My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 84

ARES 3 solar day 86

A bright spot flashed on the rover's dashboard, which lasted steadily for about a second, then flashed again, continued to stay on after a while, and finally went out.

"What's that?" Starlight Glimmer asked.

"Beacon in the residential area." Mark replied, staring at the basically flat terrain in front of him. But rocks are still everywhere, not to mention those pesky gullies and the occasional crater or hill that pops up out of nowhere. The rover has returned to the Ashidaria plain, leaving behind the more visually interesting alluvial plains of Ares Valley. "We shouldn't be able to receive it for the time being. There must be some weird Martian weather phenomenon happening."

"Huh?" After hearing this, Starlight wanted to look up the meaning of the word "beacon" in Mark's computer dictionary. However, the computer was part of the integrated component of the rover control system. Yes, the car does have a joystick, throttle (throttle control) and brake pedal, just like the automatic cars in the Equestria parade, but now there are obviously many more things to control. Mark always has one hand next to his keyboard while driving. So she asked, "What is a 'beacon'?"

"There are two radios in the residential area." Mark said, "One is for communicating with the earth. The antenna of that radio was shattered in the previous storm." He temporarily let go of the direction stick and keyboard in his hands, and quickly Made a fist-smashing hand gesture to describe the meaning of the word "crush." Soon he held the joystick steady again and continued, "And the other one can only transmit one signal on one frequency. Do you remember what 'frequency' means?"

"Remember." Xingguang nodded. She had practiced that word many times. This concept will be very useful when it comes to communicating with humans on Earth.

"It cannot change the content of the signal, nor can it change the transmission frequency, so it cannot be used for communication." Mark said, "The rover uses it so that we can always find the direction of the residential area."

"Oh. So... like a... uh..." She didn't know how to say the corresponding English word, but the word in Pony language was a compound word made up of two words; and since their language So similar in grammatical structure... "Like a lighthouse?" she asked tentatively.

At this moment, Mark's eyes turned from the deserted road in front of him to Starlight for a second, and he looked at her in surprise. "Lighthouse? Yes, just like that," he said. "But the lighthouse tells the ship that there is danger here. The beacon says, come here quickly."

Oh, so that’s what “beacon” means! Now Starlight understood what Mark was referring to - like the lights that helped guide the airship into the harbor in the dark, or like the ancient times before the unification of Equestria when the earth ponies guarded the group against Pegasus or Onehorn. A mountain bonfire lit by a beast attacking.

But how do they do this with radio? There are indeed many attraction spells that can easily guide a pony to a specific location - in fact, some attraction spells are so powerful that they can drag a pony directly to a designated location through sheer brute force. But radio can't drag anything. Radio is nothing more than light rays scattered randomly.

Aha! It's light! If you follow a glowing beacon, you'll move in the direction of the light source! And if you go the right way, the light will get brighter and brighter! So if you have a directional antenna, similar to a parabolic dish, then when you point the antenna directly at the signal source, the received signal will be the strongest!

What a simple and wonderful invention! She couldn't wait to describe the idea to Twilight Sparkle via telegram. In this way, a magical beacon can be created that can be used by any pony except unicorns and ponies carrying magic receivers. "What a great idea!" she exclaimed.

And Mark shook his head like he did every time she praised something he had grown accustomed to. “Great idea?” he suggested. “Maybe a ‘great idea’?”

“What is ‘great’?”

"'Good' can mean either 'very big' or 'very good'." At this time, Mark glanced at the dashboard in front of him, "Today's journey is almost complete." He looked around, Finding that the current location was just what he wanted, he stopped the rover.

Starlight could hardly believe it. At this moment, she was almost impatient to get into her space suit. The suit was bulky, stiff, noisy when moving, and just generally annoying; the helmet sometimes accidentally bumped into her corners, causing a lot of pain. But at least the air inside the suit doesn't smell like the sewers of Manehattan. Once she steps out of the rover's airlock, she can wear the suit and roam freely across the planet's open spaces. Besides that, there was still an hour or two to keep some distance from her traveling companions.

To put it bluntly, Mark stinks. Starlight has seen countless horses in her life, and has also encountered many homeless wanderers looking for unspeakable things; and the smelliest pony she has ever seen in her life, the one who hates cleanliness the most and has no respect for hygiene is now It can be hung around Mark's neck and used as an air freshener. Apart from the smell of feces and urine that permeated the rover, he also had a certain smell of sweat on his body, which made him smell like (friendliness warning) a 170-pound ape that had just come down from a tree.

She thought, I don't remember Sunset Shimmer smelling like this. Neither were her friends. Not even the movie pervert whose name is that. He looks a bit like one of the humans there, and the word "human" is apparently the same in both languages, but...ah, how annoying!

I couldn't even mention it to the other horses because the existence of the mirror portal was a secret!

"How far is it?" Starlight asked.

Mark gestured back and forth and said, "There's about a hundred kilometers left, maybe less." "We'll be there in two solar days."

Starlight frowned. Without a space suit, a pony can cover one hundred kilometers in one day without feeling tired. Now she even wanted to jump up, climb over the sand and rocks in front of her, and run all the way back to the living area; the air conditioner there could filter out most of the stench of feces, there was her own bed, and there were , praising the eldest princess, there is also a bathroom.

Thinking of the bathroom, she even wanted to tear off a piece of the rover's saddle bag and make a temporary small saddle bag, and carry Mark, the space suit and other weird things back all together, so that she could get him as soon as possible. The stinky smell on my body was washed away.

But this won't work. They are all team members. They belong to the same team. They are also friends. And friends will never abandon each other.

At this time, Mark locked the seal of his space suit and looked at the stars. "I'll go outside and collect some rocks," he said. "I'll be back in two hours."

Starlight snorted impatiently. Suddenly she wanted to throw away Mark and his pile of rocks and go back to the base. She had fully hoped that as the unpalatable legumes were digested into excrement, the bulk of the food parcels would gradually shrink, allowing more activities in the rover. space. But it backfired. Since Mark and the others have already landed on the moon, they have always thought about taking samples for scientific research. It was as if this pile of rocks could really be brought back to Earth by him! By the time help arrived, there was no room to carry anything else but the six of them. Even Starlight knows this, why doesn't he understand?

On the verge of collapse, she said to herself: Calm down, he is just trying to give himself something to do and keep his head clear, just like the method you thought of before. And no matter what, I only need to endure it for two more days.

"Okay." She responded to Mark while trying to control her emotions, and at the same time she began to miss the days when she had enough magic power to use the Curse of Containing Fury. All she had to do was stay in a tin can with some stinking ape who kept telling vague jokes in some language she was just beginning to learn and who couldn't appreciate the excellent avant-garde music that was ringing in her ears. The anger...

...just put it in a bottle and drop it somewhere on Mars where no horse can find it.

Of course, in order to do this, in addition to having the appropriate magic power, she also needs a suitable container. The containers in the car that are closest to the requirements of the spell are the two that they have been using as toilets, and now they are almost full. Starlight didn't want to imagine how emotional magic would react with such... ingredients.

"Okay." She repeated again, "Then I'll... go... there." In fact, it was a little further away. About a mile or two away. "Do you have that gem with you?"

Mark patted the chest of his space suit. "The batteries and crystal are here."

Starlight used magic to put on the helmet she had prepared and said, "Then I'm ready too."

So the two squeezed into the airlock together. The space inside is quite cramped, but at least it feels better than inside the smelly rover.

"Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas, please speak."

"Amicitas, this is Starlight. We are about a hundred kilometers south of the residential area. We should be back within two days."

"That's great! Everything is normal here...but...I think I should have something to tell Mark, but I can't remember it now."

"If you can forget it, it shouldn't be that important."

"No, I'm pretty sure this is important. Um...did I tell you that we took four seats off Mark's lander and put them on Amicitas?"

"You said that before. Mark said no problem, but keep the old seats. The metal in them might come in handy."

"That's good. And... well, I really can't think of anything else."

"How's the magic battery?"

"Already 30 percent. We just take it to the spacecraft and use it for a while every time we need to talk. We're charging it all the time."

"Okay. Pay attention to saving energy. There will be no calls tomorrow. We should be able to jog back to the residential area after we drive the next section."

"Copy that. I'll think about it again. But remember to prepare your spacesuits tomorrow night. I may still need to contact you."

"Understood, Berry. Starlight Glimmer communication is over."