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“Any ioes directly to the public”

“Again: so?”

“Mark Watney’s body will be within a twenty meters of the Hab Maybe partially buried in sand, but still very visible, and with a coes we take will show that”

Venkat stared Then glared “This is why you denied ery requests for two months?”

“Venk, come on-“

“Really, Teddy?” he said “You’re afraid of a PR problem?”

“Theto taper off,” Teddy said evenly “It’s been bad press after bad press for two ives people closure, and theant to do is dredge everything back up”

“So what do we do, then? He’s not going to decompose He’ll be there forever”

“Not forever,” Teddy said “Within a year, he’ll be covered in sand from normal weather activity”

“A year?” Venkat said, rising to his feet “That’s ludicrous We can’t wait a year for this”

“Why not? Ares 5 won’t even launch for another five years Plenty of time”

Venkat took a deep breath and thought for a moment

“Ok, consider this,” he said “Sy the body back We don’t say that’s the purpose of the mission, but we make it clear that would be part of it If we fraress But not if ait a year In a year, people won’t care any more”

Teddy rubbed his chin “Hmm…”

Mindy stared at the ceiling She had little else to do The 3am shift was pretty dull Only a constant stream of coffee kept her awake

Monitoring the status of satellites around Mars sounded like an exciting proposition when she took the transfer But the satellites tended to take care of theery became available

“Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering,” she gruht photo booth”

She sipped her coffee

A flicker on her screen announced another set of ies were ready for dispatch She checked the name on the work order Venkat Kapoor

Posting the data directly to internal servers, she composed an eitude of the inized the numbers

“312°N, 285°W… Acidalia Planitia… Ares 3?”

Out of curiosity, she brought up the first of the 17 ies

As she suspected, it was the Ares 3 site She’d heard they were going to ie for any sign on Mark Watney’s dead body After a , she was simultaneously relieved and disappointed

She e The Hab was intact; Dr Kapoor would be happy to see that

She brought the coffeeto her lips, then froze

“Um…” she mumbled to herself “Uhhh…”

Quickly bringing up the NASA intranet, she navigated through the site to the specifics of the Ares missions After some quick research, she picked up her phone