After transferring from the Radiance to the Queqiao, the group spent twenty-four hours aboard the Moon Palace spacecraft.
Once the supplies had been loaded, they would take the Queqiao spacecraft, which had greater acceleration and was better suited to carrying large numbers of passengers and supplies, to Mars. They would then land on the surface via the Xu Fu spacecraft, which was floating in orbit around Mars as a temporary space station.
By now, fifteen days had passed since their departure from the Moon Palace spacecraft.
Since Mars and Earth were moving away from each other, their journey to Mars would take two or three days longer than that of the first group of colonists.
Even so, they were already quite close to Mars.
If the angle happened to be right, they could even spot that bright red speck hidden among the vast sea of stars through a porthole...
"A pair of aces. I've only got one card left."
Lu Zhou tossed two playing cards onto the table, waved the last card in his hand, and leaned back comfortably in his chair. Sitting opposite him were Joel Aubrey, a professor of astrophysics from Stanford University in the United States, and Kubor Romanov, an aerospace engineer from Moscow State University.
At that moment, both men were staring glumly at their cards, their faces covered with fluttering sticky notes.
Wang Peng, who served as Lu Zhou's bodyguard, stood behind the three players along with Scholze and Professor Furnal, watching the game with interest.
Finally, Professor Aubrey and Professor Lomonov exchanged a glance and gave up their hopeless struggle.
"Pass..."
Lu Zhou smiled faintly and, unsurprised, tossed down his last card.
"Looks like I win."
A voyage lasting half a month was quite boring.
The only ways to pass the time were cards,