The cuddle pile formed, probably for the last time. Outside, the last light of the setting Martian sun lit up the thickening haze of dust from the oncoming storm, giving the freezing night an even more unworldly look than usual. None of the castaways saw it. None of them would have cared.

They needed to get an early sleep- or make the attempt. Launch lay less than twelve hours off.

“You know,” Dragonfly said, “it’s gonna feel weird, not sleeping like this anymore.”

“Bite your tongue,” Starlight Glimmer muttered. “I want a real bucking bed again, in a room that isn’t bucking freezing except for body heat.”

I wasn’t so foul-mouthed before, she thought to herself. Being around Mark Watney did this to me.

No, Mars did this to me. Blame this planet. Blame this whole bucking magic-starved universe.

“I can’t promise you a bed,” Mark said. “It’s going to be tight quarters on Hermes. We might even have to take day and night shifts with the bunks.”

“You say we,” Starlight grumbled. “I say, once I get a bunk, they can try prying it out of my stone cold hooves.”

“Quit saying cold,” Spitfire muttered. The pile shuffled as, by unspoken cooperation, they tried to pull two or three of the sleeping rolls into a more snug position over the top of the pile. Both the old RTG and the one from the Phoenix fuel plant now sat in the Phoenix, tucked into the sides of the lower deck. The flight up would be toasty-warm with three thousand watts of heat filling a space about twice that of the interior of Rover 2. But the tradeoff was that, on this last night on Mars, the Whinnybago had only two electrical heaters, the one from Rover 2 and the last remaining Amicitas heater, putting out a mere six hundred watts of heat on battery power.

The Martian night laughed at six hundred watts of heat. The metal hull of the Whinnybago trailer sucked up the heat and hungered for more.

The cuddle pile drew a little tighter.

“No more hay,” Cherry Berry said. “Think about that. No more hay, no more potatoes.”

“No more EVAs,” Fireball rumbled from the core of the pile.

“No more washing out airlock to get rid of perchlorate dust,” Spitfire stammered out.

“No more pouring gallons of water down the toilet so we can talk to home,” Dragonfly sighed.

“That reminds me,” Mark said. “Do your bosses know about tomorrow?”

“Updated them yesterday,” Dragonfly said. “Ship names, launch time, all of it.”

“What did they say?”

“They said, ‘Message received, good luck, out.’ Kinda rude of them.”

“Probably mad they never managed to track this dimension down,” Starlight said. “When we get to Earth I’ll build a huge magic beacon in the most life-packed place on your planet. If that doesn’t work, we’ll apply for citizenship.”

“They’ll find us eventually,” Cherry said. “Twilight and Chrysalis won’t give up.”

“I know they won’t,” Starlight said. “It’s that word ‘eventually’ that worries me.”

“They did say a couple weeks ago that both Twilight and Chrysalis were up on… on Harmony,” Dragonfly said, giving the English word they used for Concordia. “Maybe they’re waiting on launch.”

“They couldn’t track us with all the resources of… Pony-land… how could they do it in orbit?” Starlight grumbled. “No, I think we’re going to spend a lot of time with a lot of humans. Beginning with Mark’s friends on Hermes.”

“Martinez is pretty nice,” Cherry said. “And Commander Lewis and I have been exchanging emails for a while now. She’s got lots of good advice.”

“I wish Johanssen would talk more,” Dragonfly said. “As many times as I’ve disguised myself as her, I don’t really know much about her, even now.”

“Johanssen’s always been shy,” Mark said. “Geeky and introverted. If it wasn’t for NASA, she’d crawl into a computer and never come out again.”

“Huh. Replace NASA with ‘friendship princess work’ and ‘computer’ with ‘library,’ and that describes Twilight,” Starlight said. “Maybe someday you can meet her, Mark, and then you can tell us if she and Johanssen are alike.”

“You’ll meet Johanssen in person sooner,” Mark said. “Then you can tell me.”

“My favorite is Vogel,” Fireball growled from the bottom of the pile.

“Um, Fireball,” Mark said, “Vogel’s spoken directly to us maybe four times in the past year.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him,” Dragonfly said. “That’s Fireball’s idea of a joke.”

“I figured,” Mark said. “Anyway, the one we all get to meet first will be Chris Beck. That’s Doctor Beck to you. And he’ll get to know all of us very personally.”

“Dibs on the oral thermometer,” Dragonfly said immediately.

There was a bit of laughter all around, if somewhat nervous.

“Mark?” Cherry asked. “Tell us about your crew.”

“Hm.” Mark shifted his position a little next to Fireball. “Well, Johanssen and I were in the same astronaut group- the last group trained before the Ares III crew was selected. Martinez and Beck were in the group before ours, and Lewis was in the group before that. Vogel’s European Space Agency- he was the last guy picked. I knew Johanssen a little, and I had some training under Lewis, but I didn’t meet the others until the Ares III picks were finalized. And then we had years of training together ahead of us.”

“Yeah, but what are they like?”

“They’re like… well, they’re like them,” Mark said. “None of them are like anyone else. Martinez comes off as a fighter jock, and he loves a joke, the dirtier the better, but he’s also totally nuts for his wife and a committed Catholic- very religious, and not in any jerk I’m-better-than-you or you-ought-to-do-this-too way. Lewis is by-the-book and strict, but she has this silly streak that sneaks up on you sometimes when you don’t expect it. Beck is a doctor twenty-four seven, but once you get around that he’s game for anything. Johanssen is all geek, but she’s also the supermodel of the crew and barely knows it. Vogel is like this human iceberg, keeps most of himself hidden, very quiet, very serious. But he’s funny, in a sly way. When he tells a joke, it can take half an hour before you realize it.”

“So,” Spitfire said, “Lewis, she’s oldest, right?”

“Um… actually…” Mark wiggled under the pile, a little harder than perhaps necessary. “Actually, I’m the oldest. Nine months older than Vogel. Over a year older than Lewis.”

“Really?” Fireball snorted hard enough to shake the whole cuddle pile. “And you the oldest here, too. You able to keep up with us, old man?”

“You know,” Mark said softly, “I never appreciated that joke during training. Don’t care much for it now, either.”

“Don’t worry, Grandfather,” Starlight said. “You just take your nap during launch while the rest of us do all the work.”

“How about we take the nap now?” Dragonfly asked. “It’s an early morning tomorrow.”

As various riffs on “good night” echoed through the pile, Starlight forced her eyes to close. Sleep seemed miles away. Tomorrow anything could happen. They could go home. They could go to Earth. They could die in a fireball. They could die in the vacuum of space.

But whatever happened, it wouldn’t happen on Mars.

The pile shifted again. “Guys?” Mark asked.

“What?” Spitfire grumbled.

“Whatever happens tomorrow… thanks for everything. I don’t know how I would have survived without you. I’m lucky I met you about a dozen times over.”

“Mutual,” Fireball muttered.

“Yeah,” Dragonfly said.

“Thanks,” Spitfire said. “Now go sleep. Good night.”

“Mm.”

The pile grew still again, and gradually the easy sleepers, Fireball, Cherry and Spitfire, began their usual gentle snoring. Starlight listened to the sounds, and thought about tomorrow.

It didn’t take long for her to join them in the last sleep before leaving Mars.

Author's Notes:

Sol 551 is finished, at 6,480 words.

I've already written, weeks ago, snippets of epilog material, but tonight I'm going to push forward a bit and get the next chapter after the launch done. Yes, after months of basically posting what I write each day with no buffer, I've got a buffer again just as the story is about to end.

The ages of the Ares III crew, and their training classes, come from promotional materials released for the movie. The book says not one word about the ages of any of the characters involved, unless you count Martinez's child.