Reborn in 2011, I am the chief designer of aerospace.

"Don't move, don't move!" Han Jing pulled out a canister of compressed oxygen and frantically tried to inflate it into Song Xingye's backpack. "Sergei, hold him down!"

Sergei held Song Xingye tightly with both hands; he had never been so grateful to see his saviors in his life.

"Don't move around, you'll be fine. Stay still, I need to treat you," Han Jing reassured him.

"Of course," Song Xingye muttered, "we're all going to die sooner or later anyway. Did I tell you before, is that ship big enough to squeeze the three of us in? That pitifully small spaceship."

As emergency oxygen was connected to his life support system, Song Xingye's voice gradually weakened.

"I'm doomed," he muttered. "I'm so stupid."

"You said it yourself," Han Jing replied irritably.

……

Back during training exercises, Song Xingye had already given this living pod a nickname: "Hobbit Pod" because its interior space was extremely cramped, and even people of average build had to bend over to stand up.

"This thing isn't for humans; it's made specifically for hobbits," he remarked at the time.

From the outside, the living quarters look like three golden cookies put together, with a mini cookie stuck next to them to act as an airlock.

This golden yellow color is the natural color of the Capton film, a puncture-resistant polyimide material in which high-strength carbon fiber reinforcement lines are secretly embedded.

The translucency of the bulkhead was just right; from the outside, the "Hobbit pod" emitted a deep, almost fiery glow.

All five team members had entered the cabin. Han Jing helped Song Xingye sit down on a supply box, put an oxygen mask on him, and then drew a blood sample from him for further testing.

She gently tapped Song Xingye's other knee to observe the reaction of his reflex nerves.

What was your mother's last name before she got married?

Her surname is Li, and her name is Li Hongxia.

"Keep your arms straight and don't move."

She stared intently at his hand, watching for any signs of trembling. "Good. Now touch your nose with your index finger. Yes, then touch it again with your left index finger. Well done. Tell me, where are we now?"

"In a small, dark 'Hobbit' room that smelled of plastic," Song Xingye sniffed, then added, "there was another smell, probably peroxide."

"Then where is this room?" Han Jing pressed.

Song Xingye grinned: "On Mars."

"Very good," Han Jing said.

She opened one of his eyelids, shone a flashlight into his eye to observe the pupil's contraction, and then examined the other eye.

"Your orientation and cognitive function are at level three. Your brain experienced severe oxygen deprivation, and the situation is not optimistic, but fortunately, no permanent damage has been found so far. If you feel you can breathe enough, you can take off the oxygen mask. Do you have a headache?"

Song Xingye took off his mask: "I'm fine."

"Put it away safely," Han Jing said. "Do you know what just happened?"

Song Xingye shook his head, a hint of pain in his gesture.

Han Jing thought that the kid was probably still having a headache. She had hoped to give him a full positron emission tomography scan to ensure that there were no hidden dangers, but due to the limited equipment, this was obviously an impossible task.

"I think the zirconium oxide battery is malfunctioning, but the specific cause is still unclear," Song Xingye said. "It has stopped supplying oxygen, and I will take it apart and check it tomorrow."

"Take it down tonight," Han Jing said firmly. "We're not going anywhere until we figure out the cause of the malfunction and make sure it doesn't happen again."

Song Xingye frowned slightly, but still nodded in agreement: "You're right, okay, tonight then."

Han Jing called out towards the airlock opening, "I'm done checking, you can all come in now."

Commander Sheng Tianhong was the first to enter the living quarters, followed by Sergei, and finally Mira.

Even in this cramped space where one had to bend over like a caveman, Mila maintained her unique elegance. With five adults crammed together, the cabin suddenly felt incredibly cramped.

At this moment, Song Xingye became the focus of everyone's attention, and he felt somewhat uneasy under their gaze.

"What you just said," Han Jing said seemingly casually, "was what you said just before you fainted, do you remember?"

"I don't remember very well..." Song Xingye said vaguely, but under Han Jing's sharp gaze, he had no choice but to change his tune, "Okay, I remember now."

Song Xingye looked at Commander Sheng Tianhong, hoping he could help him out of the predicament, but the commander was clearly not ready to intervene in the interrogation.

Han Jing pressed further, "Did you say, 'We can only have three people squeeze onto the spaceship'?"

Song Xingye nodded. The cabin was deathly silent, and all eyes were on him.

He cleared his throat awkwardly: "Um...it was indeed a very small spaceship."

Still, no one responded.

"I did tell the commander about it."

Han Jing turned around and stared intently at Commander Sheng Tianhong: "You clearly knew everything, yet you've been keeping it from us?"

"I... well, at the time it seemed like keeping it a secret was a good decision," Sheng Tianhong stammered.

"I... well, at the time it seemed like keeping it a secret was a good decision," Sheng Tianhong stammered.

"You mean, even if we go through all that hardship to reach the pole, only three of us will make it home alive? You didn't even tell us that?" She then abruptly turned to Mira. "And you?"

Mira looked away, avoiding her gaze: "That's our spaceship, of course I know its parameters."

Han Jing looked at Sergei, who silently shook his head at her.

"So, in the whole team, only this poor kid doesn't know that one of us is going to die, right?"

She deliberately used the word "death" to create a shocking effect, and it seems to have actually worked.

Sheng Tianhong helplessly spread her hands: "Things aren't what you think."

"Really?" Han Jing crossed his arms over his chest. "Okay, then explain it to me."

"At that moment, all I could think about was that anything could happen once we got to the spaceship. We had to stay united as a team and not let despair spread," Sheng Tianhong explained.

"Besides, who knows what the future holds? This journey is inherently fraught with danger, and no one can say for sure whether we'll all survive to the end. What if something happens to us on the way..."

Han Jing's eyes widened instantly: "You mean, you actually hoped we'd both die on the road?!"

"No, that's absolutely not what I meant! I just thought..." Sheng Tianhong lowered her head in anguish, "I just felt that if we set off, we could at least save three people."

"Perhaps we can modify that spaceship so it can carry more people on launch," Song Xingye interjected. "I can't be sure it absolutely can't fit five people."

"Fine," Han Jing said coldly, turning back to stare at Commander Sheng Tianhong again. "Now, explain to me something else: what were you and Mira doing sneakily on the 'Rock Jumper' an hour ago?"

Han Jing originally thought that someone like Sheng Tianhong would never blush, but he did blush.

He looked down at his toes and muttered to himself, "Nothing."

"Didn't do anything?" Han Jing said, turning his gaze to Mira.

Mila Noodles looked back at her without changing his expression, tilting his head slightly to one side.

"You guys are definitely up to something."

"She just wanted to talk to me privately," Sheng Tianhong said.

"Really? Discussing it privately? Discussing what?"

Han Jing kept staring intently at Mira, but the faint smile on Mira's lips revealed far more information than Han Jing wanted to know.

Sheng Tianhong almost muttered to herself, "I should have realized sooner that she knew the size of that spaceship."

He looked up at Han Jing and said, "Nothing really happened. She just wants to talk to me."

After Sergei made the emergency call, it took Sheng Tianhong nearly ten minutes to get in touch with Song Xingye, whereas it should have taken no more than two minutes.

These two are definitely doing something shady, and as for what exactly it is, Han Jing already has a pretty good guess in his mind.

……

The next morning, the atmosphere in the team was so oppressive that it was hard to breathe. Commander Sheng Tianhong ordered Sergei to practice driving off-road vehicles and sent Mira to supervise him.

Clearly, Sergei's performance during last night's oxygen deprivation crisis finally earned the commander's approval. Or perhaps, Song Xingye's accident suddenly woke the commander up, reminding him that any team member could lose their ability to act at any time, and he had to ensure that everyone could stand on their own, including Sergei.

Meanwhile, Song Xingye has already determined the cause of the malfunction of the zirconium oxide electrolysis device in the spacesuit. Simply put, this is a miniature version of the same accident that the Darwin spacecraft encountered back then.

The oxygen partial pressure sensor was contaminated by sulfur free radicals, causing both the primary and backup sensors to erroneously issue oxygen overload alarms. Under the system's automatic feedback mechanism, the spacesuit continuously reduced the oxygen generation rate until the oxygen in the mixed gas inhaled by Song Xingye was almost exhausted.

The solution is to perform an overnight heat treatment on all sensors each night, which is sufficient to remove the accumulated harmful gases before the oxygen concentration reaches a dangerous critical point.

Song Xingye suggested making it a routine daily operation. For double insurance, Song Xingye also modified the parameter settings of the oxygen control software. In the future, even if the system detects excessive oxygen, the spacesuit's microcomputer will maintain basic oxygen production and will never directly cut off the oxygen supply again.

Finally, he strongly recommended that during missions on the ground, all personnel must manually check the oxygen levels of their spacesuits twice a day. The manual check system uses a completely independent sensor module that will not be affected by this malfunction, and the sensor element must be replaced immediately if any abnormal data is found.

In this way, they have a three-layered redundancy safety mechanism to prevent failures, which is enough to completely eliminate such dangers.

Although no one wants to sever their life and fortune on a sensor that could malfunction at any moment, Song Xingye's improvements have brought the system's security to its current limit, and he is convinced that there is no better solution at the moment.

"So what should we do now?" Han Jing asked.

"Continue north." Commander Sheng Tianhong looked at her with unwavering eyes. "We have no other choice at the moment."

As planned, Mira and Sergei set off first in their off-road vehicle to scout the route.

Since Song Xingye had stayed up all night troubleshooting, Commander Sheng Tianhong allowed him to rest as a passenger on the "Rock Jumper" rover.

The commander piloted the vehicle himself, while Han Jing once again sat in the observation position atop the cockpit.

The commander glanced at Han Jing with displeasure. If he had been driving the day before, he would never have allowed Han Jing to go outside on the roof to get some wind.

But since the die was cast, he couldn't be bothered to stop it. Besides, having Han Jing on the roof made the cramped cockpit of the "Rock Jumper" a bit more spacious.

The early morning sky was a dull, adobe-like hue, and wisps of feather-like clouds floated in the Martian stratosphere—tiny ice crystals formed by the sublimation of carbon dioxide.

The ground was jagged with rocks, and Han Jing was jolted around on the roof of the car, but she quickly adapted to the bumpy rhythm and keeping her balance was no longer a problem.

"Hey, Mira, wait a minute!" Han Jing could hear Sergei's shouts clearly through the communication channel. "Hey, you're driving too fast! Can't you slow down? Wait for me!"

Mira did not respond.

However, Han Jing noticed that her driving speed today was actually much slower than the day before, probably out of consideration for Sergei's lack of experience as a novice driver.

……

On the other side, Sergei was driving, and the melody of a classic old song kept echoing in his mind:

Driving on this lonely highway, just driving and driving and driving...

He gripped the steering wheel, completely focused and extremely careful.

Driving an off-road vehicle in a VR simulator is one thing, but actually doing it on the real Martian surface is another. He knew very well that if he crashed the off-road vehicle, the whole team would be finished, and they would never trust him again.

Dragging heavy bags, I charged forward, charged forward, charged forward...

He followed closely behind Mira's car, tracing her tracks and carefully observing how she skillfully avoided obstacles.

Mira seemed to have a lot of ease when cornering, and sometimes she would even draw lazy S-shaped curves on the open ground without any purpose. Sergei couldn't think of any reason for her to do this except for wanting a thrill.

However, the Martian rocky road surface had a ridiculously poor grip, and Sergei dared not follow too closely, fearing that the car would tilt too much when turning, causing the chassis to lose control and slide down.

So he consciously released the accelerator and increased the safe distance between the two cars.

That's fine, anyway, he's practicing safe driving and there's absolutely no way he'll get lost. This off-road vehicle is equipped with an advanced laser gyroscope inertial navigation system with positioning accuracy down to the millimeter level.

Even in the worst-case scenario, where he loses track of both Mira ahead and the Rock Jumper behind, he can still call them by radio at any time to get their real-time coordinates.

Therefore, he didn't care much about Mira gradually leaving him behind.

He even had the energy to think about other things while driving, completely forgetting that he wasn't on the highway in his hometown, but on another planet 200 million kilometers away from Earth.

So when Mira and her car plunged off the cliff, he was already nearly a kilometer away.