Chapter 42 Chapter 35 Floating

The morale of the Galaxy crew can only be described as intoxicated by the unexpected news that their sister ship, the Cosmos, is on its way and will arrive sooner than anyone could have imagined. .While the Galaxy is floating helplessly in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by unknown monsters, those facts suddenly don't matter. The monsters make amusing appearances often, and those gigantic "sharks" make an occasional appearance, but never get close to the spaceship, not even by dropping trash from it.This is surprising, and strongly suggests that these monsters (unlike their terrestrial counterparts) have excellent communication systems.They are more like sea veins than sharks.

There are also all kinds of small fish in the water, which are worthless in the market of the earth.After many attempts, one of the crew (a hobby fisherman) caught a small fish with no bait.Since the captain would not allow breeding, he released the small fish back into the sea after carefully measuring and taking pictures. But the proud angler must pay for the prize.When he returned to the spaceship, part of the pressure suit he had worn while fishing reeked of sulfide, making him a laughing stock.This also means that there is another unfamiliar and unceremonious threat here: biochemistry.

Although the scientists were very happy, the captain no longer allowed fishing. He stipulated that they could only watch and record, but they were not allowed to collect, because after all, they were only planetary geologists, not naturalists.No one thought of bringing formalin, but even if they did, it probably wouldn't be useful. At one point, the spacecraft floated for hours in a floating pad, or mat, of a bright green substance about ten meters across.They are oval in shape and are almost all the same size.The Yinhe passed through the material without any resistance, and after the Yinhe passed, the matter quickly returned to its original shape.Some have speculated that the substance is some sort of social organism.

One morning the officer in charge of the watch saw something like a periscope rising out of the sea, and then he found himself looking into a gentle blue eye, which made him quite frightened; Looking like a sick cow, it looked at him sadly for a while, seemingly uninterested, and then slowly went back into the sea. Things don't seem to be moving fast here for obvious reasons. It's still a low-energy world, because unlike Earth, there isn't enough oxygen for animals on Earth to breathe from the long-term exposure to air from birth. Only The "shark" displayed violent activity during its first encounter, but that was its final, dying struggle.

That might be good news for humans, even though they'd be cumbersome with their space suits, but probably no creature on Europa could catch them (even if they wanted to). Captain Laplace felt that it was absurd to leave the ship under the control of the purser; he doubted that such a situation had ever occurred in the history of space and sea. In fact, there is not much that Director Li can do.The Yinhe was currently drifting vertically, one-third of the way above the water, and it kept a slight tilt until a gust of wind blew in to keep it at a speed of less than five knots.There is only a slight leak below the waterline and it is easily manageable, the important thing is that the hull remains airtight.

Although most of the navigation instruments are no longer available, they still know exactly where they are. Gnymede will transmit the correct position to the emergency signal every hour. If the Yinhe continues the current According to the route, it will land on a large island within the next three days.If it missed the island, it would drift adrift in the sea until it reached the boiling waters directly below the magic star.Although it wasn't necessarily a catastrophe, it was the worst outcome, and the Purser had been thinking about how to avoid this end. Even with proper materials and rigging, sails are of little help.He had lowered the makeshift anchor to a depth of five hundred meters in search of a current to exploit, but found nothing.The anchor hadn't touched the bottom of the sea, and he had no way of knowing how deep the water was.

That's good, it keeps them from the deep-sea earthquakes that have been wrecking this nascent ocean.Sometimes when a sudden wave rushed by, the Galaxy would shake as if struck by a huge hammer.For hours, tsunamis several meters high swooped down on some shores, but here in the deep water the biggest waves were not much bigger than a ripple. On several occasions, vortices suddenly appeared in the distance, which seemed dangerous (large ones could even suck the Galaxy into unknown abysses), but fortunately, they were so far away that at most they could only make the ship in the distance. Just spin a few times in the water.

On one occasion, a huge bubble rose up a hundred meters away, only to burst shortly thereafter. This time it was very impressive, and everyone agreed with the doctor's confession: "Thank God, we can't smell it. smell." Surprisingly, it didn't take long for all this strangeness to become familiar to everyone; within a few days, everyone's life began to settle down, and Captain Laplace's main problem was to keep his crew occupied. , laziness is the most serious morale problem, he really doesn't understand how the captain of an old sailing ship keeps the crew busy during the long voyage, because they can't spend all their time arranging gear or cleaning the deck .

The problem between him and the scientists was quite different.They are constantly proposing any tests and experiments which must be carefully considered before a decision of approval can be made.If he agreed, they would have to occupy the very limited communication channels on the ship. Since the main antenna on the spacecraft was displaced by an external force, the Yinhe could no longer communicate directly with the earth.Any connection had to be relayed through Gurneymede, and the widest channel for calls was only one million hertz; the only channel that worked was occupied by the video channel, making it impossible to send the signal through the computer network.And not just because they have nothing else to report to their audiences but the sea, what's going on inside the spacecraft, and a well-spirited but increasingly irritable crew.

There had been an unusual number of telegrams to second-in-command Chris Jr., whose mysterious responses were so curt that no one could get much information; and Captain Laplace finally decided to speak to the young man. "Little Chris," he said, meeting him in his private cabin, "I would be very grateful if you could reveal a little about your side jobs." Little Chris looked embarrassed and grabbed hold of the table when the boat rocked slightly due to a sudden gust of wind. "Captain, I wish I could, but I can't." "Can you tell me whose instructions it is?"

"Frankly, I'm not sure either." That is the truth.He suspects the messenger to be the 'Universal God Control Center', but the two memorable gentlemen who briefed him at Gurneymede have irresponsibly withheld this information from him. "As the captain of this ship, especially in this situation, I want to know what happened. If we can escape from here, I may spend the next few years in interrogation conferences, and you May have the same fate." Chris Jr. seemed reluctant: "Captain, so we better not get rescued, right? All I know is that there are high-level people who know there's going to be an accident on this mission, they just don't know what form it's going to take. I just Just being told to be on the alert at all times. I feel remiss, but I think I'm the only person they can find in this situation." "I don't think you should blame yourself. Who would have thought that Rose—" The captain paused, interrupted by a sudden thought, "Do you suspect anyone?" He felt compelled to add, "Me, for example?" But Things have gone crazy. Little Chris was lost in thought.Then I sorted out my thoughts and went on: "Captain, maybe I should have talked to you earlier, but I know you're very busy; I'm sure Dr. Vandenberger must have a part, he's certainly a go-between, they're all weird people, and I really don't know them." Or like them, he might add, their family views are too deep to be really friendly to outsiders.Of course, you can't blame them, because all the pioneers who want to tame the new world are almost like this. "Well, besides Vandenberg, what about the other scientists?" "They've all been checked. They're all legitimate, nothing unusual." That's not entirely true, Dr. Simpson had more than the quorum of wives at least for a while; and Dr. Siggins has a collection of odd books.Deputy Commander Chris doesn't know why he was told these things, maybe his excellent commander wanted to deepen his understanding of them, and he dared to regard these as extra and interesting benefits given to him by the God of the Universe Control Center . "Very well," said the captain, and sent the amateur detective back. "Please let me know if you find anything, anything that might affect the safety of the ship." Judging from the current situation, it is really hard to imagine what kind of thing that would be, and any further danger seems redundant.