Yue Yuan’s journey continued toward Mars, though he would not be setting foot on the planet itself. Instead, he waited at the Yinghuo Orbital Station for the two additional specialists assigned to Callisto.
The need to transfer to a heavy-duty transport in Martian orbit was another factor.
As the engines ignited with a blinding brilliance, Yue Yuan’s party grew from four to five. They vanished from the sight of the station crew, plunging into the vastness of deep space.
Yinghuo was the ancient Chinese name for Mars, meaning "the Glimmering Flame." Once again, the Republic had chosen a name steeped in cultural romance—a bridge between history, heritage, and high technology. Only through such science could these ancient myths be carried forward as living culture into the future. [1]
As for Callisto, anyone with a basic knowledge of astronomy knows it as Jupiter’s fourth moon. In China, it was simply known as Jupiter IV. The transliterated name "Callisto" was rarely used; to the people of the Juggernaut, the literal, descriptive naming of "Jupiter IV" was far more elegant and immediate. In this era, almost every space station or extraterrestrial base established by the Chinese bore a Chinese name.
After bidding farewell to the Red Planet and enduring a grueling transit, the transport shuttle finally entered Jupiter’s massive gravitational well.
Having executed its deceleration burn well in advance, the shuttle drifted toward the Callisto Transfer Station, situated at the Lagrange point—the gravitational balance between the moon and the gas giant.
Callisto is a massive world, 4,821 kilometers in diameter. It is larger than our Moon and roughly 0.378 times the size of Earth, making it the third-largest moon in the solar system (surpassed only by Ganymede and Titan). From orbit, it appeared as a somber, brownish-yellow sphere, speckled with brilliant white dots where ice lay frozen within ancient craters. Its low albedo made it look dim and lifeless.
Its surface gravity was only 1.24 m/s²—about one-eighth of Earth’s. Despite its size, its low density and mass compared to the Moon were clear. Callisto lacked a global magnetic field, its frozen crust scarred by craters of every shape and size—bowl-shaped pits, multi-ringed basins, and rare, jagged canyons.
The Callisto Base was tucked away inside one of these narrow canyons facing Jupiter. Because the moon is tidally locked, anyone stepping outside the base only had to look up to see the overwhelming, oppressive majesty of Jupiter hanging in the sky.
The exterior of the base was a uniform grey. To maintain efficiency, every building was constructed from local materials. Soil and rock were excavated from the canyon floor, filtered, and then transformed into structures via industrial-scale 3D printing. This technique was used at Guanghan Palace and Yinghuo as well.
The printers produced bricks with integrated mortise-and-tenon joints, an ancient Chinese woodworking technique reborn for the space age. Using remote-linked engineering machinery, the Juggernaut had built a modern fortress using the wisdom of its ancestors.
Unlike the lunar or Martian outposts, more than half of the Callisto Base was subterranean. The surface structures were interconnected, sprawling across half the canyon floor, with the lowest level linked directly to the airlock of the damaged alien ship.
Because of the spacecraft, this base received unprecedented priority. In terms of research funding and construction scale, it far surpassed Guanghan Palace and Yinghuo. It was the most advanced and well-equipped human facility off-planet. It had to be; you couldn't exactly ship alien technology back to Beijing for study without massive risks to security and time.
Beijing knew that, eventually, traditional space powers like the United States would discover the truth. Rumor had it they were already planning their own base on Callisto. Once they arrived, the secret would be impossible to keep. Until then, the Republic had to push its research to the limit.
This environment had drawn the brightest minds—scientists, researchers, and high-tech artisans—to the Jovian moon. It wasn't just a lab anymore; because of the logistical needs of such a massive operation, Callisto Base had evolved into a small city of over 80,000 residents, complete with its own internal economy.
Upon his return, Yue Yuan immediately settled Dr. Yi Kai into his new role. Then, he and Zhu Peter rushed to the commander’s office to tackle the backlog of administrative tasks.
Yue Yuan’s primary focus was the alien ship. He scanned the latest reports, only to toss them aside with a heavy sigh.
There was no good news.
The interior of the ship had been thoroughly searched, and no more of the red substance had been found. This meant all future research was restricted to their own blood serum—a frustrating limitation.
Worse yet, the ship’s prow was completely pulverized. The cockpit, which they had hoped to find, was likely filled with solid rock. Experts believed all the flight equipment in that section had been destroyed upon impact.
Preliminary analysis of the rock strata suggested the ship had been embedded in the moon for over 20,000 years, though a precise date remained elusive.
Yue Yuan didn't care much about the ship's age. All that mattered was the reality: Aliens were real. Humanity was not alone in the universe.
He wasn't sure if that was a blessing or a curse.
Loneliness is terrifying, and from that perspective, humanity should celebrate the fact that it isn't the only spark of intelligence in the cosmos. But the alternative—the unknown—was equally chilling. Humans knew nothing of the nature of interstellar civilizations, the relationships between them, or whether those out there were benevolent or hostile.
Being "blind" in a universe known to be inhabited was a position of extreme danger. Thus, the Callisto Base’s true mission was to find any scrap of information within the ship that might hint at the behavior of other civilizations.
This was a new field of study, whispered about among the base’s inner circle of sociologists: Cosmic Sociology.
Given the stakes, very few people on Callisto actually knew the ship existed. Those who did were under permanent lockdown; until the secret was made public, they would never be allowed to leave the base. To Yue Yuan, this was an undeniable necessity.
His life returned to its busy, disciplined rhythm. Under normal circumstances, he would have remained here for another twenty years before rotating to a new post—perhaps returning to Beijing, or moving on to establish the next frontier base.
Given the choice, Yue Yuan would always choose the frontier. He would stay in the black until his body could no longer adapt to space life.
However, in the seventh Earth month following his return to Callisto, the unthinkable happened.
TN:
[1] The name is composed of two characters:
Ying (荧): Refers to a flickering, shimmering, or glimmering light (like fire).
Huo (惑): Means to confuse, delude, or bewilder.
Ancient astronomers called it this because of Mars's retrograde motion. Most planets move predictably, but Mars occasionally appears to slow down, stop, and then move backward across the sky before resuming its forward path. To the ancients, this "erratic" behavior was seen as the planet trying to deceive or "confuse" observers.
The most famous (and feared) mythological event involving Mars is Yinghuo Shouxin (荧惑守心), or "Mars Guarding the Heart."
The "Heart" refers to the constellation Xin, specifically the red star Antares. In Chinese mythology, Antares represented the Emperor. Because both Mars and Antares are bright red, Mars was seen as a "rival" to the star of the Emperor.
If Mars appeared to stop or "hover" near Antares, it was considered the ultimate bad omen—prophesying the death of the Emperor or a massive revolution. Ancient court astronomers spent their entire lives tracking Yinghuo to warn the palace of these "confusing" movements.
Comments
Post a Comment