GroupsConvenient link to the Master List.Faris concentrates on driving the scrapbot around, trying to find a high clear point to get the lay of the land. He wracks his brain for a way to leave the lifeboat, thinking about how much easier this would be. But with the one space suit disassembled to build the scrapbot, leaving would be problematic to say the least. Something about that logical progression seems very irritating...
At any rate, coordinating with Trippy and Harry helps little. The scrapbot just can't see anything. Until finally, it finds it's way up a long shallow hill, peaking through a gap in the rocks. There's too much dust in the air to see very far, but the bot can make out a line of lumps too smooth and gray to be native rocks off in the distance. The rangefinder suggests they're about a half kilometer away. A bit nearer and toward the end of the line, in the dustiest area you can still see, is a very distinct tower-like structure. Trippy thinks that must be him.
Squeegy chills out in Caisleán Piliúir, pitting his agricultural knowhow against the implacable strength of Mars. Perhaps the native soil could be fertilized enough to grow Terran plants? But there's no air. A supported cavern perhaps, with fluorescent lighting...
The banging is too much to bear. The fellow must be getting desperate, and his pounding is growing softer and slower. Maybe, with a little ingenuity, you can get him inside...
You know it's death outside – looking around, you find a particularly large plastic bag that. Blowing it up as a test, you think it could work as a balloon by putting it over your head and twisting the collar tight.
Outside the fridge, the bit of ruined hallway is nearly out of air, but the doors close fast enough to keep too much more from escaping. It's also stupifyingly cold, but your head bag keeps your face from instantly freezing. You find the (now) exterior door the banging was coming from, and throw it open. In falls another figure wearing ordinary mission fatigues, with a water cooler over his head. It's not easy lugging him and keeping your airbag tight, but you manage to drag him back up the hall, and throw him into the fridge.
He lays there, writhing on the floor, occasionally making an attempt at screaming. You throw some wrappers over him to try to warm him up, but it's laughably ineffective. You can't think of anything else to do for him, so you crack open a meal you'd been eying labeled “Fish, w/ Chips”. Either the freeze-drying rendered the potato wedges flat, or some pillock American did the labeling, but these aren't the chips you were hoping for.
After some minutes of a very bland meal, you notice the frozen man start to pick himself up. He tears off his frosted water cooler – it's Kallev White from the bridge crew. Slowly he manages to focus his eyes somewhere close to you. “Crisp?” you offer – no need to be rude.
The dust looks like it should be a while away. You tell the robots to roam around a little more while you set to work building some monster help. Between the four bots you disassembled to make the solar train, the two that didn't survive the landing, and the two working ones left here, you have plenty of parts to bung together a massive robot, to build or drag as need be.
The robots were really meant to be customized, but they're as modular as manipulating machines need to be. You easily strip the scientific equipment off the still functional bots, and start arranging everything as you think you'll need it. But the bruises you took on landing are finally making themselves known now that the adrenaline of the crash has worn off. You've got everything set up and cataloged for use by your set-of-the-pants planning after a half hour, but there's a lot of assembling left to do.
Before anyone can try going outside, Vlad runs back in with more news. A couple people are alive in the Medical Bay, but the pod is collapsing and they don't have any pressure suits to leave with. Relenting in the face of saving lives, Serg and Rosie let Vlad clean the suits up and run back out with them.
Worried about the remaining power supply, Rosie cranks the water pump by hand to get the rest of the water off the floor. It takes a while, but efficiency is everything, so the pumping goes easy. After nearly half an hour, the water is down to puddles the hoses can't quite pick up.
Serg gathers up the sheeting and poles meant for making a greenhouse, trying a test assemblage. The ruckus is too much for the little space – it'll just have to be trusted outside, though there's no reason why it shouldn't snap together.
Somebody apparently didn't put a lot of thought on how to get the greenhouse material out of the pod. One wall was supposed to lift away, opening into a shack built around the lab. But now, everything has to go in and out of an office, and the greenhouse pieces, especially all bundled together, can't quite fit.
You head back into the Hydro Lab to get the spare suits. Serg and Rosie have their own ideas about using them for some exploratory work, but they relent quickly. Work later, lives first.
You jog back down the hills to the Medical Bay, suits in tow. After the hike, you meet Qwerty outside, desperately and fruitlessly trying to patch the pod back into shape. You wonder exactly how to get the suits inside, but Qwerty already worked out a plan. The people inside piled some supplies in an office they've been using as a airlock. You'll leave the suits there, cycle the doors, let them get the suits, and start carting out the luggage while they change.
The plan proceeds as such, though it's clear the pod doesn't like being used as an airlock. You discuss with Qwerty exactly how you're going to move the several armloads of medical supplies, air tanks, coolers, and miscellaneous equipment back up the hills. As if on cue, a massive hulk rolls up out of a nearby gully into your little camp.
It's the large mission rover. Looking through the window, you recognize Andrezj Mosciski at the wheel. He mimes out that he can't radio out, and doesn't have a pressure suit of his own. But the rover has an airlock, seats, and cargo space.
After a few minutes of loading, Roy Boucher and Dr. Saberi emerge from the medical pod with a few more things. The Bay may not be able to close again, and is effectively out of air now anyway. At about the same time, an intermittent radio contact comes vaunting into the group – Simon Simmons, fresh from the Biology Lab, somewhere in the area.
Now what to do with the lot of you...
Only Dietrich knows now...
Your tank is too fogged to see out of any more. Your vision goes dim. You've long since lost contact with your hands, or any other part of your body.
So it comes as a shock when your sense of balance starts coming back, and the world feels sideways and moving. Only when you hit the floor does it occur to your frozen brain that it's yourself moving around. Perception fades in and out as you slowly regain feeling, all your nerves in a vocal panic after the last few minutes.
After what feels like an eternity in a world of pain, you snap into a moment of clarity. Still can't see anything. Helmet in the way. Helmet pulled off. The world slowly spins into focus, blurry even without the tank.
You see a vaguely familiar face looming over – it takes a minute to remember him as Long John Silver, the British professor. He's very calmly eating a freeze-dried meal. Seeing you've regained consciousness, he holds out a piece to you. “Crisp?”
You seal up the terrariums before you leave – your little friends are important in themselves. There's no airlock, but ducking through the door quickly is easy enough.
And with that, you've emerged onto Mars. It's just as the brochure described – dusty, rocky, red, and desolate. Cycling through the radio finds a channel with plenty of other voices. “Trippy” Sergio has been trying to coordinate the efforts of what you gather is nearly two dozen people, who all somehow survived the crash.
Idly paying attention to the conversation, finding a safe place and other physical people being higher on your mind, you llok around for landmarks. Comparing with Trippy and a couple other voices, you determine that you're in between a large smoking hulk and a growing dust cloud moving in. Another group including Vladimir and Qwerty is in the same general location, but you can't see them.
Movement does catch your eye after a minute though – what looks like the large mission rover, driving around a gully nearby. It doesn't see you though, or respond to any hails. Lacking any better ready option, you jog off after it. Naturally, it heads away from you, but stops a few minutes later near a large metallic lump obviously not native to Mars.
More jogging and radioing follows, and eventually you arrive as well. Three figures in pressure suits are lugging bundles around – they identify themselves as Vlad Sephanovich, Roy Boucher, and Dr. Shideh Saberi. Another person in a scorched space suit turns out to be Qwerty. Andrezj Mosciski is in the rover – the radio doesn't work, and he doesn't have a suit of his own. They're all taking supplies and themselves back up the hills to the Hydroponic Lab, since the Medbay isn't safe anymore.
Seems natural to head to other people, and Geoffrey couldn't agree more. Comparing viewpoints over the radio, the other group is made up of Vernon, Strife, Tetsuo, Augusta, and Harry in his Auger. They're all committed to driving about and finding more people in the same direction you're walking from. You all link up and pile on the Auger, to drive of to another large chunk of wreckage Strife spotted.
(Events continue in that group listing.)
Eventually, you'll have to head outside with the others. You drag out the one EVA suit left and give it a thorough inspection for damage. The suit looks to be fine except for some spark burns from the shorts than ran through the Bay when it crashed. Starting up the built-in computer, it was obviously scrambled by a power surge, but reboots just fine with a full system check.
The radio in the helmet is another matter. Just like before, you manage to find a few voices, obviously carrying on conversations with people you can't hear. Yakking accomplishes nothing – no one responds to anything you say.
Setting it aside for the time being, you get back to fixing machinery, starting with wrapping and capping more pipes. Not everything can actually be reached without disassembling the whole module, but lot of sealer and elbow grease seals off everything you can get to. Long term mission that this was, that includes everything truly critical to replenishing the air supply at least.
The scrubbers are put back together even easier. As vital as they are, scrubbers are mechanically simple devices. You sock back in what isn't broken, and replace or separate what is.
A good, rapid half-hour's work altogether. Without a computer or a proper power supply, there's not much you can do with any of it, but at least you know the capability exists to keep some air clean, and efficiently split water.
Harry has had all the crap he can take, and is driving to some other wreckage whether anybody else is coming on not. Strife agrees that more people have to be found. According to the radio, another group is forming on one side of the bridge, so this side needs to be searched. Tetsuo likes the plan, and knows having a vehicle will be an immense help. Vernon is ready to go too, and Augusta will stay with whoever else is around.
To save everyone the trouble, Vernon hops up on the Auger to ride it, and Harry lets everyone else on board. With Vlad and Qwerty running around on one side of the bridge (the smoking hulk everyone saw, from the remaining air venting out), the logical direction to search is the other way, where a couple more blocks of wreckage can be seen in the distance.
Coordinating by radio, the whole group links up with Louise and Geoffrey near one of the three big cubes in the crash-line. This being the Engineering Bay, with Pitor still inside, and the other cube being the Vehicle Bay Harry escaped from, that only leaves the far away one. With Louise and Geof precariously riding along, Harry drives off into the distance. Lucky it's this way too – there's a serious dust cloud rolling down the crash site from the other end. Taking a look around, the group spots more bits of wreckage up the nearer mountain, around from where Strife says his part of the ship landed.
Finally, the ride arrives and the able bodies pile off. This big cube looks just like the others from outside, and no door is readily visible...
With no radio and stuck down in a gulch, you're pretty lost on where to go. But a wisp of what looks like smoke appears over a ridge – figuring any recognizable spot is better than nothing, you drive for it, going slow so as to not risk damaging the rover any more.
While cresting a hill, you notice a few silvery blobs moving around closer than the fading smoke. They come into focus as people, running around a lump of smooth gray. Finally grinding your way out of the depression you practically barge into them and the pile of stuff they're standing around.
You find the two of them, one wearing a purpose made pressure suit, the other a scorched space suit. Without a radio, you can't communicate. You do your best charade to that effect, along with pointing out that you can't get out of the rover. They start discussing something between them, when two more people come out of the ship module you're gathered around. Judging by the shapes and symbols, the luggage they're carrying looks like medical supplies.
More discussion you're not part of ensues, and a fifth person ables out of the hills to join the group. Looks like you got here just in time.
The radio conversation wobbles between full on madhouse and rambling carnival. Harry and Strife are trying to pull at least their group together, and having more luck than you did. You leave them to it, and decide you can't put it off any longer. You've got to do something about the corpse.
There's not much in the Observation Pod, certainly not that you can find without hobbling too far. But you notice after a minute's picking that the seats are covered with a thin wrapping, probably a removable cover for cleanliness. Gingerly moving to another seat, you manage to peel the whole thing off, then another for good measure to get an opaque sheet.
Not knowing many words, you give the poor guy a silent farewell. When you can properly bury him, maybe there'll be something more to say.
Time passes quickly. You give some more sighting information over the radio. Simon Simmons the entomologist is still alive, and now walking around. The tiny robot Faris built has sight of your tower now. Harry's convoy picked up Louise and Geoffrey, and is heading off to search another piece of wreckage. Vlad and Qwerty got some suits to Roy and Dr. Saberi, and Andrezj and Simon both found them. The whole group is coming together finally. Nobody went closer to the smoking hulk - apparently it was just the bridge, venting out the last of it's air.
Meanwhile, the wind is getting louder, and visibility through your big windows is nearly nil. Judging by other people's viewpoints, there's a dust cloud rolling over the crash zone, and you're at the head of it right now.
The two of you hash out a plan with Qwerty, by yelling to him through the wall some more. To get the suits in will require cycling the office/airlock again, and again and again to get you out, along with all the supplies you want to bring. It should only take two or three such cycles.
Until then, you bundle up anything Shideh thinks could be useful into blankets and pile it by the door. Plamsa bags, medicine, air tanks, tools and appliances of all kinds, and the bedding itself of course. You start wondering about just how you're going to move it all wherever you're going.
Eventually Qwerty signals that the suits are ready to bring in. Two cycles get them into you, and Qwerty and Vlad to the supplies. The pod didn't like that at all, and with no way to preserve the air, it's getting thin inside. You and Shideh breath bottled oxygen while you get into the pressure suits. With that done, at least you don't have to worry about suffocation for a while.
The last cycle to get outside expends nearly all the air the Bay has left, and frame doesn't look like it'll let you close the internal door again. But everyone is alive, relatively safe, and you've got plenty of stuff. Welcome to the surface of Mars...
Logistics comes back to mind right as the baggage camp is shadowed by a giant hulk climbing over the red hills. You recognize the serendipitous behemoth as the large mission rover, a bit dented but driving. You can see Andrezj Mosciski inside, who pantomimes that he can't get out or use the radio.
While discussing how to use this new boon between the five of you now gathered around, another figure walks up, announcing himself on the radio. It's Simon Simmons from the Biology Lab, out trying to find more people. You tell him he's in luck, because it's getting crowded now.
You press your helmet against a wall, and yell through to Roy and Shideh about the situation with Vlad. The three of you hash out a plan to get the suits inside and a pile of supplies back out, by cycling through the office/airlock as few times as possible. No telling how many times it'll work, but it's the only option.
While you wait for Vlad to get back, you walk around the pod, looking for way to patch it back together. You have little luck. The air leaks are hard to pack with dirt, and there's nothing you can do to keep the structure from bulging when pressurized.
Eventually, you're relieved from this when Vlad comes back. The plan to swap cargo with the other survivors goes through this far, and you start dragging stuff outside. You discuss with Vlad exactly how you're going to move the several armloads of medical supplies, air tanks, coolers, and miscellaneous equipment back up the hills. As if on cue, a massive hulk rolls up out of a nearby gully into your little camp.
It's the large mission rover. Looking through the window, you recognize Andrezj Mosciski at the wheel. He mimes out that he can't radio out, and doesn't have a pressure suit of his own. But the rover has an airlock, seats, and cargo space.
After a few minutes of loading, Roy Boucher and Dr. Saberi emerge from the medical pod with a few more things. The Bay may not be able to close again, and is effectively out of air now anyway. At about the same time, an intermittent radio contact comes vaunting into the group – Simon Simmons, fresh from the Biology Lab, somewhere in the area.
Now what to do with the lot of you...
Simon has managed to leave his Pod, and is yet another body about. He had the same problem not being able to talk on the radio from inside as other people.
Simon has joined with Vlad, Qwerty, Andrezj, Roy, and Shideh outside the Medical Bay. Strife, Tetsuo, Augusta, Louise, Vernon, and Geoffrey are riding on the Auger, with Harry at the wheel, now at an unidentified hunk of wreckage.
The Next TurnNext turn will be an even 20 minutes, making that 2 hours done. Do what you can in that time. People still traveling about, you can take cues from what has and hasn't been accomplished each turn to figure out how far different locations are from each other.
I promise that this turn, I'll try writing up results as they come in. If everyone can get their actions in by Sunday morning (GMT -6), I'll have the turn done by Sunday afternoon. If not, I have my Monday morning stuff off, so it'll be then at the latest. I've underestimated a bit just how little free time my schedule this semester leaves me, but I'll do my best to maintain a turn or two a week at the least. Once everyone bunches up and starts delegating chores, I won't have to write as much, and this should go quicker.
Just for the record, one big hang-up this time was that I had to write different versions of the same results five different times for all the people around the lab modules. God will I be glad when the whole group is back together.
And if anybody can think of a better way of tracking and listing everyone's personal relationships and contact information, I'm all ears.
Also, I'll be working a new area and person into the end of the next update. Obviously, nobody actually knows that, so I'm trusting you all to stay on the honor system.
Other corrections will go here as they inevitably arrive.
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Topic: Angry Red Planet - Totally And Completely Dead (Read 48153 times)