"I have visual. I can see the MAV!"

That was Beck. Beck was coming to get him. His team hadn't been pulling a massive prank on him this entire time, intending to leave him floating in Mars's orbit for all of eternity. Yay. This realization was followed by a nice, real, conversation. With real people. Heck, just listening to the crew talking was awesome, let alone them talking about rescuing him. Watney sat still in his chair. For the first time in the past year and a half, nothing really depended on his actions for his own survival. That was a nice change. He wanted to unhook his restraints and meet Beck at the open window, but Lewis hadn't okayed that. So he didn't.

Yeah, I can follow instructions. Suck it, NASA.

Then the nice conversation his team was having became . . . less nice.

"Johanssen, run my distance to Watney again." That was Beck again. Beck was on his way to pick Mark up. Beck needed to know how far apart they were? That didn't seem good. Commander Lewis answered in place of the computer geek.

"The computer miscalculated. Not by much, thankfully, but the MAV's about five meters farther out than we originally thought."

"So that's seventeen meters?" The doctor clarified. Then he swore.

"Talk to me Beck." Lewis was concerned now. No one could blame her; what the EVA specialist had just said didn't exactly inspire the greatest feeling of optimism. Of course, Watney didn't care how concerned the commander was. She wasn't the one that was about to die, he surmised. It seemed that lot had once again somehow fallen to him. When Beck spoke again it wasn't in answer to the commander, and gave no indication as to what was going on. He was clearly in conversation with his crew mate next to him in the open airlock.

"I've going to have to punch it to span that distance. Vogel, wait until I get within three meters of the MAV and then detach my tether."

"What's the problem, Chris?" Lewis insisted again.

"I'm not going to get there in time if I don't try to push my velocity a little. If I hit the end of my line at the speed I need to get out there, the clamp might break. Vogel, I'll tell you when."

Inside the derelict MAV, Mark Watney began to panic over his teammates. His friends were already putting themselves at enough risk without Beck trying to pull some suicide stunt.

"I have told you I will not release the clamp," the German said, matter-of-factly. Mark had always admired the way Vogel could put his foot down, even when that foot was stepping right into Watney's own demise. Just to ensure Chris didn't try to pull some stunt though, he interjected.

"Don't listen to him, Vogel. Nobody gets killed because of me."

"If you don't push that button when I tell you, Mark and I are both dead." Watney had to admit that he didn't like the sound of that. "Dead" was definitely not found among his list of favorite words. But this was his friend coming out to his rescue. And that friend was an idiot that was willing to risk his own life for Mark's. That wasn't going to happen.

"Beck, don't you dare do this. Don't be stup-"

"Vogel, now!" Beck interrupted Watney's heroic, self-sacrificing speech.

What a jerk, Watney thought rather indignantly. Of course this moment of selfish pride drowned almost immediately in the worry represented rather poetically by the deep, swirling vacuum that one Doctor Christopher Beck had just jettisoned himself into.

"Releasing tether," Vogel said after a moment, almost forlornly. Stubbornly, probably. It was no secret how the German scientist hated to give in when he had decided something.

Mark wished he could see what was going on. Instead he was stuck waiting inside a giant metal tube. He couldn't even try to stop Chris from being a moron at this point, because the guy was already cut loose. After a few moments though, Watney felt a slight vibration reverberate through his perforated MAV canopy.

"Contact . . . Hard contact!" Beck's voice followed the vibrations.

Three words. Three stupid words and Mark was ready to cry. Just a little. But those words had nothing on the three words that followed. "Visual on Watney!"

The space botanist looked up, not realizing until Beck had spoken that they were now face to face. Well, face-plate to face-plate. Close enough.

"Visual on Beck!" he responded, a stupid grin demanding all available real estate on his face.

"How ya doin', man?" Beck asked as he pulled himself into the desecrated MAV. "Actually, answer that when we're back on Hermes. We've got about eight seconds to get on our way." Watney reached out and grabbed Beck's forearms so the other man didn't bounce around the MAV - or out of it - and began releasing the clamps holding him into the chair with his free hand while Beck reported contact and attached an anchor between the two space suits.

"Five seconds, Doctor," Vogel radioed.

"And we're outta here." Beck said with a certain confident flourish as he pushed Watney and himself out the open window.

"You better hurry up Chris." That was Johanssen. Calling Beck Chris. Without the proper time to process that information, Watney filed it away under a mental file titled "Things to Tease The Crew About".

"Hurrying." Beck answered. Then the rest of what was said was lost on Watney. Because he saw the loose end of a long line of rope approaching them pretty quickly, being dragged along by the Hermes. And that image suddenly got him really, really concerned that Beck might not be quite as good at EVA as he was supposed to be.

The MMU on Beck's back ignited, and they began to move back toward the Hermes, where they would hopefully reattach to the tether. Watney came back to himself when Beck said,

"We're almost in range of the tether. Mark, you'll need to grab the line too. I don't want to get left behind here."

"Hey, I can relate to that feeling," Watney responded with a nervous chuckle. "I think I'll be hanging on to that rope pretty darn tight, to be honest."

"Twelve meters between you and the anchor." Johanssen cut into their personal conversation. She sounded nervous. Mark shared the sentiment. Time seemed to crawl as they silently burned their way toward the literal lifeline moving toward them. But then the tether was there, and it was suddenly a mad dash as Watney grabbed for it as well as Beck and the two astronauts struggled with the general laws of inertia to get a secure grip. The astronaut felt his stomach clench in the beginning stages of panic as he felt the tether begin to slip through his hands, but then . . . then they had it. Both had a secure grip, and suddenly Mark was able to attach the anchor to Beck's suit in front of them. And they were safe.

Well, relatively. They were still in space. Being pulled along by a rocket. Attached to a glorified jump rope.

"Velocity zero!" Johanssen almost shouted.

"Reel 'em in, Vogel." Lewis said, and it might have been the creeping pain of cracked ribs but Watney could have sworn she was close to smiling or something.

"Copy," came the grunted reply. Vogel would always be Vogel.

The winch started up then, and Mark watched the Hermes begin to grow as he was pulled in toward Airlock 2. He started to breathe again, only slightly surprised to find that he had stopped doing that recently.

On the bridge of the Hermes, three astronauts fought to repress the urge to jump and yell excitedly as they watched their friends being pulled back in toward the ship. Below them, the hole that had erupted when Vogel's bomb had exploded remained open, though the doors from five meters aft of the airlock and beyond had been sealed in order to reestablish the atmosphere aboard the majority of the ship. However, between the burst airlock and the nearest sealed hatch, the door seal of one small personal locker remained intact. While having been expected to burst along with the majority of the ship's airtight seals, the locker's own door had remained stubbornly closed when the rest of the ship vented its oxygen. Unfortunately, three years before the Hermes had launched, a minuscule hole had perforated the vacuum seal on the door. The hole had widened when the pressure outside it had suddenly, violently, decompressed, but it had held throughout the explosive venting of oxygen.

As the two astronauts neared the Hermes, that seal finally gave way and a small amount of oxygen vented from the nose of the Hermes.

Watney watched Vogel beckon them forward, though they all knew that no one had any control over the speed of the winch. He suspected that the German astronaut simply didn't like to sit still. As Watney watched Vogel, he noticed the man begin to change position in relation to himself. Then he noticed that the entire airlock seemed to be moving. Then he finally realized what that implied: the Hermes was slowing down, but its tethered cargo wasn't.

That wasn't good.

The atmosphere vented from the burst locker had slowed Hermes' velocity by one meter per second. This created a problem, since the astronauts were attached to a tether, which attempted to slow them when it could no longer keep pace with its payload. As a result, the two men began to spin along the twenty meters of tether that remained outside the ship, picking up speed as the winch drawing them into the ship acted as a fulcrum for their increased velocity toward the Hermes.

"Something's wrong here, we've lost velocity." Martinez said from his flight control station. "Beck, can you adjust with what's left of the fuel in your MMU?"

Ahead of Watney, Beck swore again.

"No can do. I only have enough fuel for a burst of less than a second. Hermes, be advised, we're going to smack against your side. Mark . . . brace for impact."

That was a funny phrase, really. Brace for impact. At this point, there was absolutely nothing either man could brace against. Although Mark did have to admit that the statement had given him some amount of comfort regardless.

As they sped ever closer to the ship, Watney felt the MMU thruster ignite again and turn; just enough so that Beck was between the Hermes and the botanist. Before he had time to try to rectify this change they collided. Hard. Watney thought he felt another rib or two crack with the impact, and he hit his head on his helmet's face-plate. His vision grew dark quickly and he figured he might have sustained a light concussion.

His blurred vision slowly began to clear and he saw the airlock loom toward them with Vogel's arms outstretched and ready to grab them. As soon as they had floated inside the airlock, Vogel pushed them toward the inner door and moved to lock down the outer.

"Aboard. Airlock 2 outer door locked," Vogel reported, then pulled Watney and Beck toward the inner door. "I am bringing them in. What happened?"

"Working on that." Martinez responded. "Johanssen and the commander are on their way to you. It looked like they hit hard, how do they look?"

"Not good. Watney is bleeding slightly. Possibly some broken bones, but I am not positive. Beck seems to be worse." Vogel muttered a stream of German as he waited impatiently for the airlock to pressurize.

Lewis's face appeared in the door's window, and soon the inner airlock door slid open. Vogel pushed Watney and Beck through, then Lewis and Johanssen started working on getting them out of their EVA suits.

"Hey Commander," Watney said with a grin when his helmet came off. His breath probably smelled. His ears were ringing, he felt like all of his bones were broken in at least three places, and he desperately needed a nap. But a man is nothing if not polite.

"Shut up," she responded and hugged him. That was weird. Lewis was a robot. Robots don't hug. Oh well, who was he to judge human contact? He figured that he would be fine with pretty much every form of contact for the rest of his life.

Lewis let him go and she began to separate the sections of his EVA suit so that he could remove it. As he shed the suit, Mark looked over to Beck and Johanssen. Johanssen had just pulled Beck's helmet off, but the man seemed asleep.

That's not right, he thought. Unconscious? He looks unconscious. That was a problem for them. The resident doctor aboard the Hermes was in trouble. That meant the Hermes was in trouble. Not to mention it was Mark's fault. Again.

"What's up with him?" Watney slurred, vaguely gesturing toward Beck.

"Johanssen?" Lewis asked after glancing at them.

"I don't know. He's unconscious. Bleeding." Johanssen answered. She sounded flustered. "There's too much blood."

"Vogel, relieve Johanssen." Lewis ordered. The man immediately moved in behind Johanssen and gently pushed her out of the way.

"There does not seem to be a large problem. He hit his head, but I do not think it will be a big issue." Vogel said. "I can not tell about the rest of his body until I remove the suit."

"Get to work on it." Lewis leaned toward the wall and punched the intercom. "Martinez, get down here and bring a couple of scanners with you. Hurry."

"Already on my way commander." Martinez answered.

Watney knew that people kept talking. Kept talking to him even. But his head hurt, and his vision was blurry. He decided to close his eyes for a minute. Until Lewis yelled at him that he wasn't allowed to sleep yet. That was probably right. Concussions can be bad, especially if the recipient starts to obey the commands their body sends out. Mark didn't much care though, because he still felt awful. He looked around himself once or twice more. Lots of people. 600% of the people he had seen in the past eighteen months. One of them was unconscious and four others were working on him or Mark himself. And then there was Watney. He didn't know what that guy's deal was. But the problem was that the doctor, the guy who got his paychecks for dealing with this stuff, was the one in the worst shape.

Martinez kept running through what was going on to Watney. He tried to listen. He wanted to sleep. But he also wanted to know what was wrong with Beck. And what was the deal with all of these people in such a small room? But then he would blink and when he opened his eyes back up everyone would be in a different place in the room. Martinez would be yelling at him or slapping him or something. Finally, after what felt like at least a year, Martinez told him that he was pretty much fine. Well, not really. But he was pretty much as good as he could be without a few months to heal up. Or at least a night's rest. In all honesty, Watney didn't remember what Martinez had said, he had just heard the word "sleep" and decided to go for it.

That didn't mean that he was going to sleep forever though. For eighteen months, Watney had been living on Mars time. And for the past hundred sols of that, he hadn't been sleeping during the night anyway. So it was only to be understood that he would wake up at some terribly early hour. Because that made sense. Somehow.

He looked around and recognized his surroundings as the medical lab. Then he saw astronauts strewn throughout that lab. Lewis was sleeping on a table halfway across the room, Martinez was sprawled over the back of a chair next to his bed. Vogel was missing, probably on the bridge – even in circumstances like these NASA had protocols. Johanssen was impressively wrapped around Beck, somehow sharing the tiny space on another examination table. So that was apparently happening now.

With a groan, Watney sat upright and looked all over the room again. His teammates were there. Alive. Asleep. Well, everybody but Beck was asleep. That was weird. Of anyone, he was definitely supposed to be asleep.

"Beck," Watney hissed, "Are you awake?" The doctor picked up his head and looked over at the botanist.

"No." He answered. Watney glared, but realized just how useless that was because it was too dark for Beck to see his withering scowl.

"What did you break?"

"I'm not sure." Beck paused. "Everything, maybe? Feels like everything. You?"

"I'm about the same." Mark paused, gathering this thoughts. He then took in a rushed breath and blurted out, "What is wrong with you?! You could've gotten yourself killed!" He planned to continue reprimanding Beck's stupidity, using great vocabulary like "foolhardy," or "dum-dum," but then his headache got even worse and he lost his train of thought as he laid back down.

"Hey man, I had a mission to complete. That mission was getting you out of the MAV. I completed my mission." Beck replied in an infuriatingly nonchalant way.

"You detached your tether! And then you smashed yourself into a space ship! What was that?!" Beck made an exasperated noise before responding.

"Look, Watney, I got you killed once. I wasn't going to do that again."

"Wait, no. You didn't - " Watney began, but Beck continued without waiting for him to finish.

"You weren't there. Lewis was still out looking for you. I told her you were dead. She left because I told her to. You spent a year and a half alone, stranded on that giant red dust ball because of me, Mark."

A heavy silence lay between the two men as they each pondered Beck's outburst. Watney finally found the words to speak up.

"Don't pull that. None of you had a choice. For all intents and purposes, I WAS dead when you all left. Besides, I didn't end up too far from being alright, right?" Beck didn't say anything for a while.

"Well, I couldn't leave you anyway. You should've heard Martinez complain while you were gone. He was even starting to prank the commander - " Beck started to laugh, which was quickly followed by a grunt of pain and a sleepy noise of anger from Johanssen. Watney could see by the dim floor light-strips as Johanssen grabbed Beck's arm and pulled herself in tighter to him. Beck put an arm around her shoulders.

"Alright, what's with the overt friendliness I see there? I take it you read my email?"

"No." Beck lied immediately, "Well, yes. But that's not really why it happened. You had no effect on it at all."

"Uh-huh," Watney remarked with a smug grin. "Yeah, I expect to speak at your wedding."

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response. Your bark is bigger than your bite."

"I think I'll start my speech with something like, 'Back when I was stranded on Mars...'" Watney started with a chuckle. "Actually, I'm going to spend the rest of my life starting every conversation with that opener." The two men shared a painful laugh. A shockingly comfortable silence settled in over the pair for a while.

"Get some sleep, Watney. Doctor's orders." Beck finally said, then turned onto his side and faced away from his newly recovered crew mate. With the added benefit, Watney suspected, of getting closer to the crew mate currently sharing his awful bed.

That was fine by him, he supposed. If there was one thing Mark Watney could do, that thing would be sleeping.

He had spent a year and a half lulling himself to sleep all alone on a harsh, hostile planet. He figured if he could keep up a half-way decent sleep schedule under those conditions, he ought to be able to sleep like a baby surrounded by the friends who had been willing to trade their lives for his.

LOG ENTRY: MISSION DAY 689

That "689" caught me off guard for a minute. On Hermes, we track time by mission days. It may be Sol 549 down on Mars, but it's Mission Day 689 up here. And you know what? It doesn't matter what time it is on Mars because I'm not there!

I'll write a better log later, but I don't care right now. All of my crew are here with me, I got saved by those nerds, and I'm still alive. But, my ribs hurt like you wouldn't believe, my vision is still blurry, I'm really hungry, and it'll be another 210 days before I'm back on Earth.

This is the happiest day of my life.