Callisto

Yue Yuan still had to travel to Mars, but this time he would not be setting foot on the planet. Instead, he would wait at the Yinghuo orbital station for the other two specialists being transferred to Callisto.

Of course, the need to transfer to a large transport craft in Mars orbit was another reason.

As the engines erupted in dazzling light, Yue Yuan's group grew from four to five people and vanished from the sight of Queqiao Transfer Station personnel, plunging into the vast depths of space.

Yinghuo was Mars's ancient name. Zhonghua Family had once again given the base here this romantic, culturally rich name.

It was the accumulation of history, the inheritance of culture, and the vessel of technology.

Only science and technology could carry these names, condensed into culture from history and mythology alike, generation after generation into the future.

As for Callisto, anyone with even a little astronomical knowledge, anyone who had memorized Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in school, knew it referred to Jupiter's fourth moon.

But if it were called by the transliterated name Callistos, most people would be completely lost and have no idea what it meant.

The advantage of ideographic names was obvious.

Thus, in this era, any Space Station or extraterrestrial base built by Zhonghua Family was basically named entirely in Chinese.

After bidding farewell to the red planet Mars and enduring a long journey, the transport craft carrying Yue Yuan's group finally entered the range of Jupiter's gravitational capture.

Having prepared in advance for reverse deceleration, the transport craft slowly headed toward the Callisto docking station. The station was located at the gravitational balance point between Callisto and Jupiter, the Lagrange Point people often spoke of.

Callisto had a diameter of 4,821 kilometers, larger than the Moon and 0.378 times the size of Earth. It was the Solar System's third-largest moon; Ganymede ranked first, while Titan, also known as Titan, ranked second. Viewed from orbit, Callisto appeared yellowish-brown, with bright white spots scattered across its surface—the ice sheets of cooled volcanic craters.

Its albedo was very low, making it dim and giving it the feel of a lifeless world.

Its surface Gravitational Acceleration was 1.24 m/s². In other words, the same object experienced roughly one-eighth of Earth's gravity on Callisto. This showed that although it was large, neither its density nor mass surpassed the Moon's.

It had no global magnetic field. Its frozen surface was covered in meteorite craters of all shapes and sizes, including bowl-shaped craters, craters ringed with multiple circular bands, and rare, narrow elongated sunken canyons.

Callisto Base lay within one of those long, narrow sunken canyons facing Jupiter.

Because it was tidally locked to Jupiter, whenever people at the base went outside and raised their heads, they could see the enormous, overwhelmingly oppressive Jupiter.

The entire Callisto Base had a gray exterior because its construction materials were sourced locally, excavated from Callisto, sorted, and then 3D-printed.

Callisto Base was not the only one. The construction materials for Guanghan Palace and Yinghuo Base were prepared the same way, sourced locally and produced through 3D-printing technology.

Bricks with Mortise and Tenon Structure were made this way, then assembled by remotely synchronized engineering machinery. Huaxia's ancient Mortise and Tenon Structure was once again put to use in space.

It had to be said that the wisdom of their ancestors was impressive indeed.

Unlike Guanghan Palace and Yinghuo Base, more than half of Callisto Base was underground. Its aboveground sections formed one connected expanse, covering half the narrow valley, while its lowest level connected to the entrance of that damaged alien spacecraft.

Because of the damaged spacecraft, this base had received unprecedented attention. Both its research investment and construction scale far exceeded those of Guanghan Palace and Yinghuo Base. Among extraterrestrial bases, it had the most advanced and comprehensive facilities.

After all, it could not be otherwise. They could not just retrieve a piece of an alien spacecraft, ship it back to Earth, and study it there. Not only would the risk of exposure be high, but it would also waste time.

The higher-ups knew that as time passed, traditional space powers like the United States would eventually discover it. Rumor had it that they were already planning their own Callisto Base. Once they arrived, the secret would most likely be impossible to keep.

Before that happened, they had to research it with everything they had.

Thus, under such circumstances, many outstanding Research Personnel and scientists were sent to Callisto Base. In addition, because the base needed to be built, large numbers of engineers and craftsmen of every kind came here to work.

They were not traditional bricklayers, of course, but highly skilled technical workers. The construction of such extraterrestrial bases was basically handled by machinery, with workers operating indoors while the machinery worked in the external environment.

As the population grew, so did its needs, including necessities such as food and clothing. They could not ship everything from Earth every time. Under these conditions, Callisto Base gradually became a small city with a population of more than eighty thousand.

After returning to Callisto Base, Yue Yuan first arranged Yi Kai's work. Then, in a rush, he called Zhu Pete into his office and began dealing with the matters that had piled up recently.

The first thing Yue Yuan focused on was affairs related to the alien spacecraft. He read through the documents for a while, then sighed and tossed them aside.

There was no reason for it other than the lack of good news.

The spacecraft's interior had basically been searched from top to bottom, yet no trace of that red substance had been found. If that was the case, future research could only proceed through the serum, which was far from ideal.

There was another piece of bad news: the spacecraft's nose had been completely destroyed. The cockpit, which they had never found, had long since been filled with rock. Experts estimated that the equipment inside had probably all been scrapped.

According to the report, the experts believed this had been caused by the impact of the spacecraft's original crash. As for its age, scientists had made a preliminary inference based on the surrounding Rock Layer and the way the craft was embedded in the strata: it was likely more than twenty thousand years old. The exact date, however, remained uncertain.

Yue Yuan did not really care about the spacecraft's age. He only knew that aliens truly existed. Humanity was not alone in this universe.

He did not know whether that was good news or bad news.

Yes, loneliness was the most terrifying thing. From that perspective, humanity should be happy, should feel fortunate that it was not the universe's only Sentient Life.

Because the idea that humanity was the universe's only Sentient Life was simply too terrifying.

Yet humanity truly knew nothing about the universe. It did not know what Cosmic Civilizations were like, what relations existed between them, where those civilizations were, or whether they were benevolent or hostile.

Knowing that Alien Civilization existed while remaining completely in the dark was extremely dangerous. Therefore, Callisto Base's primary mission was actually to study this damaged alien spacecraft in hopes of uncovering clues about Alien Civilization.

If they could use those clues, that tiny amount of information, to infer as much as possible about the relationships among the universe's various civilizations.

This was unprecedented research. Since it leaned toward the social sciences, scientists studying the field called it Cosmic Sociology.

However, because of secrecy concerns, the discipline was currently only being quietly researched internally by a handful of sociologists using the limited information discovered by Callisto Base.

So although Callisto had many people, very few actually knew of the alien spacecraft's existence. And one thing was certain: before the secret of the alien spacecraft was made public, those who knew it would not be permitted to leave the base freely.

From Yue Yuan's perspective, that was only natural and beyond question.

After returning to Callisto, Yue Yuan's life became as busy and regimented as usual. If nothing unexpected happened, he would probably remain here for another twenty years before transferring to another post.

He might return to Earth, or he might continue onward to the next stop and pioneer a new Space Base.

But if he were given a choice, then given Yue Yuan's personality, he would definitely choose to pioneer new Space Bases until he could no longer adapt to life in space.

However, just as the seventh Earth month since Yue Yuan's return to Callisto Base arrived, an accident occurred.