An hour later, Old Cat returned in a sorry state.
"Damn it, this damn weather. Why is the wind getting stronger and stronger?"
Old Cat's face was covered in dust as he closed the airlock's hatch. He cursed as he untied the safety rope around his waist. "Tang Yue … What's wrong with you?"
"I'm autistic."
Tang Yue slumped into his chair, covering his face. He felt like he had nothing left to live for.
Old Cat took off his IVA suit's helmet and placed it on the table. Then, he opened the zipper and jumped out of the spacesuit. "What's the wind speed now?"
"It's … 43 meters per second."
Old Cat turned his head to glance at the wind speed indicator's display. There were four glaring red numbers.
43.59。
Old Cat frowned. A wind speed of 43 meters per second didn't seem optimistic.
It looked at the time again. It was half past six in the morning. Logically speaking, the sun should have risen by now, but it was still pitch-black outside the window. Clearly, the pitiful sunlight from Mars couldn't penetrate the ten-kilometer thick dust above Kunlun Station's head.
The Eagle's computer system had been fully activated. The self-check had been completed, and the automatic docking program had been set. It could be launched at any time — as long as the wind speed dropped below the safety threshold.
"Is there any hope for us?" Tang Yue asked.
"As long as the weather can improve, there's still hope," Old Cat answered.
"Can the Eagle still launch at this wind speed?" Tang Yue asked.
He was hoping that if the wind speed didn't drop, they could forcefully launch the lander. At the very least, the Eagle's design limit was 50 meters per second. A wind speed of 40 meters per second shouldn't pose too much of a threat.
"Yes, but it's not safe."
Old Cat said. "Even if the storm doesn't cause the Eagle's launch to fail, it will still interfere with the lander's normal orbit entry, causing the final docking to fail."
Tang Yue stared at the cup on the table in a daze. He suddenly had an urge to smash the cup.
If the final rendezvous and docking failed, then the launch would be meaningless.
He got up and stood in front of the porthole as he looked out in the direction of the Eagle. Tang Yue knew that the spacecraft was standing a hundred meters away and was fully loaded with relief supplies.
This situation was really worrying. Tang Yue suddenly understood the plight of the people who were involved in the disaster. You could receive the distress signal of the survivors, and you knew that they were still alive. But because of the damn storm and waves, the helicopters carrying supplies and doctors could not take off.
You hoped that the weather would improve, but at the same time, you watched helplessly as the rescue opportunity slipped away, and the lives of the survivors faded away one by one.
"You said we only have a one in ten chance."
Tang Yue turned around, leaned against the wall, and slowly slid down to sit on the floor. He whispered, "Then our probability of failure is nine out of ten."
"That's right."
"Does this count as a slim chance?"
"Tell me, how did you get here?" Old Cat asked.
Tang Yue was stunned and did not understand the meaning of this question.
Old Cat took a step closer and looked into Tang Yue's eyes. It was very short, not much taller than Tang Yue who was sitting on the floor.
"In this Mars mission, how many candidates participated in the selection process with you in the end?" Old Cat asked.
"Including me … a total of ten."
"Then you are one in ten."
Old Cat pointed to the top of its head. "That girl is also one in ten. Do you know what one in ten I am?"
Tang Yue shook his head.
"I am the only one who passed the review among the 10,000 robots in the same batch," Old Cat said. "I am one in ten thousand."
Tang Yue thought, "… Are you telling me this to tell me that you are a thousand times better than me?"
·
·
·
"I want to tell you that the Earth is gone, but we are still alive. You, that girl, and I are the only three in six and a half billion. If the denominator is expanded to include all life on Earth, then you may even be one in a hundred billion."
Old Cat said lightly, "You have encountered one in a hundred billion, so why should you be afraid of one in ten?"
Old Cat returned to the workbench, and a rectangular map of Mars unfolded on the computer screen. Then a light blue sine wave appeared on the map.
This sine wave was the trajectory of the Joint Space Station. To be precise, it was the trajectory of the space station's point below the stars. The so-called point below the stars was the vertical projection of the spacecraft on the ground. As the spacecraft's orbit had a certain angle with the equator, it was not completely parallel. Therefore, on the unfolded map, the space station's projection point was moving up and down, and the trajectory was a regular sine wave.
When Old Cat had contacted the Joint Space Station previously, he had redone the precise positioning of the space station. Now, the space station's orbit was stored in the Kunlun Station's system computer, and it was also stored in the Eagle's computer. The orbit could be very precise, with almost no deviation.
Old Cat was doing his best to reduce the error. Due to the weather, it was very likely that the Eagle would lose contact after launch. Kunlun Station would not be able to guide it, so the orbit change and rendezvous could only be done by the lander's own computer. The difficulty of this was like hitting a hole in a billiard ball from a thousand meters away … In a situation where no one was watching, the success rate of the Eagle's autonomous docking was only five percent.
To be more precise, it was 4.837 percent.
Old Cat had previously told Tang Yue that the success rate was one in twenty, but in fact, he had slightly raised the probability. And the RD-0172 propellant in the payload module could only support two orbit changes, so the total success rate of the docking was 9.44 percent.
Less than one in ten.
"What's the wind speed now?" Old Cat tapped on the keyboard as he stared at the computer screen.
"Forty-three meters per second."
Old Cat nodded and did not say another word. His two cat paws were dancing on the keyboard. He was correcting the lander's flight program bit by bit, changing the parameters that were accurate to three decimal places to five decimal places, and the parameters that were accurate to five decimal places to ten decimal places.
Only the sound of Old Cat tapping on the keyboard could be heard in Kunlun Station. Tang Yue did not dare disturb him.
"What's the wind speed now?"
"Forty-two meters per second."
Old Cat's expression was heavy. It displayed the rigor and meticulousness that a robot should have, optimizing the Eagle's launch program again and again. The complex parameters and function images on the screen were reflected in the cat's bright eyes. Old Cat was making a final effort. It was struggling against the 9.44 percent probability.
By making more than a hundred parameters accurate, it might be able to raise the probability to 9.441 percent.
It would only raise the success rate by 0.001 percent, but it was still meaningful.
After all, the probability of Tang Yue surviving Earth's disappearance was 0.0000000001 percent. A one in a trillion chance might be meaningless to ordinary people, no different from zero, but it was the entire meaning of Tang Yue's life.
Then 0.001 percent was the meaning of a million Tang Yue.