Today she made a bunch of new sunlight relay crystals in the deeper parts of the cave. The idea is that the sunlight channeled through also contains heat, so the more light the inside of the cave gets, the less dependent we are on running water.
Which brings up a question that, in retrospect, is so obvious I'm surprised you, historians of the future, haven't shouted it loudly enough for me to hear it here in the past: "Why didn't you think of this before? Starlight made all the other crystals with almost zero magic, so what took so long?" And the answer is, we didn't think of it, what with making batteries, sealing the cave, getting rid of methane, reviving Sleeping Ugly, and Starlight falling over and nearly dying half the time she casts spells. You know, petty unimportant little distractions like that. But we still should have thought of it, especially when we saw how efficient the original lighting crystals turned out to be.
We'll have to monitor the temperature inside the cave closely over the next couple of weeks. The ultimate goal, of course, is to shut off the water heating system altogether. We're nowhere near that point.
Of course, heat is just one of the many problems. But Starlight is exploring another avenue: the rainbow crystals. After all, we know two things about that random enchantment— it stores magic energy, and other enchantments can be added on top of it. That means, in theory, the rainbow crystals could be used to power other things, like for example a way of circulating water more reliable than condensation dripping off the cave ceiling. (Which it doesn't do, by the way; the cave roof is high, but not high enough for the temperature to be that different. Also, the life support box's air circulation keeps the humidity down quite a bit.)
About the only person who doesn't have something to occupy her time is Spitfire. She tends to hang around Starlight like a vulture, waiting for our adorable little four-legged power tool to blow a fuse again. She doesn't complain, but it can't be rewarding.
I wish I could think of something she could do to be useful. Maybe I could reactivate the MDV improvised flight sim. We disconnected its power after we stole a third of the Hab's electrical storage to install in the Whinnybago, but we might be able to spare the juice for some flight sim runs.
(Speaking of, it would be nice if NASA settled on the MAV modifications so they could send us an updated flight sim program before we leave here for Schiaparelli. Cherry Berry got very good at flying a stock MAV in the sims, but we're going to be riding to rescue or doom in the kludge from hell. It's not the same thing.)
Ah, well. The others have pulled out the computers for a network hearts tournament. Guess I'll join them. It beats watching more CHiPs. (And yeah, I know Ponch is meant to be a lousy cop with a heart of gold, but he's the only one in that department who doesn't have a giant redwood up his ass... )
Author's Notes:
If you didn't know, the nitrocellulose billiard ball was actually a thing on Earth at one point in the early twentieth century, when demand for pool balls outstripped the ability of humans to massacre wildlife in a brutal and wasteful fashion for their ivory. (I know, hard to imagine, right?) The Earth version of exploding pool balls weren't nearly as showy as the Discworld version, but I just wanted to remind those of you who are Pratchett fans that he got TONS of material from real life.
And for those of you who aren't fans: there's a part in a book where a group of alchemists test artificial pool balls. The result, according to the rule of billiards printed by Hoyle, is a miscue.
I really am producing a lot of filler here, but that's because the crew's life is filler right now. They're finding things to fill the hours while they count the days. I begin to have sympathy for Andy Weir making the 150-sol time-jump. And if I edit this down to a proper book, I might end up doing the same.
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Sol 360
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MISSION LOG — SOL 360
Hello to the people of Earth from the crew of the Pony spaceship Friendship. (That's not quite the right translation of the ship name, but it's close enough.)
We asked Mark to let us write today's log entry, because for us today is a special day. One year ago today we left our homeworld for what we thought was a five-day mission. One year ago tomorrow, of course, that plan crashed along with our ship.
Today we received a special message from the princess who rules the land most of us come from. We can't give a precise translation of her name, so we're going to call her "Celestia" here. This is the message, in full:
"Greetings from Ponyland. One year ago you went forth to expand the frontiers of all the speaking peoples of the world. Through a series of unforeseeable circumstances you ended up stranded farther from home than any of us can imagine. Today we send you our warmest hopes and wishes that you will soon return to us.
"Your courage and determination have inspired millions around the world. Despite being stranded on a hostile and lifeless planet, through the power of friendship you have not only survived but thrived. You have made contact with a new speaking race— more than made contact, made friends. Together you have defied the odds and found solutions to one problem after another. Your heroism proves to two worlds that nothing is impossible.
"And now two worlds are reaching out to you to bring you home. Rest assured that there will be no second anniversary of this date. One year from now you will be safe at home, receiving the honors you deserve. Until then, be safe, and know that you are loved.
"Yours very truly, Princess Celestia."
We are honored by Celestia's words, but we want to make it clear: we are not heroes. We did not sign up to spend a year from home. We never imagined that we would be here, in a place where the physical laws we took for granted are different and where life cannot exist without artificial habitats or suits.
This is not what we wanted.
We want to go home. We want to eat more than one kind of food. We want to go outside without helmets. We want to hear birds and animals. We want to sleep in proper beds in proper gravity without wondering if the thin shell that keeps the air in might rupture while we sleep.
We are not heroes. We are three ponies, a dragon and a changeling, a very long way away from home. We are tired, bored, and afraid.
We are very lucky that our ship crashed so close to a real hero— someone who spent years training to spend a year away from home, specifically to survive on this planet. Like us, he has been stranded here. He has shared his shelter, his food, his tools, and his knowledge with us, when he didn't have to.
And now his crew is coming back to get us. Five people who volunteered to spend as much as a year and a half more away from their homes and families, facing the dangers of space, just to rescue the six of us.
They are the real heroes— the people of the Ares III mission. They are doing things no one else could. We, on the other hoof, are just surviving— as anyone else would do their best to, in our position.
Whoever you are reading this, a year or a century from now, please remember that we were just ordinary people. The real heroes are those who go into danger deliberately— and if we make it home, it will be thanks to them.
Cherry Berry, earth pony, mission commander
Starlight Glimmer, unicorn, mission scientist
Dragonfly, changeling, mission engineer
Fireball, dragon, mission EVA
Spitfire, pegasus, mission pilot
MISSION LOG — SOL 360 (2)
They wouldn't let me read the log entry until they saved it, and I still don't know how to edit or delete entries, so I guess I'll just have to set the record straight.
I've mentioned all of this before, but it merits a reminder.
Cherry Berry has walked on two worlds other than her homeworld— three, now, counting Mars. She has double-digit launches and landings under her belt. In the early sols of our being stranded, she held her crew together and kept them focused on the immediate goal of survival. During moments when we all almost died, her cool head and focus saved lives. She is a hero.
Starlight Glimmer has repeatedly pushed herself to the point of collapse to make our continued survival possible. She learned English and then helped teach it to the others so that we could cooperate more closely. Her magic and her designs make our life here possible. She is a hero.
Dragonfly likewise risked her own life and health to save my life. Her knowledge of her ship's systems comes from years of training and dedication. She works harder than any of us to keep morale up and to prevent bickering and fighting among us, despite the intense stress we're all under. She is a hero.
Fireball never complains about hard work. His strength allowed us to accomplish the impossible by salvaging the crashed ship. Despite being well aware of his limitations, he is always the first to offer help with anything he's competent to handle. He is a hero.
And Spitfire, despite having never been in space before, has grown into duties which were completely alien to her before their flight. She's always alert for danger or for signs of sickness or injury. She constantly works hard, no matter how difficult she finds it, to expand her skills and make herself more useful to the crew. She is a hero.
And I'm really flattered that they call me a hero, but I don't think of it that way. I trained for years to do a job. I came here to do the job. And the job turned lethal, and yet by a fluke I didn't actually die. And for all the time since, I've persistently not died. That's all. That doesn't feel like heroism to me. Billions of people on Earth fail to die every day.
Yes, life on Mars is hard. But I came here with the resources of over a dozen nations backing me and my five crewmates. When they escaped, I was left with a secure shelter, a surplus of food, and plenty of tools and spare equipment that could be used to extend my lifespan. The ponies, on the other hand, landed with less than two months of food, a few tools, and practically no spares of anything, almost totally cut off from their home.
Sure, we worked together to survive. But they all provided their fair share of ideas, work, and goodwill. And I'm not gonna let them be bashful about it.
By the way, today was pretty much wasted. That message from their princess left everybody blue. (It also absolutely soaked the Hab soil, so we spent a lot of time getting rid of the excess water. Those are the limitations of sending long speeches by a telegraph that runs on water.) Hopefully tomorrow we all get over our homesickness and guilt and get back to our hard and rigorous schedule of wasting time until the last hay harvest.
We've got tons of nothing to do and not much time left to do it.
Author's Notes:
The pony one-year mark seemed like a thing they'd commemorate, whether or not they wanted to.
Mark's one-year-from-home day would have been somewhere around Sol 230 or so, by the way.
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Sol 361
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AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 367
ARES III SOL 361
Dragonfly leaned against the battery projecting the magic field, letting each rainbow-colored arc of magic ease the dull gnawing in every cell of her body.
Oh, she looked much better than she had when she first came out of the cocoon. Most of the wrinkles were gone. She'd put on weight. Her legs were now less hole and more whole, to make an English joke. So obviously the short daily doses of magic everybody got in the cave worked. She was, very gradually, getting better.
But.
Ninety sols from now, they would leave the cave behind, hopefully forever. After that the batteries that powered these brief recreations of a natural Equestrian environment would recharge only from the ponies themselves— not from the biomass of the cave. Even taking into account the difference between magic generated by thinking life and plant life, the recharge rate would be cut by two-thirds at least, and likely more.
Actually, certainly more, since part of the daily recharge would have to go to topping off the jumbo batteries, which couldn't ride inside the Whinnybago with them.
Hard times were coming, which is why Dragonfly stayed as close to any magic field projectors that happened to be running.
Sometimes too close. "Dragonfly," Starlight Glimmer said, "I know you need the exposure, but could you back a few feet away from the battery, please? You're absorbing too much of the field."
"Sorry." Dragonfly reluctantly stepped backwards several paces.
"In fact," Starlight continued, "could you fetch another battery? I don't think this one will last long enough to finish the enchantment on all fifteen batteries."
"I got it." Before Dragonfly could move, Mark got up and walked over to the row of idle batteries by the cave wall, currently cabled together to help balance the absorption of magic produced by the plants. That was fine by Dragonfly, who didn't like picking up a sixty-kilo battery in her forehooves. (Okay, it only weighed about twenty-five kilos on Mars, but she'd been sick a really long time.) Lifting it with her limited store of magic, of course, was right out.
Meanwhile, Starlight Glimmer focused her attention on the fifteen jumbo batteries. Each had enough spare space on the top of the crystal to jam in a secondary enchantment linking each battery to one of three forty-kilo slices of quartz. Each of these slices would have five batteries pouring all their power into pushing them away from the batteries at a particular rate of power consumption which, if their calculations were correct, would run about six minutes.
The plan was simple. Mount the slices of quartz around and behind the central engine bell of the first ascent stage of the MAV. The slices had been cut and shaped precisely according to the diagrams in the Ares mission protocols on Mark's computers to fit in those spots. The fifteen jumbo batteries would be raised in a henge surrounding the MAV descent stage, and by some means— they hadn't worked that out yet— they would be triggered to switch on half a second after the MAV lifted off the descent stage.
Based on the calculations from experiments back home, if all fifteen batteries worked, there would be fuel reserve in the second ascent stage for maneuvers . They could lose four and still make rendezvous with Hermes without having to use the Sparkle Drive. But that was based on the perfect conditions of Equestria, not the conditions prevailing in a cave on Mars, which was why Dragonfly hadn't said a word in response to Starlight's polite request to quit hogging the magic.
