Shen Manling still had a few pages of paper printed by Yu Wen from the fax machine in her hand, which slipped from her warm and jade-like hands to the sofa and the floor. She leaned against her husband Zhou Cheng and hid her face as she cried.
Zhou Cheng caressed his wife's long hair with his hands and hesitated to speak. It's not that he doesn't know how to comfort his wife, but he knows that although his wife embodies the grace and tenderness of almost all traditional oriental women, this does not mean that she Fragile. On the contrary, the wife who has a deep understanding of the stars has already developed a tough heart in the vast and desolate universe.
"They... they crushed Europa like a shelled egg... Now... there is no star map anymore. Galileo discovered it more than 400 years ago..." That planet." Shen Manying choked and said.
Zhou Cheng was deeply shocked by the scene described by his wife. Such a cold and unabashed display of power by alien civilization made him feel desperate.
The "whining" kettle on the stove seemed to be mocking him. Humanity's so-called technology seemed to have not progressed from tens of thousands of years ago to the present. The core of technology has always been to boil water, but the fuel was changed from tree branches to The split heavy nuclear atoms were replaced by aggregated light nuclear elements. But the essence has never changed.
Lu Yuanzhou received the order and took Xia Lan and Wei Xu to stay in the orbital position of the spacecraft. Because the two space telescopes "Gaoming" and "Webb" cannot independently maintain their orbital positions in this high space, And they still need to continue to monitor the wreckage of Europa and the situation on Titan.
At this time, the screen in front of Xia Lan was showing images of the vicinity of Europa captured by the "Gaoming" visible-light band space telescope. The one named "Europa" carries the largest reservoir in the solar system and has the solar system's "water tower." "Europa," known as Europa, is now divided into three parts.
The irregular ellipsoid-shaped rocky satellite core, due to the extreme decrease in mass and increase in speed, dragged a faint mist with the remaining heat through Ganymede, Callisto and several other inner satellites of Jupiter. The orbit flew to an outer orbit.
The ice cubes and the rapidly condensed water that were thrown into space quickly split into countless small fragments due to the overall rigidity and collision. Some of them, like a waterfall pouring down from a cliff, suddenly appeared in mid-air. It was frozen into countless ice crystals, and the direction of these ice crystals was pointing to the earth.
The other part, pulled by Jupiter's gravity, formed an elongated broken belt at the original orbit of Europa.
Over time, the ice blocks moving around Jupiter will form a wide and thin strip of reflective material under the combined action of gravitational perturbation and mutual collisions.
By then, there will be another planet with a beautiful ring in the solar system. On a clear summer night, you can even see such an astronomical wonder with the naked eye. But behind this beautiful ring is an alien civilization that is cold and cruel. attack horn.
"Wei Xu, do you have any results on the orbital position and time of the Europa wreckage?" Xia Lan asked.
Wei Xu pointed to the orbit simulation diagram on the screen:
"Well, based on the orbit entry speed and orientation of Europa's debris, except for the material that was attracted back to Jupiter's orbit, the rest has basically entered the Jupiter-Earth transfer orbit, and should reach Earth's low-Earth orbit in 7 years and 7 months. .But I discovered a strange phenomenon!”
Wei Xu switched the picture to the infrared imaging picture. In the visible light picture, the ice cube clusters looked like a bunch of glass shards shining in the sun. In this infrared imaging picture, they looked like orange, yellow, and green sugar cubes.
Mixed together evenly.
"You can see that their temperature has three gradients, and the divisions are very even. Their overall shape seems to be making subtle adjustments."
"I also discovered it, which means that these ice cubes contain organic creatures cultivated by alien civilizations. And they are still cooperating in unison and flying towards the earth." Xia Lan replied.
"How big are they?" Lu Yuanzhou also floated next to them.
Wei Xu enlarged the infrared imaging image:
"This can only be estimated, there is an error, but the order of magnitude cannot be wrong. The size of a single ice block should be no more than the size of a small car! A single spore on Titan is almost the same size."
Lu Yuanzhou frowned:
"At this size, when they reach low-Earth orbit, they fall into the atmosphere, burn through friction with the air, and there shouldn't be anything left to reach the ground, right?"
Wei Xu scratched his scalp:
"I can't figure it out yet, but judging from these thermal imaging photos, they may be hidden in those ice blocks. As for when they arrive on Earth, I think it may not be clear until they fall to the ground."
Xia Lan used the "Gaoming" telescope to point at Titan. At this time, Titan, like its parent planet Saturn, has been entangled with a ring of material. But those materials are not ice and dust.
, but countless spores sprayed into low orbit by launch tubes:
"The creatures on Titan have also begun to take action. Most of them are already in low orbit. Some of them have joined together and left low orbit and entered the transfer orbit."
Wei Xu also pointed the "Webb" infrared telescope at Titan. In the picture, you can see the spore clusters that are flying towards the transfer orbit. The infrared signal characteristics show a brighter red color than other spores:
"It should be the same as our previous guess. They formed a certain-sized cluster in the low orbit of Titan, and then grew biological rocket engines to push them into the transfer orbit. And judging from the spores that have entered the transfer orbit, they entered
The tracks will spread out again later."
"This is a very sophisticated orbit-changing operation for humans. It's hard to imagine that a group of organic creatures can actually do it!" Lu Yuanzhou sighed.
Xia Lan explained:
"We briefly captured a dart detector in the atmosphere of Venus. Previous observations in the X-ray band confirmed that such 'darts' are found all over Titan and Europa. They are guiding the behavior of those organisms."
Wei Xu turned to look at Xia Lan:
"This also further confirms our previous conjecture that they may have something similar to a command post somewhere on Jupiter or Saturn to coordinate the thousands of 'darts'. Because of our understanding of 'darts',
It only has execution capabilities, not analytical capabilities."
Lu Yuanzhou nodded solemnly:
"When will life from Titan arrive on Earth?"
Xia Lan called up the calculation data on the computer:
"Jupiter and Saturn are now at about the same position relative to the Earth. Based on the first batch of spores entering the transfer orbit, I calculated that they will also arrive near the low-Earth orbit some time after 7 years and 7 months."
The spacecraft fell into the same silence as in space. The three of them all looked at the fuzzy image data of the invaders on the screen, thinking about what they would look like when they appeared on the ground.