A 6-person research mission to Mars goes downhill fast when an unforeseen mishap destroys the habitat they were supposed to live in for months, along with the return shuttle and one of the crew. With no other options, they try to cross most of the planet in the hopes of flying a Brazilian shuttle left behind at the north pole after its crew died unexpectedly.
Except that shuttle can't carry more than 2 people. 3, at the most.
Landis takes the approach that space will surprise you. He takes pains to describe the amount of training the crew went through, the briefings, the screenings to make certain these people could do this. The number of redundancies and safety back-ups in the equipment. But catastrophe still occurs, because there were elements of being on Mars or space that people on Earth weren't prepared for.
An unexpected condition that causes the oxygen sensors of their space suits to malfunction. If caught in time, it can be addressed. If there's someone not yet affected to save the people dying from low oxygen. It plays up how hostile an environment Mars is, for all that it's relatively similar to Earth. But also that there may be workarounds available to human ingenuity.
He also sticks to very short chapters. Some of them no more than a paragraph, but hardly any longer than 3 or 4 pages. He splits the book into sections, each one focusing on one of the five survivors, and alternates between the backstory and what's happening in the present. Although the present-day chapters may not pay much attention to the character under the microscope in the flashbacks, which seems strange, but it's necessary if he's going to add any depth to most of them before the end of the book.
The writing is a bit clunky and stilted. Overuse of certain words in close proximity, in situations where it was probably wasn't necessary the second. I would find myself stopping after a sentence, thinking it could have been written much more smoothly. It's almost technical, someone preparing a report and wanting to be extremely precise. Except, not done so the reader interprets this as how a particular character thinks about things. It's just how Landis writes.
'After a few minutes, Brandon stopped.
"That's it?" Ryan asked.
"I think so. A hundred and twenty. You think that record will last?"
Ryan nodded. To every direction, the landscape was barren, sterile rock. Nobody was here. Nobody had ever been here before, and if the expedition failed to reach the return rocket, probably no humans would ever return.
"Yes," he said. "I expect it will last quite a while."'
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