How It All Goes Down
- After a day of thought, Mark figures out yet another classic Watney Plan. He's going to set two batteries out on the surface—one north of his location, and one south. By checking their power levels over the next few days, he should get a good indication of where—and how fast—the storm is moving.
- His experiment complete, Mark determines that he can "avoid [the storm] by heading south a way, letting it pass [...] to the north, then heading east again" (23.46). Might as well throw in a few Tokyo Drifts for good measure.
- Four days later, Mark finally emerges from the other side of the storm. Hallelujah! He should reach the Ares 4 site in two weeks, which only places him four days behind schedule.
- Then, just like that, Mark is preparing to descend into the Schiaparelli Crater. Time flies when you're having fun... or facing a life-or-death situation. All he needs to do is drive down a natural feature called "the entrance ramp" and he'll be right outside his brand new Hab (23.94)
- As usual, everything goes wrong. Although Mark tries to drive carefully, he ends up flipping the rover on the way down the ramp. Okay, so maybe Tokyo Drifting was a bad idea.