On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) Read Free Page B

calling the mechanism a few choice names; questioning its parentage, like I did with my snow blower during a particularly rough winter, years before on Terra.
    After giving up that plan, I re-oriented myself. I floated down to the lower side of the 2 metre long hatch, hunkered down and pressed the back of my pressure suit and PLISS pack (air tanks, etc.) against the frame. I then placed my foot on the lever, and started pushing. I was straining hard, grunting, and then started kicking again, “Close! … Close! … Close!” Finally it gave. The lever moved forward like there had never been a problem. The tight wing went slack, and a sudden “ Oh, shit ” sent me scrambling out of the wing-well. I had visions of the solar wing fully retracting on me, and sealing me in the wing-well like a tomb. Of course, it didn’t retract. It had just gone a bit slack without the tension of the locking mechanism.
    The rest of the process was easy. Crank in the tension cable a bit, fold the first solar panel flat, crank in the tension cable a bit more, then fold the next solar panel flat; but in the opposite direction. I started out thinking it was easy work, even though it was slow. The solar wings were 49 metres long, and had 156 solar panels. The crank, fold and placement for each panel took about five minutes. However, my nitrogen bottles (hey, I’m a rebel), only lasted a little over four hours. The stowage process took thirteen hours. Then you had to add in the time it took to get the wing unlocked, get the hatch finally sealed shut, stop to fill my nitrogen bottles four times, and take a break for lunch during one of the refills. In total, my port wing debacle was a nineteen hour exercise. At the end of it, I was exhausted. At first I thought manual labour in zero-g would be easy, but it’s not quite the walk in the park you would think. If anything, you spend more exertion keeping yourself anchored and oriented, as you do the actual work.
    There was a whole list of things to do on a clock that was getting smaller, but I had to sleep at this point. I set the alarm for four hours, but wound up sleeping through it and waking up after six. A dozen messages were waiting for me from Flight Control. Hans Gohs, the on duty Mission Director, was beside himself. He didn’t outwardly show it, but I had spent a lot of time with the man back on Terra and I could tell he was ready to chew bubble gum, and kick ass. Mainly the ass of the person who programmed the software for the port wing retraction, but I knew I better be a bit “Yes, Sir. No, Sir. Three bags full Sir”, or else he might turn his attention to my ass.
    Roughly forty-six hours until descent, and the next glitch struck.
    After waking up and listening to Hans’ messages, I had to hit the head. In my haste (both to get to business, and to get this particular business done), I failed to notice the absence of a negative pressure lock when I sat on the space potty. You see, when you make nice-nice in space, the toilet actually has a slight negative pressure inside. It basically suctions itself to your butt or your penis (separate hose for peeing), so that what you eliminate from your body goes down into the small tank that holds it until you vent it to space. However, like I said, I failed to notice the absence of negative pressure.
    The Mission Control propeller-head weenies informed me later that when I had been sitting in the wing well with my suit pressed back against the frame for leverage to move the lever of the locking mechanism; my suit had damaged the controller that held the negative pressure in the holding tank. The wing well was right beside where the transit vehicles’ head was, and some knob of a designer had put the controller in the port solar wing well.
    I finished my business and moved away from the toilet seat (which was supposed to snap a cover closed when you moved away from it); but the cover never snapped shut because there was no negative pressure. As I