Return Capsule Caught Fire!

September 20.

The husband and wife lay quietly in the seats of the return capsule, dressed in thick spacesuits.

They could faintly hear the rumble of helicopter rotors. The entire return capsule was being suspended beneath a helicopter and carried rapidly through the air, swaying constantly in the wind, like being on a boat in rough seas. It was even more dizzying than riding a boat, but after all the devilish training they had endured, this little rocking felt no different to them than lying in a baby cradle.

The windows had been covered with cloth. Inside the return capsule, it was so dark they could barely see their hands, with only the faint emergency lights providing candle-like illumination that outlined the cabin.

They had been suspended in the air for nearly three hours. Xiang Xiaotong was bored, so she reached over and occasionally smacked Song He. At first, Song He did not want to respond, but she kept hitting him harder and harder, so he lightly retaliated. She immediately grew excited and struck back repeatedly. The two of them bickered and play-fought.

They were as childish as a couple of kids.

The main issue was that they were not allowed to use communications to speak. This test was simulating a malfunctioning return capsule. According to the script, the two of them should have been struggling through the pain of extreme acceleration, barely conscious, and too exhausted to speak.

At last, the swaying stopped.

Xiang Xiaotong hit her husband even more energetically, expressing her excitement at reaching their destination. Song He was battered until he was thoroughly dazed, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

With a muffled thud, the return capsule landed!

The helicopter's sound gradually faded into the distance. The windows were still covered with black cloth, so they could not see what kind of environment lay outside.

After waiting for quite some time, the Control Screen suddenly lit up. The couple both breathed a sigh of relief, clicked open their safety belts, sat up from their half-reclined positions, and deftly flipped switches throughout the cabin to inspect the return capsule's condition. Only after confirming that the cabin pressure was stable and the air was normal did they remove their helmets and gasp for breath like two divers surfacing.

"It's time to open another mystery box." Xiang Xiaotong said, "Guess where we are this time? At least we're definitely not on water. We stayed steady the whole time without any swaying."

"Not necessarily." Song He said, "Didn't they drop us on an island last Saturday? There was only a little sand beneath the capsule. After taking two steps out, it was all seawater."

Every field-training session was like opening a mystery box. The process was roughly the same each time: the two of them would be jolted and shaken inside the pitch-black return capsule as they traveled to their destination. Once the door opened, any scene might be waiting outside, like a game with a randomly matched map.

By now, the couple had experienced almost every kind of terrain.

The first time, they landed on a vast grassland at six in the morning. Five curious wild wolves circled the return capsule, sniffing back and forth as if waiting for a can of meat. As soon as the hatch opened, a hand holding a pistol extended out and cleanly shot one dead with a bang. The remaining wolves immediately fled. In recent years, wild wolves had reproduced faster and faster and were no longer protected animals.

The second time, they landed on the surface of the sea at dusk. They could feel the rhythm of the waves before opening the hatch. Since the return capsule could float, the two of them honestly drifted on the sea for ten hours, sleeping, chatting, and lying by the window to watch sharks. At dawn, they opened the hatch and poured out a bottle of dyed water. A broad stretch of sea turned a striking orange-yellow, frightening away the sharks circling nearby and guiding the helicopter's line of sight. In the end, the helicopter lifted away both the people and the return capsule exactly as they were.

The third time, they landed on the summit of a snowy mountain. After staying outside for a while, the couple began to suffer mild oxygen deprivation. They returned to the capsule and pressurized it before recovering. The directorate determined that the return capsule's temperature-control system had failed. At night, the temperature dropped to more than ten degrees below zero, so the couple went outside to chop wood and burn it. They spent the night sleeping warmly beside the crackling campfire and were picked up by helicopter at daybreak.

There had also been swamps, forests, the Gobi Desert, saline-alkali land... They had experienced every kind of terrain!

This kind of field training was mainly intended to prevent the return capsule from malfunctioning and drifting to some unknown godforsaken place. No matter what corner of the world they landed in, astronauts had to adapt to the situation and fight for survival. There had been more than one such example in history. The most famous involved one of the Russians' space missions. The return capsule veered wildly off course and fell into the forests of Siberia. The astronauts inside listened to wolves howling in the snow while anxiously awaiting rescue.

The couple opened the hatch meticulously, following the procedure to the letter.

Blinding golden light streamed in. Their visors immediately darkened, blocking part of the intense glare.

"A desert!" they exclaimed in unison.

They opened the hatch completely and sat at the entrance, looking outside. Endless yellow sand stretched across the desert. At that moment, there was almost no wind, and tens of millions of tons of sand lay silently piled up. Heat shimmered above the enormous dunes. It felt as though the moment they took off their spacesuits, their entire bodies would be roasted dry.

In such a godforsaken place, the moisture in a corpse would evaporate at incredible speed, gradually burying it in the sand. Every grain of dry sand was a top-grade desiccant, so a dehydrated corpse could remain preserved for centuries without rotting, like the dry dehydrated vegetables in instant noodles.

"I think we shouldn't go outside and make trouble for ourselves. Let's just lie down in the cabin and stay there until this is over," Xiang Xiaotong suggested.

"Excellent plan!" Song He stood up and gently adjusted the covering above the return capsule, letting a little sunlight shine through the window for illumination without raising the temperature inside too much.

The couple retreated into the cabin, firmly shut the hatch, and stretched out comfortably.

"There's a Sand Coffee stall in the Medicine Institute cafeteria. It's run by a Turkish Professor's child. They put scalding hot sand underneath and a little pot on top, and the coffee inside boils and bubbles." Song He suddenly said.

"You mean our return capsule is like a coffee pot on hot sand?" Xiang Xiaotong said with a laugh.

"Exactly. Fortunately, our coffee pot is thick enough, and the sand beneath us isn't quite that hot." Song He yawned. "I'm sleepy. Shall we chat for a while, then go to sleep?"

A faint sizzling sound interrupted them, and the cabin broadcast came on.

"Directorate order! The return capsule caught fire after landing. Leave the capsule within three minutes!"

The couple sighed as they climbed to their feet, hurriedly grabbed their luggage, opened the hatch, and crawled outside. Reluctantly, they jumped into the heat-roiling sand. Fortunately, the spacesuits had excellent insulation, so they could not feel the heat for the time being.

Before they could catch their breath, another announcement sounded in their headsets.

"Directorate order! The spacesuits have malfunctioned and are leaking electricity. Remove your spacesuits!"

"Damn the directorate!" Xiang Xiaotong cursed irritably.

Song He burst out laughing. He did not know why, but sometimes he genuinely felt that his wife was rather charming when she swore. Perhaps this was what it meant for one's values to follow one's looks?

They took off the cumbersome spacesuits and threw them back into the return capsule. Then they changed into orange-yellow Cold-proof Suits and put on windproof masks.

Although they were called Cold-proof Suits, they could also relieve the heat in a scorching desert. In addition, they were sealed from the neck down to the ankles. Without that seal, they might unknowingly be bitten by poisonous insects, snakes, or ants, after which their entire bodies would turn blue and pink and swell to twice their size with a pop.

Part of their cheeks was still exposed, however, leaving a slight risk of being bitten by a poisonous desert insect. Song He opened the emergency case and counted the antidotes and antivenom inside.

The antivenom was fairly cheap, but the Broad-spectrum Antidote was a new product from the Chenghuang Institute. They had not yet had time to develop a cost-reduction process, so a single injection cost as much as 2.7 million. Compared with the antidote, gold was as cheap as urine.

It was expensive, but its detoxifying effect was truly astonishing. In certain situations, it could even bring the dead back to life and restore flesh to bones. It was a backup safeguard, though they definitely would not need it.

"Husband, guess where we are?" Xiang Xiaotong looked up at the sun, then scooped up a handful of sand and examined it.