Mindy Park examined the satellite photo of the Hab’s solar farm. Even with the Pathfinder link and the Morse-code transmission capability of the alien ship’s radio, Watney still occasionally changed the message spelled out by the rocks just north of the Hab complex. Today, it turned out, had been one such day. Watney and either Cherry Berry or Dragonfly- probably Dragonfly- had gone out together to clean the solar panels, and after that was done they’d moved the rocks.

The new message read: SOL 181 – White Sox suck. Cubs will rally and be above .500 by All-Star Break. DF is a Slytherin.

In other words, Mark was bored. Mindy could relate. Her unofficial job was Chief Watney Watcher, but there wasn’t much to watch. Every day two of the aliens would trot the ten kilometers out to Site Epsilon and back to tend their underground garden; Mark would drive out about once a week in Rover 2 for the same task. There was a little EVA activity around the MDV that had been converted to a flight simulator and around the alien ship which mostly served as a hay crib. And, about once every four or five days depending on dust storm activity, Mark swept off the solar farm. And, so far as satellites could see, that was all.

Demand for satellite photos of the Hab had picked up in the last couple of weeks, ever since bandwidth on the improvised data link via Pathfinder had dropped too low to allow both the vital text chat and photo uploads. Unfortunately people had forgotten how happy they’d been to get a photo of Watney a dozen or so pixels wide, taken from directly overhead, before Pathfinder’s revival. Mindy did the best she could, but nothing came back except complaints.

But she still had top priority over anything and everything orbiting Mars, and she used it to her best ability. In addition to the Hab, she scanned everything for a thirty-kilometer radius around it, looking for changes that might affect Watney and his four-legged friends. So far she’d found an exposed vein of permafrost and, just possibly, a chloride deposit, although an EVA on the ground would be required to confirm if it was sodium chloride.

“Hey, Mindy.”

Deborah Kent had strolled over to Mindy’s workstation. Don’t-Call-Me-Debbie was a member of the team that tracked space junk in Earth orbit for Project Muninn. “Hey, Deborah,” Mindy replied.

“So, what do you know about Project Elrond?” Deborah asked.

“Project what?”

“Oh, come on, everybody’s talking about it,” Deborah said. “The top dogs all had a meeting about it today, but nobody knows what it is.”

“And I’m supposed to know about it why?” Mindy asked.

“Come on, Mindy,” Deborah said. “Everybody knows you run with the big dogs these days. Kapoor comes down here to visit you at least once a week. You’ve spoken with Director Sanders. You’ve got the inside track.”

“Not on this,” Mindy said firmly. “You asking me was the first time I’ve heard of Project Elrond.”

“Hey, I know that’s what you’ve got to say,” Deborah said, smirking. “But you can give me a hint, just between us girls.” This statement ignored the workroom of fourteen other desks, almost all occupied, and the open office door of SatNav’s director beyond them.

Mindy rolled her eyes. “Fine, you caught me,” she said. “We’re going to capture an asteroid, fit it with VASIMR engines, and send it to Saturn so we can take its rings and throw them into the Sun. The probe will be named Baggins.”

Deborah pursed her lips. “That’s not fair. Or funny.”

“You don’t like it? Fine. Then please accept that I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Well, if that’s the way you want to be about it.”

Deborah walked off, leaving Mindy to her in-depth study of the Hab.

A few minutes later, to her surprise, her email client popped up with a message from Dr. Kapoor.

SUBJECT: Project ELROND – EYES ONLY

Please recommend best overland path from Ares III Hab to Schiaparelli Basin, with priority to shallowest changes in grade and least obstacles for Ares rovers in tow. This task takes priority over all others and MUST be completed by 10:00 AM tomorrow.

Tell absolutely NO ONE of this. Do not ask questions; they will not be answered.

Mindy sighed and typed a quick response:

The time is now 4:12 PM. I’ll have to pull an all-nighter for this. You had better get me overtime.

That done, she pulled up the most recent survey photos of Arabia Terra and set to work finding a shallow way down into Schiaparelli.

[13:36] JPL: Starlight, this is Venkat Kapoor again. You asked about alternatives to using ceramic to seal the cave. Why can’t you use metal?

[13:57] WATNEY: Um… because we didn’t think of it, I guess? I’ll have to ask Twilight. If I had to guess, it’s because metal conducts heat.

[14:19] JPL: Try aluminum. Lightweight, malleable and elastic. It's conductive and reactive (you did clear out the perchlorates from around the cave, right?), but a thin layer of aluminum oxide on the outsides of the layer will mitigate both problems, like the glaze on porcelain. Is there any magic problem with it?

[14:43] WATNEY: Not that I know of. Transmutation is a tricky high-energy spell, but if you can do it at all the energy and effort is mostly the same for one thing as for another. The difficulty is in making the thing stay changed, but I can handle that with enough power.

[14:46] WATNEY: I should add that our experts still insist that changing anything about the cave poses a danger. Our staff geologist says the system should be stable so long as air pressure and current temperatures are maintained.

[15:07] JPL: Our experts disagree, Starlight. How good is your geologist?

[15:30] WATNEY: Hold on, I need to work out the translation…

[15:42] WATNEY: Depressiona Daisy Pie, graduate Pony-land Institute of Rockology, with molten lava honors, 1007. Her rocktoral thesis was on the effects of magic on metamorphic rocks and crystal deposits.

[16:03] JPL: Do you mean geology, magna cum laude, doctoral?

[16:26] WATNEY: Possibly to the first. Definitely not to the second and third. “Rocktorate” is a literal translation of a portmanteau in our language for “rock doctorate.”

[16:49] JPL: Starlight, I mean no insult to you or your species or your experts, but it’s going to be hard for me to tell my chief geologist that she’s been overruled by a pony with a rocktorate.

[17:12] WATNEY: Would it help if I told you Rr. Pie is also very good at flying kites?

[17:53] WATNEY: I guess not, huh?

Author's Notes:

I was busier at CyPhaCon than I expected.

Still no buffer. Working on it.