LOCATION: ASAN MISSION CONTROL

  Director Henderson—a Silverback Gorilla whose knuckles usually barked against his desk when things went wrong—stared at the monitors in disbelief. The room was deathly quiet, save for the frantic clicking of keyboards. A Jack Russell Terrier in a headset, his ears pinned back in pure shock, pointed a trembling paw at the scrolling data. "Sir, it’s not a ghost. We’re receiving a legacy handshake from the Pathfinder lander. It’s using a modified Ares-3 encryption key."

  Henderson’s voice was a low growl that filled the command center. "Pathfinder? That thing is a museum piece. Who the hell is operating it?" The tech swallowed hard, staring at the decoded Morse flickering on his screen. "It’s Otterson, sir. She’s alive. She’s uploaded a data dump that’s... well, it’s insane. She’s managed to stabilize the Hab, and according to these logs, she’s currently converting her potato harvest into a feedstock for the protein synthesizers." The room erupted into chaos as Henderson realized they had just spent six months mourning a woman who was currently busy being the solar system's first Martian salmon farmer. "Get the Hermes on the line," Henderson commanded, "and somebody find me a botanist who can explain how an otter is still breathing on a dry rock."

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