The Martian

by Энди Вейр

  The fourth one is “Survived Something That Should Have Killed Me” because some fucking thing will happen, I just know it. I don’t know what it’ll be, but it’ll happen. The rover will break down or I’ll come down with Fatal Hemorrhoids or I’ll run in to hostile Martians or some shit. When I do (if I live) I get to eat that meal pack.

  The fifth one is reserved for the day I launch. It’s labeled “Last Meal.”

  Maybe that’s not such a good name.

  LOG ENTRY: SOL 388

  I started the day with a potato. I washed it down with some Martian Coffee. That’s my name for “hot water with a caffeine pill dissolved in it.” I ran out of real coffee months ago.

  My first order of business was a careful inventory of the Hab. I needed to root out anything that would have a problem with losing atmospheric pressure. Of course, everything in the Hab had a crash course in depressurization a few months back. But this time would be controlled and I might as well do it right.

  The main thing is the water. I lost 300L to sublimation when the Hab blew up. This time, that won’t happen. I drained the Water Reclaimer and sealed all the tanks.

  The rest was just collecting knickknacks and dumping them in Airlock 3. Anything I could think of that doesn’t do well in a near-vacuum. The three remaining laptops, all the pens, the vitamin bottles (probably not necessary but I’m not taking chances), medical supplies, etc.

  Then I did a controlled shutdown of the Hab. The critical components are designed to survive a vacuum. Hab depress is one of the many scenarios NASA accounted for. One system at a time, I cleanly shut them all down, ending with the main computer itself.

  I suited up and depressurized the Hab. Last time, the canvas collapsed and made a mess of everything. That’s not supposed to happen. The dome of the Hab is mostly supported by air pressure, but there are flexible reenforcing poles across the inside to hold the canvas up. It’s how the Hab was assembled in the first place.

  I watched as the canvas gently settled on to the poles. To confirm the depress, I opened both doors of Airlock 2. I left Airlock 3 alone. It maintained pressure for its cargo of random crap.

  Then I cut shit up!

  I’m not a materials engineer; my design for the bedroom isn’t elegant. It’s just a 2m perimeter and a ceiling. No, it won’t have right angles and corners (pressure vessels don’t like those). It’ll balloon out to a more round shape.

  Anyway, it means I only needed to cut two big-ass strips of canvas. One for the walls and one for the ceiling.

  After mangling the Hab, I pulled the remaining canvas down to the flooring and re-sealed it. Ever set up a camping tent? From the inside? While wearing a suit of armor? It was a pain in the ass.

  I repressurized to 1/20th of an atmosphere to see if it could hold pressure.

  Ha ha ha! Of course it couldn’t! Leaks galore. Time to find them.

  On Earth, tiny particles get attached to water or wear down to nothing. On Mars, they just hang around. The top layer of sand is like talcum powder. I went outside with a bag and scraped along the surface. I got some normal sand, but plenty of powder too.

  I had the Hab maintain the 1/20th atmosphere, backfilling as air leaked out. Then I “puffed” the bag to get the smallest particles to float around. They were quickly drawn to where the leaks were. As I found each leak, I spot-sealed it with resin.

  It took hours, but I finally got a good seal. I’ll tell ya, the Hab looks pretty “ghetto” now. One whole side of it is lower than the rest. I’ll have to hunch down when I’m over there.

  I pressurized to a full atmosphere and waited an hour. No leaks.

  It’s been a long, physically taxing day. I’m totally exhausted but I can’t sleep. Every sound scares the shit out of me. Is that the Hab popping? No? Ok… What was that!? Oh, nothing? Ok…

  It’s a terrible thing to have my life depend on my half-assed handiwork.

  Time to get a sleeping pill from the medical supplies.

  LOG ENTRY: SOL 389

  What the fuck is in those sleeping pills!? It’s the middle of the day.

  After two cups of Martian Coffee, I woke up a little. I won’t be taking another one of those pills. It’s not like I have to go to work in the morning.

  Anyway, as you can tell from how not dead I am, the Hab stayed sealed overnight. The seal is solid. Ugly as hell, but solid.

  Today’s task was the bedroom.

  Assembling the bedroom was way easier than re-sealing the Hab. Because this time, I didn’t have to wear an EVA suit. I made the whole thing inside the Hab. Why not? It’s just canvas. I can roll it up and take it out an airlock when I’m done.

  First, I did some surgery on the remaining pop tent. I needed to keep the rover-airlock connector and surrounding canvas. The rest of the canvas had to go. Why hack off most of the canvas only to replace it with more canvas? Seams.

  NASA is good at making things. I am not. The dangerous part of this structure won’t be the canvas. It’ll be the seams. And I get less total seam length by not trying to use the existing pop-tent canvas.

  After hacking away most of the remaining tent, I seal-stripped the two pop-tent floors together. Then I sealed the new canvas pieces in to place.

  It was so much easier without the EVA suit on. So much easier!

  Then I had to test it. Again, I did it in the Hab. I brought an EVA suit in to the tent with me and closed the mini-airlock door. Then I fired up the EVA suit, leaving the helmet off. I told it to bump the pressure up to 1.2 atm.

  It took a little while to bring it up to par, and I had to disable some alarms on the suit. (“Hey, I’m pretty sure the helmet’s not on!”). It depleted most of the N2 tank, but was finally able to bring the pressure up.

  Then I sat around and waited. I breathed, the suit regulated the air. All was well. I watched the suit readouts carefully to see if it had to replace any “lost” air. After an hour with no noticeable change, I declared the first test a success.

  I rolled up the whole thing (wadded up, really) and took it out to the rover.

  You know, I suit up a lot these days. I bet that’s another record I hold. A typical Martian astronaut does, what, 40 EVAs? I’ve done several hundred.

  Once I brought the bedroom to the rover, I attached it to the airlock from the inside. Then I pulled the release to let it loose. I was still wearing my EVA suit, cause I’m not an idiot.

  It fired out and filled in three seconds. The open airlock hatchway led directly to the bedroom, and it appeared to be holding pressure.

  Just like before, I let it sit for an hour. And just like before, it worked great. Unlike the Hab canvas resealing, I got this one right on the first try. Mostly because I didn’t have to do it with a damn EVA suit on.

  Originally I planned to let it sit overnight and check in the morning. But I ran in to a problem: I can’t get out if I do that. The rover only has one airlock, and the bedroom was attached to it. There was no way for me to get out without detaching the bedroom, and no way to attach and pressurize the bedroom without being inside the rover.

  It’s a little scary. The first time I test the thing overnight will be with me in it. But that’ll be later. I’ve done enough today.

  LOG ENTRY: SOL 390

  I have to face facts. I’m done with the rover. I don’t “feel” like I’m done. But it’s ready to go:

  Food: 1,692 potatoes. Vitamin pills.

  Water: 620L.

  Shelter: Rover, trailer, bedroom.

  Air: Rover and trailer combined storage: 14L liquid O2, 14L liquid N2.

  Life Support: Oxygenator and Atmospheric Regulator. 418 hours of use-and-discard CO2 filters for emergencies.

  Power: 36kwh of storage. Carrying capacity for 29 solar cells.

  Heat: 1400W RTG. Homemade reservoir to heat regulator’s return air. Electric heater in rover as a backup.

  Disco: Lifetime supply.

  I’m leaving here on Sol 449. That gives me 59 sols to test everything and fix whateve
r isn’t working right. And decide what’s coming with me and what’s staying behind. And plot a route to Schiaparelli using a grainy satellite map. And rack my brains trying to think of anything important I forgot.

  Since Sol 6 all I’ve wanted to do was get the hell out of here. Now the prospect of leaving the Hab behind scares the shit out of me. I need some encouragement. I need to ask myself: “What would an Apollo astronaut do?”

  He’d drink 3 whiskey sours, bang his mistress, then fly to the moon. And if he ever met a botanist like me he’d dispense a wedgie on principle.

  To hell with those guys. I’m a Space Pirate!

  Chapter 21

  LOG ENTRY: SOL 431

  I’m working out how to pack. It’s harder than it sounds.

  I have two pressure vessels: The rover and the trailer. They’re connected by hoses, but they’re also not stupid. If one loses pressure, the other will instantly seal off the shared lines.

  There’s a grim logic to this: If the rover breaches I’m dead. No point in planning around that. But if the trailer breaches, I’ll be fine. That means I should put everything important in the rover. If I’m going to die, I may as well take all the delicate stuff with me.

  Everything that goes in the trailer has to be comfortable in near-vacuum and freezing temperatures. Not that I anticipate that, but you know. Plan for the worst.

  There isn’t much room to spare. It’ll have two bulky Hab batteries, the Atmospheric Regulator, the Oxygenator and my home-made heat reservoir. It would be more convenient to have the reservoir in the rover, but it has to be near the Regulator’s return air feed.

  It’ll be cramped, but there will be some empty spaces. And I know just how to fill them: Taters!

  Nothing “bad” can happen to the potatoes. They’re already dead. I’ve been storing them outside for months anyway. Also, they’re small and not delicate. They probably won’t all fit, so some will have to ride with me.

  The rover will be pretty packed, too. When I’m driving, I’ll keep the bedroom folded up near the airlock, ready for emergency egress. Also, I’ll have the two functional EVA suits in there with me and anything that might be needed for emergency repairs: Tool kits, spare parts, my nearly depleted supply of sealant, the other rover’s main computer (just in case!) and all 620 glorious liters of water.

  And a plastic box to to serve as a toilet. One with a good lid.

  “How’s Watney doing?” Venkat asked.

  Mindy looked up from her computer with a start. “Dr. Kapoor?”

  “I hear you caught a pic of him during an EVA?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Mindy said, typing on her keyboard. “I noticed things would always change around 9am local time. People usually keep the same patterns so I figured he likes to start work around then. I did some minor realignment to get seventeen pics between 9:00 and 9:10. He showed up in one of them.”

  “Good thinking. Can I see the pic?”

  “Sure,” she said. She brought up the image on her screen.

  Venkat peered at the blurry image. “Is this as good as it gets?”

  “Well it is a photo taken from orbit,” Mindy said. “The NSA enhanced the image with the best software they have.”

  “Wait, What?” Venkat stammered. “The NSA?”

  “Yeah, they called and offered to help out. Same software they use for enhancing spy satellite imagery.”

  Venkat shrugged. “It’s amazing how much red tape gets cut when everyone’s rooting for one man to survive.” He pointed to the screen. “What’s Watney doing here?”

  “I think he’s loading something into the rover.”

  “When was the last time he worked on the trailer?” Venkat asked.

  “Not for a while. Why doesn’t he write us notes more often?”

  Venkat shrugged. “He’s busy. He works most of the daylight hours, and arranging rocks to spell a message takes time and energy.”

  “So…” Mindy said. “Why’d you come here in person? We could have done all this over email.”

  “Actually, I came to talk to you,” he said. “There’s going to be a change in your responsibilities. From now on, instead of managing the satellites around Mars, your sole responsibility is watching Mark Watney.”

  “What?” Mindy said. “What about course corrections and alignment?”

  “We’ll assign that to other people,” Venkat said. “From now on, your only focus is examining imagery of Ares 3.”

  “That’s a demotion,” Mindy said. “I’m an orbital engineer, and you’re turning me in to a glorified Peeping Tom.”

  “It’s short-term,” Venkat said. “And we’ll make it up to you. Thing is, you’ve been doing it for months and you’re an expert at identifying elements of Ares 3 from satellite pics. We don’t have anyone else who can do that.”

  “Why is this suddenly so important?”

  “He’s running out of time,” Venkat said. “We don’t know how far along he is on the rover modifications. But we do know he’s on only got 16 sols to get them done. We need to know exactly what he’s doing. I’ve got media outlets and senators asking for his status all the time. The President even called me a couple of times.

  “But seeing his status doesn’t help,” Mindy said. “It’s not like we can do anything about it if he falls behind. This is a pointless task.”

  “How long have you worked for the government?” Venkat sighed.

  LOG ENTRY: SOL 434

  The time has come to test this shit out.

  This presents a problem. Unlike my Pathfinder trip, I have to take vital life support elements out of the Hab. When you take the Atmospheric Regulator and Oxygenator out of the Hab, you’re left with… a tent. A big round tent that can’t support life.

  It’s not as risky as it seems. As always, the dangerous part about life support is managing carbon dioxide. When the air gets to 1% CO2, you start getting symptoms of poisoning. So I need to keep it below that.

  The Hab’s internal volume is about 120,000L. Breathing normally, it would take me over two days to bring the CO2 level up to 1% (and I wouldn’t even dent in the O2 level). So it’s safe to move the Regulator and Oxygenator over for a while.

  Both are way too big to fit through the trailer airlock. Lucky for me, they came to Mars with “some assembly required”. They were too big to send whole, so they’re easy to dismantle.

  Over several trips, I took all their chunks to the trailer. I brought each chunk in through the airlock, one at a time. It was a pain in the ass reassembling them inside, let me tell you. There’s barely enough room for all the shit it’s got to hold. There wasn’t much left for our intrepid hero.

  Then I got the AREC. It sat outside the Hab like an AC unit might on Earth. In a way, that’s what it was. I hauled it over to the trailer and lashed it to the shelf I’d made for it. Then I hooked it up to the feed lines that led through the “balloon” to the inside of the trailer’s pressure vessel.

  The Regulator needs to send air to the AREC then the return air needs to bubble through the heat reservoir. And, it needs a pressure tank to dump the CO2 it pulls from the air.

  When gutting the trailer to make room, I left one tank in place for this. It’s supposed to hold oxygen, but a tank’s a tank. Thank God all the air lines and valves are standardized across the mission. That’s no mistake. It’s a deliberate decision for maintenance purposes. We could fix things in the field easier that way.

  Once everything assembled, I hooked them in to the trailer’s power and watched them power up. I ran both through full diagnostics to confirm they were working correctly. Then I shut down the Oxygenator. Remember, I’ll only use it one sol out of every 5.

  I moved to the rover, which means I had to do an annoying 10-meter EVA. From there I monitored the life support situation. It’s worth noting that I can’t monitor the actual support equipment from the rover (it’s all in the trailer), but the rover can tell me all about the air. Oxygen, CO2, temperature, humidity, etc. Everything seemed ok.<
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  Getting back in to the EVA suit, I released a canister of CO2 in to the rover’s air. I watched the rover computer have a shit-fit when it saw the CO2 spike to lethal levels. Then, over time, the levels dropped to normal. The regulator was doing its job. Good boy!

  I left the equipment running when I returned to the Hab. It’ll be on its own all night and I’ll check it in the morning. It’s not a true test, because I’m not there to breathe up the oxygen and make CO2, but one step at a time.

  LOG ENTRY: SOL 435

  Last night was weird. I knew logically that nothing bad would happen in just one night, but it was a little unnerving to know I had no life support other than heaters. My life depended on some math I did earlier. If I dropped a sign or added two numbers wrong, I might never wake up.

  But I did wake up, and the main computer showed the slight rise in CO2 I had predicted. Looks like I live another Sol.

  “Live Another Sol” would be an awesome name for a James Bond movie.

  I checked up on the rover. Everything was fine. If I don’t drive it, a single charge of the batteries could keep the regulator going for over a month (with the heater off). It’s a pretty good safety margin to have. If all hell breaks loose on my trip I’ll have time to fix things. I’d be limited by oxygen consumption rather than CO2 removal, and I have plenty of oxygen.

  I decided it was a good time to test the bedroom.

  I got in the rover, and attached the bedroom to the outer airlock door from the inside. Like I mentioned before, this is the only way to do it. Then I turned it loose on an unsuspecting Mars.

  As intended, the pressure from the rover blasted the canvas outward and inflated it. After that, chaos. The sudden pressure popped the bedroom like a balloon. It quickly deflated, leaving both itself and the rover devoid of air. I was wearing my EVA suit at the time; I’m not a fucking idiot. So I get to…

  Live Another Sol! (Starring Mark Watney as … probably Q. I’m no James Bond.)

  I dragged the popped bedroom in to the Hab and gave it a good going-over. It failed at the seam where the wall met the ceiling. Makes sense. It’s a right-angle in a pressure vessel. Physics hates that sort of thing.