Venkat sat at Teddy’s desk. It was a nice desk, and the chair was identical to Venkat’s own, but he didn’t really care. He was watching the computer, waiting for Pathfinder’s restart diagnostic to complete transmission. The fact that the Deep Space Array was picking up Pathfinder’s signal- or, rather, that Pathfinder was in any condition to send a signal- was the single largest piece of good news today.
Teddy, equally impatient but better at not showing it, stood behind him, addressing the others. “What are the long-term consequences of the storm?” he asked. “Can we expect a second strike in two weeks?”
“What storm?” Randall and Mindy had been dragged from their normal duties for this top-tier meeting. “The storm began to fizzle almost as soon as it crossed the Hab, from what we can tell. Yesterday morning it had shrunk to half its size, and this morning we couldn’t find it. Which is the exact opposite of what should have happened, but I could say that for every single stage of this storm’s life.”
“Um, I have a possible reason for that,” Mindy said. “I did some more back-tracking of the storm based on our earlier work. The earliest sign of weather that might have triggered the storm was a low-level circulation kicking dust into the Martian stratosphere in Chryse Planitia on Sol 234. The prevailing winds in that area were blowing directly from the Hab.”
“So the Hab caused the storm?” Teddy asked.
“Um. The engine power test was on Sol 233,” Mindy said. “And based on our trajectory projections, on Sol 6 the storm blew up in strength within a few minutes of the alien ship’s entry into atmosphere.”
“So, not the Hab,” Teddy correct himself. “The magic engines.”
From the couch, Mitch chuckled. “They use magic,” he said. “Their crew includes a unicorn AND a pegasus AND a dragon AND a shape-shifter. Why shouldn’t they have engines that run on butterfly wings?”
Venkat looked up from the computer at Annie. “That’s a joke referring to the chaos-“
“I got that one, Venkat,” Annie snapped. “Shit, I’m only a press flack, I’m not one hundred percent fucking useless. Only ninety-five.”
“How confident are you in this conclusion?” Teddy asked.
“It’s not a conclusion,” Mindy said. “Um, sir. But this is a possibility based on technology we know nothing about, used by people who tell us it’s experimental even for them. I think we should assume the worst case scenario until more data comes in.”
“I agree,” Bruce Ng said over speakerphone from California. “We can live without further engine tests. Tell them not to fire the engines again until Sol 551. Potential danger eliminated.”
“What about on Sol 551?” Teddy asked. “Is there a danger that this effect would endanger the liftoff?”
“Possible but unlikely,” Bruce said. “The speed of sound on the Martian surface is two hundred sixty meters per second. Once they’re going faster than that, they’ll be leaving any thruster effects well behind them.”
“Okay,” Teddy said. “Randall, try to find any evidence for or against this hypothesis. Quietly. This conclusion does not leave this room.” He looked at Annie and added, “If anyone outside NASA proposes it, say that we haven’t seen sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion.”
“If it gets that far, they’re going to ask if it’s safe,” Annie said. “They’re going to ask me if I would take a ride in the thing! What the fuck do I tell them? That I’m allergic to horse hair?”
“Tell them the alternative,” Mitch growled, without Annie’s sarcasm, “is for the Hab crew to wait for the next passing alien spaceship and hope they can hitch a ride.”
“Okay, we’ve got the reboot diagnostic log in,” Bruce said. “We lost the rotor for the imager, possibly the imager itself. But the antennas and radio still check out.”
“Probably dust,” Randall said. “It’s hard to be certain, since the storm hit the area at night, but the lightning we detected seemed to center on Site Epsilon. We know for a fact there was no lightning west of the Hab.”
“And even if lightning struck the Hab, there wouldn’t be any outward signs if it struck metal,” Venkat said. “Burn marks require oxygen. Mars doesn’t have any. You wouldn’t know if lightning struck unless the target melted.”
“Anyway, the link’s back up,” Bruce said. “We should have the chat going now.”
Venkat typed.
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 253
ARES III SOL 250
[10:28] JPL: Testing. Mark, please respond as soon as you see this.
[10:57] WATNEY: This is Starlight Glimmer. Mark’s doing maintenance on the water reclaimer. Will I do?
[11:25] JPL: Good. Mainly we needed the response. The storm did one bit of damage, or else the static discharge we had you trigger did: the rotary motor for Pathfinder’s stereo imager is dead. It could be shorted out or just jammed with dust, but Pathfinder’s internal test says it’s nonfunctional. Considering that’s the one part of Pathfinder we could afford to lose, that means we dodged a major bullet. But this link works again, at least for now, so that’s good news.
[11:54] WATNEY: About that- I’ve been thinking. Once we’re on the move in the Whinnybago, we won’t really need the data link. And once we get to Schiaparelli, we’ll have the MAV’s comm systems. So how about we modify the procedures to leave Pathfinder behind when we leave? This is Mark, by the way.
[12:22] JPL: We’ll talk about it. Right now we’re opposed. The Friendship radio telegraph is slow and uncertain, and we’d rather use it only for backup.
[12:49] WATNEY: Four hundred kilos. That’s all I’m saying. Four hundred kilos we don’t absolutely need to haul thirty-five hundred kilometers. Also four hundred and nine watts per hour we don’t have to burn. Nine and a half kilowatt-hours per sol… God, we need a better name for that.
[13:20] JPL: We’ll think about it, Mark.
[13:48] WATNEY: Pirate-ninja. That’s what we’ll call it. A kilowatt-hour per sol is a pirate-ninja.
[14:16] JPL: Don’t make me revoke your naming privileges, Mark.
I particularly like this piece of irony, seeing as the real-world JPL actually does use the Pirate-Ninja for Mars missions. Well, the milliPirate-Ninja, since existing Mars probes don't hit even one kilowatt-hour-per-sol.
Which gets me thinking: what is the abbreviation of the Pirate-Ninja? PiNi? Pi-Ni? Something along those lines, anyway.
8951338 Pirates can handle but one abbreviation, me hearties:
"Rrrrrr!"
Forget the launch, if I were NASA I'd be busy worrying if a Pony rescue craft would endanger the Earth.
8951338
See, I can totally envision a future chapter now in which the lower-level employees at JPL get wind of Watney's pirate-ninja unit, and start adopting the term in official reports, much to Bruce Ng's chagrin.
8951353
What's a pirate's favorite letter? You'd think it would be R, but their first love is the C.
8951338
That's real?! That's real. Oh my Celestia, that's real. That is too freaking hilarious.
8951380
8951366
I agree if the Equestrian Magic Engines do that to Mars what would the result be on Earth. It might be that Magic based engines are only safe out of the atmosphere.
It could also be a positive. Earth has life and in this story, Life generates Magic. So Earth atmosphere is already filled with Magic so might not have a result. On the flip side Using Magic Engines on Mars could boost the atmosphere making it more habitable and open to Terraforming.
Long term it could be magic detection devices could find planets with life on them. Or a moon like Europa.
Speaking of real-world changes wrought by The Martian, imagine a chapter where NASA reveals to the crew the discovery of the plant that would become known as the Solanum watneyi. A member of the potato family, growing in the red soil of Australia, a fact which I personally found particularly ironic, considering that in the book, Watney talks about moving to Australia because it's on the opposite side of the planet from Idaho.
In a related note, I tried coming up with a clever scientific name for a theoretical new type of cherry to be named in Cherry Berry's honor. Best I could come up with was Prunus equa. Prunus is the genus name for all plants in the cherry family; I'll let you figure out the other half for yourselves (hint: Google translate it from Latin)
I call it the Mareaschino cherry
PIRATE-NINJAS!
8951338
Honestly, I don't think PN is taken for anything... so why go more complicated than is necessary?
I think you goofed who is talking mark or
starlight
Status update: I got Fireball's verse done.
i.imgur.com/tnQKhv6.jpg
If anyone wants to join my Discord server, I made a channel for general discussion of this story. PM me.
8951438
8951483
But where did starlight go
More of her to hug and love.
8951490 The time lag for each message is about an hour, IIRC. So between Starlight's message getting to JPL and their reply reaching Mars is about 2 hours.
8951499 oooooh now it makes sense thanks
8951502 No probs. It can get tricky managing time references in such stories (high Mohs sci-fi), but it can be greatly rewarding. It's nice to see Kris doing such a good job of it.
8951429
Neither is Coolawatts and frankly, if Mark was better at naming things he would've picked that.
8951605
But pirate-ninjas, dude! Coolawatts just doesn't have the same ring to it...
8951605
Coolawatts would be if Rainbow Dash got involved somehow
8951620
It has one less syllable, though!
8951353
8951380
Arright, but those suggestions only cover the pirate part. What letter should be associated with a ninja?
8951417
But that would have exactly the same pronunciation as "maraschino." Sorry; it's a good pun, but a bad name.
8951729
K obviously. Everyone knows the k in knight is silent, but the k in ninja is silent and invisible.
8951398
Doesn't have to be in atmosphere; they caused the storm using the engines in (non)orbit back at the start of the story. Realistically NASA probably wouldn't want a pony ship to use magic thrusters anywhere near Earth until they know why it's causing impossible uber-storms.
Aww. No watt-ney?
8951267
Ah alright that's fine then. The rest of it wasnt very broken english so I wasnt sure if that was the case.
Leave Pathfinder and Sojourna together inside the Cave, as the Guardians, like Laputa?
A few corrections, now that I'm home:
This should be "entry into the atmosphere."
Consider putting a "the" before "speakerphone".
I thought there was another typo when I read this earlier, but you must have fixed it in that time.
I still blame Starlight.
Fifty foot tall Dragonfly... So much to hug and love!
Yarrrrrrrrr~
'Teddy correct himself' - corrected
Oh, you tease.
...
Make it a queen and you have a deal.
If PF to too heavy to bring on the trip, then maybe in the last few sols before they leave, they can try a risky dissasembly to salvage the radio, antenna and computer. They could try to integrate PF's components into the trailer or rover.
8951744
So they could yell “PK Power!”?
8951729
So? The Whinnybago is pronounced the same as Winnebago, so it's not like there's not precedence for homophone puns in this story.
That's a bit tricky: "vanilla" scorch marks that everyone has seen get their black colour from carbon made by organics pyrolysis. Lower pressure makes that soot more likely to just fly away, though. In case of metals evaporated by discharge, vapours do oxidise in Earth's atmosphere and oxide is redeposited in kinda same way as soot, but it's unlikely they have a lot of metals with dark oxides (like copper of iron) outside anyway. Very thin metal film on something else may look dark, though.
Hmm, about units of energy and power I'm curious how ponies would react to the fact that humans measure power in horsepowers
(ponypower is a fun unit of measurement too)
8951744 Ok, I see you have a comedy story on your profile - if it's even half as funny as your responses here, then I'm very excited to read it
YEEESSS!!!! THE PIRATE NINJA GETS MADE A UNIT OF MEASUREMENT!!!
8951990
That depends on your dialect. Leading "wh" is pronounced differently from leading "w" where I'm from.
Don't know if you hear this often or even enough but thanks for the story
Personally, I would have coined the word 'KHLD' (pronounced 'KLUD') instead of 'Pirate Ninja'. It's easier to say and doesn't make one sound like a grade school kid. But then again, Mark is sort of a kid.
K-ilowatt
H-our
L-ong
D-ay.
8951990
8952073
What? Are you saying the "e" isn't given the schwa sound?
Anyway, there's no confusion on Mars between the rover-mounted spaceship and some other commercial RV. On Earth, your proposition would cause confusion in The Marketplace.
oh, i just remembered a silly character in an online comic..
warning, VERY violent:
http://goblinscomic.com/tempts-fate/tempts-fate-8-page-4
8952617
"Wh" is voiceless here and "W" isn't. Details. (I'm from Scotland)
8952861
That's absolutely not what I asked. I'm asking about the middle of these names. In my head, it's Winn-uh-bay-go versus Whinn-ee-bay-go. (Emphasis is only to point at the syllable, not to indicate stress. In both, the two greatest stresses are on the third syllable, then the first.)
50 foot tall mutant Dragonfly.
Man, Chrysalis is gonna have some questions that nobody is gonna want answered.
8953368 We'll call him 'Mothra'. Then Fireball can get greed growth and we can film the ensuing battle and make a mint at the Japanese box office!
8953470
The worst part is that I can absolutely see Mark enjoying the heck out of all that, with a great big bucket of popspuds
Potato moons and pirate-ninjas. What a wonderful few chapters these have been.
In any case, Whinnybego assembly continues apace. Mars will have to find another way to kill the crew. Though it isn't exactly running low on those.
At least Watney got the full modding procedures this time. Still waiting on that asymmetric visibility.
8951338
I imagine it as PN. kPN, etc.