“Honestly, I didn’t make one.” As he walked out he added, “Good work, Venk. Now, get them home.”
That “687” caught me off guard for a minute. On Hermes, we track time by mission days. It may be Sol 549 down on Mars, but it’s Mission Day 687 up here. And you know what? It doesn’t matter what time it is on Mars because I’m not there!
Oh my god. I’m really not on Mars anymore. I can tell because there’s no gravity and there are other humans around. I’m still adjusting.
If this were a movie, everyone would have been in the airlock, and there would have been high fives all around. But it didn’t pan out that way.
I broke two ribs during the MAV ascent. They were sore the whole time, but they really started screaming when Vogel pulled us into the airlock by the tether. I didn’t want to distract the people who were saving my life, so I muted my mic and screamed like a little girl.
It’s true, you know. In space, no one can hear you scream like a little girl.
Once they got me into Airlock 2, they opened the inner door and I was finally aboard again. Hermes was still in vacuo, so we didn’t have to cycle the airlock.
Beck told me to go limp and pushed me down the corridor toward his quarters (which serve as the ship’s “sick bay” when needed).
Vogel went the other direction and closed the outer VAL door.
Once Beck and I got to his quarters, we waited for the ship to repressurize. Hermes had enough spare air to refill the ship two more times if needed. It’d be a pretty shitty long-range ship if it couldn’t recover from a decompression.
After Johanssen gave us the all clear, Dr. Bossy-Beck made me wait while he first took off his suit, then took off mine. After he pulled my helmet off, he looked shocked. I thought maybe I had a major head wound or something, but it turns out it was the smell.
It’s been a while since I washed… anything.
After that, it was X-rays and chest bandages while the rest of the crew checked the ship for damage.
Then came the (painful) high fives, followed by people staying as far away from my stench as possible. We had a few minutes of reunion before Beck shuttled everyone out. He gave me painkillers and told me to shower as soon as I could move my arms. So now I’m waiting for the drugs to kick in.
I think about the sheer number of people who pulled together just to save my sorry ass, and I can barely comprehend it. My crewmates sacrificed a year of their lives to come back for me. Countless people at NASA worked day and night to invent rover and MAV modifications. All of JPL busted their asses to make a probe that was destroyed on launch. Then, instead of giving up, they made another probe to resupply Hermes. The China National Space Administration abandoned a project they’d worked on for years just to provide a booster.
The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollars. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother?
Well, okay. I know the answer to that. Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we’ve dreamed of for centuries. But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true.
If a hiker gets lost in the mountains, people will coordinate a search. If a train crashes, people will line up to give blood. If an earthquake levels a city, people all over the world will send emergency supplies. This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception. Yes, there are assholes who just don’t care, but they’re massively outnumbered by the people who do. And because of that, I had billions of people on my side.
Pretty cool, eh?
Anyway, my ribs hurt like hell, my vision is still blurry from acceleration sickness, I’m really hungry, it’ll be another 211 days before I’m back on Earth, and, apparently, I smell like a skunk took a shit on some sweat socks.
This is the happiest day of my life.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011, 2014 by Andy Weir
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Originally self-published, in different form, as an ebook in 2011.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.
ISBN 9780804139021
eBook ISBN: 9780804139038
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Elizabeth Rendfleisch
Map by Fred Haynes
Photograph by Antonio M. Rosario/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Jacket design by Eric White
Jacket photograph (astronaut): NASA
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