"I need to take some time to examine these holes and see what I can find. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 With that, Spred took it upon himself to end the newsletter.

Originally, Zhou Xin thought that this time he should be able to quickly find out the reason for the disappearance of neutron matter, but Spred disappeared from everyone's field of vision again after ending this communication, and at the same time, Atlas, who was originally very active, actually fell silent with him. Although he knew where the two of them were, Zhou Xin still felt a little weird. Over the next few days, Zhou Xin would occasionally go to the heart of the warp engine to see what they had discovered. But every time I passed, I could always see a thunderstar and a robot together discussing fiercely, and then there were several other thunderstars standing next to them looking at the two of them helplessly, and the two people who were discussing fiercely also stretched out their hands to gesture on the core protective layer from time to time, completely ignoring Zhou Xin's arrival. Seeing this scene, Zhou Xin was embarrassed to disturb them, so he took a few glances from a distance and left.

Five days after Atlas discovered the tiny holes, Voyager finally saw the robot controlled by Atlas come out of the core of the warp engine, but instead of looking for Zhou Xin, the robot walked to the part of the warp engine exposed to outer space. Looking at the robot's movements, it seemed that he wanted to look for something in this part, but after looking for a long time, Atlas didn't find what he was looking for, and Zhou Xin couldn't watch the robot look for something on the shell for a long time, so he also learned a little about Atlas's movements and focused his attention on other places.

Next, another few quiet days, the Voyager had been flying in sub-light mode for more than twenty days, and in five days it was about to come into contact with the target galaxy, and Spred finally appeared in the command module of the Voyager again, and before he appeared, Atlas had already appeared on the screen in front of Zhou Xin.

"Brother Captain, Brother Captain." Before the figure appeared, her sweet voice rang out in the command module.

I haven't heard Atlas's voice for more than ten days, and the moment her voice sounded, Zhou Xin still felt a little surprised, he was slightly flustered, and then reacted, "How is it, have you checked out any results?" ”

"Of course." The little girl raised her head proudly, "People must be able to find the reason." ”

As soon as Atlas's words fell, Zhou Xin heard the sound of the door of the command cabin opening, and Spred walked in tiredly. He walked straight to his seat and sat down, and after taking a sip of water, he said, "I found the reason, it's the hole." ”

After saying this, he took another big sip of water, and then began to say in detail: "The hole that Atlas found earlier is not only in the core of the warp engine, but runs through the shell of the engine to the core. A few days ago, Atlas found the same hole in the shell of the engine corresponding to the hole in the core, the hole is not large, only a millimeter in size, but it goes directly to the position of the core. The hole gradually shrunk from the outside to the inside, just making a one-micron hole in the core, in this penetrating hole, we checked for the phenomenon of abnormal neutrino radiation, the further the direction of the shell, the more intense this radiation becomes, in addition to the neutrino radiation, there is a strange ray in this hole, we have not yet studied what the function of this ray is, but from the existing clues, it seems that the zero substance is radiated from this hole until it disappears completely. ”

"And people have checked it, and it doesn't seem that this hole has appeared recently, but has been there for a long time." Atlas added, "Judging by the radiation from the hole, the hole has been in existence for at least a year, and the neutron matter in the core slowly decays and disappears during this year." ”

"A year?" Zhou Xin was a little surprised, "How can it be so long?" The core has decayed for so long, hasn't anyone ever noticed an anomaly? ”

"The hole is too small, only one micron, so the whole decay process proceeds extremely slowly. Atlas calculated that only a few element zeros decayed at most per hour. Spred replied, "And we found that the mass of Zero seemed to shoot all the particles produced from that hole when it decayed, so we didn't find out how Element Zero disappeared in the first place." As for why all the particles are only emitted from that hole and do not hit the inner wall of the core, we don't know the reason yet. ”

Spred answered the question that Zhou Xin originally wanted to ask, so Zhou Xin changed the question, "Then don't study the decay process of neutron matter first, have you figured out how that hole was formed?" ”

"Not either." Spred shook his head helplessly, "The hole formed a year ago, and it's such a tiny hole, who can find the cause, if it is formed recently, maybe the cause can be analyzed." Then he guessed, "Such a small hole may be because the spacecraft just hit a tiny speck of interstellar dust when it was flying at high speed." Then he sighed and said regretfully, "If only this hole had been discovered earlier, and if we had repaired it earlier, we might have been able to save some of Substance Zero." ”

"Impossible." Zhou Xin thought for a while and asked suspiciously, "If it is the impact of interstellar dust, how can it form a hole that is thick on the outside and thin on the inside, and all the decay particles are emitted from this hole, how can we explain it?" ”

"What else could it be?" Spred shrugged helplessly, "It was all a year ago, unless there happens to be an image near this hole, who knows how this hole was formed." ”

"A year ago." Zhou Xin fell into deep thought, and after a long time, he suddenly remembered something, "Wait, a year ago?" And the weird rays? Zhou Xin showed a look of surprise, "Where were we a year ago?" ”

"A year ago, the ship's position was over the frozen planet." The Voyager gave the exact answer.

"No, no, no, I didn't mean exactly a year ago." Zhou Xin recalled, "Didn't we encounter that spherical battleship at the end of the frozen planet. Then he patted his head, "I remember, Voyager, do you remember when the warp engine seemed to have been hit by the white light from the spherical battleship?" ”

The Voyager did not immediately answer Zhou Xin's question, and after a while, he gave a positive answer, "Captain, you are right, the moment this ship entered hyperspace, the warp engine was indeed hit by a ray of light, but no problems were found during the inspection at that time, so the ship never paid attention to this matter again." ”

"I think I still have video footage at that time." Zhou Xin said, "That video is still not there, can you release it and take a look." ”

"Please wait, this ship is searching." The Voyager replied, and a few minutes later, it reported, "The ship has found the footage and is in the process of retrieving it." ”

As soon as the Voyager's words fell, the picture behind the little girl on the screen changed, and a corner of the Voyager appeared in the screen, and this corner of the picture just revealed the full picture of the warp engine. In the other corner of the starry sky that appeared on the screen, dense triangular fighters were flying towards the Voyager.

Of course, the attention was not on the hordes of triangular fighters, but on the warp engines. At the beginning of the screen, the scene near the warp engine did not change at all, but after a dozen seconds, a white light suddenly appeared from the other side of the screen. For a split second, the white light pierced through most of the screen, hitting the cylindrical shell where the warp engine was located, and then the white light vanished. In less than a second, the dark universe that had been filled with fighter planes disappeared into a pale blue background characteristic of hyperspace.

"Rewind the image to the moment when the white light hit." Zhou Xin commanded. The Voyager reversed the image as it was said, and then froze.

"Atlas, compare the location of the warp engine hit by the white light with the location of the hole you found, and see if there are any similarities."

"Okay—"

After just a few seconds, Atlas came up with the result, "Brother Captain, Brother Captain, the location where the white light hit is the location where I found the hole, and it is exactly the same." She emphasized.

"Then that would explain it." Zhou Xin turned to Spred, who was sitting next to him, and said, "It's not an accident, that white light did cause damage to the warp engine, but because the damage was too small, we didn't notice it at the time." ”

Spred nodded, "It seems that this is indeed the case, and in this case, the anomalous direction of the decay particles can also be explained." Then he said to himself, "But how do they do it?" And it's amazing that they know the core of our engine's construction and ingredients. ”

"How exactly they know is unknown." Zhou Xin shook his head, "But it's true that they know very well about the structure of the warp engine you made and even the way it warps, otherwise that white light wouldn't have just penetrated the core, and it just happened to have an effect on the neutron matter in the core." ”

Spred nodded and was just about to answer, when Zhou Xin suddenly patted his head, "Oops, I remembered." ”

"What?" Spred asked subconsciously.

Zhou Xin patted his head, "I remembered, the warp engine was not without abnormalities before, but I ignored it." He said with annoyance.

"Anomalous? When has the anomaly occurred? Spred asked urgently, "Why haven't I seen anything anomalous?" ”

Zhou Xin didn't answer, but asked the Voyager, "Have you saved the image of the last time the spacecraft entered the warp state?" ”

"Wait a minute." After a few moments, the screen shows the scene of the Voyager leaving the badly damaged galaxy it had previously hauled.

At this time, everyone's attention was focused on the picture on the screen, so it didn't take long for the image to be played, and everyone discovered the abnormal picture that Zhou Xin didn't care about at that time.

"How did the space generated by the warp engine flicker?" One of the Thunderstars present exclaimed.

"This is it." Zhou Xin's face was annoyed, "Because it quickly returned to its original state, I thought it was a normal spatial fluctuation at the time, if only I said it at that time." ”

Spred didn't answer, he asked the Voyager to play back the flickering picture of the space a few times, and then took a piece of paper next to him and calculated it, and after a long time, he opened his mouth to comfort Zhou Xin, "At this time, I found that it was useless, I calculated, this phenomenon occurred, and the zero substance in the core had reached the critical value of minimum mass." It can be said that our last warp flight was completely driven by strong energy, and after the warp space was formed, the zero matter was exhausted. Twenty days ago, the last bit of Zero matter completely decayed and disappeared, and the core lost the guiding material that produced the warp space, so the ship exited the warp state. So, it's not your fault. ”

After listening to Spred's explanation, Zhou Xin's mood finally improved a little. After adjusting his mentality, Zhou Xin thought for a while and asked, "Can the warp engine be repaired after it has this through hole?" It's not right to just put neutron matter in it. Although the hole is small, does prolonged exposure to space not cause damage to other parts of the engine? ”

"As you said, there is nothing unusual about the warp engine other than this hole, and I don't know why the engine can still maintain its normal state in the universe after this hole. Of course, it doesn't mean that this hole can't be fixed without anomalies, but there's a problem here. Spred frowned and said, "The repair of the outer layer of the engine is still relatively simple, as long as it is repaired with the same material, the most difficult thing is the maintenance of the core protective layer and coil, these parts were originally sintered together, and it is probably not possible to repair them directly." ”

"So we're going to remake the coil and the core layer?" Zhou Xin asked.

"Impossible." Spred shook his head, "These things are all made of special materials, as I said, the core was made by another scientific research base back then, so I don't know the formula of this special material, and even if I have a formula, I don't know the specific production method, so with our current technology, it is almost impossible to repair the hole in the core." Then he lowered his head and thought for a moment, and said to himself, "Otherwise, I will just put Substance Zero in and try it when the time comes, maybe such a small hole will not affect the operation of the core." ”

"No, we can't take that risk." Zhou Xin directly objected, "If there is really a problem, what will we do then?" It's better to fix this hole. ”

"Otherwise, let me try." Atlas spoke......