"Run!
Run!
Mai Dong, run —! "
Old Cat roared at the top of his lungs.
The girl was taken aback.
Three seconds later, there was a deafening boom. Intense vibrations traveled through the cabin walls and the air. All the bits floating in the cabin seemed to freeze at that moment as the air seemed to compress.
Time froze for an instant.
Immediately following that, they all flew out violently as the panels and screens attached to the cabin walls cracked.
The space station's structure emitted a sharp screech of metal twisting as the alarm for a loss of pressure sounded.
Mai Dong felt a strong force slam into her chest. Her first thought was that she had been in a car accident and that the car she was in had been rear-ended.
Her body flew out uncontrollably as she tumbled in midair. Immediately following that, she was pulled back by the earpiece cable. The earpiece cable wrapped around her arm as Mai Dong's body spun like a pendulum before slamming heavily into the control panel.
The space station had completely lost its posture as everything in front of the girl was tumbling. She felt dizzy as the world spun.
Ear-piercing alarms sounded in her ears as the entire core module was dyed red by the alarms.
Mai Dong couldn't control her body at all as she slammed into the porthole once again.
Before falling unconscious, Mai Dong could only see red light and thick smoke.
·
·
·
The computer screen was still flashing with alarming alarms. Old Cat held the earpiece in his hand as he stood in front of the workbench. His heart turned cold.
It's over.
It's really over this time.
At the final moment, the Eagle's crappy computer still malfunctioned.
According to the normal docking procedure, the Eagle would begin to slow down when it was ten kilometers away from the space station. When it was five kilometers away, the relative speed would decrease to less than a hundred meters per second. When it was within a hundred meters, the relative speed would decrease to three meters per second.
However, due to the effects of the propellant and storms, the normal docking procedure was no longer applicable.
Therefore, Old Cat used the strategy of a one-time jump into orbit — large acceleration and large deceleration without stopping when passing through the docking point to save fuel.
However, doing so would cause the lander's docking speed to be higher than normal.
According to Old Cat's plan, if nothing unexpected happened, the relative speed of the Eagle could be reduced to one to two meters per second when it docked with the space station. It was just like how a trailer weighing more than ten tons would immediately enter the garage after accelerating and changing lanes. During this period, it would decelerate to zero.
The first few steps went very smoothly. When the distance between the Eagle and the space station was shortened to 300 meters, the relative speed had already dropped to 10 meters per second.
If this trend continued, the lander could perfectly dock with the space station.
Following that, the Eagle's sensors made a mistake.
During the approach phase, or even the closer translation phase, because the target aircraft and the tracking aircraft were too close, and there was a delay in the ground remote control, the docking control of this phase was completed by the spacecraft autonomously.
There were no passengers on the Eagle, so the control fell into the hands of the computer.
Once again, a bug appeared. Old Cat didn't know where the source of the malfunction was. It could be a programming problem, or it could be the effects of the sandstorm. The computer had misjudged its speed and shut down the thrust engine ahead of time.
The Eagle immediately lost its thrust and deceleration. Following its inertia, it slammed into the space station at 6 meters per second.
At this moment, the distance between the two was less than 40 meters. The lander needed less than six seconds to cross this distance. No one would be able to react in time.
Kunlun Station sensed that the Eagle was convulsing and immediately called the police.
However, it was too late.
The docking mechanism between the lander and the space station could withstand a collision of 5 meters per second. Five meters was the limit. Any higher and it would cause damage to the mechanism, destroying the airtightness … To be honest, the engineers who designed the docking mechanism back then never expected anyone to crash into it at 5 meters per second. Under normal circumstances, the docking speed was a few tenths of a meter per second. It was even slower than a person's walking speed.
They felt that the redundancy of 5 meters per second was too much.
For the redundancy of 5 meters per second, they had designed the docking mechanism to be as sturdy as an anchor. It wasted a lot of weight.
Old Cat sat down in silence. It saw the two cursors on the screen slam into each other.
Following that, dense pop-up windows popped up. Every one of them was an alarm. The numbers jumped rapidly as the Eagle and space station's parameters turned from green to red. It was out of the normal range.
Imagine a trailer that weighed more than ten tons slamming into it at a speed of 6 meters per second. Nothing could withstand such an impact. Even a concrete wall would be as fragile as paper.
Old Cat stared at the screen in a daze.
It didn't dare imagine what was happening in orbit four hundred kilometers above its head. It didn't even know if Mai Dong was still alive … The Eagle and the space station had deviated from their trajectories after the collision. The docking mechanism couldn't lock onto a speed of 6 meters per second.
The metal guide plates and lock onto the docking mechanism were all broken. The Eagle had completely destroyed the docking mechanism. Following that, it lost control and tumbled.
It somersaulted in space and parted ways with the space station, disappearing into the pitch-black darkness of deep space.
The Joint Space Station had suffered a violent collision. Its attitude was also out of control as the space station slowly spun around its central axis.
The Eagle's rear-end collision had destroyed a docking mechanism. At the same time, it had flattened the Dawn experiment module.
Old Cat received the Joint Space Station's warning of a loss of pressure. This meant that the collision had damaged the space station's outer shell. The air in the module was leaking out as the pressure rapidly dropped.
The smoke alarm also sounded. The space station's sensors had detected smoke. The presence of smoke meant that there was a fire hazard.
The space station was filled with pure oxygen. Even a tiny spark was a disaster.
"Miss Mai Dong!
Mai Dong!
Mai Dong —!
Please answer if you hear me!
Can you hear me? "Old Cat roared. The signal wasn't cut off, but there was no reply on the comms.
Clearly, something had happened to Mai Dong.
Old Cat felt like his head was about to explode.
The launch had been too rushed … There wasn't enough time to do a thorough inspection. It wasn't strange for the Eagle's computer system and sensors to have a bug. With such extreme working conditions, a spacecraft had a high failure rate. Whose spacecraft and space station wouldn't be full of problems?
However, 99% of other people's problems were minor. It wouldn't affect their use after some tinkering.
For the Eagle to have two problems, and each time was fatal … This was the first time Old Cat had encountered something like this.
Old Cat didn't sweat, but if it could, it would definitely be sweating profusely.
It forced itself to calm down.
Calm down.
Calm down!
It mustn't panic … It mustn't panic!
There were so many problems that had to be solved one by one!
Let's start with the most urgent one!
Old Cat no longer had the time to care about the Eagle. It could die wherever it wanted. After causing such a huge mess, the further it died, the better.
Old Cat first had to save the space station from the brink of destruction … Mai Dong's fate was unknown, and it was possible that she had lost her ability to move.
At this moment, the only person who had the ability to save her was Old Cat.
The space station's interior was losing pressure as the air pressure and temperature continued to drop. Soon, it would fall below the safety threshold. If Old Cat didn't take any measures, Mai Dong would die from asphyxiation … However, Old Cat didn't know which module was damaged. It could only take control of the space station and immediately close all the hatch doors, cutting off the air circulation between the modules.
Everything that could be done had been done. Old Cat only hoped that the damage wasn't to the core module.
Following that were the smoke alarms.
There were also the attitude instability alarms.
Old Cat's two claws moved as though they were flying, dealing with the alarms one by one.
The Joint Space Station was like a broken ship that was leaking water. Old Cat was frantically plugging the holes, pulling the ship back from the brink of sinking bit by bit. It wished it could grow two more claws.
"Old Cat … How's the situation?" Tang Yue asked. "Which stage are we at?"
"Tang Yue, we can only trouble you to hold on for a while longer." Old Cat gritted its teeth and said in a deep voice, "We've screwed up."