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He slid a picture across the desk to Teddy.
“That’s one of the images from last night. As you can see, Rover 2 is facing away from the Hab. The charging port is in the nose, and the cable isn’t long enough to reach.”
Teddy absently rotated the picture to be parallel with the edges of his desk. “She must have parked it facing the Hab or she wouldn’t have been able to plug it in,” he said. “It’s been moved since Sol 5.”
“Yeah,” Venkat said, sliding another picture to Teddy. “But here’s the real evidence. In the lower right of the image you can see the MDV. It’s been taken apart. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have done that without telling us.
“And the clincher is on the right of the image,” Venkat pointed. “The landing struts of the MAV. Looks like the fuel plant has been completely removed, with considerable damage to the struts in the process. There’s just no way that could have happened before liftoff. It would have endangered the MAV way too much for Lewis to allow it.”
“Hey,” A
Rather than answer, Venkat looked to Teddy knowingly.
“Because,” Teddy said, “if Watney really is alive, we don’t want the Ares 3 crew to know.”
“What!?” A
“They have another ten months on their trip home,” Teddy explained. “Space travel is dangerous. They need to be alert and undistracted. They’re sad that they lost a crewmate, but they’d be devastated if they found out they’d abandoned him alive.”
A
“It’s a no-brainer,” Venkat said. “Let ’em deal with that emotional trauma when they’re not flying a spaceship around.”
“This’ll be the most talked-about event since Apollo 11,” A
Teddy shrugged. “Easy. We control all communication with them.”
“Fuck,” A
“What’s your take?” he asked.
“Mmm,” A
“Okay,” Teddy agreed, “put together a statement.”
“That’ll be fun,” she grumbled.
“Where do we go from here?” Teddy asked Venkat.
“Step one is communication,” Venkat said. “From the pics, it’s clear the comm array is ruined. We need another way to talk. Once we can talk, we can assess and make plans.”
“All right,” Teddy said. “Get on it. Take anyone you want from any department. Use as much overtime as you want. Find a way to talk to him. That’s your only job right now.”
“Got it.”
“A
“Right,” A
“Just the three of us and Mindy Park in SatCon,” Venkat said.
“I’ll have a word with her,” A
Teddy stood and opened his cell phone. “I’m going to Chicago. I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Why?” A
“That’s where Watney’s parents live,” Teddy said. “I owe them a personal explanation before it breaks on the news.”
“They’ll be happy to hear their son’s alive,” A
“Yes, he’s alive,” Teddy said. “But if my math is right, he’s doomed to starve to death before we can possibly help him. I’m not looking forward to the conversation.”
“Fuck,” A
•••
“NOTHING? Nothing at all?” Venkat groaned. “Are you kidding me? You had twenty experts working for twelve hours on this. We have a multibillion-dollar communications network. You can’t figure out any way to talk to him?”
The two men in Venkat’s office fidgeted in their chairs.
“He’s got no radio,” said Chuck.
“Actually,” said Morris, “he’s got a radio, but he doesn’t have a dish.”
“Thing is,” Chuck continued, “without the dish, a signal would have to be really strong—”
“Like, melting-the-pigeons strong,” Morris supplied.
“—for him to get it,” Chuck finished.
“We considered Martian satellites,” Morris said. “They’re way closer. But the math doesn’t work out. Even SuperSurveyor 3, which has the strongest transmitter, would need to be fourteen times more powerful—”
“Seventeen times,” Chuck said.
“Fourteen times,” Morris asserted.
“No, it’s seventeen. You forgot the amperage minimum for the heaters to keep the—”
“Guys,” Venkat interrupted, “I get the idea.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry if I’m grumpy,” Venkat said. “I got like two hours sleep last night.”
“No problem,” Morris said.
“Totally understandable,” Chuck said.
“Okay,” Venkat said. “Explain to me how a single windstorm removed our ability to talk to Ares 3.”
“Failure of imagination,” Chuck said.
“Totally didn’t see it coming,” Morris agreed.
“How many backup communications systems does an Ares mission have?” Venkat asked.
“Four,” Chuck said.
“Three,” Morris said.
“No, it’s four,” Chuck corrected.
“He said backup systems,” Morris insisted. “That means not including the primary system.”
“Oh right. Three.”
“So four systems total, then,” Venkat said. “Explain how we lost all four.”
“Well,” Chuck said, “The primary ran through the big satellite dish. It blew away in the storm. The rest of the backups were in the MAV.”
“Yup,” Morris agreed. “The MAV is, like, a communicating machine. It can talk to Earth, Hermes, even satellites around Mars if it has to. And it has three independent systems to make sure nothing short of a meteor strike can stop communication.”
“Problem is,” Chuck said, “Commander Lewis and the rest of them took the MAV when they left.”
“So four independent communications systems became one. And that one broke,” Morris finished.
Venkat pinched the bridge of his nose. “How could we overlook this?”
Chuck shrugged. “Never occurred to us. We never thought someone would be on Mars without an MAV.”
“I mean, come on!” Morris said. “What are the odds?”
Chuck turned to him. “One in three, based on empirical data. That’s pretty bad if you think about it.”
•••
THIS WAS going to be rough and A
She was confident that none of that concern showed on her face as she took to the podium.
“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” she said to the assembled reporters. “We have an important a
“What this about, A
“Please take your seats,” A
The reporters milled about and argued over seats for a brief time, then finally settled down.
“This is a short but very important a
After one full second of utter silence, the room exploded with noise.
•••
A WEEK after the stu
“I’m getting sick of daily press conferences,” Venkat whispered to A