“So did you move into Mark’s room?”

“It’s right next to mine,” he said. “It has the same problem.”

“Where have you been sleeping?”

“In Airlock 2. It’s the only place I can be without people tripping over me.”

“No good,” Lewis said, shaking her head. “If one seal breaks, you die.”

“I can’t think of anywhere else to sleep,” he said. “The ship is pretty cramped, and if I sleep in a hallway I’ll be in people’s way.”

“Okay, from now on, sleep in Beck’s room. Beck can sleep with Johanssen.”

Johanssen blushed and looked down awkwardly.

“So…,” Beck said, “you know about that?”

“You thought I didn’t?” Lewis said. “It’s a small ship.”

“You’re not mad?”

“If it were a normal mission, I would be,” Lewis said. “But we’re way off-script now. Just keep it from interfering with your duties, and I’m happy.”

“Million-mile-high club,” Martinez said. “Nice!”

Johanssen blushed deeper and buried her face in her hands.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 444

I’m getting pretty good at this. Maybe when all this is over I could be a product tester for Mars rovers.

Things went well. I spent five sols driving in circles; I averaged 93 kilometers per sol. That’s a little better than I’d expected. The terrain here is flat and smooth, so it’s pretty much a best-case scenario. Once I’m going up hills and around boulders, it won’t be nearly that good.

The bedroom is awesome. Large, spacious, and comfortable. On the first night, I ran into a little problem with the temperature. It was fucking cold. The rover and trailer regulate their own temperatures just fine, but things weren’t hot enough in the bedroom.

Story of my life.

The rover has an electric heater that pushes air with a small fan. I don’t use the heater itself for anything because the RTG provides all the heat I need, so I liberated the fan and wired it into a power line near the airlock. Once it had power, all I had to do was point it at the bedroom.

It’s a low-tech solution, but it worked. There’s plenty of heat, thanks to the RTG. I just needed to get it evenly spread out. For once, entropy was on my side.

I’ve discovered that raw potatoes are disgusting. When I’m in the Hab, I cook my taters using a small microwave. I don’t have anything like that in the rover. I could easily bring the Hab’s microwave into the rover and wire it in, but the energy required to cook ten potatoes a day would actually cut into my driving distance.

I fell into a routine pretty quickly. In fact, it was hauntingly familiar. I did it for twenty-two miserable sols on the Pathfinder trip. But this time, I had the bedroom and that makes all the difference. Instead of being cooped up in the rover, I have my own little Hab.

After waking up, I have a potato for breakfast. Then, I deflate the bedroom from the inside. It’s kind of tricky, but I worked out how.