“Got it.”

“Annie, make sure nobody gets wind of this till we announce.”

“Right,” Annie said. “Who else knows?”

“Just the three of us and Mindy Park in SatCon,” Venkat said.

“I’ll have a word with her,” Annie said.

Teddy stood and opened his cell phone. “I’m going to Chicago. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Why?” Annie asked.

“That’s where Watney’s parents live,” Teddy said. “I owe them a personal explanation before it breaks on the news.”

“They’ll be happy to hear their son’s alive,” Annie said.

“Yes, he’s alive,” Teddy said. “But if my math is right, he’s doomed to starve to death before we can possibly help him. I’m not looking forward to the conversation.”

“Fuck,” Annie said, thoughtfully.

• • •

“NOTHING? Nothing at all?” Venkat groaned. “Are you kidding me? You had twenty experts working for twelve hours on this. We have a multibillion-dollar communications network. You can’t figure out any way to talk to him?”

The two men in Venkat’s office fidgeted in their chairs.

“He’s got no radio,” said Chuck.

“Actually,” said Morris, “he’s got a radio, but he doesn’t have a dish.”

“Thing is,” Chuck continued, “without the dish, a signal would have to be really strong—”

“Like, melting-the-pigeons strong,” Morris supplied.

“—for him to get it,” Chuck finished.

“We considered Martian satellites,” Morris said. “They’re way closer. But the math doesn’t work out. Even SuperSurveyor 3, which has the strongest transmitter, would need to be fourteen times more powerful—”

“Seventeen times,” Chuck said.

“Fourteen times,” Morris asserted.

“No, it’s seventeen. You forgot the amperage minimum for the heaters to keep the—”

“Guys,” Venkat interrupted, “I get the idea.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry if I’m grumpy,” Venkat said. “I got like two hours sleep last night.”

“No problem,” Morris said.

“Totally understandable,” Chuck said.

“Okay,” Venkat said. “Explain to me how a single windstorm removed our ability to talk to Ares 3.”

“Failure of imagination,” Chuck said.

“Totally didn’t see it coming,” Morris agreed.

“How many backup communications systems does an Ares mission have?” Venkat asked.

“Four,” Chuck said.

“Three,” Morris said.

“No, it’s four,” Chuck corrected.

“He said backup systems,” Morris insisted. “That means not including the primary system.”

“Oh right. Three.”

“So four systems total, then,” Venkat said. “Explain how we lost all four.”

“Well,” Chuck said, “The primary ran through the big satellite dish. It blew away in the storm. The rest of the backups were in the MAV.”

“Yup,” Morris agreed. “The MAV is, like, a communicating machine. It can talk to Earth, Hermes, even satellites around Mars if it has to. And it has three independent systems to make sure nothing short of a meteor strike can stop communication.”

“Problem is,” Chuck said, “Commander Lewis and the rest of them took the MAV when they left.”

“So four independent communications systems became one. And that one broke,” Morris finished.

Venkat pinched the bridge of his nose. “How could we overlook this?”

Chuck shrugged. “Never occurred to us. We never thought someone would be on Mars without an MAV.”