Dead on Mars

Chapter 227 - Sol Three Hundred and Thirty-Four, Star Chart
Chapter 227: Sol Three Hundred and Thirty-Four, Star Chart

After Tomcat had finished singing Sailor, it sang Stars Lamp, followed by Familial Love, Path to Heaven, and Tibetan Plateau. It was like a retro radio, but Tang Yue didn’t have the power to choose the songs he wanted. All he could do was put up Tomcat’s hoarse voice that sounded like a defunct recorder.

As it drove, it kept belting out songs. And when Tomcat reached the lyrics refrain—”This is the Tibetan Plateau—Ohhhhhheeh!”—Tang Yue had no idea how he resisted the urge to jump off and escape.

After Tomcat finished singing Tibetan Plateau, Tang Yue imagined that it was finally going to stop.

But it began humming again.

Just as Tang Yue was about to say something, he was taken aback.

He was very familiar with the tune hummed by Tomcat. Tang Yue nearly hummed along with it as it was Tomorrow Will Be Better.

“Your singing has crossed a distance of 30 AU in two minutes. It’s 114 times faster than light,” Tang Yue said. “It’s definitely the fastest in the Milky Way.”

The Mars Wanderer continued driving for half an hour until Tomcat stopped pressing down on the accelerator. It braked and switched off the engine.

The Mars Wanderer only had 5% of its power left.

“That will be all for today. I’ve already driven for thirty kilometers. What’s next is to allow the Wanderer to be recharged.” Tomcat jumped off the vehicle and looked at the Sun before circling around to the trailer to unload the solar panels.

Tang Yue got off the vehicle and stood beside the Mars Wanderer’s wheels and surveyed the area. On a boundless desert covered in saline-alkali soil, there was nothing. He couldn’t even find a place to hide from the Sun. Thankfully, this was Mars. If this were Earth, he would definitely have suffered from dehydration and heatstroke.

They thankfully had the Wanderer. A transportation device in the desert was like a rescue raft; otherwise, it was nearly impossible to walk out of this dry sea of death by human means alone.

He couldn’t see Kunlun Station anymore. Tang Yue only knew the direction where it was, but despite looking far into the distance, all he saw was a dark gray horizon.

Tomcat unfolded the solar panels one after another and set them up on the ground. The forty solar panels they had, covered an area spanning half a soccer field when fully set up. The entire day was left to recharging. It was fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, and until the Sun set, Tang Yue and Tomcat would stay here, waiting for the charging to complete.

Tang Yue connected a transformer to the backup battery, pulled out a power cable and attached it to the Radiant Armor.

Not only did the Wanderer need to be charged, but so did Tomcat and the EVA suit.

The man and cat finished setting up the solar panels, and finally, Tomcat seemed to pull a magic trick, pulling out two campstools from the geolab.

Tang Yue and Tomcat each had one as they sat there with black power cables attached to their backs.

“When do we set off again?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Tomcat replied. “The charging needs at least ten to twelve hours. I estimate that we will set off at seven in the morning tomorrow. We will then head northeast another thirty kilometers.”

“We won’t steer off course, right?”

“It’s inevitable to go off course, but it will be fine as long as we correct it in time.” Tomcat returned to the driver’s component and rummaged for a chart which it gave Tang Yue.

Tang Yue glanced at it and found it filled with numbers. He didn’t understand anything other than the shortened English words: “Mon,” “Tues,” “Wed,” Thur,” “Fri,” “Sat,” and “Sun.”

“What’s this?”

“A star chart,” Tomcat replied. “Those numbers are the coordinates on a celestial sphere and they label the positions of the celestial bodies.

“Star chart?”

“The sextant can only determine our latitude. It can’t give our longitude directly,” Tomcat explained. “We have to use other means to determine our longitude. The most direct way is to look at the time. Earth has time zones, and knowing which time zone you are in allows you to know your longitude.”

“But that’s too crude.”

“That’s right. It’s too crude.” Tomcat nodded. “Determining longitude based on time is, in essence, observing the Sun’s height and location. At the same time but at different longitudes, the Sun’s position on the celestial sphere is different. However, to ensure accuracy, it’s best we don’t use the Sun. We should use celestial bodies that are smaller and more precise.”

Tang Yue unfolded the chart over his knees. The bottom even reached the floor. It was an extremely long and complicated chart. Each number was precise to four or five decimal places. It made Tang Yue recall of a table of natural logarithms attached to the end of his high school math textbook.

“Celestial bodies that are smaller and more precise?”

“Yes.” Tomcat pointed up. “We won’t use the Sun as a reference point. We will be using Deimos and Phobos.”

“I know these names…” Tang Yue recalled the meaning of these two names. “The moons of Mars, Mars I and Mars II?”

“That’s right. We will use the two moons of Mars as a reference. Kunlun Station has very detailed trajectory data, and they are excellent reference points. The start chart you have indicates the celestial sphere’s coordinates when observing the moons from Kunlun Station.” Tomcat pointed at the chart. “Now that we have left Kunlun Station when we observe Deimos and Phobos at the same time, the location will be different from what’s written on the star chart… We can then know our longitude and the longitudinal distance from Kunlun Station.”

Tang Yue paused for a second. Tomcat’s description was overly simple. He had failed to digest such massive amounts of information in a short timespan.

“Give an example.”

“Alright. For instance, at half-past seven in the evening, when you observe Deimos from Kunlun Station, it’s at 1.00,” Tomcat elaborated. “Then at the same time, we will observe it from here. Deimos’s location is 1.01. The difference in the location is obvious because we are observing it from two different locations… This difference is equivalent to the time difference on Earth.

“Once you know the time difference, you can determine the longitude.”

Tang Yue slowly nodded. Tomcat really wasn’t joking when it said that they were Mars’s Captain Cook. Now, its words were validated. Determining one’s location via celestial bodies and time was an extremely ancient method. Centuries ago, ships that crossed the ocean would even carry sufficiently precise navigation clocks for such calculations.

Now, all he had in hand was a star chart. He didn’t have a cellphone, a mobile connection, GPS, or any complicated navigation equipment. All he could rely on was time, stars, and math.

“How accurate is this?” Tang Yue asked.

He was a little worried about the accuracy of the navigation.

“Don’t forget we are on Mars. The planet beneath our feet is only half Earth’s diameter. The total surface area is only equivalent to the landmass on Earth,” Tomcat said. “A distance of three hundred kilometers on Earth is negligible, but here, it’s enough to accentuate the differences… As long as we calculate it precisely enough, we will be able to determine a longitude value very reliably.”

“But how do we use this?”

“I’ll teach you when it’s nighttime. This can’t be used in the day.”

Tomcat put away the chart and looked up at the Sun which was creeping over their heads. It then turned around and took out the simple sextant. “What we will do next is to determine our latitude.”