Chapter 793: Falling!
In fact, Starlight arrived 79 hours earlier than Lu Zhou had expected.
After 41 days and 2 hours of flying, the fiery red planet gradually appeared in the view of the Starlight porthole.
Liu Biao squinted and looked outside the porthole. He watched as the bright sun slowly rose from the edge of the fiery red silhouette. He watched the billowing sand waves tumble like a sea of fire.
“This is a mess… But the scenery is quite pretty.”
“Yeah.” Xu Zhenghong nodded and pressed his helmet. He said, “This is Starlight, we have entered Mars’ gravitational system. Successfully entered orbit a-1.”
They waited quietly for about five minutes.
A noisy unstable sound came from Earth, which was tens of millions of kilometers away.
“This is the ground command center, congratulations on completing your mission… Please begin active braking procedures and prepare to approach Mars. Orbital navigation will be handled by the onboard computer. Good luck.”
“Roger that.”
Since they were tens of millions of kilometers away from Earth, the ground command center obviously couldn’t control the s.p.a.cecraft in real time.
The orbit change plan had already been coded in the s.p.a.cecraft computer in advance. The pilot would complete the orbit change plan with the help of the onboard computer.
Of course, even though this sounded complicated, it was much easier in practice.
Starlight had a high degree of automation control. Unless an edge case happened, generally the pilot only needed to keep his eyes on the speed dial and make sure the s.p.a.cecraft didn’t deviate from orbit.
Liu Biao: “Are we landing? Or are we waiting for them to come to us?”
Xu Zhenghong: “The New Virginia life support system has a return capsule. They will return to the BFS s.p.a.cecraft using their return capsule. Then we will return to orbit.”
They would also drop their “spying s.p.a.ce probe”.
Of course, this was a top-secret mission. This was personally arranged by Chief Designer Lu Zhou. Even Liu Biao wasn’t told about this mission.
Liu Biao: “Ok… What if they don’t come back?”
Xu Zhenghong said, “Then we’ll give them our thoughts and prayers… Remember to take photo evidence, make sure the Americans don’t blame us.”
“No problems, I’ll start taking photos now!”
Liu Biao smiled and reached out to press a b.u.t.ton on the console.
“Not yet.”
Xu Zhenghong smiled.
However, his face suddenly froze.
He looked at the silver-colored s.p.a.cecraft outside the window. His pupils contracted. He placed his hand on his helmet.
“This is Starlight… The American s.p.a.cecraft seems to be in a little bit of trouble.”
Five minutes went by.
The command center voice came through the communication channel.
“What’s happening?”
Xu Zhenghong squinted and stared at the silver s.p.a.cecraft in the distance.
He didn’t know why, but he felt like something was wrong.
Liu Biao looked in the same direction and turned on the ranging lidar, and he aimed the lidar at the target s.p.a.cecraft.
Even though this device was used to measure the distance of meteorites, it could also be used to target s.p.a.cecraft.
Xu Zhenghong looked at the velocity meter on the lidar and took a deep breath.
“BFS s.p.a.cecraft is falling… I repeat, BFS s.p.a.cecraft is falling!”
…
It had been more than a month since the distress signal was issued from Mars.
Accurately speaking, it had been 41 days and 2 hours.
Due to the lack of light and electricity, the crops in the planting area had withered.
In order to save energy, two weeks ago, they restricted their range of activities to the experiment room and cut off power to all other areas. The reason for this was because the experiment room contained the only control terminal that could receive and send data to the BFS s.p.a.cecraft.
Even then, they were running low on resources.
They would die from hypoxia in the next 42 hours…
A trembling female voice broke the silence in the experiment room.
“Are they going to save us?” Julia helplessly glanced outside the window with a look of despair.
There was no chance of hoping the sandstorm would stop.
It seemed like the sandstorm would last for at least six months.
Johnson leaned on the window while holding a picture in his hand. He answered with a weak voice, “Definitely.”
Even though he answered enthusiastically, there wasn’t an ounce of optimism on his face.
“Maybe not,” Travis said. “Maybe they’d rather us die.”
Julia’s eyes widened, and she asked, “Why?”
Travis: “Think about it. If we die, we will die as heroes. If we live, they’ll have to give supplies and bring us home… It’s a negative play for them.”
“Enough!”
Johnson suddenly growled.
The cabin went silent for a second.
Travis frowned and spoke with an unhappy tone.
“Hey, is there something wrong with what I said?”
Johnson stood up and looked at Travis.
“I just want you to shut your f*cking mouth, stop wasting oxygen.”
“What does that supposed to mean? We’re going to die anyway. Oh, you want some of this? Come on, I’ve had enough of you.” Travis rubbed his hands and clenched his fists.
Julia saw that the two men were about to fight, so she used all of her energy to stand up and tried to stop them.
“Enough, calm down you two!”
Suddenly, they heard a m.u.f.fled noise outside the life support system.
The two men stopped and looked outside the porthole.
Despite the heavy sandstorm, they could clearly see a ball of fire burning on the ground. At the same time, they saw a green dot flas.h.i.+ng on the control terminal. Finally, the dot turned red.
A line of words flashed on the upper right corner of the control terminal.
[Connection lost.]
Johnson gulped. He looked horrified.
“Sh*t, our s.p.a.cecraft!”
Travis quietly muttered, “Jesus Christ…”
The silence went on for a long time.
The fire exhausted all of the remaining oxygen and was eventually swallowed by the sandstorm…
Julia looked outside the porthole and asked with a quivering voice, “Are we going to die?”
No one answered her.
The BFR s.p.a.cecraft had enough fuel to float in orbit for twenty years, but somehow a “failure” occurred…
Johnson used his index finger to draw a cross on his chest.
G.o.d, please protect me.
However, deep down, he knew that there was nothing G.o.d could do; this was the land of Ares…
Suddenly, the control terminal started to ring.
At first, he thought it was static noise, so he ignored it.
That was until the ringing became clearer and clearer…
Johnson saw [Connection Request] on the terminal, so he quickly rushed over and pressed the b.u.t.ton.
Could this be aliens?
He hoped he wasn’t imagining things.
It turned out it wasn’t his imagination.
The moment the communication channel was connected, a voice traveled through his ears…
“This is Chinese astronaut Xu Zhenghong, how are you doing, my Martian friends?”