Dead on Mars

Chapter 197 - Sol Three Hundred and Twenty-Five, If You Were Given Three Sols to Live
Chapter 197: Sol Three Hundred and Twenty-Five, If You Were Given Three Sols to Live

The fourth sol after the space station’s incident.

There were another seven sols before Tianzhou 37 arrived.

Tomcat had been staring at the monitor early in the morning, tapping rapidly on the keyboard. When Tang Yue came out of the living quarters, it was communicating with the United Space Station. “Miss Mai Dong, what can you see?”

“What’s wrong?” Tang Yue had a towel over his shoulders as he was still lost in his reverie. “What happened?”

Tomcat raised a claw to request for silence.

“It’s too far. It’s too dim. I can’t see it… But I can hear something,” Mai Dong replied over the comms.

“What do you hear?”

“It’s very rhythmic,” Mai Dong said. “It sounds like a clock’s second-hand ticking away. However, it sounds every few seconds. Tick-tock… Tick-tock… Tick-tock.”

“It’s vibrating.” Tomcat’s voice sounded heavy. “In fact, the vibration is happening at a higher frequency than you can hear. It’s happening at a rather high frequency. What you hear is probably the collision of some loose component.”

Tang Yue was very confused. He still wasn’t sure what had just happened. Tomcat frowned and rapped the table as its ears turned around in frustration.

“Tomcat?”

Tomcat’s eyes looked to the side. “The space station is disintegrating.”

The girl had already taken off the spacesuit’s helmet as she stuck her ears to the exposed metal wall of the Crystal. She closed her eyes and listened. Although a vacuum didn’t transmit sound, the vibrations could be transmitted via the space station’s structure. The core module was silent, and all the systems had already been made to stop working. This was the best noise-insulated in the world. Any bit of sound would attract one’s attention.

Mai Dong left the wall and leaned in front of the window, trying hard to look outside.

There were still plenty of fragments floating outside, but the area had mostly been cleared out since the collision. Orion II’s collision had caused the leak of water and gases which froze under the low temperatures. This enveloped the space station in a huge fog, making it difficult for the sunlight to penetrate it. After three days, the icicles had gradually evaporated away under the sunlight, allowing the area outside the Crystal to turn clear again.

Most fragments weren’t moving at the same velocity as the Crystal. After ten orbits around Mars, most of the space trash had distanced from the space station.

The huge truss swept overhead Mai Dong. At the end of it were four remnant solar panels which were reflecting sunlight.

The soft sound was transmitted through the metallic truss. It resembled a snake in the shadows as though the space station was striking the kneel before its death. Mai Dong wasn’t sure where the vibrations came since the source could be anywhere when she surveyed her surroundings.

“The space station is disintegrating?” Tang Yue asked. “What’s happened!?”

“It’s an expected scenario,” Tomcat replied.

“Expected scenario?” Tang Yue heaved a sigh of relief. “So it means it’s nothing serious?”

Tomcat shot a glance at him, looking at him like he was an idiot.

“If I were to stab you, you will be in great pain and suffer from severe blood loss in the next three minutes before dying. That’s also an expected scenario. Not dying will be unexpected,” Tomcat said. “The space station was smashed by a huge sledgehammer like Orion. It disintegrating is an expected scenario.”

“F*ck!” Tang Yue trembled.

“Damn it… Perhaps it’s gravity. After the collision, the stress within the United Space Station’s internal structure has been accumulating. Then, due to the disparate temperature differences, there is expansion and contraction. The space station has been constantly suffering damage to its structure.” Tomcat ground its fangs. “The space station didn’t begin disintegrating today. It had begun doing so at the moment of the collision. The effects only became obvious today.”

Mai Dong heard Tomcat. The United Space Station was in fact slowly disintegrating. They had only discovered it today. That was an expected scenario. The collision between the United Space Station and Orion II was the worst space disaster in human history. It finished off two super space vehicles, destroying the alien base which humans had arduously spent more than a decade to build.