Dead on Mars

Chapter 229 - Sol Three Hundred and Thirty-Four, Humanity’s Joy and Sadness Aren’t Interlinked
Chapter 229: Sol Three Hundred and Thirty-Four, Humanity’s Joy and Sadness Aren’t Interlinked

Tang Yue and Tomcat sat back to back on a rock as they looked up at the sky.

“I feel as if we are Gypsies,” Tang Yue said softly, “carrying a huge covered truck as we wander about.”

Overhead was the pitch-black sky that seemed to be made of velvet. The starry sky seemed to encase them at the bottom of an overturned bowl. The rocks and desert under the night sky had a red glow as though they were silently burning embers.

This was a grand vista that struck deep into one’s heart. Beneath the cold night sky was a glowing-red planet.

Here, the small was small and the big was even bigger.

“I’m not a Gypsy.” Tomcat held the star chart as it counted the stars in the sky. “I’m a Gypsy cat… Have you swapped your pressurized canister?”

“Did so some time ago.” Tang Yue patted the life support system behind him. The Radiant Armor’s compressed air canister had ended its historic duty that evening. After the oxygen had been depleted, Tang Yue switched the emergency oxygen unit. The Radiant Armor EVA suit had an oxygen candle interface that allowed Tang Yue to carry it on his back.

The emergency oxygen system was a long rectangular body sixty centimeters long. It was highly integrated as solid alkaline perchlorate salts were sealed in a cylindrical metal vessel. Together with an electrical ignition switch and a gas compression filter, the design was rather compact. As long as Tang Yue opened the protective seal and used his strength to pull the pull tab at the bottom of the lid, the chemical would produce oxygen under the effects of the catalysts. The oxygen would then be moisturized and filtered before entering the Radiant Armor’s helmet.

The carbon dioxide that Tang Yue breathed out would be absorbed by the lithium hydroxide monohydrate. The carbon dioxide absorption system’s condition would directly be displayed on the Radiant Armor’s wrist terminal. Green indicated good conditions and red indicated that the chemicals were almost depleted.

“Have you found them?” Tang Yue asked

“I’ve found them.” Tomcat looked down at the star chart and drew a tick.

“Are we heading in the right direction?”

“Of course,” Tomcat replied. “We will have to continue traveling northeast for thirty kilometers tomorrow morning. We will correct the deviations tomorrow evening to ensure that we arrive at the given coordinates.”

“When I was on Earth, I learned how to read the stars, but I’ve already forgotten them all,” Tang Yue said. “Old Wang said that it doesn’t matter since we have long stopped using such primitive means to determine direction… In fact, it wasn’t difficult either. We just needed to find Polaris.”

“However, Mars doesn’t have an obvious marker like Polaris,” Tomcat languidly leaned against Tang Yue’s back. It stretched out its front paw and pointed at the sky. “Do you see that huge cross?”

“Huge cross?” Tang Yue turned his head.

“Left of your sky. Do you see it? That bright cross is Cygnus. The most famous massive black hole, Cygnus X-1 is there. It emits copious amounts of extremely powerful X-rays. It’s a spinning lighthouse of the Milky Way.”

Tomcat pointed it out to Tang Yue as he traced the direction of Tomcat’s claw. Amidst the stars, he made out a distorted cross.

“Form a line with Cygnus’s head with the closest star of Cepheus. The midpoint of this line is north,” Tomcat said. “We are currently facing north, making our left west. Kunlun Station is towards our southwest… See that rock? Kunlun Station is in that direction. If you somehow get lost on Mars, walk in that direction all the way and you will return home.”

Tang Yue sighed. “Tomcat, we no longer have a home.”

Tomcat blinked.

“We are aliens,” Tang Yue said. “We are stranded on Mars, strange creatures from an unknown alien planet. No one can discover us, hear us, or understand us.”

“Humanity’s joy and sadness aren’t interlinked.”

“That’s right,” Tang Yue said. “Back when I was letting my imagination run wild, I thought how nice it would be if one’s emotions could be shared. That way, no matter how sad something is, as long as it’s equally distributed across ten thousand people, a hundred thousand people, or a million people… each person will on average experience a millionth of the sadness. If that happened, the world wouldn’t see tears again.”

“But there wouldn’t be smiles either.”

Tang Yue looked blankly at the starry sky. Occasionally, he still imagined that the United Space Station was above him, hurtling across his head.

“It’s late. It’s time to rest.” Tomcat nudged Tang Yue. “You can sleep for seven hours. The Radiant Armor can operate normally for eight hours, so you need to wake up an hour in advance to charge it… The time now is ten. You will have to wake up before five tomorrow to recharge it.”

Tang Yue yawned and stole a glance at it,

“What about you? Do you need to recharge tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll continue stargazing.” Tomcat sat on the rock.

Tang Yue got up and headed back to sleep. The geolab on the Mars Wanderer had a sleeping bag, but it was only used to line the floor. Tang Yue had no way of crawling into it while donning the Radiant Armor.

They couldn’t sleep outside as the temperature at night would keep dropping until it reached –80°C. Such low temperatures drastically wore on the temperature control, causing the power needed to increase. They had brought the RTG along, and it was able to maintain the geolab’s temperature at around 0°C. In contrast with the outside world, this was undoubtedly a paradise in spring.

Tang Yue crawled into the geolab and closed the hatch.

Tomcat sat on the rock, the star chart flat across its knees.

This cat sat there like a statue for a very long time. Cats were strange creatures. At times, they would sit by the window motionless, a glint in their eyes suddenly appearing without anyone understanding why. Perhaps it was a baffling sense of melancholy or a strange level of silence. At times, one would suspect that they possessed similar amounts of intelligence as humans. They often traversed the walls and rooftops, looking down from above at human society.

Tomcat naturally lacked the ability to jump onto a roof or its short and fat body would probably smash through the roof. Cats would believe that a meatball chariot had fallen from the sky before being sent into a tizzy.

However, it felt that it was just like the other cats; they were all pixies.

A short and fat pixie was still a pixie.

It didn’t accept any claims against that!

A meteor suddenly streaked across the sky, brightening for a short instant. Tomcat blinked. It was about time for it to rest. The temperature was dropping and it too found low temperatures a hazardous environment that would drastically shorten its lifespan.

Tomcat got up and returned to the geolab’s outer hatch. The airtight lab had two hatches just like the airlock. Tomcat crawled in and closed the outer hatch before opening the inner hatch.

The cramped geolab was dark due to a lack of light. It was nearly pitch-black apart from the faint green light emitted from the Radiant Armor indicators. Tang Yue was sitting against the wall sleeping, his head bent. He didn’t spread the sleeping bag against the floor but instead hugged it tightly.

When Tomcat entered, it turned around to seal the hatch before snuggling close to Tang Yue. Slowly, it curled into a huge furball and closed its eyes.