Chapter 36 Chapter 30 The Galaxy Descent

In the officer's room, the sudden full-strength lift seemed to suspend the execution.The terrified officers saw the devastation of the landing site and understood that they had only one way to escape under the circumstances.Now Zhang has adopted this method, allowing them to gain their precious lives again. But no one knows how much longer they will last.Only Zhang knew whether the spacecraft had enough propellant to reach a stable orbit, and even if it did, Captain Laplace thought dejectedly, the madman might still have shot Zhang down again.Although the captain never believed that she was crazy, because she knew exactly what she was doing.

Suddenly the thrust changed. "The number four engine just cut out," said an engineer, "I'm not surprised, probably because the machine is overheating, because at this level it can't last that long." Of course, the direction of travel of the spacecraft has not changed, and the reduced thrust is still advancing along the axis of the spacecraft, but the landscape on the surveillance screen has been tilted crazily.The Yinhe was still ascending, but not vertically any more.It had turned into a ballistic missile, heading for an unknown target on Europa. The thrust suddenly dropped again, causing the horizontal line on the video monitor to return to its original position.

"He cut the reverse engine, that's the only way to keep us from flipping sideways, but can he maintain altitude? That's awesome!" The watching scientists couldn't understand the magnitude of this, the view on the monitor had completely disappeared, obscured by a blinding white fog. "He dropped excess propellant to reduce the weight of the spacecraft..." The thrust tapers off to zero, and the spacecraft goes into free fall.In a matter of seconds, Yinhe passed through the thick cloud of crystalline ice formed by propellant scattered into the air, and slowly approached Europa's central ocean below the cloud at one-eighth gravity.At least Zhang doesn't have to bother with finding a landing site; from now on it's going to be standard operating procedure, the same kind of arcade game familiar to the millions of people who have never, never will be able to travel to space.

At this time, you only need to maintain the balance between thrust and gravity, so that the descending spacecraft can maintain zero speed at zero altitude, even if the first American astronaut deliberately chose a landing site with water, and Zhang’s innocence at the moment There is almost no room for error in this action.If he makes a mistake (and it's unlikely anyone will blame him after the first few hours), there's no home computer saying to him, "Sorry, you crashed. Do you want to try again? Please." The answer is yes or no..." Deputy Commander Yu and his two companions were still on standby with weapons outside the bridge, ready to carry out the most difficult task.They had no monitors that would allow them to see what was going on outside the spacecraft and had to rely on messages from the officer room.There was no message from the hidden loudspeaker either, which was no surprise since Chang and Rose didn't have much time or need to talk.

The landing went very smoothly with very little shaking.The Yinhe sank only a few meters into the water, then floated up again, bobbing up and down, and the weight of the engine kept it from wobbling. At this time, for the first time, a clear voice came from the hidden loudspeaker. "You madman, Rose," Chang said in a weary rather than angry tone, "enough is enough, you almost killed us." Then there was a gunshot, followed by silence. The companions waited patiently, knowing that something must have happened inside.Then, when they heard the door locks being unlocked, they gripped the screws and metal bars in their hands and prepared to meet the enemy.She might hit one of them, but not all of them.

The door slowly swings open. "Sorry," Deputy Commander Zhang said, "I must have passed out for a while." Then, like any normal person, he passed out again.