let 'em know. he looks to the capcom, john skavlem. news gets worse.
get every dish in the deep space network pointed at mars. declare a spacecraft emergency.
this is a restricted, encrypted frequency. who is this?
they're breathing. it coulda worked. dammit, it coulda worked.  then through the cacophony comes one voice.
you're not wrong. nods to skavlem.
come on, people, you heard the woman, let's get on it. the techs begin calculating madly.
all right, people, we bought ourselves another eighteen hours in orbit. the crew's burning pretty much what we've got on the surface so they don't freeze solid. so whatever we can come up with.
what else is on mars?
the janitor just built a radio out of a fifty-year-old rover mission. now, what else is on mars? mars maps come up on all their pims. there are things on the surface. marked with various symbols. leftovers from other missions.
is it viable? can we get plans?
is he still alive?? schlissel's pim flickers madly as he mutters at it.
find him. somebody get on the line to kazakhstan.
we gotta wake up the director of dead technology at the smithsonian. and quick. assistants scramble. schlissel comes over to peer curiously at the shiny silver disk and -
so even if there wasn't life there, there is now.
they're dead. or dying. let's get bowman home.
let her. she's got five and a half hours before the orbit starts to decay. if she has to do this so she can concentrate later on, so be it. skavlem gets busy on the radio with bowman -