I came up with a solution, but I’d done enough physical labor for one day, and I was almost out of daylight.

Now I’m in the rover, looking at Sojourner. It seems all right. No physical damage on the outside. Doesn’t look like anything got too baked by the sunlight. The dense layer of Mars crap all over it protected it from long-term solar damage.

You may think Sojourner isn’t much use to me. It can’t communicate with Earth. Why do I care about it?

Because it has a lot of moving parts.

If I establish a link with NASA, I can talk to them by holding a page of text up to the lander’s camera. But how would they talk to me? The only moving parts on the lander are the high-gain antenna (which would have to stay pointed at Earth) and the camera boom. We’d have to come up with a system where NASA could talk by rotating the camera head. It would be painfully slow.

But Sojourner has six independent wheels that rotate reasonably fast. It’ll be much easier to communicate with those. I could draw letters on the wheels. NASA could rotate them to spell things at me.

That all assumes I can get the lander’s radio working at all.

Time to turn in. I’ve got a lot of backbreaking physical labor to do tomorrow. I’ll need my rest.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 83

Oh God, I’m sore.

But it’s the only way I could think of to get the lander safely onto the roof.

I built a ramp out of rocks and sand. Just like the ancient Egyptians did.

And if there’s one thing Ares Vallis has, it’s rocks!

First, I experimented to find out how steep the grade could be. I piled some rocks near the lander and dragged it up the pile and back down again. Then I made the pile steeper and made sure I could drag the lander up and down. I repeated this over and over until I found the best grade for my ramp: 30 degrees. Anything more was too risky. I might lose my grip and send the lander tumbling down the ramp.

The roof of the rover is over two meters from the ground. So I’d need a ramp almost four meters long. I got to work.

The first few rocks were easy. Then they started feeling heavier and heavier. Hard physical labor in a space suit is murder. Everything’s more effort because you’re lugging 20 kilograms of suit around with you, and your movement is limited. I was panting within twenty minutes.

So I cheated. I upped my O₂ mixture. It really helped a lot. Probably shouldn’t make that a habit. Also, I didn’t get hot. The suit leaks heat faster than my body could ever generate it. The heating system is what keeps the temperature bearable. My physical labor just meant the suit didn’t have to heat itself as much.

After hours of grueling labor, I finally got the ramp made. Nothing more than a pile of rocks against the rover, but it reached the roof.