Dead on Mars

Chapter 111 - Sol Hundred and Twelve, Biscuits and Coal
Chapter 111: Sol Hundred and Twelve, Biscuits and Coal

Tang Yue began selecting the compressed biscuits that met the criteria. Placed in front of him was practically all the food in Kunlun Station. Under ideal conditions, these compressed biscuits would have allowed him to survive eight hundred sols. This was the number that Tomcat had calculated back when it was distributing the supplies. It was unknown what it was thinking back when it was doing the calculation. The last two human lives in the Universe were held in its paws, and whoever received an additional biscuit lived another day.

This robot cat had played the role of God, placing Tang Yue and Mai Dong on two ends of a scale to measure their lives’ importance.

The production date of the compressed biscuits in Kunlun Station was nonuniform. The oldest batch went all the way back to the ninth landing mission, 2042 from ten years ago. The Orion had just been commissioned back then, and it was the first time a Chinese astronaut had boarded the spacecraft as Mission Commander. It is worth mentioning that the Commander was Tang Yue’s teacher, the present deputy director of the China Astronaut Research and Training Center, Li Yang. He was said to be an elite of the PLA Air Force’s 1st Fighter Aviation Division.

Tang Yue sat on the edge of the table while a cardboard box was placed by his feet. He checked each biscuit packaging for its production date, placed those that met his criteria beside him and threw those which didn’t into the box.

“June 2041… Nope.

“August 2044… Nope.

“February 2051… Nope.”

Tang Yue casually pulled out a packet from the pile of biscuits. “Production date: July 2046. China Astronaut Research and Training Center… This is it!”

“How much Vitamin C do these cold-treated biscuits contain?”

“No idea. It’s hard to tell.” Tang Yue shook his head. He waved the compressed biscuit in his hand at the camera. “The packaging says that each biscuit contains 120 grams of Vitamin C, but in reality, it’s definitely not that much. Cold-treated biscuits were failed products. The amount of Vitamin C contained in them will keep dropping with time. Back then, Cryptic Yang showed me a table… I think it drops 25% every two years on average.”

Mai Dong did a rough count. “Doesn’t that mean that the biscuits have already lost 75% of their Vitamin C?”

“Possibly. Therefore, there aren’t many vitamins in these biscuits, and can only be used to tide me through.” Tang Yue continued the selection. He didn’t know how many of the compressed biscuits in Kunlun Station met the requirement, and based on the present situation, it was best that he had as many as possible.

Tang Yue muttered the production date on the packaging as he threw plenty of biscuits into the box. Beads of perspiration oozed out of his forehead while he did so.

“2051, 2044, 2044… More 2044…”

When Mai Dong saw the number of biscuits beside Tang Yue’s hand increase in number, she felt her heart tense up. This was a matter of life and death. The more cold-treated compressed biscuits there were, the more Vitamin C there could be. It would give Tang Yue more time to live.

“How do you plan on collecting the Vitamin C in these biscuits when the time comes?” the girl asked. “You aren’t going to eat them all, right?”

Based on Tang Yue’s explanation, the cold-treated compressed biscuits contained less than 30 grams of Vitamin C. An adult needed 100–120 grams of Vitamin C a day, and more was needed on Mars. Furthermore, Tang Yue’s body was on the brink of succumbing to scurvy, so he needed to consume at least 200–300 grams of Vitamin C a day.

If Tang Yue were to solely rely on eating biscuits to replenish his vitamins, it would require him to each ten a day.

It would definitely kill him.

“Of course not by eating them. Do you think I’m a machine that burns carbohydrates? To eat more than ten a day, are you adding charcoal to a furnace?” Tang Yue slapped the bricks placed to his hand. “With so many compressed biscuits, eating them would kill me. I’ll need to extract the vitamins!”

“Extract?”

“Yes, do you still remember the traits of ascorbic acid?” Tang Yue smiled with clenched teeth. “It happens to be the easiest vitamin that can be extracted!”

“Ascorbic acid is easily soluble in water… Are you saying that Vitamin C is soluble?” Mai Dong frowned. “You want to extract the Vitamin C from the biscuits using water? But Vitamin C solution isn’t stable at all. It easily gets oxidized.”