Lewis:
Hi, Commander.
Between training and our trip to Mars, I spent 2 years working with you. I think I know you pretty well. So I’m guessing you blame yourself for my situation.
Don’t.
You were faced with an impossible scenario and made a tough decision. That’s what Commanders do. And your decision was right. If you’d waited any longer, the MAV would have tipped.
I’m sure you’ve run through all the possible outcomes in your head, so you know there’s nothing you could have done differently (other than “be psychic”).
You probably think losing a crewman is the worst thing that can happen. Not true. Losing the
But there’s something more important we need to discuss: What is it with you and Disco? I can understand the ’70’s TV because everyone loves hairy people with huge collars. But Disco?
Disco!?
Vogel checked the position and orientation of Hermes against the projected path. It matched, as usual. In addition to being the mission’s chemist, he was also an accomplished astrophysicist. Though his duties as navigator were laughably easy.
The computer knew the course. It knew when to angle the ship so the ion engines would be aimed correctly. And it knew the location of the ship at all times (easily calculated from the position of the sun and Earth, and knowing the exact time from an on-board atomic clock.)
Barring a complete computer failure or other critical event, Vogel’s vast knowledge of astrodynamics would never come in to play.
Completing the check, he ran a diagnostic on the engines. They were functioning at peak. He did all this from his quarters. All on-board computers could control all ship’s functions. Gone were the days of physically visiting the engines to check up on them.
Having completed his work for the day, he finally had time to read email.
Sorting through the messages NASA deemed worthy to upload, he read the most interesting first and responded when necessary. His responses were cached and would be sent to Earth with Johanssen’s next uplink.
A message from his wife caught his attention. Titled
Attempting to open the image, his viewer reported the file was unreadable.
He walked down the narrow hallway. The crew quarters stood against the outer hull of the constantly-spinning ship to maximize simulated gravity. Johanssen’s door was open, as usual.
“Johanssen. Good evening,” Vogel said. The crew kept the same sleep schedule, and it was nearing bedtime.
“Oh, hello,” Johanssen said, looking up from her computer.
“I have the computer problem,” Vogel explained. “I wonder if you will help.”
“Sure,” she said.
“You are in the personal time,” Vogel said. “Perhaps tomorrow when you are on the duty is better?”
“Now’s fine,” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“It is a file. It is an image, but my computer can not view.”
“Where’s the file?” she asked, typing on her keyboard.
“It is on my shared space. The name is
“Let’s take a look,” she said.
Her fingers flew over her keyboard as windows opened and closed on her screen. “Definitely a bad jpg header,” she said. “Probably mangled in the download. Lemme look with a hex editor, see if we got anything at all…”
After a few moments she said. “This isn’t a jpg. It’s a plain ASCII text file. Looks like… well I don’t know what it is. Looks like a bunch of math formulae.” She gestured to the screen. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
Vogel leaned in, looking at the text. “Ja,” he said. “It is a course maneuver for Hermes. It says the name is
“What’s that?” Johanssen asked.
“I have not heard of this maneuver.” He looked at the tables. “It is complicated… very complicated…”
He froze. “Sol 549!?” he exclaimed. “Mein Gott!”
