The Martian by Andy Weir Read Free Book Online Page A

100 percent successful.
    They say no plan survives first contact with implementation. I’d have to agree. Here’s what happened:
    I summoned up the courage to return to the Hab. Once I got there, I felt a little more confident. Everything was how I’d left it. (What did I expect? Martians looting my stuff?)
    It would take a while to let the Hab cool, so I started that right away by turning the temperature down to 1°C.
    I bagged the potato plants, and got a chance to check up on them while I was at it. They’re rooting nicely and about to sprout. One thing I hadn’t accounted for was how to bring them from the Hab to the rovers.
    The answer was pretty easy. I put all of them in Martinez’s space suit. Then I dragged it out with me to the rover I’d set up as a temporary nursery.
    Making sure to jimmy the heater to stay on, I headed back to the Hab.
    By the time I got back, it was already chilly. Down to 5°C already. Shivering and watching my breath condense in front of me, I threw on extra layers of clothes. Fortunately I’m not a very big man. Martinez’s clothes fit over mine, and Vogel’s fit over Martinez’s. These shitty clothes were designed to be worn in a temperature-controlled environment. Even with three layers, I was still cold. I climbed into my bunk and under the covers for more warmth.
    Once the temperature got to 1°C, I waited another hour, just to make sure the bacteria in the dirt got the memo that it was time to take it slow.
    The next problem I ran into was the regulator. Despite my swaggering confidence, I wasn’t able to outwit it. It
really
does not want to pull too much O 2 out of the air. The lowest I could get it to was 15 percent. After that, it flatly refused to go lower, and nothing I did mattered. I had all these plans about getting in and reprogramming it. But the safety protocols turned out to be in ROMs.
    I can’t blame it. Its whole purpose is to
prevent
the atmosphere from becoming lethal. Nobody at NASA thought, “Hey, let’s allow a fatal lack of oxygen that will make everyone drop dead!”
    So I had to use a more primitive plan.
    The regulator uses a different set of vents for air sampling than it does for main air separation. The air that gets freeze-separated comes in through a single large vent on the main unit. But it samples the air from nine small vents that pipe back to the main unit. That way it gets a good average of the Hab, and one localized imbalance won’t throw it off.
    I taped up eight of the intakes, leaving only one of them active. Then I taped the mouth of a Hefty-sized bag over the neck-hole of a spacesuit (Johanssen’s this time). In the back of the bag, I poked a small hole and taped it over the remaining intake.
    Then I inflated the bag with pure O 2 from the suit’s tanks. “Holy shit!” the regulator thought, “I better pull O 2 out right away!”
    Worked great!
    I decided not to wear a space suit after all. The atmospheric pressure was going to be fine. All I needed was oxygen. So I grabbed an O 2 canister and breather mask from the medical bay. That way, I had a hell of a lot more freedom of motion. It even had a rubber band to keep it on my face!
    Though I did need a space suit to monitor the actual Hab oxygen level, now that the Hab’s main computer was convinced it was 100 percent O 2 . Let’s see…Martinez’s space suit was in the rover. Johanssen’s was outwitting the regulator. Lewis’s was serving as a water tank. I didn’t want to mess with mine (hey, it’s custom-fitted!). That left me two space suits to work with.
    I grabbed Vogel’s suit and activated the internal air sensors while leaving the helmet off. Once the oxygen dropped to 12 percent, I put the breather mask on. I watched it fall further and further. When it reached 1 percent, I cut power to the regulator.
    I may not be able to reprogram the regulator, but I can turn the bastard off completely.
    The Hab has emergency flashlights in many locations in case of