Turning to the headsetted man at the communications console, Venkat asked, “What’s your name, new best friend?”

“Tim,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“What now?” Venkat asked.

“We sent the return telemetry automatically. It’ll get there in just over eleven minutes. Once it does, Pathfinder will start high-gain transmissions. So it’ll be twenty-two minutes till we hear from it again.”

“Venkat’s got a doctorate in physics, Tim,” Bruce said. “You don’t need to explain transmission time to him.”

Tim shrugged. “You can never tell with managers.”

“What was in the transmission we got?” Venkat asked.

“Just the bare bones. A hardware self-check. It’s got a lot of ‘nonfunctional’ systems, ’cause they were on the panels Watney removed.”

“What about the camera?”

“It says the imager’s working. We’ll have it take a panorama as soon as we can.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 97

It worked!

Holy shit, it worked!

I just suited up and checked the lander. The high-gain antenna is angled directly at Earth! Pathfinder has no way of knowing where it is, so it has no way of knowing where Earth is. The only way for it to find out is getting a signal.

They know I’m alive!

I don’t even know what to say. This was an insane plan and somehow it worked! I’m going to be talking to someone again. I spent three months as the loneliest man in history and it’s finally over.

Sure, I might not get rescued. But I won’t be alone.

The whole time I was recovering Pathfinder, I imagined what this moment would be like. I figured I’d jump up and down a bit, cheer, maybe flip off the ground (because this whole damn planet is my enemy), but that’s not what happened. When I got back to the Hab and took off the EVA suit, I sat down in the dirt and cried. Bawled like a little kid for several minutes. I finally settled down to mild sniffling and then felt a deep calm.

It was a good calm.

It occurs to me: Now that I might live, I have to be more careful about logging embarrassing moments. How do I delete log entries? There’s no obvious way.… I’ll get to it later. I’ve got more important things to do.

I’ve got people to talk to!

• • •

VENKAT GRINNED as he took the podium in the JPL press room.

“We received the high-gain response just over half an hour ago,” he said to the assembled press. “We immediately directed Pathfinder to take a panoramic image. Hopefully, Watney has some kind of message for us. Questions?”

The sea of reporters raised their hands.

“Cathy, let’s start with you,” Venkat said, pointing to the CNN reporter.

“Thanks,” she said. “Have you had any contact with the Sojourner rover?”

“Unfortunately, no,” he replied. “The lander hasn’t been able to connect to Sojourner, and we have no way to contact it directly.”

“What might be wrong with Sojourner?”

“I can’t even speculate,” Venkat said. “After spending that long on Mars, anything could be wrong with it.”