Once the ship exceeded the second cosmic velocity, Blue Star's gravitational field could no longer hold it back.
A huge, deep-blue planet appeared before everyone aboard the ship.
As they traveled toward Mars, the ship stopped accelerating once it reached nearly thirty kilometers per second. The crew were no longer restricted in their movements.
Everyone had been eating the Bamboo Rice and Bamboo Fruit Lin Chenxing provided for a long time, so they had at least the physical fitness of Quasi-Martial Artists. A little weightlessness couldn't disrupt their normal routines.
Successfully reaching the mysterious reaches of space sent everyone into a frenzy. For every one of them, it was a first.
If they'd been alone, they might only have felt surprise and amazement, but when everyone around them felt the same way, no one could hold back their excitement.
Emotions were contagious, and the joy of sharing in a happy moment only grew with the number of people there.
But after the celebrations, the stillness of space began to affect everyone—or, more accurately, its utter silence.
Apart from Blue Star shrinking in the distance, everything seemed unchanged. There were no more surprises.
Still, traveling through space hardly called for surprises. Without enough strength to protect yourself, a surprise could easily turn into a scare.
The cold and tedium wore on those who had been living aboard the ship for nearly a month. They stopped paying attention to what was outside and, just as they had back on Blue Star, devoted their energy to experiments.
In this zero-gravity environment, many things had changed, and they were waiting to be measured.
Gradually, nearly two more months of long-distance travel passed, and Mars began to appear before them.
It was an orange-red planet, with two small, irregularly shaped moons revolving around it, much