From Earth Star Map Draftsman I: Federation War

“Command Center, this is Dawn. I will be arriving at the Sane alien ship in nineteen minutes. Starting now, Dawn ship is automatically collecting data to transmit back to Earth ...... tell my son that I love him.” Somewhere in a city in the northern hemisphere, in a high-level conference room at a secret space agency base, a man with a head full of silver hair played this voice recording. His left breast was covered with medals; this man was General Quentin. He put down the remote control in his hand and added sadly. “This is the last voice recording of Dawn ship.”

In March 2059, the sun poured down unabashedly from the canopy of the trees, a vast expanse of warmth cut the sidewalks to shreds, and a force four wind blew across the outside of the shuttle station, but spring had not yet fully awakened in this northern city, and the temperature was less than ten degrees. Dawn Lucius was one of the aerospace engineers who had been on leave and received orders for an urgent mission. He left the house before he had time to put on a thicker coat and headed for the shuttle station to the moon base. He shivered on the bus in the park.

The shuttle station, one of the space projects approved by C in 2031, is the starting point for engineers on Earth going to the moon base. It is like a bus station from which some people depart for the moon base and some return from the moon base to Earth. This behemoth has four core complexes. To be precise, the shuttle station has a doughnut-shaped three-story terminal, a takeoff field, a landing field, and a maintenance station for maintenance and storage of cargo. The maintenance station is not so elaborate, just a plain rectangle. The shuttle station covers an area almost as big as Hangzhou, where almost 15 million people live, all engineers and their families related to deep space.

“Welcome, Engineer Dawn Lucius, number: LZL0104.” Dawn Lucius was about three steps away from the security door when the security AI recognized Dawn Lucius’ biometric information, the loudspeaker in the door frame played the welcome message, and the transparent door slid upward.

The first floor of the terminal is reserved for engineers returning from the moon and Mars bases, and everyone who returns needs to undergo a complex quarantine and sterilization here. Even though the shuttle station has been open for more than a decade and no engineers returning from outer space have been found to have contracted a dreaded alien virus, nor has any alien life been found to have come to Earth with the engineers, no one is willing to take the risk. Dawn Lucius took an elevator straight to the second floor, the departure level. Since the beginning of the space project, Dawn Lucius had often come here, back and forth. In his first years of going to the moon base, he would take pictures or videos at every departure as a souvenir, but after going many times, he could no longer find anything new about it. He didn’t take pictures and didn’t post updates; like a businessman who often travels, he left and came back as a routine. But this time he was nervous.

“Doctor Lucius, can you reveal the objective of this mission?” Dawn Lucius had just stepped out of the elevator when he was greeted by a female reporter in a red uniform. The camera equipment and audio capture equipment on her glasses had already transmitted this interview to the cloud.

“It’s the same mission as before, exploring the edge of the solar system.”

“But there are rumors on the internet again that this time the Dawn ship is being flown to contact that alien ship in the Kuiper belt. Would it be convenient for you to clear up the confusion for the general public here?” The woman pressed on, with the signature smile of a chief female reporter on her foundation-painted face. Her questions to Dawn Lucius were like a wind-up alarm clock ticking and tapping at Dawn Lucius’ temple, which distracted him.

“Please refer to the official announcement.”

“Doctor Lucius, allow me to remind you on behalf of the netizens that we are not the only ones who know about the appearance of the alien spacecraft in the Kuiper Belt. The ship from A has already reached Mars, and they are obviously a long way ahead of us. May I ask, do you have confidence in this mission?”

Speaking of Country A, Dawn Lucius did not think highly of their style of doing things. Back in the days of Dawn Lucius’ father, Country A was blatantly oppressive of Country C. When Country C’s space program built a base on the moon, Country A jumped in to block it, and when Country C’s space program parked a large spaceship in lunar orbit, Country A incited several small countries to oppose it, claiming that it would increase the risk of the moon hitting the earth. The dedicated female reporter brought up Country A’s spaceship, which Dawn Lucius had heard about from his friends at the observatory; they were now most worried about the ship that had flown into Mars orbit.

“We are more concerned with the larger goal of benefiting humanity, as is my goal for this mission. Thank you for the interview.” Before the last word slipped from Dawn Lucius’ lips, he turned with the intention of walking into the waiting room.

“Doctor Lucius, please wait, one last question.” The female reporter stepped forward and stopped Dawn Lucius in his tracks; she had no intention of letting Dawn Lucius just walk away. “One more question for you. There are three of our large spacecraft docked in lunar orbit, and one called ‘Home ship’ can reach a speed of 10,000 kilometers per second. Is this for human evacuation?”

Dawn Lucius froze for a moment and thought to himself: the media is still so heartless nowadays, creating panic for the sake of a topic. Home ship is an expedition ship, but here she became an evacuation ship. That ship can hold at most two hundred people; how can it evacuate the humans on Earth?

“Sorry, everything about the moon base is in the third-floor gallery. I suggest you go there for another serious look; besides, all the presentations on our space engineering are there.” Dawn Lucius finished speaking and escaped at a trot into the waiting room, where a dozen people were already waiting. Judging from their dress, they were all related to the Dawn ship’s mission, and he recognized two familiar faces.

The older man was Rodney Cruise, with hard hair like a miniature helmet, two thick eyebrows across his tanned face, eyes as steely as his style of work, and an upside-down “mountain” of a mustache on his upper lip below his nose and on his chin. This man had been the highly decorated captain of the Dawn ship, and even though the Dawn ship had never left lunar orbit, he had been appointed captain for life, since Commander Cruise was involved in the design of the ship. The young man talking to Commander Cruise was named Kenny Jr. Clooney. His white face was long and thin, with clean features; though he looked young, he was a top spacecraft designer as well as a first-class aerospace engineer.

“Commander Cruise, Kenny Jr. Clooney, how are you?” Dawn Lucius walked up and interrupted the two men who were in the middle of a conversation.

“You’re just in time.” Kenny Jr. Clooney handed the tablet in his hand to Dawn Lucius, a transparent machine less than two centimeters thick and a little smaller than a typical book, yet it contained all the information about the Dawn ship, like a medical report on the Dawn ship. “Familiarize yourself with the Dawn ship’s information in advance, so you can have less confusion when you get to the moon base for the mission briefing.”

“Okay, thanks.” Dawn Lucius took the tablet and found an empty seat. Skipping over the sections that were familiar to him, he skimmed through the Dawn ship’s kinetic and life-support systems. The Dawn ship was as long as a fifty-story building, and with the daily supplies needed for this mission, the total weight was over a thousand tons, but the micronuclear power system loaded on the Dawn ship could also push it to a speed of three hundred kilometers per second in ten seconds. Gone were the days of using gas fuel; it used to take a week to get from the shuttle station to the moon; now, in just three and a half hours, the pickup ship could reach the moon’s satellite orbit.

A roar sounded, attracting the attention of most people in the waiting room. Commander Cruise looked in the direction of the sound. Outside the glass roof of the waiting room’s dome, a squash-shaped shuttle boat had ignited. Within the first three minutes, the temperature of the nuclear reactor would approach a thousand degrees, and the high temperature would heat the liquid hydrogen peroxide; the heated water vapor would then produce a huge jet thrust, and the oxygen from the decomposition would be stored inside the shuttle boats. To obtain acceleration, the intelligent computer system would, depending on the intensity of the nuclear reaction, pull out the compensation rods inserted in the nuclear reactor, which are capable of absorbing the neutrons generated by the nuclear reaction and act as a brake in each nuclear energy generation process.

Ten minutes after ignition, the nuclear reactor can produce a high temperature of nearly 100 million degrees. It is all thanks to the development of silicon-based insulation materials that nuclear energy is now widely used in spacecraft, the moon base, and the Mars laboratory to be built within a decade. But the melon shuttle boat’s power plant is not allowed to heat beyond one thousand seven hundred degrees Celsius; no one is willing to put the Earth at risk. Earth people have plenty of time, but Earth people do not have a second Earth to go to; at least until now, there is no definite sign of a planet suitable for human survival.

As the sound of tearing air grew louder and louder, the melon shuttle boat slowly soared upward. The flames spewing from its bottom turned blue, and the ship easily fought gravity and pierced the atmosphere, becoming smaller and smaller in Rodney Cruise’s line of sight. When the roar was no longer audible, Rodney Cruise’s thoughts returned to his worry from just now. This matter has to start with the discovery made by the FAST radio telescope in Guizhou Province. In 2031, the observatory working group accurately detected an artificial signal in the Kuiper belt and observed the appearance of a new object larger than a comet. From that time on, the recognized alien spacecraft was named “Sane ship.” In the same month, Country C launched many projects in the space program at the same time. Rodney Cruise had not yet revealed this mission to others; the specific objectives of the primary mission were known only to a few people in higher management. The many engineers in the waiting room, and all the Internet users the female reporter mentioned, knew only of the secondary mission. This was one of his concerns.

“Commander Cruise,” Dawn Lucius said as he walked over toward Rodney Cruise, who was staring at the display in his hand. Dawn Lucius’ approach caused him to lower the display subconsciously, the screen against the side of his thigh.

“Dawn.” Rodney Cruise nodded, the corners of his mouth lifting gently as a polite smile formed.

“Commander Cruise, I know the next question is out of order .......” Dawn Lucius sounded somewhat apologetic, and before he could finish speaking, Kenny Jr. Clooney interrupted. “You know it’s out of order, so why are you asking?”

Dawn Lucius turned his face to look at Kenny Jr. Clooney, but before he had time to speak, Rodney Cruise raised his hands, signaling the two not to argue. He looked up at Dawn Lucius and said, “Ask.”

“Captain, how many engineers are involved this time?”

“You’ll know when we land.” Rodney Cruise’s short answer had little usable information.

“What do you want to know?” Kenny Jr. Clooney stepped forward and half-blocked the space between Dawn Lucius and Rodney Cruise.

“I want to know if we’re coming back, you know?” Dawn Lucius was a little impatient.

“What? Where did your engineer’s professionalism go? Looking at the ship data and questioning the mission, huh?”

“Don’t talk to me about professionalism.”

“So how come you’re questioning not coming back from this mission?” Kenny Jr. Clooney put on a dismissive face.

“This is the latest data from the Dawn ship, I believe.” Dawn Lucius held up the tablet computer in his hand. “We’re going to the Kuiper Belt, and at the rate the Dawn ship is going, it’s going to take at least seven months round trip, not counting the time spent on the Sane ship expedition, and the Dawn ship only has enough supplies to last three people for eight months.” Dawn Lucius spoke more and more excitedly. What was there to hide about this kind of information? He felt like an adult made to solve an elementary school problem to prove he was not illiterate.

“So you’re concluding that you’re not coming back from this mission, huh? What kind of professional are you?” Kenny Jr. Clooney provoked.

“So what did you major in? Graduating by copying my ideas.” Dawn Lucius felt like his eyes were going to fall out.

“Bullshit, I can’t compete with you, professional enough to leave your colleague in lunar orbit .......” Before Kenny Jr. Clooney had finished, Dawn Lucius’s fist landed on his face, and Kenny Jr. Clooney, knocked to the ground, instantly bounced up, his fist like a loaded bullet.

Rodney Cruise raised both hands and put them between the two men, as if he had pushed open a door of silence, behind which was a black hole that could swallow everything, and their quarrel came to an abrupt end. Amid the rumbling of the engines, the two followed him into the boarding lane.

This shuttle boat was a U3 type. The ship’s forward section has a cabin that can accommodate eight passengers, and the space in the back is loaded with supplies; because U3 type shuttle boats are the smallest, takeoff and landing are relatively easy. The shuttle boat’s main engine is in the stern, and the bow has four jets for adjusting direction. After the shuttle boats leave the Earth’s atmosphere, they move forward at maximum speed, and when they reach the Moon, they enter a temporarily assigned near-moon orbit under the control of artificial intelligence, using the Moon’s gravity to slow down the ship. After the ship goes half a circle around the near-moon orbit, it slowly descends to the Moon’s surface. The main engine is turned on to slow down the spacecraft during the descent until it stops steadily at the designated landing point.

“Please fasten your seat belt. In order to protect passengers’ bodies from injury under acceleration, the chair will be adjusted to a semi-reclining position. Please do not panic.” A gentle female voice came over the radio system, and while the announcement was being broadcast, the seats slowly tilted backward, and the passengers were secured in a semi-reclining position as the female voice continued to come over the radio. “The ship will lift off in ten seconds.”

The countdown ended and the heavy roar formed a solid wall, isolating the senses from all outside sounds. The instantaneous thrust and earth’s gravity pulled the passengers’ bodies in opposite directions, with a distinct sense of pressure from the back to the chest; Dawn Lucius had not felt this pressure for two years. The half-lying position allowed the passengers to quickly adapt to the overweight state brought on by the acceleration, and their breathing went from rapid to steady; then the passengers realized that the shuttle boats had flown out of the earth’s atmosphere. Rodney Cruise looked back at home. It was daytime in the northern hemisphere, and the southern hemisphere was not completely black in the darkness; several major cities were lit up, the city roads like veins. Refracted by the air, the lights were slowly pulsating.

“Passengers, we have left the Earth’s core gravitational area, and the shuttle boat has entered uniform motion. You can open the screen in front of you to read, or chat with the person next to you. To ensure your safety, please do not leave your seat to walk around.” After the female voice in the broadcasting system finished the announcement, the sound of seat belt buckles being unfastened rang through the cabin.

There were rookies among the passengers who were going into space for the first time, and while the nervousness made them afraid to take their hands off their seat belts, the excitement pushed their butts out of their seats, double-checking everything around them, even the small print of the safety tips on the back of their seats was carefully read out. Passengers with previous experience in space flight floated freely amidst jeers, and some even threw the rookies to the roof of the cabin. This weightlessness made it difficult for people to get out of their floating state without power or traction ropes, and for a while, cries for help, curses and laughter filled the cabin.

“Doctor Lucius, it’s good to see you going into space again, welcome back.” The man who spoke was from the lunar engineering department. He was as thin as a malnourished alien, with dark skin. Since the establishment of the lunar base, his life had been only the lunar base; the Earth, well, could only be considered a tourist destination. That was what he had said to Dawn Lucius a few years ago.

“Thank you, Engineer Laban.”

“It’s really sad. You lost a partner in that accident two years ago, and we lost a great leader in the engineering department. You designed the orbit for building the spacecraft on the moon, and Chief Kenny Clooney made it possible for the spacecraft to actually stop there.” Speaking of this, Engineer Laban shook his head, his face turning bleak as he sighed. Dawn Lucius really didn’t want to bring that up, and that was why he hadn’t wanted to continue working at the moon base.

“Yeah, it’s a shame.”

“Doctor Lucius,” Engineer Laban said, changing the subject. “This Dawn ship mission is important to all of us in humanity, and we in Engineering will make sure that the Dawn ship is overhauled properly.”

“It’s true, the mission is important.” In fact, Dawn Lucius had no idea what Dawn ship’s mission was. Kenny Jr. Clooney and Rodney Cruise were reluctant to say, and Dawn Lucius was thinking that a gossipy chief reporter might know more than he did.

“Did you hear about this mission?” Engineer Laban said this with a quick glance around. He came a little closer to Dawn Lucius again and continued in a lowered voice. “The people at the observatory told me that they didn’t just observe the Sane ship, they made other discoveries: someone was sending signals out into the universe, some kind of very secret signal band that the technology on Earth couldn’t decipher.”

“Signals? What signal?” Engineer Laban’s words pulled Dawn Lucius out of his vertigo; his body instantly lifted and his mind cleared, for this was something Dawn Lucius was hearing about for the first time. But he then leaned back in his chair; he didn’t need to show his shock.

“At first, I heard it was some kind of regular sound, like the ticking of a clock, and then I heard that the observatory had intercepted the contents of some files.” Engineer Laban looked up and around again, his lips almost to Dawn Lucius’s ear. “Supposedly, it could be the contents of a picture sent by the Sane ship.”

“Sane ship sends out pictures?” The passenger napping next to Dawn Lucius heard this and became interested.

“Well, not exactly.” Engineer Laban, finding a new audience, sat up and then leaned back in his chair, nodding gravely.

“It can’t be. How can the people at the observatory tell it’s a picture?” The passenger began to question.

“That’s not the point.” Engineer Laban shook his head as he continued. “If the aliens collect all the information about the solar system and send it back to their army, and the other side just comes and attacks, then we have no way to fight back.”

When Engineer Laban said this, the passenger who was interested earlier said nothing and turned his body to the side against the wall.

“Engineer Laban, you can’t spread rumors. We don’t even know if the Sane ship is a ship. What if it’s just a big comet flung out by some rotating system?”

“Doctor Lucius, at the edge of the solar system there is only the Kuiper Belt and no other galaxy. If there were, the countless meteorites floating in the Kuiper Belt would have been sucked over long ago, you know.”

“I mean, the Sane ship was thrown far enough to stop in the Kuiper belt.”

“All of that is possible, but Doctor Lucius, the FAST telescope has monitored more than just Sane ship’s trajectory during the two years you’ve been away. There is a picture inside the observatory where the Sane ship emitted a faint light. It was very brief, but meteorites don’t glow on their own, do they?” Engineer Laban’s descriptions grew more and more vivid, and Dawn Lucius was deeply afraid that if he went on, he would say the Sane ship played music too; a story like that, no scientist could explain away.

“Let’s just report to the moon base and go with what the higher-ups announce.” Dawn Lucius deliberately raised his volume when he said this, and as he looked in Rodney Cruise’s direction, he noticed that the other man didn’t care at all about what Engineer Laban had said.

“The information released by the higher-ups is only for the pilot engineers on the mission, and there is no way we will know the exact information.”

“Engineer Laban, it’s not like we’re new here, you do realize that the Department of Space has rules and not all information needs to be released to everyone, right?”

“Why not?” Engineer Laban questioned.

“Engineer Laban, the more you talk, the more outrageous it gets. Tell me, if there really is an alien attack, what else would telling the world do besides accelerating the chaos on Earth?”

“At least, let those who have regrets take action sooner, huh?”

Dawn Lucius couldn’t argue with him. He waved his hand tiredly, and Engineer Laban didn’t want to pester him either, so he sat back in his seat. The shuttle boat sped toward the moon. Dawn Lucius was full of questions about this trip, but the instructions he had received were top level; he had no right to ask any questions and just needed to carry them out. This set of high-level secret mission systems was like a number of black boxes: until you opened a box, everything was unknown.