My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Queen Cocoon's cockpit floats in the Sea of ​​Gryphons, drifting freely with the rolling waves, waiting for the vehicle to be recovered. ESA may prefer winged landers, but Cocoon still prefers traditional space capsules. According to Cocoon's own words, if you want to return from space in an aircraft wrapped in a big fireball and with the aerodynamic characteristics of a brick, adding a pair of wings to it and calling it a glider is definitely a no brainer. Water got in. It's better to just use it as a brick.

Cocoon Cocoon is sitting on the flight seat in the center of the cockpit, surrounded by yaks and griffons who have just completed their first aerospace career. The process of returning to the atmosphere was uneventful. Everything went smoothly from leaving the space station to the cockpit splashing down into the sea. Nonsense, Cocoon thought to herself smugly, I'm in charge after all.

Thirty days later she will enter orbit again and repeat the process. Thirty days in space, thirty days on the ground, that was her current work rhythm, at least until the earliest possible date when the escape rocket in another universe - called Mahv or something - was ready for launch. in this way. Concordia will be on standby for a long time; although the hope is slim, as soon as they discover the location of the universe where Amicitas landed, they will immediately jump there and directly coordinate with the local life forms to carry out rescue plans. If that happened, it would be Rainbow Dash who would be in charge of the mission.

Of course, once the refugees have their own rescue rocket, the plan will be adjusted to immediately rescue them and return after determining the location of the target universe. However, according to the refugees, this day will not come for at least another six months.

The cockpit drifting with the current suddenly jolted and was lifted out of the water by something. Guiding the space capsule to re-enter and return to a safe landing is still somewhat uncertain, but the technical level of CSP has also improved a lot, at least it is much better than before when it could only land in the correct ocean; now they can control the landing point of the aircraft. The recovery barge is within a radius of tens of kilometers. Therefore, only a few minutes after the aircraft splashed down, the cockpit was discovered by the recovery team, suspended in the air under the control of magic power, and prepared to be placed on a barge and transported back to Houston for repairs.

These are mundane routines. However, when Cocoon opened the hatch, a certain purple alicorn that appeared on the deck of the barge was anything but normal.

Without preamble, Twilight Sparkle got straight to the point: "We need to talk."

Cocoon looked around. There's a control room on the barge and a cubicle on the tug that provides the towing power, but little else. There is no privacy at all. Even the lack of privacy is made clear, with oversized windows providing unobstructed views into the control rooms of the tugs and barges. "Here? Now?" The Changeling Queen climbed out of the capsule and asked, "Facing..."

"Something terrible happened," Twilight said, "just two days ago, but we decided to wait until you landed safely before telling you."

The imagination in Yuxu's mind began to run wild. She understands the logic. And she also knew that Twilight Sparkle was an absolute talker by changeling standards. Therefore, if not only the princess herself chooses to remain silent, but also orders the collective to remain silent, the threat they are informed about that may cause a loss of concentration during the potentially fatal reentry process is definitely not trivial and means something that will make Cocoon Cocoon was unable to control the incident where she lost control of her emotions. Not to mention that the princess decided to come to the scene in person and tell her the news as soon as she left the cabin...

"Tell me." She prepared for the worst.

Twilight told her the situation.

The situation was as bad as Cocoon expected.

Teddy wasn't pacing anxiously, or hammering the table to vent his emotions. His face was still calm, composed and meticulous. However, he kept fiddling with the pen in his hand, tapping the notepad on the table, stroking the pen body with his thumb and index finger, then picking up the other end of the pen, letting the pen end hanging in the air fall freely, swinging it in a circle and typing back the notes. Basically, this happens over and over again. Venkat had seen Teddy do this before, but he couldn't remember how long ago it was. "Okay," he said softly at last, "we're going to keep working on the assumption that Mark will recover. How will losing Dragonfly affect the rescue mission?"

"It has a great impact." Venkat replied, "Dingting is their mission engineer. Only she has the ability to maintain their space suits. There have been two rounds of maintenance in the past two hundred and twenty solar days, and one Emergency repair. Unless some miracle happens in the pony's world, they will not have space suit maintenance for more than 300 solar days, and their space suit has already suffered from wear and tear, and there is no backup. Replacement. Not to mention that all work to adapt the pony system to our needs must be postponed."

"The cocoon that the pony astronauts mentioned is also troublesome," muttered Mitch. "They said it has never been proven to withstand a vacuum environment. As long as there is a chance that she is alive, they will not abandon it. She, so that means they have to try to get her out, put her in a space suit and transfer her to the rover. They're not going to be willing to cooperate with any plan that would hinder that."

"Dragon is the second most popular alien in the alien crew after Cherry Berry," Annie said. "The explosive news about this accident spread all over the Internet like an atomic bomb dropping shit on it. The only one The ones who blamed the current chaotic situation and accidents on Tingting were the same group of bastards who wanted the aliens to die last time. They proudly shouted on the Internet, "As expected." But the problem is that TM almost Everyone else thought she was going to die, and so was Mark. The remaining ones were hopeless without her and Mark, and the rest of NASA could only stare and do nothing."

Teddy stopped tapping the pen in his mysterious ritual, "What else can we do now?"

Yuxu held her forehead and admitted, "Okay, Tingting messed up." She continued, "She messed up very much, but I really can't blame her. If it were me, I would probably do the same thing. choice. Except of course saving the monkey. That’s something I probably wouldn’t do.”

"He's not..." Twilight Sparkle rolled her eyes and sighed, "Mark is a human, not a monkey. And he needs our help. For example, first you can tell us how to cure him."

"There is no cure," Cocoon replied. "There is no cure for being drained of love by a changeling. The victim either recovers on his own... or he never recovers."

"There is no rule of law? There must be some way!!!"

Cocoon Cocoon thought about it. On the one hand, going any further would risk exposing secrets that she was trying to protect even in peacetime. But on the other hand...she wasn't really sure anyway. "Disengagement from the changeling usually frees the victim," she finally said, "although the victim will be weaker for a while. But even if that doesn't happen...your brother came face-to-face with the changeling I chose. The subject, his beloved horse Benma, recovered quickly afterwards. You should still remember this, right?"

"Yes, I will think of this every time we want to work together," Twilight Sparkle sounded unhappy, "But I still try to let go of my prejudices..."

"Yes, yes, harmonious friendship and so on, I understand," Yuxiao interrupted her lecture, "What I want to express is that if this Mark can come into contact with the relative that Tingting imitated in order to find food, maybe It would help. Face to face with a real person, even a likeness or a voice might dispel the spell."

"That's it?" Twilight asked. "No spells, no love or anything?"

"Princess, this is really the best advice I can provide," Yuyu said not very politely, "Don't forget, we changelings didn't have any reason to care about the life and death of food not long ago, as long as we make sure It’s enough that they can continue to generate love for us. We don’t have the kind of clinical trial data you want to refer to here!”

"This oversight needs to be corrected urgently," Twilight sounded unconvinced, "But let's talk about it next time. So how do we get the dragonfly out of that cocoon?"

"There is no way." Cocoon Cocoon replied simply, "Your report mentioned an opaque cocoon. This kind of cocoon is used for long-term dormancy." In fact, this kind of cocoon can also breed queens, but Cocoon Cocoon feels that There was no reason to teach this knowledge to the pony in front of me. And the environment there lacks both magic and absolutely no (bee) royal jelly, so there is no way this is going to happen. "Forcing the cocoon to break open will harm the occupants and may even lead to death. She will leave naturally when she feels safe. The timing of breaking out of the cocoon cannot be accelerated and can only wait."

"You can't help much by saying this." Twilight couldn't help complaining.

"First you asked me a question that I never need to know the answer to, and then you asked me another question that has only one answer whether you are happy to accept it or not. What can I do?" Yuxu was extremely angry and roared. , "Ponies, for you, for my daughter and my top pilots, I'm doing my best. Stop complaining and let's talk about the lander."

"What?"

"I don't agree with the idea that we should wait until the Pony and others take action before we follow up," Teddy said. "What can we do now?"

“Catatonia is still a disease that we don’t know much about,” Dr. Shields said, sitting on the edge of an office chair. “Mark could come out of this condition at any time, or he could remain in it for years. Current situation. He needs immediate medical attention, but that won't be possible until someone takes him off Mars."

"I think we can just assume that he'll be able to recover as soon as possible," Teddy decided after some thought. "Without Mark's skills and knowledge of the Ares system, the Purnell plan would have been in vain. And we have already "We learned from alien refugees that their space program may not be able to build a vehicle that can both land on Mars and return autonomously in the short term."

"Obviously we misjudged the situation. Our astronauts may not be able to survive until the day when rescue arrives," Yuyu said. "We need to get to them as soon as possible to rescue them. We design a lander that can bring them back. how much time is required?"

"Are you kidding?" Twilight couldn't believe her ears. "Have you forgotten how big your lunar lander is? Then imagine that the aircraft you envisioned will land on an object with a gravity three times greater than that of the moon. On the planet! The atmosphere is dense enough to cause significant resistance during the ascent; but the atmosphere is too thin during landing to even provide aerodynamic deceleration! Moreover, you have to carry six more people on top of your original crew configuration. ! Not to mention that we can’t use any magic this time, and even the presence spell is a luxury.”

"Then let Concordia be responsible for the communication relay," Yuyu said nonchalantly, "The battery is sufficient."

"It takes up to two hours from landing to takeoff," Twilight was still worried. "This does not include how long it takes to rendezvous with Concordia. Moreover, Concordia will continue to consume energy during this time, and will eventually run out of energy and be unable to jump. Return to our world."

"Do you mean you can't do it?" Yuxu asked.

"No. What I mean is that both construction and testing take time. We have to test the landing and recovery of the aircraft on the star. Even if we use Concordia to carry the lander back and forth, it will take a year to complete. We also need to design the spacecraft. We also need to train the mission team. We also need to conduct a horseless landing to ensure that the aircraft will not kill the passengers. Then there are horse-controlled landing and lift-off tests. The combined time is too long. Relying on humans The spaceship is actually faster."

Cocoon cocoon snorted disdainfully, "I can't accept this." She said, "If we don't arrive as soon as possible, Tingting will die in that living hell. And only I can coax her out of the cocoon."

"We haven't even found their location yet," Twilight continued to ramble. "Before we actually found them, even if Discord gave us a beautifully packaged lander as a gift, it had the legendary Queen Queen's personal signature. ...Even so, I will never believe it..."

"That's enough!" Yuxu heard enough of the princess's words and turned away angrily. "If you just make excuses all day long saying that we can't do this or that, what's the use of the horned beast princess?"

"Cocoon, my student is right there. My first student."

"My daughter is here too. Although she is one of many descendants, she still belongs to me."

"I know. That's why we have to make sure our plan is foolproof when we go to rescue them. Because we may only have one chance."

In her mind, Yuxu wanted to refute this, attack the logic behind it, and question the motives of the princess' behavior...but she couldn't do it in the end. They indeed had to arrive as soon as possible...but they couldn't make any mistakes and had to win the first battle. "I know," as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she secretly scolded herself for revealing too much true feelings in her words. She could already feel the sympathy pouring out of the nerd.

"Cocoon..."

"Let's go," the Queen ordered coldly, "This audio...this...this conversation ends here."

"Let's go?" Twilight looked around and gestured, "We are on the barge."

Cocoon looked around and realized how many eyes were focused on the two of them. Absolutely. Just like this, he publicly executed himself in front of all the horses. "Leave me alone anyway," she muttered, "take your pity elsewhere."

"No. Friends will not abandon each other at this time." After Twilight Sparkle said this, she walked over to Cocoon and sat next to her.

It seemed like she wasn't going to leave.

Cocoon couldn't help but notice that Twilight Sparkle had the good sense not to put her front hooves or wings around her to comfort her. Which is a good thing, because if she dared to do that, she would tear it up in a heartbeat, whether it was peacetime or not.

"We can ask the alien team members to discuss this with their superiors," Teddy said, "but pinning our hopes on an alien rescue mission is futile at this point. So what can we do now that will help?"

“The ideal treatment for catatonic shock starts with placing the patient in a place where they feel safe and secure,” Dr. Shields replied. “We don’t have that on Mars. The next step is to combat the biochemical environment in the brain. Medical intervention for imbalances. Dr. Keller and I are reluctant to recommend this because ponies do not have the ability to measure neurotransmitter or endorphin levels in their bodies, and we hope they will not tamper with the materials in the medical kit. Of course. Electroshock therapy is therefore no longer feasible."

Others in the room nodded silently in understanding.

“The next best thing,” Shields continued, “would be to reach out to family, friends, and people the patient trusts, as long as they are not the cause of the catatonic episode. Maybe Mark’s parents and the Hermes team could record a set Short messages are sent through the Pathfinder channel.”

"Only audio is accepted," Venkat added. "Our data transfer rate is now only about 750 bits per second and continues to drop. That's 1MB of data every three hours. Video is absolutely impossible. Even Even audio messages can only be very brief and the sound quality is very low."

“Take a small photo with the audio,” suggested Dr. Shields. “It won’t be as good as a full video, but it will help. In this case, a text message won’t work. Nothing works - there is no direct communication of feelings.”

"That's it," Teddy said, "I'll call Watney's family to make arrangements. Mitch, you are responsible for contacting the Hermes team members. Xiaowen, do you know of anyone else..."

Venkat shook his head, "Mark is career-oriented," he explained. "He had several girlfriends during training, but they couldn't talk for long. The people closest to him are his parents, Ares 3 The crew members and Pony and the others.”

"Don't forget his nerdy side," Mitchell interjected. "Mark loves superhero movies and science fiction. Maybe we can bring in some of his favorite actors to help."

"Give me a list," Anne said bluntly, "I'll get it done. Most of Hollywood is blocking my door now asking if I can help. The threshold is almost broken."

"Well," Teddy ended the meeting, "let's show Mark how much love he can get."