The stars, but they become the gray wind

"Alada, I know you are shocked, but I can explain." Looking at the student in front of her who was so scared that she couldn't even speak, Margo tried to explain.

"Are you still alive?" Aleida asked with a trembling voice to the teacher in front of her, whom she thought had been dead for eight years.

"Yes...if you..." Before Margo could finish her words, Aleida, whose emotions were out of control, hugged her and burst into tears, venting her long-standing stress and negative emotions.

"That's great, you're still alive, you're still alive... I thought you died eight years ago..." Aleida burst into tears and hugged her mentor tightly.

.........

"So when I knew Sergei and his family had arrived in West Germany and it was time for me to leave, I went downstairs and took one last walk around Mission Control... a final goodbye, right?"

"You were at the flight control desk. I returned to my office and shortly thereafter went to the loading dock behind the building to meet my source. He drove me to the nearby Sugar Land Airport, where a private jet was waiting for me. We flew to Mexico, making several layovers and changing planes... and finally, I ended up here."

"You... defected to the Soviet Union?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't have a choice..."

"You could have told me the truth."

"I've considered it, but spending the next half of my life in prison? Life in prison, just for doing the right thing?"

"The right thing? After all this time, you still think you did the right thing?"

"You leaked the design drawings of the Martian spacecraft's nuclear thermal engine!"

"Of course you had a choice, you always had one, but you didn't choose!"

"You weren't there..."

"No, I was. I was in the building the day you defected, remember?"

"I know...Aleida."

"I don't think you know that because when you met your informant in the cafeteria and then hopped on a private jet, I was still working in the building, and everyone was—"

"One second I was watching the giant display screen tracking the rate at which fuel was being consumed, and the next second I was on the floor, my ears ringing, and the room was filled with smoke and dust."

"Five people in Mission Control died instantly! Fourteen more died from their injuries that day, and in the following weeks, another twelve died. 164 died in other areas of the building, for a total of 195 people. 195!!!"

"I knew almost every one of them! Sharon Atkins, Bob Kipling, Molly Kirkobb... I watched them die."

"As for Bill Strausser, he was lucky he didn't die. They had to dig through over three tons of reinforced concrete slab to get him out, but 'Peanut' was lucky."

"He just had a shattered pelvis and a severed spinal cord, and he'll be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life."

"I went to look for you, as soon as I was able to stand and move again."

"I walked through the building, half of which had been reduced to rubble by the explosion, found your office, opened the door, and then... came outside."

"For a moment I thought, I'm up in the clouds, this is heaven, I must be dead."

"But in reality, it was just that side of the building that was completely gone. The entire side of the building was completely destroyed in the explosion."

"I don't know how long I stood there until someone, a fireman or a policeman or something, I can't remember who it was?"

"The man came and took me out, and as I was passing the office on the outside, I saw them carrying Emma's body out from behind the desk... She was dead. She died on the spot because of the shock wave generated by the explosion. She died at her desk."

Margo felt extremely guilty towards his student Margo. After hearing the details of his former colleagues' deaths in the horrific bombing, especially Emma, ​​who used to be his most trusted secretary, Margo felt that he had let her, Aleida and others down. When talking about this, Margo's eyes were filled with tears.

"Whether it helps or not, I wish I was there, in my office, where I was supposed to be."

"So what do you want, Margo?"

"You really think I'm willing to work with you? To take care of this damn asteroid?"

"I think you know how important this asteroid is to all mankind. It will change our future."

"I know what it feels like to regret. Believe me, I know it very well. I know that question that I've pondered over and over again countless times, and on countless nights, I felt nothing but powerlessness and regret."

"We can solve this problem. We can change the course of human history, Aleida."

"If you hate me, then go ahead and hate me, but no matter what, for the sake of humanity, or for your own sake, please join me in solving this asteroid problem."

In the staff dormitory of the Mars base, a meeting among the workers alone is being held.

"Yes, the number of accidents has also increased by almost 30% in the same period. Look at what happened to Roger last week, or the mechanical incident that Petros had earlier today."

"I don't know about you, but I wouldn't consider lacerations, broken bones, and second-degree burns to be minor injuries."

"But this job is inherently dangerous, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but what do you think will happen when they add rotas and endless overtime, and double the pace of action and work?"

"Have you thought about it? It's true that there are risks. We knew that before we came here. We are very strong, but this project could be completely dangerous. At such a high working frequency, people could be injured or even killed!"

"But if you do this, it will only anger the company, right? And then we might be finished." As soon as the worker finished speaking, the closed doors of the rooms were opened.

"You're finished." Ed walked into the room where the workers of the Mars base were gathering with a stack of documents.

"This is a closed meeting, Admiral."

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I think there's something you need to know about the amount and timing of your salary payments."

"What is he talking about?" a worker expressed his confusion.

"I think he's here to stir up trouble, because the executive officers of his Mars base have been removed, understand?"

"I've been a troublemaker for many years, but this time it's not just a provocation, it's a bomb about to explode."

"Listen, the key point is that Helios and M7 want to change the method of calculating bonuses." As soon as Ed said this, the workers at the Mars base suddenly had an uproar: the workers were rioting.

"What? They can't do that, I signed a contract?"

"Can they do this? What are the specific numbers?" asked several worker representatives present.

"They are going to change the points system. It used to be 500 points to reach the first-tier bonus, right? Now it's 5000 points, and the bonus itself has also changed. The first-tier bonus was originally 20,000 US dollars, but now it's only 5000. Look, it's all written here." Ed slammed the stack of documents in his hand on the table where everyone was sitting. After taking some time to carefully read the contents of the documents on the table, the workers felt more and more unbelievable.

"They can't do that!"

"They have already done this, and this new timeline and document will be released together with the next comprehensive action plan."

"How could they do that?"

"We can't let them succeed!"

"Of course they succeed. Do you know why?"

"Because the content of our contract can be changed at the company's discretion based on actual circumstances."

"I've been telling you this. Look it up carefully. It's all in the fine print of the 50-page contract we signed."

"She's right. They can change the terms of employment at any time without giving any reason."

"My cousin is a lawyer, let's take them to court!" suggested one of the workers.

“You can’t go to court. The dispute can only be submitted to arbitration first, and the arbitrator is chosen by the company!”

"After all, you're all going to be finished soon!"

"So...what can we do?"

"I think... you should listen to Marcy and organize yourself. Unite and form a union. Let's put a warning to those bastards on Earth that if they want this precious asteroid, they have to pay the people who do the hard work adequately."

"What if this doesn't work?"

"Then we'll close this place down!"

After listening to Ed's suggestion, the workers thought for a while, then showed expressions of approval and shouted together.

"Strike! Strike!"

"Strike! Strike!"

…………

While workers on Mars were on strike due to increasingly unequal working conditions and treatment, a piece of news from Earth shocked everyone.

[Former NASA Administrator Margo Madison, who was believed to have died in the 1995 Johnson Space Center bombing, actually defected to the Soviet Union!]

"The world is still in shock. NASA Administrator Margaux Madison was believed to have died in the 1995 Johnson Space Center bombing, but the truth has come to light. She defected in 1995 and has been living in the Soviet Union in recent years. At a press conference at the Leningrad Conference, Ms. Madison was interviewed by reporters from around the world." In the TV footage, Margaux stood behind the podium at the press conference and recounted the reasons and consequences of her defection to the Soviet Union.

"I decided to defect to the Soviet Union in 1995. This was due to years of accumulated dissatisfaction and disappointment with the space agency and the US government. I joined the space program in 1966. During these years, a series of huge changes have taken place. The space agency and the US government began to value profits over human lives and were more committed to spreading ideological propaganda to the world rather than working to improve the human condition or enhance the overall moral level of mankind."

"Ms. Madison confirmed that she would lead the Soviet team tasked with capturing the Goldilocks asteroid and was reportedly working behind the scenes during the meeting."

In the cafeteria hall of the Mars base, everyone was concentrating on watching the news on TV. Palmer looked at Daniel with a bad look on his face. It was because Daniel had been a colleague of Margo for more than 20 years, and the press conference on TV was still going on.

“I’m honored to have helped MicroPort in this effort by providing advice to outstanding scientists and engineers like those working at Newtown, and I look forward to continuing to help them in the future.”

…………

"Have the conflicts erupted yet again?" The purple-haired girl sat on a bench in a park in Leningrad, swinging her legs with interest.

"From both sides' perspectives, both sides believe they're doing the right thing, and that's the worst part of the whole thing. I'm afraid that this kind of situation where both sides believe they're right, rather than truly working together to improve human civilization, will lead to disagreements and conflicts, rather than trust and cooperation. As long as humans maintain their current social and biological models, this problem will never be fundamentally resolved, and any solutions will only be temporary solutions."

"What's more, these guys on Earth don't realize where they are wrong, nor do they think they are wrong. This is the most fatal point." As the purple-haired girl sighed, a message from outside the solar system interrupted her thoughts.

"Hmm? What is this?" The purple-haired girl opened the message, and the content inside made her think deeply.

"Interesting. For the civilization born in the Tiandajiangjun galaxy, could the origin of planetary life come from an extragalactic meteorite that crashed onto its parent star?"

"Even more interesting is, is this meteorite made of... from the moon?"

"So, Theia? Even from before the Moon was formed?"

"Did the first silicon-based life in the solar system evolve on a celestial body that ceased to exist billions of years ago?"

The sender of this message from outside the solar system was Zao Chiqi. During a further, closer observation of the Theia civilization, they noticed that in the historical records of the Theia civilization, there was something called the Origin Crater, and this Origin Crater was said to be the origin of the entire Theia civilization and planetary life.

By deploying a large number of stealth drones to the Teian home planet, the glass eels obtained a large amount of first-hand information. For example, the Teian appear to be a silicon-based creature with stone skin, and their reproduction method is very similar to that of glass eels, through self-division to carry out a certain degree of asexual reproduction. The entire civilization has a population of about 150 billion distributed in the galaxy of Tiandajiangjun 6a, of which the vast majority are located on the home planet and the gas giant satellite group where the home planet is located. The entire satellite system has a fairly complete space infrastructure construction, including the Skyhook.

Subsequent investigations into the crater on the surface of the large cold satellite, which is said to be the origin of life on Theia and can be observed through a telescope even in outer space, have uncovered a truly astonishing fact: some of the residues in the crater are strikingly similar in composition to the moon, the satellite of the third planet Earth in the solar system 44 light-years away. This was something that the glass eel had never anticipated. Zao Chiqi sent the research conclusions to Calisi and others who were still in the solar system, and this discovery really surprised Calisi.

"Renlong, what do you think?"

"Two civilizations originating from the same galaxy? Do you know how likely such a coincidence is in the universe?"

"Not even one in a million trillion. I can only say that the universe is so vast that nothing is impossible."

"Forget it... If the humans in this solar system can make truly correct choices, then this twin brother of theirs, 44 light-years away, can be considered a small bonus. Please don't let me down, okay?"

"Haha, it's hard to say. After all, humans have never disappointed people in this regard." Renlong smiled helplessly.

At the Mars Happy Valley base, the strike has entered its seventh day. The laundry baskets in the base are already overflowing with dirty clothes, the trash cans in the restaurant are almost full, and various instruments and equipment in the base are piled up everywhere. The originally tidy warehouses and loading and unloading areas are now in a mess. The strike for a week has brought the entire base to a near complete standstill.

"You all broke your contract with Helios!"

"Every penny the company loses will be deducted from your wages! It's all written right here in black and white!"

"That's outrageous, Timur!"

"The company prohibits the formation of labor unions. Any strike will result in your immediate dismissal!"

"Then fire us. Look how easy it is for us to work and live here without you. How can we keep this base running?"

"This requires fairness and rationality!" Ed agreed.

"These are people who are risking their lives every day to do their job."

"Ed, you still have the nerve to bring this up? You were the one who started it all, complaining that most of these people weren't qualified to come to Mars in the first place, and now you're venting your anger on the average employee?"

"Don't bring this upon me, Dani. You know as well as I do that neither Helios nor the USSR Space Agency, nor any of the other member states on Earth, care about the lives of these workers!"

"Commander Puller, we were the ones who transformed this base from a few living pods into a functioning mining outpost. We are simply asking that you fulfill your contract."

"If we allow that asteroid to reach Earth, all of us will be out of work within a year, and the future of the entire Mars base will be ruined."

"What if Helios could provide you with some sort of guaranteed re-employment training?"

"I'm sorry, we've heard this kind of talk before, and it all ended up being empty promises. When we tried to get them to pay for these verbal promises, they either pretended to be stupid or lied with their eyes open, saying they had never made such promises."

"Listen, if you want the fuel plant to start producing and crafting the fuel needed to capture the Goldilocks asteroid, if you want the loading docks and warehouses to be able to unload and ship cargo normally, if you want to build new living quarters, or if you just want to have basic meals a day, then agree to our demands!"

"I've tried my best to accommodate your requests! Yes, the future is uncertain, and yes, this asteroid forces us to act quickly, but we must restart the cryogenics and fuel production facilities as soon as possible. We need to produce over 125 tons of liquid argon so that the Ranger can fly to Goldilocks and nudge her into the correct direction and trajectory. We're running out of time!"

"Every day you delay, Jin Jiansi will be more furious, and Miss Fa will be one day closer to flying away completely."

"That will only lead to losses for both of us. Is that what you want?"

"No, what we want is..."

"We want you to stop treating us like we're superiors and treat us more fairly than you treat the workers on Mars."

Inside the Mars base, the striking workers were still engaged in a silent confrontation and negotiation with the base's management in the conference room.

.........

On Earth, Eli is having a video call with the head of the Soviet Space Agency.