Honeycomb Briquette

December 2029, Rocket City, Bright Nation

Michael Max's grand plan to terraform Mars left Daphne both astonished and yearning. To create a "backup" for Earth—what kind of mind could come up with such a bold and crazy plan?

Michael told Prince Harufa that he had a super-energy source. He said nothing about the theory or the details. Even with Daphne, Michael strictly honored his promise of secrecy and didn't reveal a single word.

Daphne completely understood why Michael had done that. Besides, she had just signed a confidentiality agreement herself, though Michael didn't know it. The amusing thing was that the two lovers knew the same secret and were keeping it from each other.

A few days earlier, Professor Braun had come to Mr. E's office with his beloved daughter, Daphne Braun. Mr. E, who was in charge of Bright Nation's Plan T, was already in his seventies. His movements were a little slow, and he had far less energy than before, but wisdom still glimmered in his eyes beneath his white eyebrows.

Mr. E got straight to the point. "Daphne, welcome to Plan T! The committee members unanimously agree that you're the right person for the job."

Daphne was surprised. She had thought her father was simply bringing her to visit an old friend. Somewhat puzzled, she asked:

"What is Plan T about? Am I really suited for it?"

Professor Braun gazed fondly at Daphne and gave her a brief introduction to the situation.

In 1936, Nikola Tesla submitted a paper to the scientific advisers of the Bright Nation government. It was called The Dynamic Principle of Gravity.

In the paper, Tesla claimed that every direction in the universe was filled with an electromagnetic wave. It traveled at an extremely high speed, had an extremely long wavelength, and an extremely high frequency. Tesla called it "Superluminal waves."

When an object in the universe was larger than the 170,360-kilometer wavelength of Superluminal waves, they would strike it and generate enormous energy. Otherwise, they would diffract around it, producing almost no reaction. That was why the human body couldn't sense Superluminal waves at all.

In his paper, Nikola Tesla also proposed an entirely new theory of gravity. He believed that the motion of objects was a response to whether the energy density of space was uniform. Objects accelerated when they moved into regions with higher energy density, and decelerated when they moved into regions with lower energy density.

In Tesla's theory of gravity, orbital motion in a gravitational field and uniform linear motion in an inertial frame were the same kind of motion, because both followed paths of equal energy density.

Daphne Braun had received a conventional scientific education from childhood, studying classical universal gravitation, General Relativity, the quantum Standard Model, and so on.

When she heard her father describe Tesla's ideas, she didn't know what to say.

Professor Braun seemed to see what his daughter was thinking, and reiterated the accepted standards for testing a theoretical hypothesis:

Make bold assumptions, verify them carefully. It must be falsifiable and make predictions.

One day, two months later, the awkwardness of Daphne and Michael keeping the same secret from each other finally came to an end.

Mr. E invited Michael to his office and told him that the Plan T committee had decided to form an evaluation group.

Michael's plan to terraform Mars would be the group's first dedicated risk assessment project. Its members would include his girlfriend, Daphne Braun.

When Michael got home and saw Daphne, he asked eagerly, with a hint of delight, "Darling, I'm so happy you get to take part in Plan T. Did Tesla's Superluminal Wave Theory astonish you?"

"Yes, Tesla really was a genius. His theory was far ahead of his time." Daphne continued, "But the applications of Superluminal waves really worry me."

"You're afraid my Superlight Wave Power Station will blow up Mars, right? Hahaha!" Michael laughed, teasing her.

Daphne looked up at him and said seriously, "I'm sure you and your assistants have already conducted an internal risk assessment. But humanity has only one Solar System. If Mars really does explode, Earth will definitely be affected. How could we risk that?"

Michael stood up and stared out the window. Then he turned to her and said, "The risks should be controllable. Daphne, do you understand me? Do you know what I want most?"

Daphne's heart tightened. She remembered how Martha's letter had recently forced Michael to suspend his experiments on Enceladus. Could her future assessment report once again destroy the ultimate dream of the lovable, admirable man standing before her?

Daphne walked over to Michael and rested her head on his shoulder. She said gently:

"Darling, I love you, and I understand you especially well. You're not doing this for money, or even for yourself. You want to give humanity's future a safety net."

"But if that safety net itself brings risks, then no matter how much I love you, I won't agree." Daphne spoke firmly.

The air in the room seemed to freeze. Michael's breathing grew labored. He pushed Daphne away, his face flushed, and shouted:

"Aren't nuclear power plants risky? If humanity had conducted so-called risk assessments before every scientific and technological advance over the past few hundred years, how could we have achieved what we have today?"

"Daphne, I love you very much, just as I admire you as much as you admire me. Terraforming Mars is my dream. No one—not even you—can stop me!" Michael stomped his foot, and the floor trembled with it.

Michael didn't notice Daphne sway and grab the chair beside her. Her body went limp, and she slowly slid to the floor. A sharp pain seized her abdomen, and she groaned, interrupting him:

"My stomach hurts. Am I having a miscarriage?"

Michael was jolted back to reality. He panicked, carefully helped Daphne out the door and into the car, and took her to the hospital.

Daphne lay in the hospital bed, looking haggard. Michael's personal doctor held her test results and said to her:

"We got to you in time, and the baby should be fine. But you need to rest. At this stage of pregnancy, around the first few months, the risk of miscarriage is highest. You need to manage your emotions and focus on relaxing, happy things."

"Could there be any aftereffects, or any impact on the baby?" Michael asked anxiously.

"There shouldn't be. We didn't use any antibiotics or drugs that could cause a reaction, just a small amount of a pure biological stabilizer. The fetus is currently doing fine," the doctor replied.

After dinner at the hospital, color finally returned to Daphne's face. Michael stayed by her side the whole time. Following the doctor's instructions, he deliberately brought up some lighthearted topics to help her relax.

"Remember the Silver Beach cruise ship? I could tell you really love the sea. After our little one is born, how about we take a yacht road trip?"

Daphne reached out and rested her hand on Michael's arm. She said softly:

"Darling, you really think I'm some little girl who needs comforting. What really interests and excites me is Mars and Lingshen Star!"

Michael couldn't help laughing and shaking his head. He said with a sigh, "Ah! I guess I found the right person. It was the best arrangement that Heaven brought you into my life!"

A hospital room, a sickbed—what better place to talk about Lingshen Star?

Of course, wherever two lovers understood each other, they would always talk about the things they both cared about.

"Michael, it's not that I don't support your Mars terraforming plan. Quite the opposite—I think it's incredibly creative! If it passes the risk assessment and really turns Mars into a backup, it'll be a blessing for all humanity."

Encouraged by Daphne, Michael began talking at length about his plan to terraform Mars again. They dreamed and discussed together, and the light of love and imagination illuminated the entire hospital room.

Their conversation turned back to Lingshen Star, and Daphne asked:

"Michael, Lingshen Star should be part of a planet's metallic core. A metallic core is liquid molten rock, so why would it have multiple holes after erupting and cooling? And why are they so regular?"

Before Michael could answer, Daphne pressed on: "Do you think Lingshen Star could have come from Mars's core?"

"That's very possible. Lingshen Star is a metallic core that burst out of Mars. I think that's currently the best explanation for this purely metallic celestial body," Michael said.

"As for the holes in Lingshen Star, VESSEL gave me an answer. It might well be a man-made honeycomb briquette." Michael chuckled as he explained. "I asked an artist how you could cast a metal honeycomb sculpture with multiple holes inside."

"Reinforce the Mars crust with multiple pillars, compressing the molten metal inside. The molten rock keeps heating up, and eventually breaks through the crust and erupts all at once." Daphne thought of the lost-wax method of metal casting and immediately understood. She said:

"The molten metal, with the dense pillars inside it, cools in space. After the pillars weather away, they leave the multiple holes in Lingshen Star."

"Why would anyone build multiple pillars to make a metal asteroid with holes? It doesn't make sense! And who would the 'people' be?" Michael muttered to himself in confusion.

Daphne said, "Whatever the reason, if enormous pillars once extended deep into the Mars crust before Mars exploded, they must have left traces on Mars afterward."

As they looked at each other, they both thought of the same thing:

Before Mars exploded, it was like a pressure cooker. The sheer cliffs, thousands of meters high, all around Olympus Mons were the "molds" left behind when the pillars shot out!

Supplementary poem about the pressure cooker:

The Taiye waters swelled with fresh waves, Yuan, Zhou Boqi

How many times has gold melted into this pot? Qing, Bei Qingqiao

In the stone chamber, sand boils in the earthen stove, Tang, Hanshan

A sudden sight: the rift collapsed into a swirling pool. Yuan, Wu Shidao