Chapter 178 Interstellar Journey
"What's wrong?" Paco was puzzled. As soon as Rong Yuan said this, he suddenly felt itchy on his face. He touched his face with his tentacles and saw a pool of blue blood on it.
"Oh." He was stunned for a moment and then said, "I think we are almost at the space jump point. We need to enter the nutrition cabin, otherwise the gravity of the wormhole can easily tear our bodies apart ."
——In the Milky Way, the Interstellar Alliance has discovered and recorded a lot of wormholes. Sometimes there may be more than a dozen of them around a planet. However, most wormholes are very dangerous. Whether living or non-living things enter them, they will be torn apart instantly. Some wormholes are full of unknowns. Some exits are located randomly, and it is not surprising to throw people into stars or more dangerous unknown areas; some people can enter safely but never walk out; some will spit out some creatures that do not exist in the Milky Way from time to time. Experts who study wormholes believe that some of them can greatly cross time, and some may lead to parallel universes or other distant galaxies, but these are only speculations. Exploring wormholes is one of the most dangerous tasks. Throughout history, the number of intelligent lives sacrificed by the Alliance for this purpose exceeds the total population of the earth.
Among all wormholes, only 0.3% of them have fixed entrance and exit positions, insignificant time span, and certain entry and exit safety. This kind of wormhole is called a space jump point. However, its danger always exists, just slightly reduced. Therefore, traveling through wormholes is still not accepted by most people, resulting in many people never leaving the planet where they were born even in the interstellar era.
Although he said he was going to the nutrition cabin, Paco did not do so immediately. He walked into the cockpit and began to set and correct the route - this was the reason why he was forced to wake up in the middle of hibernation. When approaching a wormhole, the spacecraft could be easily pulled away from its fixed orbit due to gravity. Moreover, the gravity near the wormhole was unpredictable, and the change of the spacecraft's orbit was unpredictable. The strong electromagnetic field also made the spacecraft's automatic navigation system susceptible to interference, so manual adjustments were required every time at this time.
After learning that Rong Yuan had rarely been involved in this kind of work before, Paco took on the task. This stupid octopus was surprisingly reliable at this time. Its tentacles quickly clicked on the operating table and even left afterimages. When comparing various complex data, it only pondered for a moment before adjusting. The look in its small eyes was very serious. Rong Yuan, who was watching him from the side, even felt like two different people.
Rong Yuan observed its operation while stroking his chin and comparing it with the knowledge in his mind. He had also learned some related content these days. At this moment, every action of Paco was like lines of text in a book in his eyes. He nodded slightly, and some things that he didn't understand before suddenly became clear. As he watched, Rong Yuan suddenly felt that something was wrong. The heading angle was 3' less than the safe range he calculated. Don't underestimate this tiny angle of 3'. In a wormhole, the direction may deviate by more than 90 degrees in an instant.
"Paco, this angle is three points too small." Rong Yuan didn't care that he was actually a novice among novices who was in contact with a spacecraft for the first time. He did not doubt the problem he found and pointed it out directly.
Paco did not have any pride or authority as an "expert". He stopped and squinted his eyes to look carefully at the place Rong Yuan pointed out. After a moment, he confirmed with cold sweat that Rong Yuan was right. It would not be surprising if the ship was destroyed and people died in the wormhole if they continued in this direction. He sincerely praised: "Rong Yuan, you Landians must be an intelligent species."
He quickly corrected the error, and from time to time he asked Rong Yuan for his opinion. The two worked together and quickly adjusted the course of the spacecraft. Paco let out a long sigh and said, "It's done! The spacecraft will be uncontrollable from now on. It will enter the space jump point in about half an hour. The gravity will throw it to the next route, and the speed will only get faster and faster. We should enter the nutrition cabin immediately!"
As it spoke, blue blood dripped from its facial features and even from its pores, almost turning it into a blood octopus. Because of the color difference, it looked much less scary.
Rong Yuan himself felt very uncomfortable. He felt dizzy and had a heavy feeling in his stomach. His body tilted to one side involuntarily. It was very difficult to stand up straight. His eyes, nose, eardrums and other fragile organs were the first to sound the alarm. However, his condition was much better than Paco's. At least he had not sprayed blood yet, while Paco's blood was flowing straight forward and "slapped" on the window, blurring a large blue area.
"You don't look well, how can I help you?" Rong Yuan asked.
"This is normal. I think my skin is a little too soft." Paco said self-deprecatingly, looking completely unconcerned about his miserable condition. He pressed a red button on the console, and all the windows on the outside of the spacecraft were immediately covered by metal shells. The metal was tightly connected together, with no gaps at all. Many retractable belts popped out from the inner wall of the spacecraft to secure all the objects that could be moved. In the blink of an eye, only Rong Yuan and Paco could move.
Perhaps considering this emergency, the nutrition cabin and the cockpit were not far apart, and the two quickly reached the nutrition cabin. In addition to a narrow corridor, there were nutrition cabins that were densely packed like a Chinese medicine cabinet and formed a wall. In the event of an accident on the spacecraft, these nutrition cabins would be ejected into space like bullets, while continuously sending out indiscriminate and all-round distress signals. The nutrient solution in the cabin could also keep the life inside in a dormant state for years or even decades until they were rescued or the nutrient solution was exhausted.
Paco quickly opened a cabinet and crawled inside. The cabinet closed silently. The invisible pressure in the air became stronger and stronger. Rong Yuan couldn't stand steadily. He even felt like his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets. He opened a cabinet that was about the same size as himself and lay inside. Before he could move, the cabinet snapped shut.
The pressure disappeared instantly, and the body seemed to be so light that it could fly. The complete darkness made him feel drowsy. Then a large amount of semi-liquid and semi-solid substance poured into the nutrition cabin and submerged him completely. Rong Yuan struggled for a while, and then he found that he could still breathe in this substance. It felt a bit like being in a cotton candy ball, but more comfortable than that.
He tentatively opened his eyes slowly. As if the light had noticed his movements, the cabin wall emitted a faint glow, bright enough to illuminate the surroundings, yet very soft and not glaring at all. He was immersed in a milk-like substance. Rong Yuan knew it was a nutrient solution, but he thought it would be less... sticky.
He closed his eyes again, and the light on his eyelids slowly disappeared. This darkness and the surrounding nutrient solution gave him a sense of security as if he were in the mother's womb, so comfortable that he wished he would never leave again. In order to reduce the discomfort of the passengers, the nutrient capsule itself had a forced sleep function, and a few seconds later, Rong Yuan fell asleep.
His chest moved, and Pea crawled out of it. The hypnotic substance in the nutrient solution seemed to be completely non-existent to it. In this nutrient chamber, any posture would feel as comfortable as lying on a bed. Pea sat cross-legged beside Rong Yuan's head. During the time when Rong Yuan was asleep, it would be responsible for guarding him.
Without Noah, the optical computer started to work again. However, the system of this spaceship could not be easily hacked by giving it an intrusion command. The two could only establish a connection after Rong Yuan set up the spaceship system. Pea was completely unfamiliar with outer space. Even with an optical computer, it would not be of much use. At this time, the guarding work was its active responsibility. At the same time, it recorded everything that could be recorded. I believe Rong Yuan would be interested in taking a look at it later.
The egg-like fully enclosed spacecraft was rushing towards the wormhole at an increasingly faster speed. When it approached a certain distance, its speed suddenly increased to a level that was invisible to the naked eye. The wormhole swallowed the spacecraft in one gulp. The silver-gray egg was spinning at high speed in it, and it almost instantly passed through the entire wormhole and was thrown into the dark universe. After leaving the wormhole's range of influence, the spacecraft automatically turned on the reverse jet system, slowly slowed down its speed, and then confirmed its course and headed for the next space jump point.
…
After passing through the second wormhole, it is only ten days or half a month away from the Piqiu Star. Compared with the desolate area around the Earth, this star field is much more lively, and you can always encounter several ships coming and going in a day. In order to avoid such blunders as collisions because both sides cannot see each other, in this area, people will tacitly turn off the optical invisibility and radar shielding of the spacecraft, and send out greeting signals when they meet, just like honking when meeting a strange car on the road on Earth.
Even in this interstellar alliance where the level of technology is countless times more advanced than that of Earth, Rong Yuan's spaceship worth more than two million merits is not inferior to any of its peers. Its shielding system is enough to prevent itself from being discovered by anyone, and its scanning system has discovered some smuggling spaceships that are sneaking around the designated route.
The universe is huge. Theoretically, there are countless routes for spacecraft to navigate. However, in reality, most spacecraft will travel on the officially designated routes, because in such routes, the spacecraft can turn off the energy and use the gravity between the planets to eject and move forward effortlessly. If it is outside the route, the gravity difference will make the spacecraft gradually deviate from the direction. There is no sense of direction in the universe, and the consequences of getting lost are much more terrible than on the planet. In order not to get lost, these smuggling spacecraft outside the route must always turn on the propulsion system, and the energy demand is very considerable.
There was no conversation along the way. When they were about to approach the Biqiu Star, Rong Yuan's spaceship suddenly received a distress signal.
