Sol 302
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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 Notes:
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).
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Sol 303
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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.
