Sol 26
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 22
ARES III SOL 26
Cherry Berry shifted the limp space suit on her back and switched on the water spigot, counting to fifteen slowly as the trickle of water poured from the drinking-straw onto the reddish-gray dirt at her hooves. For once things were going smoothly. Everypony was too busy to argue or make trouble, which meant she could focus on her own task and relax.
The next three days had been planned out. Tomorrow would be more soil cultivation, digging up the treated soil and spreading it on top of half the remaining Martian dirt. Everypony would be involved in that. For the next two days, the castaways would split into two teams. She, Mark, and Fireball would spend the two days out at the crash site doing a thorough walk-over of the hill atop the crystal cave, looking for cracks, fault lines, or other hazard that might cause trouble once they began work inside. Starlight Glimmer, Dragonfly and Spitfire would stay at base and carefully disassemble the starboard side of the ship’s hull around the engineering deck, removing its airlock and extracting the emergency electric heaters.
Fireball and Spitfire had wanted to exchange mission assignments, and each had made a good case. Fireball’s strength would be useful in disassembling the ship safely, and Spitfire had experience in exploring and inspecting terrain. But Cherry had held firm. Spitfire absolutely had to be wherever risk of physical injury was greater, and in this case that was the salvage project. And since Starlight and Dragonfly were also both needed for any work on the ship, that left no one to fill Fireball’s spot on the site survey team. Thankfully both accepted the assignments without any further argument.
Now, while Cherry and Fireball applied water to the dirt to prepare it for mixing with the live soil (and even Cherry, who lacked her family’s talent for farming, could sense how horribly sterile the dirt brought in from outside was), Dragonfly and Spitfire thrashed out safety protocols for the salvage operation. Starlight was sketching some sort of magic array on a whiteboard, while Mark carefully inspected the double handful of potatoes he’d had in storage. He’d cut two of the twelve apart already, each into four pieces, and he was planning cuts on the third one with the same expression Cherry had seen Rarity use when working with a particularly expensive and hard-to-find fabric.
She eased herself over a few steps, counted to ten, then depressed the switch to pour more water onto the dead soil. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, off. Several feet away Fireball bent to do the same thing, holding his suit over one scaly arm while using the other to guide the neckhole where the water was wanted. Click, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, click. Cherry nodded her head in approval and began her next spray.
A soft whispery hiss reached her ears. She looked up to see Mark set his knife down very carefully, his already pale face going ash white.
Air leak!
“SUIT UP!” As soon as she shouted the command she shrugged her own space suit off her back, pulling down the zipper so she could slip her hind legs in. She rushed to get her legs in and the suit torso pulled up to where she could slip in her forehooves, re-zip the zipper and close the outer seal over the zipper. She reached for her helmet, which wasn’t next to her… because this isn’t a drill and we’re not on the ship, stupid! she thought.
She looked up from her own work to see the rest of her crew in complete chaos.
Fireball, now in his own suit except for the helmet, was bounding across the dirt floor to the alien spacesuit racks, where the others’s suits and all the helmets lay jumbled in a pile. The other three Amicitas crew were already there, trying to untangle the remaining three suits, passing helmets back and forth, trying to find the right one. (Unlike the alien suits, which all had the same size and design of helmet, the pony space suit helmets weren’t interchangeable. Dragonfly and Starlight required helmets different from Cherry and Spitfire’s to make room for their horns, and Fireball’s long neck and head required a different helmet from any of the others.)
“Keep calm!” Cherry shouted, forcing herself not to gallop as she moved over to the total clusterbuck by the suit racks. “Check the helmet! If it’s not yours, find the person it belongs to! And don’t try to find your own helmet until you have your suit on!”
Almost the moment she arrived, a helmet rolled to her hooves. It was hers. She grabbed it in her forehooves, put it on her head, and seated it in the suit’s locking ring. She reached a hoof to the locking ring tab…
… but the ring wouldn’t engage. As she tugged and twisted the metal ring, she heard something softly crunching in the ring’s threads.
Oh buck oh buck oh buck. “Check your locking rings!” she said, keeping her voice firm and steady. The ship’s in a flat spin, but you can pull out if you keep your head and take the recovery one step at a time.... “Make sure they’re clear of dirt and debris! If there’s some inside, get a buddy to help clear it out!’
Two of the other suits had crud inside the suit neck, and a third had dirt on the neck of the helmet. Starlight and Dragonfly used quick bursts of magic to blow away the dirt, and then finally helmets began going on heads.
“Suit clear!” Fireball reported.
After a burst of magic from Dragonfly, Cherry’s own locking ring engaged, clamping down on the base of the helmet to form an airtight seal. She switched the air feed on with one hoof, taking a sweet breath of Equestria-scented air. “Suit clear!” she said.
“Suit clear!”
“Suit clear!”
“Suit clear!”
Cherry did her own rapid visual check- yes, all five of them had their own suits on.
Wait a minute… five?
Turning around carefully, Cherry found Mark watching them with bemusement. At first glance he appeared calm… but Cherry noticed him tapping the work table with the tip of his knife, beating out a most unsteady rhythm.
Anyway, she couldn’t hear that soft hissing anymore through her helmet. “Starlight,” she said, “ask Mark what that sound is.”
Starlight nodded, walking slowly across the dirt to Mark’s worktable. Her helmet and Mark’s head lit up with the usual lights of the translation spell, and the two exchanged words- Starlight’s clearly understood, Mark’s mostly unintelligible.
“What’s that hissing sound? …. What do you mean, not dangerous? … Then why did you turn white when it began? … Say that again, please? … uuuugh… thank you.”
The light ceased, and Starlight flopped on her flank.
“Well?” Cherry asked.
“He says it’s a mild dust storm,” Starlight said. “He says it’s too weak to be dangerous. His house was designed to withstand more. And then some nonsense about rising fissures.”
“So it’s not an air leak?” Cherry asked. Before Starlight answered, she added, “No, don’t ask him again. If it was a leak he would have said so.”
“So, false alarm, then?” Fireball asked.
Cherry gave this a moment’s thought. “No,” she said carefully, “not a false alarm at all.”
“How do you mean?”
Cherry turned her body to face everyone except Starlight. “Look at what just happened,” she said. “It took more than four times as long as it should have for us to get suited! We haven’t been taking care of our equipment, and we haven’t been drilling with it. And if this had been a real emergency, some or all of us might be dead! Remember what happened with the cherry spell a few days ago? If the canvas had breached, would we have been able to get suited in time?”
The room went silent except for the soft crunching of a couple of uncomfortable suit-clad hooves making little gouges in the dirt.
“Starlight,” Cherry continued, “when you feel up to it, talk with Mark. We need a proper place to store our suits when they’re not in use. The bottom of a closet isn’t enough. Dragonfly, you’re in charge of making sure our suits get maintenance. We’ve done multi-day missions before, so you know what to do.”
“Sure thing, boss mare!” Dragonfly said.
“And Spitfire,” Cherry said, “once we have a storage spot for our suits, you’re in charge of safety drills. Work out the new procedure to work with whatever space Mark gives us. You have full authority to call instant drills whenever you like, without warning, however many of us are here, so long as the drill doesn’t interfere with operations.”
Spitfire stood straighter than Cherry could remember her standing since before she was chosen for the mission. One space suit covered foreleg snapped up in a perfect salute. “Yes, ma’am!” she said enthusiastically.
“Right,” Cherry said, returning the salute. “Everypony, suits off. Put your helmets on your bunks for now, until we get our storage space. Suits too, except Fireball and me. Then everypony return to what you were doing.”
“What about me?” Fireball asked, sounding a little put out. “Don’t I get a new job?”
Cherry shook her head. “You had your suit on first,” she said. “Your helmet locking ring didn’t jam. You were prepared, and we weren’t. You don’t need another job.”
“No,” Fireball said flatly. “Maybe I do.” He reached up, twisted open his helmet’s locking ring, and pulled the helmet off. “The only reason my stuff was clean and separate from the others was dragon instinct and luck. My suit is part of my hoard. I didn't actually think about it.” He growled softly to himself before adding, “I don’t trust my instincts. They tell me I’m invincible. This is my third space emergency, and the first two times my instincts made things worse instead of better. I wasn’t good this time,” he finished with a snarl twisting his muzzle, “I was just lucky.”
“We were all lucky,” Cherry said. “Everypony remember that: today we were all lucky. Dismissed.”
Helmets came off, suits were thrown on bunks, and Cherry and Fireball returned to watering the dirt. As Cherry adjusted her suit on her back again, she noticed Fireball staring at her. “Is there something else you wanted?” she asked.
“No, ma’am,” Fireball said, the gruffness in his voice mostly gone. “It’s just good to see the steely-eyed missile mare back again.”
Steely-eyed? Cherry thought. Where do they get these roadapples? I thought we were going to die. I panicked and ordered a suit drill without checking with Mark to see if it was a true emergency. And if it had been an emergency, Fireball would have been the only survivor because I haven’t been looking after my crew properly. I was scared out of my bucking mind the whole time, and if I’m angry now it’s because I almost got myself killed.
“Thank you,” she said dully. She forced her knees not to knock, reached a hoof to the suit controls and switched on the water. She focused her rattled mind on the numbers. One, two, three, four, five…
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That is a lot to throw out.
I only read CSP for the first time a couple weeks ago, when this story started showing up on the featured list. When you read both in a short period of time, the phrase "steely-eyed missile mare" really starts to get oversaturated. This particular use of it is a good one, though.
8676186
I dunno, it just seems like it'd be a nickname that sticks. "His Airness." "Honey Badger." "The Big Unit."
8676172 Thousand -words-. Ugh. Lemme change that.
8676186 In the CSP universe the phrase was specifically invented for Cherry Berry, whose eye color is a violet not all that far from steel-gray.
Forgot to ask a couple days ago: Could Cherry have somehow flash-frozen some cherries? Even if their taste is only a pale imitation of a real fresh cherry, that's a dozen or two more imitations than she'd get otherwise. I have to think that having an imitation-cherry every week or two for the next half-year will give her more pleasure than eating 50 instead of 30 in a single sitting.
8676228 She didn't think of it, but I doubt she'd look with favor on freeze-dried cherries.
8676238
Oh well. I just remembered she might have a few days of Mark's reconstituted cherry cobbler. Still better than nothing.
Back on the drill field. She couldn’t be happier.
Hey. If you can't update the book daily, that's fine. I have things in my Tracking that take multiple months each time to update, and I've never given up on them. I'll be fine if you extend the wait time, and I'm sure others will be too.
By the way, I know the feeling of having to throw out thousands of words. I have a book, it's called Septuple Rainbow, and I:
1. Wrote a chapter
2. Scrapped that chapter and wrote another
3. Uploaded that chapter, then took it down a few hours later
And now I'm starting on a third chapter.
Trying to handle dirt in pressure connectors is a real pain. the only time I think Ive ever seen it done to any extent is the couplings in pneumatic pressure hoses for tools etc. And I think astronaughts would complain if the helmets had to have 18 inch handles on each side, even if they were foldup.
More dust to fill the cavern entrance? Variations in air pressure inside and out due to the entry restriction? Pressure equalisation airflow, wind strength in the entry corridoor?
"when you feel up with it, talk"
"when you feel up to it, talk"?
Sorry about your recent difficulties.
outside
Please don't burn yourself out with this. I'm glad that you're trying to stay consistent with daily updates, but I've been through severe burnout before (end of semester in grad school) and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. You have a life and priorities beyond us, and that's okay. Take a page from Twilight and Cadence in Once Upon A Zeppelin, figure out where you need to draw the line, and allow yourself some downtime. I look for quality in stories, not quantity, and if spacing out the chapters by a day or two can help you keep your life in order -- and potentially enable you to even further enhance your writing -- then by all means, take all the time you need.
8676172
Turns out it's actually just the same thing repeated over and over again.
8676562 Funny thing, I've seen both "if worst comes to worst" and "if worse comes to worse," but I have never seen it rendered "if worse comes to worst." Not once.
Are you somehow going to incorporate this story into the Changeling Space Program one, where it eventually leads here, or is this like an alternate universe set-up of something you've done?
I like daily updates as much as the next guy, but if you were to update Monday-Friday, or only Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and maintain quality, I'd prefer that. If you burn yourself out and get frustrated, then that's no good for anybody. Give yourself enough time to write without stressing too much about deadlines. Please?
8676595
That actually seems to make more logical sense, doesn't it? You're making a contingency plan should a bad situation become even more awful.
In case of emergency Starlight could use the battery to rise up a shield until all have their suits on. Or she could develop a spell that will find and stop the leak. Such spell wouldn't even need much energy. I am surprised that she already doesn't know spells to deal with leaks. One would think she would be prepared for dangers of the universe. Also Twilight is such magic freak, she would probably develop dozens of such spells.
I’ve thrown out paragraphs, chapters, well over 10 thousand words myself. I know how that is.
Yeah, bills DO get in the way of fun. Am there, doing that. My organization's losing all sorts of government contracts. Went from 100% employment to 40, now about to go 25% and no one wants to hire my brand of specialness any more. Still a year and a half from social security. I'll help what I can, but I'm dropping my KERA membership. 🤷
8676662 The Maretian takes place after the planned ending of CSP.
There's no harm in throttling back your output, epsecially if daily updates are interfering with actual life. This is supposed to be fun.
As for the chapter, it is good to see Cherry able to devote some mental energy to something other than topsoil and panicking. Okay, this is still panicking, but it's much more constructive panicking.
Plus the drills will definitely help keep up at least one pony's morale.
8677177
He said when he began this that he was doing it as a desperate attempt to get more donations. It's obvious he cares about the story and making it as good as he can but the speed is mostly him trying to get some much needed cheddar.
8677281 That, and also it's a reaction to my lack of productivity during a very stressful few months. In the past twenty days I've written more material than I did in the previous hundred.
8676273
Yes, my devotion to Message in a Bottle is proof that we will indeed still be here after seven days... and the next seven after that... ad infinitum till the complete tags show up.
I was wondering how it was possible to have a sequel to a story that hasn't been completed yet...
...Then I started reading and didn't stop.
Since you're putting this out at a much faster clip than the original story, do you intend to have this one finished before the original one is? I guess it doesn't really matter; one may be the sequel to the other, but since events in the sequel aren't reliant on events in the first story, the direction the first story takes has little bearing overall. Just curious?
8677140
I was hoping it would explain the massive tech jump between tech levels
8677131 Go into funeral work. It's a business that just keeps growing!
Magical chernglerng snot can fill in leaks. Just sayin'.
Also, without cherries, Cherry will soon begin to suffer from Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome and kill them all!
8677400 Eventually it will, but I've already made mentions in CSP that Twilight Sparkle is focusing the majority of her R&D on magic thrusters and other magical means for space flight, while the changelings are mainly focusing on chemical rocketry. Amicitas Flight 3 was, in essence, the next to last step to making chemical rockets obsolete.
]
8677376 The ending of the first story is predetermined, though the road getting there isn't. Thus, so long as I avoid too many direct references to the first story and explain the ones I do use, the sequel can proceed.
8677439
Yeah, I was pretty tired when i wrote that. Yes, Helium is monatomic, the important part is that, unlike hydrogen, it wont explode the hab no matter what.
Umm was Mark's explanation legit or was that gas hissing sound him trying to fart quietly?
8679015 Legit. The sound was dust hitting the Hab. The movie's effects regarding the Hab are bullshit: the air pressure differential between inside and outside the Hab is so great that the canvas dome is essentially rigid. So, for a light storm at any rate, the dust hitting canvas would be the only sound anyone inside the Hab would hear.
There would have been a depressurization alarm if there was an actual leak of substance, although the odds are it wouldn't be noticed due to the other effects of what would likely be sudden explosive decompression. But that's not guaranteed; after all, the pressure differential between the inside and the outside of a car tire is at least twice as great as that between the inside and outside of the Hab, and you sometimes do get punctures or holes that don't result in sudden blowouts.
Mark wasn't aware he'd tensed up until Starlight asked him about it. A lot of the fanfics for The Martian that I've seen make Watney the poster child for PTSD. The book doesn't really deal with the issue at all, and the movie has only a couple scenes that suggest it. I'm not going to go to the popular fanfic "here's Mark's daily mental breakdown" end of the spectrum, but when the ponies look at him you're going to see aspects that don't come out in his writing, and one of those is stuff like this.
BTW, "rising fissures" = "cracking up".
Realizing you do need to junk the works and start over is sometimes the hardest skill to develop. There's always the temptation to try to go back, try to pound out the dents and patch the holes, but if the frame's warped it'll never work right no matter how much you try to work around it.
If the magic water supply cuts off after thirty seconds, does that mean the equestrian side can tell when it's on or off?
If so, couldn't this be used to send messages in Morse code or something similar back to equestria?
I'm enjoying the story and this would hardly solve their problems but it seems like exactly the sort of reverse engineering that this sort of story would love to play with.
Panic! Panic! Everyone panic! *runs around in circles, arms flailing*
8918413
When in trouble,
when in doubt.
Run in circles,
scream and shout!
8915903
Was thinking the exact same thing.
8964535
When in deadly danger,
When beset by doubt,
Run in little circles,
Wave your arms and shout.
(c) Sandy Mitchell, I think
9062007 The version Hakar quoted appears in a couple of Heinlein works, at least once titled "Emergency Procedures".
Heh. I bet.
Yeeah, that was actually pretty alarming
Hah. Well, you can certainly see he respects her...
...when she's not bawling her eyes out over some cherries
*Looks at current chapter list*
Yeah, right.
Never actually delete those things, though. Keep a scraps document. They can always still contain elements you can recycle later.
9062007
9062021
WikiQuote puts it as early as 1929. I'm quite certain there is no copyright on it.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Panic
9185042
I remember an episode of Lost in Space , the robot told Dr. Smith "When in danger, when in doubt, yell and scream and rush about "
Totally shipping Cherry and Fireball. Just saying.
9201451
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxMr8RO5BAg
Even with the Equestrian making it out i don't see our human making it
Tough times ahead.