Dead on Mars

Chapter 102 - Sol Hundred and Ten, The Old Monks Before the Big Bang
Chapter 102: Sol Hundred and Ten, The Old Monks Before the Big Bang

Tang Yue didn’t know if Buddha still existed as he wasn’t Buddhist. He could recite the Incantation for Purifying the Heart Spirit, but he couldn’t recite the Diamond Sutra. However, he vaguely remembered that the area under Buddha’s jurisdiction wasn’t limited to Earth. In Buddhism, there was something known as Kalpa, a Sanskrit word meaning a relatively long period of time. There were four kinds, with the regular Kalpa approximately 16.8 million years. A small Kalpa was 1,000 regular Kalpas, and every 20 small Kalpas was a medium Kalpa, making the latter 336 billion years. Finally, a great Kalpa was four medium Kalpa, making it around 1.344 trillion years.

The present known Universe’s age was approximately 13.8 billion years, barely a small Kalpa. In Buddhist scripture, it was said that every great Kalpa implied the birth of a thousand Buddhas. This also implied that it wasn’t true that there wasn’t anything before the Big Bang. There might have been a bunch of nagging old monks.

But who the hell was Gatling Bodhisattva?

Tang Yue drank another mouthful of thick coffee as he closed his eyes and opened them again. At this point, he no longer cared if he conserved water. If Tomcat was around, it would have absolutely forbidden him from being so extravagant by wasting water to make coffee.

With Tomcat away, he could let himself go. He could even use the water for a sauna for all he cared.

Mai Dong left the Crystal module and lightly circled around the electric cable that was floating in midair. With the need to do a routine inspection of the space station, she passed through the APAS and checked on the plants in the incubator. After all, Ah Chang, Classics, Runtu, and Zha had not seen Mai Dong for an entire day. The United Space Station still had another forty minutes before it would fly overhead Kunlun Station, so Mai Dong had to use this interval to complete her daily routine.

“Tang Yue, I think we are just too slow with what we are doing.” Mai Dong wore an earpiece as she spoke. “It’s been thirty-six hours since we lost contact with Mr. Cat. We have been searching through the photos for twenty-four hours, and have only completed one-sixty-sixtieth of everything. By the time we finish looking through all the pictures, won’t that be in two months’ time?”

“Yes.” Tang Yue nodded. “It will take about 1,500 hours.”

Mai Dong dragged out a particular control panel from the space station and reached her head in to check the electric cable before pressing down on a button. “Is there a faster and more efficient method? Aren’t we tight on time? It’s best if we can go through the images as quickly as possible.”

Tang Yue leaned back into his chair as the image on the screen changed, the number label jumping to Number 1,480.

“What other methods do we have? The camera’s resolution is at best five meters. The camera’s field of vision is at best 2,000 square meters. With this kind of capability, calling it a remote sensing system is already flattering it. To think it’s a product from Carl Zeiss AG.” Tang Yue sighed. “We only have this to use. You can’t expect it to be comparable with the Webb Space Telescope, can you?”

To search for a target on the Martian surface was technically nothing difficult. If Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center or Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site were there to help, they would have all kinds of solutions, with each one of them simpler than the last. They could do high-precision imaging sweeps or fuzzy image recognition. The United Space Station probably wasn’t even needed; they had the means of finding Tomcat from Earth.

But regardless of the method, there was a prerequisite which was the imagery.

High-precision and high-resolution imaging of the terrain was crucial. This was the foundation that all methods would rely on. Whatever supercomputing AI recognition would only shorten the time it took, but if the imagery couldn’t be improved, everything else was pointless.

“If we have a powerful telescope with a resolution of a meter, and a field of view exceeding a square kilometer, would we need to be going through all this trouble?” Tang Yue said. “We’d just need to take two panoramic pictures and let the computer find the difference. The problem is that we don’t have anything like that.”

That was the truth. Tang Yue didn’t wish to use such a primitive and slow method either. To do a brute-force search by eye was enough to blind him, but due to the poor conditions they had, there weren’t any other useful tools he could use.

“To be frank, we should thank our lucky stars that you managed to find this optical tracking system,” Tang Yue said. “If we didn’t have that, we would truly be helpless. We might be slow, but so be it… We need to trust in Tomcat. It’s tenacious.”

“It exists in the Dawn.” Mai Dong pushed the panel back in place. “The Dawn has high-precision observation equipment.”

“I know that the Dawn has it, but the Dawn module has long been destroyed.” Tang Yue shook his head.

Back when the Dawn’s walls ruptured from the collision, it lost its pressure, forcing Tomcat to seal the hatch shut and cutting all power and air supplies. Now, the Dawn was like a frozen tomb that was completely disused.

Mai Dong thought for a moment. “I can try activating the equipment in the Dawn module.”

Tang Yue was alarmed.

“Don’t mess around, lass!” Tang Yue became extremely stern. “Do not open the hatch by yourself, much less enter the Dawn module!”

Tomcat and Mai Dong had attempted to repair the Dawn previously but were met with failure. The Dawn, that had lost its air and pressure over the past three months, was no different from the external environment outside. No one knew if the equipment was still working when exposed to a low-temperature vacuum for such an extended period. Mai Dong definitely lacked the ability to make the Dawn operational again by herself. She was only a layman, so any rash actions might only lead to a disaster.

With Tomcat missing, Tang Yue might really find a tree to hang himself if anything were to happen to Mai Dong.

Well… Perhaps he wouldn’t die that quickly actually.

“Heard that?” Tang Yue was very worried that the lady would do something silly on impulse. “Absolutely do not open that hatch! Do not enter the Dawn!”

“Okay… Got it,” Mai Dong said.

“Promise me.”

“I promise you I’ll absolutely not open the hatch and enter the Dawn,” Mai Dong said.

“Swear on the lives of Ah Chang and Classics.”

The girl was taken aback as she pouted. “You really are ruthless.”

Tang Yue shrugged. Ruthlessness is the mark of a truly great man

“If we aren’t trying to use the equipment in the Dawn module, there’s a need for us to change our searching methods. At the speed we are searching, we will still spend another two months doing so. It’s definitely not a solution.” Mai Dong thought deeply about the matter. “Is there a way to speed up the search?”

“What we are doing now is already at the highest efficiency possible. By scanning in proper sequence and searching through the labeled images, we won’t miss out on anything. We’ll definitely find Tomcat if we continue using this method.”

“We can try changing our thought processes.” The girl pinched her hair as she coiled it around her fingertip. “We should prioritize the locations where Mr. Cat is mostly likely at.”

“Isn’t the most likely location around the Chelomey’s landing spot, within sixty kilometers of Kunlun Station’s direction?”

They had lost contact with Tomcat for forty-eight hours. According to its normal speed, its location could only be within sixty kilometers from the Chelomey. Any further would exceed the Mars Wanderer’s capabilities.

“No… No, this area is still too big.” Mai Dong shook her head. “I’ve been thinking, Tang Yue. Whether Mr. Cat’s vehicle was destroyed or if it was a malfunction in the antenna, the greatest reason would be that it encountered a powerful external collision, but this wouldn’t happen if it was driving normally on flat ground.”

Tang Yue was stunned.

“It’s impossible for Mr. Cat to just have an accident for no reason. It’s highly possible that such an accident is a result of the terrain,” Mai Dong explained.

Tang Yue understood her point. “So we should first focus on regions with cliffs, slopes, and ravines?”

“Bingo!”

Mai Dong snapped her fingers, indicating that Tang Yue was completely correct. If Tomcat had unfortunately gotten into an accident, it had likely plunged into a ravine or down a cliff.

Such steep terrain was rare on the Isidis Planitia to begin with. As long as Tang Yue and Mai Dong checked these areas, there was a very high chance of finding the scene of the accident.