“Something’s coming in… yes… yes! It’s Pathfinder!”
The room burst in to applause and cheers. Venkat slapped an unknown
technician heartily on the back while Bruce pumped his fist in the air.
The ad-hoc control center was an accomplishment in itself. JPL had
just 20 days to piece together antiquated computers, repair broken
components, network everything, and install hastily made software to
interact with the modern Deep Space Network. A team of engineers had
worked around the clock, finishing only two days earlier.
The room itself was formerly a conference room; JPL had no space
ready for the sudden need. Crammed with computers and equipment,
little space was left over for the many spectators squeezing in.
One Associated Press camera team was permitted. 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 shit 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 you’re 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 11 minutes. Once it does, Pathfinder will start high-gain
transmissions. So it’ll be 22 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.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 97
It worked!
Holy fucking shit it worked!
I just 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!
Happy dance, happy dance, I’m doin’ the happy dance!
All right. Enough happy dance. Time to make with the
communicatin’!
“We received the high-gain response just over half an hour ago,”
Venkat said to the assembled press. “We immediately directed Pathfinder
to take a panoramic image. Hopefully, Watney has some kind of message
for us. Questions?”
The sea of reporters raised their hands.
“Cathy, let’s start with you,” Venkat said, pointing her out.
“Thanks,” she said. “Have you had any contact with the Sojourner
rover?”
“Unfortunately, no,” he replied. “The Lander hasn’t been able to
connect to Sojourner, and we have no way to contact it directly.”
“What might be wrong with Sojourner?”
“I can’t even speculate,” Venkat said. “After spending that long on
Mars, anything could be wrong with it.”“Best guess?”
“Our best guess is he took it in to the Hab. The Lander’s signal
wouldn’t be able to reach Sojourner through Hab canvas.” Pointing to
another reporter, he said “You, there.”
“Marty West, NBC News,” Marty said. “How will you communicate
with Watney once everything’s up and running?”
“That’ll be up to Watney,” said Venkat. “All we have to work with is
the camera. He can write notes and hold them up. But how we talk back is
trickier.”
“How so?” Marty asked.
“Because all we have is the camera platform. That’s the only moving
part. There are plenty of ways to get information across with just the
platform’s rotation, but no way to tell Watney about them. He’ll have to
come up with something and tell us. We’ll follow his lead.”
Pointing to the next reporter, he said, “Go ahead.”
“Jill Holbrook, BBC. With a 32 minute round trip, and nothing but a
single rotating platform to talk with, it’ll be a dreadfully slow
conversation, won’t it?”
“Yes it will,” Venkat confirmed. “It’s early morning in Acidalia
Planitia right now, and just past 3am here in Pasadena. We’ll be here all
night, and that’s just for a start. No more questions for now, the panorama
is due back in a few minutes. We’ll keep you posted.”
Quickly leaving the press room, Venkat hurried down the hall to the
makeshift Pathfinder control center. He pressed through the throng to the
communications console.
“Anything, Tim?”
“Totally,” he replied. “But we’re staring at this black screen because
it’s way more interesting than pictures from Mars.”
“You’re a smart-ass, Tim,” Venkat said.
“Noted.”
Bruce pushed his way forward. “Still another few seconds on the
clock,” he said.
The time passed in silence.
“Getting something,” Tim said. “Yup. It’s the panoramic.”A general loosening of tension coruscated through the room as the
image slowly came through, one vertical stripe at a time.
“Martian surface…” Venkat said as the lines displayed. “More
surface…”
“Edge of the Hab!” Bruce said, pointing to the screen.
“Hab,” Venkat smiled. “More Hab now… more Hab… is that a
message? That’s a message!”
The vertical stripes revealed a handwritten note, suspended at the
camera’s height by a thin metal rod.
“We got a note from Mark!” Venkat announced to the room.
Applause filled the room, then quickly died down. “What’s it say?”
someone asked.
Venkat leaned closer to the screen. “It says …‘I’ll write questions
here – Are you receiving?’”
“Ok…?” said Bruce.
“That’s what it says,” Venkat shrugged.
“Another note,” said Tim, pointing to the screen as the slow march of
data revealed itself.
Venkat leaned in again. “This one says ‘Point here for yes’.”
“All right, I see what he’s going for,” said Bruce.
“There’s the third note,” said Tim.
“‘Point here for no,’” Venkat read. “‘Will check often for answer’”
Venkat folded his arms. “All right. We have communication with
Mark. Tim, point the camera at ‘Yes’. Then, start taking pictures at 10
minute intervals until he puts another question up.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 97 (2)
“Yes!” They said “Yes!”
I haven’t been this excited about a “yes” since prom night!
Ok, calm down.
I have limited paper to work with. These cards were intended to label
batches of samples. I have about 50 cards. I can use both sides, and if itcomes down to it, I can re-use them by scratching out the old question.
The Sharpie I’m using will last much longer than the cards, so ink
isn’t a problem. But I have to do all my writing in the Hab. I don’t know
what kind of hallucinogenic crap that ink is made of, but I’m pretty sure
it would boil off in 1/90th of an atmosphere.
I’m using old parts of the antenna array to hold the cards up. There’s
a certain irony in that.
We’ll need to talk faster than yes/no questions every half-hour. The
camera can rotate 360 degrees, and I have plenty of antenna parts. Time
to make an alphabet. But I can’t just use the letters A through Z. With my
Question Card, that would be 27 cards around the lander. Each one would
only get 13 degrees of arc. Even if JPL points the camera perfectly,
there’s a good chance I won’t know which letter they meant.
So I’ll have to use ASCII. That’s how computers manage characters.
Each character has a numerical code between 0 and 255. Values between
0 and 255 can be expressed as 2 hexadecimal digits. By giving me pairs
of hex digits, they can send any character they like, including numbers,
punctuation, etc.
How do I know which values go with which characters? Because
Johanssen’s laptop is a wealth of information. I knew she’d have an
ASCII table in there somewhere. All computer geeks do.
So I’ll make cards for 0 through 9, and A through F. That makes 16
cards to place around the camera, plus the Question Card. 17 cards means
over 21 degrees each. Much easier to deal with.
Time to get to work!
Spell with ASCII. Numbers 0-F at 21 degree increments. Will watch
camera starting 11:00 my time. When message done, return to this
position. Wait 20 minutes after completion to take picture (So I can write
and post reply). Repeat process at top of every hour.
S…T…A…T…U…S
No physical problems. All Hab components functional. Eating 3/4
rations. Successfully growing crops in Hab with cultivated soil. Note:
Situation not Ares 3 crew’s fault. Bad luck.H…O…W…A…L…I…V…E
Impaled by antenna fragment. Knocked out by decompression. Landed
face down, blood sealed hole. Woke up after crew left. Bio-monitor
computer destroyed by puncture. Crew had reason to think me dead. Not
their fault.
C…R…O…P…S…?
Long story. Extreme Botany. Have 126 m2 farmland growing potatoes.
Will extend food supply, but not enough to last until Ares 4 landing.
Modified rover for long distance travel, plan to drive to Ares 4.
W…E…S…A…W…-…S…A…T…L…I…T…E
Government watching me with satellites? Need tinfoil hat! Also need
faster way to communicate. Speak&Spell taking all damn day. Any ideas?
B…R…I…N…G…S…J…R…N…R…O…U…T
Sojourner rover brought out, placed 1 meter due north of Lander. If
you can contact it, I can draw hex numbers on the wheels and you can
send me six bytes at a time.
S…J…R…N…R…N…O…T…R…S…P…N…D
Damn. Any other ideas? Need faster communication.
W…O…R…K…I…N…G…O…N…I…T
Earth is about to set. Resume 08:00 my time tomorrow morning. Tell
family I’m fine. Give crew my best. Tell Commander Lewis disco sucks.
“I was up all night,” said Venkat. “Forgive me if I’m a little punchy.
Who are you again?”
“Jack Trevor,” said the thin, pale man before Venkat. “I work in
software engineering.”
“What can I do for you?”
“We have an idea for communication.”
“I’m all ears.”
“We’ve been looking through the old Pathfinder software. We got
duplicate computers up and running for testing. Same computers they
used to find a problem that almost killed the original mission. Real
interesting story, actually, turns out there was a priority inversion inSojourner’s thread management and-”
“Focus, Jack,” interrupted Venkat.
“Right. Well, the thing is, Pathfinder has an OS update process. So we
can change the software to anything we want.”
“Ok, how does this help us?”
“Pathfinder has two communication systems. One to talk to us, the
other to talk to Sojourner. We can change the second system to broadcast
on the Ares-3 rover frequency. And we can have it pretend to be the
beacon signal from the Hab.”
“You can get Pathfinder talking to Mark’s rover?”
“It’s the only option. The Hab’s radio is dead. Thing is, all the rover
does is triangulate the signal to fix its location. It doesn’t send data back
to the Hab. It just has a voice channel for the astronauts to talk to each
other.”
“So,” Venkat said, “You can get Pathfinder talking to the rover, but
you can’t get the rover talking back.”
“Right. What we want is for our text to show up on the rover screen,
and whatever Watney types to be sent back to us. That requires a change
to the rover’s software.”
“And we can’t do that,” Venkat concluded. “Because we can’t talk to
the rover.”
“Not directly,” Jack said. “But we can send data to Watney, and have
him enter it in to the rover.”
“How much data are we talking about?”
“I have guys working on the rover software right now. The patch file
will be 20 Meg, minimum. We can send one byte to Watney every 4
seconds or so with the ‘Speak&Spell.’ It’d take three years of constant
broadcasting to get that patch across. So that’s no good.”
“But you’re talking to me, so you have a solution, right?” Venkat
probed.
“Of course!” Jack beamed. “Software engineers are sneaky bastards
when it comes to data management.”
“Enlighten me,” said Venkat, patiently.
“Here’s the clever part,” Jack said, conspiratorially. “The rovercurrently parses the signal into bytes, then identifies the specific
sequence the Hab sends. That way, natural radio waves won’t throw off
the homing. If the bytes aren’t right, the rover ignores them.”
“Ok, so what?”
“It means there’s a spot in the codebase where it’s got the parsed
bytes. We can insert a tiny bit of code, just 20 instructions, to write the
parsed bytes to a log file before checking their validity.”
“This sounds promising…” Venkat said.
“It is!” Jack said excitedly. “First, we update Pathfinder with our
replacement OS. Then, we tell Watney exactly how to hack the rover
software to add those 20 instructions. Then we broadcast the rover’s
patch to Pathfinder, which re-broadcasts it to the rover. The rover logs the
bytes to a file. Finally, Watney launches the file as an executable and it
patches the rover software!”
Venkat furrowed his brow, taking in far more information than his
sleep-deprived mind wanted to accept.
“Um,” Jack said. “You’re not cheering or dancing.”
“So we just need to send Watney those 20 instructions?” Venkat
asked.
“That, and how to edit the files. And where to insert the instructions
in the files.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that!”
Venkat was silent for a moment. “Jack. I’m going to buy your whole
team autographed Star Trek memorabilia.”
“I prefer Star Wars.”
“Hello?”
“I need a picture of Watney.”
“Hi, Annie. Nice to hear from you, too. How are things back in
Houston?”
“Cut the shit, Venkat. I need a picture.”
“It’s not that simple,” Venkat explained.
“You’re talking to him with a fucking camera. How hard can it be?”“We spell out our message, wait 20 minutes and then take a picture.
Watney’s back in the Hab by then.”
“So tell him to be around when you take the next picture,” Annie
demanded.
“We can only send one message per hour, and only when Acidalia
Planitia is facing Earth,” Venkat said. “We’re not going to waste a
message just to tell him to pose for a photo. Besides, he’ll be in his EVA
suit. You won’t even be able to see his face.”
“I need something, Venkat,” Annie said. “You’ve been in contact for
24 hours and the media is going ape shit. They want an image for the
story. It’ll be on every news site in the world.”
“You have the pictures of his notes. Make do with that.”
“Not enough,” Annie said. “The press is crawling down my throat for
this. And up my ass. Both directions, Venkat! They’re gonna meet in the
middle!”
“It’ll have to wait a few days. We’re going to try and link Pathfinder
to the rover computer-“
“A few days!?” Annie gasped. “This is all anyone cares about right
now. In the world. You see what I’m getting at? This is the biggest story
since Apollo 13. Give me a fucking picture!”
Venkat sighed. “I’ll try to get it tomorrow.”
“Great!” She said. “Looking forward to it.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 98
I have to be watching the camera when it spells shit out. It’s half a
byte at a time. So I watch a pair of numbers, then look them up on an
ASCII cheat-sheet I made. That’s one letter.
I don’t want to forget any letters, so I scrape them in to the dirt with a
rod. The process of looking up a letter and scraping it in the dirt takes a
couple of seconds. Sometimes when I look back at the camera, I’ve
missed a number. I can usually guess it from context, but other times I
just miss out.Today I got up hours earlier than I needed to. It was like Christmas
morning! I could hardly wait for 08:00 to roll around. I had breakfast, did
some unnecessary checks on Hab equipment, and read some Poirot.
Finally the time came!
“CNHAKRVR2TLK2PTHFDRPRP4LONGMSG”
Yeah. Took me a minute. “Can hack rover to talk to Pathfinder.
Prepare for long message.”
That took some mental gymnastics to work out. But it was great
news! If we could get that set up, we’d only be limited by transmission
time! I set up a note that said “Roger.”
Not sure what they meant by “long message” but I figured I better be
ready. I went out 15 minutes before the top of the hour and smoothed out
a big area of dirt. I found the longest antenna rod I had, so I could reach
in to the smooth area without having to step on it.
Then I stood by. Waiting.
At exactly the top of the hour, the message came.
“LNCHhexiditONRVRCMP,OPENFILE-/usr/lib/habcomm.so-
SCROLLTILIDXON
LFTIS:2AAE5,OVRWRT141BYTSWTHDATAWE’LLSNDNXTMSG,STA
W4NXTPIC20MINFTERTHSDONE”
Jesus. Ok…
They want me to launch ‘hexedit’ on the rover’s computer, then open
the file /usr/lib/habcomm.so, scroll until the index reading on the left of
the screen is 2AAE5, then replace the bytes there with a 141 byte
sequence NASA will send in the next message. Fair enough.
Also, for some reason, they want me to hang around for the next pic.
Not sure why. You can’t see any part of me when I’m in the suit. Even the
faceplate would reflect too much light. Still, it’s what they want.
I went back in and copied down the message for future reference.
Then I wrote a short note and came back out. Usually I’d pin up the note
and go back in. But this time I had to hang around for a photo op.
I gave the camera a thumb’s-up to go along with my note, which said“I ask for a picture and I get The Fonz?” Annie admonished.
“You got your picture, quit bitching,” Venkat said, cradling the phone
on his shoulder. He paid more attention to the schematics in front of him
than the conversation.
“Ayyyyyy!” Annie mocked. “Why would he do that?”
“Have you met Mark Watney?”
“Fine, fine,” Annie said. “But I want a pic of his face ASAP.”
“Can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because if he takes off his helmet, he’ll die. Annie, I have to go, one
of the JPL programmers is here and it’s urgent. Bye!”
“But-“ Annie said as he hung up.
Jack, in the doorway, said “It’s not urgent.”
“Yeah, I know,” Venkat said. “What can I do for you?”
“We were thinking,” Jack began, “This rover hack might get kind of
detailed. We may have to do a bunch of back-and-forth communication
with Watney.”
“That’s fine,” Venkat said. “Take your time, do it right.”
“We could get things done faster with a shorter transmission time,”
Jack said.
Venkat gave him a puzzled look. “Do you have a plan for moving
Earth and Mars closer together?”
“Earth doesn’t have to be involved,” Jack said. “Hermes is 73 million
km from Mars right now. Only 4 light-minutes away. Beth Johanssen is a
great programmer. She could talk Mark through it.”
“Out of the question,” Venkat said.
“She’s the mission Sysop,” Jack pressed on, “This is her exact area of
expertise.”
“Can’t do it, Jack. The crew still doesn’t know.”
“What is with you? Why won’t you just tell them?”
“Watney’s not my only responsibility,” Venkat said. “I’ve got five
other astronauts in deep space, who have to concentrate on their returntrip. Nobody thinks about it, but statistically they’re in more danger than
Watney right now. He’s on a planet. They’re in space.”
Jack raised his arms. “Fine, we’ll do it the slow way.”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 98 (2)
Ever transcribed 141 random bytes, one half of a byte at a time?
It’s boring. And it’s tricky when you don’t have a pen.
Earlier, I had just written letters in the sand. But this time, I needed a
way to get the numbers on to something portable. My first plan was: Use
a laptop!
Each crewman had their own laptop. So I have six at my disposal.
Rather, I “had” six. I now have five. I thought a laptop would be fine
outside. It’s just electronics, right? It’ll keep warm enough to operate in
the short term, and it doesn’t need air for anything.
It died instantly. The screen went black before I was out of the
airlock. Turns out the “L” in “LCD” stands for “Liquid.” I guess it either
froze or boiled off. Maybe I’ll post a consumer review. “Brought product
to surface of Mars. It stopped working. 0/10.”
So I used a camera. I’ve got lots of them, specially made for working
on Mars. I wrote the bytes in the sand as they came in, took a picture,
then transcribed them in the Hab.
It’s night now, so no more messages. Tomorrow, I’ll enter this in to
the rover and the geeks at JPL can take it from there.
“Come on up here, Jack,” said Venkat. “You get to be the most
Timward today.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, taking Venkat’s place next to Tim. “Heya, Tim!”
“Jack,” said Tim.
“How long will the patch take?” Venkat asked.
“Should be pretty much instant,” Jack answered. “Watney entered the
hack earlier today, and we confirmed it worked. We updated Pathfinder’sOS without any problems. We sent the rover patch, which Pathfinder
rebroadcast. Once Watney executes the patch and reboots the rover, we
should get a connection.”
“Jesus what a complicated process,” Venkat said.
“Try updating a Linux server some time,” Jack said.
After a moment of silence, Tim said “You know he was telling a joke,
right? That was supposed to be funny.”
“Oh,” said Venkat. “I’m a physics guy, not a computer guy.”
“He’s not funny to computer guys either.”
“You’re a very unpleasant man, Tim,” Jack said.
“System’s online,” said Tim.
“What?”
“It’s online. FYI.”
“Holy crap!” Jack said.
“It worked!” Venkat announced to the room.
[11:18]JPL: Mark, this is Venkat Kapoor. We’ve
been watching you since Sol 49. The whole world’s
been rooting for you. Amazing job, getting
Pathfinder. We’re working on rescue plans. JPL is
adjusting Ares 4’s MDV to do a short overland
flight. They’ll pick you up, then take you with
them to Schiaparelli. We’re putting together a
supply mission to keep you fed till Ares 4
arrives.
[11:29]WATNEY: Glad to hear it. Really looking
forward to not dying. I want to make it clear it
wasn’t the crew’s fault. Side question: What did
they say when they found out I was alive? Also,
“Hi, mom!”
[11:41]JPL: Tell us about your “crops”. We
estimated your food packs would last until Sol 400at 3/4 ration per meal. Will your crops affect
that number? As to your question: We haven’t told
the crew you’re alive yet. We wanted them to
concentrate on their own mission.
[11:52]WATNEY: The crops are potatoes, grown
from the ones we were supposed to prepare on
Thanksgiving. They’re doing great, but the
available farmland isn’t enough for
sustainability. I’ll run out food around Sol 900.
Also: Tell the crew I’m alive! What the fuck is
wrong with you?
[12:04]JPL: We’ll get botanists in to ask
detailed questions and double-check your work.
Your life is at stake, so we want to be sure. Sol
900 is great news. It’ll give us a lot more time
to get the supply mission together. Also, please
watch your language. Everything you type is being
broadcast live all over the world.
[12:15]WATNEY: Look! A pair of boobs! -> (.Y.)
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Teddy said in to the phone. “I appreciate
the call, and I’ll pass your congratulations on to the whole organization.”
Hanging up, he saw Mitch Henderson in the doorway.
“This a good time?” Mitch asked.
“Come in, Mitch,” Teddy said. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks,” Mitch said, sitting in a fine leather couch. “Good day
today!”
“Yes, it was,” Teddy agreed. “Another step closer to getting Watney
back alive.”
“Yeah, about that,” said Mitch. “You probably know why I’m here.”
“I can take a guess,” said Teddy. “You want to tell the crew Watney’s
alive.”
“Yes,” Mitch said.“And you’re bringing this up with me while Venkat is in Pasadena, so
he can’t argue the other side.”
“I shouldn’t have to clear this with you or Venkat or anyone else. I’m
the flight director. It should have been my call from the beginning, but
you two stepped in and overrode me. Ignoring all that, we agreed we’d
tell them when there was hope. And now there’s hope. We’ve got
communication, we have a plan for rescue in the works, and his farm
buys us enough time to get him supplies.”
“Ok, tell them.” Teddy said.
Mitch paused. “Just like that?”
“I knew you’d be here sooner or later, so I already thought it through
and decided. Go ahead and tell them.”
Mitch stood up. “All right. Thanks,” he said as he left the office.
Teddy swiveled in his chair and looked out his windows to the night
sky. He pondered the faint, red dot amongst the stars. “Hang in there
Watney,” he said to no one. “We’re coming.”