Dead on Mars

Translator: CKtalon  Editor: CKtalon

Tang Yue sat on the Mars Wanderer’s geolab, watching the setting sun fall below the horizon. In the same direction, the night sky and starry sky were slowly rising.

Tang Yue had heard of the legend of Guixu. In an era when sea navigation and cosmology were underdeveloped, the ancients believed the land to be flat. They believed that at the end of the world was an unending huge waterfall that went over the edge. Boundless amounts of seawater would cascade down from the cliff into an endless void. That was truly an unimaginable spectacle.

He had tried imagining Mars to be a massive plane. If that were true, Tang Yue would be able to see the resplendent Milky Way rise from beneath his feet simply by standing at the edge of the land… If only Mars were flat, that could save him the trouble of looking up to face the Universe.

Looking up just stressed the neck too much.

Tomcat crawled up from the side and sat beside Tang Yue.

The man and cat sat beside each other.

“How far have we traveled?”

“95 kilometers.”

“How much farther do we have to go?”

“180 kilometers.”

“There’s still such a long distance… This is really the longest route I’ve taken in all my life,” Tang Yue said. “What do you think is driving us to continue this trip?”

“Hope?”

“It’s not hope,” Tang Yue shook his head and muttered. “What hope is there? Actually, I know how unreliable this letter is. Even if it’s real, it’s impossible for me to win the lawsuit. I’m not a lawyer. This battle is just doomed for failure. There’s no chance of Earth being restored.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s inertia,” Tang Yue replied. “Humans are like wheels. You can push a wheel ahead with all your strength. Even if it loses its driving force, it will continue rolling until all its energy is used up and it collapses. I’m now like a wheel without any driving force, but I’m still rolling ahead. I’ll stop rolling when I hit an obstacle and that will be the end.”

Tang Yue sighed as he looked up at the sky and lay down, stretching out his limbs.

Tomcat also lay down and spread out its limbs.

“Look at the sky… Is that a cloud?”

“Yes.”

Under the pitch-black sky, Tang Yue saw a very faint and sparse white cotton-like object. It emitted a weak glow and was slowly moving across the sky at a rate nearly indiscernible to the eye.

“There are clouds here? That’s rare.”

“The Martian atmosphere obviously has clouds… It’s just something you don’t usually notice. After all, there are small amounts of water and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The clouds you see are likely ice crystals of frozen water or dry ice formed from carbon dioxide. However, they are much higher than the clouds on Earth,” Tomcat explained. “They are distributed in the upper atmosphere above forty kilometers.”

Tang Yue looked at the translucent, cotton-like clouds and suddenly felt that they were egg whites mixed into the black jelly-like Chinese medicine, Tortoise Jelly.

He couldn’t be blamed for not noticing them. These clouds just didn’t stand out. It was only against the pitch-black background that Tang Yue barely noticed them. These extremely sparse clouds which floated tens of kilometers above the surface only became striking enough from reflecting sunlight. In the day, the sunlight was too strong, preventing anyone from discovering them.

The changes in the Martian weather were often small and slow. If there was a weather forecast here, it would be a forecast of clear skies to cloudy.

Clear skies.

Clear skies.

Clear skies.

Clear skies.

Clear skies.

Clear skies.

Tang Yue suddenly laughed. He found such a weather forecast amusing for some baffling reason. A single phrase could be used for ten thousand years.

“It might not always be clear skies. There are hurricanes.” Tang Yue suddenly recalled the possibility. The global hurricanes on Mars lasted months or even half a year. They left a deep impression on him. “The hurricane we met the last time won’t happen again, right?”

“No.” Tomcat categorically rejected the notion. “The one we met was a very rare, small-scale, strong convection current. Such strong hurricanes can be counted on one hand in history. The conditions for their formation are very stringent. The chances are lower than winning five million on the lottery. You will only see it once your entire life. If you were to meet it again, you would be the Chosen One. The important task of rescuing the world would definitely be yours if that was the case.”

“Then what about a global hurricane?”

“You don’t have to worry about global hurricanes as they are periodic. They follow very strict laws of physics.” Tomcat scratched its ears. “Don’t be scared by the word ‘hurricane.’ The strength of sandstorms on this godforsaken planet is very weak. It can’t even compare to Beijing’s smog.”

Compared to the convection current that came suddenly, global hurricanes were much milder. It often came and went slowly, gently coming and going. When they descended, they were like Beijing’s smog.

For a Chinese citizen who was used to such situations, a mild Martian sandstorm was really nothing.

“The Martian weather is strongly periodic. Let’s use an extreme example. If such a strong hurricane stirred this year, it will happen at the same time and place next year, one of the same scale,” Tomcat said. “Do you get it? As global hurricanes are periodic, we can estimate when they start and end.”

“When will the next global hurricane start?”

“A global hurricane happens roughly once every three to four Martian years. The next hurricane will happen in spring a Martian year later, which means two Earth years. The earliest will be in two years’ time, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Tomcat was extremely confident.

There would only be a hurricane in two years and from Tomcat’s point of view, it wouldn’t affect Tang Yue. By that time, Tang Yue would have already left or be dead. After they were dead, who cared what happened. It didn’t matter even if the strong hurricanes peeled off the crust. Therefore, Tomcat freely raised flags. It happily raised it high above Olympus Mons.

It wanted the whole Universe to see it!

“But…” Tang Yue hesitated.

“But what?”

It could raise the flag firmly without any fear, and nobody could have any thoughts of uprooting it. This was because backing behind this flag were Newton, Joule, Pascal, and Helmholtz! Predicting hurricanes was, in essence, a climate problem. It was thermodynamics research. It wasn’t like metaphysics such as astrology or divination, but something that strictly adhered to physics and relied on reliable data. Therefore, Tomcat boldly dared to raise flags to show it to the Universe!

“But… that’s data from past observations, right?” Tang Yue voiced out his worries. “After Earth vanished, wouldn’t Mars’s orbit be affected? Would the atmospheric heating and circulation conditions still be the same as before?”

Tomcat paused.

It widened its eyes.

Holy sh*t!

I’m wrong! I’m wrong. I’ll immediately take down the flag on Olympus Mons!