Chapter 6 chapter Five

On the flight to Albania, Jenkins kept thinking about his uncle Martin Bryan.My uncle's thin face is always bright and cheerful, as if he has never been intimidated by any difficulties.Now, his uncle has become his magic weapon to defeat himself. This great engineer once generously supported his widowed sister and her son, often returning to Earth to visit them.He was always excited to see the sandalwood and palm trees outside their modest apartment, and the coral beach.In his eyes, the white Sun City standing on the edge of the tropical bay is as beautiful as the cities on other planets that Nick imagined.

School days were long and monotonous, and uncle's visits were always fun.Uncle will bring all kinds of novel little gifts, such as shells on Venus, red sand on Mars, a small stone on the defunct Adonis planet, and colorful stones on Callisto. With the mystery of distant space. At that time, you can still drink wine, eat food that is rarely enjoyed in ordinary times, visit all kinds of dazzling exhibitions, even go to smoky nightclubs, travel to mountains and to the moon.Usually the uncle will bring a girl with him, most likely a beautiful blonde actress.When she leaned on the powerful arms of the space hero, she always showed a very obsessed look.

Uncle also likes to chat. Jenkins always listened with relish to his various jobs and grand plans for the future.I remember the first time he talked about the anti-gravity separation plant being built on Venus, which my uncle planned to use to extract uranium in the Venus ocean. "There is a lack of energy metals everywhere in the world. When those short, yellow and thin Venusians saw the uranium halide on my finger, their eyes widened and their mouths made a sound of exclamation. It's a pity that you were not there at that time." Uncle shrugged coolly, "But when they found out that it would cost 9 billion US dollars to build the factory, they stopped doing it. I finally convinced them that what they bought was not just a factory, but to get rid of the interstellar company." , regained economic freedom.”

Years later, when Brian returned to Earth again, Jenkins couldn't resist asking about the factory. Uncle smiled easily: "Those Venusians don't believe me." He sat upright in his gorgeous pajamas, contentedly, "I spent half of my savings to finish this matter. Now I am working on another project with a wider scope. Foreground project.” He looked down at the huge diamond in his hand, and said in a low voice, mysteriously, “You have to keep a secret for me, Nick. I have already let the Martians have a reaction to the synthetic diamond produced in this atomic furnace. Interested."

"Diamonds!" Jenkins envied. "A unique process." Brian casually tossed the surprisingly large diamond into the air, and then caught it gracefully, "Heating the high-pressure still to the melting point of carbon, and then Cool down for five years under control." That production process must have made my uncle rich.A year before those stills opened, he had returned aboard the sixty-meter luxury yacht Adonis, with even bigger diamonds than before.He already has plans for the next step. "Anti-gravity well!" His deep voice was full of confidence, "It can be used to develop the surface of Jupiter. People on Jupiter's moons lack uranium and thorium ore, and they will definitely support me with all their strength."

"You really want to go to Jupiter?" "I didn't go by myself," said the uncle with a relaxed smile. "I hate the smell of methane and ammonia on my head, and I can't keep the pressure with a repulsive field. I'm a space engineer, so I can't just die!" To be fair, Jenkins thought, Uncle's engineering talents must not be lost. "Endless Energy" amply exemplifies this, and the vision Brian paints in that blue-covered book has always seemed to Jenkins the most brilliant. Uncle also liked to talk about the book over tea or smoke, and laugh at his naive desire to change the face of the planets.

"When I first learned about the ideal of energy freedom, I was still in the trusteeship." He looked at Nick's expression of admiration and smiled, "At that time, I was just out of school, and I was not very familiar with space. I only heard him talk about the CT Meteor project when I was working with old Drake." Brian tossed his long black hair. "When I got home, I wrote it out." Nick couldn't wait to listen to his uncle's steady, smooth voice, as if enjoying music. "It took all the money I borrowed to get the publisher to print two thousand copies." Bryce smiled wryly.

"At that time, I was really blind and optimistic. I only thought about how to avoid the next world war and end people's misfortune. A young and ignorant fool actually proposed it in that book. The fifth freedom, wishful thinking Everyone can use endless energy." Seeing that Nick had a strong interest in these things, my uncle signed a book and gave it to him.Now, the young engineer still carries this treasure with him, and he has been able to recite two chapters and some important ideas. "The conquest of space is a process of constant mistakes and corrections," reads the book's preface, "mistakes are usually made by politicians, warlords, and plutocrats, and then repaired by space engineers." Duan pointed to him: "Look at how stupid I was! I actually scolded those who decided whether this plan could be implemented or not! Since then, I have only learned a little skill in dealing with people. "

"Men's mistakes began when they dreamed of flying into space," Uncle continued in the preface. for many years. It took more than a decade before the U.S. Atomic Agency created the first rocket to land on the moon. The short-sighted American politicians thought that the moon was the end of space flight, and the warlords wanted to build an air force base on the moon. In order to win time to build this fortress, the United States tried to appease other hostile countries and signed a contract to abandon the planets they thought it was impossible for humans to reach. on the right.

Thus, several major powers signed the San De Fe Treaty in the ancient New Mexico City, and divided up the entire solar system.Venus was owned by the East Asian Empire; Mars was owned by the European Western Alliance, and was later monopolized by Germany; people believed that Jupiter’s satellites were impossible to reach and were of little value, so they distributed them to Russia to make up for them. Russia’s strength was weakened by the war and it was powerless to fight; The moon is still owned by the United States. The folly of that treaty was exposed the following year.British Maxey.Gore, who moved to Peru after the war, was an astrophysicist who worked on spectroscopic photography of the solar atmosphere.The government authorities expected that he could not study anything of military, political and economic value, so they granted him free research.

But he discovered the remarkable dynamic of reverse gravity.Maxey wanted to separate the hydrogen from the other components of the prominence when he analyzed the intense prominences that erupted from the sunspot vortex.In the process, he suspected an as-yet-unknown dynamic in the prominences, and he then found a theoretical place for that dynamic on the energy spectrum halfway between gravitational and magnetic forces.This theory is easily proved in experiments. Inverse gravity is neither magnetic nor gravitational in general.It has some of the characteristics of magnetism and gravity, but also has its own characteristics.The anti-gravitational field is easily induced by the general electromagnetic field on some crystals. It has only one pole, and the polarity is easy to change. The magnitude and direction of the anti-gravitational force can be changed at will. Maxey immediately realized that this manageable reverse gravity could be used to separate fusible isotopes from natural uranium, and even to extract metallic iron from lean iron ores that were difficult to extract by other methods. He published his findings directly to news organizations around the world, a move that nearly killed him.The monopolies of atomic technology frantically tried to suppress the news about this discovery, and at the same time sent spies to try to kidnap and murder him.The nuclear authorities of the Western Confederation of Europe furiously demanded his extradition and the death penalty for illegally leaking information of military value.The Americans tried to lure him into the bait by offering him refuge at Grammos.The Russians encouraged the Peruvian miners to revolt and arrested him. The miners burned the observatory, and Maxey fled into the Andes, where he has lived in seclusion ever since.Later, when the surging wave of free research swept away all the corrupt governments and the restrictions on knowledge development were lifted, he came to the United States to continue his interrupted career. Contrary to expectations, this new discovery did not directly trigger a new crisis.A whole generation no longer has time to care about the battles between each other, and all turn their attention to the vast expanse of space.It has been proved that reverse gravity is not only an effective tool for purifying uranium ore, but also builds bridges between planets. The nuclear rockets used by Americans when they first reached the moon were expensive, inefficient, and dangerous. Now the inverse gravitational field that can control the size and direction has become the most ideal driving force in space, and its safety is unmatched by ordinary rockets. . With it, the space area that humans can reach has expanded several times, and the human world has extended from the earth to the edge of the solar system. Inverse gravity is not only an effective propulsion force, it can also provide the huge energy required for interstellar flight.In the past half century, no country has been able to build a truly effective nuclear power plant.And now, in just a few years after Liberty Research began, six methods of converting nuclear fission energy into electricity have been found. This success is thanks to the research of the German aerospace engineer Lemien, who had started and successfully built a prototype of this type of converter, but unfortunately lost his life in an accident. At that time, Lemien was designing a new type of interstellar spacecraft. He wanted to use a special inverse gravitational field to replace the thick lead and concrete shield outside the reactor, relying on the effect of the inverse gravitational field to dissipate the r Rays and high-speed particles are efficiently funneled into directed jets for increased propulsion.Unexpectedly, during the experiment, the powerful inverse gravitational field absorbed the energy of these rays and particles, the overloaded current melted the cables, the reactor suddenly exploded, and Lemien died of radiation burns. The American engineer Dawberger was talented and intelligent, and he successfully completed the conversion based on Lemien's research results. He changed the idea of ​​letting the fission products release energy directly in the jet engine, and advocated placing them in the reverse gravitational field first, and after their energy is completely absorbed, the polarity of the reverse gravitational field is continuously vibrated to make the The ionic current it traps creates a secondary magnetic current, creating an alternating current in the wire.The products of nuclear fission are directly converted into useful electricity, which can be used for lighting, to purify uranium, and even to drive spacecraft.The energy that had killed Lemien and thousands of others was finally subdued. Americans frantically tried to keep the secret of the Lemien-A-Berger converter a secret, but soon several similar devices appeared abroad.Each country has its own spare nuclear weapons and space fleet. At that stage of human expansion, the contradictions between nations seemed to be forgotten.On the hot and humid Mars, the East Asian Empire is busy mining the abundant foil mines; The atmosphere, regain the strength lost in the war. Restricted by the San Diego Treaty, Americans can only conquer higher and farther frontiers of space.The new policy of free research attracted legions of foreigners like Lemien and Maxey, who recreated America's former technological predominance.New engineering quickly solved the problems of low gravity, high vacuum, interstellar dust, unfiltered sunlight rays, and many other problems in space. Early space engineers planted small plants on the moon to separate oxygen from moon rocks; they also dug anti-gravity wells, and the controllable gravitational field generated by the anti-gravity equipment attracted the synthetic particles covering the moon towns. Air.They also produced water, and invented drivable spacesuits and beam phones for working in space.The moon became a rich colony and a powerful military base. Even though the United States built a fortress on the moon and controlled the entire earth condescendingly, the predicted war still did not happen.The hostile powers have quietly moved their governments to colonial planets, avoiding the range of large space cannonballs. However, with the emergence of the Interstellar Corporation, the freedom of the planets was soon restricted.The Interstellar Company was originally a transportation company established by an American businessman, and was chartered by the government to engage in round-trip transportation between the earth and the moon.The company quickly developed and grew stronger. Its spacecraft kept going back and forth between the planets, transporting rice and tropical hardwoods from Mars, precision instruments from Venus, thorium mines from Callisto, and thorium mines from Earth. Send immigrants to these planets. Those stupid politicians who tried to carve up the solar system with the San Defu Treaty forgot to point out the ownership of the asteroids.The first asteroid explorers died of CT reactions, and for the next generation, the asteroid belt continued to threaten the safety of spaceflight, always kept far from the space lanes.The new generation of American astronauts who grew up on the moon were disgusted with the restrictions brought to them by the so-called "civilization". After the moon was conquered, they soon set off for further and newer space fields.These peoples were the first to inhabit the Burroughs group and other asteroids known to be material. The environment in the frontier of space is much harsher than that on the moon. These asteroids are formed by planetary explosions. There is no air or gravity on them, and they are almost as cold as Jupiter's satellites.Here, there is a more deadly danger, that is CT meteor.All of the more massive asteroids are confirmed to be material, but some CT meteors are also several kilometers in diameter.For unknown reasons, the smaller the asteroid is, the larger the proportion of CT meteors is, and finally all the small stones and fine dust are CT. Space is unforgiving, but asteroids have always rewarded those brave enough to face CT meteors and other hazards.Even the tiny material planets open up to miners a vast expanse of exposed ocean and surface ore, and some of these asteroids, formed after the core of Adonis exploded, are particularly rich in metals.Gold is usually cheaper than food and water on an asteroid mine. Freedom is another reward brought to them by the frontiers of space, and many people desire it more crazily than wealth; for a hundred years, the laws on Earth have always taken the various bases scattered in the frontiers of the Interstellar Corporation as the ultimate boundary.Beyond boundaries, people have their own laws.When freedom was restricted on the planets, tens of thousands of Earthlings followed the first lunar astronauts, and occasionally refugees from colonized planets joined this huge procession. A hundred years on, the asteroid swarm is still a free zone.People who come here, whether they are Earthlings with their own pockets, or Martians, Venusians or Jupiters who escaped the arrest of the government, can speak freely, come and go at will, and mine metal mines wantonly. The interstellar company always buys as little ore as possible from the asteroids, but supplies them with all the necessities of life in the market.This huge trade gap only maintains the life of the asteroid people, but miraculously strengthens the interstellar company, controlling energy metals such as stoves and uranium. Reactors in constant need for energy have used up the metals in the planet's few rich deposits. The energy on Mars was used up by another space life before the appearance of human civilization, and all the mineral deposits under the crust of Venus are located deep under the swamps and vast oceans.Although there are abundant thorium deposits on Jupiter, there is no export license. The trade with the asteroids enabled the interstellar company to monopolize those rare metals, strengthening the company's hegemonic position in interstellar transportation.Sun City, located near the isthmus of Panama, became the terminal point of space shipping. The big chaebols of the interstellar company cunningly turned fissile energy into their own political and military power.A long time ago, they bought the actual control of the earth and the moon on the condition of providing a welfare system, and now it stands behind the crown of Venus and dictates orders to the ruler of Jupiter. The elites of the Interstellar Corporation hated independence, but were surprised to find that in their energy supply places, those savages who exchanged uranium and iron for one percent of the value of rough food and low-quality commodities also rioted for freedom.As a result, Interstellar Corporation quickly promulgated high-level space laws. Under pressure from the company, a decree was passed declaring that all asteroids and property on them would be managed by company employees acting as government officials.Asteroidians have to get a license and pay taxes to mine or drive even a small spaceship.Trading with other planets is strictly prohibited, and all smuggling and other illegal trading activities are severely punished. Taxes are actually not excessive and there are far fewer restrictions on individual liberty than on Earth.The company leaders also plan to implement compulsory education, free medical care and other measures to bring the gospel of civilization to these ignorant asteroid people.They also vowed that they would suppress all predatory behavior and provide military protection for the asteroids.These powerful people expected the asteroid people to be grateful to them, but they didn't expect these rough people to take themselves more seriously, and they didn't appreciate it. The asteroid people were reluctant to launch a resistance movement at first, and they are all descendants of the earth, so everyone has a feeling of nostalgia.Astronauts of American descent, too, feel self-confident for their wealthy StarCorp compatriots, and they just sign a petition to send someone to Sun City. At the instigation of Star Corporation, the puppet government ignored the petition, arrested the representatives, and insisted that such unorganized petitions only showed that the law enforcement was not strong enough.With the help of the Earth Space Fleet, Interstellar Corporation began to confiscate unlicensed spaceships and mines, and arrested unlicensed miners.When the asteroid miners refused to work on the mine, the company stopped delivering food to them. However, to the head of the company's headache, no matter what, these people will not be starved to death.Already accustomed to the lack of daily necessities, they can live without bitter tea, and can also live on synthetic food produced in illegal primitive factories.What made the heads of the companies even more furious was that these people began to repair those unlicensed tugboats, fly long distances to Venus and Jupiter, use spare uranium and thorium to exchange food from Venus, exchange machinery from Mars, and even exchange space from Jupiter shells. Therefore, the Interstellar Corporation arrogantly declared war, first declared war on Jupiter on the grounds of providing arms to the asteroid rebel army, and then declared war on Venus and Mars on the grounds of not obeying the law. That Star Wars lasted eight years, and the Star Corporation won every single battle.The Earth fleet smashed the armed forces of Venus, Mars, and Jupiter with ease, and leveled their capitals with atomic bombs.The Earth Expeditionary Force is stationed on the Burroughs group of stars and Asteroid 4, blocking and bombing a hundred surrounding asteroids.But Interstellar was never able to win this war. The Asteroids do not have a central government that can be raided and destroyed by an Earth fleet.On thousands of asteroids, miners continue to mine uranium defiantly, and continue to drive unlicensed spacecraft to and fro.Take Bruce.One hundred uprising leaders represented by O'Baliang closely monitored every move of Interstellar Corporation.From time to time they sabotaged its transports and blew up its mines, and after each attack they retreated to their base behind the CT meteors. The Earth Fleet can defeat everyone, but not CT Meteor.It is powerful enough to control any asteroid and defeat any uprising leader, but there are countless asteroids in space.They are all far from the sun, flying in a region shaped like a flat tire.This area is hundreds of millions of kilometers wide and billions of kilometers long, and there are countless CT meteors scattered in it.The asteroid people know everything about them, but the earth people know very little. Even the smallest of these asteroids may harbor rebel troops, awaiting cannon shipments from Jupiter, or refining fissionable metals for improvised atomic bombs.Each Rebel army is too weak to be worth a real attack, and Earth's fleet doesn't have that many ships to hit all the asteroids. Eight years later, StarCorp finally gave up on the offensive.The futile victory nearly exhausted all the energy sources on the planet, and more than half of the ships in the fleet were killed in the meteor shower.Seeing that it was impossible to conquer space, Interstellar Corporation proposed a truce, ending the long-term stalemate. In the second year, Interstellar Corporation signed a space treaty in Port Burroughs, hoping to make up for the mistakes in the war.It deliberately provoked jealousy among the leaders of the asteroids, cleverly instigated Venus and Mars to join forces against Jupiter, and later established a trusteeship government.Finally, the interstellar company got rid of the impasse. According to the space treaty, the trusteeship government was established to reorganize the order of the space frontier and ensure that each planet has an equal share of the minerals on the asteroid.It is headed by a five-member high-level committee, one representative from each major planet and one from the minor planets. It soon turns out that Earth's politicians are more dangerous than space fleet commanders.They pitted O'Brien's followers against those of other Rebel leaders, patiently defeating every Asteroid nominee.In the end, they managed to pick an Interstellar Corp employee to represent the asteroid.In this way, the earthlings occupy two seats, one of which is the permanent chairman seat. There is no doubt that the earthlings control the trusteeship committee again. In addition to this, the asteroid people have received another heavy blow.The trusteeship government recognized the interstellar company's ownership of all asteroids, new laws restored all taxes and restrictions, and the achievements of people's bloody struggles were buried.The freedom of the asteroid people protected by eight years of hard work was mercilessly betrayed by the trusteeship government. "Those were past mistakes," Martin said.Brian concludes in the preface, "In short, Interstellar Corp. has held back generations of advancement to the sky by needlessly burning cities and killing millions with atomic bombs. Fear and pain to torment the poor survivors. But these are nothing compared to another mistake that Star Corporation is brewing. The new mistake can blow up our planet into a pile of pieces, just like the explosion of planet Adonis. , unless space engineers can stop it in time.