Dead on Mars - Chapter 243

It was 7:23 in the morning.

Tang Yue subconsciously looked out the window. He had imagined that the reason it was pitch-black outside was that it was night time and the sun hadn’t risen. But the indicated time said that it was seven in the morning… Why wasn’t the sun up? They weren’t at the poles which experienced long nights.

“I copy you. You’re up?” At that moment, Tomcat’s voice sounded over the earpiece. Following that, the hatch opened. With a heavy click, Tomcat crawled in. Tang Yue noticed that it was wearing an IVA suit. Tomcat took off the helmet and said, “How was your sleep?”

“It was alright. Just some fatass weighing fifty kilograms was pressing down on my feet. My leg still feels numb… What’s happening?” Tang Yue pointed outside. “It’s not bright yet? The sun was snuffed out? It’s the apocalypse?”

“Come on out.” Tomcat wore its helmet and reached out to pull Tang Yue. “See for yourself.”

“It’s fine?”

“It’s fine.”

Tang Yue followed Tomcat out the geolab and carefully placed his feet on the ground. It was pitch-black outside. He was unable to even see his fingers. Tang Yue looked about and through the Radiant Armor’s glass, he could tell that it wasn’t the color of night because the darkness wasn’t up in the sky but right in front of him, just beyond the glass millimeters away from him. Tang Yue felt as though he was soaked in ink and was unable to see any light.

Tang Yue switched on the Radiant Armor’s headlamp, its beam failing to shine beyond five meters. The pitch-black air was a turbid reddish-brown under the light’s illumination. Dust was being stirred violently in midair.

“This is the smog you were talking about?” Tang Yue looked around him.

“Eh… Heavy smog,” Tomcat replied. “Today’s air quality is indeed a little bad, worse than I imagined.”

“Are the other smog you are acquainted with all like this? Blotting out the sky so that you can’t even see your hands?” Tang Yue glared. “Do you live in a chimney?”

“You just realized? I told you before that I’ve had a hard life since a young age. Before I was even five months old, I was sold as a slave to Shanxi ¹ . I was made to slave away and the evil boss didn’t even feed me…”

“Say something useful!”

“Alright, to be honest, I never expected it to be this serious. The sky is blotted out and there’s zero sunlight. I woke up half an hour earlier than you and have tested the solar panels.” Tomcat stood beside Tang Yue. “Clearly, the sandstorm hit us while we were sleeping last night. It brought with it large amounts of sand and dust, cloaking the surface of Mars like a blanket thirty-kilometers-thick. Sunlight can’t even penetrate through.”

“How long will this last?” Tang Yue reached out his hand and spread his palm in the darkness. “I can’t sense the wind at all.”

“That’s hard to tell. It might be a global hurricane, not happening once in three years, but once it happens, it lasts for half a year,” Tomcat replied. “It’s normal that you can’t feel the wind. The sandstorm spans a wide area, but it doesn’t mean a high wind speed. Wearing such thick gloves in such a thin atmosphere prevents you from feeling a thing.”

Tomcat and Tang Yue groped their way forward with the help of the Mars Wanderer. Tang Yue switched off the Radiant Armor’s headlamp while Tomcat held a tiny bulb in its paw, lifting it above its head, letting it emit its faint light.

“What do we do?” Tang Yue asked.

“We do everything according to plan.” Tomcat walked ahead. “I told you that the weather conditions won’t affect our progress. We will just have to travel in darkness.”

“You can navigate in such poor visibility?” Tang Yue was somewhat surprised.

“You speak as though we can navigate even with good visibility,” Tomcat grunted. “Since we were already groping blindly, what difference does it make?”

Tomcat finally exposed its unreliable side. Whatever sextant and star chart he was using to determine their latitude was simply to trick a layman like Tang Yue. It was always a blind cat searching for a dead rat in the desert.

Tang Yue was left agape.

“You! You! You! You! You!”

“What?” Tomcat threw up its paws and gnashed its teeth. “That darn letter randomly threw some coordinates at us, asking us to seek it out in the vast desert. It’s hundreds of kilometers. Without any reliable navigation equipment, how are we to find the precise location? We are just trying out luck… If we are lucky, we will encounter it. Otherwise, we won’t.”

It was shameless.

Tang Yue could do nothing about Tomcat. He knew that it was speaking the truth. Be it the sextant or the star chart, they could only determine a general direction based on sight. It was impossible to reach the precision of GPS. This whole trip, they were relying on the measurements seventy percent of the time, intuition for the next twenty percent, and luck for the last ten percent.

Tang Yue and Tomcat came to the front of the vehicle and crawled into the driver’s compartment.

The driver’s compartment, which was fully ventilated, made it no different from a convertible. Tang Yue found his seat and buckled his seatbelt. By placing the tiny bulb on the dashboard, Tomcat illuminated the wooden frame. Tang Yue took another glance at it. The astronauts on Orion had bright smiles across their faces, but that was such a distant thing.

Tomcat started the Mars Wanderer’s engine and the control panel’s indicator lights turned on. It indicated that the Mars Wanderer’s batteries were fully charged with 96% left.

“Do you know where we should go? This darn weather…” Tang Yue couldn’t even see his palm if he stretched his arm out. It felt as though he was extending his arm into a miasma. How was one to drive in such visibility? Would they end up driving into a ditch?

“Drive ahead,” Tomcat said indifferently. “Why do you need to worry when I’m driving?”

The next moment, the Mars Wanderer’s lights lit up. Two light beams tore through the darkness like a sword. The momentary blinding light narrowed Tang Yue’s eyes. He was slightly alarmed. He had never carried out missions at night, nor had he switched on the Wanderer’s headlights. He never expected Earth to equip this old dog with such powerful eyes.

“When have I ever crashed?” Tomcat looked straight ahead with a deadpan expression. Depressing the accelerator, Tomcat completed a smooth series of actions. It did seem like an experienced driver of bumper cars.

The Mars Wanderer jolted slightly as it began accelerating.

“Eh… Wait! Stop! Tomcat, stop the vehicle!” Tang Yue suddenly recalled something. “The solar panels! The solar panels are still on the ground. We didn’t collect them!”

“I know. We’re abandoning them.” Tomcat held the steering wheel and continued accelerating. “Abandon all that can be abandoned to lessen our load. After all, this hurricane will last half a year. It’s useless keeping the solar panels. We shall travel light for the last thirty kilometers! We shall head straight for the enemy’s den!”