I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

This was not Zhong Cheng's first time visiting the base. On the contrary, he was very familiar with the place, recognized the purpose of each building, and even remembered the faces of many ordinary employees.

But when he stood on the ramp with the hatch opened, he felt extremely strange.

The lights on the runway and buildings are still there, but in addition to the normal ground staff working on the ground, groups of tall figures can be seen patrolling in an orderly manner.

The photoelectric probes of hundreds of 'Warrior' robots are glowing green, patrolling every place with extremely high density, and even patrol cars passing by from time to time.

Only ordinary staff came to the runway to greet him, and no other important people were present.

Lin Ju felt his questioning gaze and explained with a smile:

"Sorry Director Zhong, we have no choice but to do this."

"Why."

Zhong Cheng muttered the three words that he thought were the weakest.

"I said, everything is out of necessity. I may have to wait a little late to promise you dinner. Please come with me first."

Sitting on the electric car heading to the destination, Lin Ju took the initiative to stir up the topic:

"You should have been paying attention to Lihuo. Let me tell you, it actually arrived on Mars half a year ago and has obtained a lot of data. The current monitoring network is just a disguised radio beacon.

We have deceived you. The thruster of 'Lihuo' is nuclear-powered. We call it the 'Comet' propulsion platform. It uses a Hall thruster solution powered by a fission reactor. After sending 'Lihuo', it has returned and stopped. At the Earth-Moon Lagrangian point. "

So that's it.

This was roughly in line with Zhong Cheng's guess, but he didn't expect that it would be suddenly opened on this day.

He wanted to say something, but ended up staying silent.

"'Lihuo' is equipped with very comprehensive detection equipment. It has conducted detailed mapping and survey of most of the surface of Mars in the past time. All the returned data are here. I will take you to see it now."

The electric car parked in front of the Space Department building, and the two of them walked in quickly, one after the other, bringing with them a gust of breeze.

Xiao Gangtian was lying in front of a computer screen at this time. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the two people, and then pointed behind them excitedly.

That was the first ultra-high-definition real-shot image of Mars sent back by Lihuo. It was displayed on a huge LCD screen. It had a huge shocking power of facing the planet directly.

"Look, this is the first full picture of Mars captured by a Chinese probe. This is definitely the clearest photo in the world. The lenses of other detectors are far inferior to it.

This is Utopia Planitia, a place loved around the world and even showing the landing site of the Phoenix probe in this photo. "

Xiao Gangtian seriously introduced the many achievements of Lihuo. As the most powerful comprehensive detector in history, Lihuo has almost reached the limit of orbital detectors.

Even Zhong Cheng couldn't help but temporarily forget his questions and indulged in admiring the photos and detection maps. This information alone was enough for the space agency to be busy for a long time.

Xiao Gangtian released carefully selected information bit by bit in order of time nodes, until he stopped on May 8.

Zhong Cheng still had some unfinished thoughts and couldn't help but admire:

"It is very comprehensive and fills quite a few gaps in the country... Why not announce it earlier? This is not a bad thing."

He had never been able to understand Xinyuan's intention of delivering the probe in advance. If it was just to obtain data earlier, then there was no need at all. It seemed that there had been no unusual movements on Mars in the past six months.

"Because these things before - are not our purpose, or not the main purpose, the real goal is it."

An enlarged picture of Plain Zero appeared on the screen. It looked completely normal. Judging from the watermark in the upper left corner, it was even taken this morning.

"What's this?"

"I don't know, but we call it 'Plain Zero'. We didn't know what was there before, and we don't know it now, but we have confirmed that there must be something there."

Zhong Cheng followed Xiao Gangtian's gaze to Lin Ju's face, who said solemnly:

"There is a gravitational wave transmitter under Plain Zero, and it sent out a modulated intelligent signal 13 days ago.

Lihuo was equipped with a very crude gravitational wave detection device, which theoretically could not detect it at all, but it was too close, so we intercepted the signal.

This is a smart signal with clear meaning. The transmission time lasts for 0.5 seconds and the power is about 96 kilowatts. The target is unknown, the message is unknown, and the source of the emission is unknown. "

"That's ridiculous."

Zhong Cheng thought this for the first time, but soon regained his composure.

"You already knew there... was something there?"

"Yes, Xin Yuan's purpose includes it."

"Why do you know?"

"'Karst' tells us."

“Who is Karst?”

"A machine, an artificial intelligence, or it may be a kind of life. In short, it has a physical existence."

“Is karst a human creation?”

"No, at least we don't think so. The era when it was discovered even had tube computers. Fortunately, the concepts of computers and artificial intelligence appeared at that time, otherwise the existence of 'karst' would not even be understood."

There was almost no delay in the answer to Lin Ju. The answer was so simple and straightforward, everything pointed to "karst".

Obviously Lin Ju had no interest in whetting his appetite and directly led the way elsewhere.

Zhong Cheng followed him all the way to the fourth underground floor that he had never entered before, and passed through multiple security inspection channels and robot searches. He even saw a large number of robot soldiers holding weapons. The things they carried were very similar to the electromagnetic tracks in science fiction movies. rifle.

After being carefully searched by the robot in front of another door, the heavy alloy door slid aside.

The interior is a closed space with all metal walls. There is a huge black spindle-shaped product with rounded edges on the central base, and a laptop is placed next to it.

The surface of the black fusiform body has complex lines, which are messy but full of details. From a distance, it can be clearly seen that there are three characters floating in it, which is quite strange.

"'Karst' was discovered by a Chinese-American, Guo Xiao, who is also Guo Shen's uncle. As an aerospace engineer, he has worked for McDonnell Douglas since the 1930s and loves to travel.

During a trip, he discovered it in a karst mountain range and named it "Karst". This was the beginning of everything.

From the 1950s to the late 1960s, Guo Xiao conducted extremely in-depth research on "Karst" and eventually developed into a small group of several people. However, it was not until ten years ago that the group suddenly began to prospered and expanded rapidly.

4 years ago, Xinyuan was established in order to rationally utilize the technology brought by "karst" and realize its purpose. "