Die on Mars

Maidong woke up after a long sleep. It was still forty minutes before the sun rose.

Tang Yue and Lao Mao have been waiting at the Kunlun Station for a long time. They have been discussing the detailed operation steps to ensure that the plan is complete.

"Miss Maidong, I have sent you the detailed repair plan and operation steps." The old cat turned the camera over, and a huge cat face flashed on Maidong's communication system, "Please confirm."

"Yeah, yeah."

Ophiopogon japonicus is eating, and her mouth is full.

The girl opened the form, and dense handwriting jumped out. Tang Yue listed every precaution in detail, including which foot was more convenient to move first when unlocking the mechanical arm.

"oh……"

"How is it?" the old cat asked, "Miss Maidong, how do you think the difficulty of the task is?"

"No problem." Maidong nodded slowly and glanced at the documents on the screen. "It's just a sensor repair, right? It's a trivial matter, and it won't be a problem for me."

"Then it's time to answer questions." Tang Yue stepped in and pushed the old cat away. "Mai Dong, you must read these action steps carefully. If you have any questions, you can ask them. Try to understand every step of the plan clearly to avoid At that time, everything will be very busy.”

"Okay, I understand, let me see..."

The old cat left the seat. Tang Yue and Maidong had already entered working mode. They still had some time to go out and take care of the solar panels in the battery farm.

The work of unfolding and retracting the battery panels every day is not done by Tang Yue alone. The old cat sometimes helps, but it is obviously much more leisurely than Tang Yue. Tang Yue wears a bloated Mingguang armor to work, and he groans from exhaustion. , like a long-term worker in a landlord's home, while the old cat walked between the batteries with its paws on its back, just like the landlord.

The old cat opened the airlock door, stood at the door of Kunlun Station, raised his head and looked up at the sky.

Its cat's eye is not a high-power telescope and cannot clearly see the United Space Station, but the old cat knows very well that the aircraft will pass over his head every hour and forty minutes. If it is at night, the space station reflecting sunlight will It will shine like a star and fly across the night sky at extremely fast speeds, making it very conspicuous against the almost static background starry sky.

Some nights Tang Yue and Lao Mao would stay in front of the Kunlun Station window, waiting for the United Space Station to appear from the horizon. Then they would contact Maidong and tell her, "We saw you!"

Maidong has survived alone on the space station for more than two hundred days, with no backup and no supplies. This is astonishing in the entire history of human spaceflight. From the time Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard carefully stepped on From the era of space exploration until the mid-21st century when global cooperation began to land on Mars, no one had ever faced the situation Tang Yue and Maidong were in now.

As a robot, Lao Mao couldn't help but sigh. God knows how much hardship these two young people have endured. They are only young people who participated in the Mars project for the first time. They are preparatory talents for the expansion of the future landing plan. They cannot compare to Lao Wang Laotang's calmness. and experienced, but bad luck happened to happen to these two people.

Ophiopogon japonicus's physical condition is getting worse and worse.

The long-term weightless environment and severe lack of nutrition are gradually destroying the girl's body. Maidong has appeared in videos wearing a hat since last month. She did not explain the reason, but Lao Mao knew that it must be due to severe hair loss.

High radiation destroys hair follicle cells, the germinal layer becomes necrotic, and hair will fall out in large quantities. This is the most intuitive manifestation of the deterioration of health conditions. In previous missions, astronauts would take anti-radiation drugs to avoid this situation, and Ophiopogon japonicus I must have finished my anti-radiation medicine.

If Ophiopogon japonicus is not removed as soon as possible, Lao Mao doesn't know how long that girl can last.

But the most heinous thing is that there is no vehicle on the space station that can be used to land.

Tang Yue proposed using the ascent stage of the Eagle spacecraft. He believed that the outer shell of the Eagle spacecraft could withstand the heat barrier, which was the only hope.

Theoretically, the insulation tiles of the Eagle spacecraft can indeed resist the high temperature of air friction. Although the Eagle spacecraft is a disposable aircraft, the design of the insulation tiles still has redundancy. This is the possibility of overcoming the thermal barrier. In terms of safety redundancy, the few extra millimeters of ablative material that engineers originally applied for safety became the last straw for Ophiopogon japonicus.

This makes sense logically. Tang Yue thinks that he has solved the first problem and has taken a gratifying first step.

This is a good start and exciting.

He began to rack his brains to think about how to overcome the next few difficulties. Old Mao walked past Tang Yue's crew rest cabin door, and could hear him mumbling about "reverse thrust landing" inside. What is "air resistance"? Apparently he stayed up all night thinking about the problem of safe landing.

It was rare that Tang Yue could be so interested in something. His walnut-sized brain was probably all devoted to this.

The old cat leaned against the hatch of Kunlun Station, picked up a flat stone at his feet, held it in his paws and shook it hard.

The light in the cat's eyes suddenly dimmed. When it was in front of Tang Yue, it always behaved like a bitchy-tongued charterer. It was full of energy, shouting and drinking, and was dragging as much as two to five hundred thousand, but At this moment, the cat's back collapsed. It didn't look strong or awesome. Some invisible huge weight bent its back. It couldn't straighten up and could only sit slowly on the ground. .

The old cat left alone turns out to be just an old cat.

A cat sitting in the desert.

"The side with cracks is the front, and the side without cracks is the back. If it's the front, then they and I will have a good ending." The old cat murmured in a low voice, tossing the stones in his paws like coins. Then he raised his paw to catch it and put it on the back of his paw.

The old cat was silent for a few seconds.

"If it's the other side...then they will have a good ending." The old cat continued, "I'd better be unlucky if I'm unlucky."

It slowly moved its paws away, and the stone lay smoothly on the back of its paws.

The old cat glanced at it, grinned, and threw the stone away.

Tang Yue was still dreaming about being able to catch Ophiopogon japonicus, and the girl was also excited to think that she could land safely. Old Mao really didn't want to break their fantasy. The survival of these two young people was so difficult, and their lives were so difficult. There is so little hope left. Seeing the twinkling lights in the eyes of the two young men, the old cat finally swallowed his words. It would be too cruel to deprive him of this last hope.

Lao Mao actually knows better than anyone else.

It considered all possible options.

It is impossible for the Eagle spacecraft to land safely. This method is completely unfeasible. Entering the atmosphere on the ascent stage of the Eagle spacecraft is tantamount to suicide.

The hope Tang Yue saw was just a small bubble rising in despair, which would burst as soon as it was poked.