Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Dynamite, a good toy for dogs
Dedicated to the following:
Jack Holloway set the ship to hover mode, turned his swivel chair, looked at Carl, and shook his head in frustration. "I can't believe we're going to have to do it all over again," Holloway said. "It's not that I don't value you, don't see you as a good partner, Carl. I value you, really. But you really make me feel like, Some things you don't understand no matter what. How many times have we been here? Twelve? Twenty-four? But every time we get here, it's like you forget everything I taught you, It's frustrating. Tell me you understand what I'm saying." Carl looked up at Holloway and barked.It is a dog. "Okay," Holloway said, "maybe it'll work this time." He scooped up a lump of plaster from the storage box below and held it in one hand. "It's sonic blast slime. What are we going to do with it?" Carl held his head up. "Come on, Carl," said Holloway, "that's the first thing I taught you. We glued it to key points on the side of the cliff, just like I did today. You remember when you It's there too." He pointed to "Karl's Cliff", a towering boulder rising up to 200 meters in length, the surface is mostly covered with vegetation, and geological features can be vaguely seen.And Carl's eyes never left Holloway's finger. Obviously, he was more interested in the finger than the cliff the owner named after it. Holloway put down the plaster and picked up another, smaller object. "It's a remote blast detonator," he said, "and we glued it to the sonic blast goo, so that when it goes off, we don't have to be around the goo. Because there's a 'bang.' How do you feel, Carl?" Carl's dog had a worried look on its face. It knows the word "bang", and Carl doesn't like "bang". "That's right," said Holloway.He lowered the explosive detonator, set it away from the blast mud, and made sure that the detonator's receiver did not activate.He picked up the third item. "And this, the remote detonator," Holloway said. "Remember this, Carl?" Carl barked. "What do you mean, Carl?" Holloway said, "You want to detonate the sound-activated explosive slime?" Carl yelled again. "I can't tell," Holloway said hesitantly. "Technically speaking, letting a non-intelligent species detonate the bomb violates Zarathustra's safe work rules." Carl leaned forward and whined and licked Holloway's face, as if to say: Let me go, oh, just let me go. "Okay," Holloway said, waving Carl away, "but there's no next time. You have to master all the basic requirements of this job first. Stop fooling around and push all the dirty work to Me. I only work as an overseer. Got it?" Carl barked again and stepped back, wagging his tail.It knows what to do next. Holloway looked down at the display operation screen of the detonator. This was the third time since he installed the gunpowder today. He had to make sure that the detonator was connected correctly to the detonator buried in the explosive mud.He pressed "Confirm" to all the safety questions automatically popped up by the system, and waited for the system to confirm the geographic location of the detonators to ensure that they were truly and safely outside the blasting range.These security issues can be set to "ignore", but it takes a lot of effort to hack the system.Anyway, Holloway didn't want to blow himself up anytime soon, and Carl really didn't like bangs. The gunpowder is in place, the detonator is displayed like this, please press the display screen for instant detonation. "Okay," Holloway said, placing the detonator on the floor of the flight deck between him and Carl.Carl looked up expectantly. "Wait a little longer." Holloway turned the seat to face the cliff.He could hear Carl's tail slapping the cage excitedly. "Wait," Holloway said again, and then tried to inspect the holes he had drilled in the cliff earlier, using the spaceship as a platform to carefully fill the holes with fried mud. Carl let out a low whimper. "Fire!" Holloway yelled.Then I heard the dog's paws crawling forward. The cliff exploded outward from four points, scattering rocks and dust, and vegetation swirling for several meters.Birds (or local bird-like flying creatures) nesting in the vegetation on the cliff face were sent flying by the sound and eruption of the explosion.The face of the cliff then darkened.A few seconds later, four muffled bangs cut through the air and spread to the cockpit of the spacecraft. Holloway and Carl finally heard the sound of the explosion—it was quite loud, but there was no "bang" that Carl was worried about. Holloway looked to the information panel to his right, where the sonic imaging program was active.The sonic probes he has placed around the cliffs are feeding raw data to an imaging program that marshals the collected data to present a three-dimensional representation of the cliff's interior. "It's over," he said, turning back to look at Carl, who still had his paw on the detonator, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. "Good boy!" Holloway said, rummaging through the storage box and pulling out a Zara Velociraptor bone, heavy with meat.He unwrapped it and tossed the bone to Carl, who jumped on it cheerfully.The agreement is like this: Press the detonator and reward a piece of meat and bone.In order for Carl to press the detonator correctly, Holloway tried many times, but fortunately, the hard work was not in vain.Anyway, Karl has to follow along to explore, so it's better to let it come in handy, even for fun. Right now, letting a dog do the blasting is really a violation of Zarathust's safe work rules.But Holloway and Carl are working without anyone watching, hundreds of kilometers away from the local headquarters of the Zara Group on this planet, and the headquarters of the group on Earth is 178 light-years away; La Group employee, he's just a contract worker, as is every miner/prospector on Zara 23, they get paid less. Holloway lowered his hand and rubbed Carl's head lovingly.Carl was too involved in the meat and bones, completely ignoring him. An emergency siren came from Holloway's information panel.He picked it up and saw that a large amount of data was suddenly poured in from their bandwidth. A muffled rumble filled the airship's cockpit, growing louder.Carl looked away from the bone and began whining.It sounded so much like a bang, it was scary. Holloway looked up, and saw that the dust all over the sky suddenly rose from the side of the cliff, forming a huge ash column, blocking everything behind. "Damn it!" he said to himself.His heart sank, and he felt terrible. After a few minutes, the dust cleared a little, and his heavy, bad feeling intensified.Through the haze of dust, Holloway could see that part of the cliff had collapsed, the edge of which was roughly where he had placed the explosives.The abrupt geological lines are exposed, replacing the original vegetation.The birds flew back and forth, looking for their nests. The remnants of the mountain were hundreds of meters below them. The mud and rocks that fell from the collapse muddied the river at the foot of the mountain, and even the river course was changed. "Damn it!" Holloway said again, reaching for his binoculars. He just blew up the cliff, and the Zara Group is going to be pissed off.In recent years, the Zara Group has been trying to salvage their long-standing public image of wanton destruction of nature - a well-deserved image thanks to the wanton destruction of nature on several of the planets they operate on.The public no longer believes in the narrative that non-inhabited planets are more ecologically tolerant than inhabited ones, nor that the ecosystems of these planets can quickly return to ecological balance after the departure of the Zara Group.From their point of view, strip mining is strip mining, whether you're mining Pennsylvania or the mountains on Zara 23. Faced with a raging public outcry denouncing his company's ECO practices (or lack thereof), Weedon Aubrey VI, Chairman and CEO of the Zarathustra Group, said "OK ", ordered the Zara Group and all its subsidiaries to operate in accordance with the proposed ecological protection guidelines.It's really no loss for Aubrey.He is not friendly to the ecology of the various planets that his company has landed on, but the exploration and development agreement signed by the Zara Group and the Colonial Star Administration states that if the company abides by the guidelines of CEPA, as long as the actual commercial cost is less than one The insignificant development cost baseline is high, and tax incentives can be enjoyed.That baseline was set decades ago, when no one cared about the ecological destruction of worlds they never actually set foot on. Zara Group's brand-new "ecologically optimal" superficial effort has actually reduced the company's tax revenue to almost zero.This move is very clever. For a large company like the Zara Group, its scale and income are very important to the Immigration Star Administration. But it also means that anything that casts dust on Zara Group's latest eco-friendly campaign will come under the harshest scrutiny.For example, blowing up an entire cliff wall.Originally, the sonic explosives were used to reduce the damage caused by geological exploration. Holloway did not intend to let half of the cliff collapse. However, given the notoriety of the Zara Group, it is not easy for people to believe that this was an unintentional mistake.Holloway had brushed aside rules and regulations before, always getting away with it.But now this was the kind of thing that would drive Holloway off the planet. unless-- "Hurry up, hurry up," Holloway muttered, looking through the binoculars.He was waiting for the dust and mist to settle down a bit, so that the details could be seen more clearly. The communication line on Holloway's information panel flickered wildly, showing that the caller was Chad Burne. Holloway cursed and tapped the "Audio Communication" option. "Hi, Chad," he said, picking up the binoculars again. "Jack, the technicians in the data room told me that your data is very wrong," Bourne said, "They said that the data was fine at first, and suddenly it seemed that someone turned it up to the maximum." Chad Bourne's voice Clear and haunting, thanks to one of the ship's true luxuries: the phenomenal sound system, fashioned after Holloway realized he'd be stuck inside the ship all of his working hours.In many cases, this system simply works miracles, but Bourne still speaks with a big tongue. "Yeah." Holloway replied. "They say you can only see this kind of data when there is an earthquake, or when the mountain collapses." Byrne continued. "So I think I've had an earthquake." "Really?" Bourne asked. "That's right," said Holloway. "Carl was behaving strangely just before that. They say animals are the most sensitive to such things." "The technician just told me that there has never been an earthquake on the land where you are. Do you find it strange?" Bourne said. "Who do you trust?" Holloway said. "I'm here and they're not." "They have 25 million worth of equipment here," Byrne said, "and you just have one dashboard and a long list of bad surveying practices." "Unsubstantiated survey misconduct," Holloway retorted. "Jack, you let your dog do the blasting," Byrne said. "I haven't," said Holloway.The dust on the cliff wall has finally dispersed. "That's a rumor." "We have eyewitnesses," Byrne said. "She can't be trusted," Holloway said. "She was a reliable employee," Byrne said, "unlike some." "She has other plans," Holloway said. "Trust me." "That's the way it is, Jack," Byrne said. "You've got to earn your own trust. You haven't got much from me at the moment. But let me tell you, I have a probe satellite for about six It'll be at your place in a few minutes. When it arrives, I'll have it check the cliff wall you're likely to blow up. If the cliff looks safe, next time you're in Aubrey Town, I'll ask you to go up to Lu Better than eating steak at a restaurant, and apologizing. But if the cliff is what I expected, I will suspend your contract and send security to bring you back. Not the gang that often drinks with you, Jack. I'll send someone who doesn't like you, I know, I'll send Joe Dries. He'd love to see you." "You'll see if you can get him off the bar stool," Holloway said. "For you, I think he will," Bourne said. "What do you say?" Holloway didn't answer, he had stopped listening seconds before, because in his binoculars he could see a thin rock formation sandwiched between two thick ones.The rock formation on which his eyes focused was as black as coal. And, sparkle. "Great!" said Holloway. "What?" Bourne asked, "Jack, did you hear what I just said?" "Sorry, Chad, your signal isn't good," Holloway said. "Signal interference, caused by sunspots." "My God, Jack. Don't you try to fool me!" Bourne yelled. "Enjoy the next five minutes. I've already tuned your contract to my information panel. Once I see the satellite image, I'll just hit delete." Bourne cut off the connection. Holloway looked at Carl, and picked up the detonation panel. "Go into the cage," he said to the dog.Carl barked in response, picked up its fleshy bones, and ran to its cage, which could be fixed to protect it in case of an accident with the spaceship.Holloway dropped the detonator into the glove box, put away his information board, and strapped himself into the seat. "Come on, Carl," he said, pushing the ship forward on the throttle, "We have five minutes before anyone kicks us off this planet."
Notes:
Jack Holloway set the ship to hover mode, turned his swivel chair, looked at Carl, and shook his head in frustration. "I can't believe we're going to have to do it all over again," Holloway said. "It's not that I don't value you, don't see you as a good partner, Carl. I value you, really. But you really make me feel like, Some things you don't understand no matter what. How many times have we been here? Twelve? Twenty-four? But every time we get here, it's like you forget everything I taught you, It's frustrating. Tell me you understand what I'm saying." Carl looked up at Holloway and barked.It is a dog. "Okay," Holloway said, "maybe it'll work this time." He scooped up a lump of plaster from the storage box below and held it in one hand. "It's sonic blast slime. What are we going to do with it?" Carl held his head up. "Come on, Carl," said Holloway, "that's the first thing I taught you. We glued it to key points on the side of the cliff, just like I did today. You remember when you It's there too." He pointed to "Karl's Cliff", a towering boulder rising up to 200 meters in length, the surface is mostly covered with vegetation, and geological features can be vaguely seen.And Carl's eyes never left Holloway's finger. Obviously, he was more interested in the finger than the cliff the owner named after it. Holloway put down the plaster and picked up another, smaller object. "It's a remote blast detonator," he said, "and we glued it to the sonic blast goo, so that when it goes off, we don't have to be around the goo. Because there's a 'bang.' How do you feel, Carl?" Carl's dog had a worried look on its face. It knows the word "bang", and Carl doesn't like "bang". "That's right," said Holloway.He lowered the explosive detonator, set it away from the blast mud, and made sure that the detonator's receiver did not activate.He picked up the third item. "And this, the remote detonator," Holloway said. "Remember this, Carl?" Carl barked. "What do you mean, Carl?" Holloway said, "You want to detonate the sound-activated explosive slime?" Carl yelled again. "I can't tell," Holloway said hesitantly. "Technically speaking, letting a non-intelligent species detonate the bomb violates Zarathustra's safe work rules." Carl leaned forward and whined and licked Holloway's face, as if to say: Let me go, oh, just let me go. "Okay," Holloway said, waving Carl away, "but there's no next time. You have to master all the basic requirements of this job first. Stop fooling around and push all the dirty work to Me. I only work as an overseer. Got it?" Carl barked again and stepped back, wagging his tail.It knows what to do next. Holloway looked down at the display operation screen of the detonator. This was the third time since he installed the gunpowder today. He had to make sure that the detonator was connected correctly to the detonator buried in the explosive mud.He pressed "Confirm" to all the safety questions automatically popped up by the system, and waited for the system to confirm the geographic location of the detonators to ensure that they were truly and safely outside the blasting range.These security issues can be set to "ignore", but it takes a lot of effort to hack the system.Anyway, Holloway didn't want to blow himself up anytime soon, and Carl really didn't like bangs. The gunpowder is in place, the detonator is displayed like this, please press the display screen for instant detonation. "Okay," Holloway said, placing the detonator on the floor of the flight deck between him and Carl.Carl looked up expectantly. "Wait a little longer." Holloway turned the seat to face the cliff.He could hear Carl's tail slapping the cage excitedly. "Wait," Holloway said again, and then tried to inspect the holes he had drilled in the cliff earlier, using the spaceship as a platform to carefully fill the holes with fried mud. Carl let out a low whimper. "Fire!" Holloway yelled.Then I heard the dog's paws crawling forward. The cliff exploded outward from four points, scattering rocks and dust, and vegetation swirling for several meters.Birds (or local bird-like flying creatures) nesting in the vegetation on the cliff face were sent flying by the sound and eruption of the explosion.The face of the cliff then darkened.A few seconds later, four muffled bangs cut through the air and spread to the cockpit of the spacecraft. Holloway and Carl finally heard the sound of the explosion—it was quite loud, but there was no "bang" that Carl was worried about. Holloway looked to the information panel to his right, where the sonic imaging program was active.The sonic probes he has placed around the cliffs are feeding raw data to an imaging program that marshals the collected data to present a three-dimensional representation of the cliff's interior. "It's over," he said, turning back to look at Carl, who still had his paw on the detonator, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. "Good boy!" Holloway said, rummaging through the storage box and pulling out a Zara Velociraptor bone, heavy with meat.He unwrapped it and tossed the bone to Carl, who jumped on it cheerfully.The agreement is like this: Press the detonator and reward a piece of meat and bone.In order for Carl to press the detonator correctly, Holloway tried many times, but fortunately, the hard work was not in vain.Anyway, Karl has to follow along to explore, so it's better to let it come in handy, even for fun. Right now, letting a dog do the blasting is really a violation of Zarathust's safe work rules.But Holloway and Carl are working without anyone watching, hundreds of kilometers away from the local headquarters of the Zara Group on this planet, and the headquarters of the group on Earth is 178 light-years away; La Group employee, he's just a contract worker, as is every miner/prospector on Zara 23, they get paid less. Holloway lowered his hand and rubbed Carl's head lovingly.Carl was too involved in the meat and bones, completely ignoring him. An emergency siren came from Holloway's information panel.He picked it up and saw that a large amount of data was suddenly poured in from their bandwidth. A muffled rumble filled the airship's cockpit, growing louder.Carl looked away from the bone and began whining.It sounded so much like a bang, it was scary. Holloway looked up, and saw that the dust all over the sky suddenly rose from the side of the cliff, forming a huge ash column, blocking everything behind. "Damn it!" he said to himself.His heart sank, and he felt terrible. After a few minutes, the dust cleared a little, and his heavy, bad feeling intensified.Through the haze of dust, Holloway could see that part of the cliff had collapsed, the edge of which was roughly where he had placed the explosives.The abrupt geological lines are exposed, replacing the original vegetation.The birds flew back and forth, looking for their nests. The remnants of the mountain were hundreds of meters below them. The mud and rocks that fell from the collapse muddied the river at the foot of the mountain, and even the river course was changed. "Damn it!" Holloway said again, reaching for his binoculars. He just blew up the cliff, and the Zara Group is going to be pissed off.In recent years, the Zara Group has been trying to salvage their long-standing public image of wanton destruction of nature - a well-deserved image thanks to the wanton destruction of nature on several of the planets they operate on.The public no longer believes in the narrative that non-inhabited planets are more ecologically tolerant than inhabited ones, nor that the ecosystems of these planets can quickly return to ecological balance after the departure of the Zara Group.From their point of view, strip mining is strip mining, whether you're mining Pennsylvania or the mountains on Zara 23. Faced with a raging public outcry denouncing his company's ECO practices (or lack thereof), Weedon Aubrey VI, Chairman and CEO of the Zarathustra Group, said "OK ", ordered the Zara Group and all its subsidiaries to operate in accordance with the proposed ecological protection guidelines.It's really no loss for Aubrey.He is not friendly to the ecology of the various planets that his company has landed on, but the exploration and development agreement signed by the Zara Group and the Colonial Star Administration states that if the company abides by the guidelines of CEPA, as long as the actual commercial cost is less than one The insignificant development cost baseline is high, and tax incentives can be enjoyed.That baseline was set decades ago, when no one cared about the ecological destruction of worlds they never actually set foot on. Zara Group's brand-new "ecologically optimal" superficial effort has actually reduced the company's tax revenue to almost zero.This move is very clever. For a large company like the Zara Group, its scale and income are very important to the Immigration Star Administration. But it also means that anything that casts dust on Zara Group's latest eco-friendly campaign will come under the harshest scrutiny.For example, blowing up an entire cliff wall.Originally, the sonic explosives were used to reduce the damage caused by geological exploration. Holloway did not intend to let half of the cliff collapse. However, given the notoriety of the Zara Group, it is not easy for people to believe that this was an unintentional mistake.Holloway had brushed aside rules and regulations before, always getting away with it.But now this was the kind of thing that would drive Holloway off the planet. unless-- "Hurry up, hurry up," Holloway muttered, looking through the binoculars.He was waiting for the dust and mist to settle down a bit, so that the details could be seen more clearly. The communication line on Holloway's information panel flickered wildly, showing that the caller was Chad Burne. Holloway cursed and tapped the "Audio Communication" option. "Hi, Chad," he said, picking up the binoculars again. "Jack, the technicians in the data room told me that your data is very wrong," Bourne said, "They said that the data was fine at first, and suddenly it seemed that someone turned it up to the maximum." Chad Bourne's voice Clear and haunting, thanks to one of the ship's true luxuries: the phenomenal sound system, fashioned after Holloway realized he'd be stuck inside the ship all of his working hours.In many cases, this system simply works miracles, but Bourne still speaks with a big tongue. "Yeah." Holloway replied. "They say you can only see this kind of data when there is an earthquake, or when the mountain collapses." Byrne continued. "So I think I've had an earthquake." "Really?" Bourne asked. "That's right," said Holloway. "Carl was behaving strangely just before that. They say animals are the most sensitive to such things." "The technician just told me that there has never been an earthquake on the land where you are. Do you find it strange?" Bourne said. "Who do you trust?" Holloway said. "I'm here and they're not." "They have 25 million worth of equipment here," Byrne said, "and you just have one dashboard and a long list of bad surveying practices." "Unsubstantiated survey misconduct," Holloway retorted. "Jack, you let your dog do the blasting," Byrne said. "I haven't," said Holloway.The dust on the cliff wall has finally dispersed. "That's a rumor." "We have eyewitnesses," Byrne said. "She can't be trusted," Holloway said. "She was a reliable employee," Byrne said, "unlike some." "She has other plans," Holloway said. "Trust me." "That's the way it is, Jack," Byrne said. "You've got to earn your own trust. You haven't got much from me at the moment. But let me tell you, I have a probe satellite for about six It'll be at your place in a few minutes. When it arrives, I'll have it check the cliff wall you're likely to blow up. If the cliff looks safe, next time you're in Aubrey Town, I'll ask you to go up to Lu Better than eating steak at a restaurant, and apologizing. But if the cliff is what I expected, I will suspend your contract and send security to bring you back. Not the gang that often drinks with you, Jack. I'll send someone who doesn't like you, I know, I'll send Joe Dries. He'd love to see you." "You'll see if you can get him off the bar stool," Holloway said. "For you, I think he will," Bourne said. "What do you say?" Holloway didn't answer, he had stopped listening seconds before, because in his binoculars he could see a thin rock formation sandwiched between two thick ones.The rock formation on which his eyes focused was as black as coal. And, sparkle. "Great!" said Holloway. "What?" Bourne asked, "Jack, did you hear what I just said?" "Sorry, Chad, your signal isn't good," Holloway said. "Signal interference, caused by sunspots." "My God, Jack. Don't you try to fool me!" Bourne yelled. "Enjoy the next five minutes. I've already tuned your contract to my information panel. Once I see the satellite image, I'll just hit delete." Bourne cut off the connection. Holloway looked at Carl, and picked up the detonation panel. "Go into the cage," he said to the dog.Carl barked in response, picked up its fleshy bones, and ran to its cage, which could be fixed to protect it in case of an accident with the spaceship.Holloway dropped the detonator into the glove box, put away his information board, and strapped himself into the seat. "Come on, Carl," he said, pushing the ship forward on the throttle, "We have five minutes before anyone kicks us off this planet."
Notes: