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 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 9 a.m. 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 and 9:10. He showed up in one of them.”
“Good thinking. Can I see the pic?”
“Sure.” 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 e-mail.”
“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 into 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 only got sixteen 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.
The time has come to test this baby out.
This presents a problem. Unlike on my Pathfinder trip, I have to take vital life support elements out of the Hab if I’m going to do a real dry run. 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 percent CO2, you start getting symptoms of poisoning. So I need to keep the Hab’s mix below that.
The Hab’s internal volume is about 120,000 liters. Breathing normally, it would take me over two days to bring the CO2 level up to 1 percent (and I wouldn’t even put a 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 moved all of 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 the trailer’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 is. 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. The regulator also needs a pressure tank to contain 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 was a deliberate decision to make field repairs easier.
Once I had the AREC in place, I hooked the oxygenator and regulator into 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 five.
I moved to the rover, which meant I had to do an annoying ten-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 okay.
After getting back into the EVA suit, I released a canister of CO2 into 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.
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’d done 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’ll 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’ll be limited by oxygen consumption rather than CO2 removal, and I have plenty of oxygen.