The Science Fiction World of Xueba

As time passed, the potato stems and leaves in the planting cabin began to turn from green to yellow, and finally it was the harvest season.

The 125th Martian day.

Pang Xuelin and Watney finished harvesting the first season of potatoes.

Potato rhizomes were pulled out of the soil, and strings of fist-sized potato particles made the two of them smile.

Rinse the potatoes with water, weigh them, and store them in vacuum bags.

Some of the potatoes were carefully selected by Watney as seed beans and placed on racks in the corner of the grow cabin.

With a planting area of ​​112.3 square meters, they finally harvested 278 kilograms of potatoes.

This is a bountiful harvest in the true sense, even somewhat beyond the expectations of Watney and the expert committee on Earth.

Because under normal circumstances, with a planting area of ​​112 square meters, it is not bad to be able to harvest 250 kilograms of potatoes, but this time the income has increased by nearly 10%.

After discussions between Watney and experts on the earth, they believed that the sandy soil on Mars may have been transformed by bacteria produced on the earth to form a sandy soil that is very suitable for potato cultivation, coupled with constant temperature and humidity conditions and fine management, making potatoes The output exceeded expectations.

For Pang Xuelin and Watney, this is undoubtedly a great thing.

At present, Pang Xuelin and Watney have consumed 125 Mars-day space food reserves, and there are 75 Martian-day food reserves left. The 278 kilograms of potatoes, according to the basic calorie guarantee of 2 kilograms per person per day, can feed their food. The reserve was extended until the 270th Martian sol.

Under special circumstances, the potato ration per person can even be reduced to 1.5 kilograms per day, but this can only maintain the most basic daily life activities of Pang Xuelin and Watney, basically unable to do any heavy physical labor.

The nutritionists re-match the recipes for them. Among the three meals a day, 1.5 kg of potatoes plus 300 grams of space meal, together with toasted mealworms, space peptide protein powder and vitamin tablets, are enough to ensure that Pang Xuelin and Water Ni's nutritional intake.

The method of making potatoes is relatively simple. After cleaning, bake them in the microwave with the skin on, and then serve them with tomato sauce. The taste is much rougher than that of spaceflight meals, but Pang Xuelin and Watney can still accept it.

In the following week, Pang Xuelin and Watney got busy again, and seized the time to replant potatoes for the second season.

The seed beans of the first season were not used up, so in order to save time, before the first season of potatoes was harvested, Watney began to select seeds, cut into pieces, and accelerate germination.

Pang Xuelin began to deep plow the soil.

Following Watney's suggestion, he first uses the air conditioning system to lower the temperature of the grow chamber to well below freezing, known as freezing.

After freezing, the water in the soil freezes, and the volume increases by 9%, and the soil becomes extra loose after being squeezed by ice.

Afterwards, Pang Xuelin plowed the soil deeply, and then applied basal fertilizer.

Potatoes have a short growth period, and 80% of the absorbed fertilizer comes from the base fertilizer, so these bio-based fertilizers will become the main source of nutrients for potatoes during the growth period.

It took Pang Xuelin five full days to cover a land of more than 100 square meters.

At this time, the seeds had already sprouted, and the two spent two more days digging the soil, and then graded and arranged the seeds according to the size of the sprouts.

The entire replanting work took two people a week, and then the two were free again.

In addition to doing the scientific research work arranged by the Ares Project Headquarters and monitoring the various facilities in the habitat every day, Pang Xuelin will study the ABC conjecture in his spare time to enrich his spare time.

Everything is moving in a good direction, but for some reason, recently, Pang Xuelin has always felt restless.

It was as if he had overlooked something, but he recalled it repeatedly, but he couldn't remember what he had forgotten.

That night, Pang Xuelin was awakened again by the creaking sound of the sandstorm blowing into the habitat cabin.

This is a third-category dust storm, with a maximum wind speed of no more than 50kph. Mars always comes once or twice a month, and Pang Xuelin and Watney are used to it.

After each dust storm, they will perform an EVA mission to clean up the sand on the solar panel, check the solar array, check the rover, check the habitat module, enough for them to work for a day.

The next morning, when Pang Xuelin opened his eyes, Watney was already wearing an EVA spacesuit.

Today is the 182nd Martian day, and it has been half a year since Pang Xuelin entered the Martian rescue plane.

Awakened by the sound of a sandstorm last night, Pang Xuelin didn't fall asleep until four or five in the morning, and woke up late today for the first time.

Seeing Pang Xuelin wake up, Watney smiled and said, "Pang, I saw that you were sleeping soundly, so I didn't call you. Breakfast is in the microwave. I'll go out and clean the solar cells first!"

Pang Xuelin smiled and said, "Okay, you go first!"

Watney opened the airlock door, and the figure quickly disappeared behind the airlock door.

Immediately afterwards, Pang Xuelin heard the sound of an air compressor coming from the airlock, and the habitat cabin shook slightly.

Pang Xuelin didn't care.

Every time he entered and exited the airlock, there would be such a movement, and he was used to it.

After getting up and washing, Pang Xuelin shaved off the stubble, put on the EVA spacesuit, opened the airlock door, and then closed it again.

The airlock of the living cabin began to depressurize slowly, from 1 atmosphere to 0.006 atmospheres. Pang Xuelin stood in the airlock, waiting for the routine procedure to be completed.

He's been in and out of this airlock hundreds of times, and to him, this is just a routine.

creak -

Pang Xuelin was wearing a spacesuit and didn't hear the sound, but he felt the airlock shaking.

In the past, when entering and exiting the airlock chamber, the airlock chamber would shake slightly, but this time, the shaking became extremely violent.

Before Pang Xuelin could react, the carbon fiber material connecting the airlock chamber and the living cabin was completely torn apart with a loud and strange noise.

The air in the habitat was ejected from the leak with all its strength, and in less than 0.1 second, the crack spread parallel to the sealing zone between the airlock chamber and the habitat.

boom--

The airlock is completely separated from the habitat.

Huge pressure burst from the leak, throwing the airlock like a balloon.

Inside the airlock, the huge inertia caused Pang Xuelin to slam into the back door of the airlock.

The airlock flew nearly forty meters in the air before landing hard on the ground.

Pang Xuelin was thrown against the front door again, with his face on the ground.

Fortunately, the heavy padding of the space suit and the helmet helped Pang Xuelin absorb a lot of the impact. Although the safety glass of the helmet was cracked into hundreds of pieces, it was not completely broken, only a few small cracks, and no damage happened to the body. fracture.

The airlock rolled a few more laps on the surface of Mars, and finally stopped slowly, surrounded by smoke and dust.

Pang Xuelin was knocked dizzy, and it took him a long time to wake up. His head was pierced with a deep gash by the broken glass. The bright red blood flowed down from his forehead, and part of it entered his eyes, making him look at the world with tinge of color. It was blood red.

"Hold!"

Pang Xuelin burst into a foul language.

He finally knew where his recent feeling of unease came from.

In the movie, Watney was in trouble because the airlock exploded, causing the potato crop to fail.

I took precautions before, sealed the airlock in the section of the planting cabin, and set the gate between the planting cabin and the living cabin to a manual state, thinking that the crisis was solved, so I fell into a mindset.

He didn't expect that the airlock of the living cabin also exploded.

hiss...

The air in Pang Xuelin's spacesuit is leaking out through the crack in the mask, and at the same time, the damaged airlock is also leaking out.

Pang Xuelin frantically found the rubber patch bag from the side of the helmet, and blocked the damaged hole in the mask.

But the leak still exists. Although the nitrogen and oxygen tank in the space suit has automatically opened the valve to perform pressure compensation, on the screen on the wrist, the air pressure in the space suit is still slowly dropping at a rate of 0.001 atmosphere per second.

"No, I have to find a way to find the leak, otherwise I won't be able to persist until I get into the rover!"

Pang Xuelin looked around. For this EVA mission, he carried a toolbox. In the toolbox, there was a bottle of nitrogen dioxide spray device. The reddish-brown nitrogen dioxide gas can be used to test the airtightness of the habitat cabin. After each sandstorm, Pang Xuelin would spray nitrogen dioxide around the habitat.

"You are the one!"

Pang Xuelin picked up the nitrogen dioxide spray, and soon the air in the airlock was dyed red. Pang Xuelin checked the spacesuit and found a leak on the calf.

Pang Xuelin continued to fill it up with gum.

At this time, the atmospheric pressure in the spacesuit had dropped to 0.6 atmospheres, and then, as the pressure compensation mechanism continued, the atmospheric pressure in the spacesuit began to rise slowly.

Pang Xuelin couldn't help but heaved a sigh of relief.

If he continued to descend until all the nitrogen and oxygen in the nitrox tank were released, Pang Xuelin might faint due to lack of oxygen and then die.

Pang Xuelin struggled to get up from the ground and opened the airlock door. Outside the airlock, Watney ran towards him stumbling while waving his hands.

At the same time, Watney's voice sounded in the earphone: "Pang, are you okay! Pang, can you hear me?"

Pang Xuelin took a deep breath and said, "I'm fine, Watney!"

...

After finding a new EVA spacesuit from the habitat, Pang Xuelin and Watney returned to the rover.

Taking off the helmet, the two looked at each other in silence.

"Pang, let me help you treat the wound first!"

Pang Xuelin nodded.

Watney first gave Pang Xuelin local anesthesia, and then used disinfectant to clean the scabbed blood on Pang Xuelin's forehead, and then used tweezers to pinch the glass slag from the wound and suture the wound.

Half an hour later, Watney finally finished.

Only then did he say, "Pang, what shall we do next?"

Pang Xuelin smiled wryly: "First find a way to seal the living cabin, and then check the damage!"