The stars, but they become the gray wind

"Kuz! What do you want to do?"

"I have to go out and re-secure the cables! Otherwise, this mission will fail!"

"This is too risky!"

"I'm well aware of this, but we can't let all our efforts over such a long time go to waste."

"Okay, then I'll give you 30 minutes. If you can't solve the problem within 30 minutes, don't hesitate, return immediately! We will terminate this mission!" Out of trust in this old friend and old colleague, the white-haired old man sitting in front of the control console nodded to astronaut Kuznetsov.

"Got it." Kuznetsov had just finished speaking when he saw his companion Tom, who was still wearing a space suit, also take off the helmet hanging on the wall.

"You're running low on oxygen. You didn't have time to refill your spacesuit's oxygen tank. I'm going with you."

"Thanks, brother." Kuznetsov nodded silently to his subordinate.

.........

"Sir! The shaking is getting worse!"

"We're already on the truss! Moving toward the platform!"

"Parker, once we reach the bottom of the truss, I'll restart the winch to restore tension on the cable, and you go do the same on the winch on the other side."

"receive."

The two men struggled to move towards the asteroid on the constantly shaking truss connecting the asteroid tug and the asteroid. As a more violent shaking came, the Ranger asteroid tug also shook violently. Several crew members in the cab were caught off guard and bumped into the operating table and wall. What was worse was that the two men who were climbing hard on the truss were almost thrown out by the violent shaking. Fortunately, the safety rope pulled their bodies, but soon after, Kuznetsov saw that the main body of the bracket connected to the surface of the asteroid on the opposite side was broken.

Kuznetsov suddenly felt a sharp pain in his feet. He lowered his head and found that due to the violent deformation caused by the excessive stress on the truss, several deformed metal handrails had stuck his feet. But he could no longer care about his own safety at this time, because the broken main part of the metal truss had already hit his colleague Tom who was standing opposite him.

"Parker! Get out of the way!"

"Be careful!" Kuznetsov shouted anxiously to his colleagues on the radio.

But it was too late. The metal truss weighing several tons, under the action of inertia, pierced Tom Parker's space suit from behind. Kuznetsov heard Parker screaming on the radio and blood splattered on the inside of the transparent space suit helmet. Inside the cabin, on the display screen that monitored the user's physical condition through the built-in sensors in the space suit, the line representing Parker's heartbeat and pulse value suddenly became straight.

Kuznetsov looked in disbelief at the colleague who had just been talking to him and had now turned into a cold corpse. He suppressed his sadness and shock and reported to the asteroid tugboat's cabin.

"Ranger, Parker... he... is gone..."

"Gregory, return to the airlock immediately and terminate this mission!"

"No, the broken truss is stuck in my leg!" Kuznetsov tried to pull his leg out from the handrail and pipe under the row, but no matter how hard he tried, the handrail and truss that were stuck in his leg remained motionless.

"Can you break free?"

"no!"

.........

At this time, the situation outside the cabin became even worse. Kuznetsov found that the broken part of the metal bracket that was stuck in his leg had torn his space suit, and the already low oxygen content in the space suit was rapidly decreasing.

"No, it's too late. There's no time. You must leave me behind and immediately cut off the connection with the asteroid to save the spacecraft and the people on board!"

"I can not……"

"Listen... your duty is on the spaceship. Your mission is to protect everyone on board. My spacesuit is torn, and the oxygen supply is running out!"

"Goodbye, my friend..." Kuznetsov took a last look at the oxygen level on his wrist monitor, which had dropped to the red line.

"Please tell my family I love them..."

In the cockpit of the spacecraft, the white-haired old man's face was full of pain, and he pressed the emergency release button almost tremblingly.

The emergency explosive bolts connecting the asteroid tug to the truss were activated, and with a burst of sparks at the connection, the tug quickly broke away from the asteroid that was spinning out of control.

Sitting in the driving seat of the tugboat, the white-haired old man couldn't stop crying as he watched the asteroid moving away from him.

………Qi Er III ordered the Four Umbrella Division…

On Earth, due to communication delays caused by the speed of light, news and images of the accident were not received until 20 minutes later. The NASA director, who was about to open a bottle of champagne at halftime, looked grim, and the overwhelmed technicians in the control room were also powerless to do anything about this accident that happened so fast.

…………

As the oxygen in the space suit was exhausted, Kunezov's consciousness gradually became blurred. The last thing he saw as he was dying of suffocation was the body of his companion floating not far away.

The covert operation status was lifted and the Corrector's shell appeared next to the broken asteroid truss. A beam of light swept across the bodies of the two people who had just died. The beam paused for a few nanoseconds when passing through their brains.

[Quantum-level scanning completed, digital brain consciousness saved...upload started.]

[Prepare the cloned body cultivation chamber, activate the intelligent life digital consciousness transmission device.]

A few ripples flashed across the surface of the Corrector's shell, and then it melted into the dark space again.

Chapter 174 A deserted Mars base?

"You uploaded their brains digitally?" Renlong knocked on the hatch of the incubator curiously.

"Yeah, I don't really want to cause any trouble. Instead of rescuing people directly, it's more convenient to just scan their brains and upload them digitally."

"So... who are these two people now?"

"I'm cloning their bodies. As for their consciousness... it's currently in the virtual world created by the ship's optical quantum computer array. I've also deliberately blurred their memories of death to keep them in a more familiar environment."

"Can I ask what exactly is the familiar environment you've built for them in the virtual digital world?"

"What else could it be? It's the Happy Valley base on Mars that they restored based on their memories."

…………

Kuznetsov looked at the familiar Mars base and felt that something was wrong. Everything here was the same as usual. He got up on time at seven in the morning, just like the countless work days he had experienced in the Mars base. After washing up in the bathroom of his room, he went to the restaurant for breakfast. In the restaurant, he met his old friend and colleague Ed who was also having breakfast in the restaurant. After greeting him as usual, the two sat at the same table. Ed complained to himself that he had been feeling some pain in his waist recently. The painkillers prescribed by Dr. Dimitri were obviously not as effective as expected. His daughter Kelly recently sent him an email asking when he could go back.

Kuznetsov ate his breakfast while listening to Ed's daily complaints. He just felt that the taste of the breakfast in the restaurant today seemed to be extra in line with his personal taste. He liked spicy food, but since a considerable number of people in the Mars base had a lighter taste, the chefs in the Happy Valley Base restaurant would deliberately reduce the use of spicy seasonings when cooking. But for some reason, the meat sauce on his pasta for breakfast seemed to have extra pepper.

After breakfast, Kuznetsov began his daily work as the base commander. He first went to the conference room of Happy Valley Base for a short meeting, and then went to the control center to command and dispatch the mining, metal parts processing and fuel production work of the Mars base.

After an uneventful day, Kuznetsov went to the underground bar opened by Ilya on the second underground floor after work. He and several other base managers, including Ed, had always been aware of Ilya's illegal behavior of using the condenser of the airlock and some scrap equipment of the base to make private liquor and open a bar, but they were also aware of the fact that the Mars base lacked suitable entertainment. The reason why this bar, which was originally an illegal one, could exist was because the staff in the Mars base lacked entertainment and had a non-negligible demand in this regard. As the base management, the two turned a blind eye to Ilya's business, as long as Ilya's underground bar did not affect the daily operation of the Mars base. Even Kuznetsov himself, as a member of the management, would occasionally come to this bar for a drink or two.

While savoring Ilya's high-concentration homemade vodka and listening to the workers at the Mars base around him complaining about their daily working environment and treatment, Kuznetsov only then felt that something seemed to be wrong.

"Would a normal workday be this smooth?" Kuznetsov suddenly thought.

There are always some small accidents every working day on Mars, such as mechanical equipment failure at a certain mining site, problems with personnel scheduling at the fuel plant, delays in the Mars rover responsible for transporting goods, and so on. In the daily operation of the Mars base, such small problems are almost countless. Most of the time, as an experienced leader, Kuznetsov and others can respond to such situations maturely and steadily.

But today seemed to be going too smoothly. No problems occurred the entire day. Every Mars rover responsible for transporting ore and cargo delivered the goods or personnel to the required location almost perfectly on time. The mining site machinery, which were vulnerable parts, did not report any malfunctions or wear and tear of parts that caused a slowdown in work progress. Even the problem of tight personnel scheduling in the fuel plant area, which was Kuznetsov's biggest headache, was inexplicably alleviated.

As the commander of the base, he certainly hopes that there will be as few minor problems as possible in the daily operation and maintenance of the base, but he is also very clear that these frequently occurring minor problems will not disappear suddenly. For example, the problem of personnel scheduling in the fuel plant is because the overall number of people in the Mars Happy Valley base is relatively tight, and the fuel plant is the most automated facility. When other work projects lack manpower, they can only be transferred from here. This has led to the technicians and workers working in the fuel plant area becoming almost jacks of all trades, often having to do everything. This has also made jobs in the fuel plant one of the most unpopular positions in the entire Mars base. This problem is almost impossible to solve perfectly before the next batch of technicians and workers arrive on Mars.

This is also the reason why Kuznetsov felt something was wrong. After a day's work, he returned to the dormitory and lay on the bed, recalling whether there was anything strange in his experience of the whole day. He thought about his three meals a day. It seemed that today's meals were particularly in line with his personal taste. The work process that was too smooth throughout the day also seemed to be developing in the direction he hoped. In the process of careful thinking, his consciousness gradually became blurred, and when he woke up again, it was already the next morning.

The next day, Kuznetsov felt that more and more things seemed to be wrong. Walking in the familiar corridors and cabins of the Mars base, he developed a strange sense of strangeness. After finishing a day's work, he came to Ilya's bar again. In the bar, he met Tom Parker, one of his most familiar and best subordinates. Although there was a glass of wine in front of him, Parker did not drink it. Instead, he put his right hand on his chest, staring at the glass on the table as if in a daze.

"Hey! Parker, are you coming to Ilya's bar to drink today too?" Kuznetsov walked up and patted Parker on the shoulder from behind, then pulled a chair over and sat at the same table with him.

"Good evening, Kuz, how were you today?" Parker said this with his right hand still on his chest.

"Are you okay? It seems like the daily problems at the Mars base have decreased a bit these past two days. Oh, and why do you keep your right hand on your chest?"

"It's nothing... It's just that since yesterday morning, I've been having strange feelings. I've been experiencing pain in my chest and back from time to time."

"Chest pain? Have you seen a doctor?"

"I went to see Dr. Dimitri after get off work yesterday. He gave me a detailed physical examination and said there was nothing wrong with my body. He said the chest and back pain might be caused by the recent mental stress."

"I'm glad you're fine. Since you're under so much mental pressure, you should take advantage of your off-duty time to relax. Stop thinking about work and have a couple of drinks with me."

"Thank you for your concern... However, although Dr. Dimitri said there's nothing wrong with my body, I still feel like the pain in my chest and back isn't the kind of nerve pain caused by excessive work stress. It's more like... something piercing my chest from my back."

"pierce?"

"Well, it's like the pain I felt when my finger was accidentally pierced by a fishhook while fishing, except that it's magnified hundreds of times."

"Uh… maybe you're worrying too much?"

"I'm not sure... I had a nightmare last night..."

"Nightmare? What did you dream about?"

"I dreamed that you and I were wearing space suits and lying on a swaying truss. Then you seemed to shout something at me. I felt a sharp pain in my back and woke up in shock."

"It was just a dream... Maybe you're just under too much mental stress."

"No, this dream felt so real to me, as if I was there myself. Even after waking up, I felt a dull pain in my back and chest, as if something had pierced through me." Parker touched his intact chest with lingering fear, recalling the dream that was too real.

After drinking a few more glasses of wine with his colleague Parker and comforting him, Kuznetsov returned to his dormitory with doubts and fell asleep on his bed.

He had a dream. He dreamed that he and Parker were wearing space suits and climbing on a truss outside the Ranger that was about to break. He saw a section of the truss support arm breaking and hitting Parker from behind. In the dream, he yelled at Parker, telling him to be careful and get out of the way, but the huge truss support arm still pierced Parker's chest from behind, and Parker's blood splattered all over the visor of his helmet from the inside.

In the panic and shock, his space suit seemed to be cut. Looking at the oxygen content in the space suit on the wrist display screen decreasing continuously, a feeling of suffocation came over him.

“Am I going to die?” Kuznetsov thought in his dream.

"Huh - ah - cough cough cough!!" Kuznetsov woke up from his sleep with a cough. Feeling the cold sweat on his body, Kuznetsov held the edge of the bed, lifted the quilt, walked to the window, and poured himself a glass of water. Outside the window, the surface of Mars was still in the dark. Except for the Happy Valley base, which had artificial lighting at night, other places were hazy in the dark night of this red planet.

Looking at the scene in front of him that he had seen countless times, Kuznetsov once again felt a strange sense of strangeness. He had obviously become accustomed to the Martian scenery outside the window during the years he had lived on Mars, but now looking at the scene outside the window, he inexplicably felt a sense of unreality. Thinking of the dream just now and the conversation between him and Parker in the bar, he thought of several Chinese friends he met by chance in Moscow. They once told him a Chinese allusion called "What you think about during the day, you dream about at night." Thinking carefully about his conversation with Parker, Kuznetsov tried to comfort himself that he had this dream just because of the conversation with Parker.

The all-too-real feeling of suffocation in the dream made Kuznetsov feel unable to calm down, as if he had really experienced suffocation due to lack of oxygen.

On the third day, just like the previous two days, Kuznetsov felt uncomfortable because his work was going smoothly. Today, Ed also informed him that they would soon conduct an exploration of an asteroid called Kronos. After the exploration work was completed, they would personally drive and ride the Ranger asteroid tug to tow the asteroid into the orbit of Mars to mine its resources for further expansion of the Mars base.

When Ed mentioned the word Kronos asteroid, Kuznetsov felt a sense of fear for no reason. However, as an experienced and mature astronaut, he still pretended to be calm and listened to Ed's report on the specific observation data of Kronos asteroid.

That night, Kuznetsov, who fell asleep in anxiety, had another nightmare. He returned to that strange truss again and watched helplessly as Parker was pierced by the truss there, with blood splattering inside his helmet. The only difference was that this time he seemed to be able to see clearly what the other end of the truss was connected to. In the previous dream, the broken end of the truss seemed to be connected to something, but no matter how carefully he looked before he suffocated, he could not see what the truss was connected to?

This time, he finally saw clearly that the truss was connected to an asteroid, but what shocked him most was that the asteroid the truss was connected to was almost exactly the same in appearance and outline as the Kronos asteroid that Ed showed him in the conference room during the day. The only difference was that the asteroid in his dream had many broken anchors and cables on its surface that were obviously installed artificially. Those cables had been stretched to the limit, and some had broken directly under the huge tension and were floating around on the low-gravity surface of the asteroid.

Soon, Kuznetsov woke up again with a startled feeling of suffocation due to oxygen depletion. He leaned on the bed, took a deep breath, and wiped the cold sweat from his head. He began to feel that what had just happened was not a dream at all, but a memory that he had personally experienced. It was impossible for a dream to have such a real feeling of suffocation and pain.

He held onto the bedside railing and tried to get out of bed and stand up, but he almost fell to the ground because his legs were shaking with fear. He had to talk to Parker about this dream.

When the sun just rose from the horizon of Mars, Kuznetsov, who finally recovered from the nightmare, left his room. When he walked out of the corridor where the dormitory door was located, he found something wrong.

"Strange, is it usually this quiet here at this time?"

Although it is early morning and the sun has just risen, some people working the night shift at the Mars base will return to the dormitory at this time. If it were normally at this time, you would have already seen the Mars base staff who had just finished their night shift returning to the dormitory in groups of three or two.

But now, the corridor where the dormitory is located is eerily quiet. There is no one in the empty corridor.

After careful consideration, Kuznetsov decided to do something impolite. He walked to the room on the left side of the corridor, where one of the doors had Nick Jennings' name on it, raised his hand and knocked on the door. Although waking someone up early in the morning was quite rude, Kuznetsov wanted to make sure of one thing.

A strange thing happened. Kuznetsov had been knocking on the door for ten minutes, but still no one came to open the door for him. After a few more minutes, still no one came to open the door. Kuznetsov pulled the door handle, but was surprised to find that the door was not locked?

"Maybe Nick forgot to lock the door before going to bed at night? Maybe he slept too soundly and didn't hear the knock on the door?" Kuznetsov muttered to himself, pushed open the door, and walked gently into the room.

Inside the room, the bed was not occupied by his familiar subordinate Nick Jennings as Kuznetsov had expected. Instead, the bed was empty, and there was not even a trace of being pressed by a heavy object.

"What? Nick?" Kuznetsov called out in the room, but got no response. He pushed open the door of the bathroom in the room, and the bathroom was also empty.

"Could it be... like me, he went out after getting up early?" Kuznetsov knew that Nick Jennings, who was an officer, had the habit of making his bed after getting up. Maybe he was like himself, making his bed after getting up early and then going to other places in the base.

"Maybe I'm just scaring myself..." Kuznetsov comforted himself again, then left Nick's room and closed the door for him before leaving.

But before he took a few steps, Kuznetsov looked back at Nick Jennings' unlocked door again and cast his gaze towards the doors of other dormitories in the corridor.

"Nick was just careless and forgot to lock the door, right? Could it be that no one else locked the door?" Kuznetsov pulled the doorknob of another room adjacent to Nick Jennings' room with a joking idea that he didn't even believe himself. Then, the most surprising thing happened. The door of this room was also not locked.

"This...can't be another guy as careless as Nick who doesn't lock the door when he goes to bed at night? Should I remind him?" Kuznetsov muttered to himself as he pushed open the door of the adjacent room.

Then, Kuznetsov's eyes widened suddenly. There was also the same clean and flat bed with no signs of use, and the empty room.

Kuznetsov then realized that something was wrong. He ran to other dormitories in the corridor and pushed open the doors one by one. All the rooms were empty, and there was no sign of use on the beds and belongings in any of the dormitories.

"Where...this...person?" Kuznetsov stuttered out these words with a tone of almost fear.

II Mio Wu San Scar Qi…………

Kuznetsov stumbled across most of the Martian base. He pushed open every door he saw and searched every room carefully. What terrified him was that he couldn't find a single person in the corridors and rooms of most of the Martian base.

In the panic, he seemed to hear a familiar voice coming from the elevator in the distance.

"Hey! Is anyone there? Where did everyone go?"

"Parker?" Kuznetsov recognized the familiar voice as his subordinate Parker. He hurried to the elevator as fast as he could. Outside the elevator, Parker was looking at the empty Martian base with a confused look on his face.

"Hey... Kuz! What happened? Why did I wake up? There's no one in the base? Even my roommates are gone. Is this some kind of April Fool's prank on me?"

"No... I don't think so. I woke up this morning and opened the doors of several dormitories. Not only were the doors unlocked, but the beds and other items inside didn't even show any signs of being used. It was as if no one had ever lived in those cabins."

"Ah? This... are we encountering some supernatural phenomenon? Just like in horror movies?" Parker felt at a loss in the face of the current situation. He subconsciously thought of the horror movies he had watched in the past. His favorite was the well-known Alien series.

Looking at the Martian base that should have been bustling but suddenly became deserted and looked very strange, Parker felt a little creepy. Although he liked science fiction horror movies, it did not mean that he was willing to be the protagonist in a science fiction horror movie who encountered such a terrible plot.

"How about... let's... look for it together?" Parker looked around and swallowed nervously. The Mars base felt so unfamiliar to him, and he suggested to Kuznetsov.

"Okay... let's... go check out Ed's room first."

…………

On the way to Ed's room, the two of them checked all the cabins along the way again, but they still didn't find any trace of a single person.