Chapter 7 Chapter 4 confusion-1

A security car came to pick me up before Marco left, and I was detained for three days in an empty room on the old Soviet base.At the same time, countless people came with tape recorders to find out what I didn't know about Tom and Guy.Finally one day, Gottgar joined them. "Mr. Hodian, I heard your brother invited you, Nick, and Kelly to try his luck with him. When you said no, he said you were a coward, remember?" His cat eyes seemed to study me, "You You have to explain what he wants to do." But I can't explain Tom's activities, I don't know why the space snake came to bother Skygate on that particular night, I can't tell Gort HQ how the safe was opened or how Tom and Guy got out with the tetrahedron.

"Better talk," Gott warned me, "before we have to use a biomedical confession device." Gott's men took me to the headquarters building the next morning, and I was weary of a new ordeal.Thorsen paced up and down the office, waiting for me, pale, vulnerable and vaguely apologetic. "Hodian, we are hopeless," he said, holding out his trembling hand to me, "you don't know that strange fog that has begun to move over the west coast of Mexico. It rolls back at night, and when the sun rises it moves back to the shore , it covers two or three fishing places. When it comes, the towns are always empty, people and animals and even the bait are gone, and no one knows what is in the fog."

He staggers back to his desk and nods to me: "We believe they are invaders, invaders from another cosmic biological system, from Venus or more likely Mercury. We have evidence that they are related to those The Space Snake Alliance. We also suspect that your brother is in contact with them and is doing so using lunar grit equipment, which is why we are asking you." Thorsen, who was sitting behind his desk, paused, as if trying to recharge his batteries to replenish his energy. "You are our best lead, Hoodian, you are Hood's younger brother and Guy's spiritual friend." He shook his arms in a helpless gesture, "I hope you will help us as much as possible .”

When I said again that there was nothing I could do, he just shrugged and looked at me for more threats.I sat and thought of Suzie.During Thorson's absence, she stayed at Tianmen, kept busy working in the nursery or in the laboratory, occasionally participated in our small social activities, and firmly refused men's dates, turning men's public admiration into her. Simple friendship.She was back with Thawson now, joyously and patiently with his frail newborn, lovingly caring for him as if he were another moon child. I went back to the nursery when Thorson let me go.Kelly awoke from the longest slumber of her life.I sat with her in the kitchen and she picked up a dinner plate boredly.She looked so bad, so pale and weak.

"Uncle Jin, I had a dream." She pushes the food away. "I don't dream much, but this one is horrible. It's about Nick and Guy, about the tetrahedron and the terminal," she shuddered. "It's a bad dream, I don't know how to tell you." That was all she was willing to say.Later, I went with her to find Nick.We had to get Gort's permission first.Finally, a security van took us to a nearby unoccupied building, outside of an aviation hangar.The building, which served as a quarantine station for astronauts upon their return, is now Nick's office.

The doorman called Gott before letting us in.We see Nick and McCabel and their two or three space engineers around a draft table in a large windowless room. Nick kissed Kelly and shook my hand solemnly. "We should design what I call a beer can engine," he said, "but we have a problem." The long wall is filled with computerized metal machines, benches, parts, and semi-finished models that McCabell requisitioned from aviation hangars. Much more attention has been paid to these than to Nick's first flyboard. The big problem he was talking about was aggregation and control.Nick assembled and tweaked a component that converted any form of radiation into kinetic energy, sucked up all the heat, and let out a high-pitched whistling sound as it receded.

"That, I'm not interested in," McCabel and Nick demonstrated twice, "it will shake Newton. Its actions are not responded to, it violates the second law of thermodynamics, and it struggles to expend energy," McCabel looked at Nick with weary eyes, "Can you explain that?" "Newton did not understand the whole universe," Nick sat at the table, childlike, but with a seriousness on his face like that of Einstein II, "not understanding the applicability of his laws in space. In space, energy is indeed consumed with difficulty, otherwise Our universe would not exist."

McCabel bent over the sketch again and asked questions that Nick seemed unable to explain. I didn't understand it after reading it for a few minutes, so I went to Kelly.I found her curled up on the floor in a corner in Nick's new office, weeping silently. "It's . . . terrible, Uncle Kim." She doesn't want a tissue, a glass of water, or anything, and she doesn't even want to cry. "We shall have that terminal built before my time runs out, and I thought the tetrahedron would show me the way, but can't believe dear poor Guy would. Now, though," her quivering voice almost Howling, "I just don't know."

When Thorson came to scout the fog project, Nick begged him to drop it. "Please, General, maybe something in the fog doesn't like humans, but we don't need weapons against space snakes, they won't hurt us." "They caused the plane to crash." "But that wasn't intentional," objected Nick, "they don't even know they're hurting, I think sharing the energy is their way of saying hello, and its plume of smoke shows they've exhausted their heat. Maybe they're trying to What do you want?" "Ridiculous!" Thorsen's throat got stuck.

"I don't care about anything they think, we decided to kill the space snake." He looked at me excitedly, "Come here, Hodian. I want you to write me a news article, briefly mentioning fog and space Snake, emphasize what we're doing now." I'm waiting to find out what that is. "We are coordinating contact with neighboring cosmic beings, we are analyzing all data from space and planning a balanced energy behavior plan, our intention is to maintain the upper hand, there is absolutely no reason to cause public panic." He keeps me busy for the next few weeks.I intend to write more good news to make the future less dire.The Space Snake disabled a batch of nuclear missiles that were firing at a cloud swimming toward the Golden Gate: two cruiser submarines had been out for a long time and were speculated to be missing under the Atlantic region; the Space Snake was reported to be in A certain peak perches.

As soon as I can I go back to see Nick and Kelly.To my surprise, they were busy.Kelly learned to operate the computer pacifier, the machine it controlled to grind out fine nuggets of gold or plastic for Nick's personal engineer. I watched Nick launch two or three jets.One was no longer as long as a pencil and contained a nucleus of halite crystals.Each one emerges from between his fingers and disappears in the distance, leaving a cool breeze in the air and a waxy taste in my mouth.But these still cannot be translated into any form that engineers can understand and imitate. Nick and Kelly go back to daycare, and Carolina asks Marco to babysit them. When I went to visit, two security guards stopped me at the door and told Marco to come out.Marco said they were asleep. McCabel, who had taken my place in the parking lot when I was away, wanted me to accompany him for a few drinks and a steak at Tianmen Hudson, he needed to talk.It wasn't easy getting along with Nick, Kelly, and one by one his fellow engineers gave up and went away.He felt that the ending would be similar to theirs. "Kim, I'm restless," he said, grabbing my arms and clinging to me, as if seeking human warmth, "and not just because of your double conversation pressure." His troubled face twitched, trying to show Smile but fail. "What are those things?" He looked back at the polygonal building from time to time, which was highlighted by the bloody sunset. "Able to make noise," he patted his pocket in bewilderment, "Things that steal small keys, coins, and pens. Things that watch you in the light and run away before you turn on the light." "Could be rats," I tried to cheer him up, "this desert is full of them. This building has been vacant for years. They could steal almost anything." "A mouse?" He shook his head. "I don't think it's a mouse." We drank too much that night and talked about intergalactic cultures and the fog and space snakes and what became of Tom and Guy and the tetrahedron and Nick's impossible beer can engine.Our annoyances about rats or things in quarantine buildings are hard to get rid of. We walked out of the restaurant. After a faint flicker, the light went out completely, and I waited for another space snake to fly by, make a sound and suck out our strength, but there was no sound.I had a few more drinks and remember a doorman leading me to bed with a candle. The next morning, McCabel shook me awake.My head was swollen, my mouth was foul, and I didn't want to listen to what he had to say. "Your friend Gott called and said he's taking you back to the Highlands. He wants to know why the power went out, what happened to the quarantine building, where Nick and Kelly were." McCabel drove me back.We found a traffic jam outside the gate ahead, no one seemed to know why, someone was turning most of the workers back with their lips pursed and serious looking, searched our car and called HQ before letting us in . Once inside, we found tanks on the main intersection.At headquarters, troops are lining up. A short, stocky security guard detained us until Gott came down.Gott looked just as I expected, a sallow complexion.He also had cramps, sleepy eyes swollen, and a restless voice complaining indifferently about what we were doing. I'm trying to ask what's wrong. "Come in," he waved beside the car, "let's take a look." The driver started the car, and Gott sat nervously beside the driver, looking at every intersection, as if expecting to see a alien invader.There are military vehicles at the headquarters. "There's something out there," Gott said abruptly. "It cut the power last night, it knocked down the quarantine building, and it's still there. Nick and Kelly! Where are they?" "We were safe inside last night," he muttered, "tell him, Harry, tell them what happened to you," The name on the man's badge was Harry. In English and Spanish, he described what happened when he and his colleague Malav Rawls came out at night to change shifts with two people on duty in the isolation building.He could not tell the time because all the clocks and electric watches had stopped.When they entered the parking lot, there were lights everywhere outside and it was still dark. As the headlights swept by, he saw the isolation building collapsed, flattened to the ground, like a cardboard box after a tank had crushed it. He and his colleagues left the lights on and got out to investigate.Those buildings are almost entirely steel.In the ruins, Sergeant Harry checked every debris on the road.Something poured into the crumbling building, rat, maybe. Excellent trap.He couldn't be sure it was a rat, because those guys were cunning.He and Malav Rawls could see them moving on the metal, and they made a humming sound, like little machines, and he tried to imitate that sound. "Damn it!" he uttered the English curse, and the lights around them went out as they watched.He and Malav Rawls ran back to the makeshift airfield with nothing in pursuit of them.At dawn, they ventured back to see what they had seen. The light was bad, but what looked like metal ants took away parts of the car—iron, glass, and soon there was nothing left but the bare shelves.The last of the fog drifted away before the sun rose. He wanted Malav Rawls to report on these creatures, and he stayed to observe what it was doing, but Malav Rawls was worried that Gott didn't believe him, so he went straight back to the security center. "Hodian, what do you think?" McCabel turned to look at me.I looked at McCabel and didn't say much. "About what's in the building, I spoke to Mr. Hodian last night. I didn't actually see anything. Something was running around behind me and stealing metal. Mr. Hodian said it was a rat." "A mouse? A mouse?" Gott gasped, and finally let out a breathless laugh.Harry hesitantly started the car. "Hodian says it's just a mouse," he said, eyes wide open as if stuck in his throat, "I pray to God it's just a mouse." Harry stepped on the brakes suddenly, the tires creaked, and the car stopped suddenly. Harry stretched out his finger and said, "There is a monster!". "God!" Gott gasped, looking at the flying thing.It falls from the sky.fall ahead of us.A peculiar insect is flying with a rope that appears even bigger as it hits a sidewalk cable.The rope is too heavy for it.There are several bills where it lies quietly.The shape of an ant, it has three parts, the head is a silver metal, shiny hexagon, the thinner middle part is the wings and limbs, and the tail is a shiny ball.A worker ant is moving.It got up and turned its metal head as if watching us, a tentacle in the middle.Moments later, it dashed back to the cable, swarming and grabbing it, dragging it down the road.The tail turned white as it disappeared into the waste pile. "You see," McCabel looked at me again, "the way it moves, that white flash." "I see it," Gott broke off suddenly, "so what?" "It doesn't run," said McCabel, "it flies, even on the ground. Those limbs aren't legs, they're manipulators. Wings don't flap, they're probably just for control." "So what?" Gott repeated. "Did you see the frost on its tail?" McCabel asked. "I think it's closely related to that space snake. I think it flies with something like Nick's beer can engine." "I don't want to put it How to fly and tell a jerk," Gott looked at me reproachfully with thick baggy eyes, as if he thought the people I invited were useless, "Hodian, what are those things? What are they doing here?" "I..." My dry throat choked. "How do I know? Major, reports of that dangerous fog and invading space snakes are annoying enough, but they're still far away. Here's the ant-shaped thing, They're so weird, they're probably still watching us." A fear numbed me. "Drive!" said Harry Gott, "Nick and Kelly are in the building." Memories hit me like electricity. "Yuri and Carolina are here too, how are they doing?" "Dead," said Harry Woods heavily. "The house fell down." "Maybe they left beforehand," McCabel said, "those things don't look very vicious." Harry Woods doubted this, and sent Malav Rawls back in another car, leaving us to scout the surroundings.We flew the entire area and took pictures.Desert Zheji, Steel Ant Hill. "God, I hope Nick and the others are dead!" Gott suddenly exasperated. "If they live, it means they have encountered those strange things." "Ah!" McCabel frowned at him, "How do you know?" "First of all, Nick and Kelly aren't quite human," Gott said forcefully. "The general said he never cared about anything but connecting with space metal ants. Hodian's brother showed them how to use the four sides Who are they trying to signal to?" His swollen eyes stared at me. "Maybe the worker ants, if you call them that!" Harry Woods stopped the car. "Don't count on us," Gott snarled at me, "if anything happens, you're asking for it." I reluctantly crawled out after McCabell, who didn't look back, and I followed out of breath.The sidewalks were empty and seemed too loud for our feet to tread on.We passed a clump of waterweed that had grown tall from the rain in the ditch beside the road.I jumped up and stopped when something made them rattle.But McCabel said it was just the wind, maybe just a mouse.I feel sweat running down my ribs even though I'm not hot. I saw a mound.If Mr. Marco and the others are alive, there's plenty of room here.I followed McCabel up the smooth loess slope to a shiny flat top.He surveyed and found that there were 6 round hole doorways on the edge sealed with metal bolts. He pried the metal object with a pocketknife, knelt down and put his ear close to it. "Listen!" Feeling the slippery warmth of hot sulfur on the metal, I pressed my ear to it, and heard the rustling sound, which was weaker and more shrill than the sound of bees.The annoying sound stopped for a few seconds as McCabel pried one of the bolts with the knife.It gradually recovered, and when he measured again the noise did not stop. "Nick knew every code," McCabel said. "If he was alive, we should have an answer." He tapped his knife on the metal and listened hopefully, but all we heard was the faint, piercing hum until Gott started calling us impatiently.A military helicopter buzzed over our heads and McCabell had to leave. "Hurry up!" Gott yelled at us as we approached the car. "The general's calling. He's going to do a demolition raid on the metal ant hill. He wants us out of the area." "Demolition raid?" McCabel asked back, "Is that necessary? Get in the car!" Gott snapped, "Quick!" With an impatient nod of his head, Harry pulled off the car before we could close the door. "Shouldn't we wait?" I asked. "If our friend lives, he may be a prisoner there." "If they're so unlucky," Gott growled, "the general's afraid to wait!" I followed Gott through the barbed wire and into the headquarters building.Thorsen's appearance shocked us. "Stand back!" I vaguely heard Gott yell. "Stand back! You jackass." I stumbled back and saw the man with the gun. "Attention all!" Gott ordered. "Hit the head. Fire!" The sun dimmed, the sun lost its heat.A biting cold wind soaked into my body, and the chill hit me. I was in pain and speechless, frightened and shivering.I waited for the gunshot, but all I heard was the hollow thud of the gun being loaded, the trigger being pulled, and the bullets missing. "Look at its tail," McCabel shouted from a distance, "the energy is exhausted, no wonder we feel so cold, it must have missed the bullet." The orange-sized tail of the metal ant is no longer black, it has become a shiny reddish color, and it is facing the telescope, its shiny snake body wraps around them.As it rose, its sonorous cry grew louder, and its smell sickened and choked me. I'm closest to it.Reluctantly, I took another half step toward it.McCabel tried to get close to it, and the metal ant was hit. The metal ant and the telescope were "shattered to pieces" above the high platform. A sparrow fluttered over my head and I took a deep breath.Gott was reloading the gun, then picked it up again.The bullet he tried broke the brief silence and shook the sparrow. I heard hysterical voices.Thorsen limped into the lift—along with help.McCabel groaned and shifted where he fell.I helped him stand up, but he limped and walked away with heavy steps, rubbing his hands like walking on thin ice. "Hodian," Gott said as we waited for the lift, "we have an urgent mission for you. The General wants to make a news release about the metal ants, calling them harmful, and specifically stating that the metal ants have been Has a record of hurting people. Talk less about our failures in trying to destroy them, don't associate them with moon children, space snakes, or the fog. We're doing enough to contact them. The general says they're under control .” That afternoon, as I sat at the table, I was sweating profusely.While I was anxiously writing the news, after knocking on the door, Susie Thorson walked into my room timidly and softly. "Mr. Hodian, may I speak to you?" Although she always consciously kept me at a distance, I admired her charming charm and optimistic attitude towards life, even her affection for Thorson. She was thinking of talking about Thawson now. "Eric is sick, Kim. But I don't know what to do," she said anxiously, with dark circles under her eyes, "doctors think he has some unknown alien virus in his blood, he has trouble sleeping and eating, and he has a terrible headache .I don't think he's crazy, he should go to the hospital, but he won't give up his job." I can't say anything that would solve the problem.Thorson's condition was obvious to me, but he wouldn't listen to my advice.All I could do was invite Suzie to the nursery for a cup of coffee. Military planes rumbled across the sky. Men in military uniforms were loading trucks with documents, boxes, and whatnot from the alien biology lab.The two soldiers at the gate wore our insignia. The kitchen was quiet.It gets too quiet after the kids are gone.Suzie made coffee and we sat at the table and had a long talk about her problems and mine. Children have become the center of our lives, and we have lost ourselves to helping them find themselves.We're caught up in Kelly and Nick's dispute with Guy, stunned by their dreams of a transgalactic terminal.We both feel lost now without the kids, without Marco and Carolina. We need each other and we talk about normal things.I don't remember much of it, but her reassuring smile, her beautiful voice, and her joy in telling me that she liked me as a person are still in my memory. We didn't talk much about the metal ants, their arrival came like a swipe.Trying to avoid thinking about it, I filled myself another glass.The three doors of the kitchen were ajar. "Hands up, Mr. Hodian!" Some men rushed in and pointed guns at me, the vast majority of them were from the Space Military Forces, and their heads were Gott's men.The man was sweating profusely, with a look of "deep regret". "You are under arrest, sir, by order of General Thorson, no particular charge. We will take you to the security center. You are not allowed to communicate with the outside world." Suzie begged them to wait.She called her husband but they took me out while she was on the phone.Got to the security center and they took me to Gott.He was in a mess in the office, dumping the contents of the drawers onto the desk. "Well, Hodian," he glanced at me with his deep-set eyes, "the thing is, Thawsen has issued a nuclear strike order, and we're clearing Skygate before the missiles go off. I'm going to take you to another I'll escort you on a post pass. Our plane should be ready. The guards won't let you talk to anyone." "What do you think I've done?" "I don't know, Hordian." His savage eyes looked back at me. "Whatever you have done, I intend to find it out. We don't have time to make any formal charges. You are Tom. Hood's brother, you have been implicated in space research. You are very close to the three children and are our best clue to the metal ants." "Trust me, sir. I know nothing about it." He turned his back to me and continued to pour out the contents of another drawer.Our plane took off half an hour later. It was a large military aircraft loaded with records from headquarters and laboratories.The other passengers included McCabel, Gott and a dozen of his subordinates. McCabel sat next to me by the window, still in the trance after being frightened by the metal ants.As the plane ascended, I glanced down at the untouched metal ant hilltop on the mesa, which looked like a gold coin in the sun, surrounded by black craters and a ring of tanks.That's what the area looks like. "Thawson went nuke," McCabel said grimly. "He might also drop napalm to put out the fire. His missiles are bread and butter to those metal ants." No one announced our destination.The plane turned to avoid encountering the space snake.We flew at low altitude with trepidation.Flying over the mountains, across the boxy brownish-red plains, the air began to hit us, and now I could see the black towers on the horizon. The airflow increases and the clouds flow past.We're caught in a storm.The plane pitched and the rain streaked the windows.We turned, rose, and finally broke free.The sky was a dark blue. "My God!" McCabel's brow furrowed. "We're flying too high." After a while, the sky darkened and the clouds were no longer dazzling.I feel a chill and a bitter taste on my tongue.As soon as I heard the engine die, I knew immediately that a space snake was on board our plane. My body temperature dropped, my body was numb and trembling, like this dead-like plane.Frightened, I was unaware of the violent wind, Gott's curse, or McCabel's elbow touch.My whole body was in unbearable pain, and my skin was as stiff as ice. I saw the space snake. A long snake shadow, as transparent as black frosted glass.Its heart is a crystal, which looks like an unpolished diamond, and two pillars of blue light emanate from the crystal. It moves swiftly, absorbing our heat. Its blue radial light has a distinct pulse, maybe the guy is sending some kind of friendly or warning signal, maybe it feels that it can be with us, maybe it just needs our heat.Its strange posture is like bitterness in my mouth, meaningless to me. The plane went straight down, and the space snake was gone.The clouds started to make people faint again, and I was choking for breath.Gott gave orders, but the engine would not ignite. We raced through the storm, through scorching clouds and howling winds, through darkness, thunder and lightning, through heavy rain and hail, and finally made an emergency landing. I remember some of the first scenes: a row of windlashed trees; a flash of lightning across the sky like a toy train heading for a destination; hail ravaging rice fields.It was a dizzying blow. That fall still haunts me like a nightmare.