Chapter 35 Chapter 29 Landing

Since Yinhe entered the transition orbit surprisingly smoothly, Deputy Commander Zhang has been facing difficult problems.For the next few hours, the Galaxy was in God's hands, or at least Newton's.Before the final braking and landing maneuvers, all there was to do was wait. Deputy Commander Zhang had considered trying to trick Rose by reversing the vector when approaching, so that the spacecraft would turn back into space and return to a stable orbit, and Gurneymede should have launched a rescue operation.But this tactic has a fundamental drawback: he will hardly survive long enough to be rescued.Although Zhang is not a coward, he really does not want to be a martyr in the history of space.

In any event, the chances of him surviving the next hour seemed to be diminishing.He was ordered to single-handedly control the 30,000-ton spaceship down to a completely unfamiliar place.Even on the familiar satellite, he did not dare to try such a difficult technology easily. "How many minutes until the brakes start?" Rose asked.It sounds more like an order than a question.Her knowledge of the fundamentals of aeronautics was so good that Zhang gave up the last sliver of illusions to try to deceive her. "Five minutes," he said reluctantly, "can I warn the rest of the ship to stand by?"

"I'll take care of it. Give me the mic...this is the bridge, we'll start braking in five minutes. Repeat, five minutes. Over." For the scientists and officials gathered in the barracks, the news was exactly what they had expected.Fortunately, the external (outside the spaceship) video monitor was not turned off, maybe Rose forgot, more likely she didn't care about it.So now the same helpless audience (or, more vernacularly, the captive audience) has at least an insight into what's outside the spaceship. The crescent-shaped and cloudy Europa now fills the rearview camera's field of view.In the dark environment where the water vapor condenses and condenses again on the backlit side, there is not a single place that is slightly clear and bright.It didn't matter, since the landing was guided entirely by radar monitoring until the last moment; yet it prolongs the agony for helpless spectators who depend on visible brightness.

No one has watched the state of this approaching world more intently than this man who has studied it for ten years and encountered countless setbacks.Sitting in a flimsy, low-gravity chair, loosely strapped into the seatbelt, Vandenberg barely noticed the change in weight as the brakes began. Within five seconds, full speed ahead again.All officials make quick calculations using relevant information.With no navigational information at all, there were many possibilities, and Captain Laplace awaited their conclusion. "Eleven minutes," he announced quickly. "If he doesn't reduce the thrust, he has already driven to the maximum, then it will take eleven minutes. If he is going to soar in the shadows at an altitude of ten kilometers, and then go straight down, it will take another five minutes."

He didn't need to add that the last second of those five minutes would be the most crucial moment. Europa seems determined to keep its secret forever.As the Yinhe soared silently above the cloudscape, there was still no sign of land (or sea) in sight.Then, for a few painful seconds, the screen went blank, revealing only the spacecraft's extended, rarely used landing gear.The noise it made a few minutes ago when it opened had caused brief confusion among travelers who now just hoped it would function properly. How thick is this damn cloud?Vandenberg wondered if this was the case all the way to the surface...

No, it's cracking open and thinning to reveal a whole new Europa that looks like it's just a few kilometers below. It is indeed novel, even for non-geologists.This is what the Earth might have looked like four billion years ago, with oceans and lands beginning to clash endlessly. Until fifty years ago, there was neither land nor sea, only ice; now, the ice on the side facing the magic star has melted, causing the water vapor to evaporate upwards and accumulate on the eternally cold and dark place. one side.Megatons of liquid are moved from one hemisphere to the other.This also exposed ancient bay beds that had never been exposed before, which were previously invisible with the faint light from afar.

Perhaps one day these eerie landscapes will be softened and tame by the growth and spread of vegetation, but for now they are flooded with lava mud, filled with steam, and occasionally have huge ridges raised by weird sloping formations. rock.It's clearly in a disturbance zone, so don't be surprised to see a newly formed mountain like Everest. There, the mountain loomed above the water.Vandenberg felt a tightness in his chest and a stabbing pain in the back of his neck.No longer needing to rely on remote sensing devices, but with his own eyes, he finally saw the mountain of his dreams.

As he expected, it was almost tetrahedral in shape, with sloping parts, but one side was almost vertical (great challenge for climbers, especially in this gravity they can't climb with bolts... …), its tops are hidden in clouds, while the gentler slopes facing them are still mostly covered in snow. "Is that why it's such a fuss?" someone complained in disgust. "It's a perfectly normal mountain to me, I guess if you've ever seen a mountain like that—" His words were interrupted by angry hisses. stop. While Zhang was looking for a landing site, the Yinhe was slowly approaching Mount Zeus.The spaceship has very little lateral control because 90 percent of the main thrust is going forward.The propellant is enough to sustain the flight for five minutes. After five minutes, although it is still possible to land safely, it is impossible to take off.

About a hundred years ago, Neil Armstrong faced the same dilemma, but he was not flying a spaceship at gunpoint. For the last few minutes, Zhang has completely forgotten about the gun and Rose, and he is absorbed in the problem at hand; in fact, he has become one with the big machine he controls.The only human emotion he still has is to be calm and happy.This is the high point of his training and his career, even if it may be his last mission. This appears to be the case at hand.He was now less than a kilometer away from the bottom of the mountain, but he still hadn't found a place to touch down.There was rough terrain everywhere, narrow valleys, boulders everywhere, and he hadn't seen a flat area bigger than a tennis court, and he was only thirty seconds away from the propellant redline.

At last he saw a flatter ground, the only chance he had now in such a short time. He nimbly drove the swaying spaceship to the flat place, it seemed to be covered with snow, it was indeed snow; a gust of wind blew the snow away, what was underneath?It looks like ice, it should be a frozen lake; how thick, how thick...? The five-hundred-ton thruster of the Yinhe's main jet touched ground that was both dangerous and fascinating.The ejecta spread rapidly outward and across the plane; the ice sheet cracked and turned over in its entirety; concentric waves of boiling water struck outward from the center as the spacecraft plunged violently into the suddenly emerging lake.

Zhang is worthy of being a well-trained official, and he did not hesitate to take contingency measures quickly.With his left hand he slammed open the safety lock lever, and with his right hand he grabbed the red emergency lever and pulled it to the restarted position. The Yinhe was lifted off again, and a series of computer operations took over from the manual operations, and without the "terminate program" command, the spacecraft was successfully driven upwards and returned to the sky.