The old cat glanced at the time, put away the tools, turned around and got into the cab, "I can only go here today, and the rest of the work will be carried out tomorrow, we have to go back to move the battery panels." ”

Tang Yue looked at the sunset, the sun hung low above the red wasteland, he remembered Wang Wei's poem, the desert is lonely, and the sun sets over the long river.

"There was once a fertile land in front of me that I didn't cherish." Tang Yue said, "Wait until you lose it to regret it, and there is nothing more painful in the world than this." ”

"If God could give me a chance to do it all over again......"

The old cat lazily interrupted him.

"Do you want the Earth to disappear and start all over again?"

The old cat started the Martian stray dog, the body trembled slightly, and began to turn slowly, Tang Yue sat in the car, as the body swayed, he put all the bottles and cans on the workbench back and forth, and closed the lid of the spectrophotometer.

"Miss Mai Dong, what if we can't find the right soil? We're just sampling over a radius of a few kilometers, so is there a huge difference in the soil over such a small area? ”

The old cat holds the steering wheel in his hand and looks ahead.

The wheels of the Martian stray dog run over the sand, and the tires leave two neat ruts on the surface.

"It's hard to say." Mai Dong replied, "Because there used to be liquid water on the surface of Mars, the topography and mineral distribution of the area through which the water flows will change, and it can also cause large differences in soil quality in a small area, such as the difference in soil quality between alluvial plains and riverbeds...... We have to find a soil with better basic conditions, a balanced acidity and alkalinity, and a higher water retention capacity, which is more suitable for plant growth. ”

"Miss Mai Dong, when you were on Kunlun Station before, did you find qualified soil?" The old cat asked.

"Unfortunately, no." Mai Dong shook his head, "I have done research on this with Lao Zheng, he is an expert in environment and geology, and he told me that Mars is a huge arid saline land of 142 million square kilometers. ”

The old cat was stunned for a moment and sighed.

"We need a Yuan Longping."

·

·

·

The Martian stray dog crossed a depression, and the old cat said it could be an ancient river channel, and that hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago, liquid water may have flowed through it.

"Mars was once a planet rich in water." Tang Yue looked out the window, the Martian stray dog climbed a low sand dune, there was a brown sand pillar standing up at the end of the dune, it was moving slowly, and when he looked closely, he found that it was a small tornado, "Where has all that water gone now?" ”

"Some of the evaporation escaped, the geological activity of Mars was stagnant for millions of years, the magnetic field almost disappeared, and the atmosphere was stripped away by the solar wind along with the water molecules." The old cat replied, "Part of it is left in the polar regions and depressions where the sun does not reach, in the form of ice, and the last part may be underground, turning into water that combines ice with certain compounds." ”

"There's water in the ground?" Tang Yue asked, "Then if I dig down, is it possible to dig out water?" ”

"Do you dig with your spoon-like shovel?" The old cat scoffed, "I've never seen anyone dig a well with a spoon, you're probably going to dig until the end of the world." ”

The Martian stray dog was driving on a barren beach full of gravel, and because there was no shock absorption and suspension, Tang Yue's butt hurt.

"If there was water, could there have been creatures on Mars?" Tang Yue stared out the window, chatting with each other.

"Of course." The old cat nodded, "If you dig twenty meters under your feet now, you might be able to dig up some fossils of ancient creatures on Mars." ”

"If there were living things, then it was possible that there were civilizations on Mars?" Mai Dong asked.

"Miss Mai Dong, it's hard to say." The old cat shrugged, "Wisdom and civilization have never been the goal of evolution, the purpose of biological evolution is to better adapt to the environment, not to grow a more developed brain, why do you have to regard wisdom as the standard of higher life?" From an evolutionary and biological point of view, the most successful creatures have always been the most adapted, not the most brain-intensive – in the Mesozoic Earth, large reptiles did not have high IQs, but that did not prevent them from dominating the globe. ”

"I just think if there had been a civilization on Mars, then it would have become romantic." "We are no longer dealing with a dead planet with no life, but with the remnants of an ancient civilization. ”

Tang Yue was stunned for a moment, looking down at his feet, he imagined that under the surface of the Mars rover, there were huge and magnificent buildings like the Pantheon in ancient Rome, and they were passing through a wide and straight avenue, where tens of thousands of years ago, the inhabitants of the Martian civilization worshipped their gods.

"Even if civilizations exist, it's hard for us to see their ruins." The old cat said leisurely, "Tang Yue, you look to the left." ”

Tang Yue obeyed, stood up and looked at the left side of the car.

At the end of the moor, there are cascading crimson hills, intertwined with canine teeth and ravines.

"What do you see?"

"Sand, wasteland, and hills arranged in a linear pattern."

"That's the Yadan landform." The old cat asked, "Do you know what the Yadan landform is?" ”

"Wind erosion?" Mai Dong said.

"It is the wind-eroded landform, the rocky mountains you see like the dragon's back are the result of wind erosion, on this planet, there is no force more powerful than wind, sand and water, no matter how tall and strong the buildings built by any civilization, they will be eroded and broken by the air flow like a knife cut in a long time, and finally turn into yellow sand in the sky." The old cat said lightly, "The slowest and most silent power has always been the most powerful. ”

"There is nothing in this world that can compete with time, and a civilization that has developed for 10,000 years can erase all traces of it in 10 million years." "But on the huge scale of geological time, we generally calculate time in billions...... What dynasty hegemony and what civilization fruits, in the end are all sand. ”

Tang Yue and Mai Dong both fell silent.

They don't know what to say, and measuring time with the insignificance of human beings is always awe-inspiring.

The old cat paused, and chanted aloud:

"When a guest returns from overseas, he has seen an ancient desert country.

There are stone statues that are half-destroyed, and only giant legs remain, squatting among the gravel.

The head is falling, half buried, and the human face is still terrifying. ”

Tang Yue was stunned for a moment, not knowing what the old cat was talking about, Mai Dong whispered on his earphones to remind him that this was Shelley's poem, from the famous "Osimantis".

The old cat raised his voice.

"The sneer, the arrogance of giving orders,

It shows that the craftsman sees through the master's heart,

Only then did the stone statue be carved with a beautiful expression,

And the hand of the stone statue and the heart of the stone statue have long been turned into ashes!

The big words on the pedestal are in the eye:

I am the king of kings, and I dare to convince the gods! ”

The Martian stray dog walked forward on the dead desert, the sand was everywhere, the old cat's voice became vast and vast, Tang Yue looked at the wind and sand in his eyes, and his heart suddenly became desolate.

But the old cat's voice slowly lowered again, like a cry, like an elegy.

"Nothing else, but see around the ruins,

Lonely flat sand empty reckless,

Stretch out to the desolation. ”