Dead on Mars

“You plan on driving the space station like a fighter jet?” Tomcat threw up its paws. “There’s no way to predict the fragments and they are exceedingly fast. They would tear you apart before you even had the chance to react.”

Tang Yue facepalmed as he took a deep breath.

“It’s over… It’s over,” Tang Yue said. “The space station won’t be able to dodge it, and we might not be able to dodge it either. No one knows where that comet will land. Perhaps it will hit right on our faces. I wonder if dying by a comet strike would hurt.”

“We can imagine the scene at the point of impact. Once Comet Tomcat-Tang-Mai I hits the Roche limit, it will begin disintegrating, producing debris before plunging into Mars.” Tomcat painted the scenario during the disaster. “At the instant of the impact, a crater a thousand kilometers across will be formed. The high temperatures and pressures will melt the desert into glass spanning an area of a few hundred square kilometers.

“A minute after the impact, the massive force will run through the surface and air, creating a global earthquake and hurricane. The hot air will be accelerated to supersonic speeds, and the waves from the impact will circle Mars a few times in a short period of time, shaking the entire atmosphere.

“Five minutes after the impact, massive amounts of matter will be thrown into the air and into orbit, covering all of Mars with the hurling winds. For a very long period of time, the entire globe will not see the light of day. And the debris in orbit will form a ring that won’t stably exist. It will slowly fall back into the Martian atmosphere over the next hundred years.

“The intensity of the impact will be so huge that Mars’s rotation will speed up. It might even have its axis tilted a little.”

Tomcat’s voice was heavy as it spoke very slowly. It was painting an apocalyptic scene, and compared to this, the divine punishment meted by God in the Bible was nothing.

A scene that even a disaster film didn’t have would be happening in reality.

Indeed, drama struggled to match the absurdness of reality.

“You are telling me that Mars will be covered in dust?” Tang Yue asked.

“Yes,” Tomcat replied. “A conservative estimate would be a trillion tonnes of dust will be swept up by a storm in a way far more terrifying than the sandstorms. It will make it impossible to see the Sun across Mars.”

“Then wouldn’t we be dead?” Tang Yue sighed. “There’s no point in hiding. Even if we can avoid the impact, Kunlun Station would be out of power without sunlight.”

Tang Yue had come to realize the power of the Universe. Compared to this, human strength was just too negligible. Apart from watching this happen helplessly, there was nothing he could do.

At this moment, Tang Yue realized how good Superman was. Although this alien with a curl wasn’t great at handling things and was rather wishy-washy and indecisive, he had the powers to resist nature—he could fly into space to push the comet away. While everyone stood helplessly in the face of imminent doom, he was someone they could pin their hopes on.

Unfortunately, Superman only lived in the DC Universe.

In a world without superheroes, how were humans to save themselves?

“Mr. Cat, Tang Yue, this is the last part of the history of philosophy…” Mai Dong appeared on the video comms. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”