Mai Dong woke up from a sleep, forty minutes before the sun rose.

Tang Yue and Lao Mao have been staying in Kunlun Station for a long time, and they have been discussing the detailed operation steps to ensure that there is no last resort.

"Miss Mai Dong, I have sent you the detailed repair plan and operation steps." The old cat turned the camera over, and a huge cat face flashed on Mai Dong's communication system, "You confirm it." ”

"Uh-huh."

Mai Dong was eating, his mouth stuffed to the brim.

The girl opened the form, and the dense handwriting jumped out, Tang Yue did everything in detail, every note was listed, even including which foot was more convenient to take first when untying the lock of the mechanical arm.

"Oh......"

"How?" The old cat asked, "Miss Mai Dong, how difficult do you think the task is?" ”

"No problem." Mai Dong nodded slowly, his eyes swept over the documents on the screen, "It's just a sensor, right?" It's a trivial matter, and it's hard to stop this girl. ”

"Then it's Q&A time." Tang Yue interjected and pushed the old cat away, "Mai Dong, you have to read this action step carefully, you can ask any questions, and strive to sort out every step of the plan, so as not to be in a hurry at that time." ”

"Okay, I see, let me see ......"

The old cat left the seat, Tang Yue and Mai Dong had already entered the working state, and it still had some time to go out and take care of the solar panels in the battery farm.

The work of folding the battery panel every day is not done by Tang Yue alone, the old cat sometimes helps, but it is obviously much more leisurely than Tang Yue, Tang Yue is working with a bloated Mingguang armor, tired and humming, like a long-term worker in the landlord's house, and the old cat walks between the batteries with his paws on his back, just like the landlord.

The old cat opened the hatch of the airlock chamber and stood at the door of Kunlun Station, raising his head and looking up at the sky.

Its cat's eye wasn't a high-powered telescope to see the Union Space Station clearly, but the old cat knew very well that the craft would pass over his head every hour and forty minutes, and if it was at night, the station would glow like a star and skim the night sky at breakneck speed, making it stand out in the almost stationary background sky.

Some nights, Tang Yue and the old cat stayed in front of the window of Kunlun Station, waiting for the United Space Station to appear from the sky, and then contacted Mai Dong and told her, "We see you!" ”

Mai Dong has survived alone on the space station for more than 200 days, without backup, and without supply, which is amazing in the entire history of human spaceflight, from the era when Yuri Gagarin and Alain Shepard carefully stepped into space, until the middle of the 21st century, when the world cooperated to land on Mars, no one has ever faced the situation that Tang Yue and Mai Dong are in at this moment.

The old cat as a robot can't help but sigh, God knows how much suffering these two young people have suffered, they are only young people who are participating in the Mars program for the first time, and they are the preparatory talents for the expansion of the landing plan in the future, not as calm and experienced as Lao Wang Lao Tang, but bad luck befell these two people.

Mai Dong's physical condition is getting worse and worse.

The long-term weightlessness and severe lack of nutrition are gradually destroying the girl's body, Mai Dong has been wearing a hat in the video since last month, she did not explain why, but the old cat knows that it must be due to severe hair loss.

High irradiation destroys hair follicle cells, the germinal layer is necrotic, and a lot of hair will fall out, which is the most intuitive manifestation of deterioration in health.

If you don't take Mai Dong off as soon as possible, the old cat doesn't know how long that girl can last.

But the worst thing is that there are no vehicles on the space station that can be used to land.

Tang Yue proposed to use the ascent stage of the Eagle spacecraft, believing that the shell of the Eagle spacecraft could withstand the heat barrier, which was the only hope.

Theoretically speaking, the heat insulation tile of the Eagle spacecraft can indeed resist the high temperature of air friction, although the Eagle spacecraft is a disposable aircraft, but the design of the heat insulation tile still has redundancy, and the possibility of overcoming the thermal barrier is in this safety redundancy.

This logically makes sense, and Tang Yue thinks that he has solved the first problem and taken a gratifying first step.

It's a good start and it's exciting.

He began to rack his brains to think about how to overcome the next few difficulties, the old cat walked in front of Tang Yue's crew rest hatch, and he could hear him chattering inside, what "reverse thrust landing", what "air resistance", obviously sleepless all night thinking about the problem of landing safely.

It's really rare that there is something that can make Tang Yue so concerned, and his walnut-sized brain capacity is probably all put on this.

The old cat leaned against the hatch of Kunlun Station, picked up a flat stone at his feet, pinched it in his paws and shook it hard.

The light in the cat's eyes suddenly dimmed, it always behaved like a cheap and venomous charter man in front of Tang Yue, energetic, snoring and drinking, dragging as if it was twenty-five or eighty-thousand, but at this moment the cat's back collapsed, it looked neither strong nor awesome, some kind of invisible huge weight bent its back, it couldn't straighten its waist, it could only sit on the ground slowly.

The old cat who stayed alone turned out to be just an old cat.

A cat sitting in the desert.

"The side with the crack is the front, the side without the crack is the back, and if it's the front, then they and I will have a good ending." The old cat muttered in a low voice, tossed the stone in its paw like a coin, and then raised its paw to catch it and put it on the back of its paw.

The old cat was silent for a few seconds.

"If it's the back...... Then they will have a good ending. The old cat continued, "If I'm unlucky, I'll be unlucky." ”

It slowly removed its claws, and the stone lay flat on the back of its paws.

The old cat took one look, grinned, and threw the stone away.

Tang Yue was still dreaming of being able to take Mai Dong next, and the girl was also excited to think that she could land safely, the old cat really didn't want to break their illusions, the survival of these two young people was so difficult, and there was so little hope left in their lives. Looking at the glint in the eyes of the two young men, the old cat finally swallowed the words on his lips, and it would be cruel to deprive him of this last hope.

The old cat actually knows better than anyone else.

It had considered all possible options.

It is impossible for the Eagle spacecraft to land safely, this method is completely unfeasible, and taking the ascent of the Eagle spacecraft into the atmosphere is tantamount to suicide.

The hope that Tang Yue saw was just a little bubble rising in despair, which burst as soon as he poked it.