With a click, the astronauts finally detached from their seats, and their backpacks began to operate.
Wei Tianyang saw his body temperature, 36.5°C, and his breathing and heartbeat had also stabilized, but the life sign scanner couldn’t find his brain signal.
"Is Yishenmali unconscious?" soone asked.
The Caucasian astronaut hurried over to check on him, a large blue light on the left side of his massive helt shining directly at him.
The two looked at each other through the glass visor.
"No, he’s fine," the Caucasian astronaut said with a smile.
"The vibration just now might have caused so functions to malfunction," Wei Tianyang said.
"Don’t panic, let’s dock with the space station first, then figure out how to fix it," the female astronaut said.
They were still floating in space, but according to the orbital map displayed on the HUD, they were already on the docking orbit.
About fifteen minutes later, Wei Tianyang distinctly felt a sense of stagnation; their rocket had now beco a spherical spacecraft, stopped by a chanical arm, and controlled gently by several nozzles around it, hovering near the space station’s docking port.
Red lights flickered inside the cabin, and the sound of the air pressure valves releasing air was quite eerie, but the astronauts were used to it, only Wei Tianyang was particularly nervous.
This was space.
If sothing went wrong with the spacecraft, would they crash to the ground or be thrown into the dark depths of the universe?
The cabin lights turned green, Wei Tianyang felt lighter, floating up slowly like a balloon, and so did everyone else.
The African-Arican guy was the first to float to the hatch, the sound of the heavy round door unlike anything Wei Tianyang had heard before, just feeling solid and robust.
He saw the African-Arican guy float towards the round port and into the space station, where the astronauts inside pulled them in.
"Channel connected, can you hear ?"
"Loud and clear, the launch was a success, we’ve brought the experintal module."
The astronauts were busy docking, and Wei Tianyang stood to the side, waiting.
The female astronaut waved at him, saying, "Yishenmali, co with ."
He floated over, and they moved one after the other into the space station through the white round corridor.
It was slightly larger here than in the spacecraft’s cabin, but not by much, more like several square rooms connected by round tubes.
There were only three astronauts in the space station, one in a spacesuit in the docking bay with them, and two others, from Yin Country, smiling at them through a large screen, not wearing spacesuits but blue work clothes, in another cabin.
"Are you here to replace Zheng Wei?" The astronaut who welcod them asked the Yin Country astronaut, using an open channel that everyone could hear.
"Yes, Ilya and Makan are on a scientific mission, Rovt, Yishenmali, and I are going for a spacewalk," the Yin Country astronaut said.
"Just a second... Lee," the Caucasian astronaut, called Rovt, suddenly floated between Wei Tianyang and the Yin Country astronaut.
"He’s going out with us??" Rovt said.
"Go inside, let’s talk in the experintal module," the astronaut said.
Everyone closed the hatch, and then the cabin began to balance the air pressure; two minutes later, the orange pressure door slowly opened, taking them to another cabin where they could finally take off the bulky spacesuits.
As soon as they removed their spacesuits, Rovt approached Lee and said, "He hasn’t been trained; this is too dangerous!"
"It’s the mission," Lee said.
"Mission? What mission? I wasn’t aware of any mission," Rovt said, his voice growing agitated.
"It’s the Emperor’s mission; we have to bring him along," Lee said.
"This is my mission, yours and mine, to repair the outer wall of the science module and replace a pipe; that’s what the mission brief said. I never heard anything about taking a novice for a spacewalk while on the ground!" Rovt was visibly upset.
"Are you really going out? That’s a dangerous mission," the female astronaut said, steering Wei Tianyang to one side.
Wei Tianyang nodded, "That’s why I ca here."
"Don’t bla Rovt for being agitated; he’s considering your safety. Spacewalking requires a lot of courage... After all, space isn’t a place for humans. One mistake, and you could either be pulled down by Earth’s gravity or be thrown out of the gravitational line and drift into space," the female astronaut said.
"I’m not sure if it’s a good idea either, but wait... why would I be thrown out? Isn’t the space station stationary?" Wei Tianyang asked.
"Well, I’m sure you haven’t had any training... You don’t even have basic scientific knowledge. The space station’s speed in low Earth orbit is faster than a fighter jet... Let’s put it this way, the station circumnavigates the Earth in about an hour and a half, traveling seven or eight kiloters per second, allowing you to witness fifteen or sixteen sunrises from the station... You think it’s motionless just because you’re too far from Earth, and it’s also moving relatively with the Earth’s rotation," the female astronaut explained.
Wei Tianyang was speechless; such high speeds would essentially be like walking on the edge of a high-speed rry-go-round.
"Zhao Ling... Zhao Ling... damn it..." Wei Tianyang cursed under his breath.
"Ready to face the first cosmic velocity?" Lee ca over and asked.
Wei Tianyang was at a loss for words, but since he had co all this way, he couldn’t back down now.
"We’ll arrange for you to go out soon; you’d better study a bit. I don’t know why the Emperor wants you to do this... But since you’re here, I have to ensure your safety," Lee said.
"There shouldn’t be political activities on the space station, Yishenmali, are you a soldier?" the female astronaut asked.
"I... suppose so," Wei Tianyang said.
Lee pondered for a mont and then said, "Ah, I see. Let’s leave it at that."
With that, he turned away to make preparations.
The African-Arican guy floated past them, saying, "Ilya, co on, our seeds are in place now."
"I need to get busy, Yishenmali, stay safe, enjoy the universe, don’t be afraid of it, and... Trust , just stand at this angle, take a look at Earth, and you’ll understand so things," the female astronaut Ilya said with a smile,
She left, leaving Wei Tianyang alone, floating aimlessly.
He pulled out AR glasses from his right arm pocket and put them on; various mission directives from the space agency and introductions to the functions of different compartnts in the space station appeared on the wall.
Everyone was busy with tasks he couldn’t comprehend.
He floated to a porthole and looked down at Earth again, the sight was indeed unforgettable; he took a deep breath and then held it.
A strange thought occurred to him.
The universe was so vast and yet so empty, but there was only one Earth.
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