Chapter 2 Boat

The boat will be docked and the lights will be extinguished. The ship swayed in the deep sky, like a drop of water in the darkness, slowly flowing into the arc-shaped hub.The ship was old, with a dull silvery glow, like a badge eroded by time, leaving texture and blurring the majesty.The ship seemed tiny in the dark, lonely in the vacuum.The ship, the sun, and Mars form a line, the sun is at the far end, Mars is near, and the ship walks in the middle, with a straight course, like a sword whose blade disappears in the darkness ahead.Darkness surrounded it from all sides, and the ship glowed faintly like a drop of silvery water.

The boat is lonely.It docked little by little in silence. The ship, called Maeus, is the only link between Mars and Earth. Before the birth of the ship, this route used to be noisy.The boat has never been seen before, that is the memory of its previous life.It doesn't know that a hundred years before it was born, its location was once occupied by transport ships, shuttling back and forth, like a river rushing, landing in dust and sand.It was the late 21st century. People finally broke through the triple defenses of gravity, atmosphere and psychology. Uneasy or triumphant, they transported various materials to distant dream planets non-stop.The competition extends from near-Earth space to the surface of Mars. Non-commissioned officers from different countries wear uniforms of different colors, speak different languages, and complete different national tasks in different development plans.The transport ships at that time were heavy and heavy, wrapped in gray-green iron sheets, like elephants made of metal, with slow and stoic steps, arriving one after another, opening the hatches in the rising red-yellow dust, Dump the machinery, unload the food, and send out a tank full of passionate minds.

The ship probably didn't know that seventy years before its birth, the politicized transport ships were gradually replaced by the development ships of the merchants.The Mars base has been built for 30 years. The tentacles of the businessman are like Jack’s pods, and they finally rise into the sky inch by inch. Jack is able to ascend to the sky, looking around in the middle of the dust and sand with the bills and the step-by-step plan.The initial operation was a physical business. Merchants and politicians allied to obtain Mars land management rights, resource trading rights, and space product development rights, and used moving words to sell the two planets to each other.Then management began to turn to knowledge itself, which was the same as the historical transformation that took place on the earth, except that the process of two hundred years was compressed into two decades, and intangible assets began to become transaction-oriented. Businessmen grabbed scientific brains and established between bases. virtual barrier.At that time, the night sky ship was full of banquets and contracts, and the gorgeous revolving restaurant tried to copy the replica of the Earth Building.

Unbeknownst to the ship either, forty years before it was born, fighting airships began appearing on this waterway.For various reasons, the Mars War of Independence broke out. The explorers and engineers between the bases formed an alliance to launch a joint resistance to the ruler of the earth. They used space and exploration technology to fight against money and power politics.At that time, warships were set up on the waterway, like chains, to resist invasion. It was once huge and surging like a sea tide, and retreated silently like a sea tide.The small and fast airship came from afar, crossed the starry sky with the anger of being betrayed, calm and wild, dropped bombs, and let the blood bloom silently in the dust.

These past ships do not know.In the year it was born, the war had ended for ten years, and everything had disappeared for a full ten years.The night sky returned to its usual silence, and there were no longer any figures on the waterway.Darkness washed everything away, it was born in darkness.It is condensed from dissipated metal fragments, facing the sea of ​​stars alone, traveling between two planets, traveling alone during the once endless business roads and artillery-fired journeys. The boat moved silently.There are no more staggered walkers in the night sky.Like a lonely silver drop, it passes through the distance, through the vacuum, through the invisible cold barrier, through the layers of the past that no one talks about in the two worlds.

The ship has been born for thirty years, and the worn shell is full of traces of time. ※※※ The interior of the ship is a maze.No one but the captain can figure out its true structure. The hull is huge, with stairs going left and right, many rooms, and winding corridors.There are many storage halls in the ship, like one decadent palace after another, magnificent, with piles of utensils, surrounded by colonnades, but the corners are full of loneliness that no one cares about.The corridor is a long and thin passage between the palaces, connecting the living room and the banquet hall, undulating and criss-crossing, just like the intricate plot in a Dickens novel, shuttling back and forth.The boat is indistinguishable from top to bottom, the floor is the side wall of a huge roller, people walk by centrifugal force, and the metal columns converge towards the heart.Carved columns, printed floors, vintage mirrors on the walls and paintings on the ceiling, this is a tribute to the time of the ship, a memorial.To commemorate that there was an era when human beings were not separated from each other.

This time, the ship carried three teams, one was a 50-member Earth delegation, the other was a 50-member Mars delegation, and the other was a 20-member youth student group. The delegation is for the exhibition, two-way exhibition.When the first Mars Expo is successfully concluded on Earth, the first Earth Expo will be officially held on Mars.The two sides carried all kinds of strange goods, showed Mars to the earth, and showed the earth to Mars, so that the humans on both sides could reconfirm the existence of the other side.This is the first full-scale contact between the two sides after a long period of isolation.

The members of the student group are a group of 18-year-old children who have returned home after five years of life on Earth. The name of the group is Mercury, which is taken from another planet besides Mars and the Earth. It is said that the patron saint of that planet It was Mercury, the mythical messenger. ※※※ Forty years after the war ended, the ship sailed for thirty years.It is the only link between Earth and Mars. The ship had seen a few negotiations, a few deals, a few contracts, a few quarrels, and nothing more than that.For a long time it was idle, the huge cabin was empty, there were no passengers in the rooms, no goods in the storage room, no drums in the banquet hall, and no missions in the cockpit.

Both the captain and the captain's wife were gray-haired.They have worked on the ship for thirty years, lived and aged on the ship.The boat is their home, their life and the world. "Have you never gone down?" Outside the captain's room, a beautiful girl asked cautiously. "I still went down for a few years, but then I couldn't go down as I got older." Opposite her, the captain's wife answered with a kind smile.She has curly silver hair, two crescent-shaped arcs at the corners of her mouth, and her posture is graceful, like a winter tree. "why?"

"I can't adapt to the back and forth changes in gravity. When people get older, their bones won't work." "Then why don't you retire?" "Garcia doesn't want to. He wants to die on the boat." "Are there many people on board?" "When there is a mission, there are more than 20 people. When there is no mission, it's just the two of us." "How often will there be a mission?" "You can't tell. Sometimes it's four months, sometimes it's over a year." "So long? Isn't it lonely usually?"

"It's okay. I'm used to it." The girl was quiet for a moment, her long eyelashes lowered slightly, then raised again. "Grandpa talks about you all the time. He misses you very much." "We miss your grandpa too. There are photos of the four of them on Garcia's desk all year round, and we look at them every day. Go back and say hello to your grandpa." The girl smiled, her smile was gentle but a little sad. "Grandma Ellie, I will definitely come to see you in the future." She smiled gently because she liked the grandma in front of her, and smiled sadly because she knew that she would probably never come again for a long time. "Okay." The captain's wife also smiled and stroked her long hair, "You are beautiful, just like your mother." The captain's cabin is at the front of the ship, next to the pilot's control room and balance ball cabin.The hut is at the corner of the junction of the two corridors, so it is not easy for ordinary people to pass by.A blue ball lamp hangs in front of the hut, shining a blue-white light within a square inch, shining on the heads of the old man and the girl, as gentle as moonlight.This is the only decoration that is the same between the hut and the house on the ground on Mars. Every time it passes the door, the blue light illuminates the memory of hometown.The door is made of white glass, blending seamlessly with the white walls on both sides. Only the raised carvings on the door inadvertently suggest the difference in quality.The carving is a small silver spaceship, flying with its head held high, and a string of tiny bells hanging from the stern.There is a line of small letters under the spaceship: Ellie, Garcia and Maeus.The door was closed quietly, and the corridors on both sides were long and quiet, as if extending to infinity. Garcia is the captain's name.He and the girl's grandfather are lifelong comrades-in-arms.When they were young, they were close comrades in the same squadron. They were born in the war and fought together in the war for more than ten years.They are all pillars of Mars after the war. The girl's grandfather stayed on the ground, and the captain went to the sky. After the war, Mars had a very difficult time. The barren soil, thin air, insufficient water, and dangerous radiation were all fatal weaknesses, and they had to face daily survival dilemmas. .The development before the war has always been supplied by the earth, and most of the food is carried by the spaceship, just like an unborn baby, which has not cut off the connection with the mother's nutrition.Independence after the war was like the pain of birth. Babies who cut their umbilical cords had to learn to walk by themselves.During that period, Mars was the most difficult, and there were always some things that had to be obtained from the earth, which even the most intelligent brain could not create out of thin air, such as animals, such as beneficial bacteria, such as organic macromolecules in oil.Without them, survival is just maintenance, and it is difficult to prosper after all.It was at that time that the captain boarded the ship. It was the tenth year after the war, and many Martians were not in favor of begging the earth, but he persisted, and as the first attempt at Martian diplomacy, he fought alone on the edge of the earth with a trace of determination.He understood the attitude of the earth better than anyone else: the humiliation of defeat turned into hatred and schadenfreude at this time, but he could not retreat, once he retreated, the new homeland would be stunted forever. The captain was tied to the ship for the rest of his life. He lived on the ship and sent messages to the earth. He insisted, pleaded, threatened, and seduced.He has been on a ship for thirty years and never got off the ground again.He is the foreign minister of Mars.In the thirty years of his long voyage, Mars and the Earth had their first business, the first exchange of personnel sent to each other, the first exhibition and the first batch of children who went to study abroad.Garcia is the captain, and the captain is Garcia.His identity and his name are intertwined like flesh and blood, and cannot be separated again.Allie, Garcia, and Maeus, these are the only words engraved on the door. The girl exchanged pleasantries with the captain's wife for a while, and was about to leave when the captain's wife suddenly stopped her from behind. "By the way, there is a word that Garcia wants to bring to your grandfather. He forgot to say it just now." "What? Say it." "Garcia said: Sometimes the fight for the treasure is bigger than the treasure itself." The girl pondered for a while, as if she wanted to ask something, but she didn't ask.She knew that the captain's words must be related to diplomacy, and it was inconvenient for her to ask more about such a big matter.So, she nodded, said she remembered, then turned and left.Her back is light, her calves are straight, her toes are slightly spread out, and she steps on the ground like two feathers, like a dragonfly on water, like a dust-free wind. The captain's wife watched her disappear before turning and entering the house. The bell on the door rang softly in the still night.She looked at the dark room and sighed silently.The room was very silent, and the captain had already fallen asleep peacefully in the dark.His body was getting weaker and weaker, and before the conversation just finished, he had to go to bed because of fatigue.She didn't know how many days he could last, and she didn't know how long she could last. She only knew that since she followed him on the boat, she had seen today's arrival.She was already ready to spend the rest of her life on this ship with him, and if she could live one more day, she would sail between the earth and Mars for one more day.She entered the room and closed the door gently behind her. The girl is Luo Ying, an eighteen-year-old student in the Mercury Group, learning to dance. ※※※ The name of the ship, Maeus, comes from the direct combination of the names of Mars and Earth, which vividly illustrates the nature of the spaceship. It not only embodies the touching spirit of communication and compromise, but also is another example of a pragmatic name that lacks aesthetic feeling. The technology of the ship is not complicated, and the structure and engine retain the pre-war tradition.Solar power is stored, and the cylinder rotates to obtain gravity.Such a structure is safe and strong, but bulky and slow to move.Whether it is Earth or Mars, wartime technology has been vigorously developed, and they have the ability to build more convenient spacecraft and reach each other in a shorter time.But Maeus is the only one, and thirty years have passed, and no one has replaced it.Its slowness and bulk make it non-aggressive, thus achieving a compromise balance that both sides know well.It beats cleverness with clumsiness, swiftness with slowness, and ability with incompetence.In the cold vacuum where the fear and doubts have not dissipated, it slowly draws a gentle arc like a giant whale.It knows better than anyone that the most difficult thing for two parties who have been at war is not the physical distance.The most quaint, and possibly the most superior. The interior of the boat is divided into four zones, corresponding to the four ninety-degree divisions of the cylinder.Areas are connected by free corridors, but they are far apart and the paths are complicated, and ordinary people seldom communicate with each other.The three groups and their crews lived in one area each, and were on the same ship, sailing for hundreds of days, but rarely had direct contact.There are many banquets, but most of them are polite. Each of the three groups has its own style. The Mars delegation finished all their missions and was about to return home, so they were in a happy mood, relaxed to the point of slack, slovenly, and talked about food, children, many adventures on Earth, and middle-aged troubles in a homely tone. The long-lost food and utensils are like a fish in water, talking and laughing happily. The student group held the last carnival.These twenty children left home at the age of thirteen and became adults at the age of eighteen. They are the only brothers of the same race. They are scattered in every corner of the earth on weekdays, and they rarely get together. For them, this voyage is really a precious reunion.For a whole hundred days, they gathered together, drank and laughed, played ball in the weightless ball cabin at the bow, and played and sang every night. The Earth Mission is a whole other story.The members of the delegation came from various countries and were not familiar with each other. They were still in the stage of mutual understanding. Except for official meals, they only talked cautiously in the small bar.There are government leaders, well-known scientists, industrial tycoons and media tycoons in the regiment.In a sense, they are similar people, accustomed to being surrounded by eyes, but alienated from each other in their hearts.They wear simple clothes, only revealing luxury on the cuffs; their words sound casual, but they avoid talking about themselves; the pride in the corners of their eyes is lowered, but people can see that they are lowering. In the small bars of the Earth District, they are often seen gathering in twos and threes, wearing thin fringed shirts, talking in low voices.The bar is arranged according to the habits of the earth, dark and reserved, with thin whiskey flowing between the ice cubes in the wide mouth glass. "Well, to be honest, do you feel the anger between Ivandonov and the king?" "Ivandonov and the king? No. I don't think so." "Observe. You, more than anyone else, should observe." Those who spoke were a middle-aged bald man and a young man with brown hair.The questioner was a middle-aged man, with a wide smile, a smooth-shaven chin, and light gray eyes that shifted like summer sea water.The young man didn't speak much, and sometimes he only answered with a smile. His curly hair covered his forehead, and his dark brown eyes were hidden under his browbones, making his expression hard to see.The middle-aged man is called Tyne, and he is the heir and CEO of Thales Media Group on Earth.The young man's name is Yi Ge, who is a documentary director accompanying the group and a contracted artist of Thales Group. The Ivandonov and Wang mentioned by Tyne are representatives of Russia and China in the delegation, and they are cold-eyed because of their respective territorial issues.The members of the delegation are complex, and there are long-standing conflicts in the background of each country. There is no bayonet on the surface, but there are mixed feelings in private.Tyne is a stateless person.He holds passports from four countries, lives in five countries, eats food in six countries, and suffers from jet lag in seven countries.He always watched this kind of conflict between countries with a smile, but he didn't take it seriously.He holds the most typical concept of life in the late 22nd century, laughs at the country, and adopts an incomprehensible and teasing attitude towards the historical issues left over after globalization. Ig understands what's going on, but he usually doesn't respond.It is quite normal that the delegation is full of different desires.Everyone who comes to Mars has something they want, and Yige is no exception. "Do you know what your best shooting subject is this time?" Tyne asked him with a smile. "what?" "A girl." "Girl?" "A girl in the Mercury cluster, named Luo Ying." "Luo Ying? Which one?" "Black hair, the one with the longest hair, very white, a dancer." "Maybe I have an impression. What happened to her?" "She will have a performance when she returns to Mars this time. A solo dance. It should be quite beautiful. If you take pictures with her, the market will definitely like it." "and then?" "Then what?" "And... other reasons. Your real reasons." "You ask too much." Tyne smiled, "However, I can tell you. Her grandfather is the current governor of Mars, and she is the only granddaughter of the great dictator. I just found out." "...Then do you want to ask the governor for instructions?" "No. Try not to let anyone know. I don't want to get in trouble." "Aren't you afraid to go back and cause trouble?" "The question of going back will be discussed later." Iggy didn't speak, he didn't agree, he didn't refuse.Tyne didn't ask him again.Such common silence is best.No semblance of consensus has been reached.Yig had no shackles of promise, and Tyne had no notoriety of abetment.Yige shook the cup in his hand silently, and Tyne looked at him with a smile. Tyne has experienced too many film releases, and knows what kind of selling points can attract what kind of people, and also knows what kind of problems and how to avoid them.Iger has just entered the industry not long ago, and he still has a strong academic atmosphere. He has a lot of ideas and doesn't like to follow the conventions.Tyne believes in the power of time. He has seen too many fledglings who think they are lofty, and too many enlightened people who have finally changed.You can only live if you can sell, so don't be arrogant. Electronic jazz music was playing in the bar, swaying slowly, covering all the discussions and secret talks on the table.The interior is warm and the ties are loosened to a discreet arc.There is no waiter, drinks are chosen from glass buckets on the wall and flow automatically.A hemispherical stained glass shade hangs from the roof, exuding a dim light, covering the friendly-looking faces and thoughtful heads.Occasionally, laughter can be heard, and the last greetings before landing are exchanged. The goals of the delegation are complex, but there is a general direction, that is technology.Technology is money.Throughout the twenty-second century, knowledge and technology are the key words, the basis for the interdependence of the various parts of the world, and the new currency forms of the financial system.The international dependence of technology, just like the gold standard finance in the past, maintains an uncoordinated balance in the complex and fragile world relations.Knowledge exchange began to play the most important role in the world, breaking through the barriers of war and including Mars.People realized that Mars was a farm of scientific engineers, knowledge made it independent and knowledge made it profitable. Some music swayed, some lights swayed, some smiles swayed, some shrewd calculations swayed. The bar is dark, with pictures from the old days hanging on the wall, no one will look carefully.Unbeknownst to the newcomers, the cracks in the past are hidden behind the photos.One photo covers a bullet hole from twenty years ago, and the other covers a wound from ten years ago.There used to be an old man with golden hair and lion roaring here, and there was also an old man with white hair and white beard here to expose the deception.Their names were Galman and Ronning, and they were the other two of the four photographs on Garcia's desk. All conflicts are subsided, all unpleasantnesses are documented as misunderstandings, and all traces are covered up.The bar is still an elegant bar, and the photos are framed in dark brown borders, well-proportioned and neatly hung. ※※※ There is still half the night, and the boat is about to dock.The party is about to end, and the excitement is about to die down.The stage for the guests set up on the ship will be disassembled, the napkins and flowers on the table will be withdrawn, the pillows and sleeping bags will be put away, the screen will be darkened, the dust will be cleaned, the storage palace will be emptied, and all the rooms will return to a transparent and quiet state, Only the smooth floor and colorless glass tables, chairs and benches are left, and only the bare body of the boat is left. The ship has been filled and emptied many times.Every wine table has been covered with table curtains of different times, and every roll of carpet has witnessed the confrontation of different ages.The boat is used to being emptied, used to grow from nothing to nothing, from gray to colorful and then to gray. There are many photos hanging in the corridor of the cabin, ranging from black-and-white photos of the era when humans had just invented the camera before they migrated to space, to three-dimensional images of their respective prosperous and proud eras after the war.Strolling along a zigzag corridor, caressing the gray walls, walking along the Roman columns, and going up and down the stairs, one can travel through many different ages and let the time be scattered.This walk will not bring one to any end of time, because the photos are not arranged in chronological order.The post-war connection before the war, and the connection between 2096 and 1905 broke up the sequence and obscured the differences.The Mars and the Earth live together on the wall, and arrange the history of multiple cycles in multiple logics. Every time the ship docked, all the utensils and decorations were put into the cabinet, only these photos were not removed.No one knew that on those days when there were no missions, the captain would walk through every corridor alone and wipe every photo gently. ※※※ Before docking, the brightly lit party reached the last moment. Luo Ying has never been able to figure out the real structure of this maze-like spaceship, and only the weightless spherical cabin is her constant support in her heart.The weightless cabin is the huge spherical cabin at the rear of the spacecraft, which uses rotation to balance the reverse rotation of the cylinder.The ball cabin is surrounded by a viewing platform, which is her favorite resting place.From head to toe, the dome porthole can directly see the vast and boundless darkness of the universe. Luo Ying rushed over from the captain's room, and quickly walked through the corridor alone.There is no one on the viewing platform, and the night sky outside the porthole is vast.Before she got there, she heard a wave of cheers erupting in the ball cabin.She knew that the game in the ball cabin was over, so she quickened her pace, hurried to the side of the cabin, and pushed open the cabin door. The ball cabin is like fireworks in full bloom. "Who wins..." Luo Ying grabbed the nearest person. Before the man could answer, Luo Ying was hugged tightly by someone.She was startled.It's Ryan. "It's the last game." Ren said vaguely. He let go of Luo Ying, hugged Kingsley who came forward, and the two hit each other's shoulders hard.Anka pushed through the crowd and came to Luo Ying, but before he could speak, Sorin hugged his shoulders behind him.Chenia floated past them, and Luo Ying saw tears flickering in the corner of her eyes. Mira opened two bottles of Gio wine, and they spilled the wine into the center of the body together, and the wine turned into countless small golden balls floating, everyone kicked off the bulkhead of the ball, floated into the air, suspended and rotated their bodies, and opened their mouths Let the ball float into your mouth. "For victory!" Anka shouted, and the entire ball cabin echoed loudly. "For tomorrow's landing." Luo Ying heard him say something in a low voice. She raised her head and closed her eyes, and fell backwards, as if being held up by invisible hands, and lay in the embrace of the vast starry sky. This is their last night. ※※※ At six o'clock in the morning on Mars time, Maeus approached the still sleeping Mars continent with the sunshine, and docked with the transfer hub on the synchronous orbit on time.The hub is a ring, one side is connected to Maeus, and the other side is connected to fifteen space shuttles to and from the ground. It takes three hours to complete the docking, and the sleeping passengers on the ship still have plenty of time to fall asleep.The ship enters the central area inch by inch, looking out from the front side glass, the ring hub is like a magnificent temple gate, and the ship is like a pilgrimage pigeon, flying soothingly and holy.With the sun behind him, the arc of the hub was illuminated golden, bright and dark.The space shuttles lined up quietly on the other side, like the guards of the temple, spread out into a uniform fan, the left wing was connected to the hub, and the right wing pointed to the dusty red soil on the surface of Mars. At this moment, a total of thirty-five of the one hundred and twenty passengers on board were awake.These people either stood or sat, watching the spaceship dock in their own rooms or in an unoccupied corner.The moment the spaceship came to a complete standstill, everyone returned to their beds in one way or another quickly and without anyone noticing.The spaceship has never been so peaceful.An hour and a half later, soft music sounded, and everyone in their pajamas rubbed their eyes and greeted each other good morning.The process of organizing the luggage is quick and orderly, and the process of gathering is lively and the atmosphere is gentle.Passengers greeted each other, said goodbye politely, boarded different shuttles, and dispersed. This is 2190 years in the Earth calendar and 40 years in the Martian calendar.