by Энди Вейр
The fourth time I kept the suit turned off, held my breath, and when the time came to light the fire, I did it very slowly. Then I watched as the little wisp of smoke drifted toward the floor of the airlock, disappearing through a hairline fracture.
I have you now, little leak!
I gasped for air and turned the EVA suit back on. The pressure had dropped to 0.9 atmospheres during my little experiment. But there was plenty of oxygen in the air for me any my hair-fire to breathe. The suit quickly got things back to normal.
Looking at the fracture, it’s pretty tiny. It would be a cinch to seal it with the suit’s patch kit, but now that I think about it, that’s a bad idea.
I’ll need to do some kind of repair to the faceplate. I don’t know how just yet, but the patch kit and its pressure-resistant resin is probably really important. And I can’t do it bit by bit, either. Once I break the seal on the patch kit, the binary components of the resin mix and I have 60 seconds before it hardens. I can’t just take a little to fix the crack.
Given time, I might be able to come up with a plan for the faceplate. Then, I could take a few seconds during that plan to scrape resin over the airlock fracture. But I don’t have time.
I’m down to 40% of my N2 tank. I need to seal that fracture now, and I need to do it without using the patch kit.
First idea: Little Dutch Boy. I’m licking my palm and placing it over the crack.
Ok… I can’t quite make a perfect seal, so there’s airflow… getting colder now… getting pretty uncomfortable… ok fuck this.
On to idea number two. Tape!
I have duct tape in my tool box. Let’s slap some on and see if it slows the flow. I wonder how long it will last before the pressure rips it. Putting it on now.
There we go… still holding…
Lemme check the suit… Readouts say the pressure is stable. Looks like the duct tape made a good seal.
Let’s see if it holds…
AUDIO LOG: SOL 119
RECORDING:
It’s been 15 minutes, and the tape is still holding. Looks like that problem is solved.
Sort of anticlimactic, really. I was already working out how to cover the breach with ice. I have 2 liters of water in the EVA suit’s “hamster-feeder”. I could have shut off the suit’s heating systems and let the airlock cool to freezing. Then I’d… well whatever.
Coulda’ done it with ice. I’m just sayin’.
All right. On to my next problem: How do I fix the EVA suit? Duct tape might seal a hairline crack, but it can’t hold an atmosphere of pressure against the size of my broken faceplate.
The patch kit is too small, but still useful. I can spread the resin around the edge of where the faceplate was, then stick something on to cover the hole. Problem is, what do I use to cover the hole? Something that can stand up to a lot of pressure.
Looking around, the only thing I see that can hold an atmosphere is the EVA suit itself. There’s plenty of material to work with, and I can even cut it. Remember when I was cutting Hab canvas in to strips? Those same sheers are right here in my tool kit.
Cutting a chunk out of my EVA suit leaves it with another hole. But a hole I can control the shape and location of.
Yeah… I think I see a solution here. I’m going to cut off my arm!
Well, no. Not my arm. The EVA suit’s arm. I’ll cut right below the left elbow. Then I can cut along its length, turning it into a rectangle. It’ll be big enough to seal the faceplate, and it’ll be held in place by the resin.
Material designed to withstand atmospheric pressure? Check.
Resin designed to seal a breach against that pressure? Check.
And what about the gaping hole on the stumpy arm? Unlike my faceplate, the suit’s material is flexible. I’ll press it together and seal it with resin. I’ll have to press my left arm against my side while I’m in the suit, but there’ll be room.
I’ll be spreading the resin pretty thin, but it’s literally the strongest adhesive known to man. And it doesn’t have to be a perfect seal. It just has to last long enough for me to get to safety.
And where will that “safety” be? Not a damn clue.
Anyway, one problem at a time. Right now I’m fixing the EVA suit.
AUDIO LOG: SOL 119
RECORDING:
Cutting the arm off the suit was easy; so was cutting along its length to make a rectangle. Those sheers are strong as hell.
Cleaning the glass off the faceplate took longer than I’d expected. It’s unlikely it would puncture EVA suit material, but I’m not taking any chances. Besides, I don’t want glass in my face when I’m wearing it.
Then came the tricky part. Once I broke the seal on the patch kit, I had 60 seconds before the resin set. I scooped it off the patch kit with my fingers and quickly spread it around the rim of the faceplate. Then, I took what was left and sealed the arm hole.
I pressed the rectangle of suit material on to the helmet. I held it firmly with both hands while using my knee to keep pressure on the arm’s seam.
I held on until I’d counted 120 seconds. Just to be sure.
It seemed to work well. The seal looked strong and the resin was rock-hard. I did, however, glue my hand to the helmet.
Stop laughing.
In retrospect, using my fingers to spread the resin wasn’t the best plan. Fortunately, my left hand was still free. After some grunting and a lot of profanities, I was able to reach the tool box. Once I got a screwdriver I chiseled myself free (feeling really stupid the whole time.)
Using the arm computer, I had the suit overpressurize to 1.2 atmospheres. The faceplate patch bowed outward, but otherwise held firm. The arm filled in, threatening to tear the new seam, but stayed in one piece.
Then I watched the readouts to see how airtight things were.
Answer: Not very.
The suit is designed for 8 hours of use. That works out to 250ml of liquid oxygen. Just to be safe, the suit has a full liter of O2 capacity. But that’s only half the story.
The rest of the air is nitrogen. It’s just there to add pressure. When the suit leaks, that’s what it backfills with. The suit has 2 liters of liquid N2 storage.
It absolutely pissed the air out. In 60 seconds it leaked so much it pressurized the whole airlock to 1.2 atmospheres.
Let’s call the volume of the airlock 2 cubic meters. The inflated EVA suit probably takes up half of it. So it took 5 minutes to add 0.2 atmospheres to 1 cubic meter. That’s 285g of air (trust me on the math). The air in the tanks is around 1 gram per cubic centimeter, meaning I just lost 285ml.
The three tanks combined had 3000ml to start with. A lot of that was used to maintain pressure while the airlock was leaking. Also, my breathing turned some oxygen in to carbon dioxide, which was captured by the suit’s CO2 filters.
Checking the readouts, I have 410ml of oxygen, 738ml of nitrogen. Together, they make almost 1150ml to work with. That, divided by 285ml lost per minute…
Once I’m out of the airlock, this EVA suit will only last 4 minutes.
Fuck.
AUDIO LOG: SOL 119
RECORDING:
Ok, I’ve been thinking some more.
What good is going to the rover? I’d just be trapped there instead. The extra room would be nice, but I’d still die eventually. No Water Reclaimer, no Oxygenator, no food. Take your pick; all of those problems are fatal.
I need to fix the Hab. I know what to do; we practiced it in training. But it’ll take a long time. I’ll have to scrounge around in the now-collapsed canvas to get the spare material for patching. Then I have to find the breach and seal-strip a patch in place.
But it’ll take hours to repair and my EVA suit is shit.
I’ll need another suit. Martinez’s used to be in the rover. I hauled it all the way to the Pathfinder site and back, just in case I needed a spare. But when I returned, I put it back in the Hab.
Damn it!
All right, so I’ll need to get another su
it before going to the rover. Which one? Johanssen’s is too small for me (tiny little gal, our Johanssen). Lewis’s is full of water. Actually, by now it’s full of slowly sublimating ice. The mangled, glued together suit I have with me is Beck’s; my original suit has a hole in it. That just leaves Martinez and Vogel.
I left Martinez’s near my bunk, in case I needed a suit in a hurry. Of course, after that sudden decompression, it could be anywhere. Still, it’s a place to start.
Next problem: I’m like 50 meters from the Hab. Running in 0.4g while wearing a bulky EVA suit isn’t easy. At best, I can trundle 2 meters per second. That’s a precious 25 seconds; almost an eighth of my 4 minutes. I’ve got to bring that down.
But how?
AUDIO LOG: SOL 119
RECORDING:
I’ll roll the damn airlock.
It’s basically a phone booth on its side. I did some experiments.
I figured if I want it to roll, I’ll need to hit the wall as hard as possible. And I have to be in the air at the time. I can’t press against some other part of the airlock. The forces would cancel and it wouldn’t move at all.
First I tried launching myself off one wall and slamming in to the other. The airlock slid a little, but that’s it.
Next, I tried doing a super-pushup to get airborne (0.4g yay!) then kicking the wall with both feet. Again, it just slid.
The third time, I got it right. The trick is to plant both my feet on the ground, near the wall. Then I launch myself to the top of the opposite wall and hit with my back. When I tried that just now, it was enough force and leverage to tip the airlock and roll it one face toward the Hab.
The airlock is a meter wide, so… sigh… I have to do it like 50 more times.
I’m gonna have a hell of a backache after this.
AUDIO LOG: SOL 120
RECORDING:
I have a hell of a backache.
The subtle and refined “hurl my body at the wall” technique had some flaws. It only worked one out of every 10 tries, and it hurt a lot. I had to take breaks, stretch out, and generally convince myself to body-slam the wall again and again.
It took all damn night, but I made it.
I’m 10 meters from the Hab now. I can’t get any closer, cause the debris from the decompression is all over the place. This isn’t an “all-terrain” airlock. I can’t roll over that shit.
It was morning when the Hab popped. Now it’s morning again. I’ve been in this damn box for an entire day. But I’m leaving soon.
I’m in the EVA suit now, and ready to roll.
All right… ok…. Once more through the plan: Use the manual valves to equalize the airlock. Get out and hurry to the Hab. Wander around under the collapsed canvas. Find Martinez’s suit (or Vogel’s if I run in to it first). Get to the rover. Then I’m safe.
If I run out of time before finding a suit, I’ll just run to the rover. I’d be in trouble, but I’d have time to think and materials to work with.
Deep breath… here we go!
LOG ENTRY: SOL 120
I’m alive! And I’m in the rover!
Things didn’t go exactly as planned, but I’m not dead, so it’s a win.
Equalizing the airlock went fine. I was out on the surface within 30 seconds. Skipping toward the Hab (the fastest way to move in this gravity) I passed through the field of debris. The rupture had really sent things flying, myself included.
It was hard to see; my faceplate was covered by the makeshift patch. Fortunately, my arm had a camera. NASA discovered that turning your whole EVA-suited body to look at something was a strenuous waste of time. So they mounted a small camera on the right arm. The feed is projected on the inner faceplate. This allows us to look at things just by pointing at them.
I had to look at a rippled, messed-up version of the outside world. The faceplate patch wasn’t exactly smooth or reflective. Still, it was enough to see what was going on.
I bee-lined for where the airlock used to be. I knew there had to be a pretty big hole there, so I’d be able to get in. I found it easily. And boy is it a nasty rip! It’s going to be a pain in the ass to fix it.
That’s when the flaws in my plan started to reveal themselves. I only had one arm to work with. My left arm was pinned against my body, while the stumpy arm of the suit bounced freely. So as I moved around under the canvas, I had to use my one good arm to hold the canvas up. It slowed me down.
From what I could see, the interior of the Hab is chaos. Everything’s moved. Entire tables and bunks are meters away from where they started. Lighter objects are wildly jumbled, many of them out on the surface. Everything’s covered in soil and mangled potato plants.
Trudging onward, I got to where I’d left Martinez’s suit. To my shock, it was still there!
“Yay!” I naively thought. “Problem solved.”
Unfortunately, the suit was pinned under a table, which was held down by the collapsed canvas. If I’d had both arms, I could have pulled it free, but with only one I just couldn’t do it.
Running low on time, I detached the helmet. Setting it aside, I reached past the table to get Martinez’s patch kit. I found it with the help of the arm-camera. I dropped it in the helmet and hauled ass out of there.
Stumbling to the rover, I barely made it in time. My ears were popping from pressure loss just as the rover’s airlock filled with wonderful 1-atmosphere air.
Crawling in, I collapsed and panted for a moment.
So I’m back in the rover. Just like I was back on the Great Pathfinder Recovery Expedition. Ugh. At least this time it smells a little better.
NASA’s probably pretty worried about me by now. They probably saw the airlock move back to the Hab, so they know I’m alive, but they’ll want status. And as it happens, it’s the rover that communicates with Pathfinder.
I tried to send a message but Pathfinder isn’t responding. That’s not a big surprise. It’s powered directly from the Hab, and the Hab is offline. During my brief, panicked scramble outside, I saw Pathfinder was right where I left it, and the debris didn’t reach that far out. It should be fine once I get it some power.
As for my current situation, the big gain is the helmet. They’re interchangeable, so I can replace my broken-ass one with Martinez’s. The stumpy arm is still an issue, but the faceplate was the main source of leaks. And with the fresh patch kit, I can seal the arm with more resin.
But that can wait. I’ve been awake for over 24 hours. I’m not in any immediate danger, so I’m going to sleep.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 121
Got a good night’s sleep, and made real progress today.
First thing I did was re-seal the arm. Last time, I had to spread the resin pretty thin; I’d used most of it for the faceplate patch. But this time I had a whole patch kit just for the arm. I got a perfect seal.
I still only had a one-armed suit, but at least it didn’t leak.
I’d lost most of my air yesterday, but I had a half-hour of oxygen left. Like I said earlier, a human body doesn’t need much oxygen. Maintaining pressure was the problem.
With that much time, I was able to take advantage of the rover’s EVA tank-refill. Something I couldn’t do with the leaky suit.
The tank-refill is an emergency measure. The expected use of the rover is to start with full EVA suits and come back with air to spare. It wasn’t designed for long trips, or even overnighters. But, just in case of emergency, it has refill hoses mounted on the exterior. Inside space was limited already, and NASA concluded most air-related emergencies would be outdoors.
But refilling is slow, slower than my suit was leaking. So it wasn’t any use to me. Now, with a solid suit capable of holding pressure, refilling the tanks was a breeze.
After refilling, and making sure the suit was still not leaking, I had a few immediate tasks to take care of. Much as I trust my handiwork, I wanted a two-armed suit.
I ventured back in to the Hab. This time, not being rushed, I was able to use a pole to leverage t
he table off Martinez’s suit. Pulling it loose, I dragged it back to the rover.
After a thorough diagnostic to be sure, I finally had a fully-functional EVA suit! It took me two trips to get it, but I got it.
Tomorrow, I’ll fix the Hab.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 122
The first thing I did today was line up rocks near the rover to spell “A-OK”. That should make NASA happy.
I went in to the Hab again to assess damage. My priority will be to get the structure intact and holding pressure. From there, I can work on fixing stuff that broke.
The Hab is normally a dome, with flexible support poles maintaining the arch, and rigid, folding floor material to keep it flat. The internal pressure was a vital part of its support. Without it, the whole thing collapsed. I inspected the poles, and none of them had broken. They’re just lying flat is all. I’ll have to re-couple a few of them, but that’ll be easy.
The hole where Airlock 1 used to be is huge, but surmountable. I have seal-strips and spare canvas. It’ll be a lot of work, but I can get the Hab together again. Once I do, I’ll re-establish power and get Pathfinder back online. From there, NASA can tell me how to fix anything I can’t figure out on my own.
I’m not worried about any of that. I have a much bigger problem.
The farm is dead.
With a complete loss of pressure, most of the water boiled off. Also, the temperature is well below freezing. Not even the bacteria in the soil can survive a catastrophe like that. Some of the crops were in pop-tents off the Hab. But they’re dead, too. I had them connected directly to the Hab via hoses to maintain air supply and temperature. When the Hab blew, the pop-tents depressurized as well. Even if they hadn’t, the freezing cold would have killed them.
Potatoes are now extinct on Mars.
So are earthworms and soil bacteria. I’ll never grow another plant so long I’m here.
We had it all planned out. My farm would give me food till Sol 900. A supply probe would get here on Sol 856; way before I ran out. With the farm dead, that plan is history.
The ration packs won’t have been affected by the explosion. And the potatoes may be dead, but they’re still food. I was just about to harvest, so it was a good time for this to happen, I guess.
