While they were chatting, Atlas's excited voice suddenly came from the communicator. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

"Brother Captain! Brother Captain! The voice coming from the communicator startled Zhou Xin, "I've discovered a new planet!" ”

"New planets?" Zhou Xin hadn't reacted at first, but when he reacted, he exclaimed in surprise, "New planet?!" Then he asked, skeptically, "Aren't there only four planets on the chart?" Where did this fifth planet come from? Don't play this joke on us at this time. His tone was a little reproachful.

"People aren't kidding!" Atlas's tone was still very excited, and a little girl representing Atlas appeared on the screen, and she was still jumping up and down on the screen, "People have really discovered a planet." ”

"How is that possible?" Zhou Xin still didn't quite believe Atlas's words, and he asked with a skeptical attitude, "What kind of planet did you find, put it on the screen and let us see." ”

"Good!" Before Atlas's words fell, the picture on the big screen above Zhou Xin flashed, and the original broken planet was gone, replaced by the starry sky near the star.

Seeing a lone star hanging on the screen, Zhou Xin looked puzzled, "Atlas, what are you doing with the picture of the star?" What about the new planet you're talking about? Where is it? ”

"Right here." A little girl appeared on the big screen, jumping to her feet and trying to point to a starry sky above her head, but the little girl was so short that she couldn't point to the exact location on the screen for a long time. After jumping a few times, seeing that she really couldn't reach the place she wanted to point, a slender stick suddenly appeared in the little girl's hand, she weighed the stick in her hand, and then raised the stick and pointed to a certain point in the starry sky. Zhou Xin tried to look at it a few times, and finally found a faint bright spot near the position pointed by the stick, this point was so dim, it was basically obscured by the strong stellar light next to it, if it wasn't pointed out by Atlas, Zhou Xin couldn't have seen this point at all.

"What kind of place is this? How can you hide from a planet? Atlas, are you sure it's a planet? And not a comet or something? ”

"This is the place." Atlas called up the Atlantean star map and pointed to a point in the innermost orbit that had already existed on the star map. Zhou Xin saw that the location of this point was at the other end of the orbit of the silica planet discovered at the beginning, and it was far away from the planet that had been discovered a long time ago, across a star.

"You're mismarked, aren't you? Hasn't this place been explored a long time ago? How is it possible to hide from a planet? Zhou Xin's face was incredulous, "Either what you found is not a planet, but something else." ”

"Actually, people aren't quite sure what they found." Atlas replied a little embarrassed, "They just discovered this bright spot when they were playing with the probe, and this bright spot does look like an object, so they came over and told the captain brother about you." ”

"Maybe it's not really a planet." Dart stared at the bright spot for a long time, and then said, "But this bright spot should be an entity, if not a planet, if it is an asteroid, it is fine, and this may be our only hope in this galaxy." ”

Zhou Xin nodded, "Voyager, send a probe over to see what this highlight is." ”

"No." Atlas said, "I've controlled this probe to fly to that place." ”

"Okay." Zhou Xin said, "Then you can notify me when you fly near that bright spot." His tone was casual, clearly not very concerned about the highlight.

Two hours later, Zhou Xin was still pondering whether there was any way to ensure that the moment the spacecraft entered warp space, there would be no danger, when Atlas's startled voice interrupted his train of thought again.

"Brother Captain! It's a planet! It's a planet! The little girl on the screen shouted as she jumped.

"Isn't it?" Zhou Xin hadn't come back to his senses from the question he had thought about, he replied along his initial train of thought, because he vaguely heard Atlas's words, he still felt a little strange in his heart, "Since it's a planet, come and tell me what to do." After thinking about it twice in a row, he suddenly felt that something was wrong. He repeated the thought in his mind before he came back to his senses, and after listening carefully to Atlas's next words, his mood suddenly became excited.

"It's a planet! It's a planet! Brother Captain! Atlas kept shouting, "This is another planet!" ”

"Is it confirmed that it's a planet?" Although he was excited, Zhou Xin still kept his senses, "It's not another object?" ”

"You can see the specific shape from such a distance, it's not what the planet is, brother captain, look at the big screen." Atlas continued to scream excitedly.

Zhou Xin looked up at the big screen, in the middle of the screen, the original dim bright spot was still so dim, but the size of the dot has obviously become larger, and now it has the size of a glass bead, looking at the bright spot on the screen that is obviously spherical, Zhou Xin can finally confirm - that bright spot is at least an asteroid, otherwise it can't be this shape, as for the comet, it is impossible, at such a close distance from the star, if it is a comet, it is impossible not to have a comet tail.

"Come closer and see what it is." Zhou Xin instructed Atlas.

"People have already manipulated the probe to get closer very hard, brother captain, wait a minute."

After confirming the news of the discovery of the new planet, Zhou Xin became excited, although he still sat patiently in his seat, but the action of constantly looking up and staring at the big screen revealed his current mood. He kept looking up, and kept praying in his heart, hoping that this planet would not be like the planet he had found before, unable to collect resources. And Dart, who was next to him, was in the same mood as him now, and he even stared at the big screen intently, with an excited look on his face.

At this time, Spred opened the door of the command cabin and walked in, he stared at the excited people in the command cabin with a strange expression, and said to Zhou Xin: "Everything is ready, are you sure we are leaving this galaxy?" ”

Zhou Xin waved his hand at Spred, then pointed to the big screen and said to him, "Look at what it is?" ”

Spred looked at the big screen that Zhou Xin was pointing at with a puzzled expression, "This is - a planet?" His expression changed from confusion to excitement in an instant.

"Do you think so too?" Zhou Xin said, "That doesn't look wrong. ”

"How did you discover this planet?" Spred asked, "Where is this planet hiding?" Why didn't we find out before? ”

Hearing Spred ask the same question as himself, Zhou Xin smiled, "It was discovered by Atlas when he was casually controlling the probe, and the location is in the orbit of the first planet we discovered." With that, he remembered the strange mark he had seen on the star chart a long time ago, and he patted his head, "I see." Then Zhou Xin asked the Voyager to pull up the star map, pointed to the innermost orbit above and said, "Do you remember the two markers on the same orbit, and that 'wow'?" It seems that the Atlanteans who originally observed this galaxy discovered two planets in this orbit, and he should have been surprised why there were two planets in one orbit, so he left that word on the star map. ”

"Maybe that's true." Dart continued, "The Atlanteans who discovered this phenomenon may have been incredulous about it, so they didn't use the usual marker to mark it on the star map, but used a unique mark. ”

"How did this strange phenomenon come about? How can two planets orbit in the same orbit without interfering with each other, won't they collide together? Spred asked, surprised.

"I don't know yet." Zhou Xin spread his hands, "Maybe we'll know the reason after we study this planet." After a pause, he continued, "As for why we didn't find this planet before, I'm actually very puzzled, Voyager, you can explain why all the probes haven't found this planet. ”

"This is a mistake in the work of this ship." "The probe discovered the first planet about a third of the way through that orbit, and then we mobilized all the probes in that orbit to the discovered planet, ignoring the follow-up investigation of the orbit." ”

"Forget it, you can't be blamed for that." Zhou Xin said, "There is nothing wrong with you taking back all the probes, who would have known that there would be two planets in the same orbit." ”

"Yes, yes." Atlas continued, "If I hadn't found out, I'd have thought there was only one planet." ”

As they chatted, the planet on the screen had grown from the size of a marble to the size of a ping-pong ball, and the dim light that had reflected the stars was gone, replaced by a black planet that could clearly distinguish the light and dark sides.

"How can the surface of this planet be so dark?" Spred noticed an anomaly on the surface of the planet, "You see that his light-receiving surface is also a little darker than the other planets you have seen before?" ”

"It seems like that's really the case." Zhou Xin stared at the planet for a long time, and then said, "Maybe it's determined by the special composition of the surface of this planet, it doesn't matter. ”

"I'm afraid that this planet is like the first planet, and it is all a single substance." Spred's tone was a little worried, "You know, this planet is in the same orbit as the first planet, what if the composition and nature of the two planets are the same?" ”

"We'll have to wait until we get closer to the planet." Zhou Xin stared at the planet on the screen and said.

An hour later, the planet on the screen was already bigger than the full moon, and some obvious features on the planet had begun to appear in front of Zhou Xin and them.

And the characteristic of this planet is that it has no features. The whole planet looked swarthy and unsightly, it was neither highly reflective like the first planet before it, nor exaggerated terrain like the badly damaged planet, nor was there a large storm on the surface of the planet that lasted all year round. In front of the camera, the planet is like a black lump of dirt, the color of the planet's surface is so dark that Zhou Xin can't distinguish the undulating terrain above, and even the dividing line between light and dark can not be well distinguished, and can only roughly judge which side is the light-receiving side and which side is the shadow side according to the position of the star.

"Why is this planet so weird?" Spred asked, "The surface of the planet is a little darker, too." ”

"Which of the planets in this galaxy isn't strange?" Zhou Xin's tone was a little helpless, "A planet that only contains pure silica, and a planet that lacks a small half." ”

"Those two giant planets look normal." Atlas interjected.

"Uh-well, those two planets are normal." Zhou Xin was slightly stunned, "But there are still half of the planets that are very abnormal." Glancing at the planet on the screen, he said, "Well, it's more than half now." ”

As soon as Zhou Xin's words were finished, Spred and Dart were speechless for a moment, and after a while, Spred spoke again: "Okay, you're right, so now let's go back to the previous question - why is the surface of this planet so dark." ”

"Didn't I say that before?" Zhou Xin spread his hands, "Wait for the probe to send back a report when it gets close to the planet, otherwise how do I know." ”

More than an hour later, the Atlas-controlled probe has successfully entered the high-level orbit of the newly discovered planet and began to survey the planet's surface. Of course, this is only a preliminary investigation, and when it was confirmed that Atlas had discovered a new planet, Zhou Xin had already sent more probes to the planet, and it was estimated that it would take some time for these probes to reach the vicinity of the planet.

Even at such a close distance, the surface of the planet is still very dark, and Atlas deliberately kept the position of the probe on the light-receiving side of the planet, but Zhou Xin and the others still can't see the specific situation on the surface of the planet. The surface of the planet seems to be covered with a layer of light-absorbing substance, absorbing a large amount of light, and only reflecting a small amount of light into the probe's lens.

Relying on the faint light, Zhou Xin and they vaguely saw that in addition to the abnormally low reflectivity of this planet, the terrain is relatively normal, with mountains, canyons, plains, and the terrain that exists on the planet in general. Of course, they will not be able to see the terrain in more detail, only when the next probe lands on the surface of the planet.

At this time, Atlas began to introduce the planet to Zhou Xin according to the data reported by the probe......