Chapter 167 Chapter 167 The Carrier of Civilization
After parting with Green Lantern, Li Hua and Benjamin returned to Earth and spent another afternoon with the Ice Ghost pups.
Before sending the kids back to Sun Nursery, I promised to take them out to play tomorrow, charged the portable space suit I bought according to the instructions, ordered takeout, and memorized my lessons while waiting for it. After dinner, I went on night patrol, and after returning to the apartment, I packed things for tomorrow. The day passed like this.
At six o'clock the next morning, the two were woken up by the alarm clock. After eating instant noodles for breakfast and making a cup of instant milk tea, they boarded the spaceship directly with the things they had prepared the night before.
What? Why not just use Kryptonians to go to space?
Before they had spaceships, they used Kryptonians to go to space. Now that they have spaceships, they still use Kryptonians to go to space. Then, wouldn’t the construction of these spaceships be in vain?
Compared to Li Hua, who was sitting in front of a pile of dashboards flipping through the manual for the Martian spacecraft, Benjamin was much more relaxed. "Don't be so nervous, buddy. I have a little trick. Just like when my grandpa taught me how to ride a bike, you can just treat the spacecraft as an oversized alien bicycle."
Li Hua said expressionlessly, "I'm not your grandfather. I don't know how to fly a spaceship the same way I fly a bicycle."
"It's okay, buddy. I can be your grandfather." Benjamin ignored Li Hua's glare and continued, "There's no need to think too much about the twists and turns when driving a spaceship. You just need to find the 'accelerator', 'brake', and 'steering wheel'. The rest is the same principle my grandfather taught me how to ride a bicycle - just drive!"
The Tennyson family motto: If you can drive a bicycle, you can drive a motorcycle, an electric car, and a spaceship!
Li Hua: "But I don't know how to ride a bike."
Benjamin: "Then you should give it a try. Look at this spaceship rudder. Doesn't it look like a bicycle handlebar? Maybe once you learn how to fly a spaceship, you'll be able to ride a bicycle when you get back."
Li Hua: ???
Don't scare me, I've never flown a spaceship!
"Don't worry, it's okay." Benjamin started the spaceship and returned to his seat, buckling his seatbelt. "I've already moved the spaceship out of the cave. There's nothing for you to hit in this area. If you lose the spaceship, I can still catch it for you."
The spaceship had already started to eject jets of air... Li Hua had never learned how to fly a spaceship, so he didn't know what this was called. Anyway, as he sat in the cockpit, he saw the spaceship ejecting air streams all around, and it seemed that he could move directly by pushing the accelerator.
Li Hua opened the manual and was about to read the precautions, but Benjamin pulled him away: "Do you need to read the manual when you fly the spacecraft later? It is the co-pilot's job to read the manual and map. Just drive your..."
Benjamin's unfinished words were pushed back into his stomach by the sudden push on his back.
Since Benjamin said so, Li Hua pulled down the speed gear lever of the spacecraft, then grabbed the control lever of the spacecraft and lifted it up directly. The spacecraft, which was working again after several centuries, rushed into the clouds at an almost right angle!
Benjamin really wanted to shout, "I didn't ask you to be so confident!", but as everyone knows, novice drivers who lack confidence hate hearing people around them shouting when driving.
While he was hesitating, Li Hua had already pressed the refuel button on the rudder again, and the speed of the spacecraft increased by another level, and it flew directly out of the Earth's atmosphere.
“It really works!”
After reaching space, Li Hua pulled the spacecraft's brake lever to the stop position before the ship started... or so it should be called, anyway, he knew that pushing that thing would make the spacecraft move. Then he asked Benjamin happily.
"What next? Where do we fly?"
"Over there," Benjamin pointed in a direction. "Mars is very close to Earth, at least closer than the sun is to Earth. For a distance less than a light-year, there's no need to use a hyperspace jump drive. Normal acceleration will suffice."
Li Hua: "Does our little spaceship have a hyperspace jump engine?"
Benjamin: "What? Isn't that something all spaceships have?"
No. 666 couldn't stand it any longer: "Does that family car have the same nitrous acceleration as a sports car?"
It’s easy to imagine that it’s impossible for all spacecraft to have the ability to travel into space!
Benjamin raised his index finger, but before he could say anything, number 666 had already predicted his words from the corner of his smiling mouth: "Don't bring up your former teammates and your grandfather's cars. Modified cars don't count, and cars modified with alien technology don't count at all."
"Also, hurry up and open the star map and radar. Mars' orbital speed is inconsistent with Earth's, and the spacecraft's speed is nowhere near as fast as the Kryptonians'. If you blindly drive, you might even leave the solar system and lose track of Mars' orbit."
At the speed of Kryptonians, they would definitely be able to see Mars after orbiting the sun, but this old spaceship from several centuries ago does not have that speed.
"Aren't you the co-pilot? I've translated the Martian spacecraft manual into English and had you print out a bilingual copy. You have it in your hand. Could you please take a look at the operating instructions and turn on the flight director?"
Benjamin honestly opened the instruction manual and began to operate the spacecraft's interface. He repeatedly compared the bilingual version and fumbled to find the route to Mars on the spacecraft.
Guided by the star map navigation, Li Hua quickly piloted the spaceship and flew over the crimson planet.
"And then? Where to land?"
After several centuries, even the most magnificent cities and civilizations were buried under the red hematite sand.
If they want to find evidence of the existence of Martians and find enough DNA of extinct species, they must get close to inhabited areas.
"I don't remember where I found the cities back then. They all look exactly the same to me now."
Without the Kryptonian's super brain and super vision, Benjamin scratched his head and flipped through the spacecraft manual, performing a series of useless operations on the spacecraft dashboard.
"This planet's navigation system must be broken."
The rise of a civilization requires hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of years of evolution. No matter how prosperous it was during its lifetime, a declining civilization will be buried by the sands of time in just a few hundred years.
"Try to look up the local map of this spacecraft," said 666. "If this spacecraft is from Mars, it might have an offline Mars map built in."
"Turn to page 176, second paragraph of the manual. That's where you'll find the instructions for calling up the offline map. Although you can't clearly see the city from space right now, you can determine its location by comparing it to the obvious terrain of Mars."
"Wait, so 666, you already knew how to operate the spacecraft?" Benjamin finally realized after pulling up a map of Mars according to the manual. "Right! 666, you can directly connect to the electronic equipment, right? Then why don't you just pull up the map and show it to us?"
"Because I don't think you two are so stupid that you can't handle this level of operation."
No. 666 said.
"And most importantly—that thing you're wearing on your wrist is also alien technology. You're at least a member of a half-universe peacekeeping organization. You know nothing about alien technology. Are you planning to perform miracles and piss everyone off to death?"
Benjamin muttered, "Why are you talking like Azmis?"
"Because this is what Azmis said, he modified it. He sent me the quotations and told me I could read them to you as appropriate."
".......real?"
"That's fake," No. 666 said emotionlessly, "but he probably thinks so."
A person who uses alien technology, deals with problems of various races in the universe, and plans to work in an interstellar peacekeeping organization actually doesn't know how to use alien technology. This is even more outrageous than Li Hua, a young magician who is obviously a magician but has frighteningly low inspiration.
After all, inspiration depends largely on one's innate ability. As long as one does not practice magic in related fields, one generally will not have much of an impression. Too much inspiration is sometimes not a good thing.
But Benjamin's case is even more outrageous. What's the difference between him and a pool lifeguard who can't swim or use first aid equipment?
I’m afraid that one day I won’t be able to save others and end up losing myself instead!
Benjamin looked away guiltily - although he didn't know where No. 666's "eyes" were, he and Li Hua matched the Gale Crater on Mars (named on Earth) with the same terrain somewhere on the map of Martian civilization, and then found the nearest city to them.
The city had been completely buried by the iron oxide sand on the surface of Mars. Li Hua landed at what should have been the city's public helipad.
Li Hua put on his space suit, walked down with his bird-beak staff, and launched an [Earth] card at a slightly raised earth slope nearby.
The red soil at the top of the slope crumbled under the power of magic, and the bottom slowly rose, revealing a weathered spaceship.
"There's nothing in there."
Benjamin, transformed into a Kryptonian, slowly floated over, with 14 ice ghost cubs gathered around him, pointing to another mound not far away.
"But there are in that spaceship."
Li Hua understood without Benjamin saying anything about what could be found in a spaceship of a civilization that had been extinct for hundreds of years, from which DNA could be collected.
Li Hua: "Go to the spacecraft and change into your modified spacesuit. I'll handle the archaeological excavation."
In this situation, even the lively Li Hua and Benjamin couldn't relax.
The second unearthed spacecraft was just as dilapidated as the first one, and the metal in many places had become part of the red sand under the action of weathering.
Li Hua found three charred skeletons in the cockpit, two large and one small.
"I can't scan." Benjamin, after changing into his space suit, reactivated the Omnitrix, but the DNA scan found nothing.
Li Hua squatted down and said "Sorry to bother you" in Martian, and tried to reach out to check the bones.
But it wasn't just that the fire that took their lives was too intense, it was also that the hundreds of years of time were too cruel. As soon as Li Hua's fingertips touched the skeleton, it turned into black ash.
"Maybe it's the body." Li Hua twisted the ashes on his fingertips. "The textbook Batman gave me said that DNA testing on ashes is not possible."
It's broken into pieces like this, and nothing can be detected.
"Martians are incredibly strong. What kind of fire could have burned them like this?" Benjamin turned his head away in dismay. "And why are these three bodies in such a state, while there are no signs of burns on this spacecraft except around them?"
Martian Manhunter says that the Martians were wiped out by a plague that spread telepathically.
Because they didn't want to touch the Martian Hunter's wounds, Benjamin and Li Hua didn't ask about the specific manifestations of the plague at the time. They took it for granted that this "plague" should be the same as the Black Death, smallpox and other earthly plagues - getting sick, getting ill, dying, and becoming a source of infection.
But the current situation clearly does not conform to their "Earth logic."
Benjamin: “What happened back then?”
"Only the survivors can answer this question, and those two survivors are now on Earth."
Li Hua gently brushed the ashes from his fingertips back to its owner, but no matter how careful he was, when he stood up, the wind from Mars that had been blowing for countless years still blew away the already fragile handful of ashes.
The children of Mars become the wind of Mars and rest in all places on Mars.
The survivors can tell them about the disaster that happened that year, and this red planet, which once gave birth to life and has now become a tombstone, is the silent recorder of that disaster.
This ancient city, whose civilization has been destroyed for centuries, is now showing its visitors everything it has "recorded".
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The author has something to say: [Catching Bugs Twice]
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