Old Cat dragged Tang Yue in, closed the hatch, removed the life support system of the Bright Light Armour, and pulled him out of the spacesuit.
Old Cat let Tang Yue sit down against the wall to rest, then squatted in front of him and pinched Tang Yue's toes. "Is your foot cramping?"
"Pinch your a * s, it hurts!"
Tang Yue retracted his foot and slapped Old Cat's paw away. He pinched his calf and slowly massaged the muscles.
"It's good that you're fine."
Old Cat spread its hands. "I thought you were paralyzed … If you were really paralyzed, I would've thrown you outside to fend for yourself."
"Can't you be more humane?" Tang Yue rolled his eyes.
"I'm throwing you outside as a humanitarian. You won't live for more than three minutes outside Kunlun Station. You'll die quickly, and there won't be any pain."
Old Cat said, "Believe me, you don't want to be paralyzed and die slowly in Kunlun Station. That kind of life is worse than death."
Tang Yue rubbed his knee joint. He tripped and fell to the ground because of the sudden pain in his knee.
Old Cat walked around him twice, leaned forward, and lifted Tang Yue's arm. It carefully looked up and down, and its cat eyes moved around and sniffed.
"What are you doing?" Tang Yue was scared by its gaze.
"Lower your head."
Old Cat pressed its paw on Tang Yue's head, pressed his head down, and pulled up the collar of his clothes.
"Raise your head."
Old Cat lifted Tang Yue's chin and pushed his head up. It leaned over and touched Tang Yue's neck. It carefully observed, as if it was looking for a suitable place to put a knife before slaughtering a pig.
"F * ck, what the f * ck are you doing …"
Before Tang Yue could finish his words, Old Cat pinched his face.
"Ah —" Old Cat motioned for Tang Yue to open his mouth, like a doctor examining his body.
Tang Yue obediently said, "Ah —".
Old Cat pinched one of Tang Yue's front teeth and stared at it for a long time. It nodded, let go of Tang Yue, took a step back, sat down on the chair, and crossed its legs.
"There's something wrong with your body."
Tang Yue was confused. "What's wrong?"
"Based on the current symptoms, your body is lacking in calcium and vitamin C. I just checked, you have symptoms of subcutaneous bleeding. There are bruises on your back and arms, and your gums are swollen. These are the typical symptoms of lack of Vitamin C. Do you have joint soreness in your joints aches?
This may also be caused by a lack of Vitamin C, "Old Cat replied." Calcium deficiency will lead to weakness, cramps, and limb spasms. "
Old Cat was serious. Tang Yue raised his arm, and he saw bruises and bleeding spots on the skin on the inside of his arm. Previously, he thought that they were caused by the wear of Bright Light Armour.
Tang Yue did not have a medical or physiological background, and he was not as sensitive to the details of nutritional supplements as Old Cat. In the current situation of lack of food and clothing, Tang Yue could at most ensure that he had enough food to eat every day. As for the 18 trace elements and the eight essential amino acids, he could not take care of the details.
The team doctor on the previous expedition team was Maxwell Thorpe, known as Old Max. He was an expert in aerospace medicine and physiology, and he had always been responsible for the nutrition intake of the astronauts during the Mars landing mission.
The Mars landing mission was a long-term spaceflight that lasted two years, but the crew on the Orion spacecraft could not receive regular supplies from Earth like the ISS, and it was difficult to get treatment if they fell ill. Therefore, the health care of the expedition team had always been a problem.
Old Max had formulated a very strict health care plan for the team, including what to eat every day, how much to eat, and how to eat, as well as physical training methods. This was to prevent calcium loss in the body, osteoporosis, and muscle atrophy.
"How many vitamin tablets are left?" Old Cat asked.
"Half of them were given to Mai Dong, and the rest is almost gone," Tang Yue replied.
The vitamin deficiency was obviously a problem with the food. Tang Yue recalled his diet for the past month. In the first two months, his food was quite abundant, but as the large pieces of rehydrated food and canned food gradually ran out, Tang Yue had to start eating a lot of energy bars and compressed biscuits.
The vitamin content in energy bars and compressed biscuits was obviously not as good as canned vegetables and fruits.
But he did not expect the consequences to be apparent so soon.
"Severe vitamin C deficiency will lead to scurvy."
Old Cat was very serious. "The radiation dose on Mars is too high. Because of the lack of sufficient atmospheric and magnetic protection, the planet is full of high-energy charged particles from space and the sun, as well as secondary particles produced by the atmosphere and soil, mainly neutrons and gamma rays — which do not exist on Earth."
"In a high-radiation environment, the body's vitamin C and other antioxidants will be consumed rapidly, much faster than on Earth."
Old Cat continued, "You ate compressed biscuits for three months on Earth, and the symptoms were not as serious as they are now. I think if you continue to develop at this rate, you will not be far from scurvy."
Tang Yue obviously knew what scurvy was. In the seventeenth century, sailors on long voyages would suffer from scurvy due to a lack of fruits and vegetables. This illness would result in joint pain and subcutaneous bleeding. In severe cases, it could even lead to death.
But in modern society, scurvy caused by vitamin C deficiency had disappeared because it could be cured by eating more oranges.
But on the barren Mars … it was as difficult to find an orange as it was to find an alien spaceship.
In a sense, the crew on the Orion spacecraft was in the same situation as the seafarers during the Age of Discovery, except that the sailboat had become a spacecraft, and the ocean had become space. But the difficulty of supplies remained unchanged. Whether it was the sixteenth century hundreds of years ago, or the technologically advanced middle of the twenty-first century, the shelf life of tomatoes and oranges did not exceed two months.
Scurvy, which had long been forgotten in the pile of history books, had unexpectedly found Tang Yue, who was sixty million kilometers away.
There were too many problems with the human body. Tang Yue thought he would starve to death.
Now that he thought about it, this idea was purely superfluous.
Before he starved to death, he might die because of scurvy, kidney failure, heart rate disorder, or even some inexplicable allergies.
Tang Yue took out a white medicine bottle from the drawer and placed it on the table.
"This is the last bottle of multivitamin pills."
Old Cat unscrewed the cap and glanced at it.
"So many pills. How long will it take for you to take them?"
"A month to a month and a half."
Tang Yue replied, "If I eat more canned food and less biscuits in the next period of time, then it can last a little longer … But there are not many canned food left. If I eat more, I will run out."
Old Cat was a little worried.
Two months later, Tang Yue would have eaten all the multivitamin pills and canned fruit. Then his vitamin intake would be greatly reduced, and all kinds of physical problems would follow.
These small problems that could be completely ignored on Earth would be magnified hundreds and thousands of times in the harsh environment of Mars. They would become insurmountable problems that could even endanger Tang Yue's life.
Old Cat walked around the Kunlun Station hall. It had to find a way to replenish the nutrients Tang Yue lacked in time.
"What can I eat to replenish Vitamin C?"
"Oranges."
Old Cat muttered oranges, but where could it find oranges on Mars?
They only had so many supplies on hand, and Old Cat couldn't make oranges appear out of thin air.
"Other than oranges?"
"Tomatoes."
Old Cat sat down and frowned. "Tomatoes … tomatoes … where the hell are we going to find tomatoes in this damn place?"
"Mr Cat?
Tang Yue? "Mai Dong connected to the channel at this time." What are you talking about?
I think I just heard tomatoes? "
"We are looking for tomatoes," Old Cat replied.
"Tomatoes?"
The girl held a tomato in her hand and waved it in front of the camera. "There are tomatoes here. Look, look."
"We are looking for tomatoes in Kunlun Station."
Old Cat said, "Tang Yue lacks vitamin supplements now. He must eat more oranges and tomatoes."
"There are no tomatoes in Kunlun Station. You can grow them," Mai Dong suggested.
Old Cat and Tang Yue were both stunned.
"Grow them?" Tang Yue asked, "I don't know how to grow tomatoes …"
"It doesn't matter if you don't know how to." The girl rubbed her palms together and said confidently, "I'll teach you!
I guarantee you'll understand! "