Old Mr. Natsume's fingers had moved slowly along the grooves of the gears in her memory:
"These 'gears' will turn round and round,
following the star paths, all the way to the end of the starry sky.
Chie,
and the red light there is the light of the stars, the warmth of civilization's continuation."
At that time, the firewood in the hearth of her memories had crackled, sending out a tiny spark,
which fell into the ashes
and vanished in an instant.
Little Chie had lain across her grandfather's knees, staring at that picture. She had felt that his words were like a spell from a fairy tale, warm and distant.
She had accepted the ginkgo wood chip her grandfather handed her. The Red Planet on it still carried the lingering warmth of the firewood. Pressing it against her cheek, she had thought that the so-called "warmth of civilization" was probably the warmth of her grandfather's palm, the warmth of the firewood in the hearth, the small, unextinguished warmth of a winter night.
But she had never imagined that this fairy tale she had heard countless times would reveal its answer in such a shocking way, ten years later, in a conference room on an Artificial Planet.
At the same time, Su Wen's fingers tapped out the final calibration command on the keyboard Caroline had simulated.
He had already seen through everything. It was time to completely unravel the mystery:
In an instant, the stream of code on the screen froze, leaving only a clear trajectory diagram.
Beside him, Caroline had just finished debugging the simulated interstellar communications system. She showed no surprise, merely nodding quietly at Su Wen.
"The signal amplification module is stable. The Izu ground station parameters have been matched."
In that instant,
a slender yet brilliant