So far, Pathfinder hasn’t tried to kill me. But I’m keeping an eye on it.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 93

I found the Hab signal today. No more chance to get lost. According to the computer, I’m 24,718 meters away.

I’ll be home tomorrow. Even if the rover has a catastrophic failure, I’ll be fine. I can walk to the Hab from here.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I am really fucking sick of being in this rover. I’ve spent so much time seated or lying down, my back is all screwed up. Of all my crewmates, the one I miss most right now is Beck. He’d fix my aching back.

Though he’d probably give me a bunch of shit about it. “Why didn’t you do stretching exercises? Your body is important! Eat more fiber,” or whatever.

At this point, I’d welcome a health lecture.

During training, we had to practice the dreaded “Missed Orbit” scenario. In the event of a second-stage failure during MAV ascent, we’d be in orbit, but too low to reach Hermes. We’d be skimming the upper atmosphere, so our orbit would rapidly decay. NASA would remotely operate Hermes and bring it in to pick us up. Then we’d get the hell out of there before Hermes caught too much drag.

To drill this, they made us stay in the MAV simulator for three miserable days. Six people in an ascent vehicle originally designed for a twenty-three-minute flight. It got a little cramped. And by “a little cramped” I mean “we wanted to kill each other.”

I’d give anything to be in that cramped capsule with those guys again.

Man, I hope I get Pathfinder working again.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 94

Home sweet home!

Today I write from my gigantic, cavernous Hab!

The first thing I did when I got in was wave my arms wildly while running in circles. Felt great! I was in that damn rover for twenty-two sols and couldn’t even walk without suiting up.

I’ll need to endure twice that to get to Ares 4, but that’s a problem for later.

After a few celebratory laps around the Hab, it was time to get to work.

First, I fired up the oxygenator and atmospheric regulator. Checking the air levels, everything looked good. There was still CO₂, so the plants hadn’t suffocated without me exhaling for them.

Naturally I did an exhaustive check on my crops, and they’re all healthy.

I added my bags of shit to the manure pile. Lovely smell, I can tell you. But once I mixed some soil in, it died down to tolerable levels. I dumped my box o’ pee into the water reclaimer.

I’d been gone over three weeks and had left the Hab very humid for the sake of the crops. That much water in the air can cause any amount of electrical problems, so I spent the next few hours doing full systems checks on everything.

Then I kind of lounged around for a while. I wanted to spend the rest of the day relaxing, but I had more to do.