Chapter 6 Chapter 4 Observation Room

"Frank, Professor Anderson thinks your physical strength is good enough to go out for a walk." "Glad to hear that. Do you know the word 'sick from stuffy'?" "I haven't heard of it, but I can guess it." Poole is used to this low g, so even striding seems normal.He estimated that this place should be half the acceleration of gravity, which is just right for people to feel comfortable.When they were walking, they met only a few people. Although they were all strangers, everyone smiled as if they knew him.Poole told himself, a little smugly, that by now I should be one of the most famous people in the world.This should help me a lot when it comes time to decide how to live the rest of my life.At least I have another century to live, if Anderson can be trusted...

The corridors in which they walked were featureless save for the occasional numbered door (each bearing a universal identification plate).After following Indira for about 200 meters, he stopped suddenly because he realized that he hadn't noticed such an obvious fact. "This space station must be huge!" he exclaimed. Indira smiled back. "Do you guys have a saying - 'You haven't seen anything'?" Poole corrected her absent-mindedly: "It's 'didn't see anything'." By the time he was startled again, he was still trying to estimate the size of the building.Who would have imagined that a space station is so big that it has a subway, even if it is only small, with only one carriage, and can only accommodate a dozen passengers.

"Observation Hall No. 3." Indira ordered, and the car drove away from the station quietly and quickly. Poole checked the time with the delicate watch on his wrist, which had more functions than he had yet studied.One of the small surprises is that the "Universal Time" is now used globally. The previous confusing and patchwork time zone system has been eliminated by the sophistication of global communication.In fact, as early as the 21st century, many people have discussed this issue; some even suggested that "sidereal time" should be used instead of "solar time".In this way, throughout the year, the 24 hours of the day will turn into noon in turn, so the sunrise in January will coincide with the sunset in July.

However, this "24-hour equality" proposal, and the more controversial calendar reform proposal, have nothing to do.It has been sarcastically suggested that this particular work should wait for some major advance in technology.Of course, there will come a day when this little mistake that God made is corrected and the Earth's orbit is adjusted so that each year's 12 months have exactly 30 days...   According to Poole's judgment of speed and time, they had traveled at least three kilometers before the car came to a silent stop.The door opened, and a soft automatic voice said: "Please enjoy the scenery, the cloud cover is 35% today."

At last, Poole thought, we were approaching the outer wall, and yet another mystery occurred: he had moved so far that the force of gravity had not changed in strength or direction!If such a displacement has not changed the gravitational acceleration vector, then he really can't imagine how huge this space station is... Could it be that he is still on a planet after all?But in other habitable worlds in the solar system, he should feel lighter, and usually lighter. The outer doors of the station opened, and Poole was inside a small airlock.He knew he must still be in space.But where is the spacesuit?He looked around anxiously—so close to a vacuum, so naked and unprotected, that it defied all his instincts.This kind of experience, once is enough...,

Indira comforted him and said, "It's almost there..." The last door opened, and through a huge window that curved both horizontally and vertically, he looked into the utter darkness of space.He feels like a goldfish in a fishbowl, hoping the designers of this audacious project are sane.These people would certainly have had better building materials than those of his day. Though the stars must have twinkled outside the window, Poole's narrowed pupils could see nothing but hollow darkness beyond the great curved window.He stepped forward, trying to get a wider view, but Indira stopped him, pointing forward.

"Look carefully," she said, "Didn't you see it?" Poole blinked and looked into the darkness, it must be a hallucination - how could such a thing happen?There was a crack in the window! He saw that from one side, it was impossible, but it was true.But how is it possible?He remembered Euclid's definition: "A line has length, but no thickness." If you look for it carefully, you can easily see a ray of light, which runs through the entire window from top to bottom, and obviously extends up and down beyond the field of vision.It's so close to one-dimensional that "thin" isn't even a word.However, it wasn't a 100% monotonous straight line, the entire straight line was scattered with bright spots of light irregularly, like water drops on a spider's silk.

Poole continued toward the window until the view was wide enough to see the landscape below.Familiar enough: the whole continent of Europe, and most of North Africa, as he'd seen it from space many times.So he's still in orbit after all; maybe right above the equator, at least 1,000 kilometers from the surface. Indira looked at him with a teasing smile. She said softly, "Come closer and you can look straight down. I hope you don't have a fear of heights." How can you say such stupid things to astronauts!Poole thought as he walked.If I had a fear of heights, I wouldn't be in this business... Just as this thought flashed through his mind, he involuntarily took a few steps back and shouted: "God!" look out.

He was looking down at the distant Mediterranean Sea from the surface of a cylindrical tower.The gentle curvature of the tower's walls suggests that it is several kilometers in diameter.But that was nothing compared to the height of the tower: the tower gradually got smaller as it went down, down, down, down, and finally disappeared in the clouds somewhere in Africa.He guessed that it should be all the way to the ground. "How high are we?" he whispered. "2000 kilometers. But you look up." This time he was not so scared, he was already mentally prepared.The tower gradually tapered until it became a thin shimmering line against the blackness of space.There is no doubt that the tower is all the way up, all the way to the Earth's synchronous orbit, which is 36,000 kilometers above the equator.Such fantasies had been common in Poole's day, but he had never dreamed that he could see the real scene—and live in it.

He pointed to the thin line stretching from the eastern horizon to the sky in the distance. "That must be another tower." "Yes, that's the Tower of Asia. We must look like that to them, too." "How many towers are there?" "There are only four, equally spaced on the equator. The African Tower, the Asian Tower, the American Tower, and the Pacific Tower. The last one is almost empty, with only a few hundred floors completed. Nothing to see except the sea..." Poole, still absorbed in this awe-inspiring thought, was interrupted by another nagging thought.

"In our time, there were thousands of satellites scattered at various heights. How do you prevent them from hitting the tower?" Indira looked embarrassed. "You know, I've never thought about that, it's not my field." She paused, obviously searching, before brightening up. "I think there was a massive cleanup a couple of centuries ago. There aren't any satellites below geosynchronous orbit now." It made sense, Poole told himself, that there was no need for satellites at all, and the services previously provided by thousands of satellites and space stations could now be performed by these four skyscrapers. "Have there been no accidents? Haven't any spacecraft that took off from the surface or re-entered the atmosphere collided?" Indira looked at him in surprise. She pointed upwards and said, "But there is no such thing anymore. All the space stations are where they should be - up there, on the outer ring. I believe the last time a spacecraft took off from the surface was 400 It happened years ago." Poole was still chewing on the words, but one unreasonable little thing caught his attention.As a well-trained astronaut, he will be immediately alert to anything that goes against common sense, because in space, it may be a matter of life and death. The sun was out of his line of sight, high in the sky.But the sunlight filtered through the large windows and painted a bright band of light across the floor.Intersecting this band of light is another much weaker light.So, the window frame casts two shadows. Poole was almost on his knees before he could look up at the sky.For novel things, he thought he was immune; but seeing the spectacle of the two suns still made him speechless for a while. After breathing through, he panted and asked, "What is that?" "Huh, no one told you? It's 'Tai Kui'." "Earth has another sun?" "It didn't provide much heat, actually, but it did make the moon appear eclipsed... Before going to your 'second mission', that was Jupiter." I just knew there was a lot to learn in this new world, Poole told himself.But how many are beyond imagination.