I’m a bit calmer today. I’m sorry to have dumped all my rage into my log entry yesterday. I’m just pissed that Venkat Kapoor tried to get Dragonfly to talk about me behind my back. And yeah, a big part of that is me being angry at somebody prying into my head. But Venkat has the right to do that, up to a point. The mental state of astronauts is really important, especially for long-term missions like Ares. Moral and mental stability are the main reason why I made it into the program at all.

But Venkat doesn’t have the right to bring Dragonfly into it. The ponies are not part of NASA. They’re not under his command. They’re visitors who didn’t ask to be marooned on Mars with me. And it’s not fair to take advantage of her like that.

I haven’t mentioned it, but the ponies can be really naïve sometimes. I think Dragonfly thinks she’s a great manipulator, with her puppy-bug eyes and her goofy behavior. But you’ll notice I still haven’t let her touch any of my tools. A human politician would tie her in knots, and the others would be even more easy prey.

So this morning, at breakfast, I had a talk with my guests. I had Starlight rev up that Google-translate spell of hers long enough to get across the core point. Basically I told them that NASA can’t force them to do anything, and if they feel one of Venkat’s requests is intrusive or suspicious, they should refuse until they’ve talked it out with each other.

I hate to admit it, but we humans can be thoughtless too.

Anyway, after breakfast I had to chat with Venkat again. The mini-antenna works. Once Rover 1 is rigged to accept Pathfinder’s radio relay, I’ll take Rover 2 out on a jaunt to see the exact range, which I suspect will be about four kilometers- just over the horizon. While I’m doing that, I’ll probably dump the RTG back in its hole. I’ve been too busy to deal with it, but just because it was one of my two warm and cuddly friends during the Pathfinder drive doesn’t mean I’m inviting it into my house where it can possibly bring us all that gift that keeps on giving, cancer. And Dragonfly will be happier knowing that Death Box has gone away again. She's already delighted that she no longer has to go outside to chat with Earth.

NASA’s got its trained botanists ready, and they started with basic stuff- how long did I let the shit and table scraps compost before I mixed them into the soil, what procedure did I use to mix composted soil with Martian regolith, etc. You know, all the stuff I went into excruciating, technical detail into the small hours last night writing up my official report. But they couldn’t wait for me to upload that, oh no. They want to waste my time answering questions now.

After almost two hours working on that, I finally got the day’s to-do list from Venkat. I get to take photos of the alien ship’s engines and thruster packs. Fortunately Dragonfly didn’t get round to replacing their good engine’s bell with the third bell they salvaged from our MAV. Today’s uploads were my botany report on the farming methods, a list of performance data for the alien ship engines as best we can estimate, and the photos of the engines and of the ship exterior, plus photos of the MAV base and of the MDV, both exterior and interior.

So I had to take a lot of photos, put them into a computer, and reduce their resolution to make them fit in the four-hour upload window. Fun times. I tried to get the equipment in the right mood- “give me resolute, now do charming, give me your good side, there we go”- but broken rocket parts just don’t make good fashion models. Maybe if I draped the spare alien parachute fabric over them? Must ask NASA if muu-muus are coming back.

Starlight Glimmer (she finally has a last name, yay!) is delighted that she can now communicate with NASA directly. She’s monopolized what used to be Vogel’s computer ever since her accident, writing up reports and translating their ship manuals. She’s constantly asking me for technical words. She says she’s almost done. I told her the top priority was the info about the ship radio. Of course she disagreed- she thinks her article about magic should be top priority. With my luck NASA will break the tie by demanding a translation of the pony medical manuals- which are the ones Starlight hasn’t worked on at all.

Anyway- time for English lessons. We’ve begun reruns on Electric Company. After that it’s Sanford and Son, which isn’t the same since Fred went to St. Louis and left Grady to watch over Lamont, as if he needed it. Redd Foxx really is the life and soul of that show. At least Esther is still around to steal a scene every episode or so. I think Dragonfly agrees with me, but Cherry still loves the show. She, Starlight and Spitfire had an argument the other night about whether unicorns or pegasi are the pony equivalent of “honkies.” Fireball broke it up by pointing out that, from a non-pony point of view, all ponies are honkies. And that was the last time the H-word got used in this Hab, at least so far.

Anyhow, after that we’re going to try Starsky and Hutch. I’m told it’s required viewing in every police academy since 2022. At least, that’s the only reason I can think of for why every cop I saw around the time I applied for the astronaut corps had these huge mustaches.

“Rich? Rich, are you in here?”

Mike wandered through the cubicle maze of Johnson Space Center’s astrodynamics department. Most of the workers had gone home for the day, but Rich could usually be counted upon to be a laggard. Under normal conditions Mike had to tell him it was time to go home about three days in a five-day week.

Conditions had ceased to be normal at NASA the day a Mars satellite spotted an alien ship about to crash-land on Mars. But even so, for the most part astrodynamics had escaped the rush of deferred-payment overtime most of the other departments had engaged in. The most work the department saw in a day came whenever JPL called for yet another rough approximation of the available trajectories for a direct boost to Mars using Delta-IX and Red Falcon boosters. Precise trajectories would take time, but the rough numbers JPL was using for ballpark estimates at this point in their design process could be done on a desktop computer in a couple of hours.

Sure enough, Rich Purnell was parked at his desk, idly ticking away at something or other on his computer. He hadn’t noticed the deep shadows outside the windows or the departure of practically all his coworkers. Mike was the only coworker whose name Rich recognized. The man barely recognized that a world existed outside whatever mathematical problem had his attention at the moment. He understood numbers and equations, and he didn’t understand people.

Rich was Mike’s problem child, but he was also the one he could dump any task on, no matter how hard or how difficult, and never get a complaint about working late and being forced to break previous plans, dates, or appointments. Rich never had any of those. In fact, Rich had never taken a sick day except when Mike had sent him home… and after the first time Rich returned the next day, still with a fever, Mike had learned to send him to a NASA doctor first. And vacations? Rich barely understood the concept, and he had something like six months of accrued vacation time, unused, on the books.

Mike had long since come to the conclusion that, if Rich ever got his own office large enough to have its own toilet and space for a cot, he'd never leave JSC.

“Rich?” Mike asked, finally getting his employee’s attention.

“Oh. Hi, Mike,” Rich said. “Is it time to go home? I lost track.’

“Yes, it is,” Mike said. “But I’ve got something I want you to look at when you get a chance. Fresh from Mars.”

That got Rich’s attention. It wasn’t quite fair to say that Rich had no idea that a universe existed outside his equations. He was very enthusiastic about the universe, except for the part of it that was Earth. His interest in his own planet was mostly limited to knowledge of its effects as a gravity well and the ability to manually dial the number of almost every take-out delivery restaurant within thirty minutes of JSC from memory.

“We’ve got some hard performance data on the alien ship,” Mike continued. “The aliens were looking into combining the remains of their ship and parts from the MDV and MAV landing stage into a sort of life-raft. Kind of like ‘Flight of the Phoenix.’”

“There’s no such thing as a phoenix,” Rich said. “Unless you mean the Phoenix lander, and that was a specially built space probe.”

Mike sighed and handed him the thick sheaf of printouts. He’d learned early on that Rich thought better when he had his data on paper, using the computer only for the actual calculations. Any information you sent him by email or on a transfer drive would end up on paper, so why not print it yourself from the beginning?

Rich began thumbing through the pages, looking at the rather grainy photos. His eye stopped at one point. “Two hundred ninety-two liters of hydrazine monoprop?” he asked. “That wouldn’t get the MDV aloft more than maybe a kilometer in Mars gravity. Thrust-weight ratios are too low.”

“We know, Rich,” Mike said. “But we want the numbers to prove it. Take a look at this, take your time, and get back to me when you have some answers.”

“Okay,” Rich said. As he held the papers in his left hand, still reading, his right hand reached for the phone on his desk. Mike recognized the number being dialed as the take-out desk for the Jimmy Chonga’s on I-45.

“Try not to stay up too late,” Mike said, stepping away from the cubicle.

Rich didn’t notice him leaving.

Author's Notes:

Only got about 500 words written today. I made the mistake of trying to do an upgrade to my credit card processing system while writing, and the upgrade failed, so I burned up the energy I would have used for writing trying everything I could think of to get around the problem.

Fortunately, tomorrow I will be stuck at a car dealership for a VERY long time with nothing to do but write. Recall service on the wiring harness in the van's steering column.

Racial tension is still a thing in Equestria, but it's got nothing on species tension.

I have no idea if Jimmy Chonga's actually delivers. I just like the name, partly because it occurred to me long before I learned of the restaurant chain. (And I was sad to learn that my brilliant idea for another restaurant name, "Pizza Love, Inc.", was already trademarked.)

And finally... say hello to Rich Purnell.