Over the last couple of sols I’ve pulled out the video camera and done a ton of documentary shots of the Hab and the cave. Today I went one step farther-, or, rather, ten kilometers farther.

Without the 4.5 tons of Mars rocks we used to simulate the jumbo batteries for the test runs, and with the two Hab hydrogen batteries installed, Rover 2 has enough range to get from the Hab to Site Epsilon and Trans-Epsilon (the mountain ten klicks the other side of Site Epsilon) and back. This time I took Cherry Berry with me, partly because she hasn’t seen the valley on the other side, and partly to get her out of the cave farm for the day.

Since we had the juice, after we drove up to the Beauty Spot and took some footage, we drove a couple kilometers around the south rim. The valley is a spot where one of the gullies that criss-cross Acidalia widens and deepens for some reason. I suspect the gradual effect of the rare water seeps like the one we witnessed the first time we came here. We didn’t get to see running water today, but we still got some pretty pictures. It looks a bit like some of the flatter parts of northern Arizona.

Just making this trip, it occurred to me that we never got around to giving proper names to any of the features around the Hab. I checked with NASA, and it turns out they’ve stuck with the placeholder names given in the mission briefings.

So I discussed the matter with the aliens, and we decided to fill the gap ourselves. I mean, why not? I’ve already named a valley after Commander Lewis during the Pathfinder trip.

So, let’s go down the list of features, beginning with the five geology sites we trained for. Site Alpha was just the flat ground the Hab sits on. That already has a name, though none of us ever used it except Lewis: Fertility Base. (Acidalia means “named for Venus”, Roman goddess of love and fertility. And since I was along as a botanist, performing the first experiments with live plants on the Martian surface, some higher-up decided it rhymed with Tranquility Base. But none of us liked it, so aside from Lewis declaring Fertility Base fully operational at the end of Sol 2, we all just called it the Hab.)

Site Beta was going to be the nearest gully. The problem is that the eight gullies that run across the path between the Hab and the cave farm are pretty much interchangeable and uninteresting. So are the ones we crossed going south on the Pathfinder trip until we got into Chryse Planitia. Neither I nor the ponies feel like they deserve names, but if we don’t somebody will. So we officially name them after dwarves: Doc, Grumpy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey and Tyrion, for the gullies going east to west from the Hab to Site Epsilon. If the others need naming, between the Lord of the Rings and Terry Pratchett there’s plenty of names. Just use Bombur for a really wide gully, okay?

Site Gamma is the crater behind the Hab- well, technically Site Gamma and Site Delta both. Gamma was the outside of the rim, and Delta was the dunes inside the crater proper. The crater is nothing in Martian terms- only a few hundred meters across. There are millions like it around the planet. But this one is ours, so it gets a name. The ponies have no attachment to it, so I’m calling it Martinez Crater, after our pilot who used it as a landmark on the way to sticking a perfect landing.

That leaves Site Epsilon, the old volcano where we found the crystal cave. I let the ponies have that, and they’ve decided to name it after their ship, Mount Friendship. Actually, they asked me to give it a Latin name like Acidalia. I think “friendship” in Latin is something like amicitas. So Site Epsilon, once we leave, shall forever be Mount Amicitas. The cave gets its own name: Salvation Cave, because it definitely saved our asses.

Finally, there’s the trans-Epsilon mountain. Since our name for the crest of the mountain is “the beauty spot”. I’m naming it Mt. Johannsen. The big weathered rock on the outcrop overlooking the valley is Vogel Peak, after our silent stone man from Germany. And, since it gets my naming-shit-for-my-crew task over with at one shot, the valley the Beauty Spot and Vogel Peak both overlook will be Beck Valley.

Tomorrow I’ll send in my naming requests, along with the requests for that flood channel in Ares Terra that I named for Lewis. We’ll see how many NASA and the astronomical community approve. I suspect the names for the Ares III crew won’t stick. Naming features for wives and kids works sometimes, but the bureaucrats frown on us naming stuff for ourselves. And, of course, NASA will be gun-shy about lawyers from Disney or the George R. R. Martin estate.

But if they say no to Mt. Amicitas, we’ll go to the mat for it. The ponies are strongly for it, and I’m on their side; more than anything else except the existence of that cave, friendship is the reason we survived this long. And friendship deserves a name on a map.

It deserves that at the very least.

Author's Notes:

Buffer is gone. We'll see if I can get something written tomorrow.