104: Cross

The giant wheel of time rolled forward in the silent universe, and in the blink of an eye, another ten Earth years passed.

The year 2066.

For the humans living in this era, the thrilling defense war of the Solar System thirty-five years ago had become a piece of glorious history in textbooks, or perhaps just bar chatter for veterans to boast about.

Today, the reach of Human Civilization has completely extended to every corner of the Solar System.

From the scorched surface of Mercury to the lonely, cold ice plains of Pluto, the trails of exhaust left by human probes and engineering ships have woven into a massive network.

Even in the distant orbit of Neptune, a permanent orbital research station named "Poseidon's Eye" is operating in solitude, where scientists record the violent atmospheric turbulence and strange magnetic field changes of this ice giant day and night, attempting to unlock the final secrets of the Solar System's formation.

And in the even more distant Kuiper Belt, a gold rush belonging to the interstellar era is in full swing.

Tens of thousands of mining ships shuttle through the icy asteroid clusters left over from hundreds of millions of years ago. Although it is far from the warmth of the sun and fraught with danger, with the constant possibility of encountering micro-meteoroid showers or unknown gravitational turbulence, the huge profits are enough to turn even the most timid person into an outlaw.

There are countless legends of overnight wealth circulating here, and the most discussed and lamentable one is the story of Jack Fernandez, captain of the General Electric mining ship Arafat.

It was an extremely ordinary workday, and Jack's mining ship was conducting a routine scan of an area numbered K-492 on the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt. Originally, they only hoped to find some ice blocks rich in volatile gases to replenish the life support system fuel, but fate played a huge joke on Jack at that moment.

The ship's deep-matter spectrometer suddenly went off the charts, and the warning lights turned a blinding red.

They discovered an asteroid about five kilometers in diameter, but the core of this rock, which appeared covered in dirty ice dust, was actually a high-purity metal egg.

The analysis results showed that the content of precious metals in this asteroid—mainly iridium, platinum, and gold—was as high as a staggering 12%!

This was an astronomical figure!

On Earth, ore with a gold content of a few grams per ton is worth mining, and this asteroid was simply a mountain of gold floating in space.

There is no greater happiness in this world than money falling from the sky.

However, they did not choose to embezzle it—because no ship could hold that much ore, and no black market could handle such a large shipment.

Jack made the most rational choice: he auctioned off the coordinates and detailed exploration data directly.

The transaction price was a figure enough to buy a small city.

That night, Jack became the object of envy, jealousy, and hatred for all space explorers in the entire Solar System.

He took this huge sum of money back to Earth, swearing to enjoy a life fit for an emperor.

However, human greed is often more terrifying than the vacuum of the universe.

Jack's first stop was the famous gambling city in the East—Macau.

In this den of iniquity that remained decadent even in the interstellar era, where holographic gambling and brain-computer interface betting had been introduced, Jack lost his way.

He thought his luck was cosmic-level, believing he was the chosen one.

Just three months.

That massive wealth, enough to keep his family worry-free for ten generations, evaporated just like a comet made of ice rushing into the sun.

The last time someone saw Jack, he was drunk under a holographic billboard on the streets of Macau, muttering the asteroid's number, his hand tightly clutching an expired plane ticket.

...

On the far side of the Moon, at the Lagrange L2 point.

This is the balance point of Earth's gravity and the quietest, most hidden corner of the Earth-Moon system. A space station shaped like a giant silver dumbbell floats silently here, and the area within a few hundred kilometers around it has been designated as an absolute military exclusion zone.

This is the Skyfire Space Station, the space base for human antimatter research.

In this place far from the hustle and bustle of the world, Dr. Li Jingheng already had graying temples; he had almost never left this space station for ten years.

He and his team, like a group of Taoist priests guarding an alchemy furnace, monitored the faint blue glow in the magnetic confinement bottle day and night.

"Doctor, the 472nd ignition simulation is complete, and the energy output fluctuation rate is below 0.001%."

"The antimatter injection rate is stable, and the catalytic efficiency has reached 98% of the theoretical value."

"The thruster nozzle magnetic field constraint is normal, and no thermal ablation abnormalities have been detected."

In the control room, the reports echoing one after another converged into a melodious movement.

Dr. Li Jingheng looked at the engine model running stably on the main screen, tears shimmering in his eyes. He took off his glasses with a trembling hand and wiped them gently.

"We did it..."

They successfully created a truly practical antimatter-catalyzed nuclear pulse fusion engine that could run stably for a long time.

This engine did not directly use the energy generated by matter-antimatter annihilation to propel the ship; that method consumed too much antimatter, and current production could not support it.

Its principle was extremely ingenious: using a trace amount of antiproton beam to shoot into fuel pellets containing deuterium and tritium, the antiprotons annihilated with the nuclei, and the huge energy released instantly heated the pellets to an extremely high temperature, thereby triggering an efficient nuclear fusion reaction.

This method required very little antimatter, but the energy produced was thousands of times that of traditional magnetic confinement fusion.

At the same time, they also designed a nuclear pulse thruster that used the directional high-energy plasma jet generated by antimatter-catalyzed fusion, combined with a strong magnetic field nozzle, to produce continuous, huge, and high-specific-impulse thrust.

"The theoretical verification is over." Dr. Li Jingheng turned around and said to the figure who had been silently watching all this behind him, "Director, we can install it on the ship."

Lei Wen nodded slightly.

"Thank you for your hard work, Dr. Li. That ship is already waiting for its heart."

...

One month later.

Babel Space Station, Supreme Command Center.

The command center was exceptionally crowded today. In addition to Lei Wen and the top brass of the Interstellar Affairs General Bureau, representatives from major countries of the Earth Council and technical consultants from major research institutions gathered together.

Everyone's gaze was focused on the giant holographic screen that occupied the entire wall.

The screen displayed images transmitted from the airspace near the L2 point, tens of thousands of kilometers away from Earth.

There, a warship with a peculiar shape was quietly docked.

It was different from any human warship in the past.

It did not have the streamlined beauty of a frigate, nor the oppressive feeling of a giant capital ship.

Its hull was extremely slender, with a total length of about 800 meters, but the main structure was composed of a huge main keel. At the very front of the keel was the crew cabin and control center, in the middle were huge spherical fuel tanks and antimatter magnetic confinement storage rings, and occupying the entire rear half of the ship was that huge thruster nozzle.

This was the Cross Star technology verification ship.

It was built specifically for humanity to verify the antimatter engine.

"Cross Star calling Command Center, all system self-checks complete."

"Antimatter magnetic ring status stable, constraint field strength 100%."

"Fusion fuel loading complete."

"Requesting departure."

The test pilot's voice was calm and steady, but only he knew that the palms holding the joystick were full of sweat. Because in the tank behind him was a super explosive that could blow him and the ship into elementary particles with just a milligram of leakage.

Lei Wen stood in front of the command console and did not give the order immediately. He looked around at the faces, some nervous and some expectant, and he knew that the significance of this moment was no less than the launch of the voyager back then.

The voyager allowed humanity to roam within the Solar System.

And the Cross Star would give humanity the qualifications to step out of the Solar System.

"Departure approved." Lei Wen's voice sounded steady, "Good luck, Cross Star."

"Understood! Antimatter injection countdown... 3, 2, 1, ignition!"

Tens of seconds later, the nozzle at the rear of the Cross Star on the screen suddenly erupted with a blue-white light so blinding that it was dazzling even through the screen.

That was not a chemical flame nor an ion stream; it was a destructive light mixed with high-energy gamma rays and extremely high-temperature plasma.

If one did not turn on a light filter, staring directly at this light with the naked eye would result in instant blindness.

The massive warship did not accelerate slowly as it had in the past under the effect of this terrifying thrust, but instead, as if it had been kicked hard, it instantly gained an astonishing acceleration.

"Acceleration 3G... 5G... 8G! Inertial damper working normally, crew cabin gravity stable at 1G!"

"Speed breaking the second cosmic velocity... breaking the third cosmic velocity!"

Data streams scrolled across the screen like a waterfall.

"Current speed 3,000 kilometers per second... 10,000 kilometers per second..."

This was just the beginning.

According to the design specifications, the Cross Star would maintain constant acceleration for the next six months.

The astonishing specific impulse of the antimatter-catalyzed fusion engine allowed it to maintain this thrust for a long time.

"According to calculations, if the current acceleration is maintained," a technical staff officer reported excitedly, "in 10 years, the speed of the Zhuque will reach 25% of the speed of light! That is 75,000 kilometers per second!"

One-quarter of the speed of light.

This meant that flying from Earth to Mars would only take a dozen minutes at the shortest distance, and flying to Neptune would only be a matter of a dozen hours.

It also meant that the once unreachable Proxima Centauri, 4.2 light-years away, now only required less than 20 years for a one-way flight!

Of course, the warship could not travel at full speed the entire time; acceleration at departure and deceleration upon arrival would consume a lot of time, and there were also unexpected events such as mid-way stops for refueling and avoiding large asteroid clusters.

"What about the deceleration test?" Lei Wen asked.

"It will be conducted six months after acceleration," Dr. Li Jingheng's remote image explained, "The ship will turn around and use the engine for reverse spray deceleration, which is expected to take another six months, finally bringing the speed down to zero."

"But after all, we are only testing within the Solar System; the test process will be affected by the Sun's gravity, so the actual values of acceleration and deceleration will differ from the theoretical values."

Lei Wen nodded, his gaze never leaving the star point on the screen that was shrinking and brightening at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The Cross Star was dragging the wildest dream of Human Civilization, rushing into the deep darkness.

"Success."

Lei Wen said to himself in his heart.

As long as the Cross Star could complete this test flight and prove the reliability and durability of the antimatter engine, then the "First Interstellar Fleet Retrofit Plan" that he had been pressing at the bottom of his desk could be officially launched.

According to the calculations of "white flower", with the performance currently displayed by the Cross Star, as long as the voyage went smoothly, it could reach the Kari Star System 5.5 light-years away within sixty years.

Everyone present, whether they were representatives of various countries or scientists, was immersed in the joy of the Cross Star's success at this moment. They celebrated that the threshold of the starry sky was about to be leveled.

From now on, the scale of light-years would be within reach.