Darkness Descends

Smashing it with a hammer sounded incredibly unreliable, but it couldn't be denied that it was an option. They just couldn't start hammering away blindly.

They had finally dug something useful out of this wrecked spaceship. What if they broke it? To be safe, they should first dismantle the engine assembly that had already been confirmed broken, carefully study its structure, figure out the approximate purpose of each component, and only then deal with the deformation in the other assembly.

"Set aside the deformed pipe for now. We should dismantle the other one and understand it first," Yue Yuan said.

"That's exactly what I was thinking." Liu Miyan laughed and said loudly, "This wreck is already ruined beyond recognition. There's no way it can fly again. We might as well make use of the scrap—strip out everything that can be removed and take it back for further study."

"Mm, then dismantle it. Remember to be extremely careful."

Yue Yuan nodded in agreement. As he spoke, he turned and left the engine room, then asked the two following behind him, "What do you think of this alien spaceship?"

To be honest, Yue Yuan was somewhat disappointed. He had expected to dig up some remaining fuel or something from the engine room of this alien wreck, but it was completely empty—not even a trace of anything.

Strictly speaking, they had dug out an engine that looked relatively intact on the surface, but Yue Yuan held no hope for it. It had been buried underground for twenty thousand years, packed with dirt inside and out. Who knew whether its interior had decayed? If it could be cleaned up and displayed in a museum, that would already be good enough.

"It should be a Probe Spaceship or a small cargo vessel," Yu Nanfeng answered first. The Probe Spaceship conclusion was probably based on its size, while the cargo vessel theory came from the Red Gas they had found earlier.

As he followed Yue Yuan forward, Yu Nanfeng said, "But aside from that Red Gas, we haven't found anything else, nor have we found any traces of alien biological remains. Still, I don't believe this was an unmanned spacecraft."

Liu Miyan cut in, "I'm certain it wasn't unmanned. We'll know once we clear out the cockpit. Also, the materials research team analyzed the ship's hull and its internal components. They confirmed that it's an alloy with an extremely high titanium content, but compared with the titanium plate alloys we manufacture ourselves, its strength and other properties are more than ten times better."

"However, its layout, mechanical structure, Electric Force transmission, and so on don't exceed conventional imagination. It has visible wiring and recognizable mechanical structures. All things considered, we believe this spaceship's technological level is indeed far beyond ours, but it hasn't reached the level of a divine artifact."

"To put it another way, we can tell what each part of the ship is used for; we just don't know its exact principles. If we're lucky enough to find an intact component, we might even be able to use it. There's a term for that—what was it called again?"

"Black Technology?" Yue Yuan supplied.

"Right, Black Technology." Liu Miyan nodded. "But it isn't completely black, because from our perspective, it doesn't violate the laws of nature."

What was Black Technology? Knowledge not developed independently by humanity and standing above humanity's current technological level.

This alien spaceship was approximately two kilometers long and eight hundred meters wide. It was enormous by human standards, yet they had found no weapons corresponding to its scale. They had found several tubular objects resembling launchers on the underside of the hull, but no ammunition had been discovered inside the ship.

According to the excavation report, either it had expended all its ammunition or had never carried any to begin with. Some analyses suggested they were some kind of laser emitters, and functional guesses had been made about certain corresponding components.

But regardless of the case, it was already old and dilapidated.

The only things humans could probably learn from were the spaceship's design framework, such as its internal partitions and cabin layout.

Humanity had no experience building spaceships this large, so even though it was practically an empty ship, there were still things worth learning from it.

"How much longer?" Yue Yuan asked.

Liu Miyan ducked beneath a rack and answered, "Three months."

"There's no time. Speed up the work. It has to be fully cleared within two months. We can't wait any longer. If we can't find anything aboard this ship, then we must activate the Emergency Hibernation Plan." At a fork in the corridor, Yue Yuan turned to look at the two of them.

"Has it really come to this?" Liu Miyan asked in shock. Of course he knew about the Emergency Hibernation Plan, but he had not known it had never truly been activated because Yue Yuan still held a sliver of hope for this spaceship.

"Time waits for no one. Let us all do our utmost." Yue Yuan did not give a direct answer. After saying that, he turned and left.

After leaving the wrecked spaceship research facility, Yue Yuan went to the Nuclear Fusion research group, though it was nothing more than an attempt to seek some psychological comfort.

The new Tokamak Device had already been completed, and the research group was constantly trying different experiments. But this thing was not even the latest-generation technology from old Earth. Although its stable burn time could now last more than thirty minutes, its energy output was still lower than its energy input.

It was deeply frustrating.

Feeling somewhat agitated, Yue Yuan returned to his office and continued handling daily affairs. Then he ate a dinner made from industrially produced starch, with artificially synthesized protein and a few pitiful green vegetables as the dishes.

The vegetables came from the plantation. Callisto Base had always had them, and they tasted all right, but after eating them too often, they no longer had much flavor.

When it came to food, the loss of Earth had left them with pitifully few varieties.

Some time ago, Yue Yuan had seen a planning report from the Food Department. It proposed using artificial protein to create highly concentrated protein bars, counted as meat, where eating one bar could sustain someone for half a day.

The Food Department also planned to develop protein bars in various flavors in the near future, doing everything possible to satisfy people's taste buds.

So far, humanity's food supply had not been scarce. It was simply extremely monotonous in variety.

Day after day, they ate artificial starch and artificial protein. A few dehydrated vegetable leaves counted as a decent meal. Everyone ate the same thing, so no one complained.

After finishing a tasteless dinner that felt like chewing wax, Yue Yuan made another trip to Doctor Yi Kai's biological laboratory.

Yi Kai had originally come to oversee the project researching human lifespan, but because of the sudden disaster, the laboratory was now rather deserted. Combined with resource rationing issues, progress had become extremely slow.

Two years had already passed, yet the serum Yue Yuan had left behind last time had not even been used up.

In fact, many research projects were in the same state as this one: unable to stop completely.

At present, apart from the massive construction effort still proceeding in full swing, much of humanity's internal research work had entered a semi-dormant state.

Yue Yuan knew very well that this was unhealthy, but to break free from it, humanity had to reach a new Star System.

Many thanks to kieos for the donation.