Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1673 Captain's Meeting

When a tiny soul looks out of a porthole into the void, the void always responds with silence.

On the bridge of Lewis and Clark, silence enveloped most people, including Dr. Weir.

He was a refined, middle-aged man with short, black hair neatly combed back. His impeccably pressed dark blue cabin uniform still had sharp, straight wrinkles. His moist, melancholic eyes revealed a hazy gaze as he tirelessly read a report on his tablet, a pen in his hand performing complex calculations. The air here was dry, clean, and also cold, carrying the smell of a gray circulating filter. The air was filled with the almost imperceptible, sharp hum of the instruments running, the force of their rotation pressing the crew firmly to the floor of their living quarters.

Everyone gathered around the round table, and Captain Miller, sitting opposite Dr. Will, looked at him with a serious expression on his dark face. As an experienced astronaut, he knew this mission was unusual, and the person who organized this rescue operation was none other than Dr. Will, who seemed out of place with everyone else. Even the most lively crew members seemed incredibly troubled at this moment.

Captain Miller scanned the round table. He believed Dr. Will needed to give everyone present an answer—an answer worth risking their lives and spending years on an unproven spaceship, an answer worth leaving behind everything they cherished on Earth. The middle-aged woman sitting next to Dr. Will was also in a spacesuit, wearing a grass-green coat. Her neatly styled, short, wet, reddish-brown curly hair was swept back. She held a tablet computer playing a video. A boy with similar reddish-brown hair, bundled up, sat in a stroller, bouncing around and laughing loudly as she pushed him. That was her son, a child with a physical disability.

She embarked on this extremely dangerous and unprecedented journey, extending humanity's footprint to the edge of the solar system, without having the time or opportunity to say goodbye to her child far away on Earth. The others on the spaceship shared similar anxieties, and the background check provided Captain Miller with a wealth of information.

“I must apologize again. I let you board this ship, Dr. Peters,” Captain Miller’s voice broke the silence, causing the middle-aged woman to look up. Her gaze lingered on the tablet. “This meeting is democratic. I’ve already told you about our current predicament. More than four months after we went to hibernation, forty attempts to contact us have gone unanswered, and Houston is unable to provide any instructions. Do you have anything to say, Dr. Peters?”

"Whether we can contact Earth now or not, we must complete this journey," Dr. Peters said. "We've spent so much time getting here; we must rescue the crew of the Event Horizon no matter what. I believe at least some of them will be in hibernation pods. The hibernation pod experiment data comes from observations of Captain America, Steve Rogers, as well as some from cryonics experiments. Under extreme conditions, the crew of the Event Horizon could survive for seven years or even longer."

Search and rescue officer Lieutenant Cooper nodded vigorously, his expression clearly showing his support for Dr. Peters's view.

This optimistic young Black man was not deterred by the current situation. He believed that the inability to contact Earth at the moment did not mean anything. Regardless of whether their radio signals could reach their destination (the Houston command center), they would have to stuff themselves with unpalatable jelly-like nutritional paste and vitamin pills before returning to Earth.

"I wouldn't mind sharing those nutrient solutions with the Event Horizon," he said with a grin. "If they're all sleeping soundly in their hibernation pods, that means the Event Horizon has plenty of food on board. As far as I know, the Event Horizon is much larger than this ship, and their food is far better than ours. Am I right, Dr. Will?"

Dr. Will looked up and surveyed the crowd.

"Yes, the Event Horizon had plenty of dehydrated meat and vegetables that keep well, and I believe the crew of the Event Horizon will be very happy to be able to taste familiar flavors after they are rescued."

Dr. Will responded gently. His identity as the designer of the Event Horizon had been known to others from the moment he entered Earth's orbit, but Captain Miller knew more. He also knew that part of the reason Dr. Will was willing to abandon everything on Earth to accept this rescue mission was because there were no longer any humans on Earth that Dr. Will cared about. Dr. Will's wife had passed away, and a man with no ties had thus exiled himself to this cold, endless void.

"I know, I have an answer for all of you. The reason NASA is willing to go to great lengths to understand everything about the Event Horizon is because the Event Horizon is a spacecraft equipped with a hyperspace engine. It can carry humans to places we have never been before at faster-than-light speeds, and that hyperspace engine is a product that we cannot replicate or reverse engineer."

Dr. Will picked up a magazine that was several years past its expiration date, pulled out two pages, overlapped them, and then pierced them together with a pencil. The Lewis and Clark spacecraft was also designed by him, but Dr. Will only joined as part of the project, not as the chief designer—the chief designer, Dr. Wendy Lawson, that brilliant woman, died in a flight accident during Project Pegasus in 1989, leaving behind highly automated space projects, including Lewis and Clark and Event Horizon, which were completely beyond the technological capabilities of the time, and many black boxes of technology used in spaceflight.

Dr. Will believes that Dr. Wendy Lawson's wisdom far surpasses that of the much-praised Tony Stark.

After that, Dr. Weil continued working on Project Pegasus, which is how he met Captain Miller, who was also working on Project Pegasus at the time, and they became partners. Also, because of the high degree of automation of the Lewis and Clark, NASA did not require candidates to have a significant level of electronic and mechanical knowledge when selecting astronauts; Dr. Weil's target audience was astronauts who did not possess relevant physics knowledge.

"This is how the Chrono Engine works. The Lewis and Clark, this spacecraft, is a product of the same project as the Event Horizon, and is also a technological black box that cannot be reverse-engineered, so NASA could only send us on a rescue mission. Apart from the Lewis and Clark, no other ship could reach Neptune as quickly as we have. We must recover the Event Horizon and its crew. Only by figuring out where the Event Horizon has been over the past seven years and obtaining experimental data from the Chrono Engine can we know whether the Chrono Engine can allow humanity to take another step into the universe."

Apart from Dr. Peters, Captain Miller, and Lieutenant Smith, no one expressed understanding for Dr. Will.

"I won't go into the details of the relationship between gravity and time. I believe you all studied the classic Doppler effect in university and are familiar with the phenomenon of time dilation—if not, the Houston command center certainly taught you about it before you left—the Global Positioning System (GPS) is also an ongoing experiment in general and special relativity." Dr. Will said with some emotion. He showed all the crew members the densely packed formulas and calculation steps he had written on his draft paper. "I dare not say that this theory is completely correct. Even the Einstein-Rosen bridge data captured by Dr. Jane Foster in New Mexico cannot completely resolve my doubts. I don't know if the crew of the Event Horizon will encounter the twin paradox with us, but what is certain is that, as a tunnel connecting distant spacetime, the artificial wormhole means that when the Event Horizon activated its hyperspace engine, the ship was no longer in this universe and cannot be measured by the time we experience. That is to say, we don't know how long the crew of the Event Horizon lived; it may have been just a moment for them, and they arrived seven years in the future. Is time a vast ocean or a river? Friends, the Event Horizon went to a faraway place, so is the place they arrived at the past or the future?"

"Let's abandon this overly ambitious assumption for now, Will."

Captain Miller straightened up; he simply couldn't bear to let Dr. Will continue his venting spree—his words were utterly disheartening. Of course, aside from Lieutenant Cooper, who had already realized that the so-called Chrono Engine was indeed a time machine, even Dr. Will wasn't sure if the Event Horizon had actually traveled to the past or future.

"What are you calculating?"

"Before we reach the answer to the problem, will Lieutenant Cooper (the search and rescue officer) and Lieutenant Smith (the pilot) starve to death? Will our oxygen supply still allow some people to smoke in the cabin?" Dr. Will stood up and gathered the papers on the table. "I don't have the energy of these two young men, Miller, my old friend," he said. "If you allow, I'd better get some sleep."

"I can't eat as much as Cooper," Lieutenant Smith complained.

The long-lost humor made Captain Miller laugh.

"On an astronomical scale, we are very close to the Event Horizon," the captain said. "According to Dr. Will's calculations, our food and recycled freshwater reserves are sufficient to sustain our return. The Event Horizon does not have a sublight-speed engine, so we have another mission: to get the Event Horizon back into Earth orbit. We will operate on a rationing system during the return journey to ensure the safe return of both the Event Horizon and the Lewis and Clark. Lieutenant Smith, if the pilot of the Event Horizon is unfortunately killed, I will need you to pilot that ship and return with us. Dr. Will will assist you and familiarize you with the Event Horizon's piloting systems."

The four-month voyage was not enough for the Punisher to catch up with the Lewis and Clark.

The aircraft carrier sailed silently, its anti-collision lights flashing red and white along its hull, like a string of twinkling stars in the void. This ship had once been sent from ten thousand meters into the underground world by the emperor, and then, with the help of hundreds of hastily added rocket thrusters, pushed through tens of thousands of tons of seawater to rise from the seabed, reappearing in the light of day, as magnificent as a giant whale leaping from the water.

When this sky carrier returned to Earth, it had been fitted with a much thicker and more robust adamantite keel, more than doubling in length and width. It could accommodate nearly ten thousand crew members, but highly automated equipment kept the crew size at around 6000, not including the assault team deployed for this operation. The vast majority of the space was used as a hangar, housing numerous void fighters and transport aircraft. All passageways were widened to allow the tall Imperial Guards to walk freely in any of them. Constantine entered the training room, his arrival causing a large group of First Class Secret Regiment assault team members to halt their training, stopping their boarding drills and physical recovery exercises. All the assault team members turned their gaze to this golden-armored demigod filling the entire sealed pneumatic door, clearly somewhat bewildered by the arrival of this Imperial Guard. Many even felt tense—especially the shooting squad, many of whom instinctively placed their fingers on the trigger, then immediately realized how foolish they had been. They could not resist the fear that came from the depths of their genes when facing a more evolved and threatening creature—then, short and forceful orders were issued by commanders at all levels, and in less than thirty seconds, all the assault team members in the huge chamber were gathered in front of Constantine. The air blown into the ventilation ducts from the air circulator could not completely dilute the smell of propellant and sweat in the huge chamber.

"Sir!" Nikki, fully armed, stood before Constantine.

His armor bore clear signs of automatic repair and a sealing cable tie, indicating that Nikki was leading his squad in emergency medical training before the arrival of the Imperial Guard. This is crucial in Void combat. If the spacesuit is damaged and the Void combat suit's automatic repair system (which is essentially a dense network of capillaries beneath the spacesuit filled with various chemical colloids, operated by a tiny pump, and capable of rapidly solidifying after a capillary breakage) cannot repair it, emergency medical training becomes key to protecting the soldiers' survival.

During the long voyage of more than two months, these soldiers trained day after day.

Although these soldiers had previously boarded the SkySword space station, being in orbit was a completely different experience from navigating far from Earth. Here, the soldiers couldn't see the Earth or the Moon with the naked eye; looking out the portholes, they saw only barren planets and a pitch-black void. All the stars were so distant, their cold light offering no warmth to their skin. The medical department had devised a lengthy plan before departure, from physical training and supplements to various medical medications and psychiatric drugs to relax the mortal crew. Constantine had always believed that a weak mind was an insurmountable barrier for mortals, but he couldn't explain with this theory why these soldiers had volunteered to board the Punishment, just as they had when they boarded another sky carrier to the Kuiper Belt to welcome the Emperor and fire upon the behemoths of the void.

The commander of the Imperial Guard was curious whether these mortal soldiers had a strong enough will.

"I'm just here to let you know that the medical department has sent over a new list of medications."

"Sir, this is not something you should be informing me of." Nikki saluted and took the documents.

"The Guardians are responsible for patrolling; I just dropped you off along the way to increase efficiency," the Guardian Commander said, using a small lie to mask his curiosity. To be precise, he wasn't even aware of his curiosity, because his psychological adjustment had rendered him devoid of ordinary human emotions; this unfamiliar feeling was like coarse sand churning on his tongue, difficult to swallow. "Furthermore, the Guardians have prepared a full-scale training room from the Event Horizon; all assault teams must participate in the training."

"I know, it's the scene we set up using shipping containers." Nicky shrugged. "You didn't know that?"

"I didn't look at the documents; I assumed it was set up by the machine tool."

"I need to keep the lads busy, sir, otherwise their pranks will make the ship a complete mess. Trust me, they're capable of it."

(End of this chapter)