That same evening.

Tang Yue was lying on the bed, the futon was tightly covered, only one head was exposed, the slight humming sound of the fan turning was like a mosquito calling, and the air temperature in the crew cabin had been kept at twenty degrees Celsius, but at this time the outdoor temperature had dropped to minus sixty degrees.

There was a pale yellow light in the gap in the door curtain, the old cat had not rested, it was still preparing for tomorrow's trip, packing his luggage, Tang Yue heard the sound of Xi Xi Suosuo, it was the old cat rolling up the map, the front of the Martian stray dog was seriously damaged, and there was not even a complete display left, so they had to use a paper map.

Tang Yue looked at the thin light on the floor, and inexplicably remembered that when he was very young, he went back to his hometown during the summer vacation, lived in an old house built of bricks and tiles, and slept on the bed every night when he was young wrapped in a quilt, and the warm light came out of the crack in the door of the room.

He didn't know why he thought of this, the house in his hometown had actually been demolished a long time ago, his grandparents had also died when he was in college, and now even the earth had disappeared, and now no one could prove that all this had ever existed, it only existed in Tang Yue's memory.

Tang Yue chewed on these memories repeatedly, from childhood to adulthood, from the TV and popsicles in his hometown house during the summer vacation, to the training at the Jiuquan Center and Lao Wang's fire in Lop Nur, he tried to confirm every detail of them, the tune of the opening song of the 10,000-year-old drama "Young Bao Qingtian", the handwriting on the wrapper of the popsicle, Lao Wang sitting by the campfire rummaging through his backpack, and taking out the hidden Tsingtao beer from his bag.

Tang Yue was afraid that he would one day forget these people.

It's a pity that memory is the most difficult thing in the world to fix after all, you try to pinch it into someone's shape, pinch it so that every strand of hair is clear, they will still fade and blur like sand, and in the end only a bare ball is left, and you can't see anything when you look at it for a long time.

Tang Yue closed his eyes and whispered, "Are you still here?"

Everything is quiet and quiet.

There is a water cup on the cabinet at the head of Tang Yue's bed, and there is a vertical wooden photo frame on the side, there is only one photo, which is a group photo of the crew of Orion 1 in the center of Jiuquan before departure, instructing Elder Wang and Lao Tang to stand in the center of the back row, flanked by Lao Zheng and Lao Mai, Tang Yue and Mai Dong are squatting in the front row, six people hook their shoulders and smile at the camera, it was very windy, the girl pressed the hair in her ear with one hand, Lao Wang was blinded by the sand, grinning his teeth, and was about to curse, but before the snacks were spoken, time was frozen forever by the camera.

In the distance, there is a tall launch stand under the clear sky, and the manned spacecraft is still being assembled, and the sun is shining.

With a pair of slippers on the floor next to the bed, an empty plastic trash can in the corner, and trousers, shirts and empty hangers hanging from the hooks on the walls, Tang Yue's crew compartment was simple, he didn't have much to take with him.

"Old cat?" Tang Yue pulled out his arm from the quilt and pillowed it behind his head.

"I'm here." A cat's head poked in through the crack in the curtain, "Aren't you sleeping yet?" Wake up early tomorrow morning. ”

"Can't sleep." Tang Yue said.

"Nervous?"

Tang Yue shook his head.

"Anxious?"

Tang Yue shook his head.

"Fear?"

Tang Yue still shook his head, he looked at his hand, "Do you know that people's emotions are built on life, and only when there is life will there be emotions...... But I can't find the real sense of my life, sometimes I suspect that I am an ignorant puppet, I can't even feel the temperature when I touch myself, compared to you, I am more like a robot......"

"Don't doubt yourself."

Tang Yue was stunned.

"Don't doubt yourself." The old cat repeated, it came over and held Tang Yue's hand, the meat pad of the cat's paw pressed into his palm, "Look, how can there be no temperature?" Never doubt the value and meaning of your existence, no matter what desperate situation you fall into, even if no one in the whole world recognizes it, even if no one can witness and record it, you must firmly believe that your life is the most important thing in this universe...... You have to believe that you are unique in the universe and that you can live and you must live. ”

Tang Yue nodded slowly.

"Whenever you encounter a hurdle that you can't overcome, tell yourself like this." The old cat smiled, "Because in this world, there is no one else who can trust you except yourself." ”

"Sleep well, count the sheep if you can't sleep."

It let go of Tang Yue's hand, turned around and left the crew compartment, and closed the curtain with his hand.

·

·

·

The old cat was piled up with manuscript paper and tables on the table, and those dense and lengthy numbers were dazzling to look at, like a cipher table, the old cat was like an astronomer in the Middle Ages, doing things that no one could understand. In the days before large-aperture optical telescopes and computers, astronomers spent their days dealing with mathematics, calculating with pen and paper, sorting through vast expanses of observations, and then finding the new object from the huge numbers.

To outsiders, astronomers at the time were mysterious, and some even believed that they could see into the future, because they could predict a total solar eclipse based on numbers on papyrus alone.

The old cat is doing something similar at the moment.

Using a sextant can read the latitude, but the longitude cannot be determined directly, and if you want to know your longitude, you must determine it indirectly by other methods, and what the old cat is sorting out in his hand is an extremely precise star catalog, which can help them not to get lost in the desert.

“11…… 261.233.541…… 155.355.712……”

“12…… 200.351.547，399.241.955……”

The old cat sat motionless in his chair, holding a pen in his paws, with a charging cable stuck in his back, his furry body curled up in a ball, and his slender cat hair fluttered in the breeze.

“12，26.413.273……”

“12，274.360.669……”

The old cat counted softly as he put pen to paper on the form, and the clock ticked.

There was no movement in the crew cabin, and Tang Yue was already asleep.

The night is getting deeper and deeper, the scratch paper on the table is higher than the old cat's head, the numbers on these papers are the calculation results rather than the calculation process, Tang Yue is not around, the old cat does not need to show the calculation to anyone, so the whole process of mental arithmetic, but due to the huge amount of data, the blank manuscript paper is no longer enough, and finally even the scratch paper has to be wasted.

The old cat's sorted out data was stacked on top of each other, and put it in a drawer.

If nothing else, the paper will stay here until the end of the world.

“SUN，10，00，102.543.027……”

“FRIDAY。”

“01，02，03…… All the way to 23. ”

"NEXT UP IS SATURDAY."

“00，102.548.227，104.424.152，212.240.270，01……”

“195.544.473。”

“01，25，02，52，03，45。”

"Further down is SUNDAY."

“SUNDAY。”

"Sunday...... Sunday, where is it on Sunday? ”

I don't know how long later, when the old cat put away his pen contentedly, and let out a long breath to announce that he was done, the sun below the horizon had already lit up the sky.