"Ivanka?"
Zhang Fan had heard Katerina mention this name more than once.
"Katerina, who exactly is this Ivanka you're talking about? What happened between you two?"
“Ivanka is another astronaut from Peace Station. She’s the one who put me in this prison! That damned woman!”
When Ivanka is mentioned, Katerina seems like a completely different person, looking like an angry lion.
"Please forgive my ignorance," Zhang Fan asked, "Wasn't the 'Peace Station' Mars base abandoned 10 years ago? Why are there still astronauts inside?"
After hearing Zhang Fan's question, Katerina paused for a moment before saying, "Humanity on Earth has been wiped out, so the answer to this question is meaningless. Let's think about how we're going to survive in the future."
Katerina's words were ambiguous and did not directly answer Zhang Fan's question, indicating that she did not want Zhang Fan to get entangled with this issue.
Zhang Fan stopped asking questions. After all, Katerina was right. If humanity was gone, what did it matter what the "Peace Station" was like before? The important thing was what to do in the future.
"Fan, what are you eating?" Katerina noticed that Zhang Fan's mouth hadn't stopped moving since the beginning.
"This is called kudzu root, the tuberous root of a legume, which contains starch. I dug it up from the soil in the plant experiment chamber. Tsk tsk tsk," Zhang Fan said, chewing on a piece of kudzu root.
This stuff is high in fiber, so you have to chew it repeatedly to extract the starch.
"Is it tasty?"
"Delicious, crunchy, and tastes like chicken."
Zhang Fan is talking nonsense. Delicious my foot! This stuff is too old now, too much fiber, and the bits of it always get stuck in your teeth.
After finishing the kudzu root, Zhang Fan took a sip of daylily soup. The daylilies harvested from the plant experiment chamber were dried and preserved by Zhang Fan; daylilies have a bitter taste, so they would taste better after being used in soup.
“Oh, I see. You have quite the unique taste,” Katerina said. “Go to my living quarters and move those canned beef here.”
puff--
Zhang Fan spat out a mouthful of daylily soup.
"Canned beef? You have that stuff? Why didn't you say so sooner!"
"I don't want to see that place again. Be careful. If you fall, you'll never be able to come near me again."
The crates containing the canned beef were placed at the very top of "Number 5" living quarters, seemingly deliberately kept away from the sewage below. The crates were also kept clean on the outside.
Zhang Fan moved the boxes out and completely sealed off "Number 5" living quarters. Then, he took a shower in the shower room along with all the canned goods before moving them into the rest room.
Zhang Fan counted the items and found that if it were just one person, these canned beef would last for half a year.
"Looks like Ivanka's been pretty good to you," Zhang Fan joked. "At least she left you so many cans of food..."
"What's so good about her? Why didn't she just kill me!" At the mention of Ivanka, Katerina reverted to her violent nature, her eyes bloodshot as she glared at Zhang Fan and roared, "She just wouldn't let me die! She locked me up there, yet gave me plenty of water and food! She made me live in that dark, hopeless hell every day!"
"She deliberately cut off the waste recycling pipes in the living quarters, so, so!"
"If I don't want to die, I'll drown in there later!"
"Aaaaaaahh ...
Katerina tore at her fingernails as if someone were choking her, her mouth agape as she gasped for breath, as if she were truly drowning.
"The only reason I've lived until now is because of how to get Ivanka down from that damned place, Phobos!"
Zhang Fan was terrified.
Katerina seemed to be bewitched; Ivanka had become her obsession.
Why should one woman make things difficult for another?
Moreover, Zhang Fan knew how difficult it was to bring someone back to Mars from Phobos.
Phobos is only 9,400 kilometers from Mars. You read that right, "only" 9,400 kilometers, because Phobos is the closest moon to a major planet in our solar system.
If you stand on Phobos and look up, you'll see that Mars occupies a quarter of the width of the entire sky.
If you don't have a sense of what 9,400 kilometers is like, just compare it to Earth and the Moon. The Earth-Moon distance is 363,300 kilometers at perihelion, 405,500 kilometers at apogee, and an average distance of 384,400 kilometers.
9,400 kilometers and 384,400 kilometers, a difference of 40 times, now you know how close Phobos is to Mars, right?
Imagine if the distance between the moon and Earth were reduced to 9,400 kilometers. If you were standing on Earth and looking up at the sky, the moon would fill the sky above you at night. What a magnificent sight that would be!
However, shortening the distance by 9,400 kilometers is easier said than done.
"Katerina, do you have a way to bring someone back from Phobos' orbit?"
Zhang Fan was very curious. If Katerina really had a way to bring someone back from Phobos, wouldn't it be easy to bring Yui back from the Soyuz space station?
Comparing 9400 kilometers to 500 kilometers, 500 kilometers is obviously simpler.
“There’s nothing we can do.” Katerina calmed down. “When Ivanka left, she deleted all the data, so we can’t activate the ‘Apollo’ return program here.”
"Apollo? What is that?"
“‘Apollo’ was a probe spacecraft that went to Phobos. According to the original plan, she and I were supposed to travel together on ‘Apollo’ to orbit Phobos to complete the final mission. Six months later, when ‘Firebird 2’ arrived at Mars, it would wake us up from hibernation. After ‘Apollo’ and ‘Firebird 2’ docked, they would return to Earth together.”
“Then I should congratulate you, Katerina,” Zhang Fan sighed. “You have avenged your great wrong.”
"What do you mean?" Katerina asked Zhang Fan.
"Firebird 2 will never come, which means Ivanka will never be awakened; she will die in her slumber on Phobos..."
"No! Absolutely not!" To Zhang Fan's surprise, Katerina showed no joy whatsoever; instead, she became even more hysterical. "How can she die like this? She can't die like this! I want to see her alive and well! At least she can't die before I do!"
Zhang Fan stared wide-eyed, not daring to reply.
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