Time is not only a temptation for intelligent life, but also a torture.

The miracles of civilization are likewise subject to the severe test of time.

After more than 200 years of sailing, the Lancer IV has been in tatters, and the metallic front-end conerate protection when it set sail is not only full of potholes, but also covered with thick or thin rock blocks and ice and rock mixtures, and the outer layer of the third section of the main functional area is also missing a piece of the personnel living quarters.

It took more than a decade longer than expected, as there were several times on the road where I had to slow down or take a detour.

"Captain, we've reached in-star cruising speed." Inside the bridge, the navigator's indifferent voice sounded.

On the main display wall of the bridge, the stellar light is not strong, but it can already suppress the light of other stars.

"Got it, I'll go tell the others."

In the home system, a notice soon appeared for all crew members: Lancer IV is approaching the mission location, please A6 group is ready to go offline, and the rest of the crew will be allowed to go on and off the line freely from now on.

The home system allows the crew to try a variety of lives, but even the thousands of selected crew members have become numb and difficult to have mood swings after two hundred years of tossing. Or for human beings, it would be merciful to let them keep a smaller amount of memory like the dormant people of the earth.

During the voyage, all crew members went offline at least 20 times and up to 50 times, and the elimination rate due to mental and physical problems unconsciously reached 26%.

Lieyang also took advantage of the lancer mission to understand why the previous lancers could not succeed.

That's fundamentally a matter of probability, the larger the colony ship and the longer it travels, the lower the probability of successfully completing the mission, and most of the dangers can only be avoided by eliminating the long hibernation system like the Lancer IV and increasing the shift density.

However, even the Lancer IV believes that as long as the target is half as far away, the success rate of reaching the target will be infinitely close to zero. The evidence is that in the last thirty or forty years in the home system, the vast majority of the crew has lost the initiative, even if the world structure of the home system is changed, most of them are still just coping with life, and the other difficulty is the durability of the ship, at 10% of the speed of light, the liquid and dust after the high temperature cracking of a small stone can cause enough damage to the ship, and the longer the time, the greater the possibility of warning errors.

It's still too difficult to make an interstellar voyage without warp speed.

After activating the self-awakening of the entire crew, Sunny turned his attention to the lancers themselves.

The colonization mission seems to be about to be completed, but in fact the hardest part from now on has just begun, the physics will be performed by the crew and the robot, and he will be responsible for arranging the various work sequences, and repairing the lancers as much as possible before reaching the target track, rather than starting the colonization process desperately.

According to the instructions of the captain, the A6 group, which was designated to go offline, carried out a detailed inspection of each damage point one by one, and counted the materials, manpower, and machinery needed for repair.

During this time, Blaze unlocks the passage of the AB group.

It seems like an inconspicuous thing, but the appearance of a large number of strange colleagues has greatly activated the fading enthusiasm of the crew, even if it is not their own rotation period, they will help their colleagues independently.

Not all the crew members are noble, it's just that there is no hope of returning home, and all the people on the lancers are family, even strangers.

The Lancers entered the cruising speed for a month, and the less damaged facilities were restored one by one, increasing the space for movement, and the restoration of the passage also made the movement of personnel more convenient.

For the Lancers, the increase in activity space does not simply increase the internal personnel movement area, but also the recovery of more decompression chambers makes personnel and equipment more convenient for external projects.

At this point, the preparatory actions are not completed, but the environmental obstacles are cleared for the next step, and there are three important projects to follow.

The first item is the stellar sail, which itself came with the Lancer when it was built, and now it needs to repair the part that is locked due to the navigation environment, and it needs to be repaired to a certain extent after it is opened, the main role of this thing is to help the Lancer slow down, and at the same time subsidize a certain amount of living energy.

The second item is the overhaul and repair of various sub-ships of the Lancer, including the aerospace ship mounted by the Lancer, the orbital satellite and the orbital equipment recovery ship that are mothballed inside. The problem of mothballing equipment is not big, the main difficulties are concentrated in the aerospace landing ship, one of which has been smashed into a pit, they are very different from the outer space vehicle, although there are spare heat-resistant materials on the lancer, but there is no real aerospace aircraft production line, and it cannot be used to carry people after repair, but can only be used for cargo delivery.

The third is the key to the colonization mission, building additional add-ons for the lancers, including the Spaceship Connection/Material Backup add-on and the clone module. The Lancer itself is designed to ensure the completion of long-distance voyages, so there is no non-essential load, and the sailing speed of follow-up operations is getting lower and lower, and there are no strict requirements for the natural appearance, and they can be modified according to the mission.

The various mission equipment completed the final overhaul, repair and configuration one by one, and the Lancer finally entered the final positioning link of the target 30AU.

The Pacific Star, renamed for the Lancer mission, is a Class A star with a white and bluish surface, about twice the mass of the Sun, and a target planet orbiting 3.2 AU from the star, which is a good distance for the hotter Pacific Star, and can already be determined to have liquid water and oxygen before confirming the target.

The Lancer's equipment is the best, but it doesn't work very well at cruising speeds, and the Lancer's speed has been slowed down to 1500 km/s at a distance of 30 AU to allow for a more accurate composition check of the target planet.

Humans are very fragile creatures, and even 0.1% of unconventional gases in the atmosphere can be deadly, and it is difficult to achieve even 1% accuracy in remote measurements, let alone others.

However, after the test began, the first thing that appeared was the news that I didn't know if it was good or bad.

"Captain, the target planet has found native creatures!"

"Looks huge?"

At present, the composition of the atmosphere is only detected by spectroscopy and other means, and at the same time, image analysis with a certain degree of accuracy is carried out, and 80% of the lancers are at night relative to the direction of the planet, and the creatures that can be photographed in this case cannot be small.

"I don't know, it looks like an airplane?" The team members themselves could not be sure whether the photograph was a projection formed by natural weather.

Plane? Kidding me?

At a distance of twenty light years, it is impossible for any electromagnetic signal to escape the surveillance of the human complex, and the lancers can also receive information from the solar system twenty years ago, and it is impossible for the target planet to develop an aircraft from no electromagnetic technology in just twenty years.

"Got it, leave it alone and continue with the original mission."

In fact, the target planet really has life, and it has nothing to do with whether the colonization mission can be completed, and the human consortium has not signed any interstellar treaties with aliens, on the other hand, there are aborigines who do not necessarily mean that humans will not be poisoned by the atmosphere, so just do what needs to be done.

The relative motion of the Lancer and the target planet is not low, and the analysis needs to be repeatedly verified and confirmed, and at a distance of 10 AU, the Lancer completes the last long-distance measurement of the atmospheric information of the target planet, with a final accuracy of 0.2%.

The results are very encouraging!

The average oxygen content detected at sea level is 24%, which is slightly higher than that of Earth, and the modified Mars is comparable at this stage, with the ratio of helium, argon, and sulfur dioxide about two to three times that of Earth, and the proportion of nitrogen is low, with an average sea level pressure of about 1.2 standard air pressures. High sulfur dioxide only indicates that the planet's volcanic activity is larger than that of the Earth, and it will not kill people in a short period of time, and no stable deadly gas has been found in most areas, so it can be landed without heavy protective equipment.

What's even more exciting is the high coverage of native plants, indicating that the atmosphere is stable enough not to have several hurricanes a day. The previously called "plane" did not reappear, and some of the crew seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

But the truth is cruel, the "plane" has not been found again, it is just not close enough.

3AU, the Lancers enter the final section to slow down.

As the relative velocity decreases, the accuracy of the same observation device increases minute by minute, and then ......

"Confirmed to be traces of a human stronghold!" The data analysis department personnel looked at their colleagues, "Do you want to inform the captain?" ”

"It's not sure if it's a 'human'."

What they're zooming in on now is the latest surface image, with small areas that appear to have regular streets, not clear enough to tell if they are not natural.

"I don't think there is any need to notify, at this scale, at most it can be regarded as a prehistoric civilization, and if you come into contact with it slowly, the aborigines will not know that we are foreigners at all." After a few meetings, someone began to understand the captain's mind.

"Then wait for the next meeting."

Lieyang has a lot of things, and he can't always pay attention to every department on the ship, this distance, in addition to coordinating various departments and paying attention to the psychological state of the crew, he is busy cooperating with the biology department to make the final settings for the cultivation area and cloning equipment of the lancers.

Therefore, when Lieyang saw traces of civilization during a multi-department meeting, the accuracy of the image had been further improved, and it was possible to confirm that there were buildings with a top area of more than 200 square meters on the surface. The so-called "airplane" before, after many comparisons, has also been confirmed, is a super-large flying creature, and now this distance seems to be a bit like the evil dragon of Western novels, but the existence of the atmosphere and clouds, for the time being, there is not enough clarity of the dynamic picture.

1AU, the Lancer prepares to locate the orbit and launch near-earth intelligence satellites, synchronous communication satellites and satellite observation satellites.

By the way, the target planet has two moons, and the relative position of the two moons is stationary, and through simulation, it is known that the tidal force on the planet is no different from that of a satellite, but through the rotation of the planet, the relative position of the satellites seen on the ground in each season is different, which is similar to the full moon and the quarter.

Considering the large mass of the Lancer itself, getting too close to the satellites could upset the relative static balance of the two satellites, so the analysis of them was left to the satellites and remote sensing machines.

A week later, the Lancers finally reached their intended far orbit, which was a bit farther than the synchronous orbit and required 1.6 calendar days of the planet to make a circle.

The colonization process has not yet started here, and there is still some work to be done, and after the site selection is completed, the Lancers will descend to the synchronous orbit and make the final preparations before the era of interstellar colonization will really begin.