Martinez and Johanssen floated down the hall toward Docking Port A.

“So,” he said, “who would you have eaten first?”

She glared at him.

“’Cause I think I’d be tastiest,” he continued, flexing his arm. “Look at that. Good solid muscle there.”

“You’re not funny.”

“I’m free-range, you know. Corn-fed.”

She shook her head and accelerated down the hall.

“Come on! I thought you liked Mexican!”

“Not listening,” she called back.

CHAPTER 20

LOG ENTRY: SOL 376

I’m finally done with the rover modifications!

The tricky part was figuring out how to maintain life support. Everything else was just work. A lot of work.

I haven’t been good at keeping the log up to date, so here’s a recap:

First I had to finish drilling holes with the Pathfinder-murderin’ drill. Then I chiseled out a billion little chunks between the holes. Okay, it was 759 but it felt like a billion.

Then I had one big hole in the trailer. I filed down the edges to keep them from being too sharp.

Remember the pop-tents? I cut the bottom out of one and the remaining canvas was the right size and shape. I used seal-strips to attach it to the inside of the trailer. After pressurizing and sealing up leaks as I found them, I had a nice big balloon bulging out of the trailer. The pressurized area is easily big enough to fit the oxygenator and atmospheric regulator.

One hitch: I need to put the AREC outside. The imaginatively named “atmospheric regulator external component” is how the regulator freeze-separates air. Why sink a bunch of energy into freezing stuff when you have incredibly cold temperatures right outside?

The regulator pumps air to the AREC to let Mars freeze it. It does this along a tube that runs through a valve in the Hab’s wall. The return air comes back through another tube just like it.

Getting the tubing through the balloon canvas wasn’t too hard. I have several spare valve patches. Basically they’re ten-by-ten-centimeter patches of Hab canvas with a valve in the middle. Why do I have these? Consider what would happen on a normal mission if the regulator valve broke. They’d have to scrub the whole mission. Easier to send spares.

The AREC is fairly small. I made a shelf for it just under the solar panel shelves. Now everything’s ready for when I eventually move the regulator and AREC over.

There’s still a lot to do.

I’m not in any hurry; I’ve been taking it slow. One four-hour EVA per day spent on work, the rest of the time to relax in the Hab. Plus, I’ll take a day off every now and then, especially if my back hurts. I can’t afford to injure myself now.

I’ll try to be better about this log. Now that I might actually get rescued, people will probably read it. I’ll be more diligent and log every day.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 380

I finished the heat reservoir.

Remember my experiments with the RTG and having a hot bath? Same principle, but I came up with an improvement: submerge the RTG. No heat will be wasted that way.