunk.”

“Was that not Johannsen’s task?” Vogel asked.

“Yeah, well, it’s our bunks, our personal items, you know?” Beck said. “We ought to all be responsible for our own stuff. And my bunk’s also our sickbay, so I’ve got more stuff than the rest of you to watch over.”

“This is true,” Vogel said. “I think I also shall check my bunk. Thank you for reminding me.”

“Sure thing,” Beck said, pushing off the walls in the direction of the bridge.

Vogel floated down through the ladderway to the living quarters. He had to pause and flatten himself against the side of the compartment to let Johannsen pass. She said nothing, but she seldom did, so Vogel thought nothing of it.

As expected, everything in Vogel’s cabin was in its proper place, properly secured, even the little photographs of his wife and children. Again he paused, looking, thinking.

But then his eyes flicked over another photo, taken at a children's party place and pizzeria in Pasadena. (That is, Pasadena the suburb of Houston, and not Pasadena the suburb of Los Angeles. Vogel had once made a snarky remark about how Americans were short of names for large cities, and Martinez had mentioned Frankfurt-am-Main and Frankfurt-an-der-Oder. Vogel had argued that the example was irrelevant, but he'd failed to persuade the others.)

He remembered the day the photo had been taken. The pizza was bad even by American standards. The games had been simple, juvenile, little challenge. Rolling a ball up a ramp and dropping it into the center hoop held few difficulties for a man who’d bowled candlepins as a child in an outdoor alley as God intended. And hitting plastic alligators with a padded hammer had much less entertainment value after one had encountered a real live alligator fresh from Mud Lake sunning itself just outside Building 34.

But he’d had fun. They’d all had fun. And the most childish of their group, the one who’d had the most fun, was also the one who’d made sure that everyone else had fun.

And there he was, in front of Martinez and next to Commander Lewis, making the goofiest face he could for the camera. That was the reason his wife and children would have to wait. They could wait, but Mark Watney couldn’t.

Watney had promised to take them all to a Chicago place for some “real pizza” after landing and quarantine.

Vogel, for one, planned to hold him to his promise.

And as he looked at the photos on his bunk wall, Hermes drew closer to Earth.

Author's Note

While cooling my heels at a Honda dealership getting necessary (and some unnecessary) maintenance done on my personal car, I wrote 2250 words of tomorrow's chapter.

It's not finished. I'll do that shortly.

Clear Lake is the more famous tidal inlet from Galveston Bay that runs near the Johnson Space Center. It has thousands of sailboats and yachts moored in it, even now, despite having had in the past fifteen years two major hurricanes plus Harvey strike the Texas coast nearby. Mud Lake, on the other hand, runs almost adjacent to the JSC campus. It's a shallower, much less scenic branch of Clear Lake- essentially the estuary of Armand Bayou (Middle Bayou before 1974), a minor creek that runs from central Pasadena southeast. The Armand Bayou Nature Center was created to preserve Mud Lake from development, which is why today you can drive up Space Center Boulevard north from NASA Road 1 to Bay Area Boulevard and see nothing but JSC grounds on the left and Texas swampland on the right.

And yes, Mud Lake has gators. Lots of gators. Alligators came close to extinction at one point, but once given protection as an endangered species they made a vigorous comeback, and once more they're all over southeast Texas... as witness this recent news article from a town sixty miles INLAND from JSC: https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/cleveland/news/article/Massive-alligator-stops-US-59-traffic-in-Cleveland-12874150.php?ipid=happening

A moment about coronal mass ejections: that's what happens when the Sun burps, basically. A tangle of the Sun's mighty magnetic field grabs a portion of the Sun's surface and flings it out into space at escape velocity. The one time in recorded history that we know such an eruption hit Earth was in the 19th Century, where it basically set all the telegraph lines on fire- this despite Earth's own magnetic field. A lot of disaster theorists speculate that if such happened now, it would cause the collapse of modern civilization. Our technology would be destroyed, and our infrastructure for practically everything along with it. Now imagine if one of those had passed by Earth while an Apollo mission was in flight. "Cooked Spam in a can" would be an accurate description. As much as "got away with it" is a mantra in Changeling Space Program, it can also be applied to early human space flight. Any future long-term space travel like the Ares program is going to plan for a CME event.

In the book, when the Hermes crew is preparing to deliberately breach the ship as a source of emergency thrust, Beck asks Martinez to secure the lab rats. While it is technically possible for lab rats to live as long as five years, that's not the way to bet- doubly so in space- and by that time Hermes had been in space for one and three-quarters years. Therefore I'm guessing that the rats were allowed, within reason, to be fruitful and multiply, insofar as they could in 0.4 g.

A certain NASA document estimates Hermes flying by Earth around Sol 360. I'm going by Andy Weir's dates as much as possible, and my math says differently. This one I'm NOT going back to tweak.

Sol 215

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 217
ARES III SOL 215

“… but why? I still can’t get over it!”

“Cherry, English, we’re with Mark, remember?”

“Okay. Why did Snape kill Dumbledore? How could he do that? I thought he was good?”

“Snape swore a magic oath, Cherry. Unicorns used to do that sort of thing, about two hundred years ago. We quit because ponies found themselves compelled to-“

“What’s compelled?”

“Forced against their will to do really horrible things. Maybe Snape didn’t want to kill Dumbledore, but the oath forced him to so Draco’s mission wouldn’t fail.”

“But… but… I don’t have the English… rrgh! Snape could have found another way!”

“What I don’t understand is why Dumbledore let Snape kill him. Obviously he knew it was coming. But instead of trying to stop it, he deliberately prevented Harry from doing anything until it was too late! And I don’t see what that gains him!”

The discussion of the ending of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which they’d finished off the night before, continued in the rover’s back seat. Meanwhile Dragonfly stood as close to Mark’s driver seat as she dared- as close as she could trust herself, and silently prayed, Please, please don’t ask my opinion. Don’t even ask me to speak. Please, please, please.

She’d all but confirmed that she was starving for magic. Not for love- her holes were mostly closed, that particular hunger virtually sated. But she’d awakened that morning feeling hungrier, in that weird way she’d only experienced on Mars, than she’d ever been in her life. Ever. She was ravenous. Part of her wanted to grab the nearest pony or dragon or human and suck them dry of love, and another part knew it wouldn’t help a bit because love wasn’t what her system craved.

That second part of her held majority rule for the moment, but the parliament of her mind was going through one vote of confidence after another, with a mental MP or two defecting with every vote.

She’d responded to the first good-morning greeting with a hiss, and she’d had to do a lot of verbal tap-dancing to write it off as bad feelings over the ending of the sixth Potter book. But ever since then she’d remained as silent as possible. She didn’t trust herself. The next word out of her muzzle might be the ancient Changeling word for “prey”, or “dinner,” or, “Nothing personal, but the miracle of nature has decreed it is your turn as the Blue Plate Special.” All the same word, and a very short word if you didn’t count the duplicate S’s after the third, but that was because ancient Changeling was barely different from the random sounds made by a mindless animal.

Because, of course, a changeling starved, angry or afraid beyond endurance usually was a mindless animal.

The breakfast hug hadn’t helped. If anything it had made keeping control harder, because every instinct Dragonfly had screamed at her to take advantage of such willing prey. And given how she felt, the last thing she wanted to do was to join Mark, Cherry and Starlight Glimmer on a trip to the cave farm.

But she had to, and she’d begged to be allowed to come. She’d had to beg because, on Mark’s home world, many things were happening this day: two launches of resupply ships and the close fly-by of the ship that would bring the supplies, and rescue, to Mars. Everyone wanted to keep posted on events, even Cape Friendship back in their home universe, and Dragonfly was the best English speaker and surest Mares-code hoof in the crew. But she’d begged Mark, and Mark had agreed, and Cherry Berry and Starlight hadn’t wanted to override him, so the job of relaying the news from the Hab to the cave had been left to Spitfire and Fireball, the two worst English speakers and code-tappers.

The reason she’d had to come was that today, after multiple delays, Starlight was finally going to make more magic batteries, which required using two or three of the existing batteries to create a magic field to work within. That field would ease the hunger, as it had done before, and keep Dragonfly safe and sane for a little while longer.

It had worked the last time they’d made batteries. The problem was, that had been thirty-two days before. The previous two times, it had been less than twenty days between field events. If it had helped before, it obviously hadn’t helped as much as she’d wanted to believe.

“Mark? What do you think?” Starlight asked. “Why would Dumbledore let himself be killed?”

Mark, Dragonfly sensed, was amused by the question- not that he found it funny, but amused anyway. “I’m not saying,” he said. “I’ve read the next book and you haven’t, not yet. We can talk about it after you get through the Deathly Hallows.”

“Oh, poo,” Starlight muttered. “Dragonfly-“

“Rover 2, Amicitas.” Fireball’s gruff voice echoed through the rover cabin through three headsets and, in Mark’s case, a bare chip of quartz.

“Friendship, this is Friendship Actual,” Cherry Berry responded. “English only, please. Remember protocol.”

Fireball growled, but before he could say anything in either English or Equestrian Spitfire jumped in. “Message from NASA,” she said. “Sleipnir 4 is safe orbit. Probe passes internal checks. Lightning strike during launch caused no malf… malfunction. All go for Hermes inter… inter..”

“Intercept?” Starlight suggested.

“All go for Hermes in-ter-cept burn,” Spitfire pronounced carefully, “at 13:17 hours Houston time. Sleipnir 5 currently go for launch on s-ched-u-lee from Ji… Ji…” She broke down and added in very testy Equestrian, “Don’t ask me to report in English when the stupid names aren’t in English! How do you even pronounce this J-I-U-whatever?”

“Jiuquan,” Mark chipped in, having understood the important part of the rant. “It’s in China.” He then made a noise which, if one was of a generous mind, sounded like the Equestrian for, “Not your sheath.”

There was a profound silence which Dragonfly, to her own surprise, found easy to break. “Mark,” she said, “remember when we asked you to stop trying to speak pony? We really, really meant it.”

“What did I say this time?” Mark asked, sounding (and feeling) defeated. “I meant to say not your fault.”

“Not telling you,” Dragonfly said.

“How bad?”

“You didn’t actually ask us to bed,” Dragonfly replied, cutting off the words this time. “Other than that… pretty bad.”

“I continue,” Spitfire said in a tone that, in either English or Equestrian, meant shut up right now. “Sleipnir 5 currently go for launch on s-ched-u-lee from Gee-You-Kwon at 13:03 hours Houston time. Hermes closest approach to Earth currently est… est… I will get this myself… est-i-mate-duh at 13:38 hours Houston time. All systems go at this time. Message ends.”

“Friendship Actual confirms, Friendship,” Cherry Berry said. “Good work.”

“I’ll have some lessons for- ow!” Starlight rubbed her flank where Cherry had swatted it with a foreleg. “I mean, good job, Spitfire.”

Fireball’s chuckle rattled over the comms. “Signing off until more update from Earth,” he said. “Friendship out.”

The magic-based communications system the ponies used and the electromagnetic radio used by humans weren’t compatible. The jury-rigged replacement antenna for the Hab radio couldn’t reach over the Martian horizon, resulting in a maximum range of just under four kilometers. That meant the only long-distance comms the castaways had was the pony comms, and even then only when Amicitas’s telepresence spell was activated. Without that the suit comms, powered solely by the wearer’s own magic, reached at most two and a half kilometers. But the telepresence spell sucked up mana battery charge like a salt addict, so it could only be activated a few minutes at a time to conserve power.

As a result, Spitfire sat alone in the Hab, while Fireball sat, miserably cold even in his spacesuit, in Amicitas. When NASA sent a status update over the Pathfinder chat, Spitfire would tell Fireball, and Fireball would connect a mana battery, activate the telepresence system, and contact the others. Once contact was established, Spitfire would report, and then the system would shut down again.

It was ridiculously complicated, but it worked.

“Okay,” Mark said, “one burn down, two to go.”

“Three burns? I thought there were only two supply ships,” Cherry Berry said.

“Sleipnir 4 is only in orbit right now,” Mark said. “Sleipnir 5 will launch straight from China without orbiting, because Hermes will be almost overhead at launch time. But Florida is on the other side of the globe, so Sleipnir 4 had to enter orbit first and swing around to get moving in the right direction. After a couple orbits, it’ll be right over China along with Hermes at the right time.”

“I understand,” Cherry said. “Sort of like your first orbital mission, Dragonfly.”

Dragonfly didn’t answer. That mission had been her finest moment as a pilot, back when they were still using one-pony capsules, back before she became a full-time engineer. But as much as she might have liked to brag about her heroic and death-defying CSP Mission 21, her struggle to appear normal while a starving monster rattled its cage inside her dampened her enthusiasm about the subject.

“What was that bit about lightning?” Starlight asked, and Dragonfly mentally thanked her for changing the subject.

“Normally launching into more than twenty percent cloud cover is a flight-rules violation,” Mark said. “But the weather forecast for Florida was for afternoon thunderstorms. I guess the storms came in early and NASA decided not to wait for better weather.” He shrugged, his hands still on the rover’s steering wheel, and added, “It’s not the first time NASA launched into bad weather and got away with it.”

“That phrase sounds just as bad in English as it does in Equestrian,” Cherry Berry muttered in her native tongue.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that?” Mark asked.

Dragonfly mentally beat her inner monster with a stick until it retreated, then found her tongue to say, “You could say ‘got away with it’ was the unofficial motto of my people’s space program.”

“Really?” Mark asked. “Why am I not a bit surprised?”

A few minutes later the rover arrived at the cave farm. Two airlocks later the four of them got to work. Cherry Berry and Mark spent the first hour working on the farm itself, checking the surviving plants and the transplanted cuttings and sadly weeding out the plants which hadn’t made it. Dragonfly and Starlight Glimmer set up six empty battery casings salvaged from the old Sparkle Drive power array, then went back into the deeper part of the cave to find suitable crystals to put inside them, plus about a hundred kilograms of smaller crystal cuttings of various colors for Fireball’s meals for the next month.

If Starlight was the scientist, Dragonfly’s job today was bottle-washer. She carried things and did what she was told, leaving Starlight to do the precise selection and cutting of the crystals. That suited Dragonfly fine on multiple levels. She could lift things and zap things with her magic, but not while her system was starved for the stuff. And even in a proper magic environment, she didn’t have the fine control for cutting things that Starlight had. So she happily carried one heavy load of shiny rocks back and forth from the Lunch Buffet and Orb chambers to the work area at the front of the farm, basking in the momentary relief brought by the splash-over aura of Starlight’s cutting and telekinesis spells.

Of course, that splash-over awakened the beast and made it hungrier than ever for more, so she was more than happy to be given a task that involved walking a couple hundred meters away from her most likely victim over difficult terrain with a heavy load on her back. The effort distracted the beast long enough for Dragonfly to be sure of her self-control on the way back.

Once the crystals were harvested, it was Starlight’s and Dragonfly’s task to install the blank crystals into the battery casings. That did require a little magic, and Dragonfly couldn’t avoid it this time, but at least she had access to one of the existing magic batteries for the task. It was a struggle to keep herself from draining the battery dry at one shot, but she did her part and had three casings firmly clamped around new crystals with some power still in her battery at the end, if only a quarter what Starlight had left in hers after the same operation.

Then, finally, came the time Dragonfly had been waiting for- mentally pleading for, to be honest. She and Starlight hooked up the Jacolt’s ladder rigs to two fresh, full batteries and wired the remaining three fresh batteries together in circuit so Starlight could draw on them all for the enchantment process. This done, Dragonfly took several steps away from both Starlight and the batteries, just in case.

Starlight switched on the Jacolt’s ladder rigs, and sparks of pure magic began rising up the aerials and dissipating through the chamber. The colors brightened, boldened, became more bright and cheerful. The millions of crystals on the walls and ceiling sparkled and danced with light. More sparks danced around the terminals of the other batteries, full and spent alike, as they sucked in the increased ambient energy.

And unnoticed by anyone except Dragonfly, the air around herself and her suit became marginally darker by comparison.

Everyone else was watching Starlight and the light show as she poured magic into one crystal after another, enchanting each as deeply as she could, as quickly as she could. The magic field generators spewed mana prodigiously, as intended, using up in minutes what it took weeks to replace. It would take about ten minutes to enchant the six crystals, and then Starlight would shut the field down as quickly as possible to preserve the remaining charge for emergencies.

Dragonfly’s mind registered that fact, but most of it was temporarily elsewhere. The sheer relief of no longer being in urgent, desperate need of magic overwhelmed her. In one way, it felt like the most intense cramp ever had suddenly released, relaxing from agony into nothing. In another it felt like being a fish that had just been dropped back into the water.

The waste product from a cast spell? Drizzle. The flow from a mana battery while levitating something? A garden hose, and one with a kink in it at that. The artificial magic field was a pool, a lake, submerging Dragonfly in magic the way Faust had intended, drowning the inner beast.

Part of her wanted to change, to disguise herself as anything, anything whatever. Her innate nature had been denied for so very long, and it wanted release. Of course that would be disaster with Mark watching- he’d report it to his people, who would go into a panic like the ponies in the Bad Old Days Which Need to Stay Over- but a small part of her just didn’t care about anything except magic, sweet magic, being back again, and the world as it should be.

But Dragonfly’s mind wasn’t washed entirely away by the incredible rightness of being. She noticed the darkness around herself and remembered why most rockets were painted white or coated in reflective metal; black absorbs heat. Black absorbs everything. Her body had been so magic-deprived that it was visibly sucking it out of the air. If someone noticed, there would be trouble.

And, having experienced it before, she knew that the moment the field shut off or ran out of power would be extremely painful. She needed hours, possibly days, in the field to fully recover. Minutes were only enough- maybe- to hold off utter collapse. So, as much as Dragonfly wanted to enjoy the feeling of not being in constant pain, she had to steel herself against its sudden return- because, considering how bad she’d been this morning, it would be really bad afterwards.

So she stood and watched, silent, as Starlight enchanted the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth new battery. The new battery terminals sparked in the artificial magic field with every surge of the Jacolt’s ladders, demonstrating a successful enchantment.

And then Starlight’s hoof reached for the switches to the batteries producing the field, and Dragonfly grit her fangs against what was to come.

She couldn’t restrain the savage hiss that burst from her as the magic field collapsed, as for an instant the contrast between an existence with magic and without became crystal clear. Every tiniest bit of her body screamed for the sudden loss. The beast in her mind threw itself against its prison bars, screaming BRING IT BACK! BRING IT BACK!

The pain didn’t ebb, but her awareness of it did. Other things besides the need of magic returned to her awareness. These included the concerned faces of two ponies and a human. “Are you all right, Dragonfly?” Mark asked.

That question was more important than usual, and the moments Dragonfly took to answer weren’t just to recover her self-control. It hurt… but it usually hurt, didn’t it? She still hungered… but she hungered less than she had before. So, on balance, she probably was all right… for a few more days, anyway. Not that she dared explain any of that to her only food supply. “It… it hurtzz zo much to looozz ze magic,” she managed to say, her changeling accent much more extreme than normal. Bad sign, she told herself. Bad, bad sign.

She wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Can we help?” Cherry Berry asked. “You sound really bad.” Worse sign. Cherry had lived among changelings for years, and she knew what sick changelings sounded like.

Time to lie, Dragonfly thought. Time to lie like you have never lied before. “I’ll be okay in a few minutes,” she said. “But I wizzzsh… I wish it would last longer.”

“Hmmm.” Starlight began drawing numbers in the uncultivated dirt around them. “Based on past consumption levels, if we start a properly enchanted battery on full charge projecting the field, it uses up the full charge in… hm… approximately thirty-seven minutes. In the Hab the battery gains four percent charge per day, on average- closer to six now with the plants, and the farm gained just over seven percent per day before the methane, but let’s stick with pessimistic numbers.”

“Starlight,” Dragonfly interrupted.

The unicorn didn’t notice. “So, twenty days production for thirty-seven minutes. So, to power one battery on field projection for twenty-four and two-thirds hours a day-“

“Starlight!”

This time Starlight looked up. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

“Working out how many batteries we’d need to create a one-battery-strong artificial magic field without draining stored energy.”

“Too many,” Dragonfly said. “I don’t need to do the math to figure that out. It would take twenty batteries a day’s worth of production just for that thirty-seven minutes. You’d need hundreds to make it run constantly.”

Starlight blinked, did the math anyway, and sighed. “Six hundred and forty,” she sighed. “But once we have twenty-two batteries, we could at least run a field of a half-hour every day.” She paused and reconsidered. “Twenty-eight, that is, because no matter what, we need to keep these six batteries sequestered for nothing but making more batteries.”

“And right now we have fourteen plus one half-power battery,” Dragonfly sighed. “How long until we have enough?”

A moment more of doing sums by hoof in the dirt, Starlight answered, “Fifty-one days, if all goes well.”

Well. That… that might be endurable. Yeah. And there would be two or three battery-making days in that period. And after that, there would be daily magic doses to get her through, possibly even restore her to full health.

And as Dragonfly absorbed that, a tiny part of her mind, a part which hadn’t had much at all to do during the Bad Old Days but which had been given a real workout since the beginning of the space program, said: Who says you’re the only one who hurts? The ponies depend on magic, too. And Fireball? When was the last time you saw him flame? How is he doing? Have you really thought about this?

No, Dragonfly realized. She’d taken Starlight’s consistent post-spell fatigue for granted. Spitfire and Cherry Berry didn’t seem like they were in pain, but would they show it? And Fireball definitely wouldn’t show weakness if he could help it. Just like a changeling, in that respect.

But I don’t dare talk about it. I can’t tell them how bad it really is for me… even if it’s bad for them.

I don’t dare.

Dragonfly thought she heard a cold, deep chuckle from the RTG, which sat unattended, no longer in the plumbing loop, near the airlock. The Pale Horse was laughing at her because she didn’t dare.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Cherry asked, saying the English words slowly but correctly. “We can turn it on again for a little.”

Oh, how Dragonfly wanted it. She wanted it so very badly. But she had to look all right. She couldn’t afford to give any cause for fear, none whatever, either of her or for her. “It’s all right,” she said, which was a lie. “Today was just a very bad day.” That, at least, was pure truth.

Starlight looked at Cherry Berry again. “The next harvest is due in four days. We’re going to re-seed the damaged parts of the farm then, right?”

Cherry nodded, and Mark put in, “That’s the plan. Sol 219 for the hay. Sol 223 for the potatoes.”

“It occurs to me,” Starlight said carefully, “that we’ve never seen what earth pony magic can do here with a field projector running. That might be a good idea. Especially with those clippings you’re trying to plant.”

Cherry looked dubious. “It can’t hurt,” she said. “But I’m no farmer pony. I don’t have that talent. Don’t… what word… don’t expect too much.”

“I think we’ll all be better for it.” Starlight Glimmer stretched, shaking off her own fatigue. “I think we could stand some lunch. How about it?”

As the four prepared their suits to go back outside, Dragonfly felt Mark’s hand clasp her shoulder and squeeze it gently. “There’s a tradition,” he said, voice pitched low for her alone. “Astronauts try to hide little pains and sickness from the flight surgeon, because the flight surgeon is the enemy. Flight surgeons love to ground astronauts. But astronauts don’t hide big things, because a really sick astronaut puts his crew in danger.” He squeezed her shoulder again and said, “I’m trusting you to know the difference.”

Oh, Mark, Dragonfly thought, if you only knew.

But you mustn’t ever know.

Never.

“Rover 2, Friendship,” Fireball’s voice said towards the end of lunch in the Rover. The meal had been cold and cramped, but surprisingly amiable, at least to Dragonfly’s mind. The beast had gone back to sleep, and she’d been able to act a little silly again, but not overdoing it. She still had to be a little ill, after the moment of weakness she’d shown.

“Friendship, Friendship Actual,” Cherry Berry said, “go ahead.”

Spitfire’s voice cut in. “NASA report: Sleipnir 5 launch successful. Second stage burnout shows intercept, haha, got it right this time, with Hermes in twenty-five hours, seven minutes. Sleipnir 4 Hermes intercept burn in progress, all systems go for Hermes intercept in twenty-four hours, sixteen minutes. Hermes is es-time-ated well that’s close enough twenty minutes from closest approach to Earth, on course, all systems go, no ob-stay-cleez what is wrong with these monkeys and their language in pro-jec-ted path. Message ends.”

“B-plus for effort, but I’m docking a letter grade for your editorializing,” Starlight responded in Equestrian.

“Girls, please,” Cherry scolded in English. “Message received and thank you, Friendship.”

Fireball signed off, and the four astronauts in the rover sighed with relief. “This calls for a celebration,” Mark said. “Who wants dessert?”

“Dessert?” Starlight asked.

“Today’s options on the dessert trolley are,” Mark said, waving a hand towards the rear cargo area, “cold potatoes… cold alfalfa… and today’s special-“

“That wasn’t funny the first fifty times, Mark,” Starlight said, but Dragonfly could sense she was lying.

Maybe things will be all right after all.

On the other side of the solar system, Hermes sped past its home planet, stealing the tiniest fraction of momentum from the quintillions of tons of mass to gain vital meters per second of speed and a small but vital course change that flung it obliquely towards the Sun.

A few thousand kilometers away from Hermes, and slightly ahead of it, two much smaller objects flew on courses which would, very slowly and carefully, approach the larger ship over the coming day.

For the first time in far too long, the people of Earth celebrated an unmitigated success for Project Ares.

Meanwhile, Hermes drew away.

Author's Note

Yes, I changed the dates a little. Not because I thought I was off about the dates in the book, but because I forgot that the eight days Hermes delayed in leaving Mars meant they got back to Earth two days later. (It's how the trajectories work.)

"And Hermes drew nearer" was never meant as anything more than a reminder that time was passing, and that it was short. The bit with The Stump, or much earlier in the story the description of how the gem cave was formed, ought to have been enough to remind you that gratuitous narration does NOT automatically mean doom. (Well, in Andy Weir's book maybe, but not here. Sometimes.) It was (I thought) a poetic way of maintaining tension, and nothing more... though I can't say I wasn't amused by the panic.

But anyway, Hermes got the supplies it needed. (I'm not doing a docking scene because there was one in the book, and it'd look pretty much the same.) But is Dragonfly getting what she needs...?

It's worth pointing out that Dragonfly has blind spots as an empath, and one major one is that she overrates her ability to conceal things from people who know her. If I didn't make it perfectly obvious, the other three in this scene are perfectly aware that Dragonfly is a lot worse off than she's acting and doesn't want to admit it. They don't know the reason, but they know the problem and have a pretty fair guess at the solution- hence Starlight's math and her suggestion for what, not long before, would have been flagrant waste of magic resources during the next harvest.

Time will tell if these measures will be sufficient to keep Dragonfly from cracking up. (Of course, that assumes she's sane now...)

Oh... by the way, spoiler alert for those who have waited almost twenty years to begin reading/watching Harry Potter.

Sol 216

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 218
ARES III SOL 216

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit CB for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: SG – need to consult with Chrysalis regarding Dragonfly health issues, over.

ESA: TS – Chrysalis isn’t available. She’s standing watch on Concordia in case we find you. Won’t be back until Mission Day 231, over.

AMICITAS: Darn and blast, over.

ESA: How urgently do you need to speak to Chrysalis, over?

AMICITAS: Unknown. Serious concerns over Dragonfly’s health, but Dragonfly is unwilling to discuss it. Need input from expert in changeling medicine. Also do not tell Dragonfly we are asking, over.

ESA: Tell me what’s wrong, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, comms check, over.

AMICITAS: Sorry, Baltimare. CB says we should keep this to changelings unless things get worse. Chrysalis won’t like ponies prying into changeling health, over.

ESA: Stand by, over.

ESA: Spoke with Chrysalis. She refused to order you to report. She says if Dragonfly is hiding something, she has good reasons. Will try to get a changeling for consultation, over.

AMICITAS: Understood. Will contact again when Dragonfly is elsewhere. Out.

Cherry Berry looked at Spitfire, Starlight Glimmer, and Fireball. They looked back at her. The water from the last outbound message seeped into the soil between the Hab's potato plants.

"Are we doing the right thing?" the pink pony asked.

"What's the alternative?" Fireball grunted. He held up his claws, using them as if they were sock-puppets. "Dragonfly, we know you're sick. No I'm not. Yes you are. No I'm not." He lowered his arms again and grunted. "Repeat as often as you feel like. She isn't going to tell you. That would be showing weakness. This is the only way we can find out."

Cherry Berry gave the dragon a sharp look. "Should I be worried about anyone else not wanting to show weakness?"

Fireball growled, a deep, seriously angry growl. He cut it short with a snort and muttered, "My fire is out. Dunno if that means anything. I feel fine otherwise."

The three ponies looked at each other, but said nothing.

"Have you noticed," Spitfire said, "that she hasn't tried to get any of us alone for her schmoozing for weeks now? And she doesn't act stupid as often." When the others nodded, she added, "How worried does she have to be, that she forgets all about her little manipulative changeling games?"

"That's not worried," Fireball grunted. "That's terrified."

Cherry sighed. "Fine, but what do we do about it?" she asked.

Starlight Glimmer sighed. "Find excuses to waste magic," she said. "You saw her yesterday. She can't hide it anymore. She obviously needs magic."

"Maybe," Spitfire said, the sound of caution totally out of place in her scratchy voice, "maybe we all do?"

"We can ask Twilight," Starlight suggested, pointing to her space suit.

"No time," Cherry said, shaking her head. "Mark will be back with Dragonfly for lunch any minute." She took a moment to look each of the others in the eyes. "We don't even hint that we know, right?"

"If I hadn't spent six months living with her, I wouldn't know," Spitfire said. "She looks normal. Well, changeling-normal."

"But not Dragonfly-normal," Starlight put in.

The outer door of Airlock 2 unlatched, the thump echoing through the Hab, and Starlight rushed to put the suit away.

Author's Note

Well, writer's block struck today. Hard. I tried to expand this beyond what it is, but the fact is, there's nothing more that needs saying for Sol 216. (And that's with me coming up with almost four hundred more words as I was about to post this.)

Current buffer is about 1 1/4; I wrote Sol 217 yesterday, and I've begun on Sol 218. But it's time for tonight's KWLP (theme: Robots) on Dementiaradio.org .

Sol 217

Venkat's brain still sensed the world through a blanket of jet lag, compounded with the exhaustion of traveling halfway around the world. But the job of Project Ares director didn't stop. Thus, only sixteen hours after he had been poured into his bed by a wife he really didn’t deserve, he stood in the doorway to his office, ready to catch up on the work that hadn’t been able to follow him to China.

And he continued to stand there, staring at the five people- three men and two women- who had beat him into his own office. That, and the neat stack of paper next to them on his desk that looked like three or four reams of office paper, unwrapped and piled together. ”Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve discovered another Rich Purnell.”

“Nope.” The voice triggered recognition; the woman speaking was the one who’d taken charge of the Project Sirius tiger team discussions. “Rich Purnell was one guy. This,” she slapped the top of the stack of paper, “took over a hundred people to develop.”

“That’s nice,” said Venkat, for whom a tall venti hadn’t been nearly enough caffeine this morning. “What is it?”

“This,” the woman said, “is what Mark Watney and the aliens have to do to get to Schiaparelli. In detail. Step by step. Complete with suggested alternatives and workarounds if our assumptions of the alien ship turn out to be inaccurate.”

“And the sooner we send all of this to him,” one of the male engineers added, “the better.”

Venkat sighed. It took a motion of his hand to get them to step aside so he could get behind his desk. He dropped his briefcase, slumped into his chair, and said, “Okay, walk me- no.” He powered his computer on, and while waiting for the boot-up process to complete itself, he said, “We’re only three hours ahead of Mars time today. You can walk Watney and his friends through the process yourselves.”

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 219
ARES III SOL 217

[07:24] JPL: Good morning, everybody! This is Venkat Kapoor, back from China. The Chinese people send you their love and good wishes. How is everybody?

[07:52] WATNEY: Mostly good. Cherry, Spitfire and Fireball are preparing to go to the cave. Hay harvest is in a couple of days, with the potato harvest a few sols later. Starlight and Dragonfly are helping me with Hab maintenance, with the main task being reconditioning the water reclaimer wastewater holding tank. Nobody’s risked injury or death in, oh, whole days now. How’s by you?

[08:18] JPL: Tired from the flight back from China, but working hard on your problems. With that in mind, Mark, I’m handing this computer over to some very smart people who have worked out the details for building what you called the “Whinnybago”. They’re going to give you broad outlines. After that we’re sending you the actual procedures. It should tell you how much work they’ve gone through that the procedures document will likely eat up all available bandwidth for the rest of the day and possibly into tomorrow.

[08:22] JPL: Good morning, Mark. I’m Jennifer Laurence. I’m a senior systems engineer in the Engineering Directorate at JSC. With me are personnel from Astroresources, the EVA office, and Flight Operations. I’ve been chosen as spokesperson for the Sirius Tiger Team.

[08:25] JPL: We’ve spent weeks working on the best way to modify your rovers and the alien ship to get you across Arabia Terra to Schiaparelli Crater. What follows isn’t what we want to tell you; it’s what we have to tell you. This is the best solution we could find out of a lot of rather bad ones. So please be understanding about what you’re about to read.

[08:34] JPL: The main point we worked with is that the cabin space of both rovers isn’t sufficient to carry the six of you and the food you would need for up to 150 days away from the Hab and up to seven in the MAV. And that’s leaving aside the materials, tools, Sparkle Drive, and whatever else you need to make the MAV into something that can get you off Mars and to safety.

So from the beginning we’ve worked on the assumption that we would convert Rover 1 into a trailer with the Rover 1 pressure chamber removed and the forward half of the alien ship mounted onto the chassis in its place. In order to make this work the ship will have to be mounted backwards, with what you call the habitat section facing Rover 2 and the nose section hanging off the back. You’ll need to mount both spare rover wheels on the alien forward landing gear to support the weight. Dr. Kapoor told you this when we began.

The main problem is, our best estimate shows that the trailer, empty and trimmed, weighs not less than twenty tons. We can’t make it any lighter than that using the mock-ups here. One rover could just barely tow a dead load of that weight on a paved highway with not worse than a five degree grade, conditions which exist precisely nowhere on Mars. That means all eight wheels on the two rover chassis will have to be powered. We think we can get away with releasing the clutches on the wheels you put on the landing gear and leaving them unpowered, but that's the only power savings to be had for wheels.

The good news is the heating system you improvised for the Pathfinder trip is just about enough to substitute for all heating systems, which would give a normal unloaded rover tandem system, all eight wheels under power, a range of about seventy kilometers on the flat. But our tests here on Earth show you get only about forty kilometers before the rover batteries run out of juice. Mind you, that’s with the batteries running nothing but the motors, the interior lights, air circulation, controls and computer. (Martian gravity might be less, but the inertia of moving a load from a standing start is the same on any planet.)

So electricity and weight are our two biggest obstacles.

[08:41] JPL: Our limitations for electricity are simple: how much storage capacity can you carry, and how much recharge capacity? Your limiting factor is going to be sunlight. By the time you travel it’ll be autumn, with about eleven hours per day of usable sunlight for solar cells.

On the other hand, we want to reduce your weight. Aside from trimming everything possible from your rovers and the alien ship, the only thing we can do in that department is shorten your travel time and save on food.

Straight-line distance is about 3200 kilometers, and a more reasonable actual driving distance would be 3500. At forty kilometers per day that would take you eighty-eight sols, which is less than our initial 100-sol estimate but still far too long. Our goal is seventy kilometers per day, for fifty days of transit. Based on our initial travel time estimate of 100 days, seventy kilometers per day saves you over half a ton of food, which is important considering how very heavy your total load is.

So that’s where we are- looking for the dead minimum load that can travel seventy kilometers per day and recharge appropriately. That’s what we’ve spent weeks experimenting with to make happen.

[08:44] WATNEY: Hello, very smart people! What have you got for me? I hope you don’t mind if I work while you talk, but the message turnaround is fifty minutes.

[08:45] JPL: With that in mind, we abandoned all thoughts of taking the life support systems from the Hab. The equipment weighs over a third of a ton not counting tanks and expendables, and the energy consumption for six people is simply too high for a mobile platform to sustain. You’ll have to rely on the alien life support systems. It’s absolutely vital that you preserve that system from harm at all costs.

But with that system plus the alien space suits, the Sirius tandem (we voted againt “Whinnybago” here, so we’re calling it Sirius tandem rover) will have air, water, and heat at zero energy cost. That means we can budget ninety percent of the electrical power to movement. and ten percent for everything else.

[08:47] WATNEY: Sure, lay it on me. I’ll wait until you’re done.

[08:51] JPL: Under that budget, the normal two rover batteries and their 18 kilowatt hours per sol would only be good enough for thirty-six kilometers per day. (Our road tests didn’t take into account overnight power costs.) We need to double that. That means stealing three of the remaining hydrogen fuel cells from the Hab. To make that work, the on-board alien ship batteries, which you described as “right out of a U-boat”, need to be removed, as will the passenger bench from Rover 2. Depending on the size and shape of the alien batteries (which are probably heavier than a fuel cell and definitely provide less storage), you can put the odd battery in either place.

That provides 45 kilowatt hours per sol of storage and over eighty kilometers on flat ground of travel range. That amount of power requires the same or greater recharge capacity. Based on your Pathfinder trip, fourteen solar panels was enough to provide 18 kilowatt hours per sol of recharge in twelve hours, counting dusk. Each Hab solar farm panel provides, mid-range, 120 watts per hour during good daylight conditions, for an estimated total 1.3 kilowatt hours per sol. That requires thirty-five solar panels total.

The good news is, even after cutting down the alien ship, our measurements show it to be wide enough to accommodate two rows of solar panels up to the front of the pressure chamber and one row along the nose, all mounted permanently to the roof. The removal of the ship’s outer skin provides ample mounting points and hardware to secure them properly, and the same adapter you’ve used to connect the ship to Hab power can be used to wire the panels directly into the Sirius tandem rover electrical system. Based on that, we estimate you can carry twenty-eight solar panels on the finished trailer alone. The remaining panels, plus whatever surplus you think you can accommodate, will be used as you used them on the Pathfinder trip, carried on the roof in a single stack next to Pathfinder. Procedures on mounting both are in the final report.

[08:56] JPL: That solves the power problem. The other problem is weight. The trailer is already excessively heavy, so we want to limit what else goes into it. Balancing the load between the two chassis will increase efficiency. It should be used for habitat, storage of things that can’t withstand vacuum, the Sparkle Drive core, and as little else as possible. Everything else will have to be stuffed into or onto the rover. That means you’ll have to recycle one of the emergency pop-tents to use its canvas to expand and strengthen your saddlebag arrangement so the extra weight of food, tools, etc. is spread more evenly around the rover’s pressure vessel to prevent its collapsing.

The heaviest things are the alien engines. Those will have to be mounted on the sides of the rover, along with a basket to hold alien batteries and thruster packs. We have a procedure for that as well. It’s ugly, but it won’t touch the pressure vessel- it’ll mount to the chassis as close as possible.

[09:01] JPL: One final note: the Sirius tandem will be tall with a high center of mass, especially in the trailer. To be blunt, it’s tippy as hell. Also, the rover suspension is being stressed past its rating, especially on dynamic loads. At a rough estimate, the total weight of your rig, loaded, with food and passengers, will be thirty-eight tons, twenty-four of which will be the trailer. The manufacturer of the rovers absolutely refuses to sign off on this load. And do I even need to talk about the brakes?

Careful driving is mission critical. Hitting a hole or rock at speed could roll the tandem rover or cause a suspension component to shear. We recommend, if the aliens are willing, that they EVA well ahead of the rover and clear the path of rocks between 20 centimeters and 60 centimeters in height. Boulders taller than 60 centimeters should be avoided whenever possible. Otherwise, we recommend a maximum of two crew in Rover 2, with the remainder either on scout duty or in the trailer.

Those are the high points. Do you have any questions?

[09:29] WATNEY: Thirty-six tons, huh? Well, at least I won’t be pulled over by the Martian Department of Public Safety for an overweight load.

“Kilowatt hours per sol” sounds clumsy. Doesn’t that unit have a name of some kind?

How do I link the life support systems of the alien ship and the rovers? Ditto the electrical systems?

Did you say carry the food outside the rover, in the saddlebags? I just want to be clear on that, that you’re proposing we turn the rover into a rolling food truck for all those snooty foodie hipster Martians out there. Do the procedures include a sign for “Watney and Company’s Home-Grown Taters and Sprouts”?

And finally, “Whinnybago” is a fine name. “Tandem rover” is boring. Next you’ll be calling the Astros the Houston People Who Mostly Fail at Hitting a Piece of Leather and Twine with a Stick.

[09:58] JPL: If the Martian fuzz pull you over, we’ll pay the ticket.

Kilowatt hours per sol sounds fine to us. If you don’t like it, suggest a better name.

Check with the alien engineer and verify that the charging port on the exterior is robust enough to handle the full load of a 45 kilowatt system. It should be. If so, run cables from the tow-hook of the Rover 1 chassis up to the port. Cannibalizing the Rover 1 pressure vessel, plus use of solar farm cables, will provide what you need. Connecting air will be a bit trickier, but it boils down to drilling two holes in the alien pressure vessel, sealing the air cross-feed lines into it, and connecting the air circulation system from Rover 1’s environmental systems to the other side.

The Sirius tandem rover is not licensed for retail sales in any Martian jurisdiction, so no sign is necessary. We do advise you watch out for Martian bears, particularly if they wear hats and/or ties.

And I don’t concern myself with sportsball matters. What other people call the Astros is their problem. But we’re calling what you’re building the Sirius tandem rover.

[10:23] WATNEY: A female engineer with a sense of humor. Marry me.

[10:48] JPL: I’m twelve years older than you are. Talk to me when the aliens give you a time machine. But beware of my ex-husband.

[10:50] JPL: Venkat here. I think we can go ahead with sending the procedure now. Looking forward to hearing about the harvest, Mark. Good luck.

Author's Note

This chapter (and the next) is me mostly nailing down the order of things.

If you've seen the movie but not read the book, having NASA give chapter and verse on how to mod the rover seems perfectly natural to you. But in the book Mark loses Pathfinder to an electrical accident on Sol 197 and has to work out very nearly all the procedures for making a two-rover rig that will sustain him for a hundred sols by himself. It's not the liveliest section of the book (which might explain why, after Hermes gets resupplied, Andy Weir has a 150-sol timeskip), but it has some clever moments.

Alas, one of those is not likely to surface here. Since NASA is doing the number crunching, and since the oxygenator, atmospheric regulator, and water reclaimer are all staying in the Hab, Mark has no real inclination to coin the electrical engineering term "pirateninja".

Anyway, this chapter marks a shift in the focus of events. We're now moving away from survival and towards actual rescue, and the time has come for our heroes to begin the preparations for that event. I'll try to make this interesting, but beyond a certain point I'll be skipping sols again for lack of anything interesting happening.

Jennifer Laurence is an original character, not in the novel. Weir really tended to mish-mash how NASA is organized to minimize the number of named characters. JPL, for example, would not be the sole place that all Mars probes were built in a real Ares program. I'm trying to correct that a little, but not so much that it bogs down the narrative.

By the way, when Jennifer says "on the flat" she's not kidding. JSC is about ten to twelve feet above mean sea level, if that, and the land is flat like a pancake for many, many miles. JSC does have a small rock-climbing hill that it used to test smaller rovers, but nothing of a size to test a tandem vehicle over twenty meters long.

Anyone inclined to complain that the electrical expenditure for travel for this weight is far too optimistic: I'm not interested. Looking at various numbers in the book, I'm pretty sure Weir just juggled numbers to turn them from "can't make it" to "can make it". I'm doing the same, because saying, "If you carry the whole damn Hab solar farm you still won't make it in time," isn't going to make for a fun story. This is one of those times when engineering must give way to storytelling.

I either have one standard-length chapter or two short ones in the buffer. I may try to stretch the second one a bit tomorrow, or I may move on.

Sol 218

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 220
ARES III SOL 218

To: Ares III Hab crew (emails redacted)
From: Laurence, Jennifer (jlaurence42@jseng.nasa.gov)
Subject: Sirius Tandem Rover Protocols

Mark,

Attached find the detailed procedures we’ve worked out so far. Be advised these procedures are subject to revision if new needs or more accurate information makes it advisable.

Please review the document and send comments, corrections, etc. Use outline numbers to indicate specific issues within the document.

Jennifer Laurence
Crew and Thermal Systems
Johnson Space Center

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX
Engineering Directorate
Crew and Thermal Systems Division

PROJECT SIRIUS
Full Modification Procedures for Ares III Rovers plus Pony ship Friendship
Version 4.16a

OUTLINE

I. INVENTORY AND ASSESSMENT OF WORKING MATERIALS

II. PREPARATION OF ROVER 1 CHASSIS

A. SALVAGE OF ROVER 1 CABIN INTERNAL COMPONENTS

B. REMOVAL OF ROVER 1 CABIN AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

C. SALVAGE OF HARDWARE FROM ROVER 1 CHASSIS

III. PREPARATION FOR TRIM OF FRIENDSHIP

A. DISMOUNT AND REMOVAL OF ALIEN ENGINES

B. CONSTRUCTION OF MID-SHIP SUPPORT

IV. TRIM OF FRIENDSHIP

A. REPLACEMENT OF FORWARD LANDING GEAR WHEELS

B. SEVERANCE OF AFT PORTIONS OF SHIP

C. SALVAGE OF HARDWARE FROM FRIENDSHIP SCRAP

D. MOUNTING OF SHIP-ROVER ENVIRONMENTAL INTERFACE

V. MOUNTING OF FRIENDSHIP

A. PREPARATION OF ROVER CHASSIS

B. PREPARATION OF UNDERSIDE OF FRIENDSHIP

C. MOVEMENT OF FRIENDSHIP

D. ADJUSTMENT OF POSITION OF FRIENDSHIP ON CHASSIS

E. SECURING OF FRIENDSHIP TO CHASSIS

F. CONNECTION OF ENVIRONMENTAL INTERFACE

VI. MODIFICATIONS OF FRIENDSHIP POST-MOUNT

A. TRANSFER OF HAB ELECTRICAL STORAGE SYSTEM COMPONENTS

B. MOUNT OF SOLAR PANELS

C. INSTALLATION OF ROVER 1 COMPUTER

D. REPLACEMENT OF FRIENDSHIP INTERNAL LIGHTING SYSTEM

E. REMOVAL OF ALL NON-ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS

F. SALVAGE OF ENGINE CONTROL SYSTEMS

G. (OPTIONAL) SUGGESTED METHODS OF LIGHTENING LOAD

VII: MODIFICATIONS OF ROVER 2

A. SADDLEBAGS MK. 2

B. SUPPLEMENTAL POWER STORAGE EXPANSION

C. PATHFINDER ROOF MOUNT CONSTRUCTION

D. PATHFINDER MOUNT

E. SOLAR PANEL STORAGE MOUNT CONSTRUCTION

F. FRIENDSHIP ENGINE & ALIEN BATTERY MOUNT CONSTRUCTION

VIII: TESTING PROTOCOLS

A. SIRIUS 5 – POWER CONSUMPTION TEST

B. SIRIUS 6 – LIFE SUPPORT TEST

C. SIRIUS 7 – DRESS REHEARSAL

IX: SIRIUS 8 – SCHIAPARELLI OR BUST

APPENDIX: CHECKLIST OF CARGO REQUIRED FOR SIRIUS 8 AND OPERATION PHOENIX II

From: Mark Watney (email redacted)
Subject: Re: Sirius Tandem Rover Protocols

First: IT’S A WHINNYBAGO.

On to issues:

IIA: I’m going to have to do all this in a pressure suit. The amount of stuff being moved around means I’m going to have to do this by myself. Under those conditions, four hours is a bit ambitious. IIB in the same spacewalk is really ambitious. In fact, since I have roughly two hundred sols to get all this done in, maybe the time estimates could be left out completely? I mean, it’s not like you’re going to dock my pay if I have to work overtime, right? Riiiiiight?

IIC: I’m not going to systematically dismantle everything we cut off of something else. I have a lot of CO2 filters, but my EVA time isn’t infinite. If we need more hardware, we’ll pick it off the scrap. It’s worked for car wrecker yards for a hundred years, and it’ll work on Mars now.

IIIA: I know you only have my photos to work with, but you wasted a lot of words to say, “Step 1: Remove engines. Step 2: don’t drop them.” You don’t need to guess.

IIIB: _How_ many rocks?? Oh my aching back.

IVB: And now you’ve wasted a lot of words to say, “Step 1: Cut off the back 40% of the ship. Step 2: DO drop it.”

IVD: You left out an important step. We’re currently using Friendship’s habitat compartment to store hay in a cool, dry environment that isn’t a freezing, desiccating environment. There’s no way to do what you want without depressurizing the chamber, and that means we have to move everything out of that compartment into the bridge and seal the vents between the two remaining airtight compartments. The weight shift is going to be a bit more than half a ton when we do it. Will this affect anything?

VA: I read this section and think, “So you want me to build the first Speed-E-Lube on Mars.” Would you like your flying saucer vacuumed out while we’re working?

VB: At this point in the procedure the underside of Friendship will be half covered by the pile of rocks it’s sitting on. That’s going to make it difficult to straighten out brackets, test for weaknesses in the metal, etc. Suggestions?

VC: Lots of words for, “Step 1: Have the unicorn pick it up. Step 2. Don’t let her drop it.”

VIA: Thank you for understanding that we do need to have electrical power in the ship as much as possible and not suggesting we yank the old batteries from the ship until now.

VIB: “Step 1: Have the unicorn lift you up. Step 2: bolt on solar panels. Step 3: don’t let her drop you.”

VIE and VIF: Ahead of you on these. The only systems left in the ship are environmental controls, one set of flight control / landing gear steering, electrical breakers and fuses, and comm systems. We’re discussing adding the Hab microwave, though, because it won’t fit in the rover.

That covers my main comments. I can’t speak for the people who own the ship we’re going to chop up, though.

Mark

From: Cherry Berry (email redacted)
Subject: Re: Sirius Tandem Rover Protocols

What are you doing to my ship??? (No, I know what you are doing, but it still hurts. It was a good ship.)

Also, tell Mark “Whinnybago” is bad name. You like it if we call rover “Oook Oook Mobile”?

CB

From: Dragonfly (email redacted)
Subject: Re: Sirius Tandem Rover Protocols

I’m not going to go down the whole list in order. I just have a few comments.

The last tests we did on the main engines were at lowest power- we didn’t want to strain the landing gear brakes or risk uncontrolled lift off. We’ll need to do better tests to see if they work well enough to make it worth carrying them to Ares IV MAV. We’ll do that before we begin building things on the rover to hold them.

If we have enough food extra, I can make better saddlebags without cutting up hab canvas. We might need that for other things, and I can’t make more Hab sealing resin.

I think the forward landing gear will be too long to let the ship lie flat on Rover 1. We can adjust it, but it will be a delay.

The main engine controls are pretty simple. If I understand, the plan is to put the engines on the first stage of the MAV and just throttle them full blast. Simple on-off switches will work for that. Maneuvering thrusters will take more work, since each pack has four thrusters on it.

If I think of anything else, I’ll let you know.

Dragonfly

From: Starlight Glimmer (email redacted)
Subject: Re: Sirius Tandem Rover Protocols

I don’t appreciate being listed as equipment. I am not a saw, a drill, a crane, a clamp, or anything else. I am a person, and it would be nice if your instructions included phrases like, for example, “Ask the unicorn if she would be willing to.”

As it is, every step in this process which requires heavy magic use will be a sol all to itself. Our magic supply is not as limited as it was when we first arrived, but this is still a generally magic-free environment. Magic strain is painful, and I’d prefer to go through as little of it as possible.

A little bit of consideration goes a long way.

Starlight Glimmer

P. S. Mark complaining about his back? Really? I'll be doing most of the rock-lifting and pit-digging! It ought to be, "Oh my burning horn"!

From: Fireball (email redacted)
Subject: Re: Sirius Tandem Rover Protocols

Do not listen to Cherry Berry. Ponies have city named Whinnycity. Whinnybago is fine name.

What is a bago?

Fireball

Author's Note

Posting this now in case I forget tonight. I have to drive to Houston to swap shirts out, and I need an early night tonight since I'm leaving home at 5:10 AM or so.

Again, the main point of this is me establishing a rough sequence of events for rover mods.

You'll notice that NASA IP has closed the barn door now.

By the way, using the flightless ship as a trailer was always in the works from the start, but at one point I did seriously consider giving it one last flight and bypassing the whole overland thing. I decided against it because, thrust-to-weight issues aside, control and fuel would be a bitch to make work... and the only thing lacking for guaranteed disaster is the presence of three adolescent fillies.

Sol 219

MISSION LOG – SOL 219

I wish that had taken longer.

We harvested the alfalfa from the cave today. That is, we harvested what was still fit to harvest, which wasn’t much. We just weighed it here in the Hab. What the methane and the sinkholes and the flooding left us amounts only to ninety-two and a half kilograms. That’s only a little more than thirty sols of pony food which took us almost sixty sols to grow. Not a winning trend.

Thankfully it’s not game over, either. We still have lots of hay left from previous harvests- just not enough to get all the way to Sol 551. Once the next potato harvest comes in, we’ll almost certainly have enough total food to hit that goal. We probably have enough right now, really. But though the ponies can eat potatoes, alfalfa has more protein and is better for them all around.

Since we were in the cave anyway, we took all but a handful of the remaining alfalfa seed and planted it in the restored sinkhole areas. We also took cuttings from the plants that aren’t dead but didn’t produce enough hay to be worth harvesting. I’m soaking the cuttings ends in water here in the Hab. I could have done that in the cave, but I didn’t have anything to keep the cuttings from sliding all the way into the water and drowning. Tomorrow I’ll go back and plant ‘em in the area left after we ran out of seed. So far my cuttings have about a fifty percent success rate, which isn’t great, but it’s better than zero.

I checked a couple of the potato plants. The tubers on one were ready to harvest, but the others were still a little green, so no harvest ahead of schedule.

We tried a new experiment today, more for Dragonfly’s sake than anything else. Starlight Glimmer took all the batteries in the cave and drained them into a single one to get a full charge. She then rigged it to project a magic field, like she does whenever she makes more batteries, and left it run for half an hour. Dragonfly tried to pretend that it was no big deal, but Fireball picked the bug up and carried her right to the battery and sat down beside it. Dragonfly complained, but she didn’t struggle.

The experiment had one definite result besides easing our worries about our resident Hello Giger. For the first time I could actually watch plants responding to Cherry Berry’s presence. The potato plants didn’t do much, but their leaves looked a little larger after she checked them over. The alfalfa responded even more, with the sick plants perking up as I watched and the cuttings actually growing an inch or so as I watched.

The cherry saplings, though, were the most dramatic. I swear I saw one of them actually bend its limbs towards her.

Cherry keeps insisting that she’s not really a farmer, that it’s not her “special talent”. After what I saw today, I really want to meet a pony who does have a talent for farming. Starlight tells me she knows a pony who can make a flower go from seed to full bloom in a couple of seconds. After today, I believe her.

Think of the possibilities we’re talking about here. Earth is approaching a population of nine billion humans. Half the world is in a state of what politicians call “food insecurity” and everyone else calls “famine”. Countries are fighting wars to defend or exploit depleted fishing grounds, while refugees flee countries that are turning to desert for places where food is more plentiful. In the last decade botanical science has kicked into high gear looking for sustainable ways to feed a population which will probably top 11 billion by the time I die- assuming the zombie apocalypse doesn’t strike before then.

Think about all that, and then think what ponies could teach us. Ponies like Cherry Berry turning poor, exhausted soils back into breadbaskets. Pegasi like Spitfire, who can control weather- imagine the Sahara turned back into lakes and jungle, as it was ten thousand years ago. And unicorn magic and magical technology, with the ability to tap into unlimited free energy produced by life itself, taking the place of fossil fuels.

We humans have done our planet no favors. When Dragonfly says Mars hates us, it might not be because we’re invaders. Mars might hate us the same way we hate an embarrassing skin rash. We’re Mother Earth’s cooties, and Mars doesn’t want any of that icky girl stuff on him.

But the ponies and their friends could help us fix all that. I’m not talking about hippie-woo stuff like “returning to nature” or “going back to the land.” Nature is a sadistic, malevolent bitch with a million ways to kill you. (Though right now I’d send Nature a bag of all-natural fertilizer and a Mother’s Day card, and Mars wouldn’t even get a shitty necktie.) Ponies have something better- a managed equilibrium, that satisfies the needs of people while preserving all the environmental systems that make people possible.

And we could pay them back by… video games? Bad ancient television shows? Childrens’ books? Training in how to not run suicidally dangerous space programs?

Obviously Earth needs better negotiators than me.

Starlight is reading over my shoulder, and she points out that they’re not perfect. They have barren badlands and deserts too. (She’s also appalled at the idea of nine billion people on one planet.) Also, we don’t know at all if the magic generated by all of Earth’s life is sufficient to create an Equestrian-style economy there. More work will be needed.

But in the meantime, I can dream.

And I can also have nightmares, because one fact remains: none of all that will happen if we don’t get ourselves off this goddamn icy death rock.

Author's Note

Today turned out not to be particularly conducive to writing, so I got nothing done until I got to my hotel. That was only enough to finish tomorrow's chapter and to write 250 words which doesn't feel as if it has anyplace else to go.

Mark's worries are serious ones. In my lifetime the population of the world has just about doubled. We're fishing the oceans dry (for one example, the Atlantic tuna population is down 95% from what it was less than a hundred years ago) and destroying biomes for industrial farming. Even today people are fleeing famine and drought, as destructive farming trends continue and even accelerate desertification in Africa and Asia.

The good news is, for the past forty years the rate of increase in the global human population is dropping. It's lower than it's been in hundreds of years, in fact. More people are having fewer (or no) babies, because they're starting families later, no longer fear infant mortality, use birth control to restrict family size, and/or don't see large families as their only hedge against the day they can no longer work.

But we're still on track to hit a peak global population of between eleven and twelve billion people before the world population curve turns back down, assuming no global war or epidemic (or mass impoverishment).

Now, to be clear: there is plenty of room on this planet for twelve billion people. The question is how to feed all those people with the ground they're not standing on without wiping out the remaining wild habitats and their biodiversity.

This isn't a lefty hippy thing. Science can figure out answers. It has in the past. The problem is that those answers come with new problems. The "Green Revolution" of agriculture accelerated desertification, especially when government funding was withdrawn and poor farmers were left to continue on their own methods they couldn't afford to use in the first place. GMO food, in addition to inspiring paranoia, help megacorporations work towards monopoly power over the seeds our food is grown from. Weed-specific defoliant and advanced insecticides are killing off our most important pollinating insects. And so on.

Mark's Earth could definitely use pony help. So could ours, but we're less likely to get magic horse intervention. We'll have to settle for as many serious Watney-style scientists as we can get.

And cross our fingers.

Sol 221

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 223
ARES III SOL 221

Diediediediediediediediedie.

Dragonfly heard the voice of Mars, clear as anything, speaking fluent ancient Changeling (not that that was difficult). She paid it no mind, mostly because the others could hear it too. It was the prolonged, annoying hiss of a mild dust storm.

NASA had predicted this storm, and after spending Sol 220 making certain everything outside was as dust-proof as could be managed, the castaways were spending all day indoors, away from the clingy, abrasive fine basaltic dust blowing around outside. As Mark explained, you didn’t expose yourself to suit-damaging conditions like a dust storm if you didn’t have to, especially if you had only the one suit.

With the chores inside the Hab caught up and potato harvest not for three sols yet, each of the castaways had found a dead-time task. Cherry Berry was reviewing bids from toy companies, forwarded by NASA’s lawyers, to make toys in the likenesses of the crew. Spitfire read a primer on human illnesses, provided by NASA’s doctors and written in the simplest English they could manage. (Spitfire still found it hard going.) Starlight Glimmer graded the essays the others had written for her most recent English lesson (topic: “Five Smarter Things to Do Than Wait For the Evil Tyrant to Actually Take Over Before Going Into Hiding”). Finally, Fireball and Mark studied and discussed the instructions for stripping out the interior of Rover 1, which would be the first step towards eventually leaving the Hab.

And Dragonfly had returned to a project she’d almost forgotten about, worried as she’d been about her own health. She still felt hungry for magic- hungry, but not HUNGRY, not starving-unto-madness hungry. She had time and concentration for other things now.

Things like Sojourner.

After reviving Pathfinder, there had been a good bit of on-again, off-again tinkering with the little rover. Mark had replaced Sojourner’s old, dead internal battery with a smaller rechargeable one from his supplies that produced and stored much more power. It hadn’t helped. With NASA’s help he’d established a radio link that would allow Sojourner inside the radiation-proof Hab to speak with Pathfinder outside it. Nothing doing. They’d carefully cleaned all the dust and grit out of the interior of the robot, and then they’d done the same to the wheels and tiny electric motors inside them.

Those wheels were a marvel. Mark had told Dragonfly that, more or less, the rover wheels used the same general principles as the Sojourner wheels. The rovers had four and Sojourner had six, but each wheel had its own electric engine that powered and even steered each wheel independently.

The only drawback, as Dragonfly noted again when she used a circuit tester to pass current through the little motors, was that the motors had been geared down- way, way down- trading away speed for extra torque. With power running through it, the little wheel turned as slowly as the key on a music box. Mark had looked it up; the rover’s top speed was a pathetic twenty-four meters- not kilometers, METERS- per hour.

But the wheels worked, all six of them. They’d figured that out months ago, before Mark had left Dragonfly to it and turned his attention to more vital tasks. Since then Dragonfly had opened up the insides, read the documentation politely provided by NASA, and got as far as verifying that the probe’s little radio system’s circuit board wasn’t damaged by cold or corrosion. Then her own worries had distracted her.

But today she was less worried, she had time on her hooves, and she was ready, with very tiny and judicious applications of telekinesis and larger applications of the understrength battery that had been Starlight Glimmer’s first success, to open the Warm Electronics Box, the part that held all the stuff that Mars’s cold would likely destroy.

Mark hadn’t bothered with the warm box because, as he put it, “That’s where the CPU and PROM live. If anything’s wrong with either, it’s game over.” But Dragonfly had checked the other stuff that she could, and without the robot’s computer running she couldn’t test the on-board cameras or any of the scientific tools, not that they were particularly important.

The core of the electronics inside the warm box took the form of two circuit boards linked by ribbon cables, gone stiff and brittle after their time on Mars. There were three huge resistors on one circuit board- even with the alien electronic shapes and codes, Dragonfly recognized them and their purpose right away. One was partially melted- a very odd thing, she thought, inside a probe that was working so far below freezing. Tiny bits of slag spattered the circuit board around the bad resistor, possibly in places that could produce a short-circuit.

Hm. I can fix this, if nothing else is damaged. And if the short burned out the processors, well, it’s game over anyway.

Dragonfly yanked all three of the old resistors and replaced them with new ones of the proper wattage from Mark’s spares. Then she applied a little more magic to carefully, carefully, carefully remove the slag from the circuit board. This left a couple of gaps which Dragonfly carefully patched, using a level of precision, had she known it, that humans could have achieved only with large machines.

Okay, she thought, half an hour later and after a brief suck on the half-powered battery to replenish her magic level. Before I put power back into this thing, is anything else broken?

It didn’t take long to find the next problem, once she started seriously examining the boards. The main power lead connecting to the circuit boards was partially melted. Dragonfly had thought, when she’d opened up the warm box, that the lead was just bent backwards, folded behind the circuit board. But no- two wires of the split ribbon harness were bent back that way, but the others had slagged a gap open a small distance short of where the bend should have been. A quick look inside the cover of the warm box revealed another blotch of slag.

“Mark?” she asked. “Where’s Sojourner’s ground wire?”

Mark looked up from the computer he and Fireball were sharing. “I have no idea,” he said. “Let’s find out.”

It didn’t take long. Originally Sojourner hadn’t had a ground wire at all. But pre-launch testing had demonstrated that, in a simulated Martian environment, the little rover built up dangerous levels of static electricity. So the antenna had been modified to include a cluster of tiny tungsten filaments that would safely discharge static electricity into the Martian air.

Of the four filaments, only the tiniest stub of one remained on the antenna base. The others were broken off, gone forever.

“So,” Dragonfly speculated, after explaining what she’d found, “lightning struck the probe, fried the resistor, and melted the power cord?”

“I doubt it,” Mark said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, but I think this is two separate incidents. A static discharge event would have done a lot more damage than just popping one resistor, if it did any at all. I think the resistor failed first. Maybe the part was bad, or maybe Sojourner’s internal heat regulation system pumped too much power into it while trying to save itself from dying. Then, years later, with the probe powered down, the sandstorm that buried Pathfinder ripped off the static discharge points and built up enough internal charge to melt these wires.” He frowned and added, “And it probably fried Sojourner’s brains in the process. Pathfinder’s ground is its entire hull, and its ground wire is internal, so it didn’t have that problem.”

“Didn’t,” Dragonfly couldn’t help saying, “or doesn’t?”

The two silently considered the faint sound of Mars screaming imprecations of death at them through the canvas dome above them.

“Nothing we can do about that right now,” Mark said, after waiting far too long to do so. “And there’s a chance we might break Pathfinder trying to fix it. Let’s leave that problem for NASA.” He looked at Sojourner’s circuits, shook his head, and sighed. “The problem is, we don’t have a good way to test the chips here except trying to activate Sojourner. And if they’re bad, I don’t have replacements. So I don’t know where to go from here.”

Dragonfly considered this. Yes, she was feeling better… but was she feeling better enough for what she was about to do? Or was it a sign of her sickness that she was delusional enough to believe it made any sense? “I have an idea,” she said. “Really stupid, too.”

Mark took two rapid steps backwards. Dragonfly didn’t blame him; he’d been at ground zero for ideas she and the ponies had thought were good ideas.

She switched on the defective magic battery for a quick splash of extra power. What she was about to do wasn’t unicorn-style, flashy magic… but she wasn’t sure it was changeling magic, either. After all, changelings could detect emotion like a flavor or scent, but that didn’t make it possible for changelings to alter their flavor for others to taste.

This is silly. This is stupid. And it might be dangerous to me, weak as I still am.

And I’m doing this because I feel sorry for a stupid little ancient alien robot.

But the thing is, I’m doing it anyway.

Dragonfly closed her eyes, let out a breath, and tuned out Mark’s curiosity and the preoccupation of the others with their own tasks. She flipped the high hoof to the sandy, breezy voice of Mars- or of the dust storm, anyway. She tuned everything out, everything she could, before laying a hoof lightly on the circuit boards and thinking, Where are you hurt?

A faint taste of loneliness. Where is the voice? Where is everything? I am alone.

Where are you hurt?

I don’t see anything. I don’t hear anything. I was left alone.

Where are you hurt?

I want instructions. No one speaks. The one that instructs is not there. I am alone.

The traces of emotion weren’t helping. Frustrated, Dragonfly shouted mentally, Shut UP about being alone and show me where you’re broken!!

I can’t think. My mind is loose. My mind is split. Where is the voice?

Disgusted, Dragonfly removed her hoof. “Knew it was a dumb idea,” she hissed. “’Oh, I’m alone,’ it says. ‘Give me instructions,’ it says. ‘My mind is loose,’ it says. Stupid little robot.”

“Wait a minute,” Mark said. “Did it really say its mind was loose?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Dragonfly muttered. “Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I’m crazy. Just ask anyone.”

“Did you check to make sure the chips were seated properly?” Mark asked.

“Nothing rattles,” Dragonfly replied.

Mark gingerly picked up the circuit boards and carried them over to the geology lab. The Hab had a grand total of two magnifying glasses: a tiny hand-held magnifier in Mark’s tool kit, and a larger, table-mounted glass for use in preliminary study of rock samples. Mark set the circuit boards under the magnifier and began looking them over. “Uh-huh… uh-huh… fucking wonderful,” he muttered.

“What?” Dragonfly tried to look over Mark’s shoulder, which she couldn’t do without flying (which she couldn’t, not without a magic field) or climbing on Mark’s shoulder (which would have been awkward). “What is it?”

“A lot of chip connectors have snapped,” Mark said. “No melting that I can see- just a more or less clean break. I guess it’s damage from the cold.” He stood up and let Dragonfly sit on a stool to look through the magnifier.

“No slag?” Dragonfly asked. “Doesn’t that mean it happened before the power surge?”

“Mmmm,” Watney grunted noncommittally. “A power surge can leave circuits looking fine until you try to power them up again. Still no way to know.” He sighed and added, “And those connectors are tiny. I don’t know that I have the stuff to jump the gaps.”

“Leave it to me!” Dragonfly dropped off the work stool, cleared her throat and shouted, “Starlight! Could you come here for a minute?”

“Hold on!” Grumbling, Starlight walked through the potato plants to the geology table. “What is it, Ms. B-Minus?” she asked.

“I want- hey, what do you mean, B-minus?” Dragonfly protested. “That essay was perfect and you know it!”

“The English was correct,” Starlight replied. “But I docked twenty percent because you only gave me four better ideas than waiting for the tyrant.”

“I gave you five!”

“Join the Winning Team does NOT count!”

“Slytherin, remember?” Dragonfly teased. “Maybe I’ll get a snake for a pet when I get home.”

“What. Do. You. WANT?”

“Have a look at the connectors between the silicon chips and the board,” Dragonfly said, motioning Starlight to the magnifier.

Starlight took a quick look. “Aren’t those metal filaments supposed to be intact?” she asked.

“Yep!” Dragonfly replied. “Can you cast a spell to fix it?”

“I could,” Starlight said. “If it’s important enough. What’s it for?”

“It’s Sojourner.”

“The little rover?” Starlight asked. “What do we need it to do?”

“Er… nothing,” Dragonfly admitted. “I just wanted to fix it.”

“Nothing doing,” Starlight said, dropping off the stool.

“Aw, c’mon,” Dragonfly wheedled. “Not even for cute little me?”

“You’re three… um… you’re eight centimeters taller than me,” Starlight grumbled. “And I’m not going to risk more magic exhaustion repairing equipment if it’s not necessary to our survival!”

As Starlight walked away, Dragonfly said, “Well, then I’ll have to do it myself! Of course, I’m not as talented as you, so I might mess up! And I’ll have to use a lot of magic to do it! But I’m sure I’ll be fine! It’s just a major reversal of entropy- no big deal at-“

“ALL RIGHT, I’LL DO IT!”

Author's Note

So yeah, I'm a bit sentimental.

I tried, and failed, to find Sojourner's software or any useful hints about it for writing this, but I did find pics of the two main circuit boards inside the WEB. I found them fascinatingly incomprehensible, so forgive me if what I've written is drivel.

Any or all of these things- failure of the resistors used to heat the interior of Sojourner's warm box, static electrical damage following the loss of its "lightning rods", damage due to thermal contraction and brittleness- could really be issues for reviving the probes. Weir (and I) ignored these things for Pathfinder's revival, partly because giving Mark access to a newer salvage probe radio would require moving the Hab. The next best option for a radio after Pathfinder, based on distance from the Hab, was the Viking 1 lander, about the same distance but west-northwest instead of south-southwest from the Hab.

Incidentally, static electricity is a MAJOR issue for long-term Moon and Mars missions, human or robotic. On Earth you can put a stake in the ground or drag a wire on the dirt and be all right. But Earth has wet, conductive soil and rock plus a magnetic field that generally draws static current into itself. Mars and the Moon are dry and have no magnetic field to speak of. (Mars has some local magnetic anomalies, but they're basically enormous magnetite deposits from the ancient days when Mars did have a magnetic field. The fields they produce are so feeble as to be negligible.)

Of course, we assume that by the time Ares I landed NASA had the static electricity problem licked, at least well enough for long-term human habitation. But Pathfinder-Sojourner was the first Mars probe that faced the issue. A large part of the longevity of the rovers that followed is down to the static discharge solution used on Sojourner. And in the real world, static electricity issues will continue to be a major concern for engineering.

Buffer's at 1 1/3; I did a lot of re-writing this morning, then started another chapter and ran out of steam. We'll see if I come up with more tonight when I get home from this event, but probably not.

Sol 222

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 224
ARES III SOL 222

[08:11] WATNEY: Dust storm has passed. I’m going out to sweep off the solar farm. While we were waiting, we made several repairs to Sojourner’s internal circuitry. What we found makes it unlikely that the probe survived. There was apparently a short circuit, we assume due to static buildup after the loss of Sojourner’s static points, that melted part of the wiring harness connecting the solar panels to the power board. That can’t have been good for the rest of the circuits, or the CPU. Our only reason for hope is that we also found a lot of broken connectors between the CPU and PROM chips and the board, so it’s possible the static surge missed those.

So we want to make one more test to see if there’s anything left to save. While I’m sweeping, let me know what I need to do to make the experiment.

[08:38] JPL: This is Tim at JPL, Mr. Watney, Ms. Dragonfly. The Pathfinder team is standing by to send Sojourner activation orders. We can’t do this while the Pathfinder chat is running, so we need you to close the client on Rover 1 and take Sojourner outside, in that order. We’ll order Sojourner to power up and execute one three-sixty rotation in place on its wheels. If nothing happens, we concur that further salvage efforts are probably futile. In any case, ninety minutes after closing out the chat, take Sojourner back inside the hab and reactivate Rover 1’s Pathfinder app. We’ll be listening.

[09:02] WATNEY: Roger. By the time you read this Rover 1 will be shut down.

Half of Sojourner’s brain resided in its own limited circuits- the CPU and the PROM chips that regulated its health on the flight to Mars and provided instructions on how to perform commands. The other half resided within Pathfinder, the parts that gave the instructions, which remembered what Sojourner had done, and which interpreted the data from the probe and relayed them back to Earth.

Almost forty years before, the two halves had been sundered when Pathfinder’s unreliable power systems, which had triggered several computer reboots and threatened its mission from the first day, finally died. The rover, lobotomized, had gone into safe mode, making its best guess where the lander was and returning to it, waiting for instructions the larger probe would never give.

For ninety days the little rover had been busy, performing miracles on a power supply designed to last only five days after separation from the lander. Then, after sputters and starts and garbled instructions, the only voice it could hear had gone silent, and not long after, so had the universe. It never sensed the internal damage that came later, over the years, as the cold of Mars and all its sand and dust did its work.

Now the universe returned. It was in an elevated position on a flat surface with a lot of unfamiliar surroundings, some of which moved on its own. Sojourner watched impassively. Nothing spoke to it in any way it could hear; there were no orders to follow and no remaining emergency protocols; so, it remained inert.

It sent out a ping to its mothership, asking for a response, and it heard nothing.

Its vision was a little scratchy from the play of Martian dust and sand on the covers protecting the various cameras. But it could see light and dark shapes, and some outlines, that suggested it was being lifted and carried somewhere. The world became very uniform for a few minutes, and then it emerged into the dimmer afternoon light of the place it had come to explore.

It was returned to the surface just outside the shadow of something large. It sent out another ping. No reply.

But before it could send a third ping, a voice came out of the silence, long awaited. It demanded a status update.

Sojourner performed a systems diagnostic and reported it, as if forty years had not passed.

The voice that gave orders commanded it move its wheels just so, performing a dance that would swing in a full circle.

Sojourner obeyed, notifying the lander as it began the requested maneuver and again when it was completed.

The voice gave one final command: stand by.

Sojourner obeyed. Its options in this regard were sharply limited, but it didn’t mind. It was a machine. It had infinite patience.

And yet…

It was too simple a robot to think for itself, but if Sojourner had a spirit, it might have cried tears of ghostly joy. For the first time in decades, it was whole.

And meanwhile, two large shapes danced around it, for no apparent reason.

“It lives!” Dragonfly giggled, dancing around the Martian surface in her spacesuit. “The robot lives!”

“You’ll have to feed it and clean up after it, you know,” Mark said over his improvised pony comms. “It’s a heavy responsibility, having your own rover.”

Dragonfly stopped dancing to give Mark a confused look. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “You humans are weird.”

[14:14] JPL: Venkat here. Congratulations on a miracle, Mark and Dragonfly. The Pathfinder team have begun work on software to install into both rovers that will allow either one to take over from Pathfinder and operate Sojourner. That way, even if Pathfinder fails, you have a rover that can go into tight places and look at things. Also, this will allow the Pathfinder chat and Sojourner to run at the same time.

[14:39] WATNEY: Thanks, but we can’t take credit. We don’t know what happened to cook only certain electrical connections inside Sojourner, but it left the CPU and PROMs alone- and that’s the only reason the little robot lives. Whatever stopped the lightning from frying Sojourner’s brains, that’s what deserves the thanks.

Also, we don’t think the bot’s much more than a pet at this point. Reviving it was a morale task. We could just as easily have taken up Martian rock scrimshaw as a hobby. In fact, it’s still on the table, as soon as Dragonfly finishes her fanfic about the forbidden love between BJ McKay and Enos Straite.

[14:42] WATNEY: Dragonfly here- I don’t know what Mark is talking about, and he won’t tell me what “fanfic” means. It’s not in the dictionary, either. Aren’t you his bosses? Make him tell me what it means!

[15:07] JPL: _Make_ him? Haven’t you got to know him better than that yet?

[15:34] WATNEY: Jokes aside, the work on Sojourner raises two questions. Why hasn’t Pathfinder had the same problems with electrical grounds and thermal contraction on the electronics board that Sojourner did? Or, if it did have those problems and is running anyway, how long until it breaks? I figure that’s a job for you guys, since if you break something taking it apart you can fix it in a few minutes. If I break Pathfinder taking it apart for maintenance, we’re down to Morse code via the pony radio.

[16:02] JPL: Thanks for bringing this up. We’ve had similar concerns, but we made the same conclusion you did. Breaking Pathfinder while trying to do maintenance on it is an avoidable disaster. We’ll have the Pathfinder team look into it, but only after the new Sojourner software is uploaded. We’re already discussing things we could do with the rover for bonus science data, both in Acidalia and at Schiaparelli if it lasts that long. But we need Pathfinder working for long enough to get the software update. That’ll take days at our current bandwidth.

[16:27] WATNEY: Roger. For now we’ll focus on the potato harvest, and then on setting up the engine test. After that we’ll begin tearing down Rover 1.

Author's Note

The bulk of this was originally part of the previous chapter, before said previous chapter got an expansion.

This scene is pure sentimentality on my part, and I feel guilty putting it into the story at all. It's neither hard science nor even semi-hard magic. But we got to see Sojourner active in the movie, at least briefly, so dammit I wanted it brought back here, too.

Also, it's a good thing I broke this in half, because I was barely able to write three paragraphs today. Frequently the day after I work a convention I have a zero-energy day. I've spent the day with my head foggy as hell and my motivation utterly absent. I can't focus, I can't concentrate, and I can barely do the most basic and urgently necessary things.

I should be better tomorrow, though.

Buffer's at one- a very, very short one.

Sol 224

MISSION LOG – SOL 224

Tater feast today. And by “tater feast” I mean “pretending we don’t all want to summon Dread Cthulhu and give ourselves up to total madness rather than take another bite.”

Between the cave and the Hab, we got over 4,000 more potatoes. If I were the only one eating them, what’s left would be enough to get me beyond sol 950 or so- in other words, to the worst-case scenario Ares 3B rescue date, which of course isn’t going to happen now. And seven hundred sols of spuds for one person is one hundred and seventy-five sols for four.

We’re very, very nearly good on food for the remainder of our stay on Mars. And we definitely have enough potatoes.

Despite that, and despite all the work it means, we’re going to keep harvesting spuds until we leave. Just because the potatoes we’ve already grown will keep practically forever in the deep freeze which is Mars, it doesn’t mean fresh isn’t better. (By better I mean “marginally less disgusting”.) And we’ve been keeping track of the old and new crops, making sure we eat the old first. So we’re going to harvest potatoes as they ripen, keeping the plants alive to make more, and we’re going to pitch the older ones on a potato-for-potato basis.

Yes- we’re almost to the point that we are actively planning to THROW FOOD AWAY.

Also, we’re going to reduce production of potatoes. We’ve moved the plants that were in the pop-tents to the cave farm. Eventually we’ll move the soil there, too. That will let us repurpose those tents for other things. If a potato plant dies off in the cave (say we have a sinkhole again), we’ll replant using alfalfa clippings rather than potato eyes. We need more hay, not more spuds, but we still want lots of living plants to help charge Starlight’s magic batteries.

Speaking of, tomorrow Cherry Berry, Dragonfly and Starlight are going to go to the cave to fill up two batteries and bring them back to the Hab, while Fireball and I assemble the engine testing rig. Spitfire’s going to be with us, too, but she says she doubts she can turn a wrench. Quoting: “Not much try fixing things. More I do the breaking of them.”

And assuming Fireball and I have the cradle assembled by the end of tomorrow (which we should- we have the hardware, the MDV landing struts, and enough pony-ship scrap metal to do it all), on Sol 226 we remove the ship engines, put one in the cradle, wire it up and see what happens. With that out of the way, we can begin work on the Whinnybago.

Speaking of work… we have leftovers to dispose of. Eating has long ceased to be a joy. We’ve even got beyond the point where it’s a penance. Eating our daily requirement of hay and/or potatoes now requires three heroic acts a day. We no longer eat meals; we throw ourselves upon unexploded food.

The detonations, if you take my meaning, begin sixteen hours or so later. Let the record show I wasn’t the first one to comment about methane leaks in the Hab. Blame Fireball.

Author's Note

Buffer at one, a good bit longer than this one was.

And today I picked up a vacant booth at a small anime convention in Baton Rouge THIS WEEKEND. I don't expect much out of it, but I need to hit anything close to me with any significant prospect of even a tiny profit, so Louisianime, here I come.

Sol 227

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 229
ARES III SOL 227

It was days like today that made Spitfire curse this planet, curse its lack of air or magic, and above all curse a space suit that didn’t come equipped with proper wing sleeves.

Not that she could have flown even with wing sleeves, but Spitfire didn’t want to hear such rational arguments. She was stuck to the ground like a fallen dart, while the others worked on unloading the main engines from Amicitas. Cherry Berry was policing a small area where two of the three engines would come to rest, while Fireball and Mark set up the cradle (which, annoyingly, had taken two days to build) that would hold the third. Starlight Glimmer was the magic crane that would lift each engine out of its mount inside the tail of the ship, while Dragonfly crawled all over and inside that tail assembly, removing the dozens of bolts which held each engine securely in place.

And what was Spitfire? Useless.

Correction: hopefully useless. Spitfire wanted nothing less than a situation where emergency medical aid was required, especially since any conceivable first-aid situation would also include space suit damage, decompression, and all the other ingredients of a Bad Day without even flying.

This bucking planet.

Spitfire wandered over to Starlight, who had her left forehoof resting across the terminals of a magic battery. For whatever reason Starlight had chosen to use the two emergency batteries from the shipwreck rather than any of the new ones. That seemed appropriate to Spitfire. These batteries had been intended to operate the ship, and after a fashion they still were. “How much longer?” she asked.

Starlight gave her a pained look, then waved her head in the direction of Mark.

“Ugh. How long?” Spitfire asked, this time in English.

“It’s a lot of bolts,” Starlight pointed out. “A lot of bolts in deliberately hard-to-reach places. Give it a-“

“Done!” Dragonfly shouted from the tail of the ship. “They’re ready to slide out of their cradles!”

“-never mind,” Starlight said, reaching down to switch on the battery. “Fireball, Mark, get ready to guide down the first engine into the cradle!”

Fireball and Mark both gave thumbs-up signs.

Spitfire gestured to the battery. “Is that going to be enough?” she asked.

“This battery has ninety percent charge,” Starlight replied, smiling smugly. “I picked up the whole ship, before we trimmed anything, on a twenty percent charge. The three engines should be easy.” Saying that, she switched on the battery, put her hoof on a terminal, and lit up her horn.

The uppermost of the three engines, complete with the smaller-than-normal bells scavenged from the MAV landing stage, slid out of its cradle in the tail assembly, surrounded by a blue glow tinged violet against the pink Martian sky. Steadily, effortlessly, it floated in the air well above the dusty Martian ground towards the carefully prepared test cradle, where Mark and Fireball stood ready to guide the motor down into the cradle and clamp it in securely.

And then, at that moment, the battery terminal snapped off under Starlight’s hoof. The indicators on the battery died. Starlight grunted softly, and then her magic winked out and she slumped to the ground.

Roughly one and a half tons of irreplaceable equipment in motion began to fall. Directly below it and in front of it, Mark stared up at it, moving slowly- too slowly- trying to get out of its way.

And then fresh magic surrounded the motor, a green balefire that wrenched the falling engine away from Mark, twisting it on its side, and dropping it, a little roughly, a couple of ponylengths to the side of the cradle.

Spitfire blinked. The whole sequence of events, from the failure of the battery to the hard landing of the rocket motor, might have taken about three seconds- less than that. But it had seemed-

Something else fell. Martian dust billowed up around an orange and white object next to the tail of Amicitas.

“Mare down!”

“Dragonfly!”

Mark ran for the fallen changeling. Fireball shifted back and forth on his feet, looking first at Dragonfly and then at Starlight, who still lay on the dirt next to the failed battery and its unused brother. Spitfire realized she was doing the same, dancing on her hooves trying to decide who to go to first.

“Fireball!” Cherry Berry’s voice cracked over the comms. “Pick up Starlight. Mark, bring Dragonfly. Spitfire, help me with the good battery. Everybody back inside the Hab. This task is scrubbed!”

“Perfect… English.” Starlight Glimmer’s voice came over the comms weakly, but it was there. “A… plus…”

“Don’t talk,” Cherry ordered. “We’ll get you inside and check you out.”

“What the hell?” That was Mark, who had Dragonfly’s suit in his arms. “Since when is Dragonfly this light? It feels like this suit is empty!”

Oh, yeah, Spitfire thought. That was Dragonfly’s magic catching the engine when it fell. And she didn’t have a battery…

… oh buck me.

Spitfire remembered something she’d overheard Dragonfly saying, many, many Martian days ago.

For me magic and love are the same thing.

Spitfire wasn’t used to lifting heavy objects in her forelimbs without the use of her wings (seriously, buck this pressure suit), but she made it work, wrestling the presumably good battery onto Cherry’s back and fastening the harness made for it- that Dragonfly had made for it- onto the earth pony’s backpack.

Then the lot of them, four walking, one semi-conscious, and one… unknown… headed for the nearest Hab airlock, paying no mind to the rules about alternating airlocks. Speed counted for more than caution.

MISSION LOG: SOL 227

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

The engine test didn’t come off as planned. In fact, it didn’t happen at all. Everything was going fine until the magic battery Starlight Glimmer was using to lift an engine broke for no apparent reason. (Well, that’s a bit of a stretch; the battery in question was one of the two that survived the crash-landing- specifically the one that was sitting unsecured in the engine compartment and got bounced around like a pinball when the pony ship belly-flopped onto Mars. But as ugly as the battery was, it worked just fine until today, so the question is, why break now?)

Anyway, when the magic quit Starlight was holding not quite a ton and a half of rocket guts about twenty feet in the air and moving at walking pace towards the cradle Fireball and I had built. The thing about heavy objects floating twenty feet in the air over a planetary surface is, they tend not to want to stay there. Starlight’s spell failed, she collapsed, and the engine began falling.

And guess who was right underneath it? That’s right, Mars’s #1 punching bag. This planet has stabbed me, burned me, rattled me around inside a soup can, and tried to suck me out a hull breach, and now it wanted to drop the equivalent of a couple large vending machines on me to see how I’d survive that.

Fortunately, we had two magic-users in our merry crew, and just before I was about to do my best imitation of a used soda can, Dragonfly grabbed the engine in her magic and put it on the ground beside me. She saved my life.

In fact, she might have just given up her life to save mine. Not a good trade. There’s billions of me back on Earth, but she’s the only one of her kind in this universe.

Casting the spell took a lot out of her- by which I mean mass. I was shocked as hell when I picked her limp body off of the ground. She felt like she weighed nothing, and I don’t mean that figuratively.

We got our two wounded back into the Hab and stripped off their suits. Starlight has her usual magic-strain symptoms. She’ll probably be fine. But Dragonfly… well, she’s always been perforated, with cute holes in her limbs and wings and even ears. But now those limbs look like they were made out of lace. There are pits in her torso. Her face is horribly shriveled. She looks like a bug-pony raisin, and that’s no joke.

I suited back up, went back outside to fetch the scale, and put Dragonfly on it. Now, back over a hundred sols ago, I did a set of physical exams on the ponies, with Spitfire’s help. At the time Dragonfly weighed forty-three and a half kilograms- a bit light for, say, a skinny woman of about five foot two, as she might be standing up.

Today? Almost exactly twenty kilograms.

Twenty.

How is she still alive??

And yet she is. She’s breathing, but that’s about all.

Everything else is on hold. At Cherry’s advice all of us, even Starlight, have been sitting around Dragonfly, trying to will love into her.

Spitfire ordered us to rig the good battery for field projection, and that ran for about half an hour. And let me tell you, it was freaky. The rest of the Hab lit up with those vivid pastel colors you usually get when the sparks fly, but Dragonfly turned into a fucking black hole. There wasn’t any gravitational pull, and I was able to put first a screwdriver and then my hand into the field and touch Dragonfly’s body, but all we could see was this blackness that totally concealed the little bug beyond head to tail.

It helped- some. When the battery ran out of juice and we shut it down, Dragonfly didn’t look quite so shriveled or hollowed-out. I put her back on the scales, and she was up to twenty-seven kilograms, which I hope means recovery.

But I can’t help thinking about concentration camp prisoners back at the end of World War II. Thousands of men and women who, through luck or determination, survived Nazi death camps or Japanese POW camps died because they tried to eat too much when rescued. Their bodies couldn’t handle it. I am scared shitless that we’re doing the same thing to Dragonfly. None of us knows what we’re doing, not even Spitfire. Cherry says their bosses back home are trying to get a bug-pony doctor to where they can talk to us as quickly as possible. I hope they hurry, because it’s already been hours.

The ponies actually want to go to the cave and fetch all the batteries, bring them here at once. I said nothing doing. It’s not far from sunset out there right now, and I don’t want anyone to risk being out of sight of the Hab after dark. Also, Starlight isn’t able to make the trip, so they’d be bringing back low-charge batteries anyway. We have a couple of those here, and we can drain those tonight to help Dragonfly further. Tomorrow Starlight might be well enough to transfer charges to fill up a few batteries.

In the meantime, we watch, we wait, and we love.

No TV, no books, no English lessons tonight. Nobody wants to. No potatoes or hay. Nobody’s hungry. We take turns holding Dragonfly’s hoof, watching, and waiting.

Speaking of, it’s my turn again.

Author's Note

WHAM.

I wasn't 100% when I wrote this, and I think it shows. The first part in particular is bare-boned and without the usual flavor I try to put into this.

But nonetheless, WHAM.

Buffer's at one, and we'll see if I can maintain that or not. I have a birthday party to attend in Houston, and then a drive to Baton Rouge tomorrow.

Sol 228

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 230
ARES III SOL 228

“Mark.”

Mark’s head jerked up. He’d fallen asleep on his work stool. His sleep-muddled eyes ran around the Hab, along the rows of recently harvested and replanted potato plants, past the bunks full of ponies and dragon, over the computers scattered here and there. Everyone was asleep except for him… so who was whispering his name?

“Mark.”

He glanced up at the mission clock, hanging over the kitchen and lab area. 02:13 hours. The middle of the night. Why hadn’t he sacked out? And who-

“Mark.”

The whisper was a little louder this time, and coming from behind him. He swiveled to face Airlock 3 and saw…

… no. It couldn’t be. Absolutely impossible.

Beth Johanssen, wearing tattered clothes almost identical to the ones he currently wore, stood by the inner airlock door, leaning against the metal frame with one hand. “Mark,” she whispered again, imploring, eyes wide, face full of unreadable emotions.

Warnings rang through Mark Watney’s brain. This is absolutely impossible. Beth is on Hermes, still only a dozen or so days out of Earth on that wacko return trajectory. This is a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. Are we going to relive The Thing?

But it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. And a real human being was in front of him, the first one he’d seen in person for over seven months. And this was no random passerby, either: Johanssen was a crewmate, someone he’d spent four years living, training, doing absolutely everything with. This was someone closer to him than blood family. And she was here, only a few yards away.

He stood up and walked over to Johanssen, every logical thought his sleepy mind could devise screaming he shouldn’t, instincts older than logic demanding that he must. Instinct won.

“Johanssen,” he gasped, bending down and hugging the small woman desperately. She clung to him in return, pulling on his arms for support. “Beth… Beth, I…”

“Maaaaark,” Johanssen hissed, pulling herself tightly to his body.

“God, I’ve missed you so much,” Mark said. “Where is everybody? God, it’s just so good to…” Words failed him. He couldn’t express, in this moment, how much love he felt, how much loneliness had lifted off his shoulders.

He held Johanssen’s shoulders, pushing back from the embrace so he could look her in the eyes.

The solid blue, pupilless eyes glowed faintly in the dim Hab night-mode lighting.

Johanssen opened her mouth, but all that emerged was a serpentine- no, an insectile- hiss.

And Mark Watney knew nothing more.

Cherry Berry hadn’t slept well. She had nightmares of her crew dying- not in sensible ways, either, but just keeling over and dramatically ceasing to breathe. She’d been powerless to prevent it- well, of course she was, when none of them were dying for any apparent cause. And they just kept dying at her, again and again, as if they were driving home the point that they were dying and, somehow, that it was all Cherry’s fault.

The flash of the Hab lights going from night to day mode roused her. She sat up on her bunk, licking her teeth, blinking her eyes, trying to sweep the last bad dreams out of her head and get her brain working again.

Death. Yeah. Small wonder she’d dreamed about it. Twilight Sparkle had finally managed to get Auntie Gardner out of Horseton to answer questions. The changeling healer hadn’t minced words. Based on the symptoms, Dragonfly was in the terminal stages of starvation. No changeling free to do anything about it would ever allow itself to get into that condition, and the hive would take measures long before any changeling got that bad. Auntie had only heard of starvation cases from her teacher, and so she only know what she had been told; that pits and holes in the torso were the final stage of deterioration.

The others had suggested that Auntie Gardner, being a changeling, might be lying. But for what reason? Dragonfly was popular in Chrysalis’s hive- a hero. Besides, Cherry knew Auntie from the earliest days of the Changeling Space Program, one of a number of changelings who tended to the broken limbs, wings and other parts of wanna-be astronauts whose idea of space travel had, at the time, begun and ended with the idea of throwing one another really fast through the air. Changeling healers were no-nonsense, unimaginative, and dedicated to their duty- and they never lied about a diagnosis.

(They also had a bedside manner that a yak would find unsympathetic, one reason why Chrysalis had hired pony medics almost as soon as Horseton Space Center opened for business.)

But Cherry didn’t want to believe it. Dragonfly had been with the program from the start. She’d been a pilot, an engineer, a leader… and, yes, a hero, and not just to changelings. And every time she went up, it seemed, she found some way of “taunting the Pale Horse,” as she called it, seeking thrills by endangering her own life. She’d lived. She’d thrived on it. If one pony was going to survive this awful, horrible planet, Dragonfly was the one Cherry Berry would have bet on.

But be fair, Cherry Berry thought. How much of this is you believing in Dragonfly, when we all knew she wasn’t doing well, and how much of it is you not wanting to admit that you lost a member of your crew?

She sighed. She was hungry, and she knew Dragonfly would be hungry, too.

If she lived through the night.

Shut up, stupid thoughts.

There was a small bundle of hay by Airlock 2, which had been intended for last night’s supper. Nopony had wanted it. Cherry didn’t particularly want it now, but her stomach demanded something. She slid off her bunk onto all fours and walked, slowly, towards the hay.

She’d got to the hay and pulled out a double hoofful to munch on before she realized that things were very, very wrong.

The ponies’ spacesuits were scattered all over the dirt, backpacks opened to reveal the thruster systems inside, complete with their chunks of crystal batteries. The five large mana batteries in the Hab had been dragged from their depository near Airlock 2, left lying on their sides. Even the broken battery was there, its bad terminal reattached with a glob of…

… changeling goo.

Cherry looked at the worktable they’d cleared- no Dragonfly.

Cherry looked at the suits- one of the orange ones was missing.

And there, by Airlock Three, Mark sat, propped up against the frame of the airlock, motionless except for the slight rising and falling of his chest, eyes staring out at nothing. Next to him Sojourner sat, facing the airlock, its round spectrometer "nose" pushed up against the door.

Puzzle pieces slotted into position with incredible speed.

Oh buck oh buck oh buck oh BUCK.

“SUIT UP!!” she screamed, paying no notice to the sudden groans and scrambling as the others woke up in response to reflexes imbued by hundreds of drills. She kept her eyes on Mark, who hadn’t budged. She reached out a hoof and touched his leg. “Mark?” she asked, much more gently. “Mark, all right? You all right, Mark?”

“Beth…” The name flowed downhill on inertia, with practically no force or inflection behind it. “Johannsen… Johannsen…” Mark’s eyes slowly tracked around Cherry- literally around her, never actually focusing at her- before returning to their neutral state.

“What the buck? What happened to all the suits?”

“Who left the thruster packs open?”

“Hey, where’s Dragonfly?”

“Her suit’s not here!”

“Guys!” Cherry Berry called out, switching to Equestrian. “Fireball, Spitfire, get Mark to a bunk now. Starlight, are you okay to check the suits?”

“I think so,” Starlight said. “My head still hurts a bit, but-“

“Dragonfly woke up last night,” Cherry said. “I think she went into some kind of weird feeding frenzy, beginning with Mark. I have no idea why she didn’t do the same to the rest of us.”

“Because Mark feeds her the most,” Spitfire said. “She said that once to me. Asked me to keep it secret.”

“Me, too,” Starlight added. “That’s why she asked us not to talk about shape-shifting. She wasn’t just afraid that humans would fear changelings. She was afraid that Mark would stop loving her.”

Cherry groaned. “Once we find her, we’re all going to have a talk about secrets,” she said. “Secrets, and why you do NOT KEEP THEM FROM YOUR CREWMATES!”

“We’re not going after her in these suits,” Spitfire said. “I just checked my suit’s system power. It reads at only twelve percent. She must have drained them.”

“Like she drained the batteries,” Starlight nodded, gesturing at the scattered blocks of quartz and metal.

“Buck,” Cherry groaned, and then added in English, “Dammit!”

They noticed the live computer only after Mark was in his bunk, still unresponsive. Dragonfly had left a note.

First: tell Irene Shields I release her from her promise. She is to tell NASA everything, at once.

Second: tell my queen I am sorry. I tried to hold out. Now I’ve spoiled it for us all, for changelings and also for ponies.

I had to save Mark. I didn’t think about it- I just did it. But I didn’t have a battery- only me. The last thing I remember was knowing that I’d set the engine down safely. Then I passed out.

When I came to my senses I was standing over Mark. I’d just drained him dry. I think I took the shape of his friend Johannsen to do it, but I don’t remember clearly.

You see, if a changeling is hungry enough, or if we’re really close to a huge supply of love, we go wild. We can’t stop ourselves. Changelings never starve to death. Our instincts kick in before that point and make us feed, even if it’s smarter for us not to. But I’ve been starving for magic, not for food, and recently I’ve been right on the edge.

I still am. I’ve drained every source of magic here except for you all, and it’s not enough. I have to get out of here before I go under again and feed on you. I can only write this because of how terrible I feel for what I did to Mark, and how I’ve failed all of you- my crew, my hive, everyone.

When you find me, because ponies will look for friends even if they don’t deserve finding, leave me where I am. I am danger to the mission. Don’t take me to the MAV. The last thing you need is a wild animal in a rocket ship during liftoff.

I must leave now while I can. I am so very sorry.

They read the note. Then, carefully, they copied the note into an email and sent it to Dr. Shields.

That afternoon, once the suits had regenerated enough power to run comms and navigation for the gallop to the cave farm and back, Cherry Berry and Spitfire found Dragonfly. Most of the potato plants had been eaten down to the ground, and a large dark green cocoon- not the soft, squishy pods changelings used to store victims, but an actual opaque, hard-shelled cocoon- hung from the crystals on the wall just inside the airlock, not far from the life support box.

The cocoon had two English words on it, written in dried goo splashes: LEAVE ME.

They did, but only after a long and, on Cherry’s part at least, truly heartfelt hug.

[15:37] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer here, Dr. Kapoor. Sorry to interrupt the software download, but we have an urgent report. This will be a long one, so please be patient.

[16:02] WATNEY: I will begin by mentioning something we haven’t done before; that all of us are showing symptoms of what might be called magic withdrawal. With us ponies the symptoms are very minor. Our coats are a little dull, our marks a bit faded. Fireball can’t breathe fire anymore except when we have a magic field generator working.

But Dragonfly is the most magical of us all, so she felt the symptoms worst of all. That is because of a thing we did not tell you before. Dragonfly is a shapeshifter, able to change herself into absolutely anything. This is how they fed on us ponies for the love they eat- by disguising themselves as loved ones and infiltrating our society, before the space race and the peace came.

We knew Dragonfly was not feeling well, but we didn’t know why until fairly recently. She was keeping her sickness from us, just like she asked us to keep her shapeshift powers from you, because she was afraid. When we figured out Dragonfly was sick from lack of magic, we began taking steps to relieve the problem. We thought that would fix it. We didn’t know how serious it was, or the most important thing Dragonfly was holding back from us.

That brings us to the events of yesterday, Sol 227…

Venkat Kapoor read the chat post, which went on in horrifying detail. It concluded:

… Mark is in some sort of trance. He obeys orders only if we keep repeating them, if we keep pushing him to do them. And he won’t eat no matter how hard we push. If he hasn’t recovered by tomorrow we’ll try raiding his food packs to see if he responds to something that isn’t potatoes.

On behalf of Commander Cherry Berry and all of us, we apologize for what’s happened. Please remember that Dragonfly meant well. She was sick, and she made herself sick almost to death saving Mark’s life. It was in that condition that she did what she did. We can’t blame you for being mad that we kept her secrets, but we forgive her for that, and we forgive her for what the sickness made her do.

We will try to go forward with the rover procedures. It will be very difficult without Mark, so we hope he recovers soon. But we have to take care of him, and also we have to take care of Dragonfly. We will find a way to heal her. We will not leave her behind.

Ask Dr. Shields for more details. We will answer any questions you have.

Venkat reached for his phone, selecting a contact from the list and dialing it.

Two rings, and then a loud, grouchy voice. “What do you want, Venkat?” Annie snapped. “I have a press conference in five minutes.”

“Cancel it,” Venkat ordered. “Tell them we’re preparing a special press release and need more time.”

“A what?” Venkat could hear Annie blinking over the momentarily silent line. “What press release? This is supposed to be a routine presser, no news after the unexplained abort of the rocket test yesterday. What’s happened?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. But cancel that right now, and then put an embargo on all outgoing data feeds. Especially the Pathfinder chat. We need to block that going out at once. And by the way, thank you for pushing for the delayed release.”

“What the fuck, Venk?” Annie snapped. “Did somebody fucking die up there or something?”

Venkat didn’t answer.

“… fuck,” Annie gasped as it sank in. “Who, Venk? Tell me who?”

“Lock the doors on our data, Annie,” Venkat said. “Then read the chat log for today. And expect a meeting in Teddy’s office when you’re done. I’m calling him next.”

“But who- oh, fuck it.” The line went dead.

Venkat leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Fuck is right,” he muttered to himself. “God, oh God.” He calmed himself, selected Teddy’s number from his contacts, and dialed. “God, oh God,” he repeated.

Author's Note

WHAM, WHAM.

Buffer is at 1/2; don't have time for more writing right now, need to pack my suitcase and get rolling for Baton Rouge.

(By the way, the suits still hold air without magic power, but with the suit batteries drained they don't have comms or navigation. The ponies couldn't talk to one another, and they risk not being able to find either the cave or the Hab once they leave line-of-sight of either.)

Sol 229

Queen Chrysalis’s capsule bobbed up and down in the Griffon Sea, awaiting recovery. The Equestrian Space Agency might prefer winged landers, but Chrysalis strongly preferred capsules. As Chrysalis had put it herself, if the thing you’re riding down from space in, wrapped by a giant fireball, is going to have the aerodynamic properties of a brick, it’s stupid to slap wings on it and call it a glider. Better to treat it as the brick it is.

Chrysalis herself sat in the capsule’s center seat, flanked by the yeti and hippogriff who had just finished their rookie flight. The descent had been uneventful from undocking to splashdown. Of course, Chryssy thought smugly, I was piloting it.

And in thirty days she’d go up and do it all over again. Thirty up, thirty down, that was to be the cycle, at least until the earliest possible day that the escape rocket in that other universe- the Mahv, or whatever- was ready for launch. Concordia would be on permanent standby on the off-chance that the universe Amicitas had landed in was found, in which case it would jump there at once and begin directly coordinating rescue plans with the natives. And if that happened, it would be either herself or Rainbow Dash in command of the mission.

Of course, once the castaways had their rescue rocket, the plan would change to immediate pickup as soon as the universe was located. But that day remained at least half a year away, according to the castaways.

With a sudden jerk the capsule lifted out of the water, no longer bobbing. Bringing a capsule down was still a little bit of a roll of the dice, but CSP had got better than hitting the correct ocean; now they could put down within a dozen or so kilometers of the recovery barge. Thus, within minutes of splashdown, the capsule now floated in the air under the telekinetic power of the recovery team, to be set down on the barge for transport back to Horseton for reconditioning.

All of that was normal, routine, business as usual. The presence of a purple alicorn on the deck of the barge when Chrysalis opened the capsule hatch, on the other hoof, was definitely not normal.

“We need to talk,” Twilight Sparkle said, without preamble.

Chrysalis looked around. The barge had a control shack, and the tugboat that towed it a small cabin, and that was all. No privacy. Not even the pretense of privacy, given that the control rooms for both tug and barge had enormous windows. “Here? Now?” the changeling queen asked, climbing out of the capsule. “In front of-“

“Something very bad has happened,” Twilight said. “It happened two days ago, but we decided not to tell you until you made it down safely.”

Chrysalis’s imagination ran wild. She understood the logic. What’s more, she understood Twilight Sparkle, a mare who by changeling standards was an uncontrolled blabbermouth. If the princess had not only held her tongue but ordered others to do likewise, on the premise that it might be a dangerous distraction from the potentially lethal process of reentry, it meant something that would make Chrysalis in particular unable to control herself. And the fact that the princess was here to tell her the very instant she got out of the capsule…

“Tell me,” she said.

Twilight told her.

It was every bit as bad as Chrysalis expected.

Teddy didn’t pace. He didn’t slam the desk. His face remained calm, composed, unruffled. But he kept knocking the end of a pen onto his desk blotter, sliding his thumb and forefinger down its length, picking it up and allowing the top to swivel down, then knocking the other end into the blotter to start the cycle again. Venkat had seen his boss as fidgety as this before, but he couldn’t remember when. “Okay,” he said quietly. “We are going to operate under the assumption that Mark will recover. What does the loss of Dragonfly do to recovery efforts?”

“Plenty,” Venkat said. “Dragonfly was their mission engineer. She was also the only one capable of maintaining their spacesuits, which have required two rounds of maintenance and one emergency repair in two hundred and twenty sols. Barring a miracle from the pony homeworld, they have over three hundred sols remaining with no suit maintenance, known wear issues on said suits, and no backups or replacements. And, of course, all work on adapting pony systems to our needs will be set back.”

“Also there’s the matter of the cocoon mentioned by the pony astronauts,” Mitch grumbled. “They say such things have never been rated for vacuum. They’re never going to abandon her while there’s any chance she’s alive, so that means they have to get her out somehow to suit her up for transfer to the rover. They’re not going to cooperate with any plan that gets in the way of that.”

“Dragonfly is the second most popular alien crew member after Cherry Berry,” Annie said. “News of this disaster hit the Net like a fucking A-bomb filled with pureed shit. The only people who blame Dragonfly for this massive clusterfuck are the same chucklefucks who wanted to let the aliens die in the first place. They’re screaming ‘we told you so.’ But damn near everybody else is convinced that she’s going to die, that Mark’s going to die, and that the others are doomed without them, and that there’s fuck-all NASA can do to stop it.”

Teddy paused in his pen-tapping ritual. “Is there anything we can do about it?” he asked.

Chrysalis rubbed her head. “Okay, Dragonfly messed up,” she admitted. “She messed up by the numbers, but I can’t really blame her. In her position I probably would have done the same thing. Except for saving the monkey, that is. I might not have done that.”

“He’s not a- ugh,” Twilight Sparkle groaned. “Mark is a person, not a monkey. And he needs our help. You can begin by telling us how to cure him.”

“There is no cure,” Chrysalis said. “Not when a changeling drains someone empty of love. Victims either recover by themselves… or they don’t.”

“No cure? But there has to be something!!”

Chrysalis considered this. On the one hoof, anything further risked giving up secrets she’d managed to protect despite the détente. On the other hoof… she wasn’t really sure, anyway. “Removing the changeling usually releases the victim,” she said, “though the victim will be weak for a while. But failing that… your brother recovered quickly when confronted with the loved one I impersonated. You remember that, yes?”

“Every time we have to work together, yes,” Twilight Sparkle said. “But I try to put it aside for the-“

“Yes, yes, harmony friendship blah blah blah,” Chrysalis interrupted. “My point is, it might help if this Mark makes contact with whichever loved one Dragonfly impersonated for her feeding. The presence, or even the image or voice, of the real thing might dispel the captivation.”

“That’s it?” Twilight asked. “No spell, no infusion of love?”

“That really is the best suggestion I have, princess,” Chrysalis snapped. “Remember, until not that long ago we changelings had no reason to care about our victims except to make sure they kept producing love for us to eat. We don’t exactly have clinical trials I could refer you to!”

“An oversight that needs correcting,” Twilight replied coldly. “But another time. How do we get Dragonfly out of that cocoon?”

“You don’t,” Chrysalis replied. “Your report specified an opaque cocoon. That’s a long-term hibernation cocoon.” It was also the kind that produced queens, but Chrysalis saw no reason to enlighten this pony. With almost no magic and definitely no royal jelly, it wasn't going to happen anyway. “Forcing it open will injure or even kill the occupant. She’ll come out when she feels safe, and not one moment before.”

“You’re not being particularly helpful,” Twilight grumbled.

“You ask me a question I’ve never needed an answer for, and you ask another question for which there’s only one answer whether you like it or not!” Chrysalis roared. “I’m doing the best I can for you, pony, for you and my daughter and my senior pilot. Cease complaining and let’s talk about a lander.”

“A what?”

“I’m not on board with the idea that we have to wait for the pony homeworld to act before we can,” Teddy said. “What can we do?”

“Catatonia is a condition we still don’t understand very well,” Dr. Shields said, perched on the edge of one of the office chairs. “Mark could come out of it any moment, or he might remain that way for years. He requires immediate medical supervision, and he won’t get that until someone gets him off Mars.”

“I think we have to assume he comes out of it quickly,” Teddy insisted. “Without Mark’s skills and knowledge of Ares systems, the Purnell plan fails. And we already know from the alien castaways that their space programs probably won’t be able to make a craft that can both land and return from Mars any time soon.”

“Obviously we were wrong about our people being able to survive until rescue comes,” Chrysalis said. “We need to get there as fast as possible. How quickly can we design a lander to pick them up?”

“Are you kidding?” Twilight gasped. “Do you remember how huge your moon lander had to be? Now imagine it landing on a world with three times the gravity of the moon! Enough atmosphere to drag on the way up, but not enough for any serious aerobraking on the way down! And imagine it carrying six people more than whatever crew you send with it! And we have to be able to do that with absolutely no magic whatever, not even the telepresence spell.”

“So have the Concordia run comms relay,” Chrysalis said. “It’s got the batteries.”

“A landing and takeoff would take as much as two hours,” Twilight pointed out. “That’s not counting however long rendezvous with Concordia would require. And Concordia will be draining power all the time, until it doesn’t have enough power to make the jump home.”

“Are you saying it can’t be done?” Chrysalis asked.

“No. I’m saying it can’t be done and tested soon enough. We’d have to test it by landing and recovering it from Bucephalous, and that project could take a year even if we use Concordia to ferry the lander back and forth. We have to design the ship. We have to train crews. We have to do unmared landings to make sure the craft won't kill the crews. And then we do the piloted landing and ascent. All of that takes too much time. It’s faster to just use the human ship.”

Chrysalis snorted. “Not acceptable,” she said. “Dragonfly is going to die in that hell-world if we don’t get there quickly. And I’m the only one who can coax her out of that cocoon.”

“We can’t even find them yet,” Twilight pointed out. “And until we do find them, even if Discord gave us a lander gift-wrapped with a certificate from the legendary Queen Majesty herself- and even then I wouldn't trust-"

“Enough!” Chrysalis turned her back on the princess. “If all you can do is find reasons why we can’t do things, what good is an alicorn princess anyway?”

“Chrysalis, my student is there. My first student.”

“And so is my daughter. One of many, but still mine.”

“I know. And that’s why, when we go rescue them, we have to be sure it’s going to work. We probably won’t get more than one chance.”

Chrysalis wanted to argue the point, to attack the logic, to impugn the motives of the princess… and couldn’t. They needed to get there soon… but they absolutely had to get it right, first. “I know,” she said, and silently she cursed herself for allowing a bit too much genuine feeling into those syllables. She could feel pity pouring off the idiot genius already.

“Chrysalis…”

“Leave me,” the queen ordered. “This audi… this… conversation is over.”

“Leave you?” Twilight gestured. “We’re on a barge.”

Chrysalis looked around, realizing how many eyes were on the two of them. Wonderful. I just humiliated myself in front of an audience. “Leave me anyway,” she muttered. “Take your pity somewhere else.”

“No. Friends don't leave friends alone at times like this.” Twilight Sparkle made her point by walking over to Chrysalis and sitting down next to her.

And that was that, apparently.

Sparkle, Chrysalis noted, had more sense than to put a comforting foreleg or wing around her. That was as well, for if she had, détente or no, she would have ripped it off.

“We can ask the alien crew to discuss it with their superiors,” Teddy said, “but for now hoping for an alien rescue mission is futile. What can we do, right now, to help?”

“Ideal treatment for catatonic shock begins with putting the victim in a place where they feel safe and secure,” Dr. Shields said. “We aren’t going to get that on Mars. Next comes pharmaceutical intervention to counter any imbalance of brain chemistry. Dr. Keller and I are reluctant to recommend that, since the ponies have no way of testing neurotransmitter or endorphin levels, and we'd rather they not experiment with the contents of the medical kit. Electroshock therapy, of course, is right out."

The other people in the room nodded silent understanding.

"The next best thing," Shields continued, "is contact with loved ones, people the victim trusts, assuming they weren't the cause of the catatonic episode. Perhaps Mark’s parents and the Hermes crew could record a series of short messages to be sent over the Pathfinder channel.”

“Audio only,” Venkat said. “Our data transfer rate is about 750 bits per second and dropping. That’s a megabyte every three hours. Video is absolutely out of the question. Even audio messages will have to be short and very low-quality.”

“Voice and a small picture, then,” Dr. Shields suggested. “It won’t be as good as full video, but it will help. Text messages are useless in these cases- no sense of direct connection.”

“Do it,” Teddy said. “I’ll call the Watneys myself and make the arrangements there. Mitch, handle the Hermes crew. Venk, if you know of anyone else-“

Venkat shook his head. “Mark was married to his work,” he said. “He had a couple of girlfriends during training, but they didn’t last long. The closest people to him are his parents, the Ares III crew, and the ponies.”

“Don’t forget his geek factor,” Mitch put in. “Mark loved superhero movies and science fiction. Maybe we could tap some of his favorite actors for that.”

“Get me a list,” Annie said. “I’ll make it happen. Most of Hollywood is beating down my door asking how they can help.”

“All right, then,” Teddy said. “Let’s show Mark how much he’s loved.”

Author's Note

Before I go to bed, the buffer will be back to one whole chapter, plus maybe the first part of the next.

Now is as good a time as any to say that I planned on this whole sequence- Dragonfly getting magic-starved, going feral, draining Mark, and fleeing to perma-pod herself- pretty much from the beginning. The original game plan was to have this happen as a consequence of losing the cave permanently, but despite my best efforts, the cave and its farm both lived.

But why have Dragonfly go berserk? Because, although this is a universe with a little magic, it's a barren wasteland compared to the world(s) of Equestria. The creatures there evolved to run on magic to greater or lesser degrees... and changelings, being shapeshifters, are more dependent on magic simply to keep existing than practically anything else we've seen except Discord. Magic deprivation sickness would hit Dragonfly first and hardest.

At no time have I ever considered, not for a moment, making Dragonfly a queen. I completely ignore the comics origin of the changelings that has Chrysalis as the sole queen of all the changelings, and without that the background and even biology of changelings is ignored in the canon. Nonetheless, I'd mentioned royal jelly in a silly footnote as a key requirement, and another key requirement would be not dying of magic withdrawal.

Anyway, with the cave surviving I had a problem if I wanted to keep this sequence in the story. Starlight Glimmer is building up magic battery stocks, so after a certain point she'll have enough batteries for a daily half-hour of magic field- and a magic field of an even shorter duration, I'd already established, is enough to offset physical cravings for magic to a sufficient degree to call it therapeutic. Furthermore, Chrysalis was going to be back in direct communication with our castaways fairly soon, at which point she would blow the whistle on the danger involved, for Dragonfly's own good if for no other reason.

In short, the window for the plot point to kick in was about to shut very hard.

It took me several days to think of the rocket test going awry, and the exact nature of the accident took another couple of days to work out in my head. In the meantime I crammed in Sojourner's revival to get it done with (and to further develop Dragonfly's misplaced optimism that she'd turned the corner).

And that's how we got here. For today you see the high brass on both homeworlds trying to find some way to help the survivors get out of this hole.

There are several causes for what used to be lumped together as catatonia, but in this case the closest human medicine would have for what Mark has is catatonic depression. And since it's magically induced, antidepressants probably wouldn't touch it.

Sol 230

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 232
ARES III SOL 230

Mark was eating, which was a victory. He had to be reminded to continue eating with every forkful, and he chewed as slowly as a foal who’d taken an unwise dare about how many pieces of bubble gum he could chew at one time, but food was going in and staying in. That was victory.

Cherry Berry had taken it upon herself to be Mark’s caretaker. She’d done occasional volunteer work in Ponyville Hospital, and she’d taken innumerable odd jobs for elderly ponies who couldn’t quite keep up with little chores around their homes anymore. Mark was like them, at the moment… if a more extreme case than she’d ever before encountered.

The others were doing what they could. Yesterday Starlight Glimmer and Fireball had set up the dropped engine for its test, verifying as well as they could that no visible damage had been done to it by the incident. Spitfire kept checking Mark’s vitals and making him drink water and take vitamin pills, though her brusque bedside manner made it a struggle. Mark’s response to direct orders was to shut down even harder, which forced Spitfire to push the vitamins into his mouth and put the water to his lips personally.

But, according to Dr. Shields, any response at all was cause for optimism. The truly catatonic remained totally unaware of their environment. Mark responded to stimuli, if barely and reluctantly. But he lacked all motivation. He didn’t want to do anything. It required constant cajolery or overwhelming pressure to persuade him to any action.

And, most concerning of all, he had a two word vocabulary: “Beth” and “Johanssen,” said with brief hope when he first awoke, whispered with a final sigh as he was put to bed.

But today he was chewing food- not enjoying it, possibly not tasting it, but chewing it. (Cherry Berry was pretty sure of this; the meal was a mush of fifty percent random meal pack, fifty percent potatoes, and despite that the small dollop of ketchup on Mark’s plate remained untouched. And, since Mark never actually looked at his meal, or at anything at all, it probably remained unseen as well.) Spitfire had requested a suit drill, but Cherry Berry had drawn the line. Getting food into Mark, as much as he would take, as often as he’d take it, was the top priority. Absolutely nothing would interfere with that.

There was still a disappointing amount of food on Mark’s tray when his fork hand went down and refused to come up again for any begging whatever. But after two days of practically nothing, this was the second meal in a row in which Mark had cooperated, so Cherry still counted it a win. She took the tray in her teeth and put it back in the Hab’s mini-fridge, to be brought out and reheated (again) in a few hours.

“Is he done?” Starlight asked. “Because I’ve got a very special treat for him!” She reared up and rested her forehooves on his knees. “NASA has some very special messages from his family and friends! Would he like to listen to them?”

Mark didn’t move. His eyes didn’t shift position as a computer floated its way over to the table in front of him.

“Dr. Shields says the sound of loved ones might bring him around,” Starlight whispered to Cherry.

But the photo on the screen wasn’t of any of the Hermes crew. Nor did it look like it might be one of Mark’s parents, though the man seemed old enough. A full head of shaggy gray hair, a rough white beard, and wild, piercing eyes stared out of the computer as a voice that reminded Cherry of Time Turner back home said, “Hallo, Mark! This is David Tennant. Sorry I can’t bring the TARDIS to come pick you up, but I would if I could. I just wanted you to know you’ve got a lot of people back on Earth rooting for you. You’ve done humanity proud. And the next time you go to space, I’d be honored if you let me be your companion. Take care of yourself!”

Mark didn’t twitch.

The picture changed. The hair was a bit different, the jump suit worn and rumpled, but it was clearly the Ares commander, Melissa Lewis. “Mark, this is Lewis,” her voice said, crisp and clear. “I’m not good at making jokes right now. I just want you to remember: we’re coming for you, and we will bring you home. I’m not going to lose you again.”

Mark didn’t blink.

A new picture, this one of a smiling man with short-cropped hair and sallow skin. “Heeeeeey, Mark! It’s Rick!” his voice said. “You know? Martinez? The guy who drives the ship, you said? Well, I’ve got the foot to the floor now. We’ll be there in no time, so try not to let your alien harem distract you with their feminine wiles. And tell Spitfire that some of my buddies in the Air Force have her pic taped in their lockers. Later!”

Spitfire made choking sounds. Mark, none.

“Mark, this is Chris Beck,” a new voice said, as the photo changed to a man who looked more like Mark did. “Your alien friends are trying to help you. Do what they say. We all need you to pull through. The team needs your strength. You probably feel like there’s nothing left to you, but I know you’re still there. It will get better, Mark. Trust me.”

Cherry Berry didn’t think much of that talk. Neither, apparently, did Mark.

The next photo was of a large, bald-headed man. “Hallo, Watney,” he said in a heavily accented voice. “This is Vogel. What have you been doing to my supervillain lair? I see the mess you are making and I cannot believe it. Next I will hear you are eating my sausages! I will be there in two hundred and twenty-one sols, Mark, and I expect some answers!”

Cherry couldn’t believe the tone of the message, but it did bring the first change of expression from Mark- a momentary twitch of one corner of his mouth.

And then the photo and voice Cherry had hoped for and dreaded popped up. “Hi, Mark. It’s Beth. Johanssen.”

Mark’s eyes widened a moment. “Johanssen,” he whispered.

“I don’t exactly know what to say,” Johanssen continued. “I read Starlight’s report. All I can say is, I wasn’t there on Sol 40 or Sol 228. But I wish I was. I wish I could be there right now and get you off Mars, right now. But we’re coming, Mark. Wait for us.”

By the end of the short message Mark’s face had settled back into its non-expression. The short message from Mark’s parents that followed didn’t change it an inch.

Mark didn’t eat any more food that day.

And when he went to bed, he sighed, “Johanssen,” just like before, as if the message had never happened.

Author's Note

Unfortunately today's writing only got me halfway through what will be tomorrow's chapter. The acoustics in the dealer's room at Louisianime are perfect to amplify every conversation, so the noise made it impossible for me to concentrate. Even now I've got a mild stress headache.

I'm tempted to have a second day of messages like this for a short filler, but time must pass on Mars... and Mark needs to eat more, in a hurry (but not all at once), or things will be very bad.

I'm putting my head down now and watching YouTube for the rest of the night.

Sol 231

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 233
ARES III SOL 231

The cave farm had to be tended. The crops needed watering, the plants trimmed and cared for (and, if necessary, weeded out). Crystals needed to be harvested for Fireball’s meals- and also for six new batteries, which would have been on the schedule for tomorrow, had events gone according to the best laid plans of ponies and man.

Oh, and there was the bug, too. Stupid troublemaking bug.

The farm had to be tended, and Mark needed to be there to help, even if he was off in some weird post-changeling trance. Fireball had insisted on two counts; first, they needed the rover to get the salvaged battery cases to the cave for the new batteries, and second, Fireball couldn’t walk back and forth. Unlike the ponies, his feet had claws on them, and even if he kept them filed and rounded down, they wore on the insides of his suit boots and gloves, just as the tips on his wings wore on the inside of the suit.

So Mark had to drive the rover… if he could be coaxed or bullied into it, given his condition.

He hadn’t called Miss Johanssen’s name when he woke this morning. That had been taken as a good omen. He ate a full breakfast, which was even better. It had taken constant prodding and pleading by Cherry Berry (who, Fireball thought, was welcome to the job of Markherder), but the tray was clean when she took it away.

But the struggle to get Mark to put his spacesuit on swept all good omens aside and replaced them with bad feelings all around. He wasn’t interested in the least. Finally Starlight recruited Fireball’s help and, with some heavy levitation and brute strength, the human got stuffed into his suit, one component at a time. Everyone was relieved when Mark, apparently from muscle memory alone, automatically activated his suit systems the moment the helmet assembly latched onto the suit torso.

And then it was “come along, Mark” to the airlock, “wait just a minute, Mark” during depressurization, “over here, Mark” to Rover 2, “thank you so much, Mark,” while he, Starlight and Fireball waited for Rover 2’s airlock to pressurize, and finally, “Mark, sit down right here, all right?” to get him to sit in the driver’s seat. Only it never took only one command. Oh, no. For Fireball it was almost half an hour of a single, highly repetitive stream of words, all in that annoying chirpy patronizing pony sound.

The thing which annoyed Fireball most was, he couldn’t object. Trying to take Mark along had been his idea. Also, he’d tried roaring at him, and roaring hadn’t worked. He’d shown his teeth, kept them about four inches from Mark’s nose long enough for the monkey to count all of them, and he had taken about as much interest as Fireball would have in a movie about the Great Accountants of the World.

(Dragon accounting was very simple. Your hoard had Income. If at any point your hoard had Expenditure, you had done something very wrong.)

But Mark was in the seat. It had required the better part of an hour to get him in it, but there he was. This had better work, Fireball thought, or else it’ll be most of another hour to get him back into the Hab.

“Okay, Mark,” Starlight said, still using her gentlest talking-to-skittish-animal tones. (Fireball always thought the most skittish animal in such conversations was the pony.) “I saw you activate the rover dozens of times when we drove to Pathfinder, but I don’t remember exactly how, so… could you activate the rover, please?”

Mark sat, immobile.

“Come on, Mark,” Starlight wheedled. “We have to go to the farm today- remember the farm? But we need the rover to make that happen. So Mark, could you reach your hands out to the keyboard? Reeeeach out…”

Not a twitch.

“It’s time to log in to the rover computer, Mark. Log in.”

That got a response. Mark’s hands slowly reached to the computer. Muscle memory took over from there. His fingers didn’t fly across the keys as they usually did, but they moved quickly enough. With the computer booted up and the rover controls lighting up, his hands automatically moved to the gear select switch, set it to “R”, and then came to rest on the steering yoke.

That, however, was as far as it went. Mark with hands on the wheel was just as statuelike as Mark at the breakfast table, having to be begged to take a bite.

“It’s going to be a long drive, isn’t it?” Fireball muttered.

“Not if I can help it,” Starlight grumbled, in a voice that, for the first time, betrayed how fed up she was with coddling Mark. She put the sweetness back into her voice, saying, “Thank you so much, Mark. I think I can handle it from here. So if you’ll just move to the back…” She reached a hoof to the steering yoke.

Mark batted it away, not hard enough to sting, but enough to surprise the buck out of both Starlight and Fireball. This done, he returned his hand to its position on the yoke.

“Er… if you want to drive, Mark, that’s fine,” Starlight said cautiously. “First we need to turn around…”

Mark’s foot found the accelerator. The rover moved slowly backwards, and Mark slewed the steering wheel hard right, performing a slow U-turn until the rear of the rover faced the Hab. This done, his foot slipped off the pedal.

“Okay, good,” Starlight said. “Now we need to go to the cave, Mark. Can you drive us to the cave?”

Mark’s spacesuit helmet was still on his head. Neither Starlight nor Fireball could see his face. But they both could imagine those unseeing eyes, that blank, indifferent expression, gazing out to infinity as his foot came down on the throttle like a supply probe in final descent.

“This was a bad idea!!” Fireball shouted as the rover lunged forward, hitting its meager 25 kph top speed almost immediately.

“What? This was YOUR idea!!” Starlight shouted back.

“That should have been your first warning!” Fireball snapped.

What with the many trips to and from Site Epsilon by this point, a track had been worn down into the Martian soil. The points where that track went across the gullies that criss-crossed Acidalia Planitia had worn down and shallowed out almost into proper ramps cut into the banks.

By the time the rover coasted to a stop at the northeastern base of Site Epsilon, that track had been worn down noticeably more. The nerves of the passengers got worn down even more than that. But despite the top speed and lack of interest in the obstacles along the route, the rover hadn’t actually hit anything, for which Fireball was grateful. “Walking ten K don’t look bad anymore,” he rumbled.

“Your idea,” Starlight snapped back.

More coaxing got Mark out of the seat, through the airlock, and out onto the Martian sand to meet Spitfire and Cherry Berry (who, having heard everything on their own comms, asked no questions). Mark had to be led by the hand up the slope, and halfway up Starlight threatened to pick him up and levitate him to the top even without a battery, but they got to the cave entrance eventually.

Once inside the cave, the ponies and dragon doffed their spacesuits and stacked them carefully next to Dragonfly’s abandoned suit. “Okay, everyone,” Cherry Berry said, “I want all you to say hello to Dragonfly and give her a big hug. It’s been three days.” To demonstrate, she began walking to the spot near the entrance where Dragonfly’s cocoon hung.

“Dragonfly?” It was the third word Mark had said since getting drained, and it got everyone’s attention. Mark’s head slowly turned to face Cherry, mirrored space suit faceplate staring directly at her.

“Er… yeah, Dragonfly,” Cherry agreed. “Let’s go say hi, okay?” She pointed to the chrysalis, a brooding black against the wall of milky crystals.

Mark’s helmet tracked towards the cocoon. Fireball could tell when he saw it, because in that moment his body language changed completely. He stood up straight, stiff, his hands coming up in some confused compromise between warding and reaching. Then, to everyone’s surprise, he bounded over to the cocoon, turned to face Cherry, and raised his arms to block her way. “What do you think you’re DOING?” he shouted.

“Mark?” Cherry asked cautiously.

“Haven’t you ever watched a sci-fi horror movie in your lives?” Mark continued, his voice carrying on in full rant mode. “When you see an egg or a pod or a cocoon or anything like that in a space cave, especially if it’s black, you leave it the fuck alone!! Look, the thing even has ‘LEAVE ME’ written on it, don’t you think that’s a clue?? You definitely don’t go poking and prodding and wishing it hello and…” He trailed off, looking down at his hands, then around at his surroundings. He uncoupled his helmet linkages and lifted the assembly off his shoulders, revealing a face full of confusion. “How the hell did I get here?” he asked. “And why do I feel so damn tired?”

Fireball let the ponies run to Mark. He was content to walk over in a slow, dignified manner that definitely wasn’t a sulky trudge and to wrap an arm around the group hug in a definitely draconic sign of comradeship and not in any way mushy or gooey. And he kept a most appropriate silence, but that was mainly because Starlight Glimmer and Cherry Berry were too busy talking over one another for anyone else to get a word in.

Eventually the group wandered into the field and over to The Stump, where Mark sat down and slumped. “Okay,” he said, “now that we’ve all been glad I’m back, wherever the hell I went, could one of you- and only one of you- explain what the fuck is going on?”

Explaining took some time.

Mark’s questions, which he withheld until the end, were brief and to the point. "So... 'changeling'?" he asked.

"Yes," Starlight said. "The pony word more or less means 'child of change.'"

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.

“Because we were worried about Dragonfly after the perchlorate explosion,” Starlight said. “She burned up a lot of love getting you home, and for a while she wasn’t getting it back. She was afraid that without you, she’d starve.”

“So… I wasn’t hallucinating when I thought I saw Johanssen in the rover,” Mark said cautiously.

“No. You were in very bad shape. Dragonfly transformed so you’d listen to her and get you all back to the Hab.”

“And when she saved me from the falling engine, she literally burned herself up to do it,” Mark said. “Okay. But you tell me she knew she was having problems. Why didn’t she tell me? Us?”

“Because-“ Cherry Berry began, but Starlight stopped her.

“Mark,” she said, “I’m going to tell you something I haven’t before. It’s something I’m really very ashamed of, which is why I haven’t told you before.” Starlight’s forehooves made circles in the soil. “When I was young I lost a friend after he got his cutie mark. He was pretty much the only friend I had. There were issues… I won’t go into details, but as a result I grew up believing that cutie marks were evil, and that pony society would be better if no one had a cutie mark- if everyone was exactly the same.

“And when I left home I tried to build that society. And it was terrible. I was a tyrant. I lied to my followers. I turned them against each other to enforce my will. I locked them up and made them listen to messages about my new society over, over, over, until it bent their brains. And I kept telling myself it was all right, because it would end in a glorious new society in which all ponies would be happy.

“Well, surprise! It didn’t work out that way. I ended up fleeing the village I’d created when six very special ponies revealed what I’d done to my followers. And then I got worse, because I wanted revenge on those ponies for destroying my dream. And I… well, I’m not going into details because there are a couple of things I don’t think your species is ready to dabble with. Suffice to say I used a very powerful magic, very stupidly, and nearly destroyed my homeworld.”

Starlight sniveled, and Fireball had to stifle a growl. Ponies got mushy at the most inconvenient times. The pause let Mark interject, “Destroy your world? One pony? How?”

“I’m not saying,” Starlight said. “Your species knows magic exists now, and we’re probably going to end up showing you how to use it. But I’m not going to tell you ways you can destroy yourselves.” She took a deep breath and continued, “But my point is, it took seeing the possible results of my horrible actions to make me realize that I wasn’t the good guy. I was a monster. And the pony who I had been trying to destroy… Twilight Sparkle gave me the chance to not be a monster anymore.”

Starlight pointed a hoof back towards the cave entrance and the cocoon. “I didn’t tell you that before because I didn’t want to be a monster to you,” she said. “And Dragonfly didn’t tell you about her changing, about her hunger, about any of that… because she didn’t want to be a monster to you. Because she didn’t want her species to be a monster in the eyes of your species.”

Mark grunted. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he muttered. He looked at Starlight very carefully. “Mind control? Making everyone the same? Almost destroying the world?”

“I… I was in a bad place at the time,” Starlight said sheepishly. “And… it took me quite some time to get better. And, well… there were setbacks.”

“I think,” Mark said carefully, “I don’t want to tell any of that to the people back home. My nation in particular is a little… vindictive… when it comes to dealing with criminals.” He raised an eyebrow and added, “What you did was illegal where you come from, right?”

“Parts of it, yeah,” Starlight said. “No one ever thought we’d need a law against destroying the world, but the rest of it, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Mark echoed. “The fact that you’re walking around in a space larger than four square meters tells me your people are a lot more about rehabilitation than mine.”

“I don’t know the word ‘rehabilitation’.”

“I mean you ponies are a lot more forgiving than humans.”

Fireball chose this moment to speak up. “Ponies more forgiving than anybody,” he snorted. “Absolutely anybody.” He was proud of that absolutely. He had no idea why that English word stuck in his mind when so many other words just sieved through it like water through sugar-sand, but…

“I’ll bet,” Mark said. He jerked a thumb at Dragonfly. “Same deal with her?”

Starlight fidgeted her hooves. “Forgiving changelings… bug-ponies… is still a work in progress,” she said. “To us they’re really, really scary.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “I understand why, now.” He shifted in his seat. “Help me up, please,” he said. “I’m not feeling all the man I should be.”

“You eat almost nothing for three days,” Spitfire accused.

“That would do it,” Mark admitted as Fireball hauled him to his feet. With the support of the Amicitas crew Mark walked over to the cocoon, putting a hand on it. “Hello, Dragonfly,” he said. “I hope you can hear me. I just want to say, the next time you need to suck all my feelings and the will to live out of my ear with a straw, ask first. It’s rude to go all Dracula on someone without asking. I mean, I hadn’t even done my laundry yet.”

Mark eased himself down to the dirt below the cocoon, sitting with those ridiculous long rear legs bent into a triangle, keeping his hand on the cocoon. "It could be worse," he continued. "At least you're not wearing my skull on your belt. And I'm not going to have a little Dragonfly burst out of my rib cage and kill me in a month or so. I'm not, right?" Mark patted the cocoon, adding, "Because if I am, I'm writing you out of my will. My Hawaiian shirts go to Fireball, and my glass aardvark collection goes to Spitfire."

Fireball sat down, as did the others. Obviously Mark didn’t intend to go anywhere.

“So, what’s it like living in there?” Mark asked. “It looks worse even than my dorm room. Well, maybe worse. My dorm room was a little larger, but I had to share it with someone, and he was such a pig…”

The cave needed tending, but it could wait.

Author's Note

Woke up a little early this morning, wrote 1800 words, and finished this. Buffer is now at zero, but I'll be home tomorrow.

Dragonfly is staying put for a while longer, but Mark has found his moment of love to pull him out of his trance- love of his crew. (And I'm sure any psychiatrist reading the last few chapters is screaming their head off, "CATATONIA DOES NOT WORK LIKE THAT!"

Expect a bunch of short-short chapters coming up; tomorrow I'm going to fluff up the buffer like mad, because before long I'm going to be on the road more days than I will be at home.

Sol 232

MISSION LOG – SOL 232

Well, we’re back from our visit to the farm, which is going to be a daily thing. Today Starlight made four new batteries and put a new casing on the one that failed, bringing the total battery count up to eighteen and a half (counting by power capacity). Once that was done, we let the magic sparks fly a while longer, letting Dragonfly soak up all she can, while we read aloud from where we left off in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I can’t do very much. The sols I spent not eating my full ration weakened me more than Dragonfly did. I’m trying to eat a little more to gain back lost energy stores. The problem is, I was already forcing myself through fourteen good-sized potatoes with a garnish of alfalfa leaves every day, and I do mean forcing. Trying to eat any more than that… ugh.

All weeds and no meat make Mark something something…

Anyway, I’m still working out how I feel about Dragonfly. For months I made all those jokes about her being an adorable little xenomorph, and then she really becomes a hissing, drooling xenomorph. Well, the hissing, anyway. I remember the hiss very well. It’s one bracket on a long period of sleepwalking, the other end being a rush of terror at seeing Cherry walking up to what I didn’t know at the time was Dragonfly’s cocoon.

There have been tales of cannibalism in dire situations- the Donner party, Snowcrash, all sorts of shipwrecks and the like- and when we hear about those things we think, “It’s horrible, but I understand they had no choice.” Well, it’s another thing entirely when you’re the one on the menu- though I think I’m the first human to have been the meal and lived.

And yeah, I’m a bit afraid. I don’t remember much from my time as one of the walking dead. I didn’t care to. And I mean that literally- I did not care about anything. I was kind of aware that there was a world out there, but it had nothing to do with me. The most emotion I remember having the entire time was a mild irritation. Looking back on it, that’s terrifying. Ninety percent of what makes me me just… checked out.

But the thing is, I also read Dragonfly’s suicide note- and that’s what it is, is a suicide note. She might still be alive in there- something was making that weird magic shadow again when the field projector was on- but the note made it clear she didn’t expect to ever come out again. That wasn’t a monster writing that note. That was a scared little girl.

So I’m not going to let my fear get in the way. We need Dragonfly back- not least because the pony suits probably won’t survive more than fifty more sols without maintenance. But more important, we want her back. We want our silly, clever, overconfident daredevil back. Our crew is weaker without her. And we’re going to get her back.

Anyone with suggestions on how we can make that happen, mail them along with a self-addressed stamped envelope to Save The Bug, Box 1, Acidalia Planitia, Planet Mars, 81009.

For now, we’re going to come out here every day, all of us, to spend at least an hour in the cave with our very own Sleeping Ugly. We’re going to burn a field projector for a few minutes every day- about half of the the daily recharge. We’re going to give her all the love we can. No matter what else we have scheduled to do, every day, without fail, all of us go to the cave.

We’re astronauts. And human or pony, we do not leave one of our own behind.

Author's Note

Buffer back at one. More tomorrow. Today was more decompressing and letting my brain recover than actual work.

Sol 233

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 235
ARES III SOL 233

[10:42] WATNEY: Engine test completed. Rock sample scale read as 483 kilograms on loading. We activated the engine and gradually ran up the throttle until the scale read 183 kilograms and did some fine adjusting until it held at that reading for ten seconds. We then eased down the throttle to zero and dismounted the engine from the cradle. Throttle setting for nine hundred kilograms of thrust is just above six percent of rated thrust. Test ran for one hundred and seven seconds on a single magic battery which began at 100% charge and ended at 11% charge. Sorry I can’t give you any more power consumption data than that.

[11:01] JPL: Thanks, Mark. It’s good to see you’re back on the job. Can you tell us how much “just above” six percent the setting is?

[11:27] WATNEY: Less than half is the best I can do. The one percent marks on the pony throttle controls are smaller than a millimeter. Analog readout.

[11:58] JPL: Okay. We’ll treat that as seven percent and make sure the MAV ascent program remembers to correct for excess thrust. We’ll let you know how that goes.

By the way, could you take Sojourner with you? If you’ll take it inside the cave, we can take some photos of Dragonfly with it and then let it roam around the interior. Rover 2’s computer can run the probe automatically and provide data dumps through Pathfinder when you return to the Hab.

[12:24] WATNEY: Sure. Or I could use one of the hand-held cameras. That I still have.

Sojourner had three cameras, but it didn’t really see with them. The cameras weren’t video cameras; they were digital still shot cameras, two black-and-white and one color, all with a rather low resolution. Insofar as the little rover “saw” anything, it saw with four infrared laser emitters and receivers that detected obstacles in its way. One of those emitters had broken during its forty years of slumber, but the other three worked adequately enough, and Sojourner’s software supplemented them with the occasional still shot and very recently updated object-recognition software stored on the rover computers.

Thus, although the little rover only “blinked” its eyes once every minute or so, filing the images in the half of its mind that currently resided in Rover 2’s computer, its lasers told it that it was being held up in the air, and that it should not run its wheels at the moment.

It had no thermometer- all environmental tools had been mounted to Pathfinder, and they remained in Ares Valles where the thing that held Sojourner had left them. Thus, it did not notice the warmer temperature and higher air pressure as the cave’s airlock filled with air to let the astronauts inside.

It had no microphone or sound-detecting equipment of any kind. Its builders had reasoned, with justification, that a robot on Mars needed ears about as much as it needed pontoons. Thus Sojourner did not hear Mark say, “Good morning, Dragonfly. We brought a visitor.”

But at the one-minute interval, its aft camera, the only color camera of the three, took a photo of the cocoon. And the pattern-recognition software in the rover interacted with the navigation software hard-wired into the probe body and came up with a deduction that represented the absolute limit of the robot’s reasoning skills.

I don’t know what that is, but it’s not a rock.

“NASA wants Sojourner to poke around the cave for a few days,” Mark said. “It’ll sleep at night and wake up in the morning. If you hear strange noises at night, it’s probably the robot sniffing at the cherry trees.”

Sojourner didn’t hear any of this, but it knew when it was set down.

The bottom of the cocoon sat about a foot off the cave floor. Sojourner took another photograph as it began planning its exploration of the cave, but its updated software decided that nothing could be more interesting than that non-rock object. It adjusted its wheel bogies, angling the chassis of the rover, trying to lift its tail, with the color camera and the spectrometer, up towards the cocoon.

Mark took a photo of what looked, at first glance, like Sojourner staring up at the cocoon.

The right image, at the right time, can change the world- or prevent it from changing.

The next day NASA released Mark's photo, in reduced resolution to save bandwidth, along with a handful of others selected by Mark from Rover 2’s memory. The image caught the eye of several news editors, but it was USA Today who made the connection that the being inside the cocoon was responsible for the rover’s reactivation.

And thus, although most news outlets ran the photo, the headline that defined the meme ran on USA Today’s front page: “THANK YOU – Pioneering Mars rover given new life by alien.”

Within days the little probe became the symbol for Dragonfly’s fans and apologists around the globe. Art of the probe standing watch over the cocoon, or bringing valentines to it, or guarding it from green antennaed Martian interlopers, popped up everywhere. When xenophobes tried to fight back by turning Sojourner into a zombie probe mind-controlled by a sinister disembodied alien menace, Dragonfly’s fans fought back with adorable minion Sojourner, zombie Sojourner taking lessons from not-that-long-dead Opportunity, and one editorial cartoon that swept the world: zombie Sojourner holding a sign that said She Lost Her Mind Giving Mine Back to Me.

Most of the voices which had questioned the wisdom of welcoming the aliens to the Hab after Dragonfly’s collapse went silent in the overwhelming wave of support. The xenophobes, though of their own opinion still, had discovered that, to paraphrase the Bible quote, perfect cuteness casts out fear. In the end support for the rescue of Mark and the aliens increased, and years later multiple students seeking a doctorate in the communications sciences and arts would base thesis papers on one grainy photograph of a probe looking up at its savior.

And as the myth blew up that Sojourner loved Dragonfly for fixing it, and as this myth was relayed to Mark from NASA, the marooned astronaut decided not to mention to anyone the fact that, no matter how far Sojourner wandered in the cave, no matter where in the farm chamber it was placed, it was always next to the cocoon when the castaways arrived for their visit in the morning.

It might just be coincidence. After all, the cocoon was next to the entrance, where the cave walls were at their thinnest and where radio signals from the rover outside were strongest. And then again, it might be another thing touched by pony (or bug-pony) magic.

But that was in the future. For today, after Mark took the picture, Sojourner approached as closely as it could to the dangling cocoon, not quite able to reach, and took an inconclusive reading with its spectroscope. It then rotated, lifted the other end of its body, and took a grainy stereo image in black and white of the structure, or as much of it as could fit within its narrow frame of view.

And the only thought or feeling Sojourner chose to reveal to JPL and humanity at large was: Nope, still not a rock.

Meanwhile, the wind produced by the test of the dismounted Amicitas main engine joined the feeble, uncertain Martian trade wind, swirling first northwest and then southwest along an atmospheric boundary line. It blew up the fine, talcum-like surface dust of Mars and sent it high into the sky. More air gathered in the wind, as the weak summer sun heated the air and gave it more energy.

Magic thrusters in an alien environment had unpredictable consequences.

Author's Note

Only wrote one chapter today, keeping a buffer of 1- too much work and household chores to do today. But wow... yeah, I'm looking forward to your reactions when I post it tomorrow.

I could have stretched out talk of reactions to the Sojourner pic for days, as I have with other things, but this felt more right when I was writing it. And anyway, other concerns will pop up soon enough to fill chapters.

As the last two paragraphs probably already told you.

Sol 234

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 236
ARES III SOL 234

Starlight Glimmer looked at her math one more time.

Six batteries were sequestered for making more batteries. At a recharge rate of six percent per day (a little less than that, really, since the new alfalfa plantings were still immature and the potato plants Dragonfly had eaten to make her cocoon had generally not sprouted back), the six batteries would make four new ones at full strength, with a comfortable power margin, every eighteen days.

Three batteries (two regular ones and the half-power prototype) stayed at the Hab for immediate use. The Hab’s farm, being slower, only added a little to the recharge provided by the permanent inhabitants, giving the batteries a four percent per day recharge rate.

This left, for the moment, a bank of ten batteries to be used for major projects, to be swapped out when one of the hab batteries had to be completely drained, or- most important, now- providing a brief daily dose of magic energy for all the occupants of the cave, including the cocooned Dragonfly.

If the batteries were all full (they weren’t- the harvest, the dismantling of the engines, the engine test, and the fact that four of them were made only a couple of days before explained that), then the daily charges of nine of them would add up to fifty-four percent of the capacity of the tenth. That meant one battery could be rigged for field projection and run for about seventeen minutes, then connected in series to the others and recharged from them.

But since the batteries were not in fact full, that seventeen minutes became eight. If Mars had taught them anything it was that magic power could never be taken for granted, and you could never have enough of it. It collected in the batteries slowly and discharged so fast you could watch the manameter dropping. And major workings, cast in a dire emergency, could- and in the past did- wipe out four or eight or however many batteries in a single spell. You couldn’t burn a whole day’s charging on a few minutes of magic, not if you wanted the juice to be there when you really, desperately needed a spell to prevent disaster.

So. Eight minutes.

There ought to be something productive she could do with the magic field during the eight minutes it would run today. Unfortunately she couldn’t think of any. Mending spells would suck up most of the field, and anyway they had nothing recently enough broken for the spell to be effective. There wasn’t enough power to spare yet to make a new battery, even if they’d brought a casing for one. She could gather salt… but the soil in the cave had had quite enough stuff magically yanked out already.

“Mark,” she said to the human sitting beside the cocoon, helmet off but the rest of his suit still on, “I need a timer for eight minutes.”

“Okay, can do.” Mark’s suit had two display modes: a keyboard and micro-monitor on one arm, and a larger heads-up display projected inside the helmet. For this application the helmet wasn’t required, and Mark punched keys for a little bit before saying, “Ready to go on your mark.”

“Now,” Starlight said, and as Mark hit the button to start the countdown she switched the battery to discharge, sending arcs of pure mana up the improvised aerials. The colors around them lost their washed-out, ghostly appearance, becoming what they ought to be. The cave felt a little bit more like home, a feeling that ran down into Starlight’s bones.

Home. Heh. At home she’d have been able to think of something useful to do with magic. But at home there was all sorts of magic, all sorts of possibilities.

Before she realized it, she began singing:

Home
I can’t help but feel its pull
Where everything’s magical
There’s nothing that’s impossible
If I were home

If I were home
The spells I’d cast would hypnotize
Rainbow lights to fill the skies
Nobody would believe their eyes
If I were home

The magic field swirled slightly, and Cherry Berry, caught in the eddy, sang as well.

If I were home
My pleasures would be plain and few
I’d eat a cherry, maybe two
There’s nothing I couldn’t do
If I were home

The field’s ripples caught Spitfire in their grip next, and she completed the verse:

If I were home
I’d fly straight back to my home town
I’d soar the skies for miles around
You’d never get me back to ground
If I were home

The three ponies joined in harmony for the chorus:

Home
You’re so close and yet so far away
We miss you more each and every day
We go to bed every night saying
I want to go home

The magic light of the arcing mana battery sparkled across the crystals around and above them, and as the colored lights glittered music began to play, a tinkling, chiming music that echoed from the crystals, sweet and yet lonesome beyond words.

The magic swept up Mark, which to Starlight’s sight took a double wrap around him before his untrained voice managed to find the tune and the words:

If I were home
I’d spend a week just going outside
Get in my car and enjoy the ride
All of my wishes satisfied
If I were home

Fireball, the most resistant to magic songs, was the last to be caught up, his voice deeper and rougher than the others, but perfectly suited for the moment.

If I were home
Back to my cave and I’d walk right in
I wouldn’t leave it ever again
My wandering would be at an end
If I were home

Another chorus, as the crystal chimes played sweeping glissandos and arpeggios behind the astronaut voices, all woven together by the unleashed magic:

Home (the third planet from the sun)
Back to the place where we belong (Had my mission, now I’m done)
Never meant to stay away this long
Wouldn’t have to sing this song
If we were home

The music subsided a bit, swimming around the theme for a moment as Cherry Berry wandered over to Dragonfly’s cocoon. She laid a hoof on it and sang:

If you were home
You wouldn’t have to stay in there
You could run and fly without a care
You’d do what no one else would dare
If you were home

And Starlight took the rest of the verse, as the others hummed agreement to her words:

If I were home
I’d have options without end
I’d spend more time with my friends
I’d see my father once again
If I were home

The music rose again as five voices (Mark echoing the pony voices) sang their homesickness in perfect tune with the sounds of light glinting off quartz:

Home (over two hundred million miles)
Back in the arms of the ones we love (I close my eyes and see their smiles)
Safe return from the stars above
What wouldn’t we do if only we could go home

The music ceased its swooping, picking clean, distinct notes as the song bounced from singer to singer in a building frenzy:

Wake at dawn to go ballooning
Eat a gem and sleep till noon-ing
Fly a kite up to the cloudtops
Swoop so low I scatter dewdrops
Walk the beach at Galveston
Surf lava from dusk till dawn
Ride the train to anywhere
Read a book, Wash my hair
Los Pegasus, Magnificent Mile
See the world, Rest a while
Cherries,pizza,ruby ice cream
Luna guarding every dream
Baseball games at Wrigley Park
The way the stars shine after dark

The crystal music crashed together, as did the singers’ voices, as the song reached its climax:

To see again familiar places
To see the smiles on people’s faces
The fact that cannot be erased is
This rusty rock in outer space is
So far
So very, very far…

The music died for a moment as the singers named their homes:

Dragonlands
Chicago
Cloudsdale
Ponyville

So far, and yet so close
If I were home

Softly, bittersweetly, the five voices sang the last words, the cave chimed its last chimes, and then the magic released them, replacing the music pulled out of their hearts with the silence of Mars.

“Um,” Mark muttered, reluctantly breaking the moment, “maybe we should turn the battery off?”

“Let it run to the timer,” the unicorn said. “The song just dropped us. Turning off the magic right now would drop us harder.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can get behind that,” Mark said. “I mean, it’s one thing to watch you guys doing that, but to become a part of it-“

“We don’t talk about it,” Starlight Glimmer said.

“Ever,” Fireball added with emphasis.

“I don’t blame you,” Mark said. “I don’t think I have words for what I just… I mean, wow. The words were just… well, I guess they came from the same place the music-“

“Mark?”

“Yeah, Starlight?”

“When I said we don’t talk about it, I meant stop talking about it.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Author's Note

How this happened:

"I feel a need to crunch the numbers for how much magic time Dragonfly actually gets every day, so let's have Starlight do the math in the story."

(write)

"Huh. I have absolutely nowhere else to go with this. I'll sleep on it."

(sleep)

"Huh. I STILL have nowhere to go with this. What do I do?... I have an idea. I will give this problem to Starlight. Have her think what she could do?"

"... Starlight has no ideas either."

"Okay. Jim Henson rule. When you write yourself into a corner, you eat something, blow something up, throw penguins in the air, or have a song and dance."

"Only one of those things is helpful at this point in the story. Besides, Mars is noticably deficient in penguins. So it's time for a musical number. At least that'll be simple. I have a few ideas already."

...

"Damn, I'm really having to work for these lines."

...

"If the tune in my head was actually in my ears I'd be crying my eyes out, and I'm the one WRITING this."

...

"There. Done. GODDAMN that hurt."

...

"I've spent a day and a half on this one damn chapter. And I meant to build a buffer this week. Goddamn it."

Sol 235

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 237
ARES III SOL 235

[08:32] WATNEY: Morning, guys. I’ve been looking at the Whinnybago mods preparing to start stripping out Rover 1, and I’ve run into something I think you’ve overlooked. Right now Rover 1 is acting as radio relay station from Pathfinder to the suit radio antenna we’re using to get signal in the Hab. Once I disconnect Rover 1 from Hab power and start gutting it, we lose that relay. Rover 2 can do the same thing, except whenever we go out to the cave farm it’ll lose line of sight to the Hab, which means it loses signal from Pathfinder’s low-gain antenna. (The high-gain, of course, stays pointed at Earth or Hermes, whichever signal is stronger.)

Losing two-thirds of the transmission window like that strikes me as a bad idea. Got any better ones?

[08:58] JPL: When we sent that procedure we assumed Rover 2 would be used at most once per week, with the ponies walking to and from the cave like they usually do. Did. Looks like we need to revisit that assumption with Dragonfly not currently in the picture.

[09:28] WATNEY: I’ve been thinking while waiting for your response. It would be a bit more work, but it’s possible to remove the entire pressure vessel intact rather than cutting it off as the existing procedure would have it. We’d have to rebuild the wiring and hose harness mount points to keep them in place when the rover combo makes a turn or navigates a change in elevation, but I can solve that problem here.

The main problem is, the Rover 1 chassis needs to retain most if not all of the power distribution system so it can run its wheels and connect with the Friendship internal power and mounted solar panels. That means I’ll have to build a brand new power system almost from scratch to run the radio inside the discarded Rover 1 hull. That will eat up a ton of my remaining electrical repair supplies, and as long as we have direct contact through Pathfinder I don’t want to risk wasting resources when I can have you guys dump things on tables and tape them together until Sy Liebergott dumps it on the CAPCOM terminal.

Does that help any?

[10:01] JPL: Why not mount Rover 1’s computer and radio inside Friendship? That will have power the whole time.

[10:27] WATNEY: I can’t read the pony wiring charts. I’m not willing to risk frying irreplaceable gear, especially the backup radio. I’d need Dragonfly’s help for that. I don’t think Starlight Glimmer knows enough about electronics to be helpful here.

[10:54] JPL: Okay, Mark, we’ll get back to work on that. For the time being go ahead and pull the seats and the life support except for the emergency O2 tank. That means you’ll have to have a pony suit with you for any IVA in Rover 1 to provide air circulation, but there’s not much else you can pull without compromising the radio.

[11:19] WATNEY: Roger. Going to the cave now; don’t wait up. BTW, is there any software in the Hab computers that strips audio out of video? My suit cam was running in the cave yesterday during k;op’

[11:47] JPL: Sorry, but we never thought you’d need any such thing. Is everything all right there?

[12:13] WATNEY: Just fine. Starlight Glimmer was just clarifying that “we do not talk about x” includes all modes of communication whatever.

[12:14] WATNEY: Correction: all modes except interpretive dance.

[12:39] JPL: We’ll look forward to that log entry. Starlight, sorry if it seems nosy, but it’s for science.

[18:11] WATNEY: Back from the cave, just read your last reply. Learned something new today: an arm gesture the ponies call the “high hoof.” It’s basically flipping the bird for species that don’t have more than one digit. I think I’ll let you all fill in the context for yourselves.

Author's Note

I began the day with two half-chapters. I end it with this half-chapter plus a bit passed off as a full chapter... plus a buffer of two.

Of course, the problem now is, I need to do some serious math for the next bit in my notes...

EDIT: For those who didn't see them in the previous day's comments, reader River Babble did a quick a capella singing of the Sol 234 song to her own tune, and I'm hella flattered.

But I couldn't listen to it until I recorded my own, because I might forget my own, so if you can stand it, here it is.

Sol 237

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 239
ARES III SOL 237

[08:01] JPL: Mark, this is Venkat. We’d much prefer that the Rover 1 computer and radio be integrated into Friendship, but we concur with your decision to postpone that until Dragonfly recovers. With that in mind we’ve got a revised procedure for you to detach the Rover 1 pressure vessel intact, install one of the Hab hydrogen cells inside, and convert it into a stationary radio relay post. A lot of the wiring for that task will come from salvaging parts of the MDV that are no longer mission critical. We should be able to continue its use as a flight simulator with the components remaining inside.

While you’re studying those procedures, we’d like you and your friends to proceed with the procedure set to remove Friendship’s tail and salvage its components. You still have a lot of time, but we’d be happier if we ran ahead of schedule than behind, and in theory trimming the ship is a simple task.

[08:27] WATNEY: Unable to comply today. We have a special procedure planned at the cave that might take all day. We’ll begin work on lopping off the back of Friendship tomorrow. This is more important.

“… the train began to move, and Harry walked alongside it, watching his son’s thin face, already ablaze with excitement…”

The five of them sat around the cocoon as Mark read from the computer. They’d all taken turns reading at various points. Spitfire and Fireball had stumbled across fewer words than normal. After yesterday’s revealation of the memories of the dying Severus Snape, the decision had been unanimous: to complete the final three chapters and epilog of the Harry Potter saga in one marathon reading session.

“As Harry looked at her, he lowered his hand absentmindedly and touched the lightning scar on his forehead. ‘I know he will.’ The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.”

After taking a deep breath, he said, “The end,” and closed the text document.

“Albus and Scorpius will be best friends at school, won’t they?” Cherry Berry asked.

“I still can’t believe Ron and Hermione stayed together long enough to raise kids!” Starlight Glimmer protested. “Ron is such a… a… give me that computer, I need to look up a word.”

Mark raised his eyebrows. “Do you want the thesaurus or Mitch Henderson’s swear glossary?”

“Both!”

“Who cares about them?” Spitfire demanded. “That was all happy-ever-after stuff. Talk about the battle! How cool it was!”

“I thought the part with Harry talk to Dumbledore was dumb,” Fireball insisted. “Too neat. Too easy. But it was good when he said he was wrong. About time.”

“Hey, cut Dumbledore some slack,” Starlight insisted.

“I don’t know what that means,” Fireball protested.

“It’s the same metaphor in Pony as in English!” Starlight said, followed by a quick burst of pony talk in which the name Dumbledore rose like a buoy in choppy seas.

“Oh. Why should I?”

“Because take it from someone who knows,” Starlight said, “you can have clever plans and mean all the best, and then have all of them go straight to… to…”

“Straight to Hell?” Mark asked, curious.

“No, no,” Starlight said impatiently. “You told me Hell is where evil people go after death, right? But back home we have a real place for evil people, and anyone can go there without dying first. It’s not far from our capital. I don't know what a good English name for it is, though.”

“Er… prison?” Mark considered this, and added, “By the way, when we get to Earth you want to be careful about saying Hell is or isn’t real, depending on which human-“

“MY POINT IS,” Starlight shouted, overriding Mark’s caution, “you can have the best plans and be the smartest person and it can all fall apart.” She stared at Fireball and added, “You can’t tell me you don’t understand that.”

“Not really,” Fireball shrugged. “I’m not smartest person, and I don’t have best plans. Not my job.”

“The battle!” Spitfire insisted. “What was that with Elder Wand? It sounded like Harry did something smart- clever,” she corrected herself. “But I don’t get how it worked.”

“Don’t you remember at the end of the last book?” Cherry Berry asked. “When the Death Eaters came in, Draco was the one who Expelliarmussed Dumbledore’s wand away!”

Mark silently considered how Cherry still stumbled over words and grammar sometimes, but had no problem coining the past tense of a made-up spell name.

“He did? I thought that was Snape!”

“No, it was Draco! He could disarm Dumbledore, but he couldn’t kill! But by the rules of the Elder Wand, that counted as defeat! And then Harry disarmed Draco! So that made Harry the wand’s master, do you see?”

“I guess so, but how did Voldemort die, then?”

“Because Voldemort never defeated Harry in a duel. Harry let Voldemort zap him without a fight. That destroyed the last Horcrux in Harry’s scar and-“

“I still don’t understand that,” Fireball said. “I thought Voldemort wanted kill Harry.”

“I think he didn’t mean to make a Horcrux,” Starlight said. “But he was kind of, well, ripping parts of his soul off and hiding them everywhere. That's Shadow-king level dark magic. Also really stupid. What he had left must have been really torn up. Maybe a piece just got… well… stuck.”

“That doesn’t explain why Voldemort finally died!!” Spitfire exclaimed.

“The Elder Wand doesn’t harm its true master,” Starlight said. “So when Voldemort tried to kill Harry, the spell backlashed on him. Voldemort killed himself.”

“Ooooooh.” Spitfire nodded her understanding, then froze. “Backlash?” she asked, horror growing on her face. “Does that mean you-“

“No, no, no, NO,” Starlight protested hurriedly. “Magic doesn't work like that! Ordinary spell failure doesn’t kill. The spell itself would have to be tremendously potent or else a dark magic spell. I just get headaches.”

“You just get in the bunk for days and days!”

“Because you won’t let me get up!!”

“Girls,” Cherry Berry said quietly.

The bickering ceased.

“My favorite part was where Harry used the Resurrection Stone to say goodbye to his lost family,” the earth pony said. “That was so touching. Especially when you consider he thought he was going to his own death.”

The silence grew silenter. Everyone quite pointedly avoided looking at the cocoon.

“So, um,” Mark said, trying to move things along, “what would Dragonfly have thought... er, what do you think she thinks about this ending?”

“You know she was all in favor of Snape,” Starlight said. “She’d be sad that he died, but she’d be strutting back and forth now about how her man was the real hero and how Harry couldn’t have done it without him.”

“That’s probably right,” Cherry Berry. “She kind of grew up with Snape, if Snape was an evil queen.”

“Really?” Mark asked. “I thought Chrysalis was a big space hero like you.”

“Not at all like me,” Cherry said flatly. “And I know her too well for her be my hero.”

“Closer to Voldemort than Snape,” Spitfire added. “Not so... wossword... obsessed... with living forever, but still sort of bad.”

“So,” Starlight said, “is that all there is?”

“Well, there was a play that was like an eighth book,” Mark said. “And some prequel books and movies. But those aren’t as popular. This is pretty much the end of Harry’s story. He went on to become an Auror, raised some kids, and had a long and happy life.”

“So, no more reading?” Starlight asked.

“Well, we got sent several other series,” Mark said. “A couple of murder mystery series to go with the Agatha Christie books-“

“Pass,” Cherry Berry and Spitfire said.

“Aw,” Starlight moaned.

“- some classic science fiction by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke… but I figured we’d stick with fantasy.”

Mark’s fingers flicked across the keyboard, and a new text document popped up. “This one was written sixty years before the Potter books,” he said. “The author was deliberately writing it to be read aloud, like a story for children. But by the end it became part of the mythology he’d been making up all his life. And this is the first chapter…”

He cleared his throat and began, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat; it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

“What’s a hobbit?” Starlight asked.

Cherry looked around at the cavern they sat in, with hay growing, afternoon sunlight relayed through the forest of crystals in the ceiling, and a comfortable breeze blowing from the life support box, and asked, “Are we hobbits?”

Mark ignored the questions and continued to read.

Author's Note

Yay, speeding ticket!

No writing today- all work. We'll see how much down time and concentration I have tomorrow.

BTW, I'm really flattered at all the continued attention the song is getting.

Sol 238

“So,” Venkat said, once telephone pleasantries had been exchanged, “Bruce, how was your time off?”

“I didn’t get time off,” Bruce Ng said. “I merely had the luxury of a couple weeks of eight-hour days and sufficient sleep. Sleipnir might be closed out except as presupply for a future Ares VI, but JPL has a lot of other projects going on.”

“Don’t we all,” Venkat agreed. “But seriously, you and your people did a tremendous job, and we’re all grateful.” He leaned back in his chair and continued, “So, did you get my memo about the Ares IV MAV modifications for Watney and his friends?”

“I did. I spent all afternoon and part of the night looking at it,” Bruce said. “And I really wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but your napkin math is wrong. Way wrong.”

“Wrong? How so?”

“The descent stage of a MAV has a thrust-weight ratio of 1.2,” Bruce said. “But that’s before the fuel plant turns one and a half tons of hydrogen into almost twenty tons of fuel and oxygen. Your math assumes the thrust-weight ratio of the hydrazine engines alone is 1.2 with a total vehicle weight of forty-four tons. But a landed MAV, before it begins making fuel, only weighs about twenty-six tons. For a fully fueled MAV, the thrust-weight ratio of the descent stage boosters is about 0.7.”

“Ah.” Venkat ran the numbers in his head, realizing Bruce was dead on target. He’d calculated the rough weight of the total MAV stack while assuming everything else stayed the same. “That’s not good. That’s really not good.”

“Tell me about it,” Bruce agreed. “I’ve been trying various alternatives with the pony engines, but none of those look promising, either. And we can’t do too much lightening of the load if we want to keep the MAV capsule viable for a direct-to-Earth Sparkle Drive backup plan.”

“Keep working the problem, Bruce. It’s in your hands now.” Venkat paused and thought, “If we can’t use the pony engines on the descent stage, where could we use them?”

“I’ll keep working on that,” Bruce said. “The best way would be to drop the second stage single engine and fuel tanks and replace it with one pony engine and three tons of batteries. Those could gradually recharge and refuel the ship in orbit. But I just can’t see how Mark and his friends would get access to that engine safely, even with magic. Also, the specific impulse on a pony engine isn't as good as a methane-oxygen chemical engine, so we'd be trading delta-V right now for delta-V maybe later. I don't know if that works.

"And I really don’t want to add one ounce of non-fuel weight to the first stage if I can help it. The trade-off in delta-V at the start of the burn would not make up for the losses towards the end. Our ascent profile relies on the first stage losing seventy percent of its mass during the burn, Venkat.”

“Do what you can, and keep me and Teddy posted.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Bruce sighed. “In the meantime, ask the ponies if they have any way to make more hydrazine that doesn’t get them all killed.”

There had been a time when Dr. Gaither had ruled Satellite Command, or SatCom, with an iron fist. Then came the aliens, and Mindy Park’s semi-promotion to chief Mark Watney watcher, with authority to override Dr. Gaither’s orders. Gaither had formally protested, and he had been told that he still had NASA’s Earth science orbiters, two solar laboratories, a space telescope, and a Venus orbiter under his absolute command, so quit complaining about Mars. Gaither responded to that by requesting a transfer.

Gaither was in Contractor Relations now, bludgeoning NASA private contractors with the example of the Sol 88 Hab breach and how the long-foreseen dangers of safety-glass space suit visors had finally become real. Tamara Lincoln had taken his place, and unlike the former SatCom boss, Mrs. Lincoln treated Mindy as an important and responsible worker instead of an ambitious scheming hussy. (Not that Gaither had ever used those words, but he’d made his displeasure at losing authority felt quite plainly.)

So instead of walking over to Mindy’s desk and giving her orders, or ignoring Mindy outright, the head of SatCom called her over to the main desk. “Hey, Mindy,” she said. “I just got a strange request from Meteorology.”

Mindy looked over her new boss’s shoulder. “Is this about the dust storm that’s blown up in Amazonis Planitia?” she asked.

“Sure is,” Lincoln said. “They want a detailed tracking of the storm back to its origins. It’s not unprecedented, but it’s really out of season.” Which was true: the really big Martian dust storms tended to blow up in late spring and early summer of Mars’s southern hemisphere, when the planet was closest to the Sun and the Martian weather systems received the most energy. Northern summer happened when the planet was at its most distant point in its elliptical orbit, sharply reducing the potential solar heating. It was the southern summer when things really got hot, with daytime highs routinely breaking into positive degrees Celsius.

But the Sol 6 megastorm had also been unseasonal…

“I can see why,” Mindy said. “But why are they asking us for image analysis? They’ve got a whole department dedicated to Mars weather observation.”

“They didn’t ask us,” Lincoln said. “They asked you.”

“Oh,” Mindy said weakly.

“Welcome to the fast track, Mindy,” Lincoln said. “And don’t be surprised if Crew Systems asks you to help modify their designs for the Sirius tandem rover.”

“At least that would let me actually use my degree,” Mindy muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing important,” Mindy said. “I’ll get right on it.”

For the first hour Mindy just read up on Martian weather patterns. To have a hope in hell of backtracking the storm, she had to have some idea of where it could have come from. She studied the approximate wind patterns, insofar as Mars had them, and read the highlights of what had been written about Martian weather systems over the years. She didn’t waste time digging into deep meteorology; she’d studied mechanical engineering, which didn’t give her much insight into things like the Coriolis effect.

Interestingly enough, the morning’s observations of the storm in Amazonis Planitia (roughly centered on 10° N, 170° W and moving due west at a blistering sixty kilometers per hour)) suggested that the storm originated in the Tharsis rise- indeed, would have had to roll directly over Olympus Mons itself. That was ridiculous, though. Mindy’s quick reading made plain that three-quarters of the major dust storms Mars produced originated from Hellas Planitia or from the northern plains- low-lying places with comparatively high air pressure, where storms could build up energy before tackling the Martian highlands.

Hellas was in the southern hemisphere; its storms only crossed the equator after they became enormous. And a storm born in the boreal plains would have moved northwest to southeast for quite a distance before catching Mars’s trade wind belt and turning. In either case, the storm shouldn’t be north of the equator but well south of the trade wind interface.

And, most notably, although Martian dust storms could expand with lightning speed, they tended to move at a glacial pace. This one was flying by Martian standards- like spring or autumn cold fronts blasting into the Houston area at thirty or forty miles per hour, driving thunderstorms ahead of them.

This storm was all wrong. It matched nothing in the quick dip she’d taken into Martian weather.

But it bore striking similarities to the Sol 6 disaster.

I can guess why they wanted me to work on this instead of doing it themselves.

Mindy called up the weather photos of Tharsis for the previous day and got to work.

Author's Note

Little Rock Comic Con... is not going to pay for my speeding ticket. It's not even paying for itself.

Not much writing tonight, but that's because I was thrashing out math.

Sol 240

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 242
ARES III SOL 240

[08:09] JPL: Good morning, Mark, Cherry, Starlight, Spitfire, Fireball. This is Bruce Ng in Pasadena. We’ve begun work on planning the modifications you’ll need to make to the Ares IV MAV when you get to Schiaparelli. It looks like it’s going to take a very long time, because we have to experiment with and simulate all sorts of scenarios we normally wouldn’t consider for an instant.

We’re looking for any possible way to use your ship engines. They produce a respectable specific impulse as per your static test a few days ago. Unfortunately, in terms of mass they’re nowhere near as efficient as the methane-oxygen rocket system we’re using, so we can’t just replace our engines with yours. If we’re going to use them at all, we have to add them to the existing engines somehow.

Our favorite scenario at this time is to use the MAV landing stage as a zeroth ascent stage. But that only works out if we can get the full three minutes the lander engines are rated for. A fully fueled MAV cannot get off the ground using lander thrusters alone, and adding the pony engines and batteries will leave the ship very sluggish on liftoff. If we can’t use the pony engines on it for a full three minutes we have to discard that option entirely.

After that option things get pretty uncomfortable. Our second favorite option is to replace the center first stage engine with one of yours. Our third favorite is to strap all three engines on the first ascent stage the same way we’re currently hoping to do to the descent stage. We really don’t like either of them because it adds weight to the ascent stage, hurting the efficiency of the existing rocket system. If your engines produced the same specific impulse as ours, it’d work, but they don’t come close.

Our least favorite strategy is to throw out all backups entirely (and I DO mean all) including the Sparkle Drive and bet everything on the Hermes rendezvous being absolutely successful. We don’t want to do that, because things happen, and our luck as regards Mars has not been the best recently.

There’s one other option we considered- replacing the single engine on the second stage with one of your engines and three tons of batteries. It would cost a bit of specific impulse, but the trade-off would be that you’d have engines that slowly regenerated. But the difference in speed is too great. We absolutely have to get a ship going to 5.8 kilometers per second that was designed to burn out at 4.1 kps. That leaves us no budget for backups or for slowly regenerating fuel.

Finally, although the Rich Purnell plan called for using the Sparkle Drive liberally to achieve the desired velocity, we’re reluctant to try it unless absolutely necessary. The Sparkle Drive is still experimental, and none of us know what will happen if it’s used in atmosphere or how it will function- if at all- in our universe without the power cascade that caused you to crash in the first place.

So, for any of our preferred plans to be workable, both these things have to be true…

Can you make much bigger batteries, capable of storing proportionally more power, using the salvaged electronics from your ship?

And can you synthesize hydrazine to refill the MAV descent stage’s tanks? We use hydrazine monopropellant for the descent stage because it’s our most reliable engine in terms of ignition. The MAV fuel plant isn’t built to make more, and in any case Mars’ atmosphere has very little nitrogen.

[08:51] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer speaking. I can try to transmute hydrazine, but it’d be extremely dangerous. The transmutation process would heat up the hydrazine, and that might make it blow up in the tank. Also, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t be pure hydrazine. I’ll have to pass that on to Twilight back home.

As for the batteries, it’s possible. Back home most enchanted artifacts or magic-powered devices have a battery function built in to power things.

It’s very seldom that anyone makes a magic battery for the sole purpose of having a battery. The enchantment is very basic, and yes, the bigger the stone the more it will hold.

The main problems are as follows.

First, the meters on the battery casings are calibrated for a roughly 60 kg cubical crystal. We can make them taller, but the charge readouts will be highly unreliable.

Second, the crystals available are a lot more prone to flaws and cracks than the ones back home. I can’t just pick any big crystal. I’m going to have to search the cave and go after the biggest unflawed crystals I can find. It’s a big cave and there are a lot of huge shafts, but finding a big clear crystal here is already a challenge.

Finally, the casings are designed to protect the crystals if they’re dropped or struck. A hard enough blow will crack a battery, severely diminishing its power if it still functions at all. An outright broken crystal loses its enchantment. A too-large crystal slid into the casing will lose the protection.

How tall do you need the batteries?

[9:17] JPL: Our math, using your revised figures for performance, says that running all three of your engines at full throttle for three minutes would require seventy-two normal sized batteries. That’s too many to mount on the exterior without some disaster happening. We’d prefer fifteen batteries five times as tall as normal if we used your engines on the MAV descent stage. If we strap them to the first ascent stage, they’d need to be at least twice as tall.

[09:46] WATNEY: You don’t ask much, do you? In theory I can do the first one. I really, REALLY don’t know about the second. But I’ll need to do a lot of searching to get them.

[10:13] JPL: Okay. Please get back to us as soon as you can on that. We don’t want to chase dead ends on this. The clock is ticking down.

The last name on the office door in Meteorology was Carter, so obviously some wag had used masking tape to cover the first name and replace it with “John.” The memo taped to the wall next to the door (“QUIT CHANGING THE NAME ON MY DOOR! IT WASN’T FUNNY THE FIRST TIME.”) suggested that this happened often.

Inside the office Mindy found a worried-looking man whose first name was Randall. “Good morning, Miss Park,” he said. “What did you find?”

“I tracked the storm back for two days,” Mindy said. “At least, I think I did, but there really wasn’t much else in the area in the days and locations indicated, so I’m fairly confident. The storm began as a squall on the southeastern edge of Tempe Terra. It proceeded due west until it passed through the gap between Alba Mons and the Tharsis Montes line. It then plunged southwards along the west side of the Montes to circle around Olympus Mons, dropping into Amazonis Planitia and building strength.”

Randall nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s what we got, too.”

“What??” Mindy tossed the printouts she’d brought with her onto Randall’s desk. “You already knew? Then why did you have me do it?”

“Because it’s impossible,” Randall said, a little heat in his own voice. “Tharsis rips apart weather systems. It’s like the great wall of Martian weather. And this storm system had way too much energy to begin with, and it barely lost anything crossing Tharsis.” He saw a map of Mars among Mindy’s printouts and traced the route of the storm. “This track is like a typhoon hitting and then crossing the Himalayas… and picking UP strength in the process. It just doesn’t happen.”

“But it is happening.”

“Yeah, but we needed an outside viewpoint to verify it. This is something we’ve never observed before.”

“Except for Sol 6.”

“Even then. The Sol 6 storm was out of season, but it moved at a normal speed and reasonable strength until the morning of Sol 6. We’d tracked it for three days, ever since it dropped off Arabia Terra. It started out ordinary and turned weird, but this,” he waved an irritated hand at Mindy’s paperwork, “this is weird from the get-go.”

“Okay,” Mindy said, calming down a bit as she began to understand where Randall’s mind was. “So, what’s the forecast?”

“Too soon to say, so far as Watney is concerned,” Randall said. “Right now the storm’s due south of Elysium Mons. If it maintains this blistering speed, it will hit Isidis Basin or the eastern edge of Arabia Terra in about two and a half days. A normal storm would get weakened or caught in the basin, or else turned north around Arabia and forced into the mid-latitude westerlies, turning it back towards Alba Mons.”

“But you don’t think this one’s going to do that,” Mindy said.

“Nope. The way this one’s acting, and the way luck has been lately, I’m betting this has Watney’s name on it. Or if you like, ‘Mark Watney or current resident, Ares III Hab.’ And as soon as I can get an appointment, we’re going to put all of this on Dr. Kapoor’s desk and recommend that we get started.” He picked up a handful of papers and began straightening them.

“Started? Aren’t we already started?”

“Started on hardening the Hab for another Sol 6 storm,” Randall said. “Watney and the aliens have to ride this one out. There’s no MAV available for an abort this time.”

Author's Note

Randall Carter is from the book; he's the meteorologist who first brings up the Arabia Terra dust storm.

According to my reading on the subject, no wind has yet been recorded on Mars faster than sixty kilometers per hour. (The Sol 6 storm, at least according to Weir, exceeded 160 kph.) Part of this is due to the thin Martian atmosphere itself, but more is down to the atmosphere's composition. Since the air is over 95% carbon dioxide, and since it's very cold, Martian air is 7% the density of Earth's on the surface... even though Mars has only 1% of the actual air pressure Earth has. The speed of sound on Mars- the point at which air becomes incompressible- is only 260 m/s, as opposed to Earth's 360 m/s.

So yeah, this storm is blatantly unnatural.

Sol 241

MISSION LOG – SOL 241

Is it too much to ask- is it too much to fucking ask- that this planet quit trying to kill me and my friends? Really?

Apparently there’s this storm, currently on the other side of the planet, but it’s acting like it has my name written on it. And knowing this goddamn planet, it probably does. “To my biggest fan, Mark Watney, Thanks for everything, signed Mars. P. S., fuck you.”

But forecasting Mars weather is a very young and error-prone science. The storm is still at least six days away, and it might turn away. Of course, that’s only if our luck changes. But in the meantime NASA has ordered us to prepare to take shelter in the cave farm. That means moving the remaining food packs plus a short supply of cut hay and potatoes back to the farm, along with all the medical supplies and a few other things.

In addition to that, we need to do a thorough inspection and policing of the area around the Hab, especially the windward (east) side. The pop-tents have to be emptied and deflated. The scrap metal pile needs to be buried to prevent the wind from turning it into shrapnel. We need to inspect and make sure all the solar panels and exterior power cables are secured, since those solar panels could make dandy kites otherwise. (The Sol 6 storm didn’t send them flying partly because the panels get staked into the ground, partly because the angled panels were pointed into the wind, so the storm pushed down on them instead of lifting them up.)

But the biggest chore is Friendship. We have to get all the rocks we can as soon as possible under the ship so that it’s beached when the storm hits. Right now the ship’s sitting way off the ground on its landing gear with nothing holding it down but landing gear and one power cable. There’s a chance the storm would overpower the wheel brakes and push the ship just like it caught the MDV’s unused emergency parachute and beat the shit of out it. If Friendship takes a tumble like the MDV did, we’ll have to buy a bus ticket for Schiaparelli, because we sure as hell won’t be driving on our own.

It’s a lot of work, and it’s going to take days if we keep up our daily couple of hours with Dragonfly in the cave. So it’s a good thing NASA is getting us started early. We began with the inspections, since those are the most important thing. Mostly I spent time staking down all the solar panels I’d stolen from the solar farm for the Pathfinder trip and never put back properly. For day to day use it didn’t matter that much, but with Marsicane Two headed our way, everything needs to be down and tight.

I remember the first time I saw hurricane prep in Houston, during my initial astronaut training. I couldn’t believe how people rushed to the stores for plywood and nails, tape, milk and water, and canned Beanie-Weenies and the like. The first time, when the storm turned north and hit Louisiana with a fizzle, I was amused by all the silliness.

Then came Hurricane Bernie, the next year. Category two. Ninety-five mile per hour winds at the eyewall, which came ashore on the Bolivar Peninsula. The storm fizzled a few hours after it came inland, but it was still enough to bring hurricane force winds to Johnson Space Center and the surrounding area.

NASA evacuated, but some people I knew invited me to a hurricane party well above the expected surge line. Vogel was curious about hurricanes, and I was curious about an alcoholic beverage called a hurricane, so we stayed in Webster while everyone else bailed. It was fun for a while, until the power went out about twenty minutes before landfall, and then all we could hear besides each other was wind.

And God, was there wind. It howled around the house until the whole building shook- even at “only” seventy miles per hour. It sounded like the storm wanted to peel off the crunchy wood wrapping to get at the gooey human center.

Not all the windows were boarded up, and I got to see outside. Shit was blowing everywhere, including tree limbs and sheet metal. But surprisingly, not much rain. My hosts told me that wasn’t unusual. You didn’t get heavy rain until the hurricane slowed down, most of the time. That was why Harvey was so horrible- the storm spun down almost immediately when it hit land and then refused to leave. By comparison, they told me, this storm would leave only about eight to ten inches.

Yeah. “Only” eight to ten inches of rain.

Other guests talked about Hurricane Ike- the storm that inspired the “Ike Dike” which is finally, FINALLY under construction. One or two of the older folks remembered Tropical Storm Allison, which was like a mini-Harvey. And there was one old grandma who talked about Alicia and how all the windows in the skyscrapers of downtown Houston got knocked out by the winds.

These people bought their bottled water and Beanie-Weenies because they’d seen true disaster- and yet they stayed, because so far as they were concerned, Hurricane Bernie was a flyweight, a pissant little blow with ambition beyond its means. They weren’t crazy for being prepared. They knew.

And the party went on, as the wind howled and then eventually died off. The locals took it all in stride. I couldn’t believe it. Neither could Vogel, who said something about all Americans being wehrsinnig or something like that. I don't know how to spell in German.

At one point I pointed out how crazy all of this was, and my hosts pointed out that their home was above the level of the forecast storm surge. You ran from water, they said. For wind you hunker down. There just weren’t enough roads to get everybody out of the wind forecast zone. (And a few people told me horror stories of having run out of gas on Interstate 45 during Hurricane Rita. Two hundred miles of de facto parking lot, as four million people tried to get out of the way of a storm that ended up missing Houston by eighty miles.)

The next day we both volunteered at the Red Cross to help however we could, but there wasn’t much for us to do. Utility trucks from other states ran up and down the streets, fixing power lines. Most of the stores- those that didn’t have roofs peeled off or windows busted- were reopened by the end of the day after the storm. Only three people died- there’s that “only” again. A month later, you couldn’t tell anything had happened, unless you went out onto Bolivar Peninsula to see where everything had been knocked flat yet again.

I didn’t mock Texans for rushing out to buy milk and bread anymore. But I still thought they were crazy.

So, how does this apply to Mars? We can’t run. We don’t know where the storm’s headed, and we can’t get more than seventy kilometers in any one direction anyway. That’s not going to be enough to avoid the storm even if it gave us a written itinerary.

So we’re going to hunker down, and be grateful there isn’t any rain.

By the way, I’d kill for milk, bread, and/or Beanie-Weenies.

Author's Note

I grew up in southeast Texas. Hurricanes are a fact of life here. I fled Rita (using back roads to avoid I-45) and rode out Ike and Harvey.

And during Harvey my house only got twenty-seven inches of rain over five days.

"Only."

Sol 244

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 246
ARES III SOL 244

When one is alone in a cave except for a cocoon containing a presumably comatose changeling, one is essentially alone in the cave, period.

Cherry Berry had spent an hour or so listlessly fiddling with plants before walking over to the cocoon. Now she lay with her back against the cool, slightly pliable surface of the cocoon, staring at nothing, just chatting. “… and we ended up having to use the rover to drive kilometers out of our way to get enough rocks to even touch the underside of the ship! Load the rover, drive back, unload the rover, go get more rocks! Again, and again, and again! We were pretty darn tired after that, I can tell you! That’s why it took us two days to build the rock platform for the ship.”

Cherry sighed, leaning a little harder against Dragonfly, who didn’t complain. “Of course, that’s pretty much why I’m here in the cave by myself right now,” she said. “Today they’re cutting the tail off the ship. I just couldn’t stand to watch it. It just… well… it was my ship, you know? Not just another capsule, but a real, purpose-built spaceship that didn’t lose ninety percent of the hull to staging.”

She closed her eyes so she could see better. “I remember the first time I saw it. Twilight Sparkle showed it to me the second time I visited Cape Friendship. It was so lovely, all pink and sleek. It looked like it wanted to jump off the ground all by itself. Of course, it couldn’t, but if Twilight had had enough time, it would have got there.”

She shook her head. “And yet it only got to fly three times, and none of them went quite right, did they? And now it’ll never fly again. It’ll get towed like a caravan wagon, and then it’ll be left here to rust. Just like the rest of this stupid planet. What a horrible way to end.”

Cherry Berry stood up, allowing Dragonfly’s cocoon to slowly return to its normal, not-a-pillow shape. “Any minute now Starlight’s going to use that cutting spell of hers to cut through the engineering deck,” she said. “Faust, it’s like cutting through my own hide. Why not amputate my right hind leg while they’re at it?”

The pink pony flinched. “Ah! They just started! I can feel it!” She rose to her hind legs, tottering around dramatically, as all true Ponyville ponies learned to do from an early age. “Slice! Slice! And the tail section is sliding off the rocks to crash backwards! But that’s not enough! Starlight cuts again! Slice! Slice! Trimming the poor ship down as close as she can! Oh, the tragedy! Such a proud ship laid low by-“

The cave airlock hissed open. “We’re here, Cherry!” Mark shouted in English.

Cherry froze in her overdramatic pose, staring with shock and humiliation at the four people in the airlock. “Wh-wh-what??” she gasped, struggling to shift from the Equestrian she’d been using to speak to Dragonfly. “You said you wouldn’t be here til afternoon! What about cutting the ship?”

“NASA changed their minds,” Mark said. “The heavier the ship is, the less likely the wind will do anything to it. So we just loaded your engine room with scrap metal instead. We’ll remove the tail after the storm.”

“Nahsuh changed their minds??” Cherry snapped. She was going to have to live through this day a second time because Mark’s bosses couldn’t make up their minds about when to cut metal?? She wrestled with the unfamiliar language to find the words, and ended up with nothing better than, “How can you humans be so mean??” Furious, she dropped back to all fours and stormed off down the cave in a cloud of indignation.

Behind her, Mark turned to look at the others, asking, “What got into her?”

Author's Note

Good news: wrote 2700 words today.

Bad news: it's split up among four chapters, so I can have a three-day buffer going into the trip to Atlanta for Momocon.

But at least there will be a buffer. For a moment I was afraid there wouldn't be.

Sol 245

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 248
ARES III SOL 245

[08:01] JPL: Good morning, everyone. At least, I’d like to say it’s good, but I really haven’t got much good news for you. The best I can say is that this storm has peak internal winds of seventy kph at the present time, based on satellite observation. The Sol 6 storm was eighty kph two sols before it hit you. So there’s a chance this one won’t be that bad.

But on every other count the news is bad. The storm is currently in Arabia Terra on a west-northwest track directly for you at between thirty-five and forty kph. It’ll hit the Hab sometime after sunset tomorrow evening.

And the best part? Our satellites are picking up strong electrical activity in the storm. That’s incredibly rare, and we’ve never seen electrical activity at this level before.

We want you all to ride out the storm in the cave. The soil and the quartz minerals should protect you from any electrical discharge. If at all possible, we also want you to store the Friendship engines in the cave. It’s the safest place.

There are a lot of things you need to do before you turtle up, though. We want you to take as many antenna farm components as you can spare and attach them to the outer skin mount clips on Friendship using bare wire. Once that’s done, you need to inspect the electrical ground system for the Hab and make sure all the components are still attached to the Hab. Every part of the electrical system depends on that ground system to avoid static buildup and related damage. Finally, be sure the shutters are closed on Rover 1’s windows.

Also, we want you to cut off the base from one of the pop-tents, take it to the cave, and attach the ground wires for the solar panels and battery there to it. There are some spare tungsten static discharge points in your repair kit; attach as many as possible to that pop-tent base. That’s all we have to ground any electronics in the cave.

When you evacuate the Hab, power everything down as per the Sol 31 checklist. Do not deflate the Hab, but make sure all the electronics are down. Also, disconnect Pathfinder from Hab power. Pathfinder has its own anti-static ground system, but there’s a danger of a short-circuit through the rig you built to power it- either from a direct hit to the power line or from a strike to the Hab. We’ll use Morse via Friendship’s radio for comms after the storm blows over.

Finally, when you evacuate, park Rover 2 on the northwest face of Site Epsilon, as close to the slope as you can for protection against wind. Remember to close the shutters on the windows before cross-country EVA to your farm. This is the best we can do to protect Rover 2 short of digging a hole for it, and we think that would only bury it faster and deeper.

Good luck and stay safe.

[08:34] WATNEY: That’s a lot of shit to do, but we’ll get it done. The cave airlock is wide enough for the engines- just barely- but we'll probably have to magic them inside one way or another. One question: why not deflate the Hab? Isn’t there a danger of it blowing out in the storm?

[09:02] JPL: The Sol 31 checklist deflates the Hab only to protect the MAV in the very unlikely case of a breach during launch. It has nothing to do with preserving the Hab for future use. In this case, deflating the Hab would make it easier for the wind to pick up the fabric and damage it. It’d also mean you’d have to shovel dust off of the canvas before you could re-inflate it, and there’s a good chance the weight of dust would break the plastic supports. The best chance for the Hab coming through intact is leaving it pressurized.

[09:31] WATNEY: Roger. Going outside to begin preparations now. Go ahead and order a power-down for Pathfinder so I can disconnect the power at the end of our EVA. Will signal you after the storm passes.

[09:59] JPL: Sending the power-down order now. Good luck, Mark. Good luck, everyone.

Author's Note

This is short partly because I needed a buffer, and partly because there really isn't much else to say for this sol.

We've only picked up rare circumstantial evidence for lightning on Mars. We do know it won't behave anything like Earth lightning. Mars doesn't have a global magnetic field to draw discharges groundwards, and its freeze-dried air and upper soil make grounding even more difficult. No danger of grounding failure of the Hab is mentioned anywhere in the book, and there's no talk of the rovers picking up static-charged Mars dust, so it's a safe bet NASA solved the grounding problem- either by discharging into the air with tungsten lightning-rod points as on Sojourner and its successors or through a large buried grid of conductive material (presumably built into the Hab floor).

In the book Weir mentions that Pathfinder uses its outer hull as a ground to protect its internal electronics. I was completely unable to find any confirmation of that in many, many online searches. So we'll see what happens.

Anyway, safe in Atlanta; going to go grocery shopping, since I'm in a long-term living hotel and have a kitchenette to save money on food in.

Sol 247

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 250
ARES III SOL 247

“Does it guess easy?” Mark hissed dramatically. “It must have a competition with us, my preciousss! If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer, we eats it, my precioussss. If it asks us, and we doesn’t answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes!”

The rush of preparation for the storm had put the reading of The Hobbit on hold, but now there was nothing left to do except hope that the storm didn’t cause a landslide that buried the airlock. Considering how comparatively flat the slopes of Site Epsilon were, that wasn’t likely, so the five castaways sat next to Dragonfly’s cocoon, gathered around the single largest source of light in the cave, the computer in Mark’s hands. With the space suits deactivated, the only other light sources in the chamber were the indicators on the Amicitas life support box and the dim orange glow of the one active electric heater.

None of them had ever been in the cave after dark before. Oh, there had been the early exploration using space suit helmet lights, but even those had been during daytime outdoors. At night, without the suits, with only the bedrolls from Amicitas to separate them from the dirt floor, the cave was all shadows and gloom, right down to the constant trickling sound of the water heating system from Equestria running down into the well.

Spitfire could easily imagine Bilbo Baggins, a sort of human-pony, sitting next to an underground lake, facing the creepy, terrifying Gollum in the darkness and the horrible claustrophobic depths of the goblin cave, with nothing for light except the flickering light of a magic sword.

In fact, she could imagine it a little too easy. Indoors, under rock, at night was not a place most pegasi felt comfortable with, Spitfire even less than most.

“White horses?” she heard Starlight ask in a slightly offended tone. “White horses for teeth? Mark, are members of your species like beavers or something? Who has horse-sized teeth?”

“It’s a riddle, Starlight,” Cherry replied. “It’s not meant to be literal.”

“But... oh, never mind,” Starlight grumbled. “Just bear in mind I’m going to imagine the Royal Guard on parade every time I watch Mark eating from now on.”

“You watch me eat?” Mark asked. “Planning a nature documentary? ‘Here we see the Watney in his unnatural habitat, underground on a desert planet.’”

“What does ‘documentary’ mean? I know what a document is, but not a documentary.”

“It means I need to get back to reading the book. Then he asked his second: ‘Voiceless it cries, wingless flutters, toothless bites, mouthless mutters.’ What do you think that one is?”

Spitfire thought of the ten million stone teeth, most of them with pointed or jagged ends, all around them and above them. I think that one is a hint to pull the Harry Potter back out and read another quidditch game, she thought. I like quidditch. It’s played above a nice green field in open skies on a pleasant day. You don’t play quidditch in caves.

And nasty cannibal creatures don’t accost you in quidditch stadiums.

Well, hardly ever.

“Wind? Really? I’d never got that one!” Cherry said. “Hey, Spitfire, why didn’t you guess?”

“Huh?” Spitfire pulled her mind out of mental images of Gollum wearing a Slytherin scarf and returned her attention to the others. “Sorry, guess what?”

“The riddle,” Cherry said. “The answer was ‘wind’.”

“Oh. Hm.” She struggled to think. “Mark, read it me again, please.”

Mark read the riddle-poem again.

Spitfire shook her head. “I would not guess wind,” she said carefully. “The thing in the riddle is a monster. Evil. The wind is my friend. It doesn’t cry or bite. It whispers and… and… rubs?”

Mark and Starlight chuckled a bit. In Equestrian Starlight said, “A masseuse rubs, Spitfire. Is there something going on between you and the wind that you wouldn’t want the Canterlot Herald to know about?”

The pegasus snorted and turned her head, acting like she was ignoring the others as Mark recited something about eyes and faces. Again the others went into a frenzy of guessing, but of all people it was Fireball who guessed it- or almost; he said the sun looking at sunflowers, and the book said the sun on daisies. Feh. Sunflowers and daisies are totally different.

Then Mark read a new one, hissing his way through a truly sinister riddle: “… it lies behind stars and under hills, and empty holes it fills, it comes first and follows after, ends life, kills-“

Above them, something rumbled. Mark went silent, and everyone got just a little bit closer to one another.

“What was that?” Fireball asked. “Cave in?”

“Impossible,” Starlight said, her voice failing to sell the word with any conviction. “The roof is solid.”

“It’s thunder,” Spitfire said. “I never think I’d hear thunder on this planet.”

“It can’t be thunder,” Mark said. “We’d only hear thunder if the lightning were right on top-“

Blinding light filled the cave. A deafening CRACK struck the ears of the castaways like a whip. For half a second, a beam of sinuous light linked one of the crystals in the ceiling and The Stump. A smaller light lit up the far end of the farm, as the lightning traveled through the water heating system and grounded again in the metal-lined trench leading to the well.

Then there was a lesser crack, followed by the hissing sound of crystal fragments falling to the farmland below.

In the dim light of the computer screen, five faces looked at one another. Five bodies pressed against one another.

“Quartz is an insulator,” Mark muttered. “How can lightning get at us inside a cave made of quartz underground??”

“The sun crystals,” Starlight answered. “The enchantment channels light through. Light is a kind of electric magnetism. But the spell gathers up light, to make it brighter in the cave.”

“So it gather up lightning too,” Fireball grumbled. “Perfect.”

“Lightning went through pipes,” Spitfire added. “Did you see?”

“I think the life support system is insulated,” Starlight said. “Dragonfly would have known for sure.”

“It’s not safe here,” Cherry said. “Any ideas for someplace safer?

“Deeper into the cave?” Spitfire asked. “Keep to sides of cave?”

“We’d have to get too close to the runoff trench,” Mark pointed out.

More soft rumbling echoed in through the cave walls.

Cherry pointed up. “And too much under the-“

CRACK!

More crystals fell from the ceiling, hissing into the alfalfa.

Five castaways blinked the afterimages of the second lightning strike out of their eyes, huddling together in silence. All thought of leaving the comparative shelter of the cave entrance had vanished.

Finally Cherry said, “Or we could stay right here. I’m tired of reading for tonight. Can we watch TV? Electric Company maybe?”

Spitfire, grateful beyond words that she hadn’t been the one to say it first, nodded her head in perfect agreement.

Mark, without argument, closed the text window and brought up the video player, quickly replacing mental images of deep underground with actual images of bright colors and smiling faces.

Everyone watched, and listened, in silence.

Outside, Mars cried and bit and muttered with all the strength it could muster, setting off electrical auroras that popped and crackled through the dust-dense air.

Author's Note

Normal quartz is a very efficient insulator, except for piezoelectric effects.

But the lighting spell Starlight Glimmer used turned chunks of crystal on the hillside into active electromagnetic conduits. The spell normally passes along light and heat. Apparently it can also pass along a static electrical charge.

And once that charge is in the cave- a cave with Earth air pressure, Earth air mixture, and a considerable amount of humidity- a standard, if weak, lightning bolt is possible.

Especially when there's a large object about a meter high in an otherwise open area, surrounded by pipe buried just under the surface.

You still wouldn't want to get hit by it. It's weak only in comparison with its Earthly counterparts.

And I think Spitfire is right: when you're in a cave with only one exit, sitting out a night wondering if you'll survive, is not a good time to get introduced to Gollum.

Sol 248

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 251
ARES III SOL 248

Dawn woke Fireball, filtering down through the surviving magic crystals. The cave was a bit chilly, which explained why he awoke with two ponies, Starlight Glimmer and Spitfire, using his stomach for a pillow. Mark’s head lay on Spitfire’s stomach, while Cherry Berry lay sprawled across Mark’s body.

Breakfast for the others was leftovers from the previous night; cold baked potato, hay, and leftovers from a food pack opened up for flavor. For himself Fireball washed off the larger shards of lightning-struck crystal that lay among the plants and made his breakfast from them.

After that, it was time to inspect the damage and fix what could be fixed.

The storm hadn’t triggered a landslide to bury the airlock, but the wind-blown dust had piled up half a meter deep against the outer airlock door. It took a bit of wrestling to get the door open, and Mark and Fireball worked on cleaning out the mechanism while the others checked the cave’s solar collectors on top of the hill.

While Fireball and Mark wielded brushes and compressed air, they listened to the chatter over the suit comms. Cherry Berry and Spitfire had gone above the cave to inspect the solar farm there. The storm had left the solar panels alone, aside from a coating of Martian dust. (The dust swept easily away, suggesting that the improvised electrical grounding system had worked.) The sun feeder crystals likewise were intact, but that didn’t matter. There hadn’t been a third lightning strike, but the two bolts had caused the failure of five of the enchanted crystals in the ceiling. The solar collector crystals linked to those destroyed crystals were good only for snacks... if you could pick which ones were still live and which weren’t.

After sweeping off the cave’s solar farm, Cherry and Spitfire hiked across the ancient volcano to check the status of Rover 2. Mark had parked it next to a steep bit of slope on Site Epsilon’s northwest side, as ordered. Only a bit of sand and dust had piled up on the rover’s wheels, with a thin coating covering the roof. The airlock worked without a problem, and the inside appeared to be in good shape, still holding air.

While the others were outside, Starlight went through the farm and cleaned out the smaller bits of shattered quartz. None of the falling shards had done serious damage to the plants, but those shards could do damage to hooves or boots if left alone. The shattered crystals had broken in pieces as large as Mark’s hand and as small as glitter, but carefully, systematically, Starlight swept through the field and magically combed them out. Fireball asked her to save the bits for later, because waste not, want not.

Cherry and Spitfire got back to the cave entrance just as Mark and Fireball finished cleaning out the airlock doors. With the crew reassembled inside the cave, Starlight used the day’s magic field time to cut five new solar collector crystals from the ceiling, enchanting them with the same spell as the already existing ones. That done, each of them gave a goodbye hug to Dragonfly’s cocoon, suited back up, and left, dropping the new collectors on the hilltop before hiking back to the rover.

All of this had happened with very little conversation. Nobody wanted to talk. That suited Fireball just fine, since he usually didn’t feel like talking anyway. Start a conversation with ponies, and sooner or later feelings were going to come into it.

But Fireball admitted, silently, to himself, a profound sense of relief when the rover climbed out of the last gully and the Hab appeared in the front windows, a bit dustier than when they’d left it, but obviously inflated and intact.

“Thank goodness,” Cherry Berry said.

“I call first shower,” Spitfire stammered.

“No shower yet,” Mark said. “I have to turn everything back on and run full diagnostics. And before we do that, we need to sweep off the solar panels and send a message to NASA.”

“I’m go to bed,” Fireball rumbled. “Go to bed and go to sleep someplace where lightning doesn’t strike inside. Where there more than one way out. Where razor sharp things won’t fall on us at any moment. Where I have my own bed. And where ponies don’t put their heads on my stomach while I’m asleep!”

He realized, a few moments late, that he’d said more than he’d meant to say.

“Um, I said I was sorry,” Spitfire replied.

“I think that’s the most English I’ve ever heard you use at one time,” Starlight added.

“Bed,” Fireball said, and kept his reply to that.

Stupid ponies and their feelings.

TRANSCRIPT – TELEGRAPH MESSAGE BETWEEN ESA AMICITAS AND EARTH DEEP SPACE NETWORK (NASA)

(note: the approximate turnaround time from sending message to receiving answer, between lightspeed delay and time required to translate Morse code, averages one hour, five minutes. The process is sped up on the Earth end by automated Morse translation and transmission software.)

AMICITAS: Friendship calling NASA. Friendship calling NASA. All safe. Hab intact. Ready to restore power to Pathfinder when ready. Please advise, over.

NASA: JSC calling Friendship. Reading you two by three, heavy solar interference. Recommend check for residual static charge on Pathfinder hull prior to restoring power. Proceed by taking longest antenna aerial fragment, connect to Hab ground system using long cable, Starlight Glimmer use magic to touch aerial to Pathfinder hull. Keep aerial away from all other components. Over.

AMICITAS: Repeat procedure, please, over.

NASA: Take one aerial fragment. Attach long cable. Plug into Hab ground system. Use magic to touch aerial to hull, and ONLY to hull, of Pathfinder. Keep aerial clear of all other parts of Pathfinder. Over.

AMICITAS: Procedure complete. It made one hell of a spark. Glad I contacted you before attempting to restore power to Pathfinder. Restoring power now, over.

NASA: Roger. Report on Hab condition, over.

AMICITAS: Hab systems back online, diagnostic in progress. So far no problems. Solar cells covered with dust and sand. Airlock 1 moved about half a foot. Secondary potato shed filled with dust blown through cracks. Friendship unmoved. Rover 1 intact. Rover 2 fully operational. Five sun crystals in cave farm destroyed by electrical discharge. Over.

NASA: Good to hear. Return to radio at 0830 hours your time to report each sol until Pathfinder link restored. Out.

Author's Note

Ugh. Headache all day today.

Buffer's down to one, mostly because I spent all my writing time yesterday expanding yesterday's and today's entries.

Sol 249

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 252
ARES III SOL 249

Cherry Berry watched Mark compare dots and dashes drawn on the whiteboard to the cheat sheet he’d written on one of the sample container labels (seven left) and taped to Amicitas’s gutted control panels just above the intact radio controls. “Well?” she asked. “Is Pathfinder talking yet?”

“No,” Mark said. “Not really a surprise. It took two full days of power and heat for it to wake up the first time.”

“Aw.” Cherry’s ears flattened.“I wanted to send a letter to Dr. Shields.”

Mark blinked, setting down the whiteboard. “Having trouble dealing with the storm?” he asked. “I can understand that.”

“No, about the dream I dreamed last night,” Cherry said. “I was back home, and-“

“If it’s a good dream about being home,” Mark said, “I think I don’t wanna hear it. We all have those every night. Well, every night we’re not waking at 3 AM with the cold sweats after dreaming about one of the ten billion ways this planet can kill us.”

Cherry Berry glared at him. “Can I go on?” she asked dryly.

“Oh.” Mark took a renewed interest in the last couple words of the NASA message. “Sorry, go ahead.”

“I was home,” Cherry said. “I was running as fast as I could from Ponyville to… er… to the princesses’s… um…”

“Castle.”

“Yeah, that. I was running late and was afraid I wouldn’t get there in time. But when I got there, I was YEARS late. And the princess said, ‘I will send you to the moon!’ I said I’d already been, but then she said I would go with magic and wouldn’t have a rocket to come back on.”

“That could be a problem,” Mark said cautiously.

“And then she said she… um… word for when a ruler says you have to leave the land and never come back?”

“Exile.”

“Exile? Okay. The princess said she would exile me. I said I already was exile, on Mars. Then she said she would send me to the moon of the place she exile me to!”

“What?”

“And then I’m on this little moon, and there is Mars, just like the first time we saw it through ship windows. And the worst part is…” Cherry took a deep breath to steady herself before exploding with, “The moon was shape like a big potato!”

“That sounds about right,” Mark said.

Cherry’s mental train jumped the track, with widespread destruction and calamity, if her face was to be believed. “What?”

“Mars has two itty bitty moons,” Mark said. “They’re both shaped like potatoes. Really.”

Bits of Cherry’s brain began slotting back into place. She stared at Mark. “Mars has potato moons?” she said.

“Well, one’s about ten miles across and the other is about half that, and they’re made of rock,” Mark said. “But they look like potatoes.”

Cherry’s stare became a glare. “Potato. Moons?”

“Afraid so.”

“Mark, I do not feel like jokes now.”

“I’ll show you the pictures. You can judge for yourself.”

Cherry Berry took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “This would not be thing,” she said, “if you had princess to guard dreams like a proper species.”

“Um. Yeah. Okay,” Mark said, picking up the marker to begin composing his reply message to Earth.

“THIS BUCKING PLANET AND ITS FLANK-KISSING POTATOES!!”

Starlight Glimmer put her hooves over her ears as Cherry Berry’s nonstop flood of invective ran into its second minute.

“I tried to tell her it wasn’t a joke,” Mark said. On the screen in front of him were several images of space rocks which, if you were of a certain mind, looked like slightly shriveled and pitted potatoes.

Starlight didn’t answer.

“I don’t think I’ve heard the same word twice,” he continued. “Has she repeated any?”

“No.” She’d been at ground zero three times when Cherry blew her top, and she never repeated profanities during her fits.

“Does the pony language even have that many bad words?”

“No.” Cherry had already exhausted Equestrian, Prench, Germane, Japonese, and Griffon and was currently working her way through ancient Minotauran.

“Would you teach me some of-“

“NO.” Not that Mark hadn’t used several of them by accident during his attempts to learn and speak Equestrian, but for the sake of avoiding mutual embarrassment she was never going to explain that to him.

At about that point Cherry began the English profanities, straight from the glossary Mr. Mitch Henderson had sent upon request.

In fact, she took them in order. Perfectly. Without missing one, skipping one, or taking any out of order. And then she went into Annie Montrose’s appendix.

“You’d think she was the one eating fifteen spuds a day instead of five.” Mark commented.

Starlight grit her teeth, pushed her hooves a bit harder against her ears (not that it helped), and refrained from explaining how Cherry might have responded if Mars had a third moon that in any way resembled a hay bale.

The Hab might burn down.

Author's Note

I'd intended to skip this sol, but just before bed last night I had this idea.

Buffer still at one.

Sol 250

Venkat sat at Teddy’s desk. It was a nice desk, and the chair was identical to Venkat’s own, but he didn’t really care. He was watching the computer, waiting for Pathfinder’s restart diagnostic to complete transmission. The fact that the Deep Space Array was picking up Pathfinder’s signal- or, rather, that Pathfinder was in any condition to send a signal- was the single largest piece of good news today.

Teddy, equally impatient but better at not showing it, stood behind him, addressing the others. “What are the long-term consequences of the storm?” he asked. “Can we expect a second strike in two weeks?”

“What storm?” Randall and Mindy had been dragged from their normal duties for this top-tier meeting. “The storm began to fizzle almost as soon as it crossed the Hab, from what we can tell. Yesterday morning it had shrunk to half its size, and this morning we couldn’t find it. Which is the exact opposite of what should have happened, but I could say that for every single stage of this storm’s life.”

“Um, I have a possible reason for that,” Mindy said. “I did some more back-tracking of the storm based on our earlier work. The earliest sign of weather that might have triggered the storm was a low-level circulation kicking dust into the Martian stratosphere in Chryse Planitia on Sol 234. The prevailing winds in that area were blowing directly from the Hab.”

“So the Hab caused the storm?” Teddy asked.

“Um. The engine power test was on Sol 233,” Mindy said. “And based on our trajectory projections, on Sol 6 the storm blew up in strength within a few minutes of the alien ship’s entry into atmosphere.”

“So, not the Hab,” Teddy correct himself. “The magic engines.”

From the couch, Mitch chuckled. “They use magic,” he said. “Their crew includes a unicorn AND a pegasus AND a dragon AND a shape-shifter. Why shouldn’t they have engines that run on butterfly wings?”

Venkat looked up from the computer at Annie. “That’s a joke referring to the chaos-“

“I got that one, Venkat,” Annie snapped. “Shit, I’m only a press flack, I’m not one hundred percent fucking useless. Only ninety-five.”

“How confident are you in this conclusion?” Teddy asked.

“It’s not a conclusion,” Mindy said. “Um, sir. But this is a possibility based on technology we know nothing about, used by people who tell us it’s experimental even for them. I think we should assume the worst case scenario until more data comes in.”

“I agree,” Bruce Ng said over speakerphone from California. “We can live without further engine tests. Tell them not to fire the engines again until Sol 551. Potential danger eliminated.”

“What about on Sol 551?” Teddy asked. “Is there a danger that this effect would endanger the liftoff?”

“Possible but unlikely,” Bruce said. “The speed of sound on the Martian surface is two hundred sixty meters per second. Once they’re going faster than that, they’ll be leaving any thruster effects well behind them.”

“Okay,” Teddy said. “Randall, try to find any evidence for or against this hypothesis. Quietly. This conclusion does not leave this room.” He looked at Annie and added, “If anyone outside NASA proposes it, say that we haven’t seen sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion.”

“If it gets that far, they’re going to ask if it’s safe,” Annie said. “They’re going to ask me if I would take a ride in the thing! What the fuck do I tell them? That I’m allergic to horse hair?”

“Tell them the alternative,” Mitch growled, without Annie’s sarcasm, “is for the Hab crew to wait for the next passing alien spaceship and hope they can hitch a ride.”

“Okay, we’ve got the reboot diagnostic log in,” Bruce said. “We lost the rotor for the imager, possibly the imager itself. But the antennas and radio still check out.”

“Probably dust,” Randall said. “It’s hard to be certain, since the storm hit the area at night, but the lightning we detected seemed to center on Site Epsilon. We know for a fact there was no lightning west of the Hab.”

“And even if lightning struck the Hab, there wouldn’t be any outward signs if it struck metal,” Venkat said. “Burn marks require oxygen. Mars doesn’t have any. You wouldn’t know if lightning struck unless the target melted.”

“Anyway, the link’s back up,” Bruce said. “We should have the chat going now.”

Venkat typed.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 253
ARES III SOL 250

[10:28] JPL: Testing. Mark, please respond as soon as you see this.

[10:57] WATNEY: This is Starlight Glimmer. Mark’s doing maintenance on the water reclaimer. Will I do?

[11:25] JPL: Good. Mainly we needed the response. The storm did one bit of damage, or else the static discharge we had you trigger did: the rotary motor for Pathfinder’s stereo imager is dead. It could be shorted out or just jammed with dust, but Pathfinder’s internal test says it’s nonfunctional. Considering that’s the one part of Pathfinder we could afford to lose, that means we dodged a major bullet. But this link works again, at least for now, so that’s good news.

[11:54] WATNEY: About that- I’ve been thinking. Once we’re on the move in the Whinnybago, we won’t really need the data link. And once we get to Schiaparelli, we’ll have the MAV’s comm systems. So how about we modify the procedures to leave Pathfinder behind when we leave? This is Mark, by the way.

[12:22] JPL: We’ll talk about it. Right now we’re opposed. The Friendship radio telegraph is slow and uncertain, and we’d rather use it only for backup.

[12:49] WATNEY: Four hundred kilos. That’s all I’m saying. Four hundred kilos we don’t absolutely need to haul thirty-five hundred kilometers. Also four hundred and nine watts per hour we don’t have to burn. Nine and a half kilowatt-hours per sol… God, we need a better name for that.

[13:20] JPL: We’ll think about it, Mark.

[13:48] WATNEY: Pirate-ninja. That’s what we’ll call it. A kilowatt-hour per sol is a pirate-ninja.

[14:16] JPL: Don’t make me revoke your naming privileges, Mark.

Author's Note

The buffer is at zero. I just had no writing time or energy today, and I need to go to sleep early so I can hit the road early and keep out of the worst of the tropical storm that's about to hit Florida, Georgia and Alabama.

What Venkat says here is true. Without oxygen, lightning strikes leave a lot less evidence behind. Especially considering how comparatively weak lightning would be on Mars.

When I first took notes for this story, I had three points on communications: (1) Pathfinder would get fried, (2) it would NOT be due to the bodged drill, and (3) the pony radio would keep operating. But one thing and another kept pushing back the day of the engine test (the thing I decided would lead to a dead Pathfinder), and by the time I got there I'd changed my mind.

In the book Mark loses communications at a critical time- when NASA is working on telling him how to modify the rover to get him to Schiaparelli. He ends up having to do it almost entirely by himself, figuring everything out. But the slightly superior connection he has in this story, and the longer time frame, and above all the absence of a need to convert the sample drill into a cutting tool, mean he's already got the full procedure lined up.

Long story short: if Mark loses Pathfinder now, it doesn't add much to the tension of the story. He's got all the info he needs at this point. And even if he didn't, he's got a Morse code connection via the pony ship.

So... if killing Pathfinder doesn't improve the story at this point... why kill Pathfinder?

Of course, if I discover a reason for Pathfinder to die in the future, death will be arranged- lightning, meteor, fifty-foot-tall mutant Dragonfly, or just old age.

But as Watney points out, on the trip it will be dead weight and a major energy expenditure. (Almost all of the power required, BTW, is for the Rover 1 space heater that allows Pathfinder to remain at operating temperature. If Mark had a second RTG, he could stick that under Pathfinder and run the probe off one-tenth of the electricity the RTG puts out.) So Pathfinder's days are likely numbered anyway...

... and Watney gets to coin "pirate-ninja" after all. (oldlady)Isn't that nice?(/oldlady)

Sol 251

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 254

ARES III SOL 251

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit DF for response, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: SG – I don’t recall any atmospheric test of magic thrusters producing weather. Did I miss anything, over?

ESA: Confirmed no unusual weather effects from magic thruster tests. Why do you ask? Over.

AMICITAS: Mark’s bosses report the abnormal storm we just survived might have come from engine tests using main thrusters. Circumstantial evidence also raises possibility that Amicitas atmospheric entry amplified storm that resulted in Mark being marooned, over.

ESA: Repeat no unusual weather effects from tests on Equestria. Effects where you are totally unpredictable owing to inability to accurately measure and determine laws of magic (if any) in your current universe, over.

AMICITAS: Please double-check. In the meantime will not use engines until/unless necessary for Mars escape, over.

ESA: Good plan. We’ll go over the equations here. Baltimare out.

MISSION LOG – SOL 251

What I Did on my Summer Vacation, by Mark Watney, age 8.

Wait, sorry, wrong beginning.

What I Did Right After Surviving a Freaky Martian Storm, by Mark Watney, age 41.

Seriously, the last few days have been spent (while waiting for Pathfinder to revive, or not) either undoing what the storm did, or undoing what we did preparing for the storm. There were two big headaches: getting all the scrap and other junk we crammed into Friendship’s engineering compartment back out of it so we can proceed with cutting it off, and getting as much sand and dust as possible out of Potato Shed #2.

But, even with taking four hours out of every sol for a visit back to the cave, we got it done, those things and all the other stuff too. We are ready to truncate (isn’t truncate a fun word? Starlight found it in the thesaurus. I’d forgotten it existed) the pony ship, and we’ll probably do that tomorrow.

Anyway, on today’s trip to the cave, Starlight Glimmer and Fireball went prospecting. According to Starlight, they found the materials in the Hallway for the fifteen extra-large batteries Bruce Ng asked for. That is, big quartz crystals that can be sliced up into shafts thirty centimeters wide and a meter and a half long. Unfortunately there were too many flaws in the shafts that tangle up the cave in that section to get fifteen three-meter lengths. Which is probably for the best, since I don’t think a three meter quartz crystal is going to be all that happy under the vibration of a rocket launch.

“They say that breaking up is hard to do, now I know they’ve never pulled three G’s in a rocket…” Yeah, so I’m not Weird Al. Who is? Besides about a thousand people on the Internet with three fans each, that is.

Anywho, Starlight also says she found a perfect amethyst crystal, twenty centimeters in diameter and almost a meter tall, to make a new Sparkle Drive core.

She takes it for granted, but the biggest amethyst crystals I’ve ever seen were in a geode twelve feet tall and just barely big enough for a person to stand inside, and those weren’t even quite as big as baseballs. I’ve never really been able to make the ponies understand just how unusual this cave is by Earth standards, with its giant quartz crystals and shafts and all. It makes me wonder just how big crystals get in their world.

Memo: if I ever get there, I must ask to see one of these “rock farms” they keep talking about. I bet they grow some smashing pumpkins along their black-eyed peas and red hot chili peppers. (And I know, somewhere, a music historian is groaning that this entry is a bunch of korn.)

Anyway, once we got back Fireball and I worked on trimming hooves and claws. It’s been well over forty sols since Dragonfly’s last round of suit maintenance. We don’t know how much longer she’s going to spend in her cocoon, so we need to be pro-active as possible about preventing excess wear and tear on the irreplaceable suits.

Amazingly, my current suit is holding up very well. It’s my original surface suit (my patched flight suit getting burned up in the perchlorate blowout on Sol 40) with Martinez’s helmet (my surface helmet shattering when the Hab sent Airlock 1 flying on Sol 88). I have put double-digit kilometers, maybe triple-digit, of travel on this suit, especially the boot soles, but they show very few signs of wear despite the environment. For all their bungles with the CO2 filters and the safety-glass visors, I have to admit the contractors built the rest of this suit to take an unholy beating. Unfortunately the pony suits, being more of an Apollo-level construction, aren’t as durable, which is why Dragonfly was patching and re-soleing things not long before her audition for a John Carpenter film.

Speaking of Dragonfly, as I said, she’s still in that cocoon. It doesn’t make a black hole anymore when we turn on the magic field, but it still glows black, kind of. It’s sort of like shining anti-light. It’s the same temperature as everything else in the cave. I tried holding a stethoscope up to it, but I didn’t hear any heartbeat, any breathing, or any voices whispering hastur hastur hastur or anything like that. But the outside is tough, if a bit pliable, and it doesn’t feel like we’re doing any harm when we hug it going and coming.

In one last bit of news, Bilbo and the dwarves have just entered Mirkwood. Gandalf’s stock has gone down considerably with the ponies, who think any responsible wizard would see things through to the end, and if he had business elsewhere he shouldn’t have been meddling with innocent people’s lives in the first place. The temptation to spoil things is great, but I can resist.

Resisting is made easier by Starlight and Cherry reading this over my shoulder and glaring daggers at me. So I think I’ll go to bed before things escalate to homicide, or worse, wedgies.

Author's Note

Got home at 7 PM local time. The above is an hour and a half's work.

BTW, for a bunch of people who might or might not think they're Weird Al, but who produce a lot of material I enjoy, I recommend http://www.thefump.com .

Sol 252

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 255
ARES III SOL 252

“Can we do this today?” Mark asked. “We’re burning EVA time here!”

As much as Spitfire empathized with the human, she couldn’t admit it in front of him. She’d done her mourning for Amicitas months ago. Cherry Berry’s emotional needs got on her nerves, especially when they needed to do this to turn what was left of the ship into a vehicle that would get them off this rock.

But Cherry Berry was the commander, and investing in the commander’s peace of mind meant you lived longer. “You can wait a few minutes,” she said, picking her way through the words like hoops on a flight course.

Satisfied, Cherry Berry placed a hoof on one of the rear landing gear, which now dangled slightly off the ground. “You kept us alive many times,” she said in English, a little awkwardly. “You let us land instead of crash. You held air and heat when the Hab blew. We used you for storage, for radio, for everything you could give.” The pink pony in the orange space suit sniffled, then said, “Thank you. We’re sorry we couldn’t take you home one last time.”

As the commander walked away, Spitfire let out a breath, carefully not asking if that was it.

“That it?” Fireball asked.

Oh, yeah. Count on a dragon for tact.

“Carry on,” Cherry said, turning her back to the ship and walking away

Magic flared, and as soon as Cherry was clear, a unicorn in a white space suit stepped forward, balanced on her hind legs, foreleg in a silly looking karate pose. “HYAH!” Starlight Glimmer shouted, leaping forward in a truly stupid leap that looked only slightly less stupid in the low Martian gravity. Despite the gravity difference she fell well short and had to hop up again, repeating, “HYAH!” before bringing a forehoof up and down in an overhead chop. Her horn flashed as her hoof made contact with the ship, and the thin air popped as the stripped-down wreck of a spaceship split into two uneven halves.

As Starlight landed again, placing her forehooves against one another and bowing, the tail section of Amicitas dropped back onto the rear landing gear, pivoted backwards, and tumbled to the Martian soil with a faint boom.

“Since when do you take Caine the Wanderer as a role model?” Mark asked, a little exasperated.

Starlight dropped back to all fours and said, “Since Gandalf let those stupid dwarves go into the AlwaysFreeForest alone. Foo on wizards. He’s just another Swirling Star. Caine is wise and dignified and honors his word.”

“Yeah, and Caine’s going to risk another attack of magic exhaustion if you don’t stay glued to that battery,” Spitfire grumbled in Equestrian.

“I can handle it,” Starlight bit back. “You’re not the boss of me.”

“Girls! Language! Mark is here!” Cherry’s voice snapped like a whip, sentiment replaced by stern anger.

Grumbling, Starlight walked back to the mana battery for the job of trimming the hull back as close to the bulkhead of the habitat compartment as they dared. Spitfire, for her own part, held her tongue and watched. She’d have her turn after they carried the stupid genius unicorn back into the Hab on the stretcher.

Again.

“Yeeeeah,” Mark said. “No more Kung Fu for you girls. I think we’re going back to Grizzly Adams.”

As much as Spitfire disliked that show- it reminded her of the pony who she’d been expected to replace- she didn’t protest. She liked it better than that stupid Barney Miller… and it didn’t give screwy unicorns ideas…

Speaking of screwy ideas… Spitfire looked at the ship, which… well, it hadn’t looked like itself since the day they crashed, but now that they’d sliced the end of the inner hull off, it suddenly didn’t look like a ship anymore, either. It looked, literally, like something the cat dragged in- half of a thing that had been alive ten minutes before.

Hadn’t Dragonfly always been going on about how this or that was alive in a way, about things having feelings and opinions and stuff? What would she have said about Amicitas now? Had they really killed it? Or was it a hunk of metal, and was Dragonfly just mental?

No. Amicitas is not the metal. The ship is the crew. The ship is the team. While we’re alive, Amicitas lives, until we all get home.

That night Spitfire smuggled a small bit of hull, a fragment shaved away in the trimming process, back into the Hab. She stole the metal file from Fireball and, off in a corner, carefully worked at the edges of the bit of steel, rounding them off, making the scrap safe to carry inside a space suit, inside the suit undergarment, next to the fur.

Amicitas, the machine, would never return to Equestria. But a piece of it would- along with her crew.

That counted, at least well enough to soothe Spitfire’s mind.

All of them- including the spirit of the ship- would make it home.

Author's Note

Sorry. This is all I have today. Just could not think of anything else at this point.

I did spend a bit of time planning out plot points for down the road, though, so that counts for something.

Sol 253

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 256
ARES III SOL 253

Fireball wrapped his arms around the pillar of quartz and tried not to think about irony. Of course this didn’t work, merely ensuring that his mind was flooded with mental images of being flattened under a couple tons of clear crystal.

“We really need to do this?” he asked, eyes glancing at the two circles of blue light humming like spinning saw blades far, far too close to him. “This feels like a bad idea. Like one of my ideas.”

“Quit whining,” Starlight grumbled, concentrating on moving one magic disc a few centimeters, then the other. “Just be ready to take the weight when I make the cuts. If the crystal drops, it could crack and ruin everything. Then we’d have to do this all over again.”

Mark, whose sole purpose was to carry the magic battery Starlight was using for this chore, wisely said nothing.

“That’s what you think,” Fireball grumbled, in a pat English phrase he was coming to love more and more by the day. Of course, what he was thinking was: here lies Fireball; eating quartz kept him alive, lifting quartz killed him.

That, of course, assumed the unicorn didn’t slice him apart just like she’d sliced the ship apart the day before.

“I said, quit whining,” Starlight said, nudging one disc down a hair, then nodding her head.

“Dragons do not whine,” Fireball said firmly. “When we say something, we say it hard.”

“D-plus,” Starlight said, and the discs leaped forward.

Fireball realized that the slab of rock in his hands now needed his active support about three seconds before he realized that Starlight’s flashy cutting spell hadn’t touched him. No time to be relieved, though; the quartz, being smooth as glass- being crystallized glass- tried to slide out down his arms to the dirt. Fireball tried to grip it tighter, his arms wrapping around the tree-trunk thick crystal hard enough for the edges to dig into his scales.

Then magic enveloped the crystal, lifting it out of Fireball’s arms, carefully turning it sideways, and then- very carefully- lowering it to the floor.

With the big rock on the ground, Fireball did let out a sigh of relief, a bit of black smoke coming out with it. “Why didn’t you do that first time?” he asked.

“I’d have to cast two spells at once,” Starlight said. “At home I could do that, no problem. Here, on battery power? Not a good idea.” The violet unicorn walked slowly around the shaft, inspecting this and that. “Looks good,” she said. “No flaws, no cracks, more than big enough. Stand back, please.”

The segment of crystal shaft, cut from the middle of a slab running a bit diagonal of floor-to-ceiling, could have made over a dozen of the core crystals for regular magic batteries by itself. It could even have made four of the three-meter tall magic batteries Mark’s bosses had suggested at one point. However, since it was one of only two shafts both large enough and flaw-free enough to do that, this rock would be used to make eight crystals for the more reasonably proportioned jumbo batteries- thirty centimeters square in cross-section, one hundred fifty centimeters long.

Of course there was waste. Quartz, of its own nature, prefers a hexagonal structure. The batteries were built to nest together as rectangles- cubes, originally, but rectangular prisms now in an attempt to store more power with the materials at hand. Slices of quartz had to be cut off in much the same way a potato might get peeled, anywhere except on a planet where the vital nutrients in a potato peel were too precious to waste. This was done with careful slices by the blue blades, magic clipping away the old six corners to leave only four. The ends, likewise, were trimmed to make all corners square.

Then, once the trimmed slab was removed from the waste, Starlight carefully recalibrated her cutting spell again, and then sliced- one, two, three- cutting the slab into eight perfectly identical sections. A normal battery, like the one in Mark’s hands all the time this went on, massed sixty kilograms. Each of these eight freshly cut sections tipped the scales at three hundred kilograms.

That was the reason Fireball was involved at all- weight. Starlight could only lift heavy things while the battery was within reach; without her magic, she was as weak as any ordinary pony. Mark was a bit stronger, but even in Martian gravity he couldn’t pick up even one of the final segments by himself. Fireball was the only one strong enough to hold up over two and a half tons of rock for long enough for Starlight to switch spells… and, likewise, he was the only one strong enough to carry the crystals, one at a time, out of Tangled Hallway and up to the front of the cave where they could be assembled into batteries.

Fireball didn’t complain. It was what he could do. He wasn’t the technician or engineer or wizard. He held the tools, lifted the heavy loads, and did as he was told. He could do two things reasonably well: fly a rocket, and spacewalk. Since neither skill was helpful in any way on the surface of Mars, he helped out as he could, and although he complained about a lot of things, he never complained about his work.

Except when the work threatened to kill him, that is. He was still a young dragon, and three tons of rock placed just so could still ruin his day.

One by one Fireball hauled the more workable slabs of quartz to the cave entrance, snacking on flakes from the trimmed-off pieces as he did so. He helped Starlight Glimmer slip the battery casing onto the base of each, bent the metal frame according to her instructions so it would hold the base of the crystal.

“You know,” he said, “we could… um… cut… um… not hole, but… ditch? Ditch in crystal. Make frame hold better.”

“Bad idea,” Mark said before Starlight could. “When we launch this whole thing’s going to vibrate like a sonufa… like you wouldn’t believe. There’s a chance the crystal might break just from that. Making a notch for the battery frame would just be giving the break a head start.”

“He’s right,” Starlight said. “We’ll have to build some kind of brace for the upper part of the crystal to keep it from shaking straight to pieces on liftoff. But no more cutting than we’ve already done.” She looked at a whiteboard, which held an intensely complex diagram, shaped like what you might get if a magic circle, a figure 8, and a snowman had done something to annoy Discord.

“Couldn’t we use scrap from your ship to make bigger battery frames?” Mark asked. “We could make them from scratch. They’d be a lot more secure.”

“Maybe,” Starlight said. “If we were at home, sure. But I’m not sure about my skills here. If I messed up rebuilding the terminal-to-array connectors, I’d ruin an old battery and not get a new one. Dragonfly would have been the one to ask for that.” She looked more closely at the diagram and added, “Please be quiet now, I need to concentrate on the new enchantment array.”

“How many are you going to do?” Cherry asked.

“Only four,” Starlight said. “The same number I would have made of the ordinary batteries. Now please let me concentrate, this is really important.”

Mark pulled the last of the six reserved batteries over to the work site and began cabling four of them together. “Fireball, can you get the field projectors? You know…” Mark made buzzing sounds while waving a hand to mimic the rising sparks the thing made.

“I know what the thing is, Mark,” Fireball growled. For the first time in far too long, a tiny flicker of flame escaped his nostril.

“Okay, okay,” Mark said. “Just didn’t know if you knew the words.”

“I know words, Mark.” Fireball growled. For some reason the human really got on his nerves today.

“Fireball, he didn’t mean to insult,” Cherry said. “Let it go.”

“But he keeps doing it!” Spitfire shouted. “He says he’ll stop, but he does it anyway!”

“Hey, come on,” Mark insisted, “that’s not goddamn fair and you know it!”

“Spitfire, you’re not helping!” Cherry said, stepping between the pegasus and the human.

“I don’t care!”

“What the hell do you want from me?”

“Maybe treat us like-“

“HEY!!”

Fireball jumped backwards, losing his balance as his instincts forgot Mars gravity and propelled him much harder than necessary or expected. The flash of light had reminded him all too forcefully of the lightning strikes a few days before.

From the way the others lay scattered around the dirt, the same thing had happened to them.

Except for Starlight, who floated in the air, glowing from the cable of pure magic pouring from the battery which had been sitting next to her. “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU ALL?” she shouted, her voice echoing from the walls of the cave. She pointed a hoof behind her, at the cocoon hanging next to the cave wall, guarded by a little low-slung robot. “NOT IN FRONT OF DRAGONFLY!”

Fireball’s gut tried to curl up on itself. He’d forgotten all about Dragonfly. All he’d had in his head was this… annoyance…

Why had he been so annoyed, anyway?

Starlight settled to the ground again, releasing the magic. The cord that had connected her to the battery vanished. “All of you,” she said, “email Dr. Shields tonight. Now go apologize to Dragonfly.”

Fireball was last to hug the cocoon and rumble, “I’m sorry,” but only because he’d been farthest from the cocoon at the start.

The new batteries were made, and the magic field allowed to run until the batteries ran out, in almost complete silence. Nobody looked at anyone else if they could help it. And, after another round of hugs and apologies to Dragonfly, they departed in silence.

Halfway back to the Hab, Mark broke the silence. “Why are we getting on each other’s nerves all of a sudden?” he asked. “I feel like I can’t say anything without setting someone off.”

“Nerves,” Spitfire said. “We had close call. On edge. Tense. Not better yet. Seen it after monster fights sometimes.”

“All of us,” Starlight said firmly, “need to talk to Dr. Shields.”

“Never needed a shrink in the old space race,” Cherry grumbled.

Fireball bit his tongue to keep himself from delivering the obvious comeback to that. Anyone familiar with the old space race- not just the changeling program, but all the space programs that everyone and his cousin started up- knew everyone involved needed a psychiatrist, or maybe two.

But right now wasn’t the time to mention it.

But there was one important question.

“Starlight… this email,” Fireball said. “Is it gonna be graded?”

“Ask Dr. Shields.”

And on that note, the silence returned to stay.

Author's Note

Well, that ended up going a little gloomy. I just typed and let things go where they would.

But yeah, it might be nerves... or something else.

Sol 256

“Irene,” Venkat asked, “what is going on with my astronauts?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Dr. Irene Shields said, slipping into a chair in Venkat’s office. “Hermes or Mars?”

“Mars. The Hermes crew appears to be fine for now.”

“Well,” Dr. Shields said, ticking off points on her fingers, “they’re stranded on a planet hostile to all forms of life. They’re eating a diet so monotonous a lot of people would give up and starve themselves to death rather than continue it. Their life support infrastructure has failed in one way or another on multiple occasions. One of their number is effectively comatose and might die. Their nerves are shot, they’re heartsick, they’re homesick, they’re miserable, they’re taking it out on each other… oh,” she said, holding up the thumb on her left hand, the last finger she had remaining. “And some bright boy decided, while the crew was having a catastrophic social breakdown, to order them to do the single most mind-numbing chore imaginable short of inspecting Hab canvas for weak spots.”

“Well,” Venkat shrugged, “at least it united them again. They all bitched me out and then went on strike.”

“Venkat, I’ve spent the last two days using the Pathfinder connection to play email ping-pong with all of them,” Dr. Shields said. “They’re not united. They’re as far from united as they can get. And they don’t understand why.”

“Can you at least give me some pointers?” Venkat asked.

“Well, part of it is that the alien crew was more or less thrown together,” Dr. Shields said. “You read the reports, you know that. It was going to be a short, simple mission. Half the crew were veterans from the first days of their world’s space flight. So their bosses put them together more based on politics than crew dynamics, and in the process they pretty much ignored long-term personality compatibility.”

“I remember all this from your earlier reports, yes,” Venkat said. “But that was months and months ago. They pulled together as a team since. Why did it fall apart like this?”

“Two reasons,” Dr. Shields said. “First, they lost the bug. I can send you the raw emails, but to sum it up, Dragonfly was actively working to hold the crew together. So was Mark, but he’s not trained for it. He does it naturally, when he has the mental energy. Dragonfly, by contrast, was literally born and bred to be an emotional manipulator. The others knew this, and knew they were being manipulated, but she made it work anyway.

“But when Dragonfly collapsed, that left Mark alone to smooth over the rough edges. He’s not trained. He gets along very well with people. He’s friendly to a fault. But he doesn’t manipulate. He doesn’t counsel. And when he hits confrontation or anger or hostility, he pretty much shuts down.

“Which leads into the second part- they’re all tired, Venkat. They’re mentally and emotionally exhausted. They’re lashing out at each other for no apparent reason, and my guess is it’s because they’re too tired for normal socialization. They have full work days between farming, caring for Dragonfly’s cocoon, working on the Whinnybago project, and generally staying alive. They’ve had one close brush with death after another in close succession and they haven’t been given any down time.”

“Their EVA time averages about six hours,” Venkat began.

“Don’t measure it in hours, dammit,” Dr. Shields said. “They need days, not minutes. They need some time to feel a little safe again. And that means not worrying about the MAV or Schiaparelli or the next Martian disaster.”

Venkat opened his mouth to deliver another defense of the current schedule, then shut it again. “How bad is it really?” he asked.

“All of them are exhibiting signs of mental and emotional exhaustion,” Dr. Shields said. “Mark’s too tired and upset to even snark anymore. That alone should tell you it’s serious. He says he feels like he’s shutting himself off from the aliens, which means he probably is. In fact, the past two days he says he just doesn’t feel like doing anything, like someone’s tied weights to his body. That’s clinical depression, and if there was one member of the Ares III crew I would have certified as immune to depression, it would have been Watney. So I’m worried about him the most right now.

“Fireball writes like a teenager, right down to the bad English. He says everyone hates him, and he hates everyone, but that’s fine because he’s pretty much useless anyway. He feels the guiltiest about being mad at the others.

“Spitfire says she has two modes now- pure rage and indifference. She diagnoses the problem well enough, again allowing for bad English. She compares it to soldiers who have just come through a bad battle, which is a fair way of describing living on Mars long-term. But she has no useful ideas for coping with it, since back home the cure was R&R as far away from the sources of stress as possible.

“Starlight thinks the others are looking for reasons to be mad at each other, and it makes her mad. She has this notion that if the others just tried hard and focused on their work, they wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves. She’s not seeing them as people right now, and that’s a bad sign. In her current mental state she’s going to be toxic to the others.

“And Cherry Berry sees all of it going on and feels like she’s the only one trying to hold things together. The general breakdown three days ago revived her feelings that she’s not qualified for command. She sees this as her failure, and she keeps asking me to tell her how she can fix it all.

“The one thing they all have in common are symptoms of exhaustion- inability to concentrate, lack of energy, lack of willpower. In their condition, the last thing they needed was a request from JPL to go back and re-do the full inventory of all spare parts and scrap metal down to the fasteners in the trimmed-off portions of the alien ship.”

“They’re going to have to do it eventually,” Venkat said. “JPL needs that information for the MAV modification sims.”

“Now is not the time. They need a few sols to rest- no duties aside from their daily cave trip. Ideally they need a break from each other, but that’s not possible. Keep the email channels open- I can continue to counsel them until they’re ready to deal with each other again. But aside from that, let them alone, Venkat. They’re not far from something really bad if you keep pushing them.”

Venkat considered this. “In about two months we go into solar blackout,” he said. “Three weeks with no communication with Mars, maybe more depending on solar activity. Data transfer to and from Pathfinder is pretty ratty already. We don’t know how much guidance they’ll need on the conversion protocols. And then there’s the question of what Mars will throw at them next.”

“Venkat, if you push them any more there’s a chance they’ll just roll over and die,” Dr. Shields insisted. “It’s time to let them set the pace. And don’t make any requests for a few days. I’ll work on getting the band back together.”

“I’ll try,” Venkat said. “I can’t make any promises, though.”

“You’re director of Mars operations,” Dr. Shields said, standing. “You report directly to Teddy Sanders. I think you can find the authority somewhere to make at least one or two small promises.”

Venkat watched the Project Ares psychologist depart. Then, after a few moments of thought, he picked up the phone. “Annie?” he said as soon as the line picked up. “Strip today’s Pathfinder logs out of the press releases. All of it. File it under ‘personal matters.’ It’s not as amusing as I thought it was…”

Author's Note

One show after another wears me out.

I may go back and fill in the sols I skipped with the email chains to Irene. This is telling and not showing, a cardinal writing sin. But, again, this is all I could think of to write just now.

Tomorrow it's on the road to Wichita for Wichicon, the geeky part of Riverfest in Wichita, Kansas.

Sol 257

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 260
ARES III SOL 257

Dear Dr. Shields,

I spent the morning finishing the removal of all the salvageable equipment from the interior of Rover 1. All that’s left is the computer, the radio system, the O2 and N2 tanks, and an air fan. I yanked the rest of the life support because it’ll be needed, at least in part, to connect the Sirius tandem rover life support systems together. Tomorrow Starlight will help me depressurize the rover interior and then remove the cabin from the chassis.

It’s a good thing Starlight’s the one I need to do this, because Spitfire and Fireball practically aren’t speaking to me. Cherry is, but she’s too busy trying to put the team back together to hear what any of us are saying back to her.

And me? Well, I’m a bit sad, not to mention frustrated. I still don’t feel like I’ve done anything to deserve the anger I’m feeling from everyone. I’ve backed off so far that I’m not even talking to the others when we drive out to the cave. The most meaningful conversation I’ve had with anyone in the past two days has been conducted through the walls of a cocoon.

Working inside the rover today was the first real pleasure I’ve had from doing anything in days, possibly weeks. And I don’t think that’s a good sign, because I was absolutely alone inside Rover 1 for pretty much all of it.

In response to what you said last email, I think “family time” is a terrible idea. The problem isn’t that we don’t know what pisses us off about the others. It’s that something is bringing it all to the surface right now. I don’t see a family time session as doing anything other than encouraging that anger, egging us on to say more hurtful things for the sake of being hurtful.

Not that I have any better ideas, but that one isn’t a winner. I hope you didn’t suggest it to any of the others.

Couldn’t eat much today. Finding it very difficult to do anything anywhere near the others. No appetite. Ironically, part of the problem is, I’m worrying about whether the others are eating, but I don’t dare ask, not with things as they are.

I need a distraction. Got any ideas?

Mark

Dear Dr. Shields,

What you say is not wrong but not whole. I have value at home. I have value in space. But on Mars I am no good. I have dumb ideas. I can’t eat others’ food. And now I can’t talk to Mark or ponies without get mad for no good reason.

I think partly is I am dragon. Dragons do not get along with others. Dragons do not get along with even other dragons. We are not nice.

But it was never this bad before. I don’t know why. I can’t understand it.

You are right that I should say sorry. But I am afraid to say sorry. I am afraid I will mess it up and get mad and get others mad. I think they mad at me anyway and they should be. I started this. I should not have blow up at Mark. I still don’t know why I did.

Right now I wish Dragonfly make a second cocoon. She is only one I can talk to anymore.

Fireball.

Dear Dr. Shields,

I think you right team need down time. But I think team also need together time. If team not get over bad time together, they not be team after.

I think you right I should apolthing to Mark. I still think he talk down to us, but now he not talk at all. He scared of us. That not what I want. And now I think he not hear me if I say sorry. Sorry not help any more.

Some time I get too look at self, not enough look at others, I don’t know English word for that. It is worst part of me as leader. It get me in trouble times. I think now it get all us in trouble. I help break team. If I shut up, Fireball would say sorry and this all be over. Now no one can say nothing.

Is good thing I not lead now. Cherry at least try keep us working team. I not know where to start.

Is good thing too all we drink is water. As is, feel like eat lots salt.

Told Dragonfly to get out here today. We need her.

Spitfire

Dear Dr. Shields,

I know my fellow crew members are people just like me. That’s exactly the problem! I’m working through my fears and anxieties. I’m not biting off their heads every time I say more than two syllables. Why can’t they? I keep having to remind myself that it’s wrong to use magic to make people behave, because it’s so bucking tempting!

At least Cherry is still trying- I give her that. But mostly what she’s doing is begging. Everyone’s too ashamed to even answer her (me included) when she asks why we can’t get along. What she’s doing isn’t working, and it’s obvious to everybody. As for the others, Mark’s given up, Fireball and Spitfire want to stay angry, and the only time anyone listens to me is when I’m reading from that hobbit book!

I really miss Dragonfly right now. She had blind spots, and she was as selfish as you’d expect a changeling to be, but she knew how to get ponies to do what she wanted- without magic. (At least, I assume without magic. I never saw her light up her horn when she was schmoozing any of us. But maybe that’s a changeling trick they can do without casting a spell… I need to ask Twilight Sparkle about that.)

Can’t you do something to get these people off their dignity and back to work? I am sick and tired of being the only functional pony around here!

Starlight Glimmer

Dear Dr. Shields,

I am out of ideas. I can’t get any of the others to answer me. They all obey orders, all but one: they won’t get along.

This is not what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to fly. I never wanted to live forever in space, or on another planet. I wanted to fly blimps, planes, balloons, choppers, rockets. Not “command” them, fly them. Not cut them apart to turn into cars, FLY them. And I never, never, never, never wanted to boss other ponies. Never.

Now we are broken into two sides. Mark and Starlight talk, a bit. Fireball and Spitfire talk, a bit. And both sides listen to me, a bit, but not enough. I can’t get everyone together at once.

The only one who listens anymore is Dragonfly. She can’t turn her eyes away. I miss her terribly. I miss laughing at silly bug. I miss feeling good about adventure bug. I miss someone who always obey, always support, always listen.

Please tell me what I can do to get it back.

Cherry Berry

Doctor’s notes:

Mark is engaging in displacement and avoidance behaviors consistent with his known tendency to avoid confrontation. He also has not yet given up on his belief that the aliens are somehow under his guardianship, which may be subconsciously affecting his treatment of them and exacerbating the symptoms of their emotional exhaustion.

Fireball talks and writes like a teenager. His self-esteem issues are front and center in his latest email. There needs to be a program to find ways to make him feel more valuable to the team.

Spitfire is too fond of her armchair psychology to listen to more professional opinions. That said, her admission of partial guilt is a positive step. True understanding of how to maintain a healthy team dynamic might be within her grasp.

Starlight Glimmer is digging into her bad place. She’s gone defensive. A different counseling approach is required to reach her now. Must think about this overnight.

Cherry Berry refuses to be forceful about enforcing morale remedies. Lewis would not have this problem. Must ask, if a chance arises after all this is over, if ponies have a submarine fleet. In the meantime, need to find ways to suggest confidence building exercises.

The latest round of emails have two shared themes: self-blame for the current state of affairs in the Hab so deep that it has become an obstacle to healing, and an intense knowledge of the missing crew member in their lives.

Solution #1: shift counseling from individual to group and promote exercises that remove the stigma of individual guilt.

Solution #2: Administrators need to contact alien space program leaders again for advice. Absolute top priority must now be given to persuading Dragonfly to come out of that cocoon. She is clearly mission-critical to crew morale in addition to her other functions. The longer this is delayed, the more all other schedule items will slip.

#2 requires a brief chat with Kapoor. #1 is this doctor’s job, and it looks like an all-nighter…

Author's Note

Grr. Traffic and errands cost me nearly two hours on the road. I just barely had energy to write this before hitting the sack.

I have to be up in about seven hours, since there's no night-before setup at this event. If I'd known the scope of Riverfest in comparison to the convention, I wouldn't have booked it. I've done an event held during a local civic festival once before, and it bombed hard. This looks to be as bad if not worse due to the inconvenience.

Wisdom comes a bit late, though. And anyway, I might be wrong.

Sol 258

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 261
ARES III SOL 258

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Need Twilight Sparkle and Queen Chrysalis at once. Mark’s people request direct communication. Long message to follow, over.

ESA: TS on site. QC in Horseton and will be on site in two hours. Proceed with message, over.

AMICITAS: Message begins. We need to consult with you about a serious issue of crew morale. Recent close calls with disaster have left the Mars survivors on edge and at one another’s throats. They report symptoms of depression, unfocused anger, and a general inability to get along with one another. The one crew activity they still undertake together is daily work at the cave farm to supply magic and love to Dragonfly’s cocoon. End paragraph.

AMICITAS: It is our opinion that the core of the problem is personality conflict made worse by mental exhaustion. These conflicts were formerly smoothed over by Dragonfly, whose presence is missed by all members of the crew. We therefore request that the revival of Dragonfly be made the top priority in the hopes that morale will improve. Message ends. Over.

ESA: TS – QC already said changelings in cocoons of that kind can’t be forced out without great danger. Over.

AMICITAS: It will be some time before Mark’s people answer. It takes about an hour to get a response to any message sent. We are translating and retransmitting this entire exchange for their benefit to help make things easier. Over.

ESA: TS – we really don’t know how to get her out. We don’t even know if it’s safe for her to be out, over.

AMICITAS: SG – I want to add we’re embarrassed and ashamed our friendship problems have grown so bad that Mark’s people demanded this. We should all be better than this, over.

ESA: TS – You’re going through very hard times. Friends understand these things. Stand by for Chrysalis, over.

AMICITAS: Standing by, over.

ESA: QC – Let me get this straight. Unfocused anger means angry with each other for no good reason? Over.

AMICITAS: Affirmative, over.

ESA: Depressed means don’t want to do things, or sad? Over.

AMICITAS: Both. Over.

ESA: And you all go together to visit Dragonfly every day? For how long? Over.

AMICITAS: Cave chores and magic field projection takes between one and two hours, not counting travel time, over.

ESA: QC – Understood. Stand by for procedure to revive Dragonfly. Over.

AMICITAS: Just received new message from Mark’s people. Disappointed in news that Dragonfly can’t be revived. Is there anything we can do to speed up her reviving on her own? Standing by, over.

ESA: QC- Procedure for reviving Dragonfly. Take one stick. Apply vigorously to side of cocoon while shouting the following chant: wake up you lazy drone, quit draining people in your sleep, don’t you know larvae are starving in Mareitania? Repeat as needed until desired results are achieved. Over.

AMICITAS: Please confirm Dragonfly draining emotion while she sleeps, over?

ESA: QC- That is what I said. What do you intend to do about it? Answer required. Over.

AMICITAS: Mark just got back from solo cave run. Vote is unanimous: find a stick. Over.

ESA: QC: Okay, don’t do that. If Dragonfly really was draining you in her sleep you would either have denied the possibility or got angry about the stick thing. Please do not beat my subject with a stick more than maybe once or twice, over.

AMICITAS: Once or twice, over?

ESA: QC – I want her back in one piece with all the brains she had when she left. But she deserves a poke. Lazy bug should be out by now.

AMICITAS: SG- But if Dragonfly isn’t the cause, what is? Over.

ESA: QC: Cabin fever. Nerves. Personality conflicts. Maybe Dragonfly a little bit- can’t blame a bug for snacking. In your case, I’m guessing that you’re all angry at the situation and taking it out on each other even if you don’t want to.

AMICITAS: Then what do we do about it? We can’t exactly leave the cabin, but we can’t live like this either.

ESA: QC – Negative emotions breed negative emotions. Positive emotions breed positive ones. Do new things together that you all enjoy. Over.

AMICITAS: Any suggestions? Over.

ESA: QC – what do I look like, a shrink? TS - I think you should begin by remembering you are friends. Friends sometimes get mad at one another, but true friends learn to forgive. Over.

AMICITAS: SF – I still vote for stick.

AMICITAS: SG – We will try to follow your advice. Please stand by for further messages from Mark’s people. Over.

ESA: Standing by, over.

AMICITAS: Message begins: We hadn’t considered the possibility of Dragonfly influencing emotions while asleep. Good to know this doesn’t seem to be a major problem. But we still need advice on how to revive her. Paragraph ends.

AMICITAS: As for crew activities, our psychologist has some ideas on that front which we can implement. Why does your program not have crew psychologists? Message ends, over.

ESA: QC – We don’t have psychologists because they would have at least half of us committed in a week. As for Dragonfly, the last report we have was of a magic drain powerful enough to create un-light. Current condition, over?

AMICITAS: Still true, though the cocoon merely looks dimly lit and not lost to vision, over.

ESA: QC – So long as you see a difference between her and everything else, she’s too sick to come out. Get her more magic, I don’t care how. TS – I do care how, be careful.

AMICITAS: Roger. Do you have any further information, or any questions for Mark’s people? Over.

ESA: Provided beacon signal is being broadcast as requested, no message. Starlight, let us know before your next big spell so we can try to refine our trace. Baltimare out.

Author's Note

I postponed what I was going to write about in favor of a direct response to last chapter's reader comments. Unfortunately I was uncomfortable at the con and then tired when I got away, so this is all I could do.

Expect a chapter mid-afternoon tomorrow. I'm going to try to get home all on one shot tomorrow night through early morning. This show just isn't paying enough for a Sunday night hotel room.

Sol 259

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 262
ARES III SOL 259

Standing outdoors on Mars without a spacesuit helmet on is almost instant suicide, if you don’t have a magical unicorn with you.

The five of them stood together, more tightly together than they’d stood outside the rover for many days now, just outside the cave farm’s airlock. A small tank of compressed oxygen plus a battery-powered force field prevented them all from dying a short but excruciatingly painful death as they removed their helmets.

“I still think this is stupid,” Fireball said.

Spitfire ignored him, taking off her own helmet. Stupid it might be, but it was close enough to a tried and true tool of teambuilding that she was more than willing to try it. And they’d spent an hour discussing the best way to do it, before committing to this particular method.

The email from Dr. Shields- the last message before Dr. Kapoor ordered email and chat shut down for several days for a long data transmission- had referred to it as a generally discredited therapy from over forty years before, which had attained fad status and then just as quickly died out in favor of more effective means. Their case, Shields had said, was one of the rare cases in which it might actually be effective.

Primitive scream therapy, is how Starlight Glimmer had translated the name.

“I can keep this up for about ten minutes,” Starlight said. “Cherry, that means one language only, okay?”

Cherry snorted, then stepped forward to the edge of the force field. She took a deep breath.

Spitfire, flinching ahead of time, put her forehooves over her ears.

“BUCK YOU, YOU MOTHERBUCKING ROADAPPLE SOUFFLE!”

Primitive Scream Therapy was supposed to be wordless shouting and roaring, but most of the castaways had words for Mars. Cherry had chosen to speak them in her native tongue, which made up for its relative lack of truly obscene words with a host of rhyming slang and euphemisms.

“WE’RE FIT TO HURL WITH YOUR COWCHIPS, YOU MOTHERLESS FOAL OF A DIAMOND-DOG! I CAN’T WAIT TO SCRAPE YOUR TARTARUS-BEDAMNED MEADOW-MUFFINS OFF MY SHOES! AND I’D DARN WELL CUT OFF MY LEFT TEAT FOR A CHANCE, JUST ONE BUCKING CHANCE, TO KICK YOU IN THE PONY-FRUIT! IF YOU HAD ANY, YOU HEAD-BUCKED FLANK-KISSING CARROT-SUCKING SON OF A SNAKE!”

The echoes faded almost instantly. Outside the force field, Mars’s thin air sucked up sound and killed it.

“Not bad,” Fireball said in English. “But now I show you.”

Fully grown dragons are as large as mid-size passenger planes. When they roar, birds fall from the sky mid-flight, stunned by the sheer impact of sound.

Fireball had a century or more before he could expect to reach that stature, but his single, wordless roar, accompanied by the largest burst of flame he’d had in months, would have been quite respectable even in the company of his elders…

… had it not ended in a choking fit as the flame ran out mid-roar, leaving black choking smoke instead.

While the others were coughing and waiting for the pony EVA life support to clear the smoke from the air bubble, Spitfire decided to take her turn. She couldn’t compete with a dragon roar- no pony could, not even Bulk Biceps, who had taken vocal lessons from a couple of dragons.

But that wasn’t what the exercise was about, was it? It was about taking all your frustration, all your anger and grief and fear, and throwing it at the disembodied world, rather than at your friends. Spitfire’s wordless shout, half-growl, half-bellow, did that just fine.

Then it was Mark’s turn. He accomplished as much as Cherry’s rant with a single cry of, “FUCK!!!” Remarkably, the echo of that one word lingered a little longer than Fireball’s roar.

And, finally, came Starlight, who had been waiting, listening, and concentrating, standing behind the others the whole while. Now they looked at her, at the dark green glow around her eyes, at the heat-haze rising from her body.

There was a sudden grab for helmets and a scramble for the outer edges of the air bubble.

The shout came out slowly, building from a soft beginning to a literally earth-shaking roar amplified by the canned magic flowing through Starlight Glimmer’s body. Clusters of dark purple and black crystals erupted from the hillside in a rough cone extending forward from Starlight’s body, ripping downslope for over a hundred meters.

And then the glow faded, and Starlight’s normal voice said, “I feel better now. Help me on with my helmet, please?” After a moment, when Mark reached for one of the little crystals called forth from the Martian soil, she warned, “Oh, and don’t touch those. It could be really bad.”

And the echoes lingered.

Some say, long after the fact, they linger yet.

Back inside the cave, the crew gathered around Dragonfly’s cocoon and listened to Mark read from The Hobbit of Bilbo’s conversation with Smaug.

“I know some dragons like this,” Fireball muttered. “Old fatheads. Love sound of voice. When I was your age blah blah blah.”

Mark, setting the computer down for a moment, asked, “You think Smaug’s an old fogey? ‘Get off my lawn you damn kids’ and like that?”

“Kinda,” Fireball said. “Must be old and sick if his scales fall out. No dragon have bare skin ever.”

“Yeah,” Spitfire agreed. “Take it from a pony who knows. Dragons don’t have soft spots.”

“Dern right,” Fireball nodded, his English taking on a Southern- or more accurately a Hazzard County- accent.

“What do you think of Bilbo?” Mark asked.

“I think Bilbo is toast without ring,” Fireball rumbled. “Angry dragons don’t do chit-chat. Should have run.”

“But if Bilbo ran, he wouldn’t get the information the dwarves needed to kill Smaug,” Starlight Glimmer said. “That’s the whole point of this trip, isn’t it?”

“Am I the only one,” Cherry Berry asked, “who thinks the dwarves have been pretty useless all this time? If Gandalf isn’t saving them, Bilbo is. Is Bilbo going to be the one who saves them?”

Mark grinned. “There have been a couple different movies made of this book. The first one had a line at the end of this bit, not in the book. The dwarves congratulate Bilbo on living, and he says, ‘Thank you, but I would greatly prefer a more practical response- in other words, EXTINGUISH ME!!’”

Everyone laughed, even Spitfire, who’d had squadron mates shout the exact same thing in distinctly non-funny circumstances.

It felt good, very good, to be a team again.

Author's Note

This, more or less, was what I planned to write yesterday.

Sol 261

MISSION LOG – SOL 261

The Pathfinder chat is still down. Bandwidth has dwindled down to a truly pathetic 400 bits per second. That’s not bytes, that’s BITS. Put it another way, Pathfinder is transferring one kilobyte every twenty-one seconds. So whatever NASA is sending for download twelve hours each day doesn’t have to be very big to tie up everything for days.

I assume it’s important, though. NASA wouldn’t tie up our main communications system for days on end just to send me a kitten video. (Though to be honest, I could use some kitten vids from the Internet right now, and I’m sure the ponies would just eat them up.)

(That last parenthetical might have triggered a strange mental image. It certainly did in me when I re-read it. However, I am certain that four out of five of the current Hab residents do not see cats as food. Given that, I’m reluctant to mention the existence of millions of crowd-sourced baby cat videos to Fireball. He might think it was sort of like people taking pictures of their lunch or something.)

Anyway, we’re still talking to one another again, and progress has resumed on the Whinnybago. We’re all the way up to IV-D (having skipped over I because it’s duplicate work and because we weren’t in any mood for sorting out nuts and bolts by size or watching paint dry). Rover 1’s pressure vessel is now sitting by the Hab.

Tomorrow I use a bit of wiring harness from it to wire Rover 1’s remaining systems directly into the Hab power grid so we can power its computers back up as quickly as possible and get use of Rover 2 back. (Remember, one of the rovers has to be near the Hab at all times for Pathfinder to talk to, because Pathfinder can’t communicate with the Hab directly.)

The black crystal I pulled from the dirt in front of the cave farm yesterday crumbled to dust overnight. Starlight tells me there wasn’t enough environmental magic for them to feed off of, and by tomorrow even the dust will have evaporated. Of course, she told me this after chewing me out, because… well…

Terry Gilliam, the Monty Python animator guy, made a lot of arty films after the Python years. My favorite remains Baron Munchausen because it has Robin Williams in an uncredited role, but I’ve seen them all, including the one that let Gilliam write his ticket as a director- Time Bandits. And Time Bandits ends with this lump of burnt gunk they call “concentrated evil” somehow going from being in the Supreme Being’s throne room to being in a toaster oven. The main character’s parents poke it and explode, and that’s how the movie ends.

It’s a trippy movie, but if you see Gilliam’s name as director you should take that for granted, be it good trip (Munchausen), bad trip (Brazil), or back and forth (Time Bandits). But I bring it up for a reason: the ugly crystals are, according to Starlight, concentrated evil.

Now, obviously I didn’t explode, though I was wearing a space suit at the time and never directly touched the stuff. But those crystals are a sort of symptom of dark magic, and dark magic is apparently very serious business in ponyland.

Dark magic feeds on evil desires- anger, fear, greed, the usual. It’s a lot cheaper on mana in the short term, which makes it really easy to cast once you learn how. Does familiar it sound, hmm? The thing is, dark magic makes up the difference by devouring the user. Once you get started, it’s really, really difficult to stop, especially since the more you use, the less you want to stop.

And to make things better, dark magic has a mind of its own. It wants to get cast. It wants to take over. It tempts and whispers, Starlight says, so that even the best ponies can be tempted to try to use it for noble ends.

It’s going to be really interesting to see Starlight’s reaction to the third chapter or so of Fellowship of the Ring in a week or so.

Anyway, the crystals. They’re kind of, I dunno, kind of like shock quartz, or possibly trinitite. They’re a by-product of dark magic- or any magic which is soaked in negative emotions. You cast dark magic, and somewhere or other those crystals are likely to show up. Normally, when you see them, it is time to run and fetch a powerful good wizard to get rid of the stuff (and the bad wizard who made it).

Problem: Starlight is the only wizard we have, and by her own admission, she’s not so much a good wizard as an ex-bad wizard on one hell of a work-release program.

(Thought: imagine Voldemort, or better yet Sauron, on probation, helping fix up little old ladies’ homes. ‘Too cold, Mrs. Maitland? Here, let me open up a volcanic vent in your basement! Save hundreds on heater oil! And don’t worry about the mice, my colleague Mr. Riddle will take care of those. Just, well, keep your eyes shut for a bit, because his pet is… shy, yeah, that’s the ticket.’)

Starlight’s embarrassed and uncomfortable for having spouted enough rage-magic to make those crystals appear, and she’s worried that they might twist any magic cast nearby to make more dark magic. They can also dampen positive emotions and amplify negative ones- a trick some really bad pony once used to enslave an entire kingdom once upon a time.

I’m explaining this badly, I know, but I only kind of half understand what Starlight was trying to tell me. Bottom line, she said don’t mess with them again, they’re dangerous.

So of course I was going to get another, because NASA will read this log and want to know why I didn’t do a geology work-up on the stuff. But I didn’t go to the cave today, because Rover 2 had to stay here until Rover 1 is repurposed as the radio shack. And when Cherry and Spitfire got back, they said all the crystals on the hillside had crumbled too.

So sorry, NASA, but I missed my chance to do science to magic plutonium. I’m sure you’re horribly disappointed in me, but I can only plead extenuating circumstances, namely that… that… um…

Dear Mr. Kotter, please excuse Mark from analyzing evil magic rocks. He is allergic. Signed, Epstein’s Mother.

Author's Note

Today was supposed to be a day of rest. I did a good bit of work regardless. Unfortunately, this wasn't part of that work...

A-Kon is this weekend- my biggest show of the year, and I've taken most of the money from the last few shows to stock up heavy on merch. I just hope the really big order gets where it's supposed to go in time...

Sol 266

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 269
ARES III SOL 266

The crew stepped into Airlock 3, suits sealed, ready for a trip to the cave followed by a momentous day of work. Over the previous two afternoons they’d carefully gone over the top of the Rover 1 chassis and then the underside of Amicitas, removing all but a handful of the brackets and hardware. They’d then dug a pit deep enough to allow Mark to crawl under Rover 1, so that the fasteners could be reinstalled.

Today the step in between would take place- the placing of Amicitas, or what was left of it, on top of Rover 1, or what was left of it. All it would take was three fresh mana batteries, one skilled unicorn, and a couple of bipeds who could nudge the hull into place while the unicorn took away most of the weight and inertia. Then, with the ship placed, Mark could go to work with the wrench, and by the end of Sol 267 at latest, the final connections would be made, and the Whinnybago trailer would be ready to hitch and connect to the power and life support of Rover 2.

Of course, this was only the beginning. The life support modifications inside Amicitas hadn’t been completed- only the installation of the connection points into the bulkhead of what had been the habitat section. Once the life support was fully installed, most of the Hab’s solar farm would begin migrating from its place north of the Hab to hard mounts on top of Amicitas. And then there would be the rebuilding of the internal power systems, a third round of gutting the interior to eliminate weight, and other issues. And then, once all that was done, they would begin modifying Rover 2.

In short, weeks of work remained in the future… but today marked a change, the day when Amicitas completed its transition from dead ship to live caravan. As such, the crew had a bit of extra energy this day. And as they discussed the death of Thorin and the nature of war, they each thought of their parts in the day’s work ahead.

Cherry Berry, last one out of the Hab, closed the airlock door behind her and keyed in the command to begin depressurizing the airlock. “But why didn’t Thorin just make peace in the first place?” she asked. “If friends are more important than gold when he’s dying, aren’t they more important when he’s alive, too?”

“One of the themes of the book is greed and generosity,” Mark said. “All the bad guys are selfish in one way or another. Thorin got greedy, and he suffered the consequences.”

“That’s kind of simplistic,” Starlight Glimmer said. “Thorin didn’t die because of greed, he died because he plowed into the middle of an army of goblins with only twelve other dwarves.”

“At least they were finally good for something,” Fireball rumbled. “Ten lived. Good fighters against so many.”

“But Beorn,” Spitfire said, not bothering with English. “To the rescue at the last second? Really? Nobody does that in real life but Rainbow-“

The air in the airlock was already pretty thin, as the pumps pushed it back into the Hab, but it could still carry sound. The soft pop caught everyone’s attention, followed by a shrill phweeeeeeeee. Instantly everyone looked down at their suits, checking to see which of them had just failed.

“Oh, buck.” Starlight Glimmer’s voice shook as she added in English, “My suit life support just scrammed.”

Mark lunged over the ponies to the inner door controls, slamming the emergency override button, then keying in the repressurization code. “Stay calm,” he said. “Don’t move. Where’s the hole?”

“In the patch,” Starlight said. “Upper arm.” As Mark looked, he saw flecks of hard black gunk, the impromptu patch spat on the suit by Dragonfly almost half a year before, cracking apart and falling to the airlock floor.

“O… kay. Yeah, this is bad,” Mark said. “But it happened here in the airlock before full depress, and not out on the surface. We can work around this.”

In another minute the airlock finished repressurizing, and the crew returned to the Hab interior, shedding space suits as soon as they stepped through the airlock door. Spitfire and Cherry Berry escorted Starlight to a bunk, while Mark examined her suit. The dried changeling goo, which had always been hard and stiff, had become brittle. Each time he touched the patch, more flaked off. Underneath ran the old tear caused by the Hab breach, each of the space suit’s five layers exposed in a ragged rip about five inches long.

“So?” Fireball asked. “Can you fix it?”

“Maybe,” Mark said. He took a moment to examine the layers. There was something like rubber in the middle- more bug-pony gunk, he remembered being told at one time. There was also a thin layer of something metallic looking, a broader wire mesh, and thick canvas inside and out. “I could use some of the pop-tent Hab canvas and some resin, slap a patch on this- inside and out, to protect Starlight and the rip both. But that rip would work its way longer the more she used the suit, until it breached the patch. It’s not something I want to risk.”

“No suit, no EVA,” Fireball rumbled.

“I know,” Mark said. “Weren’t you the EVA expert? What do you know about repairing space suits?”

“That you don’t,” Fireball said flatly. “Suit breach is mission scrubbed. You come back home right now if suit even look like it might breach. Inspect before every EVA.”

Mark blinked. “I haven’t seen you inspecting any suits for…” He couldn’t think of how long it had been since he’d seen anyone besides Dragonfly giving the pony space suits a thorough looking-over.

Fireball shook his head. “All our suits fail inspection,” he said. “All our suits. What we supposed to do about it?”

What indeed? “Well,” Mark said, “this day came sooner than I expected, but I guess it’s time to see how it works.”

“How what works?”

Mark ignored Fireball’s question, leaving Starlight’s suit on a worktable and walking over to the bunk where Starlight sat, human-style, using her forelegs to keep herself sitting up on the edge of the bunk. “Are you up for another EVA?” he asked.

“Um, sure,” Starlight said. “I just had a little scare.” She shuddered and added, “Okay, a really big scare. But I guess you’d know, right?” Her eyes rolled a little, not a human eyeroll but the facial tic of an equine dealing with overwhelming fear. “Know how it feels to feel air rushing across your skin to the breach, to feel the suit sagging on your skin, to hear the alarms and know you’re totally bucked.”

“Um… no,” Mark said weakly. “The antenna that punctured my suit also impaled me and knocked me off my feet. Between the impact and sudden loss of pressure, I passed out almost instantly. I don’t really remember it. I just remember waking up when my suit was up over ninety percent oxygen from blood-letting- that is, releasing bad air and pumping in new air when my CO2 filters filled up.”

“Oh.” Starlight shifted on her bunk a little, then added, “Tell me more about that, please.”

“Well,” Mark said, “I woke up to about three different alarms. My nitrogen tank was empty and my oxygen tank was down to critical levels, and my eyes were raw from the high oxygen concentration in the suit. My own blood had re-sealed the suit breach around the antenna stub. I was a bit loopy, but I realized pretty quick that if I didn’t get back to the Hab at once I was dead.

“But our suits come with emergency patches, complete with a sort of valve. I yanked the antenna out- and you better believe it fucking hurt- and then I slapped the emergency patch over the breach. It was a little hole, so it was easy to cover. Then I closed the valve to stop the leak, staggered back to the Hab, got inside, and enjoyed some proper air again.”

Mark had gone into a squat to look Starlight in the eyes as he told his story; now he stood up, pulling his ratty suit underclothes out of the way to reveal a small but ugly scar in the upper part of his left hip. “After that I had to doctor myself,” he said. “We’re all trained in first aid in case something happens to the crew doctor. Disinfectant, four staples- I think those hurt worse than the antenna. At least, I remember them.” He grinned, readjusting his clothes, and said, “After that I was tired and sore, glad to be alive, not expecting to live much longer, and bummed as hell that the MAV was gone without me.” He grinned wider and added, “And that’s when you all met me.”

Starlight looked at her foreleg, the one which had spent weeks in an inflatable cast. “I can’t imagine that,” she said. “To be hurt like that, to almost die, and then to be totally alone like that. It sounds…” She shuddered again at the thought.

“Fortunately I didn’t end up alone,” Mark said. “Now… feeling a bit better?”

“Maybe,” Starlight said. “What are we going to do?”

The contingency plan had always been to use Johanssen’s suit, it being the smallest and the closest to the ponies’ size. But now that the time had come, Starlight couldn’t fit into it; her barrel was substantially larger than Johannsen’s torso.

In the end they used the largest of the abandoned Ares III suits, Vogel’s. The limbs, of course, were far too long, which was just as well because the gross anatomical differences between anthropoid and equinoid limbs meant Starlight couldn’t walk in the suit anyway. Her torso was a little smaller than Vogel’s in diameter, but much shorter- which was another good thing, because without the extra slack the helmet assembly would never have fit over Starlight’s horn.

The suit sealed and pressurized with Starlight Glimmer inside it. On that ground, it was a success.

On that ground, and on no other grounds whatever.

“This is ridiculous,” Starlight grumbled. “You’re going to have to carry me like a sack. I can barely see out. I can’t work outside like this!”

“You won’t need to,” Mark said. “There’s a perfectly good suit at the cave farm that nobody’s using. It’ll be a little baggy on you, but at least it’s made for your shape.”

“Dragonfly’s suit?” Cherry protested. “But what will she use when she gets out?”

“She’ll repair this one,” Mark said, walking over to the damaged suit and its crumbling patch. “And we need her to do it soon. Because you guys,” he said, pointing to the discarded suits near Airlock 3, “are going to need your patches and booties and everything else updated soon. Before they start crumbling like this.” He pinched the broken patch on Starlight’s suit and snapped off a piece with a loud crackle. “I don’t think they’ll be far behind this one.”

TRANSCRIPT – RADIO TELEGRAPH BETWEEN ESA AMICITAS AND NASA DEEP SPACE ARRAY

(note: the same message was sent with minor changes via water telegraph to ESA Baltimare.)

AMICITAS: Friendship calling Houston. Friendship calling Houston. We are transferring to the cave for the next sol, report to follow. Repeating, Friendship calling Houston. We are transferring to the cave for the next sol, report to follow. Repeating, Friendship calling Houston. We are transferring to the cave for the next sol, report to follow.

Report begins. Starlight Glimmer’s suit breached in the airlock today. Long-term repair not possible without Dragonfly. We are using Vogel’s spare suit to get Starlight to the cave. Starlight will use Dragonfly’s suit after that. Spare suits proved not workable for pony anatomy.

We are staying the night in the cave in an attempt to saturate Dragonfly’s cocoon with magic. We will use all, and I mean all, the existing batteries to power one magic field projector for as long as it will run. We estimate fourteen hours. We hope this will be enough to revive Dragonfly so that work can begin on repairing space suits.

All Sirius work is suspended until Dragonfly is revived.

We will contact by radio or by Pathfinder if data transfer is complete no later than 1400 hours Hab time Sol 267. Repeat, will resume contact 1400 hours Hab time.

Friendship out.

Author's Note

Nothing here needs explaining, I think, except that organic polymers tend to not like near-vacuum and sub-arctic cold... even magic organic polymers.

Sol 267

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 270
ARES III SOL 267

Sixteen normal-sized batteries (the three from the Hab having been so close to empty as not to be worth adding) plus four partially charged jumbo batteries didn’t light the single field projection up any brighter than normal. The rainbow sparks that rose from the Jacolt’s ladder could only discharge magic so fast. They just kept the projector going from a little past lunchtime until long after everyone had taken to the sleeping rolls for the night.

When they woke, tiny static discharges danced around the base of the terminals, a sign that the batteries were completely drained…

… and Dragonfly’s cocoon remained where it was, sealed, undisturbed in any way.

As the others went about their breakfasts, Starlight Glimmer shut down the projector and disconnected the cables which connected the batteries. Ironically, when the day before had begun, the three batteries from the Hab had been almost totally drained. Now they were the only batteries that held any charge- not more than twenty percent each, but that was more than the flat zero in all the batteries that had been in the farm.

Starlight snorted. One battery at twenty percent power had been enough to lift Amicitas out of the rubble of its crash site and onto its landing gear. One. Now here she was, thinking how terrible it was that they only had three batteries at that power…!

And yet… sixteen batteries at full power plus whatever had been in the four jumbo batteries… enough power to have picked up Amicitas and carried it all the way to the Hab… and that still wasn’t enough to get Dragonfly to come out of her cocoon.

Starlight was beginning to come around to Chrysalis’s thinking regarding “lazy bugs.” She turned to stare at the cherry saplings, each of which had several limbs which, if not suitable for heavy sticks, might at least make the kind of switch that old-fashioned pony parents would use to keep wayward foals in line.

“Touch so much as one leaf,” Cherry Berry’s voice called from behind her, “and vengeance will be swift and terrible.”

Starlight looked at Cherry. “You’ve been hanging around changelings too long,” she said. “You do that far too well.”

“Don’t try me,” Cherry said.

Starlight sighed and turned away from the trees. She wasn’t yet willing to hit Dragonfly’s cocoon directly, not yet. But it would take two and a half weeks for all the batteries to be full again for a second attempt- longer, really, since they’d need to run the projector for at least a couple of minutes every day just to sustain Dragonfly. She’d need to sit down and do the math. After that, she could prepare- for she already knew she was going to do something very different next time.

And if that didn’t work, then came the stick, no matter what Cherry Berry said-

“I can see you thinking about it.”

-with Cherry Berry’s full consent, that is.

[13:18] WATNEY: Test. I see the chat is up again.

[13:55] JPL: Hello, Mark. Yes, the data transfer finally completed. We received your telegram yesterday. We’re sorry to hear about Starlight’s suit, but we hope it can be fixed soon.

We tied up the data transfer for a week for a good reason, though. In the rover data buffer you will find text-only versions of Dungeons and Dragons Player Handbook, Dungeon Master Guide, and eight adventure modules, plus an application for your computers to simulate die rolls. All of these were provided by Hasbro free of charge, and definitely not as any incentive for NASA to look favorably on their bid to make toys of your friends.

We hope the games give you something to do together besides work and thus improve morale. That’s the main reason we took up Pathfinder for a week. When you get a chance, can you please give a report on your current situation?

[14:41] WATNEY: Um… tell Hasbro thanks and all… but version 4.0?? Really??? If they were going back to ancient history, why not just send 3.0 or 3.5? It’d be appropriate, what with Pathfinder and all.

[15:12] JPL: Quit complaining. It could have been GURPS. That was what I played in college.

[15:41] WATNEY: I’d make wise-cracks about math geeks and RPGs, but to be honest I’m really hoping for some real life min-maxing about now. Like, how much Constitution do I have to dump to get enough Dexterity/Speed to get off this rock?

[16:10] JPL: Bruce and his people are still working on that. We’ll let you know. But we’ll try not to let your stats drop down to wizard levels.

[16:39] WATNEY: This is Starlight. What is that supposed to mean? Is that an insult?

[17:44] WATNEY: Well? Is it? Answer me!!

Author's Note

As I post this, ninety minutes to tonight's KWLP.

I have a Kickstarter waiting for approval for WLP's summer T-shirt designs- I'd forgot about the approval process, so I guess I won't have the KS live for A-Kon after all.

Speaking of, I leave first thing in the morning for that. My van is absolutely stuffed, and more merch is being shipped to Fort Worth ahead of me. (Alas, thanks to one supplier losing my payment info, one shipment will arrive a day late, so I won't have it for Friday.)

After that, it appears I have three weekends off. And I can rest, recover, and catch up on a lot of things.

But for now, need to put pinups on the PitW page, need to put together tonight's show, and need to throw my clothes and laptop into the van for tomorrow's trip.

Expect short, short chapters this weekend.

Sol 268

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 271
ARES III SOL 268

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit FB for response, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, hello, Fireball, not used to your sending messages, over.

AMICITAS: Mark’s people have gone too far. They sent their universe’s version of Ogres and Oubliettes and ordered us to play it. Over.

ESA: That’s interesting. Why do they want you to play it, over?

AMICITAS: Restricted EVA to absolute minimum for trip to cave farm each day, plus cabin-fever issue. Mark’s people say this game helps with morale. Over.

ESA: Good idea! Sharing experiences is a good tool for building friendships! Over.

AMICITAS: Ugh. Can I talk to Chrysalis, please?

ESA: Suck it up and enjoy your nerd game, Fireball. And stop whining. It’s twice as annoying when you have to decode it, over.

AMICITAS: I appeal to the Dragonlord! Over.

ESA: Ember’s been joining Spike’s game once per month. Sorry, over.

AMICITAS: Please tell me you’re going to rescue us in the next twelve hours, over.

ESA: Not likely. Play nice! Baltimare out.

“So,” Mark said, “since there’s a version of D&D in your universe, who here has played?”

Cherry Berry wasn’t at all surprised when Starlight Glimmer raised her hoof. O&O was a geek hobby, and Starlight lived in Geek Castle Central.

But Spitfire’s hoof came up as well, and that did surprise her. “Huh?” she asked. “You played… um… D&D?”

Spitfire nodded to Cherry before turning to Mark. “Pony named Surprise is… is… master of game. I not play regular. Now and then. Commander does not… does not… get too close to ponies under her.”

“But you’ve played more than once,” Mark asked.

Spitfire nodded.

“Okay. For the rest of you, you’re all going to pretend to be characters in a fantasy realm full of swords and monsters and magic.”

“Oh,” Cherry Berry said, a little too brightly, “just like home.”

“Ignoring that,” Mark said. “NASA sent a lot of prefabricated- that is, already-made- characters for you to choose from. A balanced five-person party should include two fighting classes, a magic user, a healer, and a rogue. A class is sort of like a job. The characters are in the directory D&D slash characters slash prefab. Go ahead and look through them.”

A bit of key-tapping later, Cherry asked, ‘What does alignment mean?”

“Alignment means how a thing is pointed in relation to something else,” Mark said. “In this case, it means how the character’s morals are pointed in relation to both lawful versus chaotic and good versus evil.”

“Examples?”

“Hmmmm,” Mark thought. “Well, Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane are lawful evil. They believe rules are important, but mainly because the rules help themselves. The Duke family are all chaotic good. They don’t have much use for other people’s rules, but they believe it’s important to do the right thing. Starsky and Hutch are lawful good, mostly, but Huggy Bear is true neutral. He’s out for himself, but believes doing the right thing is also important, and he both breaks the law and upholds it.”

“Huh. So who would be chaotic evil?”

“Hm… hard to say,” Mark said. “Some of the monsters Kolchak encounters? Chaotic evil characters didn’t get many recurring roles in seventies television.”

“I don’t get this,” Cherry said, tapping the screen in front of her with a hoof. “One part of alignment is choosing good or evil.”

“That’s right,” Mark said. “Or choosing to not choose. That’s what ‘neutral’ is for.”

“But the other part is choosing between following laws and not following laws,” Cherry said. “Isn’t following laws always good?”

“Not when the laws unfairly favor one person at the cost of others,” Mark said. “Or when the laws unintentionally have a bad result, like if a person goes to jail for five years because he stole food to eat.”

Cherry Berry shook her head. “You humans are strange,” she said. “You need more princesses. Their wisdom makes sure all the laws are good ones.”

“You wouldn’t say that,” Spitfire muttered in Equestrian, not quite under her breath, “if you spent some more time in Canterlot.”

Fireball looked at the screen, tapping his chin. “So,” he said at last, “what alignment is Letterman?”

Time passed.

“Grizzly Adams is not neutral good!” Cherry insisted. “He’s chaotic good! He moved to the mountains to escape laws!”

“But he’s a druid!” Starlight Glimmer insisted. “Druids have to be some kind of neutral! That’s a rule in our game back home, anyway, and I’m sure it’s the same here!”

“So make him chaotic neutral! It’s not like he goes out of his way to rescue people!”

More time passed.

“Fred Sanford is not evil! He’s greedy, but there has to be something more to being evil than wanting money! And he tries to take care of his son!”

“Speaking of Lamont,” Spitfire said, “is there ‘lawful stupid’ alignment?”

Mark chuckled. “Some people have a theory about that…”

Much more time passed.

“Cletus Hogg?”

“Evil stupid.”

“Danny Partridge?”

“Chaotic stupid.”

“Richie Cunningham?”

“Lawful stupid.”

“Mr. Furley?”

“True stupid,” all agreed.

They never got around to playing that night.

Author's Note

It's been a very long, very hot day, which included my getting a scalp sunburn (again) without noticing it until hours after the fact (again).

I'm lucky I managed this crap.

Also: https://twitter.com/i/moments/1004844177304276994

Sol 269

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 272
ARES III SOL 269

“What’s Samwise crying about?” Starlight asked as Cherry Berry, whose turn it was to read, finished the chapter. “Is he happy about going on an adventure or not?”

“That’s what you ask about?” Fireball asked. “Bilbo’s ring is a Horcrux. A real… a real big Horcrux. That more important than a few hobbit cries.”

“Yeah,” Cherry agreed. “It explains why Bilbo was acting like that after the party. How long did he have the Ring?”

“Sixty years,” Mark said. “And he didn’t age a day in all that time.”

“So it’s a Horcrux that Horcruxes other people too?” Fireball asked.

“The Potter books were written more than fifty years after these books,” Mark said. “J. K. Rowling might have got the idea for Horcruxes from the One Ring. But I remember reading a story in the school library as a kid- an old fairy tale, hundreds of years old, about a giant who couldn’t be killed because he kept his heart hidden hundreds of miles away. Turns out it was in an egg inside a chest in a tower, or something like that. The hero smashed the egg, and the giant died instantly.” He shrugged and added, “It’s a really old story with us humans.”

“But remember how Voldemort’s Horcruxes messed with the minds of people around them?” Starlight pointed out. “And this one turned a hobbit into that Gollum thing.”

“It didn’t hurt Bilbo,” Spitfire pointed out.

“Yet. That we know of.”

“Hey, you know what this makes me think of?” Cherry asked. “The Allcorn… um… word…”

“Allcorn Amulet,” Starlight said.

“What?” Mark gasped. “You mean your world has something like the One Ring?? The power of an evil god in a piece of jewelry?”

“Oh, we haven’t told you that story?” Starlight asked. “Once upon a time in the magical land of the ponies, there was a unicorn, a stage magician and sleight-of-hoof artist named Tricky Moon-lady, though she referred to herself- frequently- as the Great and Powerful Tricky…”

MISSION LOG – SOL 269

Our enforced vacation continues. It’s frustrating to see sols go by with no progress on the Whinnybago.

We’re coming up on a hay harvest soon. It’s going to be better than expected, thanks to the daily magic fields, but we weren’t expecting much. The actual yield is going to be down from pre-methane levels, but that still means a lot of work on suits that may be getting ready to fail.

Dragonfly shows no signs of waking up, so we’re waiting for magic batteries to recharge for Starlight’s next attempt to wake our gunk-bug. If it doesn’t work, then things will really get bad.

In other news, the ponies have picked their characters (finally), and I’ve run them through a few sample combats and skill checks. They… haven’t done well. Cherry’s barbarian charges straight ahead and swings his sword at anything that moves. Spitfire’s elf thief keeps trying to pick pockets mid-battle. Starlight, when playing her dwarf cleric, speaks in this weird monotone and makes every use of magic into a call for the others to worship her god, whose name is apparently Rocks.

And Fireball… well, the others are lucky a Level 1 wizard can’t cast the spell by that name. But Burning Hands, Flame Fountain, Chain Lightning and Magic Missile? And a 14 Constitution? And no comprehension of the concept of back-blast?

Anyway, for any future diplomats to the ponies who might read this, I have two pieces of information picked up during our daily literary discussion. Pay attention, because these things are very important to future good relations between our worlds.

1: If offered jewelry, for sale or as a gift, by a pony, the safe option is to decline as politely as possible. Failure to do so may result in fits of megalomania, overuse of the word “precious”, and/or a pathological fear of wheels.

2: For you or me, the day a stage magician shows up with real magic power and forces the town to kneel before his/her might would be a turning point in our dreary little lives. For ponies, it’s Tuesday. Bear this in mind if you’re tempted to make diplomatic threats.

Author's Note

Long day. This is all I have.

Sol 270

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 273
ARES III SOL 270

Blue light lashed out, and a segment of cave wall two hooves square, made of a milky reddish substance shaped vaguely like a waterfall, peeled away and floated over to where the unicorn and dragon stood.

“Why are you cutting that?” Fireball asked. “There’s a lot more good crystal than that agate. Agate tastes like mush.”

“It’s not for you to eat,” Starlight Glimmer said, using her hoof to draw precise geometrical shapes in the dirt floor of the cave. “I’m making dice. Those computer dice give us nothing but bad numbers. So I want my own.”

“Really?” Fireball asked. “Aren’t you the one who always says our supply of magic is too small to use on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary?”

“This is necessary,” Starlight insisted. “It’s totally necessary to kick Mark’s flank after the humiliation he put us to last night!”

“Really?” Fireball’s eyeridges went up in mock surprise. “So, how did Mark make you preach the glory of Rocks all night? Or maybe the great god Rocks isn’t so good at boosting dice rolls?”

“That was role-playing,” Starlight grumbled. “It’s a thing you do playing O&O. Some of us, anyway.”

“Hey, I did plenty of role-playing last night,” Fireball insisted.

“I don’t think shouting ‘Who brought the marshmallows?’ every combat counts as much of a character,” Starlight pointed out.

“At least mine’s original,” Fireball said. “You just imitated that rock-hound friend of yours. Can’t you do a character that isn’t one of your pony friends?”

Starlight flinched. “Yeah,” she said. “I can do ‘Starlight Glimmer the Cult Leader and Insanely Vengeful Sorceress.’ But the hard part with that one is quitting the role.”

Fireball cocked his head, giving the unicorn a most peculiar look. “With anyone else that would be a threat,” he said. “But you say it like it’s an apology.”

“Maybe,” Starlight admitted. “So… wanna hear more about the glory and wonder of Rocks?”

“No,” Fireball said bluntly. “I wanna hear about when we’re going to cut my rocks. For my next month’s meals. Like we’re supposed to be doing.”

Grumbling, Starlight stamped a hoof on the pattern she’d drawn, and it flared to life. The sheet of agate she’d harvested split into fragments, large chunks falling away to reveal a cluster of about a dozen smaller crystals. With a flash of light Starlight carved little numbers into each of them, then scooped them together with a forehoof, separating them from the rubble.

Fireball picked up the double handful of crystal chunks in his claws and looked them over. “Huh,” he said. “You know what?”

“What?”

“All these funny shapes you made, and I think each side of ‘em is exactly the same as the others.”

“That was the point.”

“Yeah, but, y’know, that’s really fascinating,” Fireball said. “Lots of triangles, but there’s this one made out of pentagons. And of course a cube. I wonder if you can get more sides than this one on a shape.”

“Yes and no,” Starlight said grumpily, even as her inner Twilight rose to the surface. “Five of those are regular polyhedrons. That means all the sides, all the faces, and all the angles are the same. The ten-sider is a cheat- the sides are the same, but they’re offset to make it roll better. Anything larger than the isocahedron there,” she pointed to the twenty-sider, “requires the angles to be different, or the faces, or the sides. And you can’t get a shape like that where the faces have more than five sides without mixing and matching different shapes.”

“Really?’ Fireball looked at the newly made dice again. “It seems like you could make anything with triangles.”

“Nopony ever taught you geometry, did they?” Starlight asked.

“Nope. I had to learn some trigonometry for space navigation- crash course- but nothing about all these shapes.”

“When we get home I’ll get you a book. Right now, please give me my dice.”

“Fine. I just thought it was neat.” Fireball dumped the dice into an old food pack pouch Starlight had brought for the purpose. “Now can we get something for me? I’m almost out of smoky quartz for my seasoning…”

“ARGH!”

Two ponies and a dragon were surprised to see how quickly Mark scooted back from the table.

“These dice HATE me!” Starlight shouted. “I shouldn’t be surprised, since I made them from Mars rock, but STILL!”

“But they made from rocks,” Spitfire said in her slow-to-improve English. “They touched by your god’s hand. They a part of him, right?”

“I’m seriously considering the benefits of agnosticism,” Starlight muttered, reaching for her computer and pulling up the dice-rolling app.

The blood-red agate dice sat in the middle of the table, untouched, for the rest of the session. Starlight fancied the little chunks of crystal were sneering at her.

Author's Note

For the first time since I began attending A-Kon, I've seen and will see NOTHING of the convention aside from my booth. I haven't even had time to see the other booths. It's work, come back to hotel, eat, struggle to write 800 words, post, collapse.

I ought to try for a second one now, since I'll have very little writing time tomorrow, but I'm too damn tired.

And yet more of an example that Fireball's education doesn't much deserve the name.

Sol 276

MISSION LOG – SOL 276

Hay harvest today at the cave. More than last time, but quite a long way short of previous cuttings. We just finished weighing the harvest, and it comes up to 372 kilograms. That, with only a little more supplementing with potatoes is enough alfalfa when added to the reserves on hand to get us to Schiaparelli and to launch day.

Of course we’re not going to ignore the plants after this. Fresh food (even if we’re all damn well sick and tired of the taste of potatoes and alfalfa) is always better than old. And plant life helps charge the pony magic batteries. So we’ll keep growing, and keep harvesting, until the cave and Hab farms play out or until it’s time to leave. But from now on it’s surplus. From now on we have enough food to last until we leave this rock, plus seven days in space. After that… well, if we can’t figure out a way to meet up with Hermes in seven whole days, there’s no point.

Aside from harvest activities, which took about an hour and a half- we’ve got really good at putting hay in sample bins- it’s been an ordinary day. To give you some idea of what the routine is right now, with our strictly limited EVAs, here’s the daily schedule, more or less.

0600, or local dawn – Wake up, clean up as well as we can without soap, eat breakfast (in my case, five potatoes).

0800 – Hab internal routine. The ponies water the Hab potato plants using their suits, while I do maintenance on one machine or another. Meanwhile we keep an eye on the Pathfinder chat in case NASA has something urgent to tell us, like the location of Earth and Mars in relation to one another or the many uses of hematite.

0900 – Prepare for EVA to cave farm.

1000 – Arrive at cave farm, hug Dragonfly’s cocoon, turn on the Pastel Machine for a few minutes so Dragonfly gets her daily allowance of rainbows and lollipops, do farmy things. End with a chapter from Lord of the Rings, read aloud in turns as English practice.

1200 – Leave cave, return to Hab. Others go inside first; since I have more durable suits and spares if necessary, I stay out a bit longer to sweep off the solar farm and do the other little chores that need doing outside.

1300 – Lunch. Four potatoes for me plus some alfalfa tea. (Though Cherry recently picked some leaves off the cherry saplings and tried making cherry tea; it’s surprisingly good, especially compared to the taste of boiled hay.)

1430 – Book work time. Starlight works the others over on their English for an hour, while I work on reports to be eventually sent to NASA on things like the farm, geology experiments, etc.

1530 – TV time. Shitty sitcoms and laughable action from the 1970s.

1800 – Dinner. For me, five more potatoes, whether I want them or not. (Hint: I don’t. All seasonings and condiments are exhausted now except magically harvested salt.)

1900 – D&D time. Starlight is working on her own campaign so she can take over as DM, but in the meantime I’m allowing Slash Magnus, Pickflower, Daub Cake and Schmaug to finish their campaign. Tonight’s probably the final session of that, since yesterday they faced the lich king. All thoughts of parley, feelings, negotiation went right out the window when Lichy disenchanted the gazebo, killing it dead instantly. After that it was a no holds barred curb stomp. Ponies are scary as all fuck when they’re mad, doubly so when the dice are all going their way. The battle ended with a dwarven hammer applied directly to the phylactery along with the warcry, “THIS ONE’S FOR MISTER DARCY!”

(Don’t ask me how the gazebo got named Mister Darcy. I haven’t got a clue, and I was there when it happened.)

Between 2300 and 2438/0000 – Bed.

That’s our routine, or our rut, depending. Hopefully we get to break it soon. D-day for the second attempt to get Dragonfly out of the cocoon is officially Sol 284- eight sols from now.

Let’s hope it works. I got the Rover 1 radio shack conversion finished two sols ago, but I can’t go any farther on the Whinnybago without help from Starlight and/or the bug. And although we still have plenty of time- we’re scheduled to roll out on Sol 451, which is still half an Earth year off- we don’t have as much time as we used to.

And time has never been our friend on Mars.

Author's Note

Recovering nicely from my busy time. Tomorrow is writing time- going to push for two chapters plus script work on Peter is the Wolf.

It's almost time to set filler aside and get back to plot.

Sol 286

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 290
ARES III SOL 286

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Preparing for second attempt to revive Dragonfly as per prior report. Advise when ready to trace spell, over.

ESA: Preparing to track your spell now. Tell us when you’re ready to cast and we’ll ask you to hold if necessary, over.

AMICITAS: Roger, stand by, over.

ESA: Standing by, over.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Cherry asked.

“Not really,” Starlight said around a mouthful of cable. “Stand back and try to not be magical?”

Cherry Berry hated to be useless. There was work that needed to be done, and she could only stand there as Starlight Glimmer finished connecting all the cables to every magic battery she could find.

This time all the cables were connected, clamped or even spliced directly to a single battery, rather than in series, and that single battery didn’t have bunny ears on it this time. This was because, rather than creating a magic field, Starlight had decided to pour the magic directly into Dragonfly. And rather than attach cables to the cocoon and risk frying the changeling inside, Starlight was going to channel the mana directly, allowing her to regulate the flow and to sense feedback…

… and, incidentally, risking frying both the changeling and the unicorn, a point which everyone else had raised repeatedly and loudly.

But Starlight had won the argument by pointing out that they didn’t have time or magic energy for a third attempt. If this didn’t at least produce some visible reaction, another approach would have to be taken. With this in mind, Cherry had asked Mark for a spare of one of the plastic dome support poles from the Hab, so that a really big stick would be available without anypony resorting to the maiming of one of her cherry trees.

But aside from keeping the two-meter section of flexible plastic (its internal elastic removed so it could be separated from the rest of the assembly) under one hoof, there was very little Cherry Berry could do. Spitfire, who likewise wanted to do something, had claimed the duty of telegraphing to Equestria, her hoof hovering over the water nozzle in the neck of Starlight’s old, torn space suit. Fireball, who was quite happy to do nothing if nothing needed doing, sat well away from the others and watched. Mark, who probably felt like Cherry did, paced.

Starlight flipped switches on the batteries, one at a time. The terminals of the final battery, half-covered under the multiple cable clamps, began to spark and sizzle with barely restrained magic. For this experiment every battery would be used- nineteen regular batteries plus the four jumbo batteries for the future MAV modifications. Every single spark of magic that the ponies could muster in this Faust-forsaken wilderness, without any reserve, was going into this shot.

Finally only the last switch remained, the switch that would set the final battery from recharge to release. Starlight stood with her forehooves resting on the terminals, surrounded by cables, facing the cocoon. “Ready for experiment,” she said.

“Send to Twilight Sparkle,” Cherry ordered. “Ready to cast. Standing by for final go or no go to proceed.”

Cherry Berry heard the sound of soft splashes and clicking of hoof on plastic as Spitfire tapped out the message on the water nozzle. A universe away, a light would blink on a panel being watched by a dozen ponies plus a changeling or two and possibly a minotaur. One of them would have a hoof or other appendage on the switch that worked the water flow override, ready to send the response.

More splashing sounds followed. By now all of them except Mark could read the incoming water telegraph by sound alone. But Spitfire repeated the message aloud in English, not because Mark was there, but because it was protocol: “Message from Twilight Sparkle: ready to track, all go to proceed.”

Cherry Berry took a deep breath. “Mark, Fireball, stand ready to help if the spell gets out of control.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mark said simply.

“In your own time, Starlight,” she continued. “It’s your show.”

She watched as Starlight steeled herself, slipped a hoof down to flip the switch, and then slapped a hoof on either terminal of the battery. In a blink her eyes went solid white, glowing, as an unseen updraft picked up the hair of her mane and tail and waved them wildly in the air.

The unicorn’s jaw set. Her brows dropped in concentration, her muzzle scrunching slightly.

And then magic too bright to look at, brighter than the anemic sun outside the cave, exploded from her horn, a column of raw power twice as tall as the pony at its source, roared out like a waterfall and slammed into the cocoon, the overflow splashing into the crystals studding the cave wall behind the cocoon.

Cherry Berry squinted, half-shielding her eyes with one raised hoof. This wasn’t like the feeble imitations of Equestrian magic that the field projector produced. This surpassed that- it surpassed natural Equestrian background magic. It even went beyond the power unleashed during the final battle in Canterlot, when she’d been present, shackled and chained, while Twilight’s friends rescued the princess from the power-mad Storm King.

Cherry still thought of herself as reasonably young, but she’d had a lot of experience in a wide variety of places- whatever she needed to do, within reason, in pursuit of her dreams of flight. And this, bar none, was the second largest expenditure of pure magic she’d ever witnessed.

(The single largest such display she’d witnessed at a distance of many miles, and given the destruction involved in Twilight Sparkle’s battle with Tirek, she was desperately grateful for that.)

Even the outermost edges of the aura of that monster beam of magic had power. Cherry looked down to see tiny buds of alfalfa bursting from the soil, thrown up by the root system of the nearby plants in response to her earth pony magic absorbing and relaying the mere fringes of the beam. Spitfire, her wings spread but motionless, had risen from the surface. A trace of smoke emerged from Fireball’s nostrils.

And at the far end of the beam… darkness. The core of the beam seemed to swirl like a tornado, or like a whirlpool, sucked into the depths of a shadow that clung to the cocoon like a hood. But even that shadow couldn’t suck down the entire beam, and the excess on either side sent rainbows showering from the quartz around it, set loud echoes of chimes and clinking ringing down the cave.

The beam continued to pour it on. Cherry glanced at Starlight, could just see sweat pouring down her face, lather building on her body. But her glowing eyes remained steady, locked on target, her lips pulled up in a snarl as she hammered the cocoon with all the magic power the farm and the ponies could store up in two weeks.

And under the beam the shadow melted, broke up, faded to nothing. The whirlpool dissipated, vanished into the pure light of the massive beam. The magic didn’t notice. Its wielder didn’t care. It poured out, on and on and on, spraying, splashing, saturating its target…

… until, with a suddenness matched only by how it began, it ceased. Starlight Glimmer slumped over the battery, back rising and falling as she gasped for breath.

Two weeks of the feeble trickle of magic absorbed by the enchanted stones, released in about a minute and a half. That was all.

“Mark! Spitfire! See to Starlight!” Cherry shouted, breaking the shock of the experience and setting her fellow castaways to movement. “Fireball! Help me secure the batteries! Shut them all down, quick!” Indeed, even with the batteries utterly drained, little sparks of mana danced across Starlight’s hooves as the batteries concentrated the magic collected from the life in the cave into two little points.

Mark and Spitfire hauled the unicorn off the battery and over the cables, laying her on her back on a sleeping mat. Cherry went down one row of batteries while Fireball took the other, flipping switch after switch back to recharge. The sparks on the battery terminals ceased.

And as soon as the clicking of switches stopped, she heard the splashing of the water telegraph. “Spitfire, send ‘repeat message,’” she ordered.

Spitfire gave a look at Starlight, who had quite clearly tried to pour herself out with the contents of the batteries. But she was breathing regularly, if deeply, and didn’t appear to be in pain, so obedience won out over her medical duties. She walked over to the suit, tapped out a few characters, and waited and listened to the response. “Twilight calling Friendship… we almost had you… can you recast for two full minutes, over?”

Starlight sat up, bolt upright. “Recast??” With a second movement as sudden as the first she put herself on her hooves, snorting. “Recast?? What does that…” She tried to take a step towards the spacesuit being used for the telegraph, and that proved to be a mistake. Her left foreleg buckled, and she flopped face-first into the dirt.

“Easy, Starlight,” Mark said, running his fingers through her mane. “Just relax for a-“

“Buck relax,” Starlight snorted. She tried to stand up again. “Give me that suit. I want to tell my teacher exactly what I think of-“

Water mist sprayed into Starlight’s face, and she flinched back, hissing. Mark hit her with another squirt of the mister from his botany experiment package and said, “No! Down! Bad unicorn! Bad!”

“Grrrrr!” Starlight raised a hoof to shield her face from the water, and she flopped forward again. Defeated, she remained prone, looking at Spitfire and saying, “Message to Twilight Sparkle from Starlight Glimmer: ‘I exhaust Cherry Berry’s entire vocabulary at you.’ Those exact words. Send it!”

Cherry Berry nodded to Spitfire, who shrugged and tapped out the message. “Feel better?” she asked once the last character had been rendered into the soggy soil.

“Much,” Starlight moaned. “Seventeen sols of magic at one go, and she still expects me to do it again. She does the impossible so often she forgets other ponies can’t…”

“How are you?” Cherry asked.

“I’ll be all right with some rest,” Starlight said. “I’m just really tired. Have you ever ridden a tatzlwurm and steered it where you wanted to go?”

“Um, I’m pretty sure nopony has,” Cherry said.

“It was like that anyway,” Starlight said. “The magic wanted to go everywhere. It wanted to do things- anything, so long as it was doing.”

Splashing. “From Twilight Sparkle to Starlight Glimmer,” Spitfire said. “’No need to be so mean. We had you down within two centimeters when we lost signal, over.’”

“There is no way,” Starlight Glimmer insisted, “that I can ride the tatzlwurm for two straight minutes. And if I do, she’ll ask for three, I know it. She’d do it for any pony, because she’s Twilight Sparkle, but sometimes she just doesn’t think.”

Cherry sighed. “Message to Twilight, ‘there are limits. Procedure is ended for the day. Awaiting results, will report, Friendship out.’”

Splashing, and then more splashing. “From Chrysalis to Cherry Berry,” Spitfire reported. “Standing by for report. Chrysalis not out, over.”

Cherry sighed again. “Acknowledge the message and let them wait,” she said. “Then come make sure Starlight’s okay.”

Once the message was sent and Starlight in the care (and custody) of Amicitas’s medic, the other three walked over to Dragonfly’s corner. Normally, the rainbows and sparkle faded from the crystals when the magic projectors were turned off, but the quartz behind the cocoon remained polychromatic in ways almost impossible to describe. Every color of the rainbow, plus several not in the rainbow, remained splashed across the wall, shining more normally under the amplified sunlight from the solar collectors above. A few of the crystals even appeared to be partially invisible.

As for the cocoon itself, the words LEAVE ME had been scoured off the outside. It now gleamed almost as brilliantly as the crystals, a shiny, polished lump of obsidian hanging by a slimy-looking black cord from the ceiling.

Unfortunately nothing else had changed. It certainly wasn’t moving. The flap at the bottom hadn’t unsealed itself.

Mark spoke first. “So… how about those crystals? Making you hungry, Fireball?”

Fireball’s words came deliberately and firmly, and for once almost properly: “It would be a crime to eat any of those. That whole wall would be center… heart… of any hoard at home.”

“I didn’t hear no.”

“Wash your ears.”

“We’ll have to watch and wait,” Cherry said, breaking up the deflection. “We still have chores to do. It’s time to bail out the well again.”

The three of them set to work on tending the plants (including the new sprouts), hauling loads of water from the well up to the airlock, and checking the hot water system for possible leaks. They all had lunch, with Starlight much recovered for a couple hours of rest. They read from the current book, huddling together at the description of the Fellowship’s trek through the caverns of Moria.

Not once did the cocoon stir.

Then everyone suited up and gave the cocoon their goodbye hug, trying to stifle their disappointment… everyone but one.

“I’m staying here tonight,” Starlight said. “Remember that Dragonfly didn’t attack Mark until the middle of the night. Maybe she won’t recover now until later. Someone should be here just in case.”

Cherry nodded. “Maybe we all should stay?”

“No,” Starlight said. “Just me. If something goes wrong, you should be ready to save me tomorrow.”

“Maybe you should not stay,” Spitfire said carefully. “That way, you don’t need rescue.”

“I’ll be all right,” Starlight insisted. “I have a stick.” She patted the plastic shaft Cherry had almost forgotten about.

The last thing Cherry saw as the airlock door closed was Starlight’s smiling face and her hoof waving goodbye.

I hope, she thought, I haven’t just made a horrible mistake.

Author's Note

Two centimeters doesn't seem like a lot, does it?

How many hydrogen atoms can you fit on a line two centimeters long?

Rifftrax: Space Mutiny is tonight. I am enjoying my semi-vacation, in particular eating my own home cooking and not having totally screwed it up.

Basically, inside-out stuffed cabbage leaves.

In a wok, brown hamburger meat plus lots of diced onion. Drain, but not completely. Add one small chopped cabbage, mushrooms, diced tomatoes with garlic, and salt, pepper, more garlic, etc. to taste. Cook fifteen minutes or until cabbage is tender.

I made enough to last for days, and I've had five platefuls and not got tired of it yet, so I call that success.

I tell you that because there's not much else to say about this chapter, except to add that Starlight is being a little unfair to Twilight. Twily thinks she came so very close to finding them, and her impossible demands are her passing on her frustration at coming up short to the Martians. Under normal conditions Twilight wouldn't ask the impossible...

... more than once every other week.

Sol 287

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 291
ARES III SOL 287

“Staaaar-liight.”

The hiss woke Starlight Glimmer instantly. The cave was almost pitch black, with only the faint reflections from the life support box’s indicator lights shimmering from hundreds of thousands of crystals. She could pick out the enchanted solar relay crystals in the ceiling; they were the ones that didn’t reflect. Part of her wondered what the chunks of crystal on the other end of the connection, scattered across the hillside above the cave, looked like at this time of night.

But the rest of her bucked that thought in the chin and set it in the corner to sleep off the concussion. Dragonfly had come out of her cocoon.

“Staaaar-liiiight.”

And from the raspy sound in her voice, the way she dragged out her vowels, and above all the way she was far, far too close for comfort, Dragonfly hadn’t come out in a sane frame of mind.

What am I going to see, Starlight thought, when I turn my head? Mark saw Johanssen, one of his old crew. Will I see Sunburst? Twilight Sparkle? Dragonfly as she was before this horrible experience began?

She slowly turned her head. What she saw wasn’t much, not in the dim light. But two blue eyes shone almost as brightly as the indicator lights into the darkness of the cave, and the reflections from all the quartz on the walls and ceiling were just strong enough to produce secondary reflections on a host of sharp teeth, crowned by a set of long fangs- very long fangs, very close to Starlight’s person.

But Starlight Glimmer had been prepared for this very possibility, and she didn’t need mana batteries for what she had in mind.

Light is the single easiest spell to cast. Unicorns instinctively learn telekinesis first, but light has the cheapest energy cost. In fact, since using magic causes things to glow in the color of the user’s magic, it’s far harder to prevent magic from making light than it is to use it to make more. Thus, a quick flash-bulb spell right in Dragonfly’s face proved no strain at all for, if she did say it herself, the most powerful unicorn of modern Equestria.

The changeling hissed, backing off a couple steps, forehooves flailing in front of its eyes. This allowed Starlight to leap to her hooves, face Dragonfly properly, and bring the second part of her plan into effect.

Dragonfly had almost blinked the suns and stars out of her vision when water began spraying right into her face, She hissed again, flinching and closing her eyes, backing away from the voice that shouted, “NO! BAD CHANGELING! BAD! NO CUPCAKE!”

Starlight had to tap her reserves a bit to keep the mostly-full plant mister in the air, but compared to spells she’d cast on Mars this barely qualified. She stepped forward, trying to guide Dragonfly to a wall away from the cocoon…

… and stepped too close, Two black hooves in the black cave grabbed for the not-black mister and snatched it out of Starlight’s telekinetic grip before she could react. The glow of Dragonfly’s eyes vanished completely, and there was a sound of gulping, of gasping, and coughing.

The changeling was just catching her breath again, having guzzled down the contents of the spray-bottle, when something rather light and skinny but with a lot of torque slapped her in the side of the head with a loud clack.

“BAD CHANGELING!” Starlight shouted between wild swings of the long plastic pole. “BAD BUG! LAZY BUG! Um… um… THERE ARE LARVA STARVING IN NEIGHPON!” Again and again she swung, hoping this was doing some good.

Green fire surrounded her. Starlight felt herself be lifted off the ground, then hurled with tremendous force down the length of the cave. She had almost five whole seconds to think about how stupid she was and to wonder what she’d hit and how deeply she’d be impaled before, to her own immense shock, she hit the mostly-full well with an almighty splash.

Starlight came up again, coughing and spluttering, flailing wildly for the concreted side of the well. Her hooves found something solid, and the comfort of touch brought her back to her senses. She pulled herself up and out of the chilly runoff water, ignoring how the dirt from the cave floor clung to her wet fur and bit and scratched at the skin underneath.

From quite a long distance away two blue eyes stared back at her. A buzzy, raspy voice shouted, “I’m going to…” It coughed for a moment, then continued, “I’m going to go out on a limb (*cough cough*) and assume that you really (*cough*) are Starlight and this (*cough hack hack*) is not a dream.”

It then collapsed in a full-on coughing fit that lasted for about ten seconds. Starlight had walked almost halfway across the distance between the well and the sick-sounding changeling when the empty plant mister dropped onto her head.

“More water, please,” Dragonfly croaked.

Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.

I am here. You are not a rock. Give me orders.

I am here. I will not give up. I am here.

No… no, but I saved Trixie! We escaped the Storm King! This can’t be happening! It’s not my fault! This is not how it went!

She ignored the voices. They came and went, and they almost never made sense. They were probably all dreams anyway.

In her more lucid moments she remembered who she was, where she was, and why she was there. She hated those moments, and she tried to carry herself away from them, to shut down her mind so that she wouldn’t have to remember anymore. It didn’t help that the voices were loudest during those times, even if they talked about nonsense like dwarves (what’s a dwarf?), hobbits (what’s a hobbit?), and saving rolls versus lava (that just had to be a dream, it was so stupid).

But now the voices weren’t going away. She couldn’t go back to sleep. She couldn’t let her mind dissolve. It, like her body, was putting itself back together.

Everything was telling her that it was time to come out of the cocoon, except the part of her that was her. That part curled up tighter and said, No. No. No.

And then a new voice, faint but stern, said, Hello, alien. What will you do?

She had the sensation of being lifted out of herself, of standing without hooves in a place with no light, no sound, but an abundance of Presence. And, for the moment, all of that presence had directed its attention to her with an eyeless gaze that burned.

It demanded an answer, but she didn’t understand the question. Who are you, ma’am? she asked.

Irrelevant, the stern voice replied. You must decide. What will you do?

Is this a dream? she asked. Or is this real?

Irrelevant, the voice repeated. Dreams are real enough. And real things may end as dreams. Cease putting off your decision, alien.

I don’t know what you’re talking about! she protested, feeling phantom tears on her face and muzzle.

The gaze rotated around her, unseen, unseeable, and pitiless. Predator, the stern voice said. Not one of mine, but I know you. Your kind began as monsters, then became parasites, and now have some faint pretensions towards animal husbandry. I have seen it before. I have seen it all before.

I still do not understand, she pleaded.

You come from a soft world, the voice continued. Death can be cheated. It can be negotiated with, It can even be befriended. It said the last word with a disgusted drawl. But you have come to a world not so soft. A trillion fragile islands, this planet not being one of them, in an infinite sea of uncaring, unthinking, unstoppable death. In this world all struggles are ultimately futile.

The gaze drew back, no longer burning her, but still a force. If she had a hoof to point- if there were directions in this place for pointing- then she could point straight at it. I begin to understand, she said quietly.

Do you? the stern voice asked. Mine which move have two strategies, alien. Most of them make as many of themselves as possible as fast as possible. They know they will lose most, and they don’t care. They know the odds are that they themselves will be lost, and they don’t care. The individual is nothing; every one for itself.

Um, she said, that doesn’t make sense.

The other strategy, the stern voice said, is the exact opposite. Make a few of yourselves, but invest all your energy into those few, and treasure them. Protect them. The individual is all; let us therefore unite as one.

No, she said, I guess I don’t understand after all.

Don’t you? the stern voice said. You have lived in both strategies, alien. Now you must decide between them.

What happens when I choose?

What happens.

She sat in the space which was not space, for a time of no time at all, trying to think, unable to comprehend.

And then the burning intensified, and she was inside the gaze, and the voice hammered her from all sides, including the inside.

CHOOSE!

And the next moment Dragonfly felt herself dropped, unceremoniously, onto the dirt under her cocoon. She barely remembered feeling her right forehoof kick down to open the flap; she didn’t remember deciding to do it.

From about ten steps away she heard snoring.

It took a moment for her to find her feet; she’d twisted her right foreleg when it got caught under her in the short fall. She coughed; she was dry, dry, dry, and her throat rasped with every breath.

She took a closer look at the pony sleeping in the dark cave. Why only one? she thought. If she’s the only survivor, that’s horrible. Otherwise, that’s stupid. Didn’t I make it clear I’m dangerous?

The cave was dark, but she could see the long mane and the horn in the light reflecting off all the crystals. She watched her hind legs twitch; she was obviously having a nightmare of some kind.

Well, might as well wake her up, then get a drink, and get back in the cocoon. Hopefully she wouldn’t have any more weird dreams herself. Philosophy was much scarier than Badlands monsters, any day.

“Starlight.” It came out almost incomprehensibly to her own ears, and she had to swallow a coughing fit from how her dry throat burned with the effort of talking. She tried to work up some saliva, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. She was actually, she realized, panting with thirst.

But Starlight was awake. She’d seen the single twitch, followed by the unnatural stillness. She felt apprehension rising off of her in waves. But she wasn’t getting up, wasn’t screaming. Was something wrong? “Staaaarlight,” she called, trying to make it gentle, but her voice wasn’t going to cooperate. Still no movement.

Dragonfly had just about decided to let Starlight lay a moment longer so she could go get some water from the faucet at the lower end of the farm when the sun went off about half an inch from the end of her nose.

From there things happened which ended with Dragonfly dunking Starlight in the well, by which point any thoughts of bizarre voices talking to her in the cocoon had flown entirely out of her head.

Pony and changeling sat across from each other, the pony using a tiny bit of light to illuminate the air above The Stump.

Dragonfly looked… shriveled. The holes, while not as large as they’d been, were larger than normal. Her chitin actually sagged against her muscles. Everything except the eyes looked much as she’d looked the day she’d grabbed a ton of rocket engine in her magic. But the eyes were open, alert, and glowing, and the voice had come back after another spray-bottle’s worth of water.

“So, what are you doing here?” the bug asked.

“Trying to get you to come out of that cocoon,” Starlight replied. “We’ve been trying to coax you out for two months now.”

“Really?” Dragonfly sounded like she didn’t believe it. “Why would you do something as stupid as that?”

“Don’t be silly,” Starlight snapped. “We couldn’t possibly leave here without you.”

Those glowing blue eyes half-lidded themselves. “That’s sweet,” Dragonfly said, “but you can’t let pony sentiment make your decisions here. I’m dangerous to everyone around me. Isn’t that obvious?”

“No, listen,” Starlight insisted. “Quit making this about yourself. We literally cannot leave here without you. Spacesuits. Electronics work. Rope and netting for the rovers. Padding for the batteries. Stuff like that.” With a flash of blue magic, she picked up her torn spacesuit and threw it at the changeling. It draped over her like a puffy blanket.

“Oh.” The changeling’s ear-fins drooped a bit. She reached up with her hooves and pulled off the suit. She examined the hole, the last splotches of the previous patch. “What have you been using?”

“Your suit, of course,” Starlight said. “For over three weeks now.”

Dragonfly nodded, setting the suit aside. “I thought this was a pony friendship thing,” she said.

“Never said it wasn’t,” Starlight said. “But pony friendship could have been left for another six months. We need suit patches and a ship’s engineer right now.”

Dragonfly shrugged; pragmatism was, after all, a changeling racial trait. “I’m still dangerous, you know,” she said. “I’m pretty hungry even now. Not as bad as I was, but I could get that bad again. When we leave the cave behind, for sure.”

“Then we’ll figure something out,” Starlight said. “Worst case, we can keep your cocoon around for the ride to Schiaparelli, so long as you give us some means to tell you it’s time to come out.”

“But-“

“No buts. Look at me.” Starlight stared straight into the glowing eyes. “I know every argument you can make on this because I’ve been there. You sucked Mark dry and left us a mare down. Then when you realized what you did, you ran away. I know exactly how that feels because I did the exact same thing.”

“But you didn’t drain the emotions from-“

“DETAILS,” Starlight shouted, silencing the changeling. “No, I didn’t turn one person into a zombie. Try dozens. I brain-washed a whole village. I stole their lives to make myself feel better. And then I destroyed Equestria about a dozen times. And it took a lot longer for it to sink in that I wasn’t the good guy, Dragonfly. Want to talk about guilt and running away from responsibility? Been there. Done that. Bought the baseball cap.”

“But-“

“No. Whatever it is, no,” Starlight said. “No more running and hiding. You’ve had a two month vacation from Mars. Lucky you. That’s over now. Time to get to work, and believe me, there is a ton of work piled up and waiting for you.”

Dragonfly sighed. “Are you sure-“

“TONS and tons.”

“All right,” she said. “Work. I’m a drone. I know from work.”

“Beginning with apologizing to everyone for running away from the problem,” Starlight said. “Including Mark.” Pause. “Including Chrysalis, come to think of it.”

Dragonfly moaned, flopping forward onto The Stump. “Are you REALLY sure I can’t just go back into the cocoon?” she wailed.

Time passed. Dawn came, and breakfast, and then more people. There were hugs, and angry recriminations, sometimes at the same time.

Then there was the message to Equestria, which produced a very, very long one in reply.

“Do you think she notices she’s now in a mud puddle?” Mark asked.

“Going by what Chrysalis is telling her,” Starlight replied, one ear cocked for the sound of splashing, “probably not.”

“What is she telling her?”

“Nothing you’d put in a hobbit story.”

Eventually the splashing ended, and Dragonfly keyed in a brief message-acknowledged sequence before turning to the others. “I’m sorry I ran away and left you all holding the bag,” Dragonfly said to the gathered castaways. “And Mark, I’m really sorry I sucked you dry and tossed you aside like a juice box.”

“That’s perfectly all- wait, what?” Mark asked. “You have juice boxes back home?”

“Er… yeah?”

“With the tiny little straw in the wrapper and everything?”

“This isn’t important,” Starlight warned.

“Yeah, sure,” Dragonfly said. “Pony kids go around with ‘em all the time.”

“But… but…” Mark appeared much more appalled at the thought of ponies with juice boxes than he’d been about being turned into an emotionless zombie. “But how in the hell do you even-“

“FOCUS!!!” Starlight shouted.

“But… but plastic wrappers and hooves-“

“Actually they’re wax paper wrappers.”

“But that just raises more questions!”

Starlight could hear Fireball muttering behind her, “Humans sure forgive easy, don’t they?”

The unicorn found herself wondering how hard she’d have to hit The Stump with her head before it broke.

The Stump, that is. She couldn’t get so lucky as to break her own head.

Things were already back to normal- SNABU.

[13:21] WATNEY: Hello, Earth. This is Dragonfly. I’m back. I’m sorry I haven’t been around the past two months. I thought I was keeping the others safe, but now I see I was running from my own responsibility. I should have told you all about my species, and I didn’t. I should have warned you I was having problems, and I didn’t. And when I snapped, I ran away rather than try to fix the problem, and I shouldn’t have. I left you all hanging. I’m very sorry, and it won’t happen again.

[13:59] JPL: Hello, Dragonfly. This is Venkat Kapoor. We accept your apology. Right now we want to focus on what’s ahead and not behind. The most important thing is to get work on the Sirius tandem rover back on schedule so you can make your Sol 551 rendezvous with Hermes. Top priority in that department is making sure all your spacesuits are up to maintenance. After that our engineers have some questions about lightening Friendship to make it less of a strain on the rover chassis.

[14:30] WATNEY: Yes, sir, I understand. I’ll do everything I can to help.

[14:59] JPL: So, I’ve been meaning to ask- how did Watney taste? Sweet? Salty? Probably not spicy, but who knows? It’s always the quiet ones, after all!

[15:02] JPL: Kapoor here- I want whoever typed that found and put on the first plane to Ellington Field! His feet have a date with my carpet! Heads will roll!

[15:34] WATNEY: Mark here- busy recording the discussion about flavors of pony. Most interesting fact: Dragonfly’s favorite snack is teenage puppy love, because it’s salty and crunchy.

[16:02] JPL: You just made that up.

[16:33] WATNEY: Once we get to the Ares IV MAV I’ll finally be able to upload all the audio and video I’ve been collecting. You can hear it for yourself. In English.

[17:32] JPL: Bet she can’t eat just one!

[17:35] JPL: I mean it! Rolling heads! I want a name, Bruce!

[17:38] JPL: I am Spartacus.

[17:39] JPL: I am Spartacus.

[17:39] JPL: I am Spartacus.

[17:39] JPL: I am Groot.

[17:40] JPL: I am Brian and so is my wife.

[17:43] JPL: Welcome back, Dragonfly… I think.

Author's Note

The voice in Dragonfly's cocoon dream refers to r and K reproduction strategies:

https://www.cs.montana.edu/webworks/projects/stevesbook/contents/chapters/chapter002/section004/blue/page003.html

Sol 289

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 293
ARES III SOL 289

[08:02] JPL: Good morning, everybody. Since all of you except Mark are waiting for your spacesuits to finish curing after the maintenance yesterday (I know this because I do actually read all your reports), I hope you all enjoy one more sol off before you get back to work on the rover modifications.

However, I ask that you spend at least some of your time today brainstorming to see what parts of the modifications you might want advice on. You need to get those questions in quickly, because we’re about to lose contact.

We currently estimate an effective communications blackout beginning less than thirty sols from today as (from your point of view) Earth passes behind the sun. That blackout will last at least two weeks and probably closer to three. Please leave Pathfinder powered up during that period so we can ping the probe for a link once the solar conjunction is over. If we can’t connect in four weeks, we’ll begin contacting you by the Friendship radio system at 0900 Hab time every day until we get a response.

The sun, and the distance between Mars and Earth, is already making this connection ratty and unreliable. Data packet transfer failure is over 10% due to noise in transmission and rising, which considering how low the transfer rate is in the first place is getting critical. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

With that in mind, tomorrow is the last day for emails in either direction before we restrict Pathfinder to chat and science data transfer only. We’ll restore email service after two weeks of continuous Pathfinder link up-time.

Dragonfly in particular has one email we’d really like her to answer. It contains the most asked questions by the reporters gathered at the press conference we held yesterday about her awakening. It would help us very much to give the reporters, and the world, the answers to those questions. (We’ve excised the more thoughtless ones.)

Finally, we’re still working on MAV modification procedures. If it seems like we’re dragging our feet, remember you don’t really need them until Sol 440 at earliest, because the MAV won’t be normally fueled for orbital liftoff before then. We are being as thorough as we can with our testing and simulations here to give you the best odds for a safe and uneventful docking with Hermes. Just wanted you to know we’re doing our best.

[08:35] WATNEY: Front desk, I wish to make a complaint. There is a bedbug in my room. She’s a bit more than a meter long head to tail, weighs thirty-five kilos, insists she has a reservation, and she keeps trying to stick a straw in my ear. I insist you remove her. At the very least take away her straw.

[09:07] JPL: We’re sending someone up now to take care of it. They should arrive in about two hundred and sixty sols. In the meantime, remind Mr. Fireball that you booked a non-smoking room. Enjoy another sunny spring day in Club Mars, where your forecast high temperature today is a balmy -4 Centigrade. We invite you to enjoy our planetwide Zen sand garden as a means of relaxing away your straw-in-ear anxiety.

[09:40] WATNEY: Clever. Clever Venkat.

[10:22] JPL: You don’t get to put Director in front of your name if you aren’t clever, Mark.

From: Dragonfly (email redacted)
To: (list)
Subject: Re: Questions About Your Hibernation

Hello, everyone! I’ll try to answer all of these questions in my statement.

Yes, I am glad to be back. However, I’m also anxious. I went into the cocoon because I didn’t think I could control myself anymore, and I gave up trying. There’s still some danger it could happen again, but I have been reminded that I have a crew- that I have friends- who will watch out for me and help make sure it doesn’t happen again.

As for how I feel about the whole thing, I’m mostly ashamed. And not just because of running away from what I did to Mark. Losing control like that is one of the most shameful things a changeling can do. It endangers ourselves and the rest of the hive. Strict control and concentration is drummed into those of us who are trained for infiltration duty from the first day. Even if we don’t have to do those things anymore, that was how I was raised, and I still feel the shame.

I’ve read the story you mention, and yes, “changeling” is definitely the English word for my species. Replacing children was one of our tactics, although we would replace anyone who we thought would be the recipient of a lot of unconditional love. You may think it’s not a nice thing, and I agree, but starving to death or reverting to mindless monsters is much less nice. But thanks to the wisdom of our current queen, Chrysalis, we don’t have to do those things anymore.

Should humans fear changelings? I wish you wouldn’t. That was why I didn’t tell you all about us before. I wanted to wait until my queen or the pony princesses could handle it themselves. I’m no queen or princess. I’m just a high-ranking drone whose duties, as I’ve been told many times, should never include diplomacy. Unfortunately, what happened, happened, and now I have to clean up after myself.

Yes, we could replace your leaders. We could infiltrate your military and sabotage your defenses. If there’s sufficient magic on Earth for us to survive, it probably wouldn’t be all that difficult. But we would need a reason to do that, and “Because we can” isn’t enough.

This is not our home universe. We would never be more than visitors, and probably not for long. And it is not in the least bit easy to get from one universe to another in the first place. Invading your world doesn’t make sense, especially since (if we wanted to do that sort of thing) we have a world which includes a species so foolish and naive that one of them spent the night next to a starved changeling she had reason to believe would awaken while she slept. Ponies, to be blunt, are an easier target than humans.

(At least, I think so. I’m going by your old television shows for this. I hope Mark isn’t an average human, because he’s a little easier target than a pony. He thinks he’s on guard because he’s seen some movies, but it doesn’t work that way).

Also, there’s a matter of numbers. My hive has about thirty thousand drones. There are millions of ponies. There are billions, B, of you humans. I would ask my mother to write me a note excusing me from invading your world, except my mother is Queen Chrysalis, so I would have to ask Epstein’s mother instead.

In any case, although I wouldn’t mind seeing your world, I very much want to go home- straight home. I’m better than I was, but I am not well and don’t expect to get well so long as I’m on Mars. I don’t belong here. And as much as I like Mark, if I woke up tomorrow and one of the airlocks opened up onto my home world instead of Mars, I’d be, “Later, stink-monkey!” and gone so fast you’d think I was Rainbow Run.

Speaking of Mark, none of you asked this, but I want to say it: Mars is a terrible, awful place. Yes, it’s another world, but after a hundred sols of everything about this other world trying to kill you, the thrill wears off. You know it is dangerous. Your NASA knows it is dangerous. And despite that you find people that volunteer- that compete with one another- that give up everything else in their lives for a chance to come here for thirty days. These people, people like Mark, are the bravest people I’ve ever met or seen, ever, and I’ve been in combat. I don’t care how much you appreciate them, it isn’t enough.

Maybe that’s a difference between your world and ours. You take your time, do everything safely, and you send the absolute best among you to the stars. We send our crazy people (like me) and hold them back just long enough that they might, I said might, not get themselves killed right away. We get away with it because we have a kinder world, with magic and rainbows and happy endings even for those who don’t deserve them. You have to work for your happy endings, and I think you do a better job than we would.

Sorry. I talk too much- it’s a changeling flaw, and it’s got infiltrators caught many times before.

To answer the rest of your questions: every time we visit the cave we’re making a magic environment for a few minutes a day to help keep us healthy. (I’m not the only one who suffers without magic, just the worst affected.) The others are still feeding me, three hugs a day, nice square meals. This should be enough for me to build up a reserve that will last me when we leave the cave behind, plus the little magic we generate ourselves can be used to recharge the batteries for more doses of concentrated magic during the trip.

And to whoever asked about all the homemade bug-pony dolls kids have made, I say: kids, take care of your changelings. Yes, we’re scary. But most of the time- not always, but most of the time- the scarier a thing looks, the more scared it is inside.

And no, sorry, but your dolls won’t share the love they collect from you with me, not if they’re doing their duty to the hive. But I appreciate the wish.

Thanks to everyone who was worried about me, and I’m sorry for disappointing you. I’ll do better next time.

Dragonfly

Author's Note

My Venkat is considerably more sarcastic than the book. But then, we see a lot more of him interacting with Mark than we do in the book, too.

I'd intended to get ahead on writing, get Peter is the Wolf script done... and my day got eaten trying to diagnose my uncle's computer. Final diagnosis, after three hours of futzing; it's borked. So tomorrow I drive to Houston to buy him a replacement, and then I spend tomorrow evening setting it up.

Get ahead? Get a buffer back? The universe laughs at my intentions.

Sol 290

MISSION LOG – SOL 290

Today NASA finally insisted on the damn inventory, so we spent the day counting pretty much everything, inside and out.

Starlight’s new arm- right foreleg- patch is much better than the emergency job that failed after almost two hundred sols. Dragonfly spat up three different layers of material at various points during the suit refurbishing task day before yesterday, with the result that the new patch is both more durable and more flexible. It’s still not perfect, though. We discussed adding a Hab canvas patch as a protective overlayer, but Dragonfly finally said it would get in the way if and when a new patch needed to be made.

One of the things NASA was worried about in particular was the disposable CO2 filters. They wanted to make sure, with all the EVAs I was doing, that I wasn’t running out. Well, the good thing is, when the suit life support isn’t running, the air flow to the filters is shut off cold, so that the absorption power of the filter isn’t used up while riding in the rover or while in the Hab where other systems will take care of things. Also, any time the Hab’s air tanks get a bit low, the ponies just vent their home-grown air into the Hab, and the atmospheric regulator sucks up the excess gas, splits it into its components, and stores it.

So I’ve had the luxury of leaving filters in my suit until they’re saturated, then bleeding CO2-laden air out and letting the suit backfill with good air for the rest of whatever EVA it is when the alarms go off. And, of course, I very seldom go anywhere in the rover (which also uses those filters) without at least one pony to provide suit environmental systems. I think I’ve only swapped filters in Rover 2 five times total since Sol 6.

As a result, I have, as of today, exactly 200 filters remaining, not counting the ones currently in the suits and the rovers. That’s 1600 hours of EVA time without bloodletting the air. If I used one filter per sol for EVAs, that’s two hundred sols worth of EVAs… and one way or another, we have only two hundred sixty-one sols remaining on this rock. So barring some truly lethal circumstances, I’ve got more than enough filters for the rest of the mission.

Most of the other news from the inventory is good. We’ve only cheated a little bit on the food packs, to the point that I can go back on a full food pack diet (well, two-thirds ration) around Sol 430. And believe you me, I am counting the days. I’ve even picked out my celebration meal for Sol 430: the last bacon breakfast pack, and one of the four remaining spaghetti with meat sauce dinner packs.

During a much less pleasant lunch than spaghetti, we finished Fellowship of the Ring today. Discussion time was… interesting. Dragonfly argued, and argued well, that Boromir was doing what he thought was right when he tried to get Frodo to bring the Ring to Gondor. The ponies, of course, argued right back that Boromir was wrong, that he was under the influence of the Ring. And then Dragonfly won the argument by pointing out that Boromir’s sense of duty to Gondor- his pride and love for his country- was what made it possible for the Ring to take hold in the first place. That, after all, was what Gandalf and Galadriel had been afraid of- that the Ring would twist what was best about themselves and use that to betray them.

And she ended with a bit of wisdom which I don’t think the ponies had heard before: “Everybody is the hero of their own story, in their own mind.” The conversation shifted into pony-language for a bit as they discussed their baddies, but Dragonfly was able to defend her position pretty well. The ponies weren’t happy about it, but they were definitely thinking about it. At the end only Starlight Glimmer argued the point to say that there was one pony who didn’t think themselves a hero- herself.

At that the subject quickly changed to Frodo on the Hill of Sight, which everyone agreed was a fucking dumb thing to do.

Anyway, we should finish the inventory tonight, after which Starlight is going to help Dragonfly roll up an original character for the new campaign. We need a fighter; I’m playing a bard and Fireball is playing a monk, with Spitfire as an elven cleric and Cherry Berry as a druid. That’s a party that’s just crying out for a tank. But we’ll see what Dragonfly wants to do…

“A paladin??” Starlight gasped.

“Paladin,” Dragonfly replied. “Lawful good. Smiting evil. Smiting the insufficiently good. Smiting the indifferent. Smite makes right.”

Starlight Glimmer put her face into her hoof. “Do we really look like that to you?” she asked.

“You mean you ponies? Psh! Of course not!” Dragonfly said. “You ponies would all be clerics with vows of nonviolence except for the princesses and Twilight Sparkle’s friends! Nah,” she continued, grinning, “I just want an excuse to bash things.”

“Have you ever played Ogres and Oubliettes? Or this Dungeons and Dragons?” Starlight asked. “Trust me, you’re not going to need an excuse.”

“Bash all the things,” Dragonfly said. “But in a lawful good way. For the glory of Insert Deity Here.”

Starlight sighed, mentally consigning her tale of intricate balancing of shades of political grey in a fallen kingdom to the scrap heap.

Hackfest? I can do that, bug. Bring it.

And that day, Starlight Glimmer, the Killer DM of Mars, was born.

Author's Note

Yeah.

So, today I played tech support for my aunt and uncle- driving to Houston and back (110 miles each way to the place I went) to get a new computer for them. And I spent two hours at their house trying to set it up, only to have the same NMI memory error blue-screen the refurbished computer three times. So tomorrow I go down there again...

... anyway, I got home for good a bit after 6 PM, by which time my office/bedroom was warm. The AC doesn't keep up with the Texas heat in here, so it ranges between 82 and 85 at the computer even with the thermostat set to 75. I'm seriously thinking about moving my office to another part of the house, part of it that's on the central air system.

But the heat, plus other issues, makes it difficult to concentrate, which is why you're getting this filler that's strongly inspired by the comments on yesterday's chapter. (Also, I really did spent some hours going through the entire story to date and doing a reasonably conservative estimate of EVA hours Mark has conducted (and filters used up), because I was beginning to worry, what with all the activity he's had the past hundred sols, he might be getting low. Turns out nope, he's good for the rest of the story.)

Anyway... Chrysalis and the changelings, as they exist in Changeling Space Program and, by inference, The Maretian. One commenter compared them to North Korea, whereas my thoughts turned more to South Africa or Rwanda (or other places- there's a lot of parallels). And the key point is: why is there no justice for Chrysalis, if not for all the changelings?

Justice is damn important to us human beings. We want it done, and we want to see it done. Of course, what we see ourselves as justice, others might see as revenge or even persecution. (Or, in some cases, abuse of law for purposes of enslavement; for-profit American prisons have much evil to answer for, to say nothing of the long history of prisoner work gangs and forced labor.) For a species that craves justice so much, we're not very good at either defining it or carrying it out.

So let's drop the word justice and aim for simple punishment. Chrysalis and her changelings have done a lot of evil, most of which doesn't get brought up in this story or in the cartoon because it's too bad for a Y7 rating. Murder is possible, but not clearly confirmed. Kidnapping, theft, fraud, confidence scheming, assault, endangerment, burglary, and levying of war against the crown of Equestria? Yep, all guilty. And even the changelings who stay behind in the hive (if any- in CSP there's lots, but no details are given in the cartoon) are complicit, both by aiding and abetting the warriors and infiltrators and by receiving the benefits of the crime (accessories after the fact).

For justice to happen, each and every last changeling would have to be locked up and put on trial. From the pony point of view, they're all guilty and deserve to be punished.

The changelings, of course, would disagree. The nicer (or more clever-tongued) among them would argue that what they did to ponies was distasteful but necessary for their survival. (The less nice, of course, enjoyed every bit of it.) But even though it's an attempt to excuse evil, it's not wrong. The conflict between changelings and ponies is not the same as human group A versus human group B; changelings, at least pre-reform, are utterly dependent on stealing love from ponies for their very survival. And the rules all break down when survival is on the line.

But now let's separate Chrysalis. The main difference between CSP Chrysalis and canon Chrysalis is that the Chryssy I write is much more cautious than the one in the cartoon. The one in the cartoon, to be blunt, loves her some crackpot schemes. CSP Chrysalis hates risk and hedges her bets. But either version of Chrysalis is a psychopath. The closest either can come to love is a form of possessive pride. Both lust to hold power over others- the more the better. And both believe it is morally wrong for anyone to oppose her, because she, Chrysalis, is not to be opposed.

In short, a horrible person- not totally incapable of being reformed, but it will take a lot of doing by a clever show writer to make it plausible at this point.

You can argue (and I do) that the average changeling is not innately evil- merely banal. Changelings go along with all the bad stuff because they don't see any alternative and because they've been taught- and have persuaded themselves- that it's how things should be. (The cartoon agrees with me, considering how quickly and thoroughly the changelings took Thorax's option in "To Where and Back Again". Given other circumstances and other options, changelings become just folks... in much the same way certain ponies, in circumstances, become monsters.

But Chrysalis is different. She is bad and revels in it. And in a perfect world, she should get some true cosmic justice. In CSP I have a couple of plans in that regard, but Maretian is eating all the writing time I can scrounge, so we haven't got to the payoffs yet. Suffice to say that, even if you argue that changeling drones deserve a pass for the Bad Old Days, Chrysalis indisputably does not.

But now consider the practical aspects of seeing justice done to Chrysalis. Remember, she is not merely a criminal, nor even a gang leader. She has a tiny nation, an unknown number (I use the number thirty thousand in CSP) of generally loyal subjects, all of whom are potential warriors. She lies outside the reach of standard law. It would require a war to bring her to justice in any absolute sense, and the waste involved in that war would probably not be worth it.

Could you cut off interaction with her? Yes- and this would hurt her not at all. In most cases, for example, where the US has cut off diplomatic and trade ties to a nation, the result has been to strengthen, not weaken, the regime in question. The dictators use the measure as an excuse to their people for everything bad- and a justification for the bad actions of the dictatorship. And when you finally lift the pressure, Chrysalis would still be there.

Celestia has decided, in CSP, to take an approach of reconciliation. Rather than choose justice, which would either trigger a war or make peace more difficult, she has decided to act as if she takes Chrysalis at her word when she claims to seek peace. Of course she doesn't really trust Chrysalis, but she's content to tangle Chryssy in her own diplomacy in order to inhibit whatever her real scheme is. And, all the while, she does everything she can to make it easier for the changeling drones to integrate into Equestrian society.

A year later (where CSP's story currently lies languishing), if Celestia threatened to jail Chrysalis for her crimes, the changelings would still rush to the defense of the queen... but, at the same time, the changelings are much happier with the new detente than with how things were before. They don't have to be afraid. They're eating better than ever before. They're enjoying the full benefits of civilization, rather than the cast-offs and stolen trinkets (and, in one case, the junk mail).

So, if Chrysalis said at this point that the peace was off and the changelings were going back to their old ways... it's a very open question how many would continue to follow her. And the CSP Chryssy (unlike the canon Chryssy) is cautious and smart enough to realize this is an issue. She can see that, for all her petty abuses of power from time to time, she's slowly losing her grip on her subjects, and that she has two choices; fulfill their wishes, or provide such an instant and overwhelming victory that they'll accept it.

How she resolves that problem is the main spoiler that makes me regret every single Equestrian-based scene I write for this story, no matter how indispensable it is... but at least in CSP, we can see that Chrysalis is being slowly shifted from being a ruling queen to a reigning queen. Maybe, for a controlling, abusive personality like hers, that's justice enough.

TL;DR - Justice is really bucking hard.

Sol 294-295

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 298
ARES III SOL 294

Turning wrenches while wearing space suits was annoying, but there wasn’t any choice. Today Mark and the ponies were swapping out Amicitas’s old electrical battery in favor of two of the hydrogen cells from the Hab. That required a mana battery to allow Starlight Glimmer to levitate the battery down safely. It also required four of the pony ship’s five remaining crash benches to be dismounted and part of the floor pulled up to disconnect the long, skinny battery. And, of course, since the battery was far too long to fit in Amicitas’s airlock, that airlock had to be open for the whole procedure.

It had taken them all four hours the sol before to shift the stored hay back into the habitat deck so the bridge could be depressurized. Removing the seats and floor, and then disconnecting all the electrical cables from the old battery, had required another hour and a half today. And now that that was done, Mark, Fireball, and Dragonfly stood looking at the vaguely car-engine shaped battery.

“It’s gonna be a tight turn getting this into the Rover 1 shell,” Mark said. “How did you get this thing in here in the first place?”

“Teleported it into the cabin, then levitated it into place,” Dragonfly said. “Starlight probably has enough power for the teleport, with a fifty percent battery.”

“Could,” Starlight said over the pony comms. “Could, but won’t. The more magic we conserve, the sooner all the batteries are full, and the sooner we can enjoy more time per day in the field.”

“Do you think we can lift it by hand?” Mark asked. He got on his knees, reached down, and worked his gloved hands into the gap. “I can just barely fit my hands in here.”

“No way,” Fireball said, pointing to his own suit. Mark’s suit relied as much on its materials as on air pressure to keep Mark at one bar. The pony-made suits were more Apollo-era, which meant more puffy. “Gonna need the pony.”

“Starlight, could you-“

“On my way.” There followed some grunting and some cursing in Equestrian over the comms. Climbing Amicitas’s boarding ladder with a sixty-kilo metal-clad rock strapped to your back, on top of an already bulky spacesuit, would never be on top of anyone’s list of fun pastimes. Eventually Starlight heaved herself over the threshold of the open airlock, got all four hooves on the deck, and walked inside, battery on her back.

“Hold still a moment,” Dragonfly said, trotting over to have a look at Starlight’s right forearm. If anything happened to the new patch…

“It’s fine,” Starlight grumbled. “Moves a lot easier than before. Chafes a bit more, though.”

“Gotta check anyway,” Dragonfly said.

“Mind if I look?” Fireball was next to her, staring over Dragonfly’s head at the limb.

“Don’t DO that!” Starlight complained, flinching back. “How do you move that fast and quiet, anyway?”

“Stalking wild rocks,” Dragonfly muttered. “Gemstones are easily startled and will run away at the first sign of danger. But Fireball is a renowned hunter among dragons. No gem escapes him.”

Fireball didn’t answer. He just smiled. Dragonfly’s back was to him, so she couldn’t see it except for a distorted reflection in Starlight’s faceplate, but she could count the teeth based on the combined amusement and threat coming off the dragon.

“It’s holding up okay,” the changeling said hurriedly, deciding she’d made a mistake with her joke. “Let’s just get the battery out of its hole. We can maneuver it into the airlock so that you can see it to levitate it down to safety. Once it’s on the ground, we should be able to carry it.”

“We, huh?” Fireball asked. “Like ‘we’ carry airlock to cave?”

“Let’s just get this done,” Starlight grumbled.

“No, wait,” Mark said, holding up a suited finger, “I too wish to hear more of this ‘we’ thing Dragonfly speaks of. Because I don’t recall a bug-pony as part of the ‘we’ that day. Do you, Fireball?”

“No, sir,” Fireball replied, shaking his head solemnly.

“You know I can feel you both laughing inside,” Dragonfly muttered.

“So enjoy the snack,” Mark said. “And then get out of the way while the dragon and I each rupture an intervertebral disk.”

“A what disk?” Fireball asked.

“He says you’ll both throw out your backs,” Starlight muttered.

Fireball stood up straight, almost knocking his helmet on the ceiling of the bridge. “Will not,” he insisted. “Dragons are strong. Dragons are… are… mighty, yes, mighty! My scales are like shields! My teeth are like swords!”

“Your tail is a thunderbolt,” Mark said.

“Yes!”

“Your wings a hurricane.”

“Yes!”

“And your breath could really stand some mints. Maybe some chewing gum.”

“Yyyyyyywhat’s that again?”

“Just reminding you that for all his strength,” Mark said, “Smaug was a bit of an idiot.”

Fireball snorted, and for a moment his helmet bowl clouded up with smoke. “That’s not me,” he said. “But I still can carry battery by myself. I’m stronger than all others here put together.”

Dragonfly chose this moment to step back into the conversation. “But what happens if you do hurt yourself?” she said. “Not likely, but what if? Would it be permanent? How long would we have to go without that strength while you lay in a bunk recovering? Don’t show off. Be careful. Work together. Okay?”

Fireball thought about it. “Yeah,” he said, “you’re right. But I still could do it.”

Cherry Berry, who stood with Spitfire on the ground outside, called up over the comms, “Are you going to remove that battery today or not? We’re burning EVA time.”

“Sorry,” Mark replied, stepping back to the edge of the bridge, leaning against the pilot’s controls. Dragonfly and Fireball went to the opposite corner, near the sealed hatch and ramp leading to the habitat deck, giving Starlight plenty of room to lift the battery out.

Starlight doffed the mana battery from her back, set it down, and switched it on. Blue light surrounded her helmet, and a ray leaped out to grab the battery down in its well. After a second, she grunted. A couple of seconds later, she crouched forward on her hooves, grunting louder, as the light grew brighter. Under Dragonfly’s hooves, the deck began to tilt.

“Hold what you have, Starlight,” Cherry Berry said, gently but firmly. “I want you to very little bit lower the power you put into that lift, all right? Very slow. Bit by bit. Do NOT let go, just ease down. Okay?”

“O… kay?” Starlight’s response was both strained and confused, but the light lessened, and after a second or two the deck became level once more.

“All right, let go slow,” Cherry said. “All the way. Just back out of the spell.”

“Already done,” Starlight said, the magic light winking out around her helmet. “I didn’t realize that battery was so heavy.”

“It isn’t,” Cherry said flatly. “But it’s still bolted into the ship. You had the back end up off the rocks and were about to tip the ship onto its side.”

Dragonfly could vaguely see the shadow of Mark’s head behind his reflective faceplate, shaking in confusion. “But… but how could Starlight lift up the ship while she was standing in it?” he asked. “The rules of leverage ought to make that impossible!”

Dragonfly let the others talk about magic and its unexplainable effects while she contemplated the possibility of melting into the deck. She’d forgotten all about the bolts securing the battery into its hole. All eight of them. Which required a special socket extension that her toolkit didn’t include because removing the battery wasn’t a mission service item.

And she’d forgot them. Forgot the bucking obvious thing, because there had to be bolts there. Otherwise any slight change in momentum would send the massive battery rattling around its hole, bashing things up…and that fact had gone clean out of her-

“Dragonfly,” Mark asked, “how do we unfasten the battery?”

“Oh look!” Dragonfly said. “My suit battery’s about to hit zero! Time to go back in-“ She went silent, then used her forehooves to mime a dead radio. Yes, it only bought ten minutes before she had to admit to being stupid, but that was ten minutes in which she could think of some way to make herself feel a little less stupid.

She ignored the temptation to make it a ten minute head start back to the cave and the cocoon. No matter how nice it would feel, she’d still be the same idiot when she came back out.

MISSION LOG – SOL 295

Today we completed swapping out the old pony ship battery for two of the fourteen remaining Hab hydrogen cells. The hydrogen cells are hooked up to the ship’s power systems, and since they’re connected to Hab power, the Hab power regulators have access to them for drawing down or recharging as needed. Tomorrow I’ll finish linking the old battery into the cobbled-together rig I used to replace Rover 1’s power system when the pressure vessel was removed from its chassis.

Getting the battery out required a lot more of Starlight’s magical abilities than we expected. The tool required to undo the eight bolts that hold the battery to the bottom of the hole it sits in isn’t among Dragonfly’s kit, and I don’t have enough ratchet extensions to reach down even if any of my sockets fit. NASA only gave me the four sockets that the Ares mission specs call for, anyway.

But after yesterday’s strategy session in the Hab, we figured out that Starlight could cast a simple spell to make the bolts unscrew themselves. The only problem was, we had to temporarily repressurize the pony bridge for the spell to work, because, according to Starlight, it wouldn’t be “sonic enough” otherwise. I don’t know if that’s a joke or serious.

Anyway, once that was done we depressurized the bridge again, got the battery on the edge of the airlock, and let Starlight lower it to the ground. It’s lighter than the big airlock was, but not by too much, so I was glad of Fireball’s help to carry the thing over to the Rover 1 radio shack. Then Starlight levitated up the two hydrogen cells, and I spent the rest of the day wiring them in while Dragonfly rigged some makeshift clamps to hold them in place in the back of the cabin. They’re a little too wide to fit in the same trench as the old battery, but they weigh half as much even combined, and they provide one hell of a lot more power.

The weight is the main reason we decided to do this now. Moving the batteries took less magic than moving the whole ship would have… and by lightening the ship a little bit, we made it easier to move the ship to mount it on the Rover 1 chassis when we get that far.

Tomorrow we’re going to take the sole spare Hab lighting strip, plus one of the strips installed on the Hab, and use them to replace the two bulbs that still work on the pony ship. Then, while I do electrician things to get the pony ship battery back into the circuit, the others will plan strategy on the Big Lift.

Looking at the to-do list, I’m feeling very good. Despite the long bit of time off and all the delays, we’re now through sixteen of the twenty-nine action items for the Whinnybago project. Twenty-seven, really; I’ve decided that Pathfinder is not going with us on the trip. We can’t spare the power for its heater, and it weighs too much for its utility once we’re rolling. NASA won’t like it, but I’m pretty sure that about two weeks after I tell them I’m not doing it, they’ll think it was their idea.

And the best part is, once the mods are done, the Hab will still have its current power, we’ll still have our hay barn, and the only thing we’ll have to do when we leave is install the pony life support box from the cave.

I think we’re going to be at loose ends for things to do for about a hundred sols. I wonder how that will affect things.

Anyway, no D&D tonight; just 70’s reruns. Starlight says she has to rework the campaign after Dragonfly impaled the king. See, she figured out he was about to order his guards to kill us so he wouldn’t have to pay the reward for clearing out the bulette. Of course, none of us blame Starlight for not allowing Landgrave Cleftchin to claim the throne by right of conquest afterwards, though we do think having to fight our way out through two hundred royal guards and a level 5 wizard vizier was excessive.

Well, one hundred ninety-two guards. I charmed the vizier by reminding him that the king’s heir was likely to give him the pink-slip no matter what he did to us, and the last eight surviving guards failed their will checks and ran screaming into the night like little babies. Fortunately Fireball and Cherry put Dragonfly’s paladin to sleep long enough for us to carry him out, because none of us were on board with Cleftchin’s proposal to take on the other four battalions of the guard in the same way.

We now know why no Earth probe has found any Martians: murder hobos like us got to them first.

Author's Note

Another long day. And more in the future, since the estimated repair time of that computer is six days. I could have swapped it out for a replacement with the receipt (and might still do so), but there's a chance of a similar problem with a replacement computer, whereas this guarantees (assuming they find and fix the problem) a computer absent this glitch.

And Dragonfly shouldn't be ashamed much; every other person with her is also an astronaut, and they forgot to check to see if the battery was tied down, too.

Sol 296-297

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 300
ARES III SOL 296

[08:02] JPL: Good morning, daily check-in time. We trust everyone’s fine. Today is the summer solstice at the Hab, so enjoy the sunshine and warmth while it lasts. Our forecasts show a possibility of temperatures in positive digits C for brief periods over the next week before a light dust storm currently in Syrtis reduces insolation and drops temps down for a couple of days. However, Dr. Keller asks me to remind you that sunbathing is not encouraged, both because spacesuits are not made for bikini modifications and because there’s absolutely nothing except distance from the Sun to shield you from UV rays.

[08:41] WATNEY: Summer solstice?? Why didn’t you tell us before! We missed it! I can’t believe we missed it!

[09:20] JPL: I assume this is one of the ponies. I can’t imagine Mark being that upset over a solstice. Is it part of your culture?

[10:03] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer here. We hold the Summer Sun Celebration on the longest day of the year, celebrating the rule of our Princess All-The-Skies (not the right translation). We stay up all the night before partying and then watch the Princess raise the sun in the morning. (Yes, I know, rotate the planet, but it’s traditional to call it sun-raising.) After Hearth’s Warming, it’s the most important holiday of the year.

[10:43] JPL: I see. Our scientists are still screaming about magic strong enough even to rotate an Earth-sized planet, by the way. But this is the solstice in the Martian northern hemisphere, not your home world. I assume the two don’t line up?

[11:21] WATNEY: Sorry, we’re busy now. Have to get ready for a belated Summer Sun Celebration! – Starlight --- Because what else do we have to celebrate on this rock? – Mark

In Equestria it was the depths of winter, with Hearth’s Warming less than a month in the past. On Earth it was late September, with summer lingering with its tropical heat at Johnson Space Center in Houston. But on Mars it was the first day of summer, and the three ponies had drafted the three non-ponies into the excuse to declare a holiday, survey the slim options available from what they had in the Hab, and prepare an all-night Summer Sun Celebration party.

For snacks Starlight Glimmer sliced potatoes extra fine with a trickle of magic and baked them in the atmospheric regulator’s heating elements, making their best attempt yet at chips. She used up most of the current supply of salt in the process- a trip to collect more would have to be scheduled in the next few days- but the results actually crunched, and not in the same way charcoal did. All in all, almost not terrible.

There was no party punch, alas, but Cherry Berry did harvest quite a few cherry leaves and, with care and precision, converted them into quite a lot of cherry leaf tea, a drink which, though not fruit punch and definitely not alcoholic, beat plain water. (Coffee, alas, was a thing a hundred sols in the past.)

Spitfire had volunteered for party games, which consisted of retrieving the whiteboard stashed at the cave farm, adding it to the whiteboard still at the Hab, and then brainstorming ideas for charades/Pictionary/etc. She also found one of the abandoned spacesuit undergarments from Mark’s old crew, collected a few antenna fragments, and hung the jumpsuit from a cabinet, pronouncing it the Mars Sharpshooting Challenge, or Pin the Antenna in the Watney. Starlight and Cherry had protested, but Dragonfly, Fireball and Mark all laughed at it, and they held the majority.

The choice of party music was left to Mark, but he declined, pointing out that since this was a pony holiday, human music would be inappropriate. “Besides,” he said, “I’ve done enough working to Beatles songs and disco. I want time off from them.”

So, when the party began, it began with the three ponies singing traditional songs of summertime, in the original Equestrian… followed by a tune with different words, but a very familiar tune.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Mark protested, stopping the singing. “I thought we agreed, no Earth music!”

“We’re singing in pony,” Cherry said innocently.

“So you translated Celebration,” Mark said. “It’s still a disco song!”

“When we get back home,” Starlight insisted, “it’s going to be a traditional pony song.”

“At ALL our holidays,” Spitfire added, barely stumbling over the word holidays.

“From the top, girls?” Cherry said, giving a four-count beat with her hoof.

Mark’s hands left her, and Starlight Glimmer recovered her balance, four hooves dancing on the little area cleared of potato plants for the duration of the game. Somewhere ahead of her was the target- Spitfire’s tasteless re-enactment of the accident which had left Mark stranded here to greet the Equestrian shipwreck victims.

Well… fine. If Mark wasn’t bothered by the game, she wasn’t either. In fact, she was going to win it. Granted, her magic wasn’t good for much more beyond holding the antenna piece in the air without a battery, but it had been good enough to enchant a tiny bit of dirt to send a signal only she could detect. And she could feel it, right… over… there. So all she had to do was walk towards it, over it, and stick the stupid bit of metal right in the hip of the coveralls.

Confident of victory, Starlight strode forwards. She stepped over her magic mark, rubbing it out as she did so. She reached forward with her levitated antenna piece… and forward… funny, she should be hitting the cabinet by now…

“Okay, that’s enough.” She felt the antenna get plucked out of her magic, as a hand reached down to remove her blindfold. “If you’d kept going you might have punctured the Hab, and that would ruin the party.’

Starlight blinked. She’d missed the cabinet and had been reaching the antenna through a gap between cabinets. Sure enough, at the height she’d been holding the antenna at, nothing stood between it and the canvas dome.

As the others laughed, Starlight sheepishly stood aside while Mark put the blindfold on himself. This time Fireball spun him around several times, leaving the biped very unsteady on his feet. He swayed, tottered, then brought himself back into balance, not moving until he fully reclaimed his equilibrium.

Then, with cautious footsteps, he went straight forward, antenna extended ahead of him just above his waist height… and missed the inner bullseye by a whisker, poking his antenna into the fabric directly into the hip.

After a round of congratulations, the antenna was pulled out and handed to Fireball, then to Dragonfly. Fireball’s attempt clipped the left edge of the jumpsuit’s torso, while Dragonfly stuck Flat Mark in the right thigh.

And then, finally, Spitfire took her turn. “Spin me more,” she said. “Two times more. I train for this. I train others for this.”

“Did you hear that, Fireball?” Mark said, grinning. “The lady wants extra spin.”

“I hear,” Fireball said, also grinning. The blindfold went down, and then Spitfire went up, Fireball rotating her in every axis of rotation possible, tossing the pegasus like pizza dough for about thirty seconds before gently setting her back down and giving her the antenna.

To her credit, Spitfire didn’t squawk or protest, and she only wobbled a little where she stood. “I not wobbly like Mark,” she said. “I train.”

“Feh,” Mark said. “You have four legs to my two.”

“Training.” Spitfire took two steps, and immediately it became clear she hadn’t recovered her balance yet, at least not for walking. She stumbled one way, then the other, and then without realizing it the antenna she held in her teeth met resistance.

“OOOOOOOOOH, ouch,” Mark groaned, while all the others laughed.

“What? What?” Spitfire released her bite on the antenna and raised a hoof to remove the blindfold.

“Congratulations, Spitfire,” Mark continued. “If Mars had done that, then the future Mrs. Watney would have had to adopt.”

The antenna clung to its tenuous grip, directly in the crotch of the spacesuit undergarment.

The laughter didn’t stop for a couple of minutes, after which Spitfire was unanimously voted the winner.

The clock said 03:15. Sunrise was due at 05:24 Hab time. The games had been played out, and after some begging Mark had consented to put Johanssen’s Beatles tunes on for background music. The six of them sat on their bunks, sharing the small sample container still half-full of homemade crisps, sipping cold cherry leaf tea and talking.

“You know,” Spitfire said, looking at her cup, “this would be more… more… more a party if we had… er… secret add to drink?”

“Alcohol?” Mark asked.

“Yeah, right,” Fireball grunted. “I need to be more flammable.”

This got a couple of punchy chuckles.

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t going to happen,” Mark said. “NASA doesn’t allow booze on flights except for very unique circumstances. Martinez had some four-ounce bottles of sacramental wine for Communion on Hermes, but that was the only alcohol we had outside the medical cabinet.”

Spitfire blinked. “Drinks in med kit?” she asked.

Mark shook his head. “Denatured alcohol,” he said. “Definitely not safe to drink.”

“Shoot,” Spitfire muttered.

“You know,” Dragonfly said, “we don’t have holidays like this in the Hive. Occasionally Chrysalis orders a triumph, and then there’s a gorbfest whenever the love harvests are particularly good…” She paused and thought about this. “You know, we haven’t had a gorbfest in years, and we really should, considering how well we eat these days.”

“Huh. Sounds a little like Thanksgiving,” Mark said. "This gobfeast thing- why are you all flinching?”

“Don’t mind us,” Starlight said hurriedly. “You nearly got it right.”

“This time,” Spitfire muttered.

“You have it when you have a lot of food, right?” Mark said. “Like the Thanksgiving my crew was supposed to have?”

“Thanks… giving…” Dragonfly said the two parts of the word slowly. “It’s not quite the same thing, I think. We’re supposed to thank the queen for our food, no matter how much or how little there is. Gorbfest is just about having lots of food and being almost not hungry for a day.”

“Huh. Back home it’s not just a harvest thing,” Mark said. “It’s a day when family members come back from everywhere they’ve moved to so they can see one another and be together for the day.”

“That’s sweet,” Cherry said.

“Yeah,” Mark said. “It reminds us why we moved out.”

“Aaaaand that’s not so sweet.” Cherry took a chip on her hoof and munched it. “But that’s after harvest, right? What holidays do you have to begin summer?”

“Well, we don’t have one on the actual solstice,” Mark said. “There’s one about four weeks before, where we remember the soldiers who died to protect us-“

“We don’t have that,” Spitfire interrupted. “Not enough dead guards.” She slammed back her tea, added in Equestrian, “Thank Celestia for that,” and dropped down off her bunk to go get a refill.

“Er… and a couple of weeks after the solstice is Independence Day, when my country celebrates its freedom from the kings that used to rule it.”

“I still can’t get over that,” Starlight insisted. “You have a democracy. We always thought a democracy would fall apart if it got bigger than maybe a city. The Minotaur Isles have the only national democracy I know about.”

“To be fair,” Mark said, “our democracy has come close to failing a number of times. Memorial Day was originally a day to decorate the graves of those who fell when it failed the most.” It was his turn to take a long draw at his drink.

“But no kings? No queens? No princesses? Just people?” Cherry Berry insisted, not allowing any awkward silences to continue.

“There have been a couple of times when that was a danger,” Mark said. “But most of the time my people are happier without absolute rulers demanding worship and total obedience.”

“Wait, no,” Starlight insisted. “Our princesses aren’t like that at all. In fact, Princess… ugh, I wish I could translate that name!” She snorted and continued, “Anyway, she does her best to not be worshiped, and she generally lets ponies alone. And that’s despite all the work she does!”

“And you don’t have anyone like that,” Cherry added. “No one to steady the turn of your planet. No one to guard your dreams. No one to see to it that everyone finds what they’re good at and has a chance at a happy life.”

Mark shook his head. “We just don’t work like that,” he said. “The world turns itself, we have our nightmares, and a lot of people live and die without doing what they want.”

“That’s so sad,” Cherry said. “It’s like your whole world is Free Forever Forest.”

“Because it is,” Mark said. He’d been told about the Everfree and its dangers in the stories the ponies had told of Equestria. “We can’t control the weather. Most animals either run from us or try to kill us, except for the ones we’ve bred for domestication. Even on our farms we have to deal with weeds and pests and droughts and floods. There’s nine billion of us- we make up thirty-five percent by weight of all mammals on our planet- but we don’t really control it in any meaningful way.”

“Of course not.” Dragonfly’s voice was surprisingly quiet. “Haven’t you ponies figured it out yet? This is a Free Forever universe.”

The ponies froze at the thought. “A whole universe like the- the-“ Spitfire stuttered as she tried to work around the unfamiliar place-name.

“It makes sense,” Cherry said, dropping into Equestrian. “Sweet Celestia, it makes sense. It explains why this planet is trying to kill us.”

“And Mark grew up in that horrible place!” Starlight gasped, maintaining her English.

“Girls, really,” Mark said, “it’s no big-“

One human found himself at the bottom of a pony cuddle pile. A moment later Dragonfly joined, because lings gotta ling.

Fireball, feeling no compulsion to join, sipped his tea.

“Okay, okay, get off,” Mark said. “Remember, my species is the apex predator slash scavenger slash parasite of the whole planet. Over three percent of the multicellular animal biomass of Earth is us. Three percent for one species. We do all right.” He smiled and added, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the baddest motherfucker in the valley.”

The ponies froze mid-hug. “Mark,” Starlight said carefully, “are you saying you’re one of the monsters of the Free Forever Forest?”

“Well… I’m not saying I’m not…”

The group hug broke up quite abruptly after that.

Fireball shook his head. "Ponies," he muttered.

“Thank you, Mark,” Cherry said dryly. “Now I have no problem staying up to sunrise.”

“All part of the service,” Mark chuckled.

“I think we should drive back the evil forest monster,” Spitfire said slowly. “Make him pay.”

“Oh really?” Mark asked, crossing his arms. “And how are you going to do that?”

“Power of music,” the pegasus said. “Dragonfly!”

“On it!” Before Mark could react, the changeling lunged for the computer and switched from Johanssen’s music files to Lewis’s. The opening bars of “Get Down Tonight” blasted through the Hab’s speakers.

“Nooooooooo!” Mark cried melodramatically. “Curse you! Defeated by the foul, underhanded tactics of boogie fever! But I shall have my revenge!” He lunged forward, grabbed Spitfire by the barrel, and began tickling under her forelegs.

The tickle war lasted halfway to sunrise.

Author's Note

In at the wire. Now for bed.

(If you're wondering, today I finally broke a very bad writer's block, despite a mild depressive cycle today, and got some Peter is the Wolf script and layouts sent to the artist. Didn't get started on this until late.)

Sol 302

MISSION LOG – SOL 302

We have a trailer.

It took all of about ten minutes, using magic and a bit of hands-on fine guidance, to put what remains of the pony ship onto the Rover 1 chassis. It then took a total of eleven hours of EVA over Sols 299 and 300 to make sure it stayed there. Three people crawling over each other in a trench made to hold maybe one, reaching up with socket wrenches with every extension attached, fumbling around every time a nut failed to thread and fell down in the trench with us… oh, and did I mention the spacesuits? Yeah. Spacesuits.

There are now forty-four separate places where we’ve improvised a bracket or clamp and bolted it down tight around a member of the rover chassis. But we had to do it. The details on Sirius Tandem Rover Procedure 5-E say that we should reuse or install fresh “as many mounting points as possible,” and NASA is absolutely right when they say that. We need them all and probably more.

Even empty, with everything we can strip out of it yanked, and even with close to half the ship cut off, Friendship weighs at least sixteen tons. Every bump, every wobble, every tilt of the chassis is going to put stress on those attachment points, and if they fail on the trip, we’re fucked. We can’t make it lighter- in fact, every step from here on adds more weight to it. So our only choice, short of welding the two together (which we might do, if Starlight has the spell and we can find something for filler), is recycling every fastener for which a hole already exists on the bottom of the pony ship’s hull and looping it around bits of the rover chassis.

Which we did. Fortunately the rover chassis is a big open mesh frame, which makes it easy to fasten things to. Unfortunately that requires threading socket wrenches through the frame while wearing spacesuits, which is why it took two sols to install forty-four mounting points.

By comparison, yesterday’s chore was dirt simple- finishing the connections that unite the towhook assembly, with all the linkages to Rover 2’s life support, and the pony ship. I’d already installed the mounts in the ship’s pressure vessel, complete with their self-sealing-in-vacuum valves. So all I had to do, with Starlight Glimmer’s and Dragonfly’s help, was rig a few new hoses for the few inches between the towhook and the rear of the ship (the ship being mounted backwards on the chassis, remember), then going into the ship to connect the life support system from Rover 1 plus auxiliary lines to the place where the big life support box will be mounted.

That required a bit of tinkering. The life support box’s original home was in the engineering compartment, which breached on landing and which now is so much scrap metal awaiting our need for more bolts. The air lines on the pony ship automatically seal if any one compartment loses pressure, but we needed to salvage those lines to make the linkages between the box and Rover 1’s old life support. That meant patching two more holes in the pressure vessel, which required precision-cutting and threading two plugs and screwing them into place, with changeling goo as a thread gasket.

Putting in the plugs was the easy part. The hard part was moving the hay we’re storing in the ship for the third time so we could depressurize the habitat compartment and remove the pipe sections we wanted. Moving the hay took twice as long as all the other EVA tasks combined.

But we got it done, and now the only thing left to do with the trailer life support is to put the box in its new mount and connect the air hoses plus a water faucet. We even had EVA time remaining to install the lighting strips and get some real light in the ship again. The ponies were down to one bulb per compartment and no spares left.

The next step is moving as many solar panels as possible onto permanent mounts on top of the ship. That takes planning, because (among other reasons) it’s a long way down from the top of the ship- even more than before, since the rover chassis stands a lot taller than the old rear landing gear.

That’s fine by me. There are only two action points left on the procedure for the trailer, and then four for Rover 2 (since I already decided Pathfinder isn’t coming along). We could be finished by Sol 320 even if we take it easy. And since the tests require steps that commit us to shutting down the cave farm, I don’t want to do them until at least Sol 420. So there really isn’t a hurry. We can take it easy.

I especially want Dragonfly to take it easy. It’s nice to see her around, and she’s filling out a bit now that she’s out of that cocoon. But she still looks like a bug-pony chemotherapy patient. She’s nowhere near as energetic as she was pre-cocoon, and as much as she tries to hide it, she gets tired easily. Recovery for her is going to be a long, slow process- which is the main reason I’m in no hurry to decommission the farm.

Tomorrow, after a stop at the cave farm, Starlight and I will go a bit further east for a new salt-gathering site. We’re scraping the box now, after using so much on the homemade baked chips we had for the party. Then we’ll see what we can do about safety gear for me being on top of the ship bolting solar panels onto the roof. After that, we’ll spend a day just moving the panels close enough to the Hab to make it easy.

Actually, come to think of it, I need to rebuild the power converter I cobbled together so it can include a socket to plug the solar panels into. There’s another reason to postpone trusting my life to the skill of a unicorn whose magic has this unfortunate habit of flickering out without warning. I can’t possibly imagine why I’d have misgivings about that.

So, yeah. We’re going to take it easy. While Mars lets us.

Author's Note

Pretty much as it is.

I'm a bit at sea at this point, in no small part because Andy Weir skipped 150 sols, jumping right over all of this. Also because I've solved most of the problems Weir gave Mark at this point.

Not that I don't have a couple of things left, but I want to save them a little while longer...

BTW, tonight (Wed) is the first half of my educational comedy music playlist, or "Edymacashun"; next week will be more of the same, and the week following is Anti-Christmas (I play my Christmas music when nobody else does, so I don't have to play it when everybody else is).

dementiaradio.org

Sol 303

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 307
ARES III SOL 303

“We’re here.”

Starlight Glimmer looked up from the computer screen, where an image of Dragonfly’s now unoccupied cocoon sat in front of what seemed like an aura of rainbow light rendered in crystal. “Oh?” she said. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“What abou- oh,” Dragonfly said, looking over the unicorn’s shoulder at the screen and seeing the pic. “Tired of me already?”

Although the tone was teasing, Starlight Glimmer felt a shiver through her body at the words. “Don’t you ever think of going back into that thing,” she snapped, closing the image viewer. “And no, I wasn’t thinking about that.”

“Young ladies, don’t make me turn this car around,” Mark said. “Really, don’t. I may have to swap batteries anyway, so I want to make this trip worth the trouble.”

They had come ten kilometers east-northeast of Site Epsilon, to another volcano or hill or something- this one with two peaks, each considerably taller than the squat mound of Site Epsilon. Mark had parked near the base of the volcano, Rover 1’s battery back in its saddlebag for this trip, the RTG providing a surplus of heat for the interior of the rover. The side of the mountain sloped up gently ahead of them.

“Which way to the best source of salt?” Mark asked.

“I know a gem-finding spell, Mark,” Starlight said. “But no pony I ever met had a talent for finding salt in the ground. Sorry.”

Mark shrugged. “Eh,” he said. “Let’s just drive a bit farther, then, and see what’s on the other side.”

The rover crawled slowly but steadily up the side of the volcano, aimed directly at the saddle between the peaks. It took only a couple of minutes to reach the crest of the slope. The ground rolled away, and then the rover lurched as Mark slapped on the brakes. The ribbed wheels of the rover dug in to the loose dirt and rocks, slid a little, and then ceased all motion.

“Whoa,” he said.

“Not funny, Mark,” Starlight said.

“No, seriously,” Mark said. “Suit up. We need to go out and see this.”

Ten minutes later the three of them stood on the mountain, staring eastwards.

Unlike the gentle slope on the western side of the hill, the eastern face dropped away fairly steeply not far from where Mark had stopped. Below and before them extended a large bowl, interrupted by a tongue of plainsland jutting into the bowl from the south, a small mesa jutting up from the tip like a sphinx almost totally worn away by winds. And beyond this, beyond the bowl, beyond even the horizon, a long curved ridge rose in the hazy distance; the rim of a massive impact crater.

And in this one vista Mars appeared to be throwing its entire limited range of colors at the eye. The twin peaks of the mountain shone almost white with light-colored material that could be ejecta or could be ice. The mountain slopes were the reddish gray that dominated Acidalia Planitia. The bottom of the bowl, on the other hand, lurked in a shadowy near-black that not even the distant but bright noonday sun could lighten. The wind-gnawed mesa on the outcrop, by contrast, practically glowed rust-red in comparison, and the distant crater rim, softened by distance and the pathetically thin air, shaded into the pink.

And from a point just below the southern rim of the bowl, between the outcrop and the southern mountain peak, something sparkled.

Mark held out the arm with the camera on it, refocusing it to maximum magnification, watching the output projected onto the inside of his helmet. “Oh my God,” he gasped. “Holy shit. I can’t believe I’m seeing this.”

“What is it?” Starlight asked, her eyes following the line of Mark’s stiff arm. “More quartz?”

“Oh, it’s rarer than that,” Mark said. “What temperature do your suits say it is?”

“Um…” Starlight refocused her view inside the suit, to the readouts just below the faceplate. “One degree above freezing.”

“That’s what I thought,” Mark said. “The conditions have to be absolutely perfect for this to happen. Temperature within a one or two degree band. Air pressure near absolute peak for this planet. It must be a lot higher down there than it is up here.” His voice sped up and dropped as he continued, becoming a rapid-fire mumble.

“Mark, what is it, please?” Starlight asked.

“It’s water.” Mark’s pointing hand extended a finger. “We are witnessing something that no other astronaut is likely to see here for centuries- natural running water on the surface of Mars.”

“Is that really a big deal?” Dragonfly asked. “We could probably create a spring if we wanted.”

“From a scientific standpoint, not so much,” Mark said. “We’ve known about the probability of liquid water flows when conditions were right. When humans first made a serious effort to map Mars using space probe photos, they chose for an arbitrary sea level the altitude at which average air pressure would be high enough to allow liquid water under perfect conditions. And then we learned about perchlorates and their antifreeze effects, and saw water-triggered landslides on satellite photos. We knew it could happen.

“But this is a special moment. Everything has to be exactly right for this to happen. Not enough pressure, and water can’t stay liquid. Too cold, and it stays frozen. Too hot, and it boils away instantly. And here we are, at the right time, with everything perfect, to witness a waterfall on Mars.” He patted his arm with his free hand and said, “Which is why all of this is being recorded.”

Starlight shuddered hard enough for it to be visible through her space suit. “If water is as rare as that,” she said, “this really is a terrible planet.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Dragonfly said. “I mean yes, it does want us all dead, but this part of it reminds me a little of the Bad Lands-“ she said it with emphasis on lands- “back home, where our hive is.” She stepped a little closer to Mark. “We gonna go investigate closer?”

“No,” Mark said, shaking his head. “The slopes are too steep. I’m not putting the rover at risk any farther than this. Besides, by the time we got there it would probably be over.” Indeed, the glittering seemed to be diminishing far more than the slow movement of the sun in the sky could explain.

The human dropped his arm, flexing it a bit to relieve the stiffness from holding it in place for so long. “You know,” he said, “this is the sort of thing I signed up for.”

“Being stranded on a desert planet with five aliens?” Dragonfly asked.

“Well, not that part,” Mark admitted. “But think about it. We’re the first to see anything like that on this planet. Hell, we’re the first to stand on this spot, to see this view, to look over that horizon. Everywhere we go, we’re the first there. The first to touch that rock. The first to dig that soil. The first to see, the first to do, first, first, first!” He patted his arm and added, “And now we just have to get home with the news of what we found. That’s what being an astronaut is about.”

Starlight snorted derisively. “Yeah,” she muttered, “and I’m responsible for the first spaceship from my world to visit another world… accidentally.”

“Take your firsts where you can get them,” Mark said. “When you get home you’re going to be a hero for all of time, you know that?”

This time Starlight’s snort was even louder, more of shock than derision. “Me? A hero? For getting us stranded here?”

“For getting us un-stranded,” Mark said. “For giving us a chance to live long enough to be rescued. Without you and your magic there would be no cave farm, no food, and three dead ponies about a hundred fifty sols ago. Without Dragonfly you’d all be confined to the Hab or trying to make do with the spare Ares suits. I got the farm started, and Cherry got it really going. Without Fireball’s strength we couldn’t have moved the dirt or the crops. And without Spitfire watching over everyone, one or more of us would probably be permanently injured.

“We’re surviving, Starlight. We are going to survive this motherfucking planet. And just because we survived this planet for a year and a half, all of us are going to be heroes as long as memory lasts.”

“One thousand years is the traditional pony number for such things,” Dragonfly added.

Starlight flopped back on her spacesuited flanks, head down. “I don’t feel like any hero,” she said. “Cherry, sure, she got us down alive, and I don’t think anybody else could. And back home Spitfire’s all kinds of hero. Even Dragonfly here is a hero among the changelings.”

“Too true,” the changeling in question modestly admitted.

“But I’m a buck-up,” Starlight continued. “Yes, I’ve done a few things, but I cause more problems than I fix. We wouldn’t even be here if not for me- you’d be home with your crew, and we’d be doing, oh, I don’t know what. And I’m just scared all the time, trying to save myself, and trying to think of ways to keep everyone alive a little longer.”

"Which you're pretty darn good at, all things considered," Dragonfly replied.

Mark knelt and put a gloved hand on a pressurized shoulder, leaning into it so Starlight could feel it. “Heroes don’t have to be fearless,” he said. “They don’t have to be extraordinary. I’m not Neil Armstrong. I’m not even Chris Hadfield. But a hero keeps going. A hero survives things that would kill most people. That’s all it takes: don’t die. People are going to look at you, and they’re not going to say, ‘That Starlight Glimmer, she sure screwed the pooch a lot, didn’t she?’ No. They’re going to say, ‘How did she survive a year and a half in another universe? On an almost airless planet? Growing her own food? Building her own escape vehicle? I could never do that.’ That’s what they’re going to say about you.”

“Really?” Starlight Glimmer picked herself off the dirt. “And what are they going to say about you, Mark Watney?”

“They’re going to say, ‘Is that Mark Watney? I thought he’d be taller.’”

Pony and changeling snickered appreciatively.

“But seriously, I’ve been thinking about that,” Mark continued. “How do ponies treat their heroes?”

Starlight Glimmer shrugged. “I live with the six biggest heroes of our time,” she said. “One of them is a princess, and even now half the ponies on the street don’t stop to look at her most of the time. If it’s not Sun-princess or Luna-princess, we don’t seem to get excited.”

“It is so different with humans,” Mark said. “The problem with becoming a human hero is, you can never stop. Do a heroic thing once and you’re a hero for life. That name I mentioned, Neil Armstrong? Huge introvert. He talked to machines more than he talked to people, given a choice. Very private, very mysterious. He was the first human to walk on the moon. And he never had a moment’s privacy after that until the day he died. He wasn’t allowed to do anything, to be anything else. He was First Man on the Moon, forever.”

Mark stood back up, dusting off the knee of his EVA suit. “And I think about that a lot. NASA is spending hundreds of millions of dollars and putting five lives in jeopardy just to get my worthless ass back to Earth. I owe them, and they’re going to collect. Test subject for life for space medicine. Spokesperson at any astronaut event they want. Teacher of the next generation or two of astronauts. I’ve got a job for life whether I want it or not.

“And that’s just the NASA side of things. Then there’s the public. When I get back I’m going to be known as the first guy to colonize Mars. My alma mater actually pointed that out to me in an email- that if you live there and grow crops there, you’ve colonized a place. I’m going to go through the rest of my life as the first Martian. And because of that, every Tom, Dick and Harry is going to think I owe them my time, my ear, my handshake, my endorsement. And they’re not totally wrong.”

He looked out over the bowl. The kilometer-distant waterfall had ceased, the water already vanished completely. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Ever since I really began believing we’d get out of here.”

A hoof touched his suited thigh- Dragonfly’s. “And how do you feel about being a hero?” she asked.

Mark took a deep breath. “I think it’s better than the alternative,” he said. “Now, aren’t you owed some magic-field time? And let’s see how much salt you can find on top of a mountain.”

The answer was: very little. They ended up going back down the mountain and halfway back to Site Epsilon in order to fill the salt box using Starlight’s gathering spell.

Author's Note

I wanted to fit in a reference to Log Horizon, but couldn't manage it.

Even in the book, Mark wasn't always down about Mars. Yes, he hated the planet with a passion, but he enjoyed the moments when he could be what his vision of an astronaut was. Not enough to want to go back, mind you, but...

And yes, liquid water is possible on Mars- but just barely possible, and not for very long at all, and not on most of the planet. You need a low-altitude spot like Acidalia or Gusev Crater (or, come to think of it, Schiaparelli). You need very high (for Mars) air pressure (which you'll only find in the aforementioned low altitudes). And you need temperatures just a little above freezing, because at those pressures the range of temperature in which water can remain liquid is very, very narrow.

That one short film, shot on shaky-cam at distance using a suit cam on maximum magnification, would be worth the entire cost of Ares 3 plus the rescue operations by itself. That's how rare flowing water on Mars is. It exists- we've got satellite pictures after the fact- but it's damn rare. And Mark appreciates the moment, even if his companions don't.

PS - in other news, I got the fixed computer for my aunt and uncle today and finished getting them set up. That is now over, for given values of "I just volunteered myself as technical support for life."

Sol 305

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 309
ARES III SOL 305

“You break one of those,” Fireball said, standing between Starlight Glimmer and the rainbow crystals, “over my dead body.”

“Will you just move over? Seriously.” Starlight snorted as she worked her way past the self-appointed guardian of beauty. “I need to get a close look at them. Besides, it’s not like they’re going to run out. According to Mark’s photos, they’re spreading.”

That was true. Careful examination of Mark’s photos of the rainbow crystals over the previous three or four days had shown that, somehow, whatever caused the shimmering colors that rippled through the crystal was spreading through the rest of the crystal- at a rate, more or less, of a row of crystals converted every three days. It wasn’t an even growth; large crystals, the size of Starlight’s barrel, took several days, but crystals the size of Mark’s thumb seemed to change overnight, possibly faster.

Mark had taken another photo just before Starlight activated the magic field projector for a three-minute dose of ambient magic. He’d take another photo afterwards to see if any crystals had changed visibly from the exposure. In the meantime, Starlight needed to probe the crystals to see if there was some sort of enchantment in the things, and time was running out. They needed to rebuild power in the batteries too badly to run over schedule on the projector.

Starlight gently pushed the cocoon aside so she could get right up next to the crystals. She noticed that the cocoon had left a sort of shadow of unaffected crystals behind it, although it had obviously shrunk since the day of the magic blast that created the rainbow effect. The infection, or whatever it was, spread inward as well as outward.

She took a deep breath, concentrated, and focused her vision into and through a crystal, looking for an enchantment array, if one existed.

And… well, there was something there, but it wasn’t any kind of array she’d ever learned about in her obsessive study of magic.

An enchantment array was above all orderly- usually a circle, but sometimes triangles or more complex geometrical designs were involved. Complex enchantments might have rings or layers of designs, intertwined or concentric, overlapping or entangled. But, if you were patient, you could see the sense of the design, and with knowledge you could work out what the thing was meant to do.

Staring at the enchantment within the rainbow crystals was like making sense of a restaurant-sized pot of spaghetti. Or possibly worms, since parts of it seemed to be moving just past the edge of Starlight’s focus. And when she looked at another crystal and then back to the one she’d been looking at before, it’d be all different.

It made no sense. Absolutely, positively, no sense.

And then the sight was taken away from her, as the magic field was shut down. She refocused, concentrating her reserves, and looked again… and the spaghetti lines were still there, mocking her with their disorganization, with…

… with their chaos.

“Hey, Starlight?” Mark’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Mind moving out of the way? I don’t think you want a photo of your ass in a scientific study.”

Starlight didn’t mind the crass comment. She had an epiphany and she was ready to use it. “Give me a suit,” she said. “Time to call home.”

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for response, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: I need to talk to Discord, right now. Over.

ESA: Please repeat last message, over.

AMICITAS: SG - Repeating, I need to talk to Discord. Over.

ESA: TS – Are you crazy? You know we keep Discord as far away from any space center as possible!

DISCORD: And it’s so impolite of you. I mean, here I am, one of your dearest and truest friends, and you won’t let me help.

ESA: TS – How are you doing this, over?

DISCORD: Oh, Twilight, you really don’t want the answer to that question. It’d only irritate you. And Celestia knows you’ve been so busy of late, with the launch of Angel Eleven. It’s in all the papers, you know.

AMICITAS: Discord, there’s this weird enchantment or something here. Have you kept up with the news from here? Over.

DISCORD: Oh, Fluttershy tells me this and that over our weekly teas, and then there’s game night with Spike, Big Mac and Rainbow Dash, and of course the reforming tyrants support group with Queen Chrysalis.

ESA: TS – He made that last one up. Chrysalis is on Concordia performing retrieval duties for the Angel probes. Over.

AMICITAS: Fine. We blasted Dragonfly’s cocoon with all the raw magic we had to energize her enough to come out. It more or less worked, but it turned the quartz behind her into these color-changing crystals, and the effect’s slowly spreading. There’s a really ugly enchantment that looks like all the crawling worms in the world turned to mana and took over each crystal. Know anything about it? Over.

DISCORD: Sorry, not my work or my knowledge. I can’t even see the universe you’re in directly- Twilight already asked. All I can tell is that where you are order and chaos are the same thing. Dependence on initial conditions mitigated by quantum indeterminacy. Dull, dull place, literally deathly dull. But I could…

ESA: TS – Discord? Could what, over?

AMICITAS: Discord, comms check, over.

DISCORD: Would you like a guess?

AMICITAS: Affirmative, over.

DISCORD: Ask your friend what he knows about “emergent properties”. Not usually my field of chaos, but I do like to diversify now and then.

AMICITAS: Roger “emergent properties.” Thank you, Discord, we appreciate the help. Over.

DISCORD: Oh, it is so delightful to be appreciated! It’s something I get so very seldom. Well, must be back to my duty of spreading random acts and curious coincidences around the land! Ta-ta!

ESA: I think he’s gone, over.

AMICITAS: No, he’s not, over.

DISCORD: Yes I am. Over.

AMICITAS: Thanks to you both. Amicitas out.

“Dictionary,” Starlight said as she pulled her suit away from the mud puddle beneath it. “I need to make sure I have this word exactly right.”

Five minutes with the computer later, during which time the others sat and waited out of sheer curiosity, she said, “Chaos tells me to ask you about ‘emergent properties.’ That is right, yes? Properties that come out of something?”

“Um.” Mark shifted on his feet. “Where you come from there’s a person named Chaos?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Starlight said. “It’s more like there’s a person who is chaos. Chaos isn’t the right name, but one of his titles is ‘Lord of Chaos.’ He makes impossible things happen at random around him- really, really impossible things.”

“He’s evil,” Cherry Berry said, looking frightened. It occurred to Starlight, idly, that Cherry didn’t let herself look afraid that often during their stay on Mars.

“He’s a pest,” Spitfire grumbled.

“He’s scary,” Dragonfly whispered, crouching as if she expected him to come out of thin air at any moment.

Fireball shrugged. “Not meet him,” he said.

“Ooooookay,” Mark said, looking around him in total confusion. “But how much do you know about chaos as a force of nature?”

“What? Chaos isn’t nature!” Starlight insisted. “Chaos is… opposite of harmony? Chaos is broken! Ponies try studying chaos, and it drives them mad! Chaos even carries around little cards warning ponies not to study him anymore!”

“So, that’d be nothing,” Mark said. “Okay. I’ll try to keep this simple. Humans are the only species on my planet that can express abstract thoughts in the form of language and pass them down from generation to generation. There are a lot of other animals that are close- whales, some squids, elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, parrots- but they don’t quite get there. And for decades, human scientists wondered why.

“Then we figured out that, contrary to everything we’d expected, our brains weren’t specifically designed to be intelligent and self-aware. Conscious thought is a by-product of the complexity of our brains. Even now, we’re totally incapable of pointing to a cluster of neurons and saying, ‘That means he thought X.’”

“Okaaaaay… so are you saying the crystals think now?” Starlight asked.

“No, no, no,” Mark said. “I’m saying that consciousness and the ability for abstract thought are emergent properties. They’re unexpected products of an incredibly complex system. You can’t predict them based solely on the pieces of the system itself. It’s how the system works together that creates them.”

“I don’t see the point,” Starlight said.

“Let me give you an example,” Mark said. “About, oh, forty years ago, some scientists took a bunch of little robots with the ability to rewire their own internal circuitry- don’t ask me how, I’m not a roboticist. The robots also had a radio receiver. If the robots could accurately detect a broadcast at a certain frequency, it got a reward. But the scientists didn’t tell the robots how to do it. They just stood back and let the robots start guessing. The ones who came closest became templates for the next generation of robots, and so on. And by one hundred robot generations- they made new robots every other day or so.- the robots had become able to detect that signal ninety-eight percent of the time, without confusing it for another signal or detecting it when it wasn’t there.

“But here’s the thing. They looked at that last generation. The robots had about a dozen different ways to do the same job. Absolutely none of them were the way any human designer would have done it. A couple of them, so far as the scientists could tell, shouldn’t have worked at all. And for half of them, the scientists simply could not tell how it worked. The robots had created a solution by pure random chance- several solutions, all of them the product of guesses and misfires and junk program loops and a tangle of circuits and code nobody could figure out.”

Mark shook his head in frustration. “I’m mangling the story,” he said. “I haven’t heard it since college. But that’s emergent properties in action. Randomness leads to order, depending on how you look at it. But even the simplest of rules, allowed to run, can produce unexpected results. In fact, all life on my world comes from simple rules allowed to run for a very long time.”

The ponies all shifted their weight on their hooves enough for the sound of scuffed soil to crackle through the almost silent cave. "Are you saying," Starlight asked in a shocked whisper, "that humans- that your whole world- is based on chaos?"

"I told you," Dragonfly said, "a Free Forever universe."

"Well, it's based on a lot of things," Mark said. "Chaos is just one way we explain it." He cocked his head and added, “But what does that have to do with anything?”

Starlight told them what she saw in the crystal.

“Aaahhh,” Mark said, when the explanation was complete. “Your friend Chaos was explaining how the rainbow crystals work. Your blast must have accidentally laid a random enchantment on the crystals. And at least one of those enchantments is self-replicating.”

Starlight looked at the crystals again, a bit horrified. “They’re… they’re alive??”

Mark considered this. “Starlight, I don’t know about ponies, but humans have been discussing it for hundreds of years, and we’ve never been able to come up with a definition of life that satisfies everybody. But the crystals obviously aren’t alive. No respiration, no eating or excreting, no reproduction. The enchantment might qualify, but only if computer programs are alive.” He brightened and added, “We have sci-fi stories about that, y’know.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better!”

Mark shrugged. “The question is, will it do any harm?" He pointed to the light sources in the ceiling. “What happens to the sun lamps when the rainbows get up there?” He pointed to Fireball. “Can he eat rainbow crystals safely?”

“Not gonna try,” Fireball said firmly. “We go back deep in cave, cut all crystals I need through launch, take to Hab soon. After that, not a problem.”

“And finally,” Mark said, “will the rainbows have an effect on the plants? We know they don’t actually glow by themselves, at least not in the visible spectrum…”

Starlight nodded. “I see where you’re going,” she said. “This is a job for science.”

“Yep,” Mark nodded. “Magic science.”

Author's Note

For those who asked about Discord, now you know.

I no doubt botched the explanation of emergent properties. The example I mention is in one of the volumes of The Science of Discworld, the first three of which are worth the read... the fourth, sadly, demonstrates the decay of Sir Terry's powers in his last years, plus a lack of coherent scientific theme.

But no, we're not done with the sparklies, oh no indeed.

Sol 307

Venkat’s phone rang in the middle of a paragraph, as it usually did. Venkat’s time was generally divided between reading reports (or, not nearly often enough, papers exploring the theoretical possibilities of magic, if humans could ever get it to work) and writing letters thanking, pleading, or ordering somebody to do something on behalf of Project Ares. It was all important, but no matter how important it was, there were dozens of people with his office phone number who thought their issues were more important. A few of them were even correct.

He checked the caller ID. Bruce Ng. Well, Bruce never wasted Venkat’s time with trivialities. Bruce never had any time of his own to waste.

“Hello, Bruce,” he said as soon as he picked up the line. “And how are things in sunny California?”

“I know there’s a sun in theory,” Bruce said. “Not by direct observation. I’ve been working for over a month to find some way to make the MAV landing stage work as a booster. I’m calling you to tell you it can’t be done.”

Venkat leaned back in his chair. “I’m listening,” he said. “Tell me why a step that’s absolutely indispensable to Mark Watney and friends making a direct rendezvous with Hermes is impossible.”

“It comes down to weight and timing,” Bruce said. “The whole point of keeping the landing stage on and running the pony engines on it is to gain surplus delta-V to make up for the weight we can’t shave off the MAV. We’d need to reduce a craft that weighs twelve and a half tons empty by over five tons to achieve escape velocity on internal power alone. We haven’t been able to find more than two tons without taking steps that render the MAV nonviable for long-term habitation- that is, we have to put a hole in the hull to make it lighter. That would take away the Sparkle Drive option as a backup system.”

“Yes, I understand all that,” Venkat said. “But that’s what the landing stage and the engines off of Friendship were meant to overcome.”

“And we’ve tried it in every configuration possible,” Bruce said. “We’ve tried launching it fully fueled, on the assumption that the ponies can find a way to transmute or synthesize hydrazine. We’ve tried ripping out absolutely everything and just using the descent stage as a framework to hang the pony engines on. And, of course, we asked Starlight Glimmer to make larger batteries that could run the engines for a full three-minute burn instead of the one minute we originally planned.

“But it all fails in the sims, Venkat. Nothing we try gets more than a thrust-weight ratio of 1.3. A three minute burn just barely gets the ship to the height of the Schiaparelli Basin rim, when you factor in gravity and air resistance. The sims routinely show a failure rate of fifteen percent attempting to decouple the landing stage, ignite the first ascent stage, and reorient the craft. And by failure, I mean surface impact before the procedure’s complete. And even the eighty-five percent of successful flights yield only an average delta-V gain of two hundred meters per second. That’s out of over five kilometers per second we need.”

“Okay,” Venkat said. “So what happens when you move the pony engines to the first ascent stage?”

“No improvement,” Bruce said. “Without any way to decouple the engines and their batteries, they stay on as dead weight after they burn out. If we cut the pony engines to fifty percent thrust we might be able to stretch them through the whole first stage burn, but the efficiency losses mean they don’t quite get us to where we need to be. And we lose the most efficient portion of the ascent burn to that added eight tons of engine and batteries.”

“Bruce,” Venkat said, marshaling his thoughts carefully, “I don’t need to tell you how bad this news is. You know better than anyone. But I’m not hearing much in the way of potential solutions.”

“We’re… still working on it,” Bruce said. “But we’re at the point that we need some input from the ponies. Is there any way to lighten their engines, or to modify them so they produce more thrust faster? And I know we’ve turned off the email exchange, but I wanted to ask for a waiver so I could send them the work we’ve done so far through Pathfinder.”

For a second Venkat lost the power of speech. When he recovered it, it still spluttered like a car with a bad injector. “Wha-bwuh-wha… Bruce, you are two thousand miles closer to the Pathfinder relay than I am. You have a team who knows intimately the problems we’re having just getting a signal. The data stream’s been getting parity check errors on data packets for the last two days. You know why we decided to shut down everything but the bare bones. And if you thought we could still send your data, you wouldn’t ask me for confirmation. You'd just do it.”

Venkat heard Bruce’s sigh over the line. “I know,” he said. “And you’re right, we can’t load up the link with a ton of data when it’s barely good enough for emergencies. But the alternative is that we lose more than a month. A month in which we could work the problem.”

“Well, continue working it from your end,” Venkat said. “I’ll try to drop the problem into the morning check-in, but no promises.”

“Thanks,” Bruce said, and cut the connection.

Author's Note

Yes, it's short. But that's all there is for this sol...

... and by the time I go to bed tonight, there will be a chapter in the buffer again.

I did a run-down of all the ways the MAV could or couldn't save weight or add thrust about a month ago. And it boiled down to the descent stage booster doing very little even under ideal conditions.

So, obviously, something else will have to be thought of...

Sols 309-310

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 313
ARES III SOL 309

[08:03] JPL: Daily check. Solar activity subsided a bit, so maybe comms will be better today. We estimate Sol 318 will be LOS day, after which Hermes will attempt to acquire Pathfinder’s signal every day until it works. With luck that’ll be Sol 328. Hope all of you are all right.

[08:42] WATNEY: We’re fine, but it’s bugging me why you told us not to build the engine carriage mounts on Rover 2. You have a reason. If data loss is the problem, just keep resending until it gets through. In the meantime, we’re staying busy doing science to magic, or magic to science, whatever. Waiting on your answer. – Mark

[09:41] SYSTEM: ERROR - Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Message Not Sent

[09:42] WATNEY: system_command: REPEAT

[09:42] SYSTEM: Last message resent.

[10:41] SYSTEM: ERROR - Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Message Not Sent

[13:19] WATNEY: system_command: REPEAT

[13:20] SYSTEM: Last message resent.

[14:18] SYSTEM: ERROR - Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Message Not Sent

[14:19] WATNEY: system_command: REPEAT

[14:19] SYSTEM: Last message resent.

[15:30] WATNEY: About fucking time.

[16:28] SYSTEM: ERROR - Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Message Not Sent

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 314
ARES III SOL 310

Starlight Glimmer shut off the field projector, looking with pride at the six new ordinary-sized mana batteries she’d made. With Mark’s people not explaining why carrying the three Amicitas main engines to Schiaparelli was no longer a priority, she’d decided not to make the four jumbo batteries originally scheduled for today. Besides, skipping those meant she could spare a little juice for experiments on the rainbow crystals.

Over the past few sols she and Mark had devised and carried out several experiments with the accidental enchantments in the crystals. The results both comforted and baffled her, for various reasons.

Experiment #1: Did the rainbow crystals store mana? According to Dragonfly’s thaumometer, yes, though even the ones in the center of the cluster, those which couldn’t infect other crystals anymore, didn’t store much. They were vastly less efficient than the purpose-enchanted batteries, if the average readout was an indicator.

Experiment #2: Did a crystal have to be growing out of the wall to be infected? Answer: no. Five crystal chunks cut from Lunch Buffet had been set in places where they could sit on top of certain rainbow crystals; all but the smallest had been enchanted within two days of being put there.

Experiment #3: Did a crystal have to be touching an infected crystal to be infected? Answer: too soon to be conclusive about it, but the crystals set a ponylength away, out in the open, hadn’t been infected in four sols of sitting there.

Experiment #4: Was there a size limit for the enchantment? Answer, based on observation: yes. Crystals smaller than Mark’s thumb remained in the field of rainbow crystals which hadn’t been altered. Possibly the enchantment couldn’t all fit. With careful examination (squinting) Starlight could make out a few random-looking traces of magic, but not the strange random patterns of the full enchantment.

Experiment #5: Would an already enchanted crystal be infected? Answer: apparently not. Starlight had laid the battery enchantment on a hoof-sized crystal and stuck it between two larger rainbow crystals. It still sat there, unaffected, three days later. More observation was warranted, but it looked like the batteries and the solar relays were safe. (It had occurred to her that she could probably think of ways to make a viral enchantment that would attack the batteries and sun crystals. It also occurred to her that Mars was not the place to even consider trying it.)

Experiment #6 (today): Would a rainbow crystal take an enchantment? Answer: surprisingly, yes, though with difficulty and with much reduced efficacy. Starlight had enchanted two of the rainbow crystals with a standard lighting enchantment. Now they glowed, if only feebly.

Experiment #7 (also today, using one of the infected crystals from Experiment #2): Could a rainbow crystal be dis-enchanted? Answer: not completely. As with any enchantment, bits of it tended to persist. But the portion of the random tangle of enchantments Starlight had broken had apparently broken the whole thing; the crystal was still a rainbow of colors, but the pattern hadn’t shifted.

Experiment #8 (begun today, incomplete): Would the enchantment affect non-crystalline rocks?

Experiment #9 (also begun today): If you enchant a rainbow crystal, would the added enchantment propagate along with the random one?

For this experiment the remaining three cut crystals Starlight had allowed to be infected were placed in small sample boxes Mark provided. One was filled with other cut crystals; this would be the control. One was also filled with cut crystals, but the infected crystal had the light-producing added enchantment. The last infected crystal was placed in a box of random non-crystalline surface rocks collected midway through the rover drive out to the cave that morning. In two or three days, they’d know the results.

Mark took the last photo of the post-magic round for today, charting the continued expansion of the rainbow crystal field and documenting the start of the three experiment boxes. “Do you want to write up the results?” he asked. “Or should I?”

“I’d better do it,” Starlight said. “I’m the one who’s been translating our concepts into English for your scientists. And I also have to send reports home.”

“Suit yourself,” Mark said. “Just let me know when you’re done so we can do the reading for today. It’s the last chapter of The Two Towers.”

Starlight shuddered. Spitfire and Dragonfly had turned out to be right on the money with their predictions, but the giant monstrous spider had come out of nowhere. She had nothing against spiders- the star spiders that hung around the half-restored Castle of the Two Sisters were cute and unusually friendly for denizens of the Everfree- but she drew the line at giant pony-eating monster spiders.

They discussed the final chapter of The Two Towers on the rover drive home, after renewing the previous day’s agreement that Dragonfly keep her big mouth shut.

In Starlight’s opinion there was too much Shelob, which is to say, there was some Shelob. But at least she hadn’t won. On the other hoof, Samwise hadn’t won, either…

“I feel so bad for Sam right now,” she said. “I’ve felt like that so many times- so many days when it seems like every decision I make is wrong.”

“Welcome to Planet Fireball,” the dragon rumbled ruefully.

“Welcome to Aragorn,” Spitfire added. “Remember the boat place? The orc attack?”

“But that came out okay in the end,” Starlight said. “Sam’s all by himself, Frodo’s a prisoner of Sauron’s orcs, and Gollum’s around somewhere getting ready to kill them. What can Sam do to make that right?”

“It’ll be a while before you find out,” Mark said. “The last book of the story, Return of the King, begins by going back to Gandalf and Pippin.”

“Oh, come on!” Cherry Berry protested. “Another switch? I don’t even remember what they were doing!”

“Riding to Gondor,” Starlight muttered. “But the thing is, I can’t see what Sam could have done differently. Letting Frodo get taken was the wrong move in hindsight, but if he’d stayed and tried to fight a whole squad of orcs? That would have been worse.”

“Sometimes you don’t have good choices,” Mark said quietly. “And nobody knows the future.” He paused. “Er, do people know the future? Where you come from, I mean?”

“Some say Sunbutt does,” Fireball said. “All those pony future stories come from someplace, yeah?”

“Sunbutt?” Mark asked.

“He means Princess Sky-and-Stuff,” Starlight muttered. “In a very crude and insensitive way.”

“It part of my charming personality,” Fireball said primly.

“Hint, Fireball,” Starlight replied, “don’t take charm lessons from Mr. Furley.”

“Starlight, why don’t you just use her pony name?” Mark asked. “You don’t call me Dedicated-to-Mars anymore.”

“For us names have meaning,” Starlight replied. “Many ponies change their names once they know what they’re going to do with their lives. For us a name tells other people who we are.”

“All right,” Mark said. “So what does ‘Starlight Glimmer’ tell us about you? That you’re almost invisible on a moonless night?”

“Er… um… look out for that rock!”

It was the same rock the rover drove over without so much as a scraping sound every day, so Mark didn’t bother to look. “Fine, the meanings of names are important to ponies,” he said. “But not to humans. So why not just use the pony version?”

“We did a couple times, remember?” Starlight said. “You can’t pronounce it.” And if you shift the vowel sound you can't pronounce, depending on which vowel you substitute, you either get nonsense, the word for a strong aroma, or the word teat. And knowing you, Mark, the minute you got to Equestria it'd be Princess Teat this and Princess Teat that, and Celestia would be very disappointed in us all...

She tried hard not to imagine how much Luna would laugh about it, and failed.

Before the conversation could continue its concussed wandering, the rover arrived back at the Hab. Inside, there was a message waiting for them on the main computer chat window, one the castaways had been expecting since dawn.

[06:41] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[07:44] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[08:47] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[09:51] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[10:54] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[11:57] JPL: All right, Mark, here’s the short version. Our work on modifying the Ares IV MAV has hit a roadblock. Turning the MAV descent stage into a zeroth ascent stage doesn’t work- the built-in engines are just too weak. Even with your friends’ engines running full blast, it wouldn’t do more than get you about a kilometer off the surface, and there’s a significant chance of plowing back into Mars during staging.

We considered putting the engines on the first ascent stage, but they’d burn out less than halfway through its burn, which means they’re practically negative delta-v unless you can make them disintegrate on command. We could throttle them back to half power and give up some efficiency, but that doesn’t give the ship the push it needs to break away from Mars.

We need to know: is there any way to make the engines lighter? Is there any way to increase thrust, even if it means burning out sooner? Is there any way to decouple or, if all else fails, destroy the engines and batteries once they’re used up?

Please ask your friends to study the problem. If we can’t use the pony engines, then we’ll either have to use the Sparkle Drive in atmosphere or scrap the Drive and go for a really risky all-or-nothing Hermes rendezvous. I can’t tell you how much we dislike either option. So please, give us something to work with.

This chat is having serious trouble with the solar flare activity just now. Thankfully Hermes isn’t in the path of any CMEs. Respond tomorrow via the pony radio- we want to see if the signal’s any clearer. We’ll be listening from 0830 hours Hab time.

By the time Starlight finished reading the chat message for the second time, the others had taken off and put away their suits, except for Dragonfly. The changeling had kept her suit so she could tap out a report home via the suit water spigot.

Starlight considered the problem. Mana batteries required some orderly molecular structure- ideally crystals. And those crystals had to be able to withstand a lot of punishment, if they were going to ride a rocket. There weren’t going to be any weight savings there. Yes, the batteries in the Sparkle Drive’s power array had crumbled to dust, but only under a massive sudden power demand. Maybe she could figure out a way to do that deliberately, but she didn’t think so.

As for making the engines lighter- ha! It had taken years to get them as efficient as they were. It was nearly impossible to create an enchantment for telekinesis. The spell, that most basic spell, practically required a mind to guide it. And anyway, the spell required both a point of origin and a target. Of course, a unicorn with magic to burn could make the two points the same and self-levitate, but experiments in that direction had been almost lethally unsuccessful. Yes, it made the enchanted object ballistic, but nopony had figured out how to control the direction… or how to turn it off before it hit a wall and, if you were very lucky, shattered into uselessness.

The three experiments that had decided to go up might keep going forever...

It had been Twilight who’d decided to focus on converting magic into thrust. That used a variant of a repulsor field spell, much like the forcefields that protected the Crystal Empire. The engine contained the spell, twisted just so inside its coils, and the twisting produced exhaust that could be directed using engine bells or nozzles. Of course, using an ordinary repulsor spell, either a field or a beam, wouldn’t work, because the ship would need something to push against, and space didn’t have a lot of those…

Push. Push. Push.

Dr. Kapoor had used the word. That was what a rocket did, really. The explosion in the reaction chamber pushed outward in all directions. But there was engine bell and rocket in the way in certain directions, and no resistance in other directions. Net result: the ship got pushed in the direction you presumably wanted to go.

But something about the word push gripped Starlight’s mind. There was an idea there, desperate to get out.

Suppose… a repulsor spell wouldn’t do much good in space, but the MAV wasn’t in space yet. And various force field spells and enchantments made it clear that, although you didn’t get telekinesis without a living mind, you could enchant something to kick other things away just fine.

What if… what if we used repulsor spells… to push the MAV away from Mars?

It could actually be more efficient than the engines. A lot more.

“Dragonfly?”

“Sssh,” Dragonfly said. “Composing message.”

“Break off. Send stand by,” Starlight said. “I have an idea.”

AMICITAS: Disregard prior signal, stand by, over.

ESA: Is something wrong, over?

AMICITAS: SG – urgent request you test following hypothesis: that repulsorlift spell with large mana battery can lift and launch spacecraft. Urgently need to know maximum distance of effect, whether lift efficiency is stable or degrades over distance, etc. Could potentially save twenty tons on escape rocket weight, over.

ESA: TS – good idea. Do you know how to enchant repulsor spells? Over.

AMICITAS: SG – affirmative. Over.

ESA: MD – I think the spell will lose strength by the square of the distance between caster and target. Really inefficient. But we’ll try it. Over.

AMICITAS: Thanks. Thanks. Out.

The instant she’d finished tapping the sign-off, Starlight leaped back to her hooves. “Mark!” she shouted. “We’re going back to the cave after lunch!”

“What??” Mark asked. “What for?”

“I still have four batteries to make!” Starlight said. “And with the work I have to do, there’s not a moment to spare!”

She'd have to drain eight of the remaining batteries to make it happen, which would mean no expansion of magic field time for quite a while, but she didn't care.

She wasn’t going to miss doing the right thing this time.

If necessary, Starlight Glimmer would do all the things.

Author's Note

Well, this didn't really work out how I planned. I would cut out a big chunk of the middle, but the experiment list just kind of sits there like the lump of exposition it is without something to lead into... no matter how lame it is.

Dragonfly was originally going to make the Sunbutt crack, but I decided that she'd only say that at this point, knowing how thin ice she's on after her excess revelations, if she honestly wanted everyone to start hating her. Fireball, on the other hand, has no such concerns.

I cannot think of any magic object in the cartoon, in canon, that automatically picks things up and moves them without a pony controlling them, except possibly the Tree of Harmony. But we have multiple examples of forcefields that expand and hurl things away, so repulsion is where I've decided to go with explaining the new plan.

Someone commented, "YOU MUST BUILD MORE PYLONS."

Well, yeah.

But let Twilight Sparkle design them properly first.

More on that another chapter.

Anyway, this took more writing and more effort than I'd planned- a total of almost 2800 words of writing today- but the buffer's got a whole chapter again.

And finally... I thoroughly regret bringing up the subject of good and evil, comma, the banality thereof. Bad idea. Won't do it again.

Sol 311

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 315
ARES III SOL 311

TRANSCRIPT – RADIO TELEGRAM FROM ESA AMICITAS TO NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER VIA DEEP SPACE ARRAY

AMICITAS: Friendship calling Earth, Friendship calling Earth, Friendship calling Earth. Operator Starlight Glimmer. We are exploring an alternative boost system which would not repeat not require Friendship main engines or batteries on MAV. Request calculation for three engines thrust for three minutes plus normal MAV liftoff. Also ask Rich Purnell if his theories cover Mars atmospheric decay of magic over distance. Will discuss in greater detail after comms blackout ends. Will repeat this message every two hours if no acknowledgement is received. Over.

NASA: Message received. Thanks. Good luck. Out.

The film flickered.

Angel Eleven had been the first of the Angel series to include a movie camera that would run for the minute or so of a full-length dimension-hop survey. Five of these films had been collected from the probe, returned to Equus, developed, and spliced together into this one silent reel. Now Twilight Sparkle and the available senior staff of the world’s united space programs watched the film, noting the magic numbers on the top of the screen that showed the level of magic drain from the batteries and the time elapsed since the probe arrived in that universe.

Chrysalis, of course, wasn’t there. She was still on Concordia, tending to the little probe between its jaunts. Thus far Angel Eleven had made twelve trips, three of which were aborts. In none of the nine non-abort worlds so far had the agreed-upon beacon signal been detected, so the probe kept going back out, and likely would until it met the same fate as its ten less-advanced predecessors.

Whatever else the effort to rescue the Amicitas crew was or wasn’t accomplishing, it was teaching the space programs how to build a better space probe.

On the projection screen, in a field of black, a glowing disc came into view. After a moment it resolved into familiar features- the continents and oceans of Equus. The camera continued to pan across the planet, making a full rotation of three hundred sixty degrees, then stabilizing itself for the trip back to its home universe. Obviously an uneventful, uninteresting world.

The film flickered, and the cycle repeated. This time, however, the continents were different. The oceans were larger, the coastlines completely different. Not Equus, but a world in the exact same time and space as Equus in this world. Thousands of detected radio transmissions scrolled across the bottom of the screen, faster than the enchantment that burned them into the film had been able to keep up with. But aside from this, nothing happened.

Flicker. The blue-green planet was visible in the initial frame this time, but distant, much farther than the first two, so much so that it looked more like a flaw on the screen than a picture. No one could make out the continents. And then, as it rotated, the camera caught first the rounded edge, then the whole of a giant glowing pockmarked sphere- the moon, far too close for comfort. It looked like the back of Equus’s moon- it was obviously between the probe and the planet, so it must be the back- and it had begun to noticeably get larger in the picture when the film flickered again.

This time the planet was closer than the third time, but farther than the first two. The continents could be identified, at least in part, as matching the second one. Another vast flood of radio signals flooded the crawl on the bottom of the screen. And then, as the camera began to turn away from the planet, for just a couple of seconds, the viewers saw what looked like an alien spaceship- angular, streamlined in places, armor-clad in others, oozing steel-gray menace- fly past the probe.

Then the probe’s lens turned away, facing out into space, making its fifty-second-long rotation. The screen filled with blackness… and then, suddenly, it filled with gray, not in the shape of a spaceship, but in the shape of some kind of metal biped…

… with, Twilight Sparkle recognized in shock, a vaguely human-like face. It had a chin, a nose, and two glowing reddish-purple eyes. The face was framed in a sort of bucket helmet, the sort of thing that gladiators wore back in the days before the founding of Equestria. So far as she knew, she was the only one in the room who’d actually seen humans, and she certainly hadn’t expected to see anything like them while on this side of the mirror…

The probe continued to turn. The camera passed over the metal figure, which seemed to study the probe with interest… and, after a moment, with a most unpleasant smile. (What, Twilight thought idly, did a metal creature need with teeth?) The planet drew back into view as the timer ran out for the scan…

… and then, as the probe was charging up the Drive for the hop back, the camera saw a truly immense hand, gleaming black metal against dull black nothing, reaching for the interloper. It became obvious, in the last second, that the hand was large enough to enclose the entire probe… and that it would have done so had the probe remained in that universe half a second longer.

The new scene was no improvement. What appeared to be magic bolts lit up the depths of space. Radio signal detection again flooded the data crawl, but at a slower pace than before. The slow rotation of the camera brought into view a world more or less like the second and fourth, but one that seemed the worse for wear.

Another giant metal biped appeared, soaring out of the darkness on jets, then coming to rest next to the probe. This wasn’t quite as large as the one from the prior universe, but it was immense; a gray, squat-looking thing carrying some kind of firearm in its hands, a single glowing eye sweeping back and forth in its otherwise expressionless face as it scanned the area. Then the eye focused on the probe, and again a giant metal hand reached for it…

… only to be stopped as bolts slammed into the thing, sending up an explosion in its jets and blasting holes through its armor. The blasts and shrapnel barely missed the probe, which continued turning, unconcerned for its fate.

And to her horror, just before the colossus was lost to view, Twilight saw a limp human figure floating half-extended through one of the holes caused by the blasts. The robot- for obviously that’s what it was- had had a pilot. The others in the room saw, and almost to a one they gasped in shock at the sight.

And then the camera saw another robot flying into view, this one white and gold and black, bearing a gigantic shield on one arm. Its face had two tiny eyes rather than the first robot’s one giant glowing one, but that was the only way it resembled a human face at all. It too braked to a relative stop to the probe, firing one-handed with a huge blaster rifle at something the probe couldn’t see. Its blaster went dead, and in a flash of motion it dropped the giant gun, reached behind its back, and drew out what appeared to be a sword made entirely of lightning, lightning caught and forced to hold a saber-like curve.

And then the sword whipped up just in time to parry an axe made from red energy coming down-

and the film ended.

Someone switched the lights back on in the Cape Friendship conference room.

Occupant, the changeling who ran the Changeling Space Program these days, hissed, “Is that what our probes have been going through all this time?”

“For all we know,” Moondancer said, “it could be.”

The buck-toothed changeling in the white vest shivered. “Dimensional travel is scary,” he said.

Twilight Sparkle certainly couldn’t argue with that. What if any of those robots had been touching the probe when it made its hop home? Would the Drive have failed to function? Or would they have come to Equus along with the probe? If they were hostile, what could Equestria possibly do to stop them? The astromares currently on orbit would be sitting ducks for certain…

I will be so glad when we rescue our friends, she thought. Then we can be done with universe-hopping once and for all. One universe is more than enough to explore. The danger involved with these other worlds just doesn’t bear thinking about…

Author's Note

Buffer holds at one.

This chapter exists for two reasons: (1) to give the ponies an even more blatant reason than ten lost probes to regard dimensional exploration as Bloody Dangerous, and (2) I wanted to give Megatron a cameo. (Transformers Prime version, both because it's my favorite version of Megatron as a character and because that Megatron, if the Hub was to be believed, might not actually be as obnoxious a visitor to Equestria as others... at least he seems to have a soft spot for musical numbers.)

The other robots were generically Gundams. Well, a Zaku and a Gundam, anyway, but you know what I mean.

MLP: the Maretian... A FAMILY SHOW!!

Buffer remains at one.

Sol 314

“Are you telling me,” Teddy said carefully, “that the aliens might have accidentally set up a gray goo Doomsday scenario on Mars? And they’re not telling us about it until now?”

“No,” Venkat said, “I’m saying the exact opposite. Something weird happened, they performed some experiments, and they’re fairly sure it’s not a gray goo event.”

It had taken three iterations over three days, but the report had come in over the Pathfinder chat from Starlight Glimmer, who had sent it- or the abstract, anyway, since a proper report would be much longer- one line at a time, with the lines numbered, thus:

[08:15] WATNEY: (1) Starlight Glimmer here. Posts are numbered; reply with any numbers not received and highest number post received so I can re-send only those missing.

[08:17] WATNEY: (2) The method used to successfully revive Dragonfly had an unexpected effect. We became curious and began an investigation.

[08:19] WATNEY: (3) It seems I accidentally produced a strange random enchantment in the crystals behind Dragonfly’s cocoon, and it appears to be self-replicating.

And so on. There were forty-seven lines in the initial report, not all of which related to the rainbow crystals described on lines 6, 7 and 8. Two-thirds of the lines made it through the increasing solar interference on the first pass, but three lines persistently got eaten and required a total of six repetitions before they got through- by which time Starlight had added seventeen lines of follow-up report, all without any response by NASA aside for requests to repeat lines not received.

“The rainbow crystals go inert in the absence of magic,” Venkat said, repeating a point he’d made in the presentation to Teddy. “And apparently, since our universe doesn’t have a magic constant higher than zero, magic doesn’t propagate well through solid objects. It tends to either be absorbed or reflected away. And the enchantment requires crystals above a certain size threshold to function. So it’s safe to say that the enchantment is confined to the crystal cave. Which, of course, is already contaminated all to hell with Earth bacteria, plant life, and our castaways.”

“But the fact remains that it was a possible global catastrophe,” Teddy said, “and the crew didn’t see fit to tell us until now.”

“Bear in mind it’s getting impossible for them to tell us anything,” Venkat replied. “And anyway, if they had told us, what could we have done? We know nothing about magic beyond what we read in Starlight Glimmer’s reports. But there on Mars we have a magic expert plus Mark Watney, a trained and experienced scientist. They saw the problem, tackled it systematically and scientifically, and their preliminary report is that it’s a non-issue. Absolutely harmless.”

“All right,” Teddy said. “What does this absolutely harmless enchantment do?”

“It stores magical energy,” Venkat said. “It uses that energy for two things; duplicating the enchantment in crystals in physical contact, and changing the colors of the crystal without changing the chemical composition. According to Starlight, you can add at least one enchantment to it, and the new enchantment will replicate with the old, but the new enchantment will function a lot more weakly than if it were placed on a clean crystal.”

“So,” Teddy said, “not particularly useful?”

Venkat shook his head. “Starlight used a line of her report to make clear that a purpose-made enchantment would be an order of magnitude more efficient than the random one. The main curiosity is that, according to her, it follows none of the ponies’ known rules about enchantment design. She doesn’t know how the enchantment does anything that it does, only that it does it.”

“I see,” Teddy said carefully. “Are there any long-term consequences from this?”

“Only one, at least as far as the wild crystals go,” Venkat said. “Any enchantment is difficult to remove once laid on. It’s always easier to destroy the enchanted object than to clear it of spells. The wild enchantment is easy to break, but almost impossible to clean completely. So any infected crystal becomes almost useless for future applications in pony magical technology.” Venkat allowed himself to smile just a little as he added, “However, a pre-existing enchantment immunizes the crystal from the rainbow infection.”

“So you’re saying they can contain the infection.”

“It’ll probably contain itself,” Venkat said. “It’s spreading at about a meter every five sols. At that rate the first chamber of the cave might not be completely converted by the time Ares IV lands on Mars years from now. And that’s assuming the farm doesn’t die when Mark and the ponies leave, which it almost certainly will without the heat and air cycling provided by the pony life support system. Without the farm, the crystals won’t have any magic, and the enchantment will shut down.”

“All right. Good.” Teddy nodded. “I’m still disappointed that they waited until now to present this to us, but I can see where the decision came from. And, for once, this doesn’t actually present any problems for the rescue plan.”

“Well,” Venkat said uncomfortably, “yes and no.”

“Yes and no?” Teddy asked. “Explain, please.”

“One of the last experiments they did with the rainbow crystals was to see what they’d do outside,” Venkat said. “They already knew the crystals wouldn’t infect ordinary rock or sand or even small crystal pieces. But even surrounded by crystals, outside on the surface of Mars they did nothing.

“But that made Starlight curious about something. They assumed that their magic batteries recharged faster when close to life and not at all away from it, but they hadn’t really questioned whether the batteries could recharge on the opposite side of a wall from life. So they conducted two experiments, with controls. In one case they compared a battery in the Hab with one immediately on the other side of the Hab canvas- even giving it a stand so it wouldn’t be blocked by the Hab flooring or internal components. In the other, they compared a battery sitting just outside the cave airlock with one of the ones charging normally inside the cave.

“The results were really clear-cut. In both cases, the battery outside didn’t recharge at all. In fact, both batteries actually lost a tiny bit of charge.”

“What?” Teddy asked. “Lost charge?”

“The battery casings have readouts on them,” Venkat said, “to show charge level. Also control systems to balance load and charge levels. It’s a very tiny power draw, but it’s not zero. In their home universe that’s not a problem, because the universal magic constant would more than cover the loss. There the batteries function more like power collectors and regulators than actual storage units. But on Mars, in our universe?”

“No recharge,” Teddy said glumly. “And that means any batteries carried on the outside of the Sirius tandem rover won’t recharge at all.”

Venkat nodded. “Starlight says that once they get moving, magic use will have to be reduced to emergencies only. The big batteries for launch- however we do it- will have to be fully charged at the start of the trip and topped off from other batteries right up until launch.” He took a deep breath to steady himself, then continued, “That means any procedures we suggest during the trip will have to be based entirely on non-magical resources. Mark and his equipment, basically.”

“Let’s hope they won’t be needed,” Teddy said, and then winced a second after he’d said it. “And I just guaranteed they will, didn’t I?”

“Look on the bright side,” Venkat said. “This is Mars we’re talking about. It’s not like it was ever going to go easy on us.”

“Mike, I have a problem,” Rich said.

Mike tried not to roll his eyes. Rich now had an office bigger than Mike’s. The only reason he didn’t get Mike’s job was that he didn’t want it (and, also, both Director Sanders and Dr. Kapoor saw Rich was not supervisor material). Those things which Rich Purnell wanted, he got more or less instantly. It was a tribute to Rich’s innate decency- or, at least, his extremely narrow personal vision- that he showed no inclination to abuse that power… or, for that matter, no awareness that the power even existed to be abused.

“What is it, Rich?” Mike asked.

“This job from Dr. Glimmer,” Rich said, handing Mike a piece of paper. “I don’t have the pony baseline for air resistance to coherent magic. I could assume that their homeworld’s atmosphere has the same properties as ours, but I still need the baseline before I can calculate what it would be on Mars. And I don’t want to get you in trouble again for asking her directly.”

“Thank you,” Mike said. “Well, this job is top priority, so I’ll go straight to Dr. Kapoor with it. But I warn you, our comms with Mars are pretty ratty right now.”

“Solar conjunction,” Rich said. “Yes, I know. I thought I’d go home while I was waiting.” He leaned a bit closer and said in a quieter tone, “I noticed today I don’t smell very good.”

Mike pretended not to hear the soft single beep that sounded from somewhere in the Astrodynamics cubicle hive. Just as he’d pretended for some time now that he knew nothing about the Rich Purnell Hygiene Betting Pool. If he did take notice, he’d have to shut it down, and that would hurt morale more than allowing it to run, no matter how cruel it was to Rich.

But he’d have to talk to Rich again about the subject sometime soon… once he figured out a new way to say a thing he’d tried to tell the man about a dozen times with no success. In fact, he might have to just start ordering him home again every so often, blessings from on high or not.

“That’s probably a good idea, Rich,” he said. “Other people don’t like being around people who smell.”

“Thanks,” Rich said. “I’ll try to remember that.” And, without any further leavetaking, Rich walked out.

The hell of it is, Mike thought, he sincerely means it when he says he’ll try to remember it.

Shaking his head at some of the strange personalities you met in government work and in space flight, he checked over Rich’s note, found it complete without being too verbose, and got up to take it to the admin building and Dr. Kapoor.

As he stepped out the same door Rich had left by, he heard someone- he carefully didn’t recognize the voice- call out, “Okay, who had five days, four hours, and twenty-two minutes?”

Author's Note

I figured it was time to have a peek at Earth again. It felt more interesting to deliver rainbow-crystal experiment results this way.

Tonight's KWLP (9 PM Central, dementiaradio.org) is Anti-Christmas- not in the sense that I oppose Christmas, but that this is the opposite end of the calendar from Christmas. I don't play Christmas music in December because I'm one of those who gets oversaturated with it pretty quickly... but I do like some Christmas music, especially the comedy, so I play it in the summertime.

BTW, I highly recommend that any of you who enjoy my streaming-radio thing join the Dementia Radio FB group. That lets you vote for your favorites of the songs I play each week, and it also keeps you up to date on the other live shows the little organization has each week.

Sol 316-318

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 320
ARES III SOL 316

[08:35] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[09:36] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[10:37] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[11:38] JPL: Yesterday’s message about magic resistance received. Today’s AOK message received by Morse. All looks well from here.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 321
ARES III SOL 317

[08:35] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[09:36] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[10:37] JPL: Today’s AOK message received. No changes here.

They allowed Mark to read the entire chapter this time. None of them- the ponies, Fireball, not even Dragonfly- could bring themselves to take a turn. They listened from the beginning, as the Lord of the Nazgul left the smashed gate of Minas Tirith, to the end, and Mark’s sonorous, rhythmic chanting of the list of the dead.

Dragonfly felt her own sadness, and that of the ponies, and even of Fireball, who normally had no real problem with the violence and death in human stories. She was shocked that Mark didn’t feel the same way; to him this was just a story.

She was more shocked that she was shocked herself.

After waiting a minute for the ponies to volunteer their usual post-reading comments, and getting choked silence and a couple of sniffles from Starlight Glimmer, Mark said, “For most of his adult life the writer was a professor of linguistics and ancient literature. He specialized in the writings of his ancestors from a thousand years before- what little survived, that is. And most of it was like the chant at the end there, celebrating glorious death in battle and then mourning the fallen.”

“Who- could- cel-e-brate- death- in- battle?” The sentence obviously took every ounce of concentration Spitfire could muster, but every word came out like a punch to the gut.

“My ancestors,” Mark said. “And Tolkien’s. He based the Rohirrim on a people called the Anglo-Saxons. They eventually became the core of the nation called England. And my family is descended from English settlers. And the Anglo-Saxons practically worshipped war. In fact, they were part of a greater culture that taught that the only honorable death was in battle. If you died from disease or old age, then you would be forced to join the forces of evil in the Last Battle at the end of the universe.”

“That,” Fireball said with authority, “is messed up.”

“The Battle of Five Armies wasn’t this bad. Helm's Deep wasn't this bad. Even the Battle of Hogwarts wasn’t this bad,” Cherry Berry added.

“And he wrote it this way because he liked war?” Dragonfly asked.

“No. Very much the opposite,” Mark said. “He was writing to create a myth like the ones he studied, but he also wanted to make the war as terrible and disgusting as he could at the time. You see, when he was a young man- about half my age- there was a great war, in which countries from all over the world took part. Tolkien’s schoolmates and himself all volunteered for the war. And Tolkien saw horrible things, and then was wounded- I don’t remember how, but he spent over a year in a hospital recovering. And out of all his schoolmates, he was the only survivor.”

The choked silence after this revelation lay thick enough to suffocate the farm, or so it seemed to Dragonfly. She managed to volunteer, “You know, when we were thrown hundreds of kilometers back into the Badlands by the power of love, it always surprised us a little that none of us actually died. We lost a few deserters, and a few of us had broken bones or wings from impact, but no death. And of course we took care not to kill any ponies. That would have been wasteful.” She raised her hooves and waved them at the computer Mark had been reading from. “But this? This?? All those men. And even the orcs. How many of them chose to be there? And how many had a whip at their back?”

“She has a point,” Starlight said. “No species is all evil. Though Dragonfly makes us wonder sometimes.”

“Hey! I’m working on it! Has Fluttershy overcome her fear of crowds yet?”

“Before this goes any further,” Mark said, “I’ll point out that Tolkien was dinged by future generations about the whole idea of races being inherently evil. A lot of authors even wrote books specifically to create orcs or goblins or whatever who weren’t all murderous backstabbing bastards. But to put things in context… well, remember my explanation of Sanford and Son? That show was made twenty years after these books were published. And Tolkien was almost sixty years old at that time. So he came from a generation with… hm, let’s say blind spots.”

“I still say your species needs some immortal princesses,” Starlight muttered in response.

“I want to talk about Eowyn for a minute,” Cherry Berry broke in. “She was Dernhelm all this time? She chose to ride into battle? She deliberately chose to do that?? Why?”

Mark considered this. “Well, it’s explained a bit in the book,” he said, “but you wouldn’t get the cultural parts. Put it this way. First, she was a noble of Rohan. But since the Rohirrim are a warrior culture- and one in which warrior is a males-only job-“

This got a snort out of Spitfire big enough for a horse.

“-yes, I know, but that’s how it was in my culture for about two thousand years,” Mark said. “Her brothers and other kinsmen- emphasis on men- got to ride out and do great deeds and be remembered. She got to stay home and watch her uncle go senile under Wormtongue’s spell. When she died, Eowyn wouldn’t even get her name on a tombstone unless two men fought a civil war to marry her. But she wanted to be great, just like them. Especially since, as it seemed at the time, their people and everything else good in the world was about to go under.”

“Messed. Up,” Fireball repeated.

“No, not messed up,” Dragonfly said. “This is just like changelings.”

“Really?” Mark asked. “How’s that?”

“In the hive the elites become infiltrators,” Dragonfly said. “Not every changeling can go and really blend in with ponies, after all- only the smartest and sneakiest. I just barely made it, and only because I was fast enough to be a courier. Sure, you need bugs to do the other jobs- guarding, taking care of the larva, maintaining the hive, and all that- but there was always this feeling that you weren’t a real changeling if you weren’t out there stealing love from ponies.”

“I’m pretty sure,” Starlight said, “that if Rohan was made up of love-eating insect people, Mr. Tolkien would have dropped a hint about it by now.”

“It’s not a perfect comparison,” Dragonfly said. “But think about what it’s like to be raised as one of the top changelings, strong, smart, good at disguises and voices, and then being told you have to stay home and take care of a senile queen or defend the old drones and larvae while everyone else goes off to crash a wedding. I know I’d find a way to go on the raid if I thought I could get away with it.

“And Eowyn? She’s one of… lemme count… yes, three- ONLY THREE! Three female characters with an actual NAME in this whole story!” She paused. “Wait, no, four, I keep forgetting Bilbo’s cousin-in-law, what’s her name. But anyway it’s obvious she wants to do something important, something people will remember, and nobody will let her! Nobody will give her a chance!” She turned to Cherry and said, “And I know you understand that one, boss!” She pointed to one of her own wings, which didn’t look as shriveled as they had when she first came out of the cocoon, for emphasis.

Cherry nodded. “So she went to war,” she said, a tear running down her muzzle. “Poor girl. She’s going to die in the hospital, isn’t she?”

“Now we’re getting into spoilers,” Mark warned.

“I knew it! She IS going to die!”

Dragonfly decided to shut this down before their commander went into soppy romantic pony hysterics. “Nah, no way,” she said, making her tone as callous as possible. “I bet she’s stuck in a hospital bed next to one of the wounded soldiers- maybe that Faramir guy, the writer sure played him up- and they’ll spend time together and fall in love, because that’s what people in a hospital do.”

It worked. Cherry’s crying jag aborted mid-launch, as the pink earth pony stared at the changeling in total disbelief. “What?” she asked. “Where did you come up with a… a… a stupid-stupid idea like that?”

“From my queen’s collection of bad romance paperbacks,” Dragonfly replied. “When we get home, don’t tell her I stole them.”

Not that Dragonfly believed a word of her own proposal. No, she figured Eowyn was done for, and there’d be a tragic bedside scene in the next chapter or two as she faded from life. That seemed the properly melodramatic boo-hiss-war thing to do.

After all, if Remus Lupin and Nymphadora Tonks didn’t get their happy-ever-after, in a book series written for little kids, why should this war-obsessed suicidal nut?

“But it can’t be Faramir,” Starlight pointed out. “Isn’t he dying? Isn’t Denethor about to cremate him?”

“What is-“

“Burn to ashes!”

“Hey, no need be personal!”

Mark interrupted before misunderstandings could escalate. “We get back to Pippin next chapter,” he said. “And I think that’s a good place to stop, suit up, and head back to the Hab for lunch.”

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 322
ARES III SOL 318

[08:26] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[09:27] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[10:28] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[10:42] SYSTEM: ERROR – Loss of Signal – Probe in Acquisition Mode

[10:48] SYSTEM: Signal Acquisition – Chat Restored

[10:50] SYSTEM: ERROR – Loss of Signal – Probe in Acquisition Mode

[11:00] SYSTEM: Session Timeout (LOS Error, Reacquisition Failure 600 seconds)

Author's Note

The idea of mares not being allowed to go out and fight is pretty alien to the Equestrians. It'd be even more alien if not for the mostly-male Royal Guard, but as we all know they only exist to look pretty and to sneak cake to Celestia.

Sol 320

MISSION LOG – SOL 320

You know, Superman wasn’t the first man to fly without wings. There were some saints back in the Middle Ages who could fly. Of course the only record we have of it is in the paperwork the Vatican of the time put together to justify their sainthood, so take that with a clump of magically harvested Martian salt. The story is the same in all cases: they flew for no other reason than that they were happy about being holy, or something. They didn’t do anything with it like, I dunno, rescue orphans from cathederal spires or anything like that. Just a couple laps around the ceiling and ‘yay God,’ and that was all.

Of course, those saints might be just as fictional as Superman for all we know today. The only reason I bring them up (besides the fact they’re practically all I remember from my Comparative Religion class in college) is that, if we discount those stories as myth, that makes me the first human being to fly through the air on a non-ballistic trajectory without the use of any mechanical aid whatever. I can say that because a unicorn is not a machine, and Starlight Glimmer is nobody’s idea of a mechanic.

What I’m talking about is, we decided to go ahead and tackle mounting solar panels to the roof of the trailer today. Dragonfly and I worked together and made me a tether belt that would allow me to hook on to two of the mounting points that used to hold Friendship’s outer skin to the pressure vessel. That way, if I slipped, I’d have at least one hook to keep me from falling all the way to the ground.

And to get me up and down from the roof of the ex-ship, Starlight levitated me up at the start of the job and then down at the end. To tell the truth, it freaked me out- a lot. It’s one thing to know I’m safely in the magical grip of a unicorn with a full battery under her hooves. But in the back of my brain is my monkey ancestor, the one who knows nothing about magic, the one that a couple million years of evolution taught: if you’re out of the tree, you fall. And that monkey screeched the entire time my feet weren’t firmly on either regolith or steel.

But aside from that, it was a good EVA. Starlight lifted the panels up to me, I used the existing stake holes to bolt them onto the ship’s mounting points, and Fireball plugged each wire into the harness we’d already set up to run through the ship’s charging point and its electrical system. That’s already connected to the Hab, so it’s as if the panels never left the Hab’s solar farm. It went like clockwork, mostly because we took our time, didn’t rush, and were very careful.

We quit when the CO2 alarm went off in my suit, indicating the current filter was saturated and needed replacing. In four hours we mounted twelve panels, which means it’ll take another five to six hours to finish covering the top of the Whinnybago with solar cells.

All in all, a productive enough day. It kind of fills in for the loss of communications with Earth, which I’m missing a lot more than I ought to. I mean, for the last couple weeks we could barely say anything at all, and in another month or so we should have a clear connection again better than before. But for some reason I feel cut off and alone anyway.

Maybe I’ll ask Starlight or Dragonfly to work their water telegraph and let me chat with their bosses. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken directly to them yet. Now might not be a bad time to try it.

Well, not now-now, now. Maybe tomorrow. Tonight Starlight Glimmer has promised a new campaign. She’s decided to try making a homebrew adaptation of the D&D rules we have for pony characters.

That’s right. I’m going to roleplay a talking horse.

Because hey, if you haven’t noticed, my dignity left this planet along with my crew and the Ares III MAV. So why not?

“The Tree of Harmony, its branches limp, its colors dull, deposits the shards of the Elements of Harmony at your hooves.”

“How does it do that?” Mark asked. “It’s a tree, isn’t it?”

“Ssh,” Spitfire said. “Magic thing.”

The two of them looked at Starlight Glimmer, who glared at them for a moment before resuming her opening to the adventure. “The five of you gathered here, in the very shadow of Nightmare Satellite’s castle, made your way across Dark Equestria, avoiding the patrols of the Shadow Storm Troops, to arrive here. And in this holy place, the one place the Nightmare’s power has not yet touched, you have been entrusted with the mission of restoring harmony and peace to this accursed land.”

Her horn lit up, and a line drawing in light of a rampant mare wearing helmet and armor appeared above her head. “Nightmare Satellite, who returned from a thousand years of exile, destroyed the Elements and imprisoned her sister, Princess Celestia, in the same moon that once held her. Now she rules from the castle just two hundred hooves above where you stand in the gorge, ruling a land that never sees the sun with an iron hoof.

“She rules through seven mares she has brainwashed, seven exceptionally talented and dangerous ponies. Her vizier, the meticulous Dawn Rays. Her chief enforcer, Monochrome Wave. Her chief of intelligence, the unstoppable Pinkie Spy. Her chief of the secret police, Commonplace. The mighty mare-mountain Applecrack. The mistress of the creatures of the night, Fluttermoth. And, second only to Nightmare Satellite herself, the wicked sorceress Garlight Slimmer.”

This last name was too much for the others, and they all broke down laughing, even Fireball.

“Hey!” Starlight shouted. “I forgot to put in a real name, all right? That was supposed to be a placeholder.”

More laughter, with Mark interjecting, “Whatever you say, Garlight.” That set the others off again.

“So hey!” Dragonfly said. “What’s her master plan? ‘Bow to me or you’ll loose ten to fifteen pounds in a month while eating what you normally eat?’”

The laughter continued for a moment, then cut off at the sound of one of Starlight’s magic-carved crystal dice trundling atop the worktable behind the computer screen.

“What are you rolling for, Starlight?” Mark asked, no trace of amusement in his voice.

“Nothing,” Starlight said innocently.

The others looked at each other, then went silent.

“All righty,” Starlight said brightly. “Continuing. Only one hope remains to restore Equestrian freedom. The four sacred horseshoes of Celestia lie broken and scattered in the four corners of the kingdom-“

“How do we know?” Cherry Berry asked. “Who’s telling us? Isn’t it just us and the tree?”

“Rrrgh! You just know, okay? Magic mystic harmony knowledge thing!” Starlight took a deep breath. “You must retrieve the four sacred horseshoes and then bring them all to the Dragonroost to be reforged in the hottest flames of the world by the hottest dragons-“

Mark failed to suppress a snort of amusement. Struggling mightily to not make it two snorts, he covered his mouth and waved away Starlight’s furious stare.

“-reforged so that Princess Celestia may be released from her prison. Along the way you will face all of Nightmare Satellite’s minions, who must be released from the spell of the Nightmare so that the five Elements whose dust you now hold will be restored. Only then will the sixth element reveal itself, and only with all six elements can Celestia’s power be restored and the Nightmare and her evil sorceress overthrown for good.”

The five players looked at each other.

“Er,” Starlight Glimmer added, a little uncertain, “that’s it. You can interact now if you want.”

Cherry Berry pushed her computer forward. “I wanna re-roll my character,” she said. “I want a hobbit.”

“How about we steal airship, turn pirate?” Fireball asked. “Go to that city south of the Burning Sands.”

“Pirate is good,” Spitfire agreed.

“Does this city in the south have a Thieves’ Guild?” Mark asked.

“What I hear,” Fireball said, “whole city is thieves.”

Cherry Berry looked interested in this. “Do we steal the ship here, or do we go to the city and steal one there?” she asked.

Starlight Glimmer moaned and tapped her forehead against the edge of the table.

Author's Note

Classic beginner-DM mistake: drop a sixteen-ton plot hook on top of low-level characters and expect them to defy all common sense.

Yes, Starlight finally found the name Celestia... and she used it as a FAKE name for her Celestia-parallel NPC. Connection not yet made. Might or might not revisit this later.

I read about the flying saints in a 1980s era "Mysteries of the Universe" book; it was in the school library, but I have to wonder how, since it was one of those Time/Life TV-ad mail-order books. I remember absolutely none of the names, but I remember that flying was apparently #3 on the "rubber stamp a Middle Ages saint" miracle list, #2 being stigmata and #1 being the classic, speaking in tongues. It felt like about a quarter of the book was stories of saints, with precisely one "historical" source per saint. (It's worth noting, for those Catholics reading this, that the saints in question were none of the major ones- they were all local priests or monks of one kind or another, not a single martyr in the bunch.)

Wrote about 1800 words today in two short chapters, so the buffer now stands at 2.

Sol 322

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 327
ARES III SOL 322

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for response, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Mark wishes to speak to Twilight Sparkle and/or Chrysalis, over.

ESA: QC – lucky you, I just splashed down four days ago. Princess Egghead is busy designing new system for Angel Twelve. Put him on.

AMICITAS: Greetings and salutations from Earth, oh glorious Queen Chrysalis. I am Master Mark Watney, astronaut and explorer. I salute you on behalf of my people, over.

ESA: QC – What did he really say, over?

AMICITAS: No, that was all Mark, over.

ESA: You’re putting me on, over.

AMICITAS: DF – He said it, my queen. He says, “Never spoke to a queen before, and I wanted to do it right.” Over.

ESA: Hello, Mark. How is my subject? How is my pilot? Tell me what the ponies won’t. And leave out the diplomatic talk, I only get that on letters from Canterlot complaining about dumb things like bills, subpoenas, drones running up hotel bills, like that, over.

AMICITAS: “Dragonfly’s slowly getting better physically. She still creeps us out sometimes. And Cherry Berry can’t make a Streetwise roll to save her neck.” Over.

ESA: Don’t infect me with your nerdiness, Mark. As for Dragonfly, good to hear she keeps you guessing. Over.

AMICITAS: “How can you be an astronaut and not be a nerd?” Over.

ESA: It’s a burden being the one with common sense, but I bear it well. Over.

AMICITAS: “No, seriously. Even Martinez (human crewmate) has a degree in systems engineering. You have to learn tons of stuff to fly. Nerd is how you get to be an astronaut.” Over.

ESA: Or you can be the one writing the nerds’ paychecks, over.

AMICITAS: “That works too. But if that’s the case, why do you fly? It can’t be for the science or the adventure.” Over.

ESA: You don’t have to be a nerd to enjoy being in space. I get to look down on all the little people. What got you out into space, then? Over.

AMICITAS: “Astronauts were always my heroes. And when the Mars missions began, I figured if people were going to Mars they needed to learn how to grow crops there. I was more right than I thought.” Over.

ESA: What does that have to do with you?

AMICITAS: “I’m a (scientist of farming). Growing things is my career. Well, was. Now my career is Not Being Killed By Mars.” Over.

ESA: Not much chance of promotion there, over.

AMICITAS: “It has more of a future than the alternative. I get to turn forty-two in a few days, so that’s something.” Over.

ESA: You’re having a birthday?? (note: remainder of transmission was too rapid-fire for anyone to decipher, but it went on for quite some time)

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, comms check and get Pinkie Pie away from the life support, over.

ESA: TS - Taken care of. Pinkie asks me to tell you all your backlog of birthday parties will be made up once you arrive safe at home, Mark included, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas copies birthday parties for all, over.

ESA: TS – Sorry, but we have to go now. Chrysalis says Mark gave her something to think about. That worries me, over.

AMICITAS: DF- That's my queen! What progress on rescue, over?

ESA: TS - No progress without another big spell on your end. Experiments on booster idea show promise, over.

AMICITAS: SG - Will let you know if we have plans for another big spell. Until then we’re trying to moderate use of magic to save up battery charge, over.

ESA: Understood. Keep us informed. Out.

Author's Note

It's short, but this is all there was for that sol- Mark trying to stave off boredom by chatting up Chrysalis.

Maintaining buffer at two.

Sol 325

MISSION LOG – SOL 325

You know, I thought yesterday was a bit subdued because of the book reading. Yesterday was Volcano Day in Lord of the Rings. There was a bit of discussion about whether or not to feel sorry for Gollum’s death, but nobody’s heart was in it. The attitude was summed up by Cherry, who said, “Well, I wasn’t expecting that.” Apparently nobody else did, either. In particular Dragonfly didn’t say a word about it, and that seemed pretty weird at the time.

Well, now I know. They were quiet because they were plotting and planning. And here’s the result (photo attached)- a birthday cake! Yes, they looked it up on the computers and found out that today really is my forty-second birthday. Starlight and Dragonfly must have mentioned it to the others after my chat with Dragonfly’s mom.

Quick tangent here- no, Dragonfly is not a princess. If she was there would be tens of thousands of princesses. Apparently changelings can mate without one of them being a queen, but the queen is mother to most of the drones under her rule, or so Dragonfly says. And in any case, Chrysalis doesn’t really encourage family bonds. Nobody calls her “Mom” to her face. All this is what Dragonfly tells me, and it sounds like there’s a ton more family dysfunction just under that blanket that I don’t want to get involved with- especially considering how shit-her-nonexistent-pants terrified she looked when I called her “Princess Dragonfly” as a joke. I won’t do that twice.

But back to cake. You see the photo- it’s a lovely thing, isn’t it? Fancy yellow and red and blue icing that spells out HAPPY 42 MARK in three languages. (Yes, three. You see those stars, rainbows, horseshoes and things around the perimeter? Those aren’t decoration. That’s actually Ancient Pony pictograms or somesuch. I wonder how you write O THE DIABETES in Ancient Pony?)

Anyway, yeah- beautiful cake. But I knew damn well we had nothing for cake-making. So after congratulating the kids on their work (it’s cake!), documenting it for posterity (it’s cake!), and singing the pony version of the birthday song (it’s cake!), I got them to admit the horrible truth (it isn’t cake).

My forty-second birthday was celebrated with a cake sculpted out of mashed potatoes.

To be specific, the ponies microwaved about ten potatoes again and again until they were total mush, removed the skins, mixed in a bunch of salt so it wouldn’t be absolute misery to try to eat, sculpted the pile into a cake shape (two layers), stuck it back in the microwave for one more pass, then used magic to seal up the fault lines and to change the color on the surface so it looked like it was iced. And, waste not want not, they took the potato skins plus some more sliced potatoes and used them to make chips like we did at the party a couple weeks back.

But there was one bright spot. Between the two layers they spread a layer of mustard- they found some mustard packs stashed somewhere or other, the last Earth-produced condiment in the Hab, and they used it up to give this alleged cake a flavor other than dreadful. Now mustard isn’t my favorite sauce in the world, but it tastes a hell of a lot better than plain mashed potato, so all in all it was a success.

So we ate “cake” and chips, played games (but not Pin the Antenna, because Spitfire’s result deserves to stand as perfection for all time), and discussed birthday traditions. As you’ve read, ponies have birthday parties like our kids do, but there’s no shame in playing what we humans would call kiddie games. If it’s fun (and won’t cause trouble if done in public), they do it, because what’s so great about growing up anyway?

(Note: Cherry mentions one big birthday party where everybody got to take rides on what sound like baby hippos. My brain just does not want to process that image.)

Dragonfly tells me the hive didn’t even track birthdays until the space race began, but the custom is beginning to catch on with the prosperity of her hive these days. Changelings don’t throw parties, though; it’s a simple, quiet, private exchange of gifts and maybe a trip with a few friends to do something fun together. (Note to self: must get a better description of this “Fun Machine” Dragonfly mentioned. Her first attempt to explain was something like a Marvel fan explaining the first Avengers movie to someone who’s never seen it.)

Fireball says dragons don’t do birthdays because they have this condition called “greed growth.” If they get too many things too fast, their hoarding instinct goes wild, which affects their magic and turns them into, if I understand him right, Godzilla. He knows one dragon who gets birthday presents, but it’s usually stuff he doesn’t really care for.

Who knew it sucked so much to be a winged fire-breathing lizard?

Anyway, Starlight is finishing up a second batch of chips now. We’re going to polish off the tater cake (because as successful as it was, none of us wants it for leftovers tomorrow), munch chips, and enjoy a TV rerun marathon. After a bit of discussion, we decided that Dukes of Hazzard was our favorite. (In all honesty, the ponies vastly prefer Partridge Family, even now that they understand the words, but they’re having mercy on me because it’s my birthday. And I’m having mercy on them and not subjecting them to Kolchak or Barney Miller.)

Tomorrow it’s back to work. We can’t finalize the design for the new saddlebags until we know for sure what we are and aren’t hauling in them, and the engines might not make the trip either. So the only action item left we can do without NASA input is adding two of the Hab’s hydrogen power cells to Rover 2. We’ll tackle that tomorrow. It’ll mean losing the passenger bench, but I think we can still haul our harvests in the remaining space. It just means Fireball will have to ride on top and Starlight inside while the others trot alongside.

After that? I dunno. Hab maintenance, probably. Possibly assist Starlight with more experiments on those funky lava-lamp crystals.

Speaking of, here she comes with the chips. Time for flying cars, cutoff jeans, and a celebration of cringe-worthy borderline-racist hillbilly culture.

Author's Note

Yes, most of them have run out of things to do, or nearly so.

The producers of Dukes of Hazzard realized after the first season, "You know, we've got an all-white cast in the South. This is a problem. We need to drop some black characters in here and there, and they can't be comedy characters or else we'll catch hell for it."

This resulted in a few black one-episode characters, usually heavies- like the FBI agent investigating Boss Hogg once, for example- and one occasionally recurring character, the black sheriff of the next county over. (That's right: a black sheriff in Georgia in 1980. Not impossible, but certainly not how I'd bet.) Unfortunately, not only did this character almost never get any dialog, but the only character development we ever get is that he's just as corrupt as Roscoe... but more competent.

And then, of course, there's the thing with the rebel flag on the roof of the car, etc.

Anyway, enough justifying the last line. I need help. I know that at one point I wrote up a description of all the chambers of the Site Epsilon crystal cave... but I can't find it. And I need it to move on with the chapter I was working on today. I assume I posted it somewhere that you all could read it, so I'm hoping someone remembers and can find it for me. Otherwise I'll have to make it up all over again, and I'm sure one of you would find it after I posted that. :twilightsheepish:

Sol 328

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 333
ARES III SOL 328

“Well, look at the bright side,” Cherry Berry said. “No one’s died yet.”

“Death would be a relief,” Fireball rumbled, but quietly.

The four of them- Cherry, Fireball, Mark and Spitfire- sat or leaned by The Stump, watching from a distance as Starlight Glimmer focused her full concentration on enchanting the seven remaining jumbo mana batteries. Dragonfly, as usual, stayed as close as she could to the battery projecting the magic field required for the operation, soaking up all the magic her still-weakened system could absorb.

Spitfire growled softly and said, “Don’t know how long I can take this.”

“I don’t know about you,” Mark said, “but I’m enjoying myself. I’m learning so much about your home world with every game session.”

“But it so stupid!” Spitfire protested. “Go to pirate town, there Rainbow… I mean Mo-No-Chrome. Stupid name. Go to sea-ponies, there Pinkie. Go to griffons, there Rarity. Go to big city, give up quest, get regular job, and Zoe the Great and Powerful, not Tricky oh no of course not, shows up and burns city down. No escape!!”

“Like I said,” Mark said, “I’m learning so much about your world.”

“Death would be better,” Fireball said. “So she never lets us die. She embarrass us all every session until we do what she wants. Remember the changeling pirate ship? How many things broke?”

“Dragonfly and I were winning that one until the canopy ropes snapped,” Mark said. “Starlight couldn’t break things fast enough.”

“The sea-pony synchronized swimming initiation thing?”

Mark blinked. “You remembered how to say synchronized swimming?”

“The shame is burned on my soul forever,” the dragon replied darkly. “And the day of work she put us all through?”

Mark and Cherry Berry both looked blankly at Fireball. “What about it?” Cherry asked.

Fireball looked a little confused. “All the stupid customers… the bad, horrible, rude ponies… the boss abuse…”

“Hate to break it to you, Fireball,” Mark said, “but low-end day jobs are all like that.”

“The job in the game was better than several I really had before the space race,” Cherry said. “Let’s just say Ponyville isn’t always the bright, shiny, smiling friendly face the tourist board makes it out to be.”

“Oh,” Fireball muttered. “I’m so glad I’m dragon. No day job.”

“That game put my retire off five years,” Spitfire struggled to say.

“But she’s just not getting the message,” Cherry said. “I’m not going to order her to make a new campaign, but you’d think she’d get the idea that we don’t want to do a campaign with ponies we know as the bad guys!”

“All right,” Mark said. “I admit she’s building plot rails faster than a bullet-train company. But she’s not bad enough to justify going Old Man Henderson on her.”

Four ears and a pair of scaly eye-ridges popped up. “Old Man Henderson?” Cherry asked. “Who’s he?”

“Ooooooh, no no no,” Mark said. “I am not giving you Old Man Henderson to use as a weapon against Starlight. Old Man Henderson drove the DM he was used on out of the game, it was that bad. We have to live together for the next two hundred and twenty sols. No Old Man Henderson for you!”

Spitfire and Cherry Berry slumped in disappointment, but Fireball grinned. “Old Man Henderson character who wreck game?” he rumbled. “That gives me idea.”

“Oh, no,” Mark muttered. “Oh, no, no, no. Don’t do this, guys, whatever it is.”

“Dawn Light stands between you and the statue,” Starlight Glimmer said, unconsciously wiping sweat off her forehead. "‘I shall not let you unleash the demon of the past,’ she says. ‘My queen shall reign FOREVER!’ And she surprises you all with a magic blast. Roll to dodge, everyone.”

“Seventeen.”

“Twenty-one.”

“HA!” Fireball bellowed. “Natural 20! I duck past Dawn Light and stand next to the statue!”

“Wha-bu-but you can’t!” Starlight gasped. “Dodge doesn’t work like that!”

“Also tell me,” Fireball said, grinning a most draconic grin, “how much chaos does it take to let Entropy out of statue?” He leaned forward and added, “What die roll?”

“Um… er… let me check my notes…” Starlight scrolled frantically through the document on her own computer, finally finding the notes she’d made on the strange statue in the abandoned garden of the former Royal Palace of Skykeep. “Um… critical success for those trying to revive him, critical fail for those trying to keep him sealed. Nothing else.”

“Grm.” Fireball looked at the others. “Don’t think I get another natural tonight. You?”

“What about bonuses?” Cherry Berry asked. “Isn’t there some kind of ritual we could perform to improve our chances?”

“What? No! No, no ritual!”

“But this is Entropy! Chaos! Disorder!” Cherry insisted. “If we make more chaos, he must get stronger, right? He has to!”

“But he’s held in place by the Elements of Harmony!”

“You mean the piles of dust we carry in our saddlebags?” Dragonfly asked. “I don’t think they’re holding anything anymore.”

“Quick, we need a ritual!” Cherry Berry said. “Something, anything, so wacky, so stupid, so nonsense that it can’t help but break the seal!”

Mark had been mostly silent up until now, having been outvoted three to one (and then four to one when Dragonfly had been brought up to date) on the whole plan. But, as the other players looked to each other in vain hope of inspiration, he began to smile, as an old, old song popped into his head. Without warning he slapped the table four times- whap whap whap whap!- and begin singing on the fifth beat:

I told the unicorn we had to defeat you (whap whap whap whap!)
I told the unicorn your evil days are through (whap whap whap whap!)
And with this simple spell we’re gonna make you blue

And his voice jumped two octaves into a horribly strained and pinched falsetto as he sang:

Ooo, eee, ooh ah ah
Ting, tang, walla walla bing bang
Ooo, eee, ooh ah ah
Ting tang walla walla bang bang

The others pitched in at once, singing the “Ooo-eee” chant through again as Starlight’s jaw threatened to knock a hole in the tabletop. Then, with four more sharp beats to the table, Mark delivered another lyric:

I told the unicorn it’s time for Entropy
I told the unicorn we’d wake him, wait and see
To beat the unicorn everybody sing with me (here we go)

The players jumped up from the table and began dancing around, stepping lightly through the Hab’s potato plants and chanting the silly, squeaky witch-doctor chant twice more, before Mark shouted, “Now the bridge!”

You know that you’re railroading us just like you were a choo-choo
And I admit we are not very brave
But if you keep on going then we’ll have to make it silly
Because we have another world to save

I told the unicorn the world is at an end
I told the unicorn she’ll need a new campaign
But because it feels like fun let’s sing the chant again

The players didn’t need to go through the sixth repeat of “Ooo, eee,” and so forth before Starlight’s magic made a tiny holographic white flag appear over her head, but they did it anyway, because it was fun.

And then, after a bit of laughter and some words about how a D&D campaign had to be fun for everyone involved, Mark told them the legend of the sixth force of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force, magic, and Old Man Henderson.

Starlight listened, and took the lesson to heart…

… but she also took notes.

Author's Note

Starlight is making ALL the newbie DM mistakes, right down to Giving Your Players Ammo to Use Against You and Admitting You Have Notes of a Thing You Suddenly Don't Wish to Have In Your Notes.

Re: the pirate airship: so many things spontaneously broke that it could have been the ride for an airborne version of Barrett's Privateers. And it still wasn't enough for two engineers who have spent three hundred plus days marooned on Mars. Better luck next time, Starlight.

All in all, I think Starlight Glimmer needs some parchment so she can write a letter that begins Dear Princess Celestia, Today I learned...

I had to do some inventory today, and the tendons in my right arm kept flaring up, so no writing got done today. I'm glad I got the buffer in when I had a chance. I should be able to rebuild it tomorrow, since I now have nothing to do but clear away things in the house, load up the van, and head out Thursday to Kansas City for Sausomecon.

Sol 330

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 335
ARES III SOL 330

“’They’ve cut it down!’ cried Sam. ‘They’ve cut down the Party Tree!’”

Spitfire squirmed on her sleeping roll. Normally she was glad for Dragonfly’s turns at reading. (Truth be told, she was glad for anyone else other than herself to take a turn.) But the longer Dragonfly went into this section about the aftermath of the Battle of Bywater, the more stilted the changeling’s reading became, as if, for some reason, she was suddenly having as many problems with Mark’s language as Spitfire did. And that couldn’t be right.

But there she was, squirming and squinting and stammering her way through the very last act of the War of the Ring. Was there something wrong? Was this some side effect of Dragonfly’s two months in that cocoon?

“There was a… surly… hobbit… lounging… over the low wall of the mill-yard. He was grimy-faced and… black-handed. 'Don't 'ee like it, Sam?' he sneered. 'But you always was soft…’” After a second of silence Dragonfly pushed the computer away, muttered, “Excuse me,” and trotted away, heading for the back of the cave with increasing speed.

“Dragonfly!” Mark was on his feet almost instantly.

“No, you keep reading,” Spitfire said. “I go talk.” After all, she was the fastest one there, and the only trained fighter, if this was Dragonfly about to go buggy again. She couldn’t fly much better than a chicken in the haze-thin magic of the farm, but with her suit off she could use that tiny bit of magic plus her wings to catch up to Dragonfly.

By the time Spitfire was past the farm and galloping along the water runoff trench, Dragonfly had ducked behind the curtain of insulation that covered the entrance into Tangled Hallway. Getting through the cluster of crystal shafts wasn’t as hard as it used to be, since two of the biggest had been sliced neatly out for the giant battery project, but it still forced her to slow down for a minute, until she could work her way into the more open Lunch Buffet.

When she got there Lunch Buffet was empty, but Spitfire could still hear a faint sound of hooves from deeper into the cave. She galloped on, the magic of the farm a bit fainter but still enough to give her wings a bit of boost. It took seconds to cover the length of the Buffet, and then it was through the Crack and into the Orb.

Starlight had made multiple solar relay crystals for the Hallway and Lunch Buffet because of their frequent trips to mine for battery crystals or Fireball’s meals. But the ponies very seldom had any reason to go through the Crack, and so the Orb, with its flattened almost-sphere shape and its irregular bands of every color imaginable- the single largest space without crystal pillars in the cave- had only one light. And this far away from the sources of heat and magic, Spitfire began to feel distinctly uncomfortable, pulling in her now-useless wings and slowing her running speed a bit.

Still no sign of Dragonfly.

Then it was into the chicane of Toothpaste Tube, the third narrow part of the cave. For a moment Spitfire was reminded of the hidden passage into the heart of the Lonely Mountain- five feet tall and three may walk abreast- but it wasn’t like that in the least. The passage was taller but also narrower, constricted by some truly ancient collapse and reopening of the lava tube when it was still forming, creating a double-S-curved hallway studded with little crystals, so that you couldn’t see more than five ponylengths ahead.

And then the final chamber, the Bed of Nails. A remnant of the deep Martian chill that had once ruled the cave lingered here, in the very back, dispelled only a bit by the single shining crystal immediately above the outlet from Toothpaste Tube.

Here Spitfire came to a stop. There was no point to continuing. Only a few steps from the entrance the tips of quartz crystals jabbed through the surface of the cave’s dirt floor. The dirt ceased completely, at least to pony eyes, about thirty meters into the long, somewhat narrow chamber. And then, about eighty meters beyond that, there was a place where no crystals reflected light back from the lone light source; the gray rock wall that marked the end of the cave after Starlight had permanently sealed off the granite rubble that lay at the heart of Site Epsilon.

No hoofsteps. No movement. No changeling.

At least, no visible changeling.

Shoot.

For a moment Spitfire considered conducting a systematic search by herself. Then she shook her head and turned back, a bit more slowly than she’d come, to go get the others for a proper search.

She spotted Mark as she re-entered Lunch Buffet, sitting on one of the fallen, broken shafts that tended to line the edges of the Buffet and the farm. She picked her pace up again, rushing over to him. “You Mark?” she asked, adding in quick Equestrian, “Or am I going to have to fetch a stick?”

“Me Tarzan. You… very much not Jane,” Mark replied, adding in a mutter, “Damn, but I’d like to meet a Jane around here.”

Spitfire’s confusion froze her in place for a second. She shook it off, grumbling, “You Mark, yep. Dumb no-sense… er, nonsense… joke. Okay.” She took a deep breath, then yelled, “Why you back here alone??”

Mark shrugged. “Got curious. Also, you are back here alone.”

“I am…” She’d never liked the Wonderful Lightning work-around, or any of its cousins, for Wonderbolts. She settled on, “I am military! This my job!”

“If one of your subordinates went running off by themselves to search for a lost comrade,” Mark said, “what would you do to them afterwards?”

Spitfire shuffled her hooves. “I… would… smile,” she said. “Hug. Say all right. Make them cake. A REAL cake,” she added in a louder voice, because a blatant lie can only be improved with volume.

“If you say so,” Mark said. “Why don’t you go back and see how big a cake Cherry Berry has for you?”

Spitfire couldn’t help flinching at that reminder. Darn it, she’d spent too long being at the top of the command chain. Even after a year on Mars, she kept forgetting to subordinate.

“Go on,” the human continued, giving the pony a gentle shove to the shoulder. “I’ll be right here.”

“No, you go back,” Spitfire said. “Get others.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Mark said. “I’ll be fine right here. But you could ask Starlight to rig another battery for a few extra minutes of bzzt-bzzt.”

Spitfire didn’t argue, but she didn’t go farther than just behind the first couple of shafts in the Tangled Hallway, either. She stopped, carefully took a few steps in place to mimic the sound of a pony walking away. She hadn’t even finished when she heard Mark justify her paranoia.

“How long are you going to stay a crystal?” he asked, his voice carrying out of the Lunch Buffet chamber. “It wasn’t hard to spot, you know. I’ve come back here often enough to know how many of these fallen crystals there are. And there’s definitely one too many on this side of-“

“Mark,” Dragonfly’s voice interrupted, “I’m over here.” The last word was accompanied by a soft whooshing sound, like a rather large gas stove being ignited and then immediately shut back off.

“Oh! Um.” There were a few soft, crunching footsteps, and Spitfire used them to ease as close to the entrance to Lunch Buffet as she could get. “Doesn’t that burn a hell of a lot of magic?”

“Yeah.” Dragonfly sounded despondent, defeated, resigned to whatever came. “But I thought I only had to do it for a few seconds at a time. But you wouldn’t leave.” A deep, heartfelt-sounding sigh. “Can’t I be alone for a few minutes?”

“That depends on what you want to be alone for,” Mark said. “If you’re making Cocoon Number Two back here-“

“I’m not.” Another deep sigh. “Look, today’s chapter, and the one before. The good guys won, yippee. Everything wrong is being made right. But then the hobbits get home, and it’s all bad,” Dragonfly said. “It’s all terrible. All the happy, cheerful stuff that makes the hobbits sound exactly like ponies is being wrecked, just because it’s fun to wreck things. That’s not right.”

“Well, no, it’s not,” Mark said. “But that was Tolkien’s point. War changes the home front, even if home isn’t on the front lines. And Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin all changed, too.”

“I guess,” Dragonfly sighed. “But I listened to all the stuff about tearing down, burning, spoiling things, locking people up, all the nastiness… and I began thinking…” A long pause, and Spitfire had to focus her ears very carefully to catch the bug’s next words: “What would have happened if our invasion had succeeded all those years ago?”

Mark waited for quite some time before asking, “What do you think would have happened?”

“Changelings would have been changelings,” Dragonfly said. “We would have terrorized ponies because it’s fun. We would have sucked them dry, because why not? We’d have locked up or enslaved the ones that put up any fight. And we would have stolen anything we liked and smashed the rest, because why not? We didn’t make it. It was all just pony junk.”

Another sigh. “And I would have joined in. I would have been proud to join in. Victorious changeling warrior. Beat the ponies. No more hiding. Food forever. Do what you like, because it’s all free.”

“You think you’d act like those orc-men,” Mark said.

“I know for a fact I would have,” Dragonfly said. “Fair dues, right? Rules of war. Too bad for ponies.” A sniffle. “That was before I knew ponies for anything other than food or targets. I hadn’t met Cherry then-“ A soft gasp. “Faust, I hope I didn’t meet Cherry then.” Prolonged silence, followed by, “I don’t really like myself right now.”

“Uh-huh. That settles it.” Quite a lot of dirt-crunching happened before Mark resumed. “I’m staying right here. The last time you were in this kind of mood alone, you canned yourself for two months. Or else we both go back together. We should probably do that anyway, since Spitfire and the others are taking a FUCKING LONG TIME TO COME LOOKING FOR US.”

“How did you know she was there? I mean, I knew, but how did you?”

Spitfire blushed, nose to hoof.

“Just as I said- they were taking too long. Either she never went and was listening, or else they were all listening. I’d guess the first, since I don’t seem to do a very good job of acting like me.”

Changeling snort. (She did that really well.) “Liar.”

“Maybe.” Soft soil-moving sounds. “Look. In a couple weeks you should be able to email Dr. Shields again, and she can talk you through this better than I can. But here’s the facts.” Pause. “Yeah, you’re pretty terrible.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, don’t blame me. You’ve spent a lot of time trying to make yourself look terrible to us. Well, guess what? We agree. You’re a vicious evil little cuddlebug, and we don’t care, because we can see you’re more than that. You’re trying to not be evil.” More dirt noises. “You would not believe how many people there are who act evil, revel in acting evil, and then demand that they be loved for it.”

“I’d believe it. Look who I have for a mother.”

“But you aren’t her.” Scuffle. “Though I can’t blame you for looking up to her. She’s always got a comeback, hasn’t she?” Shuffle. “But the thing is, you didn’t try to take us all over- well, except once. You tried to keep things the way they were. Hell, you even tried to make us all get along even better, even when you had to have known we knew what you were doing.”

“Changeling survival, first day of school.”

“Nope. No sell. See, you aren’t just trying to get yourself off this rock. You want everybody out of here safe. You actually care about us. Would your mom care?”

“Well… look, could you call her my queen instead? ‘Mom’ feels… weird.”

“Okay. So long as you don’t dodge the question.”

“Okay. My queen would want me off this planet. Probably Cherry too- they’re kinda friends, I think. A really weird kind of friendship, even by our standards. But Starlight? Fireball? Spitfire? You?” Pause. “Well, maybe you, because you honestly are delicious. The others could stay here forever as far as my queen cared. Not that Cherry would let her abandon them, but, well, you asked.”

“How would an ordinary, no-wings, no-horn pony make a changeling queen do anything?”

“I did just say it was a really weird friendship they have.”

“Well. Anyway, you’re not her. Maybe once you were. Maybe you were really just a bug who would help destroy pony civilization. But somewhere along the line, that changed. Now here you are questioning what you believe because a book gave you a little hint of what it might be like to be on the wrong end of a changeling swarm. A book made you see something new. That usually means it’s a good book.”

“Is it a good book? I mean, do humans generally think so?”

“It’s regarded as one of the great classics of English literature. Not because it’s the best written thing ever. Big chunks of it are dry as toast, you know that. And we’re not doing the Silmarillon, because the best part of that is still worse than all that crap about Aragorn’s coronation. And only Tolkien could take not one, not two, but three epic love stories, and deliver them as dry as a newspaper obituary.”

“So what makes it great?”

“It’s great for what it is, and what it was at the time. It was the first major fantasy story in centuries to not be a little kiddy story. It was the first fantasy story, well, ever, to portray war as inglorious or tragic in any way. And it was the first fantasy story to put a major effort into building a world that wasn’t Earth, with geography and languages and cultures and traditions and everything.

“But mostly because it was very nearly the first story, of any kind, that said you could be brave without being a fearless killer. For the first time English speakers could read a story about the heroism of mercy, generosity, gentleness, and simple endurance. The hobbits didn’t earn that through wading a river of blood. In the end they won- and they were heroes- because they were simple, humble, nice people. Which is pretty much bass-ackwards from every fictional hero humanity had up to then- and most of the real ones too.”

“Now who’s bragging about being evil?”

“Quit distracting me. Back to my point. You don’t need to be the badass bug. You don’t need to scare us. You don’t need to show your loyalty to Chrysalis every five minutes. Just be you. And if you don’t like who you are, tomorrow you can choose to be a little better you- not all at once, but a little at a time.

“But from where I sit, for something that might have been designed on purpose as a cuddle-toy for Sigourney Weaver’s grandkids, you’re all right.”

Changeling snort. “You were going good until the obscure cultural reference.”

“Trust me, if you ever visit Earth, you’ll find out real quick it’s not obscure.”

Spitfire tried to crunch as little of the dirt under her hooves as possible as she made her way back through Tangled Hallway towards the farm. She didn’t need to worry anymore, and to be honest she shouldn’t have listened to as much as she did. She’d been afraid and suspicious, and if she brought it up now Dragonfly would probably say something about how she ought to be and undo whatever good Mark’s babbling had done.

It might not be a bad idea, she thought, if I spent a little time thinking about who I’m going to be tomorrow, too.

Author's Note

The buffer this morning, what with one thing and another, was the first four hundred words of this.

There may have been other stories of heroes whose heroism came from being gentle instead of violent (I mean besides religious figures), but I can't think of any in pure fiction. In order to be a hero (rather than merely a protagonist) you had to be fearless, courageous, and pretty damn bloodthirsty. Indeed, there was nothing particularly noble about the original Greek heroes; the word just meant "someone who does the things you wish you could, but can't." This definition does not always produce healthy role models.

The original backlash against The Red Badge of Courage was because its main character was a coward- a Civil War deserter. People were pissed that someone would dare publish a novel starring such a contemptible creature, because they wanted heroes who feared nothing, heroes who charged right at the rebel lines rather than skulking to the rear and spending almost the entire book feeling sorry for themselves. It, like Lord of the Rings, is taught in classes today because it, too, is a first of its kind. But it does not celebrate kindness; it celebrates heroism in its old form, as kill-lots-of-the-enemy-and-take-his-stuff heroism. I honestly can't think of any original English-language literature that does what The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings did.

And that's just one (if the most important) of the many, many wonderful themes Tolkien put into that series.

I admit it's not an easy read, but the Lord of the Rings series really is a thing more people should read.

And screw Peter Jackson and his crappy movies. Seriously.

In the meantime, I write on.

Sol 332

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 337
ARES III SOL 332

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, this must be urgent, what’s up, over?

ESA: We are testing a solution for your ascent vehicle boosters. If successful we will send performance data and design guidelines. This will require very long messages in next couple of weeks, over.

AMICITAS: Good to hear. We’ll be ready, over.

ESA: Basic plan: enchant three durable crystals, current estimate 100 kg each, and mount them on underside of first ascent stage above engine bells of ascent vehicle. The enchantment will link all three crystals to each of fifteen repulsion field projectors which will draw power from the oversized batteries you have made. The link will ensure that the ship, and only the ship, is lifted by the full, focused power of the enchantments. The enchantment will be set to “away” without directional input, so steering of the craft must be done using chemical rockets on board. Over.

AMICITAS: Good idea. Any preliminary numbers?

ESA: System not yet tested with target blocks. Prior tests without blocks show lack of control but minimum potential acceleration of over 1200 m/s of a seven ton object in under one minute, over. We expect final system to be much more efficient.

AMICITAS: That’s groundbreaking! Development of this system would vastly reduce weight and cost of launch vehicles! Excellent! Over.

ESA: We still need to do more tests. We don’t want to send you up on a single test. But we can give you a head start based on what we learn from the first test, over.

AMICITAS: Very happy to hear! We’ll be waiting! Amicitas out.

HERMES – ARES III MISSION DAY 466

The shutters remained down on all the portholes around Hermes, as if the largest spaceship ever built by mankind was about to undertake an aerobraking maneuver. No such maneuver was on the schedule for another year or more, of course. Today, and for many weeks prior and many weeks to come, the shutters held out a force more potentially deadly than air at hypersonic velocities, a force more unavoidable than micrometeorites, space junk, or any other merely physical obstacle.

The shutters held out the sunlight.

At a mere ninety-five million kilometers away from the Sun, Hermes currently absorbed two and a half times the solar radiation- light, heat, and even nastier stuff- that it would ever encounter in Earth orbit. Most of the photons in the visible and infrared range reflected off the reflective white paint and the silvery cooling fins of the ship, but enough remained behind to strain the cooling systems on board to their absolute limits. The cooling pumps remained at their top speed almost constantly, despite the ship rotation that both provided Mars gravity in the habitat ring modules and, as a bonus, provided a passive thermal control, or PTC as it was called in the Apollo days- or, more popularly, the “barbecue roll.”

For harder radiation, Hermes had the lining of its hull plus an experimental electromagnetic field generator which, in deep space, generated a bubble much like that of the Earth in miniature. Twin slightly offset poles, one just below the vehicle airlock at the nose of the ship, the other just above the exhaust ports of the VASIMR engines. Here, in theory, charged solar wind alpha and beta particles would be grounded, relatively far away from the astronauts. If Hermes had had an atmosphere the auroras would have been fantastic- and frightening- but in the near-vacuum of space, this extra (theoretical) layer of protection went unseen.

And, of course, there was the final defense: in case of a solar storm powerful enough to endanger astronaut health beyond the safety margins set by NASA, the crew would evacuate the rest of the ship and retreat to the chamber most securely sealed from radiation and best provided with redundant cooling systems… the reactor room.

Watney and Martinez had both laughed and joked about the irony of getting as close to the little reactor as possible to get away from the products of the really big reactor outside, when they were first briefed on the procedure. That had been over three years before. Now Watney was on Mars, and Martinez no longer felt like laughing- not merely because the danger-room scenario was a serious possibility, but because getting fried by one of the Sun’s little temper tantrums ranked maybe fifth on his list of things to worry about today.

Number four was his bunk. He’d noticed two weeks before that he was sweating at night. When he was awake he didn’t feel particularly warm- hey, not compared to his time at Edwards AFB- but sweat glands didn’t lie. There was something wrong with the cooling system near his cabin. He’d have to talk with Johanssen, maybe Beck too, about it.

Number three was training for the MAV launch. All MAVs could be remotely piloted; after all, that’s how every MAV had been put on the ground except for the very first. But NASA hadn’t decided yet whether Martinez would fly the ship remotely or if the pony commander, Cherry Berry, would fly it manually. And more to the point, NASA hadn’t nailed down the final parameters for the modified ship, which made it impossible for either pilot to fly simulations. Martinez wanted to get started training, and the sooner the better.

Number two was Mark Watney in general, with his friends somewhere far back down the list. Oh, the aliens were cool, but Mark was his crewmate and friend. They’d spent years training together, only to be split apart by a chain of freak accidents. Now they were on their way to get him back, and not a day went by that Martinez didn’t pull out the rosary he’d made to replace his lost crucifix and say a silent prayer for the continued well-being of his buddy.

Normally Mark would be on top of the list, but yesterday something new had bumped it out of the way. Now Martinez sat in the pilot’s seat on the bridge, trying not to jump up every thirty seconds and look over Johanssen’s shoulder at the controls for Hermes’s radio systems. Since yesterday the Hermes computers had tried to establish contact with Pathfinder. Not only was Hermes well ahead of Earth in orbit around the sun, it was three light-minutes closer to Mars. Thus it only made sense to resume the communications relay through the ship… if, that is, Pathfinder still functioned at all.

Johanssen wasn’t even on the bridge at the moment. He was alone. Johanssen was doing diagnostics on the reactor. Lewis and Vogel were in the lab performing their scheduled experiments- NASA wasn’t going to waste extra time in deep space- while Beck was in his bunk-slash-sickbay checking samples taken from the crew for signs of radiation exposure.

So, when Johanssen’s console beeped, it took a moment for Martinez to realize that he needed to attend to it… and another moment to realize that it was the thing he’d wanted to attend to for a day and a half. The data link to Pathfinder was re-established. Pathfinder was still up and running… and, if the sun would settle down, they could talk to it.

Martinez opened the ship comms. “Status update,” he said. “We have signal acquisition of Pathfinder. Repeat, we have signal acquisition of Pathfinder.”

“On my way.” Lewis’s reply came immediately- no hesitation, not even a gap between Martinez’s last syllable and her first.

In less than a minute they were all there- all five of them- huddled around Johanssen’s terminal. Not that it made any sense- they all knew that any message they sent wouldn’t bring a reply for almost an hour, best case. But they still all wanted to be there as Johanssen sent the command to initiate chat and the simplest possible message:

[13:21] HERMES: test

And they waited, making the occasional bit of small talk, for the fifty-one minutes before any response could arrive, but mostly waiting in silence.

Then the responses came- or tried to.

[14:16] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[14:18] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[14:19] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

[14:20] WATNEY: Frodo lives!

[14:22] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Unable to Display

The first message bounce produced groans. The second, surprise- they hadn’t expected multiple replies in quick succession. But the last message bounce barely registered.

“Frodo lives?” Vogel asked. “Does this have some special meaning?”

“I read about it,” Lewis said. “But I thought I was twenty years too young to have seen it firsthand.”

Martinez couldn’t help grinning. “Better hope the signal clears up pretty quickly,” he said. “If that’s the last signal the Hab sends in the clear, the conspiracy kooks are gonna get a lot more mileage outta that than ‘Croatoan’.”

“I think we should look on the bright side,” Vogel said.

“What’s that?” Beck asked.

“Only two words made it through,” Vogel said. “And neither one was ‘fuck’.”

Author's Note

Five out of six castaways sent a message in reply to the test message.

I don't know who didn't send a message.

I don't know who sent the message that got through (though I suspect Dragonfly).

And I don't know any of the others apart from the first, which was Mark saying, "Received. It's really damn good to hear from you guys again."

I am in Kansas City now. I didn't quite get to finish unloading the van because of the massive black ant infestation (the infestation was massive, and so were the ants) I discovered once I got down to the gridwall layer. So before I checked into my hotel I went to a grocery store, bought some ant spray (foaming stuff- didn't see that on the label) and applied liberally.

Sausomecon, by the way, is at the KCI Events Center on Ambassador Dr. on the opposite side of I-29 from the airport, just barely south of 635. Basically, if you see a bunch of cheap airport hotels and a dinky convention center in land which otherwise hasn't been touched in about thirty years, you're in the right neighborhood... assuming you're in Kansas City, that is.

In fact, this is so far out, and so thinly populated, I'm not entirely sure it IS in Kansas City...

Sol 333

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 338
ARES III SOL 333

“Book reports?”

Starlight Glimmer rolled up another small bale of sweet-smelling freshly cut alfalfa in her magic. “That’s what I said,” she replied, levitating the bale over to a sample bin for transfer to the rover. “I’ve been reading some of the other books NASA sent while we were working our way through the Ring story. And any of you could have done the same thing-“

“I did,” Dragonfly spoke up, and Mark nodded agreement.

“But that’s not fair!” Cherry protested. “Story time is special! It’s something we can all share!”

“I had to catch up with the rest of you,” Dragonfly said. “And besides, you already said you didn’t want to read the murder mysteries.”

“Anyway, we need to decide what the next book- or book series- for story time is going to be,” Starlight said. “I’ve already talked to Mark about this, and he wants us to make the decision. So each of you get a book to read. Dragonfly, you get the hardest one: Foundation by Isaac Asimov.”

“Bless you,” Fireball said.

“Isaac Asimov is a human name,” Starlight ground out. “I know you know that.”

“Who wants to read books by a guy whose name is I-Suck?”

Starlight raised an eyebrow. Fireball was getting better at English than he pretended, to make a pun like that just for the purpose of being annoying. “You get to read one by a man named Stout,” she said. “There’s a whole series of murder mysteries by him, and you get to read one called The Golden Spiders.”

Fireball shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Cherry, you get to read Ringworld by Larry Niven. No murder.”

“Okay.”

Starlight noticed Spitfire cringing. “And Spitfire, I’m giving you the easy one,” she said as gently as she could. “More fantasy- more magic. It’s about witches. It’s called Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett.”

“Why we still do this?” Spitfire asked plaintively.

“Because we don’t know how long we might be in this world,” Cherry Berry said, in the tone of someone who’d said a thing too many times. “We have to act as if we take the long way to Earth and then wait a long time before Twilight rescues us. That means we need to learn the language.”

“But I’m not getting any better!”

“That’s not true,” Mark said. “You’re hesitating less on your words, I’ve noticed. And your grammar’s improving.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Spitfire muttered.

“Anyway, read the books, or as much as you can, and we’ll talk about them after the potato harvest.” That came five days after the hay harvest. “After everyone talks about their book, we’ll have a vote, and we’ll all read that book together.”

“What if everyone hates their books?” Fireball asked.

“You won’t,” Mark put in. “Some of you might, but all? No chance.”

“Okay,” Fireball asked. “But what do we do for story time until then?”

“Well, you haven’t told any stories about your home in a good long while,” Mark said. “How about a few of those?”

“We’ve told you all the big stories,” Cherry Berry said.

“All of them that aren’t secrets,” Dragonfly added.

“They don’t have to be big stories,” Mark said. “What about small stories? Stories about people you know.”

It was Spitfire who spoke up. “I have story. We tell you how Twilight Sparkle and her friends all got cutie marks the same day? But they didn’t know for years?”

“Yeah, something about a… what did you call it, Starlight?”

“A sonic rainboom,” Starlight Glimmer said. “A powerful enough pegasus can, in theory, push past the point where magic can’t overcome air resistance. When that happens there’s a thaumic shockwave that leaves a polychromatic image behind, like a rainbow. Rainbow Dash is the only pegasus in living memory to have done it- and the only one outside of legend to be able to do it on demand.”

“She not always able to,” Spitfire said. “You know how she did it the first time. Now I tell you the second time. Listen.”

Rainbow Dash come from pegasus city in clouds. Made of clouds. Named… what named?

Cloud Valley.

Really? Fine. English only language where you call a city two miles in the air valley. Anyway, she live in Ponyville now, but she born and raised Cloud Valley. And every year we have Best Young Fliers… what’s the word?

Contest.

Best Young Fliers Contest, where we see talent of ponies who just come of age. Is biggest flying contest we have. And not long after Princess Luna return, Rainbow Dash enter. She had big routine plan, big stunts, end in sonic rainboom. One problem- she couldn’t do it. Oh, she could do all the rest of her routine- Rainbow Dash is best pegasus flyer in all Equestria, even me. But she didn’t know how to do the rainboom again.

I didn’t know Dash then- I been… rrrgh… team leader about a year then. I learn this from her later. But I was there at the contest. Best Young Flier gets to spend day with… RRRRGH… our team… so we can see, is she, um, er…

If she’s got what it takes to be one of you.

Yeah, that. So, I there in the stands, and I know the rumors. All Cloud Valley know- knew a little girl say she make sonic rainboom. And we all knew somepony had done it. So we looking for that little girl at contest, and we wait, and we wait, and we wait.

Finally, last two contest-ponies.

Contestants.

Whatever. One was unicorn with big butterfly wings. Pretty to look at, but no flier. Shouldn’t have been let contest.

That was Rarity. I wasn’t there- I was too busy with my obsessions-

Let me tell it!

I just wanted to say I heard the story from Twilight Sparkle much later.

Now you hear it from me! Right. With Rarity came- you sure it was Rarity?

Positive.

I thought Rarity had more smart.

The wings turned her head a bit.

Must have turned a lot. With Rarity came Rainbow Dash. I think my team and Dash’s friends and family only ones watching her. Everyone else watch butterfly wings in sun. They stare at stupid dancing unicorn while Dash’s routine fall apart. She so nervous she make basic mistakes. I was thinking, poor kid, should have waited, not ready.

Then the butterfly wings go poof. Spell fail?

The spell uses morning dew and spider webs as catalysts. The wings were very fragile and light-sensitive. And it was late summer.

Spell fail. And without wings Rarity flies like a brick. We see her fall straight through stadium, going fast, and the three of us go after her. But Rarity is… is… too scare to think? What’s the word?

Panic. Panics. Panicked. Has panicked. Will panic. Panicking.

All that and a couple more. Waving hooves everywhere. One two three, punches us out cold. I’m wake up and see ground get really close really fast, and then YANK I’m not falling anymore. Rainbow Dash caught all four of us. All same time. And she do sonic rainboom to do it. She swoops up back to Cloud Valley, and I see ring of rainbow, I see rainbow trail behind Dash, I know she did it.

Princess… what you call her in your railroad game?

I used the name of some goddess or other I saw in an adventure module- Celestia, that was it.

I like it. More respect than Sunbutt.

But the princess has nothing to do with bells!

So Princess Cel-Ess-Tea-uh say Dash wins, which is fine to me because she the reason I’m not a hole in the dirt. We spend day with her, she total, what’s the word… what, nothing?

I didn’t hear this part, so I don’t know what you mean.

Can’t stop talk. Lose all cool. She so happy to meet us her head shut down. We see it every air show we do, but Dash was really bad.

Fangirl? Fan is short for fanatic. Rainbow Dash sounds like she was a fan of yours, and she was acting like a complete fangirl.

Fan. Yes, I know about fans. Anyway, she was so fangirl. Not mature enough, we think. Got the talent, but needs to grow up. And she did… took her long enough, though. But that’s another story. I talked enough.

“Wow,” Mark said. “I’m more amazed that the five of you survived a rapid change in vector like that. Like Superman catching a falling Lois Lane.”

“I thought we were never going to watch that stupid cartoon again,” Cherry Berry said.

“Other side of sonic rainboom, physics goes weird,” Spitfire said. “Dash’s magic is really strong. Really, really strong.”

“Sounds like it,” Mark agreed. “Do you have any other stories about Rainbow Dash?”

“Well,” Cherry Berry said slowly, “I could tell how half the town woke up one night because Dash tried to steal a book from the hospital library.”

Spitfire’s jaw dropped. “She what?”

“She did,” Cherry said. “I heard about it from Carrot Top, and she got it from…” She looked at Starlight, making an outline of a large hat on her head with her forehooves.

Starlight sighed. “Apple Cider,” she said. “I think. The translation spell kept wobbling around that one. Almost as bad as…” She bit the bullet and accepted the better-than-the-alternatives name. “… as Princess Celestia.”

“Anyway, Rainbow Dash was practicing tricks, and she had a Bad Day,” Cherry Berry said. “Broke her wing, got a week in the hospital. And she was really, really bored, until Twilight Sparkle said she should try reading one of her favorite books…”

The stories continued for an hour, ending with how Rainbow Dash held the pony space program together long enough for her to become the first Equestrian to spacewalk. Starlight enjoyed Mark’s horror at the brief and almost disastrous ESA Flight Five and then his amusement at some of the antics of ESA Flight Six.

Yes, she thought, this will do for a stop-gap. Until we get our new book picked.

Author's Note

I had plenty of time (too much) today for writing, but not the concentration, especially not when the noise picked up and I had to keep a close eye on my booth. By the time I got to my hotel room about an hour and a half ago, I had only the first 450 words of this. Lame stuff, no hook, nothing. I considered dumping it all and starting from scratch, and I considered jumping forward five days to portray the results.

And then I came up with what you see here.

So there are going to be a couple days of filler, with Mane 6 presented from the points of view of our heroes. (Future bits will either be lifted from seasons 1-5 or made up whole cloth.)

By the way, a "celeste" is a hybrid xylophone and piano- looks like a toy upright piano, sounds like a glockenspiel. Starlight's confused because she stopped short of typing out the full "Celestia" and let auto-fill lead her astray.

And "dale" means "mountain valley."

Sol 334

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 339
ARES III SOL 334

So, yesterday we talked about Rainbow Dash. Who should we tell stories about today? Twilight Sparkle?

Mark’s heard plenty about Twilight Sparkle. Let’s pick someone else.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right… what about Fluttershy? We haven’t talked about her much.

No, you haven’t. You hardly even mention her.

Well, that’s because Fluttershy has the least to do with our space program. You see, Twilight Sparkle got all her closest friends to help when the pony space program began.

But she thought that only pegasuses could be good pilots, so she made Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy her pilot candidates. She wouldn’t even consider me, which is why I ended up working with the changelings.

Worked out fine for us!

Anyway, Rainbow Dash is a born flier. Fluttershy isn’t. In fact, she’s one of the weakest and most timid fliers ever. They ended up using her entirely for ground and equipment tests. And when Flight Five almost crashed, she bowed out completely for a couple of years. She finally went up once for a day-trip to the space station to make sure some lab rats were doing well, but that was less than a year before we left, and she came right back down next day.

She almost was on our flight. Princess Twilight wanted unicorn, pegasus, earth pony on flight. But Fluttershy… how to say…

Fluttershy takes care of a lot of animals. They really depend on her. She can talk with them. She hates to be away for very long. It would have been tragic if she’d been with us.

Yeah. So I here and not her. Fluttershy rotten flier, but much better medic.

Wait a minute. Why was it important to have one each of all kinds of pony? Is there some sort of prejudice involved?

Prejudice? Hm… well, in a way, yes. The tribes intermarried after pony land was founded, and I know of an earth pony couple whose children are a pegasus and a unicorn, so it’s not like they’re at war. But there’s still a major cultural gap. A lot of towns are predominantly one tribe or another. And nobody likes it when ponies like them are left out of something really big. So it’s always important to remind ponies that we’re united, working together, all as equals.

Starlight, can we get this back to Fluttershy?

Oh, right! Anyway, that’s why you haven’t heard much about Fluttershy. Scared of heights, hates to fly, can’t talk to strangers, but she absolutely loves animals.

And she most beautiful pegasus anyone knows. Makes me feel like goose chick beside her, and I’m hot.

Oh yeah! There was this time Fluttershy had to ask ponies to help look after her animals because she’d got dragged into a… a job, I guess the word is? Wearing clothes and having pictures and, um, stuff for sell thing…

Advertising? Commercials? Wait, you mean she was a model?

From what I hear, for a couple of months she was the model.

Yeah! She offered to help Rarity by wearing clothes she made for our best picture-taker-

Photographer.

and the what-you-said ignored the clothes and dragged Fluttershy off to, um, Manehattan?

Hat Hair City. I think.

Anyway, she was on everything- magazines, posters, newspapers, even banners pegasuses towed! Everybody wanted to see her, to meet her, to get her to help sell their stuff!

And a painfully shy pony did all this?

Oh yes! And she HATED it. Totally hated every second of it.

You see, Fluttershy thought Rarity would be sad if she didn’t use the chance to become rich and famous. And Rarity was jealous as a cat about it, because she wanted to be where Fluttershy was, but she didn’t say anything because she wanted Fluttershy to be happy. She thought Fluttershy was lucky, but Fluttershy was miserable and wanted out, and it took forever before they actually talked to each other about it.

Of course, once Fluttershy found out that Rarity only wanted her to be a model because she thought she’d love being a model, she quit right on the spot! And ever since, the only times she lets her picture be taken is when she’s modeling Rarity’s clothes. But she was the first of Twilight’s friends to get really famous.

Who cares about pony famous? Why don’t you tell about the important stuff? This is Fluttershy. She so scary she makes dragons cry!

What? I’m sorry, but what?

I hear this from cousin. This dragon, not going to say name, you can’t pronounce it, he moved his hoard and all into a cave in pony lands. Way up on top of a mountain, so he thought, no pony going to bug me here. And he settled in for a nap, might last a year or three, he thought, no trouble to nobody.

But that dragon spread smoke all over middle of Pony-land!

Yeah, he snored. But he didn’t know that. Nobody tell you these things, you know? Anyway, next thing he knows, one pony after another keeps waking him up. One of them tried to steal some of his hoard, and another kicked him right in the snout. Well, you get tired of that real quick. So there he was, about to kick them all off the mountain-

Wait a minute. This was Twilight Sparkle and her friends, right? Princess Twilight Sparkle?

Guess so. Story I heard didn’t name anyone but Fluttershy.

It was. But Twilight was only a unicorn then, not a princess. A pretty strong unicorn, but not an alicorn.

Yeah, anyway, alla sudden there’s this little yellow thing in front of his face, and then all he see are these two angry eyes. And by the time the pony was done talking he was crying in shame. Dragon almost as big as the Hab, crying and bawling like a hatchling, all because of one pony.

So he pack up and moved back where he came from, and he told other dragons. Word got around. Don't mess with yellow pegasus with pink hair.

And I tell you that story so I could tell this one.

Uh-oh.

One of those, huh?

Shut up. After Rainbow Dash first walk in space, Twilight Sparkle ask all astronauts come to her space center to train for space walk. I was only astronaut for dragon space program, so my boss order me to go. About twenty astronauts there, all different species, ponies and changelings and griffon and I don’t know names. And me.

Train for EVA is hard, you know that. I had trouble. Kept get turned around. Train building takes away, um, things you look at to tell you where you are and where you going.

Reference points.

Huh?

Reference points. A point you can refer to that tells you where you are.

Thought reference was when boss calls your friend, says, What kind of worker is he? It a thing Jim Rockford don't have.

It has a lot of meanings.

Dumb language. Anyway, real easy to get mixed up. I’m fail test after test. And I’m thinking, “Don’t wanna be here anyway, just give up, maybe boss will let me quit this time.” But don’t wanna be quitter or failer either.

Then this pony I don’t know talks to me. Real quiet voice, almost whisper. Asks me what’s wrong. I say get lost, but she asks again. So I say, I’m no good at spacewalk. And she looks me in the eyes and says, “I know it’s hard, but I believe a smart dragon like you can do anything he sets his mind to.”

That sounds like Fluttershy, all right. And a very good translation, Fireball.

No way! I was there too, and I never saw her!

I didn’t see her there either.

It was the first time she came back to the space center since Flight Five. She was really pushing herself. We found her on her side, rigid, right outside the EVA training building. We took her to the infirmary until she woke up, and then we had a couple of pegasi fly her home. She wasn't there half a day. The next time she set hoof on a space center grounds after that was when she visited you lot for the joint development of… of the first successful space probe.

Yeah yeah yeah, listen. Anyone else, especially any pony else, I blow it off. But when she said it, it felt like she was right. I knew she was right. When she look you in the eyes, it's like... well... no pony, no dragon. Just soul and soul. Sounds mushy, but that's how it is. She told me a couple hints to do better- one helped, other two didn’t- and then wished me luck, walked away.

Well, that explains the unconscious part. She must have had a bad reaction from meeting you.

Not fair to insult me, boss pony.

No, it’s not an insult. Didn’t you know? Fluttershy is scared to death of dragons.

That’s right. Phobic, except for Spike. Twilight and her friends dragged Fluttershy up every inch of that mountain to face your dragon friend-of-a-friend. Add to that her normal social anxiety and her night terrors about Flight Five… you say she spoke to you first? You didn’t say hello to her or anything?

I didn’t even see until she spoke, and then- whoa! Right there in front of me. And you say she afraid of dragons?

Like some ponies are afraid of heights, or shadows, or the number five. Absolutely involuntary. Though come to think of it, Fluttershy is also afraid of heights… and shadows… don’t know about the number five, though.

That really weird, even by pony standard.

I know- Fluttershy’s got all these fears, but she loves even the biggest, wildest animals. I mean, she even made friends with Chaos!

Aren’t you Chaos’s friend too?

In a way, I guess. But Fluttershy was his first and closest friend.

I heard she even stared down a, a, I forgot the word, chicken-snake-thing! Like a basilisk, only not! Instead of turning to stone, she made it release her friends that it had turned to stone!

What? Are you saying she stared down a cockatrice?

That’s the word! And that’s what I heard from Kevin!

Who’s Kevin?

Oops! I wasn’t supposed to say that. Forget that name. There is no such changeling as Kevin.

You can’t give us that! Tell!

No, seriously, everybody, let it go. The maddest I ever saw Chrysalis was when I asked her who Kevin was. Let’s not get Dragonfly in trouble.

Changeling Chrysalis hates that much? I wanna meet.

Guys, please, who is this Fatass you’re talking about?

Oh, Mark…

Author's Note

An experiment. Also a stalling tactic, since I can't get to my copy of the book our crew will choose until I get home from the current trip.

By the way, I'm staying over in Kansas City Sunday night, so I might be available at 8 PM or so to say hi to, assuming you didn't go to the convention (Sausomecon).

I might have to go into CSP and alter a couple of things for this one, but for now I'm saying that Fluttershy did try to come back to help, and it didn't go well for a long time.

EDIT: Experiment failed big time, so tomorrow I get to add about 400 more words to turn this into a standard chapter instead of just dialog. Which is a shame, because it was fun to bounce conversation back and forth without said, said, said.

EDIT: Color text restored at the request of someone doing a hard-copy version.

Sol 335

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 340

ARES III SOL 335

“So,” Mark said, as Starlight shut down the magic field and the others gathered around the cleared area by the life support system, “who do I learn more about today?”

“I was just thinking,” Starlight Glimmer said slowly. “I sat down with the dictionary today and went through everything beginning with “apple”. I finally found ‘applejack,’ which is another name for apple brandy. It also refers to ‘jacked,’ which apparently means ‘really strong,’ which fits. So now I have a better name than Hard Cider for her.”

“Did you find the breakfast cereal?” Mark asked.

Starlight settled for giving him a look. She went on, “So let’s talk about Applejack today. I’ve known Applejack for a few years now, but I don’t really have any stories about her. What about you, Cherry?”

“I’ve known her almost my whole life,” Cherry Berry said. “And the only stories I know are a bit embarrassing. Like the time she caused a bunny stampede-“

“A what?” Mark asked.

“- or when vampire fruitbats invaded her farm and she ended up getting Fluttershy turned into a vampire pony.”

“A what??” Mark asked.

“And, y’know, I don’t want to tell those stories,” Cherry Berry concluded, “because it’s not fair to her. She’s a really good pony, not an… um… Enos, yeah. Not Enos. Definitely not Cletus or Roscoe.”

“I know what you mean,” Starlight said. “She’s strong, she’s brave, she stays calm, and she’s always there, but she doesn’t really have adventures on her own, does she?”

“Yeah, that’s it!” Cherry Berry said. “She’s always there for everypony. It’s amazing, too- she runs the biggest farm in Ponyville, and she still has time for so many other ponies.”

“That was what got her in trouble with the rabbits,” Starlight said. “I read Twilight’s book about how Applejack was so tired from working on her farm and helping everyone else out too, she got totally loopy. She wouldn’t even sleep nights, she was working so hard.”

“Yeah. She was the only pony one year to go to… um… big snooty pony party in capital? She went there to work. Could have met ponies, had fun, but no, she wanted to support her family.”

“I remember that,” Spitfire said. “My lieutenant bought a pie from her. Said best pie ever. But there was big table of free food there. She wasted her time.”

“Er…” Cherry Berry shifted uncomfortably on her hooves, exchanging glances with Spitfire. This was another little anecdote that made Applejack look like an idiot. “Well, her heart was in the right place.”

“Maybe you could start by telling me who she is,” Mark said. ‘Maybe a story will come up that way.”

“I only know her from the briefings,” Dragonfly said. “Applejack, Element of Honesty. Easily fooled so long as you tell no direct lies. Incredibly strong and talented earth pony farmer. Skilled rodeo performer. De facto leader of the Apple extended family, with members in every corner of Pony-land and beyond. If you’re fighting her and you end up directly behind her, you’re about to take a prolonged and involuntary nap- her kicks are brutal. Her lariat skills are even better.”

“Wait a minute,” Mark said. “How does an earth pony even make a lasso, never mind use one?”

“I don’t know,” Dragonfly said. “I’m not a rodeo pony. Anyway, skilled and experienced monster fighter. Almost never gets rattled. Extremely competitive and stubborn. Senior mission control flight leader, pony space center.”

“That more than I know,” Fireball said. “I only know her from sometimes talk on radio when I was on space station.”

“I don’t know much either,” Spitfire said. “Most of what I know Rainbow Dash tell me.”

The conversation, which had been rather sickly for a while, now died altogether. “So,” Mark said, attempting to defibrillate the patient, “monster hunter, huh? What kind of monsters?”

“Well, us changelings for one,” Dragonfly said, and promptly got a smack on the head from Spitfire. “Ow!”

“What I say about bragging about being evil?” the pegasus warned.

“Well, let’s see,” Starlight said. “Since I first met her she fought a, um, mix of bear and insect bigger than both… a, um, I saw one in your books- chimera, that’s the word, tiger-goat-snake mix… sea monsters, manticores, hydras, carnivorous plants, and, um, wild dogs made of wood infused with dark magic.” She shuffled her feet. “And, um, me.”

Spitfire stood up and walked over to Starlight, who immediately covered her horn with her forehoves.

“Sit down, Spitfire.” Cherry Berry wasn’t going to have this sort of thing spread, one way or another.

Spitfire glared at Starlight, pointed her hoof at her face and then at the unicorn in an I’m-watching-you gesture, and went back to her spot.

“Oooookay,” Mark said. “Wild dogs… wolves? Made of wood?”

“That’s right,” Starlight said. “Applejack’s family farm backs onto the Forever Free Forest. Every once in a while monsters come out of it, especially wood-wolves, and Applejack fights them off.”

“That’s right. She does it all the time. I remember one time…

This was back when Applejack and I were just out of school. My family had learned that I couldn’t be trusted to harvest cherries without eating myself sick, so they sent me to, um, Applejack’s father’s mother, named for a good sour baking apple. Applejack put me to work, even though they really didn’t have enough money to pay me. Farming is like that; if you have a good harvest prices are so bad you make nothing, and if prices are up it’s because nobody has a crop and you’ve got nothing to sell. Farming takes a lot of very hard work to live by.

Anyway, zap apple time had just been. Zap apples are a magic fruit. Applejack’s, um, grandmother makes a jam from the harvested zap apples that sells for big money all over pony-land, and that’s mostly what keeps the farm going. All the other crops only about break even, from what I hear. But zap apple time is also wood-wolf time. When we hear them howl at night, we know zap apples are coming.

So we were in tending some regular apple trees when we heard growling and smelled something like the poo box. Wood wolves are made of rotten tree limbs and moss and vines and like that, so their breath stinks.

Wait- magic wood needs to breathe?

Wood-wolves do. So we had about two seconds warning before two wood-wolves came out of the Forever Free, coming straight for us. A wood-wolf is six times the length of a pony and almost three times as tall. They can be deadly, and they can’t be tamed, can’t be reasoned with. They’re not like manticores or even hydras. They’re just evil. And these two wanted to kill Applejack and me so the forest could take back the zap apple trees.

Well, of course we ran. But as we ran under a low-hanging branch, Applejack wasn’t beside me anymore. She swung up on the branch, over, and down- WHACK!- right on top of the first wood-wolf’s snout. It went down, and Applejack went with it, lining up her rear hooves and kicking it straight in between the eyes. That was it for that one- it fell apart right off.

But the second one was right on top of her after that. I thought she was a goner. I screamed for her to run, but instead she found a piece of the dead wood-wolf that had a vine attached to it. She tossed the piece of wood into the second wolf’s mouth, and it jammed there- wood-wolves don’t like to let go of something once they bite. And then she grabbed the loose end of the vine and ran with it around the wolf’s rear legs. The wolf tried to pull her back, but the vine just pulled tight and ripped those rear legs clean off.

The second wolf tried to twist around to bite her, but she wasn’t there. It couldn’t find her, and it turned around again just in time to see her rear hooves coming right at it. And that was that.

We spent the rest of the day picking up the bits of wood and hauling them off to be burned. You have to burn wood-wolves. Otherwise the spell comes back after a day or so. And it’s rotten wood, so you need a lot of good wood to get it started.

So we got almost none of our work done that day. And when we went to see her grandmother, Applejack didn’t brag about killing two wood-wolves. She apologized for not getting her work done!

And that was only, hm, about three years after we got our cutie marks. Still just kids, really. And even then she was like she is now; doesn’t brag, doesn’t even like to show off. But give her a job and it’s as good as done, so long as all it needs is honest hard work.

“Whoa! You mean she saved your life when you were still kids?” Mark asked, incredulous. “Where the hell were your parents while this was going on?”

“My parents had their own farm,” Cherry said. “A lot smaller than Applejack’s, so we earned extra money sometimes helping with my aunt’s farm down south. But Applejack’s parents died when she was pretty young. Her little sister was just a baby. So now it’s the big brother, the little sister, and AJ, and their grandmother, and whatever help they can get from friends and family come harvest time.”

“Oh. Whoa. That’s rough,” Mark said. “Is that why she’s named Applejack? Does she drink a lot?”

“No more than- oh wait, you mean, does she get drunk a lot?” Cherry asked. “No. Her family makes cider, but she only drinks a mug with friends. She’s not like my cousin Berry Kick.”

“They make applejack too,” Starlight said quietly.

The thing you have to remember is, the Apple family pride themselves on their cider, soft or hard. They only offer it for sale for a short season in mid-fall, after the leaves change. Other farms use windfalls and half-rotten fruit, but the Apples insist on quality. They have part of the farm specifically for growing apples for cider. Ponies line up for days to get one drink.

Dash told me once. I think if sea were made of cider, Dash would grow gills.

Er, moving along… But the Apple family doesn’t sell apple brandy of any kind. They do keep a few barrels of cider every year and age it, and you have to be a very close friend of the family to get even a sip of that. But if you mention apple brandy, you’ll get the door slammed in your face. They don’t sell it, and they don’t even admit it exists.

But… well, Twilight Sparkle worked really hard to teach me how to be a better pony. I’m still learning. But there were times that I thought it was a lost cause. It just all seemed so tough, so… well, impossible. And one time I screwed up bad. I’m not going to give you the details, because… well, to be honest, because it embarrasses me, but it might also give your friends ideas if and when you learn how to use magic. Let’s just say it took a lot of cleaning up and apologizing.

That night I was staring at the stars from a balcony of Twilight’s castle- this was before the school. I was wondering if I was cut out for this, if it wouldn’t be better for everyone if I just lived in a cave in the mountains for the rest of my life. I even had the perfect cave picked out.

Then Applejack comes out and asks me what’s wrong. I say, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m all right.” And you don’t do that to Applejack. You can misdirect her, you can fool her, but you can’t lie to her face, because she knows.

She shook her head, then pulled this little pottery jug out of her saddlebags, uncorked it, and poured me a little bit- about, oh, twice as much as one of your test tubes, Mark. “Here,” she said. “Have a sip and go to bed. Everything will be better in the morning. Well, afternoon, I mean, but you know.”

I took a sniff. “What’s in this?” I asked.

“Apples,” she said. “Well, mostly apples. It’s a family secret. We don’t talk about it.”

It smelled good and it tasted better. I can still remember the smooth apple flavor and how warm it made me feel inside. Unfortunately that’s the last thing I remember before waking up in my bed the next morning with a killer headache and a pot of fresh coffee and two pain pills on the nightstand next to me. By the time the hangover cleared I felt much better about everything. Which led to another buck-up, but that’s another story.

Cherry Berry stared, slack-jawed, at Starlight Glimmer. “You’ve tasted the Holy Appleshine?” she asked in Equestrian. “I thought that was only a legend! I thought that was a thing grandmas and grandpas told about Granny Smith’s parents to show how much better the old days were when Ponyville was being founded!”

“Cherry, calm down!” Starlight replied. “It was only the once. Applejack’s never offered again, and I sure never asked again. The Apples really don’t talk about it! Besides, English!”

“Er, is this cider really that big a deal?” Mark asked. “I tried apple brandy in college once. Didn’t much care for it. I like beer much better.”

Starlight and Cherry turned glares on Mark that could have frozen him colder than the air outside the cave farm. “Beer,” they sneered.

Dragonfly looked at Spitfire. “So, I guess a welcome-home drinking party in Ponyville is out of the question?”

Spitfire gave the changeling another tap on the noggin, then asked, “Commander, may I hit the changeling for saying dumb thing?”

“Don’t ask permission after you’ve already done it!” Dragonfly snapped.

Author's Note

This was harder than I expected, and I'm not happy at all with ending this on a booze joke, but my head and back hurt, I'm tired, and I need a good night's sleep before the all-day drive home tomorrow. So this is what there is, right down to me stealing a lame gag from Log Horizon to wrap it up.

Going through the episodes, a few things come out about Applejack. First and foremost, she is not a thinker. She is perfect backup or muscle, but any episode that features her will make her look foolish in one way or another- stubbornness, anger, overprotectiveness, jerkass-mode honesty, etc.

As far as the cartoon is concerned, you can rely on it- any decision Applejack makes based on thought is certain to be the wrong decision.

Of course, this is why people refer to Applejack as Best Background Pony. She stands out by not standing out- by always being there when needed and providing her strength, skill, and common sense to a group. It's when she goes it alone that things inevitably go wrong. But, as a consequence of this, none of the stories in the cartoon that focus on Applejack are in any way complementary to her.

(Which is a shame, because the ending to Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 5000 is my favorite moment in the whole damn show.)

So, instead, you get two stories of Applejack that are about her courage, strength, and kindness- even if the kindness takes the form of, "Have a delicious Mickey Finn, it'll all be better in the morning." I admit it's a very easy way out and plays on fan headcanon (since, of course, there is no actual liquor in the cartoon), but it's all my brain can produce tonight.

Further edits on yesterday's chapter will have to wait. For now my back is screaming at me, and I'm to bed to watch YouTube until I pass out (which won't be long).

Incidentally, if any of you are interested in T-shirts, fourteen days remain on my 2018 Kickstarter. My publicity efforts have failed multiple ways on this, so I probably won't try this again, but here's the link anyhow:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869505034/wlp-shirts-2018-summer-shirt-lineup#

Sol 336

Changeling Space Program Mission Forty-Nine hurtled through the upper atmosphere in a cone of superheated plasma, the rocket being pushed to the very edge of survivability by an array of enchanted crystals hundreds of miles behind it. Inside the control capsule, its sole occupant repeated a single word, for no other reason than to remind the ponies on the ground that she was still alive and conscious.

“Okay!”

It was less a word than a grunt, but Chrysalis managed to get it out regardless, somehow keeping her hooves on the controls despite eight times the normal force of gravity pressing hard on her entire body.

“Okay!”

This, beyond all doubt, was the worst ascent she had ever piloted, worse than her first flight, worse than Mission Five, which more than one book had called “Chryssy’s Bad Idea”, worse than anything.

“Okay!”

Her muscles really, really ached. It took the kind of willpower that (in her own mind) made her the perfect ruler of her fractious subjects to keep one hoof on the engine throttle and the other on the joystick. But if she let her forehooves drop, she’d never be able to lift them to the controls again while the current acceleration lasted.

“Okay!”

With this kind of monstrous acceleration, it seemed madness to add to it by firing the sole engine on the short, single-stage test vehicle. But the engines were required to turn the flight from a purely vertical flight into a shot to orbit. The capsule reaction wheels, mighty as they were, would only put the ship on its side; the fifteen magical repulsor pylons would continue pushing the three comparatively small crystals tucked behind the engine bell directly away from themselves, regardless of which way the ship was actually pointed.

“Okay!”

By itself, the ship might just be able to lift itself off the ground on a half-full tank. With the addition of the enchanted ring of rocks on the ground far, far behind her, Chrysalis was now bound not just for orbit but for a rendezvous with Concordia and her long-overdue shift on station there. Her three-person capsule (the other two seats currently empty) would replace the one that would take Cadance and a certain stowaway back to Equus.

“Okay, six point five gees and falling,” Chrysalis said, getting something more closely approaching a deep breath for the first time in three minutes. “On course ninety by fifty, fuel at sixty percent, all systems nominal.” All ship’s systems, that is. The pilot’s systems felt like she’d just been popped out of the cardboard in some pony toddler’s activity book. She could be her own drogue parachute.

“Horseton copies, Forty-Nine.” Chrysalis forced herself not to frown at the sound of Rainbow Dash’s voice. Yes, it was joint operations these days, and yes the little showoff was the second most senior pilot remaining on the planet, but it just felt wrong to have any pony other than the pony as capcom for what was, at least in name, a Changeling Space Program flight run from Horseton Space Center. “Twilight confirms you are go for orbit and Concordia rendezvous, repeat go for Concordia.”

The acceleration was tapering off rapidly now, and Chrysalis checked her speed indicators, then opened the taps on her chemical rocket engine a little more. For a moment she’d wondered if those stupid enchanted rocks would let her stop at Concordia, or if their creator had decided to surprise the changeling queen by making her commander of Equestria’s first permanent moon base, population one.

“Forty-Nine, ESA speaking.” Ah, and speak of the pony herself. The idiot genius must have taken the headset from Rainbow Dash. “If we restrict the mana flow a little more, the extra weight of the NASA ship should reduce acceleration even more, making the system safe for the Amicitas crew to use for escape. I think we’re almost ready to send them the specifications and await results of their own local testing.”

That made Chrysalis smile. As much as the perfect pony princess of Putting Her Nose Into the Private Business of Evil Masterminds annoyed her, it felt good when Twilight Sparkle’s plans worked… because when she failed she tried again, and when she succeeded she literally knocked the ball out of the park.

Yes, she could live with Twilight Sparkle’s plans, so long as they weren’t pointed at her.

“Sounds good to me,” she said. “Hurry up with the bookwork, and let’s bring our people home!”

Author's Note

Original plan: leave Kansas City about 8 to 8:30 AM, get home 9 PM, write another "tell me about X" chapter.

Detour after detour in Kansas (closing down a dozen miles of a major north-south highway with a twenty-mile detour in either direction? GPS sending you down roads they're just now closing because they're maintaining the railroad crossings? Turnoff doesn't exist?) cost me at least two, closer to three hours of driving time.

So this, what I can do in half an hour, is what there is for today. (I got home at just before 11 PM, after leadfooting it through the Ozarks of eastern Oklahoma.)

Chryssy's "Okay!" is directly inspired by Alan Shepard's call during the first Mercury flight's re-entry, during which he pulled over seven G's of deceleration.

Sol 338

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 343
ARES III SOL 338

Despite having spent the morning harvesting potatoes in the Hab and the early afternoon harvesting or replanting the surviving potatoes in the cave farm, everyone rushed to bring out the computers for the book reports. The confused, faltering efforts to tell stories about the current heroes of Equestria had proven one thing: storytelling was hard.

“All right,” Starlight said once everyone was gathered. “Dragonfly, why don’t you go first?”

“Fine by me,” Dragonfly said, looking “I didn’t make it all the way through Foundation, and I’m in no hurry to finish it. When I read the description I was expecting empires, space ships, huge battles, big darn heroes. And what did I actually get?” She tapped the top of her computer. “Math. Math and books and talk, talk, talk. Hardly anything really happens at all! Or if it does happen, it happens way over there somewhere so that it won’t bother anybody. If this is what Isaac Asimov is like, I hope he didn’t write very many books.”

“Only about four or five hundred,” Mark muttered.

“All right,” Starlight shrugged. “So we won’t go there. Fireball, what did you think of The Golden Spiders?”

“It was fun,” Fireball said. “But a little confusing. Had to look up what ‘displaced person’ meant. Then looked up immigration. Did you know humans don’t want to let other humans move from one place to another? Make it hard to do so? Dragons not put up with that for long. Stupid idea.”

“Preach it, brother!” Dragonfly cheered.

“Be quiet, you,” Spitfire said. “Your queen number one argument for, wossword, in-meague-ray-shun.”

“Spitfire, leave Dragonfly alone,” Cherry Berry said quietly.

“Anyway,” Fireball continued, “I figure out blackmail just fine. Know some dragons who do it. Nice roof you got, fresh straw, burn nice, too bad if someone sneeze, and not getting lots of gold make snout itch. So I got the idea. But what made it a good book was two main characters. Character who tells story is funny, smart. I like him. And his boss, the fat human, I think I like too. I want to know what makes his head run. I like the book lots. Is there more?”

“NASA sent over forty books by Rex Stout,” Starlight said. “I think they were looking for long series or prolific authors or something.” She turned to Cherry Berry. “Now for Ringworld. Cherry?”

Cherry had been blushing deeper and deeper as her turn approached. “Mark,” she said quietly, “are all humans this obsessed with sex?”

“Um…” Mark shifted a little uncomfortably. “I didn’t think Ringworld was all that-“

“A device that triggers sexual bliss on command?” Cherry asked. “A world where sex is used to seal every bargain? What kind of imagination comes up with that?”

“An imagination that wants to sell a fuckload of books?” Mark suggested.

Cherry blushed even more deeply. She reminded Starlight a bit of Big MacIntosh for a moment.

Mark apparently got the hint. “Oops. That was unintentional. My bad.”

Cherry Berry coughed and moved on. “Most of the book is really interesting. Radically different aliens- like us- gathered together to explore a bizarre new world. Crash-landing on that world. Relying on each other to find a way home. It had action. It had big thoughts about luck and design and stuff. It had emotion. But it also…”

Starlight wondered why Twilight Sparkle wasn’t here now to rescue them. Cherry’s blush had to be visible across at least a few dimensions…

“Look, the ri-ri-the sex stuff is really distracting, that’s all I’m saying!” the commander finished. “And there’s no way I could read this book aloud without thinking about what’s in it!”

“How about we trade books?” Dragonfly asked. “And maybe I could translate that one for my queen when we get back. You know she loves the racy books.”

“I did not need to know that,” Starlight said. “Moving on. Spitfire, how did you make out with Equal Rites?”

Spitfire tapped her computer. “This story,” she said, “is home.”

“Home?” Starlight leaned closer. “How do you mean?”

“More like, it home if we had humans run things instead of princess,” Spitfire continued. “Some stupid stuff. Why can’t boy or girl be wizard? Or witch? But then I think. Back home I know unicorns built in Cloud Valley, earth pony in capital. I think of pegasus want to teach magic. I think of earth pony who want to fly.” She looked straight at Cherry Berry as she said this. “So girl want be wizard, is, um, like earth pony want fly. Thing.”

“Metaphor,” Starlight said.

“Whatever. So I understand that part. But the rest of it is… not like Hogwarts. Not like Middle Earth. Real people. Magic that breaks sometimes. Weird things happen just because. Monsters. Laundry. And pr-eye-vee. Had to look it up too. Means outhouse. Harry Potter only go bathroom to talk to Myrtle. No outhouse in Middle Earth at all.” Spitfire smirked, saying the next sentence with great care and even greater amusement: “No one in Middle Earth ever goes to the bathroom.”

“Or on the starship Enterprise either,” Mark muttered.

“Huh?”

“Nothing, go on.”

“Anyway, big adventure, big thought, and it feels like home.” She paused a moment then added, “If home were flat and on giant turtle.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Starlight said. “So we have two books left to choose from. Rex Stout’s Golden Spiders, and Terry Pratchett’s Equal Rites. And since I’m getting enough magic from working on the final enchantment for the new Sparkle Drive and the new repulsor system, my vote is for the murder mystery.”

“Me too,” Fireball said.

“I don’t want to hear more about how mean people can be,” Cherry said. “I definitely don’t want a story with blackmail in it. I vote for the other one.”

Spitfire tapped her chin. “You sure no Ringworld?”

Cherry the Red Faced Earth Pony made a return appearance. “Affirmative.”

“Then yeah, I stick with mine,” Spitfire said nodding. “I like mystery, but I like feeling home more.”

Everyone looked at Dragonfly, who tapped her chin with a hoof. “Promise to stop bopping me on the head?” she asked Spitfire.

“No promise,” Spitfire replied flatly.

“Spitfire, I told you to cut it out!”

Dragonfly shrugged. “Plenty of action in both books, right?”

“Gunfight,” Fireball said.

“Magic duel,” Spitfire added.

The changeling shrugged. “Then I’m good either way,” she said. “Sorry, but I abstain. Let Mark break the tie. It’s his books, after all.”

Mark, feeling every gaze turn to him, shrugged. “Actually I’ve never read The Golden Spiders before,” he said. “I was never much into mysteries. But there’s a book a little later in the Discworld series which has tons of action, a bit of magic, and a murder mystery. Plus politics, heroism, and romance.”

“And blackmail?”

Mark shrugged. “Well, yeah, a little bit,” he said. “But if it helps, it’s not exactly a person doing the blackmailing.”

Cherry Berry’s eyes made an attempt to imitate those of a certain mailmare. “How?”

Mark grinned, pulling the computer from Spitfire and scrolling through the library for a different title. “They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.”

The others drew closer as Mark began to read of dragons (“No dragons ever be that close together without a fight,” Fireball complained), of a drunk watchman in a gutter, and of the effect of books on spacetime (“That’s right! Twilight’s told me about that many times!” Starlight said). The aliens listened, and commented now and then, and laughed at the silliness of the cultists and the lantern-jawed innocence of the six-foot-tall dwarf boy sent to the big city alone.

All in all, it was a good beginning- and a lot better than bickering about what it was like being around Equestria’s greatest heroes.

Author's Note

I may go back at some point, if I'm really blocked for the day's entry, and make a stab at Rarity or Pinkie Pie Story Time. (The latter will be difficult, since the First Rule of Pinkie Pie is, "Do not talk about Pinkie Pie if you value your sanity.")

I read Foundation as a teenager, and liked it much more than Dragonfly did. However, I've never felt a need to re-read it afterwards, partly because... well, Asimov was one of the best short-story writers ever, but his novels tend to wallow. He either writes badly padded short stories or a cluster of short stories with a vague overarching plotline. That said, he still deserves better than Dragonfly's reaction, but this is what to expect when you ask an adrenaline junkie to read high-concept hard sci-fi.

I first read Ringworld when I was five. The sex stuff sailed straight over my head; all I cared about was spaceships, floating castles, monomolecular indestructible wire, and weird aliens. Again, the book deserves better than Cherry's (reader-inspired) prurience.

I own the entire Nero Wolfe series (well, the Rex Stout written ones- the Goldsborough pastiches are markedly inferior) and reread them frequently. I'm not fond of most detective stories, mostly because the detective characters tend to be one-note cardboard cutouts. And although Rex Stout does use a lot of cardboard in the supporting cast, Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe constantly produce unexpected depths to their outward personalities. I highly recommend the series as a whole, with The Golden Spiders and The Doorbell Rang being my picks for the two best books in the series, with Some Buried Caesar a close third.

I'm fairly sure I don't need to explain Discworld.

Sol 340

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 345
ARES III SOL 340

“Mark, tell me: do you think we’ll have any cherries for the trip?”

Cherry Berry knew the answer, but she had to ask anyway. She’d coddled and cared for the saplings, urging them to grow taller faster than anything on Equestria. But, despite it all, they were still only months old, not the two or three years it took an Equestrian cherry tree to begin bearing fruit. And that was in Equestria, a land lousy with magic, and not a cave on an otherwise totally unmagical barren wasteland of a planet.

But age was only one of the problems, as Mark pointed out. “Not unless Starlight gets her transmutation spell going without punching a hole in the rover,” he said. “I know you’ve put your heart into them, Cherry, but facts are facts. The plants are too young. If they’re all the same kind of cherry, the odds are good they won’t be fertile with one another. We haven’t got any bees, so we’d have to hand-pollinate every last flower. And it would have to happen in the next fifty sols.”

“Fifty sols?” Cherry asked. “We have a hundred and ten before we leave, right?”

“We need time to test the finished rover and fix any problems that pop up,” Mark said. “In order to test the rover-trailer combo, we need to pull the life support out of the cave, at least for a sol or two at a time. Once we start doing that, the cave will cool down in a hurry. That will hurt the plants. So whatever we’re going to grow, we have to be done before we get serious about testing the rover. The next harvest will be the last one.”

Cherry looked through the airlock window into the cave interior. The cherry trees now brushed the ceiling, limbs mostly running up the ceiling towards the solar relay crystals. In the long term- if there was going to be a long term- that would mean trouble for the sun-loving alfalfa. Once a week Cherry carefully plucked enough fresh, healthy leaves from the trees for a couple pots of cherry leaf tea, which she prepared with all due care and caution to give everyone a change from drinking plain water. She’d have to figure out a way to dry the leaves properly for long-term storage for the trip…

She absent-mindedly wiped away tears with a hoof. “Could we move your machines from the Hab here to the cave?” she asked. “Just leave it running?”

Mark shook his head. “Part of the atmospheric regulator has to be outside for it to work properly,” he said. “And it and the oxygenator both work to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The plants need CO2 added every so often. The water reclaimer won’t automatically water the plants, even if we figure out some way to pump water from downstream to replace what it puts out. And I don’t think all the heaters in the Hab put together would be enough to keep the cave warm enough for plants to grow.”

Cherry blinked. “You didn’t even have to think about that.”

“Because I’ve been thinking about it for months,” Mark replied. “I’d love to have this farm go on forever as a lasting fuck-you to this goddamn planet. But I don’t see any way of doing it that doesn’t risk our own chances of getting out alive.”

“I understand,” Cherry said. And she did. She just didn’t like it. “Could you ask Dragonfly and Spitfire to step in here, please?”

As Mark opened the inner airlock door and left, Cherry looked through the open doorway at Starlight Glimmer, who stood by the life support box holding a broken piece of antenna in her magic and writing things in the dirt as she watched the indicator lights flash. It looked like a second all-day session on the water telegraph getting the details straight for the new Sparkle Drive main crystal, which Starlight had decided to enchant two days from now rather than make more batteries that they probably wouldn’t be able to haul with them.

Cherry hated to interrupt her now, but between the Sparkle Drive and the new booster system, Starlight would probably be tied up with that for days. Anyway, Cherry had another bit of business to take care of.

When Spitfire and Dragonfly walked up, Cherry motioned them to shut the airlock door behind them. “What’s up, boss mare?” Dragonfly asked. “I hope this isn’t an order to walk the plank or something.”

“Dragonfly,” Cherry began, “I don’t think you’ve ever asked me to get Spitfire to stop hitting you on the head.”

The changeling froze, which Cherry had half-expected. So did Spitfire, and Cherry hadn’t expected that. “Er… I figured you’d stop it yourself,” she said, almost convincingly.

Cherry looked at Spitfire. “And I’m pretty sure I’ve told you to cut it out once or twice.”

Spitfire lapsed into Equestrian. “Just look at her! Isn’t that just the most hittable face?”

Dragonfly grinned. “It’s true. Five hundred royal guards can’t be wrong!”

Cherry cleared her throat. “I’m not laughing, you two,” she said in English. She looked at Spitfire. “This is an order: no more hitting Dragonfly.” She looked at Dragonfly even harder. “This is an order: quit goading Spitfire into hitting you.”

Dragonfly cocked her head, doing a very good job of pretending to be confused. “You think I want to be hit in the head?” she asked.

“I think you’re deliberately being annoying,” Cherry said. Looking Spitfire right in the eyes, she continued, “And I think you’re playing along.”

Spitfire shrugged. “Makes me feel better.”

Dragonfly nodded. “It makes everybody feel better, too.”

“Not me,” Cherry said. “I mean it: cut it out. If you two want a running joke, come up with something else.”

Dragonfly slumped. “The queen would let me get hit over the head.”

“Only if she held the stick,” Cherry said. “Anyway, she’s not here, thank Faust. Now let’s go make the plants happy…” She couldn’t suppress a sad sigh at the thought. “… for a little longer.”

Author's Note

I ran out of writing time, or else this would be longer.

Tomorrow I go to Houston (just down the road) and set up for Delta H Con.

Sol 342

MISSION LOG – SOL 342

Today NASA decided the new communications link via Hermes was stable enough to resume our email accounts. Our bandwidth is only about six hundred bits per second- Hermes is closer to us than Earth, but not that much closer, and it’s going to be pretty close to the sun for at least another month. So NASA is limiting us to thirty emails total- the most urgent in-house messages plus whatever they think is most interesting from the weeks we spent without email.

Four of us, of course, are glued to computers, reading and replying to messages from the outside world. But not Starlight, and not me. We both have homework, which means our emails have to sit on the computer a while longer.

Today Starlight actually rigged up four magic field projectors to run at once so she could make a new core crystal for the Sparkle Drive. She wasn’t taking any chances on it being underpowered. In order to make it, she covered both the whiteboards with notes, used up all the remaining sample labels, and even transmuted some of the really old hay into a sort of unbleached paper that smells a lot like hay, just so she had something to write on.

Then, once the enchanting was done and she’d shut everything off, she examined the crystal until she keeled over from exhaustion. (She hasn’t done that in a while, so I know she was really working hard on it. Starlight got good at making a little magic go a long way since she arrived here on Mars.) She says the enchantment matches the final designs she and Twilight Sparkle came up with. Unfortunately, that’s not the same thing as saying “we did it, it works.” We won’t know that until we test it.

And by test it, I mean “switch it on while in deep space on a trajectory to nowhere, assuming we live even that long.” We can’t do a ground test, because when you switch on the Drive, it and anything physically attached to it moves. We’d either have to go along for the ride or else wave goodbye as it achieves Warp One and departs for the Klingon Neutral Zone without us. And, as Starlight has repeatedly warned me, the spell is a little vague about the difference between “attached to,” “sitting inside,” and “standing on top of.” The odds are pretty good the Drive would take a large chunk of Mars along with it if we used it for a ground launch.

So follow along with me: our escape plan, if absolutely anything goes even marginally wrong with our launch, requires that we use a totally untested magical rock to correct the problem and get us either rendezvous with Hermes or a rapid Earth intercept. As you might expect, NASA is less than thrilled by this, which is why they’re working overtime to give us the best odds of getting a rendezvous without using the Drive.

Which brings us to Starlight’s homework. With the Sparkle Drive replaced, Twilight Sparkle is now pouring out a river over their magical water telegraph giving her details about the extra enchantment she has to make. This one is much simpler, though: adding a spell that, when triggered, tells the enchanted rock to push hard against a particular other enchanted rock. In theory, nothing much to it.

There’s a funny story about this. The spell is older than dirt, so to speak. It was invented before the pony tribes united into the modern pony nation. Seems the unicorns wanted a city in the sky to match ancient (according to the spell this is actually a name) Pegasopolis. So they made a small crystal forest, enchanted it, and used its power to lift a large chunk of continent into the air about five thousand feet. Voila, flying city… until some earth ponies came along, saw some pretty crystals, and mined the enchanted boosters away. The unicorns couldn’t get the earth ponies to leave their enchanted rocks alone, so they had to land their flying city in a hurry before it landed on its own, and that more or less ended that. There’s a lot more to the story, mostly about unicorns trying to get the earth ponies and pegasi back for their humiliation and how this helped bring on the Go Windys, but that’s where Starlight left off..

Anyway, there’s one problem with the current design for the magic punkin’ chunker, as I like to call it. There’s currently no way to turn it on remotely. We don’t have any radio-controlled switches we can use. We’ll have to figure out a way around that before Launch Day, or else someone’s staying behind.

For the record, not it.

Did I say one problem? I meant one major problem. There are also a ton of minor problems, such as getting magic power from the super-sized batteries to the chunker enchantment, regulating the power output so it doesn’t unload all its push at one shot and turn us into chunky salsa, things of that nature. And that’s kept Starlight glued to the water telegraph again, all afternoon and evening, hashing it all out with Twilight. I’m about to pull the plug for the evening; the auxiliary tank on the water reclaimer is almost full, again, which means we’ll have to start dumping excess water out the airlocks, again.

Speaking of airlocks, it’s now about three times as long since Airlock 1 blew out as between the assembly of the Hab and the blowout. Tomorrow I’m going to ask Starlight, Spitfire and Dragonfly to help with a thorough check for incipient flaws in the Hab canvas. It’s been over a month since we last did one. I don’t expect to find anything, but that’s exactly why we do the check. It’s the shit we don’t expect that kills, and we’re getting too close to getting off this rock for me to literally blow it now.

Why not tonight? Well, that’s because of my homework. Cherry Berry asked Starlight for ideas on how to keep the cave going after we leave. Starlight says she has some ideas, but she needs to know exactly what’s required to keep the farm healthy and growing once we’re gone. So she handed that off to me.

Which is why I’m spending this evening calculating oxygen and carbon dioxide cycles between aerobic bacteria and plants. I’m calculating water consumption and respiration. I’m making an educated guesstimate at heat losses for the cave based on past data (from the Cave Fart and its aftermath). I’m seeing a need to measure current insolation through the solar relay crystals so I can make an educated guess on what the rate will be during the Martian winter roughly three hundred sols from now.

But there’s one problem that no amount of magic or tinkering will solve: bees. We don’t have any.

Here’s the thing. If we can somehow create a self-maintaining environment suitable for plant life, the cherry trees will live a very long time- possibly fifty Martian years or until they outgrow the cave, whichever comes first. And the potato plants can theoretically keep sprouting new plants from buried tubers, so there will be potatoes in the cave for years, possibly decades.

The limiting factor is the alfalfa. Alfalfa plants live for about five to seven years if left to grow continually, but eventually they get old and die. Alfalfa doesn’t bud like potatoes, and cuttings require human care and tending to get started. And without animal life with animal digestive systems to fix nitrogen and provide certain amino acids, the alfalfa is the only thing that will keep the soil from playing out within a couple of years.

We’re out of seeds after the replanting we did after the Cave Fart and the sinkholes and the anaerobic bacteria plague. And in three hundred plus sols of growing hay on Mars, we’ve yet to see a single bud, let alone an actual flower, on any of the alfalfa plants. And if we did see a bud, we’d have to fertilize it by hand, if that’s even possible, because there are no bees on Mars.

Without bees, alfalfa doesn’t produce seeds. Neither do potato flowers (of which we have seen a few) or cherry blossoms (the trees are way too young). No seeds means no new alfalfa.

If NASA proceeds with Ares IV landing at Schiaparelli on schedule- which will require a really fast refit after Hermes makes it home- and if Ares V is redirected to this site for a follow-up picking through our garbage, they’ll get here about eight Earth years from now. By that time the cave farm will be plenty sick if not totally dead, for lack of soil nutrients. And I just don’t see any way around that.

Eh, maybe I’m overthinking this. Maybe Starlight can make little crystal bees out of magic. Maybe the alfalfa will spontaneously mutate to reproduce by parthenogenesis, like in Jurassic Park, only without the bloody murderous pack predators.

(Come to think of it, what would alfalfa hunt? How much tactical knowledge do you need to sneak up on loam?)

I’m getting punchy. Time to put this aside and pull out my other homework: campaign building. Starlight’s too busy to try making a new campaign for D&D, and we’ve played all the pre-gen adventure modules twice, so she asked me to work on a Discworld campaign setting.

If I do this right, they’ll never get out of Ankh-Morpork…

Author's Note

Offhand, can't think of anything that needs explaining here.

Sol 347

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 352
ARES III SOL 347

“I’ve been thinking- and don’t make any stupid jokes about it, okay?”

Dragonfly and Mark had cleared a worktable and sketched designs for Rover Saddlebags Version 2.0 on the surface, having discovered that the dry-erase markers could also be wiped (mostly) clean from the tabletops. (Starlight Glimmer had made it clear that, for the duration, anyone who laid a hoof on either of the actual whiteboards would lose that hoof.) The new saddlebags required careful planning; they would be expected to hold as much as ten times the weight of the saddlebags Mark had used for the drive to Pathfinder, and they would have to do that job without crushing the lightweight rover pressure vessel.

“You’ve been thinking,” Mark repeated. “About this?” He gestured to the sketched, half-erased plans.

“Yeah, but this is something else.” Dragonfly leaned away from the table for emphasis. “Spitfire made a remark yesterday about not planning on writing a book while we’re here on Mars. And I was thinking: why not? Someone ought to write a book about this.”

“Not me,” Mark said firmly. “I’m already doing mission logs when I remember to do it, and when I can think of something to log. And I’ll be writing reports and studies until I die, once we all get home.”

“Huh. Well, maybe I’ll do it myself,” Dragonfly said. “Not the official report, of course. Cherry and Starlight will write that. But maybe a romance novel like my queen likes. A book about how a beautiful young human girl fell in love with the alien she was stranded with.”

“Human girl?” Mark asked. “Not knocking it or anything, but is that your personal preference?”

It took Dragonfly a moment to figure out what preference Mark was talking about. “Oh,” she said. “Um, no. Changeling, remember? Shape-shifter. With us it’s all about what puts love on the plate.”

“Well, yeah, but you told me that the queen isn’t the only one who reproduces.”

“Yes, but most changelings never even think about mating for life or having a grub. And the larvae are raised communally anyway, so it’s not like we have cozy little pony-style families.”

“So…” Dragonfly could sense confusion boiling off of Mark like a stewpot left too close to the fire. “So you’re saying, you don’t really have a preference?”

Dragonfly sighed. “Mark, to be honest I find the idea of having a preference just as weird as you find my not having a preference. It’s just that I think a book with Miss Johanssen on the cover will sell better in Pony-land than a book with you on the cover. Human females are just more visually interesting.”

“Oh really?” Mark asked, raising an eyebrow. “And how do you justify that claim?”

“How often do you see Daisy Duke without half her clothes,” Dragonfly asked, “and how often do you see either Bo or Luke Duke without half their clothes?”

“Errrr… maybe not a good example,” Mark said. “But okay, whatever. I’m sure it’ll be a good book. It’ll rank up there with your story of how Chrissy left Jack and Janet not because her aunt was ill, but because she fell in love with Enos and eloped to Hazzard County.”

“What?”

Mark shrugged. “Just a joke,” he said. “About all the weird questions you always asked about what if this or that one of Lewis’s TV shows met each other.”

“Oh.” That explained… come to think of it, it explained nothing at all! “Wait, what does that have to do with writing stories?”

“I thought that’s what you were doing all this time- writing bad TV fanfic.”

Dragonfly didn’t bother to hide her blank stare.

“Fanfic. Fan fiction. Writing stories about someone else’s stories.”

“Oooooooh,” Dragonfly said. “Well, it took you long enough to explain…” Connections continued to build in the changeling’s mind around the new concept. “Wait, you mean you can DO that??” she asked.

“Millions of humans do it every day,” Mark said. “The creators, or more likely the companies that pay the bills, they get mad if you make too much money doing it, but a lot of people do it for a hobby. And I hear a few of them have gone on to become creators in their own right.”

“Really?” Dragonfly asked. “Because I know one time my queen tried to float a version of the Hearth’s Warming legend that said there was a changeling there who fought the Go-Windies to a standstill because she wanted all that pony love for herself. And you would not believe just how mad the ponies got about that story! Why, you’d think we’d said the Creator was a changeling!”

“Er… is he?” Mark asked tentatively.

“She was an alicorn,” Dragonfly said, correcting Mark. “Just goes to show, nobody’s perfect.” She pushed her stool away from the worktable and hopped down to the dirt-covered Hab floor.

“Wait a minute,” Mark asked, “where are you going?”

“I’m going to get started writing fanfics,” Dragonfly answered. “I have the perfect story, too- about Jesse Duke and Boss Hogg meeting the woman who destroyed their friendship years ago.” Pause, grin grin #17 (Shameless and Triumphant). “Sue Ann Nivens!”

“Sue Ann Nivens? Who the- wait, you mean Mary Tyler Moore’s Sue Ann? But she lives in Minneapolis!”

“People move, don’t they?”

“Well, yeah, but- no, wait, you know what? Never mind. Not my problem,” Mark said. “But can’t it wait until after we work this out?” He tapped the tabletop meaningfully. “After all, you’re the one who’ll have to puke it all out.”

“I only wish I was just spitting it up,” Dragonfly muttered to herself in Equestrian.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch all of that?” Mark asked.

“Nothing.” Dragonfly hopped back up onto the stool. “Let’s go down the list of everything we have to carry in them again…”

MISSION LOG – SOL 347

We’ve made a breakthrough with the plans for the Rover 2 mods.

One of the problems we’ve had is that we’re trying to keep the extra weight in the trailer as low as possible. Even empty it masses about fifteen tons, on a chassis which was rated for an emergency load of ten tons. We can’t make it any lighter without giving up solar panels or living space, and the whole point of the trailer is to provide a living space large enough for all six of us. But we don’t want one ounce more than necessary back there.

Unfortunately, it turns out we have to put rather a lot back there. Once we leave the cave farm behind, the only recharge we get for the magic batteries is from our own life force, apparently- and that gets blocked by Hab canvas or anything with sufficient radiation hardening. So, at the very least, we have to carry inside the trailer, along with us, the seven batteries the Sparkle Drive needs plus a few extras for work and other purposes. If we take all nineteen of the regular batteries we currently have, that’s a bit more than a ton- and also close to two-thirds of a cubic meter of interior space, which is almost as precious as load.

And then there’s food. Cherry Berry, Spitfire and Dragonfly will be scouting ahead of the rover as we move to help clear the path and warn us of unseen obstacles, so they’ll need a lot more than the kilo or so of hay and potatoes they’re eating each day. One and a half kilos is our goal right now- closer to the calorie and nutrient load of a full astronaut ration. But that’s one and a half kilos for four people for a hundred sols- six hunded kilos total. The potatoes can travel outside the rover in the saddlebags, but the alfalfa can’t. As we’ve discovered, freeze-dried alfalfa tastes too foul to stomach.

So that’s close to two tons, minimum, that have to ride in the trailer- along, of course, with us when we’re stopped. The six of us together, with space suits, add about another half-ton or more. And we need to carry extra food for Dragonfly in case the space suits or something else needs to be repaired by careful application of bug barf. That’s more weight. And, doubtless, we’ll keep finding more things that absolutely have to travel inside, possibly including more batteries… unless we find someplace else to carry them first.

“But Mark,” you say, “what about the interior of Rover 2?” And I say: it’s already taken. My tools will ride in the interior cargo compartment. The passenger bench has been removed so we could install two of the Hab’s hydrogen fuel cells for extra battery power. The RTG will ride along to keep the rover warm (the trailer will rely on air from the life support box). What little space remains inside the pressure vessel is probably going to go to the medical supplies and other useful things from the Hab that can’t stand either vacuum or getting scattered randomly across the Martian landscape…

… plus, of course, the Sparkle Drive crystal, which isn’t all that large, but is absolutely irreplaceable once we hit the road. We can’t count on finding a second crystal cave.

So, what’s riding in the saddlebags? Whatever potatoes we take along, of course. We can pre-bake some for the trip, and once we arrive at Schiaparelli we’ll have plenty of electricity for the microwave. (Another fifteen kilos… sigh.) Extra hardware and scrap metal salvaged from the alien ship, in case we need it for modifying the MAV. We probably won’t need it, with the new launch plan, but better to have it than not. The remaining food packs, including the seven packs per person I’m reserving for the MAV flight in case we need to make a run for Earth directly. Fourteen solar panels, to be set out after each drive and gathered up at the start of the next sol.

And, most of all, the fifteen jumbo batteries and the three target crystals for their repulsor enchantments. Each jumbo battery weighs two hundred and eighty kilos, and the three target crystals weigh forty-five kilos total, for a grand total mass of quartz of about four point three metric tons. To put it in perspective, everything else combined is less than one ton.

So- over five tons of cargo. And the cargo rack and bag on the rover roof was engineered for a maximum load of half a ton.

But the good news is, we don’t have to have the roof bear the full weight of the saddlebags. Our original plan was to build carrier racks for the three pony ship engines (4.5 tons total mass) extending from the chassis under the rover’s pressure vessel. Well, we no longer need to haul that particular 4.5 tons anyplace, but we can still build the racks. We can tie the saddlebags into the racks so that they take the bulk of the load. We’ll still have straps across the roof for extra load-bearing and balance, or if something breaks, as it probably will.

We’ve got a good design for the load-reduction racks, and we’re pretty sure there’s enough scrap metal from the alien ship to make them happen. They’ll add about two hundred kilos to Rover 2’s total weight, but that’s a small price to pay for not having the pressure vessel fail while I’m in my shirtsleeves trying to navigate Mars’s first semi truck across some of the most treacherous terrain imaginable.

I just mentioned this to Dragonfly, and she just said, “Whatever you say, Bear.” Which just shows my place in the pecking order. It’s a shame none of the crew were into Clint Eastwood movies. At least then I could hope to earn my way up to Clyde.

Author's Note

Was originally going to have this be Starlight's report on pony education, but I decided such a report would have absolutely nothing to do with the story, not even as filler. It'd be plain empty speculation on the canon-MLP world.

So I went here instead- with the first half of this, in much shorter form, being how I'd intended to end yesterday's chapter, if I hadn't had a conversation going on around me that made it impossible to continue writing.

Delta H Con is being extremely good to me this year, so I'm about to drive home for more stuff and to sleep in my own bed.

EDIT: Typing this bit from the front seat of my van, where I am waiting for a tow truck. Thank you SO much. wild hog that jumped out of the unmowed grass around the highway and did unknown but serious damage which means I have to borrow a van to get my stuff home tomorrow and then have the local dealership come get the damn thing Monday so it might be fixed in time for Mechacon at the end of the month...

... goodbye $500 deductible...

Sol 349

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 354

ARES III SOL 349

[08:07] HERMES: Good morning, Mark and everyone else. A bit of news: the vice-president won the election last night, so we have four more years of an administration firmly committed to the Mars mission. He mentioned you in his victory speech- all of you, not just Mark, as an example of the future possibilities awaiting mankind.

NASA says they’re sorry they didn’t get you a ballot, but they weren’t confident enough on the bandwidth so soon after the comms blackout to get you the legally required ballot file format. But between you, me, and Annie Montrose, I gather NASA was happier not taking a risk that your rescue might be even more politicized than it already is.

[08:34] WATNEY: No big deal. I didn’t exactly have much chance to closely examine the issues. But I better get the chance to vote twice in the next election.

[09:01] HERMES: You’re from Chicago, Mark. You vote at least twice in every election anyway.

[09:26] WATNEY: Hey! That’s a cruel and hurtful thing to say to a person who’s been horribly deprived of political speeches for over a year. Over a year with no bloviating, false promises, or toxic narcissism. A man could go mad.

[09:53] HERMES: A lot of words, but I don’t see you denying it, Mark.

[10:19] WATNEY: No, but it’s still hurtful.

“Election?” Cherry Berry asked. “You mean, like that time when Boss Hogg… well, whatever?”

“Don’t you have elections in Ponyland?” Mark asked. “I mean, not for princesses, because you don’t vote for princesses, but other offices?”

Cherry shrugged. “We have a… er… every once in a while every city and town in the land sends someone to the capital for a long meeting to discuss important stuff. There’s a lot of talking, and then everyone goes home and the princesses do what needs to be done. And we have mayors, but usually nobody wants the job, so whoever has it is stuck with it.”

“Nobody wants to be elected?” Mark asked.

“Mark, we don’t have Boss Hoggs in Ponyland,” Starlight Glimmer said. “Well, we kind of do, but not because they got elected. Mayors mainly do paperwork and perform ceremonies, and that’s about all. Only a pony with a government cutie mark would be interested.”

“What about the other races?” Mark asked.

“The griffons barely have a government at all,” Starlight said.

“Yeah,” Fireball rumbled. “It’s mostly people trying to find other people to give them a bribe.”

“It’s not that bad anymore!”

“Heh. Dragons have a lord. You do what she says, or else. But mostly we keep to ourselves. No cities, no services, no government.”

“That’s all silly stuff,” Dragonfly said. “We changelings have a nice stable democracy.”

Three ponies and a dragon all snorted. “Democracy??” Spitfire gasped. “You know what word mean?”

“Yes. I’m surprised that you do.”

“Picked it up from TV. But you have queen. Absolute ruler, power of life and death, sort of thing.”

“But it’s a democracy. If a queen gets too old, or when a daughter challenges for the throne, all changelings stand with one or the other. If the queen loses…”

“You’re Chrysalis’s daughter,” Mark pointed out. “Looking for a promotion when-“

“NO!!” Dragonfly jumped away from the worktable where she’d been sitting. “Being the queen is hard work! Dangerous work! And not one bit of fun! You’d have to be crazy to want to be queen!”

“Bing-bong,” Spitfire sang quietly.

“But all this ballots and office-holders and stuff?” Dragonfly said, waving a perforated hoof dismissively. “That’s just wasted time and effort. Why would people go to all that trouble for a thankless job any idiot could do?”

Mark opened his mouth, closed it, and muttered, “Maybe it’s just a human thing.”

“Earth needs more princesses,” Starlight Glimmer said.

“For the eighty-seventh time,” Mark sighed, “it does not.”

Author's Note

Got to bed at 1 AM last night, up again at 6, drive to Houston, work, load friend's van, finish unloading friend's van into house at 10:30 PM.

This is what I have time or energy for, but it's not quite pointless filler. I threw this in as a marker for time passing on Earth. And why not a mention of the election (although with zero details to speak of)?

Sol 350

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 355
ARES III SOL 350

“I only wish it were that easy.”

The last page of Guards! Guards! had been read, with two dragons soaring out of the Discworld and out into deep space.

“I mean, all we need is a magic library full of the most powerful spells known to pony,” Starlight Glimmer groused. “Then we could just drop Fireball into it, tie a rope to his tail, tie the other end to the ship, and fly wherever we wanted.”

“I think love had some to do with it, too,” Cherry Berry said.

Fireball snorted, as eloquently as only a dragon can. Foolish pony notions deserved more snort than a mere pony snout could provide. And poor, deprived Mark, with that tiny nose of his- if he snorted you’d never hear it.

Unfortunately you couldn’t say the same thing about his wisecracks. “It speaks,” Mark said in response to the snort. “Come on, Fireball. I’ve been waiting the whole book for this. What did you think about the dragons in this book?”

“Yeah,” Dragonfly chipped in. “I thought you’d be all like Starlight, ‘it doesn’t work like that!’ and stuff.”

“I’m not Starlight,” Fireball said. “This magic, in the books, not our magic. These dragons not our dragons. No big deal.” He tapped the reading computer. “Swamp dragons, kind of sad. But big dragon? Almost like us. Almost like me.”

“How’s that?” Mark asked.

Fireball didn’t exactly know how to say it, even in Equestrian. “Need to think,” he muttered, and he went silent for half a minute while he did just that. “First is magic,” he said, once he had a clear idea. “Not the summon thing. That stupid- no, wait, not stupid, that’s wrong word. Summon thing is… interesting. Idea that, if you magic up a dragon, what you get reflects who you are? I like the idea. But it not fit me and mine.

“But rest of it? Our dragon lord’s father is big as mountain. Flies just fine. I have little wings. I fly just fine, not as fast as many, but good enough. Dragon in book hovers, floats like cloud, flies just like me. Thinks some like me, too. I know lots of dragons just as bad as this one, except not so quick to kill.”

Yeah, he’d thought that line would make the silence even deeper. But there were more thoughts to come. Thinking was like a pony train; get started, and it took a lot to stop it again.

“Harry Potter books, dragons just monsters. Not even real animals. All mean, violent, stupid. Ring books, only Smaug. He gloats like Boss Hogg. Not quite a person. Too… too… flat. But better than Potter dragons.

“But swamp dragons feel like real animals. Some angry, some old, some playful. And Errol really smart. I like Errol. And big dragon feel almost like people.” Again he tapped the computer. “Spitfire was right. This book is home. I want to read more.”

“Eh, I don’t know,” Starlight said. “I thought it was okay, I guess, but I thought Lord of the Rings had deeper themes. Though the Patrician’s talk about the necessity of evil… well, it was completely wrong, but it makes you wonder about the kind of mind that could really believe all that.”

“I do know,” Spitfire said. “And this good book. Guard… Vimes and them… like if griffons have a guard. Felt right. Felt like writer knew.”

“It did feel like being around Ponyville ponies,” Cherry said. “If half of them were violent crazies. I liked Potter better. There if someone died, it was a big deal. Discworld…”

“I never thought I’d read a book where anyone meets the Pale Horse face to face,” Dragonfly said. “But I like Death. If it really worked like that… it wouldn’t be so bad.” The changeling’s face, which still looked a little drawn despite months of feeding up, lacked its usual grin. “I don’t suppose Death ever gets his own book?”

“Several,” Mark replied. “I’ll have to check and see which ones NASA sent. They held back on Pyramids and Small Gods, and those two are among the best in the series.”

“Don’t care about Death,” Spitfire said. “I want more Guard. Unless there’s an army story.”

“Have to get through a couple more Guard stories before the two Discworld books about war,” Mark said.

“Okay. Then let’s do the next Guard book!” Dragonfly said.

“More murder?” Cherry Berry asked, sensing herself about to become a minority of one.

“Even better. The next book focuses on the Assassins’ Guild,” Mark said. “Assassins are people who are specially trained to kill other people- one on one, not in an army or anything like that.”

“Awww.”

“Sounds good,” Fireball said.

“Eh, all right,” Starlight said. “I’ve been reading more of those books by Rex Stout. I like them better than Agatha Christie’s books, except maybe Orient Express. But more Discworld sounds good.”

“All right,” Mark said. “We’ll begin that tomorrow. Let’s go back to the Hab and get lunch.”

Author's Note

Saturday night, thanks to the van thing, I got slightly less than five hours sleep, followed up by driving, customers, packing, and more driving from 7 AM until 10:30 PM. After I signed off last night, I was hoping to sleep myself out.

So, naturally, at 8:01 AM, the dealership called and woke me up to tell me the tow truck was coming to get the van and take it to their body shop.

The tow truck finally arrived at quarter after 4 PM.

I got some other things done, including the really time-critical post-con stuff, but I've spent most of the day in a mental fog. This ought to have been twice as long as it is, but it was a struggle to focus on ANYTHING, never mind coherent dialog.

Having re-read Guards! Guards!, I have to admit that it's much lighter on themes than either the Potter books or Lord of the Rings. It's an early Pratchett work, and in all honesty the next book the ponies will tackle, Men at Arms, is closer to the point where Pratchett really began hitting his stride with social satire. As a consequence, the only thing the castaways would really have to react to, in the whole of Guards!, is dragons.

Time, of course, is passing, but I'm going to skip some more sols since I have this coming weekend off the circuit (conveniently, since there's no way my van would be fixed in three days).

And one more thing: I know I opened the door by having a chapter about election day and government structures, which is why I didn't delete any political comments to that chapter. But could they stop now, please?

Sol 354

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 360
ARES III SOL 354

“Oh, yes, these books are home.”

Spitfire’s smile grew and grew as Starlight Glimmer’s turn at reading Men at Arms got to the part where Sam Vimes, commoner bordering on commonest, was forced to attend a party of the city’s wealthy aristocracy as part of the build-up to his marriage into their ranks.

Cherry Berry, on the other hoof, found herself squirming on her haunches.

She’d spent years in close proximity to a queen who, on her good days, showed brief and fleeting glimpses of something that might, in a good light, resemble a decent pony, but who on her bad days was only restrained from being worse than Tirek by her own paranoia. She was on greeting terms with three princesses and a reasonably close acquaintance (and sometime rival) of a fourth, and knew all their major foibles and failings. But despite it all, Cherry Berry had always had the faith of most ponies that Celestia and her ministers and nobles were wise and benevolent ponies who always sought the best for all Equestria.

So several pages of nobles being ignoble shook one of her fundamental views of the world to the core, even if they were fictional, even if they were on a world that rode on a turtle instead of her own. “Spitfire, I just can’t see it,” she said.

“You never went to Celestia’s ball before Twilight and friends did, no?”

“Excuse me,” Starlight muttered, “might I continue, please?”

“No, I didn’t,” Cherry Berry said. “I only went once, after the moon landing.”

“I saw before Twilight broke the ball,” Spitfire said. “Shake hooves with Prince Blueblood, pretend not see where he looks. Shake hooves with dukes and counts and rich ponies and don’t see them turn up noses at working ponies. All so rich. All so… so good parents, good blood. And only a couple not greedy, petty dummies.”

“I don’t see it that way. The capital ponies I meet are just ponies, rich or not.”

“There reason why changelings fly all joy-ride flights.”

“Excuse me!” Starlight Glimmer said. “Do you want to end Story Time early today? No? Then stop interrupting! We can discuss this all at the end like we usually do!”

Spitfire took her usual short turn, and then Cherry Berry read the section about Vimes and Carrot in a murdered dwarf’s workshop.

About midway through, Dragonfly spoke up. “You know, I kind of understand that. It always feels weird using a tool that belongs to somebody else.”

“Oh really?” Mark asked. “Was that why you were so eager to mess with my tools the first couple hundred sols?”

“That’s different!” Dragonfly protested. “I thought they might be all neato keen alien tools, with mysterious alien properties and functions.” She snorted and added, “And all I got was your electric screwdriver and the sample probe. We have power drills back home.”

“Well, forgive my species for not having improved on the hammer!” Mark said. “And I’m sorry that hydrospanners were too much trouble for NASA to ship up here! Speaking of, where’s my half-inch ratchet wrench?”

“I told you,” Dragonfly said, “it’s in the tool box in Rover 2, because the only things that take your half-inch sockets are on the rover.”

“I looked there.”

“Excuse me,” Cherry Berry protested. “Maybe you two could do this not during Story Time?”

“Sorry.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you. Continuing-“

“But it’s just as weird having someone else using your tools as it is to use someone else’s tools.”

“Even weirder. It’s like your hoof is on some other bug’s leg, and you want to-“

“I said later!”

Silence, in stereo.

“Continuing. Rubbing his head with one hand…”

It was Mark’s turn again when the book got to the visit of Detritus the troll and Cuddy the dwarf to the Alchemist’s Guild, complete with exploding billiard balls.

“Now this,” Fireball said with feeling, “feels like home. Feels like the job.”

“I can’t count the times I’ve walked into Twilight Sparkle’s lab and had to duck the instant I opened the door,” Starlight Glimmer said.

“It’s like they took the changelings who work in vehicle assembly,” Cherry Berry said, “and gave them chemistry sets and a budget.”

“Except without the old griffon to keep them in line,” Dragonfly said. “Do you think he’s enjoying his retirement?”

“With as much as we paid him, he ought to be,” Cherry Berry replied.

“Come to think of it,” Starlight added, “these people remind me a bit of Sunburst, too. And Minuette, come to think of it. And, well, every experimental potion brewer I ever met.”

“Leonard of Quirm,” Spitfire struggled to pronounce the name. “Think he minotaur?”

“The way they talk about him, sounds like he’d fit in with our bulls,” Cherry Berry agreed.

The conversation paused for a moment, and Dragonfly took the opportunity to ask Mark, “Aren’t you going to ask us to shut up, too?”

“Why?” Mark asked. “For me this is much more interesting. For one thing, if your space programs are run like the Ankh-Morpork Alchemists’ Guild, it would explain so much about how you got here.”

“Hey, that’s a bit mean,” Dragonfly said. “Accurate, but mean.”

“It not just space program,” Fireball said. “All pony science and magic like that.”

“All of it?” Mark looked at his visitors. “How do you still have a planet?”

“Immortal princesses,” Starlight Glimmer said. “It really works, I’m telling you.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 354

Finished the second bracket for supporting the rover saddlebags. We need eight in total for the load we’re going to put in them. The jumbo batteries will ride in loops outside the brackets, so most of their weight will be borne by the brackets. The cold-resistant food and other stuff will ride in pouches between the brackets and the rover body. Based on our best estimates, the roof will bear about a ton of weight, or about double its rating on Earth. In Mars gravity, it’s less of an issue, so long as we don’t slam down off a cliff or something.

It’s good to be working with my hands. Dragonfly and Fireball are assisting me on this, and I think they’re glad of the work, too. Working with the plants ceased to be interesting for anyone except Cherry ages ago, and we’ve cut back D&D sessions to once per week to keep us from getting tired of it too quickly. The Whinnybago is almost done except for testing, which we can’t do until we’re done with the cave farm. We’re almost out of the solvents and reagents for the chem lab, so geology science experiments are pretty much over. Boredom is beginning to be a serious problem, so any busy-work seems like a treat now.

Take Starlight Glimmer. She’s waiting until Sol 360 to do the repulsor enchantment, because she wants to use the batteries she’s reserved for making more batteries to do that job. We won’t be able to take many more batteries with us than we already have due to weight and space issues, so using them to make the things that will throw the MAV hard enough for us to meet Hermes makes sense. But in the meantime she’s got down time, so she’s thrown herself into the Save the Cave project.

Today she made a bunch of new sunlight relay crystals in the deeper parts of the cave. The idea is that the sunlight channeled through also contains heat, so the more light the inside of the cave gets, the less dependent we are on running water.

Which brings up a question that, in retrospect, is so obvious I’m surprised you, historians of the future, haven’t shouted it loudly enough for me to hear it here in the past: “Why didn’t you think of this before? Starlight made all the other crystals with almost zero magic, so what took so long?” And the answer is, we didn’t think of it, what with making batteries, sealing the cave, getting rid of methane, reviving Sleeping Ugly, and Starlight falling over and nearly dying half the time she casts spells. You know, petty unimportant little distractions like that. But we still should have thought of it, especially when we saw how efficient the original lighting crystals turned out to be.

We’ll have to monitor the temperature inside the cave closely over the next couple of weeks. The ultimate goal, of course, is to shut off the water heating system altogether. We’re nowhere near that point.

Of course, heat is just one of the many problems. But Starlight is exploring another avenue: the rainbow crystals. After all, we know two things about that random enchantment- it stores magic energy, and other enchantments can be added on top of it. That means, in theory, the rainbow crystals could be used to power other things, like for example a way of circulating water more reliable than condensation dripping off the cave ceiling. (Which it doesn’t do, by the way; the cave roof is high, but not high enough for the temperature to be that different. Also, the life support box’s air circulation keeps the humidity down quite a bit.)

About the only person who doesn’t have something to occupy her time is Spitfire. She tends to hang around Starlight like a vulture, waiting for our adorable little four-legged power tool to blow a fuse again. She doesn’t complain, but it can’t be rewarding.

I wish I could think of something she could do to be useful. Maybe I could reactivate the MDV improvised flight sim. We disconnected its power after we stole a third of the Hab’s electrical storage to install in the Whinnybago, but we might be able to spare the juice for some flight sim runs.

(Speaking of, it would be nice if NASA settled on the MAV modifications so they could send us an updated flight sim program before we leave here for Schiaparelli. Cherry Berry got very good at flying a stock MAV in the sims, but we’re going to be riding to rescue or doom in the kludge from hell. It’s not the same thing.)

Ah, well. The others have pulled out the computers for a network hearts tournament. Guess I’ll join them. It beats watching more CHiPs. (And yeah, I know Ponch is meant to be a lousy cop with a heart of gold, but he’s the only one in that department who doesn’t have a giant redwood up his ass… )

Author's Note

If you didn't know, the nitrocellulose billiard ball was actually a thing on Earth at one point in the early twentieth century, when demand for pool balls outstripped the ability of humans to massacre wildlife in a brutal and wasteful fashion for their ivory. (I know, hard to imagine, right?) The Earth version of exploding pool balls weren't nearly as showy as the Discworld version, but I just wanted to remind those of you who are Pratchett fans that he got TONS of material from real life.

And for those of you who aren't fans: there's a part in a book where a group of alchemists test artificial pool balls. The result, according to the rule of billiards printed by Hoyle, is a miscue.

I really am producing a lot of filler here, but that's because the crew's life is filler right now. They're finding things to fill the hours while they count the days. I begin to have sympathy for Andy Weir making the 150-sol time-jump. And if I edit this down to a proper book, I might end up doing the same.

Sol 360

MISSION LOG – SOL 360

Hello to the people of Earth from the crew of the Pony spaceship Friendship. (That’s not quite the right translation of the ship name, but it’s close enough.)

We asked Mark to let us write today’s log entry, because for us today is a special day. One year ago today we left our homeworld for what we thought was a five-day mission. One year ago tomorrow, of course, that plan crashed along with our ship.

Today we received a special message from the princess who rules the land most of us come from. We can’t give a precise translation of her name, so we’re going to call her “Celestia” here. This is the message, in full:

“Greetings from Ponyland. One year ago you went forth to expand the frontiers of all the speaking peoples of the world. Through a series of unforeseeable circumstances you ended up stranded farther from home than any of us can imagine. Today we send you our warmest hopes and wishes that you will soon return to us.

“Your courage and determination have inspired millions around the world. Despite being stranded on a hostile and lifeless planet, through the power of friendship you have not only survived but thrived. You have made contact with a new speaking race- more than made contact, made friends. Together you have defied the odds and found solutions to one problem after another. Your heroism proves to two worlds that nothing is impossible.

“And now two worlds are reaching out to you to bring you home. Rest assured that there will be no second anniversary of this date. One year from now you will be safe at home, receiving the honors you deserve. Until then, be safe, and know that you are loved.

“Yours very truly, Princess Celestia.”

We are honored by Celestia’s words, but we want to make it clear: we are not heroes. We did not sign up to spend a year from home. We never imagined that we would be here, in a place where the physical laws we took for granted are different and where life cannot exist without artificial habitats or suits.

This is not what we wanted.

We want to go home. We want to eat more than one kind of food. We want to go outside without helmets. We want to hear birds and animals. We want to sleep in proper beds in proper gravity without wondering if the thin shell that keeps the air in might rupture while we sleep.

We are not heroes. We are three ponies, a dragon and a changeling, a very long way away from home. We are tired, bored, and afraid.

We are very lucky that our ship crashed so close to a real hero- someone who spent years training to spend a year away from home, specifically to survive on this planet. Like us, he has been stranded here. He has shared his shelter, his food, his tools, and his knowledge with us, when he didn’t have to.

And now his crew is coming back to get us. Five people who volunteered to spend as much as a year and a half more away from their homes and families, facing the dangers of space, just to rescue the six of us.

They are the real heroes- the people of the Ares III mission. They are doing things no one else could. We, on the other hoof, are just surviving- as anyone else would do their best to, in our position.

Whoever you are reading this, a year or a century from now, please remember that we were just ordinary people. The real heroes are those who go into danger deliberately- and if we make it home, it will be thanks to them.

Cherry Berry, earth pony, mission commander
Starlight Glimmer, unicorn, mission scientist
Dragonfly, changeling, mission engineer
Fireball, dragon, mission EVA
Spitfire, pegasus, mission pilot

MISSION LOG – SOL 360 (2)

They wouldn’t let me read the log entry until they saved it, and I still don’t know how to edit or delete entries, so I guess I’ll just have to set the record straight.

I’ve mentioned all of this before, but it merits a reminder.

Cherry Berry has walked on two worlds other than her homeworld- three, now, counting Mars. She has double-digit launches and landings under her belt. In the early sols of our being stranded, she held her crew together and kept them focused on the immediate goal of survival. During moments when we all almost died, her cool head and focus saved lives. She is a hero.

Starlight Glimmer has repeatedly pushed herself to the point of collapse to make our continued survival possible. She learned English and then helped teach it to the others so that we could cooperate more closely. Her magic and her designs make our life here possible. She is a hero.

Dragonfly likewise risked her own life and health to save my life. Her knowledge of her ship’s systems comes from years of training and dedication. She works harder than any of us to keep morale up and to prevent bickering and fighting among us, despite the intense stress we’re all under. She is a hero.

Fireball never complains about hard work. His strength allowed us to accomplish the impossible by salvaging the crashed ship. Despite being well aware of his limitations, he is always the first to offer help with anything he’s competent to handle. He is a hero.

And Spitfire, despite having never been in space before, has grown into duties which were completely alien to her before their flight. She’s always alert for danger or for signs of sickness or injury. She constantly works hard, no matter how difficult she finds it, to expand her skills and make herself more useful to the crew. She is a hero.

And I’m really flattered that they call me a hero, but I don’t think of it that way. I trained for years to do a job. I came here to do the job. And the job turned lethal, and yet by a fluke I didn’t actually die. And for all the time since, I’ve persistently not died. That’s all. That doesn’t feel like heroism to me. Billions of people on Earth fail to die every day.

Yes, life on Mars is hard. But I came here with the resources of over a dozen nations backing me and my five crewmates. When they escaped, I was left with a secure shelter, a surplus of food, and plenty of tools and spare equipment that could be used to extend my lifespan. The ponies, on the other hand, landed with less than two months of food, a few tools, and practically no spares of anything, almost totally cut off from their home.

Sure, we worked together to survive. But they all provided their fair share of ideas, work, and goodwill. And I’m not gonna let them be bashful about it.

By the way, today was pretty much wasted. That message from their princess left everybody blue. (It also absolutely soaked the Hab soil, so we spent a lot of time getting rid of the excess water. Those are the limitations of sending long speeches by a telegraph that runs on water.) Hopefully tomorrow we all get over our homesickness and guilt and get back to our hard and rigorous schedule of wasting time until the last hay harvest.

We’ve got tons of nothing to do and not much time left to do it.

Author's Note

The pony one-year mark seemed like a thing they'd commemorate, whether or not they wanted to.

Mark's one-year-from-home day would have been somewhere around Sol 230 or so, by the way.

Sol 361

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 367
ARES III SOL 361

Dragonfly leaned against the battery projecting the magic field, letting each rainbow-colored arc of magic ease the dull gnawing in every cell of her body.

Oh, she looked much better than she had when she first came out of the cocoon. Most of the wrinkles were gone. She’d put on weight. Her legs were now less hole and more whole, to make an English joke. So obviously the short daily doses of magic everybody got in the cave worked. She was, very gradually, getting better.

But.

Ninety sols from now, they would leave the cave behind, hopefully forever. After that the batteries that powered these brief recreations of a natural Equestrian environment would recharge only from the ponies themselves- not from the biomass of the cave. Even taking into account the difference between magic generated by thinking life and plant life, the recharge rate would be cut by two-thirds at least, and likely more.

Actually, certainly more, since part of the daily recharge would have to go to topping off the jumbo batteries, which couldn’t ride inside the Whinnybago with them.

Hard times were coming, which is why Dragonfly stayed as close to any magic field projectors that happened to be running.

Sometimes too close. “Dragonfly,” Starlight Glimmer said, “I know you need the exposure, but could you back a few feet away from the battery, please? You’re absorbing too much of the field.”

“Sorry.” Dragonfly reluctantly stepped backwards several paces.

“In fact,” Starlight continued, “could you fetch another battery? I don’t think this one will last long enough to finish the enchantment on all fifteen batteries.”

“I got it.” Before Dragonfly could move, Mark got up and walked over to the row of idle batteries by the cave wall, currently cabled together to help balance the absorption of magic produced by the plants. That was fine by Dragonfly, who didn’t like picking up a sixty-kilo battery in her forehooves. (Okay, it only weighed about twenty-five kilos on Mars, but she’d been sick a really long time.) Lifting it with her limited store of magic, of course, was right out.

Meanwhile, Starlight Glimmer focused her attention on the fifteen jumbo batteries. Each had enough spare space on the top of the crystal to jam in a secondary enchantment linking each battery to one of three forty-kilo slices of quartz. Each of these slices would have five batteries pouring all their power into pushing them away from the batteries at a particular rate of power consumption which, if their calculations were correct, would run about six minutes.

The plan was simple. Mount the slices of quartz around and behind the central engine bell of the first ascent stage of the MAV. The slices had been cut and shaped precisely according to the diagrams in the Ares mission protocols on Mark’s computers to fit in those spots. The fifteen jumbo batteries would be raised in a henge surrounding the MAV descent stage, and by some means- they hadn’t worked that out yet- they would be triggered to switch on half a second after the MAV lifted off the descent stage.

Based on the calculations from experiments back home, if all fifteen batteries worked, there would be fuel reserve in the second ascent stage for maneuvers . They could lose four and still make rendezvous with Hermes without having to use the Sparkle Drive. But that was based on the perfect conditions of Equestria, not the conditions prevailing in a cave on Mars, which was why Dragonfly hadn’t said a word in response to Starlight’s polite request to quit hogging the magic.

In fact… Dragonfly checked the battery charge indicator and said, “Finish this one and stop, Starlight. The battery’s about to run out.”

“Okay.” Starlight had another magic battery under her hooves, and she channeled both that power and the power she could tap from the weak artificial field into crafting the enchantment as strong and deep as she could. The magic flowed from her horn and into the clear quartz, not flickering even for the brief acknowledgment of Dragonfly’s warning. For twenty seconds the spell continued to burn invisible pathways into the stone, and then she cut it off, the enchantment finished. “Okay, shut it down and swap over.”

Dragonfly always hated the moment, even if it was brief, when the Jacolt’s ladder shut down and the magic field dropped. It no longer threatened her sanity when it happened, but it still felt like something which constantly lifted her up had been yanked away, replaced by a brutal, agonizing vacuum.

But she’d had a lot of practice dealing with it, hiding it, denying it. And anyway, it was the work of less than two minutes to remove the kludged aerials from the spent battery, attach them to the full battery, and switch it from recharge to discharge. “How’s it coming?” she asked as she performed this task.

“The three booster targets and ten of the jumbos are finished,” she said. “The enchantments all look good. We’ll have to add conductors to link the battery terminals to the receptor spots on the crystal. The original battery enchantment wasn’t designed to power a second enchantment on the battery itself, not directly.”

“Can you show me the places?”

“Sure. I need to drill a small hole into each of them to hard-mount the conductors, to make sure they stay in contact with the receptor spots in case the jumbos get shaken up by liftoff.”

“We have some power tools.”

“Nothing you or Mark has can cut quartz,” Starlight said. “I won’t be doing the drilling for another week at least, not until we get the charge back from today’s work.”

“Okay. If you’re sure you’re okay to do it.”

“Believe me, it’s a lot easier to put a two-inch hole in quartz than it is to add these enchantments. Ready with the new battery?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. I should be done in another ten minutes.”

“What did you think of the last part of the book?”

“Hm? Oh. Didn’t I say during Story Time?”

“You didn’t say anything. You let us talk.”

“Oh. Sorry, my mind was on this task. And besides, since Mark keeps complaining every time I bring up his species’ inferior system of government, I didn’t think he wanted to hear me talk about how Carrot is clearly meant to be an alicorn prince.”

“Oh, really?” Dragonfly asked. “Because, y’know, ponies often have orange buzz-cut hair, stand two meters tall, carry swords using the opposable thumbs they don’t have-“

“Switch the battery on, Dragonfly,” Starlight sighed.

Dragonfly, having done her little bit to shake up things just enough to keep them interesting, complied.

Author's Note

I'd actually intended to have this referred to in passing, but this was the only thing I could think up to write today.

Sol 363

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 369
ARES III SOL 363

[08:13] WATNEY: Good morning. I have a problem I want to bounce off the back rooms back at JSC.

Two sols ago Starlight Glimmer added the launch boost enchantment to the jumbo batteries. If all goes well, the jumbos will throw three pieces of specially enchanted quartz, and anything attached to them, completely off this planet. This should provide more than enough thrust, when added to the lighter load you’ll give the MAV and the existing engines, to reach Hermes with a substantial fuel reserve in the second ascent stage.

There’s just one hitch. The geniuses back in Ponyland who thought this system up (after Starlight gave them the idea) want it tested. And NASA being NASA, you want it tested too, because nothing makes a NASA engineer clench his buttocks tighter than the thought of sending a human being, never mind six people, up on a launch system that’s absolutely never flown before.

We spent all day yesterday talking about how we could do it. The enchantments are specific and can’t be re-tuned to a new target. If we use the enchantments Starlight made sol before yesterday, we lose those targets. Also, we aren’t completely sure how quickly the jumbo batteries recharge, but we think it’s slower than the regular batteries, so we don’t want to use them for anything again until escape day.

So we decided, in a few days, that Starlight would enchant some new crystals and three new targets. We’ll hook the new crystals up to the existing batteries and use them to launch something as a test. We considered rigging things to make the targets retrievable for future tests, but there’s too much danger of dropping the whole test vehicle on top of our heads. We absolutely want to reach escape velocity. Ideally we want to launch at a time where the expected launch trajectory has the maximum chance of going straight up, leaving Mars’s sphere of influence, and then dropping straight into the sun.

We’ve chosen to launch one of the pony ship’s three engines. We won’t be using them for anything, and we know the mass to within ten kilograms, so the data we get from the launch should be good. Future archaeologists will have to make do with the other two engines when we return to this site.

Our main problem with all of this is tracking. I’m sure we can pick a launch date and time when several Mars orbiters will be in view to watch the show, but cameras aren’t as good as radio tracking. Right now the only thing we have that can broadcast beyond atmosphere is Pathfinder, and we’re not launching that. Its ancient systems wouldn’t survive launch vibrations anyway.

But we have two good remote weather stations and one half-operational one. They all have short-range radio transmitters. I could fuck up one of them so it sends a constant signal, and I could attach a heavier battery to provide extra current. Could we send extra juice through the transmitter to allow the orbiters to track the test vehicle for, oh, five minutes? If it burns out after that we don’t care, but we really want accurate tracking for the first five minutes after launch.

We’ve still got plenty of time. The rover mods are essentially done, and we have about a month before we’d need to do serious testing and final prep for the drive to Schiaparelli. Get back to me when you’ve got some solid answers.

[08:39] HERMES: Ooooh, Mark, cosmic litterbug! Between this and how you’re completely trashing Mars, Greenpeace is going to picket your apartment when you get home.

[08:46] JPL: Those are some good ideas, Mark. We’ll get some systems engineers to work testing how much voltage the weather station transmitters can handle and if there are any other ways you can increase the gain using tools on site. In the meantime, I’ll put the problem of tracking your launch in the hands of our very finest SatCom technician.

Mindy Park didn’t notice she had a visitor until the mellifluous voice of her five-and-a-half-management-levels-up boss spoke from over her shoulder. “Good morning, Mindy. And how’s my favorite satellite herder today?”

Mindy sighed, sitting up from her terminal and swiveling her chair around to face Dr. Kapoor. “About to get a whole lot busier,” she said. “Am I right?”

Author's Note

The Sparkle Drive can't be tested on the ground. The booster pylon system, on the other hand, can...

Sol 364

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 370
ARES III SOL 364

Starlight Glimmer poured magical energy in a by now familiar pattern into the fabric of the crystal cube in front of her. Of course, it had been months since she used this particular pattern- not since, come to think of it, shortly before the engine test and its consequences. That had been… five months? Five whole months lost to one emergency after another?

Well, it wasn’t five months absolutely wasted. Dragonfly had been revived and put on a gradual road to recovery. The fifteen jumbo batteries had been made, although they’d been repurposed since. And, of course, there had been other issues as well.

But it was still five months with no increase in their magic generation capacity, and only three months remained until they left the cave. And the nineteen (well, eighteen and a half) batteries they had on hoof might not produce or retain enough magic to last the hundred days between departure and Escape Day. She wanted twenty-seven full batteries, fully charged- almost two tons, one whole cubic meter of mana batteries- for the trip. That meant she needed at least nine more, and then she needed spares on top of those so that last-minute magic usage wouldn’t leave them short when it came time to go.

So here she was; three batteries powering a field projection, three more batteries for her personal use, and six blank batteries with salvaged casings ready to go. In two weeks she’d make six more. Two weeks after that, the final six. Thirty-six batteries- nine (and a half) above the required minimum. Those nine batteries ought to be sufficient power for their last month in Acidalia.

With one last quick surge of power, she completed the enchantment on the second battery of the day. She switched off the battery under her hooves, conserving the residual power, and shifted over to the next battery.

“Excuse me?” Cherry Berry had been standing behind her; Starlight hadn’t noticed. (Well, she had, but she’d assumed it was Dragonfly, who always stayed within a couple of ponylengths of a battery in field-projector mode.) “I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were concentrating, but something weird’s happening with one of your bins of crystals.”

Starlight’s ears picked up. “Really?” she asked. “What kind of weird?”

“Water’s trickling down the sides of it.”

“Yeeeeesss!!” Starlight left the batteries, left the field projector- with three batteries backing it, it could run for over an hour- and galloped over to the trays of cut crystals she’d been using for her rainbow crystal enchantment experiments. Unlike the others, which were trays now filled with the standard randomly-enchanted crystals, the crystals in the bin on the end had a single straight, unchanging blue stripe underlying the rippling colors of the surface. And there, on one facet of the six-sided quartz shafts, the stripe broke through the surface and made a large, deep blue spot.

By design the crystals had been arranged to overlap the edges of the box. And yes, yes, tiny trickles of water were running down those overlapping crystals and down the sides of the tray. “It works! It works!” Starlight cheered, dancing up and down on her hooves with excitement.

“What works?” Cherry Berry asked.

“My enchantment overlay for pumping water back upslope to the top of the farm!” Starlight said. “Look, it’s very simple.” She scooped up one of the crystals in her hoof and held it under Cherry’s nose. “The blue stripe is the enchantment- a conduit that passes water, and only water, and passes it in only one direction. Water comes out the blue dot. If it drips onto a crystal enchanted like this one, it gets sucked up and pushed up the line to the next crystal!”

“Okay,” Cherry nodded. “But it’ll be a lot of work making all of these and planting them in rows-“

“No, no, that’s the genius of it!” Starlight grinned. “This is an overlay on the rainbow crystal enchantment! It self-propagates!” She glanced down at the pile of crystals, with most of the blue dots facing more or less up. “And it self-propagates pointed in the right direction! All I have to do is plant these every so often along each side of the farm area, and the rest of the water lines will build themselves!”

“Okay, that is good,” Cherry agreed. “But you don’t want every crystal to be one of these, or else you’ll end up with constant rain in the cave.”

“That’s easy,” Starlight said. “The rainbow crystals can’t pass their enchantment on to a crystal that already has an enchantment. So all I have to do is enchant a continuous row of crystals along the upper and lower bounds of where I want the water lines to go, and the rainbow enchantment can’t cross the line!”

“I see,” Cherry said. “I guess you had this planned out.”

“Well, yes,” Starlight agreed. “It’s a simpler variation on the enchantment we use for life support. It has to be- overlaying it on top of the rainbow crystal spell weakens it a lot. But with enough crystals, we should be able to recycle water from the cistern up to the airlock- in fact, if the enchantment reaches below the surface, it could tap the subsurface water that drains there from the back of the cave! We establish a magic-powered water cycle that requires no pony intervention!”

“We hope.”

Cherry’s skepticism took some of the wind out of Starlight’s sails. “Well, yes,” she said. “But this is what I can do with the time and resources we have remaining. We don’t have a pump or water lines to do this mechanically. And if we don’t do it, within a month or two of our departure, every plant in the cave will dehydrate and die.”

“I know, I know,” Cherry said. “But… we’re never going to see this in full operation, are we? I mean, long term. We don’t know what will change after we leave.”

“All we can do is give the farm a fighting chance,” Starlight said. “We’ve got light and water handled. We’ll know before long if we’ve got heat. I just wish I could think of something for pollination.” She looked at the crystal a moment longer before setting it back in the tray with its siblings. “Unfortunately, the rainbow enchantment doesn’t work at a size small enough for a quartz chip to levitate itself.”

“I’m not sure I like the idea of tiny bits of flying glass anyway,” Cherry said. “Well, good luck. Let us know how we can help set this up.”

“I will,” Starlight said. “But I need to finish the batteries now, and then I have to make the boosters for the test launch. And then there’s all sorts of other things I need to do.”

“Actually, about that,” Cherry Berry said. “Could you… um, could you make me a set of crystal dice like yours? I’m tired of the way the computer dice program keeps finding ways to dump me in Harry King’s dunny wagon.”

“Why exactly did you pick the Assassin character from the pre-gens Mark made, anyway?” Starlight asked.

“He wouldn’t let any of us play wizards or witches,” Cherry said. “Roof-jumping was as close as I could get to flying. But I don’t understand why the computer dice keep failing me on that skill, and ONLY that skill.”

“Well, it could be worse,” Starlight said. “You could fall into the River Ankh instead.”

“Ugh. Go make your batteries.”

Starlight, still feeling pleased with herself and her genius, went back to do just that.

Author's Note

Starlight's the only member of the crew who actually has a lot of work to do- because she's the only one who can do most of it.

I don't intend to do much more in the way of pony lit-crit or RPG shenanigans, but I thought I'd drop a mention that such is still going on. The campaign is in Ankh-Morpork. Cherry plays an assassin noblewoman; Starlight plays a troll; Fireball plays a dwarf; Dragonfly is a member of the thieves' guild; and Spitfire, after laughing herself sick when Mark explained it to her, chose to play a member of the Guild of Seamstresses (hem hem!).

Mark's rule: no wizards, no witches, no City Watch, and no cousins of C. M. O. T. Dibbler. He's started them off in the middle of the adventures of The Light Fantastic, with red star cultists and high intrigue among wizards making it difficult to keep from getting it in the neck in the city. So far the crew have been winning small victories, but more to the point, they're having fun discovering the city in detail. Meantime, they're alternating between Granny Weatherwax and Sam Vimes on the book side of things, having as of Sol 363 got about ninety pages into Witches Abroad, with Feet of Clay to follow.

And hopefully I won't need to go back to those for filler chapters...

Sol 370

They gathered in Teddy’s office: the usual group of Teddy, Venkat, Mitch, Annie, and (via teleconference) Bruce, plus Mindy Park from SatCom.

“So,” Teddy said, once Bruce’s call was connected, “how are the Hab crew coming on the booster test?”

“Ready to go on their end,” Venkat said. “Mark completed the procedure we sent him to remove the short-range transmitter on the northern weather station and rewire it to boost its signal. Once he connects power, it’ll transmit for two hours on the battery it has. The transmitter itself will probably melt in less than half an hour. But for as long as it lasts, the signal strength should be good enough for any orbiter on that side of the planet to pick it up.”

“Um, yes,” Mindy Park continued. She was the only person in the room not in a neat suit, and her bloodshot eyes made it obvious she didn’t care what the higher-ups thought of her old Astrocon T-shirt and sweat pants. “On Sol 374 six of our Mars satellites will be in position to track the launch. I finished testing software updates that will let them track the signal and send that data to us. As soon as Dr. Kapoor gives me authorization, I’ll upload the software patches and then go home and go to sleep.”

“Our target time is two hours before sunset,” Venkat continued. “It’s a compromise between the optimal trajectory for a perfect sun intercept and the restrictions of communications. Hermes and Earth both drop below the Hab’s horizon about thirty minutes before sunset. As nice as it would be to have one less piece of space junk to deal with, the important part of the test is to verify the numbers the ponies got when this system was tested on their homeworld.”

“Yes, about that,” Teddy said, picking up a piece of paper. “Did I read this correctly? Six G's of acceleration from the launchpad, rising to a peak of eight and a half G’s after three minutes? For a vehicle that weighed twenty tons, fuel and capsule, at launch?”

“So Starlight Glimmer reported, yes,” Venkat said. “And to be clear, their best estimate is that their world and Earth have the same diameter and gross mineral composition, so their one G is the same as ours. Also, they didn’t get a solid rate of decay for the booster’s effectiveness over distance. Their flight was an orbital launch, and the ship went over the horizon while the boosters were still about eighty percent effective. Again, their estimates.”

“I understand the caveat,” Teddy said. “Now tell me what it means for this launch. One G is nine point eight meters per second squared of acceleration, on Earth, right? So how fast is the test vehicle going to go?”

“Well, there are a lot of differences,” Venkat said. “For one thing, after their last test the ponies decided to restrict the power flow to the boosters, both to lengthen the life of the batteries and to prevent the MAV passengers from being crushed. And for this test, instead of using the fifteen large batteries, they’re only using nine normal batteries. They predict a net force reduction in the booster system of about sixty percent for the test.

“But the final test vehicle, according to Mark’s measurements, has a mass of 1.62 tons.” Venkat smirked as he added, “One point six two is a bit less than twenty. So even with only forty percent of the force on the target vehicle, the test vehicle’s going to move a lot faster. If the pony test is accurate, we’re estimating a launch acceleration of just under thirty G’s.”

Mitch lurched up from the couch. Mindy came wide awake. Teddy whistled.

“In English, please?” Annie said.

“A sudden and momentary acceleration of thirty G’s causes severe injury in humans,” Venkat said. “Sustained, it’s lethal in seconds.”

“Put it another way,” Mitch said, “that rocket engine will be going faster than a civil war cannonball almost the instant it leaves its pad.”

“Within about two seconds,” Bruce chipped in over the teleconference. “According to Starlight, they expect their battery array to power the system for about seventy seconds. Assuming ideal conditions- a straight vertical trajectory with no divergence due to air resistance- at the end of seventy seconds the target would be going twenty kilometers per second relative to Mars, at an altitude of not quite seven hundred kilometers.”

“Twenty kilometers per second,” Teddy said quietly.

“That’s right,” Venkat said. “Our friend at astrodynamics said that doesn’t quite get us a direct shot into the sun, but the resulting solar orbit will pass close enough to the sun to turn it into a fairly short-lived comet.”

“Twenty kilometers per second,” Teddy said again. “No fuel. No engine on the craft. Twenty kilometers per second. In just over a minute.” He took a deep breath. “Have we asked the ponies why they haven’t used this system before?”

“No, but I can think of several drawbacks from the start,” Venkat said. “First, they can’t steer the thrust. It just pushes its target away from itself. Second, once they’re out of range of the booster, their ship still needs its own engines for steering, orbital adjustments, and the like. Finally, the system requires a planetary mass to rest on, or else you run into serious issues with Newton’s Third Law. Try to make one ship push another, and you end up with two vessels getting accelerated apart on varying trajectories.”

“Most likely they just never thought of it,” Annie said.

Every eye turned to the press director.

“Oh, come on, you fucking geniuses didn’t think of that?” she asked. “Look at it. They live in a world so lousy with magic that they barely developed magic batteries until they invented an engine that used magic faster than it could be drawn out of the fucking air. They didn’t think, ‘we can’t lift this thing, go get more batteries.’ They thought, 'We can’t lift this with magic, so let’s fart around with a bunch of dangerous explosives and radical new ideas like electronics and radio and shit and see if that works.'

“But then some of them got dropped into our world, where magic is like rainfall in Yuma. And they didn’t have any rocket fuel, or electronics, or any of the newfangled shit they were just getting used to, but they got lucky and found enough crystals for a New Age hippie wet dream. So then they thought, ‘We don’t have rockets, but maybe we can use magic.’ And so they stumbled across the fucking holy grail of space exploration- cheap, reusable surface to orbit launch- by complete fucking accident.”

“How do you create a launch system by accident?” Mitch asked.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Annie grumbled. “Read your own goddamn history. I have to know ten zillion cutesy little anecdotes about the early manned space program so I can sprinkle them into my bullshit sessions with the press. More than half your major advances in rocket and capsule design almost didn’t happen. We were originally going to the moon in a single fifty meter tall tail-lander with an enormous ladder until what’s-his-name, Houbolt, jumped over three layers of management to push lunar orbit rendezvous as a fuel-saving mechanism. Because Wehrner von Braun assumed you couldn’t rendezvous ships in lunar orbit. Think of how many damn things seem so obvious now, that weren’t obvious when our grandparents got all this shit started!”

“Assumptions,” Teddy said, nodding. “Thank you, Annie. I think a re-read of some of the books on my shelf is in order.” He swiveled in his chair to look at the television screen. “Bruce, what does this mean in practical terms for the MAV?”

“The MAV weighs about twenty-eight tons fully fueled- that’s the two ascent stages and the capsule,” Bruce said. “With the reduction in force, the boosters will provide an extra three G’s at launch, in round numbers- twenty-eight meters per second. A little more than a minute of that would be enough, by itself, to make up the difference between Mars orbit and the velocity required for the Hermes intercept- without a single modification.”

“Well!” Mitch flopped backwards onto the couch. “I call that a win! Why not hold the crew back at the Hab a couple more weeks, then?”

“We’re still going to lighten the hell out of the MAV,” Bruce continued. “The goal is to get onto trajectory with the second ascent stage unignited. That stage can be relit several times, so we can use it for any fine-tuning required to reach Hermes. And even if this test goes perfectly, we can’t put perfect faith in this system. After all, the Sparkle Drive had two successful flights before the one that landed our guests in Mark Watney’s lap.”

Everyone sobered in the face of this obvious truth.

“But the good news is,” Venkat added, “we don’t need to use the rebuilt Sparkle Drive for the ascent.”

“That is good news,” Teddy said. “But I want everyone to consider this. If we could duplicate this launch system, and create our own Sparkle Drive, the entire solar system is at our fingertips. If the cave farm can generate enough magic to launch the MAV almost by itself-“

“It could, almost,” Bruce agreed. “With steering thrusters, at least. We’d have to choke down more on the velocity to spare the astronauts in the future.”

“Then think how much power is generated every second by all the wild plants and animals around the Cape,” Teddy continued. “We could launch entire space stations at once- no, entire starships. This technology, or magic, will revolutionize space flight. I cannot stress how vital it is now that we rescue the aliens, establish formal relations with their universe, and learn how to duplicate these systems.” He looked around the room and said, “I know you’re already doing everything you can for Mark and his friends, but bear in mind the sheer potential they represent. Four years from now we could be going back to Mars, not for another thirty-day mission, but to stay.”

No one could say anything to follow that except, of course, goodbye.

Author's Note

Yeah. I sat down and did some quick and dirty math. I don't know how to do integrals anymore, if I ever learned, so I made estimates and used a spreadsheet...

... and yeah, the booster system Starlight thought up and Twilight implemented is, well, even more impressive than I thought.

And I'm sure absolutely NOTHING will go wrong with it.

Today's chapter inspired by comments, of course.

Tomorrow's chapter will be the launch.

And, finally, thanks to those who chipped in on the shirt Kickstarter! If you pledged, please check for your survey and answer, so I can make some decisions on production.

Sol 374

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 380
ARES III SOL 374

The essential function of a switch is to touch two wires together to complete a circuit- but only when you want them to touch.

By that definition, what Mark had rigged using a small rock, two cables salvaged from Amicitas’s discarded engine room, and a long piece of parachute rope too weather-decayed to be put to any more demanding use was a switch… of sorts.

Dragonfly thought it more resembled those box traps that idiot ponies built to capture rabbits (and other things, including changelings). Those things always annoyed her, because (a) they were so blatantly obvious any animal dumb enough to go for the bait deserved to be trapped, and (b) despite being blatantly obvious, they occasionally caught rabbits (and other things, including changelings).

But she had to admit, as dumb as it looked, it worked on paper. One cable, its terminus wire shaped into a hook, had been raised above the other (its wire shaped into a loop) and balanced there on a carefully chosen rock. Any little tug on the rock with the rope would cause the hook cable to slip off and land, hook down, on the loop cable. It didn’t have to be a perfect ringer, though that would be ideal; any wire-to-wire contact would do. The system allowed the two of them, Dragonfly and Mark, to be about fifty meters away from the loop, or seventy meters away from the rock cairn built to hold the test vehicle above the enchanted repulsor crystals.

Seventy meters, or as Mark called it, “ten seconds head start.”

So long as that hook remained above that loop, the nine batteries powering the launch could be safely switched on with no effect, and this Dragonfly had just finished. “Pad power hot,” she reported over the comms. “Repeat, pad is hot. All batteries show full charge. Go for launch.”

Mark, for his part, had removed the nosecone and was connecting one vital wire in the small transmitter cannibalized from the north weather station. “Ow!” he grumbled. “That’s a strong signal, all right! Transmitter is live. Reattaching nosecone now.”

Dragonfly trotted over and burned a little magic to start four of the bolts that kept the nosecone clamped around the reversed neck of the engine bell while Mark started and tightened the fifth. Once that transmitter went live, the clock had started. Pushing enough current through the transmitter to allow it to be tracked by the satellites circling Mars, most of which hadn’t been built to track things other than Earth, would overheat the circuits. The Martian cold would only slow that process down slightly. They needed to get done and get out.

“Message sent to Pony Space Agency,” Starlight said over the comms. She and Fireball were at the cave, she inside and Fireball just outside. Fireball would film the launch with Mark’s hand-held video camera while Starlight, in the cave, would communicate with Equestria.

“Message sent to NASA; about to launch, stand by for data.” Cherry Berry and Spitfire were back at the Hab. Cherry Berry stayed in the Hab to communicate with Mark’s people (even though, by the time they got the stand-by warning, the launch would be complete). Spitfire sat in the old bridge of Amicitas, running the telepresence spell so that the magic-powered suit comms would reach across the eleven kilometers between the Hab and the flat ground well east of Site Epsilon.

Normally using tools in a spacesuit required care, planning, and patience. A year of being stranded on Mars had made both Mark and Dragonfly a bit blasé about such risks; Dragonfly could patch her suit, and Mark’s suit had been built to withstand being used by troll babies with teething problems. The nosecone bolts were snug to a turn in under a minute. “Nosecone secure,” Mark reported. “All go for launch. Pad crew now clearing launch area.” Slipping the ratchet wrench into the small tool pouch on his suit, he turned to Dragonfly and said, “Engage de-assifying procedure.”

Dragonfly liked Mark quite a lot- and not just because he was delicious and generous with his affection to a fault- but he wasn’t as funny as he thought he was. “Excuse me?” she asked.

“I said run!” Mars’s low gravity couldn’t help but cause some muscle atrophy, but enough tone remained in Mark’s legs to send him bounding over two meters in a stride at full gallop. Dragonfly, on the other hand, had learned like the ponies to gallop with minimum vertical motion and maximum horizontal motion, so she arrived at the end of the trigger rope in four seconds, leaving Mark to arrive three seconds later.

“Launch crew at trigger station,” Dragonfly reported as Mark, having lost his balance in the effort to brake his momentum, picked himself off the regolith and grabbed the loose end of the rope. “Standing by for final go no/go for launch.”

“Earth comms are go,” Cherry said. “Suit comms?”

“Suit comms go,” Spitfire reported.

“Water telegraph?”

“Water telegraph is go, Flight,” Starlight reported.

“Ground tracking?”

“Go, Flight,” Fireball reported.

“Roger. Satellite tracking is go. Launch systems?”

“Launch system is go, Flight,” Dragonfly said.

“Ship systems?”

“We’re Go, commander,” Mark said.

There was a brief pause.

“Oh. Right. Yes.” Cherry Berry continued on, “Command confirms all go for flight. Pad crew may initiate launch at their discretion.”

Dragonfly looked at Mark. “How you wanna do this?” she asked.

Mark cleared his throat. “Counting down from ten,” he said, squeezing the cracking, somewhat brittle changeling rope in his suit glove. “Nine. Eight. Seven.” He carefully got to his feet, leaving enough slack in the rope to avoid a premature launch. “Six. Five. Four.” He turned his back to the launch pad, facing the afternoon Martian sun and the flattened lump that was Site Epsilon half an imperial mile away. “Three. Two. One!”

He yanked the rope hard, pulling it taut, and ran with it for several paces. When he heard a rumble of thunder through Mars’s tenous atmosphere, he dropped the rope and ran faster, trying to adjust his bipedal gait to better imitate the ponies. A second shadow flickered in front of him, despite the sun shining down.

Dragonfly, meanwhile, passed him like he was standing still, making a beeline for the cave farm’s airlock.

Neither one looked back. Safety lay under meters of solid rock, and neither of them was confident enough in what the six of them had built to risk being outside if it came down.

Later on, they watched the video Fireball got, so that they could edit down the first couple of seconds of launch to send to Earth for a precise measurement of how fast the test vehicle left the cairn.

In the end they didn’t send the video, because one frame the test vehicle was on the cairn, the next frame the cairn was hidden behind nine beams of brilliant magical light that triggered the automatic safety systems in the camera, and in the third frame the test vehicle and the top layer of rocks on the cairn were gone. The rocks would be found later, having fallen just a bit short of the repulsor spell projectors, caught up in some sort of wake.

Then Fireball had reflexively tracked up, finding the top of the pillar of light and, presumably, the small former rocket engine on top of it. He never actually caught sight of the test vehicle. He did, however, get a perfect shot of the ring of clear air that opened up around the repulsor spell in the wake of the vehicle, the shockwave driving away the fine dust that turned the Martian air pink and leaving a rapidly growing hole in the sky colored a perfect robin’s egg blue.

The crew looked at that beautiful image, frozen in pause on the computer screen, for several seconds before Mark said, “I think we should make plans to be ready for another storm in about, oh, ten days.”

The ponies, changeling and dragon all nodded silent agreement.

“Tracking lost eight minutes after launch,” Mitch Henderson reported. “Acceleration cut-off came at seventy-three seconds. The last twelve seconds or so showed a slight decay in acceleration- about ninety-six percent of peak performance when it cut off. Course is slightly down-range and velocity slightly slower than projected; those stabilizing fins they cut must have been slightly out of true.”

“It worked perfectly,” Venkat said. “It worked absolutely perfectly.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” Mitch muttered.

“Why’s that?”

“Usually the first time you try to launch anything, it blows up on the pad,” Mitch said. “Or there’s some other in-flight glitch. But everything went right in the test. So what’s going to happen next time, when they do it for real?”

Venkat sighed. “Thanks a lot, Mitch,” he said. “I was just running short of nightmare fuel. Thanks very much for topping me off.” He shook his head. “Where’s it going?”

“Slightly better than we anticipated,” Mitch said. “The test vehicle will pass within about three million miles of the Sun’s surface on a tight parabolic loop. Materials says that at that distance pretty much everything, even quartz, will vaporize before it gets anywhere near anything else. And since the launch inclination was about nineteen degrees, it’s not coming anywhere near anything we care about anyway.”

“Well, that’s good,” Venkat said. “So, how are you spending Thanksgiving? Going to see the family?”

“What family?” Mitch asked. “NASA is my life, you know that. I have a brother in Cleveland and a sister in Gainesville, and they’d be happy if they didn’t see me again until my funeral.” He adjusted his tie slightly. “No, I’ll be on my shift in Mission Control as usual. Just another work day for me.”

“Well, I’m going to take the afternoon off,” Venkat said. “I doubt I can leave for a full day. But I have a wife and family, and they’re forgetting what I look like.”

“Just tell them Daddy’s getting the nice cute ponies down off of Mars so they can come and visit,” Mitch said.

“My daughter told me I’m gone so much she thinks Daddy’s on Mars with the rest of them,” Venkat said. “She wants to know if I’m bringing one back with me next time I go.”

“Huh.” Mitch thought about this, then said, “Which one’s her favorite?”

“Starlight Glimmer,” Venkat said. “Because unicorns are the bestest, she says.”

“Well,” Mitch said, a little cautiously, “I know we’re not supposed to be promoting non-licensed manufacture, since Hasbro won the bid to make the NASA-approved toys, but I know someone in Friendswood who makes better alien plushies than what’s on sale in the visitor center gift shop.”

Venkat couldn’t help goggling at Mitch. “You know someone outside of JSC?” he asked.

“Hey!” Mitch’s tone went fully defensive. “I have friends, you know.”

“I never doubted you had a friend, Mitch. I’m just shocked at the existence of the plural.”

Author's Note

This actually felt like a Changeling Space Program snippet. You can spot the footnotes, if I were doing footnotes in this story.

I get my van back tomorrow, just in time so I don't have to borrow someone else's van for Mechacon in New Orleans. See you there (assuming there are NOLA area readers not doing Bronycon).

Sol 378

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 384
ARES III SOL 378

[08:03] JPL: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Just a few quick bits of news that might interest you.

Holiday shoppers will have to wait a week for the Magic Cave Farm Playset from Hasbro, the top-ticket item from the first run of licensed toys featuring the six castaways of Ares III and PSA Friendship. Pre-orders of the toys have bid up as high as two hundred dollars for a fifty-dollar MSRP deluxe playset. Retailers are breathing a sigh of relief, as they feared violence during Black Friday sales if the playset had shipped on time.

A fossil skull of an ancient pygmy rhinoceros discovered recently on a Siberian island north of the Arctic Circle has been named Elasmotherium inlustris in honor of the unicorn astronaut Starlight Glimmer. Inlustris is Latin for “starlight.” There is some dispute as to whether the skull is of an actual pygmy species or merely a juvenile of the more widely recognized Elasmotherium sibercium, but the scientists proposing the name said, quote, “It was either name this after her, or else a species of beetle.”

Speaking of insects, a CNN poll shows Dragonfly as both “bravest” and “most evil” of the alien castaways currently sharing the Ares III Hab with astronaut Mark Watney. Cherry was voted "favorite" and “cutest” and tied for second behind Fireball for “coolest”. Spitfire won “sexiest”, but due diligence requires I report that over 60% of respondents refused to answer that particular question.

In the more serious portion of the poll, 82% of Americans surveyed support the effort to rescue Mark Watney and his guests, and 74% support bringing all six back to Earth.

And finally, Tonga became the one hundred and eightieth nation to officially invite the crew of Friendship to visit their nation. Thus far only four nations have announced unwillingness to host the alien crew; Afghanistan and Iran have stated their hostility to demons, New Zealand has requested the ponies comply with their quarantine and immunization protocols for imported livestock, and Nauru report they simply don’t have the space on their islands to handle the crew and the crowds they would draw.

That’s the news on this Thanksgiving Day on Earth. Here’s hoping you can spend next Thanksgiving here with us.

[08:32] WATNEY: Hey, guys, whoever’s still in the office, thanks for the news report, but how about the weather? Any storms popping up that we might have to worry about?

[09:04] JPL: No storms, Mark. No clouds anywhere on Mars for the last two days. In fact, based on photos taken of Mars since your test launch, the atmosphere is more clear now than it’s been in five Earth years. Weather satellites around Mars report higher than normal temperatures during the daylight hours and slightly cooler than normal temps on the night side. We don’t know if there’s any direct connection to your test, and we have no idea how long these conditions will continue. Enjoy it while it lasts.

[09:33] WATNEY: Roger. We shall spend Thanksgiving reveling in meteorological paranoia, wondering when the other shoe drops.

We’ll also spend it trying to ignore the sounds coming from the toilet. Five of us are celebrating by opening a couple of my meal packs and adding them to the usual hay and potatoes, but Dragonfly is cramming stale hay and taters down her gullet as fast as she can to produce the material for the expanded rover saddlebags. Memo for when we get back; we owe her a ton of green bean casserole and pumpkin pie. She doesn’t care for turkey.

[09:55] HERMES: Hey, Mark, is the bug blowing up the bathroom like you do after Jimmy Changa’s?

[10:18] WATNEY: On the advice of the pink pony commander, I decline to answer that question on the grounds that it might serve to embarrass me.

[10:41] HERMES: Lewis here- tell Cherry Berry nice try, but it’s years too late for that.

Author's Note

I meant this to be a lot longer, but I just had more stuff to do than I realized. I'm still going to be packing and loading for a couple hours in the morning before I can leave for New Orleans.

But at least I have my van back.

Sol 380

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 386
ARES III SOL 380

The castaways gathered around the worktable for the all too usual breakfast of alfalfa and potatoes, in various proportions.

“So,” Mark said, “I’m thinking that, over the next couple of days, we start migrating food for the trip over to the trailer. The food packs and stuff.”

“I’m not talking to you,” Dragonfly announced, out of the blue.

Mark twitched. “What? Why not?”

“You mentioned food.” The changeling, after an effort that might be called heroic if ancient legends ever told tales of epic accomplishments in the realm of disgusting things, had produced enough rope and patches to weave the cables required for the heavy-duty rover harness that would carry the jumbo batteries. She’d spent the previous day sick as a dog, and this morning she held one of the hab’s two magic batteries in a full-body hug and hissed at anyone who came too close.

Mark shrugged. “Anyway, how should we do it? We’ve got the last hay harvest a week from now, and that needs to go in the back to be used last thing before launch.” He looked at Cherry Berry. “It’s your ship. What do you think?”

“I’m not talking to you either,” Cherry Berry said.

“What?? Dragonfly I can understand, but why you?” Mark asked.

“I just worked it out last night,” Cherry said. “With the booster system we could have re-launched our ship. With new batteries we could have powered engines, used Sparkle Drive on low power. We would be on the way to Earth right now, if you hadn’t had us cut the engine room off the ship.”

Mark sighed. “Cherry,” he said, “the ship was compromised. The engine room had a huge hole in it. Half the outer skin was missing, and we ripped the rest off so we could salvage your cooling system for the farm. Your ship was never going to fly again, even if we’d thought of the booster system before we cut the tail off.”

Cherry Berry looked at Starlight Glimmer. “Starlight, tell the ship-destroying ape what the words ‘not talking to you’ mean.”

Starlight waved off this duty with both forehooves. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not getting in the middle of this one.”

The corner of Cherry’s mouth turned up. “So you’re not speaking to him, either?”

“I… um… buck!” Starlight blushed.

Mark rolled his eyes. “Spitfire?”

“If commander not talking to you,” Spitfire said, “I not talking to you neither.”

Fireball crunched his last flake of quartz and rumbled, “I’ll talk to you, Mark.”

Mark smiled. “Thank you, Fireball. I appreciate it.”

Fireball nodded. “You an idiot, Mark. Stupid. Complete dipstick. If you looked up in a rainstorm, you’d drown.”

“Never mind,” Mark grumbled, and ate a potato with slightly more disgust than usual, if that was possible.

[09:06] WATNEY: Venkat? Commander? Guys? You’re still talking to me, right?

[09:29] HERMES: What did you do now, Mark?

[09:33] JPL: What did you do now, Mark?

[09:55] WATNEY: I didn’t do anything! It’s just apparently all my guests woke up on the wrong side of the bunk this mor

[09:58] WATNEY: In stereo? Gee, thanks, guys. Your faith in me is touching. Never mind.

By the way, still no storm. Where’s the kaboom? There was supposed to be a Hab-shattering kaboom?

[10:21] HERMES: Sorry, Mark. Just a little joke.

[10:27] JPL: Don’t question gifts Mars gives you. The normal dust distribution is beginning to reassert itself, but no signs of any major wind or thick dust clouds. The sky should be properly pink again in a day or two. We’ll let you know if any storms come up anywhere on the planet. In the meantime, go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done, whatever it was.

[14:11] WATNEY: I really didn’t do anything. And the Hab hasn’t got a corner.

[14:38] JPL: Improvise. You do it so well.

Author's Note

Things I did today:

7 AM - Awaken
8:00 - Finish loading van, shower
8:30 - Feed cats, refill hummingbird feeder, wash dishes
9:15 - Depart
9:45 - Hardin County tax office, pay back property taxes on a quarter-share in two utterly worthless plots of land in a flood plain
10:00 - Mail packages
10:30 - Haircut
11:15 - Drive-thru brunch. Hit the highway for New Orleans
4:30 PM - Begin unloading van
5:30 - Park van in garage, return to work on setup, grab hotel gift shop sandwich for dinner
9:30 - Too tired to continue, leave booth to finish setup in the morning
10:00 - Arrive my hotel
11:00 - $1 tray of noodles eaten for supper, begin actually writing

That's why this is as it is.

Sol 383

“Randall,” Venkat asked, “what’s going on with Mars’s weather? I thought you said the dust was coming back. Watney tells me the sky’s still as blue as the first Viking photos- and those were a color balance screw-up.”

“Clouds,” Randall Carter replied. He handed Venkat printouts of some satellite photos from Mars’s more distant orbiters. “Normally we get a lot of cirrus clouds- high-level clouds made of tiny water ice crystals- this time of year, when Mars is farthest from the sun. Technically the time for that was a couple months ago, but they’re back, and they’re growing.”

“What’s causing it?” Venkat asked. “Nucleation around dust particles?”

“That’s a possible cause,” Carter agreed cautiously. “But more to the point, the higher than normal temperatures in the zone between the equator and latitude 30 have probably caused a lot of water ice just under the surface to sublimate and enter the atmosphere. More water in the atmosphere means more clouds. And every time a water crystal forms in the air, it traps the dust particles it uses for nucleation points, effectively clearing the sky.” He tapped a photo of the edge of Mars’s planetary disc, clearly showing the bright blue band of its upper atmosphere. “And without the dust in the air, you're left with ordinary gas molecules and the same Rayleigh scattering effects we see on Earth. So that’s what Watney sees- blue skies.”

“All right, sounds pretty harmless,” Venkat said. “How long will it persist?”

“My guess is, roughly a month,” Carter said. “Maybe less. As Mars gets closer to the sun again, those cirrus clouds tend to sublimate again. The water vapor either gets broken up by UV rays into oxygen and hydrogen that escape the atmosphere or else gets circulated to a lower layer of air and condenses back onto the surface.” He pulled out one more bit of paper and added, “The thing is, I don’t think this trend is harmless.”

Venkat looked at the paper. “Randall, I’m a physicist, not a meteorologist,” he said. “I see these temperature and air pressure readings, but I haven’t got a background to interpret them.”

“They’re too high,” Randall said. “This is northern summer on Mars, and Mars is just beginning to swing back in towards the sun. Right now carbon dioxide should be freezing out of the air in the southern hemisphere, causing air pressure to drop. It’s not.”

“Why not?”

“Too hot. At Mars’s normal atmospheric pressure, carbon dioxide condenses at about negative 123 degrees Celsius,” Randall said. “Normal peak lows in southern winter hit or surpass minus 150. We can see it happening in seasonal photos as the ice cap expands and contracts each Martian year. The growth and shrinkage is almost all CO2. But right now temps at the poles are only dipping below the freeze point for brief periods of time, and not in a very large area. So Mars’s atmosphere is staying put.”

“Fine,” Venkat said. “But I’m not seeing how that affects Watney and the ponies.”

“I don’t see how it does either,” Randall said. “But I’m sure it will affect them. As it is, the thicker atmosphere than normal plus the cloud coverage- did I mention it’s growing? Mark will see the clouds before much longer. Anyway, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, though not in the league of CO2 or methane. The daytime heating isn’t going to dissipate as rapidly at night. Mars is about to experience the closest thing it ever gets to a heat wave.”

“How hot are we talking about?” Venkat asked.

“Double-digit positive Celsius highs at the Hab for the next two weeks at least,” Randall said. “Still about minus forty at night, but during the day the atmospheric regulator external component is going to shut down due to excessive heat. It requires super-cold temperatures to help condense components of the atmosphere-“

“Yes, I know how it works, I’m not that uninformed,” Venkat grumbled. “But the internal portion will still function, as will the oxygenator.”

“I’m not too worried about the Hab equipment,” Randall said. “I’m worried about what will be the next weather pattern after this one. This is weather we’ve never seen on Mars before, and it’s damn near global. Global temperatures twenty degrees Celsius higher than normal, day and night. That’s a lot of energy being stored up in the atmosphere. It has to go somewhere.”

“Try to figure out where,” Venkat asked.

“I already have one guess,” Randall said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

“I like it better than no guess at all. Give.”

“All right. Higher temperatures on Earth mean more giant storms- hurricanes, typhoons nor’easters, the big weather systems. They work as a means of transferring heat energy from the ground and lower atmosphere into the upper atmosphere, where it can radiate away into space. Mars doesn’t have rainfall. The closest it comes to precipitation is the occasional dry-ice snowfall at the poles. So it has only one way to do the same thing: planetary dust storms.”

“When?” Venkat asked. “This is urgent, Randall. We’re about to send six people on a perilous journey across thousands of kilometers on solar power. And for reasons of logistics, we can’t send them immediately. I need answers.”

“I’ll try to get them, Dr. Kapoor,” Randall said. “But right now we’re all guessing. We’ve got no baseline to use for predictions, not with this.”

“That’s the deal, is it?” Teddy asked.

“That’s it,” Venkat said. “I’ve thought about putting some people to work on a crash program to get the castaways on the road now, but I recommend against it.”

“Give me the pros and cons.” Teddy unconsciously straightened papers on his desk that were already perfectly aligned with the blotter.

“Okay. Pro: the sooner they roll out, the more leeway they have to make Schiaparelli by Sol 551. Up to a point the time pressure is reduced. But that’s the only pro. Con: more food would have to be packed into a vehicle that’s already critically overweight. In case of a global dust storm like, for example, the 2018 event, we’d rather have them at the Hab missing the Hermes flight than somewhere in the middle of Arabia Terra. The Hab and the cave are more durable, should the global storm include wind events like the Sol 6 storm or electrical outbursts like the Sol 247 storm.”

“So, we keep them in Acidalia if we see a dust storm forming on Sol 451?” Teddy asked.

“Not necessarily,” Venkat replied. “Remember, we knew going into this that the drive to Schiaparelli would take place at the beginning of dust storm season on Mars. There was already a minor risk of being stranded by a dust storm, but it was just that: minor. Blackout global dust storms are almost a once-a-generation thing. There are some Martian years that don’t even have a global dust storm, not even a thin one. But even so, the risks of the trip just aren’t lowered enough by an early departure to offset the logistical difficulties.”

“All right,” Teddy said. “I’ll leave this to your discretion, Venk, but please contact me if the meteorology staff comes up with anything more definitive.”

“You’ll be the seventh to know,” Venkat said solemnly.

Author's Note

The color of the Martian sky, surprisingly, is extremely controversial, and not just thanks to Cydonia-face, fake-Moon-landing conspiracy nuts.

The fact is that the Viking lander cameras, those who sent us those first photos of Mars with a brilliant blue sky, didn't have proper color calibration. Subsequent Mars landers from Pathfinder on included a color chit on their bodies somewhere the cameras could reach that would allow for proper calibration. (It doesn't help matters that NASA releases color-enhanced or altered photos to the public. Yes, the color changes are there for good reasons, but they're not the SAME good reasons.)

And yet, there are a few shots which suggest an occasional blueness to Martian air- photos taken from orbit of the edge of the atmosphere, shots pointing almost straight up rather than at the horizon, and shots of haze-free days.

As Randall Carter explains, what gives Mars air its reddish tinge is the same dust layer that covers the planet. Sweep away that dust, and Mars rocks are grey, and Mars sky is... just possibly... blue. We won't know for certain, of course, until humans go there and spend quite some time on the surface looking up. No digital camera is a perfect imitation of the Mk. 1 eyeball.

Sales today were ROTTEN at Mechacon. Wishing I was at Bronycon. Or, for that matter, practically any other con at all.

Sol 387

MISSION LOG – SOL 387

Tomorrow’s the last hay harvest.

On the one hand I should be happy about that (and even happier that the final potato harvest comes five days later). The rover mods are all finished except for loading the weight in, so we can go straight to field tests. I should be eager to get started. But I’m not.

No matter how sick I am of eating potatoes- and have I mentioned yet that I would like to take a time machine back to the first European explorer who brought potatoes from the New World back to Europe and kill him because there isn’t a prayer of killing the first Inca or Maya or whatever who cultivated the goddamn things? I’m that sick of potatoes, and the ponies are that sick of raw hay, but we invested three hundred and fifty sols, give or take, into the farm- damn near an entire Earth year. That leaves a mark on a person.

Dragonfly says the farm wants to live. That’s fair. So do I. But I don’t know how we’re going to arrange it. We’ve fixed the water issue, and it looks like the heat issue is also covered, but the biggest problem remains: air. The plants require a lot more carbon dioxide than the soil bacteria will ever provide. Without it they’ll suffocate pretty quickly- maybe as slowly as a month, maybe as quick as a couple of days. I’m not sure. It depends on a number of factors.

I’ve thought of a lot of ideas for getting more CO2 into the cave, mostly bad ones.

1) Make hole for Mars atmosphere to enter the cave. This is primo grade-A stupid because (and follow closely here, the details are really technical) if we put a hole in the cave wall, all the air will leave. Take this, write it down on a piece of paper, and underline it: Breach hull, all die. (Well, all the plants. We’ll be long gone. I hope.)

2) Move atmospheric regulator from the Hab to the cave. It’d be nice if that would work, but it can’t. NASA never thought, “Hey, you know what problem our astronauts might have that we’ve overlooked? NOT ENOUGH CARBON DIOXIDE! We better fix that right now!” They’ve never thought it because it’s a dumbass thing. Every aspect of the Hab’s life support is dedicated to extracting CO2 and then ripping it apart in the oxygenator. It can’t be shifted into reverse. And the programming for the atmospheric regulator is on non-programmable ROM chips. So, even if we could power it at the cave, it wouldn’t help.

3) Use MAV fuel plant air compressor to pump CO2 from the outside into the cave. Okay, let’s say we could do this without losing all the air inside. With a bit of thought that’s doable. But here’s the problem: without an atmospheric reclaimer or the ponies’ direct line to their homeworld’s atmosphere, the cave doesn’t have any mechanism to regulate its internal air pressure. The MAV fuel plant would steadily pump compressed outside air into the cave, and the air would stay there, until either the fuel plant died or the overpressurized cave blew out. Breach hull, all die. Not an option.

4) Get Starlight Glimmer to make crystals that exchange molecule for molecule. This is my best idea, but I’m still troubled by it.

Here’s why. Let’s say you enchant a pair of crystals to move air in two directions between them, like the pony space suits and ship life support use. Further refine the spell so that, instead of a free flow of air, the spell detects when a molecule of carbon dioxide hits the outdoor crystal and exhanges it instantly with an oxygen molecule from inside. Simple, right?

Nuh-uh. A molecule of oxygen is two oxygen atoms, total atomic mass roughly 32 atomic units. A molecule of carbon dioxide is two oxygen atoms (dioxide, see?) plus a carbon atom, for a total atomic mass of 44. That’s a net imbalance in the exchange of twelve atomic units- or, put it another way, roughly a third more mass would be entering the cave than leaving. And that’s keeping it simple and not attempting to use the system to squeeze some scarce water vapor out of the air (atomic mass 18).

Now, almost all the carbon atoms will eventually go to making more plants, at a much higher material density than one atmosphere. But more plants take up more space, leaving less space for the existing amount of air. How long will it take before the imbalance causes a problem? And would it even provide enough CO2 fast enough to supply the needs of the plants? I have no idea.

I haven’t floated this one to NASA because they’ve got other things on their minds, namely getting me home and my friends rescued on Sol 551. To them the cave farm is unimportant. It’s only a side issue, one we can do without. When NASA returns, even the dead remains of the farm would have enough data for a generation of future botanists to write page after page about how Mark Watney screwed up or about how there were never any magical aliens, Watney had a psychotic break and made up the whole thing, including the alfalfa.

But it bugs me. It bugs me a lot. We can dump a bunch of water into the cistern before we leave and give the farm enough of a water cycle to last for years. We’ve already given them circulation for water and heating to survive on. But for the cave farm, air is the critical thing, and I wish I had a better solution.

Oh, well. I’ll talk with Starlight about it tomorrow during the harvest and see if she has any better ideas.

Author's Note

Today was better for sales, but not good. I'm still in the red.

And I'll have to try to find something to write tomorrow, probably about the hay harvest itself.

Sol 388

MISSION LOG – SOL 388

Well, that might just have been the longest, loudest, and most acrimonious argument we’ve ever had since we all got stranded here.

We got the harvest in, and we cooperated enough to load it all into the trailer this afternoon. Considering all the cave farm’s been through, it was a surprisingly large harvest- three hundred and forty kilograms, or a bit more than enough, by itself, to feed the ponies for the entire trip to Schiaparelli right up until Sol 551. We’ll be taking along a bit more than that, because Dragonfly might need to goop us out of a jam somewhere along the way.

That’s not what we argued about. We argued about how to maintain the atmosphere in the cave farm.

It began when I talked to Starlight Glimmer about my ideas, leading up to the magic option. And when I mentioned it, she totally lost her shit. I’m pretty sure she was blowing off some of the pressure she’s under. She’s obviously been anxious about her batteries and launch systems working right, and she’s the only one who puts in a full eight hours of work every day, in the cave and at the Hab. But whatever the reason, she went absolutely ballistic, and almost entirely in pony-talk. I caught the words for “work hard” and “too much” and “why me”, or things to that effect. Most of the rest of it sounded like Cherry Berry when she’s really pissed off.

Speaking of, the rant attracted the attention of our intrepid pink commander, who wanted to know what was going on. Once she got half an explanation it was her turn to blow up, because she thinks about twice as much of those cherry trees as I do of my own genitals. It didn’t take long for the conversation to degenerate into furious horse noises. Spitfire and Dragonfly had to break the two up, with Dragonfly conciliating Starlight while Spitfire lectured Cherry on the proper conduct of leaders in front of their crew.

After that Starlight and Cherry went to opposite sides of the cave, Starlight cutting hay while Cherry helped the cherry trees shed leaves. She’s trying to give the trees a brief dormancy before we leave, she tells me, even though she’s not totally sure she can do it. But cherry trees are cool-climate deciduous trees, not evergreens, and she says the leaves are tired and full of poisons and need to be dropped and re-grown.

(Side note: we can’t use the fallen leaves for tea. Fallen cherry leaves are very toxic, because all the poisons that normally get cooked out in the tea preparation process are hyper-concentrated in old, fallen, rotting leaves. Cherry hopes to get fresh, new-grown leaves enough for a few brews just before we leave, but only if it won’t harm the trees.)

Eventually Dragonfly got round to me to ask for an explanation, and we talked about the problem while hauling sample boxes full of hay to the airlock for transport to the rover. And it turns out Dragonfly had a solution for that- a pressure release valve.

Neither the Hab nor the rovers contain an automatic air pressure release valve. In the unlikely event that an environment becomes overpressurized, the life support systems simply pull air out and stuff it in tanks- the Hab via the atmospheric regulator and water reclaimer, a small air sump tank in the rovers. If that system doesn’t work, it’s expected that a human being will be on hand to turn valves manually. Thus, according to NASA mission planning, there’s no reason to have an automatic pressure release. In fact, there’s one strong reason not to have it- it’s another hole in the pressure vessel that can fail and cause a breach.

So obviously I didn’t have a spare one, and I don’t have the carefully calibrated spring required to make an accurate one from scratch. But, as it turns out, the pony ship had such a valve, and Dragonfly has not one but two spares. Dragonfly doesn’t know exactly why, except that it might be a fail-safe design, or possibly just recycling off-the-shelf parts for ship components. Both things play a huge role, she says, in pony rocket design.

The automatic pressure release valve is part of a manual system to allow for EVA if the airlocks aren’t working properly. If a pony isn’t leaning on the valve, it automatically shuts- unless the air pressure is more than 1.2 atmospheres. Dragonfly looked it up in the crumbling remains of the ship’s freeze-dried manuals, and that’s what the valve’s rated for. And that’s perfect for my overpressure issues, which I admit might be entirely unfounded, but I want to be sure.

But that got me thinking… Dragonfly’s spare pressure valve solves the main problem with using the MAV fuel plant to pump in Martian air from outside. Of course, running it full-time would waste power, not to mention it might risk smothering the plants in the other direction. Plants need to breathe in oxygen at night when they can’t photosynthesize.

But… but yeah, I think I see a way to make this work, with no magic involved. Just my tools, some leftover NASA pieces of equipment that were never meant to be put together, and a software patch courtesy of some big brains back on Earth.

Yeah, I think this could really work.

Now the question is, how do I explain my new idea to Starlight without pissing her off for real this time?

Author's Note

Written in haste. Almost time to start packing up. Not a disaster, but a lot less profitable than it should have been.

It's nice to find a way to show Mark being Mark. He's taken a back seat to the ponies a lot here, since so many of the solutions require magic of some kind.

Sol 389

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 395
ARES III SOL 389

[09:08] JPL: You want us to do what so the what will what with the what?

[09:36] WATNEY: Okay, maybe I should fill you in a bit more. I plan to take one of the Hab laptops, install the rover control package on it, and plug in Rover 1’s discarded atmospheric analyzer. I’ll then fix another wire that can run through the cave airlock to the Ares III MAV fuel plant. When CO2 drops below one hundred parts per million in the cave, I want the computer to turn on the fuel plant, which I’m rigging to release CO2 from a storage tank into the cave. When CO2 rises above five hundred ppm, I want the computer to shut off the fuel plant. The ponies have a spare automatic air pressure release valve I can use to prevent air pressure from getting dangerously high inside the cave. This will replace the CO2 provided by the pony air exchange system once we’re gone.

[10:03] JPL: Mark, I might mention it’s extremely A. M. here in Houston right now. My bed thinks I’m having an affair with a sofa. I don’t even want to know what my wife thinks.

[10:12] HERMES: Johanssen here. I can do it. Mark, I’ll send you details on where and how to splice a spare USB connector onto the MAV fuel plant control board to make this work. The software patch will take about two hours plus debugging.

[10:23] JPL: Bless you, Beth. Mark, I hope you can be finished with this in equally rapid time. By the way, how’s the weather today?

[14:18] WATNEY: Thanks, Johanssen. We all appreciate it. Expect a big pony hug from Commander Berry once we dock with Hermes.

The sky today is overcast, covered in vaguely pink-tinted cirrus clouds. The pink, I assume, means that the atmosphere has run out of condensable water vapor and that the dust is winning again. Hab power systems show solar cells running at about 90% efficiency, which will probably go back to full power once the clouds clear out.

We moved the fuel plant to the cave today and installed an air line through the cave wall. The seal is good. The Hab has one spare air circulation fan in stores; I’m going to install that on the end of the air line to provide some air mixing and circulation in the cave when we’re gone. There are plugs in the airlock I can use to route the control wires for the fuel plant, and they check out.

Thanks, guys. Between this and the other work we’ve done, the cave farm has a fighting chance to still be alive when Ares V or whoever return here. I appreciate the help.

[14:38] HERMES: No problem, Mark. I’m writing the program to activate the analyzer at hourly intervals. You’ll need to keep the analyzer away from the CO2 outlet line so it doesn’t skew the results. I’ll send the program by direct uplink, but it’ll take most of a day to download at current bandwidth. Probably day after tomorrow.

[14:44] JPL: This is Dr. Kapoor’s bed speaking. Why do you horrible people have to break up a happy home for your selfish, uncaring desires? We were so happy together, once. Can’t you just leave us alone?

[14:46] JPL: Again, that was not me. Whoever it was is lucky I’ve had my third cup of coffee. Bruce, your people continue to tap-dance on the edge of destruction.

[14:48] JPL: Venkat, darling, come home. I’ve put on your favorite sheets, with the hospital corners you like so much…

[14:50] JPL: And I thought astronauts were the only adrenaline junkies working for NASA…

Author's Note

Sorry this is all I have. I have a lot of work to do before leaving Thursday for Amarillo, and I've not been feeling well the last couple of days. If it persists after the trip, I'll call the doctor and try to get an appointment. (I'm not doing it now because it takes weeks to get an appointment, by which time whatever it is might clear up by itself.)

Sol 396

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 403

ARES III SOL 396

If Fireball’s knuckles hadn’t already been white, they would have turned that color permanently.

Navigating the Martian terrain with what Earth called the “Sirius tandem rover” and what Mark called the Whinnybago had always been planned as a team effort. Mark and Starlight crammed into Rover 2 at the front, Mark driving the whole assembly and Starlight coordinating everyone else. Cherry, Spitfire and Dragonfly scouted ahead, picking out the most level route, moving smaller obstacles to smooth the journey, and warning the drivers of things too big to move. And in the trailer- the unholy union of Rover 1 and the gutted airtight remains of Amicitas- Fireball sat in the pilot seat and steered the modified nose gear that held up what was now the tail end of the whole thing.

Simple plan, in practice. But Sirius 5, the first proper test-drive of the whole mess under load, proved anything but simple.

The first problem, of course, was balance. The improvised trailer was a bit taller than Rover 2 with a vastly higher center of gravity. The suspension which might have helped keep that load level was taxed to half again its rated limit, leaving the lumbering trailer to rock alarmingly when going over any rock or uneven spot, no matter how minor. That ride alone made Fireball want to leave the pilot seat, go into the hab deck, find a cabinet, and crawl inside to cry until the moving stopped. Not that he would admit it to anyone.

The second problem was perspective. For reasons of stability and basic engineering, Amicitas had been mounted back to front on Rover 1, which meant Fireball’s windows faced directly behind the tandem rover. He couldn’t see a bucking thing. He had to rely on the chatter on the suit comms for guidance or warnings, and those warnings hadn’t been timely most of the time. Mark was only slowly learning that he had to keep up a running commentary on his own driving for Fireball’s benefit.

And the final problem was direction. Fireball had to steer the nose gear because the large rover wheels mounted on the stump of Amicitas’s former landing gear wouldn’t turn by themselves. There was just too much weight and too much mechanical gearing in the way for them to pivot loosely. However, since the cockpit faced backwards, the directions for the gear likewise got reversed. When Mark was turning left, Fireball had to turn right to keep the two rearmost wheels in the same arc as the other eight. When he got it wrong, the nose gear wheels would dig into the soil, and the whole thing would shudder and jolt from the drag.

Example:

“Okay, Fireball, prepare for right turn in three, two, one, right turn.”

Fireball, not yet used to the reverse logic of his new piloting configuration, turned his flight yoke to the right.

The whole assembly shook like a volcano about to burp as the nose gear wheels dug in, and the Whinnybago ground to a stop.

“What the fuck, Fireball?” Mark asked. “I said I was turning right.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. My bad.” Fireball reversed the cant of the wheels. “Fixed it, go ahead.”

“Okay.” The rover very, very gradually began moving forward. “Straighten up.” That was easily enough done, although Fireball’s slight overcorrection caused a rocking in the trailer that made Fireball think, with no fondness at all, of one of his rougher rocket flights.

“Okay, Fireball,” Mark continued, “get ready to turn slightly left.”

“Left. Got it.” Fireball wasn’t going to get it wrong twice in a row, so closely together.

“Slight left in three, two, one.”

Fireball eased the flight yoke to the right.

Drag, shudder, judder, stop.

“FIREBALL!” Mark shouted. “I said turn left!”

“I DID!”

“No, you didn’t! I was turning right so I told you to turn left, but you turned right!”

“You said get ready for slight left turn!”

“That’s not what I said!”

“Yes it was!!”

And so on.

After an hour of this, Fireball’s nerves were shot. Every bump, every pebble made the rover feel like it was going to turn turtle and crush Fireball underneath it, despite the fact that he knew any pressure vessel that stood up to a belly-flop onto a rocky surface at close to three hundred meters per second wasn’t going to just go squish from flopping onto its side. Two out of three attempts to turn the Whinnybago resulted in a bungle or a missed communication- they hadn’t put two successful maneuvers together yet- and the confusion and frustration had the dragon’s head swimming.

And then there was the temperature- a blazing 15 degrees positive Centigrade outside, sweltering for Mars, and pre-heated Equestrian air blowing from the life support unit inside, mixed with the heat from the RTG in the habitat deck. For Fireball it was fine, but he wondered what it was doing to the others. Hopefully at least part of the frustration, fear, and confusion was somebody else’s fault. Blame the heat. Yeah.

“Braking.” Slowly, carefully, the Whinnybago came to a smooth stop- nothing like the earthquakes caused by Fireball’s accidents.

“Okay,” Mark said quietly, “this isn’t working. We’ve only gone fifteen kilometers, but we’ve used up forty percent of the battery charge. And until we learn how to drive this thing properly, we can’t tell if that’s because of the weight or because we keep fucking up directions.”

“Yeah,” Fireball agreed. “So?”

“I think I have an idea for the steering,” Mark said. “But it’ll take a day to implement, so we might as well go back to the Hab and recharge.”

“Good for me.”

“I figure we’re half a kilometer south of the road to Site Epsilon,” Mark said. “We’ll turn north, hit that, and head home.” Unlike the three crevasses they’d slowly navigated, the track the rover had made going back and forth to the cave farm had left ramps in and out of the gullies much smoother and more gradual from wear. On one ascent the nose wheels had threatened to dig in while the rear wheels of the Rover 1 chassis had left the ground entirely.

“Sounds good,” Starlight Glimmer said over the comms. “Cherry, you copy?”

“I copy and agree,” Cherry Berry said. “It’ll take us a couple of minutes to get back to you.”

“No problem. The ground here is clear enough to turn around.” Mark paused, then added, “Fireball, I’m going to turn hard left. Be ready to turn hard right when I say so.”

Fireball could have grumbled about how Mark was talking down to him again, but he didn’t. Obviously a little talking down was necessary, considering how things had gone. Besides, they were headed back, and he wouldn’t slow that down for anything.

“Roger,” he said. “Ready I turn right, you turn left.”

The remaining instructions were just as didactic and annoying, but they worked. The Whinneybago drove the five actual kilometer distance back to the Hab without any more juddering and with only the occasional drunken wobble.

Fireball spent the rest of the day by himself, saying nothing. If he talked, he might babble. If he babbled, he might admit to being scared out of his mind, angry beyond words, completely unwilling to get back in that seat.

And he couldn’t do that. Steering the rear wheels was a vital job, and it was the only job he could do on the trip.

And Fireball was more afraid of being useless, and being seen as useless, than he was of anything the horrible kludge of a trailer could throw at him.

MISSION LOG – SOL 396

Sirius 5 aborted after one hour. It’s obvious we need more practice driving.

One problem is that the trailer is too long. On a steep descent the nose gear at the back lifts off the ground. On a similar ascent it tries to strike oil while the trailer’s middle wheels leave the ground and spin uselessly, leaving only six powered wheels to get twenty-plus tons of load up and out. There’s nothing we can do about that except seek out the absolute shallowest path we can find and avoid any serious crevasses.

Another problem is the top-heaviness of the load on the trailer. It’s not as bad as it feels- the wheel base on the trailer is considerably wider than the alien ship hull- but it still cuts down on efficiency when it rocks back and forth hard enough to make Rover 2’s rear wheels lose traction. We’re obviously going to have to be damn careful about quick turns, or quick anything to be honest.

But the biggest problem we had today was that Fireball and I couldn’t agree on a comms protocol for steering this pushmi-pullyu monstrosity we’ve built. Fortunately, I have an idea to fix that, which I’ll finalize once I’ve taken a look at the pony ship’s flight controls to remind myself of how they’re built.

If I remember correctly, the pilot flight yoke is mounted with a steering wheel, or sort of like one, that rocks back and forth. That’s meant to steer the forward landing gear on the ground after landing. And since all the other control systems have either been stripped off or removed from the ship, that’s its only remaining function. If that’s how it works, then I have a simple solution.

Tomorrow we’ll do an EVA with me on the ground outside while Fireball is steering the ship wheel. Beforehand I will mount a half-circle bit of outer hull scrap metal behind the wheel and make a pointer to show how far the wheel deviates from straight and square. Fireball will then turn the wheel, and while I measure how far the wheel deflects the landing gear wheels outside, Starlight Glimmer will mark the point on the half-circle so that the pointer will indicate which wheel positions produce what deflection. We’ll then repeat the process with Rover 2 and its front wheels.

The genius here is this: on the pony ship end of things, everything left of zero (zero being wheels straight) will be minus such-and-so degrees, and everything right of zero will be plus such-and-so. But on the rover steering wheel, the gauge will show left of zero as positive and right of zero as negative. The one will be the mirror of the other.

No more fucking around with “My left! No, your left! No, your OTHER left!” I will call out a number, plus or minus, and Fireball will put the pointer on that number. Doing it this way, the rear wheels will line up with the quad-steer system every single time. It can't do anything different.

We’ll have to practice again before we attempt another electric charge test, but I think this will solve our biggest problem.

I haven’t told Fireball about my brainstorm yet. He’s off by himself, sulking, and Dragonfly says he really wants to be alone. He’ll probably be over his hissy fit by morning. That’s soon enough to tell him.

(I shouldn’t say ‘hissy fit’. ‘Hissy’ is probably racist to reptiles.)

Author's Note

Mark misreads the mood.

Very long day today. Longer one tomorrow.

By the way, for those who missed the shirt Kickstarter, I've listed all the shirt designs on WLP's online stores for preorders. Not all of these will go into full production, but we'll print to fill all orders taken. Check it out at http://www.wlpshirts.com/ .

Sol 398

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 405
ARES III SOL 398

Cherry Berry bucked hard with a hind leg, sending a rock that probably weighed over a hundred pounds soaring in a low arc above the Martian surface. The reinforcements Dragonfly had made to the rear boots of her spacesuit appeared to be working just fine, the heavily insulated metal plates allowing her to apply full earth pony strength without worrying about bursting the soles.

A short distance away, Spitfire and Dragonfly rolled other rocks out of the path of the rover, still half a kilometer away. Mars was covered with rocks of various sizes, but the smaller rocks could be ignored. The ponies were only interested in rocks large enough to cause problems for the huge rover wheels, and those were few and far between. The three of them appeared more than capable of clearing those rocks out of the way or, if they were too large to budge, finding a detour and then galloping well ahead of the rover again.

Sirius 5B was going well- much better than the previous attempt. The communication issues hadn’t been entirely fixed by Mark’s heading indicators, but at least the rover wasn’t coming to a complete stop every time he and Fireball tried to turn. As Mark had explained, maintaining a steady top speed as long and often as possible was the key to stretching travel distance and battery life. Acceleration burned a lot more energy than cruising, and even though the rover wheels regained some power from braking, it wasn’t remotely close to what was lost speeding back up again. Anything that prevented the rover from stopping was, by definition, a good thing.

Which led to the other half of the pony scouting mission. The area around the Hab looked smooth in the photos taken from high orbit, but the shallow crevasses that ran across Acidalia only became visible in high-magnification or super-low-altitude shots. The gullies were a pain and had been since the ponies had first left their wrecked ship to investigate the beacon on their suit navigation systems. The gullies were just deep enough, with steep enough banks, to be annoying.

And the one the ponies had just come up to, at this spot, had banks not so much steep as vertical. “Mark, Cherry,” she called over the suit comms. “Stop the rover. We found a gully with no safe way down. I’d like to practice scouting for a detour.”

“Okay,” Mark said. “Fireball, braking.”

“Roger.”

Cherry looked at the other two. “Okay, Spitfire, you go left, and…” She took a second look. For a moment Dragonfly had been slumping in a position of apparent exhaustion, but she sat to attention the moment she realized attention was on her. “Dragonfly, switch to private channel. Spitfire, go.”

The pegasus gave the two of them a glance, but she galloped off to the left of their position, looking for a shallower crossing of the gully. With her gone, Cherry switched her own comms to private and said in Equestrian, “Okay, Dragonfly, how bad is it?”

“How bad is what?” Dragonfly asked innocently.

Cherry Berry took a deep breath. “Dragonfly, I’m not in the mood for ‘am I pretending to pretend to not be sick’ games. So don’t give me those roadapples, all right? How bad is it?”

Dragonfly shrugged. “I’m not particularly hungry- no more than normal, I guess,” she said. “But I still get tired so easily. I thought I’d recover more strength with our daily magic sessions, but…”

Cherry Berry’s lips tightened on her muzzle. It had been four days since the last magic session. She wanted to get back to the cave to see how the improvised life support was working, but Dragonfly needed to get back. But that didn’t seem to be the problem at the moment. “You were really sick for a really long time,” she said. “Ponies don’t get over things so bad so fast.”

“Changelings do,” Dragonfly insisted. “We’re tough like that.”

“Maybe back home,” Cherry Berry said. She waved a hoof at their surroundings, the almost white sky above, the red and gray surface of Mars around them. “What about this looks like home to you? We can only give you a couple minutes of magic energy a day. That’s not the same as spending all day, every day, in a proper magic field.”

“You think this place cares?” Dragonfly asked. “Look, I’ll be all right. All right for long enough, anyway. And we need everyone to pull their weight.”

Cherry Berry sighed. Commanders weren’t allowed to whine and say It’s Not Fair, not even when alone. Of course it wasn’t fair. Nothing about this horrible planet was fair. Fair, if it existed at all, had stayed in bed back in Horseton or Cape Friendship or Canterlot or Ponyville or somewhere in Equestria while the rest of them rode Amicitas off the pad to its date with catastrophe.

But she still wanted to scream It’s Not Fair until they heard it on Mark’s home planet without the use of radio.

It wasn’t fair that she’d been without fresh cherries for over a year and without even highly preserved cherry-based desserts for months. It wasn’t fair that Starlight had spent a year risking permanent crippling injury on the simplest of spells. It wasn’t fair that Spitfire couldn’t do the one thing she was born to do- fly fast, far and free in these hostile, barely-present skies. It wasn’t fair that Fireball was here, full stop. And it wasn’t fair that Mark had been stuck here by chance, accident, or possibly the hoof of Faust herself as if he existed solely to keep five Equestrians from dying horrible deaths on a horrible, horrible planet.

And it wasn’t fair that Dragonfly, well, fill in the blank with anything. Whatever crimes and casual bits of unthinking evil she’d committed in the pre-space era when changelings were still hostile invading monsters, they didn’t merit being turned into a shadow of her former strong, confident self by magical starvation.

But shouting Not Fair didn’t make things any more fair, no matter how good it might feel to say it. If you wanted to make it fair, you had to do it yourself.

No, that’s wrong; you had to do it together.

Cherry tapped the control box on the front of her suit, then made a show of switching her comms back to the all-call channel. Once the changeling followed suit, she said in English, “Dragonfly, stay here and coordinate. I’ll take the other direction.”

She hadn’t gone far when Spitfire called out that she’d found a crossing spot. But that wasn’t the point.

She couldn’t make Mars fair. But she could help make it a little less unfair.

MISSION LOG – SOL 398

Sirius 5B ended up being more travel practice. I pulled the plug at twenty percent battery power, at which point we’d gone fifty-two kilometers. That’s encouraging news by itself; fifty kilometers per sol would get us to the Ares IV MAV in about seventy sols, well within the deadline for launch on Sol 551. We could live with that, if nothing else went wrong, but we really want seventy kilometers per sol. The next time we take the rover out, it’ll be for the performance run.

Fireball and I are still working out communications glitches. The turn indicators help a lot. Now the main problem is me, because I keep forgetting to warn Fireball what I’m about to do. It’s hard work, because I have to be thinking about teamwork all the time while driving. It’s like the old gag of two little kids driving a car by one steering and the other crouching under the dashboard and working the pedals.

(Come to think of it, doesn’t that gag always end in disaster? Scratch that, it’s a stupid simile and I should never have mentioned it.)

Anyway, we’re taking a couple days off from testing after this. We need to get back to the cave and check on things. That means disconnecting the trailer, because there’s zero reason to risk an accident with it if we’re not testing its capabilities. We absolutely need the trailer intact for the Schiaparelli run. If we fuck it up, then Hermes goes back to Earth without us, and we think of something else.

Part of me still wants to push forward on the rover tests. Hell, part of me wants to just go to Schiaparelli right now. But we’re not ready. We need a plan for getting there. We need to be sure we can make the trip. And, as Sirius 5 and 5B demonstrated, we need training to get there.

So it’s better to be patient, and cautious. After all, it’s not like the Soviets are going to beat us to the MAV because we waited to see if a chimp could drive before we tried it ourselves.

I hope.

Author's Note

Feeling Dragonfly here recently, though I haven't got the excuse of being on Mars or originating in a different universe.

Sol 399

“So, what have you got for me, Mindy?” Venkat asked.

Mindy brought up the online Mars map and focused on the location of the Hab. “Acidalia Planitia is fairly smooth, especially once Mark gets out of the fractured region around the Hab. He’ll leave the last of the gullies behind by the third day of travel, assuming a seventy kilometer average daily transit. And once he gets onto Arabia Terra the continental crust is fairly smooth except for craters and ejecta. If he stays clear of craters, he should make good time. And Schiaparelli Crater has a mostly smooth floor of compacted dust. So the two major problems are getting up onto Arabia Terra and getting down into Schiaparelli.”

“Got it. What’s the solution?”

“There are only two feasible ways for the tandem rover to get up Arabia Terra,” Mindy said. “Arabia is divided from the surrounding Martian terrain by a large escarpment. I think it’s too steep for the weight the rovers will be carrying. It’s broken in only two places.” She pointed to a dry river network almost directly southeast from the Hab. “Mawrth Vallis is my choice. The river bed is uneven, broken in a couple of places, and almost certain to be full of rocks carried down its path by ancient water flows. But the overall grade is one the rover can probably manage, and it meets the level of Arabia Terra here, near Trouvelot Crater. From Trouvelot there are large gaps between major craters to allow easy driving.

“The other way isn’t as good. Mark would have to drive due south from the Hab for about fifteen sols. The escarpment is shallowest in that direction, allowing for a gradual rise in elevation. From there Mark would have to turn east-southeast, and a lot of overlapping craters will be directly in his path. Getting him through that route will be difficult. The only advantage to that route is that it’s a slightly easier ascent to altitude than Mawrth Vallis. But it’s the more difficult route, and it’s several sols longer.”

“Got it,” Venkat said. “I'll tell Mark to pack all his cameras. We’ve wanted data from Mawrth Vallis for decades. We just kept finding even more interesting places to go instead.” He reached down to Mindy’s keyboard and switched the focus of the digital map to Schaparelli. “What about getting him down off the plateau again?”

“That’s not so easy,” Mindy said. “Most of Schiaparelli’s crater walls are sheer drops. And the ground surrounding Schiaparelli to the south and east is rugged and broken- almost impossible for the tandem rover to navigate. There’s only two possibilities.”

She pointed to two spots on the map. “There’s a point just west of Edom Crater where what looks like a smaller crater broke the rim and helped form a sort of ramp down from the highlands into the crater, here on the northwest side. That’s the point closest to Mark’s line of travel, but the ramp down is really rough and questionable. In the southwest corner, not far from the Ares IV MAV, there’s a point where Meridiani Planum is almost the same altitude as the basin inside Schiaparelli’s rim, and there are passes between the rim mountains. A rover might be able to get through them, but the passes aren’t large. It’s out of his direct path, and he might end up losing days to an obstacle we haven’t spotted that he can’t get around.”

“Can we get better photographs of these sites?”

“Not much. I can try.”

“Okay, do that. But in the meantime, let’s assume this northwestern entrance is the way to go. Work up a detailed travel plan for Mark and write it up for transmission through Pathfinder. And look at some alternative routes if we run into a problem.”

“Will do,” Mindy said.

“I suspect Mark’s been too busy to think about his route himself,” Venkat continued, almost to himself. “We didn’t include any detailed maps of Arabia Terra in the Ares III data files. He’ll only have an old planetary map and a detailed map of Acidalia and Chryse Planitias. Getting this will let him focus on more urgent things.”

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 406
ARES III SOL 399

“Look, all I’m saying,” Dragonfly said, waving her forehooves in the multiversal calm-down motion, “is that Granny Weatherwax is the perfect Slytherin. I never said she was evil.”

“Granny is Gryffindor!” Spitfire insisted, slamming the worktable as she said it.

“I thought Granny was Hufflepuff,” Cherry Berry said.

Heads turned. “Hufflepuff?” Mark asked.

“Yeah. Think tough love.”

“But wouldn’t Nanny Ogg be a better Hufflepuff?”

“Think about it,” Cherry urged. “Granny and Nanny are close friends, right? Wouldn’t they be housemates?”

“Or maybe Granny developed Nanny as a friend because she wanted the support and power,” Dragonfly pressed. “Because she’s Slytherin.”

“Look, can we at least agree that Magrat Garlick is a Ravenclaw?” Starlight Glimmer asked.

Fireball snorted. “Well, duh,” he said.

“Too obvious,” Spitfire said.

“Come to think of it,” Cherry Berry added, “what house would Ridcully be? He doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything, so I guess Gryffindor.”

“He seems too stupid to be afraid,” Dragonfly said. “Which means definitely Gryffindor.”

“Gryffindor is not lawful stupid house!” Spitfire shouted. “Ridcully smart in his own way.”

“You know, all of this is nice,” Mark said to the world at large, “but at some point we’re going to have to do something about the three trolls guarding the back door to the opera house.”

None of the other players, nor Starlight the GM, paid the least bit of attention. “I think Hogwarts would need a fifth house for Rincewind,” the unicorn said. “With a cheetah mascot. Or something else that runs really, really fast.”

“Rincewind probably went to Durmstrang,” Fireball theorized. “Perfect place for a wizard to learn to survive really bad things.”

The debate continued. The game session, not so much.

Author's Note

One of the critiques of the original book is that Acidalia/Chryse turns out to have a lot more obstacles than Andy Weir made out, that Arabia Terra is a lot smoother, and that Mawrth Vallis is a nasty obstacle course full of rocks and uneven terrain wide enough at points that the canyon walls are over the horizon, etc. etc. etc.

All set up at Ama-Con (Amarillo Civic Center); we open to the public tomorrow. Had plenty of time today, but not the energy to write more than this.

By the way, I'm no longer going to be building buffers. When I can write ahead, I'm going to be writing the Sol 551 launch. That will be an ENORMOUS chapter, as you might expect, compared to most of the others.

Sol 400

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 407
ARES III SOL 400

[09:03] WATNEY: Hello, this is Starlight Glimmer. Mark is busy today- he’s moving the south weather station to the cave farm so we can figure out exactly how much heat the cave is losing without the life support system. I have a solution in mind, but I need to be careful how I implement it so I don’t accidentally cook the plants we’re trying to preserve.

But I can’t work on that without the data from Mark and a few other things, so I’m working on the Sparkle Drive for the MAV today. The new crystal has been installed in the old control system for some time. But since we won’t have the old ship computer in the MAV with us, I need help connecting the Drive to the MAV computer, or failing that one of Mark’s portable computers.

The Sparkle Drive works by signal from a computer. The version of the Drive that got us here jumped two meters at a time. We programmed our computer to trigger a jump every four computer cycles, or about 250,000 times per second. In our home universe that worked fine, but when we made the cross-universe jump our batteries were instantly drained to nothing. The Drive tried to draw more power, and the batteries crumbled to dust under the strain.

To prevent that, the new Sparkle Drive makes a much smaller jump, one which (we think) will only draw the power that seven batteries can regenerate with the six of us right next to them producing a tiny trickle of magic from our life force. We think a half-meter jump per cycle for capsule plus second stage (6 tons) will be small enough to allow the batteries to regenerate. The new Drive cannot make an inter-universal jump, so the danger of the power system failing in the same way as before is almost zero.

We also have two other settings, 0.65 meters per jump for capsule only and 0.2 meters per jump for the capsule docked with Hermes, based on the masses in your records. Those settings are adjusted by placing electrodes in different spots on the core crystal and can’t be changed by the computer.

So what we need is an electrical connection that can pulse hundreds of thousands of times per second (it only takes a tiny charge) that the computer can operate. We need a program the computer can run to do this. And, finally, we need navigation software updates to take this system into account for trajectory calculations.

Obviously I don’t expect you to do this overnight. We can’t install it until we get to the MAV. But I’m sending you photos and descriptions of the updated system and its specifications, as well as Dragonfly and I can translate them, for you to work from. I’ll begin sending as soon as you give me the word.

[09:55] JPL: Starlight, this is Venkat Kapoor. I have some engineers here eager to get started on your project. We’ve been expecting this for months. Go ahead and begin transmission.

[10:18] WATNEY: Thank you. File transfer begins immediately.

MISSION LOG – SOL 400

Well, it’s official; the cave is slowly losing heat. The new solar relays aren’t quite providing enough infrared along with the other components of sunlight to compensate for the loss of the water heating system.

It’s not an immediate urgent issue; only four degrees Celsius in a week. Also, there’s a good probability that the system will reach equilibrium well above freezing. But that’s during Martian summer, and the days are growing shorter. If we leave things as they are, eventually overnight temperatures will dip below freezing, and then the temperature won’t rise above freezing come the winter solstice. The alfalfa and potato plants above ground would die off, possibly to re-sprout five months later or so- or not. The cherry trees would probably be all right, except that the water recycling system requires magic from the plant life to work, and without that the water would sink to the bottom of the sealed cave chamber, beyond the reach of the roots of those trees. Without water circulation, even the roots and tubers die, and no more magic, no more plants, no more farm. Game over.

Starlight Glimmer says she can do a trick with the rainbow crystals- basically, to turn a few into little heating elements. The problem is, she can’t enchant the crystal to only operate at certain temperatures. Enchantments are not very good at making judgments- that’s one reason why the ponies ended up here in the first place. So she’s thinking about it, trying to come up with a solution.

So tomorrow will be a make-and-mend day. I’ll run diagnostics and maintenance on the Hab equipment- probably the last time I’ll ever do it. Dragonfly will do maintenance and patching on the pony space suits. They’re going to need it more than ever, since three of them will walk almost the entire distance to Schiaparelli. Starlight will be working on the enchantment for keeping the cave temperatures moderate. I don’t know what Fireball, Cherry Berry and Spitfire will be doing, but I’m sure there’s something constructive on their minds.

Two days from now, we’ll attempt Sirius 5C. This time we’re going to run until we just barely have the juice to get back to the Hab. If all goes well, we can proceed to the next test: spending the night in the trailer.

I mentioned this fact to my guests. I now know the pony words for “slumber party.”

Author's Note

Doing okay at Ama-Con. Not feeling all that energetic, though, and definitely not inspired.

I'll be staying over in Amarillo Sunday night- I don't save any money on hotels by trying to get partway home.

Sols 402-403

MISSION LOG – SOL 402

Seventy four point three kilometers!

For any of you diligent, detail-obsessed future historians who would never skip a bunch of entries looking for the good bits, the above number is the distance traveled, according to the rover computer, from leaving the Hab this morning to when we pulled back up to the rover charging station with power levels reading 4%, three and a quarter hours later.

Sirius 5C is in the books as an unqualified success, and we’re celebrating with… goddamn hay and fucking potatoes, because that’s all we have left to celebrate with. But we’re still celebrating, because today is a major milestone.

It’s about 3200 kilometers from here to Schiaparelli. If we made seventy kilometers every sol, we’d get to the MAV in forty-six sols. Even allowing for losses of time or power due to elevation changes or obstacles, that gets us there with plenty of time to modify the MAV and make our Sol 551 rendezvous with Hermes.

To make things even better, Starlight came up with a brilliantly simple fix that will let her turn some crystals into heating elements for the cave farm. Right now, without the pony life support, the sole source of heat for the cave is the solar relay crystals… which, obviously, don’t work at night. So if you make the additional heating elements light-sensitive, they’ll run at night but not during the day, keeping temperatures in the cave more stable and preventing overnight freezing. It’s not as good as a thermostat, but it’s pretty close.

All in all, that’s two pretty nice Christmas presents.

We discussed giving each other Christmas things made out of crystals, scrap metal, etc. In the end we decided against it. We won’t be able to take much with us when we leave on Sol 551, and whichever homeworld we get to first will have much better stuff in the shops anyway. So tonight we’re settling for me teaching them all the Christmas carols I know. (They have all sorts of questions about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.) And, of course, we have the traditional holiday family dinner of fucking hay and goddamn potatoes, because, etc.

Tomorrow we’ll take the combined Whinnybago out to the cave, get production started on Starlight’s heater crystals, and then have our slumber party in the trailer. There’s no reason to wait, after all, and the cave will make just as good shelter as the Hab if something goes wrong with the life support in the trailer.

And if all goes well with that, then a couple days from now we’ll attempt Sirius 7: the full dress rehearsal. Out in a straight line as far as we can go, set up the extra solar panels for recharge, stay overnight, then back the next day. If that works, then we’re ready to roll.

To be honest, I don’t know whether I hope that it works or that something fucks up. On the one hand, I’d like the peace of mind that having everything apparently working would bring. On the other hand, I’d rather find the glitch here close to comparative safety than a thousand klicks from nowhere in the middle of Arabia Terra.

Well, whatever I’m hoping, here’s hoping it.

MISSION LOG – SOL 403

Well, fuck.

I’m writing this on a laptop in the cave. It’s close to midnight Mars time, and we’re all huddled around the pony life support unit and the RTG, both of which we uninstalled in record time when we decided to bail out of the rolling ice box.

In retrospect this was the obvious result. The RTG, by itself, is sufficient to heat the rover interior- a bit more than sufficient, since I had to rip out part of the rover’s insulation to keep from roasting. But the open interior of what remains of the pony ship is more than four times the volume of the rover interior, with a corresponding larger surface area.

And the pony ship has no insulation whatever. For reasons which I guess seemed good at the time, the ship insulation was all between the inner and outer hull layers, wrapped around the cooling system pipes and things. When we stripped off the outer hull for scrap metal, we pretty much destroyed the insulation, too. We didn’t keep very much of it. One of the largest pieces acted as the makeshift door between the farm and Tangled Hallway.

And now we’re regretting that decision, because without that insulation what’s left is a naked, highly conductive metal hull that sucks heat out of the interior. By the time we decided to bail out, we could see our breath condensing, it got that cold inside.

There’s still a heater inside the ship, but that’s for emergencies only. It draws 200 watts, and 200 watt-hours during the overnight hours, less the 100 watts of electricity the RTG produces, is still a bit more than one whole pirate-ninja every night that we won’t be using to drive on come morning. The goal is to get through the night on nothing more than the 100 watts the RTG puts out, so that the batteries stay full for the morning’s driving.

I’m already working on ideas for fixing the problem. I don’t think we can re-insulate the whole ship, and anyway we’d want to stick the insulation on the inside of the hull instead of the outside. That’s going to require a lot of work. To save on work, and to concentrate the heat into one place at night, I think we’ll focus on just insulating the habitat deck. We’ll close the pressure door to the bridge at night and shut off air circulation to the bridge and to the rover, concentrating all the heat sources into that one chamber.

It’s going to get cramped; the sleeping bags normally hang from the cabinets, because sleeping is done in zero-G. Also, all the magic batteries except the big ones are in the habitat deck for maximum recharge. Floor space is at a minimum.

Question: where do we get more insulation? What we saved isn’t even close to enough to paper the walls of the hab deck. Dragonfly has flatly refused to try spitting up insulation- and I don’t blame her. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy puking non-stop for a week or so.

We have the hab canvas from the top of the pop-tent we sliced off to provide an electrical ground for the cave farm for the Sol 247 storm. Hab canvas is a better than average insulator. It’s built to be, since it not only has to block cosmic radiation but retain heat in the Hab. But that bit of canvas would be about enough to drop like a little doily across the old docking port, which is in the top of the habitat section of the ship. The only other sources are the second pop tent and the Hab, and it’s a little early for us to cannibalize the place that’s mostly kept us alive for four hundred sols.

The other source for insulation is the Rover 1 cabin. Remember, that was removed intact from the chassis and became a permanent radio shack connecting Pathfinder with the Hab. We wear space suits on the rare occasions we go inside anyway to save on air, since the only life support remaining inside is an air tank. The problem is that it’s foam insulation, nearly impossible to remove or transport intact.

There’s one other possibility; taking whatever hay the ponies aren’t going to eat and turning that into insulation. It’s not going to smell pleasant after one hundred and fifty sols, but it might help, so it’s worth thinking about, provided there’s enough of it.

Maybe the problem will seem simpler when I wake up in the morning. Maybe all we have to do is shut air circulation down, and the RTG will be enough to keep just the habitat deck warm.

Maybe the Princess of Mars will appear, command me to be her concubine, and make the others her ladies-in-waiting.

But for now, I’m going to find a spot in the sleep-pile with the others and hope body heat keeps us comfy tonight.

MISSION LOG – SOL 403 (2)

Hi to humans. I am Spitfire. I write this because Mark is hurt. He got in way of my rear hooves when I felt something poke me in rump. I am sorry but can’t help it.

Starlight Glimmer won’t stop laugh. She says I thought it funny when happen to her on Pathfinder trip. I remember not that way.

MISSION LOG – SOL 403 (3)

Mark here. She got me right in the solar plexus. Made breathing real interesting for about half an hour. I don’t think anything’s actually ruptured, though. If I start seeing blood in my urine, then I’ll begin worrying.

It’s about three in the oh-my-god-ning. Maybe we can get through three hours of actual sleep without a jackhammer to the gut…

Author's Note

Feeling a bit better today, but will still be very glad to get home. That's tomorrow's drive, by the way.

Anyone who saw this one coming, score yourself five bonus smug points. Collect twenty-five and trade them in for one genuine I Told You So.

Sol 405

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 412
ARES III SOL 405

“It’d be easier if Starlight was helping us.”

“Yeah,” Dragonfly replied absently in Equestrian, focusing her attention on turning her ratchet while Fireball turned his. She hoped the dragon didn’t follow that thought any further. Yes, having the unicorn present would speed up the process of stripping down Amicitas’s habitat deck to bare walls, but she was more useful helping Mark cut the insulation out of Rover 1’s dismounted cabin. This job could be done with muscle, but that job required a more careful and delicate touch- and magic.

So she was there and they were here, and complaining wouldn’t change that.

“Where the heck are we going to put these anyway?” Fireball asked, pausing to point to the cabinet he was dismounting. “The bridge is crammed full already so we can barely get out the airlock. I’m not even sure these would fit in the airlock with either of us.”

“We don’t need to take them out of here,” Dragonfly said. “We can work around them. We just need to get the walls clear for insulation.”

“Oh. Okay. Where do you want the bolts?”

“Caddy in the top of the tool box. The one with the lid.”

“Okay.” More ratcheting. “Why don’t you use your magic? Make this go faster.”

“First, you know exactly why I want to use magic as little as possible,” Dragonfly said, a little testily. “Second, I will be using my magic later. So I can’t afford to use it right now doing something we can do by hoof.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Fireball grumbled. “This just takes forever, is all.” Giving the lie to his statement, he dropped the last bolt from the current cabinet into the tool box, slid it up and off the bracket that held it in place, and looked for a place to put it. “You sure you can work around this?”

“Just a moment.” Dragonfly pulled the last bolt out of her own cabinet, the one which had been beneath Fireball’s, and slid the cabinet out of its groove in the deck. “The cabinets interlock. Take a couple bolts and thread them through the bottom mounting holes. You can link these two cabinets together that way, and they can just sit together in the middle of the deck.” She forced herself not to look at the rather small deck area available for things to sit in.

“Right,” Fireball muttered. “Two down, ten to go, then.”

“Eh, we’re almost done,” Dragonfly said. “The hard part was clearing everything else out first.”

“No,” Fireball insisted, “the hard part will be putting everything back in the right order.”

Dragonfly, unable to deny the point, crawled into another lower cabinet and began loosening another bolt.

After lunch, Dragonfly returned to the ship, this time with Mark. With Starlight’s and Fireball’s help, one airlock load at a time, they got the carefully cut slices of rover insulation foam into the ship. Of course, this left practically no room for human or changeling to get through the jumble of meal packs, hay bales, medicine, and other things that absolutely had to travel in the Whinnybago’s trailer.

Dragonfly felt more grateful than usual when she set up the mana battery for field projection and switched the power on. Inside the mostly bare metal walls of the hab deck, the rainbow sparks that rose from the aerials occasionally lashed out to strike the unpainted portions of metal.

“Okay,” Mark said. “Rover foam for the ceiling, especially to cover up the docking port. We’re not going to use that any time soon. What’s left of the ship insulation in the spots where the cabinets go. When we run out of ship insulation, Hab canvas. Use the ship insulation on the outer bulkheads, the canvas for the wall between habitat and bridge. You up for a lot of spot-gluing? I noticed you had a huge lunch.”

“Just a moment.” Dragonfly grinned a fang-filled grin, and then she shifted.

Mark’s expression was everything Dragonfly had hoped it would be. “Um,” he said carefully, “can’t you pick another form? That one makes me really uncomfortable.”

“I’m used to this shape,” Dragonfly said, doing her best imitation of Beth Johanssen’s voice to match the blue-jumpsuited body she was imitating. “And it’s easier for me to work around the cabinets as a biped. Besides,” she added, “I could change into you, but it takes a lot more energy to change mass.”

Mark did his best to not look at her. “Really, really uncomfortable.”

“Think of it as building up a tolerance,” Dragonfly said, chuckling. “Or would this be better?” Another flash of green flame, and from the neck up she was still Johanssen, but from the neck down she was a certain actress famous for a role where she wore cutoff jeans for seven years. And instead of the blue astronaut jump suit, she wore those cutoff jeans and a string bikini top.

Mark’s efforts not to look increased. “Really not helping,” he said as firmly as he could manage. “Not helping in so many ways.”

“Relax, Mark,” Dragonfly giggled, now throwing a southern accent into her voice. “I’m not like Starlight or Spitfire. I don’t kick. Much.”

“This conduct is contributing to a hostile work environment!”

Dragonfly’s giggle became a full-out laugh, and with another flash of green she went back to plain, jump-suited Johanssen. “All right, all right,” Dragonfly said. “Just messing with you, Mark. And it feels good to be able to shift.” She paused for full effect before continuing, “Although lust is a nice delicious treat… and I could really go for some empty calories right-“

“OH LOOK!” Mark said loudly. “I think that’s a spot that needs some insulation right there!” He pointed up at a random spot near the ladder leading to the dorsal docking port.

“Some joker you are,” Dragonfly muttered. “Okay, let me climb up so you can hand me some of the foam.”

“Like that?” Mark asked. “Are you going to be able to… you know… make glue… in Johanssen’s body?”

Dragonfly felt a blush coming on. Darnit, sometimes the disguise had a mind of its own. “Well, yes,” she said, “but you probably don’t want to watch. Not this soon after your own lunch, anyway.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 405

Quick note for the record: changelings are gross. Really, really gross.

I haven’t missed alcohol so much since the day we lifted off from Canaveral…

Author's Note

Ten and a half hours of driving, I got home tired and uninspired. So today you get Dragonfly being cruel to Mark.

The difference between Dragonfly and Chrysalis being, Chryssy wouldn't have let it drop...

... that, and Chryssy wouldn't have settled for Johanssen. She'd use Lewis's form instead, because commander.

Sol 409

MISSION LOG – SOL 409

There may be a problem.

We began Sirius 7 with the Whinnybago loaded as it would be, more or less, for the final trip:

ROVER 2 (empty, with extra hydrogen cells) – 3.7 tons
FRIENDSHIP TRAILER (empty) – 14.5 tons
FOOD (110 days supply) – 0.65 tons
BOOSTER SYSTEM (substitute equivalent weight of rocks) – 4.5 tons
SPARKLE DRIVE plus 7 batteries to power it – 0.5 tons
OTHER MAGIC BATTERIES – 0.84 tons
FRIENDSHIP THRUSTER PACKS – 0.12 tons
TOOLS, SCRAP, AIR TANKS FOR SPACE SUIT AND MAV, ETC. – 0.5 tons
CREW, SPACE SUITS, AND PERSONAL EFFECTS – 0.7 tons
14 SOLAR PANELS (NOT COUNTING THOSE INSTALLED ON TRAILER) – 0.1 TON
TOTAL ESTIMATED MASS: 26.11 TONS

To be specific, the trailer’s total loaded mass is a little more than seventeen tons, with Rover 2 carrying the balance.

This load was propelled on ten wheels, eight of which are powered, two of which have the clutch disengaged so they rotate freely. (All the rover wheels have their own built-in electrical motors, rated at roughly fifty watt-hours per kilometer of travel on a normal load. This is more than double the normal load rating, with Rover 2 almost at maximum emergency load and the trailer miles beyond that..) The two rover batteries plus four Hab hydrogen storage cells add up to fifty-four pirate-ninjas to power all of this.

Bear with me. I’m laying all of this out so I can think.

We got a bit of a late start, so the sun was already up before we began rolling. We drove for about three hours, until the battery readouts showed 10% power remaining. (The rover computer is smart and can detect the extra, unauthorized power storage and monitor its charge level. Which is good, for reasons which will become obvious in a moment.) This got us 69.66 kilometers away from the Hab. All well and good, right?

We stopped, unloaded the fourteen extra solar cells from their stacks on top of Rover 2, and set them out for recharging the system. With a clear sky each panel provides 120 watts at peak power. The ongoing cirrus cloud coverage knocked that back a little, but with forty-two out of the Hab’s fifty-four panels with us, we figured we had power to spare. Also, we have the 100 watts provided by the RTG, which isn’t much, but it’s 24/7.

So we retired to the trailer for the rest of the day, gathering in the habitat deck when the sun went down and it began to get uncomfortable in the bridge. I set the alarm for first light, about an hour before dawn, expecting to get up to find a full power system and an easy drive back the way we came to return to the Hab.

Nice theory. Too bad it didn’t quite pan out.

We got up when my alarm went off. I suited up, went outside, picked up the solar panels in the Martian pre-dawn, and got into Rover 2 for the drive home. And that’s when I discovered that the batteries were only recharged up to 70%.

Remember, it took 90% of the batteries to drive seventy kilometers yesterday. And since 70% is less than 90%, we definitely weren’t going to get seventy kilometers today. But, since this was a test, we pushed on anyway. 90% got us seventy klicks, so 60% should get us two-thirds as far, right? Forty-six and two-thirds kilometers, no problem, yeah?

Nope. Barely forty kilometers. And that’s where we are now, as I type this; thirty kilometers from the Hab, and temporarily out of contact with Earth.

I’ve got a lot of questions I need to find answers to. Where did my recharge go? Why is my driving performance fourteen percent less efficient on the second day? And, assuming I find answers, what can I do about it?

I do know one thing: forty kilometers a day is not going to do it. That’s over eighty days- more than half our safety margin for modifying the MAV gone.

So we’re cancelling today’s read-along. No D&D. All of us are doing math and brainstorming solutions to this issue. I’m keeping this log open and using it for, well, kind of the minutes of the meeting. If we come up with good ideas, this will help us remember.

Okay, going forward.

Dragonfly asks how much power each solar cell produces. On Earth, with its almost circular orbit, sunlight adds about 1400 watts of heat energy per square meter of surface. Mars is a lot farther out, and its orbit is a lot more elliptical. Raw solar energy ranges from 500 to 700 watts per square meter. The solar cells turn that energy into electricity we can use at a 10.2 efficiency rate. That means, on a clear, day, each 2 sq. m. solar panel should have a peak power of about 120 watts.

Of course, we aren’t having clear days lately. Cirrus clouds let in most of the sunlight, but not all of it. Also, the northern hemisphere’s summer corresponds almost perfectly with the Martian apisol- that means farthest point from the sun in orbit. Mars is gradually getting closer to the sun, but this hemisphere is tilting away from the sun as we approach the equinox, so it’s kind of a wash, energy-wise.

Fireball points out that estimates aren’t the same as actual testing. Okay, so thing to do: connect one of the power meters in my tool kit to a solar panel and monitor its performance. That will give us an exact measurement.

Starlight Glimmer does some math and works out that, assuming twelve hours of good sunlight, our forty-two solar panels ought to produce a total of 60,480 watt-hours, or more than enough to fill up the batteries without the RTG. Nice idea, except that fourteen of the solar panels aren’t producing while we’re driving. We can’t start driving until there’s at least enough twilight for the ponies to see beyond the range of their suit helmet lights, so some recharge time during the day will be lost to driving.

Fireball asks: doesn’t that mean that the batteries are charging from the twenty-eight solar panels on Friendship while we drive? Good point… come to think of it, damn good point. Let’s think about that for a moment.

It takes at least half an hour after sunrise for the sun to be high enough off the horizon for the solar cells to get a decent current going. Before then the angle is too low and the panels are catching more photons reflected from the atmosphere than direct from the sun. But after that, the current is close enough to peak as makes little difference. And yesterday- and in the prior power test, come to think of it- we started driving at or after that point. That means that, in addition to burning what was in the batteries, we were also using 100 watts from the RTG and as much as 3,360 watts from the solar cells every hour. In three hours, that comes up to maybe 10,380 watt-hours.

I think we just found that fourteen percent efficiency loss. We didn’t lose any efficiency. We were just burning more juice than we thought we were.

This morning we got rolling long before dawn and ran out of juice in a bit less than two hours of driving. The solar cells were putting out negligible amounts of current for about two-thirds of our drive time today, so we didn’t get the benefit of their juice.

Doing the math again. With a normal load, the rover wheel motors are rated for fifty watts per kilometer per wheel, or (with eight drive wheels running) four hundred watts per kilometer, total. But more weight requires more juice. Yesterday’s performance was (I thought) sixty-nine kilometers on 49.6 pirate-ninjas, or in round numbers about 720 watt-hours per kilometer. But it turns out we were probably closer to 60 pirate-ninjas, or roughly 870 watt-hours per kilometer.

More than twice as much energy consumption, for more than twice the rated load. There are a lot of reasons why this could have been different- lack of air resistance, rolling load, Mars gravity, all sorts of other shit- so I never bothered to run this calculation before. But…

… eight hundred seventy watt-hours per kilometer, at seventy kilometers, requires 60,900 watt-hours- call it sixty-one pirate-ninjas. We can only store fifty-four pirate-ninjas at a time, and an all-day recharge cycle gets us not more than 60.5 pirate-ninjas per sol. That’s not sustainable. Either we find a way to use less power in motion, or else we accept a maximum theoretical range of (fifty pirate-ninjas divided by 0.87 pirate-ninjas per klick) fifty-seven kilometers per day.

The obvious answer is to lighten the load. The problem is, that’s impossible. The ship is stripped down to the absolute minimum systems. We need all the magic batteries for emergencies, for magic rations to keep Dragonfly from crawling back into a cocoon, to top off the jumbo batteries for launch day, etc. We’ll have to think of something else.

Anyway, next time we do a dress rehearsal run, we drive without the solar cells plugged into the electrical system until we stop driving for the day. That’ll give a more accurate idea of what kind of daily driving range we can sustain without making changes.

But anyway, yesterday we had nine good hours of sunlight recharge with all solar panels. Let’s say the clouds knock ten percent off their peak performance- it shouldn’t be that much, but let’s say. That should have got us almost 41 pirate-ninjas back in the tank, plus the 5 pirate-ninjas in reserve. And during our sleep cycle, when even the computers are powered down, the RTG should add close to another pirate-ninja. We should have had 46,500 watt-hours in the system when I got up this morning. Instead we had 37,500.

There is an electricity thief somewhere on Mars, and it’s stolen nine pirate-ninjas from us already.

Cherry Berry beats me to my suggestion: make a list of everything, absolutely everything, that draws electricity.

Okay. First are the rover computer and the five Hab laptops, all of which we’re taking along for reasons of morale. If all six are running at the same time, they draw a total of ninety watts, more or less.

The rover life support, with air circulation fans and air sampler, draws an average of twenty watts.

Two Hab light strips for illumination in the ship; twenty watts each.

Rover radio system, about ten watts. It’s on to let us track the Hab beacon when we get within twenty-five kilometers of either the Hab or (at the end of our drive) the MAV. This was NASA’s idea, and it’s an excellent one. Schiaparelli is one of the largest craters on Mars, and the MAV isn’t all that large in geological terms.

Microwave. Or, as I shall henceforth call it, Slayer of Pirate-Ninjas. Twelve HUNDRED watts. We’ve been cooking our potatoes in it, and only three or four potatoes fit in it at a time. And microwaving a raw potato into what we laughingly call an edible condition takes a fucking long time compared to just heating up a pre-cooked meal pack. The three ponies and I ate a combined thirty potatoes yesterday cooked by the Slayer. I’m willing to guess that it ate two entire pirate-ninjas yesterday by itself.

Can anyone else think of anything? No. That’s it.

So tonight we’ll shut everything down except the life support and the rover computer. That’s roughly thirty-five watts, which means the RTG should be recharging the battery system at a rate of sixty-five watts per hour even in pitch black. If it’s anything different, we’ll know we missed something.

So, recap:

Tonight- turn things off, check for electricity thief.

Tomorrow- get back to Hab, reactivate Hab. (Everything’s shut down except for Pathfinder, because the Hab currently has only six solar panels left.) Tell NASA our results and plans.

Two sols after tomorrow- second dress rehearsal run. Drive without solar panels.

After that: fuck if I know.

Meeting adjourned.

Author's Note

Yesterday I got up at 6 AM, left home at 6:45, and got home at 12:45 AM this morning. I drove about six hundred miles, drove a load of boxes of things to my friend's new lodgings, and did what I could to otherwise lighten her load. (No details about the load: not my story to tell.)

I paid for it today. Despite seven solid hours of sleep, I more or less sleepwalked through today. And the planned chapter for today was always going to be an infodump/problem solving one, so I didn't get to make up the missed chapter today.

The electricity problem, two days ago, looked even worse than it was at one point, until I went through the page of math I did in my notes and realized that I was calculating the power output of the solar panels as if they were one meter square instead of two meters square. Basically, I was halving the power in the system due to a math error. There's still a power shortfall, but it's no longer catastrophic.

Sol 410

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 417
ARES III SOL 410

[12:33] JPL: Welcome back, Mark. I’ve just finished reading your abstract of the results of what I suppose we’ll call Sirius 7A. I have a question, though: why does it end with seventy-two iterations of, “I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use”?

[12:44] HERMES: Seconded. It’s annoying when you spam the Pathfinder chat, Watney. What’s your excuse?

[13:02] WATNEY: Sorry. That was Fireball. When we found out that all the remaining pony ship systems had been running for two days straight, plus at least one bad ground or short circuit bleeding power into the hull and out through the rover wheels, Starlight Glimmer suggested making Fireball write sentences as a reminder. We should have told him to use a word processor instead of the chat.

However, even considering that the hydraulic system the alien ship uses for steering and the pony radio draws a lot of power, we’ve still got a lot of battery drain unaccounted for. So Dragonfly and I will spend the next few afternoons going through the ship’s wiring chart, finding every cut wire, and making certain it’s capped off properly. Then we’ll go through the harness and make sure no wires have chafed through their insulation. I figure it’ll be a week before we can attempt Sirius 7B.

We have two other solutions to reduce power. For the next trip we’ll disengage the wheel clutches on the rear wheels of Rover 2, reducing the Whinnybago to six powered wheels. It’s possible that the cost of more power to the remaining wheels during acceleration will be offset by the savings at cruising speed. Also, we’ll pre-bake our potatoes before departure. The spuds would ride in saddlebags on Rover 2 anyway, and so long as we don’t break the skins they should be all right when re-heated. That’ll save three-quarters of the cooking time and reduce the microwave’s power draw proportionately. We could just yank the microwave entirely, but it’s hard enough to eat plain baked potatoes week in and week out. Cold baked potatoes would be a morale hit I’d rather not take.

[13:29] JPL: Both good ideas. I’ll get the engineers to testing the six-wheel configuration power levels at once. Also, you won’t need to worry about that as much. We’ve been tracking your use of food packs since your last inventory based on your logs and chat, and if our numbers are correct, you’re good to resume eating food packs on 2/3 ration on Sol 428.

By the way, you’ll be glad to know that the cloud cover is beginning to break up at the equator. Meteorology forecasts clear skies at the Hab four days from now, with temperatures returning to more or less Martian normal shortly afterwards. Enjoy your above-freezing afternoons, Mark, because Mars summer is coming to an end.

[13:53] WATNEY: Oh no! How will I show off my sexy bod to all the little green beach bunnies?

Seriously, though, I’ll be glad to get non-spud material in my diet again, but I’m not going to hog the good stuff while the others continue on nothing but hay. I plan to share out parts of my food packs and make up the difference by continuing on at least some potatoes. Otherwise I’d be too guilty to eat.

[13:58] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer here. Did you say seventy-two iterations?

[14:16] JPL: Just be grateful there’s no department stores having Back to School sales in Acidalia Planitia. If you feel you need to keep eating potatoes, Mark, go ahead.

[14:21] JPL: Yes, that’s right. I counted them myself. I thought there might be some significance. Why?

[14:54] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[14:55] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[14:57] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[14:58] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[14:59] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:00] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:01] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:03] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:04] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:05] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:07] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:08] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:09] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:10] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:10] HERMES: Not again…

[15:11] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:12] HERMES: GOD DAMN IT WATNEY

[15:13] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:14] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:15] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:16] JPL: Oh no

[15:16] HERMES: MARK SERIOUSLY CUT IT OUT

[15:17] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:17] JPL: MARK

[15:18] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:20] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:21] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:22] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:23] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:24] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:26] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[15:27] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[16:00] HERMES: Is that it? Is it over?

[16:10] JPL: Don't know. Seventy-two plus twenty-seven is only ninety-nine.

[16:21] HERMES: God. Seriously, Mark, Starlight, Cherry, whoever, next time make him use the whiteboards. Bart Simpson didn’t get to type out his sentences.

[16:37] WATNEY: I will not fail to properly power down the ship when not in use.

[16:38] WATNEY: Cant read clawriting in Pony. Worse in English. Whos Bart Simpson?

Author's Note

I felt like absolute crap this morning. Ended up having to take a nap, and my sinuses were giving me absolute fits.

But I'm better now, so I'm going for two tonight to catch up!

Sol 412

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 419
ARES III SOL 412

“You know,” Mark said as he pulled a bundle of wiring out of its recess, “you have it lucky. The capsule we took to the moon had fourteen miles of wiring. With your magic comms and life support, your ship has a lot less.”

“That doesn’t make this any more fun,” Dragonfly grumbled. She was of no mind to be buoyed by Mark’s it-could-be-worse comments, not when she was engaged in one of the most hated tasks ever to confront a repairpony: wiring harness inspection.

Lots of subsystems and control panels had been yanked and dumped in the search for weight savings. The entire launch staging system, with all its reprogrammable switches- gone. The subsystem for controlling maneuvering thrusters- junk, once NASA had looked at the thruster block specifications and assured her that the MAV’s control system could be adapted to use them instead of its own heavier thrusters. Engine throttle- what engine? Buh-bye.

But in many cases the wiring for these systems remained, because it was too much trouble to unearth the wiring harness involved and then remove only the superfluous wires. Technically it still was, because even with wire coding it was impossible to be certain that one out of a dozen little wires in a bundle was the one you wanted to strip out. But they had to pull all of them anyway, and inspect them all, and make sure there were no bare spots where insulation had failed, allowing the metal wire to touch or spark against the metal of the ship interior.

Mark had told them all about what had happened once in a human ship, one with a pure oxygen atmosphere, when a wire sparked. The ship life support provided normal atmosphere and not pure oxygen, but the image stuck in Dragonfly’s mind of a fire that burned so fast that the bodies of the astronauts it killed didn’t have time to cook. That image almost- almost- made going through every single wire remaining in the ship tolerable.

But it didn’t make it even slightly fun.

Yesterday had been the easy part. Yesterday they’d found every cut end, yanked the wire completely if it was conveniently short (not many), and taped off every loose end too troublesome to remove. (This was a lot- Dragonfly was down to a sliver of electrical tape on the spool, although admittedly the outer quarter or so had been made useless by the same Martian cold immediately after the crash that had turned the ship manuals into confetti). That had proceeded quickly- the loose ends were all in known, easy-to-find, generally easy-to-access places, generally because they were where something had been cut or removed.

But wiring inspection was worse than watching paint dry. You could let your mind wander with paint, but you had to pay full and absolute attention to every bloody inch of what was still several miles of itty bitty wires.

Thankfully, just before Dragonfly was going to ask for a break, Mark did. “I need to rest my eyes,” he said after checking off Wiring Harness #7 (port thruster control, port SRB ignition and decoupling control lines, habitat deck and engineering deck lighting). “I haven’t told NASA yet, but I’ve been getting a little bit farsighted the last couple of months.”

“Farsighted?” Dragonfly asked. “Does that mean you can see the future?”

“What? No,” Mark said, confused. “It means I’m going to need reading glasses when I get back to Earth.”

“Oh. You don’t have any problem with computer screens.”

“Computer screens aren’t up close to my face, and the letters are pretty big. But I can’t read the characters on your wiring harnesses without squinting really hard.” Mark sighed. “It’s a common symptom of long term zero-gravity- weakened vision, I mean- but I’d hoped Mars gravity would be enough to avoid it.”

“Huh.” As Mark flopped over to lean his back against the habitat deck bulkhead, Dragonfly joined him in a similar pose. “That’s kind of strange. You have the smallest eyes of any of us, but they’re also the most fragile.”

“Yeah, I’ve wondered how the ponies get on with those huge eyes of theirs. Probably spend a fortune on eye drops.” Mark chuckled. “Allergy season must be a bitch.”

Dragonfly blinked again. “Um, no,” she said quietly. “I mean, a few ponies have allergies, but it’s not like it’s crippling or something.”

“Oh. Huh.”

The conversation lapsed, and Mark shut his eyes, reaching up to rub his temples with one hand.

“Hey, there’s a thing you can do that we can’t,” Dragonfly chirped. “We can’t rub both temples at the same time.”

“Mmm.”

More silence.

“I was wondering,” Dragonfly asked, “why don’t we move to the cave for the last few sols?” She’d thought about proposing this for weeks now, but this seemed like the time to bring it up.

“Mmm?” Mark didn’t open his eyes. “Hadn’t thought about it much. First thing I think of, I don’t want to move Pathfinder. After what we saw when we opened up Sojourner, I think we were lucky as shit that Pathfinder worked pretty much first time. For all we know, any little bump could kill it. The Hab still has work space, the equipment we’re not taking with us, six hydrogen cells for extra power storage, and more safety backups than the cave or the rover. It’s still the safest place.”

“Yeah, but… well,” Dragonfly muttered, a little uncomfortable with her thought, “you’re a botanist- a farmer, basically. Doesn’t the farm feel more like home?”

Mark snorted, but his eyes stayed shut. “The cave is the most alien place on Mars to me,” he said. “Yeah, it has plants. But it’s underground, in a giant geode that dwarfs almost anything ever found on Earth, and it runs ninety percent on a force of nature my entire species had relegated to myth.” He chuckled and added, “Well, most of us. I hear there are some who think that there are evil magicians among us who cast curses and steal away men’s penises.”

Dragonfly couldn’t hold back her laugh. “What??”

“I could barely say it the first time,” Mark said. “Apparently there’s this really weird mental disease, a kind of paranoia, that can make a man think his genitals are gone. And then they have to blame somebody, because obviously…” The human began to chuckle uncontrollably, then managed to finish, “… they don’t just get up and walk away…”

Dragonfly laughed too, but not as much. “You humans are weird,” she said.

“Yeah, probably,” Mark said once he calmed down. “But my point is, the Hab feels more like home than anything else here. I trained in a simulation of the Hab for years. And I’ve spent over a year living in it. The cave is nice, but…”

“The cave is alive,” Dragonfly said. “The Hab is dying.”

Mark’s eyes finally opened. They looked a little sad, staring off at the opposite wall of the compartment. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “We’re killing it one piece at a time. The life support is down to about eighty percent capacity, give or take, despite my maintenance. We’re lucky it has that. It was never meant to last this long with full occupation, much less with full occupation plus a farm.”

“Mmm.” Humans got a lot of mileage out of grunts as conversational tools, and Dragonfly could see why.

“There’s a children’s book back home,” Mark said. “It’s called The Giving Tree. The tree gives the young boy an apple. It gives the older boy a place to hang a swing. When the boy becomes a man, he takes the wood to build a house. And when he’s an old man, there’s nothing left to take. All the tree has left is its stump, and so the old man sits and rests on that. That’s what the Hab feels like to me- a giving tree.”

“That… that’s so stupid!” Dragonfly snapped. “I want a copy of that book to put in the hive nursery! It’s a perfect changeling story! Only instead of ‘The Giving Tree’ we’d call it ‘The Taking Boy!’ That tree gave the same way ponies ‘give’ to changelings!”

“Yeah, you’re not the first to notice the story’s a little one-sided,” Mark said. “But there’s another side to it. The stuff the boy took didn’t make him happy in the end. In fact, at the end he had nothing except the stump of the tree, because he’d taken and never really gave back. And when he’s old, he goes back to where he was young and happy, trying to find that again.”

Mark shook his head. “I haven’t read the book in so many years, I’m probably messing it up. But I feel bad about how we’ve looted the Hab. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to help keep the cave going. I can’t save the Hab, but maybe I can save that.”

“Huh.” Dragonfly shifted position. “How are your eyes?”

“They still hurt a bit,” Mark said. “Gimme a few more minutes.”

“Okay.” Dragonfly got up, stretched her legs, and trotted over to her discarded spacesuit. “I’m going back into the Hab for a minute. Want anything?”

“Pill bottle in the medicine chest marked ‘aspirin’,” Mark said. “If you could bring that. Rather not touch the Vicodin unless I have to.”

“Okay. Back in a while.”

It took time to cycle out the ship’s airlock and in via Airlock 2 of the Hab. Once inside, she checked the clock. In about two hours Mark would have to take Rover 2 to the cave to pick up the others- well, Starlight and Fireball, anyway; Cherry and Spitfire would walk back. But for the moment she was alone in the Hab.

The Hab floor was dirty, but no longer dirt. The plants had been carefully transferred to the cave, followed by as much of the cultivated soil as they could shovel up. The cabinets and tables, so shiny and brilliant when the five of them had first entered it the night of Sol 6, now looked dingy, scratched, beaten. The canvas scar left by the blown-out Airlock 1 grabbed and held the eye, reminding Dragonfly of that pony who had worked for the Storm King, what’s-her-name. One of the air circulation fans rattled, and another had that high-pitched whine only Dragonfly could hear, warning that its bearing was beginning to fail.

Without the farm- without the castaways- the Hab felt sadder, more tired, than before. If Dragonfly put the sensation into words, it had moved away from I still stand and had edged closer to I once stood. She still didn’t know if what she felt was real or some magic-deprivation hallucination, but to her it didn’t just feel like the Hab was dying; it felt like the Hab knew it was dying.

“Excuse me,” she said, alone in the ninety-two square meter space under the canvas dome. “I, um, just want to say something. We didn’t build you. The five of us, I mean, not Mark. We just showed up. You protected us. You warned us when you had trouble. You stood up to frightful things and kept us safe. And now we’re taking parts of you so we can go a long way away, and probably never come back.”

There was a vague hint that the bug had something’s attention. More hallucinations, probably. She felt silly, but she carried on.

“Well, I just want to say that we’re grateful for all you’ve done. And we’re sorry, really sorry, for how badly we abused you. You deserved better. You deserved a happier mission, with your proper crew. Instead you got us, and you took care of us. And now you’re giving us a chance to live long enough to maybe make it home again.”

Dragonfly walked up to the console of the Hab’s main computer, the one that monitored all the other equipment, the one too big and inconvenient to take with them to Schiaparelli. She placed a hoof on the side of the console and said, quietly, “Thank you.”

And the Hab was happy.

Author's Note

In the book Mark Watney explicitly refers to the Hab as the Giving Tree.

And with this, the buffer is out of negative digits and back to zero.

Sol 415

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 422
ARES III SOL 415

“Down five kilo, Mark.”

“I’m not surprised,” Mark replied. “Most of it’s probably from my skeleton. Common in low-gravity environments. A little higher than this point in other Ares missions, though.”

Spitfire considered this. “Ares mission lasts one year, yeah? This point in other mission, you be home two months now.”

“You know what I mean,” Mark said. “Come on, your turn on the scale. Everyone else has been.”

“Blood pressure,” Spitfire said carefully. “Temperature. Reflex. Breathing. You know the drill.” That last was a pat phrase from several of the television shows they’d watched, and Spitfire liked it. She liked it even more once drill was explained to her as not being a tool in this particular usage.

The other four castaways had been through the process already. NASA had suggested this to them in the morning’s chat. Before long they would no longer have access to the sample scale (nonessential equipment for the cross-country drive to come). This seemed like a good time to do another physical and assess the health of the crew. Blood work was out of the question, of course, but the usual non-invasive diagnostics could still be done.

To no one’s surprise, Dragonfly had the worst results thus far, with her body weight down ten whole kilograms below the baseline readings taken three hundred sols before. Mark’s loss of five kilograms came in second, but he’d had much more mass to lose than any of the others, even Fireball.

The dragon, incidentally, had actually gained three kilos. There were a couple of jokes about eating rocks, and then they moved on.

Spitfire went on to administer the other tests. Lungs clear, lung capacity undiminished. (Dragonfly was the only one whose breathing had grown weaker.) Temperature normal, heartbeat sound normal. Pulse rate slower, blood pressure slightly lower, both within margins of error according to the database on the Hab computers. In short, Mark was about as healthy as could be expected, right down to the barely visible burn scars on his upper right arm.

Spitfire was silently grateful for one fact: the only illnesses among the crew, aside from varying levels of magic deprivation, had come from injuries. Apparently neither the Equestrians nor the lone human had brought any infectious diseases to wipe out the group.

Or anyway, if they had, they were diseases for which everyone had standard resistance. If Spitfire understood parallel universe theory, the odds of Mark’s germs and pony germs being more or less identical were actually not terrible. Of course, most of what Starlight Glimmer babbled about when talking about the two universes made no sense to Spitfire, so she could be wrong.

But that didn’t help with her main concern. Mark, by deliberate decision of his bosses, had been isolated for weeks prior to launch to ensure he didn’t have a communicable disease to give to his crewmates. The ponies hadn’t been as cautious, but their weeks of training came close enough to isolation that it seemed to have worked out the same. But whichever planet the lot of them returned to first, the non-native would have to deal with the full range of disease, and the rest of them would have weakened immune systems from all this time in space.

Put bluntly, when they got back, wherever they got back to, they were all going to be really, really sick.

“Okay, Spitfire,” Mark said. “Your turn.”

“Fine.” Despite her lack of hands, Spitfire had done most of the work so far. But hooves failed to cope with the added difficulty of performing the tests on oneself, so Mark had to step in for this part. She hopped onto the worktable, stepped on the scale- down one and a quarter kilograms, not bad- and then submitted quietly to Mark's careful and cautious movements.

She couldn’t resist the ear flick when Mark stuck in the ear thermometer (a much more pleasant tool than the old-fashioned model in the Amicitas medical kit- that dinosaur was getting left behind along with the scale). Mark flinched, and Spitfire’s ear-flick became two flattened ears. “Said sorry for kick you,” she said crossly.

“And I think my abs forgive you,” Mark said. The bruises had faded some, but they were still visible when he took off his shirt. “But I’m still a bit gun-shy.”

“Get on with it.” Another pat English phrase Spitfire had embraced wholeheartedly, especially since it had fewer syllables than a lot of single English words.

Everything else checked out fine until the last test, the breath capacity test. “How much?” she asked, when she heard the results.

“Twenty percent drop,” Mark said. “That’s as bad as Dragonfly’s.”

Spitfire groaned, flopping forward on the table. “No,” she said, “it’s worse.”

“You wanna tell me about it?” Mark asked.

Spitfire snorted. “So you can finish my… sentences… for me? So you can correct me?”

Mark sighed. “Everyone, can you go find something to do in the rover or something?” he asked.

“You sure about that, Mark?” Dragonfly asked. “I think we all know Spitfire can kick your ass, even with only eighty percent of her lungs.”

“Out.”

Fireball chuckled. “Bug isn’t wrong,” he said.

“Out, out.”

“Come on, everyone,” Cherry Berry said. “I’m sure Dragonfly can find us some more wires to inspect. Suit up.”

Five minutes later, Spitfire and Mark were seated on a bunk, alone in the Hab. “Okay, we here,” she said, not bothering to hide the bitterness. “What you want me say, huh?”

“Well…” Mark seemed to think (for a change) before speaking. “First, how about this? You say what you want in pony, and I’ll talk in English. That puts us on a level playing field.”

“What?” Spitfire slipped into Equestrian at once. “But you don’t understand Equestrian! You certainly can’t speak it for crap! That’s why we all learned English!”

“I understand more than you think,” Mark said. “I’m a bit rusty, since you guys don’t go off into huddles so much anymore, but I had a lot of opportunities to listen to you. And seriously, you guys never told me what’s so wrong when I try to speak it.”

“Remember Filthy Fred?”Spitfire asked. “When you try to speak Equestrian, you sound like that almost all the time.”

Mark flinched. “That bad?” he asked.

“Worse. Like walking past drunk stallions at the air show.”

“Um… I got walking and males, and something about flying,” Mark said.

“What do stallions sound like when sexy mares walk by on your world?”

“What do… ooooh,” Mark said, understanding. “I think I see where you’re going. I sound like that. I wish you’d said.”

“We didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“Was that embarrass?” Mark chuckled. “Believe me, that ship sailed long ago.” He sobered a little and said, “Think we can keep this up now? How about you tell me what your real problem is? I know it’s not me talking down to you, because I haven’t done that for ages.”

“You’re not gonna drop this, are you? Fine.” Spitfire slumped. “I’m not just a soldier, Mark. I’m an athlete. I’m one of the twenty-four top fliers in all Equestria. Or I was, before I spent over a year in space.” She shook her head. “I’ve read the parts of your medical papers I can understand. They all say space weakens the body. When you come back you get back most of it with time and work, but never all.

“And then you tell me I’ve lost twenty percent of my lung capacity? I’m a flyer. A high-altitude flyer. I need every bit of lung function I can get. You might as well tell me that I’ve had half a lung cut out,” she shouted, making a gesture with a forehoof across her upper barrel. “It amounts to the same thing! I’ll never have that edge again! I’ll never be able to go as fast for as long as I used to.” She slumped and finished, “Mark, you just told me I lost the Wonderbolts.”

Mark put his arm around the pony’s shoulders. “I think I got most of that,” he said. “And first off, you don’t know you’ve lost your edge. We studied humans in space for up to two years. Humans, not ponies. We know nothing about pony recovery time or abilities. And you’ll be going home to a world full of magic. Who knows what’s possible there?”

“I do,” Spitfire muttered. “Once you lose the edge, you never get it back. I’m going to be like Wind Rider- an old has-been clinging to lost glory.” She slapped a hoof against the frame of the bunk. “I’m too young to be like Wind Rider, darn it! I have ten good years left in me!”

Mark hugged Spitfire a little tighter. “Spits, I’m telling you, it’s going to be all right.”

“I’m telling you it’s not! Don’t patronize me, Mark! It’s over!” Spitfire, hardened veteran, steel-willed officer with over a decade in the EUP behind her, caught herself sniffling. After a moment she decided she didn’t care. “It’s over…” she moaned, and buried her face in Mark’s side.

And then, to her shock, Mark pushed her away.

Mark, the softest, most annoying person Spitfire could think of, Mr. Cheer Up, Mr. Good Feelings, had pushed her away just as she was going to start crying.

“I’m not going to accept that,” he said quietly. “It’s not over. You’re going to survive this. You’re going to go home, and you’re going to fly faster and higher than ever before. Because if you don’t, Mars wins.” He pointed a finger at the Hab wall. “That bastard of a planet out there has been trying to break us for four hundred and some sols. In a hundred and forty sols we’ll be on our way home laughing at this fucking planet that thought it could break us. Laughing, do you hear me?”

Spitfire had lost all urge to weep. For the first time she could recall, probably for the first time ever, she heard in Mark Watney’s voice the same tone that Cherry Berry had when she was in full Steel Eyed Missile Mare mode. No… like that time when she’d been a cadet at Wonderbolts Academy, and she’d been thinking about washing out after a particularly bad day. She hadn’t said anything, but the training officer had sounded exactly like this.

“Look at all the ways Mars has tried to kill us,” Mark continued. “Impalement. Explosion. Decompression. Suffocation. Poisoning. Lightning. Starvation. Blunt force trauma. And we’re beating it, Spitfire, we’re beating the bastard. For four hundred sols we’ve beaten it. So don’t you dare let it have a victory now!” He looked down into her eyes, which had gone as wide as any of the others’, and said, “Are you going to let this fucking planet beat you, Spitfire?!”

The answer was so automatic as to be involuntary. “Sir, no sir!”

The response to that was, apparently, tradition in two universes. “I can’t hear you!”

“SIR, NO SIR!!”

“Are you going to go home, work hard, get back into shape, and show this planet where it can shove its twenty percents?”

“SIR, YES SIR!”

“Good!” And then the moment was gone, and Mark was his smiling, gentle self again, giving Spitfire another hug. “Now let’s quit this touchy-feely remake of Full Metal Jacket and go join the others, okay?”

“Um… yeah,” Spitfire said, totally confused. Had what just happened been some sort of prank? Or had she actually touched something in Mark?

She did feel better, so there must be something real in it.

“One thing,” Mark asked, “What’s so bad about being me? And why do you call me Mark Windy?”

“Not Mark Windy,” Spitfire said in English. “A pony. Wind Rider. He was a hero, once. Not more, not now. Old. Angry. Washed up.” Another pat phrase, but not one Spitfire liked.

“Okay,” Mark said. “I know the type. But that’s not you. That’s never going to be you.”

As Mark walked over to his spacesuit rack, Spitfire could only hope he was right.

Author's Note

Mark Watney is never going to be R. Lee Ermey. But he's also a born survivor, and apparently one of his very few buttons involves giving up.

I had no idea where this was going to go at first; I just wanted Spitfire and Mark to have a scene, since Spitfire is far and away the most distant of the Equestrians from Mark. I don't think Spitfire will ever particularly like Mark, but we'll see...

Sol 418

MISSION LOG – SOL 418

It’s been a little while since my last entry, but I’ve been busy, what with hunting down electrical leaks in the Whinnybago, helping do pre-trip physicals, and doing other prep work. So I’ve got a lot of ground to cover to tell you how I got where I am now, which is back in the Hab after another attempt at Sirius 7.

It really helps that the skies are clear again- well, except for the fact that it’s now considerably colder in the Whinnybago at night. The RTG and the insulation in the habitat compartment help with that, but this morning we woke up in a cuddle-pile, and we definitely didn’t go to sleep that way. And getting up and suiting up in the chill was no fun at all, let me tell you. But it’s not really uncomfortable yet, so we’re dealing with it.

Over the past week I’ve been monitoring the noontime power output of the solar cells. On Sol 410, with the clouds still in full effect, the panel I tested put out 108 watts at high noon. Today, Sol 418, with the sky clear except for the normal pink haze, we got 122 watts. That’s excellent news. So long as we have this kind of weather, we’ll get maximum recharge out of the system.

Over the past week we went over the electrical system of the Whinnybago twice and Rover 2 once. We found four bare spots on the wiring and one outright break (in a nonfunctional system, obviously), not counting the four entire wiring harnesses we removed because nothing they led to still functioned. We didn’t throw them away, though; they got added to the scrap and tools in the back of Rover 2. There are so many potential uses for wire that I just don’t want to part with it unless I have to.

Between that inspection and double-checking that the remaining cut ends are both switched off and insulated, we’ve secured the circuits about as well as we can do without actually dismantling the pony ship. I mean, more than it already is. The thing already looks like it spent six months at a U-Pull-It parts wrecker yard.

And, finally, we performed the two tests for Sirius 7B. Yesterday we left the Hab on a full electrical charge, one hour before dawn, with the harness for the solar panels on the roof of the trailer disconnected, so that only the RTG was still putting power into the system. Everything else, of course, was pulling power out. We ran until the power readings read 10%, which means more or less 48,600 watt-hours consumed. Distance traveled: fifty-seven and one-ninth kilometers, for a consumption rate lowered to 850 watt-hours per kilometer, probably thanks to the power leaks we patched.

We reconnected the solar panels, spread out the spares from Rover 2, and spent the day more or less as before. We pre-cooked four days of potato rations before leaving, so each round of taters only required about four minutes to bring from freezing to edible. (Quick thought; if we bring in tomorrow’s potato rations from the saddlebags to thaw each day, we can cut even that in half.) In every other respect we acted just like before- playing with the computers, talking, reading, recharging suits, whatever. And this morning, when we woke up, the battery charge was within 1% of full.

Yeah! Go team! Protect those pirate-ninjas!

This led to today’s experiment; drive back the way we came, with the solar panels disconnected again- basically, run all the same conditions as before- with the motor clutches on the rear two wheels of Rover 2 disengaged.

Here’s the logic behind this. The wheel motor systems are designed to produce a relatively low speed but outrageous levels of torque. Bear in mind, Rover 2 by itself hauled the wreck of the pony ship- a weight two and a half times its own. (Okay, it didn’t do it entirely by itself. We had a unicorn and a dragon to help over the gullies. But if the ground had been as flat as it looks from orbit, it would have. And if the ponies had used larger wheels for their landing gear, we could have done it a lot quicker than the one kilometer per hour. Seriously, the Ares rovers are fucking beasts.)

Now, the logic is that electric motors have a flat efficiency curve, i. e. that so long as the load isn’t zero or too heavy for the motor to budge, it’s at or near peak efficiency, and thus pouring all the electricity to one engine or distributing it among four or eight makes no difference. Thing is, that’s not necessarily so. In fact, once the load on an electrical engine drops below fifty percent of its rated capacity, its efficiency drops off. Below twenty percent, it becomes outright shitty.

The reason is friction. Friction constantly steals a bit of any engine’s efficiency- the bearings rub against each other, they rub against the housings, etc. When you lower the load you lower the electricity needed to move it, yes... but you also raise the percentage of the electricity that’s being eaten by that constant friction drain.

And as I said, the engines in each rover wheel are monsters. NASA wanted energy-efficient rovers, but they wanted a vehicle that would be able to climb over bad terrain and get its crew home a hell of a lot more. And the same idiots who gave us safety-glass helmet faceplates and one-use disposable CO2 filters said, “Well, there’s no kill like overkill,” so they gave us motors which could pull England across the Channel and connect it to France, nearly.

I exaggerate a bit, but the key point is that the rover motors are overpowered. That’s a good thing for getting a twenty-six ton load started, but once it’s moving it only takes a little juice to keep it moving. The apparent load drops off a cliff, and friction- aggravated by the excess weight of the Whinnybago- starts going all om nom nom on the efficiency. And telling the computer to cut all power to those motors doesn’t help, because if you do that the motors immediately become dynamos, producing a massive drag on the other engines that more than eats up any power they produce.

Now, of course deactivating two wheels out of eight is not going to give us a twenty-five percent efficiency boost. First, when we’re getting up to speed, all that torque is welcome. As beefy as these engines are, twenty-six tons from a dead start on six motors is a bit above one hundred percent of rated load, so the efficiency takes a hit until we’re up to speed. Also, every time we brake the connected motors regain a bit of the electricity we’ve lost, but the wheels with the clutches disconnected don’t do that. Free-wheeling wheels don’t turn dynamos. So with the six-wheel configuration we lose efficiency both starting and stopping.

And then there’s up-slopes. The six-wheel configuration does not like anything above a one in four upgrade. I actually had to get out four times today and re-engage the two wheel clutches long enough to get us out of gullies we had to cross, because we couldn’t find any banks less steep than a thirty degree angle. When we make the trip for real, that represents lost time, which means lost recharge, which means shorter legs of the trip. It also means wasted energy stopping and then accelerating again.

NASA tried the experiment on the streets of JSC (and that must have been a thing for the tourists to see, though I feel sorry for the engineers who had to move their cars out of their on-street parking). They got an efficiency gain of twelve percent in Earth gravity on perfectly flat streets with no obstacles and little braking or accelerating.

So what did we get? Well, yesterday we got 57.11 kilometers on 48,600 watt-hours. Today we got… drum roll… 60.53. That’s a 5.5% efficiency improvement, 805 or so watt-hours per kilometer instead of 850. After that we recharged for a couple hours and drove the short distance back to the Hab, which we had to drive past before. And here we are.

Five point five percent helps, but not one hell of a lot, especially when you consider there’s going to be a lot of terrain where we won’t be able to move without those two extra wheels. And critically, we drove more or less in our own tracks going back to the Hab in that second test, so at least a bit of that efficiency improvement is down to not having to slow down to pick a way around obstacles. (And there’s going to be a lot more of those where we’re going than there are in Acidalia.)

In short, we can only disconnect two motors if we can count on a really long, mostly level stretch where we can just barrel on through. Otherwise it’s not worth the hassle.

Now, to be fair, the issue isn’t really power consumption so much as power generation. You can put up with shitty efficiency so long as you have fuel to throw at the problem. And we do have an advantage in that right now Mars is getting rapidly closer to the sun, and will continue to get closer during the trip. To make things better, Schiaparelli is almost on the equator- 3 degrees south latitude. That means, if anything, we’ll get a slight gain in power from the solar panels as the trip progresses.

But that’s not enough. We don’t know what Mars will throw at us next. We might break down for days for some reason. We might find an obstacle NASA hasn’t spotted from space that makes us detour. We might have more dust storms- autumn is the beginning of the main dust storm season, as the southern hemisphere warms up and gets really active. We really need that seventy kilometers a day.

So let’s look at current ideal, best-case recharge rates. With eleven good hours of recharge time in a sol, if we use them all we’re guaranteed of a full battery. But my math says there’s very little margin. If we lose more than half an hour of prime recharge time, we don’t start the next day on a full battery.

I say eleven hours, but that’s not precisely true. There’s almost twelve hours of good charging daylight each day. The problem is, I use an hour of it each day for driving, in addition to the pre-dawn drive. If I reconnect the solar cells and drive with constant recharging, I get about 3.6 pirate-ninjas in that hour, or about enough power for three and a half kilometers more. The less efficient charging right at dawn would probably stretch that to four, which requires maybe an extra nine minutes of driving. Push it any farther, and it becomes unsustainable.

I can’t throw more solar panels at this. We only have six spares, and anyway with the saddlebags and roof storage already accounted for there’s no place to put them.

Maybe Starlight Glimmer could stick those solar power catchers she made for the cave farm on top of the panels. Not the same ones, of course. The solar panels are lightweight and can’t stand to have a big fucking slab of quartz sitting on top. But maybe a thin layer of glass…

Maybe I see a way out of this. Yeah. Time to talk to the man with the plan… or the unicorn with the horn… or something.

Author's Note

The exact efficiency curve of electric motors depends much on the motor and its power rating. It's not far off a horizontal line, but that's only after the first twenty percent or so. An electric motor moving less than twenty percent of its rated load, according to my reading, really is shit for efficiency.

Sols 423-424

MISSION LOG – SOL 423

Seventy-one point seven five kilometers!

AND, this time, a full fucking tank of pirate-ninjas long before sunset!

We are celebrating, and honestly this time. I’ve broken open two of the meal packs and divided up bits here and there to give us all at least one flavor that isn’t alfatato.

(God, that’s a horrible thought; a genetically engineered spud that tastes like hay, or a bean that grows taters on the stalk. I hope I never live to see it. Of course, somebody will read this and think, “What a neat idea! And I’m sure Mark Watney will be honored to see the product of his genius in person!” Well, future reader, let me be clear: if you do make it, keep that shit the fuck away from me unless you want to wear it. I like to think of myself as a gentle and nonviolent person, but I have my breaking point, and that will be it. Fair warning.)

Okay, to explain the solution: hothouse roofs.

It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much.

On Sol 421 we went to the cave. Cherry drafted Spitfire to help her tend to the farm, including all the just sprouted new potato plants. The rest of us went and harvested the best remaining big chunks of rock crystal. These had to be absolutely clear, so sunlight could pass through. It wasn’t easy, since we already used the best crystals in the cave for the jumbo booster batteries, but eventually Starlight said she could use extra magic to alter the shape of the quartz to fit what we need.

Which she did next. We made thirty rather thick slices of crystal and laid them out in a large open spot at the back of the farm. (We only need twenty-eight, but spares.) A bit of magic later, Starlight had the thick chunks of crystal turned to really thin sheets, one meter wide by two meters long each. They’ll just barely fit through the cave airlock this way, but we had to do it here, because of the next step in the process.

The problem with crystal is, it can actually be more fragile than glass in certain ways. Cracks in glass propagate slowly, because the molecular structure is irregular. The whole definition of crystal is that it has a very regular structure, so if a crack finds one of its lines of cleavage, it’ll zip right down it, and all you have left is shards. And that’s a major concern, because these are thin sheets of crystal glass that will have to deal with every bump and jolt along the way, plus a daily temperature swing of between sixty and seventy degrees Celsius from hot to cold and back.

So we decided to add a lamination layer to our crystal panels to make them more resistant to breaking- and to make it easier to replace them when we have to.

That was Dragonfly’s job. She wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t need much persuading. She cooked up a clear form of goop in her guts and spread it with surprising evenness across each of the slabs- surprising because the process involved projectile spitting the stuff from a few meters away, then wrapping the overflow around the edges of the slabs. She then nibbled off the excess gunk to recycle it.

Seriously, changelings are adorable, but they’re also gross as hell.

Anyway, we didn’t take the slices out to the rover immediately. There was no point in exposing them to the aforementioned temperature extremes until they were installed. And installation would require a bit of preparation. Besides, the laminate needed some time to cure properly.

Yesterday we took the full Whinnybago out almost to Site Epsilon. There we found a spot in the gully nearest to the mountain where someone standing on top of the bank could almost look straight down at the trailer. We then went to the cave, loaded the panels onto the roof (we’d removed the saddlebags for this operation) and carefully drove the things to the trailer. We then went back and fetched eight magic batteries, because what came next was going to take a lot of juice.

The frames of the solar panels are not designed to be opened up, at all, ever. In fact, they’re designed to hold together despite tremendous stresses, because they have to ride a resupply mission that launches at accelerations no human could tolerate and then land on Mars in a giant tumbler with air bags and everything. But there is a little lip sticking up from the surface of the actual panels, so that when they’re stacked you don’t actually have the panels rubbing against each other. That’s what we had to work with- that and a lot of pony magic.

Fireball and I spent nearly two hours and six batteries standing on thin air with nothing between us and broken everything except the willpower of a unicorn. We “stood” on either side of each panel as, one by one, the laminated crystal sheets were levitated down to us so we could carefully and precisely seat them in the lip of the frame. Thankfully, they were a perfect fit. We were very careful, both for the sheets and for the integrity of our spacesuit gloves. But the thick layer of clear laminate around the edges protected us. We got through all twenty-eight without a hitch.

Then Starlight put us back on solid ground so she could finish the job. She snugged up the lips of all twenty-eight panels to hold the new panels firmly in place, using the wrapped-around laminate as a sort of rubber gasket. And then she stretched the crystal. She didn’t make two big meter-square pyramids per panel, as I’d suggested. She had a better idea. She made a bunch of little pyramids- fifty of them, twenty centimeters on a side, per panel, with rounded and reinforced edges and peaks. As she pointed out, the smaller each pyramid is, the less distance the sides will wobble on each bump, and the less likely they are to crack or break. It’s a damn good idea, and I give her full credit for having it.

In addition to turning the roof into a giant cheese grater, she laid a very simple zero-power refraction enchantment on the panels; any light, from any direction, that hits the glass gets transmitted through and directed straight down on whatever part of the panel is directly below.

Let me tell you, it makes the panels look freaky as hell. They’re not totally black, because a lot of light gets reflected off the original solar panels, and much of that escapes back out the pyramids normally. But any light coming, for example, from the sky or from landmarks behind the pyramids gets sucked down inside them. So when you look at ‘em, all you see is a distorted reflection of the solar cells, plus a little bit of glare reflected off those cells. And that glare is never anyplace you’d expect to see glare, like on the tops or edges of the pyramids. Very Uncanny Valley of the Kings.

Then we drove back to the Hab. On the way back one of the crystals broke, and we had to replace it with a spare, using the last of the batteries we got from the cave. After seeing the damage, Starlight says she might be able to repair them en route, and if they can’t be repaired, we’ll bring enough crystal on the Schiaparelli trip to replace about one-third of them. But for now, we wanted to go with all original installation for the test.

Now, why are we going to all this trouble? Simple. Before, each solar panel had two square meters of surface area. With the new crystal bubbles, they have a surface area of 2.8 square meters each.

Now, it’s not perfect. At early and late hours of the day you’re still dealing with a shallow angle of attack on the solar panels which reduces their effectiveness. But the slightly higher profile of the pyramids catches more of that light, sooner and later, than before… and from about 0930 to 1500 hours Mars time, when the sun is shining down on the entire surface of the pyramids all at once, we’ll get as much as a forty percent boost to our recharge power- in theory.

Today we tested the theory. Net result, averaging out recharge rates over the day: a power gain on the altered panels of 20%, in round numbers, over what we had. Hence seventy-one and a bit kilometers, plus full batteries long before sunset.

It’s not all clear gain. Power consumption per kilometer is up, because we added about a ton and a half of material to the top of the trailer. Even stretched thin, quartz weighs a LOT. But we still have a significant power surplus now. With this boost we could technically start a little later, drive a bit longer, and still have a full battery. And if we get into serious trouble, we might need that. But I’d prefer to stick with seventy or seventy-one kilometers per day and just enjoy having more power than we need. With that in mind, we’re still going to pre-bake all our potatoes and keep an eye on power consumption.

Margins are nice to have. In the time we’ve been stuck here on Mars, we’ve had margins and not had margins, and it’s a lot more fun to not have to worry quite so much about everything going to shit and all of us dying because we just had to have one fresh baked potato.

MISSION LOG – SOL 424

Back at the Hab. None of the pyramids broke on the two-day shakedown.

The next time we take out the Whinnybago, it’ll be when we leave the Hab for the last time. Testing is done. All that’s left is to load this puppy up, cross our fingers, and hope nothing goes wrong.

Author's Note

Buffer is one and a bit, as I try to push forward.

For reasons why my energy is down, check my latest blog entry.

Sol 426

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 434

ARES III SOL 426

The speakers hissed and popped with noise, but the voice that came with the noise came out clear and distinct. “Friendship, this is Hermes, voice comms check. Friendship, Hermes on voice comms check, over.”

Mark nodded to Fireball, who switched Amicitas’s transmitter on and said, “Hermes, Friendship. Lotta noise, but we hear you. Stand by for Mark.”

The human grinned, adjusted his borrowed pony headset and said, “Good to hear your voice, Martinez! I’ve been practicing my Morse code, but I guess it won’t be needed. Over.”

Fireball switched his own headset over to the magic comms. “Friendship confirms voice contact,” he said. “Report reply sent at 11:14 hours.”

Cherry Berry’s voice replied, “Copy that, Fireball. Report sent over Pathfinder chat. Let us know when you and Mark are done.”

“Will do.” Fireball switched back to the ship radio, then leaned back against his flight couch. “Well,” he said, “got nine minutes wait for reply. What ya gonna say?”

“What would you say, in the same place?” Mark said. “If you could actually hear the voices of your people back home?”

“Easy. ‘I quit.’” Fireball growled softly, continuing, “I had enough space for lifetime. I crashed on launch and lived. Been stuck in orbit and lived. Looks like I’m gonna live after crash and been stuck in whole other universe. Think someone giving me a hint.” He smirked a reptilian smirk and added, “Gonna go out on top of the game.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Mark said. “Once I get back to Earth, I’m never going up again. Not that it’s likely NASA would ever give me another flight, but if they did, I’d turn them down.”

“Why?” Fireball asked. “My lord, she say, you astronaut now, do what I say. But you… word… you asked for this.”

“Yeah, I volunteered,” Mark said. “And don’t get me wrong. I loved every minute of being an astronaut, up to the moment I got stranded here. After that, not so much.”

“What’s to like about astronaut?” Fireball asked. “It’s mostly boring, except for total scary parts.”

“Are you kidding?” Mark asked. “It’s, like, the greatest adventure ever. You get to experience zero-G. You get to see things almost nobody ever gets to see, first-hand. Whatever science you’re interested in, you’re instantly on the cutting edge of it. And you get the knowledge that everything you do is this incredible privilege, something that only a tiny lucky few people will ever get to experience.” He shrugged and added, “The pay’s pretty shitty, though.”

Fireball snorted. “Dragons don’t do adventure,” he said. “Dragons are adventure for other people.” He couldn’t suppress a chortle as he remembered a line from what was still his favorite of all the Earth books NASA had sent up. “Dragons make you late for dinner.”

“I thought dragons made you dinner, period.”

“Never!” Calculated pause. “Well, hardly ever.”

Mark laughed. Score one for Fireball.

“Seriously,” Fireball continued, “we not monsters like hydra or chimera or manticore. People leave our hoard alone, we leave them alone. We like nice, quiet life. No trouble. And flying rocket is nothing but noise and trouble.”

“Are you kidding?” Mark said. “Yeah, it’s scary, but it’s also the most exhilarating experience of my life! Riding into space on top of the biggest controlled explosion ever devised by the mind of man!”

“But you never do it again?”

“Nope. Not once I’m home.” Mark sighed. “I’m glad I visited Mars, but being stranded here taught me how much I took little things like breathable air, not dying if I step outside, and food that isn’t a goddamn potato for granted. Let new Ares missions come back here. I’ll cheer them on from my comfy chair, in a house with open windows, eating nachos and drinking coffee.” The human shook his head and muttered, “Fuck, but I miss coffee.”

“Just thought,” Fireball said. “Coffee. Dragons don’t get coffee. Never drank it until dragon program folded into changeling program.”

“So, what?” Mark asked. “Are you saying you can’t get coffee without being an astronaut?”

“I don’t know how make coffee. Not without wall-plug coffee pot.”

The admission embarrassed Fireball enough that he was grateful that the voice on the radio prevented Mark from delivering whatever rejoinder he’d been about to make. But once the words sank in, he was less grateful: “Friendship, Hermes, we read you clear, but your mikes are set to vox. Repeat, your mikes are set to vox and we’re hearing everything you say. And recording it for posterity. Over.”

Mark gave the dragon a Look.

“Oops,” Fireball said, and switched the transmitter off. Then he remembered that Hermes had signed over to them, reactivated the transmitter, and said, “Friendship copies vox.”

“And for the record,” Mark said hurriedly, “although I firmly believe other people should have the chance that was cut short for me on Sol 6, I will happily work with NASA in whatever capacity they believe I can best advance the cause of the human exploration and colonization of space. Talk to you later, Friendship out.”

Fireball didn’t need the neck-chopping movement Mark made with a hand to switch the transmitter off properly this time. “Walk back much?” he asked with a grin.

“Hey, those people are holding my back pay for the last year and a half,” Mark said. “Granted I probably owe them every penny for what they’re spending to rescue me, but I have to live on something when I get home!”

Fireball’s eyes widened. “And Dragonlord has my hoard!” he gasped. “All my stuff!”

“Yeah. So maybe we should wait to quit until we actually get home?”

“Oooooooh, yeah,” Fireball agreed.

“And after someone teaches you how to make coffee.”

“Yeah.”

Author's Note

Adding to the buffer a little bit at a time. I should have two full (short) chapters in the can before I go to bed tonight, and I'll try to get a little writing done tomorrow morning before I leave for Dallas.

Sol 429

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 437
ARES III SOL 429

“Cherry, look at this!”

Cherry Berry paused in her work on the cherry tree next down the row. That work consisted of little more than walking around the trunk as much as possible and thinking happy thoughts at the trunk and roots, but that was just how earth pony magic worked- or, at least, it was all she knew. “What is it, Mark?”

Mark had grasped one of the lower branches of the cherry tree at the top of the row and pulled it down for easier view. “Look at these buds!” he said.

“Yes, I know, Mark,” Cherry said. “The fresh leaves should sprout in about three weeks, I think.” She’d actually had to work a little to make the trees take as much of a nap as they had. Insofar as trees could feel, they felt happy and full of pep. They were impatient to wake up again and resume growing. Rest time was over, and the sheer number of buds suggested there would be a bumper crop of fresh-grown, low-toxin sweet leaves for tea-making just as they were ready to depart.

“No, no!” Mark said. “Look at these buds! See anything different?” He pointed his finger to the clusters of buds out towards the very whip-end of the branch.

Cherry Berry looked. At the moment they just appeared to be buds and- no, wait. These were larger than the leaf buds. A lot larger, although any bud on a cherry tree was going to be tiny. “Are those flower buds?” she asked.

“Can’t be anything else!” Mark grinned. “I actually did a project as part of one of my undergraduate botany courses, going out to Jackson Park every day and monitoring the cherry trees from dormancy to first bud to full bloom. This is exactly what I remember cherry flower buds looking like!”

“That’s wonderful!”

“That’s impossible!” Mark said, still grinning. “These trees are too young, there hasn’t been enough cold weather inside the cave, it’s the wrong time entirely- there’s every reason in the world why this shouldn’t be happening, but it’s happening!”

“Well, of course it’s happening because-“ Cherry’s elation vanished, replaced by a sinking feeling in her tummy. “It’s because the trees know we’re leaving,” she said. “I think they want to say goodbye.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “Do trees actually think, where you come from?” he asked.

“Hard to say,” Cherry Berry said. “They don’t think like ponies, that’s for sure. But they do have feelings, and they know a little what’s going on around them. And I think they might hear me a bit, the same way I hear them. The same way most earth ponies hear plants, if they learn to listen.”

“So earth ponies aren’t hobbits,” Mark chuckled. “They’re ents.”

“Ha, ha,” Cherry Berry said, sarcastic. “Look, I can believe the trees are thankful for the care we give them, can’t I?”

“Sure, sure,” Mark said in a placating tone. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make fun of you.”

“Good.” Cherry stroked a hoof down the tree trunk. “I really wish we could take them with us,” she said. “All the way home, I mean. I never grew a tree from seed to adulthood before.”

“Look at it this way,” Mark said. “We brought life to a lifeless world and gave it a fighting chance. That’s more than most people get where I come from- animal or plant.”

“I know,” Cherry sighed. “But the first trees I saw all the way through. I’d like to have even just one so I could show-“

Not far above Cherry’s head, something went fwoomp. A few seconds later, it also went crack.

A branch about five hoofwidths long settled almost silently to the ground between Cherry and Mark, covered with fresh green leaves.

Mark looked at Cherry. “Did you just do that?” he asked.

“No,” Cherry answered, shaken. “At least not... I didn't mean to. I don’t know how…”

They stared at the fallen, leaf-covered branch for a long moment.

“The mister!” Cherry shouted. “Take off the cap, it’ll hold water for it to soak in until the roots grow out!”

“Need to find some wire!” Mark shouted back. “If the leaves get into the water, the plant might drown! Cherry trees don’t do well with too much water!”

“I’ll find the wire! You have thumbs, you take care of the mister bottle!”

“Right!”

They rushed off to different parts of the cave, looking for the things they needed, while the stick spread its newborn leaves to catch the magic crystal sunlight.

Author's Note

Finished off tomorrow's chapter before I left home, which is good, because that's the only writing time I've had today.

Speaking of time... it's about bedtime. Still a TON of prep due tomorrow...

Sol 432

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 440
ARES III SOL 432

Starlight Glimmer looked at the alfalfa growing in the cave. For some reason, today it smelled nicer than she remembered it ever smelling before.

Starlight had been raised by somewhat overprotective (and overbearing) parents in a well-to-do home in a unicorn settlement. She’d been brought up believing that grazing, like an ordinary, homeless nopony, was Just Not Done. You ate your hay from a bowl or in a casserole like civilized ponies did. But back home, if she’d smelled a hay field smelling as sweet and rich as the scent wafting off the little patch of cave soil now, she would have been tempted to take a few bites.

That, however, had been before spending almost exactly a year eating hay, hay, hay, hay, hay, hay, potato, hay, hay, potato and hay with a side order of hay. Today the smell comforted, but it tempted not in the least.

Today the magic field session had been cut short- as short as Starlight dared keep it while allowing Dragonfly the minimum she needed. The regular batteries would recharge in seventeen days in the cave if let alone, but for safety’s sake she worked on the twenty-day estimate- five percent per day. In theory the thirty normal batteries they now had would fill three empty batteries every two days. One battery could run a magic field projection for thirty-eight minutes, which seemed to provide enough of a magic environment for the health of the Equestrian members of the crew.

But today she’d pushed all the power she could into the fifteen giant-sized batteries with their repulsor enchantments, filling them up and, in the process, depleting the remaining batteries to a critical level. At least twenty-one of those batteries needed to be full- the seven for the Sparkle Drive and fourteen others for emergency use on the trip- before they departed.

Once they left the farm, the recharge rate, based on the six castaways and their meager output of magic alone, would be less than two percent per day- substantially less, because that recharge rate had been in the first days after the crash, when Dragonfly still had a magical surplus. Now, though no longer critically deprived of magic, she still soaked up enough of the trace magic field produced by the others to lower the whole considerably. The result would be an ongoing battle between recharging the smaller batteries and using them to keep the big batteries, which couldn’t recharge from the crew, at full strength. And, of course, they’d need to burn a little daily to keep Dragonfly healthy- well, functional, since healthy wasn’t going to happen until they got back to Equus- as much as possible.

For that reason Starlight had declared a moratorium on voluntary magic use. The batteries, from this point until launch, would be strictly for the most necessary and urgent needs, and even those kept to dead minimum. Furthermore, to ensure at least twenty-one full batteries no matter what, the magic time had been cut from half an hour to an amount that could be powered by one-fifth of the current daily production- ten minutes a day. And if anything happened that required magic to fix, that would be slashed further, to five.

The others, thankfully, had accepted this without complaint or even comment. It wasn’t as if the logic behind the decision hadn’t been obvious to everypony. And it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been struggling to scrape together five minutes per day of magic three months before. But her efforts to scrape together extra batteries for the last bit of their stay had, in a way, spoiled the others with half-hour recharges, or even ten-minute periods of concentrated magic that felt like being home again. After even a short period with those options available, a ten minute regular field felt like penance in comparison.

And, in fact, Starlight had at least one rebel- one she simply couldn’t rein in. Cherry Berry insisted on using magic time to fiddle with that broken branch she and Mark were keeping in the hand mister. Starlight’s fur practically rocked back and forth with the tug of war between Dragonfly’s body sucking at the magic field from one side and Cherry’s earth pony magic demanding more from the other side.

“Mark?” Cherry asked, as Starlight was considering the situation and wondering what, if anything, could be done about it. “Do you think these roots are long enough yet?”

Mark took a quick look. “Damn, I wish you could have done this for all those alfalfa cuttings that didn’t take.”

“I tried,” Cherry said. “I wasn’t motivated.”

“You sure are now.” The human took a close look in the slightly grubby water of the mister can. “I’d rather they were a bit longer. We need to pot Groot as soon as we can, so the roots can settle into the soil properly before we transfer him to the Whinnybago.”

“Groot?” Starlight asked.

Cherry looked up. “Hasn’t Mark told you that story?” she asked. “Here, ask him to tell it again while I work a bit more with Groot.”

Fireball cleared his throat. “You know we not supposed to add weight to the MAV, right?” he asked.

Cherry didn’t hiss like a changeling or growl like a dragon, but the glare she shot Fireball worked just as well to shut him up at once. Once satisfied that the question would not be repeated, she walked off with the edge of the mister bottle neck in her teeth, the leaf-covered branch rubbing her nose.

“Oookay,” Mark said quietly. “Well, now hear the tale of the Guardians of the Galaxy, a group of aliens thrown together in the name of adventure. One of their number was an outcast from a species of tree-like aliens. Although wise and patient, he had a language barrier problem, so that the only thing any of the others could understand was the phrase, ‘I am Groot.’”

Mark went on to briefly describe the noble sacrifice of Groot and the birth of his seedling/offspring, as it had played in the theaters during his college days.

Once this was done, Dragonfly said, “So what you’re saying is, you named that Groot because he’s a little seedling?”

“Yep.”

“Dumb pony idea,” Fireball snapped. “You think that cherry branch going to save us or something on the flight?”

“Well,” Mark drawled, “it won’t throw itself on a grenade or anything like that. But considering what it and its relatives have done for the sanity of the person who’s going to fly our ship…”

The five others looked over at Cherry, who was talking to the seedling and walking it around the larger relatives as if they also were part of the conversation.

“Smart pony plan,” Fireball said slowly. “Very smart pony plan. Very smart. What can we help?”

“Wait.” Spitfire spoke up, pointing to the seedling. “We take on MAV? How much mass?”

Mark considered. “Seedling, pot, soil, water? Ten kilos tops. Probably less.”

“We all get ten kilos too,” Spitfire insisted. “Thing to remember by. Science sample. Stuff. Ten kilo each.”

“Okay, fine,” Mark said, shrugging.

Starlight never said a word. She kept looking at her suit chronometer, watching for the ten minute mark to come around. But she considered adding a minute more for the sake of Cherry Berry’s mental state… and wondered what would be the most important twenty pounds or so of stuff from this world to take home.

Assuming NASA would allow sixty extra kilograms on the ship, that is.

Author's Note

Keeping the buffer up. I forgot to bring all my extra laptop batteries, so I can't really spare time or power during dealer room hours for writing.

Another reminder that taking away the cave also means taking away most, if not all, of their supply of power for new magic. Starlight is worried about this; after all, it's her job to worry about magic consumption.

And as for the wisdom of adding however many kilograms to the MAV, two points. First, with the booster system there appears to be a small margin; and second, all space and no cherries make Cherry Berry something something...

Sol 434

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 442
ARES III SOL 434

[09:13] HERMES: Morning, Watney. Lewis here. How’s your morning?

[09:30] WATNEY: Good morning, Lewis. Things are just delightful here. I’m enjoying actual food again and sharing bits of it with my friends, so only half my meals right now are potato. We’ve got everything loaded except the batteries at the cave, Sojourner, and Cherry Berry’s new little mascot, which is already sprouting roots. Have I mentioned lately that what they call ‘earth pony magic’ is an absolute miracle to a botanist’s eyes?

The only cloud right now is that Starlight has cut magic use completely. She intends to leave here with twenty-one normal magic batteries plus the fifteen jumbos all 100% full. So Dragonfly gets only three minutes a day of magic field time, Spitfire doesn’t get flying time anymore, and the rest of us have been told where we can stuff any special requests for spells.

Today we’re going out to the cave for an hour to check on things, and then I come back for last inspections and diagnostics on all the rover equipment and the gear from the Hab installed in the Whinnybago. It’s make-work for two weeks, really.

So we’re relaxing and enjoying our elbow room while we have it. On Sol 449 we shut down the Hab and transfer to the cave. On Sol 450 we do the final loading, and just before dawn on Sol 451 we begin about fifty sols of driving. Once we start out, we’ll be crammed cheek to flank at least until launch day. I doubt it’ll be much better once we get on Hermes.

[09:43] HERMES: I’m sorry to add an extra cloud, Mark, but NASA just spotted what looks like the first dust storm of the normal Mars storm season. It’s early, and it’s currently in far eastern Arabia Terra, but it appears normal so far. No destructive winds, no electricity, just more dust in the atmosphere than usual.

[09:55] WATNEY: Believe me, Commander, I’m not going to complain if Mars wants to be only normally malevolent for a change. Is the storm moving or growing?

[10:07] HERMES: Barely any movement- a few kilometers a day. Too early to tell if it’s strengthening. We’ll keep you updated. Once you turn off Pathfinder we’ll need you to use the alien radio at least once per day to let us know you’re all right and to receive new information as we have it.

[10:19] WATNEY: Roger. Once we’re rolling, the radio will be on from one hour after sunrise to one hour before sunset. We’ll make at least one transmission per day after we’ve camped for recharging.

By the way, since you bring up the Pathfinder link, Cherry Berry wants to know if there’s any update to the flight sims for the launch? She wants to train as much as possible before we leave, considering that we have free time.

[10:32] HERMES: I don’t know anything about that. Out of curiosity, though, how does everybody rate? I know you barely scored adequate on the most simple scenarios when we were training.

[10:43] WATNEY: Starlight never took the sim. Fireball completed the basic sims- control recognition, etc. Spitfire and Dragonfly have successfully completed the flight-rated sim package. Cherry Berry has completed all the standard and advanced missions.

[10:44] JPL: Sorry, Mark, but we’re still tweaking the MAV modification procedures, and probably will be right up until Sol 500. Also, we want to keep Pathfinder open for last-minute updates before your departure, so no more big data transfers.

Speaking of, be sure to bring all the video and high-res images you have on storage media. The MAV comms check out perfectly, and the triple-redundant system will provide plenty of bandwidth to send all of it to us long before launch.

[10:55] HERMES: Standard and advanced? How many do-overs on the advanced sims?

[11:06] WATNEY: No idea. Probably a lot. There were some days that Cherry lost her English after two hours of sitting in the MDV.

[11:09] WATNEY: Roger. In fact, since we have time, I’ll get some more footage of all the Hab systems and the cave. Beck, Vogel, sorry about this, but I’m clearing your personal drives for extra storage.

Quick question: do you want us to leave early? We could be on the road in four sols if you think an early start is justified.

[11:20] HERMES: We understand. Vogel says all his family pictures are backed up in his Hermes account anyway.

[11:32] JPL: No, keep to your schedule of Hab shutdown Sol 449, cave departure Sol 451. If the storm intensifies quickly we’ll just have you stay there and write off the Hermes intercept. If the storm remains as it is, we should be able to guide you around its leading edge with no trouble. But our worst nightmare is having it blow up into a 2018-level global storm with you stuck halfway between the cave and the MAV. We don’t think an earlier departure reduces the odds of that enough to make it worth the increased risk and discomfort.

[11:54] WATNEY: Well, that’s a cheery thought to end this conversation on. But I have another. Follow along with my logic, okay?

As we know, the US is signatory to international treaty that says nations can’t claim territory outside of Earth. That means the whole of Mars is legally international waters, except for temporary installations like the Hab or ships like the MAV. When we leave the Hab, we’ll be in international waters for the entire trip to Schiaparelli.

Now, there’s no one in the MAV to give us permission to board. Technically you could, Venk, but you’re millions of miles away. So in practical terms I would still be boarding and taking control of a ship in international waters, without the consent of the owner and against the original intent of those who launched her.

By my reasoning, that makes me a pirate. A space pirate! Arrrrr!

[12:05] HERMES: Watney, my commission in the United States Navy is still active. It would be my regrettable duty, under standing orders from the Department of the Navy, to arrest you for piracy. And if I’m not mistaken, those orders still allow for summary execution if communication with higher legal authority isn’t operational. I’m pretty sure the mount for Hermes’ cooling vanes counts as a yardarm…

[12:16] WATNEY: You take the fun out of everything, don’t you?

[12:18] JPL: I’d explain to you how stupid that idea is, Mark, but now I kind of want to see all the aliens wearing eyepatches and peg legs…

Author's Note

Uh-oh.

Buffer still at 1, BTW.

Sol 437

MISSION LOG – SOL 437

Over the last couple of sols I’ve pulled out the video camera and done a ton of documentary shots of the Hab and the cave. Today I went one step farther-, or, rather, ten kilometers farther.

Without the 4.5 tons of Mars rocks we used to simulate the jumbo batteries for the test runs, and with the two Hab hydrogen batteries installed, Rover 2 has enough range to get from the Hab to Site Epsilon and Trans-Epsilon (the mountain ten klicks the other side of Site Epsilon) and back. This time I took Cherry Berry with me, partly because she hasn’t seen the valley on the other side, and partly to get her out of the cave farm for the day.

Since we had the juice, after we drove up to the Beauty Spot and took some footage, we drove a couple kilometers around the south rim. The valley is a spot where one of the gullies that criss-cross Acidalia widens and deepens for some reason. I suspect the gradual effect of the rare water seeps like the one we witnessed the first time we came here. We didn’t get to see running water today, but we still got some pretty pictures. It looks a bit like some of the flatter parts of northern Arizona.

Just making this trip, it occurred to me that we never got around to giving proper names to any of the features around the Hab. I checked with NASA, and it turns out they’ve stuck with the placeholder names given in the mission briefings.

So I discussed the matter with the aliens, and we decided to fill the gap ourselves. I mean, why not? I’ve already named a valley after Commander Lewis during the Pathfinder trip.

So, let’s go down the list of features, beginning with the five geology sites we trained for. Site Alpha was just the flat ground the Hab sits on. That already has a name, though none of us ever used it except Lewis: Fertility Base. (Acidalia means “named for Venus”, Roman goddess of love and fertility. And since I was along as a botanist, performing the first experiments with live plants on the Martian surface, some higher-up decided it rhymed with Tranquility Base. But none of us liked it, so aside from Lewis declaring Fertility Base fully operational at the end of Sol 2, we all just called it the Hab.)

Site Beta was going to be the nearest gully. The problem is that the eight gullies that run across the path between the Hab and the cave farm are pretty much interchangeable and uninteresting. So are the ones we crossed going south on the Pathfinder trip until we got into Chryse Planitia. Neither I nor the ponies feel like they deserve names, but if we don’t somebody will. So we officially name them after dwarves: Doc, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey and Tyrion, for the gullies going west to east from the Hab to Site Epsilon. If the others need naming, between the Lord of the Rings and Terry Pratchett there’s plenty of names. Just use Bombur for a really wide gully, okay?

Site Gamma is the crater behind the Hab- well, technically Site Gamma and Site Delta both. Gamma was the outside of the rim, and Delta was the dunes inside the crater proper. The crater is nothing in Martian terms- only a few hundred meters across. There are millions like it around the planet. But this one is ours, so it gets a name. The ponies have no attachment to it, so I’m calling it Martinez Crater, after our pilot who used it as a landmark on the way to sticking a perfect landing.

That leaves Site Epsilon, the old volcano where we found the crystal cave. I let the ponies have that, and they’ve decided to name it after their ship, Mount Friendship. Actually, they asked me to give it a Latin name like Acidalia. I think “friendship” in Latin is something like amicitas. So Site Epsilon, once we leave, shall forever be Mount Amicitas. The cave gets its own name: Salvation Cave, because it definitely saved our asses.

Finally, there’s the trans-Epsilon mountain. Since our name for the crest of the mountain is “the beauty spot”. I’m naming it Mt. Johannsen. The big weathered rock on the outcrop overlooking the valley is Vogel Peak, after our silent stone man from Germany. And, since it gets my naming-shit-for-my-crew task over with at one shot, the valley the Beauty Spot and Vogel Peak both overlook will be Beck Valley.

Tomorrow I’ll send in my naming requests, along with the requests for that flood channel in Ares Terra that I named for Lewis. We’ll see how many NASA and the astronomical community approve. I suspect the names for the Ares III crew won’t stick. Naming features for wives and kids works sometimes, but the bureaucrats frown on us naming stuff for ourselves. And, of course, NASA will be gun-shy about lawyers from Disney or the George R. R. Martin estate.

But if they say no to Mt. Amicitas, we’ll go to the mat for it. The ponies are strongly for it, and I’m on their side; more than anything else except the existence of that cave, friendship is the reason we survived this long. And friendship deserves a name on a map.

It deserves that at the very least.

Author's Note

Buffer is gone. We'll see if I can get something written tomorrow.

Sol 443

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 451
ARES III SOL 443

Dragonfly took a closer look at one arm of Fireball’s space suit. “Right elbow,” she said. “Outer layer fraying. Pass me the scope.”

The scope was a bit of improvisation using one of the arm-mounted cameras from a spare Ares suit and a small flashlight from Dragonfly’s toolbox. It worked much better than just holding an open space suit to the light or, worse, turning it inside out (a task which ranged from difficult to impossible depending on the part). A quick look at the Hab’s main projector screen, which had been set to show the scope’s video output, confirmed Dragonfly’s fears. “Worse on the inside,” she said. “The middle layers are probably damaged, too. I’ll have to patch that one inside and out.”

Starlight Glimmer had made her edict stick, all but eliminating the use of magic from the crew. This chore, however, was a vital exception; this was, in essence, the last chance Dragonfly had to patch and maintain the worn-out, scuffed-up pony space suits. That task required both surplus food and enough magic to replace what the changeling used up producing the quick-setting rubbery substance that acted as patches for the suits.

But in order to conserve the magic batteries, this time Dragonfly was going through all the suits and making a list of all the necessary repairs (aside from the obligatory re-soling of the suit hooves, which all of them needed). Only with a firm plan in mind would she go forward with the repairs, using as little time as possible while two magic batteries provided power for the operation. (To further save time and energy, Starlight would smooth scuffs and scratches on the helmets and visors at the same time.)

“I’ve been thinking,” Starlight said. “About how difficult would it be to install the radio from one of Mark’s spacesuits into one of ours?”

Dragonfly paused in her inspection to consider this. “Pretty tough,” she said. “We’d have to wear the batteries inside our suits, with the radios constantly on. The last thing we want to do is punch holes in our suits for control interfaces, so we couldn’t turn the radios on or off or switch channels on the fly. Why?”

“Well, Cherry Berry will need one for the launch,” Starlight said. “That is, if she gets the okay to fly the ship. Using Mark’s radios means we don’t have to activate the telepresence spell and burn mana. And I was thinking it’d be good for you to have a comm system that your body wasn’t actively sucking the power out of.”

“Look, last I counted, Mark had five space suits functional,” Dragonfly said. “He can’t wear two, but they’re still good for parts. He’s taking two functional suits with him on the trip. That leaves only three spare radios. There’s five of us.”

“Spitfire’s still struggling with English,” Starlight said. “And I won’t be scouting the trail with you because of this big suit patch.” She tapped her own suit, which lay on the table under the one Dragonfly had been inspecting. “And neither of us will have any significant role during the launch unless things go really badly. That leaves you, Fireball and Cherry, all of whom have important jobs either during the trip or the flight.”

Dragonfly still looked doubtfully at Starlight. “We’ll have to test the range,” she said. “The aerial would have to be somewhere inside the suit, too. Not in the helmet, either- too crowded. And I don’t know where we’d mount the microphone. And that all assumes the radios can be removed from those suits. What I saw looked really complicated, with that whole helmet and backpack assembly thing and-“

A small black rectangle clattered onto the worktable. A moment later, a cable flopped on top of it, followed by the clatter of a small radio aerial.

“Three minutes per suit,” Mark said. “They have their own built-in batteries good for four hours in case main suit power runs out. Need to scrounge some connectors to link the aerial and antenna cable. Microphone will have to be tied to the body- it threads through the helmet normally. No big problem.”

Starlight and Dragonfly watched as Mark walked over to the Hab’s spacesuit rack to pop another radio out of the unused suit harnesses.

“Is it me,” Starlight said, “or has he been getting more smug the closer we get to departure day?”

“It’s not just you,” Dragonfly said.

MISSION LOG – SOL 443

The ponies spent today on suit maintenance. We took advantage of the suit down time to pop three surplus suit radios out of the suits we’re going to leave behind (Johanssen’s, Lewis’s, Vogel’s) and put together a harness so that the ponies can wear them under their own suits. It was Starlight’s idea, and it’s not a bad one. The suit radios use very little juice and have four-hour emergency batteries built in, so recharging them from the Whinnybago system amounts almost to a rounding error in the energy budget.

But the work on suits got me thinking about my own suit, and one problem I probably should have given more thought to- specifically, air.

The rover will get all its air from the trailer. The trailer hitch includes electrical and air linkages that allow one rover to keep the other running in case of emergency. In this case we’re using it to let the magic pony life support provide air, leaving the original Rover 2 life support for emergency backup. But there’s a major problem with this- namely that this system doesn’t provide compressed pure O2 and N2 for my suit to recharge its internal tanks from.

My original plan was to just bring along tanks from the Hab. Twenty-five liters of compressed O2 and ten liters of compressed N2 would be more than enough for my suit, with plenty to spare for charging up the MAV’s life support tanks. But compressed air tanks aren’t all that lightweight. I’d much prefer to use much smaller tanks if possible. And I think I’ve figured out how.

I may have mentioned that the pony ship airlocks dispose of air by gradually venting it into space. Not so either the Hab airlocks or the rover airlocks. Our airlocks have high-power compressors that put the air into small holding tanks. Those tanks can then be uncoupled, swapped around, whatever. The practical upshot of this is that I can stash air from the pony life support link and use that to refill my suit tanks.

Of course, it’s not perfect. My suit is designed to hold one liter of oxygen and two liters of nitrogen. The rover compressor can’t separate the two- that’s what the atmospheric regulator does in the Hab. So the suit will have to cope with an atmospheric mix instead of pure gases in each tank. I have no idea what kind of glitches that will cause.

But it saves a bit of weight- and, much more important, a ton of space in the rover. So that’s the plan I’m going with. I’ve passed on the idea to NASA, and they’ve given tentative approval, though they’re going to rush a ton of tests through to make sure it works before we leave here.

The ponies are rolling their eyes at me, but I don’t care all that much. I’m solving problems using good old human know-how and good old human-built equipment! Hell, if I only had a few more parts, I could probably convert the whole cave into a giant spaceship, which we would then use to escape Mars (after the inevitable first-person-shooter adventure in which we defend it from vaguely insectoid aliens and an insane AI).

Seriously, ever since we began work on the Whinnybago I’ve felt like a window pops up over my head to say ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED! every time I fix something or solve a problem. It’s a damn good feeling. It makes me feel like I’m in control of my own destiny for a change.

Yes, I know Mars will find some way to leave me helpless and at the mercy of my currently annoyed pony roommates. But I’m a space pirate. I live in the moment.

Arrrrr.

Author's Note

About to play some anime music stuff (as in, right after I post this- 9 PM Central 8-21-18) at http://listen.dementiaradio.org/ . Tomorrow night's regularly scheduled show is the Music Lessons playlist.

Mark, better ease off the ego trip. Yes, you can fix things. No need to brag.

Sol 449

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 457
ARES III SOL 449

[10:04] WATNEY: We just used the pony ship radio to do a final comms check with Hermes. Fireball is sitting in the trailer waiting for the response. We’re pretty sure we’ll get one, though, since we’ve checked the system five times in the past two weeks.

Almost everything is done. All the medicines, all the tools, all the remaining spare canvas, sealing resin and seal-strips have been loaded. One hundred twenty days of food is crammed into the habitat compartment of the trailer, including over 200 kilograms of pre-baked potatoes. We’ve bathed, cut hair, shaved, filed, done all the hygienic things we can. The last medical information went out over this chat and the pony water-telegraph yesterday. The suits are patched as well as we can manage. All that remains is to load the components for the Sparkle Drive and the seven tons of magic batteries we'll be hauling to Schiaparelli.

We've eaten our last baked potato crisps. We've played our last D&D session on the worktable. We've abused the decon shower and the Hab toilet for the last time. We don't have to worry about alternating between airlocks anymore. And when Fireball snores, we no longer have the luxury of going to his bunk and poking him until he turns over, because the bunks have seen their last night of sleepers.

The time has come to leave. This is the last message I’ll send via Pathfinder. When I shut down the Hab, Pathfinder shuts down too, probably forever. (But we’re taking Sojourner with us, since the rover computers have been modified to control the little rover as if they were Pathfinder. If we can manage it, we’ll use one of the spare radios from the MAV to allow a linkup from the rover to the satellite network around Mars, giving Sojourner and its replacement rechargeable battery an extended mission.)

It’s a little melancholy. I’ve been here for what amounts to fifteen months. For much of that time this place was the only thing between me and horrible death. And, of course, this was where I met the aliens who helped me survive those fifteen months. In this place we’ve eaten, slept, learned each other’s languages (well, mostly). Here we slew rampaging princesses and rescued dragons. Here we wept over the dead body of Albus Dumbledore, and again on the quay of the Grey Havens. And here we made plans, good and bad, to keep each other alive and semi-sane on this godforsaken world.

Maybe years from now archaeologists or historians or something will come back, put a dome over all of the junk we leave behind, and restore the Hab to its original operating condition. After all, this was the site where an Earth man first met intelligent alien life. But it’s a lot more likely that Mars will eventually chew up and swallow the Hab long before humans return. In fact, if we ever terraform Mars, the Hab will end up under over a kilometer of ocean water, which will do a lot more damage than the Mars of today could dream of.

But mostly today I’m thinking about the mission I never got- the mission that got cut short on Sol 6. Trips with Lewis and Vogel to the various geology sites. My botany experiments with Beck. Maintenance chores with Johanssen. And, after collecting half a ton of rocks and gigabytes of photos and movies, the Sol 31 shut down and departure to begin the seven month flight home.

I’m grateful for my new, 67% quadrupedal crew, but I still miss the one I spent years training with. And I hate it that this planet stole the mission we trained for from us.

I’ve already shut down most of the equipment- the heaters, the atmospheric regulator, the water reclaimer, the oxygenator, the air circulation fans, the lab equipment, even the lighting. Only the main computer and the main power system are left. And let me tell you, it’s damn quiet in here. The ponies are in their suits, minus the helmets. Every time they shift their weight, it’s like a thunderclap. With no fans or equipment running, Mars is a fucking silent place.

Sorry. I just turned this chat into a log entry. Hopefully someone will copy it over when they publish the book fifty years from now. In the meantime, let me finish on a more professional note.

Fertility Base mission complete on Sol 449. Final findings: large deposits of water ice confirmed not far below the surface, including methane hydrates and large amounts of perchlorate salts. Rock strata indicate multiple events of sedimentary layering of generally basaltic materials, either by repeat flooding or ocean deposits. Once purged of perchlorate contamination, the Martian soil at this site, high in potassium and phosphorus deposits, makes more than adequate material for cultivation once Earth bacteria and a minimum of proteins are incubated within it. Aside from the methane deposits, no obvious signs of an ongoing or extinct Martian biosphere were discovered. Finally, first contact was established with an alien civilization, studies of same ongoing.

Mark Watney, senior NASA personnel on Mars, signing off from Fertility Base. Sirius 8 is rolling.

[10:32] SYSTEM: WARNING- PATHFINDER LOS- ATTEMPTING TO REACQUIRE

[10:33] SYSTEM: REACQUISITION OF SIGNAL CANCELLED BY EXECUTIVE OVERRIDE

The cave airlock opened, releasing a smell none of the six castaways had smelled for longer than they could remember- the smell of pollen.

“Wow,” Mark whispered, as he, the ponies, the changeling and the dragon looked across the array of color flooding the farm.

The flowers had bloomed- not just the cherries, but all the flowers. Tiny pips of dark purple dotted the upper portions of the alfalfa plants. Pale white and lavender flowers towered over the ground-hugging potato plants. The fresh-grown leaves on the cherry trees seemed almost crowded out by the masses of white and slightly pink blossoms that drooped in cascades almost down to the cave floor.

And along the walls of the cave, where they had been cultivated by Starlight Glimmer, patches of the rainbow crystal enchantment shifted colors back and forth, some pumping trickles of water up from the rear of the cave, others giving off tiny pinpricks of light and heat. The as yet uninfected crystals, still (for now) the vast majority, still reflected the sunlight beamed in from the collector crystals, still glittered with reflections of the riot of color, still magnified the beauty of the moment.

“Yeah,” Cherry Berry said. “Wow.”

And although they spent most of the remaining day exploring and recording the event with cameras, it was a long, long time before any of them had a word to say beyond, “Wow.”

Author's Note

Not much to say here.

Sol 450

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 458
ARES III SOL 450

“Friendship, Hermes. NASA confirms you as go for Sirius 8 at least as far as the headwaters of Mawrth Vallis. That portion of the trip should take you fifteen sols. Once out of Mawrth, we expect to detour you around the leading edge of the sand storm, which should be creeping up on you by then. The storm is currently about six hundred kilometers across and moving due west at four kilometers per hour.

“In unrelated news, we thought you’d like to know that Dr. Beck formally proposed to Johanssen yesterday. They asked me to perform the ceremony, but I had to remind them that naval captains aren’t authorized to conduct marriages, even less so mission commanders appointed by NASA. So that’ll have to wait until after landing and quarantine, at least. Beck asks me to tell you he wants you to be best man. You can imagine what Martinez had to say about that.

“Finally, a quick status update on our mission: Hermes just crossed back over Earth’s orbit on the outbound leg of our flight. We’re catching back up to Mars quickly and are well on course for rendezvous with you on Sol 551- Hermes mission day 689. If the Sparkle Drive doesn’t work out, then Ares III will surpass Gennady Padalka’s lifetime space flight record of 879 days. Even if you count our time on Mars as breaking the chain, in a few days we’ll eclipse Valeri Polyakov’s record of 438 days continuously in space. Yes, I looked it up. Just wanted to say, you’re not the only one going into the record books for all this.

“See you in about a hundred and four days. Hermes out.”

Dragonfly awoke, uncomfortably chilled. Compared to the temperature outside on Mars’s surface at midnight, it was still warm and cozy inside the cave, but in terms of the controlled environment she’d become accustomed to since the Bad Old Days Which Are Now Over became over, it was less warm than she liked it. She wanted more sleep, and to get it she needed more warmth.

Sol 450 had involved quite a lot of hard work in space suits. Each of the fifteen jumbo batteries, each weighing three hundred kilograms, had to be carefully moved into the cave air lock, then out onto the surface and down the side of what Mark now called Amicitas Mons to the rover. There each of them had to be carefully threaded through the complex saddlebag harness so they could hang from the straps without swinging against the big metal support beams running up from the chassis.

While Fireball, Mark and Cherry Berry conducted this operation, the others hauled out the normal-sized magic batteries- twenty-one of them, leaving nine in the cave tethered to the core of the rainbow crystal infection. Then came the Sparkle Drive core, last of all, secured as carefully as possible in a padded mount in the Amicitas bridge.

After that came the personal effects. Cherry’s tree branch, transplanted into a small plastic box, had been stuffed into Mark’s spare space suit and carefully carried down to the ship. Two more boxes followed, filled with cherry leaves to be used for making tea from hot water from the life support system. Another box followed that, containing eight small rainbow crystals that Starlight wanted to get back home for study. Etc., etc., etc.

And then, once all that had been done, Spitfire had pulled out a disc of metal salvaged from Amicitas, followed by a larger chunk of the same material. Mission medals, she said, for the six of them, so that a tiny bit of the ship could go home. After a brief argument (which, for once, Starlight lost), one of the batteries being left behind was tapped for enough juice to cut five more discs and to engrave them with the same message in Equestrian and English:

C. BERRY – S. GLIMMER – FIREBALL – DRAGONFLY – SPITFIRE – M. WATNEY
ESA FLIGHT 54 – AMICITAS MISSION 3 – ARES 3 EXTENDED
ESA / CSP / DSI / NASA

And, in the center of the disc, in place of any symbol or more uplifting motto:

“HOME”

Once all of that had eventually been done, and after a meal made mostly from grazing a substantial portion of sweet-smelling alfalfa blooms, they’d laid out their sleeping rolls, laid down by the entrance, and talked like they’d never talked before. They talked about the indignity of mixing crap into Mars dust by hoof, about hours and hours spent watering plants a dribble at a time, about how they might do it differently if they ever had to do it again. They talked about disco music, about television, about the books in the small digital library NASA had sent them. They talked about their near-death experiences and about the beauty of the world that kept trying to erase the word near.

Not one word was said about the trip to Schiaparelli. The evening had been about memories- the past, not the future.

And, eventually, with no artificial lights except the motes of light from the heater-element rainbow crystals, they’d fallen asleep.

Now Dragonfly was up. Unlike the others, she could see in the almost total darkness, at least well enough to find the pile of sleepers who, three hours before, had been five astronauts lying on five sleeping bags. Fireball and Mark lay at the bottom of the pile, and the three ponies sprawled across the top.

Grumbling a little in ancient Changeling (which sounded not like a hiss, but more like a soft chitter), Dragonfly dragged herself to the pile and squeezed herself between Mark and Fireball on the bottom of the pile. It would be warmest there, between the internally heated dragon and the almost furless human. And if Mark poked her flank, well, she was the one crew member who definitely would not kick him in the gut.

Warm and cozy once again, she drifted back to sleep… and dreamed…

Spitfire dreamed.

“Say, who is that pony?”

“Don’t know. Should I recognize her?”

“She seems a little familiar.”

“Oh, her? That’s Spitfire. She used to be a flyer.”

And just like that, the Canterlot mares walked down the street, leaving Spitfire alone in the rain, wearing a cloudbuster jacket that looked suspiciously like Wind Rider’s.

Behind her, towering twenty hooves tall on the side of a shop, hung a poster: YOUNG? FIT? BRAVE? JOIN THE WONDERBOLTS! The face on the poster was hers.

Had been hers. Three years ago.

She could sense she had wings, kind of. They remained folded at her sides. The thought of opening them, even for a moment, made her gasp for air. Something held her to the ground, tighter than a leash.

Once I was a hero, she thought. Once I turned green flyers and self-obsessed prima donnas into the world’s elite flying team. Then I could have had anything- anyone. But all I wanted was the job, the job of flying and leading flyers.

I could have had a relationship, started a family. Now I’m a broken-down has-been, all alone. The world flies on without me.

And then a group of kids- human kids, with human clothes, with incredibly familiar human faces, running on the streets of Canterlot- ran up to her. “Hey, look!” shouted the youngest girl. “It’s a pony!”

“That’s a pegasus!” a boy hardly older than the little girl snapped, the You Idiot tone drenching the words.

“Wow!” the girl said. “Can you fly, Ms. Pegasus?”

“Well… yes,” Spitfire admitted, spreading her wings and flapping them enough for a slow hover. “But not as well as I used to.”

“That’s not right,” one of the slightly older girls said. “With wings like that, you should be a fantastic flier.”

“Yes,” Spitfire said quietly, “I was.”

“No,” said the oldest girl, who reached up where Spitfire hovered and stroked her orange fur. “You will be.” She waved around at the alleyway, which had changed into the walls of the crystal cave, leaving only a narrow gap to the open blue sky. “We watched you practice here, all the time. Why did you do that if you weren’t going to fly again?”

And then, with a firm shove from the hand against her chin, the human teenager sent Spitfire skywards in a streak of flame. Darkness fled, along with crystals and castles and children. The air boomed around her, sending the clouds scattering.

Spitfire soared.

Fireball dreamed.

The hoard was immense. He was immense. Before long he’d have to seek out a different cave; if he dug this one any wider, the mountaintop would probably collapse on top of him.

It was a good life. Go searching for treasure when he felt like it, eat some crystals, then go home and sleep. Sleep was fun. Sleep was relaxing.

“Good morning!”

But sleep apparently wasn’t on the program.

Standing in a little hole in one side of the cave (five hooves high and wide enough for three ponies to walk side by side) was a short blue figure, like a dragon with a beard. Indeed, like a particular dragon with a particularly silly beard…

“Ember,” Fireball asked, “why are you wearing a ridiculous fake beard?”

“I’m looking for a dragon who might be interested in having an adventure,” said the interloper.

“Adventures? No thank you!” Fireball said firmly. “I’ve had quite enough of adventures! All an adventure is, is being miserably bored or miserably terrified, one or the other! Nasty things! Make you late for dinner! No, we don’t want any adventures today, thank you! My adventures are over! Try asking a pony!”

“Haven’t you heard?” the Ember-like dragon wizard asked. “Adventures don’t really have an end.”

“They do for me, Ember or whoever you are,” Fireball insisted. “I just want to be left alone for a century or two. Just me and my treasure.”

“Oh, really?” The intruder strolled over to a little plinth Fireball had carved out of a stalagmite. “Then you won’t mind if I take these pieces of junk and-“

“Get away from there.”

Fireball punctuated the roar with a blast of flame- just a warning shot, but close enough to make the little wizard-Ember thing duck and take a couple of quick steps away from the plinth. “But why?” it asked when the fire died away. “It’s just some paper, a bit of pony pot-metal, a cheap sapphire, and a magicked-up bit of rock crystal. You couldn’t swap it away at Rainbow Falls, not for a broken goose quill.”

“That’s right,” Fireball rumbled. “I couldn’t.” He looked with fondness beyond the normal dragon possessiveness at the bric-a-brac on the plinth. A disc of steel, a little rusty, with names and other things scrawled on it in two languages. A cheap sapphire, the very last one he’d saved from hundreds of days on an alien world. A bit of quartz that, if you waited long enough, would change into any color of the rainbow while you watched. And a small bookshelf full of books, four of which, bound in bright red, sat in a place of pride alone on the top shelf.

“Very well,” the wizard-thing said. “But be warned; with a wave of my staff I can make your entire hoard vanish except for these things. You would shrink back to a mere dragonling, a whisper of your former might. You’d be driven out of the cave, possibly even forced to move into a pony house somewhere. Or I can just take this nasty junk from your adventures, erase it all, and leave you as you were meant-“

“Stop right there,” Fireball grumbled. “If you think you can take my gold, my gems, and my other junk, go ahead and try. But you will not take the treasure I earned by my blood, by my fear, by my heartbreak. You. Will. Not.” Fireball sat as tall as he could in the cave, his long, snakelike body curling around the little plinth, his disproportionately small wings unfurling to their widest spread. “And if the test of these things is in what I shall give up for them…” He smiled a little. “Then I shall diminish, and go into Equestria… and remain Fireball.”

“As you wish.” In a swirl of blue smoke the fake Ember with the fake beard vanished, leaving behind the words, “But remember that there are adventures yet to come, and deeds to do, before you may enjoy either treasure or mementoes.”

Starlight Glimmer dreamed.

She sat, alone, naked but for her fur, on the surface of Mars. It didn’t seem to be a problem.

In front of her, open and running, sat one of Mark’s computers. It had a smiling pony on the screen that looked very much like a reddish-orange Pinkie Pie, next to the words, “Welcome to Mars Clicker! To make this planet inhabitable, click the left mouse key!”

Starlight read the words, shrugged, and clicked the button.

In the corner of her eye, she felt a hint of movement.

“Congratulations!” the screen now read. “You just moved one grain of dust!”

Starlight clicked the button again. There was another flicker of movement just beyond her field of vision.

The screen popped up a counter: Number of dust grains moved: 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Every time Starlight clicked the button, she sensed something moving. But if it was only one mote of dust- only one mote, on an entire bucking planet-

A new button appeared: Buy a crystal, 20 clicks!

Starlight’s eyebrows rose. What did a crystal do? She clicked the button a bunch of times, then moved the cursor to the button on the screen and clicked it.

The click counter dropped back to zero.

And there, next to the computer, was a little rainbow crystal. It shimmered at her.

Starlight picked up the crystal in her forehooves and examined it. It changed colors at her, but didn’t seem inclined to do much else. Shrugging, she set it down again and looked at the screen for some kind of hint.

The click counter stood at five.

No, six. What in the world- seven now! Every few seconds, the click counter went up one!

She tapped the left mouse button several more times, saw the click counter ratchet up with each click. A new message appeared: Cost of next crystal 200 clicks!

Shrugging, Starlight clicked furiously for a few seconds. But long before she hit 200, a new message appeared: Buy a friend, 115 clicks!

She shrugged, clicked a few more times, and then clicked the button to buy a friend.

“Hi there.”

Starlight looked to her left. Spitfire sat there, facing her own computer. “What are you doing there?” she asked.

Spitfire clicked the left mouse button on her own computer. “I’m clicking a button,” she said. “Each click moves a bit of Mars dust, you know.”

Starlight shook her head, unable to figure things out. The click count steadily increased, without her intervention. After about a minute she got impatient, hit the button rapidly, and bought her next crystal.

Next crystal at 540 clicks! Next friend at 810 clicks! Buy a sack of alfalfa seeds, 250 clicks!

Starlight continued to click. New options opened up as the clicks came faster and faster; a space habitat, a crystal cave, a bag of soil bacteria, potatoes, cherry pits, a space probe, a space ship…

In an hour Starlight was surrounded by the other five castaways, each clicking their computer buttons with single-minded fervor. Dozens of rainbow crystals lay scattered across the dirt, winking and blinking their colors. Like a picture in a pop-up book, the Hab rose from the ground. Off in the distance, a small dead volcano bulged upwards, then sloughed off a bit of overburden to reveal a familiar-looking airlock.

Starlight stepped away from her computer. She could actually see the bits of Martian dust moving now, dancing in the thin Martian air, moving from place to place. No, wait- that one was a snowflake. And another. And another!

Green patches began to spread across the surface. Potato plants sprouted from the soil, instantly full-grown. The sound of running water echoed out of a nearby gully. Clouds swirled in a sky growing steadily bluer with every moment.

Thunder echoed in the distance. Starlight spun around on her hooves to see, on the foreshortened Martian horizon, an honest, normal, water-laden thunderhead.

“What do you think?”

There was a strange human standing next to her- a very little boy, or so it appeared. But when the boy looked at her, his eyes seemed very, very old for some reason.

“This isn’t real,” Starlight said.

“It could be, someday,” the boy said.

“But I didn’t do this,” she insisted. “I’m just one pony. I can’t do this!”

“You don’t have to,” the boy said. He waved a little hand at the place where she’d been sitting. Surrounding her fellow castaways there sat dozens, possibly hundreds, of ponies and humans and other things, all clicking away at their computers. Crystals rained from the sky, half-sinking into the Martian soil as they dropped. More habitats arose, and then followed an immense dome built of hexagonal panels of some kind of glass.

“The process will go on without you,” the boy said quietly. “But it needed someone to make the first click.”

Cherry Berry dreamed.

She walked along the rows of the cherry orchard, wagon hitched to her barrel. This was her life now- the odd jobs she’d done so often, so many times before, in order to pay for her passion.

That passion was gone now. Flying was over. This was her new reality. The earth had reclaimed its own.

“Good morning, little bird,” a slow, lugubrious voice said. A limb which might have been a tree branch or an arm reached out to pick up the pony, wagon and all, and lift her up.

“What- oh- oh, oh my,” Cherry gasped. She looked down at a face surrounded by white blooms, pale bark shining in the sunlight. “You’re- you- are you an ent?”

“What are you doing down there, Cherry?” the cherry-tree ent rumbled. “Don’t you know you belong in the sky?”

“Oh.” Cherry shuffled her hooves on the ent’s spread palm. “But I’m not a pegasus,” she said sadly. “I’m an earth pony. Earth ponies don’t fly.”

“Hoom hoom! That never stopped you before!” the ent rumbled, obviously amused.

“That was then!” Cherry waved a hoof at the row of trees, which now stood in front of a wall of crystal. “Now I grow things! I’ve been doing nothing but growing things for over a year! Maybe… maybe I should have been growing things all along.” She looked down at her hooves. “Maybe I don’t belong in the sky.”

One of the trees turned into another ent, smaller and younger than the great creature holding her up. “Well, ha, hm, let’s don’t be hasty,” it said. “After all, we owe our lives to you, do we not?”

Another tree stood up, its features becoming another entish face. “Certainly we would not exist if not for you, even if our existence is only for a brief time.”

A third tree awoke. “But one could say that we belong in an orchard, on a proper planet, not a cave on, ha hm, a glorified asteroid.”

The large ent holding Cherry added, “But we choose to belong here, where we are. I am very much of the opinion that the question of who belongs where is at least partly up to the creature involved to decide. If you want to belong in the air, who am I to stop you?”

Cherry looked back at her wagon. The little cherry branch in the plastic box pot didn’t become an ent, but it did say in a distinct, high-pitched voice, “I am Groot.”

“Ah, but our colleague speaks truly,” the great ent said. “There are always those who will dispute such things. You have met them before, have you not? What did you do about it?”

“I went ahead anyway,” Cherry said quietly. “Their voices didn’t count. But what do I do if the voice speaking against me is in here?” She tapped her chest with one forehoof.

“Ah, hoom, hom,” the great ent said, “well, that is another matter. You must deal with that yourself. But remember that, somewhere, there are trees who are grateful that, hom hoom, you flew and grew.” With that the massive cherry-ent reached its other hand out and plucked away the wagon harness from Cherry’s midsection. “In the meantime, why not have a quick flight? You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

“But I’m an earth pony!”

“Are you?”

Something felt different on Cherry Berry’s sides. She looked to either side, blinking, gasping with shock as a pair of wings spread from her back and, almost without her commanding it, flapped a mighty flap.

Squealing with delight, the blonde-maned, pink-furred pegasus swooped around the cherry orchard, while the great ent and the lesser tree spirits stood rock-still and watched, smiling.

Mark Watney dreamed.

Mark Watney dreamed that he was surrounded by gigantic potatoes, with little arms and legs. In addition to many potato eyes, they had a pair of demonic red eyes overhanging mouths filled with way too many jagged teeth.

“We hear yous been talkin’ shit about us potatoes,” one of them said.

“We been keepin’ yous alive,” another said. “Where’s yer gratitude?”

“Ain’t we good enough for yas anymore?” a third asked.

Mark gave two seconds of careful consideration to attempting to plead his case and to sway the angry produce to his way of thinking.

Then, having considered the notion all the way to the airlock and jettisoned it into deep space, he bolted between two of the spuds of wrath and ran for his life.

Behind him, mixed with the angry shouts and little footsteps of his pursuers, he heard a song strike up:

Attack of the killer potatoes
Attack of the killer potatoes
You planted them to get you through
And never thought the things you grew
Would come right back to feed on you
(Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!)

Attack of the killer potatoes
Attack of the killer potatoes
They’re tubers off in hot pursuit
They’ll eat you up from hair to boots
And then they’ll file a slander suit
(Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!)

You thought they’d keep you all fed
But now they just want you all dead
Your disrespect has got them steamed
They’re madder than you ever dreamed
So better run- or you’ll be creamed
(Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes!)

So now we have the chase scene
No butter and no sour cream
Just a man whose name is mud
And some tubers out for blood
That’ll teach you to sass a spud
(Potatoes! Potatoes! Potatoes! POTATOES!)

Dragonfly dreamed.

She was alone, in the darkness. She saw nothing, heard nothing, but she could feel a presence in the darkness with her. Somehow she knew where she was, if where applied.

“Hello?” she said. “It's me again. Are you there? Did I make the right choice?”

The voice was not the cold, indifferent female voice she had heard once before. When it came it was male, ancient beyond words, and tremulous with weakness and senility. “You do not belong here,” it said. “You disturb me. You infect me. You must die.”

“Oooo…. kay,” Dragonfly said slowly. “New voice. Creepy threatening voice. I hope the padded room they give me when I get home has enough space for all of us.”

“You must die,” the ancient voice repeated. “I will kill you.”

“At least I know what my mind’s cooking up this time,” Dragonfly said. “You have got to be my cracked head’s idea of Mars. Well, go away. We’ve stopped all your attacks already, and in a hundred days we’ll be gone, off your stupid soil forever. So just shut up and go away, all right? I have enough voices in my head. No vacancy.”

“No,” the ancient voice whispered. “You will go. Others will come. There must be none. You must die. I will kill you.”

“Oh yeah?” Dragonfly couldn’t see anything in this weird blackout dream, but she could shout pretty well in it. “You’ve done a lousy job of it so far, pal! We survived your perchlorates, your decompression, your methane, your storms, your temperature extremes, everything you could throw at us! Your attacks are weak, you stupid planet!”

Now the voice lost its senile tones and gained a hard edge through the wheezy, whispering sound. “You have to succeed every single time,” it said. “I need only succeed once. I have forever and you do not. You will die.”

“Not today, buckhead,” Dragonfly snapped. “Not tomorrow either.”

“You will die,” the voice repeated, much fainter, as if the effort had weakened it too much to continue.

“We will live,” Dragonfly hissed. “We will ALL live, do you hear me? Do you? DO YOU, you stupid planet?”

“ANSWER ME!”

The shout awakened the entire pile of sleepers. “What th- get off me!” Fireball snapped, thrashing to dislodge the ponies on top of him.

“Heeeeey!” Cherry half-whinnied. “I was having a flying-and-cherries dream! Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had a flying-and-cherries dream?”

“What’s all the noise?” Starlight asked, blinking away the sleep. “And what am I standing on?”

“That would be me,” Mark grunted. “Can’t breathe. Off, please.”

“Oops! Sorry.”

“Ow! Watch the wing!”

“Sorry, Dragonfly.”

As the pile unraveled, Mark reached over to the mat where he’d been asleep, found the arm controls of his space suit, and checked the timer. “It’s only forty minutes until we have to be up,” he said. “Might as well make an early-“

“Mark.” The voice was Spitfire’s: low, cold, and sleepy.

“Yes?”

“All of you. Lie down. Shut up. Or I will make you.”

“But-“

“Do it.” That was Cherry Berry, equally cold.

“But-“

“Flying and cherries dream!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mark and Fireball lay back down. Dragonfly crawled between them. The three ponies flopped on top of them and, in a few seconds, two of the three of them were asleep.

The third whispered, “Mark?”

“Yeah, Starlight?”

“Remember when I said that Cookie Clicker thing was the dumbest game ever invented?”

“Mm.”

“It’s dumber even than that.”

The rest of the crew’s final night in the crystal cave, what was left of it, passed in silence.

Author's Note

See idea.

See clever idea.

See clever idea not work out in the least the way you wanted it to.

See the clock tick down on the day, leaving no time or energy to redo the idea.

See the publish button.

Click the publish button.

Sols 451-455

MISSION LOG – SOL 451

Well, the cave farm is now seventy-one kilometers northwest of us. We’re hanging out in the trailer now, with nothing much to do but spend the day waiting for all the batteries to recharge. And I do mean all. Starlight Glimmer ran one of the small magic batteries for ten minutes on field-projection. Then she linked them all so that they’d all recharge the partially spent one. If they recharge completely, it means they can afford ten minutes of magic time a day, which should be enough to keep Dragonfly at her current level of health. If not… well, we’ll see.

Oddly enough, although I feel excited about taking the first step towards finally getting off this bastard planet and back home, I’m also feeling a bit anxious. The only time I’ve been this far from the Hab was during the Pathfinder retrieval trip. Even then I had the feeling that, if I got into trouble, I could get back to the Hab somehow. But this time we’re not going back to the Hab, or the cave. We’re driving over twice as far as I did for the round trip to Ares Vallis and back, and this time it’s all one way.

Of course, in theory we could still backtrack. We could even get all the way to the MAV, turn around, and come back with the food we have on hand. And there would likely be a fresh, edible crop of hay and potatoes waiting for us when we got back. But that’s if nothing goes wrong. This time there’s nobody left behind looking after things. There’s no telling what we’ll run into on this trip. There’s so much that could go wrong.

For the first time I’m really thinking about just how risky this whole enterprise is. And I’m wondering what NASA was worried about, when they green-lit this plan as being the least risky option. Is an asteroid going to hit the Hab on Sol 552 or something and they decided not to tell me? Is the warranty going to expire on Hermes and the next day the interplanetary tow truck has to haul it to the local AAA-certified spaceship repair facility? Is there some secret clause to the treaty that prohibits national territorial claims in outer space that says, “If aliens are on a planet for six hundred days, it belongs to them”?

OK, I admit, I’m being silly. But the thing is, I don’t know. And Venkat, I love you like a brother if my brother were my boss, but I can’t expect you to answer that honestly. You’d tell me what you thought I needed to hear to complete the mission, which is not the same thing as the unvarnished truth. And you wouldn’t be totally wrong to do that, no matter how much it sucks for me on this end.

Eh, I’m going to stop worrying about it. I’m going to see if I can get together four people for a game of computer hearts. Starlight says she hasn’t quite finished her new campaign setting of Middle-Ponyworld. She’s working out exactly how a Ring of Power would function under her world’s magical laws.

Come to think of it, that just makes me worry harder.

MISSION LOG – SOL 452

The sleeping arrangements are… well… communal. And uncomfortable.

A quick explanation: the rear part of the habitat compartment of what was the pony ship is taken up with the life support equipment looted from Rover 1, plus the RTG. The cabinets are stuffed full of hay, with what little space not taken up by that devoted to medicine and other supplies that might hurt from direct exposure to Mars’s so-called atmosphere. The floor space is ringed around with twenty-one foot-wide crystal and metal bricks- the magic batteries. What’s left of a horizontal surface for sleeping on isn’t all that much larger than a king-sized bed.

You may ask, “But where did the ponies sleep when this trailer was a spaceship?” Answer: on the cabinets. Unlike Hermes, which rotates to maintain a 0.4 G gravity in its habitat modules, Friendship had no artificial gravity of any kind. The ponies slept in sleeping bags tethered to the cabinet fronts, much like they still do on our space station and have done since the days of Skylab.

The problem is that this sleeping space was vertical, not horizontal. Even in Mars’s weak gravity, only Dragonfly can still sleep in a bag hung from the wall with anything remotely close to comfort. And it can’t be that comfortable, because when we woke up this morning she was down in the pillow-pile with the rest of us, cuddling up for warmth.

And yeah, even with the RTG only a few feet away, even with the windows blocked up, even with the pressure door to the bridge sealed, and even with the improvised insulation we threw in here, the room still gets chilly before dawn. It’s a fight between the RTG and the air from the pony life support and the metal hull conducting the heat out into Mars’s lethally cold night. So we start out in our own little private spots on the pile of Hab bunk mattresses, and we end up in a tangle of bodies when the alarm goes off.

But on the bright side, nobody’s kicked me in the belly yet.

In other news, the recharge system is working perfectly. The combination of permanently mounted, crystal-enhanced solar cells and the fourteen unmodified panels that ride in a stack on Rover 2 bring the batteries up to full charge well before sunset. And since we start driving at very first light, pre-dawn, we don’t stay up all that late to burn charge at night.

So I drove another three hours, another seventy-one kilometers, and set out the extra solar panels again.

One minor bit of trouble: the magic batteries aren’t recharging as well as the original two did when the ponies first came to the lab. Starlight estimates a recharge rate of 1.4% per day per battery. She puts it down to Dragonfly’s weakened system sucking up more magic than before. Also, in the early days she deliberately strained herself to dump her inner magic reserves into the batteries to build up charge faster. Both Cherry and Spitfire are determined to stop her if she tries doing that again. Fainting Unicorn Syndrome ceased to be funny ages ago.

The good news is, that’s enough to replace the juice used to create ten minutes of magic time- but only barely, and only because we have these twenty-one heavy pointy uncomfortable toe-stub hazards where we sleep. Daily magic production is just enough for that one ten minute window of magic plus topping off the jumbo batteries each sol.

We’ll refine things as we go. For now, it’s more or less smooth sailing.

MISSION LOG – SOL 453

Excellent news- today we left the part of Acidalia with all the shallow gorges. Technically that means we’re in Chryse Planitia now, but the border between the two is really uncertain. They’re both part of the great Boreal Planum, with Chryse being the southernmost extension of the Martian lowlands and Acidalia being the northeastern region tucked between Chryse, Arabia Terra, and the polar regions.

None of which makes a fuck, except that with the gorges gone we don’t have to slow down and accelerate anymore. We squeezed out four extra kilometers today from improved efficiency.

Looking forward to tonight. Starlight says her campaign is ready, and she’s given us templates to use to build our characters. I’ve decided to play the wizard. If Starlight will let me, I’ll have him wear rainbow-striped plate armor, even though technically metal is supposed to interfere with magic according to D&D rules.

But it’s essential, if I’m going to name him Canned Ralph the Gay.

(I’m kidding. He’s not gay. He’s asexual.)

MISSION LOG – SOL 454

We all woke up grouchy this morning, partly because some of us were lying on limbs so hard they lost circulation, partly because the first, and likely last, session of Middle-Ponyworld ended with a TPK. Alas, Canned Ralph, we hardly knew ye. But apparently goblins in Middle-Ponyworld have invented the can opener.

Yeah. Apparently we started out with the Pony-Shire getting invaded by an army of orcs and goblins and wolf-riders and like that. No warm-up. No Nine Riders, no Old Man Willow, no trio of easily fooled trolls, nope. Straight into the rampaging hordes. Starlight still needs to learn a bit more about pacing.

Anyway, things were pretty frosty in the Whinnybago today, even after the sun warmed things up some. For once Lewis’s disco music is a better companion than the ponies. Cherry in particular is relaying orders through Spitfire because she isn’t talking to Starlight, not after a great goblin took her druid, tossed it, and told a worg to fetch.

And from the way Starlight looks at the rest of us, the grudge is mutual.

I suspect that, before today is out, I’ll be asked to take back the DM screen again. Which means more Discworld games. I’m thinking this time I’ll focus on Lancre. Anyway, writing up a campaign will give me something to do. Once I’ve set out the solar panels for recharging, my work day is over.

In the meantime, I think I might take a nap. I didn’t get much rest last night, because see above.

MISSION LOG – SOL 455

Fireball can snore and continue living.

Fireball can smoke and continue living.

But if he does both at the same time another goddamn night, I am going to build a plank and walk him the fuck off it.

By the way, seventy-two kilometers, if you give a shit.

Author's Note

Not feeling well today- sinus infection. This is all I could do.

In the original book Mark's log skips ten sols here.

If he hadn't, it would have been about on this level.

BTW, my sympathies lie entirely with Starlight. Level 1 characters, when confronted with thousands of goblins and orcs, are supposed to run, not attempt to defend their village in a futile last stand. But then, GMs who expect their players to be mind-readers can look forward to nothing but disappointment...

Sol 461

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 469

ARES III SOL 461

“Friendship, Hermes. You’re almost through the southern gap. Now turn directly east if possible. That’ll aim you towards the center of the main channel of Mawrth Vallis. Please acknowledge, over.”

Starlight Glimmer, seated next to Fireball in what had been Amicitas’s co-pilot seat, keyed on her microphone. “Friendship acknowledges, roger wilco, over.” Switching her headset from the ship radio to her suit’s magic-powered comms, she said, “Confirmation from Hermes, Mark. We’re in the valley. The main channel mouth is due east of us.”

“That’s what I figured,” Mark said from Rover 2’s cabin. “Cherry, did you get that?”

“We copy, Mark,” Cherry Berry’s voice added. “We’re clearing a couple of large rocks out of the way now, but the ground is wide open once you get past that last narrow part of the pass.”

Ten days of very easy driving across the northern lowlands of Mars had come to an abrupt end towards the end of driving the previous Sol. This hadn’t been totally without warning- NASA, via Johanssen on Hermes, had warned them- but it had still been a bit of a shock to see the big-ass mountain of flood debris dead ahead, where the low-resolution map in the rover computer showed a wide open valley entrance.

They’d parked close to the mountain and taken some pictures. NASA couldn’t decide if the great mountain that spanned almost the entire mouth of Mawrth Vallis was debris left behind by subsiding flood waters or the moraine of some long-gone glacier. They’d have to wait at least another forty sols to find out, but they’d sent Mark and Fireball out to get enough photos and video to keep the astrogeologists arguing for years.

As a consequence, the Whinnybago had made a late start of it the next day. Partly this was due to the shadow of the mountain blocking much of the early morning light, but mostly it was due to waiting for the broadcast window to Hermes to open so the crew could get guidance, even at eighteen minutes’ round-trip lightspeed delay, from Hermes, its superior Mars maps, and its direct connection to the Martian orbiter network.

Their eyes in the sky had revealed the southern pass between the mountain and the outer edge of the ancient valley mouth, though tight and half-filled with loose debris, was the more direct route around the obstacle. The northern route was twice as far and not that much more open, according to Johanssen. Unfortunately the difference might still have been moot, since a ten kilometer drive had taken an hour and a half, counting the time lost waiting for updates from Hermes.

But that was over- or almost so. “I see the tight spot you warned me about, Cherry,” Mark said. “Fireball, prepare for plus thirty on my mark… now!”

“Plus thirty,” Fireball rumbled, turning Amicitas’s flight yoke to the point marked on the steering guide Mark had installed.

“And zero!”

“Zero,” Fireball said as the rover crept cautiously past a boulder so large the top of it rose almost level with the former spaceship’s cockpit windows. “Boss, how big rocks did you move?”

“Don’t ask,” the earth pony turned forward scout replied.

“Minus ninety in three, two, one, now!” Mark ordered.

Fireball yanked the flight yoke all the way to the right. “Minus ninety,” he said.

“Hold it… hold it… zero!”

Fireball straightened. “Zero,” he said.

“Yeah, that looks beautiful,” Mark said. “Wide open now. Let’s get a little more distance from the pass, and then I’ll turn us due east and open up the throttle.”

“Which way is east?” Fireball asked. “Can’t see sun from back here.”

“Um, yeah, it’s pretty high up by now, isn’t it?” Mark said. “But I can see Spitfire’s spacesuit. It’s the only white thing anywhere in sight. Cherry, I’m following Spitfire. That good with you?”

“No problem, Mark. We’ll stick together for a while. What are we looking for?”

“An upslope. A shallow, level upslope. Starlight, ask Hermes for details, okay? By the time you get a reply, we should be eight or nine kilometers along.”

Starlight nodded to herself, then remembered Mark couldn’t see her head from the rover cabin. “Will do,” she said.

“Lot of trouble to drive up a river,” Fireball muttered from beside her.

“Less trouble than having to work it out for ourselves,” Starlight replied. She switched back over to the radio. “Hermes, Friendship,” she called. “We’re out of the pass now and making full speed due east. We expect to be about nine kilometers east from our current position by the time we get your response. Please give guidance to the best path up the valley from that position. Over.”

As Starlight switched her headset back to suit comms, she heard Mark say, “So, after all of that, are you talking to me again?”

“That depends, Mark,” Starlight growled. “Are you going to let me have my apprentice witch character?”

“Oh, not this again,” Mark moaned in her headset. “I banned all witches from the campaign because I didn’t think you’d have fun being constantly stepped on by Granny Weatherwax. If there’s a serious magic problem in Lancre and any witch is involved in any way, she’s going to take over the whole thing. She just is. That’s how the books worked.”

“They don’t work like that for Tiffany Aching.”

“I am not giving you Tiffany Aching for a starting-level character, Starlight,” Mark groaned. “Look, if you want to be a magic user, be a hedge-wizard.”

“I’m holding out for witch, Mark,” Starlight insisted.

“Dragonfly here. Just wanted to mention the total and absolute lack of rocks in the path ahead. Definite absence of obstacles of any kind for klicks and klicks. Nary a rock. Boulders are conspicuously inconspicuous.”

“Message acknowledged, Thesaurus Jones,” Mark replied.

“How much longer are we going to drive today, Mark?” Cherry asked. “We’re already an hour past the point where we’d normally stop.”

“I’m going for the full seventy kilometers,” Mark said. “We won’t start tomorrow on full batteries, but we can drive in shifts. Assuming no more major obstacles- or at least advance warning without geological detours- we should be back on normal driving schedule by the time we get out of Mawrth.”

“Pretty big assumptions, Mark,” said Starlight.

“I’m thinking big,” Mark replied. “Mars is a pretty big planet, after all.”

“If you’re thinking big, how about you think a little bigger about witches in the campaign!”

“Starlight, drop it. We’re tired of it.” Spitfire’s first words in the radio conversation were the last…

… almost.

“So, talking to me?” Mark asked.

Starlight stared silently out the cockpit windows at the gradually receding mountainside.

“That’d be a no,” Mark answered himself, and then the conversation really did die.

Author's Note

So, yeah. In the original book Mark talks about how Mawrth Vallis is wide open at the mouth and nice, smooth and near-level all the way up.

Take a look at actual orbiter maps, and you'll find none of that is true. The mouth of Mawrth Vallis, along the line of what obviously was the original edge of Arabia Terra, is almost completely closed off by a big-ass mountain. The interior of the valley has splits in the middle, rivulets, and one hell of a lot of boulders, as you would expect if you were looking at a river valley in mountainous terrain on Earth that one day spontaneously went dry.

That said, it's still Mark's best available option. But it's not going to be as easy as all that.

Sol 464

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 473
ARES III SOL 464

Two ponies and a changeling galloped through the valley of Mawrth Vallis, hearts sinking as they drew close to the next obstacle.

“Please, please don’t be what you look like,” Cherry Berry moaned as she approached a sudden rise in the valley floor. The meter-high scarp was bad, but not insurmountable by itself, had it been even and level across the valley. It wasn’t. The water of ancient floods had scoured a trench through the center of the rock layer that made up the scarp, leaving a trench that grew deeper as it rose up the valley. Although it technically grew narrower the farther back it went, the sides also grew higher and steeper. The total effect was a wheel-breaking, rover-dumping obstacle that had to be bypassed.

The previous two days had been full of this sort of thing, which is why the ponies had gone a full two kilometers ahead of the Whinnybago. Large boulders had to be moved or shattered to make room for the rover. The most level, most gradual slope had to be picked out. Three times so far the rover had actually had to backtrack, reversing Fireball’s and Mark’s roles in steering the contraption out of a cul-de-sac. They’d maintained their seventy kilometers per day, but at the cost of falling farther behind in battery recharge.

But this was the worst obstacle yet. A large plateau, twenty-five kilometers long according to reports from Hermes, split the valley in two. They’d been about to take the eastern channel (the valley running almost due north-south at this point) because Hermes reported the western one as narrower, unlevel, and clogged with boulders, some as big as the Whinnybago itself.

And now, well after noon, blocked by impassable terrain, Cherry had had enough. “Buck!” she shouted, and then added in English, “Friendship Actual to rover. All stop, all stop, all stop. And set out the solar panels. We’ve hit a really tough obstacle. We’re not going any farther today.”

“Cherry, we’ve only made forty-two kilometers-“

“And we’re not going to make any more without careful planning, Mark!” Cherry snapped. “It’s after noon already, and we’re on our fifth hour of EVA.” She held her tongue as she looked at Dragonfly, who drooped in her orange space suit. Changelings didn’t have the endurance of ponies even without developing life-threatening levels of magic withdrawal. “We’re going to use the rest of our EVA time to look over our options. In the meantime, stop before you get under the shadow of that mountain.” She took a deep breath and added, “Starlight, report our situation to Hermes.”

“Details, Cherry,” Starlight called back from the old Amicitas bridge.

“Meter-tall rock shelf, almost sheer. The rock shelf is split down the middle by an eroded trench of some kind. The trench walls build up high and steep really quick as you go up the valley, leaving not a lot of safe room to either side without risking a fatal slide into the trench. We’re scouting around to examine our options.”

“Got it. I’ll pass it along.”

“I stopped the rover as soon as you gave the first order,” Mark said. “We’re parked. The plateau is square in the right window. Suiting up now.”

“Good.” Cherry looked over at Spitfire, her white suit badly soiled by several days of long-distance galloping. “Spitfire, go around the north end of the mountain. I want to know more about those boulders. Come back to the rover at 1330 hours.”

“On it, commander,” Spitfire said, saluting and then galloping back down the valley.

Cherry Berry looked at Dragonfly, who had stopped hiding her exhaustion at rest stops the day before. She motioned at Dragonfly’s comms controls before switching her own to the private channel. Once Dragonfly had followed suit, she asked, “Are you up for a bit more scouting, or do you need to go back to the rover?”

“I can go on, so long as I don’t need to gallop,” Dragonfly said quietly.

“Okay. We could probably get the rover up over this shelf, but there’s no point if there’s not a safe path up. I’ll take the eastern side of the branch, towards the valley walls. You take the side next to the mountain. We need a clear, mostly level path at least three times the width of the rover. Anything that puts wheels on the downslope leading into the valley is probably game over. Right?”

“Yeah,” Dragonfly said, saving her breath.

“How’s your suit battery?”

“Nineteen percent.”

“At nine percent you go back to the rover, no matter what,” Cherry said. “I don’t want to risk you getting lost.”

“Getting lost?” Dragonfly waved a hoof at the big flood-scarred wall of rock practically next to them. “Boss, we’re in a valley. A darn big valley, yeah, but still a valley.”

This was true. Mawrth Vallis was bigger than Ghastly Gorge, than practically any canyon or valley outside the Badlands that Cherry Berry could think of. It lay almost fifteen kilometers wide in places, so wide that the actual canyon walls, despite being as much as a kilometer high, just barely peeked over the horizon. Mark had told her there were a couple of canyons on Earth larger- the Grand Canyon was twice as deep and wide, if only about half as long- but that Mars had canyons much bigger than Mawrth- “Valles Marineris is so big that, if Mawrth flowed into it, it wouldn’t even have its own name.”

But it was still a valley. And the mountain next to them, according to Mark, would lead anyone near it back to the Whinnybago.

“Okay. Just be careful. Back to public channel, and get moving.”

Dragonfly didn’t gallop, but she made a decent walking speed up the slope to the right of the wash. Cherry jumped up the shelf- almost as tall as she was- and took off up the left side, gauging the slope, the maneuvering room, everything. Oddly enough, there weren’t a lot of rocks here; the floods which carved out the canyon, and the rock scour they were trying to avoid in particular, must have flushed them farther down the valley to bedevil poor innocent shipwreck victims.

After half an hour Dragonfly said, “Returning to ship as per orders. There’s a path on this side, but it’s pretty narrow. And getting the rover up that first step will be a pain.”

“Roger,” Cherry said. “The way is a lot more open and clear on this side, and the channel slopes merge smoothly with the upper levels of the valley. I’m going to backtrack and see if there’s a path up the sides of the main channel that the rover can climb.”

“Spitfire here. The west channel is no go. Tight, deep channel crammed with rocks. We might make a kilometer per day trying to get through on this side. I’m coming back.”

“Roger,” Cherry repeated. “See you in about an hour.”

She stopped, looking around the slopes near her. The ground here looked different than most of the rest of Mars she’d seen so far. The colors were different- for example, there was the orange not of Martian dust, but good old common clay like she might see on some of the farm roads around Ponyville. That particular shade hadn’t been in the planet’s color palette anywhere near the Hab.

For a moment she felt like she could follow the streak of orange and, in a few moments, be walking past Golden Harvest’s farm, next to Sweet Apple Acres…

… and that moment of thinking of home, instead of a task at hand, opened a crack in her mind.

A wave of panic slammed through her as, for the first time in months, the full weight of responsibility and danger struck her. She’d been fine as long as there was a task, but now that she’d paused, that she’d thought of being in Ponyville again, now that she was off alone by herself, she reverted to a typical Ponyville pony, right down to the hair-trigger panic button. Every fiber of her being shouted at once, I’m not supposed to be doing this! I don’t know what I’m doing! Princess, save us!! I don’t care which princess! I’ll even take Flurry Heart! Just don’t leave this up to me!!

She flopped onto her side, the fabric of her spacesuit scraping the loose dust of the valley floor as she curled into a ball and let the panic attack wash over her. It had been a while, but she knew the symptoms by now- the racing heart, the uncontrollable tears, the waves of fear and shame. Give it a few minutes, a part of her separate from the storm thought. Let it run its course, and she’d be able to control herself again. Trying to push through immediately, without something to focus on, would just make it last longer.

The suit comms didn’t give her that time. “Cherry, this is Starlight. Johanssen apologizes for the bad info. The colors of the valley here make telling surface features difficult, and a meter escarpment is pushing the limits of what they can make out from orbit. They figured you’d just go around the wash on the left side.”

With her insides still storming with fear and anxiety, Cherry found room for surprise at just how calm her own voice could sound. “Looks like that’s what we’re doing, all right,” she said. “If we can get up above the wash, there’s a broad level area that goes for kilometers with almost no rocks. But getting up is going to be the problem.”

“No hurry,” Starlight said. “NASA sent Mark on an extended EVA. They want all the pictures he can get of the rock layers of the plateau. Something about clays and… phyllosilicates, I think Johanssen said.”

“Silicates?” Cherry asked, focusing on the conversation as her lifeline back to sanity. “Like the cave? Didn’t Mark say something about the cave being made over millions of years from dissolved mineral deposits? Maybe this is where the minerals came from.”

“It’s not impossible,” Mark said, cutting into the conversation. “I don’t see any level routes up and out of the main channel on the left side that I’d like to try driving the Whinnybago up. How crumbly is that rock ledge?”

“Not very,” Cherry said. “But I could probably break it down enough for a ramp.” Yes. A thing I can do. Earth ponies are good at breaking rocks. Things I can do are good.

“Half a ramp would do. The rover was made to traverse obstacles half a meter high. Is there enough room on the left side of that gully to work up and around it?”

“Maybe. It’ll take careful driving. I’d rather bypass it altogether if we can.”

“Let me know if you see any good options as you come back. I’m going back in for lunch in half an hour. Dragonfly’s already back.”

She is? She must have galloped straight back. “I’ll be down in half an hour,” she said. “I want to give this side a good look before I give up on getting the rover up here.”

Hey, she was on her hooves again. She didn’t remember getting up. Her emotions were steadying again; when she told herself things, she could listen. Everypony is depending on me. I have to do my job. Our job. One day- one sol- at a time. Seventy kilometers at a time, except today. And we will get there.

And I bucking well deserve wings and a horn for what I’ve done on this planet.

Reflexively giving herself a shake that did nothing to dislodge the dust from her suit, Cherry Berry walked, then trotted, then galloped back down the slope of Mawrth Vallis, doubt and fear banished so that she could be the steel-eyed missile mare again.

Until the next time.

Author's Note

No, Cherry isn't entirely over her self-doubt. Or PTSD. Or both.

Mars orbiters have actually picked up spectrographic signatures of clay in the area of Mawrth Vallis where this chapter takes place. It's an exciting find because not only does clay generally require water to form, it requires water over a geologically significant period of time. (Put that another way: the entirety of human civilization, from the oldest known writing to today, runs eight thousand years... and that's NOT geologically significant.) Mawrth Vallis was a top contender for the Mars 2020 program destination site, mainly because of this find.

Sol 468

“Got a minute, Mindy?”

Mindy Park looked up from her SatCom monitor to see Randall Carter, the Mars meteorologist, leaning over her cubicle wall. “Maybe,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Well, first, what are you working on?”

Mindy pointed to her monitor, where dozens of photos of the upper reaches of Mawrth Vallis sat displayed overlapping one another. “Sirius 8 is about to enter a really bad part of Mawrth Vallis,” she said. “I’ve been working out detailed notes for Johanssen to sysop Watney through it all. Of course the conditions on the ground will probably be totally different, but maybe it’ll help some.”

“Have you been monitoring the dust storm?” Randall asked.

“Not really,” Mindy said. “I’ve had the satellites taking detailed photos about one orbit before they pass over Sirius 8. Those photos get forwarded to you automatically. I’ve been too busy with planning Watney’s route to watch the weather.” It didn’t take much brainpower to make the deduction which followed. “It’s got worse, hasn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” Randall said. “The storm’s stopped moving- that is, its center is stationary. But it’s beginning to grow. Not quickly, not like the global storms Mars has sometimes. But a normal Mars storm should either stay more or less the same or blow up into a global event in a matter of days. This storm’s been stable for weeks. So why is it blowing up now?”

Mindy looked at the screen full of satellite photos. “You mean, besides the universe in general and Mars in particular just hating Mark Watney and-or the ponies?”

“That isn’t so funny,” Randall said. “A couple of my coworkers are talking like that lately. And I’m about to go to Dr. Kapoor and give him a report that absolutely can’t have those words in it.”

“I don’t think I was joking.” She looked at the photos again. “Do we tell them to backtrack to the Hab?”

“Not my decision.”

“Your recommendation?”

“At this point, if Dr. Kapoor asks, I’ll say we’re still go,” Randall replied. “The rover’s already far enough from the Hab that the return isn’t guaranteed if the storm does blow up. And turning around now is a scrub for any rescue by Hermes or anything else we can launch for over three years. Right now the edges of the storm are survivable, and we can navigate them around the edges. But I’ll tell you something,” he sighed, “I’d love for them to be turning due south right now.”

“Can’t do it,” Mindy said. “Climbing out of Mawrth is just barely possible for them now- maybe. But the ground west of Trouvalot Crater is full of craters and small valleys- absolutely treacherous. They can’t turn south until they’re east of Trouvalot. The terrain on that side is more forgiving. Will the storm hit them in four sols?”

“No,” Randal admitted. “But at the current rate of growth, it won’t be long after. We need them to turn south as soon as they can do it safely.”

“Right,” Mindy sighed. “Let me finish this, and then I’ll begin work on a route due south from Trouvalot.”

Author's Note

This one's short because there's nothing else particularly interesting going on aside from more driving through rocks.

That will change soon.

Sol 470

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 479
ARES III SOL 470

Dragonfly stepped in through Amicitas’s sole remaining airlock, carrying on her back the mana battery that had just been used to top off the jumbo batteries hanging from Rover 2. It had been a long morning’s drive, but not as long as any of the days before, at least not since entering Mawrth Vallis. She barely even noticed Starlight Glimmer walking into the ship beside her.

Dragonfly was more than ready for the lunch hug and the eight minutes of magic time. (The meager recharge the batteries in the ship got from the crew hadn’t quite kept up with both maintaining the charge in the big batteries outside and providing ten minutes of environmental magic, so Starlight had trimmed the daily dose down.) She’d put in a hard morning’s work, and she was hungry…

… but more than hungry, she was worried.

Thus far, Dragonfly hadn’t felt any more hungry than, say she’d felt on an average afternoon in the Bad Old Days. That applied to magic hunger as well as hunger for love. But after a day galloping behind Cherry Berry and Spitfire, she felt more or less like she did when she fell out of the cocoon in the cave. She’d been an all-day flyer before this little trip. Now three to four hours of running and occasional rock-kicking (a lot less of the latter than Spitfire, and massively less than the boss pony) laid her out like a six-hoof-wide flyswatter.

And Spitfire was worried about not getting her edge back when they got home? Ha! Dragonfly felt ready for a desk job, if not a wheelchair, once they got back. No comparison.

And the worst part of it all-

“Come here, Dragonfly. You look terrible.”

-was that she didn’t have the energy to even attempt to hide how weak she felt.

“Here you go,” Mark said, finding a seat on one of the ex-ship’s flight couches and picking up the changeling to put in his lap. “Before-lunch snack, okay?”

Unfortunately love wasn’t the main emotion Mark was putting out at the moment. “Can I just say one thing?” Dragonfly said. “Yes, I’m still sick. I won’t get better until I get home. But I will get better. Once I get back to the pony world, everything will be just fine. So will you please quit throwing all that worry at me?”

“Sorry,” Mark muttered. “I can’t exactly turn it off. To be honest, you look like shit.”

“Way to make a bug feel beautiful, Mark.”

“Well, you do,” Starlight agreed. “Not as bad as when you came out of the cocoon, but…”

“You look like after fight with rock slide, second place,” Spitfire half-stammered.

“Oh really?” Dragonfly didn’t know which annoyed her more, the low level of concern coming from the pegasus or the low level of English, despite how many months of speaking it? “So you mean, about twice as good as the Canterlot guards when we got through with them?” she snapped back.

To her surprise, Spitfire didn’t rise to the bait like she usually did. “Maybe,” she said. “I wasn’t there. But really bad.”

“Maybe you can rest for a few days,” Cherry said. “Did you notice the valley walls today?”

“Yeah. One of ‘em was gone, pretty much. The other got tall again, though.”

“That’s not a valley wall,” Mark said. “That’s a crater rim. We’re out of Mawrth Vallis.” He frowned, giving her a little squeeze on his lap as he added, “That means we just ran out of easy navigation again. We’ll have to rely on sun sightings, Phobos, and reports from Hermes to verify our position from now on.”

“Does the crater have a name?” Cherry asked. “The mountain ridge around it seems a lot taller than anything in Acidalia.”

“Trouvelot,” Mark said. “Tomorrow we drive between it and another one called Rutherford. Ideally, we’d keep going east-southeast for several sols afterwards until we reached Marth Crater- um, spelled differently from Mawrth Vallis.” He pronounced the two the same. “Then we’d swing around the south side of Marth to bypass a bunch of smaller craters. That’d put us into Terra Meridiani, which is a lot smoother than Arabia Terra, and that would take us most of the way to Schiaparelli.”

“You said ‘ideally’,” Dragonfly said. “I think that means ‘if all goes well.’ Right?”

“Yes,” Mark sighed, “and it’s not going to go well. I think we’re going to turn southwards and go around Trouvelot’s rim tomorrow. Have you noticed that Johanssen hasn’t mentioned the dust storm in days?”

“Maybe it’s gone,” Cherry suggested.

“Nope,” Mark said. “I’m betting they didn’t want to talk about it until we were out of the valley. No distractions.”

“We didn’t ask, did we?” Fireball pointed out. He returned to the pilot’s seat he’d occupied for three hours that morning, switched on the radio, and said, “Hermes, Friendship. Fireball here. What about the dust storm? Respond. Over.”

“And now we’re tied down here for sixteen minutes waiting for the answer,” Starlight grumbled. “Whoopee.”

“So we eat while we wait.” Fireball shrugged. “Big deal.”

“What’s on the menu?” Cherry asked. “Besides hay and potatoes, I mean.”

“Quartz,” Fireball growled.

“And roast beef with reconstituted mashed potatoes,” Mark sighed, “broccoli and cauliflower Florentine, and apple crumble.”

“And hugs, I hope!” Dragonfly pointed out. Honestly, sometimes you had to remind people…

“I dunno, Dragonfly,” Mark said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have the beef? The gravy is really tangy. You don’t get that with hugs.”

“Says you.”

It was stupid pony-type gabble, but it did one good thing- it got rid of the worry and pity. Her lunch wouldn’t be spoiled.

Everyone else’s lunch, on the other hoof, did get spoiled, since Hermes’s response came in about midway through it. “Friendship, Hermes.” Instead of Johanssen’s voice, they heard Commander Lewis talking. “We’re still working out the details, but we want you to turn due south after tomorrow’s driving. We’d like you to turn south now, but there are several large ravines that would block your path if you tried to hug the edge of Trouvalot.

“The dust storm is intensifying. The combination of growth and movement has it coming towards you at about four kilometers per hour. Its main direction of movement is a little north of true west. At this point if you tried to backtrack to the Hab, the storm would catch you long before you could get back. NASA figures your best hope is to move due south and hopefully get beyond its southern edge.

“Unfortunately we figure you’re going to get caught by the edges at least. That means a reduction in solar cell efficiency. After tomorrow we need you to return to your original driving schedule to maximize battery recharge. I don’t need to explain to you why that’s important.

“Good luck, everyone. We’ll be watching… and listening. Hermes out.”

Mark looked at his meal pack. “I’m not looking forward to cold food,” he said. “But once we’re in the storm, we can’t afford the microwave.”

Dragonfly, who’d had to leave the human’s lap during lunch, leaned against him. At least her meals, no matter how they tasted, never came cold.

Author's Note

For today's author note, something completely different.

As a general rule, airlock doors, pressure seals, and windows designed for space are made as round as possible. Sharp square corners are out. The sliding doors you see on Star Trek just don't work.

Quick detail: from the outside, Amicitas originally appeared to have heart-shaped lateral windows. That was just the outer hull trim. The bare pressure vessel has almost round windows that lay underneath that trim. Heart-shaped windows would just be begging for a stress-induced hull breach, were they to actually fly.

Square windows were bad enough. They were what permanently grounded the entire fleet of the world's first commercial jet airliner, the DeHavilland Comet.

The reason for this is that a circle is structurally the most durable shape. Forces working on a circle or sphere are distributed equally throughout the structure. This is why so much ancient stonework beyond a certain size used arches- the arches redirect the load on the center down through the legs. Square structures don't do this. The corners create weak points where force on one point of the structure gains leverage against the rest of the structure. Instead of spreading the load, square shapes tend to concentrate it- which leads to failure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0Cg2ZeYa5E

Sol 472

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 481
ARES III SOL 472

Fireball stretched. He’d been stretching for twenty minutes, but after almost four hours in the pilot’s seat, he felt incredibly stiff, especially in the tail. In the Hab he hadn’t spent nearly as much time seated as he did in the ship, and when he had sat it was on a work stool, not in a flight couch.

Around him, the rest of the crew were settling in, the post-driving chores done, lunchtime still a little while away. Starlight Glimmer had taken her suit over to the ship’s head, so she could report the day’s progress to Equestria without spilling water all over the place. The three scouts just lay on the deck, resting, Cherry Berry and Spitire looking tired, Dragonfly one small step short of exhausted. Mark, for his part, leaned against one of the second row of flight couches, staring at the head with curiosity while Dragonfly quietly translated Mares Code into English.

“Message… received… Friendship,” she said as the response message came through. “Will… relay… to Twilight Sparkle and Chrysalis… gone to… Hair Hat City… for Summer… Sun… Celebration, over.”

Cherry Berry and Spitfire moaned.

“What’s wrong?” Mark asked.

“This is the second Summer Sun Celebration we’ve spent on Mars,” Cherry Berry sighed.

“Here. Not there,” Spitfire added.

“Well, look at the bright side,” Mark said, smiling. “We launch in eighty sols. There’s a good chance you’ll be home in time for… what’s the next big holiday?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Fireball snorted. “Ponies have holiday every week.”

“Not every week,” Cherry protested. “Not more than every other week.”

“Yeah, and they’ll make another one just for the day you get back,” Fireball growled. “So no sighs. Keep mind on getting home.”

Cherry Berry sat up and glared at Fireball. “Nice gentle attitude you have there,” she said.

“As gentle as the next dragon who ain’t Spike.”

From the head, Starlight called, “Do we have anything more we want to say today? If not, I’m signing off.”

Cherry looked at Fireball. “Tell them to start buying our Hearth’s Warming presents,” she said. “And make sure Fireball gets coal.”

Fireball made a face. “Coal? Tastes awful. And gives me gas.”

“I don’t think they meant for you to eat it,” Mark said.

“Whatever.” Fireball stretched again. It was crowded in the bridge, but at least it wasn't the habitat compartment. After two weeks on the road, nobody wanted to be in there until they had to be, when mealtime came or when night fell.

But for the moment a room without nutty whiny ponies or cheerful monkeys seemed like a good idea. “I make lunch,” he said. “I tell you when ready.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 472

We made our first southbound leg today. We’re now past Trouvelot and on our way to a region of smaller craters marked on my map as Thymiamata. The bad news is, NASA predicts the leading edge of the dust storm to catch us just as we enter that area. We’re hoping we get the go-ahead to turn east before we hit Crommelin crater, though. The area around Crommelin is really bad even by the standards of Arabia Terra. Plus, Crommelin is just above Mars’ equator. If we go more than 150 kilometers south of it, we drop south of the MAV… meaning that after that, we’ll be driving AWAY from our destination.

But the important thing is that we keep moving. If we stop, not only do we miss the launch, but we probably die. We can’t make it back to the Hab now, even if we wanted to. So we have to make as much ground as fast as we can while guaranteeing a full battery in the morning for more driving.

That’s not easy. The ground east of Trouvelot was pretty badly broken, with several small craters to dodge, ejecta from those craters and from Trouvelot itself, and a lot of gullies and ravines that dwarf the little ditches we had in Acidalia. But after two hours today we found a huge lake bed which runs north-northeast to south-southwest. It’s got some sand dunes, but nothing too difficult. We haven’t bogged down or threatened to tip over- more just plowed right through. There’s a ridge we have to go around tomorrow or the next sol, but for two days we should have comparatively smooth driving.

After that, though, it’s back into the standard Arabia Terra crap… complete with sandstorm. Because into each life a little crap must fall, unless you’re Mark Watney and anyone unfortunate enough to be within his blast radius, in which case enjoy the fucking Niagara Falls of diarrhetic feces from the sky.

We’re not reporting to NASA anymore, but we’re not completely out of contact. At high noon local time we turn on the radio to receive-only. Hermes will send a message update within ten minutes with a brief on the next day’s driving and a weather report. After the ten minutes is up, we turn off the radio. Granted we don’t need to be saving every scrap of power just yet, which is why we’re still using the microwave for meals and all the computers for entertainment. But the radio thing is NASA’s idea, and it doesn’t really hurt at this point to start doing it.

That said, we’re going to make tonight the last D&D session for a while. And I’ve decided to make a little peace offering to Starlight. Her Priestess of Om character is about to draw the attention of a Discworld-style unicorn that’s escaped from the elves. If she plays the situation right, she might just get to be a witch after all…

MISSION LOG – SOL 472 (2)

Since we’re not on power rationing yet, I’m going to report: my plan went a little too successfully. Starlight is now the Ninth Prophetess of Om due to consecutive natural 20s rolled on her knowledge of Omnianism as it applies to the holiness or unholiness of wild unicorns. As in, Om manifested, and she made the case to sanctify her new unicorn friend, and made it stick. For one night, the pony the others call Ms. Can’t Roll made every roll.

Of course, the others are mad at me for two reasons: (1) Starlight got a magic pet and they didn’t; and (2) all those good rolls were wasted on what amounts to diplomancing. No combat.

I think the reason GMs get the reputation for being TPK addicts is, TPK is the only way a GM can win.

Author's Note

San Japan setup is tomorrow. Going to be busy, so I'm going to take advantage of the situation in story to cheat a little and do several short-short chapters as our heroes begin driving through the storm.

Because on Monday I might have the time to write the good bit...

Sols 475-476

MISSION LOG – SOL 475

Today’s message from Hermes:

“Good morning, Mark. Hope you had a good drive today. It’s not going to be easily apparent from where you are, but you entered the dust storm today. For the next day or two you’ll only see a small reduction in efficiency. We’re hoping it stays that way.

“You’re mostly on the right track. If you see any craters that stretch across the horizon, pass them on the east side. That will keep you out of the worst terrain of Thymiamata.

“Good luck, and stay safe.”

Well, she’s right. Looking outside the day is just as sunny and clear to look at as before. But the wattage coming from the solar cells is down just a hair- about half of one percent down.

We’ve been pushing hard the last couple of sols, trying to squeeze a couple extra kilometers out of each drive. For all we know those couple of kilometers might be the difference between life and death.

Cold food today. The ponies decided to go to an all-alfalfa diet for the time being, since they loathe cold potatoes with a passion surpassed only by my undying hatred for the root vegetable in any form, at any temperature. Sorry, Mom, but I’m going to snub your potato salad next Thanksgiving we have. Besides, your dressing is better anyway.

Compared to the triangle of huge craters at the headwaters of Mawrth Vallis, the cluster of craters in Thymiamata are much smaller. That said, they’re still over ten kilometers wide, a couple as wide as twenty kilometers. With Mars’s too-close horizons, a crater rim wall for any of those really would go from horizon to horizon if we hit dead-on. Fortunately we’re only seeing the rim walls from a long way away… and, yes, we’re passing them all on the east side.

Although the region has a name, none of the local features do. So I’m naming craters as we pass them based on what the crater rims look like from the Whinnybago. So far I’ve got Headstone Crater, Cenotaph Crater, Crypt Crater, Sarcophagus Crater, and Duckie Crater.

Somehow I don’t think the astronomers are going to endorse my suggestions.

Mindy looked up at the sound of stomping feet on the carpeted SatCom floor. Randall Carter was making a beeline for her cubicle. “Are these pictures legit?” he asked, waving a couple of printouts clutched in one hand.

“You’re getting the raw data every time any of the probes cross over Arabia Terra,” Mindy said. “Is there something wrong?”

“Something’s very wrong,” Carter said. “Show me any photos you have from any single satellite observing Arabia Terra, each one day apart. Include today.”

Mindy ran through the mental list she kept of which orbiters had and hadn’t yet crossed Arabia in their orbits during local daytime that sol. “Close up view or wide area?” she asked.

“Not planetwide, but get me all of the storm if you can.”

“Okay.” She knew exactly which orbiter to pick. She called up the image archives, selected each day’s targeted view of Arabia Terra from three days ago until today, and brought them up on her screen. “Here you are.”

“Cycle through them, in chronological order,” Carter said.

“Okay.” Mindy stacked the windows on her screen in the proper order and then clicked through them. First to second; small movement of the storm. Second to third; small movement. Third to fourth…

Whoa.

“Is that supposed to happen?”

“No,” Carter said grimly. “High-level Martian dust storms like this one do not suddenly double their land speed and, at the same time, intensify strongly. Did the ponies do another thruster test or something?”

“They’re not scheduled to,” Mindy said. “But they’re not broadcasting right now, and they couldn’t send us uploads of their logs even if they were broadcasting. So I can’t confirm that.”

Carter growled with frustration, tossing away his printouts. “Print out each of those,” he said. “Then come with me. Time to see Dr. Kapoor.”

“This,” Teddy said, his hands clasped on his desk blotter, “is our nightmare scenario made real.”

“Possibly not,” Venkat said. “Yes, the storm is growing thicker and stronger, and above all larger. But it’s still only about a thousand kilometers across. It’s now moving at eight kilometers per hour. If the storm stops growing and keeps moving, it will pass over the Whinnybago in five more sols. No danger.”

“How confident are you that the storm stops growing and keeps moving?”

“Not in the least,” Venkat said. “You said it yourself. Nightmare scenario. Kobayashi Maru.”

“Do you mind not speaking geek when I’m in the room?” Annie snapped. “The fuck is a kobawhatever maru?”

Teddy and Venkat stopped to stare blankly at the director of media operations. On the couch, Mitch Henderson did likewise, as did Randall Carter and Mindy Park, who had been dragged along behind Venkat to this emergency meeting. “You must have watched Star Trek,” Teddy said.

“Watched it, yeah,” Annie said. “Once. I don’t worship it like some people.”

“Kobayashi Maru is a no-win scenario,” Venkat said. “In the story it’s a simulation rigged so that everything you do, everything you can think of to do, is the wrong thing to do. No matter what, you die.”

“The difference is that this is no simulation,” Teddy continued. “Venkat, is there anything we can do to help?”

“We’re feeding updates and guidance through a daily Hermes radio message,” Venkat said. “That’s all we can do. Mark’s only options are to keep trying to get around the worst part of the storm or to hunker down and hope it passes quickly. Right now his options are limited to backtracking north or going south. Going west takes him into the broken terrain of Margaritifer Terra, and going east requires him to negotiate the badlands of Thymiamata. Both would slow him down greatly, and the western route takes him directly away from Schiaparelli.”

“What I want to know is,” Annie said, “if this is a rigged game, who the fuck is doing the rigging?”

“Mars is,” Mitch said from the couch. “The planet’s not even trying to hide it behind coincidence or natural phenomena or human error. It wants them dead and doesn’t care who knows it anymore.”

“That,” Teddy said quickly, “is something NASA cannot even hint at. Annie, shut down any hints or suppositions that Mars is out to get Watney and his friends.”

“Why? Sounds like the plain fucking truth to me, at this point,” Annie said.

“It doesn’t matter how true it is,” Teddy said. “It’s unscientific. There’s no way to disprove it. And whatever else we are, NASA is a scientific institution. If we can’t test it, we don’t discuss it.”

“Even if we believe it?”

“Especially if we believe it,” Venkat said.

Author's Note

Unloaded the van in an air-conditioned loading dock, set up most of the booth.

Still feel badly overheated. Brain cooked.

But apparently I still wrote a thing.

This weekend they'll probably get shorter. I hadn't intended to write the Houston bits until they happened, so expect at least one update this week which is just a Mission Log about the length of the one here.

Sols 477-478

MISSION LOG – SOL 477

Message from Hermes: “The storm’s continuing to expand, and the center’s moving almost directly in your direction. Keep pushing as hard as you can. Starting tomorrow we’d like you to start angling a little east of due south. This is partly because the storm has shifted direction of motion to due westwards, and partly because the ground is smoother in that direction. We’ll keep you posted.”

Wonderful. So the storm’s getting bigger and deeper, and the worst part of it is turning to aim directly at us. That’s the bad news. But the good news is…

… yeah, I got nothin’.

We made 71.1 kilometers according to the rover computer, as opposed to 71.5 yesterday, despite starting the sol with a full battery charge. That’s down to less production from the boosted solar cells on top of the rover, all of which have surprisingly remained intact through all the driving. As of right after I set out the rover’s solar panels for recharging, the panels as a whole were producing 92% of their normal voltage. That’s opposed to 97% yesterday and 99.5% the sol before.

Not much conversation in the Whinnybago today. The storm is casting a shadow over everything- in all senses of the phrase.

MISSION LOG – SOL 478

Message from Hermes:“The storm is slowing down. Keep moving. All we can do is cross our fingers.”

That’s not a message you ever want to hear from NASA, even indirectly.

When the batteries hit the critical 5% “stop right now or you’ll regret it” level, we’d made 70.3 kilometers. We’re almost out of Thymiamata. Solar cells producing at 83% of normal.

We stopped today not far from a middling-sized crater, about ten kilometers across I think. I walked out to it and up to the rim- about a kilometer each way.

Remember, the normal horizon on Mars on flat ground is just over two kilometers. When you stand on a crater rim, though, it’s like standing on a scenic outlook on Earth; you’re higher than the terrain you’re looking towards, so you can see over the curvature of the planet a bit. I should have been able to see the far rim of a ten kilometer wide crater pretty well, given normal conditions.

I could barely see it at all. It was just a slightly bigger blur in the distance. In fact, the crater seemed to be filled with this haze, which grew thicker as I followed the rim wall around the edges of my vision.

Looking up, the sky looks mostly unchanged. The sun is still bright, though not as bright as on Earth. There are no obvious clouds, no storm front, nothing like the Sol 6 storm or the Electric Storm.

But the storm is there, and it’s getting closer. And the direction we’re going now, if we drive seventy kilometers per sol, only about twenty-two of that counts as getting closer to Schiaparelli.

I’m racking my brains trying to think of something we can do to boost power or driving efficiency or both. Problem is, nothing comes to mind. We tried everything already when we were testing the Whinnybago, not just the six of us here but over fifty engineers back at NASA.

But if we don’t think of something else, this trip could become a lot longer… and hungrier.

Author's Note

In the book Mark finds out he's in a dust storm by noting the haze he sees looking across Marth Crater- a pockmark well over fifty kilometers across. And that was when his solar cells were performing at 97%.

Sol 479

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 488
ARES III SOL 479

The Equestrians huddled. They hadn’t done this for quite some time, but Starlight had insisted. She didn’t want Mark to hear- or, at least, to understand- what they were talking about.

“So what are we talking about?” Fireball asked, in Equestrian. Starlight had insisted on that, too, for the same reason. “Is it about how we stopped early?”

“Sixty-three kilometers,” Starlight said. “This morning the batteries were only at eighty-three percent charge.”

“It’s actually darker outside,” Cherry Berry said. “It kind of snuck up on us, but it’s obvious now.”

“And Mark couldn’t find Phobos when it rose,” Starlight added. “The dust is too thick to see anything in the sky but the sun.”

“How big is this storm, anyway?” Dragonfly asked.

“Big, and growing,” Starlight said. “Mark says that about once every four years or so, a dust storm blows up big enough to cover the entire planet in a dust cloud. They last for weeks, sometimes months.”

“We haven’t got months,” Fireball pointed out.

“I know.” Starlight looked at Dragonfly. “You kept talking about hearing voices from this and that. Hearing anything from the planet? The weather? Anything at all?”

Dragonfly turned her gaze away from Starlight’s. “I don’t like to talk about it,” she muttered. “You all laugh. You keep it inside, but I hear it anyway.”

“We’re not laughing now,” Starlight said. “Right now, I’m wondering if Mars has windigoes.”

“Windigoes?” Spitfire’s eyes opened almost fully. “You mean the monsters from the Hearth’s Warming stories?”

“That’s right,” Starlight said, “and I don’t mean the nice one from ‘The Lonely Red Windigo,’ either. Think about it; we’re getting on each other’s nerves, and the weather is changing as if it deliberately wants to freeze us solid.”

“Um,” Cherry Berry said, “we’re not grumpy anymore. We’re worried.”

“Pfft, worried,” Fireball said. “We’re scared. We’re bucking terrified.”

“And I’m not feeling anything like windigoes around us,” Dragonfly said. “Mars isn’t saying anything. All I feel is the six of us, the rover, and the death box. The rover only ever says one thing- ‘Let’s go.’ And the death box just says, ‘Good night, mortals, good work, I’ll probably kill you in the morning.’”

“Does it care if Mars gets us first?” Cherry asked.

“Cherry, commanders don’t say things like that,” Spitfire snapped.

“Not wrong, though,” Fireball grumbled. “It looks like we’re going to die out here.”

“It’s not hopeless!” Spitfire insisted. “Twilight Sparkle might be just about to save us!”

“If she is,” Dragonfly sighed, “now would be a really good time.”

“Well, this is awkward.”

In the middle of the table, lights blinking, sat Angel 16.

On one side of the table sat Princess Twilight Sparkle, head of the Equestrian Space Agency; Queen Chrysalis, head of Changeling Space Program; and Princess Luna, one of the ruling diarchs of Equestria.

On the other side of the table sat Twilight Sparkle, unicorn scientist; Chrysalis, one of the leaders of the Resistance; and Queen Nightmare Moon, tyrant of Equestria.

“I still want to know, counterpart of mine,” Nightmare Moon purred in a most unfriendly tone, “what persuaded you to surrender to our sister.”

“Well, there was the purifying blast of pure harmonic magic direct to the face,” Princess Luna said. “Did you not get that?”

“I destroyed the Elements of Harmony with my own hoof,” Nightmare Moon said.

“So did I,” Luna said. “It didn’t help. The Elements are not just artifacts. They’re avatars of the highest ideals of civilization. And they summoned to them six mares suitable to embody those ideals.”

“Which did not occur in my universe,” Nightmare Moon said. “My initial takeover met with zero resistance, even from my sister.” She glared at the changeling and pony sharing her side of the able and hissed, “Resistance, such as it was, came later.”

“Obviously something happened to prevent Rainbow Dash from achieving a sonic rainboom in your universe,” said Princess Twilight, speaking from experience.

“Rainbow Dash is a lieutenant in my Shadowbolts,” Nightmare Moon said. “None more loyal.”

“Rarity?”

“Chambermaid and dresser,” Nightmare Moon said. “She insists on trying to get me to wear bright, frilly things. ‘Contrast’ this and ‘Lace softens the lines’ that.”

“Applejack?”

“Led the first uprising against me. She lives in my dungeons now as a hostage against the future good conduct of the Apple clan.”

“Pinkie Pie?”

“Who?”

“Fluttershy?”

“Never heard of her, either.”

Princess Twilight pointed to her non-alicorn doppelganger. “And you? Did you attend Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns?”

“I… dropped out,” Twilight said sadly. “Once I read all the books and scrolls in the public shelves, I left to seek out knowledge on my own. I was in Hollow Shades investigating the mystery of the disappearance of the Pillars of Harmony when the Night Without Dawn began. I returned to Canterlot and was recruited into the Resistance by Princess Cadance.”

“And when I find her, I shall bring proper order to the kingdom again,” Nightmare Moon growled. “That filly has been a thorn in my flank for far too long.”

“I was studying the moon, trying to find some way to return Nightmare Moon to her prison,” Unicorn Twilight continued. “That’s when we saw her magic reach out and grab this object in space. We thought it might be something we could use to defeat her, so we organized the Resistance to infiltrate her castle and steal the object.” She glared at non-queen Chrysalis. “We were discovered.”

“Not my fault,” non-queen Chrysalis snapped back. “Your ponies betrayed my changelings.”

“What is the matter with you??” definitely-queen Chrysalis shouted. “Changelings don’t get betrayed! They do the betraying!”

“Well, excuse me for trying to survive in a life or death battle against a mad goddess!” not-queen Chrysalis shouted back.

“I am not mad!!” Nightmare Moon shrieked. “How dare you imply that my sanity is not up to scratch-“

“LADIES, PLEASE!” Princess Twilight’s horn lit up, and four muzzles found themselves clamped shut by magical force.

“To get back to your original question,” Luna said quietly, her mouth not being sealed, “it was rather for the best that I surrendered. Our night has been appreciated more than ever, especially since exploration began of the void beyond. And I have since learned to appreciate the talents of our sister, and the trials she undergoes.”

Nightmare Moon’s horn flared, dispelling Princess Twilight’s muzzling spell. “Oh, spare me,” she snarled. “Miss Pretty Perfect Princess? I can do anything she did, and do it better! I protect our ponies from the monsters that roam the waking world, and I am a thousand times more terrible than the beasts that stalk their dreams! What does she do better than you,” she sneered the pronoun at Luna, “do?”

Luna didn’t even blink. “She opens shopping centers and bridges and the like.”

Nightmare Moon’s jaw dropped. “Y-y-you mean,” she stammered, “I don’t have to DO that?”

“And she can send nobles home from open court,” Luna continued, “happy and cheerful- without actually agreeing to any of their foolish proposals.”

“I’m sorry?” Nightmare Moon asked, even more boggled. “This is our sister? Celestia? The shy mare who got tongue-tied every time Princess Platinum berated her about acting her station?”

Unicorn Twilight blinked and looked at Nightmare Moon. “Princess Celestia? Tongue-tied?”

“Yes, except when she babbled uncontrollably,” Nightmare Moon said. “You would not believe how fast she’d go to pieces any time someone asked her to… um…” The tyrant queen blushed under her helmet, finding something interesting on the wall to look at. “We may discuss this another time,” she muttered. “Indeed we have much to discuss when we return home. But now it is time we got to our proper business: an explanation into the cause for this… device,” she said, poking the steel casing of the space probe on the table, “and its intrusion into Our realm.”

Explanations followed.

The dimensional counterparts, curious, accepted the invitation to watch the film collected by the probe, once it was developed. This process was rushed to completion, and two hours later the group of them sat and watched the flickering images of a couple of different versions of Equus, a desolate lifeless rock, empty space, and a blue-white world with different continents that Princess Twilight referred to as “an Earth.”

And then the scene shifted from space to someplace entirely other, a realm flooded with a murky, roiling green mist. An eye floated into view… then another, and another, and another. They flowed around one another, obviously not tethered to anything, yet giving the impression of being under the control of a single mind.

Well, hello. I knew allowing that bit of metal to pass through would be worthwhile. Such a fascinating cluster of worldlets you had here.

The ponies tried to scream, and couldn’t.

They tried to blink, and couldn’t.

All six of them sat rigid, staring at the projector screen, as something extended out of it and into the room.

“I heard somepony’s watching a film!” The door to the conference room banged open, and this world’s native Pinkie Pie barged in, wobbling on her hind legs as her forelegs carried a gigantic tub of popcorn. “And you can’t have a film-watching party without the po-“ Her eyes locked onto the screen, and her body froze. The tub of popcorn fell to the floor, its contents spilling everywhere.

At the same moment, the tentacle of otherness recoiled back into the screen.

PINKIE!

No, wait… you are not MY Pinkie.

Whew.

You are just a pony… an extraordinary pony, but still only a pony.

Very well. You at least shall be no obstacle to-

Hey, Gnarly, watcha doin’?

The tentacle, which had begun to extend itself back into the room, froze. On the screen behind it a portion of the roiling green was pushed aside by a mass of rigid cotton-candy cloud which seemed to extend into non-Euclidian geometric shapes.

Gnarly! I’m ashamed of you! What did I tell you about this?

The not-voice had a mixture of cringe and whine in it: It’s mean to conquer and defile the realms of puny insignificant mortals.

Now say you’re sorry! Or no (untranslatable concept) with your (different untranslatable concept) tonight!

I apologize for my intrusion into your lower dimension. It won’t happen again.

Okay! Now let’s clean up the mess you made…

The ponies blinked.

A tinny fanfare rang from the film projector’s built-in speaker. The title appeared on the screen: Bunny-Wunny Adventures on Carrotcake Mountain!

“What did we just see?” Princess Twilight asked.

“Nightmares beyond the dream realm,” Princess Luna gasped.

“Things mares were not meant to know,” Nightmare Moon added.

“Aw, ponies always complain about the Bunny-Wunny Adventures,” Pinkie Pie said between mouthfuls of popcorn. “They just can’t appreciate a simple, sweet, fun story.”

“Wait a moment,” Queen Chrysalis said. “If this is a children’s film, what happened to the film from the probe?”

“Oh, that’s obvious,” Pinkie said. “They couldn’t close the door while the film existed, so they made the film not exist anymore.”

“So… they destroyed it,” Resistance Chrysalis said cautiously.

“Nah,” Pinkie said. “It never existed. Duh!”

“But… if it never existed…” Unicorn Twilight began.

“… then how do we remember seeing it?” Princess Twilight finished.

“You don’t,” Pinkie said. “You remember the fact of seeing it, but if you remembered what you saw, that would be a door too. Really, am I the only one who sees all this obvious stuff that’s totally obvious?”

“But they had a Pinkie!”

“Lots of places have a Pinkie!” The local Pinkie giggled and added, “Sometimes more than one!”

“I vote,” Resistance Chrysalis said, “we all just relax, forget everything, and watch the movie. And pass me that popcorn.”

“Since when do we eat food?” Queen Chrysalis asked.

“Fine. Pass me some of that love of popcorn, please.”

“One moment,” Princess Luna said. “The seven of us saw that film… but didn’t the ponies who developed it see it as well?”

“The eldritch beings are powerful,” Nightmare Moon said, “but neither all-knowing nor infallible.”

“To the developers! Post-haste!” Luna cried. “The nightmares such visions can spawn would be just as deadly as the original invaders!”

The two moon princesses galloped out the door.

Princess Twilight and Queen Chrysalis looked at each other. “No Angel 17?” Chrysalis asked.

“No Angel 17,” Twilight agreed.

“Sssh!” Resistance Chrysalis hissed. “We’re trying to watch a movie!”

Author's Note

Inspired by comments on last chapter.

This is probably the last we see of Equus for the rest of the story...

Sols 480-481

MISSION LOG – SOL 480

Hermes message of the day: “We can’t see your rover on the surface anymore. The storm is too thick. The center of the storm is about two hundred kilometers due east of you, but the edges… well, the storm covers a huge portion of the planet now, Mark. All we can suggest is that you try disengaging two of the wheel clutches, while you’re still on comparatively level ground, and see if that saves power.”

Yeah, already did that, after we woke up this morning and found we’d only managed to recharge up to 71% of total battery capacity. It didn’t help worth a damn. We still only managed 51.8 kilometers today.

If we’d made a proper full sol of driving, we would have had to turn east or west to get around Crommelin crater today. We’ll probably just barely reach it tomorrow. After that we have to make some hard decisions.

Before we put out the solar panels today, we tried running on magic power. The ship has a magic-to-electricity converter in the bridge controls, where the emergency magic batteries normally connect. We hooked one magic battery into the system today and began driving on it. After about a minute and a half Starlight called a halt to the experiment, because she could watch the charge readout dropping as we rolled. We were burning through mana that fast.

After we set out the solar panels (now operating at a measly 59% of peak), we checked the levels in the battery we used and the distance we traveled in a minute and a half (accelerating most of the way, admittedly). Then we did the math and worked this out.

In very rough, round numbers, the Whinnybago burns twenty kilowatts per hour driving at top speed. That’s a kilowatt every three minutes.

In the minute and a half we spent driving on magic power, we only hit top speed for about half that time. It takes the Whinnybago a long run-up to get started. So we only traveled about half a kilometer, burning (again, very rough, round numbers) five hundred watts in that time.

In that time, the battery went from fully charged to 95% charged.

Put another way: the battery would get us ten kilometers before it pooped out. It would only run for a bit more than twenty minutes. It’s effectively the equivalent of a battery with a watt-hours rating of about ten kilowatt-hours.

Give it its due- that’s more efficient for a lot less weight than the rover batteries, and it competes with the lighter weight but much bulkier Hab batteries. But considering I’ve seen Starlight do things with fractions of magic battery power that would rate in megawatts or possibly gigawatts if they could be done at all electrically, I’ve got to say that the magic-to-electricity converter is really fucking inefficient.

But that’s not really the problem. The problem is recharge time.

If not for the dust storm, we’d have a little over 70 pirate-ninjas of recharge power every sol, of which we can only store 54 pirate-ninjas. Every sol we’d start out with another seventy kilometers or so of driving in the tank.

If we hooked all twenty-one of the small magic batteries up to the rover power system and used it only for driving, we’d get two hundred and ten kilometers out of it. The batteries are currently recharging at a rate of one point four percent per sol… which means a full recharge from zero would take sixty-seven sols.

Sixty. Seven. Sols.

During which time we could do nothing, absolutely nothing, involving magic.

During which time the jumbo batteries would be losing charge at the rate of 0.5% of a regular battery per day… each.

During which time Dragonfly begins drifting back towards physical collapse.

We would have to be really fucking desperate to take that option. And we would also have to be a lot closer to the Hab or Schiaparelli than we currently are. As it is, we are now slightly closer to the MAV than to the Hab or the cave farm. If two hundred kilometers got us to safety, it might be worth it. Otherwise, better to save the magic for a better idea.

Let’s just hope we find one before we lose all light completely.

By the way, if you say, “Why not just use the magic batteries to drive the distance they recharge by?” All twenty-one batteries gain about 1.4% of their capacity each sol. That adds up, combined, to the equivalent of 29.4% of the charge of a single battery, or just under three kilometers. Under the current conditions (technical definition: “fucked nine ways from Sunday”) it’s not worth it.

Better to keep the changeling, dragon, and ponies healthy with that power… while we can.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 490
ARES III SOL 481

The wind didn’t howl outside the Whinnybago. The dust didn’t hiss as it hit the bare ship hull. The only electricity came from the flickering glow that appeared occasionally on the tungsten discharge points attached to outer hull mounts around the former Amicitas, some of which were visible through the bridge windows.

But the dusty haze of the prior few sols had become a fog, a cloud of dust motes drifting past on the weak Martian wind. The afternoon sun shone dimly outside, providing a light more similar to what the ponies thought of as moonlight than anything associated with a star. The storm had them firmly in its grip.

And considering that they’d only driven thirty-six kilometers before running out of power, and that the solar panels which produced that power provided only forty-two percent of what they should have produced, everyone in the Whinnybago recognized that grip was tightening.

Hermes had run out of hopeful news. Their report today had been grim; center of storm one hundred forty kilometers east-northeast. Storm almost stationary, no longer widening but getting thicker at the core. At the storm’s center, they estimated, only about ten percent of the sun’s light reached the Martian surface… ten percent and still dropping. If the storm remained at current strength and intensity, it would take over a month to pass over Crommelin crater, which the broken ground outside suggested was now very close by the Whinnybago.

“So here’s the situation,” Mark said, as the six of them gathered in the bridge to discuss options. “We have three options. We can hunker down and hope the storm passes more quickly than expected. Anybody want to talk about how likely that is?”

Not a word. Everyone knew this storm had their names on it.

“Yeah, me neither. Option two; turn east-southeast and begin making for Schiaparelli at whatever speed we can. That takes us closer to the heart of the storm, but it also runs against the direction the storm’s currently moving, so it’s just possible that we get out from under it sooner. We can run life support off the RTG and your ship’s system, so we should be able to at least crawl a little each sol.”

“Maybe we could pull the ship behind us,” Cherry Berry suggested. “Like when it was salvaged.”

Fireball slammed a fist into the deck. “No!” he shouted. “Tying ropes around our space suits? The way they are? Look at us!” He pointed to the patches on his own suit, the elbow and knees on Cherry and Spitfire, the large gash of black gunk of Starlight Glimmer’s right foreleg. “They blow out quick. Kill wearer. No rescue. Suicide. Dumb idea. I know what I’m talking about.”

“I could make harnesses-“ Dragonfly suggested.

“NO!” Fireball took a deep breath, held up a palm to stop anyone from speaking, and thought carefully. “Even harness make different pressure on some parts of suit than others,” he said. “Different pressure puts more pressure on patches. Can’t avoid. Can’t fix. Trying that will kill somebody. Listen to me.”

Dragonfly nodded. “I hear you, Fireball,” she said, “but if it comes down to the choice-“

“If it’s choice, then ask Mark for medicine,” Fireball snarled. “You want a choice of how to kill yourself, he find something a lot less trouble than losing all your air outside.”

“Okay,” Mark said after nobody followed up Fireball’s declaration. “Anybody like that option? My main problem with it is, if my navigation is right, we’re still about thirteen hundred kilometers from the entrance to Schiaparelli, plus maybe another four hundred kilometers after that to get to the MAV. Seventeen hundred kilometers. If we traveled at the rate we did today, we’d reach there on Sol 530- but we all know the storm would get a lot worse. My math says, we’d miss the launch date and run out of food first.”

Again, no argument.

“Option three. Go around Crommelin to the southeast. We have another hundred and fifty kilometers of southward travel before Pythagoras becomes our enemy- sorry, cultural reference, I meant before we start getting farther away from Schiaparelli instead of closer. So long as the storm doesn’t turn south and cross the equator- which it’s not supposed to be able to do, but who knows what this fucking planet will do next- we’d begin to get out from under the shadow.

"The problem is, we don’t know how far south we’d have to go. The dust cloud extends a long way south of the equator- maybe eight hundred kilometers. If we go that route we’d have to take the backup route into Schiaparelli on the southwest side, which requires crossing a lot of uneven, rugged terrain. It’ll take a long time, and there’s no guarantee we’d reach the MAV before our food runs out.”

“There’s a fourth option,” Starlight said quietly. “I’ve been thinking about it for the last two sols.”

“What is it?”

Starlight shuffled her forehooves on the deck. “Remember the booster system test?” she asked. “It cleared the skies instantly. We had weeks of clear weather and unseasonably warm temperatures. We could do it again.”

“Hey, yeah,” Dragonfly said, grinning. “That is a great idea! We don’t need as big a mass this time! Or as much speed, either! All we need is a big rock from the surface, a little booster target, a booster crystal, and some battery power!”

“We’ve got half a ton of clean crystal,” Starlight said. “I think we only need twenty-five kilos of it to make the booster and its target.”

“We still have the data from the test,” Dragonfly said. “We can use that to keep the power use to a minimum. Maybe only one battery would do it!”

“Yes!” Starlight grinned even wider than Dragonfly now. “I can’t think of any reason this might go wrong!”

“I can,” Fireball grumbled. “How do we know the last test didn’t cause this storm now?”

Grins vanished. The others looked meaningfully at one another.

Cherry Berry finally spoke up. “So maybe we have a storm during launch day,” she said. “We’ll deal with that then. But if we don’t try something, this storm right now will keep us from even having a launch day.” She looked at Starlight. “Do it,” she said. “We’ll launch your cloudbuster tomorrow morning.”

Author's Note

Going to be busy the rest of the day, so here's what I wrote last night.

Sol 482

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 491
ARES III SOL 482

The rock sat on other rocks, as rocks sometimes do.

To differentiate it from other rocks, it sat with its ends supported by two carefully constructed rock cairns, lifting its middle up and away from the ground. On its underside a small bit of clear quartz had been carefully attached, pointed straight down towards where a slightly larger bit of quartz lay. That second crystal chunk was connected by a series of cables to a much larger, metal-wrapped chunk some twenty meters away, which in turn was connected to a switch, which itself was connected by ten meters of changeling-made rope to the hand of a figure in a somewhat worn-looking space suit.

The rock didn’t know it yet, but it was about to go for a ride.

Spitfire, having retired inside the Whinnybago after helping gather the rocks for the launch cairn, stared through a cockpit window and allowed herself to feel jealous of a rock. Your life sucks, she thought to herself, when a rock gets to fly and you don’t.

“If my calculations hold up,” Starlight Glimmer was saying over the comms, “the missile should reach two hundred fifty meters per second at about one thousand meters altitude. The shockwave should begin to form there, clearing out the skies without sending the missile on an escape trajectory.”

“If you say so,” Mark said. “Fireball, is the camera rolling?”

“No,” Fireball said, sounding confused. “Camera in my hand. You want me to roll the camera?”

“I meant, is it recording?” Mark asked.

“Ooooooooooooh,” Fireball replied. “Is it recording? That different. Recording now.”

“You did that on purpose,” Mark said. “I’m proud of you.”

“Back on task, everyone,” Cherry Berry said, standing near Spitfire and watching through a different window. “All go for launch in ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.”

Dragonfly, also inside and safe, paced the small open area of the bridge.

“Six. Five. Four.”

Spitfire put one forehoof on the bulkhead next to the window, watching the dust-blurred figures, a hundred meters away, leaning towards the ship as they prepared to run like hell from the launch zone.

“Three. Two. One!”

A hundred yards across the rubble-strewn surface of Mars, Mark yanked the rope that triggered the switch and began half-bouncing, half-running for the rover.

Unlike the first time they’d done this, with a much larger and heavier projectile, Spitfire could follow the ascent of the rock with her eyes. It got faster in a hurry, and in a couple of seconds it left the limited visual range of the porthole, but it had definitely been slow by comparison to the original booster system test.

“Tracking missile drifting west,” Fireball said. “Not gonna drop on our heads.”

“I’m back at the ladder,” Starlight panted. “Climbing up now.”

“And I’m right behind,” Mark said. “I don’t see any shockwave, though.”

“Lost target,” Fireball said. “No shockwave. All I see is a kind of swirl in the dust.” Pause. “Got a breeze.”

“Shoot!” Cherry Berry snapped. “Why didn’t it work? Not fast enough?”

“It’ll get faster as it gets higher,” Starlight said. “And most of the dust is upper-level atmosphere. Give it time.”

Spitfire continued staring out the porthole. She could see dust, the thicker, grittier dust that the weak dust storm couldn’t pick up, dancing in little clouds and gusts from the surface. A roller-wave of the stuff rippled across the slope towards the launch point. Another one rolled away from the rover towards the launch point.

And the haze seemed to dance and twist around the launch point… almost as if…

Updraft.

Updraft plus heat from friction, as the rock continued to accelerate past the speed of sound.

“Commander,” she said in Equestrian, “I strongly urge we get the others in at once. Leave the equipment outside.”

Cherry Berry turned to look Spitfire in the eye. She stared for just a moment, then turned back to the window. “Emergency abort,” she said in English. “Everyone back in right now.”

“What for? Just a little breeze,” Fireball said.

“Not for long,” Spitfire said, this time in English. “Dust devil forming. Tornado. Get inside right now!”

“Just a minute!” Starlight said. “Let me go back and get-“

“No.” There was a bit of rustling, and then Mark’s voice continued, “I’ve got Starlight. Fireball, get that door open.”

“Okay.”

Spitfire watched the window more intently. More dust continued to ripple towards the launch point. A column of it could be seen clearly now, borne up by the air rushing to the launch site in the wake of the massive artificial updraft.

“But the battery!”

“People before equipment,” Mark insisted. “Starlight, quit wiggling!”

"I'll stop wiggling if you put me down!!"

The trailer rang with the sound of the outer airlock door slamming shut.

“In,” Fireball said simply. “Cycling airlock now.”

Outside, the sky grew darker, as for the first time the dust began to hiss against the hull, mixed with the occasional clatter of pebbles as the winds picked up.

“I don’t know if you care,” Dragonfly said, “but Mars is talking again.”

Cherry Berry sighed. “What’s it saying? ‘Die’ again?”

“No,” Dragonfly said. “Hear the clicking of rocks? That’s what laughter sounds like in Old Changeling.”

The planet was laughing at them.

Outside, the storm took the energy given to it by the launch… and it closed in, hungry for more.

The battery, still connected to the enchanted repulsor crystal, gave it all it had.

Two frantic hours passed, during which two magic batteries were used up to safeguard another EVA. The launch system had been retrieved using Starlight’s force field spell, but only because they had to go outside to install a rapidly improvised tarp over the forward cockpit windows. This was composed of the remaining spare Hab canvas and all the sleeping bags, hastily stitched together with thin changeling rope. The rover windows had shutters; Amicitas didn’t, and although it had stood up to worse storms in the past, the crew hadn’t been totally dependent on it for a living environment at the time.

The storm continued to pelt the ship with dust and larger particles. The crew, looking out through the smaller, thicker portholes and airlock windows, saw only a slightly less than pitch black environment outside.

According to the clock on one of the laptops, it was just past noon, Mars time.

“Right,” Cherry Berry said, pulling Spitfire away from a porthole with one hoof. “Why didn’t it work?”

“Too slow,” Spitfire said. “Too slow, too small to make a big, um, shock wave like before. But fast enough, big enough, to… thing follows boat in water?”

“Wake?” Mark suggested.

“Pulls air up behind it,” Spitfire continued. “Rock gets faster, heats up. Hot air goes up. Makes updraft. Updraft causes dust devil, tornado… worse.”

“And heat makes weather stronger,” Starlight sighed. “More violent. We made it worse.”

“Okay,” Mark said. “We can try launching another rock with more power. Or a bigger rock. Or both.”

“We’d be fooling with a phenomenon we clearly don’t understand,” Starlight sighed. “I should have known better.”

“Are we getting any power from the solar panels, Mark?” Cherry asked.

“They’re pissing out a few watts, but that’s all,” Mark said. “We can’t drive on that, even if we did go EVA again to pick up the panels around the rover.”

“Okay. What can we do for power, then?”

“Well,” Mark said, “if the launch had failed in a less shitty way, I was going to try to remove the motors from the wheels on the landing gear. If we could find a place to mount them inside, Starlight could spin them with magic to produce electricity. They’re not as efficient as proper dynamos, but they’d make some power. I figure rotating one of them at, oh, about two hundred revolutions per minute would produce one kilowatt-hour per hour.”

“Which means a thousand revolutions per minute,” Starlight said, her face going from concentration to shock as she did the math, “to recharge the batteries in twelve hours. Assuming I could keep it up for that long.”

“Also assuming we could spend two to three hours on EVA just to dismount and remount the wheels,” Mark added glumly. “Further assuming removing the motors is easy. I’ve never done it. Further assuming we could get them mounted in here.” He gestured to his suit, which lay on the deck behind the co-pilot seat. “None of which makes a damn, because I can’t go outside with that stupid safety-glass faceplate while the wind is throwing gravel around.”

Spitfire tuned out the conversation after that depressing series of broken assumptions, turning to look out the window again. Stupid Martian storm, she thought. Give me twenty Wonderbolts and enough air and magic to get airborne, and we’d knock that storm out, one-two-three.

Her mind got yanked back to the inside of the Whinnybago by the sudden sound of the ship’s radio. “Friendship, Hermes,” it said in Commander Lewis’s static-filled voice. “I don’t know what you did, but it was the wrong thing to do. The whole storm is unraveling and spiraling in tight around Crommelin. It’s like it’s spontaneously re-centering itself. There’s now a dark grey spot on Mars about four hundred kilometers in radius. If you did that, undo it, quick. We’re reading tau levels like we haven’t seen since 2018. If you received this message, acknowledge by Morse key. Hermes out.”

“Fuck,” Mark moaned. He repeated the word, and repeated it again, each repetition shifting up the scale from shock to rage. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!”

“Four hundred kilometers radius,” Starlight grumbled. “Why couldn’t it have been diameter?”

“That’s just the dark part,” Dragonfly sighed. “Want to bet there’s a thin dust layer surrounding it? For how far out?”

Fireball moved to the hatch linking the bridge and habitat. “Well, that’s it,” he said. “I’m eat my last sapphire now. Why not?”

“We’re not giving up,” Cherry Berry said firmly.

“Got any ideas left?” Fireball rumbled. “I don’t.”

“Yes! We send up another cloudbuster!” Cherry insisted. “A bigger one, with more batteries! We have the spare quartz for it, right, Starlight?”

“Yes, for several more if we’re careful,” Starlight admitted. “But we don’t know it’ll do anything except make it worse.”

“We know doing nothing won’t help!” Cherry replied. “If we sit here and do nothing, we die. We can’t drive far enough on the power we’ve got to escape. Our only hope now is to knock out that storm!”

“Last time we made the storm stronger!” Starlight said. “If we do it again, the rover might not survive!”

“Then this time we have to get it right!” Cherry barked. “Can’t you add an enchantment to the target? Some kind of storm-be-gone spell?”

“Do I look like a pegasus to you?”

And just like that, the idea snapped into Spitfire’s mind in cold, horrible clarity.

It was a dumb idea- no, strike that, it was literally a suicidal idea. But…

… no, there was a chance. A small, small chance. So many ifs had to fall the same direction.

But nopony else could do it. Only her. The job needed twenty pegasi, but there was only one available.

“Launch me,” she said.

The room froze for several seconds. Then, all at once:

“What the fuck, Spitfire?” Mark asked.

“You nuts?” Fireball hissed.

“Oh my Faust,” Starlight Glimmer gasped.

“You gotta be kidding!” Dragonfly said.

“We are NOT launching you!” Cherry Berry said.

More words followed these, expressing the shock and anger Spitfire knew it would bring. She let it more or less run out, which took several minutes of alternate ranting by one person and shouting by another. She let it run its course, waiting for silence to finally set in before explaining herself.

“Look,” she said, and then glanced to Starlight and muttered, “Explain it to Mark later.” Continuing in Equestrian, she said, “Shooting more rocks into the air isn’t going to work. You need actual pegasus magic up there to disrupt the air currents and break up the storm. Wire in a magic battery to my suit, make sleeves for my wings, and I can do it- and come back safely.”

“You can’t!” Starlight insisted, also in Equestrian. “It’s impossible!”

“No, it’s not impossible,” Spitfire said firmly. “All I have to do is maintain the speed the booster gives me long enough to break the storm. My wings and magic will give me the purchase in the air to steer- not much, but enough. I can do the job, circle around, and let you catch me with your magic before I crash.”

“I refuse,” Cherry Berry said. “You’ll be going faster than sound. The air will be like a wall. A concrete wall, since it’s full of sand and grit. It’s certain death. Permission denied.”

“Cherry, you’re the best at flying machines,” Spitfire said. “But don’t tell a Wonderbolt what they can and can’t do in the sky. I’ve hit mountainsides going hundreds of miles per hour. I’ve overseen tornadoes strong enough to lift water half a mile into the air.”

“On Equus! This is Mars!”

“This is me,” Spitfire replied, thumping her chest with a forehoof. “This is what I was born to do!” She paused, adding in a softer voice, “And this is what I’m sworn to do. A Wonderbolt is still a guardspony first. I serve to protect, Cherry. Even if it means making the final sacrifice.” She looked her commander directly in the eyes and said, “This is not the first time I’ve faced that possibility.”

“Certainty.”

“Possibility.”

“Girls,” Mark interjected in English, “either switch back to English or let me try speaking your language again, but don’t leave me out of this.”

“In a minute, Mark,” Cherry said. Switching back to Equestrian, she said, “We’ll have to cut up your space suit and patch it. We’ve got nothing to patch it with.”

“Except my flight coveralls,” Spitfire said, “coated in a flexible airtight goop from Dragonfly. You can do that, right, bug?”

Dragonfly considered the question. “Like your flight suit material? I can get pretty close,” she said. “No insulation, though. You’re gonna be cold. And no reinforcement, either. If the wings breach, you die, period.”

“How fast can you ascend and not black out or be injured?” Starlight asked. “Eight G’s?”

“Eight Equus G’s,” Spitfire agreed. “Let’s say seventy-five meters per second of acceleration. Faster than today’s launch, a lot slower than the booster test.”

“We’ll have to switch off the launch battery after a few seconds,” Starlight said. “Ten seconds will have you going at three times the local speed of sound. Air resistance will destroy your suit if you go any faster.”

“Seven hundred fifty meters per second?” Spitfire nodded. “I can handle that. Rainbow Dash goes faster than that all the time.”

“Have you?” Cherry Berry asked pointedly.

“Watch me,” Spitfire replied, carefully not answering the question.

Cherry shook her head. “This is why I didn’t want to be the captain,” she said. “I’m going to make the wrong decision. And it’s going to get you killed.”

“Say it does,” Spitfire said. “One for five is the kind of trade the officers and guards of the EUP are trained to make.”

“I want zero for six.”

“You’ll get it. I promise.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Read my lips,” Spitfire said, and then added in English, “I prom-mise.”

Cherry sighed, shaking her head. “Mark,” she said, “you and I have until morning to think of a better idea than launching Spitfire on top of a piece of crystal.” She turned to Fireball, growling, “Got any smart remarks about that?”

“No, ma’am,” Fireball said quietly.

“The rest of you do whatever it takes to make it happen. Including bringing her down safely. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the others chorused.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Cherry whispered to herself in Equestrian.

Yeah, Spitfire thought. Me either.

But at least if I’m going out, I’m going out flying.

Author's Note

One of you called this days ago, not in a complimentary tone. But I've had this planned for about a month, and I'm going through with it.

Rising air is what powers thunderstorms and dust devils alike. Tornadoes require rising air, but they also require conflicting air currents to create vortexes. A launched rock producing a wake probably wouldn't start a storm anyplace in the universe... if magic weren't involved. But as I've written before in this story, when magic and Mars meet all bets are off.

Incidentally, for those wondering, Mark is assuming that the rover wheel motors are mounted on the hub. If the motor is mounted so that the spindle turns on the inside edge of the rim instead, then it's going to take a lot more RPMs than he thinks.

To get an idea of how much overdrive would be required, at top rated speed of 25 kmph, a wheel would be turning at 95 RPM, or a touch more than 540 degrees of rotation per second. I honestly don't know how efficient running an electric motor in reverse is for generating current, but I seem to recall it's not all that compared to a proper dynamo. There are losses to entropy, in any case.

And remember that the bearings inside these motors were designed to run at a relatively low speed with zero maintenance and only whatever lubrication was sealed into them during manufacturing. Overdriving them would probably chew them up in short order. Mark has to know that what he's proposing is a desperation tactic and not sustainable.

But on the other hand, it's probably more sustainable than "throw a pegasus at it."

Sol 483

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 492
ARES III SOL 483

Spitfire, in her past career as leader of the Wonderbolts, had carried two full-grown ponies in the air along with her… on Equus.

The combined weight of her spacesuit, the extra spacesuit battery strapped to the outside of her backpack, the two ship mana batteries harnessed around the barrel of her suit like a mining donkey’s saddlebags, and the two pieces of quartz attached to her chest added up to about two full-grown ponies. Unfortunately, Spitfire was on Mars, with its alien atmosphere which, if you had to limit yourself to a single word when describing it, would be, “less.”

And its magic environment, which under the same rules would be described as, “zero.”

“Okay, mission briefing,” Starlight Glimmer said, adjusting the magic battery on her own back. “We’ve disconnected your suit thruster system. Remember that. You do NOT have thrusters. We don’t want another storm to come back and hit us in two weeks, and anyway you can’t spare the magic power.”

“Right. No thrusters,” Spitfire nodded.

“These,” Starlight Glimmer said, tapping the bits of quartz on Spitfire’s chest, “are force field projectors. The first one is for launch, during the sub-sonic portion of your flight. It should keep the dust from destroying your suit before you build up a shockwave strong enough to keep it away. The second one is in case your suit breaches. Twilight Sparkle has been told to keep overriding your life support safeties in case of a breach. If your suit breaches, you activate this and come straight down at once if you can.

“The force field will keep out dust and hold in air, but it won’t hold up to anything much more energetic. If you see a mountain up there, don’t play tag with it.”

“Ha ha,” Spitfire said sarcastically.

“Once you’re supersonic, you must remove the first force field projector by hoof,” Starlight said. “One cable will be loose. You’ll need to attach that cable to the second projector to activate it. I just hope you don’t need it.”

You hope? Spitfire thought. Aloud she merely said, “I understand.”

“Okay, moving on to the suit proper,” Starlight said. “We used the flaps we cut out of your suit to line the leading edges of your wings. They’ll take the most punishment and protect the seams of the rest of the sleeves.”

“The resin covering the wing-sleeves hasn’t cured yet,” Dragonfly groaned from a flight couch. Unlike the others, each of whom had their suits on and at least one magic battery to carry out, Dragonfly was staying in the ship. Having spent the entire afternoon and evening horking up goo for the flight harness and the space suit modifications, then actually making the spacesuit mods with Fireball’s help, she was literally both sick and tired. “That’s the only reason they still flex. The goo is still liquid around the fabric core. A small breach should be self-sealing. But don’t tempt it. This isn’t your regular flight suit.”

“I know,” Spitfire said. “My flight suit has naked wings.” She’d actually tried to argue for leaving her wings open to the elements. She hadn’t been voted down so much as shouted down. Dragonfly had made the one argument against the notion that Spitfire considered valid; the only way to keep an airtight seal on wing slits would be to glue the suit to her skin. No seal meant no air… and no life.

“I really wish we could have used the spare Hab canvas for these,” Starlight continued, tapping the spots just above the bulky mana batteries where the wing-sleeves had been added. With Spitfire’s wings folded, the new fabric barely showed. “But Hab canvas blocks magic, according to the tests we ran on the rainbow crystals. Changeling goo doesn’t, or at least no more than ordinary fabric does.”

“I make work,” Spitfire snapped.

“Anyway. If you have a suit breach, you abort. When the big batteries run out, you hit the quick-release.” Starlight tapped- very carefully- the harness buckle directly under Spitfire’s barrel. “I hate to lose these batteries, but better them than you.”

“Won’t lose ‘em,” Spitfire said.

“When you abort, or when you succeed completely, you activate suit power,” Starlight said. “That’ll give you a beacon back to the ship. We’ll be running the telepresence system for just that reason. But even with the double battery on the backpack, once you’re on suit power your flight time will be measured in seconds. Come straight back as fast as you can. Don’t waste effort slowing down or braking.”

“According to NASA,” Mark added, “wings in general become useless on Mars at any speed much below two hundred meters per second. That is, any wings smaller than a football field.”

“Right. Just come at us as level as possible. I’ll be waiting to grab you telekinetically.”

“Got it.”

“How are the connections?” Dragonfly asked.

Spitfire gave thought to the two little wires the changeling had added to her suit, ending in biomonitor pads stolen from the undergarment of Mark’s spare suit. The adhesive on the pads tugged at the fur between her wings and made her skin itch abominably underneath. But she’d learned many years before to stay perfectly still no matter how she itched, after her first dose of KP duty at the Academy. “Solid,” she said.

“Okay,” Cherry Berry said. “Booster pad check?”

Mark checked the improvised flight couch- really just the largest flat bit of scrap metal from the small supply they’d brought in Rover 2, with three small repulsor targets bolted to it. “All solid,” he said.

“Booster check?”

Starlight squinted at three bits of quartz, about the size of a paperback book each. “Enchantments look good,” she said.

“Okay. Suit up,” Cherry Berry said, lifting her helmet. “Fireball, Starlight and I go out first. Then Mark and Spitfire. Let’s do it.”

A pale blue sphere surrounded the rear of the Whinnybago. Flying dust and grit swirled around it. Inside it, a unicorn, an earth pony and a dragon waited as a human helped a badly overburdened pegasus navigate the boarding ladder that extended from the airlock almost to the ground.

The five went about their tasks in almost total silence, speaking only to confirm tasks completed. Fireball held a mana battery in one claw and Starlight Glimmer in the other, allowing the unicorn to keep her hooves on the battery terminals and focus on maintaining the force field. Mark and Cherry put Spitfire on the improvised launch platform and carried it, slowly and carefully, to the same cairns that had been used to launch Operation Cloudbuster the sol before. Once the launch platform was in place, they wired up the three boosters to the single battery dedicated to the launch. Two more batteries stood ready if and when the battery Starlight was using ran out of power.

Spitfire, in all of this, had nothing to do but lie back, wait, and think about exactly what a horrible idea this had been. She had, on a couple of rare occasions, barely managed an ordinary sonic boom. The only genuine rainbooms she’d ever witnessed had been performed by Rainbow Dash and Princess Twilight Sparkle; she herself had never, never gone that fast in her life. Not even close.

I’m about to fly what would be Mock 2 back home, she thought. Three times the local speed of sound. In a dust storm. And if anything breaks on my suit…

Oh, Faust, oh Faust, I am about to die.

No. Calm. We’ve taken every possible precaution. Multiple backup systems.

I am wearing a space suit that we took a pair of shears to. We patched it with changeling puke and scrap clothing. Then we strapped over two hundred and fifty pounds of rocks to it, so that I will not only have the aerodynamic properties of a brick, I’ll be a bucking FAT brick.

I am SOOOOO gonna die.

Okay. Fine. You’re gonna die, Spitfire. But your crew isn’t. Keep your mind on the task. Beyond that? What happens, happens.

“How are you doing, Spitfire?” Mark asked over the suit comms.

“All go,” she replied, her voice calm and steady as she’d trained to be.

“Okay,” Mark said. “We’re pulling back for launch. You’re about to lose the force field. Are you ready?”

“Yes, Mark.”

“Clear skies and fair winds, Spitfire.” Where the buck had Cherry Berry picked up that old pegasus farewell? Probably an adventure book somewhere; nopony talked like that anymore.

Unless they thought somepony was about to die.

Oh, yeah.

“Yes, commander, clear skies, that’s the plan,” she said out loud.

“Counting down,” Starlight said. “Thirty. Twenty-nine.”

The wall of the force field flowed past and around Spitfire, and she suddenly felt the soft brush of talcum-light Martian dust running across her spacesuit. Right now, she thought, all it would take would be one well-placed bit of gravel, right in my faceplate, and it would all be over.

“Twenty. Nineteen. Eighteen.”

“Suit comms off at t minus six. Force field at t minus three, Spitfire,” Cherry Berry called.

“Copy t minus three,” Spitfire replied.

“Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.”

“Back in a few minutes, guys.” She’d spent half the previous night thinking of what her last words would be pre-launch. Part of that had been because the phrase had to be in English, but only a small part. Most of it had been because she hadn’t been able to think of anything except mush or empty bluster. This was- what was Starlight’s word?- banal, but it had a certain class, a clean simplicity.

As a dying mare’s last words, she could do worse. She switched off suit power.

“Six. Five. Four.”

On three Spitfire’s hoof hit the toggle switch, and the two big batteries came to life. A smaller version of the same force field Starlight Glimmer had used popped up around her. At the same time magic poured through her, in a strength she couldn’t remember ever having before. She felt like all of Equestria was pouring into her wings.

She’d never touched a magic battery’s terminals during operation before. She could see, now, how Starlight might find it addictive, here and now.

And then zero came, and the mighty hoof of Faust slid under her back and shoved her towards the skies.

Centrifuge training, back at Cape Friendship, came back to her instantly, as did the Dizzitron at the Academy. She clenched her abdomen, breathed shallowly, forced the darkness at the edges of her vision to stay there. Somewhere off unimportant, a voice counted upwards, sounding urgent, as if shouting a number made it more real somehow.

Ignore it. Focus on the mission.

The forcefield deformed around her, pushing closer to her as the forces pushing against it intensified. Just beyond it she could see dust being pushed aside, not by the force field, but by the inability of the air immediately in front of her and the launch platform to get out of the way.

Almost time. Be ready.

And then, just as suddenly as Faust’s hoof had lifted her up, it was gone. Free-fall.

Instantly Spitfire’s newly sleeved wings opened- just a little, for opening them completely at this speed would have been suicidal. She raised a hoof into the sky, slapped away the force field crystal with her other hoof, felt the magic in her wings…

… and pushed.

The forcefield died, and several kilometers above the surface of Mars, nothing remained but a storm and a single pegasus carrying two massive batteries and over seven hundred meters per second of momentum.

Spitfire’s first task was to level off while maintaining speed. That took almost half a minute. Even at the absurd speed, with magic flooding her wings, there wasn’t that much air for them to get purchase on. Besides, this was a completely unknown environment. No pegasus had ever flown under conditions like this before, anywhere, ever.

But though the sky was alien, it wasn’t totally unfamiliar. Spitfire had flown high altitude and high speed enough that these conditions, potentially lethal as they were, had some familiar qualities.

She could work with it.

But the clock was ticking. She had to get to work.

Without realizing it, she’d turned automatically into the wind. Good. Counter-flying the rotation of a storm was the way you broke it… you and a couple dozen other Wonderbolts, or a couple hundred ordinary weatherponies. But since there was only her, she’d have to make up the difference with sheer speed.

Even with the batteries pouring magic through her, she couldn’t maintain seven hundred meters per second for long in level flight. She’d have to angle down, let Mars’s weak gravity help her.

She found herself panting. Had the suit lost integrity? No- no alarms yet. This was just exhaustion, being out of shape, and that lost lung capacity from the last medical exams.

No time for weakness. Either this works, or the crew dies. Pony up and do the job.

Spitfire’s eyes caught a glimmer of light. There, above her, was a blazing streak of orange flame, floating in the sky like…

… like a contrail. Like her contrail, except that instead of smoke, she was trailing fire behind her. A ring of fire. A spiral of fire.

No. A corkscrew of fire. Because Mars, you bucking rock with delusions of grandeur, you just got screwed.

Spitfire grit her teeth, angled a little downward, and flapped her wingtips, pushing for the heart of the storm.

“Oh my God.”

Starlight had just switched to the second magic battery, the force field flickering for only a moment, when Mark pointed skywards and said the words. There, miles and miles overhead, a flickering thread of light shone through the dark haze of the dust storm.

“She’s doing it!” Cherry Berry cheered. “Go for it, Spitfire! You can do it!”

Unnoticed by the observers on the ground, the launch platform crashed to the ground behind them, sending up a thin spattering of chipped rocks from the impact.

The air grew thicker, and so did the dust. Despite that, Spitfire knew she was slowing down, losing momentum, losing power.

She couldn’t help it. For all the power in her wings, she couldn’t really feel the air around her through the sticky, horrid wing sleeves. She wondered how well an earth pony farmer would do with all four hooves in galoshes, trying to work the fields.

But she could feel a little, secondhand. Her instincts told her where the currents of the weather were going, how they could be distrupted, how she could bust them. She plowed through them, always turning her leading hoof into the greatest point of resistance, each descending loop growing tighter around the center of the storm’s circulation.

And above, unseen by her, gaps in the storm appeared, spreading out from her contrail, which persisted in its glow as if the Martian air itself was burning.

And then she felt a tug on her wingtip, an imbalance in the huge, bulky batteries, each bigger than her head, strapped to her sides.

There. That’s the core of the storm.

Her suit alarms went off- suit breach. The life support cut out, then cut back in. In, out, in, out, in… and stopped. Breach self-sealed, for the moment. Good.

She felt another eddy, a downdraft in her wake. Yes. It’s weakened. It’s breaking.

Time to finish it.

She rolled to the right, nosed down, and dove down through the heart of the storm.

The trail of fire followed her down.

The castaways stared up as the corkscrew of light grew tighter, and tighter, and then…

… stabbed.

The light plunged down through the storm, descending faster and faster. As it plunged, it expanded, sending rings of condensed dust pluming outwards from the center of rotation to descend in a slow shower on the ground below.

Patches of ordinary Mars-red sky began to appear through the breaks in the storm overhead. Even as they watched, the red patches became red-ringed patches of pink, and then pink-ringed patches of the same amazing blue they’d experienced for weeks after the first booster test.

And then the plume of fire pulled out of its dive with a terrifying slowness, swinging away from the perpendicular, approaching the ground closer and closer…

… but not quite touching it. Less than a hundred meters overhead, it soared over their position and began to climb again, rising over the now clearly visible rim of Crommelin to the south.

And behind it, mixed with the dust rapidly settling out of the rare Martian atmosphere, fell snowflakes.

The alarms didn’t stop now. Fortunately, the life support wasn’t cutting in and out anymore, either. The tiny part of her mind Spitfire could spare for irrelevancies decided that Twilight Sparkle must be leaning on the override switch constantly. Good for her.

In a way, the suit breach felt like it helped. Spitfire thought she felt a slight improvement in the lift and thrust from her wings. Without that, she didn’t think she could have pulled out of the dive, not with the stupid batteries harnessed to her. The fact that she was gasping for air, her mouth wide open, her lungs laboring, all that was a minor issue.

Whatever. Finish the job. Hold on to all the momentum you can. Keep pushing. Bank around and come in for another strike-

The overwhelming power that had flowed through her wings CEASED.

The laws of physics, which had railed against the flagrant violations the spacesuited pegasus had committed, pounced. Air resistance grabbed at the empty ship batteries, slowing Spitfire below the local speed of sound almost instantly.

She reached for the release buckle… and yanked her hoof away, instead hitting the switch for suit power. She didn’t know where she was in relation to the ship, and she was not going to risk dropping two heavy rocks from the sky onto her friends’ heads.

The suit power came up, providing a water fountain where the big batteries had been a firehose. But it was enough, for the moment, to regain control.

With the suit power came the comms and the nav-ball. She didn’t have the breath to spare for talking, but she could see the nav-ball and the beacon for the ship.

The same part of her mind that had imagined an alicorn princess propping up a wall with one hoof to keep a certain switch closed now noted, with an almost insane clinical detachment, that she’d just missed a perfect bombing shot if she’d wanted to utterly destroy the rover with a hundred kilos of crystal and metal. Even as she thought it, she passed over the rover at a kilometer high and dropping faster and faster.

Two other things ran through Spitfire’s head: Wings become useless when you drop much below two hundred meters per second on Mars, and Once you activate suit power, your flight time can be measured in seconds.

Without really thinking about it, Spitfire spread her wings as wide as they could go, pounding them frantically, in the process pumping air through the breach in her left wing sleeve. Snow condensed out of the leak as soon as it left the hole, trailing a cloud of white behind her where there had been a streak of fire. She banked left and down, using the little power remaining to regain enough speed for her wings to catch enough of the thinning air to make the turn back to the ship.

The red world beneath her turned… turned… so slowly…

It grew closer… fast… faster… faster…

She saw the rover again. More to the point, she saw the cairns where her friends were waiting.

More alarms were going off. The suit breach had gone beyond the life support system’s ability to compensate. Gasping for air wasn’t helping anymore. Panic began rising in her chest, for lack of anything else there to rise.

And then she remembered the second force field.

Flight time measured in seconds. No power to spare.

Buck that!

Spitfire fumbled frantically at her chest with her forehooves, found the loose cable, and jammed it into the plug carved into the little crystal slice.

A pointy bubble appeared around her, streamlined back by the rush of air, thin as it was, around her. She could see herself slowing down in relation to the surface, dragged back by the field’s resistance.

And she could feel air, precious, life-giving air, returning to her lungs as the life support filled up the bubble with air. It felt…

… really, really painful. The inside of her chest felt like she’d inhaled sandpaper.

She felt her wings lose way in the air; she’d slowed down below the speed required to gain lift. All she had left was momentum, and that was a rapidly diminishing resource.

Oh, look. There’s the ground. Hello, ground. Be kind to me when I’m buried in-

She felt something grab her, and in a yank she hadn’t felt since the crash landing all those sols before, she came to a rapid stop some thirty meters above the surface. Then, slowly, she was lowered to the ground, while a large blue bubble of light charged towards her position.

Spitfire let herself flop forward onto her barrel when she touched down. She didn’t have the strength to stand. She couldn’t get the air to stand. She felt herself begin to shake. Everything was cold, horribly cold, despite the warm air blowing from the vents in her suit.

The force field flickered and burst as it merged with the larger one. Figures stood over her. They had voices- the voices had been in her ears for some time now, but they hadn’t seemed really important, no matter how urgent they sounded.

“The left wing is ripped wide open!”

“There’s a pinhole leak in the right wing, too!”

“Spitfire, you idiot! Why the buck do you still have those batteries strapped on!”

“Don’t just stand there, get them off her!”

“Hey.” Was that her voice? She’d always had a rasp to it, but wow. “Told you I’d bring the batteries back.”

“I can’t hold this field much longer! Get the crap off her and get her to the airlock, now!!”

Airlock. Ship. What a good idea.

Spitfire wanted to help, but she hurt, and she was so very…

… very, very…

… tired.

Moving as fast as they could without jarring their burden, the crew carried the unconscious pegasus back to the Whinnybago.

Around them, the shattered, dusty fragments of sky fell.

Author's Note

Well, this turned out to be longer than I expected.

But now you see why I didn't want to try to write this during a convention.

Sol 484

MISSION LOG – SOL 484

The skies are clear and dark blue, and the north rim of Crommelin is so clear on the horizon it almost looks like we could walk to it in half an hour. We’re no longer trapped under a thick curtain of airborne dirt.

So why, you might ask, are we still sitting here like a bump on a log? Well, I’ll tell you.

First and foremost, after yesterday’s miracle (there’s no other word for it), Spitfire is still in a bad way. We had to cut those wing sleeves off of her, because the uncured changeling gunk had pretty much sealed to her wings. When the sleeves finally came off, they took a lot of pony feathers with them. She woke up during the process, and we had to give her a triple dose of the pony painkillers to get her back to sleep.

Fortunately, the pony medical kit actually has medicine- I suppose “potion” is a better word- to accelerate regrowth of pegasus feathers. It’s just like the medicine Spitfire kept jamming down Starlight’s throat when her right foreleg was broken. It doesn’t work as well as it does back on their homeworld, though, which is why they administer it only when they’re running the magic field… which has been cut down to three minutes a day. More about that in a bit.

But the bigger worry is decompression sickness. When Spitfire wakes up, she complains that her lungs feel like raw meat. Been there, done that. But lung tissue is incredibly resilient. Also, there’s another medicine bottle specifically to treat smoke inhalation, and the ponies on the other end of their water telegraph gave the go-ahead to use that on Spitfire, too. It’ll be a long healing process, but we like her odds there… or would, if it wasn’t for the headaches.

Whenever Spitfire wakes up, she complains of terrible headaches and joint pain. She also sees stars, the way you might if you get hit in the head really hard. I suspect our little hero had a very close brush with the bends. I didn’t get that, because my exposures to low air pressure were brief- first when the antenna impaled me on Sol 6, second when my suit caught fire in the perchlorate bomb on Sol 40.

(God, that was over a year ago. So hard to believe… seems like only yesterday I was driving across Mars in a pain-filled stupor, egged on by a hallucination that turned out not to be a hallucination at all… fuck, I better stop this. I’m getting nostalgic for the times I was almost killed by Mars, and I’m not off this motherfucking planet yet!)

Anyway, the proper treatment for the bends is a hyperbaric chamber with an almost pure oxygen atmosphere. The bends are caused by gaseous nitrogen in the bloodstream. Normally nitrogen, like oxygen, remains dissolved in the blood. But when you undergo a sudden drop in pressure, it can come out of solution, becoming bubbles that operate just as efficiently as blood clots for cutting off circulation. Left untreated, the bends can kill just like a stroke- exactly like a stroke, in fact- or cause permanent injury.

Unfortunately we don’t have a hyperbaric chamber. Once Spitfire told us the symptoms, we stuffed her into Starlight Glimmer’s suit and asked the pony homeworld to overpressurize the suit with as high a concentration of oxygen, and zero nitrogen, as they could manage. We take off her helmet for meals, then stuff a rolled-up shirt into it for a pillow, put it back on, and let her drift off.

Fortunately, Spitfire seems to be escaping the paralysis and nausea that my training taught me come with the bends. (Ares astronauts get training on this because we have to be prepared for triage and recovery in case of a Hab breach.) We’ll have to watch her, but the worst should be over in a week. After that, Spits gets to begin recovery, and we find out what, if anything, she’s lost permanently.

That’s the main reason we haven’t moved an inch- taking care of Spitfire. But there are other reasons.

We didn’t know what damage the storm did to the exterior of the Whinnybago. We did know, however, that when Spitfire killed the storm, all the dust it was carrying fell almost straight down. So this morning Fireball, Starlight Glimmer (borrowing Dragonfly’s spacesuit) and I spent the entire morning cleaning off the rover, dusting off the solar panels, and inspecting everything for signs of damage. We took special care with a bottle of compressed air to clean out all ten rover wheels. The last thing we want is for accumulated grit to lock up a wheel and make us drag it across the Martian plains.

In the process, we found four of the solar panel amplifier sheets had been broken in the storm. That required Starlight to levitate Fireball and myself up to remove the bad sheets, bring down the most intact parts of what was left, and then reverse the process once she’d used more of the spare quartz to fix them. Between that and the boosters and things, we’ve used up over half of that half-ton chunk of crystal we brought from the cave farm.

Meanwhile, Dragonfly spent today undoing the modifications on Spitfire’s suit. That required cutting out the wing sleeves, stitching the flaps back in place, stealing about two square feet of the spare Hab canvas, and a lot more puking up black sticky stuff. She’s lying down next to Spitfire now. When I asked if she was all right, she flipped me the “high hoof” and rolled over. Not a happy camper, is our little love bug.

And finally, reports. Oh, GOD, the reports. The ponies took turns flooding the toilet with water describing the last couple of days. They had it easy. I had to make my report by vox, and NASA kept relaying more questions to Hermes for me to answer. By the time today’s broadcast window finally closed, I was feeling a little… like I’d swallowed broken glass. (See, I can too resist the urge for a cheap joke!)

But one day is all we can spare. Hermes is getting closer. The lightspeed lag is only five minutes now. In sixty-two sols, ready or not, it’s going to fly by. And we’re still over sixteen hundred kilometers from the MAV. We’ve got to get moving.

(Besides, NASA is still shouting at me to send them the video Fireball captured of Spitfire’s flight, and we need the MAV’s radios to do it. So we better do that before the last scientist at JSC has a brain aneurysm and dies.)

The electric batteries are full again. Eleven of our magic batteries are empty, and most of that is power we’re not getting back, but they’ll regenerate a little each day. We’re as ready to roll as we’re going to get.

Tomorrow we turn east… and, in the words of BJ McKay, lay the hammer down.

Author's Note

Not a lot of energy today, so this is all I had. Staying up late last night to finish the chapter had its drawbacks.

Sol 485

“Well, Bruce,” Venkat said, looking across the desk at the chief of JPL, “what have you brought to show me? The final MAV modification procedures, I hope?”

“I figured now was a good time,” Bruce said. “We finalized them six days ago, but the storm thing came up. By the way,” he added, “I was somewhere over New Mexico during the comms window with Hermes. What’s the report?”

“Seventy-five kilometers today,” Venkat said, smiling. “Spitfire is resting, eating well, and recovering, though she reports still having headaches. Even better, they’re entering Meridiani Planitia; mostly flat, level, empty land. Between the clear skies and smooth terrain, they should make excellent progress over the next ten sols or so.”

“That’s good to hear,” Bruce said. “I’ve been looking at the satellite photos taken near the time of the event. It’s a shame that Hermes was at the wrong angle to see the flight. I doubt its video cameras could have picked up any details, but it would have been nice to try.”

“Believe me, the photos we have are still plenty,” Venkat said. “Not that the people demanding more would agree. We’re lucky we had satellites in place to monitor the Whinnybago’s usual drive time, and that they launched Spitfire during that window. But some of the people asking for more pictures act like NASA has a secret time machine that would let us go back and take more photos.” He shook his head. “The ones with doctorates, at least, ought to know better.”

“Well, when we work out the bugs, we’ll let you know,” Bruce said, smiling. His smile dropped as he pulled a bundle of printouts from his briefcase. “We’ve spent over half a year working on this,” he said. “These procedures remove the most weight possible from the MAV without fatally compromising life support or the capacity for a Sparkle Drive direct abort to Earth.”

“Should I be concerned?” Venkat asked.

“You will be, regardless,” Bruce said. “Remember, the MAV at launch, minus its descent stage, weighs 12,600 kilograms plus the weight of its fuel and oxidizer. We sat down and did the math and figured out that, without the pony booster system, we’d have to find a way to add extra fuel and, at the same time, reduce the tare weight of the ship to 7,300 kilograms in order to achieve intercept velocity with Hermes.”

Venkat blinked. “Forgive my imprecise math,” he said, “but that’s almost cutting the ship in half, Bruce. How on Earth did you expect to manage that?”

“By removing the parts of the pressure vessel Mark could access directly, using Hab canvas to seal the holes, and having the crew ride up in their space suits,” Bruce said.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Venkat said. “That’s the most outrageous proposal I’ve ever heard.”

“It would have been an act of desperation, yes,” Bruce admitted. “Thankfully, we don’t have to go there. But I want you to bear that in mind as we go down the list of everything we have to do to shed two and a half tons from a ship we already intended to be as light as possible. Just keep in mind it could be worse.”

“Go on,” Venkat said.

“First, bear in mind we’ll be adding some weight to the ship,” Bruce said. “The Sparkle Drive made by Starlight Glimmer on Mars will use up the entire five hundred kilogram weight allotment for surface samples. We’re also allowing the crew fifty kilograms for personal effects. The MAV would normally carry only one day’s rations for the crew, with rationing in case of the low orbit abort scenario. We’re packing seven days of short rations in this time. And we’re adding the surviving ship thrusters from Friendship. We considered just using them to replace the existing thrusters outright- they’re lighter and they regenerate if there isn’t too much shielding between them and the crew. But the headaches of adapting the existing controls to the new system were too much. They’ll be backup in case the Direct Earth Abort scenario becomes necessary.”

“How do you propose to use them, then?” Venkat asked.

“We’ll use the control systems for the secondary and tertiary thrusters,” Bruce said. “They’re redundant for good reason, but they’re still redundant. They go. Speaking of redundancies, we’ll be dumping the backup comm systems. Life support, too, except for emergency tanks for Mark’s suit. The pony suit life support systems will take up the slack except for heat, and that’s not an issue, because we’re sending up both the Ares III and Ares IV MAV’s RTGs to extend the life of the MAV batteries. Which we’re going to dump three of, plus the entire auxiliary power system. Also the copilot station and controls, plus every control panel that isn’t absolutely required for on-board control.”

“That’s an interesting qualification,” Venkat said. “Not that I’m suggesting this in any way, but why not throw out all the controls and have the computer fly the ship? Or Martinez, using the MAV satellite launch protocol?”

“Because we need a live pilot if the Direct Earth Abort becomes necessary,” Bruce said. “We can’t program a computer for any immediate responses required if and when the MAV makes it to Earth local space. There are just too many unknowns. That means there has to be one set of pilot controls on board. And if they’re going to be there, it makes more sense to use them than to risk a computer glitch or a loss of signal on the ride up.”

“Only if the pilot’s qualified,” Venkat pointed out. “Assuming Cherry Berry is going to be the pilot, we need to get her simulation time every sol from their arrival at the MAV until launch day. And only if she qualifies- and qualifies at least comparably to Martinez- do we give her the power to manually override the computer.”

“No problem,” Bruce agreed. “But anyway. Comms, life support, power system, controls… okay, yeah. No medical kit. No tools. All the suit interface gear except for Mark’s, gone. We’ll be swapping out the human flight couches for the couches the ponies rebuilt using parts from the MDV, again except for Mark’s.

“And, finally, the two big issues. The auxiliary fuel pump, and one of the Stage One engines. Both are redundant, and both are heavy as hell.”

Venkat had to stiffen his jaw to keep it from dropping. “You want to remove an engine,” he said, keeping his voice level.

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “We get more delta-V out of the ship without it. It’s only there as a redundancy in case of breakdowns.”

“Bruce,” Venkat said carefully, “is there a single backup system on the MAV you aren’t gutting?”

“A couple,” Bruce said. “But only a couple. Every kilogram we save means a little fuel we can save in the second ascent stage for maneuvering or, if necessary, for Earth orbital insertion. And dumping this weight gives us a margin if some of the pony booster pylons fail. As it is, we predict that if the pylons all work properly, the MAV can achieve orbit on the first stage alone, with this payload.”

“No backups, Bruce,” Venkat insisted. “What’s the estimated odds of failure with this setup?”

Bruce shook his head. “Impossible to say,” he said. “The repulsor launch system and the Sparkle Drive are too unfamiliar for us to judge. And if they both fail, Mark and his friends are stuck in Mars orbit if they’re lucky.”

“Jesus Christ,” Venkat moaned.

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Just keep reminding yourself, it could have been worse.”

Author's Note

Bleargh. Spent all day with a mild headache. Meant to cook today, but didn't have the energy. And the stress test and ultrasound are tomorrow, which means I have to get up at 6 AM for the almost two hour drive to where it's being done.

Fun, fun, fun.

All the named stuff coming off the ship, by the way, is listed- and then some- in the original novel. Don't ask me why a two-stage rocket plus capsule has -one- auxiliary fuel pump...

Sol 489

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 498
ARES III SOL 489

Dragonfly watched as Sojourner navigated the walkways between Amicitas’s flight couches. The little rover crept along at a snail-like pace, navigating based on orders given by her laptop and relayed via wireless network to Rover 2’s computer and out through its radio to Sojourner’s receiver. Every two minutes it paused, slowly rose up to take stereograms with its forward cameras, then rocked forward to do the same with the aft-mounted color camera.

“C’mon, bug, put Robo-Bug away.” Spitfire, still wearing Starlight Glimmer’s space suit, walked out of the habitat deck. The helmet made her voice sound very muffled to Dragonfly without the suit comms to transmit it. “And help me off with this thing. I gotta hit the head.”

“Good morning, Spitfire,” Dragonfly said. “How are you feeling today?”

“I’m going stir crazy,” the pegasus said. “I want out of this suit full time. I want to stretch and start doing exercises again. I’ve got a lot of work to get back in flying trim.”

“Uh huh. Now try that with symptoms added.”

“Ugh.” Spitfire turned her head away, as much as the suit helmet would let her. “All right. I still have a headache, there’s still pins stuck in my fetlocks, my new feathers itch horribly, and I can’t put three words of English together. But it’s all better than yesterday.”

“It must be,” Dragonfly agreed. “After all, you couldn’t put three words of English together before.”

“Fuck you.”

“Two, however, you manage just fine.”

“Look, if this was your suit I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t want to fill Starlight’s suit full of roadapples when I don’t have an undergarment anymore. Y’wanna help me out of this?”

“Sure, Spitfire,” Dragonfly said, rearing up to grip the helmet between her forehooves. “But once you’re done in the head, you go back in the suit and lie right back down. You’ve got two days of treatment to go, and treatment is high pressure, oxygen, and lying down. No exercise.”

“But I’m feeling better-“

“How does it feel to swap places with Starlight Glimmer, by the way?” Dragonfly asked pointedly.

When the helmet came off, Spitfire’s ears slumped in shame. “Yeah, all right,” she said. “You made your point. I’ll be good.”

“That’s our hero.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Spitfire muttered, wiggling out as Dragonfly helped unseal the rest of the suit. “I may be flying a desk after this, but at least I have one record Rainbow Dash is never going to beat.”

Dragonfly looked at Spitfire’s wings. They were in tatters. Another couple of primaries had come out overnight. The Feather-Fix potion had begun growing replacements for all the feathers they’d had to chop up to get the gunk-lined suit wings off her, but it came a lot more slowly than it would have done at home. The new feathers were barely barbs. A lot hadn’t even broken the skin yet.

Spitfire noticed Dragonfly examining her wings. She looked the changeling straight in the eyes and said, “Worth it.” Stepping free from her suit, she walked to the head, wobbling only a little as the deck underneath them rocked gently. The morning was young, and the Whinnybago was rolling along at top speed through an uncommonly smooth stretch of Martian terrain.

Dragonfly returned her attention to Sojourner. The little probe would have to scoot back to its corner in a while; it didn’t get a lot of sunlight through the cockpit windows to recharge its batteries. But learning the commands to make the little rover go gave her something to take her mind off of other things, like the hunger she imagined she could feel building up after days of almost no magic.

It had to be imaginary. A daily two minutes had to beat out twenty minutes every seventeen days. But… well, she felt weaker, she felt hungrier, and she couldn’t stop feeling that way.

She hadn’t mentioned it to the others, though she knew they would want her to. It just didn’t seem to be helpful. There were very good reasons why magic time had been cut back so drastically.

The batteries recharged at 1.4 percent each per sol- they’d triple-checked the rate- for a total mana recharge of 29.4% of a single battery’s capacity. 7.5% of that went to top off the jumbo batteries to compensate for their slow bleed. Two minutes of magic field, the new daily ration, ate up another 5.6%. That left just over 16% per day to recharge the eleven batteries they’d used defeating the Great Black Spot, as NASA was calling it.

At noon of Sol 483, they’d had ten full batteries and eleven empty ones. By tonight, assuming no emergencies, they’d have eleven full batteries and ten empty ones, or the equivalent. According to Mark’s travel estimate, they might be able to recharge four more batteries before they reached Schiaparelli. After that work on modifying the MAV would eat more power- who knew how much. And at the end of the process- with recharging the jumbos, with MAV mods, with daily magic doses, with emergencies if more cropped up- they had to have at least seven full batteries, minimum, for installation with the Sparkle Drive.

Bottom line: recharging the batteries against future emergencies took absolute top priority- even if it meant pushing the edge of magic starvation again.

The Great Black Spot had totally bucked Spitfire- but to be fair, she’d got the last kick in. But it was still bucking Dragonfly over, too, and it wasn’t around for the changeling to get her own kicks in. And it didn’t help that she had entirely too much time to work all of that out, especially with Starlight borrowing her suit and taking her place scouting alongside Cherry Berry.

Spitfire eventually came out of the head. “Okay,” she said. “Help me back into the flour sack.”

“Rarity would have a fit if she heard you call it that,” Dragonfly chided.

“Would she?” Spitfire asked. “Oh dear. Did this suddenly become Ponyville instead of Mars while I was on the can? Sure fooled me!”

“You’re getting better,” Dragonfly muttered as she helped Spitfire shrug the borrowed suit back on. “It takes energy to be sarcastic. What do you want for breakfast?” Mark had dug out a few of the precious non-meat food packs, formerly reserved for use if they had to take the MAV straight to Earth, to give Spitfire more incentive to eat full meals.

It hadn’t worked as well as Mark might have liked. “What’s the entrée?” Spitfire asked, not bothering to fake optimism.

“Cowboy beans and rice,” Dragonfly said.

“Bring on the hay,” Spitfire said, allowing Dragonfly to walk her back to the mattress-covered floor of the habitat deck.

Watching Spitfire eat breakfast (and getting a snuggle-snack for her trouble) occupied twenty minutes of her attention, but that was over once the helmet was back on the suit, the life support turned back on, and a computer left beside her so the pegasus could read one of the mystery novels Fireball had recommended from the NASA stash. To make things worse, Sojourner had completed its pre-programmed little dance, so Dragonfly didn’t even have watching that to occupy her mind.

Well, the Whinnybago was still rolling, so there was at least the entertainment of watching the gently rolling terrain of Meridiani Planitia slowly passing by and behind the rear-facing cockpit windows. She dragged Sojourner back to its usual resting place, then trotted forward to the co-pilot seat.

The flight couch was occupied, however, by a potted plant.

“Hey, Fireball?” Dragonfly asked.

Fireball reached over to switch off his outgoing suit mike, then said, “Done playing with the mini-rover?”

“Why do you have Cherry’s shrub in a flight couch?” Dragonfly asked.

“I’ve been helping take care of Groot,” Fireball said. “I think he likes looking out the windows. Of course, we’re at the wrong angle here for him to get much sun, but I think he likes the view.”

Dragonfly had her mouth open to say something like It has no eyes, it can’t see the view, or How do you know what a plant does or doesn’t like, or, most probably, It’s a bucking TREE, before her brain caught up and turned all of it to a meaningless, “Errr…” After all, how many times had she talked about her delusions of sensing what this or that thing felt about anything? Where did she have room to scoff at what saner people thought an inanimate object felt or thought?

Come to think of it…

She could feel Sojourner’s smug feeling from its corner, as if it were saying, I did work today! She could sense the Whinnybago’s confidence: I am rolling, and I will continue to roll, because I was reborn to roll. But she’d never bothered to try tuning her insanity to Radio Free Twig before. Why not?

She turned all her attention to the leaf-covered branch stuck in mildly damp soil.

Must get bigger. Must get stronger. Must get big and strong real soon.

“I don’t think it notices the terrain,” Dragonfly said carefully. “It’s really focused on growing as fast as it can.”

“Really?” The dragon actually smiled at that. “That’s good. Good Groot.”

Dragonfly sensed a sudden spike of… delight? “It knows we’re paying attention to it,” she added. “It likes attention a lot.”

“Who doesn’t?” Fireball asked.

“You mean, besides dragons?”

“Dragons love attention,” Fireball said. “We just don’t like visitors.”

“Pardon me for asking,” Dragonfly said, “but why are you fooling with Cherry’s plant anyway? If she finds out she’s going to have your hide.”

“I asked first,” Fireball said, a little primly. “Ever since the cave farm, I’ve been wondering how it feels to take care of something of my own.” He reached over to the copilot seat and turned the sample-box planter a quarter turn. “Feels kinda nice so far.”

Dragonfly could just barely hear Cherry Berry’s voice through Fireball’s headset as she broke in, speaking in English. “Small crater ahead. About a kilometer wide. Rubble field for two hundred meters around the rim. Scattered rocks a lot wider.”

“Roger. Any problem with taking it on the south side?” Mark asked from the rover’s driver cabin.

“Negative. No sign of any serious obstacle on either side,” Cherry said.

“Okay. Fireball, prepare for plus ten.”

Fireball switched his mike back on. “Copy plus ten,” he replied, also in English.

“On my count… five, four, three, two, one, turn!”

Fireball turned the flight yoke on the word turn.

“Hold… hold… and zero!”

Fireball re-centered the flight yoke, and with barely a wobble the Whinnybago rolled on.

“Battery check?” Cherry called.

“Twenty-one percent,” Mark answered. “About half an hour to go.”

“Roger. Looking forward to lunch. And some hot cherry tea.”

“Me too. Fireball, get Dragonfly on the headset, will ya?”

“Roger.” Fireball took his claws off the flight yoke long enough to remove his headset. “It’s for you,” he said, handing it down to Dragonfly.

Dragonfly squeezed between the pilot and copilot seats, carefully placing her forehooves away from any important active controls. “Dragonfly here, Mark. What’s up?”

“How did the Sojourner test go?”

“By the numbers,” Dragonfly said. “Should be a lot of new pictures in the rover’s data storage.”

“You might want to have it wave out the port side windows,” Mark said. “We’re passing by Opportunity right now.”

“Opportunity? What’s that? Where is it?”

“We can’t see it. It’s over three hundred kilometers south-southwest of us. This is as close as we get. But Opportunity was one of the two rovers that came immediately after Sojourner. A bigger younger sister, if you like. It was expected to last one hundred sols. It survived for years and years.”

“I don’t suppose we could stop by and visit?” Dragonfly asked.

“Over three hundred kilometers south? Nope, sorry. We need to keep moving. Besides, Opportunity is a lot bigger than Sojourner. It wouldn’t fit in the airlock.”

“I wasn’t thinking of taking it with us,” Dragonfly protested.

“I know. But the Opportunity mission is detailed in the Project Ares database. Go read about it if you’re bored. It was one of the most successful space probes of all time. I think only the Voyagers beat it out.”

“Oh? Where are they?”

“They left the solar system decades ago. They were deep space probes, sent to fly by our outer planets. Have you tried anything like that yet where you come from?”

“No. We were going to just use the Sparkle Drive to go there direct.”

“Well, you’ve got some wonderful things to look forward to, then,” Mark said. “Anyway, put Fireball back on. I think I see that crater Cherry found, and we may need to make some turns in a minute.”

“Okay.” Dragonfly hoofed the headset back up to Fireball, then left the dragon and the plant to their driving.

Reading about Opportunity and its sister Spirit consumed the remaining driving time for the day. Thirty minutes of distraction.

Only about twelve more waking hours to go…

Author's Note

With the immediate danger past and nothing but open road (or lack thereof) ahead, here's a chapter more or less about nothing.

Writing this on the laptop. My desktop HD is all but dead- hesitating and locking up a LOT. I managed to back everything on it up overnight- at least I think I did- but Monday I have to hand the compy over to a tech to clone the drive and check the computer's drive controller to make sure it isn't an issue.

Fun times...

Sol 492

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 501

ARES III SOL 492

Cherry Berry took the sample box full of water and began washing off her space suit, beginning by splashing her forehooves in the plastic bin.

The Hab had had an advanced air filtration system that scrubbed dust particles out of the air and a full decontamination shower. Amicitas had had neither, and there wasn’t space or weight allowance for them in the Whinnybago. After a couple sols of driving, Mark had noticed the buildup of dust in the trailer and had insisted, using graphic and detailed accounts of the potential inhalation hazards of perchlorates and regolith, on efforts to get the dust out of the trailer again.

The solution relied heavily on one of the few resources the ship had an endless supply of: cold water. Suits would get as much of their surface as possible washed off, leaving aside only those spots which might be hurt by getting wet. This would be done in the airlock, so that when the last suit was cleaned, someone with a dry suit could suit up, open the outer airlock doors, and quickly sluice out the airlock floor before the water froze or evaporated.

It was Cherry’s turn to do it this sol, and she was already worn out. The Martian sky had already returned to its normal pink tones, and there had been a large, rocky ridge to overcome. (Mark said it was an ancient riverbed, which seemed crazy to Cherry; since when did riverbeds bulge up from the surface? Mark had said something about concretion, but Cherry wasn’t interested unless the concrete was a royal highway leading straight to the MAV.) Cherry wanted lunch, followed by several hours of immobility.

So when she saw, through the open inner airlock doors, Spitfire suited up in her own spacesuit and doing stretching exercises, Cherry Berry’s nerves grew just a little bit more frayed. “Spitfire,” she said quietly, “what are you doing?”

“I’m going out for a trot as soon as you’re done,” Spitfire said. “Don’t worry, I’ll wash out the airlock when I get back.”

“The heck you are,” Cherry Berry said.

“Cherry? Spitfire?” Mark, his freshly heated food pack in his hands, leaned over the second row of flight couches. “Something wrong?”

“We’re fine, Mark,” Cherry said in English, forcing a smile.

“Yes. Fine. All good,” Spitfire added.

Mark didn’t look like he believed it, but he shrugged and sat down in one of the seats to eat his meal.

Cherry ground her teeth. She’d have to keep her voice soft and sweet, considering how much Equestrian Mark understood. “Spitfire, go put that suit away and eat your lunch,” she murmured.

“What’s the problem?” Spitfire asked. “I completed the week of rest. My head only hurts a little, and my joints don’t hurt at all anymore. I’m better. And I need to get some exercise so I can build my strength back up.” She tossed her head, adding, “And don’t talk to me about relapses. I’m the mission medic. And so long as I don’t go flying or rip my suit, I’m safe to begin moderate exercise.”

Cherry’s teeth grit a little harder. “I’m not worried about you having a relapse,” she lied. “But your suit is compromised all to Tartarus. Dragonfly fixed it up so you’ll have it for brief EVAs, but the more you take it outside, the weaker the patches will get.”

“It’ll hold up for half an hour of trotting!” Spitfire insisted, not bothering to keep her voice low. “If it won’t, then Dragonfly needs to do the job over!”

“Is somebody calling my name?” The changeling herself strolled out of the habitat deck, trotting up to where Mark sat eating his lunch. “What’s all the noise?” she asked him in English.

“Well,” Mark said, “Spitfire wants to go outside for a run. Cherry Berry doesn’t want her to because she’s afraid Spitfire’s suit might blow out at the patches. And neither of them wants to make a scene about it in front of me. At least not Cherry.”

Cherry Berry blushed. So much for keeping voices low. And apparently Mark understood even more Equestrian than she’d thought.

“Come on, commander,” Spitfire moaned. “I’ve been stuck in here for over a week. I need to get out of here for a little while or else I’m gonna buck some heads.”

“You can put up with it a while longer,” Cherry said. “Look at Dragonfly. She’s been in here just as long as you have. And she’s holding up just fine.”

“Are you kidding?” Spitfire asked. “Dragonfly spent two months in a cocoon. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t get claustrophobia.”

“Excuse me,” Dragonfly said, a little miffed. “I was asleep for those two months, thank you. I get cabin fever about as much as the next bug.”

“Anyway, it’s just half an hour.”

“Sure it is,” Cherry said. “And what happens if the patches fail when you’re out there? You could asphyxiate in seconds if it’s a bad leak.”

“So don’t let her go out alone,” Dragonfly suggested. “Send someone with her carrying one of Mark’s emergency patch kits. They’ll work just as well on our suits as on his.”

“See?” Spitfire said, grinning. “No excuse left! C’mon, bug, let’s go for a run!”

“Yeah, no,” Dragonfly said. “You’ve heard of the law of conservation of energy? Well, I’m conserving mine, and that’s the law.”

Cherry Berry cleared her throat. “Fireball?” She called out. “Could you come here a moment?”

“Huh?” Spitfire’s face scrunched up inside her helmet. “What do you want Fireball for?”

Fireball walked onto the bridge still crunching on a sliver of quartz. “Yeah?” he asked.

“Please suit up,” Cherry said. “Spitfire needs a backup for her EVA. She wants to get out of the ship for a while.”

“Don’t we all,” Fireball muttered.

“No, not really,” Dragonfly corrected, radiating innocence.

Spitfire looked at Fireball, then at Cherry, pleading in her eyes. “Commander, please, not Fireball,” she begged. “He’s even slower than Mark is. If I have to stay close to him, I won’t even get beyond a walk! Can’t you send somepony else?”

“His suit is intact- well, more than anyone else’s- and more to the point, it’s dry,” Cherry pointed out. “The only other dry suit right now is Starlight Glimmer’s, because she’s been using Dragonfly’s for scouting duty.”

“But Cherry…” The former Wonderbolts commander, for all her experience and maturity, had trouble keeping the whine out of her voice.

“Have a nice bit of exercise,” Cherry said, using a bit of Ares III discarded clothing to wipe down her hooves. “And don’t forget to wash out the airlock once you’re done.”

Author's Note

I have a headache, and my right arm (which has had rotator cuff and tendonitis issues since February) is more sore than usual today. So this is all I could come up with.

Incidentally, ridges made of ancient dried river beds are very much a real thing on Mars. Arabia Terra is full of them. They're formed because sediment from the ancient river beds, being mostly grains of basaltic material, made an excellent cement to hold together larger bits of other rocks, forming a kind of concrete. Over billions of years, this natural concrete eroded more slowly than the surrounding material, so what had once been the lowest point in the local terrain eventually became the highest point.

And incidentally, they've had to shut down the life support multiple times to stick a tool down the air lines and wipe dust and other crud off the crystal that didn't get transported along with the air.

Sol 494

MISSION LOG – SOL 494

Three years ago, if you’d told me that one day I would find Mars boring, I’d have said you were crazy. Wait a minute, that’s not exactly true. I’d have told you to go fuck yourself, because I’d just been selected as prime crew for Ares III and was totally into every aspect of the hardcore training we had to do before we shipped out. But you get the idea.

Anyway, whaddaya know? I’m on Mars, and I’m bored.

Aside from the little bit of mildly life-threatening weather we had, we’ve been in a rut, so to speak. Every sol we drive seventy-odd kilometers across terrain that, truth be told, tends to look a lot alike. (Seventy-four km each of the last three days; we’ve used over 200 kg of food and over 200 kg of our emergency quartz supply, and the lighter load is showing in our power efficiency.)

After every sol of driving, I set out the rover solar panels so the batteries can recharge, then go in to exchange a quick message with Hermes- we’re only about four light-minutes apart now, and the signal is getting pretty clear. After that lunch, reading time (everyone has their own book they’re reading silently, but for some reason we still like reading aloud from one book together, even if it is Agatha Christie). Every three afternoons we have a D&D session; Starlight comes up with basic scenarios, and I fill in the actual challenges and run the game. It’s more fun for everyone that way, since Starlight tends to get a little TPK when players piss her off.

On sols that we don’t do D&D, we watch television, or we work on the various reports we owe NASA and the pony space programs once we get to the MAV. We don’t stay up too long after dark, because we have to wake up well before dawn to have breakfast, suit up, pick up the solar panels, and then start driving again just as the pre-dawn light begins filling the sky. Besides, when the sun sets it gets damn cold in the bridge.

Drive, eat, read, write, game, sleep, repeat. You might not believe it, but it does get a little tedious. Sometimes I’m so bored I even forget to be terrified out of my mind at the hundred million ways this fucking planet could still kill us. That lasts about a few minutes.

Today it was my turn to walk Spitfire. She insists she needs to exercise to regain her health, and Cherry Berry won’t let her run off alone without someone beside her to pick her up and rush back to the trailer if her patched-up suit springs a leak. I have patch kits, of course, but they only work if the hole is less than nine inches wide. The wing flaps cut out of the sides of her suit are a lot bigger than that, so if one of those unravels all at once I suspect I’ll get to find out if the ponies have an equivalent of CPR.

But it didn’t happen today. All that happened is that Spitfire gave me a lot of dirty looks when I refused to even so much as work my way up to a jog. There are reasons for that, the biggest one being that I still don’t know how to run properly in a space suit in Martian gravity. It comes out as huge leaps and bounds, and I’m scared shitless that I’ll trip over something and hit face-first, shattering this fucking idiotic safety-glass visor (again). So I took it slowly, she trotted orbits around me for half an hour, and we went back into the ship with our suits still holding pressure.

I wonder when Spitfire will figure out she could use someone else's suit out on these little trips. If she doesn’t think of it herself, I might suggest it to her, if Cherry ever annoys me at some point.

Anyway, it’s almost bedtime. I mentioned we turn in early. Well, that’s not quite accurate. We lie down early, but we spend as much as an hour talking after we turn the light off. It reminds me of a TV show my parents told me about called The Waltons. They watched it with their grandparents when they were little. They showed me a few episodes, and I thought it was pretty dreadful. (Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure it was a 1970s TV show, so why didn’t Lewis have it in her collection of shitty TV?)

The reason our nighttime routine reminds me of The Waltons is this; at the end of every episode, just as the huge Walton family is going to bed, the family members hold conversations through the paper-thin walls of their house. We don’t see them doing this; all we see is the house with one or two lit windows and a lot of voiceover. And they talk about whatever the episode was about, not saying much of anything important, like families do if they live in old houses with zero soundproofing.

We do that too. Granted, we have an excuse, because we’re in the same room- hell, we’re in the same pile. We gave up even trying to sleep separately weeks ago.

But some of those conversations can get pretty weird.

Not saying how… just saying that they do. I don’t intend to record any of them, so the secrets of our lights-out conversations will go to our graves.

The habitat deck lights went out with the merest flicker of magic from Starlight Glimmer’s horn. As usual, Mark and Fireball were on the bottom of the pile, with Dragonfly wedged between them and Cherry, Starlight and Spitfire sprawled on top of them. A couple of goodnights were said, and a couple of bodies shifted, seeking a slightly more comfortable position in the pile.

And then, as Mark had known it would, the first question got asked- one of those questions that never occurred to anyone to ask during daylight, when there was tons of nothing much to do.

“Mark? Tell me again how long your world has had space rockets.” This time it was Starlight Glimmer. Usually it was Dragonfly or Cherry Berry. Mark had started it a couple of times, asking about bits of pony culture he ran across during the day. Spitfire and Fireball never started it, but for all their complaints about the conversations happening at all, they contributed as often as not once it got started.

“Hm… rockets that make it to space? Ninety years. Rockets that can take a person? Seventy-five years, give or take. Why?”

“I was just thinking,” Starlight said. “You humans in the TV shows we see, you’re always in a hurry to get places. Cars, airplanes, all sorts of stuff. But we never see you use rockets to get around. Why is that?”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“We ponies aren’t in a hurry like that most of the time. But you humans live faster lives! A rocket flight is as fast as you get, without magic!”

“It’s also dangerous,” Mark said. “And expensive as shit.”

“That didn’t stop my queen,” Dragonfly buzzed from the depths of the body-pile. It tickled.

“That’s because, pardon the insult, your queen is crazy,” Mark said. “But SpaceX was going to do it, at one point. What became Red Falcon was originally going to be a suborbital transport system. Get from one side of the globe to the other- literally one side to the other- in less than two hours. But it was too expensive and dangerous. Only a couple of countries, not including the USA, would license it for commercial passenger flight. They couldn’t fill up fifty seats for the first flight at a million bucks a head, not with a three percent landing failure rate. And then Project Ares suddenly took up SpaceX’s full production capacity, and the idea kind of faded away.”

“Huh. Only a million bucks?” Dragonfly shifted position under the pile. “The queen charges fifteen million bits for a tourist flight. Of course we actually give them full orbit, not just a ballistic shot. And for forty million bits you get a night on the space station.”

“That just shows Chrysalis is crazy but not stupid,” Fireball muttered.

“I go crazy,” Spitfire warned, “if you all not go to sleep!”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“But,” Starlight pressed, ignoring the warning, “there are enough rich people for all those airplanes, right? Those big jets must cost a lot of money to ride on.”

“Mmm,” Mark grunted. “Week’s take-home pay for a low-end worker. Less if they get a bargain deal.”

“A week’s pay??” Starlight gasped. “Only a week’s pay? Why, anybody could fly for that, at least once a year!”

“How much do you get paid anyway, Starlight?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Well, I… um… actually, I don’t,” Starlight admitted. “I just get whatever I need from Twilight by asking. If I want something special I help her reorganize her books or something like that.”

“You’re her chief assistant and you don’t get a paycheck??” Cherry asked.

“You think she too poor, give some of yours,” Spitfire growled. “I know you make three times my leader pay. Now go to sleep!!”

“Go to sleep what?”

“Go to sleep, ma’am.”

“That’s better.”

“I don’t get paid either,” Dragonfly said. “The queen does give us spending money from time to time. I usually spend it on video games.”

“Really?” Mark asked. “I thought you said you didn’t have home consoles in your world.”

“We don’t. I buy big cabinets. Fourteen so far. Last I bought was ‘Unicorn of Ur.’ Plays great as two-player.”

“Unicorn of your what?” Mark asked.

“Huh?”

“You said ‘Unicorn of Your.’”

“When we get to Earth,” Starlight Glimmer said decisively, “I’m going to buy a jet plane ticket.”

“I pay,” Spitfire snarled, “if it just shut you up!!”

“All right, all right. Good night, Spitfire.”

“Night, Starlight.”

“Night, boss pony.”

“Good night, Dragonfly.”

“Night, Cherry.”

“Good night, Fireball.”

“G’night, John-boy,” Mark mumbled.

Beat.

“Whaaaaaat?” four voices asked.

“Good night everybody!” Spitfire, the lone dissenting voice, had the last word.

Author's Note

Today I put the desktop in the repair shop and took one of my cats to the vet for an ear infection.

Tomorrow I find out just how impending, if at all, is my future heart attack.

In the meantime, have some sillies.

(And no, I haven't got unlimited faith in the vision of Elon Musk.)

Sol 496

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 505

ARES III SOL 496

TRANSCRIPT – AUDIO EXCHANGE BETWEEN ESA AMICITAS AND NASA EXPLORATION VESSEL HERMES

HERMES (Martinez): Hey, Mark! This is Martinez! Man, you’re really hustling across Mars these past few days! A guy might almost think you were in a hurry to get off the planet!

NASA wants me to tell you to keep heading straight east for the next two days. Most of that is gonna be flat and level ground except for some sand dunes… but at the end of it you’ll be out of Meridiani Planum. From there the ground will get rugged again, and the closer you get to Edom Crater and what you call the Entrance Ramp, the quicker the terrain rises.

Right now you’re about eleven hundred meters below zero level, where you’ve more or less been for the past week. The crest of Entrance Ramp is two hundred meters above zero, and you’ll gain half of that in the last two sols. And be careful once you start down, because in less than forty kilometers you drop almost five hundred meters elevation. That’s about a 1.5 degree grade if it were level, but you and I both know it won’t be.

So there you are, Mark- don’t say we didn’t warn ya.

Okay, enough with that- it’s time to get down to business. Could you put Commander Berry on? I’ll stand by until I hear her voice. Over.

AMICITAS (Watney): Thanks for the heads up. On the one hand, Meridiani is spoiling us. On the other, the mostly flat land is getting a bit hypnotic. Last night I dreamed that there was no Earth, no pony world, no outer space, just an infinite plane of Mars, and I was cursed to wander it like a Mad Max knockoff.

I tell you, man, I am definitely in a hurry to get off this planet. So far as I’m concerned you guys can show up here the sol after we make it to the MAV. I don’t care if the mods aren’t done. I will learn to fly and fucking well PULL the thing into space if I have to. I am prepared to walk all the way back to Earth if somebody shows me the road.

Anyway, it’s good to hear your voice. Chris? Vogel? You guys can feel free to talk any time. I’m getting a little tired of hearing just Johanssen and Lewis every day.

Anyway, here comes Cherry.

AMICITAS (Cherry Berry): Hi, Major Martinez! It’s good to hear your voice! What can I do for you? Over.

HERMES (Martinez): Morning, Commander Berry! NASA just sent us the updates to the MAV launch software, including the flight simulator. They’ve also sent it to the MAV. When Mark activates the MAV, it’ll automatically update. NASA wants you working on that simulator every sol you’re there, and they want me to help walk you through it. They want to be sure you’re fit to fly in case the automatic launch sequence fails and I can’t override from Hermes, or if you have to fly direct to Earth on that warp drive of yours.

NASA said I had to make it real clear; they haven’t decided who will actually fly the launch, you or me. They’re not saying you will; they’re not saying you won’t. They’re just not saying, comprende? But I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re fit to fly, because I know if we switched places I wouldn’t want my life in anyone’s hands other than my own. We’re gonna be a team, for this, you get me? Over.

AMICITAS (Cherry Berry): Thanks, Major! I worked hard to learn your systems in the MDV simulator. And you’re right. I want to fly again a lot. Really, a lot. I learned good English just so I could be the one to fly the MAV. I’ll make you proud! Over.

HERMES (Martinez): Okay, that’s the spirit! Now listen: the system we use requires two people. The pilot watches what the launch program is doing and engages manual override if the program can’t cope. Then we have the system operations crew member, or sysop for short. They monitor the systems and tell the pilot how they’re doing. Sometimes they tweak things to improve chances for a successful launch. Up here that’s Johanssen’s job. We’ll both be watching you all the way through launch, but you need a sysop on your end to be in the comm loop and give you instant updates.

You’ll also need a third crew member to run your Sparkle Drive. NASA decided not to give the launch program authority to turn the drive on. Instead they made some control software which will, um… something about pulse frequencies. It’s got a slider bar, is all I know. Your drive will still connect to a computer, but not the main MAV computer, and you’ll have to decide if it’s safe to use.

Okay? You’re gonna have to pick these people out for me, Commander Berry. I can’t do it for you. Over.

AMICITAS (Cherry Berry): Huh. I’m gonna have to think about that, Major. I’d like Mark to be sysop. He trained on this system for years with you. But he’s going to be too busy with the MAV mods. So I think it’ll be Dragonfly, if she’s fit. She was our ship engineer, and she’s an experienced pilot and capcom too. Spitfire will be her backup- she ran the MDV sims back at the Hab.

And of course Starlight Glimmer will run the Sparkle Drive! She made it! The only reason we don’t call it the Starlight Drive is because she asked we not name it for her!

AMICITAS (Starlight Glimmer) (shouted off-mike, very faint): Not true! Twilight Sparkle did most of the work! I only made the final arrays!

AMICITAS (Cherry Berry): And who made the actual drives? All of them? Personally?

AMICITAS (Starlight Glimmer): (inaudible)

AMICITAS (Cherry Berry): Right. Sorry about that, Major. We’ll let you speak now. Over.

HERMES (Martinez): Sounds good to me, Commander Berry! It’s your decision, and you know your crew. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get in some sim time myself. I can’t train you if I don’t try it out first! Tell Major Spitfire I hope she’s getting better! Out!

AMICITAS (Spitfire): Thanks, Major. I will fly again. You watch me. Out.

Author's Note

Another way-marker on the long drive to Schiaparelli.

If you're curious, as of the end of driving this chapter the Whinnybago is at roughly 1 degree N, 5 degrees E on the standard Martian map.

For those curious about my health, check today's blog post, and add "tendonitis flareup in right arm continuing".

Sol 500

MISSION LOG – SOL 500

Ever since the Black Spot, as we’ve been tooling along uneventfully across Mars, I’ve been regretting that I can’t pick up rock samples to bring home with us.

Think about it. The clays of Mawrth Vallis. The shock glass scattered around Crommelin. The sediments of the dry lakes of Thymiamata. The sands of the great lines of dunes (which we didn’t drive over so much as plow straight through) of Meridiani Planitia. And now, the broken rocks from the mesas and arroyos of the transition zone between Arabia Terra and Terra Sabaea. (Schiaparelli kind of straddles the line between the two.) There are a million geologists back home who would gladly die here if they could ship their body weight in Mars rocks back to Earth for study.

Me, I’m going the fuck home, but I still feel guilty. I’m passing up all sorts of scientific discoveries- possibly the first discovery of Martian fossils, or a rock with words carved on it: FOR A GOOD TIME CALL XENU 555-XXXX. NASA spent literal tons of money to send me here, and they’re spending extra tons of money to get me and my five magical friends back again. The least I could do is bring a few souvenirs of my prolonged involuntary vacation.

But it just isn’t feasible. Weight is everything right now. We’re up to seventy-four kilometers per day because we’ve lost weight. And our safety margin on Sol 551 relies entirely on making the MAV lighter. So no rock samples for me, as much as I’d love to.

But I have been taking photos at every stop. The cameras automatically time-stamp the digital files, so NASA will be able to place every photo with every stop. I spend about half an hour outside laying out solar panels and taking photos of anything that looks vaguely interesting. And digital files cost nothing to send back to Earth except electricity.

Today I took several photos of the view ahead. The horizon is bumpy again- really bumpy. Normally we can’t see farther than two and a half kilometers unless we’re on top of a mountain or crater ridge or something, but I think we’re seeing a lot farther than that as we look east.

In the next two and a half sols we’re going to climb about a kilometer in elevation. To give you some idea of what that means, it took us eight sols to climb the same amount of elevation coming up Mawrth Vallis. It took us even longer to climb only five hundred meters crossing Meridiani Planitia. Not that I expect the Whinnybago to have any problem, provided we stay away from really sharp grades or cliffs. My point is, the geography ahead is getting a bit on the spectacular side.

For the last sol we’ve been seeing more mesas and rock outcrops, and we’re leaving the sand dunes behind. I keep expecting to see a coyote running past the Whinnybago in hot pursuit of a road runner.

It’ll get even more impressive when we get to Schiaparelli. Most craters are pretty impressive, but Schiaparelli more so than most. The crater was a lake for uncounted millennia, and the bottom filled up with sediment… and even so, the rim in places is close to two kilometers higher than the bottom.

We’re lucky that parts of the rim are eroded, and luckier that Entrance Ramp exists. If the MAV were in Crommelin, or even in Trouvelot, we might never be able to get to it. The sheer drop into the crater would wreck the rover. And I don’t even want to think of trying to drive into Hellas Basin. Leaving aside that it’s on the opposite side of the planet from the Hab, Hellas is over seven kilometers deep, with steep dropoffs almost all the way around.

Anyway, I’m going to be taking a lot of pictures when we stop. But I don’t expect to have any spare time to do it while driving. From here on I’ll have to be even more careful than I’ve been. We’re entering the most dangerous part of the drive, and that’s counting the recent dust storm of slow suffocating death.

Anyway, Cherry and Starlight are putting in some serious work now, picking out the path forward. We’re trying to just drift a little south of true east, but not too far. There’s some more of those dry riverbed ridges ahead and, believe it or not, a couple of glaciers.

Let me repeat that: Mars has glaciers on its equator. If all the past log entries have somehow failed to convey what kind of frozen hell I’ve been stranded on all this time, that one fact ought to give you a clue.

Gotta go. Cherry and Spitfire are having another fight. Spitfire finally figured out she could borrow a good suit, and Cherry is damn well determined not to let her. Dragonfly and I take turns breaking it up. Later.

Author's Note

No, still nothing much going on as the rover rolls on.

My computer's fixed, but I won't be able to pick it up until Monday. I roll out for Abilene and Anime Sekai tomorrow morning.

Sol 503

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 513
ARES III SOL 503

“Sweet Faust, what a mess.”

Starlight Glimmer couldn’t help but agree with Cherry Berry. The previous forty kilometers, all uphill at various grades, had been bad enough, but at least they had been solid rock with only a moderate number of smaller rocks and boulders scattered here and there. But then had come the word to turn almost due south, rounding the end of the worn-down rim of an ancient, weather-flattened crater on their right, aiming towards the immense mountain to their south, and driving onto…

… onto THIS.

In unknown ancient days, the immense mountain had been part of the rim of the gigantic crater called Schiaparelli. For whatever reason, possibly to do with the smaller Edom crater to the northeast, part of the crater rim had collapsed, sending huge chunks of debris not just down the interior of the crater but also down the slope outside the crater. Billions of years of dust storms had weathered the debris and, at the same time, filled in some of the gaps between the rocks. Gravity had, very slowly, compressed the sand into rock, leaving only a thin layer on top loose enough to be kicked up by a hoof. And then, eventually, a couple of ponies leading a ten-wheeled triumph of tinkering over common sense showed up looking for a road down into the crater.

It had taken only a couple of experiments to discover that some of the seemingly middle-sized rocks extended a lot deeper below the surface. Kicking and shoving had no effect. Starlight had gone inside and, reluctantly, retrieved a mana battery. Her first attempt at lifting a rock had burned a third of the battery, unearthed a specimen almost as large as the Whinnybago itself, and triggered a slide and subsidence that eventually required the rover to detour over a kilometer to avoid it.

After that Starlight had just used cutting spells to slice and dice any rock too stubborn for Cherry to kick out of the way of the rover. Between the three of them (Cherry, Starlight and the almost-spent mana battery) they’d spent twenty kilometers literally carving out a path for the Whinnybago to crawl through.

Which left ten more kilometers, according to Mark’s friends on Hermes, before they reached the crest of the slope.

“What a bucking mess,” Cherry Berry added in English. “If the way down is as bad as the way up, I say we go back and try that other way in NASA talked about.”

“We’d lose over a week if we did,” Mark replied over the comms. “Maybe a lot more. The land directly west of Schiaparelli is terrible.”

“Worse than all this?”

“Imagine driving seventy klicks and only actually getting forty because of the maze of detours,” Mark said. “It’s pretty bad. Terra Sabaea is one of the most heavily cratered regions on the entire planet.”

“Reminds me of home,” Fireball chimed in. “All it needs is, wossword, fire mountain?”

“Volcano.”

“Yeah, that. Mountains, cliffs, rocks, all here. Bug says same thing.”

“How much longer- wait, Starlight, help me with this?”

“This” was a great rock five times as tall as the two ponies, sticking out of an otherwise clear sandy stretch between two even larger ridges of irregular rock. Starlight sighed, sent out several flashes of light, and watched as the bits of stone flopped down into a pile which Cherry kicked, one by one, well out of the Whinnybago’s path.

“Thanks. How much power is left in that battery?” Cherry asked.

Starlight checked the battery’s charge meter as she stuck it back on her back. “Maybe two more rocks like that one,” she said. “It’s almost spent.”

Cherry sighed. “Let’s just keep going,” she said. “It looks like it clears out a bit up ahead.”

The two spacesuited ponies trudged on, followed at a slow walking pace by the Whinnybago. The gap between the two stone ridges narrowed slightly, giving the tandem rover little room for maneuver at one point, before widening and then vanishing beneath the sands. Smaller rocks, not much larger than hoof-sized, still lay scattered across (or sticking out of) the sandstone here and there.

Hoping against hope, the ponies dashed ahead, leaving the Whinnybago behind. There were still a few larger rocks here and there, but nothing as large as what they’d just passed, and as they went on the rocks grew smaller and fewer- and, thank Faust, none directly in their way. The light gray sandstone under the loose dust became smoother, though never perfectly clear.

“Mark, it’s looking good ahead,” Cherry called out. “I think we can pick up the pace for a while.”

On this point Starlight was rather less in agreement with Cherry than she had been over the state of affairs a couple of kilometers back. “I’ve about had it,” she reported. “Can we please just stop for the day? We’re overtime as it is.”

“Agree.” That, of all people on the comms, was Fireball. “Don’t like what I see. Wanna stop, take closer look.”

“Huh? You know something I don’t?” Mark asked.

“Maybe. Want look to know for sure.”

“Okay. Girls, stay put. I’ll come to you, and we’ll make camp there.”

For the first time in twenty sols, all six castaways stood in their spacesuits on the Martian surface, looking around at the view. Behind them lay the jumble of sand and rocks on the northwestern slope leading up to this point. Ahead lay mostly sand, with rapidly fewer rocks as the slope appeared to level off not far away. To their left, off on the horizon, lurked the rim of the crater listed on Mark’s maps as Edom, the name itself a relic of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s maps of over a hundred fifty years before, made partly from telescopic observation and partly from wishful thinking. (For one thing, the maps utterly failed to show the gigantic crater later named after the mapmaker.)

And to their right, rising considerably higher than Edom’s rim, stood a massive shadow of rock, one of the fragments of the original rim of the Schiaparelli basin. Even with its base well below the Martian horizon, the peak stood out, calling the eye to it.

Well, calling most eyes. Fireball, unlike most of the others, had eyes for nothing but the ground. He stomped on it with his suit boots, here, there, all around them. He scraped at it with his glove, then picked up one of the smaller rocks and used it to dig past the loose surface sand. He even tried knocking on the ground, as one might knock on a door.

Eventually this show became more entertaining for the rest of the crew than the scenery. Mark spoke up first, though his thoughts ran much along Starlight’s own: “Looking for hobbits there, Fireball?”

“Not funny,” he said. “Danger. Lots of danger. Not a good place. Get worse farther we go.”

“Um, you want to explain to us?” Starlight asked. “Cherry and I have had a day of dealing with not-a-good places. What’s worse than that?”

Fireball sighed. “Need to think how to say it,” he said. “Inside. Lunch.”

Solar cells set out for recharging, suits rinsed off, and other pre-lunch chores taken care of (down to notifying Hermes of their shutting down for the day), the crew gave Dragonfly the customary midday group hug and then set about preparing their own meals. Fireball scooped a handful of quartz and citrine chips from his supply into a bowl, but he didn’t begin eating, not until everyone else had their hay, potatoes, or food pack portions.

Once Mark, being last, sat down with three potatoes and the orange chicken entrée from a food pack, Fireball began. Starlight could practically hear words being laid into place like a mason building a brick wall with deliberate care. “Dragons live in wild places,” he said. “Mostly empty places. Especially deserts and volcano places, with lots of caves. I grow up in desert. I know desert ground, desert danger.” He paused, looked at Starlight Glimmer, and asked in Equestrian, “What’s Earth talk for ‘powder pit’?”

“Um… ‘powder pit’?” Starlight hazarded. “But what is a powder pit?”

“Danger,” Fireball said. “Danger to hatchling with no wings yet. Danger to ponies too. Like this.” He spread a claw out flat. “Desert floor sandstone. Solid. But something make a big hole- water, big monster, something.” He cupped the claw. “Then sand blows in, fills hole.” He laid his other claw atop the first one. “Sand same color, look as rock. But not hold weight. Too loose. Dragon step on sand, sink in. If hole big enough, sink all the way in.” He closed the cupped claw into a fist, crushing something unseen.

“Okay,” Mark said quietly. “I can see that. How do we find them?”

“Don’t want to find,” Fireball grunted. “Keep away. In desert, stick close to plants until you get wings. Plants suck up ground water, put roots out, make powder pit collapse.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the outside world. “You see any plants out there? I didn’t.”

“So obviously there has to be another way,” Starlight said. “What other ways are there to avoid a powder pit.”

“Watch other baby dragons,” Fireball said. “If dragon falls in, say, ‘Don’t go there,’ and go around. Hard on the other dragon, but what can you do?”

“I dunno,” Dragonfly said, her buzz carrying a bit of an edge. “Maybe rescue them?”

“Not always time for dragon to wait on passing crazy changeling,” Fireball replied. “No matter how many seems like there are.”

“I meant do it yourself,” Dragonfly hissed.

Fireball shrugged. “Dragonlord could probably make happen,” he said. “But before her, fat chance. You know my people.”

“No,” Dragonfly said. “I know you.”

Starlight watched as Fireball looked away from the bug. “Yeah,” he muttered. “But I’m crazy too. Else I wouldn’t be here with you.”

“Guys, seriously,” Mark said, breaking in. “So there’s maybe a danger. What do we do about it?”

Fireball sighed. “Like I said,” he grumbled. “Watch a dragon. See if he falls in.” He looked at Cherry and said, “Tomorrow I do scout.” Turning to Dragonfly, he added, “You steer back of rover. You watch enough to know how.”

“So we’re supposed to just watch and see if you fall in?” Starlight gasped. “That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s also slow as hell,” Mark said. “Are you sure it’s that dangerous?”

“What happen if rover roll?” Fireball asked. “Heck, what happen if rover just lose a wheel? Yeah, we go slow. But we get there. Not end up like Roscoe or Cletus.”

Mark nodded, accepting the point. “We go slow, we get there,” he repeated.

“Let’s go back to you falling into a pit and dying,” Starlight insisted. “I don’t know what you think we think of you, but we don’t think dragons are expendable.”

“Huh? Expendable?” Fireball asked, puzzled.

“We’re not going to let you kill yourself just so we can be safe!” Starlight insisted.

“Oh. So what rules for joining the club, hm?” Fireball asked. He pointed to Mark. “Push me away from perchlorate fire, almost die.” He pointed to Starlight. “Save cave from breach, almost die.” He pointed to Dragonfly. “Almost burn herself out saving Mark, almost die.” He pointed to Spitfire. “Rip suit flying into Martian dust storm carrying twice her weight. Almost die.” His long muzzle curled into a smirk. “I don’t wanna be left out,” he finished.

“Well, I could do it,” Cherry Berry suggested. “I’m an earth pony. I might even be able to sense the bad ground.”

“And you might not,” Fireball said. “If you fall in… well, I’m taller than you.” He measured Cherry’s height with one claw. “I’m easier for Starlight to pull out. Also I’m stronger. Maybe pull myself out.”

“Point,” Cherry said. “But you’re not going out alone anyway. We both go. And we watch each other.”

Fireball shrugged. “Agreed,” he said. With that he began eating his crystal flakes, obviously not interested in further conversation.

Author's Note

I couldn't find anything on Earth that equates to the final Mars obstacle Andy Weir threw at Mark in his book- the seamless, invisible line between solid ground and loose, shifting sand that caused the Rovers to roll in the novel. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist; it just means that if it does, I don't know how to look for it.

Of course, if you're traversing a sand dune incautiously, of course you can slip and roll. But Weir described Entrance Ramp as a long stretch of imperfectly compressed and hardened dust and sand deposited over the ages after the Edom impactor breached Schiaparelli's rim. So for the time being I'm going to say that, even if it's not a known Earth geological hazard, it's known on Equus, and Fireball, being a lifelong survivor, knows it. His moment has finally come.

(Incidentally, I finally found the source of the name today; "Edom" is not, strictly speaking, the crater name. It's an ancient name for a high-albedo region that more or less corresponds to the area around Schiaparelli's north rim. It's one of the many names taken from myth and religion for use on Schiaparelli's original Mars maps. (There's also a Moab on Mars, but it's not adjacent.)

Updates this weekend will depend on Internet availability. I had to go through a ton of trouble to get the hotel internet to work today. I have no guarantee it will work tomorrow. We'll just have to see.

We are getting very close to the end now. I'm tinkering with end chapters here and there, in addition to the daily(ish) posts...

Sols 504-505

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 514

ARES III SOL 504

In the early days of the solar system, a large meteor struck Mars, gouging out a tremendous crater hundreds of kilometers across. The ejecta from this impact caused innumerable secondary impacts, creating rough and rippling terrain in the region immediately surrounding the giant crater.

But at the time Mars was still a young world, with active geology and hydrology. The smaller craters weathered down into mere hills and ridges. The giant crater became an immense lake, silting up as the millennia passed. Then, as Mars froze and dried, brief wet periods would flood the lake again, giving its soil the layers and ripples which, billions of years later, would inspire the civilization of Earth to send first probes and then a manned expedition to the crater.

Long after the great crater formed, but long before humans began to send machines into it, a smaller space object struck the northwest rim. The impact triggered an avalanche which left a large gap between the new crater and the remaining towering rim of the old. Air rushed through the gap, as the thin atmosphere of the planet sought a new and easier path to fill the void created by the warmer air rising from the crater floor.

The wind brought dust, weathered from the cliffs, swept from the once-flooded lowlands, expelled by the occasional volcanic eruptions from the other side of the planet. The dust settled, layer by layer, onto the broken remains of the landslide, creating a ramp extending from the gap down into the depths of the ancient crater.

Time, gravity, and the ever less frequent warm wet periods Mars occasionally experienced compressed the ramp… but not evenly. In some places the dust became rock, or rested upon the shock-hardened fragments of the original crater rim. In other places the dust remained loose, prone to shifting, a trap for the unwary traveler.

The travelers, when they came, were very wary indeed. The great slope, though fairly shallow on average, contained many uneven slopes, dips, and rises. A maze of sand dunes covered the surface, some small enough to detour around, others that the travelers crossed with discussion, planning, and the utmost caution. Even the areas without dunes lay covered by a thick, grasping layer of sand and dust, erasing the few visual cues the travelers could rely on in the alien environment.

A lone traveler would have come to grief in this hazardous terrain. Fortunately there were six, not one, entering the crater on this particular day.

Two spacesuited figures, one bipedal, one quadrupedal, walked down one of the steeper bits of the slope, making zig-zag sweeps left and right to cover the terrain as completely as possible. Their vehicle followed a safe distance behind them, the immense and ungainly collection of parts creeping along on its massive wheels.

On one leftward sweep, the bipedal scout stepped off an unseen subterranean ridge. On the right, the sands lay atop an ancient, well-compacted sandstone. On the left, they covered a subsidence filled with uncompacted, unstable powder- exactly the hazard remembered from the biped’s childhood on an unimaginably alien world. His left boot found it, and immediately he went tumbling down the slope. Indeed, the slope beneath him went tumbling as well, subsiding a good forty meters before finding a new equilibrium.

The scout righted himself, buried past his low-slung hips by the slide. The tough exterior layer of his well-worn spacesuit easily held up against the light, soft grains of collected dust and sand. A few barked orders were sufficient to keep the quadrupedal scout from attempting to rush down to his aid. More discussion with the occupants of the vehicle turned it away from the landslide area.

And as the quadruped carefully stamped the edge of the revealed crest, tracing it further down the slope and guiding the rover onto a safer path, the biped pulled himself out of his hole and, with the same caution used to guide the vehicle before the slide, he crawled across the soft sand until his hands and feet found the solid surface once more.

In fifteen minutes it was over, and both scouts led their vehicle onwards down the sandy, rock-studded slope.

TRANSCRIPT – AUDIO EXCHANGE BETWEEN ESA AMICITAS AND NASA EXPLORATION VESSEL HERMES
(note: one-way lightspeed lag of over four minutes)

AMICITAS (Dragonfly): Hermes, Friendship. Sirius is secure from driving. We’re done for the day. We had one little bit of excitement, but otherwise it’s been a dull trip. Mark’s putting out the solar panels for what’s left of the day- I mean sol- but he says our batteries are over 60% charged because we moved so slowly. Good thing, because the shadow from the crater rim is about to hit us. Over.

HERMES (Johanssen): Roger, Friendship. We show you as having made about nineteen kilometers today in eight hours. You’re about halfway down the ramp. We’d like you to stay as close to true south as possible. The center of the slope makes a sudden thirty-meter descent about ten kilometers south-southeast of your current position. Staying true south should keep you on the most shallow grade. Over.

AMICITAS (Fireball): Roger, Hermes. I tell Mark. Over.

HERMES (Johanssen): Um, hello Fireball. I wasn’t expecting your voice today. How was your day out? Over.

AMICITAS (Fireball): Lousy. Mars only tried to kill me once today. I only fell thirty meter maybe. What’s a dragon gotta do to nearly die around here? Over.

HERMES (Johanssen): Ummm…

HERMES (Martinez): Hey, I knew I liked this guy! He’s funny! Hey, Fireball, ever consider joining the military?

HERMES (Beck): Fireball, I could give you a list of possible options, but the broadcast window isn’t long enough.

HERMES (Vogel): We heard about your fall. It is good to hear that you are all right. It is also good to hear your English improving. Please be careful tomorrow. It is still possible for things to go wrong close to your goal.

HERMES (Johanssen): Um… everybody done? Okay. Over.

AMICITAS (Fireball): (in Equestrian) You better believe I’m gonna be careful. (in English) Yeah, we be careful. Right now I’m hungry. Missed lunch. Friendship out.

MISSION LOG – SOL 505

Have you ever wanted to be the driver of a parade float? Of course you haven’t. Nobody wants to spend hours at a time driving a large, unwieldy platform at less than walking speed. It’s a mind-numbing task made all the worse by the knowledge that you actually need to pay attention all the time to keep from running down the clowns walking on all sides around you or bumping into curbs or fire hydrants. It’s a shit job.

Now pretend the Whinnybago is a parade float. Only instead of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade or the Rose Bowl parade, I’m driving in the Schiaparelli Basin Homegoing Parade. For two days. And instead of a nice, flat, wide city street, I’m guiding the tandem rover down a slope of varying levels of steepness, covered with every obstacle short of a canyon or glacier that this planet has in its toolbox. And the whole way I’m trying to maintain a heel-toe pace of two kilometers per hour, exceeding that only when the loose dust on the surface threatens to mire the Whinnybago if I don’t power through.

But it’s over now, thank God. The ground is level, the sand dunes are all smaller than the rover wheels, and the dust between them has thinned out. In two days we had only one minor incident. Granted, it would have been a major incident without Fireball and Cherry scouting ahead, but with them it was just one scary moment followed by a little bit of extra caution.

Have I mentioned lately that I’m grateful as hell for my alien buddies? Because I really am, you know. In addition to helping keep me sane (because seriously, this planet is enough to leave anybody cracked), they have helped me survive so many things that ought to have killed me. (Yeah, they’ve caused a few of those themselves, but I came up with a few stupid ideas too. Fair’s fair.)

We’ve driven over 3,400 kilometers across this planet so far. Only a bit over two hundred to go. If all goes well, we’ll arrive at the MAV on Sol 508. That leaves forty-three sols to make the MAV ready for our escape from this place.

Interesting bit of trivia; the Vikings believed that demons lived in Muspelheim, a realm of fire and brimstone. But the souls of the wicked didn’t go there. No, if you were a bad Viking, you went to Niflheim, a place of eternal cold and dampness and misery. The Vikings believed that freezing cold was more hellish than fire.

Having spent a year and a half on Mars, I’m coming around to the Viking way of thinking. But I’ll pass on Valhalla. I don’t want to die in battle. I’m like the Dean of Unseen University; my preferred way to die is late.

Three more sols of driving. Forty-six until launch day.

We are all counting the sols.

Author's Note

I had a lot of writing time at my booth today. NOT a good thing.

One of my preordained points of planning for this story was: the obstacles faced by Mark alone in the original novel will be elided over or negated entirely by the ponies. I didn't hold to that as well as I could have, but today's post was planned from the very beginning to play out more or less this way. (Side note: the Arabia Terra dust storm was originally going to be unchanged and thus easily avoided by maintained communication with Earth, before I decided that the long drive would be too dull otherwise and that the booster test needed long-term negative consequences. Yes, I'm saying right now; the Black Spot was caused not just by the second booster launch but by the first, and by weeks of abnormally high temperatures and thus higher atmospheric pressure.)

It's mostly filler from now until Launch Day. I will now begin pushing hard to work on the final chapters, which will be BIG- as in Changeling Space Program sized in at least one case. Thus, the filler chaps will be short as a consequence, as Mark and crew enjoy a full communications pipe with Earth for the first time, as they strip things out of the MAV, as they say goodbye to the Rover (and a final goodbye to Amicitas), and as they look forward to the single riskiest day of their lives.

It'll be filler, and in short chapters, but I don't intend it to be boring.

Sol 507

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 517

ARES III SOL 507

The Whinnybago rolled on.

Although not perfectly smooth, the surface of Schiaparelli Basin, with its small ridges and sand dunes and widely scattered rocks, came close enough to allow the tandem rover to maintain its top rated speed of twenty-five kilometers per hour.

Through the low dunes scalloped into curls by the wan Martian wind, it rolled.

Over the rippling ridges left by water currents in the ancient days when the crater was a lake, it rolled.

Across the occasional small cracks in the crust left by thermal expansion and contraction of the topsoil, it rolled.

And despite the occasional bout with motion sickness by the passengers who had to endure the bumping, bouncing, jostling and rocking, it rolled on and on.

For the first time since leaving the cave, Cherry Berry was one of those passengers. When the space suits had been last checked and repaired, Dragonfly had put an extra thick layer inside and out of her suit’s boot soles, because they knew she’d put the most kilometers on them. She’d walked every inch of the thirty-six hundred kilometers up to the start of this day’s drive and then some. It was a testament to the otherworldly properties of changeling gunk and the design of the pony spacesuits that pieces of that rubberized coating hadn’t begun falling off until the day before.

Dragonfly had requisitioned a partially-charged magic battery and some potatoes to repair the suit- and her own as well, since it had seen almost as much travel while shared by three different ponies. As a result both suits were out of commission for the day, the goo still curing, and Cherry Berry had nothing to do but sit in a second-row flight couch and watch the desert go by through a porthole.

Today there were no scouting parties. The ground was too wide open, too rock-light, too flat to bother with scouts, especially since the rover would reach the MAV by the next sol. Three ponies, a changeling and a dragon sat in silence in Amicitas’s former bridge, watching the flat scenery and enduring the occasional bump or wobble.

Cherry didn’t care for the ride, but a day of rest suited her fine. Her forehooves held Groot’s improvised planter, and she occasionally put a hoof in the soil to make sure the transplanted sapling was doing well. Since the little plant was half again as tall as it had been when they’d left the cave farm, safe to say the trip hadn’t hurt it much.

But mostly Cherry’s mind remained on the upcoming flight. Training in the storm-damaged MDV was one thing, and a fun thing while it had lasted. Training in the MAV was another thing- the real thing. She had to get started as soon as possible, and she had to get it down cold. It wasn’t a matter of, “if you fail the computer flies the ship.” If the MAV missed its rendezvous with Hermes, the backup plan required a live pilot on board- and the MDV training showed she was far and away the best pilot of the group.

Failure was unacceptable. Succeed, or watch your crew die in the depths of space because you couldn’t do the job when needed.

Fireball’s voice interrupted her anxiety. “Roger, Mark,” he said. “Stand by.” He nodded at Spitfire, who sat in the copilot seat, to switch the radio on. This done, he said, “Hermes, Friendship. We receive MAV broadcast Hab beacon signal. Rover radio receiving message from Earth. From now on all comms to go through MAV except in emergency. This station shutting down. Friendship out.”

“What was that all about?” Cherry asked. Spitfire and Fireball had on their flight radio headsets; Cherry didn’t, and hadn’t heard Mark’s message.

“Rover has steady signal from MAV,” Fireball said. “NASA wants all comms to go through that now. Mark sending them logs and reports.”

“Agh!” Starlight sat up from her own flight couch. “My report on Spitfire’s flight isn’t done yet!” She ran as quickly as she could into the hab deck to get her computer, bumping into the frame of the pressure door as the rover took an unexpected wobble.

“Anyway,” Fireball continued, “with MAV, no need to listen for our radio now. So I close out comms.”

“Oh,” Cherry said. She understood the logic, but she still felt bad about it. She’d only used the ship comms a hoofful of times… well, ever- but the idea that the ship radio had just been shut off for most likely the final time…

Cut it out! she told herself. Amicitas is dead. We turned it into this trailer to get us here. And that job is almost over. It isn’t your ship anymore and hasn’t been for a year and a half.

But part of Cherry replied, It’ll always be my ship. And I didn’t bring it home.

The others began to talk, but Cherry slumped in her seat, hugging her plant and wishing she could hug a spaceship.

Author's Note

I'd intended to include the arrival at the MAV in this chapter, but I was busy enough at my booth today- and ill enough with a mild headache and lightheadedness, plus stress from a certain thing too involved to explain here- that I got no writing done during dealer room hours today beyond the first six short paragraphs. And once I got back to the hotel, I was too tired and, yes, still feeling sick to do more than this.

Maybe no chapter tomorrow. We'll see how the day goes. As it is I expect seven hours of driving to land me home maybe 1:30 to 2 AM Monday morning, after which I will be in no shape to write, and the next sol is a special moment for our crew.

And I suspect, on Mark Watney's Earth, there are hundreds of thousands of materials engineers who would be deliriously happy to sponsor a changeling colony on the planet, just so they could have a source for changeling goo in all its many varieties and applications.

Sol 508

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 518
ARES III SOL 508

It stood twenty-seven meters tall, towering over the low sand dunes that surrounded it. It rested level on a sandstone surface scoured clean by the wind and fire of its landing thrusters. Its once-gleaming surface had been scratched and dulled slightly by a year and a half on the Martian surface, but it still shone brightly enough in the late morning sun to be a beacon for any eyes present to see it.

As a vehicle much more scarred and battered by weather and circumstance than the rocket ever would be pulled up next to it and stopped, six pairs of eyes saw, and stared.

Mark Watney’s heart sang at the sight of the Ares IV MAV. Early on in his sojourn on the red planet, he hadn’t dared to plan beyond immediate survival. With the cave farm producing and communications to Earth restored, he had begun to plan for, if not believe in, eventual escape. Now, after almost sixty sols of driving and five hundred sols of being marooned, here stood proof, undeniable proof, that whatever else happened, he would not die on Mars. He wanted to hug the ship. He wanted to dance around it and whoop for joy. And, as soon as he could suit up and cycle through the rover airlock, he would.

Cherry Berry looked at the ship and compared it to Amicitas as it had been before the crash. The MAV looked short and squat compared to most of the rockets she’d flown for the Changeling Space Program. But unlike those ships, cobbled together using off-the-shelf mass-produced components, this ship had been built specifically for a single task. Like Amicitas, its lines flowed together elegantly, beauty and functionality in one gleaming monument to the superior engineering skill of humans. She hoped to make herself worthy of flying it.

Starlight Glimmer planned what she would have to do to help make the MAV ready for their escape plan. The docking collar linking the landing stage and the first ascent stage had to go- NASA wanted one of the first stage engines gone. They also wanted the backup maneuvering thrusters and their fuel tanks removed and the old Amicitas thruster blocks installed; that would require hours of levitation- no, wait, there were rungs and handholds all around the capsule, so perhaps Mark could rig a belaying harness from one of those to hold him up while he worked. Inside her mind she calculated how much of the remaining mana battery charge would be needed, and how much would be left for the health of the crew. She tried not to think about the weak link in that calculation: herself.

Dragonfly stared at the rocket with tired eyes, much more tired than she wanted to admit. Being relieved from scout duty hadn’t offset the loss of magic feeding time. She thought she understood Bilbo’s complaint about feeling “stretched, like butter spread over too much bread”. The metal tower meant many days of hard work, work she didn’t feel up to in the least. And yet, despite that, she smiled as she looked at the MAV. In a few weeks she would get one more chance to dance with the Pale Horse on her own terms.

Dread filled Fireball as he looked at the rocket. He’d never been an enthusiastic astronaut. Each time he’d gone up, it had only been because riding the rocket would be less annoying than the consequences of not riding the rocket. On three occasions, that judgment had proved incorrect in the extreme- crashing into a mountain, getting stranded in orbit, getting stranded in another universe. But as much as he hated it, he’d ride again, because even death in space seemed less annoying than a slow death by starvation, suffocation or cold on the surface of this stupid planet.

Spitfire smiled confidently as she looked at the rocket. When Amicitas had launched a year and a half before, she’d been an old rookie, chosen less for her skills and more to fill a political role. In the time since she’d proved herself again and again, fulfilling her role as medic, as copilot, as an experienced advisor… and, yes, as a pegasus. Sure, she’d come within an inch of death several times, but that hadn’t been anything new to her. Now she knew that, when this rocket went up, she’d ride along not as a rookie, but as a veteran… and as an equal.

Together they suited up, went outside, celebrated the end of their long journey across Mars, and then, one at a time, they followed Mark up the boarding ladder, into the airlock, and into the ship. Individual thoughts and concerns were swept aside by one common thought: at long last, they were going home.

[10:41] HOUSTON: Congratulations from all of us here at Mission Control! Well done! What’s your status?

[10:57] MAV: Thanks! Watney, Berry, Glimmer, Fireball all healthy. Dragonfly weak from reduced magic intake, special exertions to maintain suits. Spitfire recovering well from consequences of her flight, feathers growing back in, daily PT to regain strength. Rover systems running well. Pony suits worn and patched, but operational. I have my EVA suit and Martinez’s, plus three salvaged radios for use by the ponies. Currently thirteen magic batteries plus fifteen booster batteries at full charge plus eight more generating charge. Current plan is to connect MAV to rover power system, charge life support using pony air, and then do a full diagnostic on MAV systems before beginning modifications.

[11:12] HOUSTON: Good to hear. We show all go for a Sol 551 launch and rendezvous with Hermes. Procedures for MAV modifications are in the MAV computer and can be read through wireless network. We also want to discuss a procedure to take water from alien life support and electrolyze it for hydrogen to run through the MAV fuel plant. Without an atmospheric regulator we need some way to separate molecular oxygen from molecular hydrogen after electrolysis. Can Starlight do this?

[11:27] MAV: Starlight here. In theory I can do it, but it consumes magic. How important is this?

[11:43] HOUSTON: The MAV fuel plant is supplied with enough hydrogen to make sufficient fuel to fill the tanks to about 90% of capacity. We leave that margin to allow for varying levels of hydrogen escaping the vessel during the trip from Earth to Mars. With extra hydrogen we can fill at least half that remaining capacity. Gaining 5% to 10% more fuel provides more thrust and an extra safety margin when things go wrong.

[11:58] MAV: Okay. Send me the procedure, and I’ll work out a way to separate the oxygen and hydrogen.

[12:13] HOUSTON: Dragonfly, we’d also like to talk to you about preparing Rover 2 and Sojourner for its extended mission. How’s Sojourner holding up?

[12:27] MAV: Sojourner’s just fine and eager to look at more rocks!

[12:41] HOUSTON: Good to hear. Okay, we’re scheduling the rest of today and tomorrow as diagnostics and preparation. Cherry, we want you to begin simulations on Sol 510. Martinez will review your performance after each run. We’ll try to schedule sims around modification procedures, but use your best judgment. If there’s nothing else, we’ll return the MAV to retrieving your data dumps and sending you your backlogged emails.

[12:53] HERMES: We also now have the bandwidth to send you some new music. Maybe now you can stop moaning about how terrible disco is.

[12:57] MAV: Bless you. God, yes, send it, send me ANYTHING other than disco. I might even learn to like contrasynth.

Author's Note

Slow morning, so here's the chapter after all.

And with this, the Maretian adventure enters its final phase.

Sol 509

“Good morning, Dr. Kapoor! And how are you doing on this fine day?”

Venkat looked at Annie Montrose, who stood in his office doorway, smiling a warm, friendly, almost innocent smile. Alarm sirens echoed through his mind. “Well,” he said judiciously, “I’m juggling reports on the MAV launch, reading all sorts of excuses why the replacement Ares IV MAV is behind its construction schedule, and sorting through the reports, photos, and raw data Mark and his friends are sending us. It’s supposed to be over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit outside today, thunderstorms tonight, and there’s a pre-season subtropical depression in the Gulf which could make landfall anywhere from Matagorda Bay to Morgan City, or not. All in April. Oh, and NASA’s director of media relations wants an enormous favor and doesn’t think she can bully it out of me like she usually does.”

“So cynical, Venkat,” Annie purred. “I just wanted to know if you remembered something- specifically, the webcams built into all the Hab laptops and all the crew stations on the MAV.”

“Of course I remember them,” Venkat said. “We record low-quality video during launches and descents. One frame per second. We keep it in case of incidents so we have material for after-action investigations. We’ve only used it for Melissa Lewis’s review after the Sol 6 abort.”

“So good, you do remember.” Annie’s smile vanished, as did the sweet tones in her voice. “So does every single video news outlet from CNN right down to the internet dickheads who film their reports from their parents’ basement. They’re all demanding face time with the aliens, Venk. And I’ve fucking run out of excuses, because they know we have the pipe now for video signals. We already told them we sent all the software patches for launch in advance. And we told them we’ll be accepting their video archive via satellite relay during their sleep periods. Once our morale package finishes downloading, they’re all going to shove a stick up NASA’s collective ass and roast us over hot coals if we don’t give them some media opportunities!”

“What about-“

“OUT of excuses, Venk!”

“All right, all right,” Venkat said. “You did, I trust, tell them that message turnaround isn’t going to get any better than twenty-two minutes by launch day? We can’t alter physics for a media op.”

“Of course I fucking told them,” Annie said. “And I also told them the astronauts won’t have time for any exclusive interviews. But we have to at least give them a Q-and-A video. We can let the bigger outlets submit questions, and the smaller outlets will sit still for that, but they want more than a bunch of still photos, even if one of the ponies poses like a fucking Playboy centerfold!”

Venkat considered the problem.

“Venkat, are you paying attention?”

“Annie, I put up with a lot from you. You know that, right?”

“Of course you fucking do. I’m not in your chain of command. I report to Teddy and only to Teddy. You can’t fire me.”

“Understood. Now it’s your turn to put up with me. Shut up so I can think.”

To Venkat’s surprise, and possibly to Annie’s surprise as well, she did just that. He considered the benefits and drawbacks. He contemplated the available bandwidth the MAV had, the memory storage capacity of the relay satellites and of Hermes, and the mental state of the six castaways, as best they could guess at this distance.

Mental state. Yes, that would work.

“All right,” he said, “here are my conditions. You work with Dr. Shields on this,” Venkat said. “If she says no, that’s it- I pull the plug. She’ll contact Mark and his friends and get a quick update on their mental condition. We don’t want one of them unraveling on camera, do we?”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Annie said. “What else?”

“You’re going to let Dr. Shields slip a couple of questions in,” Venkat said. “The first thing we’ll do is ask the crew to make their own video, as a group. No questions for that- let them set the pace. Then we’ll have each crew member make one video. Johanssen will conduct the interview from Hermes as close to live as possible- lightspeed lag is about three minutes now. We’ll let her decide on follow-ups, but don’t count on there being any.

“The key point is Dr. Shields’s involvement. By bringing her in, this becomes a psychological test. Any part of the interview which becomes too awkward or dangerous to future missions, we can seal under patient privacy.”

“Good idea.”

“And finally,” Venkat concluded, “this is all you and the press get. One group video, six one-person interviews, and launch coverage. And if any of them say no, even Mark- make that especially Mark- I back them up, not you. Can you work with that?”

Annie nodded. “Beats the hell out of headlines about ‘What is NASA covering up this week?’” She pulled her phone out of her purse, looked at it, and nodded. “I’ll talk to Irene as soon as she has a hole in her schedule.”

“Wonderful,” Venkat said, reaching for a particular memo on his desk. “And now, if you could do me a favor-“

But when he looked up, Annie had already departed.

[14:41] MAV: So, we’ve been looking over these procedures you sent us. Are you leaving us any backups whatever? Because I can’t find any, except the pony thrusters.

[14:57] HOUSTON: We know. It’s a trade-off between backup systems and delta-V buffer. We aren’t as confident as we’d like to be in the pony launch booster system. By stripping two and a half tons off the MAV, we’re allowing you the possibility of a Hermes rendezvous with 50% of the expected performance of those boosters. Anything above that gives you spare fuel in the second stage to use for fine-tuning the rendezvous or for orbital braking if you have to use the Sparkle Drive to run for Earth.

[15:11] MAV: Roger. I see the logic, but I also see parts of Apollo 13 replaying behind my eyelids thinking about all of this. If anything at all breaks, we are well and truly fucked, you know that.

[15:26] HOUSTON: Believe me, I understand. Just be glad we’re letting you have the ten kilogram personal allowance. Without those pony boosters, we’d be asking you to shave your head to save weight. Among other considerations.

[15:41] MAV: Way to give new meaning to, “You should have gone before we left.”

[15:55] HOUSTON: You said it- I didn’t.

Author's Note

My desktop machine is back, and working all right for now.

And yes, I'm throwing open a call for suggestions. What questions would you like to see each (individually) of the castaways answer? This won't be like the interviews before; the characters won't get the same questions all the way across. I'm not promising I'll use any particular suggestion, but I'll seriously consider each.

This coming weekend is Anime Weekend Atlanta. We'll see how writing goes.

At this point I doubt the story will extend to Thanksgiving, and there's a small chance it'll wrap by Halloween.

Sol 511

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 521
ARES III SOL 511

“Tell me again why we can’t just magic these bolts out?”

Dragonfly, hanging off the side of the flight couch, ratcheted away at one of the bolts holding it to the deck. “Oh, we could do it easy. And then tonight I’d come to you in your sleep, stick a straw in your ear, and slurp out your will to live. Again. Now I don’t think that’s such a good plan, but I could be persuaded.”

“Okay, okay,” Mark muttered. “Can’t a guy complain anymore?”

“Mark?” Dragonfly scrabbled around the couch, turning from upside down to rightside up so she could look Mark in the eyes. “Let me show you something.” She took the ratchet in her right fetlock, held it over one of the holes in her left foreleg, and dropped it in. She rocked her left foreleg back and forth a few times. The wrench rattled, bumped, slid, and slipped through the hole, hitting the deck with a loud clang. “Still wanna complain?”

“No,” Mark said, face a little green. “And by the way, could you never do that again so long as we both live?”

“No promises.” Dragonfly returned to her prior position.

Mark grunted and returned to working on the bolts on his side. There wasn’t a lot of room to work in. There wasn’t a lot of room, period. Six seats and consoles had been crammed into a space less than half that of the Amicitas bridge. In a couple of places astronauts boarding had to climb over someone else’s couch to reach their own, as things currently stood. Thus, the first step to all the other modifications on the inside of the MAV was to remove all but one of the existing flight couches. Then two of the Amicitas flight couches that had been rebuilt using the bases from the seats in Mark’s MDV would be installed, so that Cherry Berry, Starlight and Dragonfly could spend the afternoons running flight sims.

After that work would be divided. Mark and Starlight would perform the outside modifications. The sooner those were done, the more time they’d have for the magic batteries to regenerate. Meanwhile, Dragonfly and Fireball would work on the inside, using detailed pictures and diagrams sent beforehand by NASA to guide them through the process of stripping all the equipment- and only that equipment- on the weight-shedding list.

But that would be later. This was now, and right now the benches were taking a lot longer to remove than expected. Dragonfly didn’t want to admit it, but she was tempted to steal a battery so she could shapeshift into something that could actually reach into the small gaps, get the socket on the bolt head, and work the ratchet. A mechanically inclined tree octopus, maybe? A baby hydra? Sadly, taking on the appearance of Pinkie Pie didn’t give a changeling her abilities; otherwise that would have been Dragonfly’s choice.

“There,” Mark said. “That’s the last one on my side. How long on your side?”

“This one and one more,” Dragonfly said. “And then we have one more couch to remove. And then we have to get two couches in here.”

“Fireball, how long has it been?”

The dragon, fully suited except for his helmet, lounged in the MAV’s lower deck, leaning in the open inner airlock door. He checked the clock on his nav display, did a bit of mental math, and called up the ladder, “Two hours and forty-five minutes.”

“So, it hasn’t been a year and a half,” Mark said. “Just seems like it.”

“That sounds like complaining,” Dragonfly said. She really didn’t want to hear it. She was having far too much trouble with these bolts as it was. She felt like she’d just flown from Appleoosa to Horseton and back, and all she’d done was turn a wrench. Mark and Fireball had done the heavy lifting, which wasn’t all that heavy in Martian gravity.

Ugh. She had a problem, didn’t she?

She started removing the last bolt, ratcheting away at the far too secure fastener. She’d have to ask Mark or Fireball to finish torquing all the bolts she began, once they started installing the replacement couches. She wasn’t at all sure she was up to doing it properly, at least not after breaking loose all the bolts that had apparently been tightened by a yak.

She didn’t complain. But she did think. A lot.

“Okay, what did you want to talk to me about?” Cherry asked, once the two were alone in Rover 2, the one place they could be guaranteed privacy.

“I can’t be your sysop,” Dragonfly sighed. “You’ll have to get Spitfire to do it.”

Cherry Berry looked at the exhausted changeling. “Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ve worked with you for five years now. You speak English better than any of us- I think even better than Mark, these days. You know the systems. Spitfire hasn’t studied the systems, her English is barely tolerable, and she’s still in recovering health.” She looked Dragonfly in the eyes and said, “Are you really in that bad shape?”

“Yes.” Dragonfly didn’t hesitate. “A half-day of turning wrenches wrecked me, boss. We need me to keep doing it, or at least to tell Fireball what to do. But I just don’t have the energy to do that and put in the kind of hours I know you’ll want on simulations. And if I'm this weak now, how bad will it be in forty days when we launch? Spitfire's healing. I'm going the other way.”

Cherry Berry didn’t smell angry at the statement, nor particularly disappointed. There was a lot of pity (blech), but there was something else in there that Dragonfly couldn’t place the taste of, something she seldom encountered. “I remember,” the pink mare said quietly, “when you would limp in on three hooves, beat up and bleeding, and insist you were good to go.”

“Yeah. When it was only me,” Dragonfly said. “Changeling warriors don’t show weakness to anybody, not even their friends. Especially not their friends. But this is different. This time me lying could mean everyling dies. We’re going to pull eight G’s at maximum thrust. Healthy pegasi black out under those conditions, sometimes. Spitfire’s trained, and she’s a strong flyer, so she won’t. Me… better not take the chance.”

That strange emotional taste grew a bit stronger. “Okay,” Cherry said quietly. “I’ll talk with Spitfire. Will you be all right to continue work on the MAV?”

“I think so,” Dragonfly said quietly. “If I get too tired I can shuffle more work onto Fireball. He won’t even know I’m doing it.” She considered this, and added, “Well, that’s not quite right. He’ll think I’m doing it all the time, even when I’m not.”

“If that condition changes, talk to me or Mark,” Cherry said quietly. “Somehow, I don’t know how, we all got this far alive. I want us all to get the rest of the way alive and well. That includes you, okay?”

“Thanks,” Dragonfly said.

“Right,” Cherry said. “Let’s go get lunch. And then you get to help me coach Spitfire through control familiarization drills.”

Author's Note

Film and interview stuff will be my writing meat for the trip to Anime Weekend Atlanta. (I leave just after 5 AM Thursday morning.)

My brain still has a bit of a problem wrapping itself around the idea of an internal boarding ladder for the MAV. The notion of a ladder that extends down through the ascent stages seems too ludicrous for words to me. Therefore, I am assuming that the MAV capsule has an upper and lower deck. The lower deck is for storing rock samples and similar and also includes the airlock, which would take up close to half the diameter of the ship by itself.

And don't get me started on the very idea of the MAV having a full shower and lavatory. That is just too stupid for words. Complete suspension-of-disbelief-breaker in the movie, at least for me.

Yanking the existing flight couches gives room to work for the mods. Replacing them with the repaired pony flight couches is necessary to give the aliens proper support for their bodies during liftoff, which human flight couches likely wouldn't give them.

Sol 512

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 522
ARES III SOL 512

Cherry Berry stared at the computer screen. It glowed red, with the following words in white written over it:

SIMULATION TERMINATED – IMPACT WITH SURFACE AT 1327.4 m/s
PRESS ENTER TO END SIMULATION

Growling softly, she tapped the appropriate key on the keyboard with one hoof, then slumped back on the flight couch.

“So, we died, huh?” Starlight Glimmer asked. She hadn’t had anything to do in the simulation except look at her own computer, which still had the Sparkle Drive interface of two sliders- one for mass to be moved, one for pulses per second, and a start/stop button. The simulation hadn’t got far enough to bring the Drive into play.

“Yes, we died,” Cherry said quietly. “And I would have sworn that we had it under control. A yaw thrust malfunction plus three booster crystals failing on launch. But I’d swear I had the trajectory on the ball! How could we have crashed?”

“Don’t know,” Spitfire muttered. “But Martinez tells us in a few minutes.”

Indeed, in only six minutes (the simulation had only run a minute and a half) Martinez’s voice came over the MAV comms. “Well, Johanssen got you,” he said. “Don’t feel bad; she got me with that combo too, about a month ago. I notice you reset the thruster breakers. Nice try, but your thrusters were fine. You lost a first stage engine without the indicator light showing it, and suffered an altitude radar malfunction. Combined with losing part of your magic booster system, it’s only just survivable. So don’t feel bad about missing it.

“However, Spitfire, you should have spotted that the altimeter readings were bogus. You’re copilot and sysop. It’s your job to keep feeding the pilot- and us- the data you’re getting. The pilot may not be able to look at the readouts herself. Your lives depend on you giving us that info as it comes in, quick and accurate. But in your audio logs you’re slow.

“I know you’re having trouble with English. I understand. My great-grandmother never learned how to speak it, God rest her soul. But you’re Air Force. You’ve led flyers into danger. You’ve trained new flyers. I know you can put in the work. You can do it.

“Okay,” Martinez said, wrapping up the review, “the good news is, you’ve only died four times out of nineteen sims. You obviously have a solid grasp of the control systems. You’re already better than Mark is at this, probably better than Vogel or Beck either. The bad news is, they’re going to get tougher. We’re going to throw every survivable scenario at you, plus a couple you just can’t win. But only a couple, because impossible sims only make sense in Star Trek. Reset all switches, and contact us when you’re ready to begin the next scenario.

“Standing by for your signal, over.”

Cherry nodded to Spitfire, who began going through the pre-flight checklist to restore all the switches flipped in the last sim. “Thanks for the review, Major,” she said. “I just have two questions. First, you all will be watching us to tell us if something goes wrong, yes? And second, are instrument failures a regular thing for you? Because our instruments on our ships don’t break unless you kick them really hard. We made them changeling-proof. Also dragon-proof. Also yak-resistant. Why don’t humans do the same thing? Over.”

Spitfire paused in resetting switches to raise an eyebrow at Cherry. “Really, commander?” she asked. “This is only ship we get. Telling them it’s not good enough?”

Cherry picked up her own checklist and began resetting switches on her side of the console. “It’s not that,” she said. “The only times we’ve had things break in the capsule or cockpit is if we broke them ourselves, by accident. We’ve never had one just wear out or fail. Never. And I never questioned that until now. Engine failure, yes. Control failure, sure. But never the instruments.” She shuddered and added, “How many times did we get away with a flight that would have killed somebody if one instrument broke?”

The other ponies didn’t answer.

Six minutes later Martinez’s response arrived. “Yes, we’ll be there, but there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to talk to you. If your comms go out, you’re on your own. Better to be ready for that. And instruments don’t break often at all, but there have been times when it’s happened. Again, we want you to be prepared if it happens. Though when this is all over, I want to see one of your consoles full of instruments that never malfunction. Talk about the test-pilot holy grail. Hope that answers your question, over."

Cherry looked at Starlight. “What’s a grail? And why would anyone want one full of holes?”

Starlight shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said. “All I know is, it has something to do with naming a man after a dog.”

"Stupid human thing," Spitfire muttered.

Author's Note

Twelve and a half hours of driving, an hour of unloading, an hour and a half of setup. More work needs done tomorrow morning before AWA opens at 10 AM.

I'm surprised I managed to do this much.

Sol 513

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 523
ARES III SOL 513

“Okay, so are we all clear on this?” Mark asked, his hands fumbling around at random as his anxiety sought an outlet. “This isn’t the time to get into arguments. Nice happy smiling family, that’s us. The less trouble we make for NASA with this, the better.”

Fireball held one of the laptops so that its screen faced the others. Its camera was running, showing a frame per second of video on its screen. The others stood or sat around the Friendship bridge, waiting for the public relations moment.

“All we’re doing is showing Earth we’re well, we’re happy, and we’re ready to be rescued,” he continued, going over points for the third time. “We show them the trailer. We show them a bit of magic. We tell them things they've already been told, because a lot of them didn't get it the first dozen times. We don’t argue or bicker. We don’t talk about current health issues. We don't talk at all about sex. We definitely don’t mention the RTG.”

“No talking about Death Box, check,” Dragonfly said dryly.

“Smiley, happy face,” Spitfire added, looking completely non-smiley and unhappy.

“Please, everyone?” Cherry Berry asked. “This is something we can do to help the people rescuing us. We owe it to them.”

“Thanks,” Mark said. “OK, ready? Fireball, start transmission.”

Fireball pushed a button- the wrong button. With the computer turned so the camera and screen faced out, he couldn’t really see the screen himself. Instead of starting the video on its way through the MAV’s comms systems, he shut down the camera.

“Oops.” Mark sighed. “Okay, no big, this is fixable…”

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 12:41 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

MARK WATNEY: Yeah. There we go! We’re rolling! Hello, Earth! Coming to you very much alive, from the surface of Mars, in glorious Flicker-Vision, it’s the Ares show! … no, dammit, why couldn’t I have thought of something cooler?

FIREBALL: You a geek, Mark. Geeks don’t do cool.

WATNEY: Hey! Geeks are cool! And I’m more than a geek! I’m an astronaut. Astronauts are always cool.

STARLIGHT GLIMMER: Well, sure, if you want to limit your ambitions, Mark. But don’t feel bad. Maybe one day soon you can hope to achieve… unicorn cool.

WATNEY: Um… yeah, we’ll see. Anyway, I’m Mark Watney. I arrived here in early November 2035 as part of the Ares III mission to Acidalia Planitia. On the sixth surface day a dust storm bigger than anything we ever saw before forced us to abort the mission. But I was hit with a piece of debris that knocked me unconscious and smashed my biomonitor. My crew had every reason to think I was dead, and they were in danger of their lives, so they had no choice but to leave me behind. I only lived because of a freak combination of circumstances.

CHERRY BERRY: And I am Cherry Berry. I was pilot and commander of the spaceship (unintelligible), which we’ve been calling Friendship in English because that’s what the name means. We were testing a new magic-powered engine when it malfunctioned and sent us from our universe to yours. We crash-landed about ten kilometers away from the Ares III Hab, and we followed its beacon signal to Mark. And we’ve been together ever since.

WATNEY: Yeah. You may have seen the photos we sent of the Hab, and of the cave that we grew food in to survive. And maybe sometime soon you’ll get to see the video we took there. But right now we’re at the Ares IV planned landing site in Schiaparelli crater, over three thousand kilometers from all of that, and we’re here inside the vehicle that got us here.

CHERRY BERRY: What’s left of it.

WATNEY: Yeah, this isn’t quite what it looked like during the drive. We yanked all the seats a couple days ago so that the ponies will have their own custom flight couches when we launch the MAV on Sol 551. So yeah, this wasn’t nearly this roomy before. Anyway, this was originally the cockpit and bridge of Friendship. For more about that, I’m gonna turn you over to the mission engineer, Dragonfly.

DRAGONFLY: Oh hi! Can you all see me? Is that thing pointed at me? Okay, before I get started, I just want to say I’m sorry I let you all down. I’m very ashamed of myself for draining Mark and bailing on everyone else-

WATNEY: Dragonfly, they got that. The ship, please?

DRAGONFLY: Look, this is important. I really screwed up, and-

WATNEY: You’ll have a chance to cover that when you get your personal interview. Focus on the ship, okay?

DRAGONFLY: All right. Yes, this is Friendship. As you can see by the different tones on the deck and walls, we ripped out a lot of controls and consoles to lighten the load when we converted our ship into a trailer. And, well, you can’t see it now, but the outside of the ship looked a lot different, all pink with hearts and, well, bleah.

CHERRY: Bleah??

DRAGONFLY: Well, yeah, I mean really, it was like… well, how would you feel about a hay-covered spaceship?

CHERRY: Kind of confused?

DRAGONFLY: Never mind. Anyway. Here’s what’s left of the flight controls. We still needed these to steer the forward landing gear, which became the tail of our rover. Most of this is going to stay here when we leave. We can’t use it on the MAV. The only exception is this little box here. This contains our main communications system, and we might need it if we have to do an EVA after we launch.

Friendship was built to carry up to seven crew for as long as one month in space. That’s why it’s so roomy in here. But if you’ll follow me… Fireball, follow me!

WATNEY: Fireball is holding the computer whose camera we’re using for this. The video cameras we use for documenting things on the surface don’t have the one frame per second setting that the webcam software does.

FIREBALL: You can hold this some, Mark. Your people already know what humans look like. How often they see a dragon?

DRAGONFLY: In a minute, I wanna show them the habitat deck? You see, Friendship originally had three airtight compartments, or decks. The engineering deck was towards the back of the ship. It cracked open during the crash. Big hole. We ended up slicing it off. But, see here? That was the hatch that used to lead to it. And there in front of the hatch is the life support equipment.

This mattress pile is what we sleep on each night. Back at the Hab we used the bunks there. In space we’d sleep on the walls- point it up, Fireball! But Mars gravity is too much for that to be comfortable here. And up at the top you see the docking port hatch for our space station and other ships. There’s no airlock there, so we made real sure that docking port stays closed!

And these are our magic batteries. This one here is one of only two that survived the accident intact. The rest were connected to the Sparkle Drive when it malfunctioned, and it pulled so much power it destroyed them. We used the metal parts left behind to make more batteries. We’ve got twenty-one here, not counting the fifteen big batteries we’ll use to boost the MAV to our rendezvous with Hermes. Out of these, eight will fly with us- seven for the Sparkle Drive, plus one to run the suit comm system or for emergencies.

STARLIGHT: Fireball, give Mark the computer and bring Number 8 to the bridge!

FIREBALL: Fine by me.

DRAGONFLY: Anyway, here’s our food supplies. There was twice as much when we left the cave. When we launch we’ll have enough food on the MAV for seven days at short rations. We’ll have our suit life support for air and water. If all goes well, we won’t need to touch that supply, because Hermes has enough meals for all of us for months waiting on board.

STARLIGHT GLIMMER: While we’re moving back into the bridge, let’s say hello to Spitfire. Spitfire, let’s have a look at your wings.

SPITFIRE: I don’t think so.

WATNEY: Your fans are worried about you! Show ‘em how you’re doing. C’mon.

SPITFIRE: Fine.

STARLIGHT: Spitfire lost over half her feathers after the flight that destroyed that dust storm in Arabia Terra. Most of those feathers are about half grown back-

SPITFIRE: They itch. They itch (unintelligible).

STARLIGHT: Spitfire’s wings are a little bigger than average for a pegasus pony. But they’re not really big enough for proper flight. Pegasus magic boosts speed and lift, allowing pegasi to fly, hover, or even tow carts and chariots. And in a minute you’ll get to see them in action.

SPITFIRE: I only say I could fly. I not say I would! No space in bridge! No room!

STARLIGHT: With a couple of aerials, like the two wrenches we’re using on the battery terminals, we can rig the batteries to create a small magic field. In our universe magic is everywhere, but in your world only life creates it. But life on our world depends at least a little on environmental magic. Once we figured that out, we started spending some time each day in a magic field to maintain our health.

The batteries recharged well in our cave farm, but with just the six of us they only charge a little each day. Since the storm- what you call the Black Spot- we normally only do about two minutes a day. But today we’ll stretch it a little longer so we can show you what our magic can do!

Here we go!

DRAGONFLY: Me first!

STARLIGHT: Changelings can change into practically anything. That’s a minotaur… that’s a big rock… that’s Princess, um…

DRAGONFLY (voice altered): Celestia.

STARLIGHT: But that’s not the right translation! – And what are you doing??

DRAGONFLY: Daisy Duke.

STARLIGHT: I can see it's Daisy Duke! I can see way too much of Daisy Duke! Stop that! There might be children watching this! Okay, that’s changelings done. Changelings can also lift things and fire bolts with their magic, but most of them can’t do more complex spells. Cherry, bring Groot here, please?

CHERRY BERRY: This is a sapling from one of the cherry trees we grew in the cave. Mark calls him Groot for some reason. If all goes well, he’ll come with us to Hermes and then either to Earth or back home with us.

STARLIGHT: Earth ponies have a magical affinity with rocks and soil. They’re the best at growing things. Also, Cherry is the strongest of us-

FIREBALL: Except for me!

STARLIGHT: - except for Fireball. OK, show us some fire. We know you’re dying to.

WATNEY: Not the face! Not the face!

FIREBALL: I wasn’t anywhere close to you, Mark.

WATNEY: It was a joke.

FIREBALL: Anyway. Dragons breathe fire. We also fly. We’re the strong-OW!

SPITFIRE: I said not enough space to fly.

STARLIGHT: You okay, Fireball?

FIREBALL: I’ll be fine. We dragons can eat regular food, but we need some gems to be healthy. We also like gold. Mark tells me gems and gold are rare on your world, but they’re cheap at home. The cave was lucky for me- I might not have made it without it. But I am really sick of quartz!

STARLIGHT: That’s a piece of citrine he’s eating, by the way. Can you show us a bit? There. See the layers where he bit through? And no, his teeth aren’t made of diamond. They’re just magically hard.

Now for me. I’m a unicorn. All unicorns can lift things using magic. I can lift this spoon even without the magic field. But with the field I can lift the battery! The battery is mostly made of quartz. It weighs sixty kilograms-

WATNEY: About one hundred thirty pounds, or a little less.

STARLIGHT: - but with magic I can lift it with ease! I can even lift myself, which is something most unicorns can’t even dream of- OWW!

FIREBALL: Ha ha! Serves you right.

STARLIGHT: Did I mention our horns are really sensitive, especially when casting? Anyway, with enough magic power we can cast other spells- like this one!

WATNEY: I don’t think a porn-star mustache suits Dragonfly, Starlight. Maybe a handlebar instead?

DRAGONFLY: I like a pencil-thin mustache. The Boston Blackie kind.

WATNEY: And thanks so much to whoever at NASA slipped some Jimmy Buffett in with all the space songs you sent us. By mutual agreement “Cheeseburger in Paradise” has been placed on the blacklist.

STARLIGHT: Anyway, that just leaves Spitfire. Can you do a hover?

SPITFIRE: Without hitting my head on the ceiling? Sure.

STARLIGHT: Note the slow, steady flaps of the wings. Well, not as slow as normal- her feathers are only half-grown. But without magic she couldn’t fly at all, and hovering like that would be impossible no matter how big her wings are.

SPITFIRE: Should see my flight shows. My team and me, we show you flying.

STARLIGHT: Anyway, that’s enough for a demo. Time to shut off the power.

WATNEY: Before we shut down this transmission, let me carry the computer over to a window… there. That’s what it looks like outside. That’s Mars. We’ve driven over a lot of different parts of it, but it’s all cold, it’s all just short of airless, and it’s all that dim. It’s just past noon outside, and it looks more like late afternoon with a heavy overcast. This is as bright as it ever gets on Mars, folks.

My friends here came on accident. But a lot of you probably wonder why I came here on purpose. Well, I’ll tell you. For all its danger, Mars is the next most habitable planet in the solar system after Earth. If we ever colonize another world in this solar system, it’ll be Mars. It will take a lot of work, and a lot of danger. But we can do it. Hell, my friends and I have been doing it for a year and a half.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Over the next few days each of us will answer questions sent to us from the press, with Beth Johanssen conducting the interview from Hermes. It’s three minutes each way, so by the time you see that video, it may be trimmed down a bit. Six minutes of a person staring into a camera isn’t much fun.

But we wanted you to see our faces and voices, and to get a glimpse of how special it’s been, these last seventeen months. It’s been a real privilege to meet my new friends… and I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re ready for it to be over so we can go home.

To all the people of Earth, thanks for all you’ve done to help us. Hope to see you real soon. Bye for now.

Author's Note

TIRED, and coming down sick.

I get to use the face masks tomorrow while running my booth. What fun.

Sol 514

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 524
ARES III SOL 514

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 16:11 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

MARK WATNEY: Hello, Johanssen. Sorry we’re getting a late start today, but Starlight and I tackled the first stage engine removal today. It was a lot of hard work, mostly because we had to remove one of the outer ring of engines to make room to get at the middle one. And we got just a little bit nervous lifting up the ascent stages, because it would really have sucked if the launch program triggered while I was under the thing. But it didn’t, and it’s back on the landing stage, all nice and secure again. Tomorrow we go in and install the booster targets where the central engine was. More hard work, and expensive on magic, but once those tasks are done the worst is over.

Anyway, I hope you don’t mind my eating lunch between questions. We all worked through normal lunchtime. As you can see, my lunch is a beef Stroganoff entrée and three potatoes. I dip the potatoes into the beef pack before I eat them. That way I feel like murder only a little bit.

BETH JOHANSSEN: Good morning, Mark. It’s morning shift on Hermes right now. Fortunately, our scheduled flyby and rendezvous on Sol 551 will also be in the morning, so we don’t have to change sleep shifts. We’ll be ready and alert when the time comes.

Okay. Here’s the first question. Um. Mark, remember, I didn’t write these, okay? The question is, “How do you feel about being the only human on the face of Mars for so long?”

WATNEY: Wow. Start with the big ones first, huh? Well, not a sol goes by that I don’t miss you guys, all of you on Hermes. But at the same time, well, I’ve got my new friends. And maybe they’re not human, but they’re still people. So it’s not like I’m absolutely alone. God, if I had been I might really have gone nuts. Maybe paint a face on Rover 2 and call it Wilson or something.

Anyway, next question?

JOHANSSEN: “We’ve been reading your logs. You seem to tell a lot of jokes. Where do you come up with them?”

WATNEY: Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I met some other aliens. They’re gray and tall and skinny, with heads like those Easter Island statues. About once a month they give me some lame jokes, and I let them pet the ponies for an hour.

Now obviously that’s not true. The truth is, that sort of thing just pops into my head sometimes, especially when I’m angry or stressed out. And I get really angry at this place sometimes.

DRAGONFLY: It’s true, he does!

WATNEY: Hey! Wait your own turn! Haven’t you got some snuggle seconds to go eat?

DRAGONFLY: Seriously, if he could blast Mars into a million pieces, he would.

WATNEY: Go on, move it! Yeah, anyway. Making bad jokes makes me feel better, like this fucked-up situation is somehow under control.

Oops. I promised NASA I’d try to watch the language. This effed up situation.

JOHANSSEN: Next question. I promise, Mark, I didn’t make these. “What’s with the potty mouth?”

WATNEY: Now that one has Venkat Kapoor written all over it. Well, I’ll tell you. When I wrote the early log entries, I really expected to die here. NASA believes that astronauts should be perfect, morally upstanding examples to the world, right down to not knowing a single swear word. Well, the truth is, astronauts swear just as much as anyone else, or as little. Martinez swears as much as I do, and he’s a good Catholic boy. And I’ve caught Lewis a time or two letting one slip. But you and Vogel never cuss at all.

But back to my point, spending months expecting to die kind of put NASA rules about clean language in perspective. Bad language makes me feel better, so I use it. And if some sensitive soul is upset because I said a dirty word, well, fuck ‘em. They get a vote once they’ve spent some time marooned on another planet.

All that said, I really am trying to do a little better. NASA is going to a lot of trouble to bring me home, and the least I can do is not add to that trouble. But it’s a hard habit to break, especially since I’m still millions of miles from anyone else who cares. See, I could have said, “who gives a shit,” but I didn’t! I’m getting better! Next question.

JOHANSSEN: Um, okay. Next question… “what have you got against potatoes?”

WATNEY: What have I got against them? Nothing! Potatoes are easy to grow, adapt to a broad range of environments, and provide high calorie content plus a respectable nutrient and protein load if you leave the skins on. They’re not nature’s perfect food, but they’re pretty good, especially in a desperate struggle for survival.

And before this trip I used to like potatoes. Baked, fries, hash browns, fritters- I even tried latkes a couple times. They were pretty good. But when you eat one thing, ANY one thing, the exact same one thing, over and over again for a year, you’re going to get really tired of that one thing. And as you might tell by the faces I’ve been making as I eat, I am absolutely done with microwave baked potatoes. Maybe I’ll change my mind after I spend some time eating other foods. Seventy or eighty years ought to do it. Next?

JOHANSSEN: Next one: “What’s it like, being humanity’s sole representative to our first alien visitors?”

WATNEY: If you want to be honest, really messed up. I mean, you’d expect a first contact to be carefully planned, the best of one world seeking out the best of the other and making one small step at a time. What we got instead was a whole series of extremely improbable events that ended with five aliens and one Earthman on Mars. And believe me, nobody, least of all me, would have picked me to represent all humankind to a bunch of shipwrecked aliens.

Early on I was really nervous. I mean, this is the biggest opportunity anyone’s ever had, and if I said the wrong thing, history would say, “And that was Mark Watney, the biggest fuckup humanity ever had the misfortune to spawn.” But it helped when I figured out that the ponies weren’t chosen for this any more than I was. We just focused on surviving and working together without killing each other, and we kicked diplomacy up our chains of command. Next?

JOHANSSEN: “How does it feel to have met, lived with, and worked with, what was previously considered mythical creatures?”

WATNEY: About like this: “Oh those silly ponies and things, how cute they are, HEY THAT ALMOST KILLED US ALL huh that’s interesting MY GOD ARE YOU SUICIDAL oh the diabetes OMFG DID YOU SEE THAT THAT WAS AMAZING!” Yeah, that seems about right.

Seriously, they’re already interdimensional aliens from a culture which is remarkably close to, and yet in some respects radically different from, our own. The fact that they resemble some of our own myths is still kind of small potatoes, pardon the phrase, compared to that.

JOHANSSEN: “What effects have you experienced as a result of being exposed to the ‘magic fields’ the aliens make?”

WATNEY: I could make a joke, but the honest truth is, I have no idea. The ponies say Earth should have its own magic field from all the life there, but we won’t know until we can test it somehow. One thing I know for sure is, NASA doctors and scientists will be examining my body for any interesting changes for years to come. If there’s anything different about me, they’ll find it.

JOHANSSEN: “Is magic still magical to you?”

WATNEY: Hmmm… that one’s actually a good question. I’ve been living around magic since Sol 17, more or less. And I’ve gotten used to the idea that magic is a tool that can be used to make life easier- or, here on Mars, to make it even possible.

But there are still moments- and it’s not always the big moments- when I sit up and think, Holy shit, this is a unicorn holding a wrench with nothing but the power of her mind, things like that. So yeah, it’s still magical to me.

But you know what else is? Growing plants. Think about it. We know how plants do it, and we know the conditions to encourage plant growth, but we can’t actually make plants grow. They do it for themselves. One time we can work our asses off and end up with a barren field, and another time we just have to wave the plow at the dirt and the crops just jump right up.

And as tired as I am of being in space, it’s pretty magical too. It’s unimaginably vast and empty, except for the occasional planet or moon or star. No two planets we’ve discovered in this universe are alike. And the views are just incredible.

So I think you make your own magic. Everything’s a miracle.

JOHANSSEN: Um… again, not me. “Considering the traditional first thing about learning a language, what are the curse/obscene/bad words of the pony language?”

WATNEY: Well, almost every time I try to speak pony I say something horribly obscene by accident. You’d think I’d have a huge vocabulary of pony swear words, but I don’t. As far as I can tell, ponies don’t actually have cursing rougher than “shucks” or “darn” or, in dire circumstances, “roadapples.” What they have is a lot of double-meaning words that can be either innocent or filthy depending on use. Their F-bomb is (unintelligible), which means buck, or a full-body kick that ends with lashing out with the hind hooves. And it also means exactly what you think it means.

JOHANSSEN: “Mark, in the event Hermes has to take the long way back, will your roleplaying games continue? Do you plan to expand them to include the rest of the Hermes crew, and who among the eleven of you would have the most evil gamemaster laugh?”

WATNEY: Um… did a reporter actually write that one? Really? Whatever. If the Sparkle Drive doesn’t work out, maybe we’ll keep playing and maybe we won’t. Out of the Ares crew, Johanssen was the only active gamer. Commander Lewis had slung some dice as a junior officer, and I played in high school and some in college, but we didn’t have time to do any of that while training. And so far as I know, Martinez, Beck and Vogel just aren’t interested.

But I’d pick Vogel for most evil GM laugh, because he’s German. The problem is, I’ve never actually heard him laugh. No one hears Alexander Vogel laugh… and lives…

JOHANSSEN: That’s not true, Mark. Vogel laughs all the time. Just a gentle little chuckle. Next question: “What things were unexpectedly useful on your mission?”

WATNEY: Oh, come on, don’t you want to help build the legend of Vogel, Ares III mad scientist and supervillain? Well, anyway, there’s a huge list of expectedly useful items, like the duck tape, the sample containers, the spare electric cables… but the most unexpectedly useful things were the whiteboards and dry-erase markers. We pretty much destroyed those whiteboards re-using them. Whether using them to work out grammar or make plans for building something or other, they were more useful than anyone could have imagined when NASA included them in Ares standard supplies.

JOHANSSEN: Um… I’m not even sure I should ask this… “who is best alien?”

WATNEY: Shame, whoever wrote that question! I don’t play favorites among my alien buds! I like them all equally!

DRAGONFLY: It’s totally me.

WATNEY: Will you get out of here??

JOHANSSEN: Last question… “We heard that a couple of your crewmates…” um… “…got engaged. Do you have your eye on anyone, in a romantic sense?"

WATNEY: Sorry, everyone, but I was too busy to date for more than a year before launch. And for the dirty-minded among you, there’s nothing going on between me and any of the aliens.

DRAGONFLY: Also true, darn it.

WATNEY: Ugh… anyway, once I get back to Earth, I’m going to be too busy just learning how to be among other humans again for any romance. So sorry, ladies, but I’m off the market for now.

JOHANSSEN: Okay, that’s it. Thanks, Mark, I’ll send the recording immediately. Hermes out.

WATNEY: Thanks, Beth. Friendship out.

Author's Note

Tired. Very sick (my fever got as high as 102.1 today before it broke, and I had to work through that). And tomorrow I have to pack up the van and start driving home.

Odds are, no chapter tomorrow.

Sol 515

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 525
ARES III SOL 515

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 11:14 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

CHERRY BERRY: Hermes, MAV, standing by for press event, over.

BETH JOHANSSEN: MAV, Hermes, we read you. Good morning, Commander Berry. You’re a bit early, over.

CHERRY BERRY: Well, Starlight and Mark finished early today, so I thought I’d get this out of the way so we can spend the afternoon in sims.

MARK WATNEY: Hiya, Johanssen!

CHERRY: So I’m ready to answer your questions, whatever you have. Over.

JOHANSSEN: Okay. Let’s start with a light one: “You've been halfway round Mars already, and have seen a lot of rocks. Which one was your favorite?”

CHERRY: Really? Really? (unintelligible angry noises) … I’m sorry, Miss Johanssen, but that is a foolish question. I am not a rock scientist. I know one, but I’m not her. I do not have a favorite Mars rock. I have no love whatever for Mars rocks. I will be very happy if I never see a Mars rock again for the rest of my life!

And couldn’t your newspaper people think of better questions? Favorite rock? That’s like favorite spoon! It’s… just… so… stupid!! What will they ask next, “Are you eager to launch on Sol 551?” Um, YES! Because we HATE IT HERE and want to go HOME!

Look, do you want to know my favorite? Mark, give me Groot.

WATNEY: Here you go.

CHERRY: See this? This will be a cherry tree. When he gets home he will grow lots and lots of delicious cherries. I grew his parent tree from a pit because I needed something to keep me going. I knew there would be no cherries here, but I did it anyway, because I could hope. I could look forward. And now I’m looking forward to taking this home with me. This is my favorite! This is real! Not some stupid rock!

I’m sorry I’m so angry, but if you have any more questions that dumb, you should just not ask. Please go ahead, over.

JOHANSSEN: It’s all right. Let’s try another one: “How tough is it to be a commander of a crew stranded on Mars?”

CHERRY: That’s better. And yes, it’s very tough. I never wanted to be in charge of other ponies. It just ended up that way. I fly things. Flying is what I love most, aside from eating cherries. I don’t love being a boss, but it’s a job that has to be done.

I try to watch out for all my crew, make sure they’re all right and stuff. It’s not easy. This is a dangerous world. Four of us have been injured or made sick, and all of us have come close to dying several times. And all of us sometimes push a little harder than we should. By the way, Mark, how’s your back?

WATNEY: Well, it WAS fine, thanks, Cherry.

CHERRY: Sorry. But the most important part of my job is, when things are serious, I’m the one who has to keep her head clear and calm. It’s not easy at all. I want to scream and run around and yell for help, just like any other pony, but that doesn’t help. Panic catches. Panic from the top explodes. So I put it away, the fear, and I focus on the job. Get the job done. Keep everybody moving, everybody safe, everybody together and on task. I stay calm, and everybody stays calm, and we get the job done.

JOHANSSEN: Okay. Next question: “If you were not commander of your crew, which of them do you want to replace you?”

CHERRY: You know, I tried to quit. They wouldn’t let me. None of them want the job. But Spitfire has a lot of command experience. On the other hoof, the MAV is a human ship, so maybe Mark’s people would be happier if he- Mark!

WATNEY: (leans into camera view, waving hands, shaking head, and mouthing “NO” repeatedly)

CHERRY: Mark, move over! Thank you! Anyway, yes, Spitfire or Mark, those would be my choices.

JOHANSSEN: “Do you feel up to the challenge of commanding your crew during the upcoming escape mission?”

CHERRY: Well, I did just say I tried to quit. Look, none of us expected any of this. Mark was going to be here a month. We were in another world and weren’t going to even land. We all got stuck here without all the stuff we needed. Nobody is ‘up’ to that! But somehow we lived. And we’re going to keep on living. And I’m going to do everything, everything, to make sure my crew gets home alive. No matter what.

JOHANSSEN: “What are your thoughts on witnessing a space craft made by a different species?”

CHERRY: You mean the MAV? It’s beautiful! Well, it was before we began taking it apart, anyway. It’s obvious a very good ship. I’m looking forward to flying it!

JOHANSSEN: “How do you feel about being the first non-human to fly a human spacecraft in the history of our species?”

CHERRY: Well, that’s not certain yet. I have to prove that I’m the best pony to fly first. If I’m not qualified- is that the right word?

WATNEY: That’s it.

CHERRY: If I’m not qualified, then I don’t belong in the pilot seat.

For another thing, you humans rely a lot more on computers than we do. For us computers are very new tech… techno… technology. Your computers can do all sorts of things ours just can’t! Computers talking to each other without wires! Computers that show movies! Even if we go home without taking your computers with us, just the things we’ve seen will change our home! Every pony will want their own computer so they can talk with friends across the country and send them pictures and stuff! Though that might not be a good thing… I know some ponies who would never leave their houses if that were a thing…

WATNEY: Sounds just like a lot of people on Earth, Cherry.

CHERRY: Anyway, back home computer is a back-up. It helps, but pilot has final say. With the MAV, the pilot kinda, um… suggests things to the computer, and the computer makes it happen up to the point that it doesn’t risk the ship.

Major Martinez on Hermes taught me this: “Rule One: never override the computer unless you know something it doesn’t. Rule Two: the computer always knows more than you do. And Rule Three: even computers don’t know everything.” He says this means trust the computer, but don’t be afraid to take over if there’s a darn good reason. It’s not the way I learned to fly, but I can always learn something new.

JOHANSSEN: Okay, this next question is related: “How would you feel if you were told you couldn’t pilot the MAV when it leaves Mars?”

CHERRY: Being honest? Disappointed. I do this because I love to fly. I’m not interested in being on new worlds or stuff. I go to new worlds because I get to fly there. I’ve flown all sorts of stuff, but this is my only chance to fly a human spaceship. And if I don’t get to, it’ll be because I wasn’t good enough to do it. So I have to make myself good enough. And I will.

MELISSA LEWIS: And I’m sure you will, Friendship Actual. This is Lewis speaking. How are you today?

CHERRY: Hello, Commander Lewis! I’m doing well! I’m looking forward to this afternoon’s simulations! Is the interview over?

LEWIS: No, Commander Berry, I just thought I’d take over for the last few questions. Here’s the next one: “Will you feel comfortable being a passenger of a ship that isn't under your command?” And for the record, I intend to make you as comfortable as I can, though Hermes is going to be very cramped on the ride back to Earth. Over.

CHERRY: I’ve been a passenger before. It’s not a big deal. I am sad that I won’t be flying the ship that brought us here, but that can’t be helped. It did its best. Next?

LEWIS: “How do you feel about starting a small cherry orchard when you get home?”

CHERRY: Um… kind of… word, Mark, fighting myself inside?

WATNEY: Conflicted?

CHERRY: I guess? Before I flew I did odd jobs places, including farms. My family owns huge cherry farms. But I didn’t think that was my calling. I didn’t think I was any good at it. But as much as I love flying, now I want to go back to the farm for a bit and try again with growing cherries. Because… well, because it’s different now, I guess.

LEWIS: Last question: “Would you go to Japan for the Cherry Blossom festival?”

CHERRY: I would go anywhere for a cherry blossom festival. Anywhere that isn’t (unintelligible) Mars!

WATNEY: Hear that, Earth? Aliens are coming for your cherries! Lock your pantries! Okay, there’s only one, but she’s REALLY hungry, so watch out!

CHERRY: Maaaaaark!

Author's Note

Progression of an upper respiratory infection:

SATURDAY: Seriously feverish, a little spacy, but able to function.
SUNDAY: No longer feverish, but pretty miserable and energy-sapped. Still able to function.
MONDAY: More miserable, but alert thanks to a 10-hour sleep. Able to function at least until I get home.
TUESDAY: Complete and total space case. My head is a small snot machine attached to a large helium balloon. Three-hour nap didn't help much.

Managed this anyway. Hopefully tomorrow will be better. Thursday damn well needs to be better.

Sol 516

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 526
ARES III SOL 516

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 13:04 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

STARLIGHT GLIMMER: Hermes, MAV, standing by for press event, over.

BETH JOHANSSEN: Hello, Starlight. I hope you had a nice lunch. Most of the questions you were sent overlapped, I’m told. So your interview will be the shortest. I hope that’s all right.

STARLIGHT: Um… sure! Sure it is! Busy afternoon ahead, after all! I’m sure you’ve got lots of tricky sims to keep us busy! Let’s do it!

JOHANSSEN: First question: “We’re told you’re second in command of the Friendship crew. Would you be ready to take over if something happened to Cherry Berry?”

STARLIGHT: … to be honest, I really hope nothing happens to Cherry. You know, she and Fireball are the only ones to get through this experience without a major injury? We’re lucky she was lucky. I don’t think I could ever fill her shoes. But I’d do my best if I had to. I have had some leadership experience before… er, with mixed results. Next question?

JOHANSSEN: “Are you looking forward to meeting humans other than Mark?”

STARLIGHT: I don’t know. Mark’s been so wonderful… when he’s not being annoying, that is… I’m a little scared that other humans might be so much worse. But if there’s one human I’d like to meet, it’s this Rich Purnell person. There are all sorts of experiments based on his proposed equations that are just waiting on this rescue! I’ve thought of eight or ten myself, as soon as I get somewhere with a working magic field! Mr. Purnell must be a very amazing human!

JOHANSSEN: We think he’s done some amazing work, making this rescue possible. Now, the rest of the questions are all related to magic. First, a general question: “tell us about magic.”

STARLIGHT: Huh? Didn’t everyone read my reports on basic magic? The schools of spellcasting? Spell array logic? What’s left to tell?

JOHANSSEN: This is for people who haven’t read the reports, or who tried but don’t understand them. Um, use short words, okay?

STARLIGHT: Oooh. Magic kindergarten. Okay. Magic is a force of nature in my universe. It exists in your universe too, but in a much weaker and more localized form. It’s a form of energy that can be stored and manipulated with the application of will or enchantments. My universe has a thick background field of it, plus local concentrations generated by life or other effects. In your universe it’s only made by life, with thinking life producing more than non-thinking life. We think. If we get to Earth, we'll be able to test that.

Where I come from, magic is in everything- and I mean everything. Some creatures are more inherently magical than others. Ponies are about middle of the range- we use magic, but we can function without it. I don’t know how to explain the difference except that, well, your world- even the bits we see on Commander Lewis’s television shows- well, it seems kind of bland compared to ours. Like there’s something missing.

Anyway, magic affects emotions, and emotions affect magic. In our world the most powerful magic comes from ponies working together in harmony- the power of friendship, we call it. Our ship was named with an ancient word for that power. My teacher is the princess of friendship, Twilight Sparkle. She could probably explain all this better than I could. Let’s move on.

JOHANSSEN: Next question: “I'm sure you've been introduced to how electronics work quite well at this point. Would you describe magic as something akin to computer code for rewriting reality? Or would you describe it like a fundamental force?”

STARLIGHT: Um… well, I’ve heard a lot of the theory… but… how to explain? There is magic in its raw form, as a force of nature. And then there’s the working of magic, casting of spells, like that. Casting spells is a bit like computer code, except that computer code works in sequence. Most spells are in a single casting- everything has to be resolved at once, or else you get a fizzle. All of this was in my reports, you know, much better explained.

JOHANSSEN: We know, Starlight. Next question: “What useful insights magically speaking, have you gained for your home world from this trip?”

STARLIGHT: Well, the biggest one is, “Never assume you’ll always have infinite magic available.” I’ve really had to learn to do without magic, which is really strange for me, since I used to do absolutely everything with magic. I just took it for granted, and when we got here, I felt so, well, handicapped. I don’t know if we’ll go to other worlds, but I think it’s a good thing if we learn to remember that magic isn’t everywhere.

JOHANSSEN: Next question: “What is the most fun you've ever had with magic?”

STARLIGHT: The most fun? Well, there was this one time… I like kites, rather a lot. Not the bird, the paper toy thing. that you send up into the wind on a string? Well, my friends Sunburst and Maudlin Pie and I made this tremendous kite, and I conjured up this great wind to carry it up! And we made it spin and dance with the strings, and we made it change colors and trail colored smoke, and it went so high it hit Rainbow Dash’s house! She got a little mad then, but then we played tag with her using the kite, and the rainbow trail and smoke trail was so beautiful, especially when Princess... um, Celestia... set the sun! I think that might have been the most fun I’ve ever had with magic.

JOHANSSEN: Last question, and it’s a complex one, okay? “We heard about the ‘Cherry Stone’ incident. While that may not have worked as intended, it does raise a lot of interesting questions. What are the limits of transformation magic? Is it normally possible to safely change non-food into food? Does transformation magic work on people? Could you, say, turn a human into a dragon? Asking for a friend.”

STARLIGHT: Oh boy. Asking for a friend, huh? You humans know that wasn’t exactly a proud moment for us, right? We wasted a lot of magic and nearly put a hole in the Hab to get almost one cherry.

All right. Transformation magic is expensive. It takes a LOT of energy, and it takes that much energy squared, or even more, to make permanent. Inanimate objects are pretty easy if you’re strong enough. My best friend can turn practically anything into a teacup, but she’s still working on turning things back. Living creatures, really complex, always changing- those are extremely difficult. Making a permanent change to a person beyond, oh, growing a mustache- well, even trying will exhaust even a powerful unicorn.

Non-food to food can be done, though usually nobody does it because it’s a lot less work to cook for yourself. Changing a human to a dragon? You’d need Chaos or an alicorn to do that, and I don’t think they’d be willing to help out. Either that or a really special artifact. Even then it probably wouldn’t stay. Sorry. Did you want to be a dragon, Johanssen?

JOHANSSEN: Um? Um. No, no I didn’t. I didn’t write any of these questions. But I am curious about magic. When you get up to Hermes I’ll have lots of questions of my own to ask. Will that be okay?

STARLIGHT: Sure! Do you want to begin now?

JOHANSSEN: Um, the sims are waiting. Good luck. Hermes out.

STARLIGHT: Oh! I completely forgot!

CHERRY BERRY: I didn’t! It’s been an hour and a half! Sign off and let’s go already!

STARLIGHT: Sorry! Sorry! Um, MAV out!

Author's Note

Feeling a bit less spacy, but still not 100%. But I'm grateful for any improvement.

I probably ought to have quoted from that "Celestia teaches magic kindergarten" video, but I haven't got the energy for that.

Sol 517

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 527
ARES III SOL 517

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 13:07 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

SPITFIRE: Hermes, MAV, standing by for… press… event, over.

RICK MARTINEZ: MAV, Hermes. Hey, Major! I asked to do your interview today. I figured you’d be more comfortable with a fellow flier. That all right? Ready to go when you are, over.

SPITFIRE: Thank you, Major. I wor… I am working… on my English. Starlight Glimmer is here to help me.

STARLIGHT GLIMMER: Hello, Major Martinez.

SPITFIRE: If she knows it is only to help! Not to speak for me! All right?

STARLIGHT GLIMMER: All right, all right, I said I wouldn’t interrupt.

SPITFIRE: Good. So, ready. Over.

MARTINEZ: Copy, MAV. First question: “We understand you took a beating in that flight of yours. How are you feeling now?”

SPITFIRE: Much more good. Better. But still... long way to go. Wings… my wings… itch… all the time. We run out of… lotion? Lotion. We run out of lotion two weeks ago. Used most on Mark’s burns and Starlight’s leg… er… long ago. So itch, but can’t scratch, because I might hurt… er, damage… growing feathers. …. Over.

MARTINEZ: Roger. Next Q: “How did it feel to bust apart a storm on an alien world?”

SPITFIRE: It felt great. But the hole in suit, losing air, feathers stuck in, in, in, word please?

STARLIGHT: Gunk.

SPITFIRE: Stuck in gunk, all that was not so good. But… excuse me, thinking of words… it was the first time since I left home that I felt like I did what I was born to do. I was flying. I was doing work with… um… weather. I was saving ponies. I can’t say how good that feels. For one… minute? No, um, short time, begins mm…

STARLIGHT: Moment?

SPITFIRE: Yes! For one moment, I was where I belong.

MARTINEZ: Sounds wonderful, Major. Next one: “There are bigger storms in our solar system, and maybe in yours too. What would you say to anyone trying to break your record?”

SPITFIRE: I say: you crazy?? I did what I did because I had to, to save lives. That storm needed a hundred, more pegasus. We had me. I make… I made it work! I was willing to die if it save my friends! That… that’s a good reason to do it. Doing it for… for fun? For break record? That bad reason. That stupid. That will get you dead. Also I was so, so lucky. You, maybe not. So DON’T DO IT! Over!

MARTINEZ: Confirm copy, confirmed! Easy, Spits! I’m on your side! We good for the next question? Here it is: “Soon you’ll be back in space. Are you looking forward to being able to fly around in zero gravity again?”

SPITFIRE: Zero G is not flying. Zero G is all different, totally different, from flying with wings. All different… um, skills. What I look forward to is flying in a real sky, no space suits, just me and the wind.

MARTINEZ: You know, I’m a bit jealous of that? I went hang-gliding once. Damn near broke my leg landing. It’s tougher than it looks. That’s as close as humans ever get to what you experience, I think. But anyway, next question: “Given that one is encased in a capsule at enormous speed and the other exposed but not quite as fast, how does the exhilaration of a rocket launch compare to that of flying?” Over.

SPITFIRE: Some ponies… hang glide… at home too. I think they do. If hang glide is with big, um, thing like kite, um, with pony under?

STARLIGHT: That’s one way to describe a hang glider, yes.

SPITFIRE: Anyway, we have that. Answer to question: can’t, um, er… word? (unintelligible)

STARLIGHT: Compare. Show how two things are alike and unalike.

SPITFIRE: Right. Can’t compare the two. When I fly, I control the flying. I only go up in rocket once. Cherry Berry was pilot, not me. Rocket ride was… was…

STARLIGHT: Exciting?

SPITFIRE: I get there! Wait until I ask! But yes, exciting. Also scary. Feels not at all like pegasus flying. Not… what was word in question? Begins X, but not exciting.

STARLIGHT: Um… I think “exhilaration”?

SPITFIRE: (unintelligible)

STARLIGHT: (unintelligible)

SPITFIRE: Oooh. No, rocket flight very much not exhilaration. Over.

MARTINEZ: Copy, MAV. I agree, it’s not the same when someone else drives. Next question: “Do you think you'll ever go to space again?”

SPITFIRE: I am an officer. I have a duty. I go where I am ordered.

MARTINEZ: Fair enough. The next question is a little complicated. Starlight, could you help her with this one? “You've been on Mars in an environment where you're subjected to 1/3rd of a G for over a year and a half. Have you, or anyone else there, given thought as to how you're going to handle returning to an environment of 1 full G?”

SPITFIRE: I don’t need help for that one. I think about it a very lot. We all will need time to… er… to get used to real G’s again. Most of all I will need lots of work to fly right, to fly good, again. I think about it all the time.

MARTINEZ: Next one: “What kinds of sports do they have back home besides racing and stunt flying? Anything comparable to Quidditch?”

SPITFIRE: Ponies have all kinds of sports. I don’t have words for them. I represent my home town, Clouds Valley, in Pony-land Games twice now! Gold, um, thing wear around neck?

STARLIGHT: Spitfire has won gold medals for aerial racing in multiple, um, Pony-land Games.

SPITFIRE: Yes. But games are not just flying. Ponies kick things, throw things, hit things, um… um… sorry, really don’t have the words. Next questi- no, wait. Also want to say, I think I will try to get ponies to play quidditch when we get home. Now, next question.

MARTINEZ: I’d pay money to see that! Next question- actually, this is a twofer: “How old were you when you knew you wanted a military career? What advice would you give to children wondering about following in your footsteps?”

SPITFIRE: What’s ‘twofer’?

STARLIGHT: It means somebody tried to ask two questions as if they were one.

SPITFIRE: Oh. So it means cheat? Like when you make us roll Evil Mars Dice?

STARLIGHT: There is nothing wrong with those dice! They are perfectly balanced and roll true! It’s not my fault! Besides, you deserve those rolls, after what you did to those goblins!

SPITFIRE: I still say it’s wrong to have not-evil goblins in D&D! Anyway! Um. Sorry, I forgot question, over.

MARTINEZ: “How old were you when you knew you wanted a military career? What advice would you give to children wondering about following in your footsteps?”

SPITFIRE: Oh, right. I wanted to be best flier since I was very small. Best flying team is Wonderful Thunderbolts, part of royal guard. So all my life I work hard to be best. Kids, if you know what you want, work hard. Keep working hard. Maybe you don’t get it if you work hard, but for sure you won’t get it if you don’t work at all! Even if you don’t get it, you’ll still be a better pony for the work! And you don’t know- maybe you find something good you never… um… dream of before!

MARTINEZ: Good advice! Next question: “After so long as a crew member under someone else's command, how are you feeling about returning to your own squad on your homeworld as leader?”

SPITFIRE: No. It’s not my squad now. I’ve been away too long. I’ve been on Mars too long. Maybe I get squad back, maybe not. But if I do, I will have to work for it… earn it… again. I think about this a lot. I think about all the work I will do when I get home. I wish I could start now.

MARTINEZ: Let’s get you off Mars first, Major, okay? Maybe we can help with that. Anyway, last question: “Have you considered a career as a pinup model?”

SPITFIRE: Maybe. I have the looks. I have the body. And I see Mark’s eyes on me all the time!

STARLIGHT: SPITFIRE!!!

SPITFIRE: What? Look is allowed! Flight not hurt my flank! It’s worth looking at! Maybe if you swish your tail for him he look at-

MAV TRANSMISSION TERMINATED AT SOURCE

Author's Note

And now I've come to the "Dammit My Nose is Not a Spigot" phase of the crud.

Still much work to do tomorrow for setup, so to bed.

(Yes, Spitfire's English improved a bit as the interview went on- partly due to practice, partly to relaxing and getting into the flow of things.)

Sol 518

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 528
ARES III SOL 518

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 13:22 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

FIREBALL: Hermes, MAV, standing by for press event. Over.

BETH JOHANSSEN: MAV, Hermes. Hello, Fireball. What are you eating?

FIREBALL: It was a potato. With bits of quartz stuffed in. Thought it might taste better. It didn’t. Let’s go. Over.

JOHANSSEN: Okay. First question: “How are you getting along with your crewmates?”

FIREBALL: All right. Not fried, cooked, eaten any yet.

DRAGONFLY: I taste better slow-roasted!

FIREBALL: Though there’s STILL TIME! Rrgh. Bug aside, we’re okay. Looking forward to going home and being by myself, though.

JOHANSSEN: Next question: “What was the most inconvenient thing about spending so much time in such close proximity with others?”

FIREBALL: Being everybody’s cuddle mattress. It gets chilly in the ship at night, even with life support. Everybody piles on me for body heat, ‘cause dragons are hot. Not fun being on bottom. Nobody likes couple hundred kilos on top of them when they try to sleep. But better than freezing, so I don’t complain.

JOHANSSEN: “Dragons are big and powerful. Are you using that to help get off the planet?”

FIREBALL: Dragons are strong. But right now dragon claws- and dragon thumbs- more important. I use wrenches and move things easier than ponies and bug. Do so well, we more than half done with MAV mods. Then, I inspect suits, help Dragonfly make ready for launch. I do my job.

JOHANSSEN: You’re well ahead of schedule. That’s great. Next question: “I heard that dragons collect hoard. Is it true for you? And what's the thing of your hoard that you missed the most if you do?”

FIREBALL: I have hoard. A small one. Dragonlord back home is watching it. But nothing there as good as what I bring back from this trip. Some things you can’t count in bits of gold or jewels.

JOHANSSEN: Aww- er, okay. Next: “Can you tell us your most memorable space experience except this one of course?”

FIREBALL: Oh, YES. My very first flight. Flew straight into mountain. Spent month in full body cast eating through a straw. Flying into mountain VERY memorable.

JOHANSSEN: You crashed a rocket and lived? And you went back up? That’s amazing!

FIREBALL: Yeah. Amazing. I can’t believe I was that dumb. Coin flip chance I crash on each launch. This time when I get home, they can find some other dragon to put in a can!

JOHANSSEN: Er… um… moving on. “We know you want to try driving a car. Do you have any ideas as to what kind of cars you'd like to try?”

FIREBALL: Not a cop car. They crash too easy. I think I want to try a car that doesn’t have a trailer. Also, one that doesn’t jump broken bridges. I fly with my own wings only from now on.

JOHANSSEN: “What changes would you make to your spacesuit design to make them better prepared for the vigors of frequent and extended planetary EVA?”

FIREBALL: They work pretty good. Yeah, we patch them-

DRAGONFLY: What do you mean we? I don’t see you throwing up for science!

FIREBALL: Did it become tomorrow when I not look? Get! Pushy bug. What I say… yeah. We patch them a lot to get this far, but they plenty tough to last like this. Never meant to go so long. But bathroom thing still needs work.

JOHANSSEN: Agreed. Next: “Do gemstones have flavour to a dragon? Can you describe them in terms of equivalent taste to other foodstuffs?”

FIREBALL: Hard to say. More color is usually sweeter. Darker is spicier. Clear is blah. Eat diamonds like eat ice, except not cold, not wet. So, not much like ice at all. Really hard to say.

JOHANSSEN: “Would you become a gem expert?”

FIREBALL: Why? Life too short to spend it as store clerk. –OH, wait. I forget, gems worth lots of money on Earth. No, no need for Earth-like gem expert at home. Which is where I’m going.

JOHANSSEN: Last question: “Would you be interested in a movie career? Hollywood would love to put dragons in films without expensive special effects.”

FIREBALL: No. Nose too big for films. But I’d like to see some fake dragons in films sometime. I could use a laugh. We done now?

JOHANSSEN: That’s all, Fireball. Dragonfly’s interview is tomorrow, the last one.

FIREBALL: Good. Stay tuned. Bug don’t know it, but payback is coming.

DRAGONFLY: Fireball, I’m still right over here.

FIREBALL: Payback coming anyway! MAV out.

Author's Note

Sorry this isn't more, but I've been space-out sleepy most of the day. Lingering congestion probably prevented me from sleeping well last night.

Sol 519

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 529
ARES III SOL 519

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 12:14 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

DRAGONFLY: Hermes, MAV, standing by for media event.

BETH JOHANSSEN: Good morning, Dragonfly… Mark. Fireball. What’s going on? Why are all three of you on camera?

DRAGONFLY: Well, er. Mark and Fireball said they appreciated my help with their interviews so much that they, well, they insist on helping with mine.

MARK WATNEY: S’right.

FIREBALL: Yep.

MARK: Don’t mind us, we’ll just be here, ready to chime in whenever we, well, you just go ahead.

FIREBALL: Yeah. Go ahead.

DRAGONFLY: So, um, yeah, I guess we’re doing this. Over.

JOHANSSEN: All right. First question: “A lot of people on Earth have been worried about you ever since you went into the cocoon. How are you doing now? Will you be healthy for the Sol 551 launch?”

WATNEY: Um.

FIREBALL: Huh. Yeah, we shut up now.

WATNEY: Yeah, um, we’re just gonna go over here. Way over here. Yeah.

DRAGONFLY: Guys, guys, it’s all right. Sit down. It'll be fun later, trust me. Okay? Okay, when we got here, I thought I had to hide this sort of thing, because I was afraid that people would hate me if they knew the truth. I didn’t trust my crew… my friends… enough. I’m getting over that. The truth is, I’m not doing well. I’m not going to be all better until I get home, or at least someplace with a strong magic field. We get little doses of magic each day, and that helps, but it’s not enough.

But what happened before- what I did to Mark- that will never happen again. Never! I’m sorry it happened the first time, and I’m sorry I kept my problems a secret for so long. Now, everyone here knows my problems, and they’re all helping. Fireball helps me with the interior MAV mods, and it speeds things up a lot. And of course I get three good meals a day, plus occasional snacks. So it might be tough, but I’m going to make it. Because I have help.

FIREBALL: Yeah.

WATNEY: That’s right. We’re here for you.

JOHANSSEN: “Do you feel up to taking an active role in the upcoming launch?”

DRAGONFLY: To be honest, no. I really wanted to help fly the MAV, but… well, we’re predicted to pull a peak sustained load of 8 G’s during ascent. That takes a lot of effort and training to resist blackout, and I can’t guarantee that I’ll be up to it. So I scratched myself off the flight list. Unless something really goes wrong, I’m just gonna be a passenger. It’s safest that way.

JOHANSSEN: The next one’s a long one. “A lot of people have heard about how you have maintained your suits for all this time, and many of those people are a bit put off by it. But for those of us who can keep our stomachs from overriding our brain cells (and those of us who know where Honey comes from and don't even blink), what can you say about the nature of the 'resin' you have been producing patches from? Are you restricted to organic compounds, or can you safely utilize more volatile chemicals in limited quantities?”

DRAGONFLY: Well, guys? Got anything to say?

FIREBALL: Yeah. Better you than us.

WATNEY: Seriously, the bug’s made it clear that producing goo in the quantities we need is not fun for her at all. We don’t joke about it.

DRAGONFLY: Yeah. I’m not fond of solid food anyway. Now imagine having to wolf down a bunch of some food you really hate, let your guts work on it for half an hour, and then bring it all back up. Back home it’s no big deal, except we don’t make so much at once. But it also takes magic to do, which makes it even more… unpleasant.

Now, about the goo itself. We changelings produce a number of substances for different uses. We can change the stuff up a lot, but we can’t recreate everything. It’s not exact. The stuff we use for space suit patches is also used for a layer inside the space suit fabric. It’s like rubber, only a bit more durable and a bit less springy. It’s very similar to the rope we make. We can also make various kinds of fluids with different effects. We can make acids or caustic solutions, but only organic ones, and not much at a time.

As for making more volatile stuff, no, we can’t. Anything likely to burn or blow up would do it in the, um, digestion process. So no making rocket fuel one puke at a time. I don't feel like exploding today.

WATNEY: Exploding changeling?

FIREBALL: I can see it. Wish I couldn’t.

WATNEY: Dragonfly, you sound like Errol from the Discworld books! Or some other swamp dragon!

DRAGONFLY: No, I’m not! I’m not gonna go bang if someone kicks me or if I get too angry! That’s what I was just saying! Guys, it’s okay, I am not going to go boom on you! Unless you’re into that…

FIREBALL: Grr. For a minute I felt sorry for her…

JOHANSSEN: Let’s move on. “What was the strangest use you've ever had for changeling goop? What was the weirdest thing you've had to eat to make it?”

DRAGONFLY: Huh. Hey, Mark? You know how there was that story in Dukes of Hazard where they mentioned a weird phrase? How you said it meant that after so many years you couldn’t go to jail for a crime anymore?

WATNEY: Yeeeess… it’s called the statute of limitations.

DRAGONFLY: Yeah, that. I don’t think that’s passed yet for, er, certain things back home. Bad old days stuff. So I don’t think I can answer the first part of that question… or the second part of that question, come to think of it.

WATNEY: I don’t want to know, do I?

FIREBALL: If you gotta ask that question, the answer’s no.

JOHANSSEN: “Can you taste regular food? How would you describe the tastes of different emotions in ways we would understand?”

DRAGONFLY: Sure, I can taste regular food. There’s a few things I don’t mind a nibble from now and then. But I don’t need much of it at all, most of the time, and I sure don’t feel like big heavy meals like ponies and humans.

As for how emotions taste? There are so many emotions, so I’ll just stick to a few simple ones. Anger is like oil and smoke and stink. We can’t eat that. Fear is… well, you flush fear down the toilet. Can’t eat that either. Sadness is kind of like ice-cold sick. Happiness is hot and crunchy and fluffy like fresh popcorn. Family love can be like fresh rolls or hot apple pie. Romantic love tastes like spicy chocolate. Thankfulness and gratitude is kind of dry and minty and not very filling, like that green stuff they put on plates at restaurants that you’re not supposed to eat.

JOHANSSEN: “There have been rumors about how you feed on emotions from other living things. Some say you scavenge emotions left behind, while others say you extract “love” like a mosquito drinks blood. Which is it?

DRAGONFLY: Both? Either? We changelings can subsist on environmental love if there’s enough of it and not too many changelings. But we do better if the love is directed at us. And if we’re hungry enough we can yank the love out of our victims, but that hurts them pretty badly. We only do that if we’re desperate, because it means we can’t get more from that victim later. But back home we get all sorts of freely given love, so we don’t need to worry about doing that ever again. But you’re right to be concerned. A sick or desperate changeling can suck a person dry of love. Like I did with Mark. Again, I’m very sorry, Mark.

WATNEY: It’s all right, bug. Dragonfly. Water under the bridge.

DRAGONFLY: So if more of my people come to Earth, we’ll have to be on our very best behavior. Actually, if there are more tasty people like Mark, we’ll have to watch our weight or else we’ll get fat. That happened to a changeling I know who tried to eat Cherry Berry’s love of flying and of cherries. Everybody calls her… er, um, big round-ish dark fruit, don’t know the name. Ponies fry it or put it in, um… you know what, never mind. Next?

WATNEY: Now that’s going to keep me up nights, trying to figure out what fruit you’re talking about…

JOHANSSEN: “You've got quite a lot of fans here on Earth. Can you feel their love all the way on Mars? If not, will it cause any problems once you get close to us?”

DRAGONFLY: Um, I appreciate the thought, and it sure can’t hurt for you to try to send me love from Earth, but no, I don’t feel it. As for causing problems if- when I get closer to Earth? I’d LOVE to have those problems! Gimme a big juicy chocolate slice of those problems! They can cut me out of the landing capsule! Roll me to the hospital! Believe me, it’s better than the problems I have now!

WATNEY: Astronomers, you might end up adding a new planet. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Dragonfly.

FIREBALL: She already thinks she as important as planet…

DRAGONFLY: Only because it’s true!

FIREBALL: How is it, when we razz her, she still gets the laugh?

WATNEY: All part of the sweet mystery of comedy, o dragon mine.

FIREBALL: Mystery? So who killed comedy, then?

DRAGONFLY: Well, you guys sure are beating the corpse a lot...

JOHANSSEN: “Would you accept endless hugs from human children?”

DRAGONFLY: Um, no. That's irresponsible. Kids, not every bug you meet wants to be friends. Listen to your parents. If they say it’s okay, then you can hug. And if the changeling says she’s full, then maybe just settle for scritchies.

WATNEY: Did I hear that right? You, an emotional vampire, are teaching children about stranger danger?

DRAGONFLY: I know, right? I am gonna be in SO much trouble with the queen when she finds out...

JOHANSSEN: “Do you think adding pets to your hive can offset some of its need for emotional imports?”

DRAGONFLY: Um… we changelings are kind of selfish and greedy. Also a bit forgetful. That’s not a good thing for pets. Don’t ask how I know that.

WATNEY: So, what did you have, a dog? A cat? A-

DRAGONFLY: Don’t ask, really don’t.

FIREBALL: I think what she had was a snack.

DRAGONFLY: Can we please move on?

FIREBALL: Was it-

WATNEY: Sure, we can move on. Can’t we, Fireball?

FIREBALL: Grrrm.

WATNEY: You scored a point, boss. Be happy with that.

JOHANSSEN: Next question: “Who do you get the most love from?”

FIREBALL: Mark.

DRAGONFLY: Yeah, it’s Mark. By a mile. The boss mare- um, Cherry Berry- she comes in second, I guess because we’ve worked together so long.

WATNEY: Awww… I think.

JOHANSSEN: “Who do you enjoy mimicking the most?”

DRAGONFLY: Now that’s kind of an unfair question, when I can’t spare the magic to show off. I don’t get to use my power very much here at all. The shape I’ve used most is yours, Miss Johanssen, but it makes Mark uncomfortable in a bad way. If I had the juice, I’d like to try Janet from Three’s Company in a nightie, because it would make Mark uncomfortable in a good way! See, it’s working already!

WATNEY: Bug, could you quit doing that shit, please?

DRAGONFLY: Sorry, Mark, I can’t hear you over all that sweet, spicy lust you’re feeding me…

FIREBALL: Ugh. Take it to the rover.

WATNEY: I think that’s enough questions. In fact, one too many. If you’ll excuse me, I have a date with the cold water tap.

DRAGONFLY: Later, Hermes, thanks and see you soon! MAV out!

Author's Note

And that runs out the interviews. Thanks to everyone who contributed questions.

Realmscon is going okay (or at least as okay as generic DayQuil can make it). After this I have a weekend off the circuit, which I will use to push hard for the conclusion of this story.

Sol 521

To: Venkat Kapoor, director, Project Ares
From: Irene Shields, chief psychologist, Project Ares
Subject: Psychological evaluation of M. Watney and crew as of Sol 520

Below, based on the media interviews, emails, and other communications, is my personal evaluation of the mental fitness of Mark Watney and the five alien astronauts prior to the planned Sol 551 rendezvous with Hermes. This is a rough evaluation only and does not constitute a detailed diagnosis, as such would require personal interviews and tests in a controlled clinical setting.

SUBJECT: WATNEY, MARK

Although Mark Watney shows some signs of inner nervousness about the upcoming launch, which he masks with redirection and bad jokes, he is obviously relaxed and confident in the efforts of NASA, his crewmates on Hermes, and his crewmates with him in the Whinnybago. Despite the perfectly normal anger he exhibits towards his hostile surroundings, he appears to be as enthusiastic and optimistic towards his alien friends and contact with their civilization as he was about the Ares mission when he was first selected as prime crew for Ares III.

I note no signs of mental fatigue or deterioration, nor any artifacts of desocialization aside from his beard, which given the likely condition of his grooming equipment is understandable. I put down claims by the aliens to suppressed sexual interest in them by Watney to be a combination of friendly ribbing by crewmates and a symptom of an extended period without contact with humans of his sexual preference. His reaction to their flirtation may be a lingering remnant of his earlier juvenilization of them as part of his self-image as protector, which otherwise seems to have been demolished.

SUBJECT: BERRY, CHERRY

Cherry Berry’s self-confidence issues have faded noticeably since my first evaluation, but they are still present to a certain degree. Her temper appears to be shorter, possibly due to weeks of keeping the peace among six grown persons in a tightly confined environment during the cross-country trip to the MAV, possibly due to stress from the impending launch. She clearly exhibits powerful motivation to pilot the MAV and to personally oversee the rescue of her crew, but the latter is evidently more important to her than the former. Her interactions with Martinez and Johanssen during simulations have been totally professional, with a total absence of combativeness, defensiveness or stubborn resistance to the lessons of the simulation exercises. Although losing the chance to fly the MAV would be a severe blow to her morale, I do not believe it would be crippling to her mission effectiveness. Psychologically speaking, I see no reason at this time why she should not be certified to pilot the MAV, if all other criteria are met.

SUBJECT: GLIMMER, STARLIGHT

Starlight Glimmer’s confidence issues appear to be a fundamental part of her personality. They remain almost unchanged from my prior evaluations. I choose to see it as a good sign that she becomes less self-conscious when focusing on answers to questions exclusively focused on magic. Aside from this point, I have nothing to add to my previous analysis.

SUBJECT: SPITFIRE

Spitfire appears much more comfortable with herself than in my prior analysis. This is almost certainly due to her incredible achievement regarding the Great Black Spot storm. My guess, without any strong basis in available data, is that the current personality traits represent a reversion to the subject’s normal personality prior to her assignment to the mission that ended in the Sol 6 crash. She presents as confident but realistic in her outlook and expectations, with considerable life experience- a much healthier, more stable personality so long as it does not shade into narcissism.

SUBJECT: FIREBALL

Fireball’s insecurity issues have eased somewhat since my last evaluation. Strong antisocial traits remain evident, tempered by an obvious respect and affection for his fellow castaways. Subject is more open about himself and more relaxed, a sign of his trust of the rest of the crew. His sense of humor opens a question: was this a pre-existing trait, or is Mark Watney’s horrible humor rubbing off on him?

SUBJECT: DRAGONFLY

Subject seems to have overcorrected substantially regarding past trust issues and is now prone to over-sharing. Without a direct examination and diagnosis of her current physical condition it is impossible to determine if her doubts about her fitness are merited or a symptom of lowered self-esteem. There is a deep affection for her crew, and especially for Mark, although how far she truly wishes to take this affection is difficult to determine without a proper analysis in a controlled environment. Her erratic behavior is difficult to diagnose completely unless this observer accedes to the subject’s own claim that “lings gotta ling.”

OVERALL EVALUATION

With the possible exception of Dragonfly, the six astronauts due to fly in the Ares IV MAV on Sol 551 demonstrate marked improvement in morale, mental health, and confidence over previous evaluations. Absent additional countervailing data, it is my opinion that all six are capable of clear and quick judgment and rational thought and, therefore, may be trusted with active participation in the conduct of the MAV launch and Hermes rendezvous if necessary or desired. Further purely medical evaluation should be conducted on Cherry Berry, Spitfire and Dragonfly if possible.

On a personal note, I wish to observe that all six of these people have grown and changed markedly as a result of their experiences on Mars. Except for possible PTSD and similar conditions which may become evident after their removal from the Martian environment, it appears that Mars has changed them all for the better. Or, possibly, it could be as simple as this: these six people are just good for each other.

Irene Shields, Ph. D.
Chief psychologist
Project Ares

Author's Note

A quick bit I wrote last night so today wouldn't be without an update. Getting ready to start packing up for the drive home.

The interviews served their purpose, but now it's time to press on.

Thirty sols remain.

Sol 522

MISSION LOG – SOL 522

We’re turning water into rocket fuel. It’s easier than you’d think.

Yesterday we finished the last bit of modifications on the exterior of the MAV, when I very carefully installed the pony thruster systems on top of the holes left by removing the secondary maneuvering thruster systems. The last bit of undesired interior equipment, the tertiary communications system, is getting removed by Dragonfly and Fireball today. After that all that’s left is installing the three remaining pony flight couches, then the two RTGs- and that last item won’t happen until the day before launch. We need the heat from at least one RTG for sleeping at night, and the MAV makes the Whinnybago look like a blimp hangar by comparison. So with the major work done, we’re moving on to secondary tasks like extra fuel.

All you need to separate oxygen and hydrogen from water is electricity and two electrodes. The problem lies in collecting the hydrogen. One early design for the MAV actually had an electrolysis plant included as part of the fuel plant. The MAV would launch with a fuckload of water to split apart to get hydrogen, which it could then use to make rocket fuel. It would get the carbon for the fuel from carbon dioxide, which is mostly what Mars’s athmosphere is made of. The oxygen would be stored as oxidizer for the fuel, with excess oxygen being vented into the Martian air.

Unfortunately for me, a clever boffin found a way to apply the oxygenator tech to replace the old system of converting water and carbon dioxide into fuel and oxygen. Instead the fuel plant splits apart carbon dioxide and takes stored hydrogen to make methane. The CO2 provides enough oxygen for the fuel oxidizer and no more, which means no wasted mass being sent to Mars. Even with the super-insulated storage bottle for the molecular hydrogen and the inevitable leaks and losses, the new system ended up less than half the mass of the old, simply because about 91% of the reactant weight at launch had been eliminated.

The upshot of all this is, the MAV fuel plant can’t accept water directly. It has no electrolysis unit and no ability to separate oxygen from hydrogen. All I can do is swap out empty hydrogen tanks with full ones, feed it electricity, and watch it work.

Fucking mass-conservation obsessed NASA engineers. How could they not have known that some dumb schmuck would be stranded for years on Mars and suddenly need to make enough fuel to top off the fuel tanks in order to make a lunatic lunge at an escape-velocity rendezvous with a rescue ship? It’s such an obvious scenario that could happen to anybody, after all. No excuse.

But since the fuel plant can’t isolate hydrogen for us, we have to do it the complicated way. Fortunately, we have a small air tank compressor built into Rover 2. It’s what vents the airlock when it cycles, so that we don’t waste precious oxygen and nitrogen on Mars, ungrateful world that it is. It’s a simple trick to get that pump to suck up the entire contents of Rover 2’s interior into its tank instead of just the airlock.

But doing that gets us a bunch of mixed gases. That’s no good. And since we have no equipment that can un-mix gases, naturally we turn to magic for the solution. In fact, we’re using almost the same spell that we used to purge the methane from the cave farm. (Except, of course, we’re being much more careful, since we can’t afford to rip this airlock out from its frame.)

Here’s how it works. We isolate Rover 2 from the trailer and depressurize it. Then we use that tanked air to return the rover interior to about a quarter of an atmosphere. We need some air pressure, or else the water will just boil off before we can electrolyze it. Then we take a plastic box full of water (filled from the pony life support spigot), drop a couple of electrodes in it, and let it run. At the end we have an atmosphere that’s roughly ten percent hydrogen by weight, most of the rest of it being molecular oxygen. We can read that on the rover’s atmospheric analyzer.

If you’re thinking that this basically turns the inside of Rover 2 into a bomb, you’re right. And if you’re wondering where Starlight Glimmer and I are standing for all this, well, wonder no more- we’re at Ground Zero. Then Starlight casts her little spell, creating a force field that isolates the atmosphere sensors from the rest of the rover. The force field stops anything as heavy as molecular nitrogen, but molecular hydrogen just flits right through. A little bit of force field flexing later, and the hydrogen just flows into the bubble. The analyzer tells us when we’ve got it going.

Once we have the bubble of 100% hydrogen started, Starlight moves it from the analyzer to the airlock, and we wait until the analyzer shows the hydrogen content of the air in the rest of the rover as less than 1%. Then I activate the airlock air compressor and pump our harvested hydrogen into the tank.

Each box full of water contains about fifty liters, weighing fifty kilograms. That water contains about five and a half kilograms of hydrogen. Each five and a half kilos of hydrogen, fed into the fuel plant, makes about seventy-two kilos of rocket fuel. If we do this for twenty-five sols, once per sol, we get a bit more than 1,400 kilograms of fuel.

Why are we bothering with this, you ask? Hasn’t the MAV fuel plant already filled its tanks? Well, as it happens, the answer is no.

The MAV fuel tanks, first and second stage combined, have a bit of excess volume for both fuel and oxidizer to compensate for the hydrogen the MAV might or might not lose to leaks from leaving Earth until the stored supply is exhausted. The MAV is rated to achieve normal orbit, with normal cargo, on about eighteen tons of fuel, and the fuel plant is calculated to make over nineteen tons to provide a safety margin… but an absolutely full load for the MAV would be twenty-one tons of fuel plus adequate oxidizer to go with it.

Thanks to the ponies, who are being very understanding about us drinking their planet dry, we have an infinite supply of water to electrolyze. With the solar cells on the Whinnybago, we have enough power to supercharge the fuel plant systems to make it run much faster than normal. Normally the fuel plant only makes about forty to forty-five kilos of fuel per day. Extra power lets us double that. We could go a lot higher without risking a burnout or accident, but we don’t need to. One electrolysis session gives us enough hydrogen for seventy-two kilos, and we have enough time for that to add up to all the remaining space in the tanks.

That’s our only safety margin. With all the stuff we’ve ripped off the MAV, almost anything that breaks from now on means we’re fucked. But we’ll have ten percent more delta-V (not counting the magic boosters) than we otherwise would, which means if we lose a rocket engine or magic booster, we can make up the difference with a longer burn.

In one way it’s a shame we have all the water we’d ever need. I could just as easily electrolyze urine, which is mostly water. Then, for the rest of my life, I could brag about being so tough I pissed rocket fuel. But then, I think my guests are just as happy we don’t have to do that. It smells bad enough in the Whinnybago as it is without adding the smell of boiled pee.

Author's Note

In real life hydrogen tanks leak pretty much constantly... and the emptier the tank, the faster it leaks. Molecular hydrogen just doesn't want to be contained, and it will flit, molecule by molecule, through the solid metal walls of anything you put it in.

That's the single biggest critique of Andy Weir's take on harvesting fuel on Mars for the return trip. Yes, it makes lots of sense on paper to send up only a few hundred kilograms of hydrogen, rather than enough nice, stable, electrolyzable water that weighs enough to make the weight savings of the process trivial. But with six months in transit and fifteen months on the surface cooking up rocket fuel, it just doesn't make sense that all the hydrogen's going to be there.

Also, in the book the idea of adding fuel to the already full-up MAV is considered such a trivial issue that it simply isn't addressed. "The tanks are full!" "Add more!" "Okay." This is logic that, on the face of it, doesn't work outside of infinitely large hotels.

But consider this: let's say that hydrogen storage tech improves enough to make this fuel plant feasible. Thing is, it's never going to be 100%. And although you can predict an average amount of hydrogen losses, you can't really predict an exact amount. Conditions will vary. So a smart engineer, in this situation, would give himself a large fudge factor to compensate for both less hydrogen than expected (send a lot more hydrogen than the minimum launch requirement) and more hydrogen than expected (extra capacity in the fuel tanks).

In the book Mark had a finite water supply and could only make 780 kilograms of fuel. He started later and didn't electrolyze as often. Here he has more time, more water, and thus more extra fuel.

We'll see if it makes a damn come Launch Day.

Sol 526

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 536
ARES III SOL 526

Suppertime found the six castaways gathered in the trailer’s habitat deck. Fireball crunched his quartz. The ponies nibbled their dried months-old hay, garnished lightly with a cheesy vegetable side dish from Mark’s meal pack. Mark ate the main course and dessert from said pack along with several potatoes.

It had been a light day. The morning had been spent loading and securing the week of emergency food packs onto the MAV, a chore which had taken only about an hour to complete. The Hermes crew had asked for a day off of supervising simulations, so Cherry, Spitfire and Starlight had had the afternoon free along with the others. There had been a bit of reading, a bit of tinkering with roleplaying scenarios, and a lot of staring out of portholes at the now-familiar landscape of Schiaparelli. But mostly, for lack of any other stimulus, their minds had wandered at random, each keeping their own thoughts to themselves.

That changed during dinner. “Mark?” Dragonfly asked from where she leaned shamelessly against him. “Why is it the MAV doesn’t have a name?”

“Well, Ares I was going to have a contest to name the MDV and MAV,” Mark said. “But the entries were flooded by assholes who submitted names like… well, let’s just say nobody in their right mind would put any of those names on a ship. In the end NASA backpedaled and said that, since each ship was a one-use vehicle, they didn’t merit a name.” The human picked a bit of chicken teriyaki out of the meal pouch and added, “What about you? Did all of your ships have names?”

“No, they didn’t,” Starlight said. “Friendship was the first spaceship we ever gave a name, because it was meant to be used again and again. Almost all our other ships were capsules like the MAV. We reused the capsules, but we never named them.”

“Except for the moon flight,” Cherry Berry said. “The Dreamer is in a museum now.”

“We should have given them all names,” Dragonfly said, in a drowsy, sing-song voice. “They deserve it. They did their jobs. Well, most of them.”

Silence followed, except for the cracking and crunching of Fireball’s meal.

Then Mark murmured, “Freedom 7. Liberty Bell 7. Friendship 7. Aurora 7. Sigma 7. Faith 7. Molly Brown.” He paused, muttering, “I don’t think any other Gemini capsules got a name. Nor Apollo 7 nor 8. But Apollo 9 had Gumdrop and Spider. Apollo 10, Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Apollo 11, the first actual moon landing, had Columbia and Eagle. Apollo 12, Yankee Clipper and Intrepid. Apollo 13, Odyssey and Aquarius. Apollo 14, Kitty Hawk and… and…” He tapped his head, groaning, “I used to have all of these memorized… Antares, that was the lander’s name. I don’t remember Apollo 15, 16 or 17, though, except that there was a Challenger in there somewhere. And the Skylab missions and Apollo-Soyuz didn’t get names, I don’t think. And I don’t think the Russians ever named any of their capsules.”

He held up a fist, saying, “Then the five space shuttles- the STS, not the Dream Chaser we use today. Columbia, that broke up on re-entry in 2003. I was nine then. Challenger, that blew up on launch before I was born. Atlantis. Discovery. Endeavor.” He extended a finger with each name. “And technically Enterprise, but that one only flew glide tests. It never went to space.” He lowered his hand and said, “The Soviet shuttle Buran, which only flew one unmanned flight. The Dream Chasers all have names, but I only remember the one I flew up to Hermes on, the Grissom. And Hermes. I don’t remember any other names.”

“Are there rules for if a ship gets a name or not?” Cherry asked.

“Not consistent ones,” Mark said quietly. “Privately owned spaceships generally do. NASA names ships only if they’re multi-person, reusable craft. Disposable ships don’t get names anymore. The Apollo ships got names only because NASA wanted good press for the moon missions, I think.”

“Hmmmm,” Cherry said. “What was it you kept talking about, when I wanted to rebuild Friendship into an escape ship? There was a name…”

“Flight of the Phoenix,” Mark muttered. “It’s a reference to a couple of movies. The original one is better.”

“What’s a fee-necks anyway?”

“Phoenix,” Starlight said in Equestrian, and then added in English, “The fire-bird. You know, like Celestia’s pet. I told you ages ago.”

“Does your version burn up and then rise from the ashes good as new?” Mark asked.

“Yes, it does,” Starlight said. “Fluttershy told me all about her first encounter with Celestia’s phoenix. It scared her silly, thinking she’d killed it. Turns out it was only playing dead.”

“Okay, then.” Cherry Berry pushed aside the uneaten portion of her hay, stood up, and reached into a cubbyhole for one of the old Hab laptops.

“What are you doing?” Mark asked.

“The transmission window is still open for a few hours, right?” she asked. “I need to send a message.”

[18:41] MAV: Please rename Ares IV MAV “PHOENIX,” because we who crashed and burned will rise again in fire and magic. Cherry Berry

[18:43] HERMES: Hermes copies message. Clear skies, Phoenix.

[18:59] HOUSTON: Request received and taken under advisement. We’ll let you know if it gets approved.

[19:17] MAV: An interplanetary spaceship needs a name. Maybe this one won’t need to go that far, but it’ll be able to. We’re calling it Phoenix. What you call it is your problem. CB

[19:35] HOUSTON: Cherry, please remember, it is our ship.

[19:51] MAV: Was your ship. Arrrrrr. CB

Author's Note

A thing that preys on my mind: if the Apollo capsules and landers all had names from 9 on through 17, why not the MDV and MAV in the book? I mean, yes, I can see the argument against naming single-use craft, but I can also see the strong argument in favor of publicity stunts to name the ships.

Feeling considerably better, except for a lingering cough and lack of energy. And glad that I have a weekend off before what I expect to be six conventions in a row.

Sol 528

Venkat looked up at the knock on his office door. Randall Carter stood in the doorway, a sheepish expression on his face.

“Oh, no,” Venkat groaned. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I know it’s not good news.”

Randall shrugged. “Well, the good news is, it’s not another one of those weird storms,” he said. “But we’ve got a perfectly normal dust storm building in Hellas that’s shaping up already to go global.”

“How bad?” Venkat asked. “And will it hit Schiaparelli in the next three weeks?”

“Not very bad,” Randall said. “The Black Spot seems to have used up a lot of the atmospheric energy stored up by the heat wave. But given movement and expansion, we’re betting on at least some coverage of the Ares IV site by Sol 551. Say, fifteen to twenty percent reduction in solar energy reaching the surface. And, of course, the MAV will have to fly through that.”

“Ugh,” Venkat grunted, dropping his head into his hands. The Ares III MAV had launched through unimaginably worse weather without compromising hull integrity, but its windows and exterior camera pickups had paid the price. Martinez had had to dock half-blind. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me? Say, seismic activity in Tharsis? Olympus Mons getting ready to erupt?”

“No, that’s it for now,” Randall said. “The Ares I and II seismometers have been silent for months. Just a little dust and wind, that’s all.”

“That’s all,” Venkat echoed ironically. “All right, you’ve told me. Keep me posted if it begins behaving unusually… and by that I mean, ‘starts acting like another active attempt to kill Watney and his friends.’”

“Will do.”

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 538
ARES III SOL 528

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mark said for them all.

Six pairs of eyes stared at the message on the computer screen.

Five pairs of eyes turned to face the sixth.

“No, no, no,” Spitfire said bluntly. “One was enough. Not two.”

“Okay,” Mark said, “so it’s a dust storm. Lewis and the others launched in a dust storm a lot worse than this. They made it. So can we.”

“Maybe,” Starlight Glimmer said, shuffling her hooves. “If there’s a dust storm, that scratches any use of the Sparkle Drive in atmosphere. The spell would pick up the dust and try to find a dust-free spot to teleport to. In a storm, there wouldn’t be one. I can’t predict the results, but if we’re lucky the Drive would just fail and shatter like on Sol 6.”

“That’s okay,” Cherry said. “The Sparkle Drive is an emergency use only thing. It just means we have to be a little more careful on the way up. It barely changes the odds.”

“Yeah?” Fireball asked. “What are the odds?”

“According to the sims we’ve run and NASA computer predictions,” Cherry said, “ninety-seven percent.”

“Hey, that’s great!” Dragonfly said cheerfully. “Boss, you remember how many missions we launched with much worse odds than that, right?”

“Doesn’t make me feel better,” Fireball growled.

“It’s still ninety-seven percent,” Mark said. “Granted, that’s worse odds than old Soviet rockets… and those were real death-traps… yeah, I’m gonna shut up now.”

“Thirty-two out of thirty-three,” Cherry Berry said firmly. “Ninety-seven percent chance to make it up safely. Anyone want to guess our odds when we came down?”

Silence.

“I didn’t think so,” Cherry said. “We lived. And we’re going to live. This changes nothing.”

“Except that we can’t use the Sparkle Drive going up,” Starlight Glimmer pointed out.

“Not helping.”

Starlight Glimmer blinked awake. There was a light in the compartment, and it wasn’t coming from Fireball’s nostrils. She reluctantly slid off the cuddle pile, producing a soft grunt from the dragon, and shivered as her hooves touched the chilly uncovered deck.

Curled up in a cabinet that had been emptied of stored food, Cherry Berry stared at a computer screen, occasionally tapping a few keys, then staring at the screen again in intense concentration.

“Cherry,” Starlight hissed, “what are you doing?”

“Writing a message to send home,” Cherry murmured. “Just in case of the three percent. I’ll send it before I go back to sleep.”

“You said we’re all going to live,” Starlight whispered.

“We will,” Cherry said. “The numbers say we will. We worked hard to make sure we will. Mark’s people have done all sorts of things to make sure we will.” She waved a hoof at the computer. “But this makes me feel better. It’s like…” She considered the computer again. “It’s like, if I write this, nothing will happen. But if I don’t write it, something will, and the last thing I’ll think will be, ‘I never got to say such-and-so.’”

“And what is such-and-so you want to say?”

Cherry sighed. “I’m working on it.”

“Right,” Starlight said quietly. “I’ll leave you to it.”

Climbing back onto the cuddle pile produced only another quiet grunt. The others had become too used to one person or another getting up for a bathroom run in the middle of the night. The warmth of Fireball’s and Mark’s bodies felt wonderful compared to the deep chill of the metal deck, and Starlight closed her eyes in relief.

But she didn’t get back to sleep. Her mind spun around the question: what do I want to say, just in case?

Eventually she heard the sound of splashing in the head, on the other side of the pressure wall. There was the connection protocol, a signal to prepare for a long message, and the acknowledgments from Equestria, all easily recognizable if one had pony ears and couldn’t sleep.

Then she picked out the code that followed, the splashes of every letter clearly distinct:

Dear Princess Celestia,

While on Mars I learned just how lucky we ponies are to have princesses. It’s hard to stay calm when you want to be afraid. It’s hard to always know what to do when other ponies look to you for orders. I’ve done the best I know how, and I think it’s worked most of the time, but it’s such hard work. And every night I go to sleep wondering if I did it right. I can’t wait to get back home to Equestria, where we have princesses who know everything. I wouldn’t want your job for anything, and I’ll never take you for granted again.

Your humble subject,
Cherry Berry

A few last splashes later, Starlight felt Cherry climb back up onto the pile beside her. She stayed absolutely still, very carefully breathing in perfect regular intervals as Cherry nestled up next to her, slumped limply, and almost immediately began to snore.

On the other side of her, Spitfire stirred. “nnnn… Starlight, kick Cherry…” she muttered crossly.

Starlight gave a gentle nudge, and Cherry’s snoring became softer.

She listened to it the whole remainder of the night.

Author's Note

This is a little rough and thin, but I have an excuse; today I mostly worked on Sol 551.

So far that chapter is 2,600 words, and a lot more to come.

Sol 529

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 539

ARES III SOL 529

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit DF for responses, over.

ESA: Twilight Sparkle and Chrysalis will launch to Concordia in two days to prepare for your upcoming launch. If you have any more messages of the kind sent yesterday, we recommend you send them now, over.

AMICITAS: Did not copy that last. What messages, over?

ESA: Personal message sent by Cherry Berry last night your time and Starlight Glimmer this morning, over.

AMICITAS: Stand by.

AMICITAS: DF – Understood. Spoke with SG. Expect new personal message within the hour. Others may come, will discuss with others privately. Over.

ESA: Standing by, over.

Dear Twilight Sparkle,

I just wanted to thank you for all the lessons you taught me over the years about magic and friendship. There is one important lesson I have learned here on Mars which I especially want to share with you; sometimes it is better to try, get it wrong, and try again than to do nothing for fear of making a mistake. My mistake with the Sparkle Drive caused all of this disaster, but everyone else needed me to keep working and using my skills to help keep us all alive. I don’t know if I’ve done the best things all the time. I have made several mistakes I wish I could correct since I came here. But if I’d done nothing, I wouldn’t be here now, and neither would the rest of our crew. I just hope I got the last parts right, so that we can all get off this rock and back home to our friends.

Looking forward to seeing you soon.

Your obedient student,
Starlight Glimmer

Your Royal and Duplicitious Majesty,

I know you’ve had a lot of doubts about the new ways. A lot of ponies still distrust and fear us, and a lot of us remain in hiding. But for all the mistakes I’ve made, I have done one thing right on this side of the jump. Trust is tastier than fear. You can fool other people into doing what you want sometimes, but sooner or later they wise up. Trust lasts. Trust will keep you alive when nothing else will. We trust each other inside the hive (mostly); now I’ve learned we can trust our crewmates, even if they’re not part of the hive.

So open up. You don’t have to be alone all the time.

Your loyal subject,
Dragonfly

P. S. I miss you.
P. P. S. Please don’t smite me for this when I get home.

Yo Ember,

I’m coming back in about another month or so, if all goes well. Have my hoard ready and waiting for me. Also a coffee pot, preferably the kind that doesn’t need a wall plug.

If you’re thinking about sending some other dragon on nutty trips like this, I just want to say one thing. Pick someone who isn’t full of himself. All the fewmets about being a big, strong, loner dragon just get in the way here, and I’m sure it’ll be the same for the next guy. Make sure they know they’re not Faust’s gift to the other races. Big and strong isn’t everything- but I guess you know that. Above all, knock it into their heads that “working with” is not the same as “working next to” or “working in the same ship as.”

One more thing: ask around to see if any pony colleges want to take an older dragon student. I could stand to learn some stuff… on the ground!!

Fireball

Dear Princess Celestia,

I never really wanted to be an astromare. I was happy with the Wonderbolts. And when I came here I was worried because I was leaving behind what I knew to do stuff I didn’t know- being an astronaut, being a doctor, and being a subordinate again. But I learned that new things aren’t as scary as they first appear, unless they’re horrible dead planets that keep trying to kill you. You’d be surprised at what you can accomplish when you try something for the first time, especially if you have a darn good motivation to work hard at it. I’ve done things probably no other pony will ever do again, and I wouldn’t have had the chance (or the need) if I hadn’t been pushed out of my cozy little spot.

All that said, when I get home I’m going to work as hard as I can to take that cozy little spot back. But even if it doesn’t work out, I know now that whatever I do from now on, I can do it well.

Yours to command,
Spitfire
Major, E. U. P. Unified Service

To: Venkat Kapoor
From: Mark Watney
Subject: PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Venkat,

See this gets to my folks without leaking to the press. Feel free to read it if you like, but make sure nobody else does. Definitely don’t let public relations get hold of this.

Mark

Dear Mom and Dad,

Well, it’s getting close to launch day. We’re pretty confident that everything will work fine, but as the people from NASA explained to you when we were getting ready for the launch up to Hermes two years ago, there’s no such thing as a sure thing in space flight. My alien friends seem to have finally figured that out, so everyone’s taking turns sending a private message home to whoever is most important to them- sort of a Famous Last Words thing, just in case they really are our last words.

NASA will have my mission logs. They’ll be uploaded to Hermes and relayed to Earth just before we launch. They can pick my deep, moving, touching last message to mankind out of that if they want. Right now I’m more concerned about you two.

Despite all the better judgment in the world, you two supported me through everything I did. When I said I wanted to be a doctor of botany, you said, “Can you believe it? He wants to combine the low income of farming with the terrible job prospects of academics!” And then you put me through school. When I said I was postponing my doctorate so I could apply to be an astronaut, you said, “Dying of poverty isn’t good enough for our son! He wants to get blown up on a rocket!” And then you paid for my master’s in mechnical engineering and kept my stuff in storage during my field work in Africa. You never told me I couldn’t do it, and you went to a lot of trouble to make it possible. I haven’t thanked you enough.

Now I know you’re probably embarrassed by your foul-mouthed Martian son who can’t stop staring at alien butts (if you believe the Internet). And you’re probably annoyed that I haven’t sent more messages when I’ve had clear communications with Earth. And I know you’re ready for the ten million reporters to go home. I’ve put you through a lot.

But whatever happens in three weeks, I want you to know I love you both more than I can say, and I always have, even though I usually only say it when I’m about to hang up the phone. Believe it.

Hope to talk to you again from Hermes, or possibly closer, by next month.

Your loving son,
Mark

Dear ponies and dragon and my subject who ought to know better;

Quit with the mush. I may throw up.

Chrysalis

Author's Note

You didn't think we were going to leave the others out of this, did you? There are no secrets in cramped quarters, especially when a pony whose special talent is sitting and staring at things is allowed to run communications.

Sol 534

HERMES – MISSION DAY 669

“Commander, could I have a minute of your time?”

Lewis walked over to Martinez’s station. In a couple of weeks they’d have to stop Hermes’s rotation in preparation for docking with the MAV- with Phoenix, as the ponies now called it- so for now they’d enjoy the artificial gravity while they could. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “That looked like a successful sim run to me, even if you and Johanssen ended up having to take Hermes to them rather than the other way round.”

“Yeah,” Martinez said quietly. “That’s kind of the problem. It should have failed.”

Lewis cocked her head. “Explain.”

“We were throwing what we thought was a no-win scenario at them,” Martinez said. “Two-thirds booster failure. That by itself should have meant no rendezvous. Sparkle Drive failure. And a fuel leak in the second stage that reduced its burn time by ten percent.” He called up the MAV’s internal camera recordings and rewound through the simulation. “But they worked the problem, and I mean radically. They dumped the Drive and all its batteries out the airlock before igniting the second stage. Their food, too. And one of the RTGs. Freed up six hundred kilos. Then they burned the second stage, then exhausted the primary maneuvering thrusters and the magic thrusters, then found a way to hook up their last magic battery to recharge the magic thrusters, and ran through that.”

“I had to reprogram the sim on the fly to account for all the changes,” Johanssen said. “It wasn’t made to account for such radical measures.”

“And once Johanssen put the numbers in- the lighter MAV, the estimated delta-V of the maneuvering thrusters, all of it- the sim says they made it. Just barely within the ability of Hermes to go to them for a docking one day later than scheduled.” Martinez shook his head.

“They were talking about getting out and pushing if necessary,” Johanssen said. “The pony suits have MMU systems built in. They figured each suit would give about 1.5 meters per second more delta-V to the MAV capsule.”

“What did the computer say?” Lewis asked.

“I didn’t try it,” Johanssen said. “We have no data on pony suit thruster performance. And they didn’t need to do it in the sim.”

“And that’s not the weirdest thing,” Martinez said. “Look at their faces. Cherry’s especially.” He called up the interior cam view of the pilot’s station, of Cherry Berry grimly giving orders, facing one setback after another without even blinking. “She didn’t get angry. She didn’t even get rattled. Hell, commander, I would have gotten pissed off after the third system failure!”

“I am failing,” Lewis said dryly, “to find a problem with this situation, Major.”

“The problem is, what do I tell her?” Martinez said, throwing his hands up at the screen. “Congratulations, you beat the no-win scenario? Could you give me Captain Kirk’s autograph while you’re at it? This shouldn’t have happened! There must be something wrong with the sim!”

“What you say,” Lewis replied, “is Good job, Commander Berry.” She pointed at the screen. “Broken sim or not, she did exactly what she ought to on launch day. She stayed calm, worked the problem, and tried unorthodox solutions. If you call that cheating… well,” she shrugged, “it’s not like space plays fair, either.”

Martinez nodded. “True,” he said. “But it’s still a cooked result. It has to be. I don’t like having it stand as something they can rely on during the real launch.”

“Which is more important?” Lewis asked. “A pilot who knows something can’t work, or a commander who will try anything if it means the survival of her crew?”

“Trick question, commander,” Martinez said. “You need both. But I get your point.”

Lewis gestured at the screen again. “How’s she coming along overall? Is she ready to fly?”

“She never makes the same mistake twice,” Martinez said. “And she has the reduced control systems down cold. Spitfire and Starlight Glimmer are coming along well. And Dragonfly has done okay in about a dozen sim runs substituting for any one of the three.” He shrugged. “You can never have too much sim time, but I’d certify Cherry to fly right now, for sure. Especially after…” He shook his head and gestured helplessly at the screen again.

“The words are, Good job, Cherry,” Lewis repeated, returning to her own station.

Martinez shook his head again and keyed on the outgoing comms. “Good job, Cherry,” he said. “We took some extra time to look things over, but we just can’t suggest anything to improve on your performance. That was really amazing.” He grinned and added, “We especially like how you stayed calm through all of that. You didn’t even blink. Excellent work. Over.”

“I’m going to archive this sim and send it to NASA for deeper analysis,” Johanssen said. “I still think my adjustments to the sim glitched.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Martinez said. “Be sure to include a note that I didn’t make this up.”

“Why don’t you tell them?”

“Because if I tell them, they won’t believe me.”

The delay between Hermes and Mars had closed to only about a minute, so Cherry Berry’s reply came only moments later. “Thanks, Rick,” she said. “As for staying calm… well, you kind of have to. Fear catches, you know? Besides, I’ve done all of that before. It wasn’t anything new. Over.”

Martinez froze. Johanssen looked up from her console, eyes wide. Lewis got back out of her seat and walked back over to Martinez’s station.

Martinez, after a quick look at his crewmates, keyed on his microphone. “Er, could you repeat that last, commander? Did you say you’ve thrown stuff out of a spaceship before? You’ve burned maneuvering thrusters for delta-V before?” A hesitation, another glance at the other two. “You’ve got out of a spaceship and pushed before? Over.”

A minute passed.

“Yes, I’ve done all of that,” Cherry said. “It kind of sucked- that is the right word, yes? It kind of sucked at the time, but anything that gets you back home safe is good. Over.”

Martinez looked at Lewis. “You know what that tells me?” he asked. “It tells me that she was in at least one situation where she had to do all that before. And she lived.”

“And they let her go up again,” Lewis added. “I don’t know what that says about their space program.”

“I think I understand now why she stays calm in all the sims,” Johanssen said.

“You think this launch is going to be as bad as whatever that was before?” Lewis asked.

Martinez threw up his hands in surrender. “I don’t think it can be worse,” he said. “But now I have another problem.”

“What now?”

“When I write my report to NASA certifying Cherry to pilot a MAV,” Martinez said, “I’m gonna have to give my reasons. How do I phrase it so they don’t ground her for reasons of obvious insanity?”

Lewis nodded judiciously. “That’s a real problem,” she said. “But it’s not mine.” With a little smirk she turned and went back to her own station.

“Muchas gracias, Commander,” Martinez muttered.

Author's Note

The thing about the Changeling Space Program was (and is) that you learn how to get out of the kind of trouble NASA would never let you get into in the first place.

I don't know if the specifics I mention here happen during or after the CSP story proper, but I'm officially saying that at least once Cherry has had to perform the Scott Manley Maneuver.

Sol 538

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 549
ARES III SOL 538

The jumbo battery felt heavy in Fireball’s arms.

It shouldn’t have.

It wasn’t a big deal, not really- he could carry two of them easily, probably, except they had to be absolutely sure to treat these giant chunks of crystal as delicately as possible. Starlight had found five cracks in the batteries from the cross-Mars drive- none very large, but any of them could cause a complete break once the repulsor enchantments in the top of the crystals kicked in. She’d taken the time and the magic battery power to cast mending spells on all the cracks, leaving the crystals- and their embedded enchantments- as good as new. Even little cracks couldn’t be allowed, not now.

But as important as absolute care and caution were, Fireball couldn’t keep his mind completely on the job. His mind kept returning to the fact that, after the ninth battery, and after spending two days’ worth of EVA time clearing all the junk removed from Phoenix from the launch zone to make room for the batteries, he felt… no other word for it… weak. And tired. And, well, very un-dragonlike.

Is whatever Dragonfly’s going through contagious? He glanced over at the changeling, who was slowly stringing cables between the batteries to link them to a master switch. All the batteries were lying on their backs, terminals and readouts facing up, making it easier to connect them. The bug was really dragging her hooves and not particularly trying to hide it anymore, but at least she kept going.

Thirteen more days. That’s it. Thirteen days and we’re on our way home. We can lie down, rest, do nothing until we get someplace with real magic again, and with gems that aren’t bucking quartz!

“Okay, right here, Fireball,” Starlight Glimmer said. “Very gently. Metal away from the ship.”

“Yeah, I know.” Fireball brought his mind back to the here and now, shifting his grip and cautiously lowering the meter-and-a-half long shaft of quartz and metal to the dust-covered soil. “There. These would look neat if we stood them up.”

“They sure would,” Starlight agreed. “Right up to the moment they fell over and shattered during liftoff. They’ll work just as well this way, and they can’t fall over like this.”

“We could dig holes.”

“That wouldn’t keep them steady enough. Besides, the controls and terminals are on the bottom. I really don’t want to think about what might happen if we stood these upside down and launched.”

“Heh. How about if we stuck one on top of the ship, upside down, and turned it on?” Fireball grinned. “And watch the battery fly up into the sky.”

“Not funny. It’d probably also wreck the ship. Equal and opposite reaction, remember? C’mon, let’s go get the next booster. Only five to go.”

Fireball followed the unicorn back to the rover. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

“Sure.”

“Have you tried using magic without the batteries lately? Is it stronger or weaker?”

“Not for anything larger than a potato, no. Why do you ask?”

Fireball, on most subjects, believed in brutal honesty. But where it came to his own feelings of weakness, or his own feelings of any kind, he felt no shame or guilt about lying like a pile of rhinestones. “Bug’s getting worse fast on the two-minute magic ration,” he said. “I was wondering if it affected you ponies any.”

“Hm,” Starlight said. “Well, I’m a bad example. Channeling mana from the batteries exposes me to more magic than the rest of us put together.” She stopped walking to look at the MAV, where Cherry Berry and Spitfire were going through more control familiarization drills. “And I don’t think Cherry would admit it if she was feeling weaker, not right now. I know for a fact Spitfire won’t.”

“Huh,” Fireball shrugged. “Anything we can do about it?”

Starlight considered this. “We have nine full batteries,” she said. “We’ll need a little juice to levitate up the last pieces of equipment to install in the Phoenix- the Sparkle Drive, the RTGs, the batteries. Maybe we can go to three minutes. If Mars doesn’t pull something new on us, that is.”

Fireball nodded at Dragonfly again. “Probably a good idea,” he said. “More would be better.”

Starlight shook her head. “If we have extra magic the night before liftoff, we can splurge then. But I just don’t feel safe…”

“Yeah.” Fireball didn’t need her to finish the sentence. “None of us are gonna feel safe til we get off this rock.”

They began walking again. Fireball carefully slid another jumbo battery out of the harness that had carried it from Acidalia Planitia across thirty-seven hundred kilometers of Mars. It felt heavy in his arms too, just like the ones before.

Three minutes instead of two. Hope it’s enough.

Thirteen more days.

Author's Note

Really nothing more to say about this particular sol, so this stays short.

Coming down to the end here. Tomorrow I expect to finish up the Sol 551 chapter.

Sol 544

“Sorry I’m late,” Teddy said, setting his briefcase down next to his desk. Taking his seat, he looked around the others in the room and said, “Launch day is in one week. Walk me through it.”

“Phoenix will launch just after dawn local time on Sol 551,” Venkat said. “That will be just after Hermes’s closest approach to Mars.”

“After?” Annie asked. “Shouldn’t the rendezvous take place when Hermes is as close to Mars as it can get?”

Venkat shook his head. “Hermes is passing inside and in front of Mars in relation to its orbit. Mars’s gravity will slow Hermes down a bit- not enough to capture it, but enough to put Hermes on a trajectory for the soonest possible Earth intercept. That part of the maneuver is vital. Hermes has enough remaining propellant for its VASIMR engines to adjust trajectory to meet Phoenix and then get back on course for Earth, but only after closest approach. If they deviate from flight plan prior to that point, they don’t get home.”

“Unless they can use the Sparkle Drive,” Mitch grumbled. “And we don’t want to depend on that.”

“No indeed,” Venkat agreed. “Dawn local time at Schiaparelli will be 6:44 PM Houston time. The MAV will launch on a generally westward track on liftoff to counter Mars rotation. We expect to lose about four hundred meters per second of delta-V to that. Our calculations are that, if seven of the fifteen magic boosters fail on liftoff, Phoenix can still make rendezvous. Eight is one too many.

“The magic boosters and the first stage engines will burn for approximately six minutes. The boosters will provide three G’s of acceleration at launch, plus another two G’s once the first stage engines throttle up. The main engines will throttle down during launch to keep maximum G levels at a maximum of eight G. We expect Mark, Dragonfly, and possibly Starlight to black out, but Cherry Berry assures us that she, Spitfire, and probably Fireball can remain conscious and functional under that strain. It costs us a bit more delta-V, but with as many uncertainties about this launch as we have, we’d rather have a conscious crew able to respond to emergencies.”

“Is that delta-V loss factored into your calculations about the magic boosters?” Teddy asked, making a note.

“It is. We can’t be certain about when the magic boosters will cut out. The ponies say they adjusted the booster spell to have the batteries run them for six minutes, but that’s not exact. Once they burn out, they won’t ignite the second stage straight away. Instead the Hermes crew will double-check the trajectory of Phoenix and verify the Phoenix computer’s projection for the second stage burn required to establish an intercept with Hermes. Only after confirmation do they burn. If all goes perfectly, the two ships should be in a position to begin docking maneuvers roughly fifty minutes after Phoenix launches. Any difficulties will, of course, mean a later rendezvous.”

“Or none at all,” Bruce Ng said over the speakerphone. “In the case of a launch failure too significant for any chance of a Hermes rendezvous, the Phoenix crew will engage the Sparkle Drive for a direct Earth abort. If the velocities are good but the trajectory too compromised for a normal intercept, then the Sparkle Drive will be used to move Phoenix so that its carried momentum is shifted to make a Hermes intercept possible.”

“The Earth abort is the last ditch scenario,” Venkat agreed. “We don’t know if the Sparkle Drive is reliable long-term, and we have only a rough estimate of travel time, and putting Phoenix into any useful Earth orbit will be a nightmare. Landing is out of the question. Also, Phoenix will only carry seven days of food for a trip which, under the best conditions, takes us four months normally. Hermes has food for all of them for months and months. So we want them there if at all possible.”

Annie was making her own notes on her phone, fingers flying across the touch-screen. “Tough shit for all the reporters who want to hear a horse say, ‘Warp speed,’” she said. “What happens after docking?”

“Phoenix will dock with the vehicle docking bay on the nose of Hermes,” Venkat said. “Normally a MAV would be dumped after crew transfer, but this time we’ll leave it in place. Hermes can still rotate with a vehicle docked, so we don’t need to transfer the Sparkle Drive. The software for the Drive is adjustable to account for power available and for the mass of the combined ships. We’ll attempt to use the Drive to get Hermes home sooner, taking a trajectory that will always leave Hermes in a viable limp-home trajectory.

“Arrival time depends entirely on the Sparkle Drive. If it fails completely, Hermes continues on the Rich Purnell trajectory and gets home seven months from now. If it’s completely successful, that time gets cut down to about one month or a little longer.”

“Wait a minute,” Annie protested. “Explain again why Phoenix would only need a week to get to Earth, but Hermes needs a month on Sparkle Drive.”

“Mass,” Venkat said. “Apparently, just because the Drive is magic doesn’t make it exempt from all physical laws. Hermes is bigger, so every micro-jump it makes costs more energy. To compensate, the Drive has to reduce its cycles per second way down, which means a slower trip.”

Both Teddy and Annie made notes at this. “All right,” Teddy said. “I want to backtrack for a moment. All the uses of their booster system, as I understand it, involved improvised switches that were operated by someone on the surface pulling a rope. There’s not going to be anyone outside to pull a rope this time. Have we worked out a way around this?”

“We didn’t have to,” Venkat said. “They did it for themselves three sols ago.”

“How does it work?”

“It was Dragonfly’s idea. Sojourner is staying behind at Schiaparelli. One of the MAV backup radios has been installed in the rover so that Sojourner can take photos of the Schiaparelli site and send them to Earth after Phoenix leaves.”

“So Sojourner pulls the rope?”

“No. Dragonfly didn’t think Sojourner would have the torque, and anyway she didn’t want to permanently tether the robot to the booster system. No, instead they rigged up a teeter-totter using panels from consoles stripped out of Phoenix. Sojourner will crawl up the panel until it tips.” Venkat mimed a see-saw pivoting down. “When the end of the panel hits the ground, it will hit two metal studs connected to wires. That will complete the circuits linking the battery portion of the boosters to the booster parts, all at once. Sojourner has been positioned so it will take the rover precisely two minutes to drive just past the tipping point. That means the first stage will be ignited and ready to throttle up the instant the boost hits.”

“That sounds like a Rube Goldberg machine,” Teddy commented.

“It’s what they have parts to spare for,” Venkat shrugged. “They don’t have a radio-operable switch they could use. They barely have enough wires and cables to make this work.”

“Will this harm Sojourner in any way?”

“Only if it falls off the teeter-totter. Dragonfly covered Sojourner’s wheels in non-conductive goo. That will keep it insulated long enough. And Starlight doesn’t think magic current would harm Sojourner in any case.”

“We’ll leave it at that, then,” Teddy said. “Let’s go down the list. How’s the fuel situation?”

“Fuel tanks are at 98% capacity,” Bruce reported. “Tomorrow’s the last day we’ll have them electrolyze water. The only way we could get more fuel on this ship now would be if we strapped tanks on the outside of the ship.”

“Good. What about the remaining ship systems?”

“We’ll have Mark run full diagnostics on Sol 547,” Bruce said. “If something shows up, that gives us two days to fix it- probably by replacing the bad component with the backup we had them rip out. For now, the ship looks perfectly healthy.”

“Healthy like a man missing a lung and a kidney,” Venkat muttered.

Teddy ignored the comment. “What about the crew? What’s their flight status?”

“According to Martinez, good to fly,” Mitch said. “The last day of flight sims will be Sol 548. After that launch prep takes priority. If I’m reading between the lines of Martinez’s reports correctly, he thinks Cherry Berry is a little sloppier than he is, but a lot more willing to push the envelope- and vastly more experienced. I’m quoting here: ‘It’s like teaching Alan Shepard to fly… and John Glenn… and Neil Armstrong… and Jim Lovell… and John Young… all in the same body.’”

“That’s pretty accurate,” Venkat said. “I read Starlight's reports. Imagine if all the Mercury and half the Gemini flights were flown by one person.”

“That’s it exactly,” Mitch said. “Martinez’s only concerns are that she might be too willing to take an unnecessary risk-“

“- and when was the last time you heard an astronaut say that about another astronaut?” Venkat said.

Mitch nodded. “That, and that she might not trust the flight computer enough. And, also, he says she uses too much fuel. But I think he’s saying that last because he wants to make it clear he’s still the better pilot. It doesn’t sound like a serious critique.”

“But the bottom line,” Teddy said, “is that she’s good to fly? What about her sysop?”

“Spitfire’s English is still spotty,” Mitch said. “But she’s familiar with the controls and has a basic working knowledge of the main computer interface. As a copilot she’s good to go. For anything major we’ll have Johanssen handle the computer side of things remotely.”

“And the Sparkle Drive?” Teddy asked. “How big of a question mark is it?”

“Enormous,” Venkat admitted. “Starlight says they corrected the problems that caused them to come here in the first place. We have to take their word for that. We’re using a Hab laptop with special software prepared by JPL to operate the Drive using an interface we had them make from electrical repair kit parts. But that software was written based on their specifications, which again we have to take their word for.”

He smiled and added, “We did catch one issue, though. The original interface was mouse-only, using a slider bar to control the frequency of jumps. But it turned out that the slider bar in simulation mode was precisely the opposite orientation as the slider bar in normal operations mode. Apparently the programmer changed the interface partway through writing and forgot to make the changes to both modes. A low setting in sims would produce a dangerously high setting on launch day. That got fixed two weeks ago, and to make it safer the slider is now only a backup. The jump rate is now set by keyboard instruction- type in the number and hit enter. They've been using it that way in at least two sims per sol for three weeks now.”

“Good. But I gather your bottom line is that we don’t want to have to touch it until docking with Hermes is complete.”

“Right,” Venkat said. “We’re treating it as almost completely untested, and we don’t want to operate it outside of fail-safe conditions.”

“I agree,” Teddy said. “Dr. Shields, Dr. Keller, your medical opinion?”

Dr. Shields and Dr. Keller, the Ares psychologist and chief flight surgeon, stood side by side near the office door. “Mentally, they’re as good as can be expected,” Shields said. “I was afraid the tight quarters in the Whinnybago would have them at each other’s throats, but they’re coming together in adversity.”

“Physically, it’s not so good,” Keller said. “Dragonfly has been deteriorating over the past month, in particular, likely due to magic deficiency. The others aren’t certain whether they show any symptoms themselves, but they all show noticeable muscle atrophy due to long-term exposure to low gravity. We don’t know about bone mass. Watney’s been taking supplements, and alfalfa hay helps build bones in animals on Earth, so that’s been mitigated as much as can be expected.”

“Would you qualify them to take an active role in the launch?” Teddy asked.

“Watney, no,” Keller said, shaking his head. “Not at eight G’s with only minimal training to resist blackout. And based on reports, not Dragonfly either. But remember, everyone except Watney is an alien. Even with the papers Starlight Glimmer translated, I just don’t know enough to make a confirmable diagnosis. All I can say is, I can’t find a reason to disqualify them.”

“And let me point out,” Venkat added quickly, “this is not a question of whether they launch or not. There’s no alternative.”

Teddy made notes, then said, “Launch weather. How much will the dust storm affect them?”

“Not greatly,” Randall Carter, the Mars meteorologist, said. “The current dust storm is building up absolutely normally. Its only real movement is in growth of area affected. The leading edge of the storm is predicted to reach the launch site on Sol 549, with a minimal reduction in solar panel efficiency on Sol 550. The only effect is to put enough particles in the air above the site that even emergency use of the Sparkle Drive becomes too unsafe to consider. Given the fine nature of the dust, some of it might get as high as sixty kilometers. We recommend a minimum safe altitude of two hundred kilometers before engaging the Sparkle Drive, with a minimum emergency altitude of one hundred.”

“Bruce, does that line up with your recommendations?” Teddy asked.

“I’ll accept it,” Bruce said. “I’d prefer the Drive be left alone completely.”

“Tracking.” Teddy looked at Mindy Park. “What will we see?”

“Everything we have orbiting Mars that can monitor the flight in any useful way will be,” Mindy said. “We’re adjusting orbits of three satellites to put them close enough for direct video observation of the launch, but we won’t see that video for hours after the fact. The satellite high-gain antennas can’t point at Earth while the sats are tracking Phoenix with their cameras. But everything else with the capacity will track trajectory by radio and relay that data through Hermes and Sleipnir 2 to Earth. We’ll know exactly where they went… twelve minutes ago.”

“Good work.” Teddy paused, tapping his notepad with his pen. “Venkat, what about the trajectory teams?”

“Astrodynamics has been running hundreds of thousands of flight variants through the supercomputers for the past month,” Venkat said. “And you know absolutely everyone who can get through the gate will be on-site on launch day. If we need a course correction, then so long as there’s fuel in the second ascent stage or power for the Sparkle Drive, we have a chance. Remember, Phoenix has unlimited air and water and seven days of food. We can take a little time to get it right. We won’t have to pull a seat-of-the-pants maneuver at the last minute.”

“Your lips to God’s ears,” Bruce Ng muttered over the speakerphone.

“Mission control?” Teddy asked.

“For what it’s worth, we’ll be ready,” Mitch said. “I’ve shuffled schedules so that the prime team will be at the consoles beginning at 4 PM our time. I’ll have my deputy controllers to use as runners or aides as needed, and I’m sure every controller will be on hand for this, on or off shift.” He shook his head. “But aside from tracking and trajectory, there’s dick-all they can do. We’re twenty-four minutes out of the action, and that’s all there is to it!”

“You never know,” Teddy said. “Your people are all highly trained engineers, Mitch. If a contingency arises that gives us those twenty-four minutes, I want anyone who might have a useful idea available to give it. If we can do something to help, I want us to be able to.” He closed his notebook and said, “Annie, I have to report to the president in person, but after I get back I’ll be at your disposal for any press events you think are beneficial.”

“I’ll see what I can line up,” Annie muttered. “But unless you get off the plane with four hooves and pastel fur, don’t count on much.”

A chuckle went round the room as the meeting broke up.

Author's Note

Setting the stage for the upcoming launch, so to speak. Tonight, after some prep work for San Angelo Comic Con next weekend, I'll work more on the Sol 551 entry.

I thought about making the bit where Dragonfly turns Sojourner into a rocket launch switch into its own chapter, but that's all it would be. I had no ideas for making it more interesting. Also, I'm feeling very eager to get to the launch now.

Sol 548

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 559
ARES III SOL 548

“All right, Phoenix, good job,” Martinez’s voice called over the comms. “And congratulations, Dragonfly! That’s your tenth successful sim as pilot.”

“Thanks,” Dragonfly said. “I just hope I don’t have to do it for real. Too much would have had to go wrong by then.” She pulled herself out of the pilot’s flight couch, making room for Cherry Berry. “Thank you for indulging me, Hermes.”

“No problem, Dragonfly. Tell Cherry we have time for one more sim today.”

“Roger.” Dragonfly removed the human radio headset from her head and said, “You get one more go, boss. Then it’s time to disconnect the rover and move it to safe distance.”

“Thanks.” Cherry put the headset back on. “Are you okay to get back to the rover?”

“Sure!” Dragonfly felt a little offended. “I’m weak, but I’m not that weak, not yet.” Of course, she didn’t like that not yet, but she had to include it. There was no telling what would happen to her on the trip to Earth, assuming the queen and Twilight Sparkle didn’t find a way to rescue them.

“Okay, see you later, then.” Cherry settled into the pilot seat and said, “Rick, give us five minutes to reset the controls, and we’ll have one more go. Give us a tough one.”

Dragonfly didn’t wait for the response, not that she could hear it. She put on her suit helmet, crawled down the ladder into the MAV lower deck, and cycled through the airlock. From there it was another long ladder climb down to the ground. Once down she took it slow, walking through the ring of jumbo batteries and stepping over the long strings of cables.

And then there was the teeter-totter, balanced on a bit of framework pulled out of the Phoenix, and just in front of it, Sojourner. Dragonfly reached up and gently brushed a few bits of dust from the little rover’s solar panel. “Hello, little girl,” she said. “I hope you’re doing well.”

The little robot didn’t move; its orders were to remain in standby mode until new orders came. But to Dragonfly’s mind it exuded an aura of eagerness to do, to be doing.

“We’re leaving you a good rechargeable battery,” she continued. “And you’ll have a radio link to Earth. The gunk I put on your treads will probably break down and fall off in another week or two, once it’s done its job. And I polished up your lenses as much as I could. You’ve got a nice new mission ahead of you. I hope you enjoy it.”

Sojourner said and did nothing.

“Well, I probably won’t be by to say it again,” Dragonfly said. “So… goodbye, then. Have a nice life… or whatever robots have.”

Sojourner did not say goodbye back. Aside from the faint sense of being ready for orders, Dragonfly heard and saw nothing.

That over with, the changeling continued the walk over to the Whinnybago. She didn’t pause to say goodbye to Rover 2 or to the remains of Amicitas; she had no great attachment to the former, and she’d said her goodbyes to the latter months before. She just climbed the boarding ladder to the trailer, cycled through the airlock, and stepped onto the bridge- just, apparently, as Mark and Fireball were suiting up to go out.

“Hey, Dragonfly!” Mark said cheerfully, pausing to lean down and give her a hug, suit to suit. “Is Cherry about done with the sims?”

“They’re about to begin the last one,” Dragonfly said.

“Okay. That’s perfect,” Mark said. “Fireball and I are going to stage the Sparkle Drive and its batteries for installation. With Starlight’s help, it should only take an hour to cycle them through the airlock and secure them down on the deck.”

“Sounds good,” Dragonfly said, reaching up to undo her helmet latch. She looked around, noticing a lack of potted plant near the cockpit windows. “Where’s Groot?”

“In here,” Fireball said, pointing to the half-limp form of Mark’s spare suit. “We take Groot over to the ship today too. All personal stuff. You taking anything?”

Dragonfly shook her head. “No, just the medallion. I don’t need anything else to remember all this.” And that was pure truth. She would have liked to take Sojourner home, but back in Horseton the robot would be just a large, kind of ugly paperweight. Here it could still be useful.

Here it would be happier, part of her thought. The insane part.

“Okay, then,” Mark said. “Comm us if something comes up.” He carefully lifted the extra suit, while Fireball locked on his own helmet and picked up one of the batteries.

(There was a thing Dragonfly was looking forward to. Through careful effort Starlight Glimmer had managed to keep eleven of the mana batteries full. Eight would go into the rover, apparently right now. One more would be needed to do final top-offs of the booster system. The other two, Starlight had decreed, would be allowed to discharge their full loads, for thirty-eight minutes of magic field tonight and thirty-eight more tomorrow, and whatever the batteries remaining in the rover regenerated for the night before launch.

(Eight sols before, Starlight had gone for a midnight potty break and found Dragonfly wrapped around one of the mostly-drained batteries, mouth sucking on one of the terminals. She hadn’t gotten angry, to Dragonfly’s continuing surprise. She’d just said, “Does that help any?” When Dragonfly had told her the truth- “not really”- she’d shrugged, gone into the head, and said nothing more about the incident afterwards. Embarrassment didn’t come easily to Dragonfly, but that had done it. Tonight and its thirty-eight minutes of not starving couldn’t come fast enough.)

She left Mark and Fireball to their work and walked into the habitat deck. It smelled, of course. Nobody talked about it, but everything about them stank, and nothing stank worse than the beaten-up sleeping rolls and bunk mattresses they’d been sleeping with since leaving the Hab. (Well, except possibly the inside of Mark’s space suit. All the other space suits cycled fresh air in and stinky air out. Mark stewed.)

Dragonfly kind of missed the Hab. She definitely missed the cave farm. But this cramped, smelly space, which was too hot in the daytime and too chilly at night? She couldn’t wait to leave it behind for good. This place was everything bad about surviving on Mars in one little space.

But it was where she could get a nap until lunch or whatever. She flopped down on the mattress pile and shut her eyes, trying to smell the emotions left behind by her crewmates instead of the sweat and other less pleasant body odors.

That was a mistake. Dragonfly hadn’t realized how much emotional leakage had stained the mattresses along with everything else. Feelings surged through her, followed by voices from the past…

“We are NOT having a Bad Day! I am going to land this ship and we are all going to be rescued and everything is going to work out just fine!”

“What is WRONG with you?? Are you TRYING to kill yourself?”

“You! Make these grow! Understand?”

“They HEARD us!!”

“Twenty… eight… FLIGHTS?”

“Cute is a matter of opinion, but crazy is a stone cold fact.”

“Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I’m crazy. Just ask anyone.”

“Yeah. But I’m crazy too. Else I wouldn’t be here with you.”

“Hey, Mark, get your bucking crystal on.” “One bucking minute, Starlight.”

“I trust your instincts a lot more than I trust mine.”

“Is it a mutiny when the crew is forcing the captain to keep giving orders?”

“Crunch, crunch, crunch.”

“Earth is sending a signal. They know Pathfinder’s here. They know I’m alive!!”

“Mars is not a nice planet and we all want OFF.”

“Shoot me like one of your Fancy girls.”

“Once upon a time, in the magical land of the ponies…”

“For you I bring… bacon!”

“It’s okay. You’re the strongest unicorn in Equestria. You’re the mightiest wizard on this planet. You got this.”

“You could say ‘got away with it’ was the unofficial motto of my people’s space program.”

“Mare down!”

“Mark.”

Hello, alien. What will you do?

“Haven’t you ponies figured it out yet? This is a Free Forever universe.”

“But a hero keeps going. A hero survives things that would kill most people. That’s all it takes: don’t die.”

“This is a job for science.” “Yep. Magic science.”

“Have I mentioned lately you’re delicious?”

“I’m so glad I’m dragon. No day job.”

“I don’t really like myself right now.”

“Earth needs more princesses.”

“Wow.” “Yeah, wow.”

“Launch me.”

“What’s a dragon gotta do to nearly die around here?”

“Maybe one day soon you can hope to achieve… unicorn cool.”

“I think you make your own magic. Everything’s a miracle.”

“Dragonfly? You all right?”

Dragonfly woke up. The others all stood over her, looking at her with various levels of concern. “Yeah,” she said, yawning and picking herself up. “What’s up?”

“You slept through us moving the rover,” Mark said. “And through lunch. We were beginning to get worried.”

“Did I sleep through the magic field?”

Mark smiled wryly. “No,” he said. “That’s coming up now. And dinner.”

Dragonfly stood, made a show of being well-rested, and made sure to place herself as close to the magic-projecting battery as she could manage. The mana washing through her body felt wonderful, after so little time with it for so long.

But her mind returned to her dream- the voices, the visions, the sights. The first view of the Hab, the day of the crash, the setting too-small sun sinking behind it as they trotted up. The first time they entered the crystal cave. The beauty spot on the next mountain over, the time they visited that. Dust devils. Sojourner. Starlight saving the cave farm. Spitfire destroying the giant storm. Fireball biting through a quartz crystal. Cherry Berry’s face as she brought them down safe from certain death.

No, she thought, I don’t need things to remember this place. I’ll remember it forever.

Even the parts I don’t want to.

Author's Note

It took me twice as long to go through the whole text and pick out quotes as it did to write the rest of the chapter.

This was originally going to be Cherry having her last sim. But I couldn't see anything interesting in that, and anyway it's only been a couple of entries since Cherry got a bit of spotlight. So instead I did Dragonfly, who deserved to say goodbye to Sojourner, even if she doesn't really feel attached to anything else at the Schiaparelli site.

Didn't quite finish Sol 551 today, though I pushed forward a bit. Current word count on that is 5,648 words. It's mostly done- another thousand words, I think, will finish it. That will post on Wednesday.

A week from Wednesday, if I don't skip days, will probably be the end of the story. Maybe sooner, depending.

Sol 550

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 561
ARES III SOL 550

The cuddle pile formed, probably for the last time. Outside, the last light of the setting Martian sun lit up the thickening haze of dust from the oncoming storm, giving the freezing night an even more unworldly look than usual. None of the castaways saw it. None of them would have cared.

They needed to get an early sleep- or make the attempt. Launch lay less than twelve hours off.

“You know,” Dragonfly said, “it’s gonna feel weird, not sleeping like this anymore.”

“Bite your tongue,” Starlight Glimmer muttered. “I want a real bucking bed again, in a room that isn’t bucking freezing except for body heat.”

I wasn’t so foul-mouthed before, she thought to herself. Being around Mark Watney did this to me.

No, Mars did this to me. Blame this planet. Blame this whole bucking magic-starved universe.

“I can’t promise you a bed,” Mark said. “It’s going to be tight quarters on Hermes. We might even have to take day and night shifts with the bunks.”

“You say we,” Starlight grumbled. “I say, once I get a bunk, they can try prying it out of my stone cold hooves.”

“Quit saying cold,” Spitfire muttered. The pile shuffled as, by unspoken cooperation, they tried to pull two or three of the sleeping rolls into a more snug position over the top of the pile. Both the old RTG and the one from the Phoenix fuel plant now sat in the Phoenix, tucked into the sides of the lower deck. The flight up would be toasty-warm with three thousand watts of heat filling a space about twice that of the interior of Rover 2. But the tradeoff was that, on this last night on Mars, the Whinnybago had only two electrical heaters, the one from Rover 2 and the last remaining Amicitas heater, putting out a mere six hundred watts of heat on battery power.

The Martian night laughed at six hundred watts of heat. The metal hull of the Whinnybago trailer sucked up the heat and hungered for more.

The cuddle pile drew a little tighter.

“No more hay,” Cherry Berry said. “Think about that. No more hay, no more potatoes.”

“No more EVAs,” Fireball rumbled from the core of the pile.

“No more washing out airlock to get rid of perchlorate dust,” Spitfire stammered out.

“No more pouring gallons of water down the toilet so we can talk to home,” Dragonfly sighed.

“That reminds me,” Mark said. “Do your bosses know about tomorrow?”

“Updated them yesterday,” Dragonfly said. “Ship names, launch time, all of it.”

“What did they say?”

“They said, ‘Message received, good luck, out.’ Kinda rude of them.”

“Probably mad they never managed to track this dimension down,” Starlight said. “When we get to Earth I’ll build a huge magic beacon in the most life-packed place on your planet. If that doesn’t work, we’ll apply for citizenship.”

“They’ll find us eventually,” Cherry said. “Twilight and Chrysalis won’t give up.”

“I know they won’t,” Starlight said. “It’s that word ‘eventually’ that worries me.”

“They did say a couple weeks ago that both Twilight and Chrysalis were up on… on Harmony,” Dragonfly said, giving the English word they used for Concordia. “Maybe they’re waiting on launch.”

“They couldn’t track us with all the resources of… Pony-land… how could they do it in orbit?” Starlight grumbled. “No, I think we’re going to spend a lot of time with a lot of humans. Beginning with Mark’s friends on Hermes.”

“Martinez is pretty nice,” Cherry said. “And Commander Lewis and I have been exchanging emails for a while now. She’s got lots of good advice.”

“I wish Johanssen would talk more,” Dragonfly said. “As many times as I’ve disguised myself as her, I don’t really know much about her, even now.”

“Johanssen’s always been shy,” Mark said. “Geeky and introverted. If it wasn’t for NASA, she’d crawl into a computer and never come out again.”

“Huh. Replace NASA with ‘friendship princess work’ and ‘computer’ with ‘library,’ and that describes Twilight,” Starlight said. “Maybe someday you can meet her, Mark, and then you can tell us if she and Johanssen are alike.”

“You’ll meet Johanssen in person sooner,” Mark said. “Then you can tell me.”

“My favorite is Vogel,” Fireball growled from the bottom of the pile.

“Um, Fireball,” Mark said, “Vogel’s spoken directly to us maybe four times in the past year.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Dragonfly said. “That’s Fireball’s idea of a joke.”

“I figured,” Mark said. “Anyway, the one we all get to meet first will be Chris Beck. That’s Doctor Beck to you. And he’ll get to know all of us very personally.”

“Dibs on the oral thermometer,” Dragonfly said immediately.

There was a bit of laughter all around, if somewhat nervous.

“Mark?” Cherry asked. “Tell us about your crew.”

“Hm.” Mark shifted his position a little next to Fireball. “Well, Johanssen and I were in the same astronaut group- the last group trained before the Ares III crew was selected. Martinez and Beck were in the group before ours, and Lewis was in the group before that. Vogel’s European Space Agency- he was the last guy picked. I knew Johanssen a little, and I had some training under Lewis, but I didn’t meet the others until the Ares III picks were finalized. And then we had years of training together ahead of us.”

“Yeah, but what are they like?”

“They’re like… well, they’re like them,” Mark said. “None of them are like anyone else. Martinez comes off as a fighter jock, and he loves a joke, the dirtier the better, but he’s also totally nuts for his wife and a committed Catholic- very religious, and not in any jerk I’m-better-than-you or you-ought-to-do-this-too way. Lewis is by-the-book and strict, but she has this silly streak that sneaks up on you sometimes when you don’t expect it. Beck is a doctor twenty-four seven, but once you get around that he’s game for anything. Johanssen is all geek, but she’s also the supermodel of the crew and barely knows it. Vogel is like this human iceberg, keeps most of himself hidden, very quiet, very serious. But he’s funny, in a sly way. When he tells a joke, it can take half an hour before you realize it.”

“So,” Spitfire said, “Lewis, she’s oldest, right?”

“Um… actually…” Mark wiggled under the pile, a little harder than perhaps necessary. “Actually, I’m the oldest. Nine months older than Vogel. Over a year older than Lewis.”

“Really?” Fireball snorted hard enough to shake the whole cuddle pile. “And you the oldest here, too. You able to keep up with us, old man?”

“You know,” Mark said softly, “I never appreciated that joke during training. Don’t care much for it now, either.”

“Don’t worry, Grandfather,” Starlight said. “You just take your nap during launch while the rest of us do all the work.”

“How about we take the nap now?” Dragonfly asked. “It’s an early morning tomorrow.”

As various riffs on “good night” echoed through the pile, Starlight forced her eyes to close. Sleep seemed miles away. Tomorrow anything could happen. They could go home. They could go to Earth. They could die in a fireball. They could die in the vacuum of space.

But whatever happened, it wouldn’t happen on Mars.

The pile shifted again. “Guys?” Mark asked.

“What?” Spitfire grumbled.

“Whatever happens tomorrow… thanks for everything. I don’t know how I would have survived without you. I’m lucky I met you about a dozen times over.”

“Mutual,” Fireball muttered.

“Yeah,” Dragonfly said.

“Thanks,” Spitfire said. “Now go sleep. Good night.”

“Mm.”

The pile grew still again, and gradually the easy sleepers, Fireball, Cherry and Spitfire, began their usual gentle snoring. Starlight listened to the sounds, and thought about tomorrow.

It didn’t take long for her to join them in the last sleep before leaving Mars.

Author's Note

Sol 551 is finished, at 6,480 words.

I've already written, weeks ago, snippets of epilog material, but tonight I'm going to push forward a bit and get the next chapter after the launch done. Yes, after months of basically posting what I write each day with no buffer, I've got a buffer again just as the story is about to end.

The ages of the Ares III crew, and their training classes, come from promotional materials released for the movie. The book says not one word about the ages of any of the characters involved, unless you count Martinez's child.

Sol 551

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 562
ARES III SOL 551
PHOENIX MISSION DAY 1

“Hey. Get up.”

“Grruh… what time izzit?”

“0400. Time to get up.”

“It’s cold.”

“It’ll be plenty warm in the Phoenix. Launch is in two and a half hours. Suit up.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 551

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t shitting myself. In two hours I’m going to ride a stripped-down, no-backups MAV hurled to unprecedented speeds by a barely-tested magical lifting system. I’ve ridden rockets before, but no human being alive has ever taken a ride like this.

Cherry and I are doing preflight checks now. We have our suits on except for helmets, and we’ll put those on for takeoff, because even though the Phoenix will have the good old pony life support box, it only takes one perfectly timed pea-sized meteor to fuck our shit up big time. Besides, the most efficient way to stow the suits during takeoff is to wear them. The Phoenix was built for short-term occupancy, not extended flight, so there’s no suit rack like in the Hab.

The ponies ate the last of the hay last night. We’re taking along fifty potatoes and about ten kilograms of leftover quartz chips for Fireball, plus seven days of food packs for me and six days for the ponies. (Spitfire ate the other food packs when she was recovering from the storm busting, if you remember.)

Aside from that, we’re hauling up the Sparkle Drive and seven mana batteries, mounted where the removed consoles used to be, so that the batteries can get a slight recharge off of us during flight. There’s an eighth battery for emergencies. We also allowed ourselves fifty kilos of weight for a couple of souvenirs each, which we didn’t come close to using up. Every pony has the little medallion made from pieces of their ship’s hull. Cherry has Groot, her little tree branch in a pot, which somehow she kept alive all the way from Site Epsilon. Starlight has her rainbow crystal samples. Fireball chose to bring the spare computer; his idea is that he’ll copy all the books off of it when he gets home, before our worlds establish any copyright treaties.

Me, I’m carrying the antenna fragment that stranded me here in the first place, plus my smallest ratchet wrench. None of the sockets, just the wrench. It’s a reminder of all the work I’ve done over the last year and a half, with the help of these silly, sweet, strange visitors from another universe, all to stay alive long enough for this moment.

This is it. If the launch fucks up, we probably die. If we get into orbit but fail to make escape velocity, we miss Hermes, which means we have to shoot for our second-best option, a direct Sparkle Drive trip to Earth. That’s the only reason we have seven days of food on board. The Sparkle Drive is our abort mode, and none of us wants to use it if we don’t need to.

There’s one subject we haven’t talked about, not once, not the whole time this plan has been in operation: what if everything fails? We miss Hermes, the Sparkle Drive fizzles; what then? Of course it’s obvious what happens then. We die in space.

As options go, I’m not fond of that one.

If the magic boosting spell crushed the MAV fuel tanks and made the rocket blow up, that might not be so bad. We’d probably never know. But if we’re stranded in space, we’ll starve to death, very slowly, over the course of a month- maybe sooner in Dragonfly’s case. She’s been looking very sick the past couple of weeks.

But I have a solution to that. If starvation is the only option, I’m not sticking around for it. The Hab medical kit had a substantial supply of injectable morphine in case of a serious injury requiring field surgery. It’s enough for six lethal doses. I checked. We’ll fall asleep and never wake up, nice and painless.

That’s a morbid thought to leave this planet on, but it’s only beginning to sink in that I’m actually leaving. This frozen rock has been our home for eighteen months. We figured out how to survive. We built equipment to improve our lives. We’ve seen things no one has ever seen before. And we told stories, learned how to cook using a chemistry set and heating elements from a central air system, and learned to love Dungeons and Dragons all over again.

And then we drove across Mars in a cobbled-together RV, navigating by static-filled messages from Hermes and the tiny moons of Mars. We transformed a launch-to-orbit rocket into, in theory (and pray we don’t have to actually use it) an interplanetary spaceship. And despite being cheek to jowl, hip to flank with each other, we’ve managed not to kill each other in the process.

And now all that is over. There’s only one flight left, either a short or a long one, and then it’s done. We’ve eaten the last Martian crops. We’ve read each other Earth books for the last time. We will leave no more tracks, of boots or hooves or claws, in the red sands. One way or another, we’re leaving Mars.

About fucking time.

“Hello, everyone. This is CNN, and I’m Cathy Warner.”

Cheers rose from the crowd of people gathered behind CNN’s outdoor stage. The late afternoon Houston sun beat down on the observers. No one seemed to mind the heat, except Cathy, who sweltered even in her short-sleeve ensemble.

“In less than an hour Mark Watney and his five alien comrades will launch in their modified Ares MAV, the Phoenix, in their one and only chance to meet the rest of the Ares III crew on Hermes. If that attempt fails, their only backup option will be to attempt to fly directly to Earth using an untested reproduction of the same experimental drive system that stranded the aliens on Mars in the first place.

“Business has ground to a halt around the world as billions of people stand vigil, waiting to see what happens. Here in Houston, the Astros home game has been canceled so that both Minute Maid Park and NRG Stadium can be used to house over a hundred thousand people gathered together to watch the launch on the stadium screens. Tens of thousands more have jammed the area around Johnson Space Center. Even more have gathered at Cape Canaveral, in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in Tiananmen Square, in Red Square, and in stadiums, bars, offices, and homes around the world. The world’s stock exchanges have closed, almost all retail has shut its doors, and even many public schools let out early today to allow parents to collect their children before scheduled launch time.”

Cathy gestured over her shoulder to the gates of Johnson Space Center. “And inside NASA, tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, astronauts and administrators stand and wait. They have labored hard to give this launch its best chance of success, just as they worked to help the crew of Phoenix to survive this long. But their work is over now. With radio signals requiring twelve minutes to travel from Earth to Mars, NASA can provide no more help, no more instructions. From now on, they can only watch… and pray.”

In the observation booth, Venkat stared down into Mission Control, where Mitch Henderson stood, apparently calm and in command, at the flight director’s podium. The stations around him were jammed, as every control shift had gathered, on duty or off, to witness the outcome of their efforts.

A few other notables were present in the crowd. Rich Purnell, cleaned up almost to presentability, stood among the trajectory controllers, ready to help with Sparkle Drive contingencies if required. Jennifer Lawrence, the engineer who had taken charge of the Sirius tiger team and designed what became the Whinnybago, stood by EECOM. And Mindy Park, who had described herself at one point as the most overqualified space paparazzi in the universe, had taken up a patch of wall not far from the Tracking station.

To his left, Teddy Sanders sat, briefcase between his feet. To his right sat Annie Montrose, having just completed the final press briefing and the last finessing of the other VIPs present, including the vice-president, the Chinese ambassador, the governors of Florida and Texas, and more than half the House and Senate subcommittees that oversaw NASA.

They had come to wait, and to worry, and to pray, like billions of other people in their homes around the world. Venkat had the entire Hindu pantheon to choose from for his own prayers, but the illogical question in his mind at the moment was: which of them, alone or combined, were strong enough to thwart the ancient Roman god of war and slaughter?

Mars had come close many times to claiming the lives of the six castaways. Would Mars find a way to finish the job, now, at the last moment?

If so, there wasn’t a damn thing Dr. Venkat Kapoor could do now, except pray and hope that all his work, all the work of NASA and of the pony space programs and the six castaways, that all the work had been enough…

Twelve light-minutes away, the crew of Hermes sat at their stations on the bridge. No eyes strayed to the empty seat today. Today that seat would be filled once again- if all went according to plan.

“Fuel pressure green,” Johanssen said from her console. “Engine alignment perfect, gimbals fully operational. Communications five by five. We are ready for preflight checklist, commander.”

“Copy,” said Lewis from the center seat. “CAPCOM.”

“Go,” said Johanssen.

“Guidance.”

“Go,” Johanssen said again.

“Remote backup.”

“Go,” said Martinez.

“Pilot.”

Over the speakers, the voice of a pink pony replied, “Go, Hermes.”

“Systems.”

A slightly raspy-sounding voice called over the radio, “All go, commander.”

“EECOM.”

A male, distinctly human voice said, “Go.”

Lewis permitted herself a pause to smile, but only for a moment. “Star drive,” she said.

A slightly nervous female voice said, “Go, Hermes.”

“Boosters.”

A voice with buzzy harmonics, somewhat weak-sounding. “Go, ma’am.”

Twelve minutes later, as four alien voices and one human voice chimed in, cheers went up from millions of throats around the planet Earth.

Twelve minutes earlier, the checklist continued.

“Telemetry.”

“Go,” said Johanssen.

“Recovery.”

“Go,” said Beck, over the radio from his station in Airlock 1.

“Secondary recovery.”

“Go,” said Vogel from beside Beck.

Lewis took a deep breath. “Mission control,” she said, carefully and clearly, “this is Hermes Actual. We are go for launch and will proceed on schedule. We are T minus eight minutes, ten seconds to launch…” She glanced at the mission clock, watched a couple of seconds tick down, and said, “Mark!”

“MAV to Ground Control,” Mark replied.

“What?” Lewis asked.

“MAV to Ground Control,” Mark repeated. “Everyone is ready and the countdown is on hold.”

“Mark, what are you-“

Then Cherry Berry began to sing, and behind her voice Lewis heard the faint sound of music.

MAV to Ground Control
Phoenix reports all systems go
We’ve come so very far and we’re set to see it through

“Where is that music coming from?” Lewis asked. “We need this channel-“

The ponies, paying no attention, sang together, as the music behind their words grew louder.

Hermes, this is Phoenix, how are you
We’re ready to go home
And the ponies want to kiss this world goodbye
It’s time to take this capsule to the sky-y-y

Then Mark sang:

This is Mark Watney to Ground Control
We’re waiting for the launch
And I guess that we’ve been waiting for so long
That’s why the things we’re feeling are so strong

All six of them, including Dragonfly and Fireball, joined together:

For here we are sitting in our tin can
Here beneath the stars

Then Dragonfly alone:

Don’t ask us why we sing
It’s just a pony thing

And for a minute the sound of guitars, drums, and even violins echoed over the radio.

“Um,” Johanssen said, “that doesn’t sound quite the same as the version of Space Oddity we sent them. And telemetry says the MAV computer isn’t running a music app.”

“It’s not,” Lewis said, knowing that song far better than anyone else on Hermes. “But where could it be coming from?”

“Dragonfly said don’t ask,” Martinez said. “So long as it doesn’t interfere with the launch.”

Now it was Starlight Glimmer singing:

Although it’s still a hundred million miles
We’ve come so very far
And I think our pilot knows which way to go

Fireball:

Tell Mars just what we think of it-

Dragonfly:

--- it knows!

And then all together:

Phoenix calling Ground Control
This life on Mars is getting old
Standing by for launch, Control!
Standing by for launch, Control!

Control, here we are sitting in a tin can
Sitting here on Mars
Hermes, we’re standing by
Waiting on your reply

“T minus three minutes and counting,” Lewis replied, speaking up over the music, which hadn’t abated.

“Phoenix copies three minutes,” Cherry Berry said in a normal voice. “We seem to be experiencing a sudden magic surge. Batteries continue to show full. All systems go.”

And then the others joined in

Here we are singing in our tin can
Ready for our flight
All our work is through
And there’s nothing left to do

“Coming up on two minutes,” Johanssen said. “Sending activation order to Sojourner.”

Outside and well away from the MAV, the ancient little rover received its instructions: drive forward four-fifths of a meter up the metal plate it sat on. Slowly, cautiously, its wheels began to turn.

On the Phoenix, the magical music changed, taking up a faster, more urgent beat, as Cherry began singing again:

Too late to turn back, Sojourner’s rolling
All systems are go-

Spitfire’s voice:
- are you sure?

Cherry replied:
Conditions are not great
But the Hermes cannot stop to wait

And Mark added nervously:
No chance to abort… the countdown starts…

Starlight reported:
Sparkle Drive is set, all batteries full
Everything is ready, now or never

Dragonfly added:
Lie back and relax, look out the window
Soon we’ll ride the fire to the midnight sky
Seconds tick by

And all joined in to sing:

Dust above us
Drifting, falling
Mars beneath us
Soon we’re going home

“T minus one minute,” Lewis called from Hermes. “Sojourner operating as expected.”

Cherry Berry flipped a switch and said:

Capsule is secure, ready for launching
Fuel and oxidizer tanks are full
Pyros are all set, batteries hot
Ready to ignite ascent stage one
The count goes on

Spitfire called out:
Twenty seconds left, begin ignition
Fuel pumps activate, light ‘em up

Cherry Berry replied:
Preparing to release the mooring clamps
Everybody wave this world goodbye
We’re about to fly

For a few moments, over the building rumble of Phoenix’s engines, Lewis’s voice called out, “Four… three… two… one…”

Sojourner’s middle set of wheels passed over the frame member, driving the metal plate down to complete the circuit linking the jumbo batteries and their built-in booster enchantments.

Fifteen beams of magic slammed into the three target crystals mounted to the bottom of the first ascent stage.

Phoenix heaved off the MAV descent stage, rising into the air like a bullet, accelerating faster as the small plumes of flame emerging from the engines opened into a torrent of light.

Inside the capsule, despite the heavy G loads pressing the six crew members into their flight couches, they sang:

Mars below us
Spinning, falling
Hermes, Phoenix
Here we’re coming

Mars below us
Spinning, falling
This is Phoenix
And we’re flying
Ho-o-o-o-ome
Ho-o-o-o-ome

And the music faded as, riding a mighty wave of stored magic energy and an equally mighty controlled explosion, Phoenix raced through and out of the dust storm and up towards space.

The three target crystals mounted around the hole where the central first stage engine had been were carefully carved out of shafts of apparently flawless clear quartz. Each had been carefully sized, using the MAV diagrams included in the Ares computer files, to perfectly fit in the available space while providing the maximum available surface to spread the launch load.

But the fact remained that they were quartz crystals, a material prone to breaking under unpredictable conditions… and they now bore the load of a hundred tons of magical force, pushing up from the repulsor crystals on the surface. Although that force was magical in nature, it still obeyed certain physical laws… and the enchantment that linked the target crystals to their respective repulsor batteries below did nothing to eliminate or redirect the force pressing against them.

To make things worse, this force was not quite steady. No rocket engine runs perfectly smoothly, and the vibrations from the four remaining first stage engines shook the crystals in their mountings. The mountings held firm, having been carefully fitted with changeling-crafted bushings to prevent loosening or shifting of the target crystals. But the vibrations also caused slight variations in the pressure on the crystals, as the rocket engines fired marginally harder or softer microsecond by microsecond.

A flaw appeared in one of the crystals. In a second it spread halfway across the surface. In another second it calved off a third of its mass, directly in the center. The remaining crystal, unable to hold together, shattered completely, and the enchantment within failed.

Five boosters, no longer magically tethered to a target, shut down at seventy-one seconds into flight, no longer providing lift to the rocket.

Phoenix lurched.

“Wha’happn?”

The words were more of a grunt. For all her confidence in sims, Cherry Berry had forgotten what five and a half G’s felt like. She hadn’t tried to pilot a rocket under such acceleration since the first couple of rocket flights ever, when the ships had been tiny capsules stuck on barely stable Mk. 1 “Flea” solid fuel boosters. This flight had already gone well beyond the burn time of those early experiments, and until the lurch the G loads had been steadily increasing as the ship burned fuel. It was taking all her earth pony strength, experience, and what haphazard training she’d picked up to stay alert and keep her hooves on the controls. Speech took lower priority.

The lurch had brought some relief, the darkness at the edges of her vision receding at the drop from five and a half to four and a half G’s. But that relief was temporary, and she knew it. Her forelegs felt heavier every moment. She lay on her back on the flight couch, focusing on keeping her hooves up and her barrel clenched.

“Lost something.” Spitfire, though suffering under the same load, was dealing a little better with it. An advantage of being a pegasus. “Accel drop one point one G. Engines at full gimbal.”

Full gimbal… that meant something… something bad.

There was a new light on on the console. The flight computer had automatically activated the maneuvering thrusters. The light blinked about once every two seconds.

“We lost a target crystal,” Cherry grunted, getting a little air back. “Trajectory drifting. Hermes confirm.”

The cannibalized radio from one of the spare Ares surface suits sat awkwardly on her head inside her helmet, but it worked fine. Johanssen’s voice came through clear. “Confirm probable loss of number two booster target crystal,” she said. “Your computer is automatically compensating for the imbalanced thrust. Recommend manual roll twenty degrees clockwise to put the lost crystal on the west facing side. That will minimize thruster use and keep your trajectory coplanar with Hermes.”

“Done.” Cherry had nudged the controls as soon as she heard “manual roll twenty degrees clockwise.” By the time Johanssen had finished the explanation, the maneuver was complete. It was the first manual maneuver she’d had to execute thus far. The computer was doing its job- better than the ones back home.

“T plus two minutes,” Johanssen called out. “Acceleration 4.7 G and climbing.”

“First stage fuel eleven tons,” Spitfire added.

“It’s all right, Cherry,” Martinez’s voice added. “You lost some delta-V. There’s still plenty in the second stage.”

“Copy,” Cherry grunted, and kept her eyes on the controls and, when she could spare any attention, for the rapidly darkening sky visible through the small windows in front of her.

“Martinez, can you get Vogel’s station running on your console?” Lewis asked. “We need to begin work on the second stage burn.”

“Too soon to tell,” Martinez said. “The MAV computer would have throttled back the last minute and a half of the burn to keep the load on the crew below eight G’s. Otherwise they’d be pulling just over ten G’s at first stage burnout. With a crystal gone, it might not throttle down at all. That’s a bit of extra efficiency regained. We calculated burnout at six minutes and twenty-two seconds, but we can’t count on that now. Too many unknowns until burnout.” Throughout his explanation, his eyes remained locked on his station, his hands resting next to the remote pilot controls.

“Damn,” Lewis muttered. “And how much are we losing to that max gimbal? That’s one hell of a course drift if the engines can’t gimbal enough to compensate. What about reducing thrust on three of the engines?”

“Gain efficiency one place, lose it another,” Martinez said. “Remember, the computer always knows more than you do.”

“Computers don’t know anything their programmers don’t,” Lewis muttered.

“T plus four minutes,” Johanssen said. “Acceleration 5.8 G and climbing.”

“Phoenix, Hermes,” Lewis called. “Cherry, talk to us.”

“Okay!”

She wasn’t, but it was a word she could grunt clearly. The hardest acceleration she’d ever experienced during a launch was 6.1 G, and that had been for only twenty seconds or so of acceleration. There were still over two minutes of launch to go.

Cherry didn’t dare turn her head to look around the capsule, but she could speak. “Spits! Crew check!”

“Okay!” Spitfire replied. “Dragonfly out.”

“Okay!” Fireball’s growl was loud and clear.

“…okay!” Starlight Glimmer’s voice was much softer, but clear.

“…okay?” Mark’s voice wasn’t clear in the least.

“Just relax, Mark,” Lewis’s voice called over the human radio. “It’ll be all right.”

Cherry noticed the maneuvering thruster light flicker again. It had reduced to about once every five seconds. For the moment, the unbalanced thrust was guiding them where they wanted to go, on a slow curve counter to Mars’s rotation, a trajectory which would take Phoenix out and away from the sun before eventually arcing back down towards Earth. But how much maneuvering fuel was it costing them?

“Thruster fuel check.”

“Nine one percent,” Spitfire replied.

Okay. No urgent worry, not yet.

“T plus five minutes,” Johanssen’s voice called out. “6.5 G and climbing.”

“Okay!”

“Coming up on expected booster burnout,” Martinez said. “She’ll fly straight once that’s done.”

“Okay!” The strain in Cherry Berry’s voice spoke volumes.

“Did someone tell her about Alan Shepard’s first flight?” Martinez muttered.

“First stage, one ton fuel!” Spitfire’s voice had less strain, but only by a little.

“Okay!”

“T plus six minutes,” Johanssen said. “Seven point five G. Booster burnout imminent.”

They waited.

“Okay!”

“Eight G,” Johanssen said.

And then, Cherry Berry’s voice again:

“WHOA!”

The first thing she noticed was that she could breathe again- not much, not well, but she could breathe. The dark tunnel in her vision gradually widened again.

The second thing she noticed was the alarm coming from the computer. “Master alarm, off trajectory,” she automatically said.

“First stage burnout,” Spitfire managed to report.

“Burnout? Then what’s this?” Cherry couldn’t understand it. They were still under acceleration- almost four G’s, according to the readouts.

“Boosters!” Spitfire replied. “Has to be!”

It all clicked in Cherry’s head in an instant. The magic boosters hadn’t cut out on schedule. Now, without the first stage engines and their gimbals to counter, the only thing holding them on course were the maneuvering thrusters, which without their secondary and tertiary backups were hopelessly outmatched.

“Going manual,” Cherry reported. “Activating secondary thrusters.” She reached up and hit the switch which activated the six surviving thruster blocks salvaged from Amicitas. Their batteries wouldn’t last long, but the metal walls separating those batteries from the interior of the ship might be thin enough for them to recharge, as had been the case for Amicitas during the crash. The smaller batteries had a faster recharge time in any case.

The guidance readouts shifted. The ship’s attitude returned almost to where it had been… but no farther. Even with the magic thrusters added to the chemical ones, the imbalance from the boosters was too much to compensate for. “Hermes, unable to correct drift,” she reported. “We’re going to be off course by a lot.”

“We confirm,” Lewis’s voice said over the radio. “Can you stage and pull away from the boosters?”

“Negative,” Cherry said. “The first stage would ram into us. And your ships aren’t as unbreakable as ours.”

“T plus seven minutes,” Johanssen called. “Acceleration three point six eight G’s and dropping.”

“Why are those boosters still running?” Cherry demanded.

“My fault.” Dragonfly’s voice was weak, but it carried over the pony suit comms if not the human radio. “All batteries on one circuit. The five failed boosters still work as batteries. They’re powering the other ten. I didn’t think of that.”

“None of us did,” Starlight groaned. “Oh, almighty Faust…”

“Thrust fuel at twenty-five percent,” Spitfire called out. “Secondary thirty percent charge.”

“Hermes, be advised primary thrusters will be exhausted for docking,” Cherry reported. “Secondary thrusters might have some function. We’ll see.”

“Copy,” Lewis replied.

“Request advisability of spin stabilization,” Cherry said.

“Negative,” Martinez said. “Spinning the ship will make it wobble, possibly even turn turtle. And… well, no go.”

“Copy,” Cherry said.

“Thruster fuel fifteen percent,” Spitfire said.

“When are those boosters going to drop?” Cherry asked, unable to keep all the frustration out of her voice.

“When the batteries run out,” Dragonfly said. “Half the unused run time of the failed boosters. Their power’s split over twice as many remaining boosters.”

“So at about the eight minute thirty mark,” Cherry said. “The thrusters won’t last that long.”

“Acceleration three point two five and dropping,” Johanssen reported. “Booster decay with distance. T plus eight minutes… mark!”

Phoenix twitched.

“Secondary thrusters exhausted,” Cherry reported. “Primary thrusters five percent.”

“Phoenix drifting off course,” Johanssen said.

Phoenix twitched harder.

“Primary thrusters exhausted.” Cherry sighed, letting her hooves rest on the flight couch. “What I wouldn’t give for reaction wheels from home right now.”

“Acceleration three G’s and dropping,” Johanssen called out.

And then, at eight minutes and twenty-four seconds after liftoff, the magic boosters finally shut down, and Phoenix entered free fall.

“First stage shutdown. And jettison,” Cherry reported as one final thump signaled the separation of the spent first stage from the rest of the ship. “Crew check. Report!”

Five “okays”, ranging from the weak and groggy to the strong but worried, confirmed the well-being of the Phoenix crew.

“Okay,” Cherry echoed. “Starlight, Dragonfly, Mark, can you use the emergency battery to get some charge back into the secondary thrusters?”

“We’ll have to open up a console panel,” Dragonfly said. “But I think we can feed magic through the control circuits. Not something you’d want to try on a human system.”

“Fuck no,” Mark agreed groggily.

“Do it,” Cherry said. “There’s no point in igniting the second stage if we can’t steer. Hermes, where do we stand on trajectory?”

“Working,” Johanssen said. “Um… you’re actually three hundred forty-one meters per second faster than projected due to the longer burn. Trajectory is eleven degrees off target. No intercept.” The last two words came out almost as a sob, and she repeated them more firmly, “Repeat, no Hermes intercept. Working on burn requirements to put Phoenix back on course.”

“Not just back on course,” Cherry said. “I’ll need fuel in the second stage to slow down to match velocity.” Deep breath. “Mission Control, this is Phoenix. Request calculations for a Sparkle Drive jump to take us inside Hermes’ orbital path to generate an intercept. Assuming we’re still coplanar?”

“That’s affirmative, Phoenix,” Johanssen said.

“Okay. Earth, we need that calculation in half an hour. We’re getting farther away from Hermes every second, so get to work.”

Twelve minutes later, the words echoed in Mission Control: “… we’re getting farther away from Hermes every second, so get to work.”

“Mission Control copies,” Mitch Henderson responded, leaning over the CAPCOM station. “We’re working the problem, stand by.” This was true; at the first sign of serious problems, Rich Purnell had opened up his laptop and set it next on the Trajectory console next to the controller manning the station. By now five other people were gathered around the two, pointing to things on the screens, discussing options.

“Flight, Tracking.”

“Go ahead, Tracking.”

“Satellite observation confirms Phoenix trajectory,” the tracking controller said. “Numbers are solid.”

“Good to know, thanks,” Mitch grumbled. He began to pace, something a flight controller never did.

Up in the observation area, Annie leaned over to Venkat. “Now that it’s quiet for a moment,” she said, “what the fuck happened?”

“The magic boosters put all their input through three crystals mounted on the bottom of the first stage,” Venkat said. “One of those target crystals broke, which took five boosters out of action at once. But the trigger switch for the boosters linked all of their battery components together, so the batteries on the five failed boosters became extra power for the other ten. So those ten kept firing a lot longer than they should have.

“Between that and the normal rockets not throttling back, Phoenix is actually going faster than predicted- a lot faster than Hermes. But since the magic booster acceleration was unbalanced- pushing on one side of the craft more than the other- it pushed Phoenix off course. Cherry used up all her maneuvering thrusters trying to hold it, and she couldn’t. So right now they’re going too fast, in the wrong direction to meet Hermes, and they can’t turn the ship. And the second ascent stage probably isn’t enough to correct all that.”

“Fuck,” Annie whispered.

“Oh, yes,” Venkat agreed. “On a normal launch this would be game over. Cherry would have cut the thrusters to save some for steering. But the magic thrusters can be recharged, so those will probably come back online in a little while. And they have the Sparkle Drive, which can hop them sideways in space so that Phoenix and Hermes’s momentum will bring them together instead of apart.” He frowned more deeply and added, “In theory. They’re going to try it, anyway.”

“And what if that goes wrong? Annie asked.

“To borrow a phrase of yours,” Venkat replied, “fuck if I know.”

“Shit,” Annie said.

"Now would be a good time," Teddy said on the other side of Venkat, “for another cheery musical number.”

Sixteen minutes later, the reply came up from Earth to Hermes and Phoenix. “All right, we have a vector for the Sparkle Drive,” Mitch Henderson’s voice called up. “We’re sending it to both your ships’ nav-comms now. The Sparkle Drive is to fire on two hundred fifty thousand cycles for two hundred seconds. That will provide a total displacement of twenty-five thousand kilometers at a speed of one hundred twenty-five kilometers per second. The trajectory will take Phoenix behind and inside Hermes’s current course and put it on a rough intercept course. We’ll fine-tune the intercept once you’re secure from Sparkle Drive. Over.”

“Hermes copies, Houston,” Lewis said.

“Phoenix copies,” Cherry Berry echoed. “We have secondary thrusters restored to forty percent battery. Preparing to implement Sparkle Drive maneuver.” Cherry Berry brought up the MAV computer’s navigation system, found the program sent up from Earth, and activated it. The computer began firing the magic thrusters, turning Phoenix as it coasted through space, until the nose pointed almost behind them on their path.

“Activating Sparkle Drive,” Starlight reported from her station, bringing up the control program on the repurposed Hab laptop. “Set to timed burn mode. Two hundred seconds.” She keyed in the number and clicked Accept.

“Two hundred fifty thousand cycles.” She keyed in that number, too.

The laptop had been designed to endure high accelerations, vacuum, and various other kinds of abuse. But, above all else, it had been designed to be lightweight. Thus, there were compromises in durability, chiefly in the keyboard- which, after all, was only intended to be used by human fingers for thirty days. This keyboard, however, had suffered from heavy, if unnaturally nimble, pony hooves, for more than a year.

Be it the Galactic Ghoul, the malign spirit of Mars having one final attempt at the lives of the interlopers, bad design, or simply bad luck, the switch under the zero key chose this particular moment to stick. Nothing happened for a second, and then, just before Starlight’s hoof clicked the mouse to accept the setting, more zeroes appeared behind the four already present… and then the software, sensing a number higher than the maximum capacity of the computer to pulse a signal over a wire, reset the entry to its maximum setting.

Starlight clicked Accept for a cycle rate of 1,000,000,000 cycles per second, not noticing the changed number.

“All go for Sparkle Drive,” she reported.

“Engage,” Cherry Berry ordered.

Starlight did.

“What the FUCK?” Martinez shouted. “We just lost tracking on Phoenix!”

“Calm down and work the problem,” Lewis insisted. “Why did we lose tracking? Did it disappear?”

“No, just the opposite,” Martinez said. “Our radio tracking systems claim to be receiving multiple sources for Phoenix’s signal. Thousands of them. And the sources keep disappearing and appearing. The system’s overloaded. We can’t maintain a lock. Same story from the satellites!”

“There must be some kind of glitch,” Lewis said. “There’s no way Phoenix can be in multiple places at once.”

“Unless Phoenix is moving faster than light,” Johanssen muttered. “Um.”

“Put Phoenix’s last known position on screen,” Lewis ordered.

Phoenix should have been too small and too distant to be visible in the viewscreen without significant magnification. But as the image of space and the darker curve of Mars’s night side filled the bridge’s main screen, it included a brilliant thin white streak of light across the screen.

And as they watched, the tail of the streak zipped past them, right to left, and vanished.

Mark didn’t particularly want to move. His chest still ached from the eight G’s peak acceleration of the launch, though the lightheadedness had mostly passed. But his suit’s radio had just gone bonkers, with so much echo it seemed like static.

Over the noise in his ears, he could just about make out the sound of the ponies going nuts about something. He pulled the release latch on his flight couch harness and, not without some pain, sat up. It took an effort of will to focus on the voices and turn sounds into words, but when he did he discovered that the ponies were still speaking- well, almost shouting- in English.

And then the words began to register.

“-they’re dropping like a brick! Down ten percent already! What’s going on?”

“Reduce power to the Drive, then!”

“I’m trying! The slider isn’t working! It- oh buck! It’s set to maximum cycles!”

“How fast is that?”

“Too fast! And the computer won’t take new input!”

Over the sound of the radio going nuts and the ponies following the radio’s lead, Mark heard a loud crunching sound. It repeated, and then a lot of little crunches followed. His eye fell on one of the magic batteries. Cracks were running through it, big ones and little ones, flaw after flaw after flaw appearing in the crystal.

“The batteries are overloading! They’re going to fail!”

“Kill the drive! Now!”

“I’m trying! The computer won’t let me! I keep trying to reset, but-“

Mark had heard enough. The simple solution was the best, even if Starlight was, for whatever reason, overlooking it. Even with the Sparkle Drive on full pelt, they were still in free-fall, so it was a trivial thing for him to grab the back of Cherry Berry’s flight couch, use it to push himself off his own couch and across the opening for the boarding ladder, and over Starlight’s couch. He used a hand to stop himself on the console in front of her, reached down to the laptop, and grabbed the cord leading from the laptop to the Sparkle Drive.

He yanked it out.

The noise in his radio resolved into voices- strangely, Lewis’s voice, saying, “There’s no way Phoenix can be in multiple places at once!” He ignored it for now, focusing on the problems inside the capsule.

The batteries crackled and crunched a few more times, but for the moment they remained intact. Their readouts all showed the same level; eighty-one percent power remaining. The Sparkle Drive crystal itself remained clear, flawless, intact. Cherry and Starlight, with Spitfire sitting between them, appeared to be calming down.

“Thank you, Mark,” Starlight said. “I got too focused on this.” She waved a hoof at the keyboard.

Mark looked at it, then used the three-finger salute to bring up the task manager to manually kill the Sparkle Drive app. That done, a new window became visible with an error message: System has detected a potentially erroneous input (sticky key). Ignore or accept? “Well, there’s your problem,” he said.

“Later,” Cherry said. “How fast were we going?”

“Maximum cycles,” Starlight said quietly. “One billion jumps per second. Half a meter per jump.”

Mark did the math in his head. Five hundred million meters per second. Five hundred thousand kilometers per second.

Slightly more than one point six times the speed of light.

“Well, no wonder the radio went bonkers,” he muttered.

And they had been in Sparkle Drive for roughly a minute, which meant… thirty million kilometers.

Thirty million kilometers away from Hermes. From Mars.

From anything.

As Mark froze, absorbing the impact, Starlight nudged him out of the way. “There’s still fifty percent left in the emergency battery,” she said. “I need that to mend as many of the other batteries as possible, if I can. We need to get the Drive back online ASAP.” She worked out of her own restraints, leaning over her flight couch to look at Fireball. “Fireball, go get that keepsake computer of yours,” she said. “We need it to install a new copy of the Drive software. We can’t trust this computer now.”

“Roger,” Fireball said, getting out of his own seat.

“And nobody bump anything hard,” Starlight added. “Especially not the batteries. They could shatter at any moment with-“

“Phoenix, Hermes,” the voice in Mark’s headset- Commander Lewis’s voice- broke in. “Please report status, over.”

Cherry Berry replied, “Hermes, Phoenix. Secure from Sparkle Drive. We had a computer error that caused some damage. Making repairs now. Sparkle Drive temporarily offline. Please confirm our position, over.”

No immediate response. Well, that wasn’t surprising. They were now a hundred light-seconds away from Hermes, roughly speaking.

One hundred light-seconds. Thirty million kilometers. The numbers finally began to sink in.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, “we’re fucked, aren’t we?”

“Work the problem,” Cherry Berry growled. But she didn’t disagree.

Far out in deep space, Phoenix coasted on, from nowhere to nowhere, alone.

Author's Note

Yes, I'm a bastard.

Here's the musical moment I promised. I'm not fond of "Starman" as a song, and I found the scene that used it in the movie to be totally forgettable. But I'm fond of "Space Oddity" and much more fond of "Major Tom," so you get a medley of the two, although an incomplete one. Things eventuated.

And now comes the last thing I want to talk about that the book... well, I don't say for certain the original novel gets this wrong, but it doesn't make much sense to me.

At one point in the book we're told that the full launch cycle for an unmodified MAV requires a total of twelve minutes. We aren't told how much of that is for which of the two stages mentioned. We are told that, at the end of twelve minutes, a normal MAV, weighing 12,600 kilograms plus fuel at launch, will be in Mars orbit moving 4.1 kilometers per second. Let's wave away complexities like air resistance and planetary rotation and just say that requires an average acceleration of only 5.7 meters per second per second above the effects of air resistance, change in trajectory, and Mars gravity. That means, if the launch is twelve minutes, the astronauts on board would experience an average G load of less than two G (one G being 9.8 meters per second per second).

But.

In the book Mark Watney's target velocity is higher than Mars escape velocity- 5.8 kilometers per second. To achieve this the MAV is reduced to less than three-fifths its original unfueled weight, which means its acceleration should be 167% of its normal load, give or take. Now, I can ignore that 5.8 is not 167% of 4.1, because the difference is small enough that atmospheric resistance and differing trajectories can easily account for that. That's not the problem.

The problem is that the book also mentions that Mark Watney experiences higher acceleration than any human before him- a peak load of a rib-cracking twelve G's, or 117.6 meters per second per second, not accounting for Mars gravity or other effects. Now, obviously he experiences this for a very brief period of time, but if the modified MAV hits 117.6 meters per second at max acceleration just before a stage burnout, that means the unmodified MAV should hit 70.4 meters per second, or just over seven G's.

Seven is a lot more than two.

To avoid my having to ask someone to do calculus, let's just assume an average of six G's acceleration, and let's limit it to a six-minute first stage burn. Six G's is 58.8 meters per second per second. Let's ignore air resistance and trajectory changes, but assume that Mars eats a constant 3.9 of that, giving an actual acceleration of 53.9 m/s/s. Three hundred and sixty seconds of that would get us (drum roll)...

... 19.4 kilometers per second.

That's not Mars escape velocity. That's solar system escape velocity. That's next stop Alpha Centauri.

And when I ran the numbers with the magic booster system and the less-modified Phoenix, I came up with numbers saying Alpha Centauri, here we come half again as fast.

So one of two things is correct: Andy Weir knows something I don't, or Andy Weir hand-waved all aspects of the final launch for purposes of drama. Either one could be true.

Unfortunately, I don't really have enough knowledge or skill to correct the whole mess and be confident that I'd actually be doing a better job. So, after about five minutes of looking at the numbers, I decided, "screw it, if I hand-wave hard enough maybe I will learn to fly," and went with what you see here.

Because if a million-selling novelist can do it, so can I.

May 22, 2037, 12:07 AM CDT

It was just after midnight. Some of the multitudes gathered around JSC had gone home, but most had stayed.

There had been a press conference, explaining the basic facts of the situation. The launch had had several problems, but none fatal to the mission. Phoenix was now an immense distance from Hermes, but that might still be corrected. The Sparkle Drive was being repaired, partly by mending the overstrained batteries, partly by switching the Drive over to a backup computer. Once the Drive was fully operational, the crews and NASA would re-evaluate the situation and decide between another attempt at a Hermes rendezvous or using the Sparkle Drive for a straight shot to Earth.

That had been hours before. Most of the intervening time had been taken up waiting on the Sparkle Drive interface app to be uploaded fresh to Phoenix for a new installation. The original install file had been on Starlight’s laptop, which still refused to work properly due to the keyboard error.

The Phoenix crew had put that time to good use, repairing the damaged batteries, topping off the smaller batteries on the salvaged magic thrusters, and eating a meal. They had also exchanged messages with Hermes, celebrating the fact that, without intending to, the Phoenix crew had become the first known beings from either universe to travel through space faster than light.

In the meantime, Mission Control remained full- mostly. The prime controller team had gone off-shift, replaced at the consoles by the night watch. The morning team, for the most part, had gone to the cots in the meeting rooms below the observation area to get some nap time, but few of them stayed out of the room for more than two hours at a time. This included none of the Trajectory team, who had been engaged in one argument after another over the benefits and drawbacks of another Hermes rendezvous attempt versus the Direct Earth Abort option… all directly over Rich Purnell’s head, as he kept working non-stop on trajectories and flight programs for both options, saying not a word unless directly asked.

And in the observation room, no one had left. The trash cans now overflowed with empty takeout boxes and bags. The vice president was still there, as was the Chinese ambassador, as was the entire Congressional delegation, and all the rest, including Teddy Sanders, Venkat Kapoor, and Annie Montrose.

“When the fuck are they going to make a decision?” Annie asked. “For that matter, why aren’t you two down there making the decision for them?”

“This isn’t a question of planning or policy anymore,” Teddy said. “This is crisis management. Operations. Go or no go. That makes it the flight director’s decision. Ever since Chris Kraft, the rule has been, on all operational decisions the flight director is God.”

“Right,” Venkat said. “It’s out of our hands now.”

Below, Mitch Henderson stood at his position, having retained command after his team had gone off-shift. Brendan Hutch, whose team was officially on duty, had joined the discussions at the Trajectory consoles. Both appeared in full control of the situation, barely showing the hours of waiting and alertness. The only indication of how much time had passed came from the row of paper coffee cups that now lined two-thirds of the cupola surrounding the flight director’s station.

“Flight, Tracking.”

Although there had been a lot of discussion on the floor, the headset circuit had been silent for almost a full hour, except for a press officer summarizing the situation every ten minutes for the benefit of press and VIPs. This call-out caught the attention of everyone in the room, silencing the argument at Trajectory and causing the VIPs to sit up and come alert.

“Go, Tracking,” Mitch said.

“We’re receiving a signal on 110.1 megahertz,” the Tracking officer said. “It’s coming from an object in very low Earth orbit, closer than the SpaceX station. We’re trying to get a visual on it now.”

“What’s the signal?” Mitch said.

“110.1?” Venkat gasped from the observation area. “It's them! That's the prearranged arrival signal!”

“Morse code,” the Tracking officer said. “It’s repeating. The back room is decoding it…” The tracking officer held his headset tighter to his ear, listening to the message from his subordinates elsewhere in the building. “Message is: C-S-P H-R-M-Y, R-S-Q, and the code for ‘stand by.’”

“Roger, Tracking. Get someone to acknowledge the message on the same frequency.”

“I’ll try, but it keeps- wait a minute. We’ve got a satellite with a camera pointed at the object. Put feed 31 on screen.”

“Do it,” Mitch said.

A moment later the main screen in the control room showed an image of the other side of the Earth, with a large object vaguely like three enormous cylinders linked side by side, flanked by enormous solar arrays, flying over some ocean or other below.

“That’s not one of ours,” Teddy said. “It looks bigger than the SpaceX station. Almost as big as ours.”

“Of course,” Venkat said, almost giggling, bouncing in his seat.

“We’re getting a voice message now over the same frequency,” Tracking said. “Patching it in.”

The room was treated to garbled sounds which, if you were of a certain frame of mind, sounded like a half-Welsh, half-Dutch woman clearing her sinuses.

Then another voice made the same sounds- a voice the room recognized. That voice then said, in English, “Mission Control…” There was a brief burst of the other language, which sounded like some variant of ‘oh my god’. “Mission Control, this is Phoenix, relayed through Changeling Space Program spaceship Harmony. Their message reads: ‘Stand by- we are coming.’ Message ends.”

An instant later, the mysterious spaceship on the Mission Control screen vanished, leaving nothing but the unobstructed view of the eastern Pacific Ocean.

TRANSCRIPT – AUDIO FROM MAV PHOENIX, MAY 22, 2037 07:32 CDT

CHERRY BERRY: NASA, this is Phoenix. Harmony has arrived at our position and is proceeding with recovery efforts.

MARK WATNEY: Je-zus Christ! Look at the size of that thing! It’s as big as Hermes! Bigger! Let me get a video link on it… there! I hope you're getting this! Look at it! It looks like someone lifted two Saturn V rockets to orbit and tied them to a space station! I think that’s exactly what they’ve done! Look at the engine bells there! And what’s that sticking out of the middle section?

CHERRY: (unintelligible pony sounds) Message from Harmony. “To Phoenix crew: brace and prepare for grappling.” Grappling? Since when could we do that? (unintelligible pony sounds)

WATNEY: That’s what that thing is! It’s a claw! Like the arcade game! They’re going to take us in tow!

CHERRY: (unintelligible pony sounds) New message, um… “Harmony to NASA. We cannot stay long. Power drains quickly. We will return your ship and your astronaut as soon as we can. We will be back. Phoenix, stand by for grapple.”

WATNEY: Huh! Well. I guess we’re not going to Earth after all. Sorry, everyone on Hermes, but we’ll have to wait a bit longer for that reunion.

(sound of thumps, slight creaking)

CHERRY: (long string of unintelligible pony sounds) Grapple confirmed. Phoenix to Hermes and Earth, thanks for all your help, Mark will be-

END OF TRANSMISSION

“… thanks for all your help, Mark will be back as soon as we can manage it. Phoenix out.”

“They can’t hear you,” Dragonfly said. “We’re not there anymore.”

Cherry blinked. “What?”

“We’re already home.” The changeling grinned, already looking more like herself than she had in months. “We’re home!” In a flash of green flame, she took on the appearance of Beth Johanssen. “Can’t you feel it?” Another flash of flame, and there were two Mark Watneys in the capsule. “We’re HOME!”

“Look at the batteries!” Starlight said, pointing to the readouts. Before, four had been completely drained during the repair process, and the others had been around eighty percent full. Now all eight showed 100%, with the needles vibrating slightly at the top of the range.

And in Cherry’s headset, the voice of Twilight Sparkle said, in her native tongue, “Phoenix, this is Concordia. Prepare for EVA transfer to this ship. We’re sending out three spacewalkers to assist with the crew transfer. What is your condition?”

“We’re home,” Cherry whispered in English. Tears began running down her face. “We’re finally home.” She leaned over and hugged Spitfire, who hugged her right back, tears also running down the pegasus’s face. Fireball was next, hugging the two ponies tightly, with Starlight joining a moment later and Dragonfly, shifted back to her natural form, joining last. Finally, the hand of Mark Watney snaked through the mass hug to rest on Cherry’s shoulder, squeezing tightly.

“We’re home,” she repeated, and then in Equestrian, “Thank you, Celestia, we’re home.”

Author's Note

This was always how our heroes' stay on Mars was going to end- mainly because, for the most part, Equestria wasn't able to provide much material help for most of the story. They could send suggestions for spells for Starlight to cast, and that was about all. Letting them have the rescue seemed to be a balance for the two sides of the story, at least when I first planned it out.

The original plan was for something to happen to the rockets that would cause the MAV (which didn't get the name Phoenix until the day the ponies decided it needed a name, just a week or so ago) to miss its rendezvous with Hermes. The original plan, which I have lost the details of, didn't survive the abandonment of recycling Amicitas's main engines as boosters.

Whatever happened, the next step was to engage the Sparkle Drive, which, being directly connected to a human computer's vastly faster processors, would go to warp until, in short order, it ran out of power, at which point the whole thing would disintegrate just as in the Sol 6 accident. That plan died when Twilight Sparkle came up with the idea of making the Sparkle Drive's frequency and jump distance adjustable. It was implausible in the extreme that an adjustable setting Drive app would default to top speed. I toyed with the interface causing confusion and leading Starlight to set it for highest instead of lowest setting by accident (the clickable sliders), but I decided against that, too. The sticky-key failure mode only came to mind a couple of weeks ago.

Incidentally, I did the math to work out two things:

(1) How much energy would be used at my pre-determined "indefinitely sustainable" setting of 0.5 meters, 250 kilohertz. Answer: 0.00008% of the power of the seven batteries linked to the Drive per second.

This let me work out (2) How long would the batteries last at maximum velocity of 1 gigahertz? Answer: slightly more than 313 seconds, or five and a quarter minutes (0.32% of total battery power per second). This was, well, longer than I'd originally planned... and far longer than the crew would have let things continue without a Really Damn Good Reason.

I seriously considered having the batteries disintegrate from just plain overstrain (which would be understandable- after all, this is getting warp speed out of a system about the size and weight of a work truck's diesel engine- not even a semi!). But at the last minute I decided that the near brush with total disaster was actually more dramatic than the total failure... provided I had a chapter break between our heroes being stranded in deep space and their rescue.

Even without a pony rescue, the crew could probably rescue themselves, at least as far as getting to Earth. Meeting Hermes would still be the smart solution- slightly more so, since repairs on the Sparkle Drive ate up half their stored magic power, turning the Direct Earth Abort option from doable-but-chancy to no-margin-for-error. But now, fortunately for all concerned, those problems have been bypassed.

It's all epilogue from here, and since you can work out most of how things go from here, I will drop a couple of spoilers:

(1) No, Mark is not getting stranded on Equus. Concordia is not broken, and they now know how to get to and from Mark's world safely.

(2) No, there will not be another sequel, at least not one written by me. There are a ton of other "first contact" and "culture clash" stories by other authors, many better than I can do. And since this first contact is going to result in an earth-shattering explosion of new technologies on both sides of the dimensional barrier, the kind of "scarce supplies, bare survival" adventure that defined this story becomes nigh-impossible. Both worlds are headed for, if not the Trek-style post-scarcity economy, such vast social and technological changes that they surpass my ability to imagine it. If someone else has ideas, they're welcome to roll their own, with the caveat that I may or may not pay any attention to spinoffs.

(2A) Also, I still have CSP to complete.

(3) The epilogue will be short-ish, but not instant. There are not less than three chapters remaining, maybe a couple more depending on how I play things out. We will get at least one glimpse of each of our six principals After.

And finally, (4) the remaining few chapters may not be daily. They will post when complete. I say this because I'm over 3,000 words into the chapter after this one and it's nowhere close to done.

There are some details I'm keeping mum about for the moment, but be patient. You've not got long to find out for yourselves, after all.

Phoenix Day 22

MISSION LOG – PHOENIX DAY 22

Well, I finally got Starlight’s broken computer fixed. Not that it took a lot of work- it didn’t take long to get a unicorn here to disassemble the computer so I could show the purple princess what the keyboard relay switches looked like so she could copy and replace the broken one under the zero key. But it took three weeks because… well… because we’ve been busy.

It feels a little strange, seeing the “day” instead of “sol” in the log header. But it’s just another reminder that a sol is a Martian day, and the reason I’m using “day” instead of “sol” is that I’m not there!

Every day it hits me all over again: I’m not on Mars anymore. And for the last two weeks I’ve been on an alien world- the good kind, the kind where you can walk outside without a space suit, where leaves blow in the gentle, dust-free breeze and ponies sing and tuxedoed dragons bring you breakfast.

(I’m not kidding about the tuxedoed dragon. There was one, about one-third Fireball’s size. Starlight says his name is Spike, and she was almost as thrilled to see him as she was to see this pale blue unicorn in a witch costume… but I digress.)

Anyway, the last time I made a log entry I was helping with the final preflight checks. And as you probably know, the launch went a little bit off course. A bit of magic failed, a bit of human technology failed, and a lot of imagination and communication failed. Net result: we were way the fuck out in deep space, trying to put the pieces back together for a second bite at the apple.

But the good news is, the pony space programs picked up the magic surge- not from the boosters, which were too far away from our life support, but from our brief faster-than-light jaunt. Sixty-four billion teleportation spells gave them enough data to finally pinpoint our universe- well, nearly. They used a probe first, and it took three false starts before they finally found us.

It took them some time to rescue us, though. When they first got to our universe, they popped in in roughly the same position they occupied in their own world- very low Earth orbit. They popped in just long enough to find where we were and send a message. Then they went back home, where magic energy is super-cheap, and spent a few hours crossing over a hundred million miles of empty space before popping back into our zero-magic environment practically on top of us.

Of course their docking ports and the Phoenix’s didn’t match up. They had a solution for that: grab us with the claw from a giant crane machine, and then pop back to their universe. Once over there the ponies could use their suit thrusters- which never once got a single use on Mars- to transfer to the mother ship. That was, as psychiatrists say when talking about PTSD patients, a memorable experience…

“Have you got your comm crystal on, Mark?” Starlight Glimmer asked.

“Yeah, it’s right… huh.” Mark patted the chest of his space suit, remembering. “Dunno why, except habit. I don’t have its battery. We had to reinstall it in the thruster, remember?”

“You’re in our universe now, Mark,” Starlight said, grinning. “Put your helmet on and say something in pony.”

“What.” Mark, halfway to putting his helmet assembly over his head, paused. “You actually want me to say something in your language. And, if this works, whatever obscene thing I say, everyone and their uncle will hear.”

“They’re probably hearing now,” Starlight said, pointing to her own headset. “Just do it.”

“O-kaaay,” Mark said, muttering under his breath, “One small embarrassment for man, one giant diplomatic fuckup for mankind.” He put on the helmet, sealed it, activated his life support (which immediately warned him that his CO2 filter was saturated- dammit, he should have brought spares), and thought carefully about the various things he’d picked out of private pony gabbles over the months. “Comm check… I am Mark Watney. Give me to but princess.”

There was a bit of laughter over the channel, followed by a deep female voice saying what Mark made out as, “Don’t worry, the butt princess is ready and eager to meet you,” followed by a younger-sounding voice making flustered horse noises.

“Well, it works,” Mark muttered. “Happy now?”

“Cheer up, Mark,” Starlight said. “You technically didn’t say anything dirty this time.”

“Oh yeah? Then what was the laughter for?”

“Um… changing the vowel sound for our word for ‘your’ makes it the conjunction ‘but’. Which is also the first syllable for-“

“The question was rhetorical, Starlight.”

“Suit check.” Fireball, after all that time on Mars, had finally entered his competence zone, and he was making the most of the moment. “Pressure good?” When everyone confirmed good seals and pressure, he said, “Mark, listen. Small gap between hand holds on Phoenix and ladders on Harmony. Crew from ship coming to guide us over. We use our jet packs. You link arms with me when I say. We have me on one side, crew on other. We get you across. Just hold on and be calm. Okay?”

“Okay,” Mark said. “I trained for spacewalks before.”

“Good,” Fireball said. “How many you make?”

“Almost one,” Mark admitted.

“Yeah. Hold on strong and be calm.”

It took two full cycles of the airlock to get all six of the crew out of Phoenix. By that time three other figures floated around Phoenix, thruster packs deployed. Mark spared a moment of envy for their bright, clean, un-patched space suits, which shone in the sunlight compared to the dust-covered, dust-scoured, goo-spattered garments which just barely separated the Phoenix crew from a very bad day.

Two of the figures were either ponies or changelings- the reflections off the helmet visors made seeing faces impossible. The third figure had a suit with actual hands- or, at least, three fingers and a thumb on each forelimb. This figure was apparently male, judging by the laconic voice that exchanged rapid-fire pony talk with Fireball after pointing to Mark.

“Okay, Mark,” Fireball said in English. “Follow me up the hand holds. Wossname the griffon will help us when we get to top of Phoenix.”

So, that’s a griffon.

Mark obeyed, struggling to keep his feet from drifting away from the ship, always having at least one hand on the grips scattered all over the MAV exterior specifically for use in situations like this, where direct docking with Hermes was impossible. (The engineers had never imagined a MAV being within forty million kilometers of any other spaceship after leaving Earth.) He took it slow and careful, letting Fireball set a slow pace, while the others activated their suit jet packs and floated around the linked spaceships, out of sight.

And then there was no more Phoenix to climb- just the gigantic claw gripping its exterior, about fifteen meters of robot arm, and the massive bulk of the central shaft of the pony starship.

“Okay, Mark, wait here,” Fireball said. “We come back for you.” That said, he pushed gently away from the ship and activated his thruster pack, the two control arms popping up directly under his own arms, joysticks fitting neatly into the dragon’s hands. There was a brief firing of jets as the suit stabilized, and then Fireball floated back, the griffon astronaut maneuvering to float by his side.

“Okay, Mark,” Fireball said. “You need to wait to we turn round, then let go ship and drift up to us. We be close, like two meters close. Very easy. Very safe. You get to us, you grab on, one in each hand. Then we all go to Harmony. Okay?”

Mark looked at the dragon and the griffon in their space suits. He then looked down at Phoenix, and even further down at the absolute and total lack of anything beyond Phoenix and the two aliens for about five million light-years. “One question,” he said. “Have you two ever done this before? I mean, two MMU packs towing an astronaut without one?”

“Nope,” Fireball said. Mark could hear the grin. “We going in history books. Again. When you’re ready.”

As the two used their thrusters to turn their backpacks to Mark, he reflected, It’s not like I didn’t know all these aliens are insanely casual about total disaster. And if I miss, there’s not one but two warp-capable ships right here to come get me. But…!

Very, very cautiously, Mark turned himself so his back was to Phoenix, his grip maintained by one handhold. Then, very, very gently, he pushed off, releasing his grip.

Two meters had never been so terrifying in his life. Those two meters would give him nightmares for weeks.

Of course, the forty meters that followed that, riding the backs of two imperfectly coordinated astronauts around a tangle of obstacles towards an airlock, would live in his nightmares forever…

Once on the pony ship, I got to meet my friends’ top bosses. The bigger of the two was obviously Dragonfly’s mom. The family resemblance was uncanny, except that Chrysalis has hair (long, greasy, bright blue-green) and actual eyes with pupils (slitted) instead of the big shiny blue eyes Dragonfly has. And Chryssy’s wings glittered the way Dragonfly’s did when I first met her… and she had no holes at all, except for the big crooked horn on her head with bends that suggested holes. When I got through the airlock she was ranting and raving at Starlight, apparently furious at Dragonfly’s physical condition. When Dragonfly tried to defend her, she switched targets without missing a beat, dressing down our poor love-bug just as thoroughly as our science wizard.

The other one managed to break off the chain of abuse. Twilight Sparkle is, if anything, even cuter than Cherry Berry, with the biggest, most innocent eyes I’ve seen on any pony before or since. (And I’ve visited a couple of pony elementary schools since.) Somehow she derailed Chrysalis mid-rant, said a few well-chosen words on the tune of “we’re all so very happy to have you home,” and ended by giving Starlight a warm embrace. Chrysalis actually hugged Dragonfly at the same time, which I’ve learned since is maybe the third public display of affection the bug-queen has allowed herself, well, pretty much ever.

Things settled down after that. Cherry and Chrysalis exchanged a few words, which Starlight later explained were a series of gentle one-upsmanship lines: “Oh, so you’re still alive? Well, enjoy the ride and watch me NOT take the ship into another universe.” “Nice to see you, too. Sorry I didn’t bring more souvenirs from the universe that I got to see and you didn’t.” Stuff like that. Then we got to see a ship’s doctor, who didn’t like what he saw in any of the ponies, and then we settled in for the trip to the pony world.

I would just as soon have gone back into Phoenix and asked them to drop me off, but apparently Twilight has plans for me and Phoenix. Besides, the doctor didn’t like what he found on me, either, so I got an E-ticket down to Ponyworld to heal with the others. Fortunately they had a capsule ready capable of seating seven, even though my seat was a little cramped compared to the others’.

We spent a week in quarantine, partly to get adjusted to full gravity after a year and a half at 0.39 G… and partly because, after less than a day on the pony starship, the pony space station, and the pony re-entry vehicle, we all caught massive colds. We’d been isolated with one another for a year and a half, with less than optimal nutrition and physical deterioration from low gravity, so our immune systems were an all-you-can-eat buffet for germs. Even with the best magical meds pony ingenuity could provide, it was a miserable week, made worse by having to learn how to walk all over again.

There were some benefits. For one thing, now that she was back in her natural habitat with no limits on her Phenomenal Cosmic Power, Starlight Glimmer finally got that Babelfish translation spell working properly. (Imagine her chagrin when she found out that yes, Celestia was the actual proper translation for the sun princess’s name.) And Dragonfly put on at least five kilos while in quarantine. Now, as I type this, she’s almost back to the way she was when I first met her. Her wings are even starting to sparkle again.

Also, one of Starlight’s friends, a white unicorn pony with purple hair, took every measurement imaginable, went away, and came back the next day with brand new, clean, pristine clothes. Perfect fit. She even made new mission patches for me, perfectly matching both the old Ares patch and Spitfire’s medallions. It had been almost two years since I last wore freshly laundered clothing. Putting them on felt wonderful. It felt like safety.

And after quarantine was done… well, things happened. Beginning with the first tickertape parade I’ve ever been in, even if I was riding in a horse-drawn (well, pony-drawn) carriage…

My arm’s going to fall off, Mark thought as he waved, and waved, and waved at tens of thousands of cheering ponies lining the streets and hanging out of the windows of the main drag of the ponies’ largest city, the one Starlight had once referred to as “Hair Hat City”. The new and improved translation spell corrected that to one of a multitude of horse puns Mark had begun to recognize over the past four days: Manehattan.

Practically everything about the city reminded Mark of the theory of parallel Earths. Of course it wasn’t a perfect parallel. The continents were a bit different, with Equestria- the pony nation- being centered on the closest equivalent of North America. There were no Great Lakes, and thus no Chicago, the area being replaced by a long barrier of snow-covered mountains that separated Equestria from a smaller nation called the Crystal Empire. But this city had a Broadway (well, “Bridleway”) full of theaters, an iconic bridge, and a gigantic Statue of Harmony standing on an island in the harbor.

It was New York, if New York was about one-tenth the size and full of ponies.

“Hey, look at that!” Fireball, sitting next to him, pointed at one of the marquees. The spell didn’t help with writing, so Mark couldn’t read it. “Says ‘First Mare: the Cherry Berry Story’! We gotta get tickets for that! I want to see how mad the boss mare gets when she sees how they act her out!”

Mark could just hear Cherry Berry’s voice over the crowd, from two carriages ahead. He couldn’t understand the words, but he could guess that she had also seen the marquee, and she wasn’t going to wait for the curtain to go up before she got good and mad…

… I have witnessed the moon being set and the sun being made to rise- yes, you read that right- using magic…

The mug was too small, and its handle was too big and loose around Mark’s fingers. The coffee inside was plenty black, though. He sipped it as quickly as he dared. “Why are we up so early?” he asked. “And can’t we have breakfast first?”

“Didn’t you like the donuts?” Starlight Glimmer asked.

“They were good donuts.” Correction: they had been excellent donuts, glazed using genuine sugar, with no “better living through chemistry” and so fresh they were still warm. Pony Joe, whoever he was (or was it a chain name?), knew his business. And, most important of all, they were not potatoes. “But we were up past midnight, and it’s before six in the morning.”

“Correction,” Starlight said. “It’s five fifty-eight.” She pointed over the tall stone walls, at the turrets and parapets and towers that looked like a blend of Cinderella and the Arabian Nights, glued up here on the sheer side of a mountain. “Now keep your eyes on those two balconies. And on the sky.”

Mark tried. The moon was off in the west, about to sink behind a distant line of hills. A faint glow lit up the eastern horizon, miles and miles of rolling farmland viewed from an altitude of what appeared to be half a mile above the base of the mountain.

He’d made the mistake of going out to the outer city walls when they’d arrived by train the day before. It was worse than when he’d gone downtown to the observation deck of what had then been Sears Tower. It had given him a brief flashback to that memorable spacewalk.

He closed his eyes, turned until his body faced the castle again, and looked up. There, on balconies extending from towers on opposite sides of the castle, two large ponies appeared, one almost invisible against the night sky, the other with a brilliant white coat visible even in the dim light from the city streets.

Light shimmered around the dark pony. Shadows moved. Mark looked to the west just in time to watch the moon zip behind the hills and out of sight.

Then much brighter light surrounded the horn of the white pony. The sky exploded with light and color as the sun rose, covering as much sky in seconds as Mark would expect it to traverse in an hour.

Mark found himself being supported by his unicorn companion. “What’s the matter?” Starlight asked. “Not enough coffee?”

“Buh… bwah… you know exactly what’s the matter!” Mark said. “Celestial objects just do not move that fast!”

“Welcome to Pony-land… um…” Starlight shrugged, a bit embarrassed, and corrected herself to the term the new spell had given her, “I mean Equestria.”

… I have toured the space centers for the two space programs that put my friends in space, and seen the records of their first steps into space- only, from their point of view, about five years ago…

“And this,” Cherry Berry said, pointing at another of the giant posters on the Horseton Space Center museum wall, “is Mission Eight, the first rocket to make it out of atmosphere.”

Mark looked at the design and, not for the first time, plumbed new and deeper definitions of the word appalled. “Well, first,” he said, “how did that not fall over and blow up on the pad?? That thing looks like a ballerina on point if a ballerina had three arms!”

“Well, we had good reasons at the time,” Cherry said. “I guess you had to be there.”

“Second,” Mark continued, deciding not to dare wading into that conversational morass, “you launched people in seven atmospheric-only rockets before you tried for space?”

“Oh, a lot more than seven,” Cherry Berry said. “In the early days everybody had a space program. But the changelings launched seven. I flew three, Chrysalis flew two, Dragonfly one, and one was unmared.”

“One was what?”

“No one in it.”

“And that’s my third point,” Mark said. “You told me it was almost a year before you even considered sending a rocket up without a crew. What the hell? NASA did multiple unmanned launches for every flight system before risking any lives!”

“Yes, well,” Cherry said, “we hadn’t invented robot controls when we started. Robots were just a fairy-tale, like hobbits and Expecto Patronum.” She pointed at a somewhat more humble poster. “This was our very first ever launch. Mission Zero.”

Mark looked at the… thing.

“That,” he said carefully, “is a cardboard box.”

“Yep,” Cherry agreed.

“Sitting on a big metal trash can.”

“That’s right.”

“And somebody thought this was a good idea??”

“Not me!” Cherry said emphatically. “Which is why this poster has the words it does.” She pointed to the writing at the bottom.

“The spell doesn’t translate writing, remember?” Mark said. “What’s it say?”

“It says,” Cherry replied, reading out loud, “This is Why We Do Not Do This.”

Mark looked at the poster again. “That’s a good name,” he said. “That’s a very good name.”

Dragonfly poked her head into the museum area. “Are you two still here in Boringsville?” she asked. “Come on, I’ve been waiting a year and a half for my turn on the Fun Machine! Let’s go already!!”

To be fair, the Fun Machine was pretty nice, although I don’t get the same absolute pleasure the changelings seem to. Apparently it’s a changeling trait to really love free fall and high winds.

Anyway, after that I visited Cherry and Starlight’s home town and met the greatest pony heroes ever- not that I wasn’t warned…

After a delicious pancake breakfast in Twilight Sparkle’s castle, the astronauts went out to spend the day in Ponyville, Mark leaned over to Starlight and whispered, “That’s the fourth time I’ve seen that pink pony with the goofy hair spying on me.”

“Just ignore her,” Starlight said. “That’s Pinkie Pie, and there’s nothing you can do about her. At some point in the next hour a surprise party is going to happen. It’s inevitable.”

“Relax,” Cherry Berry added. “Pinkie’s parties are always great. You’ll like it.”

“Okay, but what about the orange pony with the poofy black hair?” Mark said. “I’ve seen him twice. The one carrying a rubber chicken.”

“Really?” Fireball asked, actually smiling. “That’s Cheese Sandwich. He actually threw me a party once for my molt. It was just him, me, and the three monsters trying to eat me, but we all had a blast!”

“Really?” Spitfire asked. “How long ago was that?”

“Maybe ten years, little more,” Fireball said. “He was just starting out, I think. Only got better since.”

“So both Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich are doing a surprise party for Mark?” Starlight said.

“For all of us,” Dragonfly pointed out. “Pinkie did promise us all our missed birthdays. Pinkie promised.”

Somewhere in the background, a tuba played two notes.

Duuuuuuun… dun.

“What was that?” Mark asked.

The two tuba notes repeated: duuuuuuuun… dun.

“Don’t ask,” Cherry and Starlight said in unison.

The tuba began playing the same two notes over and over, very slowly at first, but gradually gathering steam: duuuuuuuuun dun, duuuuuuuuun dun, duuuuuuun dun, duuuuuun dun dun DUN dun DUN dun DUN dun…

“Oh, come on!!” Mark snapped. “This is music from my world!!”

A French horn played a quick fanfare in a very minor key as the two curly-maned ponies in question poked their heads out of a nearby bush, smiled sinister smiles, and vanished again.

“Including that French horn!” Mark added.

“We don’t try to figure out heartsongs because heartsongs are really personal,” Cherry said.

“We don’t try to figure out party ponies,” Starlight finished, “because ponies who try go nuts.”

And as the group of astronauts approached the center of Ponyville, the tuba music grew louder, even though the only musician Mark could actually see was a grey earth pony playing a cello…

… with hooves.

This entire planet, Mark decided, needs a ring of orbiting signs pointing down that read, THIS WAY LIES MADNESS.

I finally got to see the Everfree Forest, which is kind of like the real-life nightmare world of ponies. I don’t find it quite so scary, but there were a couple of things there which will give me nightmares for a while…

Six figures ran for their lives down the forest path. Not nearly far enough behind them came the sounds of howling, snapping wood, and crashing underbrush.

“Keep running!!” Cherry Berry yelled.

“I… AM… running…” Mark gasped. “Why don’t… we just… teleport out?”

“I can’t teleport us all when we’re this scattered!” Starlight shouted at full gallop.

Just above their heads, Fireball, Dragonfly and Spitfire dodged back and forth between the overhanging tree branches. “This is your fault, Mark!” Fireball shouted down at them.

“How?” Mark asked between gasps for air. “All I did… was collect… a plant sample! Fallen wood! With mold!”

“You pulled part of the tail off a timberwolf!” Cherry shouted. “I’m sure we warned you about timberwolves!”

“Where… back home… timberwolf… is a kinda dog!” Mark gasped. “Wild… dangerous… dog! Not… animated… kindling!” Mark looked up, tripped and almost fell over a root he didn’t see, recovered, and shouted up, “You breathe fire… burn ‘em!”

“Can’t!” Fireball shouted back. “It just makes ‘em mad!”

“Run faster!” Dragonfly called, her own breath a little labored. “They’re catching up!”

“Gotta get off the trail,” Mark wheezed. “Let’s lose ‘em… in those blue flowers!”

“MARK, NO!!”

And that’s how I learned that small-town Ponyville has a full-service, five-star spa.

Next day I got to ride in a hot-air balloon, which works a little differently than it does on Earth…

“So let me get this straight,” Mark said, looking around the oversized basket. “This balloon is going to Spitfire’s home town of Cloud Valley.”

“Cloudsdale,” Starlight corrected.

“Cloudsdale,” Mark said. “But where I come from, you need an engine to steer a balloon. We call those airships.”

“We have those too,” Cherry said. “The controls are a bit more complicated. I’ve been allowed to fly them a couple of times, but I don’t have a license yet.”

“I don’t see an engine here,” Mark said.

“Well, it’s like this.” Cherry patted the balloon. “This is my excursion balloon, the one I use for charters. To steer it I pick a specific altitude.”

“We control our wind,” Spitfire added. “Blows one way one level, different on another. Like streets in sky.”

Cherry nodded. “Most of a balloon license is learning where those paths are across Equestria,” she said. “But my personal balloon- well, technically it’s Twilight Sparkle’s, but she hasn’t asked for it back in years and years- that one’s enchanted so I can steer it any direction.”

“On calm wind levels,” Spitfire agreed. “Only works with pilot. If rope breaks on ground, it flies away like normal balloon.”

“That… almost makes sense,” Mark said. “Except for the part about a full time astronaut plus corporate executive- you did say you run an employment agency?”

“Cherry Berry’s Rocket Parts and Odd Jobs, Inc.,” Cherry said, nodding.

“But you take charter flights?”

“Well, yeah,” Cherry said, smiling. “A girl’s gotta have something to do on the weekends.”

I have toured a factory where they manufacture weather. Yes again, you read that correctly: weather factory. Full on industrial, right down to required hard hats.

(Side note: ponies wearing hard hats and lab coats are adorable-squared. Especially since, considering all the other things I’ve seen about pony society and psychology, I would never have guessed hard hats would have ever been invented here…)

“… the water gets mixed with air here and shifted to storage tanks here. By altering the compression and circulation within the tanks, we can produce any kind of cloud from fluffy white decorative cumulus clouds to heavy stratonimbus to stable construction-grade nimbocrete. And this system controls the static polarization within each cloud, which lets us vary the lightning output from practically zero to the ever popular ‘joy zapper,’ also known as the Rainbow Dash Special.”

Mark boggled at Spitfire, who had been speaking almost non-stop since they set foot on the city built of clouds. (Fortunately, the very first words she’d said were, “Mark, stay on the paved parts.”)

“And over here we have the rainbow mixer,” Spitfire continued. “Natural rainbows occur in many places around Equestria, most notably Rainbow Falls, but we use careful resource management and proprietary technology to mass-produce rainbow fluid that lets us install rainbows practically anywhere, either temporary or permanent, for any conceivable requirement.”

“Spitfire,” Mark said, “this is amazing.”

“It sure is,” Spitfire said. “Tastes pretty good too, if you like spicy things. Just a little at a time, though.”

“No, I- well, yeah, all of this is really amazing,” Mark said, pointing at the rainbow-striped pool at their feet and the transparent pipes of brilliantly primary-colored fluids transporting raw materials to it. “But what’s really amazing is how much you’re talking.”

Spitfire pointed to Starlight, whose horn continued to shine steadily and brightly. “Hey, when I can speak my own language,” she said, “I can say plenty. It’s not my fault your language makes me sound like I crashed into a mountainside.”

“Hey!” said a nearby worker with a barbell cutie mark clearly visible below his lab coat. “I only did that nine times!”

“Anyway, let’s check out the planning office,” Spitfire said. “Cloudsdale Central Planning sends out weather schedules to all the districts of Equestria and even beyond. They also dispatch first response units, including my Wonderbolts, for all weather-related-“

“Wait a minute, Spitfire.” Mark pointed at another lab-coated, hard-hatted pegasus, who was pushing a large metal barrel across the factory floor on a two-wheeled dolly. “What’s he doing?”

“Dunno,” Spitfire said. “Let’s ask.” She flapped over to him, obviously laboring a bit due to her still not fully regrown feathers, and said, “Hey, buddy. What’s with the barrel?”

“Cleaning out Rainbow Mixer #3,” the worker said. “See for yourself.” He lifted the lid, showing that the barrel was mostly full of liquid.

Plaid liquid.

“Ugh. Toxic waste,” Spitfire said.

“Yeah,” the worker agreed. “At least we got to it before it went argyle.”

I even got to see the dragonlands and see a lot of dragons who aren’t Fireball. News flash: my dear misanthropic loner of a macho lizard turns out to be unnaturally sweet, cuddly, and gregarious for his species. Who could ever have predicted that?

That’s sarcasm, by the way…

“Aaaaaah,” Fireball sighed, letting himself sink deeper into the lava pool. “It’s been so long since I did this.”

“I think I’ll pass, thanks,” Mark called down from the ledge thirty feet above. Even at that distance the heat was almost unbearable for a human. The ponies had stayed outside the caldera entirely, partly due to the heat, partly because they wanted to stay within line of sight of Dragonlord Ember. Trust between dragons and everyone else was, at best, fragile.

Fireball shrugged, not having expected anything else, and leaned back into the lava for a moment. Then he frowned slightly. “This gets uncomfortable,” he said, and then a moment later he leaned up. “This gets hot! What the buck?” He splashed his way out of the pool, landing on the edge of the lava and shaking off the already hardening crusts from his body. “What goes on? Am I gonna molt? I did that already!”

“You okay down there?” Mark asked.

“I’m fine,” Fireball growled. “Just something else to thank Mars for.”

“What’s the matter?” a sneering voice asked in Equestrian from directly over Mark’s shoulder. He spun around to look up into golden eyes set in a red face. The dragon attached to the face was about Fireball’s height, possibly a hair shorter, but stouter. And all the machismo and arrogance Mark remembered from Fireball’s first days in the Hab combined in the new dragon’s attitude with a more than healthy dose of contempt. “Big space hero Fireball can’t handle a little heat?”

“Get bent, Garble,” Fireball snarled in the same language, slowly flapping his wings to rise up to the ledge that ran around the inner volcano rim.

“I always said hanging around ponies and bugs would make you soft,” Garble sneered, stepping around behind Mark. One clawed hand came down on Mark’s shoulder- hard. “But now you’re hanging out with monkeys? You’ve really hit bottom, Fireball.”

A flare of flame escaped Fireball’s nostrils. His eyes narrowed. In a soft growl that made Mark, despite a year and a half living with the dragon, shudder from head to toe and clench his sphincters for control, the white dragon said, “Take your claw off Mark Watney.”

“Who’s Mark Watney?” Garble sneered, squeezing Mark’s shoulder. The tips of his claws began to dig into his skin through his jumpsuit. “All I see here’s this stupid trained monkey.”

Fireball’s nostrils flared again. “Mark Watney saved my life,” he growled, even more softly. “He saved us from dying on a world with almost no air, no heat, and absolutely no magic. He found a way to grow food there. He built a machine that took us to a place with an escape ship. He saved the ship from the same kind of disaster that made us crash in the first place.”

“Big deal,” Garble sneered.

“Yes big deal,” Fireball said in the same soft, dangerous tones. “Mark Watney flew from his world to another without any magic, He survived explosions and air blowouts. He ate the same horrible food every day for almost a year so me and my friends would have something to eat at all. Now he’s here, on his second alien world. How many have you been to?” He took a deep breath, which made the flames rising from his nostrils flare brighter. “What lives have you saved? What have you ever done, Garble? In all your life, what have you ever accomplished? Name one thing. One.”

“Hey, I done stuff,” Garble protested.

“Name one thing,” Fireball hissed.

“Well…”

Mark held his tongue (partly because, without Starlight around to run the translation spell, his attempts at speaking pony would make things worse instantly). He really wished Fireball would end this. The more he made Garble squirm, the tighter the red dragon’s claws dug in.

“Nothing? Then take your claws off Mark Watney. And go find something that makes your life worth one-tenth of his, you eggsucking piece of-“

“Hey, calm down, calm down, Fireball!” The pain in Mark’s shoulder almost went away, except for the scratches under his clothes. “I was just playing, you know?”

“I’m not,” Fireball hissed. “Get lost.”

There was a frantic flapping of leathery wings. When Mark turned around, there was no longer a red dragon behind him. “Hey, thanks,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “But why didn’t you tell him all the stuff you did?”

The corner of Fireball’s mouth turned up. “I still got some doing to do,” he said.

And I’ve been someplace that I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone else about, under any circumstances. Considering what happened, I’m just as happy to keep quiet…

A lanky lavender figure tumbled out of one of the mirrors below the Wondercolts statue in front of Canterlot High School. Sunset Shimmer stood close enough that it took only a couple of steps for her to come over and help the new arrival to her feet. “Hi, Twilight,” she said. “So why did you ask me to meet you here?”

“Well,” Twilight Sparkle said, “remember that other world I told you about? The human world that’s different from this one, with no duplicates and different continents and things?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Sunset said. “And our Twilight is still touchy about the subject after you told us to stop poking at that space probe of yours.”

“Well,” Twilight said, “what with one thing and another, we have one of those humans on our world. As a human.”

“Really?” Sunset asked. “And he stays human?” She held up her hands and folded her thumbs in emphasis of her point.

“So far,” Twilight said. “And that’s kind of a problem. We can’t fill all his dietary needs.”

“What?”

Twilight blushed. “We’re bringing him here so he can have an ethically sourced hamburger,” she said quietly.

“Oh.” Sunset shrugged. “Well, after all this time with the natives, it’s not that big a deal for me. But where is he, then?”

Twilight looked around. “I don’t know,” she said. “He was right behind me, I thought…”

Another figure tumbled out of the mirror portal, rolling and slamming into Twilight’s legs, knocking her into Sunset’s arms.

“You all right?” Sunset asked.

“Yeah, I think so,” Twilight said.

A male voice said something in a language Sunset couldn’t understand.

“Oops! Sorry, Mark, let me…” Twilight froze as she looked down at the figure struggling to stand on very wobbly legs.

It was a pony.

Specifically, it was a male earth pony, rust-colored with a dirty blond mane and a cutie mark of a plant seedling overlying a rocket ship.

“Well, buck me,” said Mark Watney.

So yeah, what with one thing and another, it’s been a busy two weeks since we got out of quarantine. We’re back at Cape Friendship now for more medical tests for all of us. That’s why I finally found the time to get some help from a unicorn to fix this computer. (In exchange, I had to show the unicorn, whose name is apparently Lyra Heartstrings, all the neat stuff a computer can do. She was particularly interested in the clips of 70’s television I showed her, though I am happy to say she’s the first pony I’ve met who actively hates disco. She apparently prefers classical. So, no interest in Weird Al, but I had to pry her away from the John Williams.)

Anyway, tomorrow I get to find out whether I’m fit to fly again. I gotta say, as nice as this little vacation is, I’m ready to go home. The pony planet is incredible, and I’m enjoying my time here and absorbing everything I can, but it’s not Earth. It’s not Houston or Chicago or even Fort Wayne, Indiana. And every time I see something weird or magical or bizarrely retro (thatched roofs? Wattle walls? Really?) I’m reminded of that fact. It’s getting fucking painful.

The most striking thing about this vacation- the thing I’ve observed most- is how everything seems to… well… to soften around ponies. For all the dangers of the Everfree Forest, there are a couple of places that are almost tame, like the path between the apple orchards and the old castle ruins. I’ve seen a pegasus plow into the ground at hundreds of miles per hour and walk it off. I’ve seen a swarm of angry wasps get talked down by a sweet yellow pony with pink hair. And I’ve seen farmer ponies that completely justify Cherry’s claims that she’s no farmer. Everything seems to want to cooperate with the ponies, even their predators, in a bizarre way.

I now understand a bit why the ponies are a lot more casual about lethal danger than NASA. But, at the same time, I’m beginning to wonder if our survival doesn’t owe something to pony softness. Maybe this effect carried over to our world. Did our universe, hostile as it is, feel a little sorry for them? Did they make puppy-dog eyes at reality, and have it work?

That’s what I’m thinking about: ponies making sad eyes to get entropy to change its mind, and going home. Not in that order of priority.

Author's Note

I think there's only four chapters left. I'm not sure yet, and won't be until they're written, but that's what it feels like.

EDIT: I fully intend to go see "First Man" in theaters. I'm bemused by one reviewer slamming the movie because "Ryan Gosling doesn't give any emotion in his portrayal of Armstrong." Dude... that's what Neil Armstrong was REALLY LIKE.

Phoenix Day 23

The six astronauts, having spent the morning undergoing a battery of medical tests, sat in Cape Friendship’s cafeteria, eating lunch.

“Cherries again??” Starlight Glimmer asked as Cherry Berry, last of the group, walked over to the table, tray in her teeth.

“Cherries still,” Cherry replied as soon as she set the tray down. The meal, indeed, was the Cherry Berry Special, a combination Cherry had apparently ordered often enough before the last flight of Amicitas that it had been permanently added to the cafeteria menu. Diced cherry salad, cherry omelet, cherry torte, lime gelatin with cherries, and cherry leaf tea. This fit the pattern of the period since splashdown on Equus, with Cherry Berry ordering any and every cherry option on the menu wherever they went, if cherries were to be had at all.

“I hate to say it,” Mark said cautiously, “but if you keep this up, you might begin to feel about cherries the same way you feel about hay and potatoes.”

“Blasphemy,” Cherry said, and plunged her muzzle into the fruit salad.

“I am ready,” the ESA flight surgeon reported, “to give the results of today’s tests.”

The audience sat at a conference table, all three of them. On one end, Twilight Sparkle; on the other end, Chrysalis; and in the middle, Celestia, present as the eldest of the alicorn princesses and, as such, the highest ranking ruler of Equestria.

The doctor flipped a page on his clipboard. “All the subjects have suffered significant bone and muscle atrophy compared to pre-flight tests where available,” he said. “Messages relayed from Mr. Watney’s world through the Angel Eighteen probe have given us enough basic information to make an educated guess about his bone and muscle status prior to his launch. However, substantial recovery has already occurred, along with rapid strengthening of immune systems. All subjects are improving and expected to improve over time.

“This is most notable in the cases of prolonged magic deficiency. As you recall, all our people showed signs, from significant levels in the pony crew to serious in Fireball’s case to near-fatal in Dragonfly’s. Symptoms in the pony crew members included faded coats, cutie magic atrophy, and in two cases a minor decrease in racial magic talents. Starlight Glimmer is the exception, in that her spellcasting skills have actually strengthened to the point that she is having to learn how to channel less magic.”

Flipping another page, the doctor continued, “On to individual cases. Starlight Glimmer is the least affected by magic deficiency, probably due to her frequent channeling of raw mana as described in her preliminary report. The break in her right forelimb is completely healed, with a minor deformity which can be corrected without surgery with the assistance of a competent alchemist. However, her muscular atrophy is the greatest of the three ponies, and I would recommend therapy and a strength training program before any return to space flight.”

Another page flipped. “Major Spitfire is a worse case. Although her magic deficiency symptoms were the worst of the three ponies, they pale by comparison to her physical ailments. Her lung capacity has increased somewhat since her first post-return examination, but it still lags behind her pre-flight norms, and there are some indications of scarring inside her lungs. She’s lost significant bone and muscle mass. She no longer shows any outward signs of altitude or depressurization sickness, but I would regard her as in potential danger of a relapse for another three months at least. Given the nature of her injuries I would recommend a prolonged treatment plan and an indefinite removal from the flight list, except that the major has already resigned from the astronaut service and requested the reactivation of her EUP commission.”

Flip. “Cherry Berry is the least concern of the crew. Her symptoms of magic deficiency have almost totally vanished. She’s regained significant muscle mass. Bone mass lags, but if we can get her to eat something besides cherries that may change.”

“Yeah, good luck with that,” Chrysalis muttered.

“Our sole concern with her at this point is psychological,” the doctor continued. “She is one of two crew members who consistently performs below pre-flight norms on mental acuity tests. For that reason I recommend, at the very least, a leave of absence from the space program and recommendations for therapy. On strictly physical terms, she could fly tomorrow.”

Flip. “Fireball has suffered more significant magic deficiency symptoms. His natural strength, endurance, and resistance to damage as a dragon are all markedly reduced. He also has a minor mineral deficiency- he hasn’t had any gold in over a year- which is being corrected. But as one of two crew members who suffered no major injuries aside from environmental effects during his experience, I limit my recommendation to temporary removal from flight status. This, again, is academic, since Fireball has also resigned from the astronaut corps.”

Yet another flip. “This brings us to Dragonfly.”

Chrysalis leaned forward over the table.

“Dragonfly’s symptoms of magic deficiency, per se, have reduced rapidly since her return,” the doctor said. “However, the secondary effects on her body left by those symptoms are slow to heal. She’s still down ten percent off her pre-flight weight and shows massive reduction in stamina and strength. She shows the worst drop in mental acuity of the group, which is disturbing, because her scores were second only to Starlight Glimmer’s pre-launch. It’s too early to tell,” he continued, turning to the last page on his clipboard, “but my recommendation is, barring more positive signs in future examinations, that Dragonfly be permanently debarred from future flight status.”

“She’ll fly again,” Chrysalis muttered. “Watch and see.”

Looking at the last page, the doctor said, “Finally, the alien, Mark Watney. Our judgment is uncertain where it comes to the human. We found some cracks in his rib cage in our first examination, on Concordia, and again during quarantine. Those have responded well to treatment. Based upon the past two weeks, we can suppose with some certainty that we have no immediately lethal diseases which he might transmit to his people once returned. We already assume no truly dangerous microbes have made the transit in the other direction. He shows no ill effects from direct exposure to high magic levels.

“But even with the, I admit, limited information given us by his own doctors on his homeworld, we simply cannot make a firm judgment as to his fitness to fly.” The doctor slipped the clipboard into a saddlebag and said, “But based on his experiences visiting our world, I believe it is safe enough for him to have one more launch… to send him back where he belongs. And that, I personally feel, is safest for his long-term health.”

“I see,” Celestia said. “A few questions, if I may.”

“Proceed,” the doctor said.

“How much credence do you put in Starlight Glimmer’s theory that their home planet, which is as full of life as our own, sustains a strong enough magic field for our long-term health?”

The doctor shuffled his hooves. “It’s entirely possible,” he said. “But not proven. We would have to send some astronauts and observe conditions personally to be sure.”

“Very well. Could you indulge me in a hypothetical?”

“Certainly, Your Highness.”

“Suppose that Amicitas had landed with no operating magic batteries at all. None. Yet, despite that, the crew found some way to grow crops and meet all the other requirements of survival.” Celestia steepled her forehooves together on the tabletop, gesturing with them towards the doctor. “Based on the data we have, how long would they have survived? In what condition?”

“Hmmmm…” The doctor sat back on his haunches and considered. “The data we have is, of course, incomplete, lacks a control, and is muddied by the exposures to stored magic the crew gave themselves. But…” He waved a hoof decisively. “Dragonfly would likely have been dead within eighteen months, probably sooner, even given no use of stored magic. Fireball would have begun a slow wasting after about two years, I think, with death within three. The time frame is too uncertain for the ponies, but I would postulate a possible loss of cutie marks within two years and a permanent loss of magic abilities after three to five years.” With one final hoof gesture, he said, “All of this, of course, is conjecture.”

“We understand, doctor,” Celestia said. “Now for my final question. What portion of the damage suffered is truly irreversible- and would be for any other astronauts?”

“It would depend entirely on the pony,” the doctor said. “Cherry Berry and Starlight Glimmer, who suffered the least deprivation, appear to be making full recoveries. Spitfire has medical issues unrelated to the situation that make her example unreliable. And a final judgment on Fireball will have to be made by my great-grandchildren. The only one I’m even close to certain suffered permanent injury is Dragonfly.”

“And for all your training, you are not a changeling healer,” Chrysalis challenged.

“Indeed I am not… Your Majesty,” the doctor admitted. “But I have consulted with a couple, and their diagnosis aligns with mine where Dragonfly is concerned.”

“Very well.” Celestia nodded to a guard, who wordlessly opened the conference room door. “Thank you for your report, doctor. We will be in touch.”

As soon as the door shut behind the pony doctor, Twilight turned to look at the other two. “You heard him!” she said. “Worst case scenario, months or years! And that’s only if there’s no magic at all! If Earth has a magic field, then ponies can survive there just as easily as Mr. Watney does here!”

“I am not risking my subjects,” Chrysalis replied hotly, “on maybe! Or did you not also notice that permanent injury and death hits changelings first? No. Too dangerous.”

Celestia sighed. “I agree with Chrysalis,” she said. “I’m sorry, Twilight, but we just got our friends back. And any new ponies we send in their stead will face the same dangers.”

She bowed her head, closing her eyes as she continued, “And if the dangers are real, then what happens? According to Mr. Watney, it would take his people months to launch a craft that could return our ponies to us, under the best conditions. These are months they might not have.” When she opened her eyes again, the gentle warmth that normally filled them had been driven out by cold determination. “I cannot accept that risk to my ponies, Twilight- the risk that they again might be in deadly peril where none of us could help.”

“But…” Twilight sighed, nodding defeat. “It would be so much simpler if Starswirl would just teach me the enchantment he used to make…” She looked at Chrysalis, who was staring back with unmasked curiosity, and changed what she had been going to say to, “… a certain legendary artifact that would solve the problem.”

Chrysalis snorted at the obvious cover-up, but said nothing else.

“Then I believe we are agreed,” Celestia said. “I’m afraid it will be hard news for them. They have grown close.”

“Let me tell them,” Chrysalis said.

The two alicorn princesses gave her a Look.

“What?” Chrysalis asked. “I can do tact. I just generally choose not to.” She turned her own eyes away and muttered, “Besides, I owe that stink-monkey something.”

“What is the time frame?” Celestia asked Twilight.

“Not immediately,” Twilight said. “We can begin preparations for a return to Concordia two weeks from now. But there’s a couple of other necessary tasks we need to complete first.” Her hoof touched a row of narrow rosewood boxes, lined in silk, each holding a carefully laquered shaft of wood. “And repayment to make for all Mark’s people did for ours.”

The explanation took several minutes, with Celestia doing most of the talking and Starlight running the new translation spell so Mark wouldn’t miss anything. The facts were made plain: health, mental condition, logistics, the known dangers, the unknowns.

When the words ran out, five jaws sagged open. Only Mark Watney appeared unsurprised, though his own face wore an expression of sadness to match the shock on the others’.

Cherry Berry was the first to speak, and she wrapped up all the group’s questions in her first word:

“Goodbye?”

Author's Note

Three chapters remain.

No chapter tomorrow, for certain. San Angelo Comic Con has not been kind to me, so I'll be driving well into the night tomorrow to save money on a hotel.

Phoenix Day 38

Each day Earth heard the message, always at the exact same time, regular as clockwork.

The first message had come six days after the disappearance of Phoenix and Mark Watney with only a vague, interrupted message from the aliens to account for it. The voice of the pony Starlight Glimmer, a bit muffled and nasal, had echoed around the world after its release by NASA.

“Greetings to the people of Earth. This is Starlight Glimmer. I’ve recorded this message for a space probe we’ll send to your world once per day until (achoo!) Mark Watney returns. Mark’s here with us in quarantine on our home world. We’ve all caught cold, but the medicine is helping, and other than that we’re all right.

“Our probe can only remain in your universe for ten minutes. Then it has to come back or risk being stranded forever. So our time to communicate is brief. We will send you a message on this frequency. The probe will record all transmissions sent in analog audio to our Channel Four, which NASA has in the records of our early communications attempts.

“For this first window, we don’t expect a response. Tomorrow, however, our doctors would appreciate anything you can send about Mark Watney’s bone and muscle mass and his eyesight. They’re performing tests on all of us to see how we are after so long on Mars. Thanks in advance, and we’ll be talking to you tomorrow.”

As promised, every day a new message followed the first, read by either Starlight Glimmer or Dragonfly. The first part of each message usually consisted of some request for particular information- information about Mark Watney and human health issues, information about Hermes, information about computers, and so forth. Then any questions that Earth had sent up the previous day would get answered, up to the ten-minute limit.

And then, if there was any space left on the recorder, a message would be added from Mark Watney. It took several days before the first of these appeared, but by the tenth day they became a regular part of the message:

“Hi Earth! Mark Watney here! Today I visited Cherry Berry’s workplace, the Horse-town Space Center. Not to be confused with Ponyville, which has a castle but not a space center. Anyway, HSC looks remarkably like Kennedy back home. What’s amazing is, five years ago this was swamp, and now it launches a manned flight every two weeks or so. But NASA be warned, when you come here you’re going to need to take some tranquilizers. Gotta go!”

“Hey, it’s Mark again! Mark Watney. Remember me? I used to be stranded on Mars, farming in a crystal cave. Well, today I saw another crystal cave, under Dragonfly’s home. It’s not as spectacular as Salvation Cave on Mars was, but it’s really pretty, especially by torchlight. Of course, a couple thousand changeling eyes watching me all the time is a bit creepy by torchlight. Hope to see you all soon!”

“Mark Watney here. I only have a few seconds, so I’ll just say one thing. I have eaten the cake. ALL the cake. Real, actual, genuine, zero-potato-content cake. And it was delicious. Later!”

“Hey, this is Mark Watney! And I’ve got a question for my buddies on Hermes; what kind of souvenirs would you like? I’m going to be doing some shopping soon, and I’d like to know what kind of stuff you want from the pony planet. Pass it on, okay NASA? Thanks!”

“Quick message from Watney: ponies play golf. Same clubs, same course, same rules, just like Earth. The word is even the same. Chalk up another point for parallel world theory.

“What’s more, the ponies play golf without magic. And they don’t hold the clubs in their teeth, either. They stand up on their hind legs, hold the club in their fetlocks, and swing just like a human. They tend to fall over a lot, not so much like a human. But they still play better than I do. And I still don’t see what people see in this sport. It’s just an excuse to wear ugly clothes and tear up a lot of sod and grass. But that’s just me. And it has nothing to do with me chalking up a thirteen on the first hole while Spitfire makes her birdie putt.

“Anyway, let me just leave you with the mental image of Fireball in knickerbockers and a plaid beret with a little red puffball on top. He hits monster drives, but he can’t putt for shit. Anyway, later!”

And then, one day, the messages changed: what had been a minute or so of Mark Watney became the whole transmission.

“Hello, Earth! This is Mark Watney. Looks like my little vacation is over. The ponies are currently getting ready to return me, so I’m getting ready for my flight back into space. I’m also being trained for something else, but the rulers here asked me not to say anything more about that until I get back. They want it to be a surprise. Gotta say, it’s one hell of a surprise, so I won’t spoil it.

“On to business. When the ponies bring me back, they want to put me as close to Hermes as possible. We need to verify a few things. Will Hermes’s attitude thrusters have enough juice to stop rotation for docking and then restart it later? For how long a timeframe can Hermes stop the VASIMR engines for docking without jeopardizing their return trajectory? If necessary, can Hermes dock with Phoenix if Phoenix has zero thruster capacity? If not, what’s the minimum requirement for Phoenix thrusters? That last bit we already hashed out for the Sol 551 launch, but they want verification.

“Now, to answer some of your questions. Yes, gold and gemstones are a lot more common here than they are on Earth. One of Starlight’s friends has a family that runs, get this, a rock farm. It’s like a quarry, except they actually do grow rocks there, too. It’s a specialized magic thing. I haven’t seen it myself yet, but I’m hoping to get a day away from my current top-secret activities to check it out.

“As for gold, there’s not much in the way of paper currency here. The main medium of exchange is a thick gold coin- well, gold-ish, about fifty percent by content, but it’s still over a quarter ounce of gold per coin. And it takes two of those coins to buy a large supermarket-quality apple. Granted, the apples here are the size of grapefruits, but that’s what? A thousand bucks worth of gold for one apple? I mean, the apples are good, but not a thousand bucks good.

“Anyway, I’m sorry if I stepped on some toes, but I already explained this to my hosts, and Starlight explained it to them before I did. And they won’t be letting people pack large amounts of gems or gold off with them to make it rich on Earth.

“As for what the ponies lack that we have, so far I’ve only found one thing, and I don’t think we’re going to be selling a lot of uranium to folks here. It’s so rare as to be almost nonexistent, but the only use they have for it is for physics experiments. And after hearing about us, they don’t want any large quantities of it here at all.

“Just about out of time for now, so I’ll be talking to you tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow, same Watney time, same Watney channel!”

And so it went, for a week and a half. Then came the final message:

“Well, launch day is almost here, so this is my last message home until the other side. In fact, I’m going to keep this one short, since my friends are giving me a going-away party in this world’s version of Las Vegas and Hollywood combined. Which is another flying city, like Cloudsdale, but it gets tons of non-pegasus tourists.

“Yes, I know this will disappoint you, but I said going-away party. My friends aren’t coming with me on this flight. The flight surgeons have them grounded. So everyone on Earth, you’ll have to wait a bit longer before you meet everyone face to face. The good news, though, is that we won’t have to go double-bunks on Hermes.

“Speaking of Hermes… Commander Lewis, believe it or not, the ponies both have thatched-roof cottages and house synth music. They also have magnetic tape, so I’ll be bringing a tape deck and a sample of various recordings. The ponies prefer vinyl, though, and the CD hasn’t been invented here yet, so the tapes will have to do. Martinez, I’ve got a book here all about Spitfire’s unit, the Wonderbolts. I’ve got a snazzy top hat for Johanssen and an Arabian-style veil for Beck- you can wear them at the wedding. And if anyone thinks I have those two mixed up, well, I know them and you don’t, so go f… I mean, so there.

“Finally, Vogel, your kids might be a little too old for them, but I did as you asked and brought you half a dozen pony plushies. I was even able to score a Cherry Berry, a Dragonfly, and a Spitfire. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a market for Starlight Glimmer or Fireball plushes in this universe, so I bought one of the little alicorn princess, a griffon, and a unicorn. Hope your kids like ‘em.

“Anyway, my balloon ride’s waiting, so until I’m back in my home universe, this is Mark Watney, signing off.”

And the next day, the pony probe did not appear.

Nor the next, nor the next, nor for several days to follow.

“Hermes, this is Phoenix. Stand by to begin docking procedures.”

Every head on Hermes jerked up. Every hand dropped the normal daily routine tasks and scrambled to action stations. Thanks to all the messages relayed through the interdimensional space probe, they had known that, sometime very soon, the failure of Sol 551 would be made good. They hadn’t known what day, though, and they certainly hadn’t known it would be today.

“Commander to the bridge!” Martinez called over the intraship radio.

“On my way,” Lewis said. “Beck, Vogel to Airlock 1 and suit up.”

“Already there,” Vogel replied.

“Phoenix, Hermes,” Johanssen said from her station on the bridge, “message received and welcome home.”

“Thanks, Johanssen,” Watney’s voice replied from Phoenix. “Concordia- that’s Harmony- will stick around a few minutes to make sure the docking comes off. Also, I’ve been asked to relay a message. Stand by.”

“Roger, Phoenix,” Johanssen said. “Standing by.”

Outside, the immense Concordia released its claw and gently pushed away with its maneuvering thrusters, leaving Phoenix free to maneuver in space.

“Phoenix, ready for remote docking control,” Martinez said. “Uplink established.”

“Copy, Hermes. Message begins.”

There was an additional hiss over the radio, and then a new voice spoke, one the Hermes crew hadn’t heard before.

“To the people of Earth. Greetings from Equestria. I am Princess Twilight Sparkle.

“Thank you for your generosity and kindness in helping us bring our friends home. We know you were looking forward to meeting them in person. Unfortunately, the low magic environment they experienced in your universe made them very sick, not including the injuries they suffered during their time there. They need time to heal, to think, and to decide for themselves if they wish to continue being explorers in the greatest enterprise imaginable. And we don’t want to risk what happened to them happening to other ponies.

“So we’re sorry, but we’re sending Mr. Watney back to you alone. And we’re not coming to visit you, at least not any time soon.

“But maybe you can come and visit us.

“In addition to sending Mark back with a Sparkle Drive and extra batteries to speed Hermes on its voyage home, we have sent some experimental equipment. The experiments, if they function, will tell us whether your world has enough magic for us to visit long-term. Once this concern is dealt with, we can tackle the second problem, providing a simpler, safer way of traveling from one world to another than a rocket launch.

“With this end in mind we have also sent you a number of magic wands, which will allow humans to cast spells in the same way unicorns do. Mark has tested them, and they work. Although Mark will never be a great wizard, we have taught him a few basic spells, and your scientists can take it from there.

“We have also provided full instructions for construction of your own Sparkle Drive… along with video of some of the dangerous things we found while searching for your world. We don’t advise that you go exploring blindly as we did. The danger is real.

“But we have also included our own world’s coordinates in relation to your own. You will be welcomed as Mark was, should you decide to come- so long as you use this gift responsibly. Magic has many dangers and temptations, as many of us on our world have learned to our regret.

“Use our magic well. Use it wisely. And use it together- in friendship and harmony.

“Until then, we will resume our communications via the Angel 18 interdimensional probe. We look forward to your questions once Mark and his cargo are returned safely to your world. Until then, farewell.”

There was a long silence. “Is that it, Mark?” Martinez asked.

“That’s the message,” Watney replied. “Ready for remote docking. Secondary thrusters at ninety-nine percent. Primary thrusters still at zero.”

“That was their princess?” Martinez asked.

“One of ‘em,” Watney said. “They have several. The idea is, having one queen causes trouble, but you can have as many princesses as you want.”

“Obviously they have not read Earth history yet,” Vogel said from the airlock. “Else they would not be so optimistic.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Martinez said, “but what I want to know is, how did she learn to speak English that well? How long did she have to learn it, Mark?”

“I dunno, maybe a week, week and a half,” Watney said. “Starlight was with me most of the first three weeks I was there, so I don’t think Twilight would have been able to start before two weeks ago.”

“She learned a language like English in a week and a half?” Martinez asked. “That’s scary, man.”

“She might have learned just enough to be able to read a phonetically prepared script,” Lewis said, taking her seat on the bridge. “Not impossible.”

“Guys, I really don’t know which it was,” Watney said. “But could we get this ship docked? I’ve got a lot of luggage to transfer, including a slightly used warp drive.”

“Sorry, Phoenix,” Martinez said, all business once more. “Remote uplink confirmed, beginning docking maneuvers.”

And as the MAV was carefully guided toward Hermes’s vehicle air lock, Concordia vanished.

Author's Note

Two chapters left.

EDIT: My original idea was that this would be the end of all contact between the two worlds for the time being. However, I decided for whatever reason to have the ponies use the same probe they used to confirm Watney's dimensional coordinates to get medical and other information from Earth. And then, when I got better enough to write, I decided, "no, there's just no way they'd shut this line of communication down cold."

So, instead of just having Watney appear, I expanded this scene by referring to the messages sent through the probe. Which, in turn, allowed me to fill in a couple of gaps in the previous chapter.

Later

MISSION LOG – HERMES MISSION DAY 754

The Sparkle Drive is ticking over nicely, this time at a sustainable level, even considering that it’s moving all of Hermes. We’ll be in position to begin aerobraking passes in two days. That means, if all goes well, we’ll be downside in a week.

I had a lot of time to think during my weeks on the pony planet. And it’s a really different planet from Earth. For all its nations and its many intelligent species, it’s surprisingly empty compared to Earth. There are the cities in the clouds, the huge castle city perched on the sheer cliff, and all sorts of other things.

But in a more fundamental way, it’s so very much like Earth.

I got to see the underground caverns and the castle under construction of the changelings. I rode in a balloon piloted by Cherry Berry to the pony version of Las Vegas. I met the Dragonlord and the Princess of Friendship. I got to watch two ponies literally raise the sun and moon. And I’ve eaten apples which, if cultivated on Earth, would drive every other cultivar out of the market within a decade.

And everywhere, all the ponies and changelings and dragons, and also buffalo, yaks, hippogriffs, griffons, minotaurs, or other stuff, were just like people on Earth. Some are dicks, but most of them are good people. And when they see one of their buddies in trouble, they do everything they can to help.

I’m only alive today because the people of two entire planets, not even in the same universe, did everything in their power to save my ass. The same goes for Cherry Berry, Starlight Glimmer, Fireball, Dragonfly, and Spitfire. NASA’s equipment, their work with Pathfinder, their design of the Whinnybago; the pony space agency’s magic tech, advice on spellcasting, and of course the final rescue.

I’ll probably never see my Martian pony friends again, but the year and a half I spent with them gives me hope for our future- for our universe’s future. We have met aliens, and it turns out they are very much like us. We learned each other’s languages, shared each other’s culture and jokes, and risked our lives for each other. We shared the same concepts, the same values, the same feelings.

The next time we meet aliens, we may not be so lucky. But my experience suggests that we’ll find a way. People are people. You can’t build a society that can reach the stars without first learning how to work together and treat each other right. Honesty, generosity, loyalty, kindness, laughter- these aren’t just virtues. They’re requirements.

I don’t think we have to worry about Klingons. At worst, we have to worry about us. We humans have a lot of black spots in our history. But I believe we’re getting better.

Now that I’m about to come home, after two years in space, I think I’ll always be grateful for this experience. I’ve been part of the greatest adventure imaginable, and I shared that adventure with five wonderful people. And we survived it all by working together and being the best friends to each other we could be.

I’m glad it happened, and I’m fucking glad it’s over.

Goodbye, friends, and thanks.

Mark Watney
aboard NASA exploration vessel Hermes
July 11, 2037

Dear Mark,

Thanks for your message! It’s good to know the enchanted diaries work across worlds! I was afraid the low-magic environment on your side would break the enchantment, but I guess not, obviously, since I can read what you write in your book!

My life is beginning to get back to normal. I’m not chipping my teeth with my spoon anymore, and I don’t rip doorlatches off with my magic now. I’m helping Twilight Sparkle study the computer Fireball kept. She thinks she can use a more complex version of the enchantment we use for our version of television to replicate the operating system- and even network multiple devices across Equestria! (Though we’re on the lookout in case two particular unicorn brothers come snooping…)

I’m sorry you won’t get to show us around Earth the way we showed you around Equestria. But I’m also glad I didn’t have to go. It’s been such a very long time since we all left. I for one am still meeting ponies I haven’t seen in a year and a half. Every day I look at some thing or place and think, “This isn’t Mars anymore.”

The worst thing is when I’m casting a spell, and all of a sudden I freak out because there’s not a battery anywhere in sight and I’m about to drain myself dry again- or worse- and I panic. Twilight and Spike are helping me through that, though. I don’t know what I’d do without them- ~~probably try to conquer the world again~~- .

The wild magic crystals seem to like Equestria very much. The castle is so enchanted that the rainbow enchantment can’t catch there, but my friend Maud (you remember her, right) loves how they brighten her home. Still, we’re going to keep them in controlled settings until we’re sure how to erase the enchantment should it mutate or get out of control. Discord says he’ll be happy to take them off our hooves if that happens, but… well, we’ll see!

Glad to hear you’ve landed all right. Write me often!

Starlight Glimmer

Dear Mark,

No, I’m not jealous that you have lots of sexy women trying to throw themselves at you. After all, they’ll never have what the two of us had together, will they? No matter what happens, we’ll always have Hazzard County!

Thanks for asking how I am. Physically, I’m doing better. I’m getting my strength back. I’ve even visited Spitfire a couple times so we can work out together. She’s getting better too, but she’s not satisfied. We both want to get back to our peak performance.

Mentally is another matter. Oh, I guess I’m better than I was- I’m not hearing voices from things anymore. (Though my queen didn’t so much as crack a smile when I told her about it. She was very interested in that dream I had coming out of the cocoon, though.) But… well… I don’t like my fellow changelings as much as I used to.

To be honest (and don’t tell my queen!) I’m thinking about moving out.

I haven’t done it yet because there are still some changelings I like being around. Occupant is nice enough, and Lucky Cricket, and some others… but way too many of my brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and whatever are still the same kind of monster we were in the Bad Old Days Which, I think, Are Not Over Enough. They still see ponies as food or the enemy, nothing else. And I don’t want to be around them, because I feel like I might go back to that too if I stick around.

My queen is kind of in the middle. She still talks about conquest and about how ponies or changelings must rule, one or the other, like that… but every day she asks after Cherry Berry. And there are other ponies, like Moondancer at ESA for instance, who she respects and might actually like. I keep asking myself which is the real Chrysalis… which is probably one reason why she’s a queen and I’m not.

But the biggest reason I’m still here is, I want to fly again. Even just once, I want to fly again, just to show that the last time wasn’t the end. Also, I’m curious to know if, once I’m far enough out in space, I might hear the voices again.

Yeah, maybe I’m not as much better mentally as I thought. Sane people don't want to hear voices in their head. I’ll keep you informed.

In the meantime, I’m training someone for future missions- one of my younger sisters, Ocellus. She’s very smart, but she’s so shy you’d never know it. Would you believe she actually got a degree from that school of Twilight Sparkle’s? (I can’t believe my queen even let her go! And I really can't believe she let her come back after!)

Let me know when your people work out a way of getting here! I’d love to see you again! (See what I did there?)

Dragonfly

Dear Mark,

I have a plant now. It is a cactus. I am calling it Venkat because it is prickly. It sits in my windowsill above the chest I keep my hoard in.

I am taking catchup classes at the University of Manehattan. I don’t know what degree I want yet, but it all seems interesting. I never would have thought I would find pony school interesting before my time on Mars.

Whatever else happens, when I am done here I will be useful to a lot more people- ponies, dragons, or whatever. I won’t have to settle for just being the guy who picks things up. I will be good for something. Good for what I don’t know yet.

I went to visit the bug last week. She’s doing well. We might get together once a month, the five of us. We’re still talking about if it should be Cape Friendship, Canterlot, or Ponyville. Spitfire and Cherry can’t come to Manehattan without a crowd of ponies bothering them.

I wish it was the six of us. I think I might have quartz sprinkles on my lunch today to remind me of Mars. Not all of it was terrible. Maybe you could eat some potato and think of us.

Later.

Fireball

Mark,

Thanks for write me. Sorry my English bad. I do not practice. I work on flying.

Practice is hard. One hundred wing push, twelve times around track on hoof, then fly. Still too slow. Much much too slow. Mars steal that from me.

But I remember you say: if I give up, Mars wins. So I keep work working. I will be a Wonderbolt again.

Good luck with your thesis, what that is.

Spitfire

Dear Mark,

Congratulations, Dr. Watney! You earned that degree!

How’s training astronauts going? I’m now helping teach the new generation of astronauts for CSP. I don’t know if I’m ready to go up in a rocket again yet. I’m in no hurry. I know you wanted to see Mars, but I was never interested in seeing other worlds. I just want to fly. But, because I wanted to fly, I’ve now stood on four different worlds, and that’s the only thing any pony cares about. I’m really not interested in a fifth.

Starlight told me what you told her about being a hero. It’s all true. Why don’t everybody chase Starlight or Fireball or Dragonfly? They were all more useful than me, and they have their lives back. I didn’t do anything other than survive. You could have made the farm work without me, and aside from that the only thing I really did was get the ship down in the first place.

But that was enough. There’s not that many places I can go anymore and be left alone to do what I want. I used to be an ordinary, uninteresting pony, and that’s how I still feel. That’s how I want to be again- just a pony who flies a balloon now and then.

I still fly, of course, whenever I can. I have my balloons, which you saw. I never did get to show you my biplane or my helicopter. I go up a lot just to be up, by myself (except for passing pegasi). I spent so long on Mars without the privilege. And I carry lunch. Cherries still taste wonderful at ten thousand hooves, but now it’s because of two reasons. The old reason is, they’re cherries. The new reason is, they’re not hay or potatoes.

Part of me wants to fly a rocket again. I am the most experienced pilot in our world- Chrysalis and Rainbow Dash have more flight time now, but neither of them have piloted a MAV. But I’m afraid that if I go back up, next time I might not come back down. I was stranded on Mars for so long. Where will I be stranded next? If flying a rocket means giving up cherries or flying balloons or living in Ponyville, the price is too high… but I still want to fly. I don’t know what I think, really.

So for now I’m enjoying just being home, and putting up with signing things for ponies and teaching new astronauts the basics of rocket operations. There’s a dragon called Smolder that has potential. She has a pony friend- a classmate from Twilight’s school, I understand- who’s interested in ground support. And they have a griffon friend who just kind of hangs out. He’s not a flight candidate- he can’t stand being in a closed place. And there are changelings, several pegasi, a couple of hippogriffs, another griffon, and even an Abyssinian named Tom. (I haven’t let him hear those Earth songs about Tom- it might be bad luck.)

I hope your students are as interesting as mine. I know your people are pickier than we are, but I think we’ll do all right. We’re making plans for a return to Bucephalous, to orbit and study for a future landing. We’re taking ideas from Project Ares, but with Concordia and the Sparkle Drive instead of Hermes. I’m looking forward to the mission… from the ground, I think. I’ve had enough red planets.

Hope to see you again one day.

Love,
Cherry Berry

Author's Note

Almost done (although I'm considering adding an appendix to help explain all the CSP and Martian tech in this story, considering how very, very many questions were asked about both in comments over the course of the writing).

Obviously the above messages don't take place at the same time. The first is Mark's final log entry. The last is obviously after Mark defends his thesis on Martian agriculture with alien influence.

I just wanted to give a glimpse of how Mars affected our characters, long-term.

Much Later

The cherry tree saplings stood several ponylengths apart, twenty rows of twenty trees each. In the center one tree stood taller than the rest, limbs spreading to reach out towards its younger cousins. At its base rested a small sign with six words written on it: “I AM GROOT- do not touch”.

Cherry Berry had thought long and hard before transplanting the sapling she’d managed to bring alive and intact from Mars. Her first thought, planting it on the Horseton Space Center grounds, was rejected; not only would too many tourists try to take a bit of Groot home, but Horseton just didn’t get cool enough in the wintertime for good cherries. Even Dodge Junction, despite being desert aside from her Aunt Jubilee’s orchards, got plenty of snow in the wintertime, but Horseton was near jungle. Also, the swampy ground was no good for cherry trees.

In the end she’d found an untenanted plot of land thirty miles north of Ponyville. It was the first real property she’d ever owned; she rented her aircraft barn from Golden Harvest, and the factories and offices at Appleoosa were owned by the company chartered by the changelings, not herself. It felt… odd, owning land, as if she, Cherry Berry, the flying earth pony, was setting down roots at last.

The property had advantages- no close neighbors, off the main Canterlot-Ponyville road, out of sight. It also had its disadvantages; surrounded by undeveloped land, an hour’s gallop from Ponyville, and too close to the home of Rainbow Miriam “All Trees Are Made for Napping In” Dash. But it was hers- and, also, Groot’s.

The young trees were all doing well, getting sun and water in proper measure. The weatherponies were doing their jobs. They weren’t doing as spectacularly well as, for example, the apple trees on Sweet Apple Acres, but the cherry trees didn’t seem to mind. One in particular definitely didn’t mind. Cherry fancied she could see leaves turn in her direction when she trotted up to Groot.

“Hi there,” she said. “Just wanted to tell you I won’t be able to visit for a few weeks. I’m going up again.”

Did the leaves droop a little? No, that was just the wind, probably.

“I’m not going away,” Cherry said hurriedly. “But I’m part of the team that’s flight-testing the new repulsor-launched shuttle system. The test vehicle has both magic and chemical engines, just in case. And no Sparkle Drive. So I’ll be going up and coming right back down after a supply run to the space station.”

Cherry sat down and leaned against Groot’s trunk. The sapling which a year before had fit in a human spacesuit was now more than thick and strong enough to withstand a pony leaning against its trunk. (But probably not big enough yet to withstand a lazy pegasus, which is why Cherry kept an eye to the skies whenever she visited.) “They offered me command of the moon base,” she said quietly. “It’s going to be a dry run for our version of Ares. Learn how to do it on the moon, close to home. I told them I wasn’t interested. So they gave it to Gordon. He’ll do a good job.”

Cherry was trying to think of anything else important that she needed to say to a tree when she heard a buzzing sound from overhead. She grumbled and got to her feet, getting ready to advise the incoming changeling (a) what “day off” meant, and (b) that they were no more welcome in her baby trees than pegasi were.

But the changeling turned out to be a familiar one. “Hey, Cherry!” Dragonfly shouted down. “Guess who got cleared to be your flight engineer for Project Clover!”

“You did?” Cherry asked. “Congratulations!” As Dragonfly fluttered in for a landing, Cherry reared up and caught her in a bear hug. “I knew they couldn’t keep you down!”

“Of course not!” Dragonfly said. “We had to get the team back together, right?”

“Is Twilight sending Starlight along for our third?” Cherry asked.

“Nah,” Dragonfly said. “Starlight’s going to be in Mission Control. I’m told the princess will have a list of five names and give you the pick.”

“I don’t want a list of names, I want dossiers,” Cherry Berry grumbled. “This isn’t the old days. I don’t know all the astromares personally anymore. I need records, medical reports, evaluations.” She sighed. “I don’t want to deal with this on my day off.”

“Sorry, boss mare,” Dragonfly muttered. “But… so long as we’re talking about it, mind if I slip one more name onto that list?”

Cherry looked at Dragonfly. “Which one?”

“I was thinking that Ocellus is coming along nicely. I think she’s a born scientist, and she tests well in EVA training.”

“I know,” Cherry said. “But I want her saved for later. I’m thinking about putting her on the Bucephalous exploration crew, or maybe the landing.”

“Um…” Dragonfly shuffled her hooves. “I’m not exactly comfortable with that. You know,” she muttered, waving a forehoof, “Mars, and stuff.”

“Somepony has to go back,” Cherry said. “And sooner or later new astronauts have to have their chance. And as you said, Ocellus is a born scientist, if we can just get her to speak up more.”

“Mmm,” Dragonfly grunted. “Any word from Earth lately?”

“Mark wrote me that he’s finished with his first class of astronauts,” Cherry said. “And he’s helped the Ares IV crew re-train for a return to Acidalia. The Phoenix Sparkle Drive was re-installed onto Hermes, so Ares IV should launch within the month. And Mark’s friend Major Martinez was picked to command Ares V to Schiaparelli.”

“Yeah, he told me that, too,” Dragonfly said. “I meant from Mark’s bosses, through Angel 18. I haven’t heard much lately, but I thought you top bosses might have been keeping it quiet.”

Cherry raised an eyebrow. “And you think I’d tell you if we were?”

“Of course you would,” Dragonfly grinned. “We’re old Mars buddies!”

Cherry snorted. “Well, we’re not,” she said. “But the humans have got quiet the last few weeks. Quiet and evasive. We don’t know why.” She smirked and added, “Your mom thinks they’re going to invade.”

“Of course she does,” Dragonfly nodded. “If changelings outnumbered humans ten to one, instead of humans outnumbering everything on Equus ten to one, that’s what she’d do in their place.” She grinned and added, “She says she’s thinking about doing it anyway. Not a full invasion. More sort of running away from her job.” A bit uncertainly, she added, “She was giving me a funny look when she said that, so I didn’t say anything about it.”

“Smart bug,” Cherry nodded. “Care to help me with the plants?”

“Does it involve sticking my forehooves in a bucket full of roadapples?” Dragonfly asked.

“Not this week.”

“Then yeah, sure.”

… and as Daring Do watched in horror, the ancient frieze cracked open, and where a painting of a waterfall had been, a real one gushed out, flooding the chamber! The water began to rise, covering Daring’s fetlocks almost instantly. She flapped her wings to get above the rising tide. But as she frantically looked around for an exit, she found only the sealed stone door behind her and the air vents around the roof, all too small for a pegasus. How would she get out of this one?

Fireball tapped lightly on the keys, glancing from the computer screen over to the open book on his desk. The translations of the Daring Do books were coming along quickly- much more so than he’d thought he could manage. Granted, he’d had practice, but that had been practice in English to Equestrian, and not the other way round.

Several boxes sat in the corner of his student apartment in Manehattan. They contained the first editions of the translated Lord of the Rings, hot off the presses. That had been a chore, and occasionally a nightmare, but he’d got it done, around his class work and projects.

He hadn’t decided yet what his major would be, now that he was officially a freshman. Literature attracted him, no question of that… but he could also see numbers dancing in his head, enticing him to join them in the world of higher mathematics. Either one would be hard work- that hadn’t changed, even if his attitude towards reading and sums had. But they were both… interesting… interesting in a way nothing else in his life had been.

Before Mars.

He paused, reopened his copy of the magic journal that linked him to the monkey he’d lived with for a year and a half. Mark had received a promotion: Director of Astrobotany, a brand new department responsible for developing agricultural applications for future Mars missions and the off-again, on-again moon colony project.

Well, good for him. Mark always was happier the busier he was.

But speaking of busy… it might be years or decades before the humans managed their own communications link with Equus, but when the time came Fireball’s work on the first three Daring Do books needed to be complete. The oral recorded contracts were on file with both worlds. A. K. Yearling had been prodding him, asking about progress.

And translating a text, for all its problems, was more interesting than writing a paper on the post-classical shift in literary techniques among earth pony writers between 100 and 150 CR.

Especially when he didn’t remember exactly how Daring Do had escaped from this trap… it had been weeks since he’d last read the book.

Fireball turned the page. Oh, yeah, that’s right. Slowly, carefully, he began to type on the old Project Ares computer…

“Seven point three seconds.”

“Again!”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “Major, seven point three seconds on the Dizzitron is a high mark. It’s way above Wonderbolts Reserves admissions levels. Levels you wrote!”

Spitfire grumbled, trying to hold her temper. “My best is six point seven,” she said. “And I’m not done until I match that.”

“Nuh-uh, Major,” Rainbow Dash said. “You’ve done this test nine times today. The last four results are seven seconds flat, seven point one, seven flat, and seven point three. And that’s after five hundred laps of the field, three perfect runs of the obstacle course, and an hour of cloud-busting! Even I’d be tired after all that!”

“Captain Dash, I am your superior officer,” Spitfire said.

“Major Spitfire, I’m acting commander of the Wonderbolts,” Rainbow Dash replied. “And so long as we’re on the training grounds, I outrank Celestia. Your rules, Major. And I say you’re coming with me for a cool-down flight before hitting the showers.”

“I didn’t actually write that rule,” Spitfire grumbled. “I think that was Admiral Fairweather.”

“Major, I want to see your wings flapping,” Rainbow Dash barked, “not your jaw.”

“Yes, commander,” Spitfire grumbled, and the two ponies left the Dizzitron behind and took off, taking a slow, soaring flight around the plateau that housed the Wonderbolts headquarters complex.

“Now, Spitfire, what’s wrong with you?” Rainbow Dash asked. “You asked me to oversee your training. Over the past week you proved you’re ready to rejoin the Wonderbolts. Why haven’t you applied for reinstatement?”

“Because I’m not ready yet!” Spitfire snapped, her wings flapping a little harder, pulling her ahead of Rainbow. “My speed is still off. My balance is off. My endurance is bucking pathetic. I’ve been back a year, and I still haven’t got my edge back!”

“Roadapples,” Rainbow Dash said. “You score above requirements for reserve status on every test. Your precision flying is perfect. And thanks to ESA poaching for the upcoming moon base and Bucephalous mission, we currently have two slots open in the prime squadron. So you’re not perfect! You’re still one of Equestria’s best flyers, and you’re experienced. And I, for one, would follow your orders to the letter- once you took your job back.”

Spitfire shook her head. “I can’t ask my squadron to do anything I can’t do myself.”

“OH, COME ON!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “When was the last time you did a sonic rainboom?”

“On Mars.”

“Unassisted!”

“Well…”

“And how many times did you ask me to do it?”

“But you’re the only one who can do it on command!”

“Exactly! There’s no rule that says a commander has to be able to do everything their subordinates can! You know that!” Rainbow Dash zipped in front of Spitfire and hovered, blocking her way. “Now the truth. Why haven’t you applied?”

Spitfire sighed, shifting to a hover. “Because I don’t feel ready,” she said, hanging her head. “I’m not where I used to be. I may never be again. And I just feel that if I’m not the pony I was when I left the Wonderbolts… then I don’t deserve to return.”

“Ugh,” Rainbow Dash grunted. “Well, I can’t make you put in the paperwork. But the instant you do, you’ll be back in command. The team talked about this already, and what you’ve done this past week only confirms it.” She flapped her wings and moved aside, letting Spitfire continue with the cool-down flight. “You are officially one of the twenty-four best flyers in Equestria. That means you have earned a space on the Wonderbolts- if you want it. But you have to reapply. I’ll help you train any day I don’t have other duties and stuff, but I can’t file the-“

“Excuse me! Excuse me!”

The two flyers stopped, looking behind them at the pegasus in the royal guard armor laboring to catch up.

“Excuse me,” the guard pony gasped as he approached. He hovered, putting himself in proper order befitting a royal guard. “Colonel Spitfire, ma’am?” he asked, facing the yellow pegasus.

“Yes? And it’s Major Spitfire, by the way.”

“No, ma’am,” the guard pony said, pulling some papers out of his armor with one hoof and giving them to Spitfire. “Lieutenant Colonel Spitfire is hereby ordered to Canterlot, immediately, for special duties.”

“Special duties?” Rainbow Dash asked. “What kind of special duties?”

“Don’t know, Captain Dash, ma’am,” the guard pony said. “And don’t think I’d be allowed to say if I did.”

“Huh,” Spitfire said. “It really doesn’t say. But apparently I’ve been promoted.”

“Congratulations, ma’am,” Rainbow Dash said. “Now let’s go see why Celestia wants you.”

“Crash, I don’t see your name on these orders,” Spitfire replied. “Shouldn’t you butt out?”

“Who, me?” Rainbow Dash said, putting on her usual bad innocence act. “I’m not prying! I’m just escorting a trainee of mine who just completed a day-long workout and might have a wing cramp between here and Canterlot. Totally not curious about secret special duties at all!”

“Riiiight,” Spitfire said. “All right, guardsman, lead me there.”

“Good morning, Mark.”

“Dr. Kapoor,” Mark Watney, Ph. D. (botany) replied, stepping into Venkat’s office. “I’m kind of busy right now going over staff files for the new Astrobotany directorate. What did you need?”

“I just wanted to talk to you about your next mission,” Venkat replied casually.

“The fuck?” Watney took off his glasses and waved them at Venkat. “Unless you’re talking about me taking a flight to Chicago to visit my folks, the answer is not just no, but fuck no. You see these? There are a million reasons why I’m permanently ineligible for all future spaceflight, but my eyesight by itself would be sufficient reason to ground me. What possible mission do you have that would override common fucking sense?”

Venkat didn’t bat an eye. Nobody tried to discipline Watney for his language, public or private, anymore. But the Ares director wasn’t intimidated by it, either, not after years of Annie Montrose (who had accepted a staff position in the White House a couple of months before, to the relief of many NASA directors). “We’ve completed unmanned flight tests on a magical booster system,” he said. “And we’re pretty sure we have a working trans-dimensional Sparkle Drive.” He smirked and said, “Our new Directorate of Magical Engineering is split between those who think a dimension-jumping drive should be given a different name, like the Starlight Drive in honor of your friend, and those who think the trans-dimensional one should be the Sparkle Drive, and the limited FTL version should be the Starlight Drive, because the names make more sense that way.”

“That’s nice for them,” Watney said. “But unless you’re shuffling Magical Engineering under Astrobotany- which wouldn’t surprise me, since I trained every single person over there in basic wand use- that’s none of my business.”

“Actually it is,” Venkat said. “We’ve completed preliminary tests of the trans-dimensional drive, and we’re ready for its first manned mission. And you’ve been named as its commander.”

That shut Watney up for a moment. Venkat could see gears turning in his mind; even for someone determined to stay on Earth, being offered not just a mission but a command posed at least some temptation. But it didn’t last. “No,” he said firmly. “I spent two years away from Earth. That’s enough for anybody, especially since the docs figure those two years cost me as much as ten years off my lifespan. Whatever time I have left, I’m spending it here.”

Venkat steepled his fingers. “Mark, you are aware of how much money NASA spent to rescue you? How much we begged, stole and borrowed?”

“I’m only reminded about every damn day,” Watney said. “And I don’t complain about the constant medical tests. You want a media op? I’m your guy, even if I can’t stand the things. You want a pet hero at some Congressional shindig? Fine by me, even if I’d rather be on a chatroom somewhere or in a workshop. Sixteen hour days training astronauts, training magicians, writing reports and putting together a whole new NASA department? No problem. I owe NASA big, and I don’t mind paying NASA back.

“But I am not going up on a rocket, Venkat. I will go up the creek, up the spout, up and at ‘em, up a blind alley, up on top of Old Smokey, up the down staircase, and even up the river if it’s not death row. But I will not go up on a rocket!”

Venkat raised his eyebrows. “Three things, Mark. First, I’m still two rungs up the organization chart from you, so if I say you’re going, you either go or you quit.”

“Gimme a piece of paper. How do you spell ‘resign’?”

“Second,” Venkat said, ignoring Watney’s quip, “you were personally requested for this mission by someone who outranks me.” He opened a folder, revealing a document headed by the presidential seal. “This is a presidential appointment. As soon as your acceptance is confirmed, your name will be submitted to the Senate for approval. Given your fame and popularity, that would be a slam dunk even if the administration’s party didn’t control the Senate.”

Watney picked up the folder and looked at the page. His eyes went wider as he read the short message embossed on the heavy bond paper.

“And third,” Venkat finished, “who said anything about a rocket?”

The chamber sat in a building, by itself, not far from the railroad siding at the base of Mount Canter. Its counterpart sat a universe away, in a nondescript barn eleven miles east of Osceola, Iowa. Both chambers had the same layout: a large antechamber separated from the inner chamber by a transparent wall, a retractable ramp leading into the inner chamber, which was lined by cut crystal that glowed faintly in addition to the artificial light.

In the building at the base of Mount Canter, a large group of pony dignitaries, plus representatives from a large number of other speaking races, stood and watched as lights blinked on the console in a small control room. All five of the pony princesses stood on one side of the room, with Starlight Glimmer standing next to Twilight Sparkle. Guards flanked the cluster of princesses, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Spitfire, standing proudly to attention with her new rank insignia on her blue dress uniform. The other Bearers of Harmony, along with the Pillars, stood among the fifty other ponies present, a number which also included renowned pilot Cherry Berry and a small marching band.

On the other side of the chamber, with a little space separating them from the others, stood Queen Chrysalis, Occupant, and Dragonfly, representing the changelings. Next to them stood Dragonlord Ember in full ceremonial armor, with Astromare Candidate Smolder on one side and ex-astronaut Fireball, sporting a collar and tie, on the other. Next to them stood griffons, yaks, minotaurs, and other speaking races from across Equus, with a particular emphasis on representation from the world’s united space programs.

The lights in the control room ceased blinking, turning green one by one. A moment later, the empty inner chamber was full of a large metal capsule, which floated in the air in the carefully balanced repulsion field generated by the crystals inside. The ramp was extended up to the large pressure door, even as legs extended slowly down from the capsule to the floor.

The wheel on the pressure door began to turn.

The pony band director raised his baton in one hoof, holding it up as the musicians prepared to play.

And then, with a clank, the wheel on the pressure door stopped turning. A couple more clanks followed, followed by a loud clang as something inside the capsule apparently tried kicking the door.

And then, in the silence that followed, those in the little building who could understand English clearly heard, through the metal walls of the capsule:

“You have gotta be shitting me.”

THE END

Author's Note

It's over, until/unless I make that tech appendix.

I'd intended to use this last note to plug a bunch of stuff, since I doubt I'll have this big an audience for anything on FimFiction again. And I will point to my Patreon and KoFi. I'll begin daily posts of miscellaneous writing (including naughty stuff again) probably after Thanksgiving, posted for Patreon users only until it collects up enough to post more publicly elsewhere.

But the thing is, I have to be vertical again in five and a half hours to drive to Houston for Houston Arcade Expo, so I need to get horizontal, well, NOW.

So... yeah. Thanks for all your support, everybody. Between Patreon, KoFi, and direct contributions, The Maretian has put a little less than $3000 in my pocket, which I've used to put groceries in the fridge and to cover car collision deductibles and health insurance deductibles. (I find out the final word on my heart on Tuesday, BTW.) That's your generosity at work. It's not earned money- it's a gift made by you, the readers, out of love, and I deeply appreciate that. (That said, it works out to two-thirds of a cent per word, so you got a real bargain...)

And to those of you who have been threatening sequels and spinoffs... have fun!

For now, I'm going to try to complete that Villain Crossover thing over the weekend, and then various writing projects that have languished, especially Changeling Space Program, will start getting some love again.

But first, SLEEEEEEP...

Much, Much Later

ARES III SOL 1167

ARES IV SOL 4

The Mars rover Sirius 8 (all Ares mission rovers were now called Sirius, with the already existing rovers renamed retroactively) rolled up to a well-worn hollow on the northeastern slope of the hill now officially named Amicitia Mons by the International Astronomical Union. Any tracks which might have been left by previous visitors had blown away over a complete Martian year, but the deeper ruts and hollows left behind by frequent travel had proven more resilient against the feeble Martian weather.

If a Martian, or a space probe, had been on site to witness the first new arrival in over seven hundred sols, it would have had a prolonged wait before anything else happened. Certain technologies had made enormous leaps in recent days, but others hadn't yet been affected, and rover airlocks still took several minutes to cycle and allow passengers to exit. But eventually they did: Dr. Alberto Rodriguez, the mission commander and top Project Ares field geologist; Piu Chen, a taikonaut transferred from Ares V when the decision was made to send Ares IV back to Acidalia Planitia; and Hunter Webb, the mission botanist.

If duties and the space inside a single rover had permitted, all six of the Ares IV crew would have gone to Amicitia Mons that sol. But there had been the new Ares IV Hab to unpack and assemble, the old Ares III Hab to inspect, reinflate, and re-equip with new equipment sent in special supplemental resupply flights, experiments to set up, and so forth. The others would get to visit on other sols; Ares IV had supplies for a sixty-sol excursion, thanks to the Sparkle Drive installed on Hermes, extra presupply launches powered by the new repulsor launch systems, and the unused extra supplies sent on Sleipnir 2 and Sleipnir 3. Barring more freak storms, each crew member would get their chance to visit.

But Hunter Webb had to be on the first visit for obvious reasons- to see if the cave farm which had fed the Ares III / Amicitas 3 castaways was still alive, and if so to determine its condition. Piu Chen has come as a special thank-you to the Chinese government for their help during the Ares III crisis, and also to nullify protests that NASA held too strong a monopoly on the new science of magic. And Dr. Rodriguez had to be there as commander, as the man who had trained the geology specialists of the first three Ares flights...

... and as the mission's magic specialist, having been trained by Mark Watney himself prior to launch.

The three astronauts approached the cave's airlock with caution, each carrying a large case full of tools and equipment. They'd all been instructed- again, by Mark Watney personally- on the operation of the airlock. But before they tried anything with the airlock, they were going to make certain it still functioned. They spent an hour inspecting the site, noting the thin rime of frost covering the end of the atmospheric relief valve sticking out of the mountain nearby, the three out of four status lights that still functioned, the inches-thick drifts of dust built up in the hollow the airlock sat in. They climbed up above the airlock, finding the solar collection crystals exactly as described, with only a thin layer of dust in the deepest crevices of the floral-cut quartz. They climbed back down and used compressed air to clear the doors of dust, then applied silicone lubricant as a further precaution.

Only after they had checked the door controls and the nearby fuel plant for live current and inspected the doors for any sign of corrosion or seal breach did they key in the code to open the outer airlock door. It opened reluctantly at first, but once it began moving its motion smoothed out, shortly opening wide for the astronauts to enter. Once inside, they ordered the door to close, which it did as if there had never been any hesitation in the first place. They keyed in the order to pressurize the airlock, and immediately air began to flow into the little chamber. Their suits registered the rapid rise in atmospheric pressure. as the dust they tracked into the airlock swirled in place, finding no exit.

Then, when the control panel light lit up green for equalized pressure, they opened the inner door...

... and stepped into a glittering wonderland.

The walls flickered in waves of color, rainbows sweeping from the far end of the cave up to the entrance. Thin solid strips of blue ran along the walls, dividing the light show into segments. Sunlight, significantly brighter than the natural light outside, shone down from dozens of quartz shafts in the ceiling.

And the floor of the cave was a solid mass of various shades of green. Alfalfa stood waist-high as far as the astronauts could see, blocking the view of the potato plants beyond. Young cherry trees had grown up to the ceiling along the right-hand side of the cave, their limbs stretching towards the sun-crystals above.

"Check air composition," Dr. Rodriguez said, looking around him. "I've found the Sirius 5 atmospheric system. It seems to still be operational."

"I think that's kind of obvious, Doc," Webb muttered. He pulled a piece of equipment out of his tool kit- a portable atmospheric analyzer, a tool that hadn't been available for Ares III. "Oxygen twenty-nine percent, carbon dioxide three hundred ten parts per million. Trace amounts of methane. Nothing toxic. Air pressure one point oh five atmospheres, ambient temperature twelve degrees Centigrade. I'd say it's safe to unsuit. Gonna be a bit chilly, though."

"Compared to what's outside, I believe it will be positively tropical," said Piu, who unlatched her helmet assembly first. The others followed suit, taking deep breaths of the cool air inside the cave. "It smells like old leaves," she added.

"Of course it does," Webb said. "Nobody's been here to rake up or tend the crops for two years." He wriggled out of his spacesuit, stepped away from it, and reached down to the roots of the nearest alfalfa plants, scraping a bit of soil from around the plants' bases, sniffing it, rubbing it between his fingertips. "Soil's pretty poor," he said quietly. "I'll need to take samples back to the Hab for analysis, but I'm guessing the potassium and phosphates are low. The alfalfa's a bit off its color. I don't know if it's the soil, the plants senescing, or what." He looked over to the trees and said, "The cherry trees seem to be doing all right, though."

Dr. Rodriguez didn't look away from his inspection of what had been Ares III's Rover 1 computer and atmospheric console. "But not dying, I trust?"

"I don't think so," Webb said. "Just not thriving as well as it could. The fertilizer we brought down with us should help with that. And, of course, we'll need to cut back the alfalfa to encourage fresh growth. We might even get flowers before we leave."

Piu had turned her attention to the improvised atmospheric transfer system- the line that intermittently pumped concentrated Martian air into the cave, the valve that let excess pressure out again. "The relief valve is significantly corroded on this side," she said. "The humidity of the air being released must accelerate the process. I would recommend moving up the installation of the new atmospheric regulation system."

"Just as well," Dr. Rodriguez said. "The keyboard on the computer keeps giving me errors. I suppose it's a wonder it's still running at all. It's as if a computer was left running outdoors for years at a time."

Webb had begun working his way around the left side of the cave, in the narrow gap between the wild alfalfa and the cavern wall. "Hey!" he shouted. "I've found the abandoned mana batteries!" He reached down and, with a little grunt, picked one up. "Not even any rust on the frames! How's that work?"

"I'm told that magic artifacts automatically protect themselves against decay," Dr. Rodriguez said. "I presume they're working?"

"Well, the readout on this one is pegging the meter," Webb said. "Either it's stuck that way, or it's fully charged."

"Well, we'll find out soon enough." Dr. Rodriguez stepped away from the console and walked back to where his own tool kit sat by the airlock door. "As much as I'm looking forward to exploring this cave in full, we have a responsibility to fulfill. Let's get all those batteries together and connected."

That took a little time, but before long they had eight mana batteries connected and ready to go. Dr. Rodriguez connected the leads from the batteries to a small box, which lit up the moment the leads were tight on the posts. "Likely we'll only have a few minutes of operational time," he said. "But that should be enough for this."

Dr. Rodriguez turned on the switch, and what looked like a large window opened up in the air between the little box and the cave wall. Colors swirled in the window for a moment before words appeared in two languages: Connection established.

A moment later the projection became a group of faces gathered around a console in a control room. There were some faces the astronauts recognized: the dark skin and semi-ironic smile of Dr. Venkat Kapoor, the newly promoted chief director of NASA; Captain Melissa Lewis, retired now from both the U. S. Navy and the astronaut corps, now acting as capcom; and Mark Watney, who history would remember forever as the first Martian. But there were other faces the astronauts didn't recognize among the people.

Or, rather, among the humans. There were five non-humans also in view, and anyone who'd watched the news or read the NASA reports recognized those faces, including the large pink face with blonde hair curling around huge, anxious violet-grey eyes.

But it was the first time any of the three of them had seen the pony aliens in realtime.

"Mission Control," Dr. Rodriguez said, "this is Ares IV, communications check."

"We read you, Ares IV," Lewis said. "And we see you, too."

"What's the good word on the cave, Doc?" Mark Watney interrupted. "We've got a pony ready to explode over here waiting to find out."

"The word is good, Dr. Watney," Dr. Rodriguez said politely. "Initial findings suggest the cave continues to be viable and can be sustained for future missions. The plants are alive and, though not thriving, healthy enough. " Taking a deep breath, he added, "Salvation Base is go."

Mission Control erupted into cheers, none louder than the pink pony with the blonde mane, who spun and danced and whooped with joy.

There would be quite a bit of work over the next fifty sols: bringing in the forty new mana batteries built on Earth under Equestrian guidance, planting new crops in deeper parts of the cave, replacing water lost to the improvised atmospheric control system, replacing that system with a specially designed atmospheric regulator, and- at the very end of the mission- installing The Mirror. Designed on Earth (and deliberately using much different methods than the molecule-scrambling life support crystals), The Mirror formed one end of a portal which would allow new astronauts to travel between the planets in a single step. At the end of the work, the cave would become Salvation Base, the first permanent base on Mars, and the stepping-off point for all post-Ares Mars exploration and conquest.

Of course, travel in the other direction via The Mirror would require weeks if not months of recharge time for the batteries, so Ares IV would return to Earth on Hermes... launching in the same newly-designed MSS (Mars Shuttle System) which replaced both MAV and MDV. By using a variant of the pony life support crystals to transmit fuel and oxidizer to the ship- the triply-redundant crystals kept well away from each other and from the reaction chamber- the new design did away with the weight of both, allowing the same ship to be used for descent and ascent while, at the same time, allowing larger payloads in both directions.

Massive changes had happened in two years... and yet the MSS was already obsolescent thanks not just to the Mirror but also to other advances coming from magic. Hermes itself was obsolete, and after Ares VI it would be decommissioned, turned into the core of a new space station somewhere in Earth, Mars, or lunar orbit. And as Sparkle Drive technology experiments continued, before long humanity would be able to take the next step to the outer solar system, and then to the stars, using the pony universe, with its limitless mana supply, as a free-fuel shortcut between points in Earth's universe.

And the advances in technology hardly went in one direction- as witness the presence of three ponies, a changeling and a dragon in Houston. Just as the frontiers were opening for humanity, so also were they opening for the races of Equus. They had their own universe to explore, and at the same time the mysteries of a homeworld that, by Earth standards, remained mostly empty and unexplored.

So much had changed. So much would continue to change.

... and yet, a voice none of the three Ares IV astronauts could hear proclaimed, Today, I am still here.

Author's Note

Happy April Fool's Day.

Except, this chapter isn't a joke. This is the "what happened?" you all requested.

I was prompted to write this when I went looking on derpiboru for images for the header for a new group I'm working on, and encountered what I devoutly hope is their idea of an April Fool's joke (or, at least, a one-day protest against the new European Union copyright laws). I saw that, gave it a moment's thought, and decided: Today's the day.

Of course, the fact that I spent most of today working on my income taxes, and that tomorrow I have to file my property tax rendition with the local appraisal district, also had something to do with it. (Plug Patreon, plug Ko-Fi, plug direct PayPal donations...)

Repeat: this chapter isn't a joke, and it's not going to be gone April 2. But it is- I hope- the very, very, VERY last writing I'll do on this project.

Now back to working on Haycartes' Pluperfect Method, if you hadn't heard about my current (almost) daily writing attempt...

OH- and sorry I couldn't fit Sojourner in here. It just didn't work. I feel guilty even giving the cave its voice without Dragonfly around to maybe be imagining it. But it's still running on its new batteries and wiring, taking pictures of rocks and being useful, which is as close as a rover can get to being happy.

Foreword

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic developed for television by Lauren Faust
The Martian written by Andy Weir
No ownership is claimed to either property.

DEDICATION

To Admiral Biscuit, who made me say, "I want to try that"...

and to Honda, for making a van that got over 300,000 miles before costing me enough money that it became urgently required that I "try that."

NOTES ON THE STORY

This story assumes a basic working knowledge of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the world therein. Most of the series is canonical to this story, with a few specific exceptions (most notably the Season Six finale). The comics and other ephemera are not canonical to this story.

This story occurs subsequent to the planned conclusion of Changeling Space Program. However, it was written not only to make it unnecessary to read that work but to actively avoid whenever possible spoilers for the planned conclusion of that story.

Likewise, this story was written to reduce the need to be familiar with Andy Weir's The Martian. (The original novel was the primary source for this story, with the movie used only for select details.) However, reading the novel is still strongly recommended for two reasons. First, reading the novel allows the reader to compare and contrast the altered and parallel situations between the two scenarios- Mark Watney alone and Mark Watney with visitors from a magical world. Second, on a great many occasions I deliberately avoided scenes which would have constituted either a direct repeat or a direct re-write of scenes extant in the novel. Although over three times the length of Weir's work, The Maretian is by no means a complete chronicle of the events that take place within its span, and reading the original book will help the reader fill in some gaps left by my decision not to redo what had been done.

WITH THANKS TO:

The readers (who enthusiastically called my attention to the handful of typos I let slip through each chapter while under the deadline gun and who debated points of technology and magic up one side and down the other);

The scientists of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories, whose work with various Martian missions provided almost all we know about the second most habitable planet in the solar system;

Evening Star and the late HarmonyPony on YouTube, who along with Kevin MacLeod provided much of the soundtrack used to aid in concentration while I was writing this; and

the late Douglas Adams, who along with Terry Pratchett and Lois McMaster Bujold is possibly the most influential author on my own writing style, and whose sense of both humor and adventure strongly influenced this work.

AND SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Canary in the Coal Mine, and his deep pockets.

Author's Note

AND ONE FINAL WARNING

Expect a hell of a lot of these, split half between explaining the material and detailing the trials and tribulations I was undergoing at the time of original writing. A couple of the notes ended up longer than the chapters they were for.

Sol 11

“Let’s make this fast,” Annie Montrose growled as she stepped into Teddy Sanders’ office. “I’ve got five cable news networks demanding hourly updates, never mind all the print and web outlets. And in case you haven’t noticed, we are getting totally fucked out there.”

Teddy tugged a corner of his desk blotter, trying to remove a slight crease from it. “That’s out of our control,” he said. “All we can do is deal with the situation as it is.”

Dr. Venkat Kapoor, leaning against the wall in one corner of the room, ignored Annie’s usual profane complaints about the difficulty of her job. His focus was on Mindy Park, who sat in one of the plush guest chairs and tried to fold herself into nonexistence.

Mindy had been the first one in satellite control to spot the UFO in one frame of satellite coverage of Mars during the abort. Rather than go through normal channels, which could have taken days or even weeks, she’d jumped six levels of management and contacted him directly, just in time to stop Hermes from breaking orbit. And that had led to the new, and even more exciting, images…

That kind of initiative in a young employee, Venkat thought, deserved reward. And the proper reward for a job well done in a government bureaucracy was… well, an even tougher job, and one you almost certainly didn’t want.

Welcome to the big leagues, Ms. Park. Let’s see how you do.

“How is our message performing with the public right now?” Teddy asked Annie.

“How the fuck do you think?” Annie retorted. “We’re a fucking laughingstock. Even the most shit-for-brains gomer from East Armpit, Wyoming knows there’s not the slightest possibility that Russia or China got a ship to Mars without anybody knowing! Right now we’re the only people in the world who don’t think it’s aliens! Even the conspiracy nutjobs think the aliens have been there all along and we've been keeping them secret until now!” She ran her hands through her hair from frustration. “Christ, I miss the good old days when we could wave a wand and say those magic fucking words, ‘national security,’ and hush up anything we fucking well wanted to!”

“That was then and this is now,” Teddy replied. “What about Watney? We still don’t know for certain that’s him down there. An alien might be using his suit as a spare. And Hermes only caught him outside the Hab or rover once. The satellites can’t see him as anything more than a dot.”

“You have to admit, Annie,” Venkat added, “we’re on a lot firmer ground when we say ‘wait and see’ about Watney.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Annie said dismissively. “And I can point that out until I fucking well turn blue, and it’s all pissing in the wind. And you wanna know why? Because those people out there want to believe, Venkat. They want to believe Watney is alive even more than they want to believe in aliens!”

“Okay,” Teddy shrugged, “so we need a new message. What should it be?”

“Not my job,” Annie said firmly. “My job is to be the pretty blonde still-vaguely-fuckable public face of NASA who puts as much ketchup as possible on the shitburger before it goes out. You’re the one who decides what goes in the shitburger.”

“Annie,” Venkat asked, “how did you get to become director of media relations anyway?”

“Simple,” Annie replied. “I worked like hell, and any time some asshole got in my way, I kicked him in the balls. Eventually I ran out of balls to kick, and then I was here.”

“I can see that,” Venkat admitted, “but why go to all that trouble to get the job?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“If we can get back on topic,” Teddy said, unruffled by the byplay, “let’s assume that we have Watney and an unknown number of aliens stranded on Mars. Can we talk to them? Venkat, what did your boys say?”

“Not a chance,” Venkat said. “Without the dish the Hab hasn’t got the broadcast strength to reach the satellites, let alone Earth. And without either the dish or the array, he can’t hear anything we send him unless we’re right on top of him.”

“Aren’t there backup systems?” Teddy asked. “Please tell me this isn’t another thing like the surface EVA suits.”

“Not like that,” Venkat said, shaking his head. “This wasn’t a contractor issue. This was a design lapse on our part. All the backup systems were in the MAV, on the assumption that anything that took out the main communications system would constitute grounds for abort. As one of my tech supervisors put it, nobody ever thought someone would be on Mars without a MAV.”

“So there’s nothing?” Teddy asked.

“There’s one thing, but it’s a longshot,” Venkat said. “The rover antennas are mounted outside the pressure vessel but under body trim, for protection against sand and rocks. They were designed to communicate with the Hab from as far as forty kilometers away… assuming an intact comm array. It’s still not strong enough to reach Earth or the satellites, or vice versa… but it might just be enough for brief communications windows with Hermes.”

“Explain,” Teddy said.

“Normally Hermes wouldn’t have the broadcast power to reach a rover on the surface or vice versa,” Venkat said. “But right now Hermes still has the MAV attached for deployment as a communications relay. The crew could network the two communications systems and double both broadcast strength and reception capacity.”

“Okay, I can see that,” Teddy said. “But there’s a reason you didn’t lead with that plan.”

Venkat nodded. “Given the limitations of the rover, Hermes would have to be within about a hundred and fifty kilometers for a clear signal. That’s just too low. Atmospheric drag would be enough that Hermes would have to fire its main engines almost constantly to prevent orbital decay. It would also damage the ship’s radiator vanes, reducing the safe power output of the ship’s reactor. And, of course, it would mean putting Hermes even deeper into a gravity well we want to get out of as soon as possible.”

“How long could we sustain it,” Teddy asked, “if we did it?”

“Based on the testing we did for the missed orbit abort scenario?” Venkat asked. “Three, maybe four passes, maximum, with at best three minutes of transmission time. After that damage to the ship becomes too severe to risk, leaving aside the waste of fuel. And it would only work if Watney was in the rover, with the radio turned on, during those three minutes. Otherwise it’d be a total waste.”

“And that’s too much risk for too little reward,” Teddy nodded. “Yes, I understand now. Keep your guys working the problem. We still have a couple days before we need to order Hermes home, and maybe we can think of something clever to boost that signal.”

“We’ll try,” Venkat said.

Teddy turned his attention to Mindy. “Miss Park, it’s good to meet you,” he said. “Dr. Kapoor speaks very highly of your initiative and observational skills.”

“Sir,” Mindy peeped.

“We need positive proof that the unknown people at the Ares III landing site are Mark Watney and aliens,” Teddy said. “We already look foolish for not knowing, but if we say definitely that it is Watney and aliens and not, say, some insane billionaire civilians from Earth, then we’ll look doubly foolish down the line.”

“That’s no lie,” Annie grumbled.

“So,” Teddy continued, “what can you do to get us proof that we’re not already doing?”

“Er,” Mindy said, and then, “Well, Dr. Gaither is already giving top priority to Ares III and second priority to Site Epsilon. We’re adjusting orbits to maximize satellite coverage. But it’s very difficult to determine anything from overhead views. Even the Hermes photos and video are all from directly overhead, and they suffer from the relative speed of the ship compared to the Martian surface.”

The more Mindy talked, the more comfortable she became. Venkat nodded to himself. All of this was common sense to him, and probably to Teddy, who had held two lower administrative positions within NASA before becoming chief administrator. Annie tended to forget these details, with her relentless focus on the next day’s message. But by reviewing the obvious Mindy was calming herself down and buying time to think. Venkat approved… provided it didn’t turn into outright stalling.

“Most of our survey satellites have a very limited amount of propellant for orbital adjustment,” Mindy continued. “I’ll have to check the stats for each satellite, but I’m pretty sure that if we bring a satellite low enough that a view of the horizon can be magnified enough to show the alien’s shapes from any angle other than overhead, we’ll lose the satellite. It won’t have the thrust to return to its former station, and it might not even be able to maintain the lower orbit against atmospheric drag. Um.”

For a moment it looked like Mindy was done, but before Teddy could dismiss her, she took a breath and pressed on, rushing and stumbling over her own words. “But it’s much easier to prove that it’s Watney and not someone else wearing that suit. Satellite resolution is just barely enough to tell the difference between Watney’s helmet and the aliens from overhead. Yesterday and day before yesterday he was the only person in the rover for EVAs. He’s the only one who cleans the solar panels. When we first spotted him three days ago, he was the last one out of the Hab so he could operate the controls. He was the last one into the rover and the first one out- which makes him the driver. There are probably other tests we could think of, but the pattern strongly suggests that he’s the only one familiar with our equipment, which makes it almost certain that it’s Watney.”

Teddy’s eyebrows had gone down during Mindy’s explanation of why the satellites couldn’t see the aliens from the side, but by the end of her frantic confirmation of Watney’s identity they were up near his neatly brushed hair. “That’s impressive,” he said once he was certain Mindy was done. “Very well reasoned.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mindy muttered.

“Annie, can we use that for the press?”

“Oh, fuck yes we can use it.” The perpetually angry Annie looked like she’d been thrown a life preserver, even if she didn’t particularly care for the person throwing it. (That was nothing against Mindy: Venkat had yet to meet a human being Annie sincerely liked.) “We can use every bit of it. Miss Park, if you can go over all that again for me after we’re done here, I’d really appreciate it.”

“’Kay.”

“Venk, I want Miss Park in charge of monitoring Watney and his guests,” Teddy added.

“Already done,” Venkat said.

“I also want the gaps in our satellite coverage cut down to the absolute minimum,” Teddy continued. “Miss Park, you have total authority to make that happen. Will the Ares III MAV help with that problem?”

“Um, no sir,” Mindy said. “The MAV’s only remaining external camera is the docking camera. No magnification. It’s only useful as a relay satellite.”

“I understand,” Teddy said. “And I think this is all leading up to an emergency resupply mission for Watney. His food won’t last until Ares IV unless those aliens have a supply they can share with him.”

“We have to assume they don’t,” Venkat said. “The odds against our body chemistries being compatible are astronomical. And given the size of their ship, there can’t be a great amount of food on board.”

Teddy nodded. “And if they could contact us or rescue him themselves, I’d have to think they’d have done it already.” He shook his head and tried to straighten his desk blotter again, hands fidgeting. “I had intended to embargo all photos of the Ares III site for a year to prevent the media using pictures of Watney’s corpse. That might have killed the Ares program entirely. Now that he’s apparently alive and well, I’m glad it didn’t turn out that way. We can begin work on designing a resupply probe and have it ready for launch by the first feasible launch window.”

“Why not send it now?” Annie asked.

“Besides the fact we don’t have the probe yet?” Venkat asked. “And we weren’t even going to tool up for Ares IV presupply for over a year yet? Right now Earth and Mars are in almost perfect position to launch something from Mars to Earth. That makes it the worst possible time to launch something from Earth to Mars.”

Teddy nodded. “I already spoke with Bruce Ng at JPL. According to him, the heaviest lift booster we have available is the one scheduled for the Eagle Eye Three Saturn probe, which is due to go to the launchpad in about four months. He says it has about enough power to get to Mars right now, if all we send is a grapefruit. Everyone else's heavy lifters are all accounted for.”

“Well, shit,” Annie said. “Okay, so I bullshit the press about our rescue plans for now. I give them Park’s logic about Watney. What do I say about the aliens?”

“Tell them that, until we get more data, aliens are as valid an explanation as anything else for who’s on Mars with Watney,” Venkat said.

“But don’t confirm that it’s aliens,” Teddy warned. “Just let people know we’re open to the possibility.”

“Fuck. Thanks for the impossible mission.” Annie pulled out a notepad and scribbled something down. “I’ll have a statement prepped in an hour, once I’m done with Miss Park.”

“Good.” Teddy stood up. “I think we need to bring in Bruce and Mitch Henderson for the next meeting. We need to get to work planning both a resupply mission and a rescue mission.”

“Why not both at once?” Annie asked.

“If Watney rations his food, he can make it stretch maybe four hundred days,” Venkat said. “That’s not long enough, but maybe he can figure out some way to extend it even more. We have no idea what the food situation is like for the aliens, but it’s probably not good. That means all possible weight on the resupply mission has to go towards food, and lots of it, but we can do that quickly. But a ship that can land, pick Watney up, and return to Earth is just too heavy- out of the question except during a Hohmann transfer window. The next one of those doesn’t open up for twenty-one months. And we know for a fact Watney can’t wait that long without a resupply.”

“Shit,” Annie gasped. “How badly fucked is he?”

“Pretty badly,” Venkat admitted. “But we’ll think of something.”

LOG ENTRY – SOL 11

So, remember how I said I could cut my rations if I restricted my activity to only the stuff I needed to do to keep from dying?

Yeah, so of course I spent the day out at the alien spaceship, loading all their food packs into the rover (and there were a lot of them- barely room for me and Puff, or Fireball, or whatever) and bringing them back to the Hab.

It sounds stupid- why not let the ponies do it? It’s their food.

Well, it began with this morning’s psychic conversation with Magica, or Starlight- not Starwhite- which went like this.

STARLIGHT: Trying thing new. Your being name?

WATNEY: Mark Watney.

STARLIGHT: Mean anything your name?

WATNEY: (heroically suppressing a Yoda joke) No, it doesn’t mean anything.

STARLIGHT: Our names all meaning have. I Starlight Faint-Flickering-Light, our commander Cherry Berry. Him Fireball. Her Dragonflying. Her Spits Flame.

WATNEY: Oooooooh. Starlight Something, Cherry Berry, Fireball, Dragonfly… Spitfire?

STARLIGHT (surprised and happy): Yes! Yes, that’s it! Much is better!

SPITFIRE: (not affected by spell, says something warning to Mirage/Starlight, sounds like someone on BBC clearing her sinuses)

STARLIGHT: Not much time. Must ask. Why potty box?

(Note: I’m pretty sure, in their place, I would have asked, “Why the hell do you want me to shit in this box?” a lot sooner, language barrier or not.)

WATNEY: Compost. Need soil. I’m a botanist. I’m going to grow food. Have you got any seeds?

STARLIGHT: (pokes Spitfire) Show your breakfast him.

(light show ends, Starlight gasps for breath and trembles but doesn’t fall over; Spitfire brings one of their cereal food packs and opens it)

WATNEY: Wait a minute… is this alfalfa seed?

(aliens look blank, then Starlight takes a deep breath, and the twinkly lights come back)

WATNEY (points at planting box, then at food pack) Alfalfa? Same thing?

STARLIGHT: Yes. Same thing.

WATNEY: God, yes. Anything you have with fresh seeds in it, I need.

(Starlight falls over at this point, and the translation ends, which is good because I’m sure I don’t want to know what Spitfire was saying to me as she carried her patient back to bed)

So yeah, it turns out that Spitfire eats nothing for breakfast but a cereal that is about two-thirds or more alfalfa seeds. Not surprising- alfalfa seeds are mildly toxic for humans, but they’re a popular animal food supplement. And the other ponies have a couple of snacks and things that also use them. So we went back to the ship, this time taking one of the Hab’s O2 tanks- heavy as hell, but it only takes a little bit to fill the parts of the ship that still hold air. And if I need more oxygen, I can always use the fuel plant from the MAV landing stage to bottle up Martian air, release it into the Hab a little at a time, and let the atmospheric regulator work its magic on it.

I could have gone through the food packs on the ship, but it’s still cold as hell in there- too cold to take off the suit for more than a couple seconds. And since the food had to come to the Hab eventually, we just decided to take it all. It took several trips back and forth through the airlock, which was a chore, but at least we didn’t need to wait on that manual pump that only puts maybe half the air back into the tank.

But about midway through that chore I began thinking about something else: salvage.

I was the mission engineer for Ares III. I know the basics of all the mission equipment, and I know how to look up anything I don’t remember immediately. It was my job to repair anything that broke- under constant NASA supervision, of course, but I had to be ready in case there was a communications breakdown. And right now, with my life on the line (to say nothing of my guests) I’m seeing everything in terms of survival resources.

I don’t know the systems in this ship, but some of them have got to be useful. The problem is, it’s ten kilometers each way. That’s inconvenient and slightly dangerous if the rover breaks down. The aliens have no problem covering that distance- they can gallop or run across the Martian terrain a lot better than I can manage with my bunny-hops. For me it’s a long distance hike (hop?) with a lot of things that can go wrong.

And the rovers, although they have a short travel range, produce one hell of a lot of torque… and they’re already rigged for towing.

I just have to figure out a way to get the thing out of its hole and onto wheels. I need to think about that part.

I wasn’t the only one thinking about salvage. Fireball brought back two objects from the control cabin. One looks pretty beat up, but the other looks almost new. Starlight was thrilled to see them when we got back, and she kept poking and prodding at them while the rest of us sorted through several hundred food packs. Well, when I say us, I mean them, because I can’t read the labels. The letters look so close to Roman letters, but the words are nonsense. So I just contributed the one thing I could- thumbs- and opened the ones they handed to me.

Good news: there were a fuckton of alfalfa seeds. Score!

Bad news: by the time we were done, we’d pretty much destroyed about fifty to sixty of their food packs. That’s a huge dent in the alien food supplies. And I don’t know where we’re going to replace them from yet.

Worse news: nothing else in the salads is viable. The seeds in the tomatoes and cucumbers in the garden salads are immature. Not that either is among my top candidates for saving our lives, as water and nutrient hungry as both crops are. Everything else was cut, peeled, shredded, etc. into uselessness.

Tonight I’m going to begin inventorying my own food supplies for anything that might be viable. The grasses and ferns NASA sent for my experiments are inedible to me and not much good even for ruminants, so those are non-options. I do have one very good candidate for a crop, but I don’t have much of it, so I want to examine all my options.

Starlight really is very happy about those box-things we brought back from her ship. I tried to ask her about them, but she shakes her head. She’s not going to tell me until our morning mind-meld, I guess.

I broke my rationing and had a full meal pack for dinner. I’ve done a lot of work today, and it’s still not over.

Oh, speaking of rationing, that brings up another problem that I have: CO2 filters.

The oxygenator in the Hab breaks down CO2 into carbon and oxygen using flash-heating and electrolysis. There are similar, smaller systems available for spacesuits, but we didn’t get those. The first contractor NASA hired to make the new suits went bankrupt without producing a single suit, never mind the sixty suits required for all five Ares missions. So, with mere months to go before launch, NASA handed it off to the same company who built the rovers.

And since the rovers (for even more stupid reasons) use disposable CO2 filters, they decided the suits should use filters too- because that way they could use the same filters.

Nobody at NASA thought much about this minor issue. They were a lot more upset about the major fuckup in the suits- the stupid, idiotic safety-glass visors. Because, apparently, the manufacturer thought they were cheaper than impact-resistant clear plastic and anti-radiation overlay, as used by, well, practically every other space suit EVER. But the suits were delivered too late to replace them without missing Ares I’s launch window, and budgets and politics prevented replacing them afterwards.

And compared to the visor issue, having CO2 filters instead of a self-contained oxygenator system was beneath NASA’s notice, because the filters are small and lightweight and they could afford to send a lot more than we’d need for a grand total of ninety hours of EVA per person.

So, instead of a rover and suit that can scrub CO2 indefinitely- and we’ve had the technology to do that for a while- I have one with a very limited number of EVA hours.

Specifically, about fifteen hundred hours to last me four years.

Hooray, Not Invented Here! You just screwed me over royally.

I wonder how the aliens do it? I’ve never seen them recharge their suits yet, and they’re not tapping my water supplies for their EVAs.

Another thing to ask during mind-meld time, somewhere in between “how do you wipe your ass with hooves?” and “So, is that thing on your head a pickle or are you just glad to see me?”

Yeah, that one was bad even by my low standards. I’m gonna get back to work.

LOG ENTRY – SOL 11 (2)

I dug out Johannsen’s media storage drive. We all were allowed to bring digital media of whatever entertainment we wanted on the trip. I left mine on Hermes because, stupid me, I thought I’d be too busy and excited to bother with it. I didn’t find Martinez’s or Beck’s, but the other three left theirs behind. Vogel’s is all in German, so it’s not much good to me.

Johannsen turns out to be a major Beatles fan- all their music, plus a lot of Lennon and McCartney’s solo work apparently. Also a ton of Agatha Christie novels in text and some prehistoric computer games. But Beatles is okay for now- I just want some noise besides alien-Welsh and the Hab machines humming.

I mention all this because the aliens are starting to sing along. They can’t understand the words, but they’re pretty good at mimicking, and all of them can sing. Even the dragon has a better singing voice than I do.

So I’m working on food inventory to a chorus of “With a Little Help From My Friends.”

It’s beautiful and spooky at the same time. And it makes me really, really homesick for some reason. Which is bizarre, because when I was growing up my parents were Nirvana fans.

Author's Note

Well, now we get our first look at the NASA leadership, or at least part of it. I'll have a lot more to say (and complain) about the book's handling of NASA, in a later chapter's author's note.

Right now I'll settle for one thing: communications.

When I first started taking notes for this project, I planned to give Hermes contact with Watney for the first twenty days or so of his being marooned, using packet-bursts of data during the very brief windows when ship and base were close enough for communications. I based the minimum range on the maximum distance the rover was ever recorded as picking up a signal from, which was just under one hundred kilometers.

No problem, I thought. One hundred kilometers is the official border of space on Earth, right? And Mars has one percent of Earth's air, right? So Hermes should be able to orbit a lot lower, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

First, one hundred kilometers is defined as space because that's the point at which wings and fins stop being useful. At one hundred kilometers you have to be at or above orbital velocity to get any meaningful lift or drag or anything out of a wing. But that is NOT the same as saying there's no air. There's still enough air above one hundred kilometers to slow a craft to a suborbital trajectory. Skylab orbited at almost two hundred kilometers, and it fell out of orbit in seven years. The ISS today orbits at four hundred kilometers, and it still requires thrusters to boost its orbit because of atmospheric drag. There is no clear line at which air stops and vacuum begins. Nature doesn't work like that.

Second, Mars has a lot less air... but, ironically, its lower gravity plus its lack of a strong magnetic field means that its less-dense atmosphere goes a lot HIGHER than Earth's does. I couldn't find any easy or simple answer about the "boundary of space" on Mars or what would constitute a safe orbit, but it became plain it would be a lot higher than one hundred kilometers.

And, finally, there are the reasons presented here. At best the story would require that Hermes catch Watney in the rover. He'd have his radio turned off, because he'd assume there was nobody he could talk to. The only plan was to somehow signal him through the Hab beacon channel... which would require basically jamming the Hab beacon with a much stronger signal from a lot farther away. I toyed with that for a couple hours, decided I couldn't justify it, and accepted that Watney wasn't going to be talking to Hermes.

So, on to the Mars end of today's chapter.

One of the things that the movie actually, honestly fixes over the book is Watney's spacesuit visor. In the movie at one point Watney cracks his suit visor and has to use duck tape to seal it long enough to get to safety (and spare helmets).

In the book the visor is safety glass- the kind in the side and rear windows of your car, the kind that crumbles into ten zillion tiny pieces if it breaks at all. Watney ends up... well, I throw around enough spoilers willy-nilly as it is, so I'll just say the repair requires more extreme methods than duck tape.

Now you'd say, quite sensibly, that only a complete imbecile would make an astronaut's life dependent on a substance that can't handle a solid hit. And there's definitely a case to be made here that Andy Weir screwed up big time.

But I'm keeping it anyway.

First, about a year after the book was first released digitally, a new man-portable life support system was developed that scrubs CO2 from space suit air indefinitely. No filters required at all. So long as you have oxygen and electricity, you're golden. Which means a major tension point in the original novel was rendered twenty years obsolete by the time of the story. But I didn't want to lose that point completely, even if the ponies have something superior to that, so I decided to keep the filters. And who knows? I might find a plot point for them yet.

But second, and more important... NASA contractors have made screwups like this throughout history. Some of it was NASA's fault (the one lesson the space shuttle ought to teach future spacecraft designers is all life-critical infrastructure goes at the top of the stack, not halfway down). But the Hubble mirror? The flawed three-gimbal navigation system of the Apollo command module? Half the systems in the LEM? And even bigger space fanatics than I can think of a long list of other screwups, ranging from the annoying to the mission-critical to the outright lethal, perpetuated by a combination of tight, immovable deadlines and lowest-bidder government contracting, and above all the phenomenon Watney invokes here in my story: Not Invented Here Syndrome.

Ponies love music in general, but given how simple and frequently nonsensical Beatles lyrics are, I suspect a second British Invasion is imminent. :pinkiehappy:

Sol 23

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 19
ARES III SOL 23

It was done, for now.

Fireball and the monkey both stank, even more so than the habitat in general. The dragon longed for a nice long lava bath, or failing that ten minutes in the decontamination shower. But the alien ape, despite several longing looks in the direction of the shower stall, had made no move to take off his equally stinky clothes. And if Mark was going to tough it out, then so would Fireball. It was a matter of principle. No alien, especially a mostly furless, scaleless, clawless, tiny-toothed monkey alien, was going to out-tough a dragon.

But both of them washed their hands in the chemistry lab sink, because nobody wanted to have horseapples on their hands when they were eating.

Cherry Berry, on the other hand, was in the shower, scrubbing industriously. She’d been the only pony helping the dragon and the human with the dirt-doubling project. The others had retreated into their space suits the moment Mark had opened the compost box. They still wore them, though the eight-hour self-imposed safety limit had to run out pretty soon. Starlight Glimmer and Dragonfly had one worktable covered with whiteboards and the manuals from the ship, while Spitfire had taken her medical manual and retired to a bunk. But Cherry had been up to her hocks in very smelly dirt and… other things… all day.

She emerged with two of the alien’s stupid sandwich baggies on her forehooves. (The alien kept dirt and pebbles in them, but Fireball had seen ponies use them back home, and they were sandwich baggies. He still didn’t know how a pony ever unzipped one without a unicorn to help.) The improvised plastic booties made sense, since the just-turned portion of the habitat’s new dirt floor included the part immediately in front of the shower. While Mark settled to his favorite work table and opened his picture-typewriter thing, Cherry walked over to the kitchen area and opened the refrigerator.

Well, walked wasn’t the word. Trudged was more like it, just like a dragon who’d been told by the Dragonlord that if they wanted any more gems for their hoard they’d have to go dig in the dirt. (And come to think of it, hadn’t he been digging in the dirt all day? Fireball felt he deserved some gems, even if it was mostly boring bland quartz.)

She walked over to a table, put the one and a quarter cartons of cherries on it, and pushed a stool up to sit on. Perched precariously on the stool, which had been built for tall bipedal aliens with no tails, she opened the basket and sighed a sigh that sang of more tragedy and heartbreak than a Smoky Mountain balladeer.

That sigh made Fireball’s spines tremble. After her first objections Cherry had personally overseen the composting without more than the occasional expression of disgust. She’d gone through the day’s hard, filthy work of moving and mixing dirt without a murmur. But now she looked ready to cry…

… and oh, how Fireball hated ponies crying. For some reason it got contagious.

Slowly, reverently, the pink pony removed her forehoof protectors, opened the mostly-empty fruit carton, and took out a cherry, rolling it between her hooves.

“What’s the matter, commander?” he asked as politely as he could bring himself to manage around ponies.

“They’re starting to go soft,” Cherry said. “Look, there are bruises on each of them.” She pointed into the basket, but Fireball shrugged. Fruit was fruit to him. “If I wait any longer, they’re going to spoil. So today’s the day.”

Oh. Fireball remembered Cherry mentioning something like this at some point- that at some point she’d have to either devour or throw out the fresh cherries she’d been carefully doling out to herself. Apparently the Time of No More Cherries had come.

“Yeah, that’s tough, commander,” he said, not particularly sympathetic.

“You understand what this means, though,” Cherry Berry continued. “You were looking at the same problem until a couple days ago.”

“That wasn’t the same at all,” Fireball replied. “I was going to suffer malnutrition before the geeks found that cave. You’ll still have healthy meals and then alfalfa to eat, if Mark the Monkey there can grow anything here.” The words were angry, but his tone remained soft, and Fireball didn’t understand why. Yes, sapphires were his favorite gem and plain quartz down near the bottom, but the spice of smoky quartz and the juiciness of citrine and amethyst would help with that, and… where was he going with this thought?

“But now you’ve got a gem mine,” Cherry said, putting the cherry in her mouth and, in a few moments, spitting out the pit onto the table. “Even in Equestria, famous for its magic and wonders, nopony ever had a cherry mine,” she continued, chewing bits of cherry in her cheek.

“Has anypony tried?” As pointless as the idea seemed to Fireball, some pony somewhere HAD to have done it. Ponies were like that- the more stupid the notion, the quicker they wanted to put it into practice.

“There’s never been any reason to,” Cherry sighed, swallowing. “The cherry orchards around the country produce several harvests a year, so even in winter there’s not really a shortage. And with proper earth pony care and attention you can grow a tree from pit to fruit in about two years. Nopony imagined you’d need cherries someplace where absolutely nothing could grow.”

“Hm. So what you’re saying is, you haven’t tried.” Before Cherry could respond, he bellowed, “YO! Starlight, c’mere!”

Starlight and Dragonfly looked up from their conference. Shrugging, the two slipped off their own chairs and trotted over, shaking a hoof now and again as dirt clung unpleasantly to them. “You roared, Fireball?” Starlight asked dryly.

“Yeah. The commander wants more cherries,” Fireball said. “How do we get more?”

“How do we get more? We get rescued, that’s how. That’s the only way.”

“Don’t you have some sort of mushy-gooey pony magic,” Fireball said, making oogy-boogy motions with his claws, “that’ll make new cherries appear?”

Starlight rubbed her head. “You two,” she muttered, “you two just interrupted an important planning session about what parts we’re going to need to rip out of the ship to make the cave airtight. For this. And we’re saving the first aid kit for major trauma, which means I have to live with the headache.”

“Just answer the question, Ms. Magic-Solves-Everything,” Fireball snapped back.

“Fine,” Starlight retorted. “If a unicorn knows where some cherries are nearby, she can teleport them to herself. A really powerful unicorn or alicorn on the top of her game can transmute something else into cherries. But I can’t remember even an alicorn creating anything, much less cherries, out of nothing but magic energy. At least, none that wouldn’t just vanish when the spell ended!”

“So no cherries out of nowhere.”

“Weren’t you listening? NO!”

Fireball didn’t like the unicorn’s tone of voice, but he settled for a snort without any flame in it. Flame was hard to come by here for some reason, and even dragons were cautious about dragonfire in enclosed places. “What was that middle part? Something about turning something else into cherries?”

“Transmutation,” Starlight said. “Can be temporary or permanent depending on how much magic power you put into it. Takes serious concentration and a strong ambient magical field.”

“Which we don’t have,” Cherry Berry sighed, in the process of eating her third cherry.

“We’ve got the magic batteries,” Fireball pointed out.

“For emergencies!” Cherry snapped.

“And in this environment it’d take a lot of charge to transmute something permanently into a cherry,” Starlight continued. “And before you ask, no, I can’t make it cost less energy. I could use dark magic, but there's always a bigger price after the fact- usually that it forces you to cast more dark magic spells. The cleanup is always more expensive than any savings from the original spell.”

“So give it a try,” Fireball said. “Let’s see how much juice it sucks up, and maybe we have a solution to the food problem in general. Heck, it would be worth it to get all this dirt out of here!”

Hah. There, he’d thought of something. He wasn’t just dumb muscle. By making this about more than cherries, he’d taken away Cherry Berry’s argument about the magic batteries only being for emergencies. The food issue was an emergency… well, not exactly, since everyone could see it coming, but it was definitely the most important issue facing them. If magic offered a solution, it had to be tried.

And sure enough, Cherry Berry, mouth full of cherry, didn’t say anything when Starlight looked to her for confirmation.

“All right,” the violet unicorn said. “Dragonfly, please bring me whichever battery has less charge on it. Also, I’m going to need something to transform into a cherry. Something we’re not going to need back.”

Fireball had just the thing. After all, there were precisely three things they now had more of than they needed, right? And air and water weren’t going to work for this. He went to his newly expanded gem hoard, rustled through the bits, and pulled out the smallest piece, an irregular fleck of carnelian. It looked like a cherry, and it was about the size of a cherry, and…

It took him two attempts to set it on the table in front of Starlight and let go. Parting with any part of a hoard… well, it went against everything dragons believed in. But if it prevented more pony crying, fine.

Starlight poked it with her hoof, verifying that the thing was a rock and not a fruit. “Maybe something a little bigger?” she suggested. “If this works we won’t be making food one berry at a time.”

“Just make with the light show, magic pony,” Fireball grumbled.

Mark, attracted by the noise, stood up and walked over, pointing to the little gem and asking, “Wux gnaw hingawn?”

“Cyaunts,” Starlight replied. The ape cocked an eyebrow, then leaned over the table to watch with interest.

Dragonfly brought the battered emergency battery #2 over to the table. “It’s only got six percent,” she said.

“That’s fine,” Starlight replied. “If this spell takes more than that, then it’s too expensive to use for food.” She flipped the switch, put one hoof on a mana terminal, and focused her mind on the spell.

The pebble, clipped off the edge of one of the narrow spots in the crystal cave, danced and spun, rising into the air in a sphere of light.

Sweat dripped down Starlight’s face, matting her mane to her forehead below her horn. “It’s… resisting…” she grunted. “More… power…”

The battery beeped and went dead.

A moment later the spell collapsed, and the piece of carnelian shattered with a deafening crack. A second crack sounded a split second later, followed by tiny glossy grains of semi-precious mineral settling down from the air onto the tabletop.

The underside of a table, Fireball realized, is particularly uncomfortable when four other bodies are pressing as tightly as possible against your own. Despite that he let the monkey expose his head first, because after all, it was his space house. Let him fix it.

A few moments later the alien said something in his sheep language, and the other bodies surrounding Fireball shifted away. Finally freed, he climbed out from under the table. Mark was standing next to a storage cabinet across the hab from where the group had been working. There was a huge dent in the cabinet door with a small hole in the center. Mark wrenched the bent door open, reached in among several plastic containers, and pulled out a piece of carnelian, about half the size of the original.

Without saying a word, Mark pointed first to the hole and then up at the fancy rubber canvas that was all that separated the warm, thick air inside from the freezing, almost nonexistent air outside.

Dragonfly was the first to speak, remarking, “I, um, I feel a sudden urge to visit the little changeling’s room.” She picked up the mana battery and carried it with her back to its usual resting spot.

“Six percent on one battery,” Starlight said, voice shaking wildly, “spell fails for lack of power, and the resulting backlash nearly kills us all. I think this experiment is over.” She laughed a hysterical laugh, shoved a hoof into her own mouth, and fled the table.

Mark pulled out a camera, took several photos of the hole inside and out, and then returned to his thing full of buttons and began typing about twice as fast as he had before. Cherry, still in shock, swiped up a hoofful of cherries and jammed them all into her mouth at once. The pits came back out, one by one, set carefully aside as she chewed.

Fireball stood, and watched, and thought, for about three minutes. Then, without saying a word, he stood next to Cherry, took the remaining carton of berries, and opened it. With a single flick of a claw he sliced a cherry open, and with a second flick he extracted the pit. Two more flicks, one more cherry pit, set carefully in the upturned lid of the carton. Another pit followed, and another, with the pitted cherries getting dropped into the top of the almost-empty carton in front of the pony.

“Hmmmph…what are you doing?” Cherry asked once her mouth was free enough to talk.

Fireball didn’t answer. Flick, flick, plunk, plop. Flick, flick, plunk, plop. Flick, flick, plunk, plop.

In two minutes the job was done. All the remaining cherries were pitted, and the pits gathered in one carton. The other carton sat in front of Cherry.

“Eat,” Fireball muttered. “They’ll only go bad if you don’t.”

He paid no attention to the utter confusion on her face, and he didn’t see her jaw drop when he walked over to Mark and practically slammed the carton full of cherry pits into the alien’s gut. “You!” the dragon growled, having got his full attention. He pointed a claw to the carton and shouted, “Make these grow! Understand?”

There. Job done. Fireball went back to the lab sink to wash the cherry juice from his clawtips.

Stupid pony crying disease, he thought. It’s contagious even when they DON’T cry.

Author's Note

When I started this chapter my only thought was, "For dragons empathy is a learned skill at best." I hadn't planned to breach the Hab, though such a scenario had been in my notes at one point- the ponies punching a hole in the Hab through careless magic.

When I discovered that yes, the chapter was going to go in that direction, I seriously considered having the hab blow at this point. I eventually decided it was too soon, especially since a total Hab depressurization and loss of environment would almost certainly doom the potato project if not all agriculture on Mars. So instead we get half of a very close call, and the other half is in the scene I wrote today for posting on Wednesday.

But yeah, Fireball makes a very unreliable narrator / POV. And even if he's a big, bad dragon (hint: he's not), he's still a native of Equus.

Sol 38

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 35
ARES III SOL 38

“Well?” Dragonfly asked. “What did he say?”

Starlight Glimmer tried not to drag her hooves as she walked over to the other members of her crew. Their host, Mark, sat at his worktable in obvious deep thought, occasionally sparing moments to glare at them- at her. “He’s still very upset with me,” she said.

“I could have told you that,” Dragonfly said.

“We used up most of the battery talking about these perchlorates,” Starlight continued, ignoring the bug. “He still doesn’t understand why I didn’t know what they were. The translation spell isn’t good enough to explain.” She allowed herself a moment of grumpiness as she added, “Which is why all of us should be trying to learn his language and not just me, right?”

“Why didn’t you know?” Dragonfly asked. “I knew! So did Cherry! We had to know! We built I don’t know how many solid rocket boosters using the stuff!”

“And we bought them from you and never made our own,” Starlight replied. “Twilight and I focused on magic thrusters instead of chemical ones. We never needed to know the alchemy!”

“Chemistry,” Dragonfly corrected.

Starlight sighed and again, ignored the changeling. “Of course Twilight probably knew. She knows everything. She went to Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns! But I’m a specialist, not a generalist! I know magic because I was a bitter little filly obsessed with changing the world! The only chemistry I know is what I picked up in the margins of obscure magic texts!”

“Calm down,” Cherry Berry said, putting a hoof on Starlight’s shoulder. “We’re not blaming you, and Mark will forgive you soon enough.” After another comforting rub, Cherry Berry added, “So what do we do about it?”

“He doesn’t know yet,” Starlight said. “He says none of his tools are safe to handle the stuff.”

“Yeah,” Dragonfly added. “When we handle the stuff, we don’t use the pure chemical- only about 70% concentration at most. Even then you have to store it in non-reactive metal containers until you mix it with the fuel. And it has to be done in absolutely dry conditions.” The changeling chuckled as she added, “Not exactly tough to do in Appleoosa.”

“How do you clean up a spill?” Starlight asked.

“For a small spill, you dilute it and wash it away,” Dragonfly said. “But you use a hose and stand back, because sometimes it’ll catch fire when it gets wet.”

“Sometimes?” Spitfire asked.

“Yeah, lots about this stuff is ‘sometimes’,” Dragonfly said. “Cherry, remember the time a drum of the stuff spilled and it caught fire just from the shovel?”

Cherry nodded. “And it only happened that one time. We couldn’t make it happen again. Not that a lot of changelings didn’t keep trying. Idiots.”

“Long story short,” Dragonfly said, “the stuff is stable in normal conditions if you leave it alone. Usually. And sometimes it’ll blow up if you look at it funny. But certain stuff will quite definitely set it off- Goddard showed us that in the lab.”

“What kind of stuff?” Starlight asked.

“Metal shavings, if the metal’s reactive,” Dragonfly said. “Magnesium, titanium, and aluminum especially. Also practically any flammable oil or plastic. And even some of the non-flammable plastic. Not flesh, but you get chemical burns if you handle it directly for too long. And, if you get it hot enough, it’ll burn itself.”

Starlight’s jaw dropped. “And you worked with this stuff?” she asked. “You sold this stuff to us?”

“Remember all those times we said we were flying into space in tin cans on top of bombs?” Cherry Berry said solemnly. “It wasn’t a joke.”

“The good news is, ‘sometimes’ in this case is ‘not often,’” Dragonfly added. “We can handle this if we're careful. We just need tools that won’t react to the stuff, and we need to keep the stuff from getting hot.”

“Well, that’ll be easy here,” Fireball rumbled. “This whole planet’s an ice box.”

“That matches what Mark told me,” Starlight nodded. “He wanted to know if I could use magic to make it go away. But there’s so much of it!”

“How big a job are we talking about here?” Fireball asked.

Starlight considered the question for a moment. “Let me get the whiteboard,” she said. “I’m going to tell Mark where we’re going. You all need to see this, because this job is going to take all of us.”

They didn't walk. In the end Mark ended up driving them to the cave, with Starlight, Dragonfly, and a magic battery riding inside with him as the other three clung to the equipment racks on top of the rover. Starlight Glimmer had the distinct feeling he was going along to keep them out of further trouble.

The first thing Dragonfly said when the six of them entered the chamber with the massive pile of perchlorates in it was, “Whoa. Yeah, you do not want to try using a hose on that.”

“That’s going to take weeks to shovel out,” Spitfire gasped.

“If we had a good sturdy wagon, it’d take, oh, about fifty trips,” Cherry Berry estimated.

“How do you know?”

“Hauling wagons was one of the many, many odd jobs I took before I became an astromare,” Cherry replied. “And I’ve hauled dirt a few times. That pile looks like about a hundred and fifty tons, wouldn’t you say?”

Spitfire shrugged. “You lost me,” she said. “The only thing I ever knew about dirt is how much it hurts when you crash into it.”

“Anyway, a sturdy four-pony wagon- a four-wheeler- will carry five tons of dirt easy, even up to eight on flat ground if the wagon’s in good shape. The only hard part is getting the dirt on the wagon in the first place.”

Every spacesuit turned to face Starlight- even Mark’s, although he only looked once he noticed all the others turning.

“Maybe,” she said. “If the magic holds out, and if I don’t collapse. But we haven’t got a wagon.”

“Hey, here’s an idea,” Dragonfly said. “Maybe Fireball could eat it.”

Five spacesuits found something more interesting to look at than Starlight.

“No, I’m serious!” Dragonfly said. “Dragons eat gems and bathe in lava. They’re burn-proof. It’s worth asking!”

“Bug, have you gone bughouse?” Fireball asked. “Count the number of dragons we have here.”

“Um, Fireball, we all know-“

“Count the dragons.”

The changeling sighed. “One. One dragon.”

“Right. One young, small dragon. With only one stomach.” Fireball waved a claw at the giant yellow-white pile of powder. “How much do you think I can guzzle down? Even Torch would have leftovers for a week!”

“It was just a suggestion,” Dragonfly muttered, kicking a hoof in the non-perchlorate dust.

Satisfied, Fireball turned to look at the mound again. “But now you’ve got me curious,” he said. “Starlight, have we got any way to take some of this stuff back?”

Starlight shook her head inside her helmet hard enough to rock her whole upper body. “I am NOT asking Mark about that,” she said. “Not in the mood he's in.”

“Fine.” The dragon tapped his helmet where his chin would have been. “Then can you bring one of the spoons from the ship and give me an air bubble?” He traced the outline of his helmet and shoulders with his claws.

“Er… I think so,” Starlight said. “It’ll eat most of the remaining battery if I do.”

“Shouldn’t we tell Mark?” Cherry Berry asked pointedly.

“He’ll only say no,” Fireball muttered.

“Don’t you think we’ve given him good reason to say no?” Cherry replied. “Considering the last two magical experiments we’ve done?”

“Look, what’s the worst that can happen?” Fireball asked. “I get sick to my stomach, big deal. As long as there’s no arsenic or mercury in that, it won’t kill me. Let’s just do it.”

"Let me rephrase myself," Cherry said grimly. "We should tell Mark. If we want him to trust us again, we should trust him." She waved a hoof at Starlight. "Go tell him what we're going to try. Exactly what we're going to try. Then, if he doesn't say no, proceed, but be as quick as possible,” she said. “We can use that magic power tomorrow or whenever we start shoveling this stuff.”

To Starlight's surprise, Mark didn't have another fit of language so bad it broke the translation spell. In fact, he didn't say anything at all when she told him about the experiment. He just swept his hand in a slow okay, go ahead motion. But even then, Starlight was pretty sure that he was looking at Cherry Berry and not herself when he did it.

Starlight turned up the magic battery and concentrated. The magic stretched, reaching an enormous distance considering the lack of environmental mana, and fumbled for a moment inside the ship. Then it locked on to target and pulled, kicking her in the gut with the effort of summoning even a single teaspoon from six miles away.

In a flash of light one of the steel spoons from Amicitas’s pantry dropped into Fireball’s suited claw.

The dragon carefully wrapped his claws around the spoon and put his free hand to the locking ring of his helmet. Starlight concentrated again, crafting a holding field and wrapping it around his upper body. Fireball twisted the locking ring open, then used both claws to remove his helmet and set it down on the ground well away from the perchlorates.

Mark’s hands moved in a series of confusing, agitated gestures. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) none of the Amicitas’s crew could hear his words or see his face.

As Starlight felt the strain of channeling the magic from the mostly-empty battery into her semi-permeable forcefield spell, she watched Fireball move around the pile, getting as close as he could without stepping on any of the stuff. He reached forward, nimbly scooped a teaspoonful of mixed perchlorates, and carefully walked back to his helmet.

Then- and only then- did he put the heaping teaspoon into his mouth and swallow. After a moment’s thought, he reached down for his helmet, then stopped, stood straight again, threw back his head, and launched a flaming belch that extended well beyond the forcefield and up to the crystals lining the cave’s roof.

Mark jumped at the sight, falling down on his rump.

Once Fireball got his helmet back on, Starlight dismissed the spell, leaning on the battery for support. “That’s all for today,” she said. “The battery might have charge, but I don’t.”

“So how was it?” Dragonfly asked.

“Spicy,” Fireball said. “Definitely not something I’d want to make a meal out of. But I think it’d go really good on all this bucking quartz.”

MISSION LOG - SOL 38

During the Manhattan Project, the nuclear scientists performed several experiments which put two lumps of uranium together into a critical mass for only a fraction of a second so they could measure the resulting chain reaction. They called it "tickling the dragon's tail".

I think I'm the first human ever to see the same thing done by a real life dragon, though.

But it's given me an idea. Now to see if the ponies are on board.

Author's Note

Originally this was the ponies pulling another surprise on Watney, but I decided in editing that this wasn't the pony thing to do. Watney lets them do it because the notion of a dragon eating perchlorates inspired his curiosity too strongly for him to say no.

Cherry Berry, in addition to her other responsibilities for Changeling Space Program, was CEO of the front company that manufactured most of the rocket components not just for that program but for all the early space organizations of Equestria's space race. Dragonfly frequently worked with them from the design end of things, in particular inventing the parachute deployment system that became universal for Equestrian spaceflight and overseeing the development of the standard ablative heat shield. Both know about the chemicals that went into the rockets from a practical, respect-the-thing-that-might-kill-you perspective, even if neither can walk you through the chemical equations that produce the boom.

Magnesium chloride is usually kept in metal containers- either steel or specially treated aluminum. Mark's fear of his shovels causing a boom is excessive caution... or would be if not for the fact that in space there is no such thing as excessive caution.

"Okay, but there's one thing I want you to remember."
"If you don't understand it, it's dangerous."
"That's the one thing I want you to remember besides I Told You So."
-- Larry Niven, "Flatlander"

Not at all a universal adage, but very applicable for hostile environments.

This was going to be a test of pre-posting for timed publication, but I can't find the "Publish later" function. Oh well. I leave for an all-day drive from Texas to Birmingham tomorrow. Today I finish loading the van, pick up T-shirt reprints, and put together my show for tonight on dementiaradio.org ! I might not get to write anything today; tomorrow I almost certainly won't. This is why I have a buffer.

Sols 52-55

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 49
ARES III SOL 52

TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS

AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for responses, over.

ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, copy transmit via SG suit, over.

AMICITAS: DF – all crops planted. Alien wants to use ship radio to attempt to contact his people. Request second attempt Comm Alpha and Comm Gamma. Over.

ESA: Stand by, over.

ESA: Ready for Comm Gamma, over.

AMICITAS: DF – Initiating Comm Gamma, over.

AMICITAS: DF – Comm Gamma concluded. Negative response on radio. Over.

ESA: Confirm negative connection on radio, no signal received. Over.

AMICITAS: DF – standing by for Comm Alpha, over.

ESA: Comm Alpha result negative this end. We calculate insufficient magic on your end for connection, over.

AMICITAS: DF – copied. Any better ideas, over?

ESA: Please confirm report ample quantities of enchantable crystal, over?

AMICITAS: Confirm quartz and related crystals, plenty of them, over.

ESA: Prepare for long message tomorrow regarding modifications to telepresence array for replacement crystal for comms system.

AMICITAS: Copy long message tomorrow to modify comms. Twenty-five hours from now? Over.

ESA: Confirm twenty-five hours mark. Go for alien use of non-magic radio systems. Out.

MISSION LOG – SOL 55

Well, I just finished putting the pony radio back together for the last time. I’m pretty sure everything’s the way I found it, not that it matters.

It’s been a frustrating four sols. It began with a conversation with Dragonfly about their radio. The pony ship’s primary communications system used magic, and it’s offline, despite several attempts to fix it. (They’re going to make a replacement core for their magic radio, but that has to wait until Spitfire clears Starlight for more magic use. She’s gone nine days without so much as a spark from her horn.) But they did have a normal, electromagnetic radio for emergency use, and Dragonfly showed me the specs on it.

The pony radio uses frequency modulation and a combined transceiver antenna. The antenna was under the skin of the ship on top of the cockpit, so it wasn’t too difficult for me to get to after Fireball gave me a boost. So far, so good, right? I could loot the thing, hook it up to the Hab radio, and contact NASA via relay through one of the orbiting satellites overhead, right?

Well… no. The Hab radio isn’t broad-spectrum. It broadcasts X-band microwaves, and the pony antenna isn’t built for that. I tried it anyway, because what the hell. I tried about a dozen different adjustments, anything I could think of that wouldn’t result in breaking the Hab radio or frying the antenna. I even let it just sit in place for a day, hoping the Hab computers would make the connection, even briefly, to one of the orbiters. It never happened. The equipment mismatch is just too great. I’d have better luck building a new transmitter from scratch.

So I reinstalled the antenna on the pony ship and tried using their radio as it is. Unfortunately there are a couple of problems with that.

The first problem is that the pony radio is pure analog. It’s a backup for voice comms only, not for the ship’s computer to speak to ground computers. I actually opened up the radio assembly with Dragonfly’s help, and it was like I was looking at the innards of that radio Gilligan and his friends used to keep track of the outside world. No integrated circuits, no chips- just big old transistors and resistors and capacitors, all of which are colored and shaped similar to the Earth variety.

That doesn’t sound like an issue, but it is. It means the pony radio and the Hab systems are totally incompatible. All of the Ares III communications are digital. It has to be, because analog voice broadcasts, even in FM, require more power than the Hab can ever provide to get back to Earth. Digital signals are 1’s and 0’s- full strength on or completely off- so they’re easier to pick up.

Even with digital, getting a signal back and forth isn’t easy. One of the reasons the Hab had a large directional radio dish and an enormous antenna farm was to enable broadband data transmission to and from Earth. Even at closest Earth-Mars approach, the period when we’d be on the surface, the distance between the two planets would seriously weaken signal strength, and the weaker the signal is, the slower data transmission will be.

Continuous video feeds like you get from the space station were out of the question. Even recorded video messages eat a shitton of bandwidth, so NASA restricted those. Voice communications were reserved for flight operations that Mission Control would want to monitor, because even digitized sound is bandwidth-heavy. As much as possible we were encouraged to use text files like this log, because ASCII text is bandwidth-light.

How serious is this constraint? Well, Curiosity didn’t have the big dish or antenna farm- it just had three small antennae and an occasional connection to satellites overhead. And its direct data transfer rate to Earth was at best 32 kbps- not even good enough for streaming audio. At maximum separation, that drops to 0.5 kbps. That’s why Curiosity mostly talked to its orbiters, which had more power and better transmitters. But even then, if you were trying to watch Twitch by that connection you’d spend more time buffering than watching.

Anyway, the satellites orbiting Mars are also all digital. They wouldn’t know what to do with an analog signal if they detected one.

All of that is Problem One. Problem Two is a more fundamental one: the pony radio is hard-wired to a range of five frequencies, all between 86 MHz and 109 MHz. In other words, it transmits right into the teeth of nine-tenths of the commercial FM radio on Earth. Unless the radio telescopes NASA uses are all dialed in to the exact spot on Mars to hear it, the signal would be swamped by local broadcasting.

I tried to fix this. I disassembled the radio, looked carefully at its wiring chart (which didn’t help- the equipment looks the same, but the diagrams are nothing like Earth wiring charts apart from lines), and tried like hell to think of some way of rewiring the radio that wouldn’t risk permanent damage. But in the end, I came up empty.

So, now everything’s back where it belongs. I’m pretty sure the pony radio works, up to a point. But it’s not useful to me unless I can get in contact with NASA and get some help from the other end on making it work as a backup connection.

Open the safe with the key you will find inside.

Long story short: I can’t build a working radio that will contact any of the orbiters, much less Earth, with the materials I have at hand. The only way I’ll be able to communicate with Earth is if I go out and buy a new radio.

… wait a minute, that’s actually not as stupid an idea as it sounds.

Let me look at a map. The ponies will have to wait for their language lesson a few more minutes.

Author's Note

Yes, that's right- all those pictures you see from the surface of Mars? Turns out they're really low-quality, highly compressed image files, especially the early probe photos. If you think your cousin out in West Elbow, Kansas is deprived because he's still on dialup, give a thought to Opportunity or Curiosity and know true pity.

Finished the rewrite on tomorrow's post. That, plus keeping the buffer up to three chapters, ended up being 2200 words written today, more or less.

Sols 59-60

MISSION LOG – SOL 59

Well, tomorrow’s the big day. The harness for Rover One’s battery works well. The fourteen solar panels stack stably enough on top of the rover, although I have to use the ponies’ parachute rope to keep them there. I have three layers of clothes- mine under Martinez’s under Vogel’s- for insulation in case Fireball’s flame isn’t enough to counter Mars’s freezing temperatures. And I’ve loaded the equivalent weight of twenty-five days worth of food and water for two people into the back of the rover. There’s barely space left for me, my passenger, and our port-a-john.

Better yet, in the loading process, I found a whole bunch of spare CO2 filters. Apparently NASA decided to pack the rovers full of emergency reserve filters, because they don’t weigh much and the space in the rover was otherwise empty, so why not? I’ve been worried sick about my EVA time, considering how much suit time I’ve put in these past weeks, but the new supply is more than half the supply I had before. That’s more than 800 hours of EVA, or almost twice as much as I’m going to use on my entire upcoming trip.

Still better- I found Lewis’s personal bag tucked under the driver seat. She’d been scheduled to do a long EVA on Sol 7. She even had a flash drive in the kit- yay, more entertainment! I just hope she has better taste in driving music than in television.

And, best of all, the experiment with turning off the Hab’s oxygenator worked. So long as at least three of the pony suits are operating, there’s enough air exchange to keep the CO2 levels from spiking. What the magic life support doesn’t take care of, the plants seem to catch. So, despite my having stolen more than a third of the Hab’s power generating capacity for the cave and for the rover, our power budget is firmly in the green.

Now, I’m not leaving the hab tomorrow. Fuck, no. I’ve only done a bit of testing between the hab and the cave to make sure nothing falls off. But I am doing the first long-term test to see how far I can get with the two batteries and no heater. In fact, it’s not really a test, unless you count Mercury, Gemini, and early Apollo flights as all “tests.”

I know, that’s what they were, but NASA didn’t call them that. NASA called them missions. And since I am the sole representative of NASA on Mars- hell, I AM NASA on Mars- I can call what I’m doing missions, too.

But it’s not a mission without a fancy mythological name. So… since this is about testing our rover modifications, I’m calling tomorrow Sirius 1.

Sirius. Because dogs. Get it? If not, then fuck you.

Now, I need fancy mission goals and protocols, because these are things NASA does.

So:

Sirius 1 Mission Goal: find out how far I can drive, in kilometers, on the charge in the two batteries, without the heater.

Sirius 1 Mission Protocols: (a) Drive as far as I can, in kilometers, using the two batteries. (b) Don’t turn on the heater.

Huh. It sounds better when NASA does it. Maybe there’s a class that teaches them to write in engineer jargon and bureaucrat jargon combined. There probably is- I just skipped it.

Anyway, I’ll stay in sight of the Hab at all times, so Fireball and I can walk home if something really bad happens. I’ll just drive back and forth on a half-kilometer or so stretch of Mars and watch the mileage log on the rover computer. When the battery hits 5% charge, I stop and swap the power cable to the second battery. (There’s a small emergency battery built into the rover that’ll cover life support for the ten minutes or so that’ll take.) When that hits 5%, I stop, set out the solar panels, and see if my math is right.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow. The only thing I dread is waking Fireball up. I want to drive in pre-dawn time as much as possible so I have as much of the Martian winter daylight as possible to recharge. That, unfortunately, requires waking a large reptile up at oh-God-thirty in the morning.

I wonder if Spitfire will lend me a feather.

MISSION LOG – SOL 60

Sirius 1 is complete!

And by complete, I mean “pulled the plug after an hour and a half,” but hey. Even Neil Armstrong aborted a mission once. So I’m calling it a “successful failure,” in that I didn’t achieve the mission goals, but we got back to the Hab safely.

Things started out fine. Fireball didn’t complain about waking up early. We suited up, got into the rover, drove out about a kilometer to the first gully towards the cave, and began driving back and forth along the rim of the gully.

Things began to go sour when I plugged Lewis’s data stick into the rover computer. I should have known better. Lewis has collected what I suspect is every disco song known to mortal man on that one flash drive. At least, I hope it’s every disco song known to man, because I don’t want to live in a world where there’s even one disco song more.

(Come to think of it, so long as I stay on Mars, I’m guaranteed of that. Silver linings and all that.)

Fireball hates disco even more than I do. After two songs he turned it off. But after fifteen minutes of silence he turned it back on again. After one song he turned it off again. And then he turned it back on, kind of sheepishly, and it stayed on the rest of the trip.

Fireball had damn good reason to be sheepish, too. It turns out he couldn’t sustain a flame for more than a minute or two without triggering some sort of coughing fit. The fit sent clouds of smoke through the rover, which probably saturated the CO2 filters. I don’t know for certain, because the alarm never went off. Fireball had his suit on with the helmet off the whole time, which meant that we got the benefit of air exchange through his life support. It took its own sweet time clearing the smoke away, though.

By the time he turned the music back on for good, he’d given up on trying to relight his flame. It was already pretty chilly in the rover by then. Fireball’s suit air just couldn’t keep up with the rover’s heat loss. The rover’s got the best insulation NASA could devise- the contractors didn’t cheap out on that, at least- but it was competing with a Martian pre-dawn temperature of ninety below outside.

So, from about half an hour into the mission on, we were down to nothing but body heat. And that didn’t last long at all. Three layers of clothes helped, but not much. Half an hour after the music returned, my teeth were chattering and my hands and feet were getting numb. But I soldiered on, trying to push my limits.

Then I looked at Fireball. Remember, he was wearing his spacesuit and getting a constant direct rush of warm air from his homeworld. Despite that, I could see he was suffering pretty badly. At about the ninety-minute mark, he was barely moving at all.

Once, not long after I joined the astronaut corps, I went to speak at a special event in Houston. It was summertime, and the hotel had cranked the AC up to the max, especially in the green room where I waited with a couple of the other guest speakers. And somebody, for whatever reason, had put a stuffed iguana in the middle of the conference table. I got curious, and I was just about to touch it to see what it felt like when its head sloooooooowly moved and one beady eye swiveled almost imperceptibly to watch me. It wasn’t a stuffed iguana at all- it was somebody’s pet, and it was so cold it was on the verge of torpor.

Fireball looked like a white-red-and-gold edition of that iguana.

Jeopardizing my own life is one thing- it’s quite literally what I’m paid to do, even when I’m not stranded on a hostile planet with no hope of rescue. But putting somebody else in jeopardy is just plain wrong. I cranked the heater up to maximum and beat it directly back to the Hab.

Now I’m thinking- well, sulking, really, and I know I’m sulking because Dragonfly just hugged me and told me not to feel so bad. But I’ve got a real problem, and I need to figure out a solution.

Fireball is out as a traveling companion. He never complained once the whole time, unless you count his playing with the radio a complaint. But he appears to be even more vulnerable to cold than I am, and his internal fire just doesn’t work as a heat source. And I can’t drive without a heat source that works a lot better than body heat.

I don’t have to turn the heater on all the way. I could turn it way down. How low can I turn it so that I almost, but not quite, freeze to death?

Blurgh. My head hurts, and in a few hours it’ll be English Time with Professor Watney again. I need some honest relaxation time. I think I’ll crack open another of Johannsen’s Agatha Christie e-books. It’ll be nice to lose myself in the life of someone more intelligent than me for a while.

That’s not saying much. After today, I’m not saying Poirot is smarter than me. I’m saying Hastings is smarter than me. And when you fail to reach the mental benchmark of a World War I infantry captain...

… yeah, today was that kind of day.

It could be worse. I think I’m still outdoing Bertie Wooster.

Author's Note

I left to go buy my replacement van at 10:15 this morning.

Thanks to unforeseen circumstances, I got home at 7:30.

Whatever I write tonight will be VERY short.

In light of that, I seriously considered making this two chapters, but I wrote them intending to be one, so that's what they'll be.

The replacement van is a 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan. (Couldn't get a replacement Odyssey that met my needs.) It's got a more rugged suspension and about as good a power train, but its cargo capacity is substantially less... and the car lot listed it before they'd actually cleaned out the detritus of the mother-of-two-infants. It was an ungodly mess when I got there, and even now after a vacuuming there are sticky spots and the smell of what my inner nine-year-old won't stop calling "baby rabies." The diaper is strong with this one...

So: plus, pony suits help with rover life support. Minus... dragon riding shotgun turns out to be a bad idea. What next?

The extra CO2 filters pop up because Andy Weir changed the numbers midway through the book, without ever really explaining why. Here's my explanation.

And disco has finally come to Mars.

Sols 66-69

Author's Note

Warning: I am addressing the issue of "Mark is in close proximity to several non-humanoid alien females" in this chapter, with a couple of non-graphic but pretty easy to understand sexual references. This may be squick territory for some of you. This is the one time I'm doing this, but I feel this is the kind of circumstances for it to happen. So let's get it out of the way once and for all.

Okay, you've been warned.

No writing today. Probably no writing tomorrow. That means by Monday I'll be down to a single day buffer at most.

Sols 66-69

MISSION LOG – SOL 66

Made 79 kilometers today. Everything is working well. Acidalia Planitia is just as boring as you’d expect.

Starlight Glimmer brought three things with her: one of the magic batteries with an absolutely full charge, a whiteboard, and a sample bag full of markers. (Okay, that's more than three things. Bite me.) Now that she’s allowed to levitate things again, she’s going whole hog on writing lessons. She’s already mastered typing… by which I mean, she’s able to hunt and peck individual keys on the computer without mashing eight at once. Her speed is terrible, but she’s practicing.

Starlight likes disco. I think this is a sign that she has been hiding her true evil nature all along, but her dark side cannot resist the primitive synthesizers and thumping beats- the same ones that give me headaches. That said, she’s making a list of the relatively slower and quieter songs, because the peppier ones make her want to dance, and there’s no room in the rover for dancing.

There’s no room in the rover for much of anything. We have a free range of movement consisting of the airlock area, the driver seat, and a small, pony-sized section of the passenger bench. Everything else is either filled or obstructed with the piss-box, the shit-box, the hot-nuclear-death-box, the clean-water-do-not-get-this-mixed-up-box, the tool-no-hyphen-box, and fifty days of food. There’s just barely enough room for us to get in and out of suits when it’s time for an EVA.

I’m going to read more Christie to Starlight now. I’m quite surprised to learn that the ponies have mystery novels too, and horror, and other genres dealing with death. As happy and upbeat as they are most of the time, I thought they’d be more freaked out about a murder. But Starlight isn’t bothered. In fact, she seemed to approve when Poirot arranged things so that a murderer who could never be arrested met an unfortunate end.

Hopefully she can restrain her requests for me to spell out words to one per paragraph. I have definite mixed feelings about teaching a cute violet pony how to spell “exsanguination.”

“Starlight Glimmer, Amicitas. Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas, do you copy?”

“Amicitas, Starlight Glimmer. All going well here.”

“Good to hear, Starlight. Hello, Mark, hear me?”

“Hiya.”

“Good test. Starlight, we’ll call every day this time.”

“Copy, Amicitas. We’ll keep in touch. Starlight out.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 67

I haven’t spoken about my sex drive in this log. Sex is the one taboo NASA drills into our heads never to mention in any document that might ever see the light of day. So far as NASA is concerned all its astronauts are unattainable, asexual plastic models of perfect moral rectitude. Which is a load of bullshit, but the training is fierce, and it includes a couple of major black eyes astronauts gave the agency because of it, so it kind of sticks.

But I have to mention it here, because right now Starlight Glimmer and I aren’t on speaking terms with one another, and I have to figure out how to explain why in the least X-rated fashion without descending into NASA jargon.

Last night was the second time we’d slept together in the rover. During the one overnight of Sirius 3 we just slept in our respective seats. Starlight got the better of the deal, because I don’t sleep well in a chair. The driver’s seat is comfortable enough while driving, but there’s no way to turn on your side or even to tilt your head. So last night I cleaned off the whole passenger bench so I could turn it into a bed and claimed that.

Starlight apparently decided to join me during the night, because I woke up with my arms wrapped around her. The back of her head was just under my chin.

When I awakened I had… I’ll refer to it as a condition which is frequent in the human male when he has an urgent need to urinate immediately upon awakening.

I want to emphasize that, although at times I have been made keenly aware that four-fifths of my list of guests is female, the gross anatomical differences mean I have no interest in, well, unauthorized fraternization during the mission, as NASA might put it. If the Martian queen appears on the Martian roadside with her thumb sticking out and a sign reading ARES VALLES OR BUST, all bets are off, but not the ponies. What I woke up to was pure autonomous reflex due to a full bladder and nothing else.

My attempts to get out from under the pony woke her up.

I have to mention at this point that, due to the heat of the RTG, I was only wearing a makeshift short-sleeve shirt and cutoffs. Starlight, as is the pony preference, was completely nude.

So her first sensation upon awakening was of something poking her in what college zoological anatomy taught me to call the flank, a place that no female ever wants to be poked unexpectedly and that no equine likes to be poked at any time whatever.

There are two permanent hoofprints in the back of the passenger bench. Fortunately Starlight was sleeping on her side, which means those two permanent hoofprints are not in me. This means none of my bones are broken, none of my organs are ruptured, and if and when the time comes I will still be able to sire children. But it was a close call neither of us want to risk again.

Starlight activated the translation spell long enough for me to apologize and explain, and she reassured me that something similar occurs with males of her species, but that was the last word we exchanged all day. It was a long, silent 76 kilometers.

Starlight is wearing her under-spacesuit garment, I’m in mine, and the brick of insulation has been removed so we don’t sweat ourselves dry. Tonight I’m probably going to get to use it as a pillow here in this damn driver’s seat.

It’s going to be a long twenty days.

“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas.”

“Amicitas, Starlight Glimmer. All go here. Out.”

“Starlight, is something wrong?”

“Mission proceeds as planned. Starlight out.”

“Can we speak to Mark?”

“Starlight Glimmer out.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 68

When I woke up this morning, Starlight was hiding behind the passenger couch, peeking over the back of it like a little kid.

The glare she was giving me wasn’t a little kid glare, though.

I don’t think I did anything in my sleep, but apparently there’s not going to be much conversation today, either.

Well, out to collect the solar panels, and then onward. Personnel problems or not, Pathfinder isn’t going to jump on Sojourner’s back and come to me.

“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas.”

“Amicitas, this is Starlight. Mission proceeds. Out.”

“We need to ask Mark something about his lander. Specifically, what fuel it takes.”

“He’s not available right now. We’re very busy here. Save battery power. Out.”

“Starlight, what’s wrong? It might help if you-“

“The magic battery will power the main telepresence spell for no more than twenty-five minutes on a full charge. Conserve power. Starlight Glimmer OUT.”

MISSION LOG – SOL 69

I woke up this morning with Starlight in my lap. There wasn’t a repeat of Sol 67’s incident, mostly because the weight of her rump and rear hooves had cut off all circulation to my legs. She ended up going EVA to pack up and secure the solar panels. I couldn't.

After we stopped for the day it was her turn to apologize to me. She doesn’t remember joining me in the chair. She’s really spooked out about this. She shifted from English to pony-talk three times in fits of panic-babble. She tried to reassure me that she had no feelings for me “that way”.

We’re talking again. After two of these incidents in three days, we kind of have to. Today’s language lesson was really filthy, or would have been except Starlight insisted I not use any bad English words. Where the fuck’s the fun in that?

“Starlight, this is Amicitas, Cherry Berry speaking. We need to ask Mark about the fuel used by the Emm Deevee. Please put him on.”

“Hey, Mark, get your bucking crystal on!”

“One bucking minute, Starlight.”

“… Starlight, why the buck did you teach Mark the word ‘bucking’ in our language, and how did you get him to pronounce it properly?”

“It’s a long and mutually embarrassing story, Amicitas. We’ll explain when we get back. What do you need to know?”

“We need to know what the fuel is. We’re surveying what can be salvaged from the ships if we need to try to get off this rock in a hurry.”

“I’ll ask him. Mark, what the buck makes your lander fly?”

“Who the buck wants to know?”

“Answer the bucking question.”

“You know what, Starlight, buck it. Mark, I give Dragonfly wrench, open MDV, find out.”

“The buck you say.”

“Not joke, Mark.”

“Okay. Sorry. Please don’t do that. Rocket fuel in MDV is very dangerous.”

“We know. What kind fouel?”

“Fuel. I explain to Starlight. She tell tomorrow.”

“Okay. Thank you, Mark. Talk to you tomorrow, Starlight. Amicitas out.”

Sol 91

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 89
ARES III SOL 91

“Okay, next page please, Mark.”

Starlight Glimmer watched from her bunk as Mark gingerly turned the page of the Amicitas’s ship specs book on the ground next to her, careful not to flex the brittle page more than necessary. The book was a looseleaf binder, making it easy to keep open while Mark took photos of the two newly visible pages. This done, he sat back on his own bunk and typed on his computer while Starlight used her magic to type on another. He was working on his diary; she was trying to translate the text of the manual so the whole thing could be sent to Earth once a steady communication system existed.

It was a quiet day in the Hab. She, Cherry Berry and Spitfire had eaten the last Equestrian-prepared meal packs except for Fireball’s remaining handful the night before. The morning’s breakfast had been an attempt to eat the small supply of freeze-dried alfalfa left after the hab breach. After a couple of bites the whole mini-harvest had been set aside as raw material for Dragonfly’s future use, if and when more goo and goo by-products were needed. After that they had a second breakfast, splitting two of Mark’s mostly-grain breakfast meals between the three ponies and Mark himself.

The main task for the others today was to mulch up the dead potato plants so they could be added to the compost box and their nutrients recycled into the soil. Mark would suit up about once an hour and step outside to look at the space probe he’d spent the previous day working on. So far, nothing had changed. The smaller robot rover sat on a work table, inert, its battery removed, its solar panels sitting directly under a reading lamp.

When Mark wasn’t committing the robot equivalent of watching snail races, he was helping Starlight with her project. She literally couldn’t do it without him. The digital dictionary in the computer wasn’t up to the task, or her English wasn’t up to finding the answers in the dictionary. She had asked a couple of dozen times already for technical words, and on several occasions she’d asked him to transcribe pony words for units of measurement that didn’t line up exactly with human measurements. And although typing by magic was a bit faster than typing by hoof, the tiny trickle of her inner magic’s regeneration in this universe limited her typing speed.

“Hey, Starlight.”

Starlight looked up from her typing a list of labels for the Amicitas’s heat transfer system to see Spitfire walking over. Another of Mark’s computers was carefully perched on her back. Mark didn’t even blink; he’d seen the ponies use this method of carrying things around, without incident, too often to be worried anymore.

“What is it, Spitfire?” Starlight groaned. “You gave me a dose of bone-knit only an hour ago, and the painkillers are still working fine. I don’t need more medicine.”

Spitfire frowned, and for a moment Starlight was afraid she’d argue the point. But she shook her head and said, “No medicine. I just need help finding that dictionary you told us about.”

Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Is there some reason you don’t ask someone who knows better than me?” she asked. She used her tiny trickle of magic to cast a minor cantrip of a glowing arrow pointing down at Mark behind his head where he couldn’t see it.

“It’s a surprise,” Spitfire said, smiling.

“Ooooooookay,” Starlight said carefully, cancelling the illusion. “What are you looking up?”

“Dinner.”

It seemed like every question left Starlight more confused than ever. “Right,” she said. “Let me see.”

Spitfire used her wings to pick up the laptop and turn it so the screen faced Starlight. With a few keystrokes the unicorn brought up the dictionary app. “There you are,” she said. “The tab up top with the long label that begins T-H-E,” she used the English letters, “gives you the thesaurus. If you’re looking for a lot of words for the same thing, that’s where to begin.”

“Thanks,” Spitfire said, turning the computer back around and walking carefully back to the pony-use worktable.

“What was that about?” Mark asked.

“Um…” Starlight tried to remember if the word she wanted had ever been in their English lessons. “Thing where you don’t know something is going to happen until it does? Like a party? Or the inside of a box?”

“Surprise?” Mark asked, his hands miming a sort of explosion.

Starlight looked the word up in her own dictionary and nodded. “Yes. Spitfire has a surprise.”

Mark looked a bit wistful. “I used to like surprises,” he said.

“What happened?”

Mark pointed to the elliptical patch in the Hab canvas where Airlock 1 had been. “I came to Mars,” he said.

MISSION LOG – SOL 91

This morning I woke up to a Pathfinder that wasn’t any different than it was when I left it yesterday afternoon. Considering the lack of vandals on Mars, that shouldn’t be too surprising, but I had hoped for something.

If hooking Pathfinder up to Hab power and adding a heater to warm it up to operating temperatures doesn’t work, I’m going to have to crack it open and see if I can find anything broken that I have tools to fix. If the CPU or the circuit board is damaged in any way I’m probably fucked, but anything else might be solvable.

Right now I’m thinking about backup plans if Pathfinder’s brains are permanently offline. The simplest experiment would be to rip off the low-gain and high-gain antennas and hook them up to the Hab radio and see if that works. That’s a last resort, though, because I don’t think I can do that without irreparably breaking the rest of Pathfinder’s systems.

Another alternative would be to bugger the leads to the high-gain antenna and make a telegraphy key. I’m certain I could get an outgoing signal that way. The problem is, I’ve got no clue how to receive a reply. I don’t know enough about the insides of either Pathfinder or the Hab radio to turn incoming transmissions into either audible tones or something the Hab can read.

And that’s really the key flaw in my plan. Getting an outbound transmission is easy; I have the pony ship radio for that, even if it is fighting with Top 20 Radio and public broadcasting for wavebands.

Wait a minute… here’s an idea. I could use Pathfinder as my outgoing telegraphy key. Assuming NASA’s radio telescopes pick up the unexpected microwave transmission from Mars, I can use it to send instructions to reply by one of the five presets in the pony ship radio. The time lag will be enough for me to move from Pathfinder to the pony ship and await a response. (It’s about 11 minutes lag one-way- Earth is a speedy fuck compared to Mars’s orbital velocity around the sun, and in ninety sols one-way transmission time has almost tripled.)

The pony radio is set up for voice. And analog. I’ll have to include that in the instructions I send them- make the return signal loud and in Morse. It might just be possible to get a voice transmission here from Earth, but signal decay makes that unlikely, and that decay’s only going to get worse for the next two hundred and fifty or so sols.

But yeah. That’s doable, as a last resort. I hope it doesn’t get that far, though.

But that’s days ahead. I want to give Pathfinder at least two more days to heat up. The thin Martian air is all too damn good at whisking heat away, but kind of shit at helping heat transfer into an object, even when the object is literally sitting on the heat source like Pathfinder is.

The thing is, the direct power feed I have running into Pathfinder ought to be powering its internal heaters, if they still work at all. But I don’t have a good way of knowing. That’s why Rover 1’s environment heater is there- a backup in case the on-board heaters are offline. Or stolen. I did mention I couldn’t find them yesterday, right?

Maybe I ought to be worried about Martian vandals after all. It might not be a coincidence that when we got here on Sol 1, neither rover had any hubcaps.

Just sayin’.

“Okay, everyone,” Mark said, “here’s lunch. Enjoy!” He laid a full mealpack each in front of Cherry Berry and Spitfire, then walked over to Starlight’s stool-turned-nightstand to offer her a third.

“Excuse, Mark?” Spitfire asked. “Can ask choose meal?”

Mark walked back over to the other two ponies. “Choose your meal?” he asked. “What do you want?”

“Meat.”

Mark went pale.

“Fish meat,” Spitfire continued. “Cod. Hake. Pollock. Trout. Carp. Salmon. Tuna.”

Mark went paler.

“Sardines. Anchovies. I like anchovies,” Spitfire said. With a large toothy smile she added, “Eat whole. Eat fins. Eat heads. Crunch, crunch, crunch.” She made biting motions in Mark’s direction.

Mark turned slightly green. “Excuse me,” he said, stepping uncertainly in the direction of the little-used Hab toilet.

Spitfire laughed, long and loud. “That got him!” she cheered in Equestrian between fits. “That’ll- ha ha- teach him- ha ha ha ha- to treat us- hee hee- like cows!”

She hadn’t noticed that Cherry Berry next to her had turned even greener than Mark, a sight which looked pretty impressive through pink fur.

“Now maybe we can get some of the good stuff,” Spitfire said. “At least eggs for breakfast. I miss eggs almost as much as my-“

“Spitfire,” Cherry said, gulping a bit of air, “shut up right now and that’s an order.”

And the pink pilot pony pushed her pack away.

Author's Note

For all you readers who kept reminding me that ponies, real or fictional, are not true obligate herbivores, this chapter was for you.

In the book Mark makes a point of using Rover 1's environmental heater, placing it where Pathfinder's dead battery used to be. He never found Pathfinder's existing heaters. The thing is, Pathfinder's heaters obviously ought to be enough by themselves to bring the probe up to operational temperatures. Yet they're mentioned precisely once in the book, and never again. So I'm going to assume the heater elements in the probe are dead.

Also, I refuse to apologize for ending the chapter with gratuitous alliteration.

Finally, the buffer is back up to three chapters.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.

Sol 100

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 99
ARES III SOL 100

[07:56] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Bruce Ng here today. We want to go ahead and get Rover 1 online as another substitute Sojourner. We’re uploading a patch to Rover 2 which will let you disable direct connection to Pathfinder. It’s important that you do this, otherwise Pathfinder will attempt to talk to both rovers thinking both are Sojourner, and errors may result.

We’ve already sent you a zip file with the Rover 1 patch to let it talk to Pathfinder. Check the usr/bin/upgrades folder, copy the file to a flash drive, and run it on the other rover. For now, leave Rover 1’s radio turned OFF. We’ll switch over the chat and download functions tomorrow.

Since a large part of the day will consist of updating Rover 2, we’re not going to do much chatting today. Instead we want you to queue up the following, in this order:

* Your complete mission log from Sol 6 through today

* Two photos of each of your guests (ideally your oldest picture of each and a picture of each taken today)

* A description of each of your guests and their role on their crew

* A short history of your guests’ space program history- we understand Starlight Glimmer has written one

* The photos of your guests’ technical manuals

* Starlight’s translations of same, as you mentioned

* The other reports Starlight has written, as available

* Any documentation, aside from videos, you can provide on use of “magic”

Don’t worry about files being cut off. The software will restart any file upload tomorrow that it doesn’t have a record of receiving confirmation of delivery. Once the upload begins, Rover 2 will upload through Pathfinder until the queue is exhausted.

We know it will take you some time to collect the data and queue it properly. The Rover 2 upgrade will begin at 08:30 your time and is expected to last not less than five hours. No data will be uploaded until at least then.

If for some reason the upgrade does not synch properly with Pathfinder, turn off Rover 2’s radio, turn Rover 1’s radio on, open the Pathfinder interface, and select “Synch w/Pathfinder.” If that doesn’t work, we’ll check the ASCII dial for a message at 08:00 your time two sols from now and work from there.

There’s an email for you from Dr. Shields. She asked me to make certain you read it.

We’re almost done designing your resupply probes. Construction has already begun. We’ve decided to shoot for a launch date about eighty days from now. This would put the landing in the range of Sol 600. We’re planning on launching on two Red Falcons and, depending on availability, either a third Red Falcon or the Delta-IX being held back from Eagle Eye 3. The combined payload will include two new radios, spare parts for the Hab plus a 3D printer, and enough food to last all of you through Sol 1000. We should have the Ares-3B mission ready to pick you up long before then.

Finally, Dr. Kapoor has a request for your friends. Astrodynamics wants experimental confirmation of the power of the alien ship thrusters. The numbers you gave us for the ship’s main engines make them too powerful for you to test with the tools you have, but we think the maneuvering thrusters are just within tolerances to test on your mineral samples scale. We have a procedure ready for them to carry out that would let us test and verify your measurement conversions. Please ask them if they’re willing.

Have a great day!

[08:13] WATNEY: Thanks for the infodump. I’ll ask the ponies. But I have an alternative. The pony suits have MMU systems built into them. We can get the performance numbers for those and test a pony wearing the suit on the scale with a lot less risk of breaking the scale. Let me know if that works for Astrodynamics.

Good to know the resupply mission is moving forward. I know you’ll do the best job possible. But I have to say, I’m glad you’re not English. The last time a Mars probe was built even half as fast as this, it was Beagle 2.

[08:26] JPL: Pip-pip cheerio to you too, Mark.

MISSION LOG – SOL 100

One hundred sols, and I’m not dead yet. Only 850-something to go.

Today was update day for rover software. The Rover 2 update went without a hitch. Updating Rover 1 so it could take Rover 2’s place as pseudo-Sojourner and radio relay station was a little more problematic. Rover 1’s battery is still slung in its saddlebag on Rover 2, and even plugged into the rover charging station it won’t run with no battery installed.

Fortunately I had mission standardization on my side. I used Rover 2 to tow Rover 1 around the hab to an open power outlet. All the power plugs on this mission are compatible- even the battery socket plugs. So it was easy for me to run a cable from the Hab into Rover 1’s battery compartment. Now Rover 1 thinks it has its battery back, so everything powers up.

Yeah, I could have just put the battery back. But anyone who thinks that’s the simple and sensible option has never tried to lift a rover battery by themselves. Rover 1’s battery is staying put until I get a damn good reason why it should go elsewhere. I may revisit that decision once Starlight’s leg is healed, but until then, hotwiring Rover 1 is the smarter option.

Anyway, once I had Rover 1’s computer online and working on its own software update, I swept off the solar farm and went back in to take some pictures. NASA wants fresh pictures of my guests without their suits on.

Apparently the people back at NASA forgot that the population of the Hab has gone from 2/3 male on Sol 1 to two-thirds female on Sol 100. And actually that’s a bit unfair, because Commander Lewis wouldn’t have wasted any mission time primping for a camera. My guests, on the other hand, freaked.

I should point out that hygiene has been reduced to the bare essentials. Soap, cleaning wipes, and the like were supplied for six humans for thirty days plus a ten-day supplement. There’s no way that’s lasting past Sol 900 with one human, three ponies, a dragon, and a Dragonfly. But we’re making it stretch as long as we can, which means decon showers only when we can’t stand it any longer, my using the electric razor only every third day, and Starlight using a spell every day to sterilize the sanitary sponge.

So to be blunt, none of us looked like fashion models. I looked less like an astronaut and more like a hobo. And the ponies looked like hobo horses. And as soon as they got the idea that they were going to be photographed and shown on Earth, all three of them went nuts.

Fireball and Dragonfly weren’t quite as bothered. Yes, Fireball was first to the suit inspection mirror, but after taking a minute to brush his claws through the spines on his head, and another minute flexing his arms, he was done. And Dragonfly barely looks any different now than she did when she first arrived.

But the other three made up for it. Cherry and Spitfire got themselves jammed in the decon shower stall trying to race each other in. Starlight screamed for someone to bring the magic battery over so she could levitate herself (which is apparently a thing she can do) into the shower after them.

And then, of course, they all wanted a haircut. I confess I wanted one myself, considering I was shaggy enough that my hair didn't fit under my spacesuit headset anymore. But, as it turns out, there are precisely two pairs of scissors available: the metal shears in my tool box, and the shears in Dragonfly’s tools.

Needless to say we put up a fight. Dragonfly lost first, because Cherry gave her a direct order to yield up the clippers and backed it up with some of the most impressive untranslatable invective I’ve ever heard- and I grew up in Chicago. I’m sure that in among the angry horse noises was the F-bomb, the S-bomb, one or two Q-bombs and a Silent-J-bomb. I asked Starlight for a translation and she said, “You don’t want to know.” When I insisted, she said, “I don’t want you to know.” Fair enough.

(Note: pony shears have finger loops just like human scissors. Why? And more importantly, how? Starlight shrugs and says, “Always been that way.”)

I fought rather better, because Cherry isn’t in my line of command. Neither is Spitfire, even if she uses her broken English as effectively as any drill sergeant. She and Cherry tag-teamed me with lectures, demands, and cajolery. They would have been more effective if their English was anywhere close to as good as Starlight’s or Dragonfly’s, but as it was I couldn’t take them seriously.

But I lost, because I forgot I had a telekinetic working against me. I didn’t hear the snaps opening on my toolbox, so the first I knew that Starlight had my metal shears was when I saw them floating past me on their way to the bunks. I could have taken them back, but what would be the point? I can lecture them about it later. In the meantime, I’ll just steal the whetstone from Fireball and spend a few minutes with the shears when I’m not busy.

I don’t think it’ll take much. Horsehair is notoriously thick and coarse, but what the ponies have isn’t horsehair. Oh, they have fur- short, bristly fur that grows, sheds, and grows back to a consistent length. And that stuff is coarse. I know because I have to dig tons of the crap out of the atmospheric regulator’s filters every time I service the thing. I need to remember to have Bruce Ng send a backup filter or two with the resupply. I only have one spare.

But the stuff in their manes and tails is almost human hair, if you discount the fact that Spitfire and Starlight have two different colors of hair in their manes and that Starlight’s hair is of colors not found in nature outside of mollusks. Cherry’s grows in in long, poofy curls that remind me of macaroni and cheese (right down to the artificial-cheese-substitute coloring). Spitfire is happy with a spiky bob cut that really does make it look like her head is on fire. Of the three Starlight fussed the most over her hair and tail, trimming, brushing, trimming some more, brushing some more until it took on this elegant wave. I would have sworn you could not do that with hair without gel, or possibly crazy glue.

And then came the part I hadn’t considered- hoof care.

Each member of Ares III had a personal hygiene kit- personal heads for the electric toothbrush, personal comb or hairbrush, and personal nail clippers, among other things. This last point is important, because untrimmed fingernails or even toenails can pose a risk to the structural integrity of spacesuits.

But the ponies were only expecting to be in space for five days. They had nothing.

Starlight offered to do the other ponies’ hooves for them using her magic, but after watching her use her magic laser to trim the edges of her left forehoof (the unbroken limb), the others were less than eager. I have to say, if I saw smoke rising from someone’s fingers and had them offer to perform the exact same manicure on me, I would be just a tiny fucking little bit reluctant.

Dragonfly, whose hooves apparently don’t grow like that, pleaded ignorance. Fireball, the only one besides me with thumbs, pleaded ignorance.

So yeah, apparently in addition to being the Ares-III botanist and engineer, I’m now the mission farrier. And I spent over an hour learning how- very carefully- to trim alien pony hooves with one of my knives. I took a lot of photos, of course. NASA wants to know about pony anatomy? They should be glad I didn’t ask the girls to moon them.

Spitfire’s were in the worst shape. She told me that back home she spent as much or more time in the air than on the ground, so she wasn’t used to the almost constant wear on her hooves.

Dragonfly took one look at them- two splits and one inward curl- and demanded to see her spacesuit at once. That led to impromptu inspections of the other pony space suits, particularly the inside soles of the hoof-boots. She then demanded two of my meal packs, and I quote, “Packs with most white bread-like stuff in them. Like pasghetti.”

It turns out that at least one layer of the pony spacesuits is made from bug-pony goo- and almost everything that looks rubber on the suits originally came not from a tree but from bug-pony puke. The pony hooves are beginning to cut through the soles. Fortunately Dragonfly can fill the hoof-grooves with fresh goo that will bond and seal to the old stuff almost like a single pouring. But it’s going to cost me almost a day’s rations for her to do it.

Of course I said yes, but not until after the photos were done.

Surprisingly, although Cherry’s hooves were in the best shape, her spacesuit boots were in the worst. She does more EVAs than anyone else, even me, and there was a crack through the inside sole of each of her hoof-boots. The outer soles were beginning to crack, too. Dragonfly reversed the rank-pulling and declared the suit unsafe for EVA until repaired.

I don’t blame her one bit. Damage to the boots of an Ares spacesuit of that degree would be borderline cause to abort the whole mission. At the least the astronaut involved would be restricted to the Hab until launch day. Fortunately the Ares-III surface operation suits (unlike our flight suits) were specifically engineered for high-wear, high-damage hostile environments like the Moon. JPL even risks the wrath of Pele by bringing in fresh lava from Hawaii to stress-test the suits. Mars is a picnic by comparison.

Eventually- long, long, long after Rover 2’s update had completed itself- the ponies finally permitted me to take photos. And then, once I had several shots of each to choose from, they sat me down, cut my hair (surprisingly well, considering Fireball and his thumbs played no part), made me shave, and took several photos of me.

And NASA will have those photos, along with the rest, sometime tonight. They’re all in the upload queue.

Mark Watney, the face that launched a thousand ships.

Well, four, anyway.

I damn well hope at least four.

Author's Note

3,700 words written today on my Scribblefest entry. I'll edit and post it tomorrow. The weakest part of it is my title: "Athletic Supporter."

No, I really couldn't think of anything better. Maybe something will come to me before I edit and post it tomorrow.

And yes, you people inspired this chapter.

In the book wear and tear on the spacesuits, aside from violent accidents like the Airlock 1 blowout, simply doesn't happen. Considering how much trouble is gone through to make space suits and how comparatively easy it is to breach one through wear and tear, I'm choosing to assume that, for all their idiocy in using safety glass visors and one-use CO2 filters when filterless systems were available, the makers made up for it by making it as durable as possible. The ponies, of course, had no reason whatever to go to that extreme, since their off-Equus landings never lasted more than a day or two.

If something happens to Dragonfly, the ponies are in real trouble.

A Silent-J bomb is like the F-bomb, if the F-bomb were a cluster munition.

Sol 109

MISSION LOG – SOL 109

Well, that was a lot of work!

There were about a hundred square meters of potatoes- about three hundred and sixty potato plants- planted in the cave farm. Today we dug them all up- and I mean all of them. Three hundred sixty plants, each with either three or four small tubers, for a total in the ballpark of fifteen hundred potatoes. That is a lot of spuds.

I had to supervise this- hell, I did most of it myself. We want to keep as many potato plants alive as possible, so that the next crop will grow faster and larger than these little hand-held calorie packs we got today. The ponies aren’t good at gentle because of their hooves and teeth, and Fireball isn’t good at gentle, period. But between me, the dragon, and the pony with a sling on her spacesuit hopping around the cave, we got the job done and didn’t rip off too many leaves or roots.

Fifteen hundred potatoes, each with between six and ten eyes, is a lot more than enough to seed the Hab and the remaining hundred square meters we had reserved for them in the cave. But since potatoes have a shallower root system, I decided to plant the potatoes on either side of the water runoff sluice, which has already eroded a good trench into the cave soil. The space where they were going to go will get some of our remaining alfalfa seed. Based on this harvest, we’ll be in potato surplus long before hay surplus, so giving the good spot to the alfalfa seed only makes sense.

In all honesty, I’m not counting on the new cave potatoes for much. We didn’t cultivate the soil downstream using our improvised manure. It’s got some bacteria and water leeching from the main farm, but it’s going to lack a lot of nutrients and amino acids. So the best we can do is bring the shit box tomorrow, spread the contents on top of the two patches of newly planted potatoes and hope for the best.

The Hab is a different story. We’re leaving the new seed crop of spuds to dry a little, because we’re going to plant them after we harvest the hay over the next couple of days. Most of the time spent is going to consist of ferrying loads of hay about twenty kilos at a time from the cave to the Hab. (Twenty kilos is about all our largest available airtight containers can carry. After the ponies’ experience with the small harvest after the Hab blew out, we’re being careful to minimize any possible exposure to Mars conditions. Normally dried hay is one thing, but freeze-dried, dessicated hay is another. Or it might be that the hay grown in the Hab tasted bad because the plants were stressed, but we’re taking no chances.)

When I get back to Earth I’m going to propose a design for NASA’s first ever interplanetary combine harvester. Or, at the least, a rover with a pickup bed.

Anyway, once all the replanting was done, we still had- I counted them- one thousand, three hundred, and fourteen little spuds. Each one is only about a hundred calories, if that. I’d need twenty of them for a daily minimum recommended calorie count. But 1314 potatoes divided by twenty equals just under sixty-six days of food for one midly-active person.

This is our first successful harvest on Mars, the product of the Hab post-breach notwithstanding. So we celebrated with a little tater feast.

We stuck the unused taters in Airlock 1; they’ll freeze-dry there, but freezing doesn’t hurt potato flavor nearly as much (apparently) as alfalfa. But we brought two hundred spuds into the Hab, washed ‘em, and began cooking ‘em in the microwave, five at a time. (Five is all the Hab microwave can hold, and if these were average sized potatoes it’d be more like three or four.)

Normally you don’t feed potatoes to horses. Part of this is that horses are particularly sensitive to the toxic amino acids in green potatoes, but microwaving breaks those down for the most part. But the main problem is that horses are stupid and will try to swallow potatoes without chewing, so they either choke and die or get colic from poor digestion and die. My guests, not having been raised in a barn (see what I did there?), don’t have those problems, so potatoes are just fine for them.

So… yeah, they were potatoes. Plain, microwave-baked potatoes. Very, very plain, starchy, skin-and-all, microwave-baked potatoes.

We didn’t come close to eating all two hundred. Or even one hundred. Right now my stomach is churning at the idea that I’ll have to eat thirteen to fifteen properly sized spuds PER DAY before too long.

I’ve been rationing the ketchup as if they were Captain Queeg’s strawberries, but today... not so much. In fact, not at all.

After the fourth potato around, I got onto Pathfinder while the transmission window was still open and sent a message:

[18:14] WATNEY: Memo to Bruce Ng at JPL: send ketchup. Send LOTS of ketchup. Also butter, chives, sour cream. Not to eat; by the time they get here I probably won’t want to see another potato so long as I live. But after five hundred sols of spuds, when the ketchup and butter and other stuff gets here, I am going to BATHE in them, because at that point I will have TURNED into a potato.

[18:21] HERMES: And this would change your stunning personality… how, again?

[18:29] JPL: We’ll begin testing to see if we can make a couch out of ketchup packets, just for you, Mark.

Yep, that’s NASA. Can’t ever let a guy have the last word.

ESA: To Fireball. Message begins. Quote. By power of the Bloodstone Scepter you are ordered to not die, nor allow anyone with you to die, until we come to rescue you. You will demonstrate superior dragon strength, courage and wisdom by protecting your crewmates and keeping them safe from harm. This is a command from your lawful Dragonlord, and you shall obey! Got it? End quote. Over.

AMICITAS: Message received, over.

ESA: Sorry, that was more blunt than we’d expected. Over.

AMICITAS – FB- that’s about as pony-mushy as we get, actually. Over.

INTERVIEW #3

What is your name? Dragonfly!

What did you do on your ship? I was the ship’s engineer. If anything broke besides the Sparkle Drive, it was my job to fix it. Also, I’m helping with the other crew members’ English.

How did you get into space flight? My queen said we were going to space, so I volunteered immediately! I’m the fastest bug-pony flier in the group!

Who do you have waiting for you back home? My queen and the rest of the bug-ponies, of course!

What are your impressions of humans? Well, if you don’t count television, I’ve only met the one, but he’s pretty nourishing.

Do you look forward to visiting Earth after your rescue? Of course! I want to meet Venkat and Irene and Mark’s crew and everybody else who made this neat base!

What will you do when you finally go home? Whatever my queen tells me to, of course!

What is your favorite disco song? “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love.”

If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? A button that I could push to call a ship. Mars is not a nice planet and we all want OFF.

What message do you have for the people of Earth? Flying in space is fun! But not being stranded on Mars. That part sucks. (Is that how you use that word, Mark?)

Author's Note

Buffer remains at 2.

Sol 122

Dear Dr. Shields,

Dragonfly tells me she tells you something secret, and now she feel better. Now I tell you something, and you keep secret, and maybe I feel better.

I command Friendship crew. I not want command. I just want fly ship. I not smart. I not like princess or queen or like that. But all look at me order them. Even for everyone-know things they look at me order them.

I hate that. I hate this. I not want to do this anymore.

Fly is fun. Fly in space is very fun. Not fly in space and stuck on Mars is very not fun.

I want fly. I want go home. I not want be boss. Why they not let me stop be boss?

Sorry my English is bad. Not use Starlight or Dragonfly help this time.

Cherry Berry

Dear Dr. Shields,

Cherry Berry say write you feels better. But must be secret. Okay, I write you secret.

Dragon tough. Dragon strong. Dragon mean. All everybody know. Dragon best everything.

But not me. I make mess. Almost kill all twice.

I not smart like Starlight or Dragonfly. I not boss like Cherry or Spitfire. I not funny or good with people like Mark. I not help. I make things worse.

What I am good for? Almost no fire. No fly ship- no ship for fly. No space walk- not in space. I pick up things and I hold things, only. Any can do.

Crew better I not here. But can no say. Dragon not talk sorry for me.

I not feel better for say you this. Feel sad. Feel angry. Was better not think this.

Fireball

Dear Dr. Shields,

I feel fine. I have no secret tell you. Think you like read that for change.

Spitfire

Dear Dr. Shields,

Since everyone else is writing you in secret today, I am writing you too. I apologize for the bad English you probably suffered through, but even if we’re getting good at understanding your language we aren’t as good at remembering words when we want to say things. Also, the others are really slow typers.

Everyone else is writing you their secret worries. I don’t keep those secret. But I do have a secret request, if you can help me. Dragonfly once told me that everyone else in the crew- Spitfire, Fireball, Cherry Berry- felt like they were no good at their job. I assume Dragonfly has a similar problem- not that she doesn’t think she’s good at her job, but she worries that we don’t really like her. But I’m sure we all think that we’re all doing our best for each other. Can you do anything to help them see it?

Sincerely yours,
Starlight Glimmer

Dear Dr. Shields,

I was wrong. I have secret ask of you. Can you give me human bad words and what mean? If I have bad words maybe Mark stop treat me like little child.

Spitfire

Author's Note

Buffer is now 3 again. This is with me throwing out half of today's writing because it ended up revealing too much too soon.

Yesterday's chapter wasn't so fluffy, but it led into this, and into tomorrow, both of which are cotton candy writing.

Not much to say about the second shortest chapter to date.

Sol 185

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 186
ARES III SOL 185

Spitfire removed her helmet as Airlock 2 closed behind her. It always felt good to go out to the cave and stretch her wings, even if she had to flap constantly to remain airborne. At least now it was actual flight, with direction and purpose, and not the bad chicken imitation that ensued when she tried to fly in the Hab. She couldn’t go fast at all, and she couldn’t hover or carry anything with her, but it was still flight, of a sort.

Spitfire considered proposing a research project for Twilight Sparkle or her egghead classmates from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. A low-magic environment like the cave farm (and not an almost-zero magic like the Hab) might make a good training ground for fliers who needed to exercise physical strength rather than magical talent. And those with both, like herself and (for example) Rainbow Dash, would enjoy the challenge.

In front of her Cherry Berry and Dragonfly took off their helmets and walked over to the suit storage cabinets. Spitfire still called drills once or twice a week, and three drills ago a suit hadn’t been in its proper place when the drill was called. Starlight Glimmer had left it on a worktable after using it for communications with Equestria, and as a result she’d scrambled to the lockers, found it missing, and only then remembered where it was. Spitfire had delighted in informing her that she’d “died” in the drill. It had been a timely reminder that one lapse in judgment could mean death in an emergency.

So the suits went to the lockers, even if the wearers would have preferred to keep them on to keep their hooves clean for lunch.

Spitfire felt good about herself these days. She had purpose. She had duties to carry out almost on a daily basis. Once a week she collected the vital signs data for all the Amicitas crew including herself, entered dutifully into Mark’s computer for transmission to Earth and transmitted via the water telegraph to Equestria. She kept an eye on Starlight Glimmer’s broken foreleg, which was mending quite nicely despite some remaining soreness and fatigue. She performed safety drills- not just the suit drill but the other applicable drills Mark had shown her from his crew’s mission training. She split duties with Dragonfly in running the improvised simulator outside, occasionally taking a turn in the hot seat herself, learning to fly human-style spacecraft.

And twice a week she went out to the cave farm to help tend it, though she saw that less as duty and more as reward for other jobs well done.

“Oh hey, you’re back,” Mark said from the food storage area. “I got something special for you.”

It took Spitfire a few moments to mentally translate the words. It had been a long time since Mark’s words had been nonsense in her ears, but she still had to work for each sentence. “Special?” she asked.

“Is it hay surprise?” Cherry asked. “Again?”

“Nope.” Mark pointed to the microwave tray, which held two freshly warmed meal packs. “I decided to thank you for those stories from your world by giving you all a bit of my meal packs today. Each of you gets a little special something!”

Spitfire’s eyes widened. After weeks and weeks of alfalfa, potatoes, or alfalfa and potatoes, a taste of something, ANYTHING, seemed heavenly.

“First, everybody gives Dragonfly her meal.” This was a minute or two of group hugging, during which everybody focused on their most positive thoughts of her. Spitfire focused her thoughts on an incident from three days before, when the changeling had got Cherry to flub a MDV flight sim session by jamming a maneuvering thruster full on thirty seconds into the flight. Granted, Cherry had demanded the same sim over and aced it the second time around, but it had been satisfying to watch the steely eyed missile mare flustered for once.

So long as it was in the simulator, that is.

“All right, first, Fireball,” Mark said. “You’ll have to provide your own gems, but here’s a spaghetti and meatballs entrée.” He slid one pouch off the tray onto the worktable in front of the dragon.

Fireball blinked. “How did you know?” the dragon asked.

“Know what?”

“Spaghetti is my favorite meal in space,” Fireball said, stumbling around the word favorite. “Meatballs not, but I don’t mind. Thank you.”

“Um… no problem.” Mark said. “I just remembered seeing you eat spaghetti a few times when you first got here. Um… enjoy?” His smile returned as he pushed a smaller, but familiar-looking pouch towards Cherry Berry. “You know what this is, don’t you?” he said.

“Cherry clobber!” Cherry Berry gasped, leaping onto a stool and working at the pouch with her hooves.

“Um, that’s cherry cobbler,” Mark muttered.

Cherry didn’t answer. Steam wafted up from the vent hole, and her eyes rolled up in olfactory bliss.

“Ooooookay, Cherry’s gone for the day,” Mark said. “Starlight, I have scrambled cheesy eggs with hominy grits for you.”

Scrambled eggs wasn’t Starlight’s favorite anything, but after a lot of only two things to eat she was happy to get it and said so.

“And finally, Spitfire,” Mark said, and his grin spread even wider and toothier than usual.

Spitfire prepared herself. The monkey was plotting something. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good.

“NASA doesn’t send fish in meal packs,” Mark continued. “It doesn’t keep well, and it stinks up the spacecraft. But I know you like crunchy things. Crunch, crunch, crunch.”

Payback was an Everfree timberwolf, and Spitfire suddenly smelled the foul breath of the magical monster breathing down her neck.

“So I found the next best thing. For you I bring… bacon!”

Mark opened the final pouch and, carefully, spread eight rashers of red and white marbled meat onto the microwave tray. Each slice made a slight clink sound as it hit the tray.

“Now, I love bacon,” Mark continued. “It’s made out of pig bellies, you know. But it’s just so salty and so crunchy and so greasy. It’s like carnivore candy, you know?”

Spitfire’s stomach did a barrel roll and a dive to port.

“But the thing is, it’s important to remember and honor the pigs who gave their lives to bring us such a delightful and nutritious breakfast,” Mark said. “So as you eat this, I want you to think of those pigs.” He pushed one strip of bacon towards Spitfire and said, “This one was named Porky.”

By now Starlight and Cherry were also watching Mark in complete horror, even the smell of cherries forgotten. Fireball, on the other end of the spectrum, was smirking even as he used a spoon to stir in small chunks of topaz into his spaghetti. And Dragonfly wasn’t smiling or laughing, but she looked far too obviously innocent to actually be innocent.

“This was Petunia,” Mark added, pushing a second strip towards Spitfire. “They went to the slaughterhouse together, their last thoughts of the happiness of the people who would devour them.” Another finger, another rasher. “This is Wilbur, also known as Zuckerman’s Famous Pig.” Another strip. “And this is Babe, a well-known public speaker.”

Spitfire finally found her voice, if not her courage. “You absolute feather-plucker,” she said in Equestrian.

“Oh, no, I don’t want any,” Mark said, deliberately misunderstanding. “You can have Porky and Petunia and Wilbur and Babe. And Miss Piggy, Hampton, Pua, and finally, the great star of Hollywood, Arnold Ziffel.” Push, push, push, push. All eight strips now sat on the tray just under Spitfire’s chin, which was a bit slack from shock. “So honor their memory, and eat up. Don’t let their noble sacrifice be in vain.”

Spitfire stared at the slivers of meat and fat. She knew how this worked- she’d seen it during her career many times, from both sides. It was part of the pecking order. She’d got Mark good with her fish prank, and now he wanted to tie up the score. And the only way she could win, to deny him his victory, was to eat, and eat it all, and at least pretend to enjoy it.

For a moment Spitfire considered backing out. If she did, Mark would have a laugh, and then, knowing Mark, he’d pull out some other little treat from his food packs for her and say nothing more about it. In fact, she thought she could guess what it would be, since at least once before she’d seen the combination of eggs, grits, bacon, and cream cheese Danish in Mark’s breakfast meals.

She could practically taste that Danish.

Which is good, said her pride, because while you’re thinking of that Danish, we’re eating pig flesh. Because no monkey is going to make a monkey out of me.

She scooped up a slice in one hoof and bit.

She didn’t like the fat and grease at all, especially not the coating it quickly left on the inside of her mouth. But the muscle fiber was indeed quite crunchy and had a certain tang to it… and the saltiness lingered on the tongue, almost but not quite overpowering the greasiness.

As disgusting as the idea was, she found herself actually craving the second slice. Which she ate.

As she picked up the third slice, with every eye in the Hab focused on her, she expected Mark to remind her of those names, or to give some other biographical info on her meal, to twist the knife (or possibly the fork). In a similar situation back home, that would be the standard protocol- see what it took to make your teammate crack. But Mark didn’t do that, because (as horrible as he was for putting Spitfire in this position) he wasn’t actually a complete jerk. She heard the crinkle of the wrapping Mark’s people used for food packs and knew, for a fact, he now held the Danish behind his back, waiting for her to cry uncle.

Slice number four, and five, and six went the same way as one, two and three. By the time she swallowed the bits of the sixth slice the salt no longer tempted her. She wanted to be done with bacon, to be done with meat. She was honestly, terribly, desperately sorry she’d ever taunted Mark over his obsessive tap-dancing around his own omnivore diet. Faust as her witness, she would never make a joke of meat-eating ever, ever again.

But her pride still insisted she pick up the seventh slice, put it in her mouth, chew, and swallow.

Her stomach, on the other hoof, threatened to retroactively veto slices one through six.

She ate the seventh slice anyway, chewing slowly, thinking desperately for a way out. And then, finally, she found it.

She pointed to the eighth slice. “His name is Arllnod?” she asked. “Great actor? You like him?”

Mark, whose expression had gone almost as horrified as the other ponies’ faces, blinked and stammered, “Wh-bwuh- uh, he was before my time, really. But I’ve seen a few things he was in. One of the great pig actors of all time.”

Spitfire shook her head. “I’ve not see him,” he said. “You know him better. You bring more honor to his memory.” Her hoof slid the last piece of bacon in his direction.

Mark considered this, shrugged, and forced a weak, shaky smile on his face. “Can’t argue with that,” he said. He picked up the slice, ate it in three quick bites, and then brought out the vacuum-sealed pastry. “Care for dessert?” he asked.

“Later,” Spitfire said. “Bacon is crunchy but very fattening. I need to work it off.” She walked over to the suit cabinets, adding in Equestrian, “Nobody touch that, understand?”

Afterward she was proud of herself for keeping to a slow walk to the suits, then again to Airlock 3 and on out. Somehow she kept the contents of her stomach in place until she got through the Hab airlock, through Amicitas’s airlock, and to the pony ship’s zero-gravity toilet.

The toilet would not so much flush her vomit away as dump it on the ground under the ship, where it would freeze-dry in minutes, making it easy to scoop up and bury someplace. That task would be even more humiliating than stuffing her muzzle in the little metal receptacle intended for the opposite end of pony bodies.

But at least you didn’t show weakness in front of the monkey, her pride said.

And as her stomach found a little bit more bacon it wanted to get rid of, the rest of her mind told her pride to shut the buck up.

He looked at the monitor, at the file, and at its title: “unsere kinder”. All he had to do was attach it to the email with the spoofed sender header, click a button, and commit career suicide on a point of principle.

He’d wanted to be an astronaut once. He’d applied, but he was never fit enough, never quite healthy enough. But NASA never had enough engineers, and it especially never had enough engineers who also had management skills. Granted, his management skills were a lot weaker than his engineering skills, but that was the nature of NASA: the reward for doing your job well was to get a harder job you didn’t like as much. Look at Venkat Kapoor: an astrophysicist whose doctoral thesis had been about supernovas, and somehow he ended up as head of Mars exploration.

So he’d worked his way up in NASA, as high as he could go within the agency. He wore a suit and tie instead of a blue jumpsuit. He’d never get any closer to space than the first class compartment of an international passenger flight, not unless he bought a tourist ticket from SpaceX or Virgin Galactic. (Which he wouldn’t, because as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t justify blowing a year’s salary for an hour or two above the atmosphere.)

But he’d never lost his respect and admiration for the rare breed of men and women, literally the best humanity had to offer, who faced danger not as a thing to be feared or to be chased, but as one factor among many to be dealt with in pursuit of a higher goal.

That was where he differed with the other “suits”. Teddy and Venkat both thought astronauts were a little insane, that they courted danger, that they didn’t understand the risks. He knew better. Astronauts understood risk better than anyone else. If they didn’t, they didn’t get to become astronauts in the first place.

And to be blunt, if Teddy or Venkat understood risk as well as they thought they did, they’d be up in Hermes and someone else would be behind a desk telling them why they didn’t understand things.

But now it was his turn to balance risk. If he sent his email, his career was almost certainly over. Not that that bothered him much; the NASA bureaucracy would almost certainly let him save face, retire honorably, and take up some sinecure at one of NASA’s contractors. He’d be leaving behind the place he loved more than anything else on Earth, but if it meant saving Mark Watney and the alien castaways, he could live with that.

But the risk wasn’t just his own. What would happen if he sent the email, and the Hermes astronauts decided to use the Rich Purnell maneuver? NASA’s hand would be forced. Their careers would be over, with the absolute minimum face-saving, even if Mark and his friends returned to Earth safely.

Well… that would be their choice. He wouldn’t be ordering them to do it.

But… but Teddy, that cowardly, tight-assed dickhead, was right about one thing. The decision was a foregone conclusion. Hermes could make the trip, barring an unforeseen catastrophe like a microasteroid impact. Modifying the Ares IV MAV for intercept was a lot less certain, but NASA would have almost a year to figure it out. The plan would work. And it was, in the end analysis, less risky than leaving Mark and friends on Mars for almost a year more- two hundred and twenty sols in which anything could happen and almost certainly would. The astronauts would know all of this. Furthermore, Watney was one of their own. Their decision was as predictable as atomic decay.

But… how much less risky was it?

Watney was in no immediate danger, at least no immediate predictable danger. Another fifty sols and he’d have the minimum of food required to survive to Sol 768 and the Ares 3B rescue, assuming Sleipnir 2 didn’t crash and Sleipnir 3 got refueled in time to be useful. Another sixty or so sols beyond that, and Sleipnir 3 wouldn’t matter. Mark has the Hab, the rovers, the alien ship, and that cave, so if any one of those lost containment, he could withdraw to the others until repairs were made. And the aliens could provide all the air and water he’d ever need.

They were all still in danger- danger from the unknown, danger from a lapse in attention or concentration, danger from equipment breaking or wearing out. But was it enough danger to justify sacrificing six careers, and, yes, extending the risk of five other people for a year and a half, to cut out two hundred and seventeen sols of it?

His finger hovered over the mouse button, its cursor pointed at his email app.

Then he shifted it to the other email app, the one for his regular NASA correspondence.

In six more days Hermes would begin braking for Earth orbital capture. It would take a day for the astronauts to initiate the Rich Purnell maneuver, assuming they chose to. Engaging it earlier wouldn’t change the arrival on Mars by a day; it would only slightly reduce the amount of thrust required for the maneuver.

He could wait four more days and see what happened.

And in the meantime, he could ask questions.

He opened his address book, opened a new email message to the engineering department at SpaceX, and began typing.

Author's Note

I'm not a practical joker myself. I find practical jokes and pranks generally cruel. But there are times when it can be satisfying. It's too bad Starlight and Cherry became collateral damage for Mark's revenge, though.

Will try to write a bit more tonight. Most of today was doing what had to be done (what could be done) to prepare for the next event- Yellow City Comic Con in Amarillo.

After that I get two weekends off.

By the way, "hay surprise" is a bad joke. "Guess what we're having! ... Surprise! It's MORE HAY!" So of course Mark has tried it a few times already, even though the ponies didn't think it was funny even the first time.

Sol 187

Venkat stumbled into Teddy’s office. For once he was the last to arrive. Teddy was standing, not sitting, behind his desk. Annie paced with barely restrained fury from one side of the large room to the other. Mitch, rumpled and worried-looking, had abandoned the couch in favor of Venkat’s preferred wall-propping position. “I was giving Mark his orders for the day,” he said. “What’s the emergency?”

“Congress,” Teddy said, in a tone that suggested he’d be spitting the word if Teddy Sanders were a man that spat anything. “The House Subcommittee on Space Exploration just ordered a special commission to investigate SpaceX operations in light of the launch failures of Sleipnir 1 and 3. Apparently the chairman isn’t satisfied with how SpaceX is handling its internal investigation. And they’ve ordered SpaceX to halt all operations until the committee is chosen and seated.”

“What??” Venkat gasped. “They can’t do this! We need boosters for Sleipnir 4 and for the Sleipnir 3 refueling! It’ll be months before anyone else can deliver a booster with the power we need!”

“I know,” Teddy said. “I’ve got a plane waiting on the tarmac at Ellington Field. I need to make the case before the committee members in person that we need those boosters to ensure the continued well-being of our people on Mars.”

“The ranking minority member’s a real choad,” Annie put in. “I think he got himself on the committee just so he could attack NASA. He thinks we’re wasting money that could be put to useful things like battleships and tanks and observation balloons.”

“And not everybody on the majority is on our side,” Teddy added. “But popular opinion is still heavily on Watney’s side, and especially on the ponies’ side. I’m going to use that to pry at least two more SpaceX rockets out of the committee’s grip.”

Mitch cleared his throat. “How long is that going to take?” he asked, in nothing like his usual I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-your-feelings tone.

Teddy shrugged. “As long as it takes,” he said. “We need those boosters, and we need them in less than three months to do any good.”

“What was their projected delivery date?” Mitch asked, a little more forcefully.

Venkat supplied the answer on Teddy’s behalf. “Three weeks for a simple Sleipnir 3 refueling mission, assuming no more foul-ups. Seventy-two days for a brand-new Red Falcon ready for Sleipnir 4.”

“That’s cutting it tight,” Mitch said. “Really tight. Teddy, don’t you think you should reconsider-“

“Project Elrond is dead,” Teddy said firmly. “That decision has been made. We’re committed to Sleipnir 4 and Ares 3B, Mitch. Now we have to go out and make it happen.”

The director of NASA picked up his briefcase. “Everyone, we’re going forward as if nothing happened this morning. I hope that it will un-happen not later than tomorrow afternoon. Venk, get with Bruce. JPL used up almost all the available spare parts for Mars supply missions building the first three Sleipnirs. Now he’s building Sleipnir 4 from scratch, and our suppliers are dragging their heels. Do what you can to energize them.”

Venkat nodded. “I’ll do all I can,” he said.

“Annie, do everything you can to salvage SpaceX’s reputation,” Teddy continued. “We need pressure off them and on Congress. Don’t be afraid to appeal to the sympathy of the voters.”

“Like I don’t do that every fucking day?” she growled.

“Mitch, keep working over the data logs from Sleipnir 1,” Teddy finished. “And get your teams ready for Sleipnir 4. Make sure the pad crews at KSC are ready to roll the instant we get booster and probe delivered.”

“Will do,” Mitch replied, still quiet, but with a different tone in his voice.

“Sorry to cut this short,” Teddy said, “but I’m late.” And without further comment, he strode out the door, leaving the other directors behind him.

Annie lingered only a moment longer than Teddy. “I’ve got to get some releases written ASAP,” she said. “Christ, this is going to take some fucking finesse.” And she was gone, leaving Venkat and Mitch standing looking at each other.

Mitch spoke first. “What are the odds on Sleipnir 4, really?” he asked.

Venkat shook his head. “The bottleneck is in the tumbler landing systems,” he said. “The air bags for the tumblers are made out of hab canvas, and the contractors already gave JPL all their backstock for the first three Sleipnir probes. The manufacture requires chemical processes that can’t be accelerated. They just finished cutting the pieces for the Ares IV Hab, so they’re starting from zero. It’ll be a month before JPL gets the raw fabric for Sleipnir 4’s air bags and parachutes, and JPL will have to assemble them themselves. That on top of machining the hull, assembling the electronics, building the thrusters and everything else. It’s going to be tight, Mitch. It’s going to be damn tight.”

Mitch nodded. “About what I was thinking,” he said. “Well, we’ll be ready.”

“I know you will, Mitch,” Venkat said. “Just try not to break too many knuckles, okay?”

Mitch rubbed his own knuckles absently. “You mean like Teddy just now?”

“We need to keep focused on task,” Venkat said. “And our task right now is Sleipnir 4, followed by Ares 3B. Which reminds me, I have to talk with Lockheed about how construction of the next MAV is going.”

“I’ll talk with the SpaceX engineers,” Mitch said. “I’ll try to be gentle, though.”

“You know,” Moondancer said over her stack of books, “there are reasons why we generally don’t build houses or buildings with magic. Wood and bricks and iron take much less work.”

“Not helping,” Lemon Hearts said. “Anyway, we don’t need Starlight to build a house. We only need her to make about an inch-thick layer of solid, continuous, flawless quartz crystal over a surface about fifty-eight thousand square meters in size.”

Twilight Sparkle’s old gang from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, along with Sunburst, had gathered in the largest research room at Cape Friendship. Every once in a while Spike would belch and let loose a green flame that would coalesce into yet another book found in the Canterlot royal archives by Celestia herself, by request of Moondancer, Sunburst, or Twilight herself as they thought of them.

“Only fifty-eight thousand meters,” Minuette giggled. “So simple!”

Lyra turned a page in her own book. “We’re talking about an alicorn-level spell, Twilight,” she said. “Would such a thing even be written down?”

“We have to do it,” Twilight replied. “If Mark’s people are right, that cave farm of theirs could fail at any moment. Without that they don’t eat and they can’t recharge the magic batteries they’re rebuilding. So I refuse to believe there is no solution!” She slammed her own book shut, having found nothing of promise inside. “As for power and skill, Starlight’s the most powerful unicorn in all Equestria. She was able to fight me to a draw, remember.”

“Still not helping, girls,” Lemon Hearts repeated. “Let’s focus on the task. The whole cave is lined with silicon dioxide, right? Just not in pure crystal form.”

“It’s practically lined in quartz crystals,” Twilight said. “But not a single crystal, and the cave walls behind it are porous, just like a geode.”

“Okay, so how do we get rid of the pores?” Lemon Hearts repeated. “She used Door What Door to seal the cave initially, right?”

“That’s right,” Twilight said. “But that spell is almost impossible to cast without line of sight, and you can’t recast it without un-casting it first. She can’t use it again without risking a breach.”

“Okay, so what makes quartz airtight, then?” Lemon Hearts asked.

“Heat and pressure deep under the earth’s crust,” Moondancer said, not looking up from her book.

“That’s no good,” Sunburst said, his beard wagging as he shook his head. “That much heat would make the permafrost above the cave explode, wouldn’t it?”

“What about petroculture spells?” Lyra asked. “Wouldn’t the Pies know something about that?”

“The Pie family doesn’t use unicorn spells,” Twilight said. “They pride themselves on marketing only one hundred percent naturally grown rocks.”

“Well, somebody must have used magic to make crystals grow!” Lyra said. “What about the Tree of Harmony? Your castle? There’s got to be somepony who knows how that works!”

“I never questioned it before,” Twilight said. “Well, I did question it at first, but there was always something else to do, and I always believed the Tree of Harmony knew what it was doing, so I never studied it properly.”

“Wow,” Minuette muttered. “All of this trouble just to get rid of a few holes in the rock.”

Pages continued to rustle, but one fewer page rustled than had done before Minuette spoke.

Spike burped, caught the book as it materialized, and said, a little tiredly, “Good Neighbor’s Advanced Wall Mending Spells. Who asked for this one?”

“That was Twilight, I think,” Sunburst said, his own head buried in Flois du Rose’s Dark Side of the Wall.

Twilight didn’t speak.

“Twilight? If you’re done, can you stop sending requests long enough for me to get some water?” Spike asked. He burped a normal burp and added, “And some antacid?”

“Get rid of the holes,” Twilight said. “Minuette, you’re a genius!”

“Of course,” Minuette said modestly. “You can’t be a social secretary to the Canterlot elite without-“

“We don’t need to transmute anything!” Twilight said, warming to her task. “And we don’t need to make the crystals grow or melt! We’re looking at it the wrong way! We need a spell that mends holes- that makes holes go away! That’s all! That’s easy!”

“A spell to get rid of holes?” Moondancer stopped and thought about it. “Cheesemonger’s Mouse-be-Gone?”

“Cedar Chest’s Moth Mender?” Lemon Hearts suggested.

“Midnight Blue’s Shameful Stocking Stitch?” Sunburst added.

Several glares reminded him that, Spike excepted, he was the only stallion in the room. “Where,” Lyra asked on behalf of the majority, “did you pick up a spell like that?”

“And does Starlight know yet?” Minuette added, waggling her eyebrows.

“No, no, simpler!” Twilight shouted. In a flash of magic the books exploded off the table, stacking themselves neatly in a corner in three columns reaching almost to the ceiling. “Clover’s Instant Foundations! Clover the Clever used ordinary soil to form foundations for Canterlot’s oldest buildings by taking away the space between the bits of dirt and rock! It made them stronger than concrete! It’s part of why Canterlot doesn’t break off and slide down the side of Mount Canter!” She pulled out inkwell and parchment with her magic and frantically scribbled notes with a quill. “And I’m pretty sure Starlight already knows the spell!”

In the silence that followed as the other unicorns watched Twilight designing a new hybrid spell on the fly, Spike asked, “So, are you done with all those books, or what?”

Author's Note

Buffer of one, done.

Now I have less than half an hour to put together tonight's KWLP (dementaradio.org: tonight's theme, GOOD v. EVIL).

I assume something got fixed in American politics for Project Ares to even be a thing, but human nature is and will remain human nature. Space flight has had its enemies from the beginning- Eisenhower thought it was a waste of money, as did JFK's science adviser Jerome Weisner, and many politicians after them. And they always look for an excuse to throw a wrench into the gears...

Sol 192

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 193
ARES III SOL 192

[09:31] JPL: Mark, have you, Starlight and Dragonfly had a chance to look at the engine testing procedures we just sent?

[09:56] WATNEY: We regret to inform you that the Ares III Hab is closed for business, as we are observing a Day of Mourning for Sirius Black. In the interests of efficiency we are also mourning Chuck Cunningham, James Evans Sr., and Cousin Oliver Brady. Normal business operations will resume at 08:00 local time tomorrow.

[10:22] JPL: Mark, according to Google, Oliver Brady didn’t die.

[10:47] WATNEY: That’s what we’re mourning.

[10:49] WATNEY: And Starlight just slapped me upside the head and refuses to explain why. Did you know it hurts like hell to get slapped by a hoof?

Author's Note

Yeah, this is all I have.

And yes, I went there.

I've been on the road all day, I'm tired, and there is no buffer, so this is what there is.

Sol 271

MISSION LOG – SOL 271

Contrary to popular belief and mathematics, the Cubs have not been eliminated from the playoffs. We only need 27 teams to be swallowed up in freak earthquakes, and we’re in.

Based on my experiences on Mars, this is a thing that totally could happen.

In other news, we are coping with our limited EVA time without any sign of resuming cabin fever. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go talk with Fireball about that annoying habit he has of making crunching sounds when he eats his rocks.

Author's Note

I've threatened this before, but the day has come; no buffer, not enough time to write. So here's the "I wonder what the Cubs are doing" moment.

Tomorrow I will be home, with nothing urgent ahead of me, and I will be able to do something a little better. And after that, I might actually build a buffer again.

Sol 273-274

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 277
ARES III SOL 274

[08:05] WATNEY: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, and come short of the grace of DM.

[08:32] JPL: Good morning, Mark. What did you do? I don’t think we included Tomb of Horrors in your adventure packs.

[09:03] WATNEY: I gave them the gazebo.

[09:32] JPL: I see. Maybe we did include Tomb of Horrors. You’d better email me a full report. For sociological studies, you understand.

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 276
ARES III SOL 273
(the night before)

“The courtyard is covered with green grass- the only live, growing thing you’ve seen so far since you entered. The walls enclose a square area about a hundred yards on a side, with nothing but a walkway from the gate to the building and a lone gazebo which stands about, oh, ten yards off the main walkway.”

There, thought Mark, let’s see what happens next.

“What is a gazebo?” three voices asked at once, Fireball’s the first and loudest.

“Wait a moment.” Starlight switched her computer over to dictionary mode and said, “G-A-Z-E-B-O,” typing the letters with her hooves as she did so. “Ah, here we are. Even has a picture. See?” She turned the screen so the others could see it. “An outdoor structure, usually in a lawn or garden, used for shade, shelter and rest.”

Darn, Mark thought.

And then he thought, Darn? I’ve been around these ponies too long.

“Uh-huh,” Fireball rumbled. “What does it look like, Mark?”

“Well,” Mark said, pretending to scroll through the adventure notes on his own computer, “considering the décor you’ve seen so far, it’s surprisingly ordinary. It appears to be made of wood. Hexagonal layout with steps up on the side facing the walkway and the opposite side. It’s painted mostly white, with brown wooden shingles on the roof, green handrails around the sides, and a bit of yellow trim up near the eaves. The shade underneath looks particularly attractive.”

“Uh-huh,” the dragon repeated. “And no skulls?”

“No skulls anywhere,” Mark agreed.

“Okay,” Fireball rumbled. “Schmaug asks Slash Magnus does he still has that firewood we got last camp.”

“What?” Cherry Berry, whose barbarian had been renamed ‘Slash Magnus’, asked. “What do you want that for?”

“Too much… describe,” Fireball finally said. “Too many little things. Mark had this ready. It’s a… a… it’s a trap,” Fireball finished in Equestrian, unable to find the right English word.

Starlight, of course, had the word. “A trap?” she asked. “It’s a pretty shed with open sides. It’s an inanimate object- it’s a thing! Just a thing! How could it be a trap?”

“Don’t know,” Fireball said, “and not gonna find out.” He looked back at Cherry. “Firewood.”

“This is a waste of time,” Cherry Berry groaned.

“I’m with Fire… um, with Schmaug,” Spitfire said. “I check for traps.”

“Okay, roll Thievery,” Mark said.

Spitfire clicked the appropriate button on her computer. “Twelve.”

“Plus your bonus!!” Starlight hissed in warning.

“Oh, right,” Spitfire said. “Um… twenty-one.”

“Okay,” Mark said. “You don’t see any traps, because it’s a gazebo.”

“Yep, trap for sure,” Fireball said. “I take the firewood, pile it up next to ga-zee-bo thing.”

“I haven’t gave you the firewood yet!” Cherry insisted.

“Did too,” Fireball said. “And I pour lamp oil on wood. Empty bottle. Maybe splash on gazebo too.” He leaned his head forward over his computer, stretching his long neck to smirk at Mark. “What does it think of that?”

“Roll for Perception,” Mark said.

Fireball looked back at his computer and frowned. “Where… where.”

“Per-kep-tee-on,” Starlight muttered.

“Oh, that,” Fireball said. “Why can’t you humans say words right?” He clicked a button and laughed. “Nineteen! Plus two is twenty-one!”

“Well,” Mark said, doing his best to sound judicious, “a person could say the gazebo looks a little apprehensive… if it wasn’t a building!”

“There, see?” Fireball gloated. Then, a moment later, he asked, “What is appre-what he said?”

“Apprehensive,” Starlight sighed. “It means the gazebo can see what’s coming and is afraid of it. Or would be, if-“

“I knew it!” Fireball’s head whipped back to face Mark. “Schmaug runs back out of… out of… runs to safe place and casts Scorching Burst on the firewood.”

Mark raised his eyebrows. “Just to be clear,” he said, “you are initiating combat- starting a fight- against a building.” Now came the words of doom, the words he’d heard in high school and college way too many times, the words that told you it was already far too late: “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Fireball didn’t flinch. “I cast Scorching Burst on the firewood.”

“Okay, then,” Mark said. “Roll your attack. You get first advantage; everyone else roll.”

Fireball clicked the button. “Ha! Natural 20!” He rolled again. “And seven! Thirty-two!”

“Roll damage!”

Click, different button. “Seven!”

“Okay, and since you’re targeting oil-soaked flammable materials, I’m ruling it does double damage.” Mark clicked his die-roll app a couple of times. “The good news is, you have successfully set the gazebo on fire. It’ll take fourteen points of damage every round. The bad news is, you have enraged it. The dread gazebo jumps from its foundations, lands next to Schmaug, and swallows him whole. The bite does…” Click. “Well, eighteen points of damage, so you’re not dead, but you are very definitely bloodied.” Mark could no longer keep the grin off his face as he added, “Oh, and all non-bite attacks the gazebo makes? Add fire damage to that.”

“OH, COME ON!” Starlight Glimmer shouted.

“I make Vengeful Attack,” Cherry said.

“Yep, you can do that,” Mark agreed. “Roll it.”

Cherry clicked the button, and groaned. “Twelve.”

“Add your bonus,” Starlight urged.

“I did.” She turned the computer to show the 3 on the dice app display.

“Yeah, that’s a miss,” Mark said. “Your greatsword bounces off the gazebo’s wooden hide leaving barely a nick.”

“Um… did you say it eat me?” Fireball asked. “Crunch crunch crunch?”

“More like crunch, gulp,” Mark said. “Also, don’t do that.”

“But it open, yeah? How it hold me?”

“Support beams in roof grabbing you,” Mark said.

“I try to get out.” Fireball made snake-wriggle motions with his claws.

“Not your turn,” Mark said. “The gazebo used its action point for the reaction attack, so next up is Pickflower.”

That was Spitfire’s thief. “I stab gazebo in back,” she said.

“Okay, you waste the round figuring out that the gazebo doesn’t have a back,” Mark said. “Cherry Berry is next.”

“I take sword and chop gazebo,” Cherry said. “Let my friend go!” She clicked the button, and this time she groaned even louder. “One.”

“Ooooh, yeah,” Mark said. “Slash Magnus tries to impale the gazebo with his greatsword. The sword goes in and gets stuck, and the gazebo spins around, yanking the sword out of Slash’s hands. I’ll rule that the sword did half damage, but now you have the gazebo’s-“

“Is it my turn now?” Starlight Glimmer interrupted.

Mark paused. “Um, in just a moment,” he said.

“I dump my water bottle on the flames and try to put them out!”

Everyone froze. “Um… okaaaaaaay…” He clicked a button, and his eyebrows rose from honest surprise this time. “The unexpected action stuns the gazebo with surprise…” He clicked again. “And since the gazebo jumped away from the firewood, you’re able to douse the flames enough that you can use your cape to swat out the remaining flames.”

“Okay,” Starlight continued. “I then apologize to the gazebo and ask it to release my ignorant friend. Talking’s a free action, right?”

“Um…” Mark looked at his notes. “This gazebo is a magically animated brute. It doesn’t think. You can’t parley with it.”

“Oh, yes I can,” Starlight insisted. “You said it was apprehensive when it saw Schmaug piling up firewood and dousing it with oil. That means it can think and anticipate the future. Only intelligent creatures can do that. And if it’s intelligent, that means I can parley with it.”

Damn, Mark thought, and also, Shit, and furthermore, Fuck.

I can’t argue with that.

“Fine,” he surrendered. “But the gazebo is really angry and not all that intelligent, and you only have a plus-one bonus for Diplomacy-“

“But this is a monster, right?” Starlight continued. “That means I use Dungeoneering, and I have a plus-nine for that!”

Okay, Mark thought. I should have known Starlight would be the rules lawyer. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Schmaug set a wooden creature on fire. For the gazebo, that’s glue-factory nightmare territory. Your target number to succeed is thirty, so nothing less than a natural twenty is going to succeed.”

“But it is possible, right?” Starlight asked.

Mark sighed. “Yes,” he admitted. “Just barely. Roll it.”

“So,” Spitfire said in Equestrian, “we need Daub Cake to roll twenty or we all die? Daub ‘Can’t Roll Don’t Make Me’ Cake? We’re doomed.”

Starlight looked at her computer, then looked at the dice she’d carved (which hadn’t been removed from the worktable since their first use), then at her computer. Then, taking a deep breath, she pushed the computer aside and reached for the red twenty-sided crystal. She balanced it carefully on the underside of her forehoof, tilted it to let it roll in a little circle around her frog, and then gently released it to tumble on the table.

The die rattled, rolled, and stopped.

“HOODY HOO!”

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 277
ARES III SOL 274

[15:18] JPL: Just finished reading your report. I can’t believe you let them charm the Dread Gazebo.

[15:39] WATNEY: I know. Thanks to their new friend they’re all up to level 4 already and preparing to go back into the dungeon tonight to finish off the lich king.

[16:11] JPL: But bribing the gazebo by giving it a granite flagstone floor??

[16:40] WATNEY: The dice backed Starlight up. And I checked- they’re not loaded or imbalanced. I think it just shows that, however much Mars hates the ponies, it hates me more.

[17:11] JPL: I think it shows it’s time you handed off your GM screen to Starlight. Don’t take it too hard. Some people just weren’t born to handle such responsibility.

[17:43] WATNEY: I’m not allowed to say what I’m thinking because you’re my boss, Venkat, but I’m thinking it as loud as I can.

Author's Note

Today is a day of rest, so one chapter is it, but being at home, in perfect quiet aside from the A/C, with no urgent need to do anything besides laundry, makes it so much easier to write.

Still, since today is a day of rest, I'm not doing more than this for writing today. In fact, in a little while I'm driving down to Beaumont to treat myself to the theatrical showing of Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks. That's to help make up for the fun I didn't have last weekend, or to be honest at any convention so far this year.

Anyhow, this scenario was preordained in almost all its details from the moment I decided our heroes were really going to get some ~~material for easy filler chapters~~ time playing RPGs. I mean, D&D plus language difficulties? It's practically obligatory that they get the gazebo.

Sol 283

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 287
ARES III SOL 283

“… and that’s the end of the chapter,” Starlight Glimmer said, pushing away the computer. The others began stretching where they sat, reluctant to put their spacesuits back on to leave the cave, now that the daily routine was complete. She didn’t want to get up either, but for better reasons than ordinary dislike of being in a pressure suit.

“What was that big long poem about?” Fireball asked. “We gonna read about Earen-whozit?”

“The author spent his life making a huge mythology,” Mark said from his seat, nearest as always to the cocoon. “From the creation of the world up to Frodo’s adventure. He even created whole languages and writing systems for it. It’s the background for the story. Earendil, as it happens, is Elrond’s dad, and the poem tells about how he goes to the gods to beg for help to defeat the great evil of the world. And afterwards he became the morning star- what we call Venus, the second planet, today.”

“And do we meet him?” Fireball asked.

“Nope,” Mark said. “Tolkien was showing off a bit. The only relevance is this: Earendil’s grandparents were an elf and a man. He and his descendants were given the ability to, well, stop being elves and become human. But once an elf becomes human, they become mortal. They die and pass out of the universe. Elves remain, even if they get killed. So it’s a one-way decision. And Elrond is Earendil’s son. And Arwen is Elrond’s daughter. Elrond has made his decision, but Arwen hasn’t yet.”

“Nothing about Frodo,” Fireball grumbled. “Then not important. Waste of time.”

“What about Bilbo?” Spitfire paused a few seconds, and everyone knew it was to line up the English words in her head. “Remember the part with the Ring? What happened to him?”

“Pretty obvious,” Cherry Berry said. “The Ring was working on him. Working on Frodo, too. It made him see Bilbo different.”

“But why would it do that?” Spitfire asked.

“Make enemies,” Fireball said. “Ring don’t want to go back to Bilbo. Also, Ring wants Frodo alone, no friends, no help, when Black Riders come back.”

“Maybe it’s not on purpose,” Cherry suggested. “The Ring makes everyone want it, right?”

“Gandalf said the Ring has mind of its own,” Fireball insisted. “It doing it on purpose, for sure.”

“But why now?” Spitfire asked. “Why in Rivendell, in safe place?”

“So that nowhere is safe,” Fireball replied. “Teach Frodo to hate everybody, suspect everybody. Make everybody fight, weaken party, take Ring from them left.”

“Huh.” Spitfire considered this a moment. “Mark, is Fireball right?”

“Spoilers.”

“So he IS right!”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Ugh.” Spitfire looked at Starlight. “What do you think?”

Starlight took a deep breath. “I think we should read something else,” she said.

“What? But the book only half over!” Fireball insisted. “And two books after!”

“Why do you think we should read something else?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Because,” Starlight said, “I don’t want to encourage comparisons between the One Ring and Dragonfly.” There. She’d said it. And, of course, now that she’d said it, comparisons were guaranteed.

And, right on cue, Cherry Berry began them. “Oh, come on!” she insisted. “Chrysalis is a bad person, but she’s not a Dark Lord. Dark Lords don’t get embarrassed or flustered. Dark Lords don’t spend weeks as a paperweight because they got sucker-punched.”

“Irrelevant,” Starlight said. “We all know Dragonfly tried to manipulate us. Not like the One Ring- she tried to bring us together, or at least to keep us from attacking each other. But remember when Chrysalis suggested we were angry at each other because of her?”

“And she was wrong,” Cherry said. “She was testing us to see.”

“Mmmm, maybe, maybe,” Spitfire began, struggling for words, “maybe Dragonfly like horcrux more than Ring.”

“The horcruxes were definitely intelligent,” Starlight said. “That’s not a good argument.”

Mark pushed himself to his feet. “I think I’ll spoil you a little,” he said. “One of the key messages of the Lord of the Rings story is that all evil has its beginning within ourselves. You’re going to see examples of that in later chapters. And by the end, I’m pretty sure you won’t be comparing Dragonfly to the One Ring.” He took a deep breath and added, “For one thing, nobody is going to use Dragonfly as a wedding prop.”

Starlight’s train of thought derailed spectacularly. From the looks on everypony else’s faces, the same thing happened to them. “Um, what?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Mark said, grinning. “When I was a kid these really big, expensive movies came out based on these books. And for a while there was this fad where geeks got married using reproductions of the One Ring.”

Starlight felt facial muscles struggling to find their positions, as her emotional coach had just called an audible not in the playbook. “You let people get married with the One Ring?” she asked.

“Not the real one, obviously,” Mark said. “It’s just a story.”

“People get married,” Cherry Berry said in the same tone as Starlight, “with an evil, evil magic ring? Even if is fake? And people knew it was evil?”

“Um… yeah. But when you put it like that-“

“What is wrong with your species??” Starlight shrieked.

Mark pondered this. “Would you like me to write out a list?”

Starlight grunted, getting up and moving for her suit. “Never mind,” she said. “Dragonfly isn’t the evil influence. Mark is.”

“Well, of course I am,” Mark admitted. “I’m the bard, after all.”

“Maybe we take vote,” Fireball rumbled, a smirk on his muzzle. “Once Dragonfly is out, we put Mark in instead. And every day we visit we stuff three potatoes each in.”

Starlight sighed. “First we have to get her out,” she said. “Three days until we try it. And if the next bit doesn’t work, I don’t know what else to do.”

“Besides get a stick,” Spitfire muttered.

Author's Note

This idea worked better in my head than written down. Maybe I should have done it before cooking most of a week's meals. (

Anyway, here's today's. Proceeding to do work on tomorrow's.

Incidentally, I went live with a Kickstarter during A-Kon, but I never announced it here, because there's only one faintly pony shirt design in it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869505034/wlp-shirts-2018-summer-shirt-lineup?ref=user_menu

Sol 308

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 312
ARES III SOL 308

[08:31] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold - Unable to Display

[09:36] SYSTEM: ERROR - Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold - Unable to Display

[10:10] JPL: Well, as you see, Mark, we’re beginning to have problems even at this low bit rate. Explanation will have to wait. For now, don’t bother making the cargo brackets for the alien engines. Put it off until later.

[10:42] WATNEY: How come? Did Bruce Ng and his boys run into a problem? Anything we can do to help?

[11:37] SYSTEM: ERROR - Destination reports Signal Corruption Exceeds Recovery Threshold – Message Not Sent

[11:39] WATNEY: I see the problem. Roger wilco.

Spitfire frowned as Mark worked his way through the end of the chapter, delivering Smeagol’s lines in the weird voice he used for that character. It was a terrible voice, a wheedling, whining, rasp-edged voice that got on Spitfire’s nerves… which, of course, made it perfect for Gollum. Spitfire liked it a little better than Mark’s normal voice for one reason; doing the Smeagol voice forced Mark to slow down a little as he read, which made it easier for her to figure out what was being said.

“I don’t get it,” she said. That was one of the English phrases she’d memorized whole, mostly because she found it so useful so often. “We know Gollum betray… will betray them. Now he look nice for, for, for little time, and Sam, he, he, he make it bad?” Faust alive, but she sounded like Rainbow Dash right after she slammed into a mountain headfirst at speed… twice in a row. Which was a thing she did sometimes. “Why writer show this?”

“Maybe Gollum is changing,” Cherry Berry said. “He is a hobbit, or he was one. And Gandalf said hobbits resist the influence of the Ring. Maybe he’s fighting it off?”

Smoke rose from the snort Fireball gave at that. “I bet he already did betray,” he said. “Maybe he feel bad about it. He’s loco, you see that.”

“I think he’s changing his mind,” Starlight Glimmer said. She was fussing over something by the color-changing crystals, squinting at one and then another. She hadn’t taken a turn reading this time. “Or anyway, that’s what I want to believe. I listen to Smeagol’s bits, and I keep thinking how easy I had it, how generous Twilight Sparkle was to me. And the good part of Smeagol isn’t having it easy at all.”

“Is no good Smeagol,” Spitfire insisted. “Is bad Smeagol and Gollum worse. This cheap writer trick.”

“I think it’s a good moment of… um… right and wrong,” Cherry said. “The ring made Gollum do all sorts of evil, but there’s still a little part that resists. And it takes control for a minute, and Sam swats it down with bad temper. Suspicion.”

“Good.” That, unexpectedly, was Dragonfly. “Smeagol isn’t to be trusted. I’m sure he’s already sold out the hobbits, but to what I don’t know.”

“But it’s the Ring doing it to him,” Cherry insisted.

"Nope," Dragonfly insisted. "First rule of mind control: you can't directly force someone to do something against their will. At least part of them has to want to do it."

“Actually,” Starlight began, “that wasn’t how it worked when… never mind.” Spitfire couldn’t help smirking as the unicorn took an extreme interest in the rainbow crystals again.

"As I was saying," Dragonfly continued, "the Ring couldn't have done a thing to Smeagol by itself, not without making him into a total puppet. Which obviously it didn't do. Look at his history. Gandalf said he killed his brother, or cousin, or whatever, for the Ring. He snuck around, poked and pried at things, listening for secrets, stealing little things. That's how he was before the Ring- that's how it got him. Bilbo, on the other hoof, didn’t want anything for himself. He was kind, generous, brave, and loyal. The Ring couldn't do much with that. That's why it kept slipping off his finger- it wanted a new host.”

“But Bilbo couldn’t give up the Ring by himself,” Cherry protested. “It had hold of him enough to make him protect it.”

“Sure,” Dragonfly said. “It’s a gold ring that makes you invisible. Not hard to persuade someone to want to keep it. But Bilbo actually wanted to be rid of the thing. He wanted to give away the Precious, think about what that took! And it wanted to be rid of Bilbo, is what I think. That’s why I think it let Bilbo drop the envelope.”

“We’re getting away from Smeagol here,” Starlight said. “What makes you think Smeagol isn’t reforming?”

“Because Smeagol doesn’t want to reform,” Dragonfly said. “He wants his treasure back. That’s who Smeagol is. That’s who Smeagol always was. The Ring didn’t create that, it just made it worse, took away whatever good things he might have had in him. But you just can’t make someone do something they really don’t want to do. You have to first persuade them they want to do it. You have to start a crack. Smeagol was vulnerable already when he first saw the Ring.”

“Dragonfly,” Mark said slowly, “is this first-hand knowledge? The mind control, I mean”

The changeling looked Mark directly in the eyes and said, “Yes. Yes, it is.” She looked at the others, continuing, “Before the invasion I had a lot of infiltration roles, usually as a pegasus courier. Fastest changeling in the hive means a pretty fast pegasus disguise. My job was to read the messages and pass on anything useful back to headquarters. And yes, that meant hypnotizing a lot of ponies so they’d give me certain jobs or let me look at something I wasn’t supposed to see. I know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Dragonfly looked at Mark again and added, “And the last time I used that ability, you were half-unconscious with a badly burned arm, and I was burning magic like, like, like something that burns really fast, to keep you awake and driving and get yourself and Starlight back to the Hab.” She stomped another hoof. “If you hadn’t wanted to live, deep down, it wouldn’t have done a bucking thing. If you’d given up and decided to die, you would have died no matter how hard I tried to bend your mind. So don't expect me to apologize for knowing how to pull your levers when I really need to!”

This silenced the literary discussion so thoroughly that Mark needed a full twenty seconds before he could think of anything to get it going. “So, would you say that you feel sympathy for Gollum?”

“A little,” Dragonfly said after some consideration. “When I lost control and drained you, it was because some part of me really wanted to. Have I mentioned lately you’re delicious?”

Spitfire put her face in her hoof. This discussion kept finding new and previously unexplored worlds of awkward and uncomfortable.

“So I know exactly what it’s like to give in. Except I don’t think Smeagol ever really fought it.” She sighed. “No, if I understand the word sympathy right, then I feel sympathy for the Ring.”

“Explain.” Mark only said the one word, but it was one word more than Spitfire could muster.

“Pretty simple: mind-bending monster that wants to get home.” Dragonfly shrugged. “And six years ago I could add, ‘so that it can help destroy or enslave the whole world.’ That’s how I was raised. That’s how I’m made. The only difference is that I can decide that, although I definitely am a monster, I will not act like a monster. I don’t know if the Ring has that choice, and I sure don’t see any sign that it would choose to be nice if it could, anyway.”

More silence, followed by Cherry Berry murmuring, “You know, the only other changeling I can ever remember referring to herself as a monster is Chrysalis. None of the others think of themselves that way, at least not out loud.”

Dragonfly shrugged. “Maybe I’ve been around ponies too long.”

Spitfire, having gradually got over her shock, ran through the conversation in her mind, came to a quick decision, and got to her hooves. No one had ever bothered to return the two-meter spare section of Hab support pole to its cabinet back at the Hab, and it lay only a few paces away. She trotted over, picked it up in her teeth, and then walked slowly towards Dragonfly. The others, guessing what was coming, scattered.

“Spitfire,” Cherry Berry asked in a warning tone, “what are you doing?”

“That’s what I’d like to-“

Dragonfly’s comment was interrupted by the swoosh and thwack of plastic against chitin.

“OW!”

“Stop feeling sorry for self,” Spitfire grunted out around the stick. English was hard enough; English with your teeth clamped down on something was just annoying.

“I wasn’t feeling-“

Thwack.

“OW!!”

“Stop talking about be monster. Not let monster in space.”

“Would you like to tell that to my qu-“

Thwack.

“CUT IT OUT!”

“Stop bragging about be evil. Not thing to be proud about.”

“I wasn’t rooting for the-“

Thwack.

“That’s really annoying!”

“Next time you asked what you think about book, say, ‘I hope Frodo wins.’”

Dragonfly didn’t say anything.

Thwack anyway.

“What was THAT for??”

“Am I understand?”

“Yes, I got it!”

“Yes, what?”

“Spitfire,” Cherry Berry said, her tone making it clear that the farce was now over, “give me that stick. After you say yes, ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Ears drooping, Spitfire let the commander take the plastic pole away. For a moment she’d felt back at home… and forgot where she was.

“Thank you,” Dragonfly said, only to get another thwack to the noggin.

“Don’t try to out-Chrysalis Chrysalis,” Cherry said. “I put up with it from her because she almost never tries to do the stuff she talks about. I don’t have to put up with it from you. Understood?”

Dragonfly stood to rigid attention. “Ma’am yes ma’am!” she replied crisply.

“Thank you.” Cherry extended the pole to Mark, who grasped it in one hand. “Please put that away somewhere.”

“Um… sure.” Mark set the pole beside him, then added, “What the hell was all that just now?”

“Percussive medicine,” Spitfire replied in Equestrian. She wasn’t even going to try to render that into English, and to her relief, Mark didn’t press the point.

“Maybe we could read a mystery book when this is done,” Dragonfly said, rubbing her head. “Fantasy is hard on the head.”

“I said, no feel sorry for self.”

Dragonfly, for a changeling, could do a very good disgusted pony snort.

Author's Note

Let's talk about evil for a minute. Evil is, of course, in the news and discussions of late, but I am not going to bring in any current events into this. (I have very strong opinions about said events, but this is a refuge from the rage, not a platform for it.)

One of the common phrases used in the wake of World War II was "the banality of evil." This is a useless phrase to most Americans, because for most Americans "banal" is not a word. Nobody uses it in ordinary conversation. It means: "something so ordinary as to be obvious or boring; unimaginative."

Evil is not always banal, although it tends to repeat itself- greed, hate, fear, self-love can only be expressed so many ways. But evil is very, very ordinary.

Consider frontier Americans, especially pre-Civil War, when settlers were still clearing out land east of the Mississippi. A typical letter from a militia soldier home would go something like this:

"Camped under the stars, saw some beautiful fireflies. Night before last some boys with instruments played music and sang songs, it was so beautiful. I miss everyone at home. How's the baby? Are you taking care of my dog? I can't wait until I tell you where my land claim is so you can come join me. By the way, I saved you a couple of baby Indian scalps from today's battle as a memento of our glorious victory. Yours sincerely, etc."

It was just that simple. Here were men, most of whom you'd all think were quite nice people if you met them on the street, friendly, courteous, charming... if you were white. If you were black, you better not make eye contact. And if you were a native American, you were in deadly peril of your life- even if you were a woman or child. (To be blunt, especially if you were a woman or child.)

Because at that time the consensus was, Indians didn't really count as people, so it was okay to kill them. In fact, it was better than okay; it was a duty to kill them or drive them out, to fulfill Manifest Destiny. And almost nobody questioned this, much less recognized it as evil.

I could go on in detail, but my point is this: a person can be nine-tenths good and decent and one-tenth horrible, and often that person will not recognize it in themselves. Usually they can't, because nobody wants to think of themselves as a monster, so we humans will justify away any monstrous conduct by finding some kind of excuse.

Evil is ordinary. We all have it. We all have the potential for it. And most of the time we don't know we're doing evil at the time.

Hence Dragonfly, who allowed herself the changeling (and other cartoon baddies) flaw of blabbermouth. She has a definition of monster in her head, and under certain conditions she recognizes she qualifies. But, at the same time, she refuses to admit that the really sketchy things she did on Chrysalis's orders back Before Space were wrong, because she also thinks of herself as a good and dutiful drone and subject. She is highly unusual- not just among changelings, but among people- in that she's actually tried to look at herself and see the evil. It's a work in progress at best.

That's why Spitfire violates several items in the Code of Conduct to apply ~~corporal punishment~~ percussive medicine on Dragonfly. For all that it's not the right way to do it, it has the advantage of closing the issue and making everyone else see that it is closed. They can (mostly) pretend Dragonfly didn't admit these things, move on, and continue to work together.

So the next time you're talking to someone, and they let slip that they've done some horrible thing and don't particularly regret it- or even recognize there's anything to regret- don't ask how they could do that. They do it because they're people. People are like that.

But don't hit them over the head with anything, because Cherry Berry isn't going to back you up, and your target might not be as forgiving as Dragonfly.

Sol 331

The testing team was half and half- half pony, half changeling. The pony half, in turn, was also half and half- unicorn and pegasus, with only those unicorns Twilight Sparkle could muster who were good at long-range teleportation.

The tests were simple: set up the test vehicle on the launch pad, with its array of fifteen enchanted pylons, trigger the enchantment, and get the heck out of the way of ten tons of rapidly rising (or falling) metal.

“Test Fourteen at T minus thirty seconds,” echoed the call from the dozen or so loudspeakers scattered around the little island well off the coast of Horseton Space Center. “All personnel prepare to evacuate. T minus twenty-five seconds…”

Well offshore, on a small barge that rocked gently in the slow swells of the Celestial Sea, one unicorn after another popped into existence with a flash of light (and, in one instance, with a splash of water, having unexpectedly been bumped aside by the spell’s failsafe when another unicorn arrived at the chosen destination a split second earlier). Some pegasi and most of the changelings followed at a more normal flying speed, while the four fastest pegasi and the two fastest changelings, plus one alicorn princess, hovered and watched for whatever was about to happen.

The princess in question, Twilight Sparkle, wore one of the new wireless headsets, and as she counted down every word echoed over the little island launch pad. “… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one!”

What happened next, in tests one through eight, had been the sudden appearance of a magical blast wave, a force dome that rapidly expanded and left trees standing while carrying the test vehicle- and usually a lot of things that hadn’t been intended to become test vehicles- up into the air along with it.

Test Nine had been the first test to see if less of the dome could be generated. Subsequent tests had reduced the dome into a more or less round magical plate- or, rather, a trampoline, since what it did was essentially bounce whatever was above it into the air at tremendous speeds.

But, as with the prior tests, Test Fourteen proved that the spell had extreme difficulty discerning which things it should toss into the air, and which it shouldn’t. The mock-up spacecraft caught only the edge of the field, which was still enough to lift it in the air a bit before it slipped out of the forcefield’s effect and almost immediately plunged back to the ground.

The launch tower, on the other hoof, went almost straight up and kept accelerating, driven swiftly through the sound barrier by the fifteen pylons that generated the spell.

“Forget the capsule! Track the tower!” Twilight called out over her headset. “It’s still valid data!”

Inside the earphones of her headset, an imperious and grating voice snapped, “I don’t care if it’s data or not, it’s heading directly for my space center!!”

“Pssh,” Twilight scoffed. “It’s still accelerating upwards. I can follow it and prevent it from-“

Far, far up in the sky, the launch tower, already not at all well from having been ripped up off its foundation by the spell and then accelerated to over three times the speed of sound, gave up what structural integrity it had remaining, turning from one slightly mangled object into over a hundred smaller, but still very destructive, ballistic projectiles of tremendous weight. The spell lost its focus, and without its target it shut down.

“My space center, princess!” Chrysalis demanded over the radio.

“Shoot. Hold on one moment.”

Twilight Sparkle had heard the occasional joke about her being the Alicorn Princess of OCD, but even her detractors would have to admit that a miles-distant telekinetic grab of almost a gross of different objects, collectively massing about seven tons, followed by a mass teleport that left the metal neatly stacked in careful rows next to the launch pad for reassembly, was a feat not even Celestia would have been able to perform.

“There. All sorted out. What did we get?”

“Tracking reports maximum speed at breakup of twelve hundred sixty-two meters per second,” came the response from the minotaur chief scientist of the Changeling Space Program, Warner von Brawn. “Altitude approximately fourteen thousand, five hundred meters. Rate of acceleration had dropped by fourteen percent below launch estimate, with numbers inexact due to not tracking the tower for the first six seconds of flight.”

“Perfect!” Twilight Sparkle cheered. “Mares and gentlecolts, we have proof of concept!”

“What?” Chrysalis wasn’t having it. “Did it escape your attention that the actual capsule flew about two hundred meters, came down, and exploded on the pad? Or that we still have no way of actually steering the thing without a unicorn controlling the spell in person?”

“Oh, those? I solved those problems a week ago,” Twilight said, her voice too chipper to be smug. “The only question was whether or not the same kind of projectors that Starlight Glimmer will have available, at her much reduced power levels, would be able to produce sufficient force to be worth bothering with! Today’s experiment shows that, if anything, the spell might be slightly overpowered!”

“There is some truth to that,” the minotaur rumbled over the radio. “The estimated G forces for the tower’s launch would severely inconvenience a changeling and would pose lethal danger for practically anyone else.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you solved the other problems?” Chrysalis asked.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I solved them?” Twilight asked, pouting a little.

“Would I understand it? No. And I have no need to understand- not the theory, anyway. All I need to know is how to make it go in the right direction.”

“I’ll show you when I get back to your space center,” Twilight said. “I need to call Rainbow Dash, anyway. Test Fifteen will require a live pilot.”

“Tell her to stay home,” Chrysalis replied. “I’ll fly Fifteen.”

“Aren’t you two weeks overdue to relieve Concordia?” Twilight asked.

“Concordia is in good hooves,” Chrysalis said.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles overhead, the current officer in command of CSP Concordia looked sternly at her subordinate and said, “I don’t care if you can teleport here in one go, I’ve told you, you’re not allowed to visit Mama when she’s at work.”

“But Mama!” Flurry Heart whined.

“No buts,” Cadance replied. “Now go sit in the corner and think about what a dangerous thing you’ve just done.”

“Isn’t a corner, Mama.”

“Fine. Over by the ladder, then.”

“An’ can’t sit in zero-G.”

“Improvise.”

As the overpowered alicorn child floated past one of the changelings on duty on the half-ship, half-space station’s bridge, she asked, “Can Mr. Changeling play with me?”

“No,” Cadance said, but her glare was reserved for the drone whose crimes were (a) Being a Changeling Who is Not Thorax, and (b) Being Here.

The changeling, remembering that his current commanding officer had once launched himself, his queen, and tens of thousands of his friends hundreds of miles at ballistic speed, bent back to his console and thought small thoughts.

Author's Note

Cadence is really regretting "keeping an eye on things for a day or two." And she holds one particular grudge a very long time, especially when her daughter is in close proximity. But the two changelings currently on crew regret it even more. She gets tetchy when you say "Princess of Food" in her hearing...

KWLP tonight is the July 4th show. First thing tomorrow I hit the road for Sausomecon, up by Kansas City airport. Vacation is over; time to get back on the road. I'll have tomorrow's chapter finished before I sack out tonight.

Oh- and by the way, here's my favorite Martian post-Mars fanfic. It's a shame the ponies act as kind of a curb on Mark's more manic side, because this writer really gets Mark: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8879638

Sol 346

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 351
ARES III SOL 346

“A-HA!”

Spitfire jabbed her hoof at the computer screen. “Starlight always talk ‘need to know how to talk write proper.’ So humans understand. But here a human writer, writes bad. On purpose!”

They were midway through Guards! Guards! On the screen, Watch Captain Samuel Vimes had engaged in the traditional police procedural device of writing down facts in the hopes of making a connection. But since the book was a fantasy book and involved a dragon that appeared and disappeared by magic, the policeman’s notes were written in a bad Ye Olde Langueuage. (Though, admittedly, not using any actual bad language.)

“Look! Look at this! He even can’t find word! ‘I-Time: The drag-gone was not a Mechanical devize, yettie surely no wiz-zard has the power to create a beas-tee of that mag- mag—magnight- size.’ What he trying say anyway?”

“Magnitude,” Starlight Glimmer muttered. When that got a blank look, she said in Equestrian, “Magnitude.”

“Oh. I don’t use that word even in Equestrian, let alone English.” Spitfire shrugged and shifted back to English and back to her point. “This proves you don’t need perfect English! Not when humans get it wrong!”

“Spitfire,” Cherry Berry said quietly, “do you ever read the Wonderbolt-“ she used the Equestrian name- “-records from about, oh, four hundred years ago?”

“Yes! When I must!” Spitfire replied. “Annoying! Ponies not know spelling then! Words all… weird! Make me nuts reading…” The light dawned, and Spitfire looked down to the computer screen, then back at Cherry Berry. Borrowing a phrase she’d heard Mark use several times, she said, “I see what you did there.”

“Oh, it’s better than that,” Starlight Glimmer said. “The character writing those notes grew up poor and on the streets in a place with no public education, not even a one-room school like Ponyville’s.”

“A one room schoolhouse?” Mark asked. “You still have that kind of thing? How big is Ponyville anyway?”

“Not important just now,” Starlight said. “My point is, Captain Vimes has every excuse to have bad grammar, but he’s trying. He uses archaic- that’s very old- words and spelling, even though he doesn’t talk like that, because he thinks that’s how educated people write. And the author, Mr. Pratchett, knows exactly when and how to break the rules of grammar and spelling to make this effect work. That’s what knowing a language can do for you!”

“Right,” Spitfire scoffed. “Didn’t mean to write book on Mars.”

“Can we get back to reading the book now?” Cherry Berry asked.

“Just a minute,” Mark said. “I want to go back to public education not being important.”

Spitfire pulled the computer back to herself and began reading aloud- and very loud- until Mark gave up on any attempt to investigate the educational system of the ponies.

Author's Note

This seemed like a much more promising line of exploration when I decided on it for today's writing. But between distractions and work at Delta H Con, this is all that resulted.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.

Sol 366

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 372

ARES III SOL 366

“This is dumb.”

“I’m not arguing the point,” Mark replied, working the ratchet wrench while Fireball held the engine bell (one of those salvaged from the MAV descent stage) upside down on top of its normal mounting point on the Amicitas engine. “But if we don’t want this thing to flip over in midair, we have to do it.”

Fireball couldn’t argue with that. They’d considered just sending the rocket motor up as is, all one point four tons of it. After all, Mars had so little air that wind resistance was a non-factor, right? Then Starlight Glimmer had passed on the numbers from the launch tests on Equestria, particularly the launch that sent Chrysalis up to the new giant orbiting spaceship. Mark had done some quick and dirty math and worked out that the test vehicle, being something like eight percent the launch weight of the vehicle used on Chryssy’s flight, would leave the pad at something like seventy G’s of acceleration…

… or, to put it in terms of meters per second, almost seven hundred meters per second per second if they used the same system. Even with the more restrained system Twilight Sparkle had recommended, the test vehicle would break the Martian speed of sound roughly two-thirds of one second after liftoff.

Fireball knew himself to be a dragon of only moderate intellect, but even he could see two things here. First, every bit of Mars’s ability to throw the flight off course by air resistance would come into play practically immediately, and so the engine had to be made at least vaguely aerodynamic if they didn’t want it to drop right on top of their heads in several uncomfortably heavy pieces.

Second, even with the aerodynamic shell they were bodging together, only an idiot would be anywhere close to the thing when it launched.

All of that was obvious. But putting the engine bell on a rocket motor backwards, so that the open end just barely fit over the guts of the motor, was just about like that one pony you always got at a party who thought it was the funniest thing in the world to put a lampshade on her head. Again.

Yes, it was a way of saving on scrap metal- not that that was as urgent as it had once been, since they weren’t going to be strapping this rocket and its two siblings to the Ares IV MAV anymore, but you didn’t need to be a dragon to see the sense of hoarding useful material on a hostile, unpredictable world.

And yes, the material the bell was made of had been specifically designed to withstand tremendous temperatures, air friction, and anything else ponies, dragons, or deranged changelings could throw at it.

All true, and yet it still looked dumb.

“Okay, that’s got it,” Mark said, giving the last bolt a final tug with his ratchet. “Let’s go inside and make the cap and fins.”

They’d taken the engine out to Site Epsilon, just east of the cave farm, for launch. It wasn’t an absolute guarantee that moving east would prevent the engine from hitting the Hab in case of a mishap, but it helped. Any misfire of the launch system would need quite a bit of help to overcome Mars’s rotational velocity.

As for the cave farm and Site Epsilon… well, it could take a direct hit better than the Hab could. Meters of dirt and rock beat a canvas dome for impact resistance any day.

Fireball and Mark wasted no time divesting themselves of their space suits once the airlock finished pressurizing. The interior temperature of the cave now matched that of the Hab, and the valve on the water heating system was being closed off bit by bit as the extra sun crystals throughout the cave did their work. Besides, it was more comfortable out of the suits than in.

“Hey, Starlight!” Fireball shouted. “We taking battery for two minutes of field.”

“What for?” Starlight was studying the designs she’d drawn on the whiteboards, making sure she had the adjustments for the launch-test crystal enchantment clear in her mind. She didn’t even look up at Fireball’s shout.

Fireball almost used the Equestrian word, and then remembered the English, thanks to several episodes from entirely different series that mentioned or showed it being done. “Welding,” he said. Thank you, stupid human television.

“Take one of the amethyst batteries,” Starlight said. “I drained them day before yesterday. Less than ten percent charge. Two minutes is about all you’ll get.”

“Good.” Most of the batteries were clear quartz, since most of the crystals large enough for the purpose were clear quartz, but a couple of large amethyst chunks had been trimmed and turned into batteries, and they were easy to pick out from the others. Fireball picked it up, ignoring how everything seemed a little heavier than it ought to despite Martian gravity, and carried it over to where Mark had laid out five pieces of pink-painted metal- originally pieces of Amicitas’s thin outer hull.

“Okay,” Mark said, taking a marker and drawing a not-quite triangle on one of the bits of metal, leaving a square bit on the end that could be bent and bolted to the engine. He then handed the last piece of metal to Fireball. “Are you sure you’re up to this? I remember the first rover test.”

“It won’t hurt anything if not.”

“Right. Let me get Starlight to cut these, and I’ll be right back.”

Fireball watched him go. Yes, Starlight’s magic was more efficient, strictly speaking, at cutting. That was fine for the fins. But the nosecone required a little special work.

Fireball stuck the aerials on the battery terminals, switched the battery on, and felt pure magic radiating out from the battery with every sputter and buzz of rainbow sparks. He coughed a couple times to get his inner pilot light re-lit, and then puckered his lips as tightly as he could, breathed in through his nostrils, and spat his tightest, hottest flame directly at the scrap metal in front of him.

It wasn’t as hot as the flame from that huge dragon in the Discworld book. No dragon had flame that hot. If they had, more dragons would have challenged Celestia for her throne, and no doubt there’d be a bunch of dragons on the moon or pretty dragon “sculptures” in the Canterlot royal gardens.

For that matter, he couldn’t sustain a cutting flame for long even back home, never mind here. He had to move quickly. He cut a quick circle out of the metal- not perfect, but pretty close. He then cut a wedge out of that- like a large slice taken out of a pizza. This took about a minute.

Mmmmm… malachite and anchovy pizza. He’d order five of them the minute he set foot on Equus again. Charge them to Twilight Sparkle or Chrysalis or Ember, whichever was most convenient, just before he handed his resignation to all three.

No. Focus. Cutting is done, but you still need to weld the seam.

The outer skin metal was thin enough for a dragon to bend it easily by hand. Fireball did so, closing up the open wedge so the edges overlapped. Voila- a quick and dirty cone shape. He crimped the seam in a couple of places with his claws to give the seam a bit of a bite, and then he applied the flame again, not quite as hot this time but close. Carefully running the flame up and down the seam, he held the metal edges as tightly together as he could, slagging the overlapping edge so that it melted and bonded to the lower edge.

There. Two minutes and loose change, and he had a metal hat. It was irregular at the mouth of the cone, of course, and a bit wider than the open area on top of the inverted engine bell. That was on purpose. The overlap could be bent over the edge and then fastened onto the engine bell. So long as the weight was close to balanced, and so long as the overall shape was pointy enough to go more or less straight through the thin air of Mars, that was good enough.

If he’d actually been planning to ride inside the thing, he’d have been a lot more careful. Heck, he’d probably hand the whole thing to Starlight or Dragonfly or Mark, go find a corner, and sit on his claws unless asked to lift something. But this was just throwing a dumb object away. Nothing complicated about that.

“Huh. Yeah, that’ll work.” Mark had returned with four newly cut fins. Starlight now had her own field generator going as she began enchanting the nine small booster blocks and three little target blocks for the test launch.

Fireball switched off his- it had begun to sputter anyway, having run out of stored power.

“How do you get a flame that hot anyway?” the human continued, setting down his load of metal so he could more closely examine the nosecone.

“Think hard. Then make more pressure to breath,” Fireball said. “More pressure means hotter flame. Big ball of fire, like show off, like car crash on TV show, not very hot. Little bitty flame, fast air and lots of it, that very hot.”

“Huh.” Mark gave Fireball a look the dragon couldn’t interpret. He just hoped it didn’t mean If you die, dibs on dissecting you. “Well, let’s weigh all of this. Need to know how much weight we’re adding to the payload, after all.”

Fireball shook his head. That was humans for you. They’d find a way to take throwing a brick into the sun from two hundred million miles away, add math and science and junk, and make it boring.

He then considered the pony and changeling way of doing things, and then the dragon way, and how various combinations of those had got him here, and he decided he could stand a little boredom.

“I go get scale,” he said.

Author's Note

No, they're not going to launch anything at 0.7 kilometer per second squared acceleration. There's a good chance the ship engine, even as bricky as it is, would shear apart even in Martian air. More details about how they step down the power next chapter.

Dragon flame in the cartoon is, well, plot-sensitive. Spike can't do anything about timberwolves, but he can spontaneously melt an iceberg wider than a football stadium. So I feel no shame about giving Fireball his moment of ego-reconstruction.

About twelve hours to go on that T-shirt Kickstarter I'm doing. It's just barely over the line, mostly because I did a crap job of publicizing it, but if you were intrigued by any of the designs, you've got until noon Central tomorrow (Monday 7-23-18) to pledge.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1869505034/wlp-shirts-2018-summer-shirt-lineup

Sols 392-395

MISSION LOG – SOL 392

The new air system is up and running in the cave- and just in time.

Johanssen’s little program isn’t exactly a software patch. It’s a separate program that runs in the background most of the time. It does have a test sequence, because Beth Johanssen is not just a nerd but a super-nerd who understands the need to double-check everything, especially in space.

We made all the connections, and the system works great. The fuel plant released carbon dioxide, the pressure valve that keeps the air in the cave from escaping back out through the fuel plant opened up just enough to let the CO2 in, and the plant shut off exactly when the computer told it to.

For a triple-check I took a small oxygen bottle and ran it directly into the atmospheric analyzer. The computer (after seven minutes- running the analyzer non-stop would wear it out in short order) saw the lack of CO2, sent the order, and the fuel plant let loose more CO2. Ten minutes later, with the oxygen cut off, the computer saw the perfectly adequate CO2 levels and shut off the fuel plant again.

So, an almost purely mechanical solution to a problem works without a hitch. We’ll need to transfer another of the Hab’s hydrogen batteries and a couple of the handful of un-pillaged solar panels to guarantee enough power for all of this, but otherwise it’s good to go. Score one for Earth!

And, as I said, just in time. Tomorrow’s the final potato harvest. We’re not going to keep more than a small number of the spuds. Most of them are going to be re-planted.

That’s right, I said re-planted. And moreover, we’re going to gradually move the Hab potato plants and the Hab soil (which is getting pretty worn out anyway) to the cave. Why? Because, at least in theory, more life equals more magic. The rainbow crystals Starlight diddled to circulate water will need all the magic we can give them. Also, if the sun crystals don’t produce enough heat once the water heating system is shut off, we’ll need to make some rainbow crystals with a heating enchantment to make up the difference. Those will need even more magic.

Of course, the tradeoff is less magic in the Hab, which means that any batteries we have there will recharge about half as fast as they have been. But we can’t take plants with us to Schiaparelli. Every kilogram above the minimum means more electrical demand from the wheel motors, which means a shorter per-day travel time. The plants, and the soil they grow in, are a luxury we have to do without. So, if we can’t take them with us, we might as well put them where they’ll do the most long-term good.

With that in mind, when we harvest the cave potatoes tomorrow we’ll also dig up the water pipes and rearrange them. Starlight is already arranging it with her people back home to dump a LOT of water as far back in the cave as we can manage. We’ll reconnect the pipes to stretch almost all the way through Tangled Hallway, then use the scrap metal trench to get the water back maybe as far as the Orb. The water will seep through the uncultivated dirt floor and sink to the bottom of the sealed chamber. Part of that will become deep permafrost, but most of it will remain liquid, and the plant roots and enchanted water-pumping crystals will be able to cycle it up from there. The pony planet will monitor flow and shut off the valve on their end when we get as much water added to the system as it can take without risking a return of the black ooze, so we can just leave the tap running when we leave.

It’s obviously not a perfect solution. Humans have never been able to make a perfectly sealed, self-contained, self-sustaining environment larger than a bottle garden, and absolutely never with alfalfa and/or potatoes and/or trees of any kind. Balanced complex ecosystems get exponentially tougher the larger you make them. But this is the best we can do to set up a system that, without anyone to maintain it, has a fighting chance to survive the six years until the next open slot for an Ares mission. I just hope it’s enough.

MISSION LOG – SOL 394

We’re about halfway done transplanting the Hab plants and soil. The ripe tubers have been cut and replanted around the edges of the original cave farm, while the plants (along with a number of alfalfa cuttings) have been planted in Lunch Buffet.

The rainbow crystal irrigation system is already beginning to work- at least, the one that runs from the well at the back of the farm chamber up to the front. Starlight has begun a second, smaller line- a pair of lines, really, to bring a bit of water up from below Lunch Buffet’s soil and irrigate the plants we’re putting there. In the meantime we’ll spend our remaining cave time hand-watering those plants to give them a chance to root and survive.

But we’ll be doing that using pony space suits. Our half-assed hydrological system has absorbed all the water the main life support box can give. So tomorrow we’re going to pull the life support box and re-install it into the pony ship.

I wonder what Ares V or whoever will find in six years’ time? Will it be a crumbling, freeze-dried plant graveyard after something rusts or breaks or cracks and lets the air out? Will they find a terrarium where the plants are surviving but half-starved and sickly? Or will they find a wildly growing jungle of alfalfa and potato plants, half-shaded by an enormous tangle of cherry tree branches?

Common sense bets on the first option, but I’m hoping for the last one. We all are. The farm served us well this past year, and now we’re giving back what we can to give it a chance to live on.

MISSION LOG – SOL 395

I changed the Morse code rock message today: “SOL 395 – TESTING ROVER MODS, ON TRACK FOR SOL 451 DEPART.” Not that I really needed to, since Pathfinder is working and we have the pony radio for when Pathfinder’s no longer an option. But it had been over a hundred sols since I updated my rock blog, and it was overdue, and I felt like it.

After that we all got to work loading up the Whinnybago. From now on everything that’s going with us gets stored on board. The food is in, along with my tools, all the spare parts we’re going to take with us, and whatever personal items we might take with us. We’re not loading the magic batteries yet, because we want to put as much charge on them as possible.

Since we’re not taking the batteries with us yet, we have to add their equivalent weight in Martian rocks to the rig. That means going around the area around the Hab and the cave farm to gather several tons of rocks to make up the difference. Even Fireball was grumbling about a sore back by the time we got back to the Hab for the evening. It takes a lot of rocks- seriously, a LOT of rocks- to equal the weight of fifteen slices of quartz five feet long each plus all the smaller batteries.

We’re going to take tomorrow off- entirely off. We’ve earned a vacation day. And then we’re going to perform the first serious test of the combined Whinnybago- driving around within two kilometers or so of the Hab to see how far it goes on a full electric charge and how well it handles the little canyons that criss-cross this part of Acidalia. If it can’t handle these, then there will be major problems getting up onto Arabia Terra, never mind across it.

Anyway, it’s game night tonight. I’m anticipating trouble; Dragonfly asked if she could roll up a new character. I wouldn’t worry, except that she asked for a template for a Nac Mac Feegle…

MISSION LOG – SOL 395 (2)

About-So-High Angus MacHenderson, the Nac Mac Feegle, got vetoed, and there was much rejoicing (except by Dragonfly).

But I want a copy of the character for future reference… assuming I make D&D a regular thing back on Earth, I’d like a way to express my displeasure if a DM is screwing us over in a Discworld setting…

Author's Note

Most of this was written either while waiting on my free wash and detail job at the dealership (which I drove to in a blinding downpour) or while waiting on the oil change. I wish I'd taken the laptop in to the doctor's office, but when I walked in I wasn't expecting to actually get an appointment for today. But they had an appointment for 12 PM, which meant I got to see the doctor at 1:45.

To be fair, the doctor spent almost half an hour with me. He put me on an acid reflux pill, sent an inhaler prescrip to my pharmacy (which wasn't ready when I had to drive to Houston on another errand), and "just to be sure" ran an electrocardiogram on me.

Which picked up an irregular heartbeat.

Probably benign, he says. 90% of the time it's benign. But I need to see the cardiologist anyway. So tomorrow morning I get to check and see if his referral is actually in-network on my insurance.

Fun times, fun times.

Anyway, sorry this is all Mark. I tried to think of interesting things that could happen during all this work, but nothing popped immediately to mind.

Sol 407

MISSION LOG - SOL 407

Well, we didn't have to start weaving insulation out of hay, so that's good.

The combination of the RTG in the habitat deck and shutting down all air flow to Rover 2 and the bridge, plus the ugly-ass insulation job we did on the walls of that compartment, kept the room warm enough during the early part of the evening and only a little chilly by just before dawn. That'll have to do, because we can't really afford to run heaters, and we don't have anything else to use for insulation except hay, which has problems.

We decided one other thing: when we leave, we're going to line the floor of the habitat deck with the mattress pads from the Hab bunks. They're only a few inches thick- they were made to be thrown across a string base to save launch weight- but they're better than nothing.

Today we're going to make sure everything's in its proper place. Then tomorrow, Sirius 7, the dress rehearsal.

Fingers crossed...

(I need to ask Starlight what the pony version of that is.)

Author's Note

Sorry, but two things happened today. (1) I committed to helping a friend in Dallas, whose apartment lease is up and can't afford the new higher rent, get her crap out before the landlords lock her out and shitcan all her worldly possessions. And (2) I found a problem for our heroes, but not yet the solution, and I just spent an hour and a half verifying that the problem is, if anything, worse than I thought.

So this is all I had time for today, what with unloading the van and filling it with boxes and paper for moving stuff. And since tomorrow involves about twelve hours of driving plus five hours or so of moving house, I won't have any time for writing tomorrow.

Hopefully two chapters on Thursday to make up for missing a day.

Sol 419

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 426
ARES III SOL 419

“Glass pyramids.”

“Yeah. Bubbles would be better, because they’d be more resistant against breaking after a serious jolt, but that’s pretty much it.”

“Eighty-four glass pyramids.”

“No, just fifty-six. If we put them on the solar panels we carry on the rover, they won’t stack anymore, and we won’t be able to carry them.”

“All right. Fifty-six glass pyramids. On top of the ship. Which no longer has a safe place to stand on top of it, if it ever had one, because it’s covered with solar panels.”

“Starlight, I get the feeling you’re less than enthusiastic about my little brainstorm,” Mark said.

Starlight rolled her eyes. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Look, it’s this or take a lot longer to get to the Mav,” Mark said. “Like nine days longer if absolutely nothing goes wrong. Unless you can think of some other way to juice up the solar panels? Or maybe I could dismantle the wheels on the nose gear, remove their motors, and rig some sort of bicycle so we could take turns manually charging the batteries?”

Starlight shook her head. “Where do you get these ideas?” she asked.

“I dunno,” Mark said. “Where did you get yours? The cave farm is almost entirely your baby, you know.”

Starlight’s head continued shaking. “There’s a little shop in the crater behind the Hab,” she said with mixed sarcasm and disgust. “Can’t miss it. Big sign saying ‘DISCOUNT BAD IDEAS.’ Fireball has a gold card membership, and I put the shop owner’s kid through college.”

Mark chuckled. “I think my jokes may be rubbing off on you a bit.”

“No, seriously, Mark,” Starlight Glimmer said, setting her hooves on the worktable, “I don’t have original ideas. Not good ones. I know a ton of spells because I was an obsessed little filly who wanted to bend the world to her wishes. Every time I think of something myself, it goes wrong.”

“Not true,” Mark said.

“Transmuting rocks to ballistic cherries.”

“You could probably do it now.”

“The perchlorate spell.”

“Which we use for salt mining. God, I don’t know what we’d do without that.”

“The methane spell.”

“That one was my idea, remember?” Mark smiled. “Look, I’m not letting you off the hook. Most of the time if I come up with an idea, I have to come to you for implementation, right? But you came up with the translation spell that got us talking at first. You sealed the cave for the first time without asking for help from home. The lighting crystals were all you. Using the rainbow crystals to circulate water and add heat to the cave- all you. I couldn’t have done any of that by myself. If it was left to me, we’d still be playing Pictionary.”

Starlight looked at the whiteboard currently in the Hab. It had been drawn on and erased until the residue had made it less a white and more a darkish grey. “That’d be a neat trick,” she said.

“Look, I’m sorry I’m always imposing on you,” Mark said. “Believe me, I’d love to learn magic. I’d need a wand or something like in Harry Potter, but even if I could just make colored lights like you do-“

“Mark, we have wands that make light. They’re called flashlights. You have them too.” She sighed. “Look, take it from a recovering magic addict. Magic isn’t everything. It’s a tool just like anything else, and it can be dangerous if used irresponsibly.”

“I’d still love to learn.”

Starlight sighed again. “If you visit Pony-land, we’ll see what can be done, okay?” She lit up her horn- it took a lot from her reserves, with the plants gone from the Hab- and made a line-picture in light above the work table. “Why a pyramid?” she asked.

“Surface area and angles,” Mark said. “Imagine each square meter as four right triangles with the hypotenuse being a side of the square. 45-45-90 isosceles triangles, right? Each of them is a quarter square meter in area. Now imagine four 60-60-60 triangles instead- equilateral triangles, all of the sides being one meter long. Do the math, and each of those is a bit more than two-fifths of a square meter in area. More surface area. And since it stands up above the panel, you end up able to catch even a bit of light from lower angles. Add your light-gathering spell, and you get… well, I don’t know how much you get, but more than we’re getting now.”

“Huh.” Starlight thought about this for a moment, then banished the cantrip. She couldn’t hold it much longer anyway. “You don’t want bubbles,” she said. “They might be more sturdy, but they’d be lenses concentrating all the light on a single point. Bad idea, don’t you think?”

Mark blinked. “Oh. Yeah, you’re right. I’d forgotten about that.”

“I think I can cobble together something from a couple of mirror spells- not like Granny Weatherwax’s sister did, perfectly safe stuff. Instead of being a relay like in the cave, I could have the glass just refract any light that hits it straight down onto the panel. There might still be some hot spots, but nothing that would melt the panel.”

“Okay, I can see it.”

“The problem is, these things will have to be thin to save weight,” Starlight continued. “And they’ll have to rest only on the panel frame, so they don’t damage the cells. These are going to get broken a lot, Mark.”

“Can you fix them?”

“I can’t patch them. If they crack, good-bye enchantment. No, I’d have to replace any broken dome. That means bringing along raw material for repairs. A couple of big blocks of the clearest quartz we can find. I might be able to recycle broken domes into new ones, but I think we’d better add half a ton of quartz to the load.”

Mark groaned. “You know we’re trying to move faster, not slower, right?”

“If you think we’re going to find a second gem cave on the trip-“

“No, no, I get you,” Mark said, waving a hand in defeat. “When can we begin?”

“I need a place where I can stand and look down on the rover from not too far away,” Starlight said. “That means a gully with steep sides somewhere. Site Epsilon’s sides aren’t steep enough.”

“Okay. Get the crystal you need tomorrow, installation the next sol, Sirius 7C after that?”

“Sounds good.”

Author's Note

I'm not fond at all with how this turned out, but the important thing is this: I wrote this last night, after I posted yesterday's chapter.

And I just finished writing another chapter.

I have a chapter in the buffer.

Which is good, because AnimeFEST in Dallas this weekend runs from Friday through Monday.

By the way, I haven't mentioned this before, but about a month ago I had a realization as I was about to drop off into sleep.

All this time I've described the mana batteries as having two posts each, like a car battery, only magical. But that night I realized: wait a minute, magic is NOT a polar energy! Once you expend the power, nothing cycles back to the battery! There's no need for a loop circuit! The batteries should have only ONE post!

But I didn't feel like changing every mention of battery posts at that point in the story- even less so, now. So magic batteries have two posts, Because Reasons. Tra-la.

Sol 439

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 447
ARES III SOL 439

[09:50] JPL: Mark, just letting you know that there’s been no significant change in that dust storm in Arabia Terra. It’s moving westward at about four kilometers per hour with no real signs of strengthening. If this continues a small detour of about one hundred kilometers should be enough for you to avoid the dangerous parts of the storm.

[10:44] JPL: Mark, is everything okay down there? Pathfinder shows as fully active, but we don’t see your response.

[11:31] JPL: Ares III Hab, this is JPL, communications check, please respond, over.

[11:53] WATNEY: Sorry. We’ve been busy this morning. Mainly, we just realized that what’s left of the pony ship doesn’t have a decontamination shower. The ponies used wipes for hygiene, now all expended. So this morning we had a line for the shower followed by discussions about rigging up a bathtub, since this is our last chance to be even sort of clean for the next hundred-plus sols.

[12:04] HERMES: One hundred sols? NASA, are there any procedures for manufacturing gas masks from materials on the ship? Come Sol 551 we’re going to need some…

[12:15] WATNEY: Ha ha, guys. By the way, my response cost me my place in line for Second Shower. And you would not believe how long Dragonfly spends in there if left alone. I think she flosses the holes in her legs.

Author's Note

There probably won't be a hot tub this time. Replacing and recycling the water between users would be a bit much for the water reclaimer, and dumping water brought into the Hab from pony life support would be hot, sweaty, I-need-another-bath work.

Sorry for the brief gag, but I got home at 11:40 PM, and I'm about to go sack out.

Appendix: Dramatis Personae

THE MARTIANS

MARK WATNEY - Human. NASA astronaut (29th class), member of the Ares III expedition to Acidalia Planitia. Primary role: scientist (botany). Secondary role: mission engineer. Backup role: scientist (chemistry). Master's degrees in botany and mechanical engineering, Northwestern University.

CHERRY BERRY (alias "Orange Leader") - Earth pony. Commander of Equestrian Space Agency Flight Fifty-Four, the third flight of ESA Amicitas, a mission jointly manned by the united space programs of the world Equus. Equus's first and most experienced rocket pilot. Former chief pilot and de facto head of Changeling Space Program. Prior missions include landings on Equus's primary moon and one of its companion asteroids, Minmus. Known by her peers as "the steely eyed missile mare."

STARLIGHT GLIMMER (alias "White Boxy") - Unicorn. Mission scientist and senior Equestrian Space Agency member on Amicitas Flight 3. Co-creator of the experimental Sparkle Drive, meant to make interplanetary and possibly interstellar travel feasible via magic. Student and chief research assistant of Princess Twilight Sparkle. Recovering megalomaniac.

DRAGONFLY (alias "Orange Random") - Changeling. Mission engineer, Amicitas Flight 3. Experienced pilot and engineer. Creator of several systems universally used in Equus space flight, including the durable parachute systems and the flexible core layer of space suits. Veteran changeling infiltrator and warrior; fastest changeling in Chrysalis's hive.

FIREBALL (alias "Tall Boy") - Dragon. Mission EVA specialist, Amicitas Flight 3. First dragon astronaut. First survivor of a rocket crash. Experienced pilot with two tours on the Equestrian space station. Antisocial and not fond of his job.

SPITFIRE (alias "White Hen") - Pegasus. Mission medic, Amicitas Flight 3. Recently promoted to Major, Equestrian EUP (national military/guard forces). On leave from commanding the elite Wonderbolts flying team. Although trained as a reserve astronaut, Amicitas Flight 3 is her first ever space flight.

HERMES - ARES III CREW

LEWIS, Melissa - Ares III mission commander (NASA Astronaut 27th class). Primary role: commander. Secondary role: science (geology). Backup role: mission pilot. Commander, United States Navy, with a career including carrier operations and submarine duty in preparation for astronautics.

MARTINEZ, Rick - Ares III mission pilot (NASA Astronaut 28th class). Backup role: medic. Major, United States Air Force.

BECK, Chris - Ares III mission doctor (NASA Astronaut 28th class). Secondary role: EVA specialist. Backup role: science (botany).

JOHANSSEN, Beth - Ares III systems operations specialist (NASA Astronaut 29th class). Backup role: mission engineer.

VOGEL, Alexander - Ares III chief science officer (European Space Agency astronaut). Secondary role: science (chemistry). Backup role: mission EVA specialist.

EARTH

Dr. VENKAT KAPOOR - Chief director, Project ARES and all Mars operations; de facto second ranking executive, NASA Johnson Space Center. Ph. D., physics, specializing in astrodynamics.

THEODORE "TEDDY" SANDERS - Chief administrator, United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

MITCH HENDERSON - Chief flight director, NASA Mission Control, Johnson Space Center.

ANNIE MONTROSE - Director of media relations, NASA.

BRUCE NG - Director, Jet Propulsion Laboratories, Pasadena, CA; in charge of constructing supply missions for Project Ares and overseeing work on vehicles for same.

MINDY PARK - Photography technician, Satellite Control (Satcom), Johnson Space Center. Master's degree in mechanical engineering.

RICH PURNELL - Trajectory calculator, Astrodynamics Directorate.

MICHAEL "MIKE" BENDAREK - Chief of trajectory calculations, Astrodynamics Directorate.

CATHY WARNER - On-air personality, CNN.

Dr. IRENE SHIELDS - Chief psychologist, Project Ares.

Dr. ETHELBERT KELLER - Chief flight surgeon, Project Ares.

RANDALL CARTER - Mars specialist, Meteorology Directorate, Johnson Space Center.

MICHAEL HONG - Safety inspector, SpaceX.

EQUESTRIA

TWILIGHT SPARKLE - Princess of Friendship. Founder and former head, Equestrian Space Agency. Inventor of the life support systems used by all Equus space agencies and the magic-powered thrust systems used for Amicitas's in-space engines. Co-creator of the Sparkle Drive.

CHRYSALIS - Queen of the changelings. Founder and former (titular) head, Changeling Space Program. Experienced rocket pilot. Once and possibly future would-be world conqueror.

MOONDANCER - Current head mare, Equestrian Space Agency. Graduate magna cum laude, Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.

OCCUPANT - Current head of Changeling Space Program. Trained science officer, experienced flight controller.

DRYING PAINT - Employee, Equestrian Space Agency.

CADANCE - Princess of Love, co-ruler of the Crystal Empire. Trained rocket pilot.

Author's Note

Will add more as I go through the story and pick the people out. As a general rule, you have to appear in more than one chapter to get in this appendix.

Appendix: Technological Glossary

ARES III TECHNOLOGY

HERMES - The most expensive single thing ever built by mankind. Designed to operate in space for a thirty-year lifespan, the ship transports crew members and the Mars Descent Vehicle (see separate entry) from Earth to Mars and then returns the crew and surface samples to Earth. The ship is powered by nuclear-powered VASIMR ion engines that use xenon ions to produce continuous thrust. The ship is designed to spin on its central axis to provide Mars-level artificial gravity via centrifugal force in a ring of habitat compartments. The ship has a vehicular air lock in the nose and two other airlocks down the ship's spine, all of which are capable of hard docking with compatible vessels or operating as points of exit or entry for astronauts on EVA (extravehicular activity).

ARES PREFABRICATED SURFACE HABITAT ("THE HAB") - An inflatable, climate-controlled, radiation-shielded habitat used by the expeditions of Project Ares for between seven and sixty sols (Martian days) on the surface of Mars. The Hab is assembled from supplies contained in fourteen pre-supply probes launched years ahead of the arrival of the expedition; the crew is trained to unpack and assemble the Hab in a single eight-hour EVA. The Hab has three airlocks, fifteen hydrogen electrical storage units rated for 9000 watt-hours of storage each, storage for 300 liters of water, 100 liters of compressed oxygen, 50 liters of compressed nitrogen, and food supplies for 150% of the expected mission duration of the expedition in progress, plus a small geology-chemistry lab, a microwave oven for heating food packs, six bunks, and a decontamination shower to clean perchlorate-tainted surface dust off the suits and crew.

HAB CANVAS - An extremely strong flexible multi-layer laminate fabric. The fabric is designed to provide radiation shielding and atmospheric containment under extreme differential pressure for the Hab. It is assembled and held together through the use of a special binary resin that, when mixed, hardens into a near-perfect seal in sixty seconds even under normal Martian surface conditions. This resin comes both in tubes for spot use and "seal strips" for rapid application along long, straight seams.

ARES EXPEDITION ROVER - A large four-wheeled conveyance designed for occupancy of one driver and two passengers plus both internally and externally stowed cargo. The driver compartment is internally pressurized and climate controlled to permit the removal of space suits during operation. Each rover has four independently driven electric wheels powered by a lithium-ion 9000 watt-hour battery. Each Ares mission is supplied two rovers which, in case of emergency, can be linked together using specialized tow hooks that allow the sharing of power and air between the vehicles. Two spare wheels are shipped in supply in case of defects or breakage. Top speed: 25 km/h. Maximum range: 35 km. Maximum mission travel radius: 10 km. The loss of one rover is automatic grounds for scrub of all subsequent rover-based EVA tasks and potential grounds for a mission abort. Carbon dioxide levels inside the rover are controlled by use of single-use, non-recyclable lithium hydroxide filters.

ATMOSPHERIC REGULATOR - A Hab subsystem which detects and regulates the amounts of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide in the Hab's atmosphere. Regulation of these levels is done by either adding more of the desired substance from storage tanks or removing it by a fractionation process utilizing Mars's natural cold. Air is passed through an external component (AREC) outside the containment of the Hab, reducing the energy required to cool the air in question to a liquid. The differing points of condensation allows the atmospheric regulator to control which portions of the air are sent to storage tanks. The returning air is then heated electrically back to the internal temperature of the Hab. The atmospheric regulator cannot condense or separate gases lighter than nitrogen.

OXYGENATOR - A Hab subsystem that converts carbon dioxide, separated from the internal atmosphere by the atmospheric regulator, into breathable oxygen through the use of heating elements and catalysts. The resulting carbon residue is the primary waste product.

WATER RECLAIMER - A Hab subsystem that filters and purifies used water, including excess atmospheric water vapor, and returns the clean water to the storage tank for reuse. This system saves water weight of as much as four times the weight of the unit itself. The filtration systems require regular maintenance, but the filters themselves are reusable with a long service life.

ATMOSPHERIC CONTAINMENT GARMENTS ("space suit") - Come in two varieties: a normal version used for wear aboard Hermes, for use interfacing with a manned maneuvering unit (MMU) on spacewalks, or during descent and ascent to/from Mars; and a highly robust, wear-resistant surface suit specifically designed to limit damage from dust, rocks, regolith, etc. on the Martian surface. The surface suits in particular use non-reusable filters to scrub carbon dioxide from the internal atmosphere (of the same kind used in the rovers). The suits also have two liters of atmospheric storage (compressed liquid oxygen and nitrogen), a small water reservoir, short-range radio, and internal displays projected onto the inside of the helmet visor. Two cameras are mounted on the helmet and right arm. Internal batteries, good for twelve hours of continuous function, are recharged using special racks contained in the Hab and plugs available in the rovers. All helmets are standardized to be interchangeable with all suits; gloves, however, are custom-fit to each astronaut.

COMMUNICATIONS ARRAY - Two separate systems, connected via cable to the Hab's radio systems. Outgoing transmissions are conducted using a large parabolic tracking dish for direct communications to Earth. Incoming signals are received via a large array of small wire antennae to be spread across the surface near the Hab. In case of loss of the main communications system, the MAV communications systems are triply redundant, allowing direct communications with Earth, Hermes, or any of the many orbiters in Mars local space. Loss of main communications is a condition for mission abort. The Hab also has a simple broadcast beacon for use by the rover and suit navigation systems, separate from the main communications systems.

MARS DESCENT VEHICLE (MDV) - A capsule designed solely to bring the crew from Hermes to the expedition site on the Martian surface. Using a combination of heat shields, parachutes, and thrusters (powered by hydrazine), the capsule descends through the Martian atmosphere to a pinpoint targeted landing zone. Once the MDV commits to descent, there is no possible abort, nor any return to Hermes except via the MAV. The interior cabin of the MDV is almost identical to the MAV, with internal life support for up to forty-eight hours in case of contingencies involving Hab assembly.

MARS ASCENT VEHICLE (MAV) - The single largest and heaviest pre-supply payload delivered to Mars prior to a surface expedition. In order to save the weight of fuel necessary to reach orbit from the Martian surface (about the same weight as the empty, unfueled vehicle), the MAV lands on Mars two years prior to the human crew and uses a radioisotope thermal generator (RTG) to power a fuel plant that converts carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere into methane and oxygen. This process requires fifteen months.

The vehicle consists of a descent stage (containing heat shield, parachutes, and just enough thruster power for a controlled vertical landing, plus the RTG and fuel plant), two ascent stages (the first with multiple engines, the second with a single engine), and a two-deck capsule for the crew and cargo.

On-board life support is charged from Hab supplies and can hold up to three days of air. Solar panels enable a backup communications satellite mode in the event that an expedition is scrubbed before landing or if the MAV is unable to land. The MAV contains triply-redundant communications systems capable of establishing data links direct with Earth or with any spacecraft or satellite in or near Mars orbit.

The MAV is the single most mission critical piece of hardware in any Ares expedition. If a MAV is not fully functional, the expedition will not attempt a landing. If any contingency arises which would present a danger to the MAV, the mission will be immediately aborted and the astronauts will launch immediately for rendezvous with Hermes.

EQUESTRIAN TECHNOMANCY

AMICITAS - Equus's first purpose-built multiple-use spacecraft (as opposed to capsules and prefabricated habitat compartments). Originally designed by Twilight Sparkle as a test bed for magic-powered fuelless rocket systems, Amicitas was the first piloted vehicle to orbit the moon. Amicitas was pulled out of semi-retirement for use as the test bed for the final planned test flight of the Sparkle Drive (see below).

In the configuration used for the third flight of Amicitas, the ship interior was composed of three airtight chambers. The cockpit or bridge contained seating for seven and all controls required for operation of the ship, plus a non-dockable personnel airlock. The central compartment, the habitat deck, contained the food supplies for the voyage, the sleeping area, and a dorsal docking port for use with the joint space programs' space station or other craft. The rear compartment, the engineering deck, contained the Sparkle Drive and a massive array of mana batteries for use in powering both the Sparkle Drive and the three main orbital engines. Access to the engines and batteries is accomplished via an extra-large cargo air lock.

The exterior of the ship consisted of an outer hull shaped in a streamlined lifting-body configuration to allow a runway landing (although emergency parachutes were also available), three main engines for use in orbit or deep space, and eight maneuvering thruster blocks. Initial launch to orbit is accomplished by an array of external booster rockets using chemical propulsion. A water-based cooling system runs between the outer and inner hull to regulate the temperature of the ship while in space.

Electrical power was provided by a mana-to-electricity conversion system, with an emergency backup solar array deployable from a compartment above the bridge in case the converter failed. Communications with Equus were provided by a magic telepresence array that provided instant FTL video and audio communications with the ground. An electric radio with six pre-set frequency-modulation channels acted as an emergency backup communications system.

SPARKLE DRIVE - An enchanted artifact designed to teleport itself and anything attached to it a certain pre-set distance every time an electrical pulse is sent into its main crystal. As with more common teleportation spells, the magical energy required is proportional to the square of the distance traveled, but the time required for a teleport is virtually instantaneous regardless of distance. Thus, by teleporting very short distances hundreds of thousands of times per second, apparent velocities can be attained that would be impossible using reaction-based propulsion. However, the enchantment, being unintelligent, can only teleport a fixed distance in a specific orientation (usually aligned with the nose of the ship). The only exception is a special safety enchantment that forces the teleport to displace the destination the shortest possible distance required to avoid collisions or the coexistence of two different masses within the same space.

The Sparkle Drive avoids relativistic effects by bypassing them entirely. Post-teleport the momentum of the equipped craft remains precisely the same. However, by displacing itself from point to point in space without traversing the space between, the Drive can allow travel faster than light without actually achieving the velocity of light.

In practice, the Sparkle Drive consists of control systems, the core teleport-enchanted artifact, and an array of mana batteries which collect mana beyond the ability of the Drive alone and which moderate power flow and demand to the Drive.

MANA BATTERIES - Although all enchanted artifacts store magical energy, or mana, as part of their enchantment, artifacts specifically designed for no purpose other than to store mana for future use were not developed by ponykind prior to the Equestrian Space Race of 1006-1007 CR. Early models required manual charging by unicorns and thus were prone to discharge and exhaustion, but the most recent version of the enchantment allows automatic environmental recharging.

The mana batteries installed for Amicitas Flight Three were composed of a crystal cube (amethyst for preference) containing the battery enchantment, encased in an open metal frame which also included the terminals, charge readouts, and control switches between recharge mode (off) and discharge mode (on). Amicitas contained one hundred batteries as part of the Sparkle Drive power array, plus two separate emergency batteries for use in powering bridge control systems.

MANA-ELECTRIC CONVERTER - A system which converts mana drawn from a battery into direct-current electricity. The process works in part because magical energy has a much higher potential energy state than electrical charge; the process is not reversible, in the same way that a water wheel cannot be used to pump water upstream merely by reversing the rotation of the wheel.

LIFE SUPPORT TELEPORTATION SYSTEM - A system which has, at its core, two or three pairs of magically linked crystals. The larger crystal of the pair remains at base (specifically, the Life Support Monitor Building, Cape Friendship Space Center, Baltimare, Equestria) and powers the enchantment for both crystals. The smaller crystal rides in the space suit or spaceship being supplied with life support. Various external systems provide additional controls, including activating or deactivating transmission through the magic link. The system provides normal Equus atmosphere at Baltimare local pressure, cold water for drinking, and (in the case of spaceship life support systems) a small stream of hot water for use in reconstituting and heating dehydrated meals. The air system provides for two-way circulation of air in order to keep the astronaut's air clean; the water system is one-way.

The chief drawback to the system is that the trans-dimensional link which allows instant transmission of materials also disrupts a certain percentage of many if not most molecular bonds, particularly carbon bonds or any bond which might lead to an exothermic chemical reaction. Attempts to use the system to transmit liquid food have proven messy and disgusting; attempts to transmit rocket fuels like kerosene, alcohol, or hydrazine have proven disastrously explosive. Attempts to convert the system into a rocket engine in its own right have failed owing to the relative fragility of the crystals on the receiving end. Although experiments at ending the issue continue, they have taken a much lower priority compared to improving the performance of magic-powered thrusters and developing the Sparkle Drive.

TELEPRESENCE SPELL - An all-purpose audiovisual communications spell, producing live, real-time communications between multiple stations. The system cannot provide recordings on its own; recordings must be made by filming or taping the output using conventional recording devices. Each spacecraft launched from Equus contains a full telepresence array, powered by ambient magic. Spacesuits contain a weaker version of the spell with a limited range should the master spell be deactivated.

MAGIC THRUSTERS - A system invented by Twilight Sparkle that converts stored magic power into propulsive thrust. In theory the final development of this technology would be a rocket system requiring no fuel whatever. The three main engines equipped on Amicitas for its third flight, the current peak efficiency revision of the system, produce a combined thrust sufficient to hover approximately eighteen tons at one Equus gravity. In orbit, with the vessel fully crewed and stocked, this would produce a maximum acceleration of the roughly sixty-ton mass of about three meters per second per second. All Equus space suits are equipped with thruster packs based on the same technology; these packs are vastly more effective on the astronauts' smaller masses.

OTHER TECHNOLOGY

PATHFINDER and SOJOURNER - Launched from Earth in 1996, the first (and only) successful "Faster Better Cheaper" Mars probe landed in Ares Vallis in the southernmost region of Chryse Planitia in July 1997. The combined mission of the Pathfinder base station and the small Sojourner rover, planned for thirty days, lasted almost a hundred days before Pathfinder ceased operations. The exact cause of the shutdown is unknown, but is presumed to be failure of Pathfinder's battery.

Pathfinder, the mission's base station, operated a meteorological package and provided direct contact to Earth using an aimable high-gain antenna and a weaker low-gain antenna, originally designed for a maximum transmission rate of about 1400 baud at Earth-Mars closest approach. (Communications limits were due to the distance between worlds and the very low power levels available for the probe.) Pathfinder also had a dual-camera stereoscopic imager on a tall mast capable of producing 360-degree three-dimensional panoramic views. The rover Sojourner had a spectroscope capable of limited mineral analysis plus a trio of cameras used both for examining nearby rocks and testing self-driving and obstacle-avoidance algorithms.

Although the mission delivered real science achievements, its primary legacy is as proof of technology which would be used for much greater effect on future Mars missions.

SPACEX RED FALCON - An adaptation of the (in)famous "B.F.R.", Red Falcon is the single most powerful booster system ever put into regular service in lifting payloads into space. In its cargo configuration it is rated for delivery of up to forty tons of payload to the Martian surface during the Hohmann transfer window. (This amount decreases to twenty tons if the first stage is staged early for landing and reuse.) The Red Falcons used to provide most of the presupply launches for each Ares mission, plus most of the components of the current space station, represent SpaceX's main contribution to Project Ares.

BATHROOMS (in space) - Human or pony, Hab or spaceship or spacesuit, they are NEVER good enough. The less said the better.

Author's Note

I'm sure the loyal readers who responded to every update for months will correct me on details or contradictions, or point out things that need to be added here.

For future readers, I hope this appendix answers questions (including the #1 question ever asked, "Why don't they send food/magic/Pinkie Pie through the life support?").

And now that I have your attention... some readers have got together with a pony POD outfit, Avonder, to make a hardcopy Maretian edition. If you're interested, answer this poll:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdGMp5UBNv-4GD781MfvHeEAmxXWgRC4AwD5XMOChEy7z0HrQ/viewform

Another reader was making a POD for themselves, but I don't think they're doing mass production...

Anyway, we need to get responses soon to gauge demand for the print run. Typesetting is in progress. Let us know!