Энди Вейр: The Martian

Then I did it again. And again. Short bursts. Nothing flashy. I was happy to take my time.

I was elated! This was the best plan ever! Not only was I clearing out the hydrogen, I was making more water!

Everything went great right up to the explosion.

One minute I was happily burning hydrogen; the next I was on the other side of the Hab and a lot of stuff was knocked over. I stumbled to my feet and saw the Hab in disarray.

My first thought was “My ears hurt like hell!”

Then I thought “I’m dizzy,” and fell to my knees. Then I fell prone. I was that dizzy. I groped my head with both hands, looking for a head-wound I desperately hoped would not be there. Nothing seemed to be amiss.

But feeling all over my head and face revealed the true problem. My oxygen mask had been ripped off in the blast. I was breathing nearly pure nitrogen.

The floor was covered in junk from all over the Hab. No hope of finding the medical O2 tank. No hope of finding anything in this mess before I passed out.

Then I saw Lewis’s suit hanging right where it belonged. It hadn’t moved in the blast. It was heavy to start with and had 70L of water in it.

Rushing over, I quickly cranked on the O2 and stuck my head into the neck-hole (I’d removed the helmet long ago, for easy access to the water). I breathed a bit until the dizziness faded, then took a deep breath and held it.

Still holding my breath, I glanced over to the spacesuit and Hefty bag I’d used to outsmart the regulator. The bad news is I’d never removed them. The good news is the explosion removed them. Eight of the nine intakes for the regulator were still bagged, but this one would at least tell the truth.

Stumbling over to the regulator, I turned it back on.

After a two second boot process (it was made to start up fast for obvious reasons) it immediately identified the problem.

The shrill low-oxygen alarm blared throughout the Hab as the regulator dumped pure oxygen in to the atmosphere as fast as it safely could. Separating oxygen from the atmosphere is difficult and time consuming, but adding it is as simple as opening a valve.

I clambered over debris back to Lewis’s spacesuit and put my head back in for more good air. Within three minutes, the regulator had brought the Hab oxygen back up to par.

I noticed for the first time how burned my clothing was. It was a good time to be wearing three layers of clothes. Mostly the damage was on my sleves. The outer layer was gone. The middle layer was singed and burned clean through in places. The inner layer, my own uniform, was in reasonably good shape. Looks like I lucked out again.

Also, glancing at the Hab’s main computer, I see the temperature rose to 15C. Something very hot and very explodey happened, and I wasn’t sure what. Or how.

And that’s where I am now. Wondering what the hell happened.

After all that work and getting blown up, I’m exhausted. Tomorrow I’ll have to do a million equipment checks and try to figure out what blew up, but for now I just want to sleep.

I’m in the rover again tonight. Even with the hydrogen gone, I’m reluctant to hang out in a Hab that has a history of exploding for no reason. Plus, I can’t be sure there isn’t a leak.

This time, I brought a proper meal, and something to listen to that isn’t disco.

I spent the day running full diagnostics on every system in the Hab. It was incredibly boring, but my survival depends on these machines, so it had to be done. I can’t just assume an explosion did no long-term damage.

I did the most critical tests first. Number one was the integrity of the Hab canvas. I felt pretty confident it was in good shape, cause I’d spent a few hours asleep in the rover before returning to the Hab, and the pressure was still good. The computer reported no change pressure over that time, other than a minor fluctuation based on temperature.

Then I checked the Oxygenator. If that stops working and I can’t fix it, I’m a dead man. No problems.

Then the Atmospheric Regulator. Again, no problem.

Heating unit, primary battery array, O2 and N2 storage tanks, Water Reclaimer, all three airlocks, lighting systems, main computer… on and on I went, feeling better and better as each system proved to be in perfect working order.

Got to hand it to NASA. They don’t fuck around when making this stuff.

Then came the critical part… checking the dirt. Taking a few samples from all over the Hab (remember, it’s all dirt flooring now), I made some slides.

I took them over to the microscope and checked up on my beloved bacteria. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw healthy, active bacteria doing their thing.

Then I set about cleaning up the mess. And I had a lot of time to think about what had happened.

So what happened? Well, I have a theory.

According to the main computer, during the blast, the internal pressure spiked to 1.4 atmospheres, and the temperature rose to 15C in under a second. But the pressure quickly subsided back to 1atm. This would make sense if the Atmospheric Regulator were on, but I’d cut power to it.

The temperature remained 15C for some time afterward, so any heat expansion should still have been present. But the pressure dropped down again, so where did that extra pressure go? Raising the temperature and keeping the same number of atoms inside should permanently raise the pressure. But it didn’t.

I quickly realized the answer. The hydrogen (the only available thing to burn) combined with oxygen (hence combustion) and became water. Water is a thousand times as dense as a gas. So the heat added to the pressure, and the transformation of hydrogen and oxygen in to water brought it back down again.

The million dollar question is: Where the hell did the oxygen come from? The whole plan was to limit oxygen and keep an explosion from happening. And it was working for quite a while before blowing up.

I think I have my answer. And it comes down to me brain-farting. Remember when I decided not to wear a spacesuit? That decision almost killed me.

The medical O2 tank mixes pure oxygen with surrounding air, then feeds it to you through a mask. The mask stays on your face with a little rubber band that goes around the back of your neck. Not an air-tight seal.

I know what you’re thinking. The mask leaked oxygen. But no. I was breathing the oxygen. When I was inhaling, I made a nearly airtight seal with the mask by sucking it to my face.

The problem was the exhale . Do you know how much oxygen you absorb out of the air when you take a normal breath? I don’t know either, but it’s not 100%. With every breath, I was taking in oxygen, my lungs grabbed some of it, then I was breathing it out into the Hab. Every time I exhaled, I added more oxygen to the system.

It just didn’t occur to me. But it should have. If your lungs grabbed up all the oxygen, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation wouldn’t work. I’m such a dumb-ass for not thinking of it! And my dumbassery almost got me killed!

I’m really going to have to be more careful.

It’s a good thing I burned off most of the hydrogen before the explosion. Otherwise that would have been the end. As it is, the explosion wasn’t strong enough to pop the Hab. Though it was strong enough to almost blast my eardrums in.

The Water Reclaimer did its job last night and pulled another 50L of water out of the air. Long ago before hydrogen became the focus of my life, my problem was the 60L shortfall in water production. 50L of it is now in Lewis’s spacesuit, which I’ll call “The Cistern” from now on because it sounds cooler. The other 10L of water was absorbed by the dry soil.

Lots of physical labor today. I’ve earned a full meal. And to celebrate my first night back in the Hab, I’ll kick back and watch some shitty 20 thcentury TV courtesy of Commander Lewis.