“It was like flying a cow,” Martinez grumbled, his hands racing over his controls.
“Can you get him up?” Lewis asked.
“He'll get to orbit,” Johanssen said, “but the intercept course may be compromised.”
“Get him up first,” Lewis said. “Then we'll worry about intercept.”
“Copy. Main engine cut-off in 15 seconds.”
“Much smoother now,” Martinez said. “It's not fighting me at all anymore.”
“Well below target altitude,” Johanssen said. “Velocity is good.”
“How far below?” Lewis said.
“Can't say for sure,” Johanssen said. “All I have is accelerometer data. We'll need radar pings at intervals to work out his true final orbit.”
“Back to automatic guidance,” Martinez said.
“Main shutdown in 4,” Johanssen said “3... 2... 1... Shutdown.”
“Confirm shutdown,” Martinez said.
“Watney, you there?” Lewis said. “Watney? Watney, do you read?”
“Probably passed out, Commander,” Beck said over the radio. “He pulled 12 G's on the ascent. Give him a few minutes.”
“Copy,” Lewis said. “Johanssen, got his orbit yet?”
“I have interval pings. Working out our intercept range and velocity...”
Martinez and Lewis stared intensely at Johanssen as she brought up the intercept calculation software. Normally, orbits would be worked out by Vogel, but he was otherwise engaged. Johanssen was his backup for orbital dynamics.
“Intercept velocity will be 11 meters per second...” she began.
“I can make that work,” Beck said over the radio.
“Distance at intercept will be-” She stopped and choked. Shakily, she continued. “We'll be 68 kilometers apart.” She buried her face in her hands.
“Did she say 68 kilometers!?” Beck said. “Kilometers!?”
“God damn it,” Martinez whispered.
“Keep it together,” Lewis said. “Work the problem. Martinez, is there any juice in the MAV?”
“Negative, Commander,” Martinez responded. “They ditched the OMS system to lighten the launch weight.”
“Then we'll have to go to him. Johanssen, time to intercept?”
“39 minutes, 12 seconds,” Johanssen said, trying not to quaver.
“Vogel,” Lewis continued, “how far can we deflect in 39 minutes with the ion engines?”
“Perhaps 5 kilometers,” he radioed.
“Not enough,” Lewis said. “Martinez, what if we point our attitude thrusters all the same direction?”
“Depends on how much fuel we want to save for attitude adjustments on the trip home.”
“How much do you need?”
“I could get by with maybe 20 percent of what's left.”
“All right, if you used the other 80 percent-”
“Checking,” Martinez said, running the numbers on his console. “We'd get a delta-v of 31 meters per second.”
“Johanssen,” Lewis said. “Math.”
“In 39 minutes we'd deflect...” Johanssen quickly typed, “72 kilometers!”
“There we go,” Lewis said. “How much fuel-”
“Use 75.5 percent of remaining attitude adjust fuel,” Johanssen said. “That'll bring the intercept range to zero.”
“Do it,” Lewis said.
“Aye, Commander.” Martinez said.
“Hold on,” Johanssen said. “That'll get the intercept range to zero, but the intercept velocity will be 42 meters per second.”
“Then we have 39 minutes to figure out how to slow down,” Lewis said. “Martinez, burn the jets.”
“Aye.” Martinez said.
“Whoa,” Annie said to Venkat. “A lot of shit just happened really fast. Explain.”
Venkat strained to hear to speaker over the murmur of the VIPs in the observation booth. Through the glass he saw Mitch throw his hands up in frustration.
“The launch missed badly,” Venkat said, looking past Mitch to the screens beyond. “The intercept distance was going to be way too big. So they're using the attitude adjusters to close the gap.”
“What do attitude adjusters usually do?”
“They rotate the ship. They're not made for thrusting it. Hermes doesn't have quick reaction engines. Just the slow steady ion engines.”
“So... problem solved?” Annie said hopefully.
“No,” Venkat said. “They'll get to him, but they'll be going 42 meters per second when they get there.”
“How fast is that?” Annie asked.
“About 90 miles per hour,” Venkat said. “There's no hope of Beck grabbing Watney at that speed.”
“Can they use the attitude adjusters to slow down?”
“They used all the fuel they could to close the gap in time. They don't have enough to slow down.” Venkat frowned.
“So what can they do?”
“I don't know,” he said. “And even if I did, I couldn't tell them in time.”
“Well fuck,” Annie said.
“Yeah,” Venkat agreed.
“Watney,” Lewis said “Do you read?”
“Watney?” She repeated.
“Commander,” Beck radioed. “He's wearing a surface EVA suit, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It should have a bio-monitor,” Beck said. “And it'll be broadcasting. It's not a strong signal; it's only designed to go a couple hundred meters to the rover or Hab. But maybe we can pick it up.”
“Johanssen,” Lewis said.
“On it,” Johanssen said. “I have to look up the frequencies in the tech specs. Gimme a second.”
“Martinez,” Lewis continued. “Any idea how to slow down?”
He shook his head. “I got nothin', Commander. We're just going too damn fast.”
“Vogel?”
“The ion drive is simply not strong enough,” Vogel replied.
“There's got to be something,” Lewis said. “Something we can do. Anything.”
“Got his biomonitor data,” Johanssen said. “Pulse 58, blood pressure 98/61.”
“That's not bad,” Beck said. “Lower than I'd like but he's been in Mars gravity for 18 months, so it's expected.”
“Time to intercept?” Lewis asked.
“32 minutes,” Johanssen replied.
Blissful unconsciousness became foggy awareness which transitioned into painful reality. Watney opened his eyes, then winced at the pain in his chest.
Little remained of the canvas. Tatters floated along the edge of the hole it once covered. This granted Watney an unobstructed view of Mars from orbit. The great red planet's horizon stretched out seemingly forever as the wispy atmosphere gave it a fuzzy edge. Only 18 people in history had personally seen this view.
“Fuck you,” he said to the planet below.
Reaching toward the controls on his arm, he winced. Trying again, more slowly this time, he activated his radio. “MAV to Hermes.”
“Watney!?” Came the reply.
“Affirmative. That you, Commander?” Watney said.
“Affirmative. What's your status?”
“I'm on a ship with no control panel,” he said. “That's as much as I can tell you.”
“How do you feel?”
“My chest hurts. I think I broke a rib. How are you?”
“We're working on getting you,” Lewis said. “There was a complication in the launch.”
“Yeah,” Watney said, looking out the hole in the ship. “The canvas didn't hold. I think it ripped early in the ascent.”
“That's consistent with what we saw during the launch.”
“How bad is it, Commander?” He asked.
“We were able to correct the intercept range with Hermes's attitude thrusters. But there's a problem with the intercept velocity.”
“How big a problem.”
“42 meters per second.”
“Well shit.”
“Hey, at least he's ok for the moment,” Martinez said.
“Beck,” Lewis said. “I'm coming around to your way of thinking. How fast can you get going if you're untethered?”
“Sorry, Commander,” Beck said. “I already ran the numbers. At best I could get 25 meters per second. Even if I could get to 42, I'd need another 42 to match Hermes when I came back.”
“Copy,” Lewis said.
“Hey,” Watney said over the radio, “I've got an idea.”
“Of course you do,” Lewis said. “What do you got?”
“I could find something sharp in here and poke a hole in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily.”
“How does he come up with this shit?” Martinez interjected.
“Hmm,” Lewis said. “Could you get 42 meters per second that way?”
“No idea,” Watney said.
“I can't see you having any control if you did that,” Lewis said. “You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control.”
“I admit it's fatally dangerous,” Watney said. “But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.”
“We'll keep working on ideas,” Lewis said.
“Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man.”
“Standby,” Lewis said.
She furrowed her brow. “Hmm... Maybe it's not such a bad idea...”
“You kidding, Commander?” Martinez said. “It's a terrible idea. He'd shoot off in to space-”
“Not the whole idea, but part of it,” she said. “Using atmosphere as thrust. Martinez, get Vogel's station up and running.”
“Ok,” Martinez said, typing at his keyboard. The screen changed to Vogel's workstation. He quickly changed the language from German to English. “It's up. What do you need?”
“Vogel's got software for calculating course offsets caused by hull breaches, right?”
“Yeah,” Martinez said. “It estimates course corrections needed in the event of-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lewis said. “Fire it up. I want to know what happens if we blow the VAL.”
Johanssen and Martinez looked at each other.
“Um. Yes, Commander,” Martinez said.
“The Vehicular Airlock?” Johanssen said. “You want to... open it?”
“Plenty of air in the ship,” Lewis said. “It'd give us a good kick.”
“Ye-es...” Martinez said as he brought up the software. “And it might blow the nose of the ship off in the process.”
“Also, all the air would leave,” Johanssen felt compelled to add.
“We'll seal the bridge and reactor room. We can let everywhere else go vacuo, but we don't want explosive decompression in here or near the reactor.”
Martinez entered the scenario in to the software. “I think we'll just have the same problem as Watney, but on a larger scale. We can't direct that thrust.”
“We don't have to,” Lewis said. “The VAL is in the nose. Escaping air would make a thrust vector through our center of mass. We just need to point the ship directly away from where we want to go.”
“Ok I have the numbers,” Martinez said. “A breach at the VAL, with the bridge and reactor room sealed off, would accelerate us 29 meters per second.”
“We'd have a relative velocity of 13 meters per second afterward,” Johanssen supplied.
“Beck,” Lewis radioed, “Have you been hearing all this?”
“Affirmative, Commander,” Beck said. “
“Can you do 13 meters per second?”
“It'll be risky,” Beck replied, “13 to match the MAV then another 13 to match Hermes. But it's a hell of a lot better than 42.”
“Johanssen,” Lewis said. “time to intercept?”
“18 minutes, Commander.”
“What kind of jolt will we feel with that breach?” Lewis asked to Martinez.
“The air will take 4 seconds to evacuate,” he said. “We'll feel a little less than one g.”
“Watney,” she said to her headset, “We have a plan.”
“Yay! A plan!” Watney replied.
“Houston,” Lewis's voice rang through Mission Control, “be advised we are going to deliberately breach the VAL to produce thrust.”
“What?” Mitch said. “What!?” He yelled.
“Oh... my god,” Venkat said in the observation room.
“Fuck me raw,” Annie said, getting up. “I better get to the press room. Any parting knowledge before I go?”
“They're going to breach the ship,” Venkat said, still dumbfounded. “They're going to deliberately breach the ship. Oh my god...”
“Got it,” Annie said, jogging to the door.
“How will we open the airlock doors?” Martinez asked. “There's no way to open them remotely, and if anyone's nearby when it blows-”
“Right,” Lewis said. “We can open one door with the other shut, but how do we open the other?”
She thought for a moment. “Vogel,” she radioed. “I need you to come back in and make a bomb.”
“Um. Again, please, Commander?” Vogel replied.
“A bomb,” Lewis confirmed. “You're a chemist. Can you make a bomb out of stuff on board?”
“Ja,” Vogel said. “We have flammables and pure oxygen.”
“Sounds good.” Lewis said.
“It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft,” Vogel said pragmatically.
“So make it small,” Lewis said. “It just needs to poke a hole in the inner airlock door. Any hole will do. If it blows the door off that's fine. If it doesn't, the air will get out slower, but for longer. The momentum change is the same and we'll get the acceleration we need.”
“Pressurizing Airlock-2,” Vogel reported. “How will we activate this bomb?”
“Johanssen?” Lewis said.
“Uh...” Johanssen said. She picked up her headset and quickly put it on. “Vogel, can you run wires in to it?”
“Ja,” Vogel said. “I will use threaded stopper with a small hole for the wires. It will have little effect on the seal.”
“We could run the wire to lighting panel 41,” Johanssen said. “It's next to the airlock, and I can turn it on and off from here.”
“There's our remote trigger,” Lewis said. “Johanssen go set up the lighting panel. Vogel, get in here and make the bomb. Martinez, go close and seal the doors to the reactor room.”
“Yes Commander,” Johanssen said, kicking off her seat toward the hallway.
“Commander,” Martinez said, pausing at the exit, “You want me to bring back some space suits?”
“No point,” Lewis said. “If the seal on the bridge doesn't hold we'll get sucked out at close to the speed of sound. We'll be jelly with or without suits on.”
“Roger, Commander.”
“Are you back in yet, Vogel?” Lewis asked.
“I am just re-entering now, Commander.”
“Beck,” Lewis said to her headset. “I'll need you back in, too. But don't take your suit off.”
“Ok,” Beck said. “Why?”
“We're going to have to literally blow up one of the doors,” Lewis explained. “I'd rather we kill the inner one. I want the outer door unharmed so we keep our smooth aerobraking shape.”
“Makes sense.” Beck responded as he floated back in to the ship.
“One problem,” Lewis said. “I want the outer door locked in the fully open position with the mechanical stopper in place to keep it from being trashed by the decompress.”
“You have to have someone in the airlock to do that,” Beck said. “And you can't open the inner door if the outer door is locked open.”
“Right,” Lewis said. “I need you to go to the VAL, depressurize, and lock the outer door open. Then you'll need to crawl along the hull to get back to Airlock 2.”
“Copy, Commander,” Beck said. “There are latch points all over the hull. I'll move my tether along, mountain climber style.”
“Get to it,” Lewis said. “And Vogel, you're in a hurry. You have to make the bomb, set it up, get back to Airlock 2, suit up, depressurize it, and open the outer door so Beck can get in.”
“He's taking his suit off right now and can't reply,” Beck reported, “but he heard the order.”