Son of the Stars

Chapter 210 Good day to die
Today, the sky on Mars is dark and dusty. The thin atmosphere pushes the sand and gravel to whistle past, and the fine dust and gravel hit the outer shell of the landing module, making a series of "swish" sounds. Inside the landing module, the originally neat panels covered with various polymer materials were dismantled into a pile of ruins - in order to dismantle them as quickly as possible, many plastic clips that should have been opened with a crowbar were directly pulled off by the astronauts with their bare hands.

"Don't remove the power supply to the toilet yet." Jin Yuzhe suddenly stopped Stephen's action. He looked at the circuit system in the wall in front of him and recognized at a glance that this system was used to control the ventilation and flushing of the toilet. He stopped his work of removing the panel without hesitation and stopped Stephen's action.

"If you don't remove all these subsystems, you'll get electrocuted when you remove the main capacitor." Stephen glanced at Jin Yuzhe with some dissatisfaction, "Are you planning to touch the capacitor and commit suicide?"

"I haven't decided how to die yet." Jin Yuzhe walked past Stephen, who was squatting by the wall removing wires, and took off his sweat-soaked T-shirt while walking towards the toilet door. "But before I die, I want to take a shit first."

Stephen scoffed at Jin Yuzhe's request at first, and was even a little angry. "If we delay it for a little longer, there will be many more victims on the earth..."

Jin Yuzhe rolled his eyes. "Ai Xi, I'm ready to sacrifice my life for a charger, so what's wrong with going to the toilet? I still hope that I don't have a stomach full of shit when I die... I suggest you go there too. You don't want to poop in your pants when you die, do you?"

After saying that, Jin Yuzhe went into the bathroom without looking back.

Stephen thought about it, silently moved to another place, and began to dismantle the circuit in the rest area.

Field was communicating with S3C7 in the communication cabin. When he learned that the Egyptians on Mars were going to dismantle the power supply system, including the life support system, in order to save everyone on the entire earth, this robot, who was obsessed with "creating a better world for the Egyptians", almost went crazy.

It quickly proposed a series of alternatives, such as building and modifying airtight underground caverns for shelter, or using it to manufacture supercapacitors so as not to destroy the equipment in the landing module.

But all these proposals were rejected. The scale of the underground cavity at the landing site was too large, and it would take months to maintain airtightness even if S3C7 was fully multiplied. Digging an airtight pit large enough for four people to breathe for at least five days would also be too much work. This task would take at least two weeks to complete - the laser sintering power of S3C7 was insufficient, and it would take at least two weeks to burn airtightness under loose sand. And this was without considering the rapid increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the air, and only considering the total volume of air.

More importantly, astronauts no longer dare to use S3C7 "wantonly" to carry out any engineering projects. This self-organizing machine that is almost omnipotent in civil engineering also needs to obey the second law of thermodynamics, and its activities require the consumption of metallic hydrogen.

There is no ability to continue synthesizing compressed metallic hydrogen on Mars. Every gram of metallic hydrogen that reaches the surface of Mars with the lander may become the key to continuing human existence.

"If the remaining reaction materials are insufficient, this machine will take out the metallic hydrogen from other machines and put it into the fusion furnace." After trying to calculate almost all the means, S3C7 had to accept the reality and assured Field that it would also help complete this "suicide rescue mission."

"As long as humans continue to exist, there will be no shortage of exploration missions to Mars and other areas," Field said with a smile. "More and more Egyptians will go into space, and you will have more and more missions in the future."

"This machine pays tribute to you." S3C7 said solemnly in a straightforward tone, "Like other heroes, you have made great sacrifices for the survival of the Egyptians." It paused and said, "When the time is right, this machine will build an obelisk for you - how do you want me to describe you?"

Now it was Field's turn to feel uncomfortable. He wanted to refuse subconsciously, but when the words came to his lips, he suddenly hesitated.

"Let me put it this way: This man lived in the shadow all his life." Writing an epitaph for oneself is always a very difficult thing, but Field seemed to have thought it through long ago. He continued, "Fortunately, he still chose to look to the future and hope in the end - instead of trapping himself in the haze of the past."

"As you wish." S3C7 took note of this, the indicator light on its head flashed, and then said, "If you like, I can provide you with a few less painful solutions."
-
The atmosphere in the double zone was heavy.

The gamma-ray-electron stream emitter has been installed. Theoretically, the area around Lushan Mountain within a radius of about ten kilometers is considered a safe zone. However, the range of this safe zone is not absolute, and the emitter can only prevent new patients from developing the disease. It is useless for those who have already developed the disease to enter the irradiation area. After all, in principle, the continuous electron flow can help maintain the excited state of the electrons outside the hydrogen atom, but it is not enough to directly raise the electrons that have fallen back to the ground state to the excited state again.

In other words, this system can only prevent the occurrence of quantum potential syndrome under the best circumstances, and it cannot be treated in this way in principle.

But now no one has time to care about "how to treat the sick patients". At present, everyone in the two areas is anxiously contacting all the relatives and friends they can contact. As long as they tell them the location of the safe zone and let them find a way to reach it and stay within ten kilometers of Lushan, these healthy people can survive.

Just like the community assistance activities during the Great Collapse, where people helped each other and tied the sick to bed and cared for them, allowing as many people as possible to survive is not only beneficial to personal psychological feelings, but also helps the survival of the entire human society and even the species.

The manufacturing drawings of the launcher have been distributed to various additive manufacturing centers, but the number of centers that can manufacture in response to demand is less than 10% of the total. The additive manufacturing center must be operated manually throughout the process, and each step must be approved by the authorized control personnel before it can be carried out. Obviously, there are not many control personnel who are still sticking to their posts.

What's worse is that the transmitter made by the manufacturing center is useless in the factory. It must be installed in a place that is high enough and has enough power supply to calm the restless electrons in the crowd of an entire area.

Robots that perform emergency operations can complete installation tasks, but due to program settings, these robots cannot go to areas outside their own administrative divisions. Manned manufacturing centers can manufacture and provide transmitters for their own regions, but other manufacturing centers that are unmanned can only wait for support from surrounding areas. After completing the installation tasks in the surrounding areas, the excess transmitters will be transported by robots to the border areas of the administrative regions, and then the handover will be completed.

This will take a lot of time, and now, time is life.

It is a pipe dream to expect that this ground system can be fully configured and protect all of humanity. Perhaps they can prevent some people from getting sick, but ground-level electronic transmitters can only reduce the number of people who get sick. It cannot treat patients who have already gotten sick, nor can it reduce the explosive equivalent of patients who get sick.

It was hard to say how many people could be saved with such desperate efforts. After all, a sick patient could directly raze the entire main campus of the demonstration hospital to the ground, causing tens of thousands of casualties. In densely populated areas, even if most people were stabilized by electronic transmitters, there was still the danger of a human bomb.

Tang Qinglong and Yang Weimin were busy calculating the locations of the launchers in each manufacturing center, while Mu Zhiran and Giuseppe were paying attention to the layout of the reflecting mirrors - the specific arrangements needed to be adjusted based on Tang Qinglong and Yang Weimin's calculations.

Only Lu Chen was still paying attention to every move happening on Mars. He was watching intently, and it made him feel very distressed.

Wu Hou reported to him the latest situation thirteen minutes ago. One of the fusion reactors sent to Mars was completely scrapped, and the remaining fusion reactor alone could not achieve the set goal. When Lu Chen thought that mankind was completely hopeless, Wu Hou comforted him in time - he said there was still a way, and there was still a glimmer of hope.

Lu Chen did not pass this message directly to others, because there was no need to do so. If the Mars mission failed, everyone would die. There was no need to tell other working groups about this kind of news, because it would be useless anyway.

More importantly, Wuhou also mentioned that it "has a way to deal with this problem, it just takes some time."

Lu Chen couldn't guess what Wu Hou's "method" was, but that didn't stop him from fully trusting this AI. The reason was simple, after all, Wu Hou's record was too impressive. It even reached the point where Lu Chen couldn't help but believe it.

Besides, what can you do if you don't believe it? Just go out, turn left, find a trash can, take the bronze magic lamp inside and rub it, and let the blue elf turn into another one on Mars?
Many thoughts flashed through Lu Chen's mind, and these thoughts finally converged into a helpless sigh. They were at their wit's end, and had no other choice but to trust Wu Hou.

An AI that once wanted to destroy humanity and cover up the fact that it caused the Great Collapse has now become the only way to save humanity. It has to be said that God is really a bastard with nothing new - he couldn't even think of any other fresher routines, and just threw this huge problem to Wu Hou.

Then he was solved by Wu Hou.

Lu Chen looked at the jumping cursor representing Wu Hou on the screen, and there was only one question left in his mind - how could it solve this problem? Can it name a fusion furnace just by talking?
-
"If you ask me, the scientists on Earth are just a bunch of idiots." Jin Yuzhe tied his belt and walked out of the toilet with his butt twisted. He patted his belt, which had been tied into a knot, with satisfaction, and pointed to the toilet behind him to Stephen, "Would you like to go there?"

"No." Stephen shook his head. He had already disconnected all the main lines of the entire landing module and stopped charging the main capacitor.

The only energy source driving the landing capsule now is the remaining energy in the main capacitor, and the power in the main capacitor, which was not fully charged to begin with, can last for about an hour.

"There's less than an hour left, and I don't think I have much food in my stomach." Stephen raised his head, wiped the sweat off his head and asked, "Have you left anything you should leave behind?"

"Well, I left a few words for the kids." Jin Yuzhe took out a bottle of black coffee from the refrigerator nearby and poured it into his mouth. "Hey, if I had known that I would be staying on Mars for such a short time, I wouldn't have saved my coffee."

As a person who knew he was going to die and had arranged the way he would die, Jin Yuzhe obviously seemed a little talkative, but this did not affect Stephen or the other astronauts.

Everyone is equally afraid and doesn't want to die.

Those soldiers who killed themselves in the battlefield and sacrificed their lives to avenge their comrades, those heroes who died calmly for their ideals and beliefs, and those who resolutely sacrificed their lives to save more lives... I don't know how they felt when facing death. But one thing is certain - they would never feel as tormented as the four astronauts.

But for the four astronauts on Mars, the threat of death is like a shadow that follows them all the time, like a puff of smoke that is blown away, from the moment they board the orbital module that takes them into orbit.

When it moved from Earth orbit to Mars orbit, the smoke gradually became more concrete and thicker. When Dawn 8 exploded, it instantly turned from thick smoke into a swamp that could swallow everyone.

Now, the swamp gradually closed in, becoming a monster with its mouth wide open. They had to walk into the monster's mouth and let it eat them, and this action was completely spontaneous.

I’m afraid, of course I’m afraid, I’m scared to death.

Jin Yuzhe swallowed hard the black coffee in his throat. The dark liquid flowed down the corner of his mouth and then mixed with the tears that had long since slid down his neck to form an ugly brown drop.

Stephen patted his shoulder and stopped what he was doing. "Save some space for yourself and have a beer with me later."

Field leaned his head out of the command module and said to Stephen, "I've finished recording, come on."

Field finished recording his last words. Unlike Jin Yuzhe who was obviously depressed, the deputy commander even had a look of relief on his face.

"What kind of coffee are you drinking? Why do you want to wake yourself up so much?" Field snatched the coffee bottle from Jin Yuzhe's hand and roughly stuffed a cigar into his hand. "Try it, this is my secret stash that I secretly took from the cabin!"

Smoking and open flames were strictly prohibited in the landing module. Field secretly brought a few cigars into the module. In fact, he wanted to use the cigars that had been on Mars as a gimmick and sell them to make a fortune after returning to Earth.

But now...it's better to just quit.

Lighting a cigarette is a very difficult task, especially in the absence of any ignition facilities in the landing module. It is even more difficult to light a thick cigar. Fortunately, lighting a cigarette is not difficult for three healthy and normal adult men, especially for three astronauts with strong engineering and science backgrounds. After four attempts, the three used the emergency self-heating soldering iron to light the thick cigarette, and then they quickly lit three cigars that had just been unpacked by putting their cigarette butts together.

Three thick cigarettes were emitting bursts of blue smoke in the hands of the three men, which looked like three thick and short incense sticks stuck on three steamed buns.

The life support system of the landing module began to work at full capacity, and the filtration system above the head began to filter out the harmful smoke that suddenly appeared in the station. At the same time, Zheng Yan, who was transmitting the last scientific data in the command module, also saw the fire warning from the living section of the landing module.

She stuck her head out of the command module and saw three crew members holding thick, smoking cigars, but no one dared to put the cigars in their mouths first.

"You have such a good thing, why don't you leave one for me?" Zheng Yan walked over angrily, snatched a cigar from Jin Yuzhe's hand and stuffed it into her mouth, "How mean!"

Two streams of smoke came out of her nostrils, and her aura was quite eye-catching.

Without a cigar in his hand, Jin Yuzhe trembled his lips, but in the end he didn't say anything. He unscrewed the second bottle of black coffee in front of him and poured the coffee into his mouth carefully.

"The data will be transmitted in fifteen minutes, and then we will retreat with the capacitors." The smoke from her nostrils blocked Zheng Yan's face, and her voice sounded inexplicably muffled. "What are your plans? Will you come with me to install the capacitors, or stay here?"

The astronauts in the landing module all chose to avoid talking about the word "death", but this is a mountain that stands in front of everyone and cannot be ignored.

She wanted to ask her fellow crew members what they thought, and then see if she could be of any help—or to see if Wu Hou could be of any help.

Death is terrible, and if possible, Zheng Yan would like to choose a way that is as less painful and dignified as possible.

(End of this chapter)