“Um,” she said, touching her finger to the screen. “That.”

Venkat leaned in and looked closer. Just below the Hab, beside the rovers, two white circles sat in the sand. “Hmm. Looks like Hab canvas. Maybe the Hab didn’t do well after all? I guess pieces got torn off and—”

“Um,” she interrupted. “They look like rover pop-tents.”

Venkat looked again. “Hmm. Probably right.”

“How’d they get set up?” Mindy asked.

Venkat shrugged. “Commander Lewis probably ordered them deployed during the evac. Not a bad idea. Have the emergency shelters ready in case the MAV didn’t work and the Hab breached.”

“Yeah, um,” Mindy said, opening a document on her computer, “this is the entire mission log for Sols 1 through 6. From MDV touchdown to MAV emergency liftoff.”

“Okay, and?”

“I read through it. Several times. They never threw out the pop-tents.” Her voice cracked at the last word.

“Well, uh…,” Venkat said, furrowing his brow. “They obviously did, but it didn’t make it into the log.”

“They activated two emergency pop-tents and never told anyone?”

“Hmm. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, no. Maybe the storm messed with the rovers and the tents autodeployed.”

“So after autodeploying, they detached themselves from the rovers and lined up next to each other twenty meters away?”

Venkat looked back to the image. “Well obviously they activated somehow.”

“Why are the solar cells clean?” Mindy said, fighting back tears. “There was a huge sandstorm. Why isn’t there sand all over them?”

“A good wind could have done it?” Venkat said, unsure.

“Did I mention I never found Watney’s body?” she said, sniffling.

Venkat’s eyes widened as he stared at the picture. “Oh…,” he said quietly. “Oh God…”

Mindy put her hands over her face and sobbed quietly.

• • •

“FUCK!” Annie Montrose said. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!”

Teddy glared across his immaculate mahogany desk at his director of media relations. “Not helping, Annie.”

He turned to his director of Mars operations. “How sure are we of this?”

“Nearly a hundred percent,” Venkat said.

“Fuck!” Annie said.

Teddy moved a folder on his desk slightly to the right so it would line up with his mouse pad. “It is what it is. We have to deal with it.”

“Do you have any idea the magnitude of shit storm this is gonna be?” she retorted. “You don’t have to face those damn reporters every day. I do!”

“One thing at a time,” Teddy said. “Venk, what makes you sure he’s alive?”

“For starters, no body,” Venkat explained. “Also, the pop-tents are set up. And the solar cells are clean. You can thank Mindy Park in SatCon for noticing all that, by the way.

“But,” Venkat continued, “his body could have been buried in the Sol 6 storm. The pop-tents might have autodeployed and wind could have blown them around. A 30 kph windstorm some time later would have been strong enough to clean the solar cells but not strong enough to carry sand. It’s not likely, but it’s possible.