From the view above, the ice sheet surrounded by the steel structure instantly shattered, and countless dense cracks began to form. In the muffled sound of vibrations accompanied by violent shaking, large pieces of ice fragnts were thrown into the air.
Previously, the L-shaped structure drill sent low-temperature explosives under the ice sheet and inserted them layer by layer. The entire project took three years, and a neat cube ice pit was precisely blasted out of the fifteen kiloters of ice.
At the sa ti, the Svetovid, which embedded itself in the ice, surged upwards from the huge water pressure below. Thankfully, the starship’s titanium armor was durable enough, otherwise, such a blowout would be enough to squeeze the frozen Svetovid into scrap tal.
“The target is rising!”
“Continue the blasting to prevent the ice layer from freezing!”
“ROGER!”
The deafening sound of rupture ca one after another from beneath the ice sheet as the low-temperature explosives embedded in the nearby ice layer blasted simultaneously. The blast generated a great amount of heat energy in the fragnted ice layer which prevented the upwelling seawater from backfilling and solidifying the cracks.
“The sensor temperature is at 11 degrees Celsius!”
“Continue the blast!”
Tan Ming’s eyes fixed on the holographic screen at the ice layer marked as red.
It was the ice layer where the Svetovid was located. Driven by the water current, it was now rising rapidly at a speed slightly slower than that of the seawater. If the ice sheet froze, all efforts would be in vain. In order to keep the water temperature above the freezing point, in addition to explosives, they even prepared anticoagulants…
Of course, that was their last resort.
To inject anticoagulants would result in unpredictable effects on the fragile ecosystem under Europa’s ice sheet. If possible, he hoped to solve this issue with those low-temperature explosives. Otherwise, the cost of saving these people would be too severe…
As the red layer of ice continued to rise, the explosives on both sides of the well exploded one after another.
Tan Ming watched the constantly changing temperature and water flow paraters on the screen as his palms beca soaked in sweat.
When the ice suddenly got stuck a few tis, his heart almost jumped out of his throat.
But fortunately, there was no unexpectedness that happened in the end. Under everyone’s gaze, the red ice layer finally touched the green line with a depth of two kiloters.
“The target has reached the safety level!”
Loud cheers broke out in the command room.
Tan Ming felt his legs give out as he collapsed on the chair and let out a sigh of relief towards the ceiling. As he watched the ice layer rise at a constant speed, a heartfelt smile finally appeared on his face.
The hard work of the past three years had not been in vain.
…
The astronauts who sat in the space vehicles put on their seat belts and unfolded the tal mory shield on the top of the vehicle.
The ice fragnts that had been thrown into the air by the water pressure began to fall one after another. So of these fragnts were only tossed ten ters out, while so were thrown into the low orbit. Although Europa’s gravity was only one-seventh of Earth, the extrely thin atmosphere ant that these heavy objects that were thrown into the air almost maintained the sa upward kinetic energy and smashed back down.
The dense ice blocks smashed down violently into the bowl-shaped mory tal shield and left craters the size of fists. The unluckiest vehicle was almost buried underneath by an ice chunk, but fortunately, the quality of the mory tal shield passed the test, and the space vehicle underneath was safe.
Finally!
The blowout was coming to an end!
The ice layer that embedded the Svetovid floated up and blocked the hole that still gushed out ice shards. A rectangular icicle rose from the center of the steel structure accompanied by bursts of loud rumblings that shook the ground. Then it ford into a huge rectangular tower with a height of more than a thousand ters.
The Svetovid was like a specin in amber, firmly frozen in the center of the “ice tower”. The explosives below stopped blasting, and the upwelling sea quickly froze the cracks. After the rectangular icicle with a longitudinal area of thousands of square ters finally lost its upward kinetic energy, it slowly ca to a halt.
The hailstorm falling from the sky also gradually stopped and left only the snow and ice shards flying in the air.
The bowl-shaped mory tal shield gathered towards the center and revealed the space vehicles hidden underneath. The astronauts stepped out one by one, took out the equipnt from the trunk, and walked to the colleagues buried under the snowdrift, ready to help them.
At this mont, the two astronauts who carried the toolbox stopped and looked in the direction of the icicle.
The fine ice shards drifted down slowly from the surface of the icicle. From the distance, it looked like dense mist. Jupiter in the distance radiated a soft light, and when it passed through the icy fog, there was actually a faint reflection of a rainbow.
…
“That is a rainbow? This, this is incredible!” One of the astronauts opened his eyes wide and stared at the scene in disbelief.
He had been working on Europa for almost two years, but it was the first ti he witnessed such a magnificent scene.
“It should be… Damnit, I left my cara in the dorm.”
“What’s the matter? The video on the action recorder can be extracted, and when you go back, you can take screenshots all you want.”
“That’s different!”
…
Just two hours after the Svetovid broke through the ice sheet, in the holographic eting room of Future Building, Jiang Chen t Golovin I again. In the past three years, the Earth Defense Alliance had received considerable help from the Svetovid , and now the alliance fulfilled its promise to free the Svetovid from under the ice sheet.
“I hope to discuss with you about our future ho ground.” As always, without any greetings, Golovin went straight to the point.
“The Earth Defense Alliance voted on Resolution 51. It is one hundred kiloters away from Heavenly Palace City and you can build your ho there. There are abundant underground water, graphite, and aluminum deposits. Of course, if you’re not satisfied with the environnt of Mars, we can consider other options.” Jiang Chen sent the location he described, together with the local topographic map and the distribution map of mineral reserves, to Golovin.
“No, we are very satisfied.” After Golovin read the dozens of gigabytes of data in about two seconds, he nodded and continued, “Is there any result with your plan?”
“Which one are you referring to?”
“Earth Federation.”
When Jiang Chen heard the na, his expression was a little bit awkward. He coughed softly and said, “Thanks to your old friends in the void, the situation on Earth now is far more complicated than you think. I said at the beginning that it will take at least five years.”
Because of the Remnants of the Void, the history of this world started to diverge from World War Two. Although from Jiang Chen’s standpoint, the history of this world was supposed to be the real history, but if there was no interference from external factors, the current global situation was supposed to be divided into three powers Pan-Asia, NATO, and the Soviet Union, instead of none of them existing…
“I must correct that, we are not friends with them,” Golovin looked to Jiang Chen, then continued, “We just promised those poor people to save the last kindle of fire for Earth civilization in return for their help to us.”
“Speaking of it, I have always been very surprised by your use of this statent…I an, didn’t you also co from Earth?” Jiang Chen asked, “If you must save the fire for Earth civilization, aren’t you guys the one?”
Contrary to Jiang Chen’s expectation, he thought that Golovin would give him the answer without thinking, just like all the other questions he had answered. However, this ti, he had given it a long thought, to the point that Jiang Chen began to wonder if there was a problem with quantum communication.
“I can understand your confusion, but I can’t give you an answer,” Golovin said slowly. The pupils were so calm that there was no sign of emotion; it was impossible to see his true thoughts. “Maybe in those poor people’s eyes, we have beco sothing else.”
“That’s really ironic, their body was already destroyed…” At this point, Golovin shook his head, then just like before, left without saying goodbye.
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