Son of the Stars

Chapter 197 Landing

Lu Chen and others were anxiously waiting for news - there was still no news from the Space Administration. Meanwhile, far away on Mars, the rescue operation that had been delayed for more than 20 minutes was still going on.

In fact, since Zheng Yan rushed into the lifeboat with a broken leg, Lu Chen and others have not received any signal directly from Dawn 7. After being blown to pieces, the data encoding and forwarding system of Dawn 7 could not work properly. A large part of the weak signal from the lifeboat was transmitted into the empty deep space. Only a small part of the radio signal was intercepted by Dawn 6 and then forwarded to the earth.

From these radio wave codes, Lu Chen and others could barely judge that Zheng Yan was still alive. But this "alive" was only before the radio waves were sent. The only thing known on Earth was that Zheng Yan was still alive twenty minutes ago. As for her current situation, God didn't know.

God lives in heaven. Although we don’t know exactly where heaven is, it is probably not closer to Mars than the Earth.

Yang Weimin's reaction was faster than that of young people like Lu Chen and Mu Zhiran. He immediately asked the astronauts who had not yet completed the first Mars landing to launch a rescue operation. According to AI calculations, when the instructions from Earth reach the surface of Mars, these astronauts should be able to set off when the rescue capsule reenters the orbit.

But that was all they could do for the Dawn series crew - Mars was too far away, and the Earth was really out of reach. But for the Earth, Lu Chen and the others had a lot of things they had to do right now.

"If the cause of the explosion of Dawn 7 was quantum energy release syndrome... does that mean that some changes have occurred that we don't know about?" Lu Chen was worried. Ruan Hongying's death was shocking. One of the important reasons was that her death did not conform to the general laws of quantum potential energy syndrome.

Quantum energy release syndrome generally does not occur so suddenly. At least in all the cases observed in the past, a long-term high fever should appear first, followed by a violent energy release.

But Ruan Hongying did not have a fever.

Each astronaut has a vital sign monitoring device in his space suit. The vital signs of astronauts that can be obtained on Earth include their heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, body temperature, etc. Whether it is the data from a few days ago or the monitoring in the last hour before the explosion, Ruan Hongying's body temperature is completely normal.

Before the explosion of Dawn 8, the astronaut's fever was also detected. The medical team at that time gave the astronaut a large dose of antipyretic drugs, and the astronaut "lived up to everyone's expectations" and had a high fever for four consecutive days.

Then it turned into a huge bomb that completely destroyed Dawn 8.

To be honest, the only reason why this extremely dangerous disease, Quantum Energy Syndrome, can still be kept "secret" is that it has very obvious signs and a very slow onset. At least four days of high fever and the subsequent trance of consciousness make it almost impossible for ordinary people to ignore such an onset of the disease.

And this is enough for the crowd to take adequate countermeasures - at least to keep casualties at the level of one patient.

But the current situation was somewhat unexpected. Ruan Hongying exploded, but did not have a fever.

Explosions without warning are the most terrifying.

Without the need for other instructors to point it out, Lu Chen immediately realized the seriousness of this change. If astronauts in the orbit of Mars could suddenly explode without any warning, why wouldn't those on Earth? Why wouldn't the crew of the Dawn 8 between Earth and Mars?
There must be some factor that has caused this change in the situation, and this factor will undoubtedly be the fatal blow that changes the attitude of the entire human world towards Quantum Energy Release Syndrome.

Lu Chen and Mu Zhiran looked at each other, and then thought of a possibility at the same time - "Exit the radiation range?"

The electron tide from the Crab Nebula is the basis for the birth of the Big Crunch and the Quantum Energy Syndrome, and its decay leads to the onset of the Big Crunch and the subsequent emergence of the Quantum Energy Syndrome. The solar system has now moved to the edge of the Crab Nebula's radiation influence.

Since the appearance of the Tianguan guest star, no human has ever left the radiation range of the electron tide. No one knows what the consequences of leaving the radiation zone will be, not even the most daring guess.

"From a mechanistic point of view, immune-mediated photon release is the main hypothesis for the patient's fever. Under this hypothesis, a major cause of persistent fever is the slow imbalance process under the influence of electron tide." Yang Weimin is familiar with the hypotheses proposed by Lu Chen, and his professional background in rheumatology and immunology makes him adept at applying these hypotheses. "If there is no continuous influence of electron tide, this imbalance process is likely to be shortened a lot."

"The burning process was shortened a lot and turned into an explosion." Tang Qinglong rubbed his brow and said, "But this doesn't make sense... She didn't have a major collapse, and most of the electrons outside the lithium atoms in her body are still in normal state. Then the ultraviolet rays released by the drop in the energy level of the hydrogen atoms will not be captured by the electrons outside the lithium atoms..."

"Although ultraviolet rays will not be captured by the external electrons of lithium atoms, the released photons will be lost during the propagation process. In the radiation zone, we rely on electron tides to make up for the loss. But after leaving the radiation zone, this loss will trigger energy release." Mu Zhiran analyzed, "The impact of electron tides on us may be greater than expected, so that the hydrogen atoms in their bodies will explosively release energy with the slightest change..."

Tang Qinglong looked at Mu Zhiran with some concern. The knowledgeable Academician Tang was frightened by his student's assumption: "Doesn't that mean that all the astronauts on Mars now may be time bombs?"

"Teacher Tang, the situation may be worse than that." Lu Chen shook his head and said, "The Earth will enter a radiation-free zone in about half a year - if four billion people all turn into bombs, I'm afraid only single-celled organisms will be able to survive on Earth."
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The landing capsule disintegrated while spinning, like a brilliant firework that suddenly bloomed in the sky.

In the design led by normal people, the landing capsule certainly does not have the function of active disintegration. Although the designs of the Shuguang series landing capsules and lifeboats are different, they all follow a common rule - there is no button that can self-destruct or cause self-destruction.

The setting of the spacecraft with a self-destruct button is mainly for the convenience of those screenwriters who want to show the fearless self-sacrifice of the characters. In actual use, the spacecraft will not carry enough explosives to blow itself up anyway, and the detonation button is placed in the most conspicuous place, marked in the most conspicuous red color, and separated by a fragile and vulnerable plastic sheet.

The Dawn series does not have self-destruction, but the lifeboat itself can also serve as a forward base on Mars. It is expandable.

In fact, in order to ensure that the smaller life capsule can serve as a backup forward base during the Mars mission, the designers specially designed many movable and expandable parts around the life capsule. These parts should be gradually unfolded after landing, so as to provide convenience for the astronauts' work and life.

This mechanism became Zheng Yan's last attempt to save her life.

Using his authority, he ordered the AI ​​to forcibly unlock all the expansion mechanism locks. As the landing module spun wildly, these expansion mechanisms flew out along with other important lines and pipelines, even the power module and oxygen tanks. The centrifugal force directly tore the link mechanism apart, creating a huge firework on Mars.

After the huge change in mass, the lander, which was already leaking air on all sides, finally underwent a Dzhanibekov rotation. The rotating lander suddenly turned back and forth, completing the righting action.

The display in front of Zheng Yan had long lost its display, and only the control panel in front of her maintained emergency power supply. She twisted the joystick in front of her violently, causing the attitude engine, which was almost completely ejected, to rotate in reverse and slow down, and then directly pulled the manual pull ring of the parachute while it was rotating.

The parachute rope that flew out at high speed was three hundred meters long. By the time the parachute rope was fully released and the huge parachute was inflated and fully opened, the life capsule was less than five hundred meters from the ground.

What's even more terrible is that the deceleration effect of the parachute is rapidly weakening - the high-speed rotating landing capsule is like a huge spinning weight, which quickly twists the parachute rope into a strand.

The connection between the parachute rope and the lifeboat should have had a two-way sliding connection structure to prevent this from happening. But I don't know if it was because of the high-speed rotation just now that the structure was deformed, or for some other reason... The two-way sliding structure did not work, and the parachute, which was originally 600 square meters when opened, was rapidly bending and shrinking. The deceleration range of the lifeboat was also rapidly decreasing.

Fifty meters from the ground, the recoil engine started. In the lifeboat that was leaking air on all sides, the cushioning seat started forcibly, pulling Zheng Yan, who was still trying to control the landing speed, back to the top of the seat, and then the whole body rose in a lying position, ready to deal with the impact.

Zheng Yan lay on the seat and took a deep breath of the air in the helmet that had already become polluted.

She had done everything she could, and now she could only leave everything to fate, to that completely unreliable bastard who had clear ill intentions.

She looked up at the sky which was still spinning rapidly, and saw rapidly rotating patches of gray-red color.

Then she closed her eyes in a strong sense of dizziness and discomfort.
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A column of smoke shot up into the sky, and about half a minute later, a slight sound reached the hull of the rover - and then was completely isolated by the hull.

The astronauts in the Mars rover were in a delicate silence. Whether it was Watanabe Masao and Kim Woo-cheol who were wearing space suits, or Valentina who was controlling the Mars rover to drive at full speed to the predicted landing site, they all had an unspoken "consensus".

The life capsule exploded in mid-air, breaking into countless pieces. Although the parachute opened, it obviously did not slow down the aircraft to a level that the human body could tolerate.

Add to that the flying smoke and dust, and even the most optimistic people would not think that Zheng Yan could survive. Although she was a very remarkable commander, this did not allow her to suddenly gain a strong, superhuman-level tough body.

The impact that humans can withstand on Mars is much greater than on Earth. Strictly speaking, it is at least twice as great. But... even taking this into account, the probability of Zheng Yan surviving is still too small.

But none of the three dared to speak first.

The rover drove silently at full speed towards the crash site, and the three people in the cockpit remained silent - they could only speak the truth, but no one was willing to be the first to say "Zheng Yan cannot be saved, let's go back first to save resources."

But everyone's attitude is loosening and changing. They are astronauts, professionals who cannot afford to take chances. Giving up the search and rescue of the commander on Mars is certainly unacceptable, but wasting precious and non-renewable resources on a search and rescue operation that is doomed to fail is equally unacceptable.

"We..." Valentina was the first to lose patience. She turned around and said to her two colleagues who were wearing space suits, "Should we..."

Before she could finish her suggestion, a distorted sound suddenly came from the radio.

This voice obviously came from Zheng Yan, and will inevitably be recorded in history as "the speech of the first person to land on Mars."

This is what Zheng Yan said.

"It fucking hurts."

(End of this chapter)