And so it begins…

(Moderator’s Note: Lots of action today! ~5k words, and we get to hear Watney’s inner dialogue for the first time. I’m excited! You’ll notice that I’ve left the “Chapter One” Heading where the book should’ve started. The stuff before that is similar to “Creation of Plastic;” I’ve left a note where it originally sat. All of the chapter headings have been left in place. This is also where the language starts to become a little too much for sensitive ears, because Watney has no brain-to-mouth (or brain-to-log) filter, so if you don’t like swearing, proceed with caution. With that out of the way, enjoy!)

Mission Day – Nov. 12, 2035 (Sol 6)

Watney slept peacefully in his bunk. He shifted slightly as some pleasant dream put a smile on his face. The previous day had been particularly labor-intensive, so he slept deeper and better than he had in a long time.

“Good morning crew!” Lewis called out. “It’s a brand new day! Up and at ‘em!”

Watney added his voice to a chorus of groans.

“Come on,” Lewis prodded, “no bitching. You got 40 minutes more sleep than you would’ve on Earth.”

Martinez was first out of his bunk. An Air-Force man, he could match Lewis’s Navy schedule with ease. “Morning, Commander,” he said crisply.

Johanssen sat up, but made no further move toward the harsh world outside her blankets. A career software-engineer, mornings were never her forte.

Vogel slowly lumbered from his bunk, checking his watch. He wordlessly pulled on his jumpsuit, smoothing out what wrinkles he could. He sighed inwardly at the grimy feeling of another day without a shower.

Watney turned away from the noise, hugging a pillow to his head. “Noisy people go away,” he mumbled.

“Beck!” Martinez called out, shaking the mission’s doctor. “Rise and shine, bud!”

“Yeah, ok,” Beck said blearily.

Johanssen fell out of her bunk, then remained on the floor.

Pulling the pillow from Watney’s hands, Lewis said “Let’s move, Watney! Uncle Sam paid $100,000 for every second we’ll be here.”

“Bad woman take pillow,” Watney groaned, unwilling to open his eyes.

“Back on Earth, I’ve tipped 200-pound men out of their bunks. Want to see what I can do in 0.4g?”

“No, not really,” Watney said, sitting up.

Having rousted the troops, Lewis sat at the comm station to check overnight messages from Houston.

Watney shuffled to the ration cupboard and grabbed a breakfast at random.

“Hand me an ‘eggs’, will ya,” Martinez said.

“You can tell the difference?” Watney said, passing Martinez a pack.

“Not really,” Martinez said.

“Beck, what’ll you have?” Watney continued.

“Don’t care,” Beck said. “Give me whatever.”

Watney tossed a pack to him.

“Vogel, your usual sausages?”

“Ja, please,” Vogel responded.

“You know you’re a stereotype, right?”

“I am comfortable with that,” Vogel replied, taking the proffered breakfast.

“Hey Sunshine,” Watney called to Johanssen. “Eating breakfast today?”

“Mnrrn,” Johanssen grunted.

“Pretty sure that’s a no,” Watney guessed.

The crew ate in silence. Johanssen eventually trudged to the ration cupboard and got a coffee packet. Clumsily adding hot water, she sipped it until wakefulness crept in.

“Mission updates from Houston, ” Lewis said. “Satellites show a storm coming, but we can do surface ops before it gets here. Vogel, Martinez, you’ll be with me outside. Johanssen, you’re stuck tracking weather reports. Watney, your soil experiments are bumped up to today. Beck, run the samples from yesterday’s EVA through the spectrometer.”

“Should you really go out with a storm on the way?” Beck asked.

“Houston authorized it,” Lewis said.

“Seems needlessly dangerous.”

“Coming to Mars was needlessly dangerous,” Lewis said. “What’s your point?”

Beck shrugged. “Just be careful.”

Three figures looked eastward. Their bulky EVA suits rendered them nearly identical. Only the European Union flag on Vogel’s shoulder distinguished him from Lewis and Martinez, who donned the Stars and Stripes.

The darkness to the east undulated and flickered in the rays of the rising sun.

“The storm.” Vogel said in his accented English. “It is closer than Houston reported.”

“We’ve got time,” Lewis said. “Focus on the task at hand. This EVA’s all about chemical analysis. Vogel, you’re the chemist, so you’re in charge of what we dig up.”

“Ja,” Vogel said. “Please dig 30 centimeters and get soil samples. At least 100 grams each. Very important is 30 centimeters down.”

“Will do.” Lewis said. “Stay within 100 meters of the Hab,” she added.

“Mm,” Vogel said.

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Martinez.

They split up. Greatly improved since the days of Apollo, Ares EVA suits allowed much more freedom of motion. Digging, bending over, and bagging samples were trivial tasks.

After a time, Lewis asked “How many samples do you need?”

“Seven each, perhaps?”

“That’s fine,” Lewis confirmed. “I’ve got four so far.”

“Five here,” Martinez said. “Of course, we can’t expect the Navy to keep up with the Air Force, now can we?”

“So that’s how you want to play it?” Lewis said.

“Just call ‘em as I see ‘em Commander.”

“Johanssen here,” came the sysop’s voice over the radio. “Houston’s upgraded the storm to ‘severe’. It’s going to be here in 15 minutes.”

“Back to base,” Lewis said.

The Hab shook in the roaring wind as the astronauts huddled in the center. All six of donned their EVA suits in case of a breach. Johanssen watched her laptop while the rest watched her.

“Sustained winds over 100kph now,” she said. “Gusting to 125.”

“Jesus, we’re gonna end up in Oz,” Watney said. “What’s the abort windspeed?”

“Technically 150kph,” Martinez said. “Any more than that and the MAV’s in danger of tipping.”

“Any predictions on the storm track?” Lewis asked.

“This is the edge of it,” Johanssen said, staring at her screen. “It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

The Hab canvas rippled under the brutal assault as the internal supports bent and shivered with each gust. The cacophony grew louder by the minute.

“All right,” Lewis said. “Prep for abort. We’ll go to the MAV and hope for the best. If the wind gets too high, we’ll launch.”

Leaving the Hab in pairs, they grouped up outside airlock 1. The driving wind and sand battered them, but they were able to stay on their feet.

“Visibility is almost zero,” Lewis said. “If you get lost, home in on my suit’s telemetry. The wind’s gonna be rougher away from the Hab, so be ready.”

Pressing through the gale, they stumbled toward the MAV.

“Hey,” Watney panted, “Maybe we could shore up the MAV. Make tipping less likely.”

“How?” Lewis huffed.

“We could use cables from the solar farm as guy lines.” He wheezed for a few moments, then continued. “The rovers could be anchors. The trick would be getting the line around the-“

Flying wreckage slammed Watney, carrying him off in to the wind.

“Watney!” Johanssen exclaimed.

“What happened?” Lewis said.

“Something hit him!” Johanssen reported.

“Watney, report,” Lewis said.

No reply.

“Watney, report,” Lewis repeated.

Again, she was met with silence.

“He’s offline,” Johanssen reported. “I don’t know where he is!”

“Commander,” Beck said, “Before we lost telemetry, his decompression alarm went off!”

“Shit!” Lewis exclaimed. “Johanssen where did you last see him?”

“He was right in front of me and then he was gone,” she said. “He flew off due west.”

“Ok,” Lewis said. “Martinez, get to the MAV and prep for launch. Everyone else, home in on Johanssen.”

“Doctor Beck,” Vogel said as he stumbled through the storm,

“How long can a person survive decompression?”

“Less than a minute,” Beck said, emotion choking his voice.

“I can’t see anything,” Johanssen said as the crew crowded around her.

“Line up and walk west,” Lewis commanded. “Small steps. He’s probably prone; we don’t want to step over him.”

Staying in sight of one another, they trudged through the chaos.

Martinez fell in to the MAV airlock and forced it closed against the wind. Once it pressurized he quickly doffed his suit. Climbing the ladder to the crew compartment, he slid in to the pilot’s couch and booted the system. Grabbing the emergency-launch checklist with one hand, he flicked switches rapidly with the other. One by one, the systems reported flight- ready status. As they came online, he noted one in particular.

“Commander,” he radioed, “The MAV’s got a 7 degree tilt. It’ll tip at 12.3.”

“Copy that,” Lewis said.

“Johanssen,” Beck said, looking at his arm computer, “Watney’s bio-monitor sent something before going offline. My computer just says ‘Bad Packet.’”

“I have it, too,” Johanssen said. “It didn’t finish transmitting. Some data’s missing and there’s no checksum. Gimme a sec.”

“Commander,” Martinez said. “Message from Houston. We’re officially scrubbed. The storm’s definitely gonna be too rough.”

“Copy,” Lewis said.

“They sent that four and a half minutes ago,” Martinez continued, “while looking at satellite data from nine minutes ago.”

“Understood,” Lewis said. “Continue prepping for launch.”

“Copy,” Martinez said.

“Beck,” Johanssen said. “I have the raw packet. It’s plaintext: BP 0, PR 0, TP 36.2. That’s as far as it got.”

“Copy,” Beck said morosely. “Blood pressure 0, pulse rate 0, temperature normal.”

The channel fell silent for some time. They continued pressing forward, shuffling through the sandstorm, hoping for a miracle.

“Temperature normal?” Lewis said, a hint of hope in her voice.

“It takes a while for the-“ Beck stammered. “It takes a while to cool.”

“Commander,” Martinez said. “Tilting at 10.5 degrees now, with gusts pushing it to 11.”

“Copy,” Lewis said. “Are you at pilot-release?”

“Affirmative,” Martinez replied. “I can launch any time.”

“If it tips, can you launch before it falls completely over?”

“Uh,” Martinez said, not expecting the question. “Yes Ma’am. I’d take manual control and go full throttle. Then I’d nose up and return to pre-programmed ascent.”

“Copy that,” Lewis said. “Everyone home in on Martinez’s suit. That’ll get you to the MAV airlock. Get in and prep for launch.”

“What about you, Commander?” Beck asked.

“I’m searching a little more. Get moving. And Martinez, if you start to tip, launch.”

“You really think I’ll leave you behind?” Martinez said.

“I just ordered you to,” Lewis replied. “You three, get to the ship.”

They reluctantly obeyed Lewis’s order, and made their way toward the MAV. The punishing wind fought them every step of the way.

Unable to see the ground, Lewis shuffled forward. Remembering something, she reached to her back and got a pair of rock-drill bits. She had added the 1-meter bits to her equipment that morning, anticipating geological sampling later in the day. Holding one in each hand, she dragged them along the ground as she walked.

After 20 meters, she turned around and walked the opposite direction. Walking a straight line proved to be impossible. Not only did she lack visual references, the endless wind pushed her off course. The sheer volume of attacking sand buried her feet with each step. Grunting, she pressed on.

Beck, Johanssen, and Vogel squeezed in to the MAV airlock.

Designed for two, it could be used by three in emergencies. As it equalized, Lewis’s voice came over the radio.

“Johanssen,” she said. “Would the rover IR camera do any good?”

“Negative,” Johanssen replied. “IR can’t get through sand any better than visible light.”

“What’s she thinking?” Beck asked after removing his helmet. “She’s a geologist. She knows IR can’t get through a sandstorm.”

“She is grasping,” Vogel said, opening the inner door. “We must get to the couches. Please hurry.”

“I don’t feel good about this,” Beck said.

“Neither do I, Doctor,” said Vogel, climbing the ladder. “But the Commander has given us orders. Insubordination will not help.”

“Commander,” Martinez radioed, “We’re tilting 11.6 degrees. One good gust and we’re tipping.”

“What about the proximity radar?” Lewis said,

“Could it detect Watney’s suit?”

“No way,” Martinez said. “It’s made to see Hermes in orbit, not the metal in a single space suit.”

“Give it a try,” Lewis said.

“Commander,” said Beck, putting on a headset as he slid in to his acceleration couch. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but Watn-… Mark’s dead.”

“Copy,” Lewis said. “Martinez, try the radar.”

“Roger,” Martinez radioed.

Bringing the radar online, he waited for it to complete a self check.

Glaring at Beck, he said “What’s the matter with you?”

“My friend just died,” Beck answered. “And I don’t want my Commander to die too.” Martinez gave him a stern look. Turning his attention back to the radar, he radioed “Negative contact on proximity radar.”

“Nothing?” Lewis asked.

“It can barely see the Hab,” he replied. “The sandstorm’s fucking things up. Even if it wasn’t, there’s not enough metal in- Shit!”

“Strap in!” he yelled to the crew. “We’re tipping!”

The MAV began to creaking as it tilted faster and faster.

“13 degrees,” Johanssen called out from her couch.

Buckling his restraints, Vogel said “We are far past balance. We will not rock back.”

“We can’t leave her!” Beck yelled. “Let it tip, we’ll fix it!”

“32 metric tons including fuel,” Martinez said, his hands flying over the controls. “If it hits the ground, it’ll do structural damage to the tanks, frame, and probably the second stage engine. We’d never be able to fix it.”

“You can’t abandon her!” Beck said. “You can’t.”

“I’ve got one trick. If that doesn’t work, I’m following her orders.”

Bringing the Orbital Maneuvering System online, he fired a sustained burn from the nosecone array. The small thrusters fought against the lumbering mass of the slowly tilting spacecraft.

“You are firing the OMS?” Vogel asked.

“I don’t know if it’ll work. We’re not tipping very fast,” Martinez said. “I think it’s slowing down…”

“The aerodynamic caps will have automatically ejected.” Vogel said.

“It will be a bumpy ascent with three holes in the side of the ship.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Martinez said, maintaining the burn and watching the tilt readout. “C’mon…”

“Still 13 degrees,” Johanssen reported.

“What’s going on up there?” Lewis radioed. “You went quiet. Respond.”

“Standby,” Martinez replied.

“12.9 degrees,” Johanssen said.

“It is working,” Vogel said.

“For now,” Martinez said. “I don’t know if maneuvering fuel will last.”

“12.8 now.” Johanssen supplied.

“OMS fuel at 60 percent,” Beck said. “How much do you need to dock with Hermes?”

“10 percent if I don’t fuck anything up,” Martinez said, adjusting the thrust angle.

“12.6,” Johanssen said. “We’re tipping back.”

“Or the wind died down a little,

” Beck postulated. “Fuel at 45 percent.”

“There is danger of damage to the vents,” Vogel cautioned. “The OMS was not made for prolonged thrusts,”

“I know,” Martinez said. “I can dock without nose vents if I have to.”

“Almost there…” Johanssen said. “Ok we’re under 12.3.”

“OMS cutoff,” Martinez announced, terminating the burn.

“Still tipping back,” Johanssen said. “11.6… 11.5… holding at 11.5”

“OMS Fuel at 22 percent,” Beck said.

“Yeah, I see that,” Martinez replied. “It’ll be enough.”

“Commander,” Beck radioed. “You need to get to the ship now.”

“Agreed,” Martinez radioed. “He’s gone, Ma’am. Watney’s gone.”

The four crewmates awaited their commander’s response.

“Copy,” she finally replied. “On my way.”

They lay in silence, strapped to their couches and ready for launch. Beck looked at Watney’s empty couch and saw Vogel doing the same. Martinez ran a self-check on the nosecone OMS thrusters. They were no longer safe for use. He noted the malfunction in his log.

The airlock cycled. After removing her suit, Lewis made her way to the flight cabin. She wordlessly strapped in to her couch, her face a frozen mask. Only Martinez dared speak.

“Still at pilot release,” he said quietly. “Ready for launch.”

Lewis closed her eyes and nodded.

“I’m sorry, Commander,” Martinez said. “You need to verbally-”

“Launch,” she said.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he replied, activating the sequence.

The retaining clamps ejected from the launch gantry, falling to the ground. Seconds later, preignition pyros fired, igniting the main engines, and the MAV lurched upward.

The ship slowly gained speed. As it did, wind-sheer blew it laterally off course. Sensing the problem, the ascent software angled the ship in to the wind to counteract it.

As fuel was consumed, the ship got lighter, and the acceleration more pronounced. Rising at this exponential rate, the craft quickly reached maximum acceleration. A limit defined not by the ship’s power, but by the delicate human bodies inside.

As the ship soared, the open OMS ports took their toll. The crew rocked in their couches as the craft shook violently. Martinez and the ascent software kept it trim, though it was a constant battle. The turbulence tapered off and eventually fell to nothing as the atmosphere became thinner and thinner.

Suddenly, all force stopped. The first stage had completed. The crew experienced weightlessness for several seconds, then were pressed back in to their couches as the next stage began. Outside, the now-empty first stage fell away, eventually to crash on some unknown area of the planet below.

The second stage pushed the ship ever higher, and in to low orbit. Lasting less time than the massive first stage, and running much smoother, it seemed almost like an afterthought.

Abruptly, the engine stopped, and an oppressive calm replaced the previous cacophony.

“Main engine shutdown,” Martinez said. “Ascent time: 8 minutes, 14 seconds. On course for Hermes intercept.”

Normally, an incident-free launch would be cause for celebration.

This one earned only silence broken by Johanssen’s gentle sobbing.

Chapter 1

LOG ENTRY: SOL 6 (Nov. 12, 2035)

I’m pretty much fucked. 

That’s my considered opinion. 

Fucked. 

Six days in to what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it’s turned in to a nightmare. 

I don’t even know who’ll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now. 

For the record… I didn’t die on Sol 6. Certainly the rest of the crew thought I did, and I can’t blame them. Maybe there’ll be a day of national mourning for me, and my Wikipedia page will say “Mark Watney is the only human being to have died on Mars.” 

And it’ll be right, probably. Cause I’ll surely die here. Just not on Sol 6 when everyone thinks I did. 

Let’s see… where do I begin? 

The Ares program. Mankind reaching out to Mars to send people to another planet for the very first time and expand the horizons of humanity blah, blah, blah. The Ares 1 crew did their thing and came back heroes. They got the parades and fame and love of the world. 

Ares 2 did the same thing, in a different location on Mars. They got a firm handshake and a hot cup of coffee when they got home. Ares 3. Well. That was my mission. Well, not mine per se. Commander Lewis was in charge. I was just one of her crew. Actually, I was the very lowest ranked member of the crew. I would only be “in command” of the mission if I were the only remaining person. What do you know? I’m in command. 

I wonder if this log will be recovered before the rest of the crew die of old age? I presume they got back to Earth all right. Well, guys, if you’re reading this: It wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to do. In your position I would have done the same thing. I don’t blame you, and I’m glad you survived. 

I guess I should explain how Mars missions work, for any layman who may be reading this. We got to earth orbit the normal way, through an ordinary ship to Hermes. All the Ares missions use Hermes to get to and from Mars. It’s really big and cost a lot so NASA only built one. 

Once we got to Hermes, four additional unmanned missions brought us fuel and supplies while we prepared for our trip. Once everything was a go, we set out for Mars. But not very fast. Gone are the days of heavy chemical fuel burns and trans-Mars injection orbits. 

Hermes is powered by ion engines. They throw Argon out the back of the ship really fast to get a tiny amount of acceleration. The thing is, it doesn’t take much reactant mass, so a little Argon (and a nuclear reactor to power things) let us accelerate constantly the whole way there. You’d be amazed at how fast you can get going with a tiny acceleration over a long time. 

I could regale you with tales of how we had great fun on the trip, but I won’t. We did have fun, but I don’t feel like reliving it right now. Suffice it to say we got to Mars 124 days later without strangling each other. 

From there, we took the MDV (Mars Descent Vehicle) to the surface. The MDV is basically a big can with some light thrusters and parachutes attached. Its sole purpose is to get six humans from Mars orbit to the surface without killing any of them. 

And now we come to the real trick of Mars exploration: Having all our shit there in advance. 

A total of 14 unmanned missions deposited everything we would need for surface operations. They tried their best to land all the supply vessels in the same general area, and did a reasonably good job. Supplies aren’t nearly so fragile as humans and can hit the ground really hard. But they tended to bounce around a lot. 

Naturally, they didn’t send us to Mars until they’d confirmed all the supplies had made it to the surface and their containers weren’t breached. Start to finish, including supply missions, a Mars mission takes about 3 years. In fact, there were Ares 3 supplies en route to Mars while the Ares 2 crew were on their way home. 

The most important piece of the advance supplies, of course, was the MAV. The “Mars Ascent Vehicle.” That was how we would get back to Hermes after surface operations were complete. The MAV was soft landed (as opposed to the balloon bounce-fest the other supplies had). Of course, it was in constant communication with Houston, and if there were any problems with it, we would pass by Mars and go back to Earth without ever landing. 

The MAV is pretty cool. Turns out, through a neat set of chemical reactions with the Martian atmosphere, for every kilogram of hydrogen you bring to Mars, you can make 13 kilograms of fuel. It’s a slow process, though. It takes 24 months to fill the tank. That’s why they sent it long before we got here. 

You can imagine how disappointed I was when I discovered the MAV was gone. 

It was a ridiculous sequence of events that led to me almost dying. Then an even more ridiculous sequence that led to me surviving. The mission is designed to handle sandstorm gusts up to 150 km/hr. So Houston got understandably nervous when we got whacked with 175 km/hr winds. We all got in our suits and huddled in the middle of the Hab, just in case it lost pressure. But the Hab wasn’t the problem. The MAV is a spaceship. It has a lot of delicate parts. It can put up with storms to a certain extent but it can’t just get sandblasted forever. After an hour and a half of sustained wind, NASA gave the order to abort. Nobody wanted to stop a month-long mission after only six days but if the MAV took any more punishment we’d all get stranded down here. We had to go out in the storm to get from the Hab to the MAV. That was going to be risky, but what choice did we have? 

Everyone made it but me. 

Our main communications dish, which relayed signals from the Hab to Hermes, acted like a parachute, getting torn from its foundation and carried with the torrent. Along the way, it crashed through the reception antenna array. Then one of those long thin antennae slammed in to me end first. It tore through my suit like a bullet through butter and I felt the worst pain of my life as it ripped open my side. I vaguely remember suddenly having the wind knocked out of me (pulled out of me, really) and my ears popping painfully as the pressure of my suit escaped. 

The last thing I remember was seeing Johanssen hopelessly reaching out toward me. 

I awoke to the oxygen alarm in my suit. A steady, obnoxious beeping that eventually roused me from a deep and profound desire to just fucking die. 

The storm had abated; I was face down, almost totally buried in sand. As I groggily came to, I wondered why I wasn’t more dead. The antenna had enough force to punch through the suit and my side, but then it got stopped by my pelvis. So there was only one hole in the suit (and a hole in me, of course). 

I had been knocked back quite a ways and rolled down a steep hill. Somehow I landed face down, which forced the antenna to a strongly oblique angle that put a lot of torque on the hole in the suit. It made a weak seal. 

Then, the copious blood from my wound trickled down toward the hole. As the blood reached the site of the breach, the water in it quickly evaporated from the airflow and low pressure, leaving only a gunky residue behind. More blood came in behind it and was also reduced to gunk. Eventually, the blood sealed the gaps around the hole and reduced the leak to something the suit could counteract. 

The suit did its job admirably. Seeing the drop in pressure, it constantly flooded itself with air from my nitrogen tank to equalize. Once the leak became manageable, it only had to trickle new air in slowly the relieve the air lost. 

After a while, the CO2 (carbon dioxide) absorbers in the suit were expended. That’s really the limiting factor to life support. Not the amount of oxygen you bring with you, but the amount of CO2 you can remove. In the Hab, we had the Oxygenator, a large piece of equipment that could break CO2 apart and give the oxygen back. But the spacesuits had to be portable, so they used a simple chemical absorption process with expendable filters. I’d been asleep long enough that my filters were useless. 

The suit saw this problem and moved in to an emergency mode the engineers call “bloodletting”. Having no way to separate out the CO2, the suit deliberately vented air to the Martian atmosphere, then back-filled with nitrogen. Between the breach and the bloodletting, it quickly ran out of nitrogen. All it had left was my oxygen tank. 

So it did the only thing it could to keep me alive. It started back filling with pure oxygen. I now risked dying from oxygen toxicity, as the excessively high amount of oxygen threatened to burn up my nervous system, lungs, and eyes. An ironic death for someone with a leaky space suit: too much oxygen. 

Every step of the way would have had beeping alarms, alerts, and warnings. But it was the high-oxygen warning that woke me. The sheer volume of training for a space mission is astounding. I spent a week back on Earth practicing emergency space suit drills. I knew what to do. 

Carefully reaching to the side of my helmet, I got the breach kit. It’s nothing more than a funnel with a valve at the small end, and an unbelievably sticky resin on the wide end. The idea is you have the valve open and stick the wide end over a hole. The air can escape through the valve, so it doesn’t interfere with the resin making a good seal. Then you close the valve and you’ve sealed the breach. 

The tricky part was getting the antenna out of the way. I pulled it out as fast as I could, wincing as the sudden pressure drop dizzied me and made the wound in my side scream in agony. 

I got the breach kit over the hole and sealed it. It held. The suit back filled the missing air with yet more oxygen. Checking my arm readouts, I saw the suit was now at 85% oxygen. For reference, Earth’s atmosphere is about 21%. I’d be ok, so long as I didn’t spend too much time like that. 

I stumbled up the hill back toward the Hab. As I crested the rise, I saw something that made me very happy and something that made me very sad: The Hab was in-tact (yay!) and the MAV was gone (boo!). Right that moment I knew I was screwed. But I didn’t want to just die out on the surface. I limped back to the Hab and fumbled my way in to an airlock. As soon as it equalized, I threw off my helmet. 

Entering the Hab, I doffed the suit and got my first good look at the injury. It would need stitches. Fortunately, all of us had been trained in basic medical procedures, and the Hab had excellent medical supplies. A quick shot of local anesthetic, irrigate the wound, 9 stitches and I was done. I’d be taking antibiotics for a couple of weeks, but other than that I’d be fine. 

I knew it was hopeless, but I tried firing up the communication array. No signal, of course. The primary satellite dish had broken off, remember? And it took the reception antennae with it. The Hab had secondary and tertiary communication systems, but they were both just for talking to the MAV, which would use its much more powerful systems to relay to Hermes. Thing is, that only works if the MAV is still around. 

I had no way to talk to Hermes. In time, I could locate the dish out on the surface, but it would take weeks for me to rig up any repairs, and that would be too late. In an abort, Hermes would leave orbit within 24 hours. The orbital dynamics made the trip safer and shorter the earlier you left, so why wait for no reason just to make the trip take longer? Checking out my suit, I saw the antenna had plowed through my bio monitor computer. When on an EVA, all the crew’s suits are networked so we can see each others status. The rest of the crew would have seen the pressure in my suit drop to nearly 0, followed immediately by my bio signs going flat. Add to that I was sent tumbling down a hill with a spear through me in the middle of a sandstorm… yeah. They thought I was dead. How could they not? 

They may have even had a brief discussion about recovering my body, but regulations were clear. In the event a crewman died on Mars, he stayed on Mars. Leaving his body behind reduced weight for the MAV on the trip back. That meant more disposable fuel and a larger margin of error for the return thrust. No point in giving that up for sentimentality.

So that’s the situation. I’m stranded on Mars. I have no way to communicate with Hermes or Earth. Everyone thinks I’m dead. I’m in a Hab designed to last 31 days. 

If the Oxygenator breaks down, I’ll suffocate. If the Water Reclaimer breaks down, I’ll die of thirst. If the Hab breaches, I’ll just kind of explode. If none of those things happen, I’ll eventually run out of food and starve to death. 

So yeah. I’m fucked.