Chapter 63: s.p.a.ce Travel
Endaro Star Region’s wars.h.i.+p graveyard was on a planet called ACG 21, the site where all the decommissioned s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps were sc.r.a.pped and abandoned.
There were no direct flights leaving Earth to ACG 21, so Xia Fei had no choice but to fly to the metropolitan planet of Brolin first before taking another flight from Brolin to the wars.h.i.+p graveyard.
Because the Earth Federation had recently joined the Pan-Human Alliance, it was still considered a backward civilization. There were only two flights that pa.s.sed through Earth; both s.h.i.+ps originating from the edge of the star region were bound to the premier planet, Brolin.
The Federation’s interstellar s.p.a.ceport was built on the southern outskirts of Delmar, Delaware in the North American continent. This was a vast area, which was largely uninhabited, possessing a suitable climate for s.p.a.cecraft takeoff and landing, making it a good choice for them to build an interstellar s.p.a.ceport.
Xia Fei stood in the s.p.a.ceport terminal, peering through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It was empty all around him, and he could very clearly make out the distant horizon.
s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps would all land and take off vertically, so there was no need for a runway in the s.p.a.ceport. All it had was a huge concrete parking ap.r.o.n, which took up roughly about several dozens of square kilometers.
Further away, a larger and grander main terminal was currently under construction. It would cover an area of well over two million square meters, able to transport up to a million pa.s.sengers a day.
There were even four extremely large parking ap.r.o.ns that were being built around the terminal, allowing a.s.sault cla.s.s wars.h.i.+ps to land and take off with ease upon completion of their itineraries.
It was fairly ironic. The Earth Federation would barely receive ten thousand or so interplanetary visitors a day currently, yet they had spent an astronomical amount to construct a s.p.a.ceport that could handle a million pa.s.sengers a day. Xia Fei felt that the Federal government had only done so to save face, demonstrating a level of unfounded blind optimism toward the planet’s future.
“Mr. Xia Fei, would you like a gla.s.s of champagne?” A very sultry female voice could be heard from behind him.
Behind him was a whole row of flight attendants all dressed in their uniforms. Because Xia Fei was the only pa.s.senger on this flight, the entire staff in this s.p.a.ceport had been circling him the entire time.
Xia Fei smiled awkwardly and rejected her kind offer.
He was not used to this overly friendly reception, feeling as if he were being watched the whole time.
After some time, he saw a small shuttle in the sky flying closer and closer. The warp engine thundered as the blue flames it spat glowed near luminescence, which made for a beautiful sight.
Xia Fei picked up his backpack and made his way down the terminal to board a small shuttle under the escort of several employees.
This shuttle was especially suited for picking up and dropping off pa.s.sengers, so there was only s.p.a.ce for a dozen of seats, while the larger pa.s.senger s.p.a.ce cruiser was parked in s.p.a.ce.
Xia Fei sought a seat near a porthole and placed his backpack on his lap.
There was a young steward in a blue uniform onboard who seemed to be no older than twenty years old.
“Welcome aboard Connection Airlines. Please show me your ticket.” The young steward spoke with a smile as he approached his side.
Xia Fei pulled out his ticket and handed it over. The young chap glanced at it once, then returned it to him. He pushed a b.u.t.ton on the onboard intercom to inform the pilot that they were cleared for take-off.
“Mr. Xia Fei, are you reporting to the Adjudicator Union?” The young man sat beside Xia Fei and struck up a conversation with somewhat familiar ease.
Xia Fei was a bit shocked. “Do you know who I am?”
The young man laughed lightly and very politely replied, “But of course. Practically everyone in the star region has seen your fight with Chen Dong. Truth be told, I found it somewhat hard to believe when I saw your name appear on the pa.s.sengers’ list.”
Xia Fei mulled over this for a moment. “Are my looks easily recognizable?”
The staff looked at the plain clothes that he was wearing and shook his head. “I never imagined that you would be someone so lowkey.”
Xia Fei’s mind was somewhat put at ease. Not being easily recognizable was a good thing; he did not enjoy being gawked at by people everywhere he went.
Soon, the small shuttle left Earth’s atmosphere and entered s.p.a.ce.
A huge s.p.a.ce cruiser loomed in the distance, parked beyond Earth’s...o...b..t. It was over a dozen of kilometers long, s.h.i.+ning brightly from the lights of the many portholes on the side.
“That s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p is huge. How many pa.s.sengers can it carry?” Xia Fei was taking in the sight of the ma.s.sive s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.
“That’s a midsize, long-range s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, Dragonfly, with a maximum capacity of 176,100 pa.s.sengers and 8,322 staff, as well as twenty-five small shuttles which are used to ferry pa.s.sengers.”
“There are a hundred sixty-two restaurants, thirty-seven nightclubs, fourteen casinos, as well as a pool, a gym, and all sorts of amenities on it. I dare to guarantee that you will fall in love with that luxury liner.” The steward gave Xia Fei an introduction of the s.p.a.ce cruiser as if he had recited it by heart.
A bay door opened near the tail end of Dragonfly, and the small shuttle automatically guided itself to dock inside, landing on the parking ap.r.o.n within the pa.s.senger s.h.i.+p.
The bay door closed, and the sound of rus.h.i.+ng air was heard. It was evident that this bay they were in was being rapidly filled with air.
Several minutes pa.s.sed, and a green light from within the shuttle lit up, indicating that the berth had been filled with air and people could now breathe freely.
The flight employees opened the doors and led Xia Fei off the shuttle, going down a long and narrow corridor before they reached an elevator.
After some time, Xia Fei appeared on the seventeenth floor of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p’s residential section.
The steward helped open the door for him. “This is your cabin. If there’s anything you require, feel free to utilize the communicator inside to contact a crew member. We’ll be reaching Brolin in forty-seven hours; in the meantime, take care and rest well.”
Xia Fei nodded and entered his cabin.
The cabin only covered an area of roughly twenty square meters. It was a spartanly decorated room that just had a bed, a desk, a chair, and a simple rectangular porthole looking out into s.p.a.ce.
Xia Fei tossed his backpack onto the bed and moved the chair over to the porthole. Lighting a cigarette, he smoked the stick as he gazed out into the starry sky outside.
s.p.a.ce travel was not cheap. Just a forty-seven-hour ride had cost him ninety-two thousand star coins.
Xia Fei booked a Type-A cabin overlooking the s.p.a.ce; aside from providing him with a beautiful view of the endless s.p.a.ce beyond, there was hardly any difference from a sixty-thousand cabin that did not provide a view.
Though it was more expensive, Xia Fei felt that it was well worth the price. It would be too much of a waste if he traveled through s.p.a.ce and did not take in the beauty of it.
“The universe sure is marvelous.” Xia Fei gazed at the starry void beyond the porthole as he muttered this to himself.
“Everyone says that when they first get into s.p.a.ce. Wait till you stay in s.p.a.ce long enough, then you’ll realize that there’s hardly any fun looking at this cold and gloomy s.p.a.ce. You’ll even get nauseated from the sight after staring at it so long,” refuted Phantom.
Xia Fei smiled and ignored Phantom. He sat by the porthole all alone as he soaked in the mystifying allure of the universe yonder.
His journey from Blue Sea Star the last time had been very short, and he had not been able to see the scenery at all while riding that cramped and shabby s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p with very small portholes.
Besides, a trip with him apprehended and imprisoned required a completely different set of emotions. This should be considered as Xia Fei’s first time traveling into outer s.p.a.ce.
The warp engine propelled the ma.s.sive s.p.a.ce cruiser, moving slowly and inelegantly in the vacuum of s.p.a.ce. The warp engine in s.p.a.cecraft comprised two components: the propulsion engine and the warp drive.
The propulsion engine enabled s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps to propel themselves forward in s.p.a.ce, but it was unable to make them travel past lightspeed. Attempting to travel to faraway planets would require the warp drive technology.
The warp drive technology essentially created a man-made wormhole in s.p.a.ce, linking up two distant points through that wormhole. A s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p would only need to enter a wormhole to reach the destination and would not need to spend a long time traveling in s.p.a.ce.
It was like drawing a circle on each end of a paper; there might be twenty centimeters of difference between the two, but the paper could be folded, such that the distance would no longer be twenty centimeters and would merely be paper-thin, instead.
The idea behind this theory was also called s.p.a.ce-folding, and the warp drive was designed in accordance with this very logic.
Currently, the furthest wormhole created through the warp drive was fifty thousand lightyears—calculated by taking the time a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, which could continuously fly at near lightspeed, would need to traverse the said distance. For such a long period of s.p.a.ce travel, by the time a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p arrived at its destination, the grandson’s grandson’s grandson of the original crew would have already died of old age.
The discovery of the warp drive changed all that, and a trip which would have taken fifty-thousand years was drastically reduced to mere ten minutes. Traveling across millions of lightyears had all been made simple, and with the distance between the stars figuratively made closer, a universal society was able to be established.
It was just that each jump a warp drive made required s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps to expend colossal energy, so several minutes or even hours of downtime were needed to recover the energy used for it. Meanwhile, the duration of this recovery depended on the size of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, as well as the grade of the reactor powering it.
Normally, a single jump would need around an hour to recharge.
Just as Xia Fei was mulling on this, Dragonfly entered a wormhole and initiated the jump. The instant it went into the wormhole, the starry sky around disappeared without a trace, as countless blazing meteors appeared all around.
These streaking meteors had variegated trails. Xia Fei watched through the porthole as they disappeared just as quickly as they appeared, making it seem as if a large meteor shower was raining down in front of him, a gorgeous spectacle which dazzled him.
Such a scene lasted for ten whole minutes, and when the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p exited the other side of the wormhole, he found himself in a completely different galaxy altogether.
A flaming red nebula could be seen, and the starry sky was surrounded by this indescribable nebula, its redness basking the entirety of the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p to a nearly boiling degree.
Xia Fei’s two eyes sparkled as he stood up from his chair. He then planted both his hands firmly on the porthole and stuck his nose to the icy-cold surface of that reinforced gla.s.s. “How beautiful! This stretch of red nebula is simply too beautiful!”
Xia Fei felt that his vocabulary was far too inadequate as he struggled to find the right words to describe what he was seeing right now, which was nothing short of a shocking miracle to him.
Phantom pursed his lips, completely unperturbed. “What’s so nice about a red nebula? You’re just making a fuss over nothing.”
From Earth to Brolin and the connecting flight from Brolin to ACG 21, Xia Fei had scarcely gotten a wink. He had maintained a heightened state of excitement throughout, sitting by the porthole as he admired each and every magical scene that pa.s.sed through.
“Dear pa.s.sengers, please be advised that we’ll be arriving at Planet ACG 21 in thirty minutes. May all those headed to this planet immediately make their way to the landing shuttle,” announced the s.h.i.+p’s emotionless broadcast system.
Xia Fei looked at the black planet outside his porthole and could not help furrowing his brows. “How did this planet end up looking like that?”