“Yeah, other than that,” Venkat interrupted.
“Question,” Annie said. “What am I even here for? This seems like something for you nerds to discuss.”
“You need to be in the loop,” Venkat said. “We're not deciding right now. We'll need to quietly research the details internally. Something might leak, and you need to be ready to dance around questions.”
“How long have we got to make a decision?” Teddy asked.
“The window for starting the maneuver ends in 39 hours.”
“All right,” Teddy said. “Everyone, we discuss this only in person or on the phone; never email. And don't talk to anyone about this, other than the people here. The last thing we need is public opinion pressing for a risky cowboy rescue that may be impossible.”
Beck:
Hey, man. How ya been?
Now that I'm in a “dire situation,” I don't have to follow social rules anymore. I can be honest with everyone.
Bearing that in mind, I have to say... dude... you need to tell Johanssen how you feel. If you don’t, you’ll regret it forever.
I won't lie: It could end badly. I have no idea what she thinks of you. Or of anything. She's weird.
But wait till the mission’s over. You're on a ship with her for another two months. Also, if you guys got up to anything while the mission was in progress, Lewis would kill you.
Venkat, Mitch, Annie, Bruce, and Teddy met secretly for the second time in as many days. “Project Elrond” had taken on a dark connotation, veiled in secrecy. Many people knew the name, none knew its purpose.
Speculation ran rampant. Some thought it was a completely new program in the works. Others worried it might be a move to cancel Ares 4 and 5. Most thought it was Ares 6 in the works.
“It wasn't an easy decision,” Teddy said to the assembled elite. “But I've decided to go with Iris 2. No Rich Purnell Maneuver.”
Mitch slammed his fist on the table.
“We'll do all we can to make it work,” Bruce said.
“If it's not too much to ask,” Venkat began. “What made up your mind?”
Teddy sighed. “It's a matter of risk,” he said. “Iris 2 only risks one life. Rich Purnell risks all six of them. I know Rich Purnell is more likely to work, but I don't think it's six times more likely.”
“You fucking coward,” Mitch said.
“Mitch...” Venkat said.
“You god damned fucking coward,” Mitch continued, ignoring Venkat. “You just want to cut your losses. You're on damage control. You don't give a shit about Watney's life.”
“Of course I do,” Teddy replied. “And I'm sick of your infantile attitude. You can throw all the tantrums you want, but the rest of us have to be adults. This isn't a TV show; the riskier solution isn't always the best.”
“Space is dangerous,” Mitch snapped. “It's what we do here. If you want to play it safe all the time, go join an insurance company. And by the way, it's not even your life you're risking. The crew can make up their own minds about it.”
“No they can't,” Teddy fired back. “They're too emotionally involved. Clearly, so are you. I'm not gambling five lives to save one. Especially when we might save him without risking them at all.”
“Bullshit!” Mitch shot back as he stood from his chair. “You're just convincing yourself the crash-lander will work so you don't have to take a risk. You're hanging him out to dry, you chicken-shit son of a bitch!”
He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
After a few seconds, Venkat followed behind, saying “I'll make sure he cools off.”
Bruce slumped in his chair. “Sheesh,” he said, nervously. “We're scientists, for Christ's sake. What the hell!?”
Annie quietly gathered her things and placed them in her briefcase.
Teddy looked to her. “Sorry about that, Annie,” he said. “What can I say? Sometimes men let testosterone take over-”
“I was hoping he'd kick your ass,” she interrupted.
“What?”
“I know you care about the astronauts, but he's right. You are a fucking coward. If you had balls we might be able to save Watney.”
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 whole crew is worse. You kept that from happening.
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 Unsere kinder (“our children”), it contained nothing but an image attachment. He raised an eyebrow. Several things stood out at once. Firstly, “kinder” should have been capitalized. Helena, a grammar school teacher in Bremen, was very unlikely to make that mistake. Also, to each other, they affectionately called their kids Die Affen.
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 'kinder.jpg'.”
“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 'Rich Purnell Maneuver'.”
“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!”
The Hermes crew enjoyed their scant personal time in an area called “The Rec”. Consisting of a table and barely room to seat six, it ranked low in gravity priority. It's position amidships granted it a mere 0.2g.
Still, it was enough to keep everyone in their seats as they pondered what Vogel told them.
“...and then mission would conclude with Earth intercept 211 days later,” he finished up.
“Thank you, Vogel,” Lewis said. She'd heard the explanation earlier when Vogel came to her, but Johanssen, Martinez, and Beck were hearing it for the first time. She gave them a moment to digest.
“Would this really work?” Martinez asked.
“Ja,” Vogel nodded. “I ran the numbers. They all check out. It is brilliant course. Amazing.”
“How would he get off Mars?” Martinez asked.
Lewis leaned forward. “There was more in the message,” she began. “The maneuver is part of an overall idea NASA had to rescue Watney. We'd have to pick up a supply near Earth, and he'd have to get to Ares-4's MAV.”
“Why all the cloak and dagger?” Beck asked.
“According to the message,” Lewis explained. “NASA rejected the idea. They'd rather take a big risk on Watney than a small risk on all of us. Whoever snuck it in to Vogel's email obviously disagreed.”
“So,” Martinez said, “We're talking about going directly against NASA's decision?”
“Yes,” Lewis confirmed, “That's what we're talking about. If we do the maneuver, they'll have to send the supply ship or we'll die. We have the opportunity to force their hand.”
“Are we going to do it?” Johanssen asked.
They all looked to Lewis.
“I won't lie,” she said. “I'd sure as hell like to. But this isn't a normal decision. This is something NASA expressly rejected. We're talking about mutiny. And that's not a word I throw around lightly.”
She stood and paced slowly around the table. “We'll only do it if we all agree. And before you answer, consider the consequences. If we mess up the supply rendezvous, we die. If we mess up the Earth gravity assist, we die.
“If we do everything perfectly, we add 533 days to our mission. 533 days of unplanned space travel where anything could go wrong. Maintenance will be a hassle. Something might break that we can't fix. If it's life-critical, we die.”
“Sign me up!” Martinez smiled.
“Easy, cowboy,” Lewis said. “You and I are military. There's a good chance we'd be court-martialed when we got home. As for the rest of you, I guarantee they'll never send you up again.”
Martinez leaned against the wall, arms folded with a half grin on his face. The rest silently considered what their commander had said.
“If we do this,” Vogel said. “It would be over 1000 days of space. This is enough space for a life. I do not need to return.”
“Sounds like Vogel's in,” Martinez grinned. “Me, too, obviously.”
“Let's do it,” Beck said.
“If you think it'll work,” Johanssen said to Lewis, “I trust you.”
“Ok,” Lewis said. “If we go for it, what's involved?”
Vogel shrugged. “I plot the course and execute it,” he said. “What else?”
“Remote Override,” Johanssen said. “It's designed to get the ship back if we all die or something. They can take over Hermes from Mission Control.”
“But we're right here,” Lewis said. “We can undo whatever they try, right?”
“Not really,” Johanssen said. “Remote Override takes priority over any on-board controls. Its assumes there's been a disaster and the ship's control panels can't be trusted.”
“Can you disable it?” Lewis asked.
“Hmm...” Johanssen pondered. “Hermes has four redundant flight computers, each connected to three redundant comm systems. If any computer gets signal from any comm system, Mission Control can take over. We can't shut down the comms; we'd lose telemetry and guidance. We can't shut down the computers; we need them to control the ship. I'll have to disable the Remote Override on each system... It's part of the OS, I'll have to jump over the code... yes. I can do it.”
“You're sure?” Lewis asked. “You can turn it off?”
“Shouldn't be hard,” Johanssen said. “It's an emergency feature, not a security program. It isn't protected against malicious code.”
“Malicious code?” Beck smiled. “So... you'll be a hacker?”
“Yeah,” Johanssen smiled back. “I guess I will.”
“All right,” Lewis said. “Looks like we can do it. But I don't want peer pressure forcing anyone into it. We'll wait for 24 hours. During that time, anyone can change their mind. Just talk to me in private or send me an email. I'll call it off and never tell anyone who it was.”
Lewis stayed behind as the rest filed out. Watching them leave, she saw they were smiling. All four of them. For the first time since leaving Mars, they were back to their old selves. She knew right then no one would change their mind.
They were going back to Mars.
Everyone knew Brendan Hutch would be running missions soon.
He rose through the ranks as fast as one could in the large, inertia-bound organization. Known as a diligent worker, his skill and leadership qualities were plain to all his subordinates.
Brendan was in charge of Mission Control from 1am to 9am every night. Continued excellent performance in this role would certainly net him a promotion. It was already announced he'd be back-up Flight Controller for Ares-4, and he had a good shot at the top job for Ares-5.
“Flight, CAPCOM,” came a voice through his headset.
“Go CAPCOM,” Brendan responded. Though they were in the same room, radio protocol was observed at all times.
“Unscheduled status update from Hermes.”
With Hermes 90 light-seconds away, back-and-forth voice communication was impractical. Other than media relations, Hermes would communicate via text until they were much closer.
“Roger,” Brendan said. “Read it out.”
“I... I don't get it, Flight,” came the confused reply. “No real status, just a single sentence.”
“What's it say?”
“Message reads: 'Houston, be advised: Rich Purnell is a steely-eyed missile man.'”
“What?” Brendan asked. “Who the hell is Rich Purnell?”
“Flight, Telemetry,” came another voice.
“Go Telemetry,” Brendan said.
“Hermes is off-course.”
“CAPCOM, advise Hermes they're drifting. Telemetry, get a correction vector ready-”
“Negative, Flight,” Telemetry interrupted. “It's not drift. They adjusted course. Instrumentation uplink shows a deliberate 27.812 degree rotation.”
“What the hell?” Brendan stammered. “CAPCOM, ask them what the hell.”
“Roger Flight... message sent. Minimum reply time 3 minutes, 4 seconds.”
“Telemetry, any chance this is instrumentation failure?”
“Negative, Flight. We're tracking them with SatCon. Observed position is consistent with the course change.”
“CAPCOM, Read your logs and see what the previous shift did. See if a massive course change was ordered and somehow nobody told us.”
“Roger, Flight.”
“Guidance, Flight.” Brendan said.
“Go Flight,” came the reply from the Guidance Controller.
“Work out how long they can stay on this course before it's irreversible. At what point will they no longer be able to intercept Earth?”
“Working on that now, Flight.”
“And somebody find out who the hell Rich Purnell is!”
Mitch sat comfortably in Teddy's office.
“Why'd you do it, Mitch?” Teddy demanded.
“Do what?” Mitch asked.
“You know damn well what I'm talking about.”
“Oh, you mean the Hermes mutiny?” Mitch said innocently. “You know, that'd make a good movie title. 'The Hermes Mutiny.' Got a nice ring to it.”
“We know you did it,” Teddy said sternly. “We don't know how, but we know you sent them the maneuver.”
“I suppose you have proof, then?”
Teddy glared. “No. Not yet, but we're working on it.”
“Really?” Mitch said. “Is that really the best use of our time? I mean, we have a near-Earth resupply to plan, not to mention figuring out how to get Watney to Schiaparelli. We've got a lot on our plates.”
“You're damn right we have a lot on our plates!” Teddy fumed. “After your little stunt, we're committed to this thing.”
“Alleged stunt,” Mitch said. “I suppose Annie will tell the media we decided to try this risky maneuver? And she'll leave out the mutiny part?”
“Of course,” Teddy said. “Otherwise we'd look like idiots.”
“Guess that's me off the hook then!” Mitch smiled. “Can't fire me for enacting NASA policy. Allegedly enacting it, that is. I guess Lewis is off the hook, too. And maybe Watney gets to live. Happy endings all around!”
“You may have killed the whole crew,” Teddy countered. “Ever think of that?”
“Whomever gave them the maneuver,” Mitch said, “only passed along