A furious shout made Jim's fingers recoil as though he had been electrocuted.
He looked blankly at Robert and the others.
But Robert, Ron, and even Allen, who was still burping from overeating, were all terrified. They had finally confirmed one thing: there really was someone fucking outside.
All their confusion vanished in that instant.
"There's someone out there! Someone outside!" Allen shook Ron in terror.
"We heard, we heard... Nobody move. Don't touch anything." Ron pulled free of Allen and looked around, apparently searching for something.
"What did he just say?" Robert asked.
Only then did the four astronauts realize that although they had heard a human voice, the person had clearly been speaking Chinese.
"Don't go out!"
Gao Jian's voice came from outside the cabin again.
This time, they understood. He was telling them not to go outside. They obviously could not leave the command module itself, so he must have meant the golden barrier surrounding them. The spherical membrane of light enclosed all four of them, and no more.
"How is he talking in a vacuum?" Jim murmured.
"None of that matters now. Do what he says. Don't touch this golden barrier," Robert ordered.
Ron slowly approached the membrane, studying it with wide eyes. By now, it was as thin and translucent as silk, but still fairly stable.
As the lunar orbital engineer, Ron was sensitive to the slightest changes. After careful observation, he was certain he could see fine ripples outside the membrane. They were growing denser and more fragmented, and those tiny ripples gave him a startling idea.
The white flashes flickering in his vision might be only a drop in the ocean of radiation. Far more high-energy radiation was being intercepted by this transparent membrane.
To test his theory, he raised the radiation-monitoring panel he had just picked up.
High-energy particles had scrambled its screen before the membrane even appeared. Now, all that remained was flickering static and a few meaningless vertical lines of color.
But that did not matter. He raised the radiation-monitoring panel and carefully extended it beyond the membrane.
The instant its radiation sensor touched the space outside,
the entire panel convulsed violently several times and began trailing white smoke. It was clearly a goner.
"My God..." Ron froze.
Only now did he realize how terrifying the radiation outside was. The Orion spacecraft's radiation shielding might as well have been paper. Countless streams of high-energy particles had punched straight through its high-density polyethylene. Those materials, which theoretically could substantially reduce radiation damage, were as helpless as a married woman facing Cao Cao.
The flashes they were seeing had already been weakened twice, first by the high-density polyethylene, then by the golden membrane before them.
He immediately shared his findings with the other three.
"The ripples we can see with the naked eye are most likely caused by high-energy particles from space bombarding this membrane," Ron said bitterly.
"What is this thing? An alien civilization's energy shield?" Jim asked in disbelief.
Allen said, "This membrane only just appeared. That means we were bombarded by high-energy particle streams for ten straight minutes before that."
"No." Ron shook his head and pointed at the radiation-monitoring panel, which had thoroughly given up the ghost. "A geomagnetic storm is strongest when it first erupts. At the intensity out there, forget ten minutes-our internal organs would have been cooked in three. Yet we're still alive. At least Allen can still eat. That means this membrane has been protecting us all along. We've only just become able to see it."
"You're saying it was always here, and we only just saw it?" Allen asked.
Ron nodded, then turned to their commander, who had remained silent.
"Colonel Robert, what do you think?"
Robert carefully studied the membrane's shape and said slowly, "In theory, visible light accounts for only a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. This membrane might indeed have existed before, just outside the visible spectrum."
A shield capable of intercepting high-energy particle streams was already beyond anything the four of them understood. Given that, there was nothing surprising about whatever form it took.
"Thank God. He saved me." Jim looked out the window.
"Not necessarily a he. It could be a she or an it. How can you assume the identity of a higher being?" Allen said.
"This is no time to argue about gender!" Jim shouted.
He threw away the little cross in his hand, offered a prayer toward the window, then kept staring outside.
There was nothing beyond the window but empty space.
"If this is an alien, at least it's an alien that speaks Chinese and English. We can communicate with it. That's good news," Ron reasoned.
Jim looked at the thin membrane before him and called tentatively, "Are you okay? Where are you?"
No answer came from outside.
He tried again in broken Chinese. "Are yoo oh-kay?"
Robert said calmly, "Stop shouting. He can't possibly hear us. Our voices can't travel through the spacecraft's cabin."
The four tried every means they could think of to communicate with the person outside, even tapping Morse code against the cabin wall, but received no response.
"I just remembered something," Ron said suddenly. After their attempts to communicate failed, the lunar orbital engineer had become unusually calm. "About that knocking."
"You only thought of it now?" Robert asked.
"I couldn't make sense of it before. Now I can. The continuous knocking we heard during launch only stopped for a few hours after the EUS ignited. If there really is someone outside, and that person has been on the spacecraft all along, the timing of those knocks corresponds exactly to its three most dangerous moments: passing through maximum dynamic pressure, booster separation, and just before EUS ignition."
"So?"
Ron said with a self-mocking smile, "Do you think we accidentally took a rocket maintenance engineer along when we launched?"
Robert gave a dry, cold chuckle. "Then Christopher Reeve must have had an awful lot of time on his hands." (Note: another actor who played Superman.)
Allen gave him a thumbs-up. "You're saying this Superman of a rocket maintenance engineer stabilized our tilting rocket in the atmosphere, removed the left booster that failed to separate, and fixed the strange vibrating noise before the EUS engine ignited?"
"More or less."
"Then we owe him our lives at least three times over."
"Three and a half," Ron said. "Have you forgotten that we refueled before launch?"
All four fell silent.
Seconds and minutes passed in a long, deathly silence.
They tried to save themselves, but with the SLS rocket completely out of control, there was very little they could do. Allen initially searched for usable equipment within the membrane, but unfortunately, there was not even a single button left in the cabin that would light up.
Pinpricks of emergency warning lights still flickered on the spacecraft's console, but it sat flush against the dome overhead, outside the golden membrane's coverage and beyond their physical reach.
Feeling the discomfort in his body, Allen said dejectedly, "So what do we do next? Wait to die?"
Robert answered, "A geomagnetic storm beyond Carrington-level intensity usually lasts over twenty hours before it gradually subsides. If this energy shield can hold out that long..."
Looking at the flickering membrane, already dimmer than when it first appeared, Robert added, "All right. But he probably won't last that long..."
Gao Jian indeed could not last that long.
The Golden Light Formation consumed far too much energy. The spiritual energy in his dantian could not keep up with the demand. At this point, he did not even have the strength to transmit his voice into the cabin. He was only a minor cultivator in the early stage of Foundation Establishment.
The four inside had also noticed the membrane weakening. Its light reflected on all their faces, but now it was so dim that they could barely distinguish one another's outlines.
Ron felt his nose clogging. He touched it and found a few tiny beads of blood. His expression went blank. "The facts prove that even with this energy shield blocking the radiation, the dose we've already accumulated is enough to guarantee our deaths."
He was right. All four could clearly feel something wrong with their bodies. Symptoms of acute radiation sickness were beginning to appear, and Allen had even started dry-heaving.
"I told you not to eat so much," Jim complained. "Great. Soon your taco puke will be flying everywhere. What an undignified way to die."
He felt sorry for the rescuers who, years or decades from now, would pry open the hatch and experience the despair of finding four corpses in space mixed with all manner of vomit.
Even now, high-energy particles continued to pass through the cabin walls. Despite being weakened by the Boundless Golden Light Formation, they still carried enormous energy as they passed through the astronauts' bodies. Every passage shattered the double-stranded DNA structures within their cell nuclei.
With their genes damaged, modern medicine could do nothing to save them.
Their protein structures also continued to mutate. Water molecules within their cells were ionized, producing vast quantities of hydroxyl radicals that snipped and shredded inside the cell membranes like frenzied scissors.
All four could feel a strange, indistinct pain. Their blood vessels were heating up on their own, their skin burned, and the white specks constantly flashing before their eyes had become brighter than the golden membrane outside.
"The snow in my eyes is getting denser," Jim said.
"Mine too," Ron said.
"Everything looks like I'm seeing it through a camera flash," Allen said wearily.
"Classic Cherenkov radiation," Ron said. "A shock wave produced when high-energy charged particles move through the vitreous humor faster than light's phase velocity in that medium. Unfortunately, everyone who's seen Cherenkov radiation so far has died..."
"Thank you for the science lesson. You can stop now," Robert interrupted. "European, doctoral student-none of that matters anymore."
Ron fell silent.
All four had also noticed that every time the membrane dimmed a little, the white flashes in their eyes grew a little brighter. This further confirmed the relationship between the golden membrane and the high-energy radiation: whoever was outside really had come to weaken the radiation and protect them.
But the membrane was fading and could not block the radiation completely.
Robert sighed and retrieved the notebook and pencil floating aimlessly around the cabin. In the darkness, he began writing by the golden membrane's faint light.
The scrape of pencil against paper was unusually clear inside the cabin.
"What are you writing?" Jim floated over, unwilling to give up.
By the faint light, he made out the blurred handwriting. The very first sentence read:
[Blackwell is an amateur. He has destroyed the entire lunar landing program...]
Jim lowered his voice. "Is Commander Black really a KGB spy?"
Robert shook his head, sounding hesitant. "I'm not sure either... But he did try to recruit me. I turned down his overtures and those of his young Slavic mistress. Thinking back, perhaps my refusal was what angered him. I suspect the whole lunar landing program was sacrificed to further his career... And whether he did it deliberately or not, he's a despicable fraud. He knows nothing about landing on the Moon."
Jim nodded emphatically. "I've been wondering too. Never mind the radiation monitoring teams on the ground-what about NOAA? Didn't they detect the solar activity? A geomagnetic storm like this, solar activity on this scale, should have been detected at least a month ago... This is absurd!"
Geomagnetic storms were generally caused by solar activity. That was among the most basic facts every astronaut knew.
Robert sighed. "The Orion spacecraft's radiation shielding could never have been designed to account for a geomagnetic storm. I don't understand why NOAA didn't issue a warning either. Forget NOAA-what were the European Space Agency, the Russian Space Agency, and the China National Space Administration doing?"
Alongside his accusations of negligence against the various national space agencies, Robert wrote scattered accusations against Blackwell, emphasizing his dereliction of duty and requesting a thorough investigation of his young Slavic mistress.
When he finished, he called weakly, "Anyone else have any last words?"
"Write something for me first," Jim said. "'To the choir of Saint Mary's Church-' Forget it. They'll never see it. Write it to my mom instead. 'Mom, I love you-' A little sappy, but let's go with that. I hope my funeral is lively."
Jim imagined his funeral. "And a real priest will describe me like this: 'The brave navigator Jim Hargrove devoted his life to space exploration. Jim was a young man with a heart of gold. Before becoming an astronaut, he frequently volunteered in his community...'"
Robert tossed him the notebook. "Write it yourself."
Jim hastily wrote a few sentences, then handed the notebook to Allen.
Allen shook his head. "I'm not writing anything. I just want to know who that voice outside belongs to and where he is. I want to look out the window."
"Don't go," Ron urged weakly. "You won't live long outside the membrane."
"I can already feel the pain." Allen gave a miserable smile. "Think about it. Even the radiation getting through is enough to kill us. Death is inevitable. Why cling to a few more moments?"
Jim remarked, "A full stomach really does give a man confidence."
Allen ignored him and swam unsteadily toward the main window.
The others no longer had the strength to stop him.
Just then, the membrane seemed to dim even further, and its flickering began to accelerate.
Seeing this, Ron murmured,
"Thank you. You can stop now. If you're an alien, save yourself enough energy to get home. If you're human, then it's even more important that you make it back alive."
As though it had heard Ron's words, the miserable golden light finally collapsed completely just as Allen touched the membrane.
Allen had just reached the window when his vision turned pure white.
And he was not the only one.
Fierce white light flooded all four astronauts' vision almost instantly. Their bodies burned, and their thoughts ground to a complete halt under the ceaseless bombardment of high-energy particles, as though even their brains' electrical signals and synaptic transmissions had stopped.
The Boundless Golden Light Formation shattered.
On the SLS rocket, Gao Jian spat out a mouthful of blood. It dispersed into clouds of bloody mist in the deathly silence of space. His spiritual energy was completely exhausted, his consciousness already blurred. He could no longer even hold on to the rocket. His body slowly slipped free and fell toward the endless void.
But at that very moment, the super-Carrington geomagnetic storm, which had raged for a full thirty minutes, suddenly subsided.
It was as though the geomagnetic catastrophe was certain that thirty minutes of high-energy particle radiation had been enough to kill every living thing near low Earth orbit.
In the last moment before his sight failed, he saw the stars, the rocket, and the lingering auroral glow receding before him. Crushing dizziness swept through his body, and his consciousness sank completely into boundless darkness.
Time passed slowly.
The world beneath him seemed divided into light and darkness. The day and night hemispheres spread across the vast Earth at once. Then, one cluster after another, the cities on the night side lit up, joining into an immense, unbroken tide of light that silently mirrored the daylight world on the other side.
Power was returning across the nations. But of the roughly 16,100 artificial satellites still functioning effectively worldwide-from Sputnik 1 in 1957 through 2028, including Starlink-almost none had escaped. Every one had malfunctioned and failed.
The invisible might surging at Earth's core slowly fell quiet. The flood of high-energy particles sweeping across space gradually thinned and weakened from its violent torrent.
The dazzling auroras that had spread throughout low Earth orbit and burned across the equator slowly receded. The warped, chaotic electromagnetic fields in space gradually settled, and the radiation scouring that had torn through heaven and earth finally ended.
Only now did the terrifying catastrophe slowly subside.
Before you continue