Dead on Mars

Tang Yue looked at himself in the mirror. A silver tin-foil insulation blanket was draped over him. He gave himself winks while he bared his teeth.

He combed his hair to the back, giving himself a huge slicked-back. He tried hard to have the swooning, gentleman’s aura of Leonardo DiCaprio or Chow Yun-fat.

“Tomcat, do you think I look like… that old-school Hong Kong actor? The one that’s super handsome. The one who acted in the police movie with Jackie Chan.” Tang Yue recalled as he said, “His name was Wu… Wu ¹ …”

Tomcat sat behind him and glanced at him.

“Wu Mengda ¹ .”

Today was Tang Yue’s ninety-eighth sol of being trapped on Mars.

Three months had passed since Earth’s disappearance. There was still no news from Earth, and the Kunlun Station had its communication systems round the clock, but nothing had been received. In the past three months, Tomcat had spent a great deal of time and effort analyzing the reasons for Earth’s disappearance and attempting to track the Orion I’s trajectory.

The Orion I was the spacecraft that Old Wang and company had taken. They had left for Earth a few days before Tang Yue was due to leave.

Tang Yue should have taken that spacecraft back to Earth. It was a rare situation for Mars scientific teams to be split into two batches. However, there was an important research observation mission that needed to be completed on the Kunlun Station. Tomcat alone was insufficient, so Tang Yue had stayed behind to help it. The plan was for Tang Yue to return to Earth on the Orion II after the mission was completed.

Meanwhile, he was tasked with the cargo on the Orion II. Most of the activated laboratory samples on the Orion II needed someone to take care of them.

Who would have expected that this delay of a few days had actually saved Tang Yue’s life?

The Orion I and II were old spacecraft that had been in service for more than a decade. They had rendered plenty of meritorious services, but they were aged. According to the plans, the Orion I and II would return to Earth after this mission and be decommissioned. The spacecraft to ferry the next Mars scientific team were probably the brand new Orion III and Orion IV.

This delay of a few days also saved the Orion II.

If it had launched together with the Orion I, it might have disappeared as well.

“Mr. Cat! Tang Yue!” Mai Dong appeared on the screen. “Good morning! Have you had breakfast?”

She was still as lively as before. Three months had passed, and her hair had grown long. Mai Dong tied a simple ponytail as a result.

“Good morning, Miss Mai Dong.” Tomcat sat at the other end of the Hab as it waved its paw from afar. It would groom its fur every morning.

“Good morning, lass.” Tang Yue nodded. “Which sunrise is it on your side?”

“The seventh.”

“What did you eat this morning?”

“Eh… Tuna, cheese, and orange juice.” The girl’s fair face and neck were glistening with perspiration. She flicked away the hair by her forehead and said, “I just cycled for five kilometers.”

“How bourgeois.”

“Tang Yue, what did you eat this morning?” Mai Dong asked.

“Me? I ate an East-meets-West fusion.” Tang Yue thought and said, “Sparkling Oldenlandia Water matched with canned Swedish herring.”

Three months ago, Tang Yue had sent enough supplies up to the United Space Station. Mai Dong temporarily didn’t need to worry about food, but power and nutrition were only able to maintain one aspect of healthiness.

Humans were biological creatures that had evolved on Earth. Their body structures were adapted to gravity of a single G. Being in a weightless environment for extended periods of time brought about all kinds of problems, especially problems to the bones, muscles, heart, vessels, and nerves.

In long space missions, the physiological and mental effects on astronauts were always hot topics of research. Due to the extended exposure to microgravity environments, humans would lose calcium in their bones at accelerated speeds. Their bones would turn brittle, and muscles that work against gravity would be in prolonged periods of disuse, causing muscle atrophy. The red blood cell count would also decrease, causing the regulation of blood vessels to weaken.

These problems were accentuated during the long missions to Mars. It severely threatened the health of astronauts.

The medical experts on Earth targeted the Mars missions, and specially designed a set of training exercises. It was to resist the decline of one’s physique due to the loss of gravity. The Orion and Kunlun Station both had training facilities. It required the team members to complete a full daily exercise regime. For instance, Tang Yue had to run three thousand meters on the treadmill daily.

There was some gravity on Mars, but the United Space Station was in zero gravity. Mars United Space Station’s exercise regime was tougher than Tang Yue’s.

“Tang Yue, what do you plan on doing next?” Mai Dong asked, “Move the solar panels?”

Tang Yue nodded. He took off his robe, changed into his clothes before donning the Radiant Armor.

Out of the forty-plus solar panels, one of them had been damaged. In the sandstorm three months ago, they had failed to store them away in time. The next day, Tomcat and Tang Yue discovered that two of the solar panels had lowered efficiencies. The two went to great effort to fix one of them, but the other one remained unrepairable.

Tomcat theorized that due to the prolonged exposure to low temperatures, together with dust entering the battery’s internal circuits, the batteries had short-circuited.

Now, they had forty solar panels left. Thankfully, one less solar panel didn’t affect Kunlun Station’s normal operations. Tomcat warned Tang Yue that ten was the warning line. Once more than ten solar panels were damaged, there was no way to maintain Kunlun Station’s normal power consumption. They would then have to shut down parts of the Station.

Food, water, batteries. It was unknown which would be exhausted first.

This was somewhat like Liebig’s law—Tang Yue’s remaining lifespan was not dictated by the total resources available, but by the scarcest resource.

“After moving the solar panels out, I’ll have to check the conditions of the various systems in Kunlun Station. Anyway, it’s a bunch of trivialities,” Tang Yue said. “If I’m fast enough, I might have the time to sit by Kunlun Station’s entrance to see the sunset.”

“How’s the sunset at Kunlun Station?”

“At times red,” Tang Yue replied, “at times blue.”

“Blue?” Mai Dong was astonished.

“Tomcat said that the dust in the Martian atmosphere scatters blue light that has a relatively short wavelength. Therefore, the sun appears blue.” Tang Yue shrugged his shoulders as he passed by Tomcat with clothes in hand.

He saw the motionless cat sitting squarely, its paws on its knees with its eyes closed.

“What are you doing?”

Tang Yue prodded the cat’s head.

“Move your claw away,” Tomcat said softly without much of a reaction.

“Mine is a hand. Yours is a claw.” Tang Yue corrected it.

“From my point of view, you are a primate with five furless claws.” Tomcat counterattacked. “I’m currently meditating over the truth of this world.”

“Meditating?” Tang Yue scoffed. “Are you meditating over some Zen? Have you figured out any truths?”

“I’m meditating over the way of the world, the ultimate truth of the Universe.” Tomcat slowly opened its eyes as it wore a calm expression like an accomplished monk. “For example, the truth behind the Orion I’s disappearance.”