I got my tool kit and started poking around. Opening the outer panel wasn’t too hard and I identified the battery easily enough. JPL labels everything. It’s a 40 amp-hour Ag-Zn battery with an optimal voltage of 1.5. Wow. They really made those things run on nothin’ back then.
I detached the battery and headed back inside. I checked it with my electronics kit, and sure enough it’s dead, dead, dead. I could shuffle across a carpet and hold more charge.
But I knew what the lander needed: 1.5 volts.
Compared to the makeshift crap I’ve been gluing together since Sol 6, this was a breeze. I have voltage controllers in my kit! It only took me fifteen minutes to put a controller on a reserve power line, then another hour to go outside and run the line to where the battery used to be.
Then there’s the issue of heat. It’s a good idea to keep electronics above −40°C. The temperature today is a brisk −63°C.
The battery was big and easy to identify, but I had no clue where the heaters were. Even if I knew, it’d be too risky to hook them directly to power. I could easily fry the whole system.
So instead, I went to good old “Spare Parts” Rover 1 and stole its environment heater. I’ve gutted that poor rover so much, it looks like I parked it in a bad part of town.
I lugged the heater to my outdoor “workbench,” and hooked it to Hab power. Then I rested it in the lander where the battery used to be.
Now I wait. And hope.
I was really hoping I’d wake up to a functional lander, but no such luck. Its high-gain antenna is right where I last saw it. Why does that matter? Well, I’ll tell ya…
If the lander comes back to life (and that’s a big if), it’ll try to establish contact with Earth. Problem is nobody’s listening. It’s not like the Pathfinder team is hanging around JPL just in case their long-dead probe is repaired by a wayward astronaut.
The Deep Space Network and SETI are my best bets for picking up the signal. If either of them caught a blip from Pathfinder, they’d tell JPL.
JPL would quickly figure out what was going on, especially when they triangulated the signal to my landing site.
They’d tell the lander where Earth is, and it would angle the high-gain antenna appropriately. That there, the angling of the antenna, is how I’ll know if it linked up.
So far, no action.
There’s still hope. Any number of reasons could be delaying things. The rover heater is designed to heat air at one atmosphere, and the thin Martian air severely hampers its ability to work. So the electronics might need more time to warm up.
Also, Earth is only visible during the day. I (hopefully) fixed the lander yesterday evening. It’s morning now, so most of the intervening time has been night. No Earth.
Sojourner’s showing no signs of life, either. It’s been in the nice, warm environment of the Hab all night, with plenty of light on its sparkling clean solar cells. Maybe it’s running an extended self-check, or staying still until it hears from the lander or something.
I’ll just have to put it out of my mind for now.
Pathfinder LOG: SOL 0
BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED
TIME 00:00:00
LOSS OF POWER DETECTED, TIME/DATE UNRELIABLE
LOADING OS…
VXWARE OPERATING SYSTEM (C) WIND RIVER SYSTEMS PERFORMING HARDWARE CHECK:
INT. TEMPERATURE: −34°C
EXT. TEMPERATURE: NONFUNCTIONAL
BATTERY: FULL
HIGAIN: OK
LOGAIN: OK
WIND SENSOR: NONFUNCTIONAL
METEOROLOGY: NONFUNCTIONAL
ASI: NONFUNCTIONAL
IMAGER: OK
ROVER RAMP: NONFUNCTIONAL
SOLAR A: NONFUNCTIONAL
SOLAR B: NONFUNCTIONAL
SOLAR C: NONFUNCTIONAL
HARDWARE CHECK COMPLETE
BROADCASTING STATUS
LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL…
LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL…
LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL
SIGNAL ACQUIRED…
CHAPTER 11
“SOMETHING’S COMING IN… yes… yes! It’s Pathfinder!”
The crowded room burst into applause and cheers. Venkat slapped an unknown technician on the back while Bruce pumped his fist in the air.
The ad-hoc Pathfinder control center was an accomplishment in itself. Over the last twenty days, a team of JPL engineers had worked around the clock to piece together antiquated computers, repair broken components, network everything, and install hastily made software that allowed the old systems to interact with the modern Deep Space Network.
The room itself was formerly a conference room; JPL had no space ready for the sudden need. Already jam-packed with computers and equipment, the cramped space had turned positively claustrophobic with the many spectators now squeezing into it.
One Associated Press camera team pressed against the back wall, trying—and failing—to stay out of everyone’s way while recording the auspicious moment. The rest of the media would have to satisfy themselves with the live AP feed, and await a press conference.
Venkat turned to Bruce. “God damn, Bruce. You really pulled a rabbit out of your hat this time! Good work!”
“I’m just the director,” Bruce said modestly. “Thank the guys who got all this stuff working.”
“Oh I will!” Venkat beamed. “But first I have to talk to my new best friend!”
Turning to the headsetted man at the communications console, Venkat asked, “What’s your name, new best friend?”
“Tim,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“What now?” Venkat asked.
“We sent the return telemetry automatically. It’ll get there in just over eleven minutes. Once it does, Pathfinder will start high-gain transmissions. So it’ll be twenty-two minutes till we hear from it again.”
“Venkat’s got a doctorate in physics, Tim,” Bruce said. “You don’t need to explain transmission time to him.”
Tim shrugged. “You can never tell with managers.”
“What was in the transmission we got?” Venkat asked.
“Just the bare bones. A hardware self-check. It’s got a lot of ‘nonfunctional’ systems, ’cause they were on the panels Watney removed.”
“What about the camera?”
“It says the imager’s working. We’ll have it take a panorama as soon as we can.”
It worked!
Holy shit, it worked!
I just suited up and checked the lander. The high-gain antenna is angled directly at Earth! Pathfinder has no way of knowing where it is, so it has no way of knowing where Earth is. The only way for it to find out is getting a signal.
They know I’m alive!
I don’t even know what to say. This was an insane plan and somehow it worked! I’m going to be talking to someone again. I spent three months as the loneliest man in history and it’s finally over.
Sure, I might not get rescued. But I won’t be alone.
The whole time I was recovering Pathfinder, I imagined what this moment would be like. I figured I’d jump up and down a bit, cheer, maybe flip off the ground (because this whole damn planet is my enemy), but that’s not what happened. When I got back to the Hab and took off the EVA suit, I sat down in the dirt and cried. Bawled like a little kid for several minutes. I finally settled down to mild sniffling and then felt a deep calm.