After a few moments she said. “This isn’t a jpg. It’s a plain ASCII text file. Looks like… well I don’t know what it is. Looks like a bunch of math formulae.” She gestured to the screen. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
Vogel leaned in, looking at the text. “Ja,” he said. “It is a course maneuver for Hermes. It says the name is Rich Purnell Maneuver.”
“What’s that?” Johanssen asked.
“I have not heard of this maneuver.” He looked at the tables. “It is complicated… very complicated…”
He froze. “Sol 549!?” he exclaimed. “Mein Gott!”
The Hermes crew enjoyed their scant personal time in an area called “The Rec”. Consisting of a table and barely room to seat six, it ranked low in gravity priority. It’s position amidships granted it a mere 0.2g.
Still, it was enough to keep everyone in their seats as they pondered what Vogel told them.
“…and then mission would conclude with Earth intercept 211 days later,” he finished up.
“Thank you, Vogel,” Lewis said. She’d heard the explanation earlier when Vogel came to her, but Johanssen, Martinez, and Beck were hearing it for the first time. She gave them a moment to digest.
“Would this really work?” Martinez asked.
“Ja,” Vogel nodded. “I ran the numbers. They all check out. It is brilliant course. Amazing.”
“How would he get off Mars?” Martinez asked.
Lewis leaned forward. “There was more in the message,” she began. “The maneuver is part of an overall idea NASA had to rescue Watney. We’d have to pick up a supply near Earth, and he’d have to get to Ares-4’s MAV.”
“Why all the cloak and dagger?” Beck asked.
“According to the message,” Lewis explained. “NASA rejected the idea. They’d rather take a big risk on Watney than a small risk on all of us. Whoever snuck it in to Vogel’s email obviously disagreed.”
“So,” Martinez said, “We’re talking about going directly against NASA’s decision?”
“Yes,” Lewis confirmed, “That’s what we’re talking about. If we do the maneuver, they’ll have to send the supply ship or we’ll die. We have the opportunity to force their hand.”
“Are we going to do it?” Johanssen asked.
They all looked to Lewis.
“I won’t lie,” she said. “I’d sure as hell like to. But this isn’t a normal decision. This is something NASA expressly rejected. We’re talking about mutiny. And that’s not a word I throw around lightly.”
She stood and paced slowly around the table. “We’ll only do it if we all agree. And before you answer, consider the consequences. If we mess up the supply rendezvous, we die. If we mess up the Earth gravity assist, we die.
“If we do everything perfectly, we add 533 days to our mission. 533 days of unplanned space travel where anything could go wrong. Maintenance will be a hassle. Something might break that we can’t fix. If it’s life-critical, we die.”
“Sign me up!” Martinez smiled.
“Easy, cowboy,” Lewis said. “You and I are military. There’s a good chance we’d be court-martialed when we got home. As for the rest of you, I guarantee they’ll never send you up again.”
Martinez leaned against the wall, arms folded with a half grin on his face. The rest silently considered what their commander had said.
“If we do this,” Vogel said. “It would be over 1000 days of space. This is enough space for a life. I do not need to return.”
“Sounds like Vogel’s in,” Martinez grinned. “Me, too, obviously.”
“Let’s do it,” Beck said.
“If you think it’ll work,” Johanssen said to Lewis, “I trust you.”
“Ok,” Lewis said. “If we go for it, what’s involved?”
Vogel shrugged. “I plot the course and execute it,” he said. “What else?”
“Remote Override,” Johanssen said. “It’s designed to get the ship back if we all die or something. They can take over Hermes from Mission Control.”
“But we’re right here,” Lewis said. “We can undo whatever they try, right?”
“Not really,” Johanssen said. “Remote Override takes priority over any on-board controls. Its assumes there’s been a disaster and the ship’s control panels can’t be trusted.”
“Can you disable it?” Lewis asked.
“Hmm…” Johanssen pondered. “Hermes has four redundant flight computers, each connected to three redundant comm systems. If any computer gets signal from any comm system, Mission Control can take over. We can’t shut down the comms; we’d lose telemetry and guidance. We can’t shut down the computers; we need them to control the ship. I’ll have to disable the Remote Override on each system… It’s part of the OS, I’ll have to jump over the code… yes. I can do it.”
“You’re sure?” Lewis asked. “You can turn it off?”
“Shouldn’t be hard,” Johanssen said. “It’s an emergency feature, not a security program. It isn’t protected against malicious code.”
“Malicious code?” Beck smiled. “So… you’ll be a hacker?”
“Yeah,” Johanssen smiled back. “I guess I will.”
“All right,” Lewis said. “Looks like we can do it. But I don’t want peer pressure forcing anyone into it. We’ll wait for 24 hours. During that time, anyone can change their mind. Just talk to me in private or send me an email. I’ll call it off and never tell anyone who it was.”
Lewis stayed behind as the rest filed out. Watching them leave, she saw they were smiling. All four of them. For the first time since leaving Mars, they were back to their old selves. She knew right then no one would change their mind.
They were going back to Mars.
Everyone knew Brendan Hutch would be running missions soon.
He rose through the ranks as fast as one could in the large, inertia-bound organization. Known as a diligent worker, his skill and leadership qualities were plain to all his subordinates.
Brendan was in charge of Mission Control from 1am to 9am every night. Continued excellent performance in this role would certainly net him a promotion. It was already announced he’d be back-up Flight Controller for Ares-4, and he had a good shot at the top job for Ares-5.
“Flight, CAPCOM,” came a voice through his headset.
“Go CAPCOM,” Brendan responded. Though they were in the same room, radio protocol was observed at all times.
“Unscheduled status update from Hermes.”
With Hermes 90 light-seconds away, back-and-forth voice communication was impractical. Other than media relations, Hermes would communicate via text until they were much closer.
“Roger,” Brendan said. “Read it out.”
“I… I don’t get it, Flight,” came the confused reply. “No real status, just a single sentence.”
“What’s it say?”
“Message reads: ‘Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man.’”
“What?” Brendan asked. “Who the hell is Rich Purnell?”
“Flight, Telemetry,” came another voice.
“Go Telemetry,” Brendan said.
“Hermes is off-course.”
“CAPCOM, advise Hermes they’re drifting. Telemetry, get a correction vector ready—”
“Negative, Flight,” Telemetry interrupted. “It’s not drift. They adjusted course. Instrumentation uplink shows a deliberate 27.812 degree rotation.”