Chapter 2 Chapter two

When we were growing up, Uncle Paine visited us on the moon on occasion, though he didn't come very often.He brings a lot of interesting gifts.Some exotic fruits, as well as some novel games and difficult puzzles.A small holographic cube holds photos of our lives as we grow from baby to year in a nursery.He's always been so sweet and sweet with us, but I think as we get older, he tends to care less and less for us. Apparently, all he cared about was the space station itself.He removed dust and debris from the deepest tunnel, which had been used as a workshop and warehouse.He repurposed the tunnel and installed some new equipment and spare parts that the robots could use to repair themselves and maintain the space station.

For most of the visit, he spent time with Diane and her virtual mother in the library and museum.He studies old books, holograms, paintings, and statues, removes them for safekeeping, and puts reproductions back in their place.At one point, he kept the excavator busy again, removing stone chips from around the space station, crushing them into large blocks of concrete to strengthen the station's foundation. To celebrate our twenty-first birthday, he had robots measure us and make several spacesuits like his.These space suits are so funny-looking, reflect light like a mirror, wear on the body like our own skin, and when we wear it to go outside the dome observation room, we feel very comfortable at home.We walk down to see the old spaceship that stands in the launch site next to his nimble "glider."His robots dug the spaceship out of its collapsed hangar, and now he's having them repair it with new parts from Earth.

One of the giant excavators extended a long cantilever to keep the spacecraft upright.A robot is replacing a damaged landing pad, smoothly fusing it to the spacecraft in some way that doesn't heat up. Casey spoke to the robot, but it ignored it.He climbed up and knocked on the cabin door of the spacecraft, and there were several clear echoes in our helmets. "Open the door," Casey ordered to the ship, "let us in." "Refused to enter." The rigid mechanical voice of the spaceship had Paine's accent. "Who is going to authorize it?" "Must be authorized by Lunar Site Director Sand Paine."

"Go and ask the supervisor to allow us to enter." "Access denied." "Use your brain," Kathy shook his head, and he muttered sarcastically through my helmet, "if you have a brain." Back in the air chamber, Paine was waiting there to help us take off our space suits.Casey thanked him for the gift, then asked him if the ancient spaceship would stay on the moon. 'You don't have to think about it,' he gave Casey a knowing look, 'we're going to ship it back to Earth. " "I wish I could follow along." "I'm sorry I can't bring you." He was determined, but a burst of joy deepened the gold on his face, "It will be parked in the center of our new historical memorial in Australia. This historical memorial represents our restoration of prehistory. The achievements of civilization, showing the history of the earth's environment and people on earth before the big impact."

He stopped and smiled at Tanya, who smiled back, blushing. "It is indeed magnificent! Discovering the lunar ruins is my greatest fortune, and my work here has been the center of my life for many years. It fills a gap in human history and answers questions that scholars have pondered for many years. You are in There is also its own place in the memorial hall, which is a hologram recording your childhood life." Kathy asked again why we couldn't see it for ourselves. "Because you only belong here," his voice sharpened with irritation. "Because the agreement that allowed us to excavate the space station must be followed. We agreed to restore the space station to its original state and not bring back any genetic material from it, so as not to contaminate the earth. We want to keep the site as it was before the impact, guard the sky, and protect the earth from any future violations."

We were all unhappy when he told us that day that he had finished working on the site.As a farewell present, he took us two by two into lunar orbit.Casey was with me, and we sat behind him in the Glider.Although we have observed space and Earth countless times in the dome observation room in this life, this flight is still an exciting adventure for us. Looking out from the inside, the shell of the spaceship is as transparent as a mirror, and we are sitting in the spaceship as if suspended in the boundless space.The gray and desolate ruins stretched slowly underfoot, then gradually shrank, and finally the moon floated like a shining bubble in the dark harbor.Although I didn't see anything touched by Uncle Paine, the surrounding stars suddenly shone brightly, and the Milky Way shone brightly around us like a wide belt studded with beautiful jade.The filtered sunlight is less dazzling, and the image of the sun is enlarged so that we can see that its surface is covered with sunspots.

Uncle Paine still didn't make any moves, but now the mainland of Australia was enlarged and extended.The desert has disappeared, and a long and narrow new ocean lies in the middle of the continent, like a crescent moon, and the sea is blue. "That's the memorial," he pointed to the wide tongue-shaped green in the ocean, "if you could go down to Earth - and I don't want that to happen - you could see yours in the 'Tycho' pavilion." replica." Kathy asked, "Is Mona there, too?" Mona Lisa is the woman that Casey's cloned father took when he boarded the spaceship before the big impact, we only know them from their holograms, his name is "Ai Cheno", on the black chest There is a Mexican cross flag and a Chinese totem, while her belly is a picture of Leonardo.

Those old photos are enough to make us imagine the courage and desperate passion that drove them to the moon. They met in a Medellín nightclub.Kathy fell in love with her from the first moment she saw her hologram and dreamed of meeting her one day.I once heard him ask my virtual father why she wasn't cloned with us. "You ask the main computer," my virtual father shrugged noncommittally, and said in a dull computer-simulated voice. "She should also be cloned. Her tissue samples are still stored in the cryogenic freezer." "Do you know why she wasn't cloned?"

"The main computer won't explain it," he shrugged again. "If you asked me to guess, maybe she and Kiel were some 'treshers' who came to the moon without permission. Or their clones reserve places." "Trespasser?" Kathy's black face darkened even more. "At least Dee Ford thinks their genes are worth keeping. If I'm worth being cloned, so is Mona. Someday she'll have life again." .” Back in the observation dome of the space station, Paine said our final goodbyes.We thanked him for the exciting observations he gave us of the planet, for the clothes and all the gifts, and for our lives.It was a meager return, he said, and nothing compared to what he found on the space station.He held our hands, kissed Tanya and Diane goodbye, and donned his silver spacesuit.We followed him down the gas chamber.I didn't expect Tanya to love him so much. As we watched the shiny teardrop-shaped spaceship fly to Earth, she couldn't hold back the tears and ran back to the room crying.

"It's us who made them salaried," Kathy murmured, "and we have a right to see what we've done." When the robot put the recovered spacecraft back to its original launch position, the excavator slowly left and joined other machines: they were busy again, digging a row of deep pits.We watched them bury themselves under the rubble, leaving a new row of holes, and I think this may leave a mystery for future astronomers.Casey called us back to the observation dome to watch a trailer roll out of the hangar under the crater. "We want to go to the earth!" He put his arms on Pippi's shoulders, "Who wants to go?"

An Li glared at him: "Didn't you hear what Uncle Pan En said?" "He's gone," he grinned at Pippi. "We have a plan." They haven't talked publicly about their plans, but I've seen them whisper and go about their business.While the time-warping technology of the Glider ship is still a mystery to us, I know that the robot stewards taught them a little about astronomy and electronics, and I also know that they secretly constructed a Virtual Paine, begging him to tell them more about the New Earth, because they couldn't do it with the real Uncle Paine. "I don't know about your plans," Anli muttered, "but I've seen the dictation reports from the observers who came to Earth to assess the reconstruction. They couldn't find anything of interest, and never Not back to the moon." "So what?" Pippi shrugged, "It's better than wasting our lives sitting here waiting to die." "We only belong here." An Li stubbornly repeated what Pan En said, "Our mission is to keep the space station operating, and we cannot allow ourselves to take stupid risks. I want to stay here." Diane chose to stay with him, but I don't think they're in a relationship.What she loves is the space station itself, and all the ancient earth heritage on the space station.Even at an early age, she worked with her virtual mother, documenting every item Paine took to copy and return. Tanya has her heart set on Paine, and I think she must have often dreamed that one day he would bring her back to Earth.When he left her and left alone, her heart was filled with the pain of being abandoned, and her eyesight was hit hard. "He did love us when we were kids," she whimpers when Pippi asks her to join him and Kathy, "but that's because we're kids, or to him , we are all interesting pets. He finds it interesting because we are different from his species, and immortal humans like them have no children." Pippi asked her to join again, I think Pippi fell in love with her.Whatever they find on Earth, it will always be bigger than our tunnels, and certainly more exciting.She cried and kissed him, and chose to stay.Where there was no her on the new earth, even if she found Paine, Paine would not want her.She promised to contact them by radio and pray for their safe return. On the space station, I was often seen as a historian, and Earth was the source of history.I shook Pippi's and Kathy's hands and agreed to join. "You won't be accepted," Tanya warned. "You'll have to take care of yourself." She prepared water bottles and supply kits for us, and reminded us to remember to bring travel clothes when we stepped out of the spacecraft.We walk up to the observation dome one by one and watch as the tow truck pulls the ship out of the hangar and the robot begins to refuel it. "It's time for us to go," Kathy said with an eager look on his face. "It's time to say goodbye." Diane and Anli held our hands with serious expressions.Tanya hugged Pippi for a long time, and kissed Kaiyou and me goodbye.Tears were streaming down her face and it made me sick.We put on our shiny spacesuits and walked out of the space station to the ancient spaceship.We boarded the landing pad, but this time the spacecraft still refused to open the hatch. Casey stepped back, talking on the radio in his helmet. "This is a priority operation order from Director Sand Paine," his clear voice imitated vividly, "Special order: Reactivate spaceship SP2469." The hatch responded with a "click" I'd never heard before. "The order is effective immediately," Casey continued. "Tycho space station personnel K.C. Carr, Pedro Ravaro and Duncan Yale are authorized to board the ship and go to Earth immediately." The hatch slid open silently. I thought there were robots operating in the control room, but when I entered the spaceship, I found that there was no one there, not even the pilot's seat.We watched in awe as the spacecraft launched itself.The hatch closed with a hissing sound as the cabin sealed.The engines blazed, the ship shook, and we flew away from the moon. Looking back at the space station, all I could see was the domed observation room, a small eye peering skyward on the rough gray roof of the crater.It dwindled before my eyes, disappearing in the shadow of the great pothole and the bright black peak between Tycho's crater.The Moon, too, was getting smaller until we could see its entire sphere, a gray, squashed sphere falling behind us into a black abyss. Paine might have spent only an hour or a split second in the Glider, but in this ancient rocket ship, we have enough time to observe the slowly growing planet ahead, and it orbits three times at the same time. center point rotation.Most of the time, the ship made almost no sound, except for an occasional whistling to correct our course.We floated freely in mid-air, carefully avoiding the controllers, lest we make a big mistake.We took turns strapping ourselves into our seats and trying to sleep, but everyone was too excited to sleep.We spend most of our time observing the Earth with binoculars, searching for landmarks that represent Wen Lai. "Nothing," Casey kept muttering, "no cities, railroads, canals, or dams. Nothing but greenery. All we see are forests and grasslands. Did they return the planet to its original state? state?" "It's hard to say now, we are too high off the ground." Pippi shrugged as usual. In the end, the spacecraft seemed to wake up from a deep sleep and carried us into the atmosphere.We flew twice around the enigmatic planet and saw the continent of Australia slowly unfolding ahead.The engine roared and we flew down again, toward the tongue-shaped green space between the tiny tips of the crescent-shaped lake.