An hour and a half later.
Mai Dong was in the midst of her second excursion. Her mission at this stage was to remove the light sensor's control wires.
This was a very troublesome operation. Mai Dong first had to remove the two wires B3074 and B3075 that were obstructing her movements. Then, she had to remove the deeply disconnected C1002 cable. This was a simple surgery that required a screwdriver, scissors, and tweezers. However, Mai Dong was wearing the heavy equipment of an EOD suit. Her fingers were thicker than sausages.
"B3074 has been removed successfully."
Mai Dong reported. She felt like she was an EOD specialist. Faced with a bunch of red, blue, and green wires in a time bomb, she was at a loss as to which wire to cut.
Mai Dong had watched many movies and dramas. The EOD specialist would always have a sudden epiphany when the countdown neared zero. She would either recall her family or her comrades. Then, under the glow of a protagonist's halo, she would resolutely cut the wires under the nervous gazes of the spectators. With a crisp crack, the red LCD countdown came to an abrupt halt.
Later on, Captain Old Wang told her that it was a TV series. In a real EOD, no one cared about the red and blue wires. There were no red and blue wires either. They were all picked up by robots and thrown into liquid nitrogen cylinders.
“OK！”
Old Cat nodded. He had seen a disconnected circuit notification on the space station's computer system. B3074 had been disconnected. "Miss Mai Dong, do you need to rest?
I can see that your heart is racing. "
Mai Dong nodded her head. She was indeed a little tired. Going out of the cabin was nothing to a strong man like Lao Wang. Lao Wang often stayed outside the cabin for six to seven hours, but it was still very difficult for a girl's physical strength to take it. After her first trip outside the cabin, Mai Dong ate something and rested until the sun rose again.
Mai Dong put the tools in her hands into a bag and floated in space to rest. In zero gravity, there was no distinction between up and down, so there was no difference between standing and lying down.
She looked at Mars that was just inches away. This brownish-red world seemed so close that she could touch it.
But it was so far away that it seemed like another world.
She and the space station were flying at high speeds four hundred kilometers above the ground. This distance was just too close. Mai Dong could see the details of the Martian surface with her naked eyes, but this universe only allowed her to orbit the planet in a circular motion. The space station had been flying its entire life. Even though it was flying at a speed of three kilometers per second, it was unable to approach Mars by even a centimeter.
Gravity was a wall that Mai Dong might not be able to cross in her entire life.
"Isidis Planum … Mr. Cat, Tang Yue, I see Isidis Planum."
Mai Dong saw a small plain in the northern hemisphere of Mars near the equator. It was easy to miss if one didn't look for it deliberately. She knew that Kunlun Station was on this plain, but the scientific research station was too small. It exceeded the limits of the girl's eyesight … It was a very strange feeling. You knew they were there, but you couldn't see them.
If you used a high-powered microscope to magnify them, you would see Kunlun Station, and then you would see the tiny humans and cats in Kunlun Station.
For some reason, it felt like she was looking at a miniature model.
Mai Dong was surprised by her own thoughts. The first thing that popped into her mind was a microscope and not a telescope. This meant that the concept in her mind was size and not distance.
The girl subconsciously treated Mars as a massive entity that was somewhere between living and non-living. Kunlun Station was just an extremely tiny vassal of this massive entity.
"Tang Yue, Mr. Cat, can you see me?" Mai Dong asked. "I'm on the same side as you right now."
"The sunlight during the day is too strong. I can't see you."
Tang Yue replied. Due to the strong sunlight during the day, they couldn't see the space station in orbit from the surface of Mars.
"Even if you can see it, there's no way to accurately track it. Miss Mai Dong, your orbit is too low, and your speed on the celestial sphere is too fast," Old Cat said. "To continue tracking the space station, we need a high-precision equatorial instrument."
"If only you could see me. It doesn't feel like face to face with a camera and a computer screen."
Tang Yue's heart skipped a beat.
Indeed, the camera and radio allowed them to video call, but video calls were always separated by a layer of glass. Through this layer of glass, Kunlun Station and the space station seemed to be in two different worlds.
But if he could see Mai Dong on the space station without any obstruction, his line of sight would connect the two worlds. Looking at each other from four hundred kilometers away would allow the two to return to the same universe.
·
·
·
Mai Dong carefully put the screwdriver and wires into the bag and heaved a sigh of relief. "B3075 dismantled successfully."
"Next is C1002. Mai Dong, observe the situation first and see how to do it with the least effort. Don't be in a hurry to do it," Tang Yue instructed. "Do whatever is convenient."
Mai Dong held the long tweezers in her hand and got Old Cat to slightly adjust the position of the mechanical arm.
"Tang Yue, Mr. Cat, I see it, but that screw is a little stuck …" Mai Dong gritted her teeth and tried to remove the screw, but she failed. "I might have to turn it around first, or it won't be easy to use force. So I'll have to switch to using the tweezers. The tweezers … The tweezers are here."
"Take it slow, take it slow."
"This gap is too narrow. The tweezers can't reach in. I have to widen it a little. Strange … Is this rust?
No, it's just paint. The paint is peeling off. "
Tang Yue and Old Cat sat in Kunlun Station and stared at the monitor. Mai Dong's panting continued to rise and fall in the comms. Clearly, she had expended a lot of energy. Mai Dong would stop to rest every once in a while.
"It's so tiring. I never knew that repairing the space station was so exhausting."
Mai Dong panted and stopped to rest again. "Captain and the rest can actually work like this for six hours straight. It's unbelievable."
"How can you compare to Old Wang?"
Tang Yue shook his head. "Old Wang and Old Tang are rough men. They have muscles all over their bodies. They often fight in bathrooms and expend more energy than this, but they still enjoy it."
"Why do they fight in bathrooms?" Mai Dong asked.
Tang Yue thought for a moment.
"It's usually because of a piece of soap."
After more than half an hour, Mai Dong finally successfully removed the C1002 circuit. This phase of the mission was successfully completed. Mai Dong was so tired that she was on the verge of collapse. After she returned to the space station, she shook out more than a liter of sweat from her EVA suit. She was completely drenched.
After returning to the core module, Mai Dong didn't have time to say anything. She didn't even put on her noise-canceling earplugs before she hugged her pillow and fell asleep with Ah Q. The sunlight was gradually leaving them.
In Kunlun Station, Tang Yue and Old Cat were discussing the next step of the operation. The dividing line between day and night slowly moved across the surface of Mars.
The Joint Space Station once again flew behind Mars.
Mars was still orbiting the Sun at a speed of 24 kilometers per second.
The Solar System was still orbiting the Silver Core at a speed of 250 kilometers per second.
The universe was expanding silently.