Annihilation of the solar system

Thick vines covered the piers and guardrails of the viaduct, making the urban elevated loop look like a large-scale gardening landscape. A car whizzed past the bridge, and the markings on the road were now only

I could vaguely see several lane dividing lines in the middle of the road, and the markings near the bridge were no longer covered by dead leaves, dust or other things.

A faint cloud of dust rose up from behind the car, like a truck carrying dirt. Where the car passed, the markings on the ground became clear again. Suddenly, the vines wrapped around the guardrail in front emerged from the bushes.

A flock of black birds flew past the car. Wei Xu, who was driving, was startled and instinctively stepped on the brakes. Xia Lan, who was sitting in the passenger seat reading documents, also had the papers on her knees scattered.

Go down.

"Wow! I was scared to death!" Wei Xu complained.

Xia Lan picked up the information on the ground:

"Don't drive so fast when passing the commercial center. I almost hit a rabbit last time."

Wei Xu looked at the inside of the viaduct not far ahead, where a dozen dense skyscrapers were clustered together. It was once a commercial center:

"It's only been four years since the crisis began. I didn't expect nature to move so fast."

The all-glass curtain wall of the towering commercial center building that once symbolized prosperity and times has lost its luster, and the mirrored glass is covered with yellow-brown dust, making it look even dilapidated. At its feet, Tengman

Plants have even begun to creep up the walls.

On both sides of the bustling pedestrian streets in the past, the tree crowns along the sidewalks were lush and lush, but they were not as neat and uniform as they once were. The shrub isolation strips under the trees were trimmed into square shapes and no longer existed, looking like flowers clustered together.

Cotton ball-like bushes grew uncontrollably on the edges of sidewalks and roads.

"The bustling and prosperous area is now really a forest in concrete." Xia Lan sighed.

The car continued to drive forward and entered a curve. The vast plain outside the viaduct was another scene. In the industrial park as far as the eye could see, the wide and straight roads seemed to be drawn with a ruler, horizontally and vertically.

The straight road is busy with traffic.

The factory buildings between the roads are lined up in neat rows like supermarket shelves. Under the sun, the clean and simple exterior walls of the factory buildings shine. Although Wei Xu and Xia Lan can only hear the sound of car engines from their positions, but

The rumble of machinery operating in the factory seemed to be faintly echoing in my ears.

"If the city before was a paradise, then the city now is a machine, running all the time." Xia Lan sighed.

"By the way, senior sister. What are the results of this data analysis? Is there any breakthrough?" Wei Xu asked.

Xia Lan was listing a pile of data on her lap that had just fallen to the ground. It was an analysis report that had just been retrieved from the Galaxy Supercomputing Center. The content of the analysis was the external data read in the flaming hell-like atmosphere of Venus three years ago.

Star detector "Boomer" data.

"The main conclusion is similar to the previous two times. The analysis shows that the 'Boomerang' detectors have extremely strong command execution capabilities, but the logic of their data analysis and processing capabilities is still not clear."

"Oh, let's analyze it again with my colleagues when we get to the office later."

The office that was originally quite spacious now has almost no room to stand. There are high and low piles of documents on the desks and on the floor, leaving only a passage for people to walk. The walls are also covered with various photos and drawings.

There are three beds placed by the window. Wei Xu, Lin Tianyu and Wu Fan sometimes sleep in the office when they work too late. Although the office is cramped, it is not messy and everything is in order.

"Junior sister, Lao Wei, you are back! Just come over and take a look at this." Xia Lan heard Lin Tianyu's voice as soon as she entered the door.

Xia Lan walked around the pile of information like a small model building and came to Lin Tianyu's desk. Displayed on the computer screen was a high-definition infrared imaging photo of Titan.

"Combined with today's infrared photos, the infrared signature signals on Titan have changed more obviously in the past few days." Lin Tianyu pointed the mouse at the egg sacs scattered in the valleys, ravines and methane lakes. Although they were blocked on the computer screen

Rendering's dark green egg sacs are only the size of a fingernail, but on Titan their size is larger than a medium-sized city.

"You see, the temperature of these egg sacs is still continuing to drop. According to calculations, their temperature has dropped by about 20 degrees in the past week." Looking at these again, Lin Tianyu moved the mouse like a spider's thread.

Egg sac clusters are linked together by biological tubes, and their color is rendered light yellow depending on the temperature.

"The temperature of these pipes increased by about 10 degrees."

"If you think of egg sacs as factories, then the pipelines are the channels for transporting finished products. The increase in the temperature of the pipelines means that the biological activities in the pipeline parts are more intense, which may mean that they are about to enter the next stage." Wei Xu looked at it.

The photo said solemnly.

Lin Tianyu pointed the mouse at several straight lines again. Those slender lines rendered in orange are very different from other chaotic pipeline corridors. It is extremely straight and looks like a drink straw.

"This should be the launch tube structure that Lao Wei speculated before."

"Judging from the color, its temperature is higher than that of the pipeline." Xia Lan said.

Lin Tianyu did some operations on the computer, and only the long launch tube was left on the screen. Lin Tianyu pressed Enter, and the color of the launch tube cycled repeatedly between orange-yellow and red-orange.

.

"This is an animation I made based on the infrared photos taken this week. The temperature of the launch tube is not constant, but fluctuates."

Xia Lan was startled and frowned:

"This means that the launch tubes are working in pulse mode. In other words, they have begun to launch spores into Titan's low orbit!"

The three of them all stared at the thermal imaging animation of the emission tube that was constantly changing colors like a running water lamp on the screen without saying anything, but their faces gradually turned pale.

"Senior Brother Tianyu's analysis should be correct. This also confirms the speculation four years ago. They will arrive on Earth in the 12th year of the Crisis Era, that is, eight years later, but there is something I can't figure out." Wu Fan stood up from the bed.

He sat up and rummaged sleepily for his glasses on the pillow.

"We can't figure out how they can enter the Jupiter orbit from Titan's low orbit, and finally enter the Jupiter-Earth transfer orbit and reach the Earth. If Old Guard's 'launch tube' theory can solve the problem of their escape from the satellite surface, then they will

There are no launch tubes in space. We all study astronomy and we all know how difficult it is to escape the gravity of Jupiter." Liu Mengzhu took over Wu Fan's words.

This problem not only bothers them, but also bothers most of EDA's scientific research institutions. Some EDA member countries even question whether it is necessary to completely sacrifice the free life of two generations of people around the world to make the earth as stretched as a rope about to break.

Lost spring.

Wei Xu suddenly remembered the industrial zone he and Xia Lan had just passed through:

"Is it possible that their mechanical logic is similar to ours, but the raw materials they use are different!"

"What do you mean?" Wu Fan asked