Chapter 169 Water is a big problem
The hydraulic door made a slight sound as it slid automatically. Xiao Zhen floated at the door, holding the hydraulic door with one hand, but he did not swim directly in.
The ship's navigator, Ms. Fei, was floating quietly in the air in the room. The alien woman's long silver-gray silky hair was floating in the air, shining a strange light under the indoor lights.
"Ms. Fei, it's dinner time soon, aren't you going to eat?"
"I have rules to follow. I'm sorry, I can't go to the restaurant for dinner." Fei said softly, her voice cold and crisp.
Xiao Zhen floated at the door without leaving. "Can I come in?"
"Can."
Ms. Fei's room is very simple and tidy. Apart from the necessary living facilities, there is only a gorgeous and simple decorative carpet hanging on the wall, which is the utensil she uses for traditional rituals of her tribe.
“This carpet is really beautiful.”
"Thank you. It contains some pictures of my ancestors' past events."
"What does this pattern mean?"
"This pattern tells the most glorious story of my grandmother. She once wiped out a group of head-eating bats and protected my hometown." Ms. Fei said, stroking the carpet slowly.
"Head-eating bat?"
"There is a dangerous creature on my home planet. They will hook your head with their claws and then spray corrosive liquid on your face to melt your head and eat it. This is one of the creatures that plague us Yimen people. There was once a large number of head-eating bats that invaded my hometown, and my grandmother wiped them out."
“That’s amazing.”
"In the tradition of the Yimen people, warriors would print their glorious deeds on carpets and pass them down to their descendants. I also hope to have my own carpet."
"You will have it."
"Mr. Yan Zhen, you actually don't know how to chat with the opposite sex."
"this……"
Ms. Fei looked at Xiao Zhen, "Do you have something to tell me?"
She is indeed very perceptive.
Xiao Zhen scratched his head and laughed, "Before Jia Moer came on board, you always ate with us, even if we were just drinking nutrient solution together. But now you always eat alone."
"Because I have to obey..."
"Rules? There are no such rules, right?" Xiaozhen looked into Ms. Fei's eyes, "You are avoiding eating the food cooked by Gamor."
“…”
"Gamoer has been on the ship for so many days, and you have never eaten a bite of the food she cooked. You are wary of Gamoer, right?"
Ms. Fei looked Xiao Zhen in the eye and asked, "Is it that obvious?"
"Others have no doubts. But as far as I know, none of the many rules of the Yimen people match the current situation. And before Gamor came, you were clearly looking forward to hiring a cook on the ship . But now your attitude is completely the opposite. After thinking about it, there may be only one answer. That is, you are worried about Gamor, but it is not convenient to tell us, right?"
Ms. Fei lowered her head and was silent for a long time. She said softly, "I don't trust the Homo sapiens woman who calls herself Gamor."
"So what do you think is wrong with her?"
“……” Fei remained silent.
"Roken 89 checked Gamor's background. Her chef license was registered with the Gourmet and Cooking Association, and the school she mentioned does have her file. This is the result of the investigation given by the Eye of Overwatch. At least the initial investigation of the Eye of Overwatch found that there was no problem with her. Her meals were also tested by Roken 89 before being served."
"I know..." Fei's eyes were fixed on a corner of the room. Her profile was pale and almost transparent. "This is my personal concern."
Fei's shallow consciousness flooded into Xiaozhen's brain. Her consciousness was just like what she showed, clear and rational, and her thoughts were full of doubts about Gamor. She was troubled, and seemed to be hesitating whether to tell Xiaozhen about her worries, but she didn't know how to start. Xiaozhen saw that her hesitant consciousness was connected with a dark red emotion, which was like a thread, sometimes there and sometimes not. It was a certain pain hidden in her heart.
She was very rational, but she just hadn't sorted out her thoughts yet.
Xiao Zhen did not probe further. Some emotions and consciousness belonged to Ms. Fei personally. When she judged that she had to inform him, she would naturally say it.
On the other hand, Xiao Zhen did not find anything suspicious about Jia Moer. Luo Ken 89 investigated her background and checked the food she cooked, but found nothing suspicious.
Just stay alert and observe for now.
"Please come to the command room." A mechanical voice came from the communication speaker on the wall. The voice was flat and emotionless, coming from Roken 89.
Xiao Zhen and Ms. Fei floated silently in the passage one after the other. "Mr. Yan Zhen, please don't be so..." Fei suddenly said.
"Don't worry, I won't tell."
When Xiao Zhen walked into the command room, Zhang Fei was sitting at the table, carefully fiddling with the egg incubator in his hand. This was an insulated box he made with the existing materials on the ship to incubate eggs. He had great expectations for this pet egg, hoping to hatch a rare pet and win the grand prize. In Xiao Zhen's eyes, this scene was simply a reappearance of Leek's yesterday.
Captain Madara sat in the center of the command desk. He had always considered himself the captain of the ship, but the recognition of the crew was still a problem. Gamor was sitting at the table, spinning a Rubik's Cube. Guan Yu leaned against the wall silently, while Liu Bei and Roken 89 were operating the console screen.
Seeing Xiaozhen walk into the command room, Roken 89 said: "We received a communication request."
"Who is it?"
"Carbella, the caller is..." Liu Bei read out: "He Zhining."
Liu Xingquan began to miss his life of living outdoors with the crustaceans.
Although life was a bit difficult at that time and food was sometimes scarce, at least there was fresh air in the wilderness, and he and the crustacean also had fresh river water to drink.
Now he and Little Ross were squeezed in a narrow and dark lower cabin. There were about twenty aliens in the cabin compartment where he was. Later he found out that this was the result of Little Ross's money. There were more than thirty or forty people in the dark cabin, and many aliens didn't even have beds to sleep on.
Little Ross said that the various star regions of the Galactic Federation are loosely controlled, and most planets are independent, but the passes to and from different star regions are strictly checked, so this kind of smuggling business has emerged. The Hopeland they talk about is a place of infinite prosperity and opportunities. In their words, as long as you go to the Hopeland, you will definitely be able to show your talents and get a better life, as if the Hopeland has a panacea to solve all the difficulties in real life. For Liu Xingquan, the Hopeland is a place that can take him home.
But now, he was being tortured by the terrible life in the cabin.
The cabin where he slept was dark and smelly all day long. There were two aliens with hairy faces huddled in a corner. They always gave off a terrible stench. At first, Liu Xingquan almost suffocated from the smell, and it took him several days to get used to it. The most terrifying thing was the blood-sucking bugs crawling around in the cabin. These bugs were similar to fleas on Earth, small and fast-moving. They hardly felt any pain when sucking blood, but the itching afterwards was enough to make your skin peel off. He was bitten so hard that he tossed and turned on the first night and couldn't sleep at all. When he woke up and rolled up his trouser legs, his legs were covered with shocking blood spots.
Little Ross's legs were covered with scales, but he didn't have this problem at all. Liu Xingquan stared at Little Ross's thick and rough thighs with hatred, wishing he could swap with Little Ross immediately. When he thought of this, his whole body itched badly, and he had to reach out and scratch everywhere. Liu Xingquan was originally a boy with delicate skin and tender flesh who had never suffered much, so when he scratched, his skin broke, and both legs were bleeding, which scared Little Ross.
Another big problem is water. Uncle Ross stuffed a large bag of dried fruit from Crustacean into the bags of Little Ross and Liu Xingquan. They lived on these dried fruits at first. Food did not bother Little Ross and Liu Xingquan at first. What they needed most was water. The water sent to the lower cabin was very dirty, with a layer of oil floating on it, and it had a strange taste when you drink it. This water was the garbage waste water used in the kitchen of the middle and upper cabins. God knows what sequelae would be caused by drinking it. Clean water needs money to buy.
Little Ross paid for the water for himself and Liu Xingquan. He drank very sparingly, limiting his water intake to less than half a bottle a day, but every time Liu Xingquan finished drinking, he would buy him another bottle, without any complaints.
After Liu Xingquan realized this, he turned his head and blushed. Both Uncle Ross and Little Ross gave him selfless help, but he had nothing to give back. After that, Liu Xingquan also deliberately saved his drinking water, and only drank a little to moisten his throat when his throat was smoking.
Days passed like this in the lower cabin. It was impossible for all kinds of aliens to live in harmony and peace, fights and quarrels occurred from time to time, and even fatal injuries often occurred.
One day, a Kuyupu and a Pepero had a conflict. A group of aliens were cheering on the side. The Kuyupu looked like a life form made of stone, while the Pepero looked like a giant rat. They shouted and cursed at each other. Liu Xingquan could not understand what they said. The goggles he wore could only translate some mainstream languages in the galaxy. After a round of shouting and cursing, they fought. In the end, the Kuyupu directly broke the Pepero's head.
The Pepero's head spun and fell directly at Liu Xingquan's feet. Blood gushed out, and its head stared at Liu Xingquan with its teeth bared and its tongue half hanging out. Little Ross pulled him away.
Amid a burst of exclamations, a team of boat police came down from above with electric batons and beat anyone they saw. After the crackling sound of electric shocks, they carried away the dismembered body of the Pepero people. Two cleaning machine workers came over and started cleaning the ground. After a while, the blood stains on the ground were cleaned up, as if nothing had happened.
The alien sleeping next to Liu Xingquan said that the ship police would throw the body directly into space. "Won't they keep the body and return it to its family?" Liu Xingquan asked, still remembering the horrible head of the Pepero before his death.
"We are all stowaways without any identity documents. Not throwing you out of the ship is already a courtesy to you. The higher-ups won't care about you. If you die, you can only blame yourself for your bad luck."
Liu Xingquan fell silent. After that, he rarely wandered around the corridor. The aliens who were stuck in the small cabin were buzzing with each other every day. In their spare time, the topic they talked about was basically always Hopeland. Once they got there, their hard days would be over. When Liu Xingquan heard this, he felt sad. When he got to Hopeland, could he really find information to return to Earth?
Whenever he was bored, he would take out the letter in the bottle and write a new letter to his pen pal. His pen pal got promoted and now his work has become much easier, and he wrote to him more frequently than before. He used to write letters to his pen pal to pass the idle and boring time. He wrote a lot of things to his pen pal, the daily life in the lower cabin, his life in school in the past, and in his casual writing he also mentioned his favorite cartoon, Grand Theft Auto Lothar. This was his grievance, since he came here, he couldn't follow the show. Now he has fallen behind by many episodes, and he doesn't know if Lothar has been resurrected. The pen pal likes to listen to him tell the story of this cartoon. He became interested and told the pen pal the plot of the animation episode by episode.
As the days passed, he kept in touch with his pen pal, but now his pen pal kept asking him to tell him stories about Losa. But the pen pal could only ease some of his sorrow, and his longing for the earth, his mother, his friend Yan Zhen, and his classmates became heavier.
As soon as he closed his eyes, he seemed to be able to see his bedroom, which was small but tidy. The beautiful bookcase against the wall was given to him by Yan Zhen. In addition to various textbooks, tutorial books and extracurricular classics, it also contained a set of Losar stories that he had saved up for a long time. He always thought of the wontons his mother made for him. The soy sauce soup was sprinkled with coriander, a drop of sesame oil, and an egg. It was a superb delicacy.
How he wanted to go back home and taste the wontons his mother made.
But when he opened his eyes, he still saw the stuffy and smelly cabin.
The journey was taking much longer than he had imagined.
Then one day, little Ross told him that they were running out of money and couldn't afford to buy water anymore.
