Dead on Mars

Tang Yue tightened his clothes and blanket, leaning his body close to the RTG. Kunlun Station’s temperature had already fallen to –15°C in the morning, but it was far from Tang Yue’s limits. Back when he was undergoing training with Old Wang in Daxing’anling Prefecture, it had snowed at night with temperatures dropping below –30°C.

With Tomcat gone, Kunlun Station suddenly appeared empty.

Tang Yue woke up from his sleep. When he drew the curtains to his living quarters and wanted to call out to Tomcat, he paused midway, suddenly realizing that Tomcat was gone. He was the only person left on Kunlun Station, and everything seemed bleak.

“Has it protruded? Have you protruded… Have you protruded or not?”

Tang Yue held the box and carefully and observed the tomato seeds in the box. He flipped them around as though he was a pervert hoping to steal a glance under a girl’s skirt.

But the anti-gravity skirt didn’t give him a chance.

In the past two sols, he had been tying the tomato seeds to his body. He relied on his body temperature to supply them with heat, but it clearly hadn’t shown any significant effects. Based on what Mai Dong said, the seeds should have sprouted by now, but none of the tomato seeds on Tang Yue showed signs of awakening.

“Have the seeds not germinated?” Mai Dong asked.

“Nope.” Tang Yue was somewhat disappointed as he shook his head. The temperature control’s sudden malfunction had wrecked their plans to plant the seeds in soil. Tang Yue had attempted to check the temperature control once again this morning but was helpless. He had no idea which lunatic had designed a heater to be that complicated. It would have been easy to fix if they were only two filaments. Tang Yue would then be able to fix it like fixing a hairdryer.

Tang Yue had also brought in the fermenting fertilizer from the garage. As the saying went, it was much more joyful to share the joy than enjoy alone; likewise for heat. He couldn’t forget his sh*t brothers who were suffering from the cold in the garage while he enjoyed the warmth. Therefore, Tang Yue circled the RTG with a few buckets of feces to warm each other up.

The feces didn’t seem to be fermenting. Instead, it was a lot more frozen.

In the past, it had smelled.

Now, it smelled and was hard.

Being alone on Kunlun Station made one feel as though they were in a boundless place with no place to call home. Over time, one’s heart would be filled with bleakness. Even with Mai Dong on the comms to accompany him, the solitary feeling wasn’t something that could be dispelled with the two people hugging each other. If the Mars mission only had two people, the two would most likely cover every topic there was to be covered during that long period of time. Eventually, they would have nothing to say to each other and be sick of each other. It was also why each expedition typically had six people, with the addition of Tomcat.

Tang Yue believed that the reason Tomcat seemed neurotic and naggy was likely a result of this. Tomcat often found all kinds of baffling topics to talk about. In a small way, it was to liven Kunlun Station’s mood, and in a big way, it was to train the brains of the expedition members. In terms of a chatting companion, Tomcat was as good as six people in one.

“How’s Tomcat? How far has he gone?” Tang Yue put away the seeds.

“Mr. Cat has already stopped advancing at a distance 31.4 kilometers from Kunlun Station. It contacted me two hours ago.” Mai Dong looked at the screen which had a blip representing the Mars Wanderer blinking every five seconds. “Currently, it should be recharging.”

The Mars Wanderer had a high-power communications antenna that could connect to the relay satellites or United Space Station to establish communications, but to save power, Tomcat shut down the communications system, and only contacted the United Space Station twice a sol to report on its exact situation.

Tang Yue got up and looked out through the window.

However, all he could see was thirty kilometers out. He could only imagine the cat taking down the solar panels from the sled, setting them up, then leaning against the tire to await a complete recharge.

Tang Yue got up and did high knees on the spot before getting down to do ten push-ups to dispel the heat.

“I feel as if I”m an Eskimo who’s trying hard to survive in the arctic.”

“Like an Inuit?”

Tang Yue nodded. “Yes, those people who like eating Kiviak.”

“Kiviak?”

“It’s some traditional wintertime Inuit food. They stuff five hundred auks into seal skin and let them rot and ferment for three months. Finally, they dig out the auk meat for consumption,” Tang Yue explained. “That’s Kiviak for you. It’s said to be rich in vitamins, and is way more terrifying than Sparkling Oldenlandia Water mixed with Swedish herring canned food.”

…

Around five in the afternoon, Tomcat established communications with the United Space Station and Kunlun Station. It sent a very short email.

Tomcat: “This is the Mars Wanderer. Everything is fine. The batteries have been charged, and all the solar panels have been packed up. I estimate I’ll be able to continue traveling another 30 kilometers tonight.”

Mai Dong: “This is space station. I copy you five-by-five. Mr. Cat, you are heading in a direction right on target. Good luck.”

Tang Yue: “Tomcat, how’s the situation. Did you meet Optimus Prime?”

Tomcat: “No, but I encountered Nazi Germany’s Mars base. They invited me to be their guest and warmly entertained me. They even asked if Stalin was dead.”

Tang Yue languidly typed: “Oh, apart from the moon, the Third Reich also has a base on Mars?”

Tomcat: “Of course, according to them, during WW2, after the Normandy D-Day landing, the Chancellor knew it was over. Hence, he gathered all the rocket experts in the country, and with Professor Wernher von Braun as lead scientist, they secretly built a large carrier rocket in Peenemünde and Hamburg, sending the empire’s legacy to Mars.”

Tang Yue: “Impressive. The Third Reich had the ability to reach Mars in 1944?”

Tomcat: “According to them, it’s because the Chancellor had discovered alien technology in the Tibetan Plateau. In fact, the Messerschmitt Me 262 and the V-2 rocket are the results of reverse-engineered alien technology. They even found the legendary Ark of the Covenant, but it was stopped by some guy named Indiana Jones. They even claimed that they were the only country in the twentieth century who could land on an extraterrestrial planet. They said that the American Apollo missions were a hoax, and were all recorded in a studio.”

Tang Yue: “Why was it a hoax?”

Tomcat: “That’s what’s said on some forum.”

Tang Yue: “Then, did you see Hitler?”

Tomcat: “Hitler didn’t come. He didn’t trust Braun’s rockets.”

Tang Yue: “So Hitler still committed suicide?”

Tomcat: “No, he didn’t. It was a stand-in. At the end of WW2, he escaped to Argentina.”

Tang Yue: “So Hitler died of old age?”

Tomcat: “No, he didn’t end well. He was pursued by Israel.”

Tang Yue: “How many people are left in the base?”

Tomcat: “There were three, but now, there’s only one left.”

Tang Yue: “What happened?”

Tomcat: “The three from before were from Hydra, and the remaining one is named Steven Rogers. He was dressed weirdly and even held a shield.”

Tang Yue: “Alright then. Where are you now?”

Tomcat: “I’m still about sixty kilometers away from the Chelomey’s landing point. I’ve just moved all the solar panels onto the sled. I’ll spend the first half of the night traveling and spend the rest of the night resting… Eh? Wait a moment.”

Tang Yue: “What’s wrong?”

Tomcat: “I might be seeing things.”

Tang Yue: “You’re a robot. How can a robot be seeing things?”

Tomcat: “Robots can too. It might be a bug in the program, creating some incorrect image.”

Tang Yue: “Then what did you see?”

Tomcat: “Something flew over the Wanderer.”

Tang Yue: “?”

Mai Dong: “?”

Shit: “?”

Tomcat: “It caught me by surprise as well. That thing traveled really quickly, and it flew at a very high altitude. It was just a tiny dot that emitted light, just like a jet-propelled plane, but it was silent. If I hadn’t happened to look up, I might not have discovered it.”

Tang Yue: “A satellite? The space station? Or a meteor?”

Mai Dong: “It’s not our satellites or space station. No satellites are over Mr. Cat at the moment.”

Tomcat: “It’s probably a meteor. It’s impossible for anyone to build an aircraft on Mars… That will be the end of today’s communications. I’ll need to get moving. Over and out.”