As winter gave way to spring in the northern hemisphere of Mars, the prevailing winds of the latitude of the Ares III Hab began to shift. What during the winter ran west to east fluctuated, becoming east to west, with what passed for strong gusts in Mars's attenuated atmosphere.
What is winter in a planet's northern hemisphere is summer in its southern hemisphere. Just before the arrival of the Ares III crew on Mars, the warming of the surface in the south produced an unusually strong dust storm, strong enough to cross the equator. By a series of coincidences and unintended consequences, the ESA Amicitas’s unplanned entry into the Martian atmosphere had amplified this storm to levels not seen on the planet since the last major volcanic eruption. These winds had battered the eastern face of the Hab, in particular Airlock 1. Airlocks 2 and 3, facing southwest and northwest respectively, had been sheltered by the rest of the Hab.
Two much smaller dust storms, brief and feeble, had visited the Hab since the day of the Ares III abort and the Amicitas crash-landing. Smaller events, like the dust devil witnessed by two of Amicitas’s crew on Ares III Sol 84, hit the hab almost all the time. By freaks of the gradually warming northern weather, these almost invariably struck the Hab on its eastern face.
Under normal circumstances none of this should have been cause for alarm. The materials the Hab was constructed of, and the methods of assembly, had been tested by NASA engineers in an Earth environment as well as simulated Martian environments. The canvas which made up the inflatable dome of the Hab, in particular, had been tested to withstand wind forces up to Category 1 hurricane levels in an Earth atmosphere. Even the freak storm of Sol 6 posed only a relatively minor danger to the Hab, and the other storms no danger at all.
But the stress tests had never taken into consideration the constant use and abuse the Hab canvas, particularly near its seams with hard metallic edges, would see over a mission extended beyond the planned 60-day maximum. Just as a man can wear a hole into granite with feathers given infinite time and patience, so also can repeated long-term strain on a particular point break down something tested and proven to hold up to abuse in the short term.
The Sol 6 storm had opened a tiny flaw in the canvas, hidden by the two-piece clamp that held it in place around Airlock 1. The flaw flexed with every airlock use, stretching and relaxing as the airlock pressurized and depressurized. The hab’s final human inhabitant preferred that airlock because it was adjacent to the rover recharge station. Its alien inhabitants preferred it because it was the most direct route to Site Epsilon and its massive crystal cave. Thus Airlock 1 saw repeated use almost every sol, with Airlock 3 used solely for visits to the remaining portion of Amicitas and Airlock 2 relegated to the status of storage closet.
No visual search would have turned up the leak. The flange it was glued to hid it from the outside, and a metal gasket that clamped it against the flange hid it from the inside. But even with metal pressing it on both sides, it allowed air to escape through the canvas’s multiple layers into the vastly lower pressure Martian atmosphere outside, a few molecules at a time. The leak was too slow to trigger the atmospheric regulator’s pressure warning alarms. Furthermore, with the pony space suits being used to replace the oxygenator, the tiny fraction of lost air was constantly replaced. Thus, no obvious warning sign existed to cause the occupants of the Hab to take action.
Even when the leak became noticeable to the most sensitive of the alien crew, she couldn’t even identify it as a leak, let alone locate it. She could only tell that the operation of Airlock 1 seemed to make it worse. In response to her worries the aliens discontinued use of that airlock. They then used airtight sample bins to transfer vacuum-sensitive materials from the Hab to their ship and its independent air supply.
But despite the caution, the aliens had no warning other than a vague premonition of danger- so vague that none of them remembered to pass that warning on to the owner of the Hab.
Thus he, and his sole alien companion on his overland trip, returned in the Martian dawn of Sol 88 without a clue that his preferred airlock might be dangerous in any way.
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 86
ARES III SOL 88
“Finally!” Mark cheered as a brownish lump rose on the foreshortened Martian horizon. “Home sweet home!”
Starlight Glimmer couldn’t quite believe she’d heard properly. “I thought Earth is your home,” she said.
“It is,” Mark said. His face went pale- well, paler than usual. “Oh my God. Did I just call the Hab home?”
“Yes.”
“I have got to get out of this rover.”
“Yes,” Starlight said firmly. “We have to get out of this rover.”
Mark had put the rover into motion shortly before dawn, picking up the solar panels from their final campsite and securing them to the rover’s roof in record time. Now, barely an hour later, he slowed down for the final approach to the Hab.
There had been a few changes. The MAV’s descent stage had lost its engine bells. The MDV had been moved much closer to the Hab, with only a bit of it visible beyond Rover 1. The remaining debris from the Sol 6 storm had been cleared away. But the Hab itself looked the same as ever- maybe a little dustier, but otherwise just as Mark and Starlight had left it twenty-two sols before.
The rover came to a stop. The instant Mark shut down the rover systems he grabbed his spacesuit, slipping it on with the ease and speed of long practice and urgent need. Starlight followed his lead, digging out her own suit and shutting down its environmental system long enough for her to step into its legs and seal it up.
Her suit had held up extremely well for the wear and abuse it had seen. The rubber soles were beginning to wear down a little- she’d have to talk with Dragonfly about re-soling the suits for everypony. But the joints were still sound, with no sign of fabric wear, much less rips that might lead to air leaks. Starlight wondered, idly, if the other ponies’ spacesuits were holding up as well.
Mark sealed his helmet, activated his life support, and picked up his huge toolbox, which had hardly been opened the entire trip. Starlight was a little surprised that Mark was bringing anything with him at all. A little, but not much; after watching him interact with Dragonfly, she knew that the tools were Mark’s greatest treasure on the planet.
Speaking of… Her own suit secure and active, Starlight used her magic to lift the mostly depleted mana battery onto her back. She secured its carrying harness, wriggled her body to test it, and nodded. “Ready to go, Mark,” she said.
“I’m past ready,” Mark replied, stepping into the rover airlock. “Let’s go.”
Starlight squeezed in beside him, and the inner airlock door closed behind them.
Spitfire set the remaining half of her breakfast food pack in Mark’s refrigerator and shut and latched its airtight door. Nineteen food packs remained of the entire Amicitas supply, counting Fireball’s remaining inedible-by-pony meals. Dinner of day after tomorrow, she figured, would be the last meal with food brought from Equestria.
The crops in the cave were coming along quite well, but the first alfalfa harvest in bulk lay weeks in the future- weeks during which the ponies would have no choice but to steal from Mark’s supply of food. She’d already inspected some of his food packs, with the help of a dictionary Dragonfly had found on the computer used for their nightly television viewing. She wished she hadn’t, and she hoped the harvest came in before she learned the flavors of things that, back home, she would have greeted by name.
The thought gave her more incentive to work hard that day. It was another day for working the cave farm, and it was her turn to walk out with Cherry Berry to the cave. By the time they returned Mark and Starlight would finally be back from their long trip, and-
The air pumps on Airlock 1 began to whirr.
Almost instantly, Spitfire felt the air inside the Hab change in that subtle, disturbing way.
She looked around the Hab interior for the others. None of them stood anywhere near Airlock 1; Fireball was finishing off his breakfast of plain quartz, Cherry Berry was putting on her spacesuit undergarment, and Dragonfly was at the computer staring at diagrams she’d found for the MDV, trying again to make sense of them. Obviously they didn’t activate the airlock controls.
Obviously Mark and Starlight were early. They hadn't announced their arrival on the suit comms- and why would they, since nopony had their suit on yet? But Spitfire had counted on their arriving while her suit was on, so she could steer them away from Airlock 1.
They had activated the airlock, depressurizing it in preparation for entering the Hab.
And, equally obviously, neither of them had been warned not to use the airlock.
The pumps continued to whirr, drawing air out of the airlock and back into the Hab. Spitfire watched the canvas wall around the airlock. Was it flexing? Was it shifting, or was her imagination making her see things that weren’t there? Every instinct screamed at her that she and her crewmates were in danger, deadly danger, deadly and immediate danger.
But she didn’t want to panic. She still couldn’t be sure of herself. Nopony else could feel the air current, and everypony had had a try at finding possible leaks in the hab.
It wasn’t even her hab. The person who knew the most about the hab was about to come in by the airlock. If he didn’t find anything wrong-
Spitfire’s frantic chain of thought ceased as she felt the air current, stronger than ever before, ruffling the fur on her back.
No more thought. No more doubt. Time to act.
“SUIT UP!!!”
The airlock door opened. Mark and Starlight stepped inside.
“Suit clear!”
“Suit clear!”
“Suit clear!”
“Suit clear!”
Starlight blinked at the series of suit-clear calls flooding her headphones. “Amicitas, Starlight,” she replied. “Guys, we appreciate the welcome home, but shouldn’t the suit drill wait until we’re inside?”
“This is no drill,” Spitfire’s voice replied over the comms. “Does Mark have that crystal you made him on?”
“Yes, he does. What’s going on here?” Starlight looked up at Mark, who had just finished securing the outer airlock door.
“Mark, danger. Maybe hole in Hab. Careful.”
Mark stiffened. “Hole in the Hab?” he asked. “Where? Hold on, we’re coming in.” His hand reached across the small airlock and hit the button to pump air into the chamber.
The Hab canvas was a triumph of NASA engineering, layers of complex polymers reinforced with a weave of carbon fibers. The material combined unprecedented strength, insulation, radiation reflectivity, and lightness. It had been assembled with care by the Ares III crew on Sol 1, using an equally miraculous resin on convenient seal-strips that formed an airtight seal even stronger than the canvas itself.
As miraculous as the canvas was, it was not indestructible.
As Airlock 1 depressurized, two of the fibers around the flaw in the fabric stretched and failed, snapping apart, making the gap in the weave larger. The rest held, under the tension of more than five thousand kilograms per square meter, as the airlock finished depressurizing.
But as the astronaut began the repressurization process, the airlock began to expand again, causing the flawed canvas to slacken for a fraction of a second. The air pressure of the interior of the Hab pulled it taut again almost instantly, tugging harder on the remaining fibers in the process.
This slight tug, atop the strain already present, proved too much. More fibers parted. The failures propagated up and down the edge where canvas met airlock metal. Without its reinforcement, and with thirteen point nine pounds per square inch of differential pressure backing it, the canvas failed, parting enough for an actual hole, visible to the eye, to appear along the edge of the airlock’s flange.
In less time than it would take that eye to blink, the hole propagated around the entire perimeter of the airlock.
On Sol 88, the Ares III Hab suffered sudden eruptive decompression. The wind generated lasted for only a fraction of a second, but for that second thousands of pounds of force exerted themselves against the metal canister which was Airlock 1.
The airlock, and its two occupants, went flying, soaring for twenty meters before tumbling across the Martian surface for thirty more, beating and battering the people inside before finally coming to rest.
The Hab systems, sensing the sudden and total loss of air pressure, enacted an emergency shutdown. Breakers snapped open. Valves snapped shut. Electrical supply died.
Inside the now all-but-airless Hab, things were chaos.
Inside the airlock, things were worse.
AUDIO LOG – WATNEY, M. – SOL 88
RECORDING…
Ooooh… oh, my head… what the hell happened?
….
You fucking kidding me?
For the record, since my suit is recording all of this, Mars has just given me a wonderful welcome-back-fuck-you gift by waiting until the moment I got back to the Hab to have it breach. And by breach I mean send Airlock 1 flying a good fifty meters, with Starlight and I tumbled like socks in a dryer. I’m having to wipe a trickle of blood from my forehead because my stupid fucking idiotic safety-glass faceplate took the brunt of my impact with the airlock inner door when the thing went flying.
The good news is, my suit had more than enough air in it- fresh O2 and N2 tanks- to fill the airlock. The bad news is, I’m hearing a hissing sound, and I’m really hoping it’s a leak in Starlight’s suit. If it’s not, we’re in real trouble.
Checking my suit air tank levels… yeah, we’re fucked. My suit is still backfilling air. The airlock has a small leak somewhere. I know it’s a small leak because if it was a large leak we’d already be dead.
I’m hearing a lot of pony voices over their comm channel. There’s a real sore spot on my chest where the battery for the crystal communicator Starlight made for me rests. In the bouncing around we took I must have banged my chest against something- maybe my arms. Doesn’t feel too bad, though. I don’t think anything’s broken.
I hear Cherry’s voice now. She’s taking charge.
Watney here, Cherry. I mean Mark here. The glass on my helmet is broken, but I think I’m okay.
I don’t know. I’ll check. Starlight? Starlight, are you awake?
Oh. Oh, this is bad. Cherry, Starlight was carrying her battery when the Hab blew out.
Dragonfly, do you understand me? Good, explain it to Cherry. Starlight was carrying the battery. When the Hab blew out we got shaken up hard. The harness shifted on her and pinned one of her legs. The metal on the battery cut a hole in her suit. Also I think her leg is broken. And she’s out cold. Unconscious. Not awake.
That’s right, she has a hole in her suit.
Also, the airlock is leaking.
Leaking. It has a hole in it. Either that or there’s another Dragonfly in here with me.
No, there isn’t really another Dragonfly in here. I just meant it hisses.
Look, I have to find that leak while I still have air in my suit. My suit has a hole in it too.
The lights? The lights on Starlight’s suit are all green.
She does? Good. I’m turning my air off, then.
What? Okay, I’m waiting.
Oh. Okay, I’ll leave it on. But that means I need to find that leak really quick.
No, I don’t want to wake Starlight. We both took a beating. If her leg is broken, she’s really going to hurt.
Okay. I’m going to turn my crystal off now. I’ll call you when I have something to say. Mark out.
Okay. Have to think fast. Starlight’s life depends on it. If the air pressure drops too low in here her life support will shut down automatically. I have to fix the leak while my suit still has air in its tanks.
So. How can I find that leak?
I need a visible vapor of some kind. The only kind I can think of is smoke. What have I got in here that can burn?
Hair. My hair and Starlight’s hair. But I don’t want to disturb her until I have to, so my hair will have to do.
First step, get out of this suit.
RECORDING ENDED
“I found the magic battery, Cherry!” Fireball shouted. His head poked through a curtain of half-collapsed canvas.
“We can hear you fine,” Cherry replied. “Good work. Dragonfly, what about a helmet for Mark?”
“I’m digging out a whole suit for him,” Dragonfly called, her suit barely visible under a collapsed pile of canvas and poles near the bunks. “Just because we know his helmet is shot doesn’t mean there isn’t damage elsewhere. Plus he’ll need more air.”
“Good call,” Cherry replied. “Spitfire, how about first aid?”
“Nothing doing until we can get Starlight somewhere safe,” Spitfire replied from the hole where the airlock had been. “I’ve got our medical kit here, but I’m taking it back to the ship. That should still have air.” Without pausing for permission, she half-trotted, half-bounced out into the Martian morning light.
“It’ll have power, too,” Dragonfly said. “We kept the electrical batteries charged. They should be good for a few hours.”
“Okay. Fireball, give me the magic battery. What’s the charge?”
“One-third, looks like,” Fireball said.
“Good. You take Mark’s new suit and helmet once Dragonfly digs it out. Dragonfly, I want you in the ship. Make sure it can handle all of us. We need to get Starlight and Mark over there as quickly as possible.”
“Okay,” Dragonfly responded. “Fireball, can you give me a claw over here? I’m having trouble getting the suit off its rack. I can’t disconnect the recharge harness.”
“Just a minute. I’ll be with you once I’ve got the battery harnessed to Cherry.”
“Spitfire here.”
“Go ahead, Spitfire,” Cherry said.
“I’m carrying the medical kit up to the Amicitas crew airlock,” Spitfire said. “Just a reminder, we’re probably going to need both Fireball and Mark to get Starlight up the ladder.”
“Got it. Dragonfly, do you think you can patch Starlight’s suit?”
“If it’s only the fabric, sure. But I can’t do it in vacuum. Also, I’ll need a meal pack to make enough goo for the patch.”
“Can you use one of Fireball’s?”
“Hey!” Fireball protested.
“Have something to say, Fireball?” Cherry asked.
“No, ma’am.” The dragon’s voice softened immediately. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
“So long as the gem bits aren’t too large, yeah,” Dragonfly, said. “I can use it.”
“Grab the one marked ‘Rubblerito with Chococoal Fudge,’” Fireball said, seating the battered mana battery on Cherry’s back and fastening the harness around her. “The burrito’s mostly beans and peppers.”
“Will do. Done with the bossmare yet?”
“Yes, he is. Go get that suit, Fireball. Then let’s go help Mark.”
AUDIO LOG – WATNEY, M. – SOL 88 (2)
I owe Dragonfly a great big thank you. If she hadn’t made me paranoid about my tools with all her poking and prying, I wouldn’t have grabbed them first thing when I left the rover, and I wouldn’t have them in the airlock with me. The toolbox came through the tumbling intact, as did everything inside, including the shears I used to cut several locks of hair and the flashlight I’ve just finished breaking so I can make a spark.
If I hadn’t had the tool box… well, I could have pulled a couple of wires on my space suit for the spark. And I could have removed Starlight’s helmet and bit some of her mane hairs off. But the tools make things much easier. Of course, this might get us both killed, so the tools might just be assisting my suicide here. There is that to consider. Mixed blessings and all that.
Anyway, here’s the plan. I’ve closed the nitrogen valve on my suit completely, so it’s now backfilling the airlock with pure oxygen. The higher the oxygen level in the airlock, the more easily my hair will burn. I’ve removed an LED from the flashlight and used a couple short lengths of wire from the supply in the tool box. Now when I switch the flashlight on, I get a little spark. That’s plenty. With enough oxygen, any spark will ignite almost any fuel.
Thing is, I’ve just described Apollo One. Not the parallel I’d like to have here.
Starlight just groaned. She’ll be waking up soon, I think. I need to hurry up and do this. My air levels are dropping pretty rapidly.
Wish me luck…
END RECORDING
Starlight Glimmer opened her eyes. Her head hurt. Her horn really hurt. And her right foreleg…
Starlight opened her eyes again. This time she tried not to think of the leg.
And failed.
For the third time in as many minutes, Starlight opened her eyes again, just in time to hear Mark behind her saying, “Goddammit! Five times!”
“Mark?” she asked, unable to raise her voice much above a croak.
“Starlight, stay absolutely still,” Mark said sternly. “And when I tell you, turn off your suit air and hold your breath. It’s important.”
“What happened?” Starlight asked.
“Starlight, is that you?” a voice asked in her ear.
“The Hab blew out,” Mark said. “We’re in the airlock and it’s leaking.” She heard the sound of a pair of shears working. “Okay. Attempt number six. Suit air off. Starlight, hold your breath now.”
“Starlight, if you’re awake, please respond,” the voice in her ears said.
Starlight, caught between conflicting orders, decided to follow the orders of the person actually in the chamber with her. She pulled her left forehoof under herself and hit the shutoff switch for her suit life support. This done, she held her breath, trying to ignore the gradual ache in her ears as the air pressure in the airlock began to drop.
Silence. More silence. Starlight could hear her heartbeat in her ears.
“Gotcha!” Starlight heard the sound of Mark’s boot hitting the airlock floor. “Starlight, breathe! Air! Now!”
Starlight switched on her suit air again. A warning beep echoed in her headset; the suit sensed the air pressure was below standard pressure. But between her suit and Mark’s the air pressure returned to normal in a few seconds, and the beep cut out.
“Amicitas, Starlight Glimmer,” she said, now that the need for silence was past. “I’m awake. Not happy about it, though.”
“Report,” Cherry said bluntly.
“My right foreleg hurts a lot,” Starlight said. “I think it’s broken. It’s pinned by the mana battery. I can feel air blowing through a gash in the suit there. My head also hurts, but my helmet seems to be intact, I think. We’re losing air, but I think Mark is working on that.”
“Yes, Mark told us that,” Cherry replied. “How much magic is left in the battery?”
“Less than ten percent,” Starlight said. “I used most of it when we recovered Mark’s robot, and I’ve tapped it once or twice for translation spells. I’ve really been working on learning his language.”
“Understood. Now this is important,” Cherry said. “Are you able to cast a forcefield spell to hold the air in for about a minute? We can get Mark a fresh suit if you do. We can also give you the other battery- it’s up to thirty-five percent power.”
The sound of Mark unspooling gray tape from his tool kit echoed through the airlock, momentarily drowning out all other sound.
“I think I can,” Starlight said. “But there’s no point in bringing the other battery. I can’t cast a mending spell on my suit while wearing it.”
“Okay. Dragonfly says she can patch the suit. Are you familiar with changeling goo?”
Starlight found the strength to groan. “I suspect I’m going to be a lot more familiar in a few minutes,” she said.
Before Cherry could continue, Mark spoke up, and his voice echoed in Starlight’s ears as she heard it both from in the room and over her headset. “Watney here,” he said. “Air leak secured for now… I mean, I stopped the leak. Are all of you all right?”
“We are all right,” Cherry said, very carefully, in English. “We have plan. Get you in our ship. Starlight will tell you. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mark said. “I’ll shut up and let you talk.”
“Good. Thank you.” Cherry switched back to Equestrian. “Starlight, when I give the signal you put the air retention forcefield around the inner airlock door. Then tell Mark to open it. Fireball will pass the new spacesuit in for Mark, and Dragonfly will come inside with it. She’ll patch up your suit well enough to hold air. Then Mark and Fireball will carry you over to Amicitas. It still has power and air, and Spitfire’s waiting there to splint your leg. Once we’re all in the ship safe, we can discuss what to do next.”
“Got it,” Starlight said. “I’ll explain it to Mark.”
MISSION LOG – SOL 88 (3)
It’s been a very long, very bad day, but it could have been oh so much worse.
It took two-thirds of the remaining spare hab canvas, but the hole where Airlock 1 was has been patched. Starlight tells me that, once a magic battery is fully recharged, she could properly fix the leak in the airlock, but that could take weeks. We need the hole patched now, so we patched it now. Maybe we’ll find some use for Airlock 1 somewhere down the line, but for now we just have to make do with the two remaining airlocks.
The assembly of the Hab on Sol 1 took four people most of the day. Fortunately I didn’t have to reassemble it by myself; most of it, including the heavy equipment, didn’t move very far. Airlock 1 took most of the blow, with the rest of the debris being small objects like all the open markers we’d been using for whiteboards. I checked four of them; all dead, dried out under their non-airtight caps by the Martian air. Fortunately we have the backup supply, never opened, plus the bundle Starlight brought on the Pathfinder trip.
I owe a lot to the ponies’ foresight, particularly Spitfire. She was the one who first knew something was wrong, or so Cherry tells me. None of the others had a clue that the airlock was about to go, but they were careful enough to move a lot of the potentially air-sensitive material, including most of the medical stores, over to their ship. That included the unused alfalfa seeds, which is a very good thing.
All in all, the hab was open to the Martian environment for about seven hours before we verified a good seal on the repaired canvas. That was more than long enough to kill all the plants in the Hab farm. It’s possible some of the bacteria survived at the bottom of the dirt, but it’ll be days before we know for sure. But the original alfalfa stand is dead at least to the top of the roots, and the potato plants are all goners. The new spuds had just begun sprouting, too. Fuck, what a waste.
It’s not disaster. We have the cave farm. Most of the conditioned soil remained in the Hab, with only the loosest dirt blowing out. We can revive that soil a lot more easily than the effort required to condition it in the first place. We have some spare alfalfa seeds, and we can take some potatoes from the first cave harvest to replant those. But it’s a huge setback.
Every piece of equipment survived the sudden decompression except the computer Dragonfly was using at the time (it took a ten-meter flight across the Hab and hit the ground hard, breaking the monitor) and the water reclaimer. I suspect ice formed in the lines, causing them to burst. That’s not a big problem: I have a lot of hose specifically to repair problems like that. Everything else is working fine, which is how I’m able to type this on a computer plugged into Hab power.
The most serious problem is Starlight. Spitfire did the best she could to splint the broken leg, but that’s all she knows how to do. We haven’t got a doctor to do it properly. The ponies apparently had some magic medicines which accelerate healing, but Spitfire says they’re not working nearly as well as they should. She’s going to be bedridden- all but immobile- for three weeks minimum. Fireball and I are going to get a lot of practice carrying her to and from the john, and I guarantee you all three of us are looking forward to that SO much.
And Starlight’s suit is… well, it’ll still hold air. I got to watch Dragonfly hork up the world’s biggest, blackest loogie right onto the rip in her suit. The suit’s absolutely rigid at that point now- the stuff hardened almost instantly. Starlight tells me it’s permanently bonded to the suit, quoting her, “and magic can’t fix it anymore.” Apparently there are spells that can fix broken things, but not beyond a certain point. Trying the spell now with that goo on would just rip off the patch and make a bigger hole, if I understand correctly.
So, even after Starlight gets out of bed again, her suit is permanently scratched for any further heavy labor. She’s going to be limited to the absolute minimum EVA time. Her suit is compromised, and if it fails irreparably she probably dies here. We can’t risk that.
I need an explanation for how Dragonfly can do things like that suit patch that doesn’t begin or end with the word “magic”. But I haven’t got the time now. I want to get the water reclaimer fixed before bed tonight so I can begin trying to fix Pathfinder tomorrow. That’s going to be a long job if it’s even possible at all, so I don’t want anything else on my plate.
Anyway, summary: today was the worst sol I’ve had on Mars since Sol 6. But it could have been worse. Working together, we got Starlight out of the airlock safely and repaired the Hab in a few hours instead of the couple of days it would take me alone. The Hab farm is dead, but it can be revived- and at least some of the alfalfa will be edible, although freeze-dried alfalfa is going to be a taste pleasure for absolutely nobody.
Mars didn’t kill us today. Life goes on, until tomorrow.
And I’ve taught Spitfire the English words for “suit up.” From now on, when she calls a suit drill, I’m joining in.
Longest chapter yet. No wonder you're having trouble building a buffer.
My gut literally dropped after reading this section. No lie, there was actual fear.
It's only a hundred+ Gs, if the canvas goes all at once.
If the canvas rips 'slowly' - so that the airlock can partially pivot out of the airstream, or the hab is largely decompressed without the airlock becoming fully detached, and it rips off finally by inertia, that can greatly reduce acceleration.
Another good chapter!
Mars now needs to rebuild its energy for it's next attack on Mark and co.
Magma bubble... surging.
"I thought the Volcanic activity on mars was all but gone..."
"We were mistaken! It was just waiting!"
Welcome to a disaster movie. Where the narrative itself is trying to kill you.
Well, that could have been worse. Still, 3 weeks bed rest for Starlight? She's not gonna be happy about that.
Round of applause for Spitfire's suit drills. Horsebird just saved their collective asses.
Starlight has suffered the most from this ordeal, with her injury, being immobile for at least three weeks, needing help to get to the bathroom, and the sad state of her space suit.
Starlight needs a big hug. Get on it, Mark.
This was an amazing chapter. Loved it, can barely wait for more
Damn, another setback, that's going to hurt moral alongside starlights broken leg.
This might've been my favorite chapter so far. I cannot clearly explain why, but one of my most favorite things in the world is that moment — that brief, fleeting moment — when the blood in the veins turns into ice water.
That was a real haphazard solution to their problems that causes them more long term problems later.
Starlight's suit being compromised is a big longterm problem. Especially considering she could have fixed it if they could get her to safety and a magic battery. If she can maintain an air retaining force field across the entire airlock door, she could have maintained one across the hole in her suit that would be about 2 magnitudes smaller.
So just follow the procedure they had to bring the higher magic battery in, get Watney in his fresh suit, and then have Starlight hold a field over the hole in her suit and carry her to the Amicitas. Then she can recover there until she can cast the mending spell.
Though for that matter, I strongly suspect they could have just used Watney's suit patch kit just fine without the drawback of inflexibility.
What's the process for making the flexible changeling goo material that ropes are made from anyway? Why couldn't Dragonfly have used that instead of hard stuff for the suit patch?
Also I suspect that Watney will come up with a lot more uses for Dragonfly now that he knows she can basically output vacuum rated resins with just any sort of food as an input. They could use that to reinforce the Hab from the inside for instance.
In terms of timing luck, as long as Spitfire could get them suited up in time, I'm not sure the Hab blowing out days earlier would have been much of a problem. They're going to have to recondition the soil regardless, and 7 hours is enough time to kill any equipment that isn't vacuum hardened anyway. The only difference a few days would make is how much water is lost to sublimation, and they have unlimited water. I suppose if they had trouble rigging the solar cells up to the Amicitas without the Hab that could be a problem, but to all appearances from the novel the solar cells were the single best piece of equipment on the mission in terms of ease of use and reliability. Those things took everything Mars could throw at them, and every unintended use Wateny could come up with like it was nothing.
Considering how much earlier the alfalfa was started there than the cave, I suspect that it would have been fairly close to harvest anyway, so could extend the ponies food supply a bit more towards the first real harvest.
In terms of acceleration there's way too many factors that can affect acceleration to firmly say whether a sudden but ultimately reasonable velocity change is survivable in advance. We crash test cars by crashing them with accelerometers because it's difficult for even advanced computer models to judge that sort of thing in advance. Even if the airlock accelerated at 172 gs for a fraction of a second for instance, the occupants won't because their acceleration is spread over time by the air inside the airlock and the give of the canvas when they impact it.
The buffer survives! What an amazing story of survival and persistence in the face of overwhelming odds! Book about it soon?
Is it possible to survive the airlock ejection if the internal air pressure is at a lower level like one third Earth's atmosphere pressure at sea level which most land animals and birds can tolerate? I know there is some studies about the subject of air pressure and life.
Wow, that was intense! Amazing how quickly military-style professionalism can overcome panic in a crisis
I guess removing the air is another way to deal with the problem of how bad Mark smells?
8741462
Spitfire is a steely-eyed missile mare
Ouch. Poor Starlight. That's gotta hurt.
Still, it could have been a lot worse. At least Starlight still has access to her magic, and if they give him a backpack Fireball can probably carry her around fairly easily. Also, I would think she should be able to wear Dragonfly's suit, should they not have any spares.
One question: why not tape Starlight's suit up? If they did it that way, it wouldn't have been permanently damaged.
Damn. Poor Starlight. Broken leg and stuck in the Hab for the duration save for absolutely necessary EVAS...
At first, upon seeing the word count, I was excited. Then, about a second later, I realized why this chapter would be this long given what we knew going in. I'm not sure this is a dramatic letdown... This event was quite bad in the original but it didn't cripple him. Now we're going to have one crippled person, still not nearly enough food, and another blaming herself for the incident when she was already suffering confidence issues. ...I dunno, this might actually be worse than the original from a dramatic standpoint, if not a pure survivability standpoint.
8741544 Yes she is!
A monitor broke,huh? I wonder what they will think of the LCD liquid.
Spanklight Glimzor: "Liquid crystal? LIQUID CRYSTAL?! WHAT IN THE BUCKLEBERG!?!"
Fireball: "MINE MINE MINE"
Dragonfly: "what does it taste like,Fireball?"
8741571
It'll have boiled off in Mars' atmosphere.
I bet Starlight wishes she had access to enough magic to constantly use her levitation/flight spell.
Or her size spells so she could shrink herself to allow herself to be easily carried around.
8741500 Starlight's spell requires a mostly full battery, and it requires that she not be in the suit. It takes a lot of energy because it's basically reversing entropy. The solution used minimized short-term risk and sacrificed long-term utility of the suit. In a space emergency, that's usually the smart strategy, because long-term utility is pointless if you're short-term dead.
And changeling rope isn't what you would use to make an airtight seal for anything whatever. What was needed was a thick substance that spreads widely, dries quickly, bonds with what it attaches, and doesn't leak air. That said, a variant of changeling "rope" is used in the fabric of Equestrian suits for strength and resistance to wear.
8741520 One hundred seventy-plus g's of instant acceleration is going to hurt no matter what medium you're in. Obviously, therefore, Mark and Starlight didn't experience anything like those forces.
Smeg Fridges. Lead lined for your convenience.
Changeling chitin repair goop is fastest, most effiicnt and innate material that can be thrown up?
Fibre reinforced epoxy is used all over. Usually for the front bits of rockets wjhere metals cant take the heat?
8741531 In any setting where common sense rules, a person with knowledge in motion outranks anyone who doesn't know what's going on.
8741546 The airlock leak was a hairline crack, and the tape was applied on the inside, so the air pressure would hold the tape in place. Starlight's suit was ripped, and the tape would have to be wrapped around the outside, where the air would be trying to push it away from the hole. If it held at all, it wouldn't hold for very long.
8741628 Yeah, I should probably add a quick explanation for the ice box. It's airtight because it's one of the few things that comes with the astronauts in the MDV, containing stuff that must be kept climate-controlled and which has an expiration date.
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Starlight want upsies for at least three weeks.
You know, now that I take a good look at her cutie mark, doesn't it look like a star with a couple Swirls of magic above it? Coincidence?
8741616
Obviously they didn’t experience those forces, because they were never actually accelerated by Hab’s air at full force. When the Hab breached, they initially stayed motionless (yay Newton’s laws). Only the airlock experienced those Gs, and only for a microsecond. The farther it moved away from the Hab, the easier it became for the air to escape sideways, and so the force dropped really quickly. The airlock was like a bullet at the exact moment of leaving the barrel. Then, of course, the airlock collided with its ‘passengers’, but it was not lethal.
good news they still have food, also good knows now dragonfly can take apart that laptop too see how it runs and works.
bad news no potatoes for him for some time now, and good news i hope that this time they would take there time to build a rocket full of sweet foods and among other things to keep them busy for the next few years
You sure know how to keep things interesting.
Which leg did Starlight break, and can ponies use crutches?
Incredible chapter. Very well done.
8741697
Right foreleg. Guessing a splint is as good as she's gonna get.
Could they cut away the loogie patch and replace it with a patch made from one of the ARES spacesuits? Maybe wrap it around up the whole leg with a couple layers of ducktape for reinforcement? I know it wouldn't make a difference as far as her suit being unusable exept when it's absolutely necessary. But it still seems better than just hocking some goo on it.
8741755 if you ask me i say let NASA make her a new space suit i mean if the food problem and water is no longer a problem then the rocket building would not be rush no more and won't blown up like in the book or movie
8741616
There was no need to use the mending spell there though. She could have used the air shield on the breach in her suit, been carried into the Amicitas, and healed up there while the magic battery accumulated charge. Really the magic battery at the base should have been much higher charge after 3 weeks of no one using it given they were able to fill up a magic battery to 100% before she left even with her using magic.
Though I don't think that describing a repair spell as reversing entropy is really accurate. Repairs in general don't reverse entropy, just move it around the same as every other action. Unless maybe she's doing something ridiculous because she lacks a normal mending spell like perhaps using time magic to reverse it to an undamaged state. But she could get a proper mending spell transmitted to her via water telegraph.
She could also use changeling rope to form a flexible patch and then apply the sealing spell she used in the cave which didn't cost a whole lot of magic to fuse it together. Though for that matter she could still do that. Just cut out the hard section once Dragonfly can prepare a patch, then use the sealing spell to make an airtight seal between the patch and the suit. The rope also doesn't need to be airtight on its own because the sealing spell will smooth out the pores.
By the way, Kris, this is probably a good time to say - thank you so much for writing this. You're an incredible person to have kept up this pace, and a very generous author.
How do you feel about this story having overtaken its parent story in likes and nearly views too?
No mention of how stinky those two are? ;)
---
Might be put under vernacular:
with Starlight and me
(with "us")
One hell of a intense chapter.
Awesome.
8741629
Maxim #2 : "A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on."
Sooner or later I think we're going to need to see more of what's going on back in Equestria. They have be working on there own plans, and you know Twilight is trying to both fix the drive and work out how to control it jumping elseways. She also might decide to test it herself which could end up with her stuck on Earth, but able to help NASA. The problem is if she does get the drive working, even as a one way trip, it would allow them to send a supply drop to Mars... which should not be able to work. Standing Twilight in Earth would take that out of the equation, and allow the two programs to start working together in some fashion.
Congrats on still having a buffer...any buffer.
Do you have a thorough description or sketch of Amicitas before crashing? Just curious and trying to envision what it looked like. º›º
I sort of picture Dr. Jumba Jookiba's ship from Lilo and Stitch.
8741853 me i just hope with that cave farm and all that they no longer rush the building of the rocket like they did in the movie and book and have a resupply rocket that gets there without blowing up
The ponies can probably eat a lot more of the immature alfalfa than Mark can. The roots for example, might be edible for them.
For those of you who have never read the martian maybe you should. +Insert evil laugh here+ I'm building it up more than I shoulf I think.
8741796
A sequel surpassing an already popular original is pretty rare over here. The author should be proud.
8741616
Wonderful chapter--glad to see that the ponies' (and not-ponies') paranoia ended up saying them.
Looking forward to how having more plants will affect the story later on than in the original (though with more mouths to feed it might still be identical).
8741870
He described it earlier as kind of like a bright pink space shuttle with 50s style fins, and an overall cartoonish appearance.
8741853
You forgot Maxim 2A: An Ordinance technician in motion outranks EVERYBODY
And never in between, it seems sometimes. Crazy chapter. Wish we could have seen from NASA's side. Can't wait for the next.
8742009 I can bring them BACK TO LIFE!
I'll only need a spare soul...
8741713 Eventually Mark will remember the Ares III medical kit has an inflatable cast.
8741755 Yes, but it still wouldn't be a new suit, and all the same logic would apply. So there's no good reason to waste decidedly finite resources on it.
8741769 The battery left at base was used to power Amicitas's telepresence spell array so that they could maintain daily contact with the rover crew. It wasn't full. And Cherry was by no means certain Starlight could hold a forcefield spell while being carried roughly 150 to 200 meters to Amicitas and then hoisted up a ladder to get into the airlock. Either concentration might lapse or the battery might run out. The patch job was the quick, safe option.
8741853 The main sticking point in an Equestrian rescue is finding the specific distance along a fifth-dimensional vector to hit the one parallel universe that has their crew. The ponies can build a new ship and an improved Sparkle Drive, but until they know exactly where to go, they're going nowhere.
8741870 Start with your stereotypical three-fin cartoon rocket, as in Futurama. Flatten the angle of the lower two fins and broaden and flatten the body slightly there so it can land like a shuttle. Add control surfaces on the fins. Three main engine bells on the back, plus thruster nozzles at logical points to provide an eight-point grid of navigation. Give it a ladder and a pony-sized airlock towards the front, another airlock twice as large towards the back (both on the same side of the ship) and a row of windows along each side, with the outer skin overlay shaped like hearts. Larger windows in front, not heart-shaped. Give it a small pair of hatch doors in the middle of the dorsal side that protect/conceal a docking port. Paint the whole thing pink.
8742009 The most recent planting of potatoes was twenty-three sols prior. There are no edible tubers to be dug up at this point.