Chapter 217 – Communication
There is one thing to point out when the signal transmitter is completed.
Putting a spacecraft stationary in Mars orbit underwater and recovering the vaccine are still separate problems.
Until now, the reason I have taken risks and robbed research institutes myself is because these technologies are so valuable.
Bionic technologies will be forgotten forever if human experiments are essential and there is no backup data, so if they are lost. Seeds and animal embryos that have no way to be restored once they become extinct.
Even the slightest risk, such as self-destruction by the security system, could not be taken. Even though I was stubborn towards Artemis, I went out to find it myself.
The spaceship Solaver came on was a treasure more precious than anything I had secured so far.
Technology has parts that intersect with each other. The higher the technology, the more it encompasses multiple lower-level technologies.
For example, from simple tools like lighters to sophisticated tools like guns, and even ultra-precise tools like radars and cell phones. The principles of these tools are concentrated in helicopters and fighter jets.
Textile technology, medical technology, industrial technology, cooling technology, and automatic control technology are all integrated into one spacesuit.
A spaceship capable of interstellar travel would contain the great legacies of numerous alien civilizations.
This is something that must be secured without any hesitation.
Of course, interpreting and understanding them will be a long journey incomparable to the reverse engineering that has been done so far.
“This will be the theft of the century. Solaver said it would legally transfer ownership, but understanding its components would be an endless series of dead copies. It’s literally like deciphering a code written by God.”
Artemis said.
Perhaps the relationship has improved a little, so we started calling him by his first name instead of ‘him’.
“Still, I have to bring it. There must be a technique that can be solved as easily as catching a mouse while a cow is backing away.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
There was a consensus from the beginning about securing the spacecraft, and the next thing to consider was the risk the spacecraft would pose to Earth.
We headed to the room of the external laboratory where Solaver was staying to talk about this.
He must wear a small respirator because the air concentration has been adjusted to accommodate his lifestyle. You won’t die with bare mouth, but it’s not as comfortable as being in an alpine area.
“Hmph! Haaa…”
“I don’t need it.”
Artemis said to me while I was checking that I was wearing the respirator properly.
“Is Android still Android?”
We often forget that she is a warm body filled with real blood and flesh, but her body is not human.
“It’s different from being sturdy. Unlike Chrollo and Rose, I breathe with real lungs like you. “I feel the same way when I breathe in air of that concentration.”
“Then isn’t it necessary?”
Artemis shook her head when I tried to hand her the respirator.
“My body is special. You can contain everything, and you can combine everything. Would you say it is a biotech workshop that can rival the factories in the central region? If necessary, my body can also combine oxygen and nitrogen on its own. So there is no need for a separate respirator.”
“Is it some kind of built-in respirator?”
“It’s not a metaphor I like very much. “It’s a much higher level technology.”
As I watched her bouncing her chest with her proud face, I was intrigued the other way.
“You mean the body can secrete anything?”
“Whatever. And would you please say creation instead of dirty expressions like secretion?”
“Oh my.”
“… What is it? “That expression.”
Me holding my chin and Artemis wrapping my arms around me as if I suddenly felt chills.
So we entered Solaver’s room.
“Please come quickly.”
He opened his arms and welcomed us.
“The completed transmitter has been confirmed. Thank you for your hard work.”
“Thank you for your cooperation, guest.”
Artemis shed the relaxed appearance she had shown when she had just been flirting with me and became her majestic mistress.
Does she really have someone to use her honorific on? I suddenly became curious.
It is said that her director during her time at NASA treated her like his own daughter, and that he too saw her as a close relative of her family. If the two of you meet again, will you still treat each other with the same level of respect?
While they are thinking that, the two are already talking.
“There are two types of danger inside the spaceship. The first is the infectious agent that will remain within the ship. But this is meaningless since it has spread to your planet anyway.”
Solaver said.
“The second would be infectious agents, right? And those are monsters based on extraterrestrial life forms, not Earth-based ones.”
“That’s right.”
The old diplomat gently dismissed Artemis’ still somewhat displeased look.
“How big will that number be? “If you look at the video footage we obtained, that is, from the first Mars exploration team, the inside of the spacecraft was full of corpses.”
“It was a quarantine zone. When we realized that the ship was exposed to infection, we separated it into several compartments. If the human exploration team had encountered infectious agents in a place that was not quarantined, history might have changed.”
“Well, if the video of the expedition team being slaughtered by monsters had been broadcast, quarantine measures would have been much stricter.”
What if the exploration team that infiltrated the alien spaceship with a small boat was completely annihilated by monsters?
The personnel waiting in the shuttle would have left their dead colleagues and returned straight to Earth. If so, the risk of infection could have been prevented.
Well, it’s all pointless to talk about it now.
The map of the spacecraft was displayed on the screen of the electronic desk around which we sat.
“As I said before, when the infection spread, we not only implemented quarantine but also purification protocols.”
Countless alien corpses captured on video from the manned Mars exploration team.
In addition to lacerations, stab wounds, and penetrating wounds that appear to have been inflicted by an infectious agent, there were also many signs of suffocation or freezing to death.
“It must not have been an easy choice. “It was a way to kill even the healthy people.”
“In the end, that’s the way to reduce the number of victims the most. It’s a lesson learned from many failures. Unfortunately, the situation was so bad at the time that I couldn’t do it completely.”
The compartments of the spacecraft were divided into three colors.
Places where the purification protocol was properly implemented are colored in green, areas where it was implemented incompletely are colored in yellow, and areas where it was not implemented are colored in red.
“To be honest, this map isn’t going to be very reliable. We must take into account that there may be areas where the blockade has been lifted due to various types of damage.”
“I know.”
The crew of the spacecraft totaled 312 people.
There, about 70 people were ejected into outer space due to the activation of the purification protocol, about 90 people died from suffocation, and about 30 people were rapidly cooled.
“Please understand that we were unable to provide exact numbers due to lack of time.”
“Don’t do that. “You are doing it to the point where I couldn’t treat you any better.”
I bowed my head and tried to dissuade him.
Considering the number of samples recovered by the manned exploration team, the minimum number of infectious agents can be assumed to be 100 and the maximum to be 200.
Since I was also informed of the composition ratio of the crew members on board, I was able to roughly estimate their strength.
Our current powerful army is enough to surround and annihilate us.
That’s right.
We planned to land the spacecraft on the ground, not in Earth orbit.
* * *
A camera outside the lab transmitted the completed signal transmitter to the screen.
The shape, which pursues the aesthetics of curves to the limit, has some similarities to a conch shell and looks cute.
The size is much more compact than the deep space communication antenna operated by NASA.
We left the guest room and gathered in the external laboratory control room.
It’s much shabby compared to the shelter’s central control room, but it has everything. However, it is difficult to adapt to the drastically reduced screen size.
On the screen, a 3D map displays a signal transmitter on Earth and a spacecraft in Mars orbit.
“We are ready. Just give me the command.”
Solaver, wearing a special respirator, said.
I glanced at Artemis. She crossed her arms and nodded slightly.
“Is there any reason to wait any longer? Let’s get started.”
The ceiling where the transmitter was installed vibrated slightly.
And you can faintly hear a resonance sound like the sound of waves coming from a conch shell.
An image of a wave being emitted from a transmitter was displayed on the screen.
‘4 minutes and 8 seconds.’
The remaining time until the radio waves arrive has begun to be counted.
It’s quite a frustrating time, but it can’t be helped since it’s communication with a spacecraft over 80 million kilometers away.
After that, we stared at the screen without saying a word. Even if a person who has starved for a week microwaves frozen food, he or she will not look at the numbers with such concentration.
Time passed quickly in a tense atmosphere.
And finally.
5 seconds.
4 seconds.
3 seconds.
2 seconds.
1 second.
The moment the number pointed to 0, there was an immediate response from the spacecraft.
“A communication request has arrived from the spaceship.”
Artemis said.
Thanks to learning the storage device handed over by Solaver, Artemis was now able to understand the language and script of the alien civilization.
This is because the device was originally created for the same purpose as the Golden Record contained in Voyager.
Ppadeuk.
A sound of teeth clenching was heard from behind. It was Solaver.
When I looked back at him, I was surprised. He had a stern, even scary expression on his face that we had never seen since we first met.
“We will open a communication channel.”
A communication from the spacecraft was received on the large screen.
Unlike transmitters that can only transmit radio waves and are therefore limited by the speed of light, that spacecraft is capable of real-time communication with partners in outer space.
They said it was because there is technology for creating ultra-small wormholes exclusively for radio waves, but I don’t know the details.
[∫∫∬○∫◎∫∬∬∬∫◎∬∫∬!]
What came out of the speaker was a voice of a type I had never heard before.
There were no sounds, and it was composed only of vowels, so it had a smooth sound like singing.
A fairly long conversation followed, the content of which was subtitled by Artemis.
‘God helped! Wrecked due to mechanical failure, you urgently need help. There are a lot of children here. We need your help.’
A distress signal that humans in the past could not interpret clearly.
The true content of communication, of which only the type was known, was revealed before us.
