Chapter 5 Chapter Four

Quinn inhaled desperately in the hot smoke, fumbling around with his scalded hands.He tore off the hot main magnet and hung up the spare wire-wound magnet.After the test, the current was there, but the supercharged light flashed again.Microscopic transistors block the flow of electricity.He had to pull back on the thruster, once, twice, until it was so weak he couldn't feel it.He stumbled into the cab, blinking his eyes blinded by tears, and found a blurry gray dot on the control screen—it must be Jannot.He couldn't see the exact numbers, but he knew the distance was still far, the thrusters were too weak, and the air was too foul.He fumbled and clicked, and finally included that distant gray dot as the flight target.Afterwards, he groped into the internal affairs cabin and looked for Life Brake—when Yoyo woke up, he was already lying in the plastic tent of the Aperture Station hospital.His arms were pricked like needles, his head was pounding, and his eyes were hurting badly.He fell asleep, woke up, fell asleep again, and found Clay sitting next to him when he smelled a pungent star mist.

"Damn fool!" His throat was still hurting. "I was a fool, I stole the blimp. I'm sorry, Clay, I'm so sorry—" "Don't talk." Clay shrugged, not looking very angry. "It's too late for us to be happy that you can come back alive. Your friend Jason told us that you are dead." "How come—" He was in so much pain that it was difficult to breathe. "how come--" "Relax, boy," Clay said with a smile, "don't talk, I know how you feel, I knew it when I got you out of the boat, and I've used life brakes too. However, Nurse Engel said , you'll be fine soon."

He waited for the next sentence, feeling slightly relieved. "Jason left you alone," Clay told him. "He turned around by himself in an emergency ship, just in time for the spaceship that was leaving back. He blew it like a god, saying that he witnessed an alien hiding in a broken ship, and said that the alien's laser light shined on your small spaceship Later, he found out that all the broken ships had been burned. "He also said that the alien killed you." With his eyes closed, he seemed to see Jason's expressionless smiling face and hear his lazy and condescending tone.

"I've wronged you, boy." "He's always been so cunning!" Clay let go of his clenched fist, and took a breath of Star Mist. "But we'll just have to listen to him. He said he was trying to save you, and then the alien with the blazing lasers climbed out of the wreck; he said he got out by putting full power on the thrusters and hiding in the back of the ship— " "Nonsense—" he couldn't help but whispered. "There are no aliens at all—" "Kirwan never lies." Clay's voice was clearly sarcasm. "But our telescopes haven't picked up any laser combat information, and the little ship has no trace of any lasers, and neither have you. Here and now, we all know he's lying, but back to the sun, who knows?"

Moaning in pain, he asked how Mindy Zinn was doing. "Let's go, I'm leaving with my family. When I went to the berth to see them off, I heard Mindy ask Jason what happened. When Jason told her that you were dead, she burst into tears." Clay shrugged, squinting at him. "Fate, it's the catchphrase in our hometown. Fate is bad, boy. I've been watching you and Mindy, and I can guess your feelings for her, but you'd better forget about her. She's getting better and better. Lovely, but she doesn't belong to you." Maybe, she belongs to Jason?The thought made him miserable.Needless to say, she was too small for Jason—however, would Jason think so?In any case, on the long journey to the sun, she would be surrounded by sun people like Jason who would fascinate her as much as he himself.

He knew that he should forget everything.But as he waited in a daze for Engel to nurse him after Clay left, he remembered the day she had told him for the first time that she had to go home with her parents. By then, Clay had already made two pairs of wings for him and Mindy, and the two of them flew together in the wide open space of the gym.Janenot has very little gravity, and they fly around freely, having a lot of fun.Suddenly he saw that Mindi's expression was not right, so he asked her what was going on. She pretended to be happy and told him why. "Mom promised me that when we got home, she would give me an important birthday present." Her voice trembled slightly.He saw her biting her lips tightly, and she would bite her lips when she was sad. "That is, my own sun mark!"

"I want you to stay..." Of course she was too young to stay alone.In addition, she said that her parents wanted her to have the opportunity to develop.And the boys at Aperture Station have no chance to develop in culture, career or any other aspects, this is what her mother said. They flew straight up against the slight cold, and the two of them floated on it for a long time.A strange floral scent emanated from her face and hair.When he asked, she laughed and said she had stolen a bottle of her mother's expensive Wildwood perfume because she wanted him to smell it.The scent quickly fades into the pungent plastic, ammonia fumes.The gymnasium is always cold as it cools the air for the entire aperture station.They crossed their arms, freed only occasionally to flap their wings, and talked about the good times they had spent together.

"The day we met," he teased her deliberately. "You said you didn't like me." "Oh, Quinn, if I really—" She wanted to laugh, but trembled and cried out.Quinn pulled her into his arms and they kissed.She swears that she will come back when she grows up; he whispers softly, saying that as long as possible, he will follow her to the side of the sun.Now lying in the oxygen tent, he seemed to see her still in his arms, so warm, so powerful, so wonderful, as if smelling the fragrance of wild wood mixed with ammonia, as if tasting their salty tears. In his thoughts, he worried that he would never see her again.Only with the help of Jason Cowan can he make his way to the other side of the sun.In a daze, he tried hard not to think about the mistakes he made hastily, but Jason kept walking into his dreams. He held the alluring sun mark, as if holding a shiny gold coin, and gave He, but immediately snatched it back.

Nurse Engier kept injecting disinfectant into his blood, slowly forcing the life out of his body.Soon, he was sober and able to sit up in bed, so she helped him down to walk.Clay also came over to cheer him up.As Carbon investigates the situation, he's still concerned that the wreck is really full of aliens. "Son of a bitch!" The fat captain made no secret of his distaste for Jason when finally convinced there had never been any monsters. "He's going home now, lying to the giants." "Can't you talk to the sun and tell them the truth?" "What good is that?" Carbon shrugged. "The giant loves his son, so he doesn't want the truth."

Finally discharged from the hospital.On the one hand, Quinn wanted to forget his hatred for Jason, and on the other hand he wanted to get rid of the shadow of humiliation, so he returned to the classroom to attend lectures, and went to the engine room to be on duty with Jomo. Clay also let him go to the Observation Dome to teach him how to use the engine when he had time.The detector lights are still working. "Enter Zen's contact code," Clay said, "to send an invitation to chat." Quinn frowned. "Those guys were capable of grabbing the Spica and taking it apart curiously. We knew they were around. They got our signal and read it, but they didn't respond."

"Afraid of us?" "Possibly." Clay shrugged. "They must have guessed what we did to that alien bird. Maybe—" He reached for Starmist. "Who knows what they are? Who knows what they think of us? Maybe according to their concept of time and space, they can spend a hundred or even a thousand years observing us." Alder Barron is back, bringing Clay a letter.After he finished reading, he stared at Xingwu for a while, and then read the letter again.Then, he handed the letter to Quinn with stern eyes: "Written by your mother." She writes that she and Olaf still work at Kirwan's lab.Olaf was buried in his research on superconductors, and after working on alien birds herself, she now taught some courses and started a new study of the emerging genetic differences between Sun people and Earth people. "Hearing of Quinn's death from Jason Cowan," she wrote, "was devastated." After reading this, Quinn felt a chill in his heart. "I've always had trouble leaving him so far away by himself. I've often wished I'd somehow get him to the sun anyway." His hands were shaking, and tears of anger welled up in his eyes, soaking the letter paper. "The news that there were aliens on that wreck was unbelievable, and that aliens attacked Jason and Quinn—even more unbelievable. At least I think so, because the alien birds we've seen don't seem to be able to Hurt. "The Zins are in trouble. They seem to have had an argument with Jason on the crew, I think, partly because they blamed Jason for Quinn's death, but partly because of Jason's disrespect for them The teenage daughter showed too much concern. "After returning to the laboratory, Aurelia gave a press conference. She reported on the work on Jannot and called for additional funds to continue contacting aliens. She believed that aliens could be our friends, And very irrationally questioned Jason's statement that aliens attacked humans. "Although she and Tiken were not formally arrested, the Ministry of Security has detained them for interrogation. The interrogation is still going on now - I think, you should remember what the Ministry of Security does, and their daughter is now living with her uncle.Her uncle made a fortune doing business with the people on Earth. " Quinn found Carbon and begged for permission to call his mother and tell her that he was still alive. "Forget it," the captain muttered unhappily. "Then how. You know that the laser communication network cannot be used for private matters. If you are not afraid of provoking the censor and Kowan, you can just write a letter." He wrote a letter to his mother, and then he started writing to Mindy, but he wasn't sure if Mindy remembered him.He also thought about finding a way to go back to the sun and meet her—but how absurd this idea was!He tore up the letter; he should have forgotten her. Although there are not many women in the aperture station, there are still a few.Lireth Engel, the light-handed nurse at the hospital, had alternated with Mindy in his dreams for months, but she had married the new doctor when a new doctor came along. And then there was Dolores Della. Dolores was a pretty blonde, with straight, long, golden hair like the sun-mark on her face.Her job is to manage the computers and plan the cultivation of crops in the garden.Sometimes she made up and sang mournful songs of her own, in sad ditties about the misfortunes of women who had fallen in love with giants. At the age of sixteen, he started working with Dolores at the gymnasium.He gave her the wings he made for Mindy and listened to her sing her songs.Outside the gymnasium, her husky voice was not pleasant, but inside, the echoes from the crooked walls turned her singing into a rumbling whimper, somehow igniting an old dream in his heart: as long as he If he can go to the Sun, he will be able to find his father in the Sun Empire and have a bright future! She taught him how to have sex late one night in the garden supply room, surrounded by plastic plant leaves and the pungent smell of ammonia fertilizer.They went there almost every late night that month, glued together in the dark, sweating profusely and panting.He almost forgot about Mindy, but then one day she told him they had to stop because she decided to marry Jo-mo. He was dumbfounded and hated both her and even Jomo.Suddenly Mindy came to his mind again, so he went to class, went to help Clay in the observation deck (now he can be alone on duty in the engine room), learned new things in every possible way, and no matter what happened, he still Thinking of Mindy, thinking of the side of the sun. Finally, Alder Barron is back, this time only two months late.He waited anxiously for the letter.There is a letter from my mother.He tore open the envelope and saw his mother in the brand new photo, standing with another woman in an unfamiliar earth park.The underground lawn is like a carpet, but it is too green, and there is a magical tree that goes straight to the blue sky.The woman she was with - it was Mindy! In order not to be mistaken, he looked at the photo again.Mindy was taller and thinner than she remembered, and her black hair was longer, loose and blowing in the wind.The pimples on her face were gone, and she looked a little serious, with a sad expression. "Quinn - my darling!" the mother wrote. "How sad it is for us to hear that you're dead. Especially your friend Mindy, who suffers more than me and Olaf. She's a student now, living in Zurich, doing some concrete research while trying to forget once Terrible experience-" The security staff called his name and threw him another letter.It's Mindy's crooked handwriting.He had a sore throat and quickly opened the envelope.The beginning of the letter seems very happy. "Dear Quinn, your mother has just delivered your letter to me. I'm so glad to know you're all right--my hands are still shaking, so I must have had a hard time reading it. I All is well. I'm in the lab, taking your mother's classes and working part-time as her research assistant. "However, two years ago—" At this point, the letter has changed to a different kind of ink. "I've got a terrible story to tell you, Quinn. It was horrible, even now. My parents—" The next word was painted over, so he couldn't see it clearly. "Their troubles started when they got into an argument with Jason Cowan on the ship to Codobosi. They knew it would be foolish to argue with Jason, but Mother just didn't believe that aliens could attack microships." After landing, the Ministry of Security detained them. "There is a reason for the politics of the Sun Empire. The Kewan family and the Chen family have always been at odds. There are allegations that the alien research conducted by the mother corresponds to the revelation that the sun people have devil blood, so the mother must make a decision. Explanation. "I stayed at my uncle's house in Azteca while my parents were detained in the Security Service. My uncle was always busy, but he treated me better than my aunt. When my parents were finally free, they came to this side of the planet for vacation. They A vacation like this is needed. The disaster has worn them out and ruined their careers. "I went with them in Zurich, they had their own land in the Empire of the Sun. They were just learning to ski. They said skiing was fun, like flying in the Janoint Arena, and they asked me to learn to ski too. "Of course, we've heard a lot about the Holy Tribe terrorists, but that area has always been safe. We never thought it would be dangerous, until one day the snow fell and the gas car couldn't drive. Suddenly a group of people led I rushed into the car with a gas gun and knocked out everyone in the car. When I woke up, my parents were gone. 'They've been kidnapped - terrible, Quinn!'" There was nothing Security could do .They blocked all roads with planes and tanks, but they couldn't do anything about it.A few weeks later, we received a ransom note. "Empire of the Sun never pays the ransom—that's what they say—but my uncle got the news of where my parents were hiding. In the end, my parents found it—dead. The security department didn't let me see my parents Their bodies were hidden in a cave, where they were tortured, tied up, and died of starvation and cold! The murderer was not caught and is still at large. "It was a terrible thing, Quinn. It took me several months to return to my uncle's house before I recovered. Later, my uncle sent me to the laboratory to be with your mother. Your mother is such a good person, and I too I like the tiring work here. "I haven't forgotten that, and I'll never forget that. Sometimes I have nightmares about masked men climbing into cars and slamming the sun mark on my mother's face and calling her a satanist. "It's scary! "I hate, Quinn, I hate everything this side of the sun. How I wish I could come back to you. Of course it's not realistic, and it's impossible. The supply ship doesn't know how many years it takes to go up. I even Not sure if the supply ship will go to—” The ink was changed again. "Quin—" There was a cloud of ink on the letter. "I've been thinking about us, a lot. I know life on this side of the sun is changing me. I guess you're changing too. I was so sad to leave you, especially when I heard you were dead. Distraught. But as it stands—" Another blob of ink. "We'd better forget each other, as completely as possible, so that we can live again--although we had a good time together, even though we don't want to forget it. Writing to say goodbye to you makes me Sad because I still love you dearly, but goodbye dear Quinn." A note in another ink followed. "For both of us's sake, don't reply. You'll see why." He didn't understand the reason and stayed up all night. At breakfast the next morning, Clay looked up from the star fog, blinked gravely, and said with a worried look, "It's hard on you, boy. Not Sensitive. Dee's right, she fits in." Live there. You should feel sorry for her, sorry for the whole sun side. The sun side stinks and rots, and Kovan and Revelator are still fighting over a pile of rotten meat!" Quinn shook his head vigorously. "Be realistic, child! If Kowan sentences you to death, you are dead. They will never back down. If you write to Mindy, you will get her into trouble, and even your mother." Quinn shuddered, envious of Clay in his heart that he could find comfort in the star fog. "If you want to dream," Clay went on. "Just dream about the future of our aperture. There are hundreds of snowballs here, and when we find one, we develop humans on it. The new worlds we build are separated by hundreds of thousands of miles. The saints want to occupy and destroy, but they can't do it!" Klay raised his strong-smelling palm and stared at him. "Think about it, kid." He nodded without a trace of joy. "good luck--" "Stop dreaming!" Clay said angrily. "You can't go there, hasn't Jason taught you enough?" "He lied to me, and I still remember the shame in my heart. It's just that no matter when, no matter how, I must go there." "If you've been there—" Clay shook his head, and took a breath of star mist. "It's a jungle in the sky, and the Kirwans and the Chens are like two tigers in the jungle. If you aspire to that kind of place, boy—you're a fool." "Even if I'm a fool—I'll still!" Aldebarron was delayed again, this time because of an engine failure en route. It finally came up under the command of new captain Macquarie Moon, when Quinn was nearly 20 years old.He waited impatiently for the letter to arrive.There was only one letter, from my mother, and Mindy didn't write a letter. This was expected, but he was still aching with disappointment. "We still live in the Kirwan lab," the mother wrote. "I don't see Olaf very often these days, he's too busy. They're working on something huge and confidential. He can't even talk." He glanced at ten lines, anxiously looking for news about Mindy. "The girl Zion has been gone for over a year. Going back to her uncle's. She has grown up, is very sweet and very capable.She could have accomplished something in planetary science.When talking to her about you, she said she was going to live a new life, but she didn't specify what it was.Now I have no news of her except a news report that her aunt was killed. " On the eve of Meng's departure back to the sun, Quinn and Clay were on duty together.There is no dawn in Jannot; the sky in Jannot is always dark until the sun rises violently over the near horizon.When it was time to get off work, the observation deck was still pitch black, only the red lights of various instruments were flashing.It was cold and silent all around.After checking the instruments, he set the detector to "automatic" and looked out to see that there were still lights around Alderbaren.People are still loading reactive substances on top.When Alder Barron took off, he was so tired that he almost fell asleep. An alarm bell woke him up from his dream.The buzzer made a harsh sound, and the signal light flashed continuously.The printer also flickered into activity.Clay was already bent over and waiting there.He stood for a long time, his expression focused and strangely calm, then turned around. "Something's coming." He said softly, but Quinn could feel the excitement inside him. "I do not know what it is." "Is it reflective?" "No, not from our beams..." Clay's voice gradually became inaudible, and he turned to stare at the boundless night sky pointed by the telescope, as if he wanted to see something else. "What..." "It's puffs of laser light. Very faint, bouncing like a probe signal—but not like ours." Clay bent over the printout.It was a long time before he raised his head.With the flashing red light, Quinn could see his strange expression. "Someone—something is visiting us from afar." Still far from her newfound den, the Queen encountered a halo of snow, enough to fill her empty stomach.She vaguely smelled a trace of heat, which meant that there was metal food in the snow ball that she had dreamed of.This time she couldn't stand the painful taste of hunger in her stomach anymore, she turned around and wanted to swallow it in one gulp. A small chironomus burst out of the snowball and flew towards her, startling her.The thing was pitifully small, but it was bright and had a heat that made her salivate.She was starving with hunger, turned around and flew towards it.Suddenly the creaking sound of the thing made her stop.At first the voice was weak, and it puzzled her, because she could understand what the thing was saying. "—I warn you to fly away! We are Newlyn. Here is the edge of our aperture, which we call Numarch. I hereby solemnly declare on behalf of Newlyn and Elder that this nuclear star and The world around it is ours! I warn you to fly away and stay away from us, for we-" She let out a scornful yelp that drowned out the harsh squeak of the thing, but soon it spoke again. "We know you. The place where you were born was once ours. We fought when you built your nest there. We lost to you only because you were so numerous and ruthless, but we learned from our failures. Experience. We have invented a weapon. Had that weapon been used, we could have driven you off. "But we didn't do that, and we came here because the friends of Alder forbade us to kill. We listened to them and left our country and gave it all to you. But we brought weapons, so we warned You don't want to chase after—" The little chironomus flew aside, and she swooped to catch it. "Go away!" it screamed frantically. "You are not allowed to enter our new aperture." The little dwarf was so rude, she was furious.Now she recalled the story of these little chironomids, a comic scene in her mother's ancestral legend.In the early days, these nasty little bugs liked to gather in groups in their ancestors' dens, emitting bad smells, and constantly bragging and threatening, and later the ancestors didn't bother to eat them. "—don't make us go to war," screamed the heroic little reptile. "Get out of here early! We don't use weapons just to respect Elder's habits. If you're hungry, and there's an uninhabited snowball, we'll show you the way, and you can have a good meal—" She saw it collapsed under her intense radiation, unable to move.She stuck her mouth out. "Go away!" It wanted to escape. "We won't allow—" As soon as she closed her mouth, the faint scream stopped abruptly. It's too small, and even the heat is deceiving.She chewed it a few times, but she didn't taste the slightest bit of metal.It was too small to solve any problems, but she swallowed it anyway. She licked her tasteless lips and flew towards the snow ball again.More chironomids flew in and out, but none of them were as bold as the one just now.But they are too slow to escape.She stopped and swallowed the whole snow ball in one gulp, so as not to chase after each one. The little snow ball was as bland and tasteless as that little chironomist, without the metal nutrition that the little life in its belly urgently needed.But she couldn't take care of that much anymore, and licked and ate the snowball clean.At least they could be used to feed her stomach and prop her up to the stars.Even here, she seemed to smell the seductive smell of stars. A small ice circle on the inner edge of Janenot's aperture, 600AU from the sun (equivalent to 600 times the distance between the earth and the sun), its wheel core is formed by interstellar dust, and the outer ice is mixed with water, ammonia and methane .Diameter: 129 km; average density: 0.9; surface gravity: 2cm/sec2; day length: 19.08 hours.The location of the aperture station.