Chapter 20 Chapter 18 Grand Hotel

Of course, the Three Great Hotels of Ganymede (called "Three Great Hotels" in the entire solar system) are of course not big at all, and if they can be rated as one and a half stars on Earth, they are considered lucky.Since the closest competitor is hundreds of millions of kilometers away, the hotel management doesn't feel the need to work very hard. But Poole had no complaints.Although he often hopes that Danny is still around, helping with daily chores and communicating more efficiently with the semi-intelligent devices around him.Poole felt a wave of panic as the door closed behind the (human) waiter.Apparently the waiter was so awed by the presence of this distinguished guest that he forgot to explain to him how room service works.After five minutes of fruitless talking to an unresponsive wall, Poole finally made contact with a system that understood his accent and commands. How will "Interstellar News" report?Astronauts were trapped in three hotel suites, hungry and cold to death!

There are even more ironic things.Although the three major hotels are unavoidable to name the only luxury suite, when he was taken into the "Bowman Suite", Poole was still shocked when he saw the classical life-size hologram of his old shipmate.He recognized the image, too; his own official portrait had been made around that time, shortly before the mission began. Poole soon discovered that most of the Goliath's mates had families in Wolfsburg, and they were all eager to allow Poole to meet their other halves during the 20 days they were scheduled to berth.Poole plunged headfirst into socializing and working in the outpost colony almost immediately, and now, instead, the Tower of Africa seemed more like a distant dream.

Like many Americans, Poole harbors a nostalgic nostalgia for small communities: everyone knows each other—in real life, not as a fictitious image in computer space.The population of Langshen City is smaller than that of Qigan Town in his impression, but it is not far from this ideal. Three main pressure domes, each two kilometers in diameter, stand on terraces overlooking the endless ice fields.The heat provided by Ganymede's second sun (formerly called Jupiter) was far from enough to melt the polar caps, and this is the main reason why Lycanthropy was founded in such a desolate location: Unlikely to crash.

Staying inside the dome, it is easy to turn a blind eye to the outside world.As Poole got acquainted with the mechanics of the Bowman suite, he found himself with a small but rather wonderful choice of environments.He can sit under a palm tree on the shore of the Pacific Ocean and listen to the gentle murmur of the waves; if he likes, he can also choose the roar of a tropical hurricane.He can soar along the peaks of the Himalayas, or swoop in the Valle de Mariner.He could walk in the courtyard of the Palace of Versailles, and wander in the streets of five or six great cities at different times.Even if the three major hotels are not the most famous resorts in the galaxy, these proud facilities will definitely make the more famous predecessor hotels on the earth pale in comparison.

Still, it's kind of ludicrous to travel across the greater part of the solar system to visit this strange new world, while wallowing in nostalgia for Earth.After a few tries, Poole finally came up with a compromise for his dwindling leisure time—for entertainment, but also for inspiration. It is his long-standing regret not to have been to Egypt.Now, he's more than happy to be able to relax under the gaze of the Sphinx (the time is set before the controversial "restoration") and watch tourists climb the huge blocks of the Great Pyramid.The illusion is extremely realistic, but the edge of the uninhabited desert is the carpet of Bowman's suite, which is really abrupt.

However, what is reflected above is the sky that humans only saw 5,000 years after the pyramid was built.That is not an illusion, but a complex and ever-changing reality on Ganymede. For this world's ability to rotate (like its companions) had been deprived many years ago by Jupiter (the new sun that hung motionless in the sky, born of a giant planet).One side of Ganymede is always bathed in the light of Tai Kui.And the other hemisphere, although it has always been called the "dark side" by everyone, this name is like the earlier "dark side of the moon", which is easily misunderstood.In fact, the "dark side" of Ganymede is just like the "dark side" of the moon, and the bright light of the old sun can be seen for half a "Day".

In a rather puzzling coincidence than useful, Ganymede takes almost exactly one week (seven days and three hours) to orbit its parent star.Attempts to create a "San-day/Earth-week" calendar were abolished centuries ago because of the confusion they caused.Like the inhabitants of other worlds in the solar system, the natives used the number 24 to name the standard day instead of the week when they followed the universe. Because Ganymede's nascent atmosphere is still very thin and almost cloudless, the motion of the celestial body presents a never-ending spectacle.At their closest approach to Ganymede, Io and Callisto are nearly half the size of the Moon seen from Earth—the only thing Io and Callisto have in common.Io is so close to the Sun that it can orbit it in less than two days, and even show visible movement in a few minutes.Callisto is three or four times farther away than Io, and it would take two Sani days (or 16 Earth days) to complete a leisurely circle.

The physical nature of the two worlds is even more different, frozen Callisto, barely affected by Jupiter's transformation into a small sun: it remains a wasteland of shallow icy craters clustered so The closeness is because the huge gravitational fields of Jupiter and Saturn competed with each other, competing to attract the fragments of the outer solar system, so that no part of the entire satellite surface escaped the constant impact.Since then, apart from a few stray bullets, nothing has happened for billions of years. On Io, some things happen every week.As one local philosopher remarked, it was hell before Tai Kai was born—and now, purgatory.

Usually Poole adjusts the image to observe the fiery landscape, getting a closer look inside the caldera and the landmass, which is larger than Africa and is constantly being reshaped by volcanoes.Sometimes, geysers of incandescence burst hundreds of kilometers into space, like giant trees of fire growing out of a dead world. Torrents of molten sulfur overflow from craters and blowholes, and their colors change in a narrow spectrum of red, orange, and yellow, like a chameleon, forming colorful allotropes.Before the dawn of the space age, no one could have imagined such a world existed.While all was fascinating from Poole's vantage point, he also found it inconceivable that anyone had ever ventured onto a world where not even robots could advance...

But he was most interested in Europa.At its closest approach to Ganymede, it is almost as large as Earth's unique moon, with a waxing and waning cycle of just four days.Although Poole didn't notice its symbolism when he chose to enjoy the scene for himself, it now seems that Ganymede hangs in the sky above another ancient mystery-the Sphinx, which is more suitable. But that's all. How much Ganymede has changed in the 1,000 years since Discovery sailed toward Jupiter, even if Poole specified the full-size view without zooming in.On the smallest of the Galilean moons, the spidery bands and lines that once covered the globe are gone, except for the poles.There, the kilometers-thick global ice shell persists under the heat of Ganymede's new sun; elsewhere, at the comfortable temperature of Earth, primordial oceans evaporate in thin atmospheres. boiling.

It's also a comfortable temperature for creatures that emerge from the water after the ice shell, which acts as both a protection and a hindrance, has melted.Spy satellites in orbit, showing minute-by-minute views, have discovered an organism on Europa that has evolved to the amphibious stage.Although they are still in the water most of the time, the "Europeans" have begun to construct some simple buildings.All this happened in just 1,000 years, which is truly astonishing.But no one doubts that the explanation lies in the last and largest slab of stone—the kilometer-long "Great Wall" that stands on the shore of the "Sea of ​​Galileo". No one doubts that the slab guards its experiments in this world in its own mysterious way—just like it did on Earth 3 million years ago.