Chapter 2 2

"It's not enough to say it's unusual. What happened after you landed?" The tape spins silently. "I can't recall," Marco murmured at last, "that buzz that guided us. I remember the brake rockets firing, the bottom floor of the tower, where I thought we'd land, and I Thought we were flying too low to land there. Then it faded away." "That's because it's not even there!" Eric Thorson's voice came second on the tape.Parkinson greeted him earnestly, "Major!" as if expecting to hear more sane and reasonable words from him, and asked him to describe in his own words what had happened on Explorer 2 thing.

"Yes, sir, Colonel Parkinson!" Thorsen returned to "Military Courtesy" in a crisp voice, "All three of us are on duty, sir, very vigilant to avoid a repeat of what happened on Explorer 1. We are all watching the light spots on the surface ahead, And also see something in front of it, sir. I see a castle." "The Castle of Venus?" "I can't say for sure, sir. It's magnificent. Round like a turret, buried in the moon. It looks like it's hidden by a rocky ridge around the crater's rim. As we approached, it rose and loaded with missiles, Unlike anything I've seen."

"Did it fire at you?" "No, sir. Hood was operating the radio and laser machine. He heard a voice ordering us to land near the castle. The voice," Thorsen hesitated, "speaks Norwegian, sir. My mother is Rie Xmal, that's what I learned at home in Stavankiel." "Norwegian?" Parkinson's surprised voice had lost the gentle tone of its military partners. "Little Norway built castles in space?" "That's all I know, sir," Thorsen sounded annoyed. "I don't remember the landing." "Listen, Colonel," my brother's voice appeared on the tape, hoarse but still recognizably shrewd and fluent, "don't let them fool you! I saw what those people were doing, it wasn't a Galactic base is not a Venus castle either. They are trying to trick you into hiding a million tons of gold!"

"What does that mean, Hood? What gold?" "What I saw was a golden meteor," said Tom, "that knocked the moon apart. But the main body was in the middle of that crater. Burning hill of gold.There is more gold scattered around.One hundred tons of gleaming pure gold! " "Did you hear something?" "My father's voice," Tom paused, as if taken aback, "my father's voice! He disappeared from the face of the earth more than ten years ago. We think he's dead.But here he was, summoning from his own little survey rocket, speaking broken English with a funny Turkish accent, just as he had been as a child.He said he has always been single.He had electronically located the gold and cleaned it of moondust.He wants us to land, to prove his claim as a discoverer, according to the conventions of cosmic organization.That's what we did, we landed," Tom's voice became sharper, "and that's why these people lied, got my poor old father's claim to the gold. "

"I don't see any gold," Parkinson said through gritted teeth. "Let's talk about the whole thing again." As long as the three of them could talk, he continued to question them in turn.When the doctor told him to stop, he ordered them back to the ward under guard and called in the engineer who was working on the black sand samples, but their answers did not improve his temper. The engineer reported that the sand grains were crystalline impure carbon.Most of the crystals had been damaged by impact or eroded from prolonged exposure to the microscope, but it was clear that they were all once perfect tetrahedrons, new types of crystals for the scientific community.

The edge of the intact sample was nearly 8 mm long. They are slightly radioactive and highly magnetic.In addition to carbon, chemical analysis shows that 6% is silicon, 3% is gold, and also contains lead and small amounts of other elements. A chemist suggested that the crystals were an unknown allotrope of natural carbon. "Nonsense!" retorted one engineer, "they're too much alike. At the level of our construction, they seem to have basically every feature the same. Natural things are not so perfect. I say they are manufactured." "Who made it?" Parkinson asked. "For what?"

The tape spins, revealing Parkinson's blindness and rashness in asking that question.When Explorer 2 was inspected for damage, he sent it (Explorer 2) back into orbit to recreate its disrupted survey flight. Observers from the lunar observatory watched it follow its programmed path back to the impact crater, while engineers in the navigation ship watched from posts near the crater, preparing to photograph and measure what would bring it down again. But nothing happened. "Explorer 2" Skimming very low above the crater, neither the Intergalactic Base nor the Space Castle or the Golden Meteor was seen.Observatory observers saw no surface glow, and engineers found nothing to photograph or measure.

When Parkinson questioned Marco, Thorson, and my brother again, the voices of the three sounded raised on the tape, but they refused to tell the contradictory story.Everyone is still stubbornly convinced of what they saw and no one remembers leaving Explorer 2 to collect the black sand. Parkinson postponed his plans to survey the crater again.He ran down the dark alleyway, filing his inconclusive reports, while he waited for the night to end.Videotaped his landing just in time for the sunrise on the moon.Now he has a new discovery. His voice reporting to the Lunar Observatory sounded like he had suffered a stroke.The other man with him didn't wait for sunrise, where a launch vehicle touched down after Explorer 2 had ascended from the impact site to high altitude.Magnetizing instruments are used to remove residual crystalline grit.A few boot prints remained on the dust, but there was nothing more to suggest.

Parkinson stayed there for half a long lunar day, again sifting through surface dust samples and drilling a regular set of inspection holes around the crater, but all he got was disappointment, no buried mass conglomerates or any shocks There were no traces of objects, nothing to account for the crystalline sand grains, and no way to even identify the broken tools of the intruders. In Antiris Hudson, we were able to follow the thread of the report so far that the news from the moon was now cut off. The "secret" that Hudson leaked has spread from the office to the guests.An unfriendly journalist reported the incident, adding his own insight that the midnight attack on the crater had been planned and directed by Hudson himself.

Hudson was out when the news broke, but he called home.Six or seven of us were immediately fired, and no one was able to "share" the tapes recorded on the moon anymore.While Hudson took as long as it took his personal spacecraft to return from the moon, he was silent on the incident, his own departure or anything.After paying the board and lodging bar bill, I was down to $23 from my severance pay.I was going to earn my fare back to land, I went to the hotel casino and lost that money.When I got back to the recruiting office, an unhappy clerk "suggested" that I either wash the dishes or be a lifeguard at the swimming pool.I said I would like to swim.

That afternoon, as I was walking up and down the deck, not sure what I could do, I heard a newscast that Robin Hudson had arrived to spend the weekend with her father, and I had the impulse to go to her suite. Surprisingly, the doorman let me in.Robin kissed me tearfully and bark.But when she knew I hadn't heard from Tom, her smile disappeared, and when I asked her to help me get ashore, she got angry. Maybe I lost my temper too.I remember calling her a lustful rich woman.Her reaction was that she was happy to be rich and perfectly happy that I was poor.And she said Tom said I'd always been a snot-nosed guy, and they were both much better than me. She still scowled when I decided to apologize and explain my predicament.Thanks to Tom, she eventually called and found me a seat on the jet. Back in the Outback, I got a job writing commercials for the Mood Dial Company (a company like the one that designs mood controllers).We were competitors with the company "Joey Ayre" who spread the rumor that our tuners had an addictive hallucination trigger.My new job is to counter-myth: "Joey Al" tuners have unpleasant side effects, from causing excessive weight gain to paralysis or dementia. For several months, all the moon stories I knew came from dry COS announcements. Exploration of Explorer 2 is still ongoing and no further developments have been made.Hillman Parkinson has been replaced at the Lunar Control Center by the former Hudson Crater Manager.Thomas Hood and his fellow crash survivors were recovered enough to be returned from the Moon to Skygate for further examination by the Exobiology Laboratory there. That's all.The cosmic tissue is filled with news of the discovery of exciting unidentified life forms flying above Jupiter's atmosphere.The Cosmos didn't say much more about the Moon.I wrote two or three letters to Tom of Skygate, but he didn't answer. The job at Mood Dial wasn't 100 percent secure because I lacked what the president called "loyalty."I continued to send out job applications, and one was sent to Tianmen.The response was to assign me a special job writing a story on the economic benefits of space science.Even though the pay was less than half that of Mood Dial, I happily accepted because I couldn't wait to put together the story of the moon grit and its curious effect on the Explorer 2 crew. Tianmen is the birthplace of the children of the moon. The plateau had just rained before I arrived, and it looked pale green instead of the usual red of sand and yellow of windblown sand.The spaceship landed in a narrow clearing surrounded by pine trees whose trunks were covered with gum.The small oases beside the road are like beads strung on both sides, and the raised ridge to the west is as cold and desolate as the moon. As far as I know, the crystal grit mystery is still unsolved, but my brother and his companions have visibly recovered.After getting out of the hospital, all three of their team members got married after getting permission, and all three brides are now pregnant. My sister-in-law is Robin Hudson and their combination blew my mind, Tom once said no woman could have hooked him, but frankly I think Robin could have done better.Maybe she's drawn into Tom and her father's wolfish insatiability, but I think she enjoys being Robin Hood. Sosen's wife was the nurse he had met at the Moon Hospital, her parents were Japanese, and her large, dark, elegant eyes were a stark and eerie contrast to the firm, muscular muscles of the Nordics of Sosen.Although her stammering English was difficult for me to understand at first, I could still feel her enthusiasm and sense of humor.In fact, I fell in love with her: Suzie Thorson. I also like Marco's wife.She is Dr. Carolina Carter, whom Marco met during a briefing at the space lab.Her father was a black astronaut who died in the quarantine facility of Oppos.She herself has a Ph.D. in exobiology.She was tall, very beautiful, knowledgeable and gentle, but Robin would not accept her. When I came to Tianmen, she was employed by the laboratory to study the cultivation of micro-inferior life brought back by the probe from the atmosphere of Venus.She generously provided the facts for my feature and, along with Marco, invited me to dinner at their home.Later, Marco offered me a stable job, which was to do publicity work for the Universal Organization. At that time my allegiance to the so-called cause of human unification had completely diminished, but I wanted to stay at Tianmen very much.More than anyone, I want to know about those little black crystals, what the hell crashed the Explorer, and why Marco's account contradicts the obvious in such a bizarre way.So I took the job. From this point of view, I don't see a significant reason why the three suddenly got married.I had no mental preparations for the birth of a moon child. For me, the irony is that my job now is not to tell but to cover their stories, and this is where things are going.Their lives quickly received so much public attention that it was my job to spare them the pain of the world's curiosity. For Nick Marco Jr., the first miracle was his birth.Carolina was less than seven months pregnant with him.Just an hour before he was born, she was in the lab doing amino acid tests for microbial forms. Nick was born weighing exactly 3 pounds and barely an ounce, surprising neonatologists with his small but well-developed physique.He couldn't wait to be sucked and spanked before he breathed freely and with an unusual desire. His complexion was equally astonishing.At birth, his complexion was pink and pale, neither a tomato red nor any of his mother's rich pigmentation.Under the light of his father's camera, his skin color turned brown after five seconds, and the brown disappeared after ten minutes. His sleep patterns further baffled doctors and terrified his parents.For almost a whole month he was awake day and night, just turning over in bed and being interested in everything he came across.When he was 28 days old, Carolina found him cold and curled up in his crib.Marco felt his pulse and thought he was dead. Two medical scientists also thought he was dead. No signs of life were found, and even the brain waves had disappeared.But Carolina didn't want to give up, and she stayed with him all night, caring for him like another Venusian organism.His temperature stabilized when it dropped to 81 degrees. After 4 hours, the body temperature began to rise.At dawn, he awoke in Carolina's arms, babbling happily and ready to suck. That same night, Kelly Thorson was born.She wasn't as strong as her father had named her.Kelly is the name of a female warrior.She was small at birth, but also magically matured.Although Suzie Thorson was almost as dark as Carolina, little Kelly's skin was so fair at first that it quickly turned golden under the lights of the delivery room. Kelly and Nick are eerily similar; equally precocious, equally perfect, equally shy, with the same good-natured, jovial personality, and both have the same inhuman oddity, slender build, and big elf-like eyes.They all have keen insight, yet often have an unapproachable indifference.Every time they sleep, there is a one-month interval, and they all seem to be dead when they sleep. The two seemed to know each other before they met, and there was a feeling.One morning, Carolina drove Marco, who is now the head of the life sciences department, to the center with little Nick (who was strapped into the seat).On the way home she noticed little Nick jumping and screaming as she passed the Thorsons' house. Carolina didn't want to stop, but Nick yelled as she passed the Thorsons' house, and then began to whimper sadly, causing her to reverse the car and back away.When she parked the car in front of Thorson's door, little Nick was writhing and screaming with joy again. In the house, little Kelly sat at the end of the cot and shook a rattle, playing the jazz she had learned, making demands in syncopated rhythms, though not harmoniously.As Carolina and Nick approached the door, she began throwing toys out of the crib.After Suzie ushered them in, Kelly straightened up to greet the visitors, and she let out a happy squeal. They screamed and looked so desperate to be together that their mothers had to keep them together in the cot.The two little guys each occupied the head of the bed, sat facing each other, and immediately fell silent. The big eyes slowly changed from opal golden to midnight black, and they looked at each other like this for 5 minutes. Nick leaned forward suddenly, grabbed Kelly's doll's foot and stuffed it into his mouth.Carolina quickly leaned over to rescue the doll, because Nick was already biting, but when she tried to pull Nick away, Kelly cried and refused him to leave. The two of them lay together in the crib for another hour, pushing and pulling, kicking and nibbling each other, laughing and serious by turns.Carolina felt a little scared. When it was time for Carolina to leave, they clung to each other until the mothers promised they could visit each other whenever they wanted.Nick seemed to understand his mother's words, and he hummed softly to Kelly until Kelly's sad eyes slowly turned golden.Nick raised his head, glanced at his mother quietly, and was about to leave. They would allow nothing to hinder the mutually agreed visits.One morning, it was Kelly's turn to meet Nick.An unusually heavy snowfall covered the high mesas.The car got stuck in the snow, and Suzie didn't want to get out.Kelly sobbed so pitifully that Thorson had to put on the sleigh and take her to Little Nick's house. My brother's child was also peculiar, but also disturbing.Tom was still working in Skygate, but in a new job: Assistant Director of Explorer Operations.Robin never liked the place, it was like the country to her.She spent most of her time abroad, flying her own plane to and from her father's resorts, until one day she suddenly found out that she was pregnant. She begged to kill the child, but both Tom and her father objected.Howard Hudson wanted a grandson, and Tom was still fragile from the effects of moon grit, and she could have ignored them.But when her doctor heard about Nick and Kelly's situation since birth, she suggested that she return to the space hospital for her own safety and give birth under the care of experts. To Robin's dismay the baby didn't arrive at seven months and she waited restlessly.Since Tom's room could not accommodate her nurse, French maid and hypnotist at the same time, she moved to a suite in Tianmen Hudson. What she hated most was the damage the desert had done to her skin. 9 months and the baby has not yet been born.At this point, Robin was hysterical about everything, not just the lost fun times and the freckles on her skin.She called her father, her astrologer, and a religious teacher she met in Magar Hudson to confide in them.They all advised her to have a C-section, but she was afraid of the scalpel. Robin was 10 months pregnant when Nick and Kelly came to visit.It was a sunny afternoon, and Marco took two children and their mother to the comprehensive base for sightseeing.They saw a spacecraft rushing towards the earth base, an ancient Indian building, a mountain of pine firewood, and a large cactus in bloom.The two children watched these quietly and intently with wide-open eyes.There was a sudden scream when they caught a glimpse of Tianmen Hudson. Their will to go to Tianmen is so strong that Marco has to take them to the hotel.Robin was reluctant to see them at first, and my brother came down and received them in the reception room.He gave Carolina an embarrassed look and said his wife refused to see anyone. Nick and Kelly, however, are reluctant to leave, in the suite.The unborn fetus also seems to feel their presence.As the mothers tried to quiet the two screaming children, Robin's nurse barged in to whisper something to Tom. My brother told Marco to wait a while, then turned back to Robin.He came back a few minutes later, pale and shaking. He said that Robin had changed her mind and was willing to meet Nick and Kelly, and if the two mothers wanted to see her, they could go together. Carolina chose to stay in the reception room. Suzie Thorson later told me what she saw: Robin slouching on a bench, pillows and blankets covering her belly but unable to hide her arch.The maid, the nurse, and Tom circled restlessly around her.There were unseemly traces of tears on her face.Suzie felt sorry for her. Seeing Robin, Nick and Kelly exclaimed happily.They seemed only interested in her protruding belly.They stared at her belly with huge black eyes and moved towards it impatiently.They poked her stomach hard when Robin went to hug them. With sudden, frantic force, she pushed them away. "Ugly little monsters...things!" Suzie imitated Robin's furious and stammering expression at the time, "terrible little bastards... kind! They are too light-skinned, they don't look like human...humans. Take them away Walk!" Marco and Suzie took them away immediately.They suppressed it strangely, but they didn't resist, their big eyes were still dark and serious.On the way Marco drove them home, the two little guys hugged each other tightly, as if they were afraid of something.Nick looks somber after Suzie lifts Kelly out of the car. In the middle of the night, Marco and Carolina were awakened by Nick's frantic screams, and they didn't know what was wrong with him.Just when they couldn't calm him down, the phone rang, and it was Suzie.She said she couldn't see why, and Kelly was sobbing and terrified. They rushed Nick to Kelly's nursery, hoping the two little ones could comfort each other. They sat on a cot, looked at each other blankly and howled in unison. At this time, Marco thought of another child.He immediately called Robin's suite. The French maid told him that Robin had gone to the hospital for a C-section.Marco called her doctor again.The doctors were making preparations. They said they dare not delay any longer and refused to postpone the operation time any longer. Nick and Kelly let out another horrific cry, and Marco immediately called Colonel Petrov.Maxim Petrov is not a real commoner.He is a retired officer who succeeds Hillman Parkinson as head of the Space Research Center.His devotion to the cosmic organization's altruistic ideals was no stronger than Parkinson's, but he was just as eager to figure out the magic of lunar grit.When Mark pointed out to him that the unborn child in Robin's womb would be another person who could be used for scientific experiments and could help him unravel the mystery, Petrov called the hospital. Robin's doctor was furious and had to agree to wait for additional medical tests.Tests revealed that Robin had an antigen in his blood and was allergic to the anesthetic they wanted to administer.Coupled with Robin's objections, they postponed the operation. Nick and Kelly relaxed in their cots and happily fell asleep as Robin was wheeled out of the delivery room.That's a week earlier than they usually go to sleep.My brother brought Robin back to Tianmen Hudson.She was lightly sedated, sobbing excitedly, cursing Tom and the fetus. She had to wait another month, her stomach swelled quite enormously.She argued viciously with everyone she spoke to.She saw no one but the nurses, the doctors, and the astonished members of the exobiology team and some experts. Carolina believes Nick and Kelly know when Robin is giving birth.They wanted to stay together, they chatted softly in excited trembling voices, and sometimes they watched intently, lifting their big heads as if they were listening.Whatever they perceive, they are not alarmed. Robin's labor was going well, in fact, more smoothly than the obstetrician had expected.Not so normal with the child, a loose, inhuman, sluglike thing that weighed thirteen pounds.His head is oddly shaped, broad and flat, and his limbs are in the shape of incompletely evolved fins.In short, there is no human figure at all.Its entire body is covered with short, black fur. Obstetricians couldn't get him to breathe, and they found he had no pulse or other signs of life. His temperature dropped rapidly.The obstetricians considered it hopeless and had to abandon the effort, handing him over to competing specialists.They looked for reflections of brain waves and failed to detect anything new.The bizarre creature lay lifeless in their hands like a bag of nameless meat. They announced that the baby was dead. Carolina asks to see Robin's baby, and the doctors, who are trying to get the baffling thing off their hands, allow her to take him.She bathed the baby and held him in her arms all night.The baby's falling body temperature begins to rise slowly, stabilizing at 80 degrees.At noon the next day, he woke up. Specialists later took the baby back to Robin's home and asked her to breastfeed herself because they were concerned about the dangers of using a bottle.They had warned her that there was something strange about the child, and she took one look at him before covering her eyes and screaming.Her doctor immediately gave her a massive sedative. My brother hinted that this little life should not be left in the world.However, as a biological sample, he has extremely high value and cannot be easily given up.Also, many of us have a stronger interest in him than in Nick and Kelly.Since neither of his parents wanted to see him again, Marco and Carolina took him home until the nursery was repaired, which was actually a special laboratory designed by Colonel Petrov himself. Used to observe such strange scientific experiments.It was a low-eaved one-story house that could easily be mistaken for a home, but it contained offices, an instrument room, and a basement, as well as rooms for the children and the caretaker.Its wall surface is a mirror, inside which is installed a network of sensors. Robin's toddler moved in a week before Nick and Kelly when the room was ready.To Carolina's surprise, Nick and Kelly seemed to miss the baby terribly, even though the little one was mostly asleep.The little ones squealed with joy when Nick and Kelly knew the baby would be living with them again and they would have their own space.While the nurses were afraid to go near the strange, shapeless baby, Nick and Kelly clamored to get near him.Their big eyes were shining brightly, as if in their eyes, he was a beautiful little boy. Carolina thought the baby was a boy.When she heard Nick and Kelly seem to be calling him Guy, she named him Guy.His soft flippers began to grow more and more like human hands and feet, and he would occasionally move his limbs or blink his eyes as Nick and Kelly approached. But months passed, and he still hadn't made any sound. Robin has started taking LSD to relax her nerves and is doing yoga to get back in shape.She returned to Michael Hudson with her religious teacher and married him that year.She swore to a "small talk" columnist that she would never have another child. Robin's divorce from Tom did little to injure the inexplicably special relationship between my brother and Howard Hudson, and Tom left Skygate as soon as he had Colonel Petroff's permission. I heard that he joined the Hudson Expedition to Mercury and Venus to develop some amazing discoveries, where the Explorer maps the crater walls full of iridium alloy nodules.An exobiologist thought it was the excrement of an unknown creature that had dug a metal tunnel. Even with so much to discover.The cosmic organization is still beginning to split.Rumors and misgivings about lunar grit have added to the tense atmosphere among the Cosmos partners.Maxim Petrov resigned from Cosmos due to a scandal involving an American-Soviet spy ring. Washington threatened to stop leasing the base and take back all equipment at Tianmen.After a compromise, Eric Thorson became the new head of the center, but was soon accused of building a spy facility for the United States. As we were drinking coffee in the nursery kitchen one morning, I naively asked Marco what the hell were the spies trying to get?After all, the Universal Organization is a neutral international non-governmental organization, and our research report is open to every member.I can understand Howard Hudson's strong interest in the Explorer missions, but we don't have a giant iridium field at Skygate. "We have something else that will surprise you." Marco winked at me solemnly like an owl. "Thawson asked me the other day and ended up warning me to keep an eye out for his enemy spies, who Want to know about the three fathers - Thorson, Tom and I, and want to know about our sex lives." "why?" "Those three children are by far the most exciting result of space exploration - even more mysterious than the tunnels dug on Venus by unknown beings. Many scientists and even several governments wonder if there is more to it .” He stirred the coffee sadly. "Carolina still wants a baby," He later went on to say, "But the results of the experiment showed that my genitals were no longer fertile. Thorsen didn't say so, but I thought he was barren, too, and was upset about it. What happened to your brother?" " I thought about it.In the divorce proceedings, Robin's lawyer mentioned a hotel nail manicurist, a space hospital nurse, and a records department typist. Could any of them be spies?" "Tom's gone," I said." Maybe back in space. We have no connection. But who wants a second offspring like Guy." "Don't look down on Guy," Marco seemed hurt, "Nick and Kelly idolized him. I The wife has also learned to love him. She often says 'you can't see an oak tree in a camphor tree'." I was so impressed with the acorn parable that it applies to all three children.The mystery of life is embodied in them in a special form.What is novel is that they continue to display unpredictable and amazing strength. Marco is now in charge of the nursery, with Suzie and Carolina as assistants.They carefully nurtured these "seedlings" with love, while maintaining vigilance.Guy Hood was mostly asleep for the first few years, and people were busy taking notes on Nick and Kelly that Thorson wanted. Although they looked more human than Guy, their bodies were just as bizarre.All three of them were born with thermostats, which baffled biologists.For example, when it is snowing and cool, they don't want to wear anything, and the harshest desert light can at most cause temporary freckles on their skin.They seem to be born "exhibitionists", clothes are useless to them, and we are used to not dressing them. Marco gave them an intelligence test. When Guy is awake, he seems to have no mind, at least not detectable, while Nick and Kelly are happy to cooperate.Their odd reactions were so puzzling that Karolina discovered later that they were playing a game of observation with their observers. After Suzie taught Kelly to blink her colorful eyes, she started blinking at everyone who tried to look at her through the mirror.No matter how careful the observer is and how quiet the voice is, she can still detect it.Thorsen wondered how she felt we were looking at her, but no one had an answer. Nick learned arithmetic before he could speak.At two months old, he started counting with Carolina, fiddled with beads on a toy abacus, and added and subtracted to ten. When he was one month older, he learned division by using the larger abacus that Marco made for him and created a set of methods. Not only that, but his mathematical intuition is also a headache.I remember a day of horror in Marco's office as we watched a salesman demonstrate a tiny new computer.At this time, Carolina came in with Nick in her arms.Nick was always as eager as anyone to see new equipment in the lab. Less than six months old and still barely able to walk, he leaned forward, crying, until Carolina put him on the stool in front of the computer.The bewildered salesman flicked the switch, and Nick turned on the computer with ease, the salesman gasped in surprise.Nick played for half an hour, carefully tapping out what he wanted to type with his little finger, and then leaning his bald head forward to look, his big eyes only an inch from the screen. Then, suddenly, with a shy smile that concealed his boredom with the machine, he began to tear the tape from the machine.When Carolina stopped him, he slid quickly from his chair and back into the hall where Kelly was.凯莉正在用茶匙和马可的塑料卷尺盒敲打着一个空食品罐，弄出一种令人不快的声音。它给我留下了深刻的印象，我至今还能回忆起来。 我叮嘱那位推销员不要对别人讲关于孩子的事。等他走了后，我同马可和卡罗琳娜谈论了这件让人不安的事。“有时这两个小家伙真的让我感到害怕，”马可承认道，“刚才我有一种十分奇特的感觉，我认为尼克能操作我们的新电脑。” 卡罗琳娜用中指在嘴唇上作了个竖起的动作，以提醒他小心，尽管他已关上了隔音的办公室门。 “他们是什么东西？“我一想起尼克在撕纸带时脸上小精灵般的淘气表情就不寒而栗，“他们长大后会变成什么样子？” “盖是最让我担心的，”卡罗琳娜小声说，“另外两个很愉快。由于他们天资聪慧，绝大多数情况下，都可以使我理解他们的意思。可盖不同，他是另一种类型。我想我同样也很爱他，他的确也需要爱，可我总觉得他的出生是个悲剧。我真为盖担心！” “重元素聚变是一门很深的学问，现在给你们还讲不明白。你们只需要知道，地球发动机是人类建造的力量最大的机器，比如我们所在的华北794号，全功率运行时能向大地产生150亿吨的推力。” 这里有瑕疵，重元素不是只能裂变释能吗？因为原子序数比铁大的元素（重元素）原子在裂变时是损失质量，并将其转化为能量，“重元素聚变”实在不可思议。