Johanssen and Martinez looked at each other.

“Um. Yes, Commander,” Martinez said.

“The vehicular airlock?” Johanssen said. “You want to… open it?”

“Plenty of air in the ship,” Lewis said. “It’d give us a good kick.”

“Ye-es…,” Martinez said as he brought up the software. “And it might blow the nose of the ship off in the process.”

“Also, all the air would leave,” Johanssen felt compelled to add.

“We’ll seal the bridge and reactor room. We can let everywhere else go vacuo, but we don’t want explosive decompression in here or near the reactor.”

Martinez entered the scenario into the software. “I think we’ll just have the same problem as Watney, but on a larger scale. We can’t direct that thrust.”

“We don’t have to,” Lewis said. “The VAL is in the nose. Escaping air would make a thrust vector through our center of mass. We just need to point the ship directly away from where we want to go.”

“Okay, I have the numbers,” Martinez said. “A breach at the VAL, with the bridge and reactor room sealed off, would accelerate us twenty-nine meters per second.”

“We’d have a relative velocity of thirteen meters per second afterward,” Johanssen supplied.

“Beck,” Lewis radioed. “Have you been hearing all this?”

“Affirmative, Commander,” Beck said.

“Can you do thirteen meters per second?”

“It’ll be risky,” Beck replied. “Thirteen to match the MAV, then another thirteen to match Hermes. But it’s a hell of a lot better than forty-two.”

“Johanssen,” Lewis said. “Time to intercept?”

“Eighteen minutes, Commander.”

“What kind of jolt will we feel with that breach?” Lewis asked Martinez.

“The air will take four seconds to evacuate,” he said. “We’ll feel a little less than one g.”

“Watney,” she said to her headset, “we have a plan.”

“Yay! A plan!” Watney replied.

• • •

“HOUSTON,” LEWIS’S voice rang through Mission Control. “Be advised we are going to deliberately breach the VAL to produce thrust.”

“What?” Mitch said. “What!?”

“Oh… my god,” Venkat said in the observation room.

“Fuck me raw,” Annie said, getting up. “I better get to the press room. Any parting knowledge before I go?”

“They’re going to breach the ship,” Venkat said, still dumbfounded. “They’re going to deliberately breach the ship. Oh my god…”

“Got it,” Annie said, jogging to the door.

• • •

“HOW WILL we open the airlock doors?” Martinez asked. “There’s no way to open them remotely, and if anyone’s nearby when it blows—”

“Right,” Lewis said. “We can open one door with the other shut, but how do we open the other?”

She thought for a moment. “Vogel,” she radioed. “I need you to come back in and make a bomb.”

“Um. Again, please, Commander?” Vogel replied.

“A bomb,” Lewis confirmed. “You’re a chemist. Can you make a bomb out of stuff on board?”

“Ja,” Vogel said. “We have flammables and pure oxygen.”

“Sounds good,” Lewis said.

“It is of course dangerous to set off an explosive device on a spacecraft,” Vogel pointed out.