“We spell out our message, wait twenty minutes, and then take a picture. Watney’s back in the Hab by then.”

“So tell him to be around when you take the next picture,” Annie demanded.

“We can only send one message per hour, and only when Acidalia Planitia is facing Earth,” Venkat said. “We’re not going to waste a message just to tell him to pose for a photo. Besides, he’ll be in his EVA suit. You won’t even be able to see his face.”

“I need something, Venkat,” Annie said. “You’ve been in contact for twenty-four hours and the media is going ape shit. They want an image for the story. It’ll be on every news site in the world.”

“You have the pictures of his notes. Make do with that.”

“Not enough,” Annie said. “The press is crawling down my throat for this. And up my ass. Both directions, Venkat! They’re gonna meet in the middle!”

“It’ll have to wait a few days. We’re going to try and link Pathfinder to the rover computer—”

“A few days!?” Annie gasped. “This is all anyone cares about right now. In the world. This is the biggest story since Apollo 13. Give me a fucking picture!”

Venkat sighed. “I’ll try to get it tomorrow.”

“Great!” she said. “Looking forward to it.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 98

I have to be watching the camera when it spells things out. It’s half a byte at a time. So I watch a pair of numbers, then look them up on an ASCII cheat sheet I made. That’s one letter.

I don’t want to forget any letters, so I scrape them into the dirt with a rod. The process of looking up a letter and scraping it in the dirt takes a couple of seconds. Sometimes when I look back at the camera, I’ve missed a number. I can usually guess it from context, but other times I just miss out.

Today, I got up hours earlier than I needed to. It was like Christmas morning! I could hardly wait for 08:00 to roll around. I had breakfast, did some unnecessary checks on Hab equipment, and read some Poirot. Finally the time came!

CNHAKRVR2TLK2PTHFDRPRP4LONGMSG

Yeah. Took me a minute. “Can hack rover to talk to Pathfinder. Prepare for long message.”

That took some mental gymnastics to work out. But it was great news! If we could get that set up, we’d only be limited by transmission time! I set up a note that said, Roger.

Not sure what they meant by “long message,” but I figured I better be ready. I went out fifteen minutes before the top of the hour and smoothed out a big area of dirt. I found the longest antenna rod I had, so I could reach into the smooth area without having to step on it.

Then I stood by. Waiting.

At exactly the top of the hour, the message came.

LNCHhexiditONRVRCMP, OPENFILE-/usr/lib/habcomm. so - SCROLLTILIDXONLFTIS: 2AAE5, OVRWRT141 BYTSWTHDATA WE’LLSNDNXTMSG, STANDINVIEW4NXTPIC 20MINFTERTHSDONE