Chapter 9 Chapter 8 Jupiter flyby

The spacecraft's screen showed a panoramic view of Jupiter, surrounded by white cloud bands, mixed with mottled orange and pink, and the Great Red Spot is like an evil eye.Three-quarters of the entire scene was a bright disk, but no one paid attention to this part, and all eyes were fixed on the edge of the crescent-like dark side.There, in the night of this planet, the Chinese spacecraft was about to face its fate. That's ridiculous, Fogeld thought.We can't see anything at 40 million kilometers away.But that's okay, we can learn all we want to know from the radio communication.

Two hours earlier, the Qian had retracted its long-distance antenna into the protective heat shield, interrupting all audio, video and data transmissions.Only the omnidirectional signal instrument was still transmitting, which accurately showed the position of the Chinese spacecraft entering the cloud cluster about the size of the mainland.In the control cabin of the Leonov, only beeps echoed shrillly.Each pulse had left Jupiter since two minutes ago; by this time, its origin had probably become an incandescent cloud wafting through Jupiter's stratosphere. The signal sound started to get louder.The beeps were distorted, some were even lost, and then reappeared.A layer of plasma surrounds the Qian and will soon block all communications until the ship reappears.If it still shows up.

"Look!" Max exclaimed, "There it is!" At first Freud saw nothing, then, on the edge of Jupiter's bright side, he made out - a tiny little star - twinkling where it was impossible to see stars, against the background of Jupiter's dark side Down. It looked stationary, but he knew it was moving at a hundred kilometers per second.Slowly, it became brighter, no longer an almost immeasurable starlight, but began to extend and grow.An artificial comet flies across Jupiter's night sky, leaving an incandescent trail thousands of kilometers behind. A final distorted beep from the tracker, and then all that is heard is the meaningless hiss of Jupiter's electromagnetic radiation, one of those sounds that fills the universe and is of great concern to human beings and their cause. no help.

The Qian's voice could no longer be heard, but they could still observe it.They saw the tiny, extended trail of light moving across the bright side of the planet, which would soon be lost in the darkness of night.At that point, if all goes according to plan, Jupiter will capture the craft, slowing it down.When it resurfaces from behind the giant star, it will become a new moon of Jupiter. The trail of light disappeared. Qian followed the curve of the planet and leaped into the dark side.Nothing could be seen or heard until it emerged from the shadows again—less than an hour, if all went well.For the Chinese, it will be a very long hour.

For Chief Scientist Vasily Olov and Communications Engineer Sasha Kovalev, the hour seemed short.They benefited greatly from observations of the small star, whose several appearances and disappearances and—most importantly—the Doppler shifts in the radio signal provided vital information about Qian's new orbit. information.Already the computers on board the Leon Lev were digesting the data to work out when and where the spacecraft would reappear based on various assumptions about the deceleration of Jupiter's atmosphere. Vasily turned off the computer monitor, turned around, unbuckled his seat belt, and addressed his observations to the patiently waiting audience:

"It'll take forty-two minutes at the fastest for them to reappear. Why don't you go for a walk? That way we can focus on the scene better. See you in thirty-five minutes. Hush! Go!— —” The unwelcome group reluctantly left the bridge—but to Vasili's annoyance, everyone returned after thirty minutes.He was chiding them for their lack of confidence in his calculations when the familiar beep of the Qian's tracking signal burst from the loudspeaker. Vasily looked surprised and hurt, but soon he joined the applause, and Floyd didn't know who started the applause.They may be competing with each other, but they are all astronauts, both at the furthest end of the human journey—"envoys of humanity," the noble title used in the United Nations space treaty.Although they did not want the Chinese to win, they certainly did not want disaster for them.

Focusing on themselves also made them care more about Money, Freud could not help thinking.Now the possibility of Leonov's success has also greatly increased; the "Qian" proved that the strategy of using air brakes is feasible.The data on Jupiter are correct, and there are no unexpected or potentially fatal crises in its atmosphere. "Okay!" Tanya said, "I think we should send them a letter of congratulations. But if we did, they wouldn't say anything." Some of the crew were still laughing at Vasily, who was staring at the output of his computer with great disbelief.

"I don't understand!" he cried. "They should still be behind Jupiter! Sasha,—give me the speed read from their signal!" There was another silent conversation with the computer, and then Vasily blew a low, long whistle. "Not quite right. They're in orbit around Jupiter, that's right--but they won't be able to rendezvous with Discovery. Now their orbit will take them past Io-follow them for five minutes, and I'll figure out more accurate data." "Anyway, they're on a safe track," Tanya said. "They can always correct it later."

"Maybe. But even if they had enough fuel—I doubt it—it'd be a waste of days." "So we still have a chance to win." "Don't be so optimistic. We're three weeks away from reaching Jupiter, and before that they can change a dozen or so orbits and choose the one that's best for the rendezvous." "But—assuming they still have enough propellant." "Of course. And it's the only thing we can count on." All discussions took place in fast and furious Russian, which Floyd could not understand at all.When Tanya kindly explained to him that the Qian was on the wrong track and heading for an outer satellite, his first reaction was: "Then they're probably in serious trouble. If they call for help, are you going to How to do it?"

"You must be joking. Do you think they would do that? They're too arrogant. Besides, it's impossible. We have no right to change the mission schedule, you know that well. Even if we have enough fuel..." "Of course, you're right; but it's nearly impossible to explain why to ninety-nine percent of humanity, who barely understand orbital mechanics. We've got politics to consider—it seems like if we can't provide Help, it's too bad for us. Vasily, you--let me know as soon as you figure out their final orbit, okay? I'll get to my cabin and make some preparations."

Floyd's cabin, or rather a third of it, was still filled with storage, much of which was piled behind the curtains of Chandra and Kono's bunks, waiting for them to wake from their long sleep. Only those two berths will be occupied.He managed to clear a small space that belonged to him, and he was assured that as long as the man was free, he would help him to clear another two cubic meters of space. Floyd unlocked the communications control box, set the code, and called up the message from Washington about the Money.He wondered if his inhabitant had ever been lucky enough to decipher the message, a code based on two-hundred-digit primes, of which the NSA was so proud, that it claimed that existing computers would survive the "big crunch" of the universe (The Big Crunch Contrary to the big bang at the birth of the universe, it is the description of the final outcome of the universe by some scientists.——Rechecker's Note) It has not been able to decode before.This is an unprovable claim—only disproof is possible. Once again he stared intently at the photo of the Chinese spacecraft, taken just as it was showing its true colors, about to leave Earth's orbit.The faint trail -- not very clear, because it was far from the spy satellite at the time -- was headed up toward Jupiter.This is what interests him the most, even more than the more practical aspects of orbit profiling and performance evaluation. Even speculating on the most optimistic assumptions, it is difficult to see what the Chinese really want to do.They had spent at least 90 percent of their propellant in this frenzied move across the solar system.Unless it was a suicide attempt - which cannot be ruled out - only hibernation and a rescue plan could be a normal explanation.But anyone with a brain would not believe that China's hibernation technology has reached this level. But a thinking person is also often wrong, often confused by the mass of unfiltered facts he is confronted with—the so-called information "noise".Good work on the Money, although Freud hoped that the material sent to him had been carefully filtered, given the short amount of time it was given, as it was clear that some of it was utter rubbish, unlike this The tasks are not connected. However, when you don't know what you're looking for, it's important to let go of prejudice and preconceptions.Something that at first glance seems irrelevant, or even meaningless, can turn out to be a crucial clue. Freud sighed and began to search through the five hundred pages, focusing as much as possible on the tables, graphs, photographs—some of which were too blurry to make out—news, scientific conference attendance. Lists, titles of technical publications, and even business documents scroll quickly across high-definition screens.An efficient espionage network was obviously running for it, who would have thought that so many Japanese full memory modules, Swiss airflow micro-controllers or German radiation detectors would be transported to the dry riverbed of Lop Nur-they lead to Where is Jupiter's starting point? Some things were written into the material by accident; they couldn't have been related to the mission.If China secretly ordered a thousand infrared remote sensors through a virtual agency in Singapore, it would only be relevant for the military, and the "Qian" would of course be almost impossible to be tracked by heat-sensitive missiles.Another interesting piece of news is the order of specialized sounding equipment from Glacier Geophysics in Anchorage, Alaska.What idiot would think a space expedition needed that kind of thing—the smile froze on Floyd's lips, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.My God - they dare not!But, they did have the guts; now there is finally a rationale for it. He took another look at the photo of the Chinese spacecraft and the inference of the plan.Yes, that's right - those long slots in the tail, next to the deflection electrodes of the drive system, are just the right size... Floyd called the bridge. "Vassily," he said, "have you calculated their orbit?" "Yes," said the navigation engineer, sounding downcast.Floyd suddenly understood something, and he let out a long breath. "They're going to rendezvous with Europa, aren't they?" There was an unbelievable exclamation from the other end. "My God! How do you know?" "I don't know—I'm just guessing." "Can't be wrong—I've checked data from six locations. Their braking strategy worked as they expected. They're heading for Europa—can't be by chance. Seventeen more They were there in an hour." "And into orbit." "Possibly, that wouldn't require much propellant. But why?" "I'm going to make a bold prediction. They'll take a quick survey—and land." "You're crazy—or do you know something we don't?" "No—it's just simple reasoning. You'll kick yourself for letting go of such an obvious fact." "Okay, cheapskate. Why would anyone want to land on Europa? For God's sake, what's there?" Floyd was slightly intoxicated by his victory.Of course, he could be all wrong. "What's on Europa? Only the most precious thing in the entire universe." He overdid it a little; Vasily, no fool, took the conversation off him at once. "Of course—it's water!" "That's right. Tens of billions of trillions of tons of water. Enough to fill the propellant tanks - for them to cruise through all the moons, and then enough left over for it to rendezvous with Discovery and go home. I hate to say that , Vasily—but our Chinese friends are better than us.” "Always so cocky, of course, but always gets away with it."