Chapter 18 Chapter 17 The Frozen Rebel

Ann followed Anders into the opening of the cylinder.They descended slowly through the crack of the door.Inside the cylinder is a huge dark cave.At first, they couldn't see anything.Slowly, the two eyes got used to the dark environment.A passage and railing appeared before them. "A passage!" cried Anders, "I saw something like this on a reel—" The passage spiraled down the inner wall of the cylinder, with some wide platforms in between.On the platform closest to them, there are many black iron boxes stacked high up. "I see!" Anders said suddenly, "That's cargo. It means that this is the berth of some kind of service ship or auxiliary ship. Its tonnage is a hundred times that of the 'Golden Eagle'!"

He flew towards the nearest platform. "These are the loading docks—they're just level with the ship's hatch," he said quickly and excitedly. "Those CT guys used to walk up and down that narrow passageway. You think they What will it look like?" After Anders finished speaking, he glanced at Ann.Anna's gray eyes were wide open, full of confusion and fear.Anders was suddenly convinced that she had never been here before, and at the same time that no one had walked that passage in tens of thousands of years. Without thinking about it, he thought that those CT people only existed in the past, because everything around him felt old and lifeless in the darkness.However, when he really wanted to find the source of the sudden thought, he couldn't find any definite proof.Those invading CT people are dead.

This CT spacecraft seems to be silent, but because half of it is matter, there must be no air inside, so there is no sound.It's pitch black in there, but maybe those CT people don't need light.The handrails of that passage were as shiny as new, though there was no air to tarnish them, as if they had been scrubbed.Anders didn't see a speck of dust on that platform.He and Ann were able to enter the spacecraft only after the "Golden Eagle" spacecraft silenced the attacking spacecraft. "I think those CT people must have died a long time ago. That's how I feel. Maybe when their planet crashed into Adonis."

"Maybe." Anders nodded, he suddenly became confident, "Even if this is their Noah's Ark, they can't live here forever. Maybe they hope that our planets are also made of CT material, They set off from here in a service ship to find out the truth, and they all died, or most of them died." Anders' voice dropped uneasily as he remembered the strange, mysterious voices yet to be explained.Maybe a few survivors, just able to capture the Guards patrol ship and open fire on the Golden Eagle.Maybe they used their ancient technology to repair the broken spaceship, and escaped in it.

Anders nodded to himself dubiously.If so, the speedy disappearance of the ship could be explained.They must have replaced its nuclear reactor with some kind of CT reactor.But where can they go?The major planets in the solar system are still material, and it is impossible for a spacecraft of the same level as the "Persius" to conduct interstellar flight. "I don't know where they have gone." Anders shrugged impatiently, turned to look at Ann and said. "Let's go, goblin." He smiled at her, "It seems that they have left all their secrets to the Interstellar Corporation."

"No, Paul!" They were close to the narrow passage, and when Anders turned around, he reached for the tall glistening handrail without thinking.Ann stopped him with a shriek, and she pushed him away with her body. "Ann?" said Anders, "how—" When he saw the chassis under the tunnel, he was speechless.Those silver chassis are like mushrooms with long stalks.The material handle was welded to the wall, but the passage had no contact with the wall, nor did the handrail.And there was something else odd about the handrail: it seemed to be installed backwards, on the inside of the passageway, not the outside.In the end, he saw that the handrail was there to protect the CT men walking the passage from the walls of the deadly substance.

Anders, chilling all over, watched Ann go back to testing the handrail.With a flick of her wrist, she fired a beam of alpha particles from the tiny device.They reacted so faintly with the bright armrest that they were invisible to the naked eye.Anders suddenly heard the hiss of the gamma ray measuring device from Ann's side, which was similar to the sound of rattlesnakes he saw in the zoo on Earth. "Thank you, Ann," Anders said gratefully. "I didn't even think about it. Of course they have to use CT to lay the passage." They backed away from the railing. "There are other things." Ann frowned at Anders, her voice was surprisingly calm, "Why is this spaceship half CT and half material?"

"That's a good question." Anders nodded uneasily, "If they only need this spaceship to take them away from the big bang, they can all use CT matter to make it. Also, if they want to use matter to make it They would have encased the entire ship if they hadn't made a solid shell to prevent the ship from reacting with the Earth's air and the stuff of the planet." "Then why do they make everything half and half?" Anders floated in the air, looking down at the darkness beneath his feet. "The same idea as Drake and Mackey," Anders said suddenly, "for energy! Of course, CTs can't land on our planet, and they can't even touch matter with their hands—if they have Hands. But anything that is alive needs energy. I believe this whole thing is a giant reactor! There must be machines and tools for gathering material and smelting at this end."

Anders held his breath in excitement. "Let's go down and have a look." They landed cautiously, looking at the surrounding environment with the help of the faint light above their heads.The untouchable passage wraps around them.A dark platform emerges from below and slowly disappears overhead.At last they were about to step on the bottom of the huge cylinder. This time, Anders did not act rashly, but waited for Ann to do the test first.There was no reaction, and they landed cautiously on the floor.Several piles of ore were scattered on the ground.Anders leaned over and studied the ores with the help of the headlamp.

"Iron ore!" he cried. "It's nickel-iron ore!" Anders looked up at the winding passage, the wide platforms, the half-open flap.Now, he has a better understanding of their respective uses. "This is where the spaceships made of matter are moored." He was overwhelmed with excitement. "The CT people use it to collect meteorites made of matter. They pick up the waste and leave it here, because for them, it is necessary to transport these residues out." It's dangerous. That must be where they dumped the ore." Anders walked eagerly toward the center of the cave.There stood a circle of gigantic iron pillars, crowned with a gigantic ring.He rose to mid-air and found a deep hole in the center of the ring, the hole was big enough to swallow the "Golden Eagle" spaceship.

"This is the chute where the ore is dumped." He leaned over to look at the dark hole, his voice full of triumph. "We've found the right place, honey! The ore mills, smelting furnaces, etc. must be down here. We'll probably learn all the new techniques just by seeing how they work. We might even take the whole Everything is moved back to Interstellar. We just need to remove the narrow passage, and build our own passage on the same CT chassis, of course, not on this side, but on the CT part! For Interstellar Say, what a big--" Ann screamed. It was a cry of extreme fear.Anders jerked his pistol out and leaned down to shoot the attacking CT man.However, Ann was not attacked.She stood there straight, pointing somewhere. Anders came to her, "What happened?" "I'm sorry," Ann smiled nervously, "I'm fine, I'm just a little nervous. I didn't mean to scare you. But over there—" she paused and continued, "There's a person over there." Anders looked in the direction of her finger, and sure enough, there was a person there.The man, also in a space suit, was sitting on a pile of black ore near the untouchable passage, his hands clasped around the iron handle of a chassis.It was a slightly comical sight, like a clumsy toy under a shiny metal mushroom.Anders couldn't help laughing, but he was a little nervous and didn't laugh. He put the gun back in his belt, for he had seen that the signal light on the man's helmet had gone out.And the stiff limbs and the hoarfrost inside the mask all showed that the man was dead.He turned and stared at it and asked: "Dead. Who is he?" "I think he is a soldier of the Guards." Ann said calmly, "His spacesuit is a regular military product." "I think you're right," Anders said apologetically. "Can you test him... with that chassis?" The man's space suit and the iron handle he was clinging to were both material, but the shiny mushroom cap on top was CT material.Anders walked forward cautiously. With the help of the faint light of the headlight, he saw several black words printed on the shoulders of the man's silver space suit: trusteeship of government property size five SS Purseus HSG "This is impossible!" Anders yelled, feeling a chill rise from the soles of his feet, "Hood did warn me that after the comatose astronauts woke up, Van Falkenberg rebelled , and turned to chase us. But it's been less than forty-eight hours since then. There's no way the Purseus could get here before us unless they use some kind of CT drive!" Ann flinched. "I don't like Van Falkenberg," she said hoarsely. "I think he's on the CT patrol just to keep an eye on our work. His guys broke into our office in Albania." and he himself twice tried to follow Captain Mackey through that CT cloud to Liberty Star. Maybe he'd found it before." "No, if that's the case, we should already know." Anders shook his head, then leaned over to look at the words printed on the spacesuit, "But Van Falkenberg is a very capable spy He took the reel of film I saw. I don't know how he got here ahead of us—but the Guard ship we fought with earlier must have been the Purseus." He nodded himself, but he wasn't too sure. "Perhaps that's a reasonable guess. I'm still trying to figure out where the asteroid friends saw the comatose astronauts, but I don't think it's here. It looks like those people came to life, and Became an accomplice of Van Falkenberg, and together they managed to get here ahead of us—" Anders couldn't speculate anymore, because none of these conjectures really made sense. "In this way, he came off the 'Persius'." Ann turned around and looked at the man and the iron mushroom again, "but what does he want to do with that chassis?" "He wanted to do what we wanted to do," Anders said confidently. "He wanted to figure out why it didn't blow up. Maybe he took it off and tried to take it apart." "Look there!" Ann called, pointing to the narrow passage.There was a gap left by the loss of a supporting chassis, "But, what—" her voice was low and flustered, "how did he die?" "Probably died of power failure," Anders said. "He must have sawed off the chassis with the little chainsaw he carried with him. And he was so excited that he forgot to check the energy meter of his spacesuit. Therefore, When he finally got his prize in his hands, he had no energy left to lift it." Ann trembled, "And he can't put the chassis on the ground!" "Yes, otherwise it will cause a big explosion." Anders looked at the mask covered with hoarfrost, and suddenly felt a little sympathy for this unknown person in his heart. The passage was too high, and once he took off the chassis, he couldn't put it back Put it back.When he found he couldn't lift the chassis, the only thing he could do was sit down and hold on to it until the energy in his energy storage device was exhausted and the air supply system stopped working.He probably wanted to wait for his friends to come back.But none of them came back. " Ann turned around. "A queer way of dying!" she whispered. "Terrible. Even though he was a rebel, he was too miserable." "I don't know if there are any other people coming off the 'Persius' spaceship." Anders scanned the piles of waste mines anxiously, "They—" "They're all dead!" Ann interrupted him, her voice was trembling, a little hysterical, "They're all dead! In this lifeless place, there is nothing but death!" She grabbed Anders' hand. "Please, Paul!" she whispered. "Haven't we seen enough? Let's go back now, okay? We can take this chassis back to Drake and Mackey. They know CT. I'm sure they could take it apart without taking their lives. That's enough, we don't need anything else." Anders stood silently, watching the dead astronaut. "Let's get out while we can." An softly begged, "This scary spaceship is too strange for us. Anything we touch could be as dangerous as that handrail . If we stay here any longer, we'll be like him." Anders turned slowly, the beam of his headlamp was shining on Ann's face, and he saw the terrified look on her face. "Maybe you're right, goblin." He paused intentionally, trying to relax himself, "I'm not sure we really need what those CT people make. If we put this damn If it blows up to the sky, it may be the luck of mankind." Anders looked at the winding passage again with the help of the headlamp.Then, his gaze returned to Ann's face.That youthful face made him feel very warm in his heart. He smiled at her and squeezed her hand. "Don't know what those CT people look like," Anders murmured, "probably taller than us. But there must be more important differences. It's hard to say what their dying culture will do for us." .” Ann looked at him silently, her confused eyes wide open. "I don't know." Anders shrugged. "I'm not a sociologist, goblin. I can only speak in engineering terms. But I do know that when you combine things or forces of a different nature When you put it together, you definitely get a reaction." An anxiously glanced at the dead man, then turned her gaze back to his face. "These reactions are sometimes constructive, beneficial, sometimes destructive, destructive, and sometimes neither. A light metal and a poisonous gas can react with each other to form the gas we cannot live without. Salt. The reaction between substances and CT substances will generate enormous heat and energy, but different uses of them will bring about completely different results.” Anders’ voice became very serious and deep, “Therefore, if we will If the discovered technology is brought back to human society, what exactly will we get?" "I don't quite understand what you mean." Ann stared at him, trying to read the expression on his face, "unless you're worried that the Martians will use this technology to make CT missiles. I think they will. But, if we Can help Drake and his son supply CT energy to all mankind—” "I don't worry about anything, goblin," Anders interrupted. "You don't think too much about what I'm saying. I'm just an engineer, working for Interstellar. What does my work entail? Philosophical ramifications are not my thing." He looked at the watch on his wrist. "Let's go there next and see. Do you want to go with me?" "Paul——" Ann was hurt by his words, but she had no time to defend because Anders had flown away, "Wait, I'm going too!" Ann followed Anders and flew towards the circle of iron pillars, and they landed on the edge of the huge chute.Those CT people certainly didn't die from lack of physical fuel.When Anders carefully looked at the situation in the cave, he saw a pile of iron ore as high as a hill. "Let's go down. My dear," he said very casually, "for dear old StarCorp—" Anders had stepped over the edge of the chute when he heard a faint scream in Ann's throat.But he felt her grab the straps of his spacesuit and pull him back. "Listen to me, goblin." Anstad smiled teasingly at Ann, "If you can't bear to see me working diligently for Interstellar Corporation, you can go back and wait for our Van Falkenberg to come— —” Ann was still speechless, but her trembling fingers pointed to the black edge of the chute.Anders saw that his shoes had kicked a small pile of waste ore, and the ore fines were falling down the chute, but what was so strange about it? "Didn't you see?" Ann finally said, "Didn't you see what happened to those ores?" At this time, Anders saw that when the fine ore particles rolled down a short section of the chute, they began to crumble.He felt disgusted watching the hard ore turn into gray powder.Pushing down with his chin, he opened the cleaning box at the bottom of the helmet, but the nausea faded again.He smiled reluctantly at Ann, and heard her ask softly: "It didn't hurt you, did it?" Anders shook his head as he feebly kicked another pile of crushed ore down the chute, watching them turn to dust. "Clever design," he said. "I've always wished I could develop something like this for our antigravity ore sorting plant that would break down ore into individual atoms." "It's really good," Ann said hoarsely. "I hope you're satisfied now!" "I'm ashamed," Anders muttered. "You're saving my life every five minutes. But StarCorp really needs a device like this. It could make the company tens of billions." He laughed hard. Laughing, "Thank you again, goblin. But I can't stop there now." "Oh. Paul, I—I hate you! Damn Star Corp!" "I'm sorry," Anders felt very uncomfortable, but he tried his best to control his fluctuating emotions, "maybe you shouldn't save my life anymore." He flew away from Ann, and Ann cursed angrily, and followed him to the lowest ledge.There was no chassis connecting the platform to the wall, and Anders knew it must be physical, but he still waited for Ann to come up to him and test it out with her little device. "It's safe." An said sullenly. They landed on that platform.Next to the platform is the passage that spirals upwards.There are two rails on the platform leading to the inside of a gate.Anders saw a small car parked on the tracks and walked quickly towards it. "That's the way to get in," he said aloud to Ann. "We'll just have to follow the rails of matter until—" "No!" Ann yelled, "I—I can't scream anymore." Anders had stopped.Next to the little car, he found a bunch of strange white things on the dark platform.It was another astronaut in a regular spacesuit, but he had been cut in half by something.The moisture in his evaporated bodily fluids re-condensed and fell back onto his corpse, forming a white frost. Regardless of Ann's objection, Anders bent down to brush off the hoarfrost on the shoulder of the spacesuit, and several printed black words appeared in front of his eyes: trusteeship of government property size zero SS Purseus HSG "Another rebel." He wanted to see the man's face clearly, but the man's mask was also covered with hoarfrost, and it was impossible to see what he looked like. "It was cut in two." Anders approached the car cautiously.On board was a heavy machine.There were some protruding iron rods on the machine, with a triangular point at one end, as if they were set up to mount some special tool.The end of the iron rod, facing the dead astronaut, tapers to a pair of two-pronged prongs topped with fine-grained diamonds.Anders picked up a piece of meteorite and threw it between the two strands of the fork. It immediately split into two parts and fell on the platform, as if split by an invisible knife. Anders whistled softly. "A mining tool used to chip ore into pieces." He glanced at the dead astronaut. "Our rebel friend doesn't know how powerful it is." "It's terrible!" Ann walked towards him quickly, "Paul, don't you want to go back now? Before this kind of thing happens to us!" "Just a little while, honey. Hood wants a detailed report on this thing, with diagrams of its parts. But don't get too nervous." Anders tried to reassure her, "You're right here Wait until I get back, okay? I'll be careful—but don't forget the time." He wanted to leave, but Ke An's face made him unable to move his feet.Her eyes were wide with anxiety, her lips were quivering, and a lock of hair on her forehead made her look like a lost and frightened child.An suddenly took a deep breath and couldn't help shivering.Anders expected her to burst into hysterical yells of fear and anger, but Ann just nodded slightly and let him go. Then something moved.