The Martian

“Again, so?”

“Mark Watney’s body will be within twenty meters of the Hab. Maybe partially buried in sand, but still very visible, and with a comm ante

Venkat stared. Then glared. “This is why you denied my imagery requests for two months?”

“Venk, come on—”

“Really, Teddy?” he said. “You’re afraid of a PR problem?”

“The media’s obsession with Watney’s death is finally starting to taper off,” Teddy said evenly. “It’s been bad press after bad press for two months. Today’s memorial gives people closure, and the media can move on to some other story. The last thing we want is to dredge everything back up.”

“So what do we do, then? He’s not going to decompose. He’ll be there forever.”

“Not forever,” Teddy said. “Within a year, he’ll be covered in sand from normal weather activity.”

“A year?” Venkat said, rising to his feet. “That’s ludicrous. We can’t wait a year for this.”

“Why not? Ares 4 won’t even launch for another five years. Plenty of time.”

Venkat took a deep breath and thought for a moment.

“Okay, consider this: Sympathy for Watney’s family is really high. Ares 6 could bring the body back. We don’t say that’s the purpose of the mission, but we make it clear that would be part of it. If we framed it that way, we’d get more support in Congress. But not if we wait a year. In a year, people won’t care anymore.”

Teddy rubbed his chin. “Hmm…”

•••

MINDY PARK stared at the ceiling. She had little else to do. The three a.m. shift was pretty dull. Only a constant stream of coffee kept her awake.

Monitoring the status of satellites around Mars had sounded like an exciting proposition when she took the transfer. But the satellites tended to take care of themselves. Her job turned out to be sending e-mails as imagery became available.

“Master’s degree in mechanical engineering,” she muttered. “And I’m working in an all-night photo booth.”

She sipped her coffee.

A flicker on her screen a

She posted the data directly to internal servers and composed an e-mail to Dr. Kapoor. As she entered the latitude and longitude of the image, she recognized the numbers.

“31.2°N, 28.5°W…Acidalia Planitia…Ares 3?”

Out of curiosity, she brought up the first of the seventeen images.

As she’d suspected, it was the Ares 3 site. She’d heard they were going to image it. Slightly ashamed of herself, she scoured the image for any sign of Mark Watney’s dead body. After a minute of fruitless searching, she was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.

She moved on to perusing the rest of the image. The Hab was intact; Dr. Kapoor would be happy to see that.

She brought the coffee mug to her lips, then froze.

“Um…,” she mumbled to herself. “Uhhh…”

She brought up the NASA intranet and navigated through the site to the specifics of the Ares missions. After some quick research, she picked up her phone.

“Hey, this is Mindy Park at SatCon. I need the mission logs for Ares 3, where can I get ’em?…Uh huh…uh-huh…Okay…Thanks.”

After some more time on the intranet, she leaned back in her seat. She no longer needed the coffee to keep awake.

Picking up the phone again, she said, “Hello, Security? This is Mindy Park in SatCon. I need the emergency contact number for Dr. Venkat Kapoor.… Yes it’s an emergency.”

•••

MINDY FIDGETED in her seat as Venkat trudged in. To have the director of Mars operations visiting SatCon was unusual. Seeing him in jeans and a T-shirt was even more unusual.

“You Mindy Park?” he asked with the scowl of a man operating on two hours of sleep.

“Yes,” she quavered. “Sorry to drag you in.”

“I’m assuming you had a good reason. So?”

“Um,” she said, looking down. “Um, it’s. Well. The imagery you ordered. Um. Come here and look.”

He pulled another chair to her station and seated himself. “Is this about Watney’s body? Is that why you’re shook up?”

“Um, no,” she said. “Um. Well…uh.” She winced at her own awkwardness and pointed to the screen.

Venkat inspected the image. “Looks like the Hab’s in one piece. That’s good news. Solar array looks good. The rovers are okay, too. Main dish isn’t around. No surprise there. What’s the big emergency?”

“Um,” she said, touching her finger to the screen. “That.”

Venkat leaned in and looked closer. Just below the Hab, beside the rovers, two white circles sat in the sand. “Hmm. Looks like Hab canvas. Maybe the Hab didn’t do well after all? I guess pieces got torn off and—”

“Um,” she interrupted. “They look like rover pop-tents.”

Venkat looked again. “Hmm. Probably right.”

“How’d they get set up?” Mindy asked.

Venkat shrugged. “Commander Lewis probably ordered them deployed during the evac. Not a bad idea. Have the emergency shelters ready in case the MAV didn’t work and the Hab breached.”

“Yeah, um,” Mindy said, opening a document on her computer, “this is the entire mission log for Sols 1 through 6. From MDV touchdown to MAV emergency liftoff.”

“Okay, and?”

“I read through it. Several times. They never threw out the pop-tents.” Her voice cracked at the last word.

“Well, uh…,” Venkat said, furrowing his brow. “They obviously did, but it didn’t make it into the log.”

“They activated two emergency pop-tents and never told anyone?”

“Hmm. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, no. Maybe the storm messed with the rovers and the tents autodeployed.”

“So after autodeploying, they detached themselves from the rovers and lined up next to each other twenty meters away?”

Venkat looked back to the image. “Well obviously they activated somehow.”

“Why are the solar cells clean?” Mindy said, fighting back tears. “There was a huge sandstorm. Why isn’t there sand all over them?”

“A good wind could have done it?” Venkat said, unsure.

“Did I mention I never found Watney’s body?” she said, sniffling.

Venkat’s eyes widened as he stared at the picture. “Oh…,” he said quietly. “Oh God…”

Mindy put her hands over her face and sobbed quietly.

•••

“FUCK!” A

Teddy glared across his immaculate mahogany desk at his director of media relations. “Not helping, A

He turned to his director of Mars operations. “How sure are we of this?”

“Nearly a hundred percent,” Venkat said.

“Fuck!” A

Teddy moved a folder on his desk slightly to the right so it would line up with his mouse pad. “It is what it is. We have to deal with it.”

“Do you have any idea the magnitude of shit storm this is go

“One thing at a time,” Teddy said. “Venk, what makes you sure he’s alive?”

“For starters, no body,” Venkat explained. “Also, the pop-tents are set up. And the solar cells are clean. You can thank Mindy Park in SatCon for noticing all that, by the way.

“But,” Venkat continued, “his body could have been buried in the Sol 6 storm. The pop-tents might have autodeployed and wind could have blown them around. A 30 kph windstorm some time later would have been strong enough to clean the solar cells but not strong enough to carry sand. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.

“So I spent the last few hours checking everything I could. Commander Lewis had two outings in Rover 2. The second was on Sol 5. According to the logs, after returning, she plugged it into the Hab for recharging. It wasn’t used again, and thirteen hours later they evac’d.”