Chapter 14

Reeling after the Hab’s catastrophic decompression, Mark Watney finds himself inside a detached, leaking airlock with a shattered faceplate and the Hab collapsed 50 meters away. He locates the airlock’s hairline leak by creating smoke from burning arm hair, then seals it with duct tape to halt the pressure loss.

To salvage his EVA suit, Watney uses the resin patch kit to glue a rectangle cut from the suit’s left arm over the destroyed faceplate and reseals the arm stump. Testing shows the suit hemorrhages air, giving him only minutes outside. Deciding the rover alone won’t save him, he plans to repair the Hab but first must reach it. He spends the night rolling the airlock back toward the Hab by body-slamming its walls.

On Sol 120 he equalizes the airlock, dashes under the collapsed canvas, and, with only one usable arm, retrieves Martinez’s helmet and patch kit before sprinting to the rover just as his suit gives out. Rested, he reseals the arm with the new kit, swaps to Martinez’s intact helmet, uses the rover’s refill to restore suit tanks, and then frees and verifies Martinez’s entire suit, finally regaining a fully functional EVA suit.

On Sol 122 he signals NASA with rock letters, inspects the downed Hab, and confirms the structure can be patched and repressurized. The critical blow: his entire potato farm and soil bacteria are dead from vacuum and freezing. Though rations and harvested (now-dead) potatoes extend food to around Sol 600, this falls far short of the Sol 856 supply probe, creating a severe long-term survival crisis.