Chapter 9 Chapter nine

He was now in the back of the warehouse; heretofore the tour group's exchange for China America had been piled up—the stuff that would take China America beyond twenty-first-century Earth.Ten meters above his head was a room temperature nuclear fusion device.With them—and a way to make them—the economies of the U.S. and China would no longer depend on formaldehyde fuel, and people would no longer need those stationary reactors.Two aisles beyond are unprocessed anti-gravity materials.They are not like high-tech products, but more like piles of fabric.The elevator in the warehouse is made of an anti-gravity pad; in the future, it will be as easy for China and the United States to manufacture flying cars as it is now to manufacture cars.

Hamid knew that there were cameras attached to the lights on the roof; but with any luck, they should have died as well as the security devices.Footsteps were heard in the adjoining passage.Hamid slipped into the shadows between two shelves.Quiet, quiet.It's a pity that Guagua didn't want to stay quietly.It rushed forward, imitating the sound of Hamid's pistol at the same time, and the sound was terrifyingly loud.Another second and they'll find it.Hamid ran a few meters in the opposite direction before firing a shot into the air. "God! How many people did that bastard Lucas let in?" Not far away, a voice replied: "It's still a low-energy weapon." Then, the man lowered his voice and said, "Let them see what it means Firepower." Hamid suddenly realized that there were only two guards in the warehouse.In addition, the guard room was blocked, unless the guards outside rushed over after hearing the alarm, they were likely to be trapped in the warehouse.

He avoided the place where the sound came from, and continued to walk towards the back of the warehouse. "Bang!" Guagua stood on the shelf above his head and shouted at someone below.A shell hit a cluster of ambient fusion reactors next to it and exploded, a loud explosion that echoed through the warehouse.Whether it was a shell or not, it was a cannon as powerful as his pistol.This stuff is definitely banned indoors, but no amount of bans will help Hamid right now.He ran forward recklessly, shouting at the shelf while running: "Get down!" A shadow appeared in front of him, and disappeared at the end of the aisle in a blink of an eye.

A second shell exploded where he had been standing.This time there was something else.The blue light from the pile of room temperature fusion reactors cast a bright light and a few shadows on the wall ahead, as if someone had opened the furnace door.When Hamid looked back, the blue light that looked like an electric welding machine continued to spread.He thought he was bound to get burned, but felt nothing.Hamid quickly moved his eyes away, but there were still many afterimages dangling in front of him; even if he closed his eyes, he seemed to be able to see the shelves falling to the ground in the heat.

The automatic fire extinguisher was activated, and immediately there was a heavy rain in the warehouse.But water will not extinguish the fire, and may even add fuel to it.In a blink of an eye, the water turned into steam with a "bang", and Hamid was knocked to his knees by the airflow.He jumped up hard, fell again, and tried to get up again.The anti-gravity elevator should be right next to the next row of shelves.He subconsciously analyzed the current situation: the explosion of the shell and the fire triggered the escape reaction of the fusion material.If such an accident happened at the nuclear power plants of China and the United States, the entire continent would definitely be polluted by nuclear weapons.But here these things should be safer than formaldehyde engines.They also melt, but visitors claim their machines do so without polluting the environment.They emit low-energy photons and clumps of particles that are largely inert to ordinary media.Hamid almost wanted to laugh hysterically: Maybe one day, there will be a ripple on the neutrino telescope countless light-years away, and the astronomers in the reptilian world will notice this phenomenon, for their flawed cosmology This is yet another blow.

Now, between the shelves and in the aisles, there is light, like lightning in a storm.These lights have extended to the place where the anti-gravity mats are piled up. Those cloth-like materials violently undulate and swing up and down, like a magic carpet released by a monster, and the whole sheet floats upwards. Hamid felt countless pairs of big hands hitting him, and the loud sound made his ears hurt.The rain suddenly disappeared, replaced by a hot, humid wind; the morning light filtered in through the mist of steam, and a rainbow appeared over the ruins—the roof was blown away by the blast of the explosion.Hamid scrambled forward, something wet and sticky dripping from his face, leaving spots of red on the floor.The shelf holding the room temperature fusion device had collapsed; fifteen meters away, on the molten metal, the plastic had melted into a puddle of slime.

He saw the anti-gravity elevator, or rather, the rest of the elevator.The thing floated on the molten metal like a half-burned candle.It's over, I can't go up.Hamid's mind went blank, and he finally took his eyes off the scrapped elevator, took a few steps back, and leaned against a pile of anti-gravity materials.The pads swayed constantly, they were soft but insulated and kept some noise out.The last bit of rain and fog in the warehouse was almost clearing away; outside the warehouse, the morning sky was blue with a touch of pink, and Hamid could easily see Roslyn Marr's barge, with its densely packed slopes and four in the middle of the opening. The spherical pressure chamber can be seen clearly.

God.Most of the warehouse roof is... gone.There was a big hole in the far wall.Where!Hamid saw the two guards, their backs turned to him, one leaning on top of the other.They were so preoccupied with finding a way out of the warehouse that they had forgotten about Hamid.A stream of silvery metal barred their way, and one wrong step would sink their ankles all in.They were lucky, though, and fifteen seconds later they escaped from the warehouse and disappeared from Hamid's sight. He should be able to get out there too...but he didn't come in to escape the warehouse.Hamid struggled to his feet, croaking loudly.The warehouse is still full of popping and hissing, but not as loudly as before; if it's sane, it's sure to be heard.He wiped the blood from his lips and limped along the pile of anti-gravity material.You must not die, quack, don't die.

There was movement in every direction: those anti-gravity pads seemed to come to life.The top cushions were rolled up, stretched out, rolled and floated upwards; the layers below were constantly shaking and deforming.The mass of particles produced by the fusion of room temperature fusion reactors is inactive, and ordinary matter will not react at all; but the anti-gravity pad is not ordinary at all.Around the bottom anti-gravity pad there was some kind of radiation glowing, very soft, not like the eye-burning glow that comes from melting normal temperature fusion reactors—not bursting out, but slowly waking up.Hamid's eyes were drawn to the rising gravity-defying material; in the morning light they fluttered like gray, tawny banners.He leans back.Directly above, the farthest ones have become specks in the blue sky.maybe--

Something hit his leg so hard that Hamid staggered and almost fell to the ground. "Wow. It's too noisy." Guagua found him!Hamid knelt down and grabbed it by the neck.It's all right!Anyway, much better than himself.Like many small animals, a little bump is nothing to Quack.Examining Quack's shoulder with both hands, he found several cuts and a few drops of blood spattered there.It kept saying: "It's so noisy, it's so noisy." It looks very docile, not at all like the usual mischievous look. "I know, quack. But it's going to be alright." He looked up again, and the anti-gravity pads were... drifting toward the worm's barge.It's crazy to do this... Just then, the sound of sirens came from outside.

He patted croaks, stood up, and climbed onto the pile of cushions closest to him.Hundreds of anti-gravity pads are piled up like blankets, and Hamid's booted feet feel like stepping on sponge latex, sliding back a little with each step.He clung to the edges of the cushions above and managed to get near the top.Now he could test the mats that were flying up.The top one had begun to undulate in an imperceptible breeze.Hamed grabbed the mat, took a pocket knife from his pocket, and slashed down hard.It feels full in the hand and the cuts in the mat are smooth.He cut off one, stuffed it in his pocket, and then grabbed the mat with both hands, the four-meter-wide square swinging in his hands, struggling upward.It pushed him back slowly; Hamid found his feet leaving the pile of cushions - as fast as the unattached cushions! "Wait for me! Wait!" Quack hopped around his feet in despair.Two meters, three meters.Hamid took a breath, then let go.He fell firmly to the ground and couldn't move for a long time.Just now, if he hesitated for a while... However, that was just an "if".He took the cut piece of anti-gravity material out of his pocket and watched it writhe in his fingertips.This reddish-gray material has a cyclic pattern on it, which is very intricate.Tourists say it's nothing like a normal temperature fusion machine.The controller uses a lot of advanced technology, but as long as you master the method, it can also be manufactured in the crawling world.As for the anti-gravity material... you can use theory to explain how it works, but in practice, it relies on constant rebalancing at the atomic level.It is said that it also contains billions of protein-sized processors.Even for people in the Leap world, this is an import - it's from the Beyond world.Until just now, Hamid had been skeptical of this; the principle of flight seemed to him to be simple.But... the logic of these things is not so easy to explain.They are like living things, or complex control systems.Larry once said that there are many "self-aware devices" in Celestial's technology, maybe this is one of them. Hamid cut the anti-gravity pad into two pieces of unequal size.The cuts are smooth, unlike when cutting clothing or leather.He let go...they floated up slowly like leaves in a breeze.After a few seconds, the larger piece flew ahead, and the distance between the two pieces of material grew wider and wider.I can land by cutting mats!He recalled another detail: when he grasped the mat just now, it had shifted toward the place where his hand was exerting pressure, so the direction was no problem. The sirens grew louder.He looked down at the pile of anti-gravity stuff.so funny.A week ago, he was dreading taking a commercial flight west. "Want to play a game, Quack? It's the best ever." He crawled back to the top of the anti-gravity pad.The top one just started to twitch.Judging from the previous situation, they had about thirty seconds left.He wrapped the anti-gravity pads around his body and fastened them under his arms. "Quack! Come up to me!" It came, but not with the usual glee.Maybe it's been through too much trouble this morning - or maybe it's just a little smarter than he is at knowing when to be afraid.Hamed grabbed it and strapped the other end of the anti-gravity pad under her shoulders.The cushion vibrated upwards, and at the same time it seemed to retract of its own accord.Hamed can still move his hands and cut mats, but the knots he's tied appear to be tighter.He hugged Guagua's waist and let it lean against his chest.When Quack was a child, his father often hugged it like this.The difference was that it was grown now, with its front legs hanging down from his shoulders. The pads under his arm tightened.He stood up with this force.And then -- with your feet in the air.Hamid looked down at the molten racks, at the silvery stream that had eaten away at the warehouse floor.Croaking made the sound of a little boy crying.