• Published 2nd Jan 2018
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The Maretian - Kris Overstreet



Mark Watney is stranded- the only human on Mars. But he's not alone- five astronauts from a magical kingdom are shipwrecked with him.

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Sol 396

AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 403

ARES III SOL 396

If Fireball’s knuckles hadn’t already been white, they would have turned that color permanently.

Navigating the Martian terrain with what Earth called the “Sirius tandem rover” and what Mark called the Whinnybago had always been planned as a team effort. Mark and Starlight crammed into Rover 2 at the front, Mark driving the whole assembly and Starlight coordinating everyone else. Cherry, Spitfire and Dragonfly scouted ahead, picking out the most level route, moving smaller obstacles to smooth the journey, and warning the drivers of things too big to move. And in the trailer- the unholy union of Rover 1 and the gutted airtight remains of Amicitas- Fireball sat in the pilot seat and steered the modified nose gear that held up what was now the tail end of the whole thing.

Simple plan, in practice. But Sirius 5, the first proper test-drive of the whole mess under load, proved anything but simple.

The first problem, of course, was balance. The improvised trailer was a bit taller than Rover 2 with a vastly higher center of gravity. The suspension which might have helped keep that load level was taxed to half again its rated limit, leaving the lumbering trailer to rock alarmingly when going over any rock or uneven spot, no matter how minor. That ride alone made Fireball want to leave the pilot seat, go into the hab deck, find a cabinet, and crawl inside to cry until the moving stopped. Not that he would admit it to anyone.

The second problem was perspective. For reasons of stability and basic engineering, Amicitas had been mounted back to front on Rover 1, which meant Fireball’s windows faced directly behind the tandem rover. He couldn’t see a bucking thing. He had to rely on the chatter on the suit comms for guidance or warnings, and those warnings hadn’t been timely most of the time. Mark was only slowly learning that he had to keep up a running commentary on his own driving for Fireball’s benefit.

And the final problem was direction. Fireball had to steer the nose gear because the large rover wheels mounted on the stump of Amicitas’s former landing gear wouldn’t turn by themselves. There was just too much weight and too much mechanical gearing in the way for them to pivot loosely. However, since the cockpit faced backwards, the directions for the gear likewise got reversed. When Mark was turning left, Fireball had to turn right to keep the two rearmost wheels in the same arc as the other eight. When he got it wrong, the nose gear wheels would dig into the soil, and the whole thing would shudder and jolt from the drag.

Example:

“Okay, Fireball, prepare for right turn in three, two, one, right turn.”

Fireball, not yet used to the reverse logic of his new piloting configuration, turned his flight yoke to the right.

The whole assembly shook like a volcano about to burp as the nose gear wheels dug in, and the Whinnybago ground to a stop.

“What the fuck, Fireball?” Mark asked. “I said I was turning right.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. My bad.” Fireball reversed the cant of the wheels. “Fixed it, go ahead.”

“Okay.” The rover very, very gradually began moving forward. “Straighten up.” That was easily enough done, although Fireball’s slight overcorrection caused a rocking in the trailer that made Fireball think, with no fondness at all, of one of his rougher rocket flights.

“Okay, Fireball,” Mark continued, “get ready to turn slightly left.”

“Left. Got it.” Fireball wasn’t going to get it wrong twice in a row, so closely together.

“Slight left in three, two, one.”

Fireball eased the flight yoke to the right.

Drag, shudder, judder, stop.

“FIREBALL!” Mark shouted. “I said turn left!”

“I DID!”

“No, you didn’t! I was turning right so I told you to turn left, but you turned right!”

“You said get ready for slight left turn!”

“That’s not what I said!”

“Yes it was!!”

And so on.

After an hour of this, Fireball’s nerves were shot. Every bump, every pebble made the rover feel like it was going to turn turtle and crush Fireball underneath it, despite the fact that he knew any pressure vessel that stood up to a belly-flop onto a rocky surface at close to three hundred meters per second wasn’t going to just go squish from flopping onto its side. Two out of three attempts to turn the Whinnybago resulted in a bungle or a missed communication- they hadn’t put two successful maneuvers together yet- and the confusion and frustration had the dragon’s head swimming.

And then there was the temperature- a blazing 15 degrees positive Centigrade outside, sweltering for Mars, and pre-heated Equestrian air blowing from the life support unit inside, mixed with the heat from the RTG in the habitat deck. For Fireball it was fine, but he wondered what it was doing to the others. Hopefully at least part of the frustration, fear, and confusion was somebody else’s fault. Blame the heat. Yeah.

“Braking.” Slowly, carefully, the Whinnybago came to a smooth stop- nothing like the earthquakes caused by Fireball’s accidents.

“Okay,” Mark said quietly, “this isn’t working. We’ve only gone fifteen kilometers, but we’ve used up forty percent of the battery charge. And until we learn how to drive this thing properly, we can’t tell if that’s because of the weight or because we keep fucking up directions.”

“Yeah,” Fireball agreed. “So?”

“I think I have an idea for the steering,” Mark said. “But it’ll take a day to implement, so we might as well go back to the Hab and recharge.”

“Good for me.”

“I figure we’re half a kilometer south of the road to Site Epsilon,” Mark said. “We’ll turn north, hit that, and head home.” Unlike the three crevasses they’d slowly navigated, the track the rover had made going back and forth to the cave farm had left ramps in and out of the gullies much smoother and more gradual from wear. On one ascent the nose wheels had threatened to dig in while the rear wheels of the Rover 1 chassis had left the ground entirely.

“Sounds good,” Starlight Glimmer said over the comms. “Cherry, you copy?”

“I copy and agree,” Cherry Berry said. “It’ll take us a couple of minutes to get back to you.”

“No problem. The ground here is clear enough to turn around.” Mark paused, then added, “Fireball, I’m going to turn hard left. Be ready to turn hard right when I say so.”

Fireball could have grumbled about how Mark was talking down to him again, but he didn’t. Obviously a little talking down was necessary, considering how things had gone. Besides, they were headed back, and he wouldn’t slow that down for anything.

“Roger,” he said. “Ready I turn right, you turn left.”

The remaining instructions were just as didactic and annoying, but they worked. The Whinneybago drove the five actual kilometer distance back to the Hab without any more juddering and with only the occasional drunken wobble.

Fireball spent the rest of the day by himself, saying nothing. If he talked, he might babble. If he babbled, he might admit to being scared out of his mind, angry beyond words, completely unwilling to get back in that seat.

And he couldn’t do that. Steering the rear wheels was a vital job, and it was the only job he could do on the trip.

And Fireball was more afraid of being useless, and being seen as useless, than he was of anything the horrible kludge of a trailer could throw at him.

MISSION LOG – SOL 396

Sirius 5 aborted after one hour. It’s obvious we need more practice driving.

One problem is that the trailer is too long. On a steep descent the nose gear at the back lifts off the ground. On a similar ascent it tries to strike oil while the trailer’s middle wheels leave the ground and spin uselessly, leaving only six powered wheels to get twenty-plus tons of load up and out. There’s nothing we can do about that except seek out the absolute shallowest path we can find and avoid any serious crevasses.

Another problem is the top-heaviness of the load on the trailer. It’s not as bad as it feels- the wheel base on the trailer is considerably wider than the alien ship hull- but it still cuts down on efficiency when it rocks back and forth hard enough to make Rover 2’s rear wheels lose traction. We’re obviously going to have to be damn careful about quick turns, or quick anything to be honest.

But the biggest problem we had today was that Fireball and I couldn’t agree on a comms protocol for steering this pushmi-pullyu monstrosity we’ve built. Fortunately, I have an idea to fix that, which I’ll finalize once I’ve taken a look at the pony ship’s flight controls to remind myself of how they’re built.

If I remember correctly, the pilot flight yoke is mounted with a steering wheel, or sort of like one, that rocks back and forth. That’s meant to steer the forward landing gear on the ground after landing. And since all the other control systems have either been stripped off or removed from the ship, that’s its only remaining function. If that’s how it works, then I have a simple solution.

Tomorrow we’ll do an EVA with me on the ground outside while Fireball is steering the ship wheel. Beforehand I will mount a half-circle bit of outer hull scrap metal behind the wheel and make a pointer to show how far the wheel deviates from straight and square. Fireball will then turn the wheel, and while I measure how far the wheel deflects the landing gear wheels outside, Starlight Glimmer will mark the point on the half-circle so that the pointer will indicate which wheel positions produce what deflection. We’ll then repeat the process with Rover 2 and its front wheels.

The genius here is this: on the pony ship end of things, everything left of zero (zero being wheels straight) will be minus such-and-so degrees, and everything right of zero will be plus such-and-so. But on the rover steering wheel, the gauge will show left of zero as positive and right of zero as negative. The one will be the mirror of the other.

No more fucking around with “My left! No, your left! No, your OTHER left!” I will call out a number, plus or minus, and Fireball will put the pointer on that number. Doing it this way, the rear wheels will line up with the quad-steer system every single time. It can't do anything different.

We’ll have to practice again before we attempt another electric charge test, but I think this will solve our biggest problem.

I haven’t told Fireball about my brainstorm yet. He’s off by himself, sulking, and Dragonfly says he really wants to be alone. He’ll probably be over his hissy fit by morning. That’s soon enough to tell him.

(I shouldn’t say ‘hissy fit’. ‘Hissy’ is probably racist to reptiles.)

Author's Note:

Mark misreads the mood.

Very long day today. Longer one tomorrow.

By the way, for those who missed the shirt Kickstarter, I've listed all the shirt designs on WLP's online stores for preorders. Not all of these will go into full production, but we'll print to fill all orders taken. Check it out at http://www.wlpshirts.com/ .

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