"Look, guys, I really don't have any time for this now," said Oliver when Dorothy and Mildred reached him.  He was inside a mechsuit, and trying to manuever it onto the mini-rover.  The bay door of Building 14 was open, so they had put on their pressure suits before entering (Building 14 was usually not pressurized).

Dorothy and Mildred attempted, in a confused and too-hurried manner, to explain what they were planning, but it was none-too-coherent, and Oliver was not in a mood to stop and listen.

"Get out of the way, now," he said, in a voice which brooked no argument.  Then he manuevered the mechsuit onto the mini-rover, and both had to jump out of the way as its weight nearly flipped the mini-rover onto its back.  As it was, its front wheels were far off the ground, tipping the mini-rover back at nearly a 30 degree angle to the floor, and it was quite clear that nothing as heavy as the mechsuit was going to be transported by this method.  The only thing they had (aside from the rover that was trapped on the ship) which was able to move the mechsuit, was the mechsuit itself.

Oliver quickly told the situation to Olivia over the commlink, and there was a long pause as everyone involved (including those trapped inside the rover, who probably knew this meant they were going to die) absorbed what they had been told.

"Well get it off the mini-rover then, before you break it," said Theodore, his voice grumpy but not any more than usual.

There followed another long pause.

"Move the mechsuit here as fast as you can," said Olivia, her voice grim-sounding.  Oliver moved out the bay doors, and was soon gone.

"How long will it take him to run the mechsuit there?" asked Mildred.

"At least an hour," said Dorothy, "maybe longer.  They're made for strength and toughness, not speed."

Eugene, Raymond, and Stanley showed up soon, with Orange Yellow inside Raymond's bubble helmet.

"It didn't work," said Dorothy.  "Oliver wouldn't listen to us, and now he's taken off in the mechsuit."

"But that will be too slow!" said Stanley.

"Yes, but the mini-rover won't hold anything as heavy as the mechsuits," said Dorothy.  "He tried, and it tipped up so that the front wheels weren't even on the ground."

Dorothy, Mildred, Stanley, and Raymond looked downcast.  Without the mini-rover, they could not possibly get to the crash site in time.  Without Oliver, they could not use the mini-rover.

Eugene put the oxygen tank on the back of the mini-rover, got into the driver's seat, and pushed the power button.  Surprised, the rest of the New Soil Crew scrambled on board.

"Do you know how to drive this?" asked Dorothy.  Stanley would have asked, except that it had not even occurred to him that a person might attempt to drive the mini-rover if they didn't know how.

In fact, it had not really occurred to any of them that driving the mini-rover themselves was an option, given that none of them had ever done so before.  It was not even an option that they considered and rejected; it simply never occurred to them as an option, to use a piece of heavy equipment that they had never used before.  Eugene, however, was not a person to spend overmuch time considering how things might go badly.  If no one and nothing was stopping him from trying a thing, he typically would try it.

With a lurch, the mini-rover went backwards out of the bay doors, which were still open (Building 14 was normally not pressurized).  They described a large arc, still going backwards, until eventually they were pointed in the correct direction.  The mini-rover stopped, and then Eugene (frowning, as if he was trying to remember something, but actually just wondering which control to guess at) punched a button on the console and it lurched forwards, achieving very quickly the top speed of the vehicle.

"It looks like maybe yes," said Eugene.

There was no road, per se, but the route to the crash site did have multiple rover (and now mini-rover) tire tracks that they could follow, and these did generally go along the least bumpy path.  The only real obstacle they had to steer around on the route was Oliver in his mechsuit, moving in it as fast as it could go but nearly stationary compared to the mini-rover.  If Oliver had any comment to make, they did not hear it; their commlinks were on, but the bumpiness of the ride kept their full attention.

Dorothy felt the urge to tell Eugene to slow down, before he crashed and killed them all, but did not, for two reasons:
1) they did really need to hurry, and there were lives on the line
2) she was pretty certain he had no idea how to control the speed anyway

After about ten minutes of fear and some small amount of bruising from bumps along the way, they arrived at the crash site in a trail of red dust.  Olivia, Liam, Noah, Lucas, and Anna were there, and their eyes all went wide when they saw who had arrived.  Without waiting to explain, Eugene picked up the oxygen tank from the back of the mini-rover, and ran towards the ship.

"Where's the tear in the ship?" he yelled.

"What?  What are you doing?" said several adults at once.

"We can get the hose to them if there is a tear in the ship large enough for a rat to go through," said Dorothy quickly.  Several adults had loud and angry questions at that moment, but Noah pointed them towards the spot they had been trying to get through.  There were actually several places where the hull had been split open, but this was the largest and most promising for the purpose at hand.  Eugene ran up to it and put the oxygen tank down, and then Dorothy began adjusting the hose and the flow valve.

Raymond tried to lift off his bubble helmet to remove Orange Yellow, but found that his hands just wouldn't do it.  The Outside on Mars is not like the vacuum of space; it has atmospheric pressure of less than 1% of Earth's, but it is not vacuum.  Also, the air has almost no oxygen in it, but it is not toxic.  Moreover, just then the temperature was actually not too cold; Martian nights are lethally frigid, but some parts of Mars get warm enough for humans during the day.

But the children had all absorbed the idea, from earliest conversations about Outside, that you must absolutely wear a pressure suit, and you must absolutely make sure every seal is good every time, or Bad Things Happen And You Could Die.  Intellectually Raymond knew that he could remove his bubble helmet for a short time, but something deep in his mind refused to do it.

Eugene did it for him, quickly and brusquely, and grabbed Orange Yellow (who was perched on his shoulder, and moved too slowly to avoid his grasp) and held her while Dorothy attached the end of the tube from the oxygen tank.  Orange Yellow writhed about at first, upset, but calmed down a bit when the hose was attached to her.  She now had a steady flow of oxygen over her head, and while she was still not happy, she was not panicking.  Dorothy quickly tied the end of the hose to the back of the harness that Orange Yellow had on.

"Where did you get that rat?  What are you doing?" said several adults at once.

Raymond put his bubble helmet back on, and started "steering" Orange Yellow, who stepped cautiously off of Dorothy's hand and onto the edge of the gash in the side of the spaceship.

Orange Yellow found the weight of the tube annoying, but it was tied securely to the back of her harness, and she was hungry (and thus eager to get on with the business of earning food treats, which was the usual result of her playing this game), so she didn't bother trying to remove it just yet.  More troubling was how to interpret the lights (left, right, forward, or stop) when in a three-dimensional maze of twisted metal and ceramic.  Moreover, she occasionally found herself being pulled backwards, which was alarming and confusing.

"Don't, you'll tear it off!" said Stanley.

"I didn't ever train her to back up, and it's a dead end, what else do you expect me to do?" said Raymond angrily.

Orange Yellow, as she came closer to the inside of the ship, began to detect the barest hint of recognizable scents.  She had not spent much time in the rover bay, but they did pass through it when being taken to the Colony.  She paused, and tried to remember if this scent was a good one or not.

"She's stuck!  She's stuck!" shouted Stanley anxiously.

Orange Yellow was not, physically, stuck, but Stanley was not totally incorrect.  She was mentally stuck.  She was in a strange and somewhat uncomfortable environment; she was not in pain, and she had plenty of oxygen, but the hose attached to her was bulky, and her surroundings were uncomfortable and unfamiliar.  She wanted, more than anything, to be back in her familiar warren in the Recycling Room, getting the nest ready for her pups who would be arriving in a couple weeks, but that was not a thing that she could make happen (actually she did not really think this in words, of course, but she did feel it in an emotional way).  She considered simply retreating, but she was hungry, and wanted more food, and playing the game seemed the best way to make that happen.  She hovered between these two options; retreating, or moving forwards towards the barely perceptible and somewhat familiar scent.

"She's moving!  She's moving again!" said Stanley, and Mildred, and Eugene, and Dorothy, and several of the adults.  Raymond, who said nothing, breathed heavily, and realized he had been holding his breath as he waited for Orange Yellow to move.

Orange Yellow saw the outstretched hand of a human, and her many, many generations of breeding to select for being easily handled urged her forward onto it.

"We've got her!" said Theodore.  "The hose is through!  How much length do you have?"

"About four meters," said Dorothy.

"Make sure the rat gets put somewhere safe, with oxygen!" said Raymond.

"Will do," said Theodore.  "Not in my suit, though, she doesn't seem to like the looks of Loki."

"Don't let the cat get to her!" said Raymond, anxiously.

"I guarantee you," said Theodore, "this is a very popular rat in here right now.  We will take care of it."