Chapter 64: Feeling Good
In the second screen on the left, a man with a similarly short buzz cut and a resolute expression immediately stood up, saluting Sun Changhe across the screen: “Astronaut No. 24, Tong Zheng reporting to you!”
Sun Changhe’s voice was full of seriousness: “Apocalypse Project Command has decided that you will be the first to carry out the astronaut mission!”
“Yes!”
At this moment, even the astronauts who had discipline ingrained in their bones and willpower as tough as steel showed a slight stir.
“Commander! I request to take Comrade Tong Zheng’s place as the first to carry out the mission, I…”
“Commander!”
Dozens of different voices rang out simultaneously.
Sun Changhe’s words were full of sternness and solemnity: “Pay attention to discipline!”
All the astronauts instinctively straightened their bodies in their seats almost simultaneously, answering together: “Yes!”
No one made another sound, and no one dared to question the decision at this moment.
In the screen, the astronaut named Tong Zheng stood straight, firm as a pine.
He raised his arm, maintaining the salute pose, first facing his companions, then the base’s logistics and researcher personnel, then facing the screen toward Sun Changhe, then turning and marching with precise steps out of the conference hall.
In front of Jiang Yang, another screen image suddenly switched, focusing on Tong Zheng.
Riding the shuttle vehicle, he quickly arrived at the launch pad building. There, a conical spaceship, wide at one end and narrow at the other, no more than five meters long in total, had already been loaded into the payload bay of the Giant Spirit God II Rocket.
Inside this spaceship were only a few necessary research devices, such as the radiometer and physiological surveillance equipment, and besides that, just life support facilities, temperature control equipment, food drinking water oxygen reserves, communication antennas, and the like.
It had been simplified to the extreme. It could basically be seen as a crude iron shell that could briefly sustain human body survival in space.
If the launch succeeded, Tong Zheng would spend these few days before the apocalypse in this iron shell, then either die in the apocalypse, or… exhaust energy and supplies and die in the cold and darkness.
Putting on the in-cabin spacesuit, Tong Zheng lay down at the bottom of the conical spaceship, methodically connecting various surveillance equipment to himself.
His arm was extremely stable and precise, like an embroiderer seriously embroidering flowers in a calm environment.
His expression showed no trace of tension, not even any emotion, as if what he was carrying out was not a suicide mission, but a spring outing.
In less than half an hour, everything was ready.
Fuel loading was also complete at this moment. A small amount of cryogenic fuel was leaking from the bottom of the rocket, creating patches of mist around it.
“Report to Commander, Rocket 267 is ready, requesting launch!”
Sun Changhe said those two words in a deep voice: “Launch!”
“Yes! Countdown, 10, 9… 1, 0, ignition!”
Blazing tail flames once again jetted from the rocket’s tail, clearly transmitted to the meeting room where Jiang Yang was via the unmanned camera.
Also transmitted along was the footage from inside the spaceship.
Tong Zheng lay quietly at the bottom of the spaceship, motionless, as if resting, seemingly not caring at all about the over 800 tons of fuel beneath him that, if exploded, would equal more than 2000 tons of TNT explosives.
Launch pad separation complete, the giant rocket weighing over 1000 tons began to rise slowly.
At this moment, countless gazes converged on the rocket and Tong Zheng. At this moment, countless hearts lifted together.
Jiang Yang saw Zhou Yu beside him, her eyes still red and swollen, forgetting to wipe her tears, just staring tightly at the screen, her fingers gripping his clothes so hard her knuckles turned white.
He saw Professor Chen Yusheng, the leading figure in domestic aerospace and the overall person in charge of this rocket launch plan, his body trembling slightly nonstop.
In the entire apocalypse plan, Professor Chen Yusheng was the specific executor, and these nearly 300 rockets could be seen as personally organized and manufactured by him with gathered forces.
He also saw Gu Changshan, who usually showed no emotion, with a tense face, and Sun Changhe with an unprecedentedly solemn expression.
The rocket flew higher and higher, gradually turning into a light spot in the sky. In the spaceship interior footage, Tong Zheng’s expression remained serene throughout.
But suddenly, he frowned slightly and sniffed lightly with his nose.
The huge overload pressure made speaking difficult, but he still said clearly: “Deep Space No. 1 reporting, I smell a burnt odor, currently unable to determine the source…”
Before his words finished, several piercing alarm sounds rang out together. The next moment, the ground command personnel’s voice full of solemnity came through: “Report to Commander-in-Chief, sixth deflector pipe failure, separator failure, No. 3 engine failure…”
Jiang Yang’s heart sank instantly.
He knew that any one of these failures could not be eliminated now that the rocket had already launched.
So…
Tong Zheng’s expression was calm with a hint of solemnity, his voice still steady: “Comrades, for the nation and the people!”
The next moment, the image suddenly disappeared.
Jiang Yang looked up and saw a blazing massive firelight appear in the sky again.
Professor Chen Yusheng’s body swayed, leaning against the wall to barely stand steady.
The meeting room was silent.
The astronauts still sat solemnly in their seats.
Sun Changhe looked at the document in his hand, then after a moment raised his head: “Li Hui, step forward!”
“Astronaut No. 16, Li Hui reporting to you!”
In the meeting room where Jiang Yang was, a man with a similarly short buzz cut stood up.
“Apocalypse Project Command has decided that you will be the second to carry out the astronaut mission!”
“Yes!”
He walked to the door with firm steps, saluted everyone in the meeting room, then turned and left.
Moments later, in the live broadcast footage, Jiang Yang saw him appear in an identical conical spaceship.
“Launch!”
Jiang Yang closed his eyes, silently blessing in his heart. Until Sun Changhe’s voice sounded again: “Zhao Jianguo, step forward!”
“Yes!”
“Qian Liang, step forward!”
“Yes!”
“Wei Han, step forward!”
“Yes!”
…
One rocket after another roared into the sky and never returned;
Similarly, one astronaut after another stepped forward, marching with firm steps, without hesitation, charging forward fearlessly to the launch site, and never came back.
Professor Chen Yusheng had now completely slumped in the corner, eyes lifeless, expression numb.
“Zhang Jian, step forward!”
“Yes!”
Gently rubbing the almost imperceptible bump on his fingertip, Zhang Jian resolutely stood up, just like the comrades before him who had rushed to the battlefield without hesitation, heading to the launch site equally without delay.
His figure also appeared on the screen.
Professor Chen Yusheng suddenly crawled up and knelt with a thud before the massive rocket on the screen, his head banging repeatedly against the ground.
“I beg you, please!
Succeed just once, I beg you! I’m kowtowing to you!”
…
On the large screen, Zhang Jian’s expression remained calm. Following the preset program, he methodically connected various cables and pipes to his in-cabin spacesuit, then operated the various buttons and equipment inside the spaceship one by one.
In a haze of white mist, this massive rocket stood quietly, pointing straight at the vast firmament.
In the conference hall filled with a solemn atmosphere, only Professor Chen Yusheng’s voice like a crow crying at night echoed, accompanied by the banging sounds of his head hitting the ground.
No one went to help him up, and no one went to comfort him.
It was not that people blamed him in their hearts and treated him coldly, but… every person present at this moment had the impulse to pray to some vague existence.
Amid these sounds, the on-site commander’s high-pitched voice rang out: “Prepare for launch, countdown… 3, 2, 1, 0! Ignition!”
Chen Yusheng’s body suddenly froze, motionless there, not making any sound, as if afraid that any tiny movement of his would trigger something bad in the void.
Just like before, blazing flames jetted from the rocket’s tail, pushing this massive body with a total mass of over 1000 tons slowly into the sky.
The deafening rumbling sound shook the ears, then slowly faded.
Clearly, this rocket had risen to a certain height.
Then came the long silence. Until Sun Changhe’s voice came through again: “Li Chengyu, step forward!”
“Yes!”
Another astronaut stood out and saluted before walking out.
Professor Chen Yusheng, kneeling on the ground, went limp, his evidently well-exercised robust body, not inferior to that of young people, now slumped on the ground like a puddle of mud.
Jiang Yang’s gaze remained fixed on the large screen.
He saw this rocket once again rise swiftly, quickly drilling into the clouds and disappearing.
But footage and signals from aerial cameras and the rocket’s own cameras kept coming continuously, allowing people to clearly see its current state.
It rose to several thousand meters in height.
Jiang Yang’s heart slowly lifted again.
This altitude was the most dangerous. A considerable portion of the previous rockets had exploded and disintegrated at this height.
Following the rocket’s camera, Jiang Yang saw the land below rapidly shrinking, clouds and the blue sea gradually appearing, and Earth finally taking on a spherical shape.
“Third-stage rocket separation!”
In the footage, the explosive bolts at the connection between the third-stage rocket body, which had exhausted its fuel and become dead weight, and the second stage suddenly detonated, a puff of firelight flashing and gone.
The next moment, the third-stage rocket, occupying half the length of the entire body, instantly separated from the upper stage, and under Earth’s gravity, began to descend.
“Second-stage rocket ignition!”
A mass of blazing firelight suddenly jetted from the rocket body, now half its previous length, taking over the former’s task and once again driving the remaining rocket section upward with surging power.
“Second-stage rocket separation!”
“Fairing jettison!”
…
Under a series of instructions, the conference hall was silent. At this moment, Jiang Yang could even clearly hear his own heartbeat.
Thump thump thump thump thump…
Beating faster than ever before.
He even felt like some unknown existence was choking his throat, making breathing difficult.
Until a voice suddenly came: “Successfully entered predetermined orbit!
This launch… successful!”
Whoosh—
The invisible existence choking Jiang Yang’s throat suddenly vanished. Air surged into his lungs like a tide.
He gasped for air, only then feeling that his body was covered in cold sweat.
It succeeded, finally succeeded…
He turned his head with some difficulty to look at Professor Chen Yusheng slumped on the ground, and saw him struggling to crawl up, kneeling again, and bursting into loud wails like a child.
At this moment, Jiang Yang had no mocking thoughts in his heart. Because he too had the impulse to cry right now.
“Earth, Earth, this is Deep Space 16. I am feeling good now.”
In the footage, Astronaut Li Chengyu was already floating in the zero-gravity spaceship.
His expression remained calm, as if what he had just experienced was merely a trivial matter.
Jiang Yang glanced at the data showing his heart rate, and saw it was 59 beats per minute at this moment.
And this number, from entering the cabin, rocket launch, until this moment of successful orbital insertion, over a total of more than ten minutes, seemed never to have fluctuated by more than 10%.
“Earth received. Please carry out the following inspection items, awaiting further instructions.”
“Deep Space 16 received.”
…
Following the crowd out of the launch base, Jiang Yang saw 3 massive rockets still standing around the launch site, pointing straight at the vast firmament.
He knew that across the total of five launch sites, there were still 9 rockets in total at this moment.
The launch missions had all been completed, and these 9 rockets could be temporarily sealed, no need to take further risks.
After a few hours of rest, Jiang Yang returned to the command hall.
In just a few hours, the spaceship already launched into space had orbited Earth a full five times.
During this journey of over 200,000 kilometers, it had also completed the necessary orbital adjustment, ready for the next step.
“Engine ignition!”
The next moment, in space, blazing firelight jetted again from the tail of the conical spaceship, pushing its speed to increase once more.
A few minutes later, the engine shut down.
Just these few minutes of thrust had completely changed its orbit around Earth.
Its apogee had extended to 700,000 kilometers away, perpendicular to the Earth-Moon line.
Over the next few days of journey, it would slowly fly there, then ignite thrust again at apogee, thus adjusting the orbit into an approximately circular one centered on Earth with a radius of 700,000 kilometers.
This number was about 100 times Earth’s radius.
If those high-energy neutrinos from the Moon were aimed at Earth, this spaceship could almost certainly dodge them.
In the vast firmament, aboard this small spaceship, Li Chengyu slowly advanced toward deep space.
Things at the launch site were over, and there were still over 100 hours until the apocalypse.
“Let’s go.”
Calling out to Zhou Yu, the group boarded the helicopter and headed to Apocalypse Base No. 7.
Gazing at the undulating mountains and rivers underground, a thought silently emerged in Jiang Yang’s mind.
“We have done everything we could in this life. Now we just wait slowly for the results…”
Beside him, Zhou Yu suddenly spoke, her voice full of anger.
“Jiang Yang, look, the news of our successive rocket launch failures has spread online, and those hateful foreigners actually dare to say this about us.”
Taking the mobile phone and looking, Jiang Yang chuckled speechlessly.
To keep the plot coherent, today’s two chapters are combined into one and released together, no update tonight.
Also, Author sees the monthly tickets are already over 3000, owed chapters increased to 4, noted down, Reader Lords can rest assured.
