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 Notes:
Not much to say here.
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Sol 450
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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.
