"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 Notes:
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.
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Sol 468
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"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 Notes:
This one's short because there's nothing else particularly interesting going on aside from more driving through rocks.
That will change soon.
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Sol 470
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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 Notes:
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
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Sol 472
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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.
