UnusualAttitude

Martin Freeman is awesome in a number of roles (as Bilbo Baggins and Dr. Watson in Sherlock), but those of us who grew up with the BBC remember the original voice of Arthur Dent as played by Simon Jones in the radio plays, and later the 1980s TV series of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His cranky, high-pitched voice expresses the anguish of being a normal guy plucked out of a mundane existence and blasted unwittingly into space perfectly. It suits Camwise well, I think.

Oh, right, yes, the Potted Plant is a sort of brick joke, then. It is also one of these. The Vrijheid Cooperative is an independant organisation attempting to defy the crushing monopoly of the three mega-corporations that dominate Earth. (Vrijheid means freedom or liberty). I must confess that I originally imagined that this cooperative was based in southern Africa, and I should have used Afrikaans (Vryheid). But I didn't, so there you go. They are therefore officially from the lowlands of northern Europe. Good luck importing your uranium ore from Antartica up there for a profit. It's hardly surprising that they went bust.

By bilingual bonus, I assume you mean Station Vrijheid. But what's this brick joke ?

About three weeks, putting in a couple of hours 3-4 nights per week. Although it seemed like longer. The autorove mod made it possible (it would have been about 400 hours of driving otherwise, which is something no-one wants to do). Most of the time was trundling around looking for the perfect screenshot and taking panoramic views.

Then you are not alone in your weirdness. In fact, a while back I took this one step further and actually recorded myself reading through a few passages of The Camwise Logs and forced myself to listen to it. It really brought to light the fact that many of my sentences were too long and convoluted. I'm really trying to make an effort to slowly improve that now. Really. And the thing about a first-person log (and maybe this is what @adsii1970 meant, because he is basically doing the same thing), is that you have to imagine your whole narrative with this voice, not just the dialogues. There is no neutral "voiceless narrator". The whole thing is a monologue of your main character(s). So it must be consistent and distinctive, without being over-the-top and impossible to keep up for 100,000 words or more. That is really hard to do for Bartdon, in particular, with all his damning and blasting. It's just one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose... By the way, my inner Bartdon sounds almost exactly like John Rhys-Davies. Froemone is, of course, uhm... Elon Musk. Not sure about Camwise. Maybe an improbably tech-savvy Arthur Dent with a slight gallic accent. Weird indeed.

Great conclusion to a wonderfully creepy set of chapters.

Ah... hours of trundling across highlands and canyons, flipping on those invisible fault lines. Good times. It may be flippy, but it looks like a tough little machine.

So, that's the score. See what you can come up with. Out of respect for readers who are just along for the ride, please use spoiler tags.

YEAR 12, DAY 73. CAMWISE. When we touched down at Omelek, every precaution was taken to ensure that my return was kept a closely guarded secret amongst a small circle of engineers who could be trusted. I could not simply step off the aircraft and saunter into Mission Control, or wander through the bustling alleys and hangars of the complex. I was still supposed to be pumping gas down at the South Pole, and a significant proportion of the Space Centre's senior staff might still recognise me. “Where are you going to take me?” I asked Catbeth as we taxied in to park. “To your old office in the R&D facility. It's still empty.” “But how will I get there without being seen?” “Don't worry, Cam. We have you covered.” In the end, I was carried from the freight depot to my office in a wooden crate by a couple of unwitting kerbs who thought they were delivering new furniture. It was large enough and well padded with cardboard, but unfortunately for me, the crate did not sport a “this way up” label. As a result, the whole experience was rather unpleasant and I was most relieved when they set me down with a final thump and slammed the door behind them. Silence. I was soon wondering whether the various parties who were responsible for smuggling me in would remember to send someone to let me out of the crate, the top of which had been nailed shut to avoid me tumbling out and giving myself away. I was starting to feel a little cramped and it was hot. I had gone from spending more than two years at constant sub-zero temperatures, and here it was thirty in the shade. Finally the door creaked open, footsteps crossed the room, and without hesitation someone began to prise the lid open. It came off with a crack and light streamed in, temporarily blinding me. A figure stood over me holding a crowbar. “Uhm, hello Camwise,” said Froemone. I unfolded my cramped limbs from the crate and leaned against it heavily as I got my bearings. Nearly six long years had passed since I had last been here, but at first glance everything seemed to be as I had left it. My desk, the filing cabinet, the small window with a view to the southern side of the island and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Wait, no... something was missing... “Would you like to sit down?” Froemone interrupted my thoughts. “We have a lot to cover.” Omelek's Senior Engineer had aged visibly since our last meeting, but most of all he looked as if he hadn't slept in several days. He was carrying a thick pile of documents that he threw in a heap on the desk and sat down in front of it heavily, waving at me to take a seat also. “I can't stay here with you long,” he began, “so I'll get straight to what.. uhm... happened. Last time I wrote to you, Bartdon and his team were still on the surface of Mars. They made an important discovery there. I got your letter, and we must talk about that later. But I don't think it has any direct link with the present situation.” Froemone went on to tell me about Quissac's successful return to orbit, and Bartdon's second flight in Cadrieu to Deimos, then finally back to the inner moon, Phobos. “Two days ago at 8:27 UT, as Cadrieu was taking on water and producing hydrogen fuel on the surface of Phobos, an explosion occurred. It's origin appears to be one of the ship's oxygen tanks beneath the pressurised hull and crew quarters, although we cannot be sure. The blast flipped Cadrieu several metres into the air, and she came to rest on her side. This secondary impact caused additional damage to some of her solar arrays and radiators. The hull was not breached, and life support systems are still intact and functional. The crew were not hurt... uhm... too badly.” I gaped at Froemone in wide-eyed horror as he continued with his story. “That's it for the good news, I'm afraid. Both of Cadrieu's lower attitude thrusters were knocked out by the explosion, as well as her main engine. The irony of the situation is that they have fuel, and could perhaps even get the ISRU rig up and running again. But they have no viable propulsion system. Even Munvey says that there is no way he can fly her with just the remaining attitude thrusters.” “Then get Laroque up there, now!” I started, “surely we can find a way to get them off the surface..?” Froemone reached out across the desk and gripped my arm. “I haven't finished,” he said in a quiet voice and continued without letting go, “almost simultaneously, there was an explosion on Laroque. In the aft section, near the NTR.” “No...” I whispered. My dear, stupid cousin. And Lisabeth... “The reactor was shut down at the time, but most of the sensors are either knocked out or giving false readings so we have no clear picture of what went wrong. Against our advice, CE Karanda performed an EVA to assess the damage. Her dosimeter began to spike before she could get anywhere near, so she returned to the airlock. “As of now, she does not present any symptoms of an acute radiation dosage, and levels remain acceptable throughout the crew quarters. But...” Froemone's hold on my arm became a death-grip. “...she saw enough to confirm that the NTR's exhaust has been destroyed. Laroque is dead in space too, Camwise.” In the long silence that followed, I tore myself from Froemone's grasp and made my way over to the window. I was suddenly aware that the musty smell of years of accumulated dust and the stifling heat that prevailed in my office. I threw open the window and felt the gentle kiss of fresh air seep into the room, carrying the sound of the bustling hive of activity in the R&D centre below, and the distant crash of the waves as they rolled onto the shore of the island. Such a simple gesture, yet such a privilege for we, the earthbound. “So we're looking at a reactor meltdown...” I said, thinking aloud, “but if the pressure shell holds, then they're safe for now, aren't they?” “Yes...” Froemone admitted, “until they run out of life support, and with just the three of them on board, that won't happen for a while. We could maybe run a supply mission before then. But Bartdon, Mitzon and Munvey will run out of food long before we could get anything to Cadrieu on Phobos, even if we use our biggest launcher. They will starve to death.” “How much food do they have?” “They have started rationing already. The lander will run out of solid food in just over thirty days. How long they can survive after that is anyone's guess.” A month. This was pathetic. We were talking about living, breathing Kerbals who were more than three hundred million kilometres away, and we had one month with which to provide assistance. That just wasn't going to happen. They might just as well have been at the other end of the galaxy. Unless... “Froe... Quissac is still docked to Laroque, right? And one of the transfer stages? Is there any fuel left in the tug's tank? You said that they went to Phobos to get more before landing on Mars...” Froemone sighed and looked wearier than ever. “We have assessed that solution already. With the remaining fuel in the tug's tank we come up short. Even if they strip down Quissac completely, she will need another 200 m/s to have any hope of performing a transfer from LMO to Phobos and landing.” “And could Lisabeth take her back down to Mars and refuel on the surface?” I insisted. “Yes, if she ignores every previous simulation that has failed to land safely with less than 50% fuel and manages to pull it off. Extremely risky, but maybe possible. Although it wouldn't help in any way: Quissac uses all of her fuel just to get to Low Martian Orbit. Getting Quissac directly to Phobos from the surface of Mars would be impossible, even if fully fuelled.” I looked out across the calm waters of the Pacific as the afternoon sun began its swift equatorial plunge towards the horizon; something else that I had not seen in years. There was nothing to say. “I have to go, Camwise,” Froemone said at last. “Everything we know about the situation is detailed in this report.” He tapped the heavy file on my desk. “I just want you to know that I'm not expecting anything from you. But if you think of something we've missed, call this number and I'll pick up straight away.” He lifted the receiver of the old telephone on my desk and put it to his ear, listening for a tone. After six years of gathering dust, it still worked. “Huh,” he grumbled, slamming it back down again, “I wish our spaceships were that reliable...” He stood up and made for the door. “Froemone, this wasn't an accident, was it?” I shot at his back. He turned slowly and stared at me, blinking. “What if it wasn't?” “If the Board rejects any conceivable rescue plan, do we have any hope of bringing them back?” “Omelek still belongs to us, for now,” he replied, gritting his teeth, “so what else can we do, other than try and find a solution for them?” After he left, I began to leaf through the pile of reports that he had left on the desk. They described the situation in excruciating detail and quoted estimations of remaining propellant, life support reserves, delta-vee requirements for reaching the crew stranded on Phobos... Having listened to Froemone's account, it was a depressingly predictable read but I gave it my best shot regardless. I focussed on Quissac, the descent and ascent shuttle, since she was the only remaining vehicle with a functional propulsion system. I considered every possibility, including stripping off any unneeded mass, even the avionics package and the landing struts. I postulated that Laroque's attitude thrusters could be used to give her a slight push and a head start. But I eventually found that every gram of weight that could be gained and every metre per second added had already been accounted for by Froemone's team. Quissac just wasn't going to reach Phobos from Low Martian Orbit. She ended up either stranded in a higher orbit, or crashing in to Phobos at more than 100 m/s. I stretched, rubbed my eyes, and made my way over to the window again. As I had pored over the documents, late afternoon had moved on swiftly into night. I had made no useful progress and up there, the sands of time continued to flow unabated. Either from radiation poisoning or from starvation, death would come for them sooner or later. I glanced around at my office once more and as my eyes settled on my filing cabinet, I finally realised what was missing. My potted plant had gone.

If you look back through the dates of his log entries, you will see that Camwise spent more than two years working on the icecrawler with Gemxy in the Antarctic. Time kinda flies when you then focus on a mission to Mars. But certainly he and Gemxy were close, and his departure was... unexpected. Sadly, Camwise has a problem with longing for something (a Kerbelle) he cannot have. Just say the word "Lisab..." and he comes running, even though he knows deep down that it cannot end well. I agree that this is tragic, indeed there is a little bit of the author's own personal experience there. And before you ask, no, she wasn't called Lisabeth. Maybe, just maybe, we haven't seen the last of Gemxy. But, as always, if she reappears, it will be at a most unexpected moment. Thank you very much for commenting: it is always particularly encouraging for me to realise that some of my readers are attentive to the finer details of my story.

Well, it is supposed to be cryptic. If you remember from this entry, Bartdon asked Karanda to write a message to Omelek. She was to warn Foremone and his team of a possible threat to Earth and disguise her meaning as the usual abusive garbage she would write to her cousin, Camwise. The whole point of the operation was to get the message through to Froemone without its content being immediately obvious to the Board (who are clearly monitoring all transmissions from Mars to Earth closely). In French, boulet is often used to signify "cannon ball". A "cannon ball from the heavens" is pretty self-explanatory, hence the "umbrella" required to protect the planet. As for the Party-Animal, and the Old Man's place, you literally need to brush up on your classics.

Steady on the pies there, Shania. You don't want to come in over budget.

...and merely the family-friendly version of it. By the way, for those of you who don't speak any French, here is a full literal translation of Karanda's letter.

Heh. Let's hope he is as good at surviving as his Earth-born cousin with a similar name. Fair winds to your Elcano crew !

Heh, sorry. I mean, it's not as if I chose that opening sentence to mislead my readers on purpose... No sir, absolutely not. Me, do such a thing ?

YEAR 12, DAY 20. CAMWISE. We listened to them over the radio as they died slowly, one after the other. Prospection Station Vrijheid 2 was a small mineral exploration camp that one of the struggling independent companies had set up in Antarctica. A last-ditch attempt to escape the smothering monopoly of the Big Three had brought a skeleton crew of desperate engineers and geologists to the hellish conditions of the Adelie Coast. Here, they had hoped to find rare earth deposits and ore that was sufficiently rich in uranium to try leaching it out of the ground. Two decades ago, such a venture would have been unthinkable, as the cost of extracting, processing and shipping minerals from such a hostile environment would have been prohibitive. But as the years went by, unclaimed resources became scarcer and the noose that Trans Pacific, Trans Atlantic, and Trans Indian held around the world's neck tightened slowly but surely. The choke-hold was such that some of the smaller settlements had formed cooperatives, trying to break free by finding up their own sources of energy or income. Drawing on new extraction techniques, they sought out deposits in the most distant and inaccessible places of our planet. A small minority of these projects were successful, but this only encouraged the cooperatives to push on to ever greater risks. In some cases, these independent exploration camps turned out to be ill-advised mistakes that payed the price of failure in Kerbal lives. Such was the tragic fate of Station Vrijheid 2. The Vrijheid Cooperative had already been in dire straits when we had last visited the station two months ago. It was a bleak and desolate place, situated on one of the ice plateaus about two hundred kilometres inland, near a mountain range that the geologists hoped to exploit. Whereas the summer temperatures could be bearable near the edge of the ice-shelf, up here at altitude they could still drop to forty below at night, and the wind chill factors were vicious. I remember the ragged team of Kerbals milling aimlessly amongst a group of inadequately equipped huts that were in urgent need of repair. We offloaded the pitifully small amount of food, medical supplies and kerosene that happened to be all that they could afford. Tucked in the back of our icecrawler, Montbrun, was a badly needed back-up generator that had been ordered by the cooperative to replace the ageing and sputtering turbine that kept the outpost alive. However, Trans Pacific had called the previous day to inform us that the Vrijheid Cooperative no longer had the means to pay for it. The generator would stay in our cargo hold; we were not to unload it under any circumstances. Commander Tirice had offered to evacuate the team there and then and let the bean-counters squabble over compensation later if they really had to. This suggestion of surrender was met with hostile glares from the half-starved crowd that now surrounded Tirice and I at the bottom of the cargo ramp. You could see the hatred for the Company in their eyes. They would not accept defeat and the shameful prospect of being given a ride home by the enemy. “At least let me take a look at that generator...” I offered, knowing that if it packed in then they were as good as dead. I thought of the Company-owned research stations and their redundant power supplies housed in separate, well-spaced buildings. Some of the larger bases were even equipped with nukes. These guys had nothing. “You will leave, now,” said the Chief Engineer of Vrijheid 2 in a gruff, broken common tongue. And, since our crew of four now faced a dozen increasingly angry and desperate prospectors with nothing to lose, we closed up shop and left. As Montbrun pulled out, I spotted three kerb-sized mounds of snow in a line, a stone's throw away from the camp. The cold and lack of supplies had already claimed its first victims. Last week we were returning to Knox along the coast when the blizzards started. Temperatures plunged far below zero and the whole region became cut off from the outside. In these impossible conditions, a fire had broken out in the hut housing the generator at Vrijheid 2. In the polar regions, a fire can be every bit as deadly as the pervasive, soul-numbing cold. With little liquid water on hand to fight it and a howling gale to fan the flames, the Station was reduced to a jumble of burnt-out ruins in minutes. As the storm raged on, the survivors huddled inside the gutted remains of one of the shelters and used the dwindling power of their remaining battery to call for help. Even if an aircraft with sufficient range had been on hand at Woomera, a successful airdrop of emergency supplies in such atrocious conditions would have been unlikely to succeed. If, by some miracle, a package had landed safely within a kilometre of the survivors, they would never have found it in the blinding snowstorm. An airship evacuation in such high winds would have been suicidal. We were their only hope, and we were a thousand kilometres away across the ice shelf. Never before had we pushed the icecrawler so hard, driving relentlessly through the long polar days into weather that worsened with every passing mile. Never before had we taken so many risks, and Comander Tirice used every trick in the book to shorten the journey, knowing full well that each hour we lost by being cautious could mean one less living Kerbal to pull from the wreckage of Station Vrijheid 2. As we got closer it became possible to contact the survivors directly with our radio. We listened to the strained voice of the Chief Engineer shouting over the wind shrieking through the jagged and twisted corrugated metal that was their pitiful last line of defence against the mindless violence of the elements. At first, we could hear other voices in the background. But as the days passed and the blizzard fell upon us, our progress slowed to a crawl. And one by one, these other voices fell silent. We were spared the ordeal of listening to the Chief Engineer's end when the battery of his radio finally gave up the ghost. With the typical blind cruelty of nature, the storm lifted the very next day. The wind fell silent and a blazing sun appeared above the ice-cap, showering the endless blanket of fresh snow with brilliant light and feeble warmth. Montbrun covered the last fifty kilometres to Vrijheid 2 in just over an hour. We knew that it was too late, but we had come much too far to give up now. We almost missed the remains of the shelter, half-buried in deep drifts. I volunteered to go in and perform the cursory examination that would confirm what we already knew. Tirice overruled me with a few sharp words, and climbed down into the shelter herself through a gaping tear in its corrugated roof. She returned just a few minutes later clutching the Chief Engineer's battered radio. Staring straight ahead, she pushed past us and headed back towards the icecrawler. That evening we buried the remains of the shelter. Gemxy, Jorvis and I shovelled compact snow into a large mound, and we planted the station's broken radio mast at the summit as a monument to the shattered hopes of the Vrijheid Cooperative. Not a word passed between us as we worked, and the heavy silence prevailed when we were done and turned to leave. There was no ceremony. There was nothing to be said. We hadn't even known their names anyway. I dragged my exhausted body up the ladder to the bridge, lost in the frozen wasteland of my thoughts. Gemxy was slumped in one of the seats, staring out of the window, tears streaming down her face. I had no comforting words for her. There were two and a half years still to go before the end of my contract. YEAR 12, DAY 63. CAMWISE. Things had changed very little since I had joined the team, with the exception of the departure of Malcolm who had moved on to bigger and better things as a trainee officer for Trans Atlantic. My new shift-partner was Pilot Jorvis, a cold and grizzled Kerbal from the far North. We would trundle around the ice-caps for months on end, then at the end of each year, we were granted a few week's leave. This involved flying out to Woomera on an airship, leaving Montbrun in the hands of the overhaul crews for scheduled maintenance. From there, Tirice would leave us to our own devices while she flew out to Africa to join her partner. Jorvis, Gemxy and I usually stuck together during those weeks we spent in the arid dustbowl of Australia. It wasn't that we couldn't have done without each other. But after months on end spent working as a family in a closed environment, the rest of the world felt alien and strange. Our senses were assaulted by the seething mass of faceless Kerbals that we were suddenly surrounded by, whether it was out on the surface around the airport, or in the cave settlements that lay below it. After a couple of weeks, we usually looked forward to returning to the isolation of our polar home on wheels. Coverage in Antarctica can be patchy at best, with just a few satellites in high polar or molniya orbits. And even when we have it, Montbrun's ageing communications array can be less than reliable. Sometimes we go for days without contact from the outside world. Most of the radio traffic we get consists of orders from the Trans Pacific logistics HQ. Go there. Pick up this from the coast. Take that to Station Zeta. Yes, they have payed for it. Weather bulletins, storm warnings, assistance required by another crawler that has experienced some failure or other. And so on... Occasionally, Froemone would write to me. He would give me a very brief summary of the space programme's activities. After an initial period of cooperation, during which I provided what help I could with concepts for Bartdon's Mars mission, these summaries got more and more infrequent. There were no details, nothing that could be considered confidential, and the news often reached me long after the events had taken place. Froemone was obviously being very careful, well aware of the risk of his messages being intercepted and their contents examined. But it was in this manner that I had learned that the crew had reached the surface of the Red Planet safely. But this morning I received short message from Karanda, relayed via Omelek with the usual engineer's encryption. This was unusual, as until now Froemone had been the only one to write to me. Something was obviously very wrong. Salut, vielle crotte verte, Je sais que ça fait longtemps, cousin. Mais contrairement à toi, j'ai été pas mal occupée ces derniers mois. Alors que tu étais en train de prendre du bon temps et de faire le fainéant au pôle sud, je suis allée sur Phobos et maintenant je suis en orbite autour de Mars. La vue est magnifique. Je voulais juste te dire à quel point je suis heureuse que tu ne sois pas là pour l'apprécier avec moi... Which meant, of course, that my beloved cousin held me in high esteem for the difficult job I was doing here in Antarctica, and she wished that I was there with her to share the magnificent view of Mars. ...Le Chef s'inquiète, par contre. Au sol, il a trouvé une tête qui parle. Elle me rappelle un peu la tienne, tellement elle est moche. La tête lui a dit avec une voix de robot que si jamais on la contrariait, elle nous enverrait des boulets du ciel dessus... What the hell was she on about? The Boss – which I assumed meant Bartdon – had found a talking head on Mars with a robotic voice. And if we didn't do as it said, it would throw... balls... from the sky at us...? ...Il faut vraiment que tu parles aux copains sur l'Ile. Dis-leur de préparer un parapluie pour nous protéger au plus vite... Now she was telling me to speak with our friends on the Island, and tell them to prepare an umbrella to protect ourselves soon as possible. ...En plus, il faut que nous soyons ou bien chez le fêtard, ou bien chez le vieux pour l'heure du souper, disons dans dix longues heures... What's more, we must arrive at either the party-animal's place, or the old man's home in time for supper in, say, about ten long hours... ...Salut cousin, je te déteste, comme toujours. Karanda. By now, I was staring vacantly at the screen in total incomprehension. It sounded like Karanda had been at the hydrazine again. In fact, it sounded as if she had completely drained the tank. I couldn't even begin to... Then things began to click into place. An umbrella to protect ourselves from space... I began frantically hammering out a quick translation for Froemone, hoping that it would not be intercepted, and praying that Omelek's Senior Engineer could summon enough imagination to make any sense of it. It was a good job I sent it when I did. Just a few hours later the last of our spare tubes blew and Montbrun's radio fell silent for the foreseeable future. There'll be no chance of us getting hold of any replacement parts until we return to our drop-off point in Knox in a couple of weeks. For now, I am left to worry in silence at the ominous state of affairs suggested by Karanda's message. I hope they are alright. YEAR 12, DAY 73. CAMWISE. This morning an aircraft flew low overhead. It was clearly searching for something. It was another bright, crisp morning and visibility was excellent. From the bridge, I got a clear view of the jet as it flashed past but I didn't recognise the design. It was a sleek machine that was obviously built for speed, with a large cropped delta wing and two engines mounted in large booms that were embedded in the airframe. The turbines put out a very loud and distinctive whine that I had no trouble hearing, even over the noise of the ice-crawler. The jet climbed, turned and flashed past us again rocking its wings. It was trying to talk to us, but we still had no radio with which to respond. We were out on the ice shelf, just a few hundred kilometres out of our drop-off point on Knox Coast, and the surrounding terrain was flat and smooth. Despite this, I couldn't believe my eyes when the pilot of the aircraft lined up on our position, lowered its landing gear, and put it down on the ice about a mile away from Montbrun. Jorvis adjusted our course and just a couple of minutes later, we had pulled up along side the aircraft. A ladder extended from the cockpit and the figure of a suited Kerbelle was already climbing out onto the ice, waving anxiously at us. I slid down the ladder from Montbrun's bridge and crunched across the surface to meet her. As I approached and got a clear view of her face for the first time, I blinked. It was Catbeth. My pilot and teammate from the Drygalski Lunar mission. I hadn't seen her since Cernin had left for Mars, and that had been nearly six years ago. I stumbled over and swept my old friend into a fierce bear-hug, almost lifting her bodily out of the snow. But then she stiffened. Something was wrong. I released her from my embrace. She was clearly happy to see me too, but there was also anguish in her eyes. “Camwise. You have to come with me. Right now,” her voice was flat as she attempted to contain her emotion. As she spoke, a second Kerbal descended the ladder from the aircraft behind her. “But... I can't. I...” “You must. We need your help. Engineer Calby here will stand in for you while you're gone. He is familiar with the Kastria reactor and has served on crawlers before. Calby, will you ask Commander Tirice if she can spare part of her load of kerosene to top us off? This is on Trans Pacific, of course.” Calby dropped lightly onto the ice and with nothing more than a cheery “Aye TP, will do. Morning, sir,” made his way over to Montbrun without looking back. I watched him go in a daze. “Camwise, come with me,” Catbeth insisted. Five minutes later I was sitting in the right hand seat of the aircraft's cockpit, looking out at Calby and Gemxy working to attach a fuel line beneath the jet's wing. Another ten minutes more and Calby gave us the thumbs up as he backed off to a safe distance for us to roll. I caught a final glimpse of Gemxy, standing in the snow in front of one of Montbrun's massive wheels. She gazed up at the aircraft's cockpit intently, unable to see me through the glass due to the glare of the morning sun. She wrapped her arms around her own chest, as if protecting herself against something other than just the cold, and bowed her head as the aircraft turned and pulled away across the ice. There had been no time to say farewell, as always. Then the engines shrieked and the acceleration kicked in as Catbeth toggled a couple of piano switches situated behind the thrust levers. I realised that this aircraft was not designed for hanging around. The jet's afterburners pushed hard, but she was heavy with fuel and we were hurtling along at an insane speed before Cat finally rotated the craft's nose and pulled us into the air. The Antarctic ice shelf and another chapter of my life fell away behind me as we climbed to cruising altitude and set a course northwards. “It's a good job your Commander gave us some fuel,” said Catbeth. “It means we can head directly for Omelek. I was afraid we'd have to stop in Woomera. We'll have to supercruise for most of the way, but once I'm sure we have enough fuel, I'll kick in the afterburners again. We should be home in... five and a half hours.” Despite all that had taken place that morning, I couldn't help but be impressed by this mysterious aircraft. By my reckoning, the Pacific Island was nearly ten thousand kilometres from where Catbeth had picked me up. As if reading my mind, Catbeth told me, “This is Martiel, the Board members and top executives use these when they can't get on a scheduled hypersonic flight. Froe had an extra fuel tank fitted to its cargo bay. I've no idea what that will do to its handling, but it was the only ship with enough range and speed to reach you in time. It's a good job you weren't far from the coast, or I would never have found you.” “What's going on, Cat?” “Something... happened. At Mars.” I froze. Couldn't breathe. “Are they..?” “Everyone is alive,” Catbeth began, and I found that I could breathe once more, “your cousin and my sister are... OK. But they won't be for long if we don't find some way to get them home. We thought that you could maybe help us with that.” “But I wasn't involved in the mission...” I stammered, beginning to panic. “I don't even know the vehicle's specs. I just offered some ideas...” “I can't give you the details, but Froemone will give you a full briefing on the situation as soon as we land,” Catbeth said firmly. “In the present state of things, any new ideas will be worth a try. It's not looking good, Cam. And the Board are not cooperating like they should.” “What do you mean?” “So far, they have rejected funding for any proposal of a rescue or relief mission. Not that we even have a plausible one. Earth and Mars are still only just past opposition right now. It's the worst possible time to launch there.” Catbeth lapsed into an uneasy silence. Martiel sped on above the great Southern Ocean towards the Pacific.

Do you 'ave a problème with zis, Monsieur? I suppose ze americain acteurs can at least do a proper death scene, unlike ze French...

You could experiment in KSP (RSS)... 1) Build something with wings and a rocket engine. 2) Add/drain fuel until TWR < 1. 3) Turn on infinite fuel and see if you can get to orbit. See how low a TWR you can get away with. 4) Report your results. :-D

The arches are really quite massive, even in stock. I don't have any stock pictures close to hand but I do have a shot of a Lunar arch in RSS with a Type-G rover to scale (a bit more compact than your Loki). Not sure what this is but it sounds awesome... Keep plugging away for those funds...!

Sad to see the end of such a classic piece of KSP lore, indeed. But I'm sure we can trust you to come up with more awesome entertaining stuff in the future.

I exaggerate: it's not too bad at the moment. Back in August things got pretty hot in my little study though. That big desktop fan was on full blast all the time. Ironically, I was writing about Camwise in the Antarctic back then. When preparing for his journey to Mars, Bartdon packed a red herring... geddit?

Just for the record (as it may become important at some point in the story), I consider that the nuclear reactors used in the Camwise Logs are tough enough to survive a launch failure, so pretty strong. But in terms of radiation shielding: not so good. I design my ships so that bulkheads, fuel tanks and water/supplies provide the shielding. On the bridge, you're relatively safe. EVA to the rear of the ship when the reactor is powered up, and you won't be having sprouts any time soon. Love that expression. Just remember that Bartdon cut the message short before the First Mate explicitly threatened the Kerbals, hoping to keep the situation under control and avoid mass panic. He has never had any love for the Board's methods, quite the contrary, but he is part of the establishment himself and would much prefer to avoid a bloody revolution or a complete collapse of the resource companies' authority. You and I know all the sci-fi tropes. If an alien robot says "we will have to consider your species as a potential threat", we get understandably nervous for our characters. But for the Board, the Crew are still just a bunch of helpless million year old abandoned computers that might hand out free technology. The potential gains far outweigh the remote chance that they might actually represent a true danger to Earth. Bartdon betted that his knowledge of the end of the Martian Transmission would be insurance for him and his crew. He lost that one... Read on...

@Geschosskopf, @Shania_L and @Mad Rocket Scientist: you all make good points. Reactor containment vessels should be incredibly tough things, although if you want to use one to push your spaceship to Mars, you're gonna have to cut down on weight somewhere. By how much I don't know. I'm certainly no expert on the matter. But all this is irrelevant if the much more fragile nozzle of the aforementioned nuclear propulsion system is destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Your NTR ain't sending you home... Sounds like a job for Camwise, indeed.

There was definitely some remote detonating going on there, although the Board will no doubt claim that "an unfortunate technical failure occurred." If you look at the image of Laroque, however, you can see that the explosion occurs in the aft section of the ship, around the NTR. I don't think Bartdon would be careless enough to leave his explosives lying around near a nuclear reactor.

Bartdon and Mitzon finally reach the Kerbal Face on the surface of... Mars. This was their final port of call before returning to the shuttle Quissac for the trip back to orbit. Vertical take-off... ...and then transition to horizontal flight. It took Quissac all of her 4,500 m/s of Delta-vee to get to a 300x300 km orbit. Maps usually give a significantly lower figure (about 3,800 m/s to 200x200). Either I am a really lousy pilot, or the maps need some revision (this is RSS in 1.1.2 by the way). Things are getting busy around the Laroque crew transfer vehicle.