"That burst just now... was it solar radiation?"
"How could it be so intense?"
"What on earth happened outside?"
"Was it caused by the signal the Sun Wheel just sent out?"
Chen Jue stared at the completely dark control console before him, his heart jolting in alarm. The electromagnetic radiation had struck without warning, not only knocking out all the electronic equipment in the return capsule but abruptly cutting off communications with the ground as well.
Meanwhile, in the ground Monitoring Hall, every staff member was dumbfounded.
"Big Dipper signal lost... return capsule data lost!"
"Contact with the Space Station interrupted!"
"Contact with the Remote Sensing Satellite lost!"
"Level-three alert response... no! The alert has already been raised to level one!"
"Contact has been lost with all orbiting satellites and spacecraft over the Northern Hemisphere!"
Elder Zhong and Liu Chengdong, who had been chatting and laughing in the Monitoring Hall as they waited for Chen Jue to land safely, both paled.
Red alerts lit up and scrolled across the Monitoring Hall's displays. This was the first major emergency since the base had been established, and the hearts of the hundred-plus staff present all lurched.
"Don't panic!"
"Stay steady!"
"Switch the feed to the ground-to-sky electronic cameras. Check whether the return capsule and Space Station are still in normal orbit!" Elder Zhong snatched up the microphone in front of him and shouted, his face so grim it looked as though water could be wrung from it.
Several staff members quickly followed his instructions and switched the feeds on the hall's monitoring screens. Both the return capsule and the Space Station appeared unharmed.
However, all the red and green signal lights that should have been lit on the two spacecraft had stopped working.
"Elder Zhong, this is..." Liu Chengdong's brows knitted