Chapter Ninety-Four: Castor’s Sudden Mutation

White Muqing? You sent her a message? What exactly is your relationship?

Those questions left Zhang Mingyang at a complete loss. “Senior Brother, it’s not what you think. I just slipped and sent it to the wrong person.”

“Don’t explain. An explanation is just a cover-up. I never imagined my junior brother had actually won over the dream goddess of every man in the entire base. Not bad, Zhang Mingyang.”

Peng Dongli was so excited that he shouted loud enough for the entire tunnel to hear. “Senior Brother, keep your voice down.”

Zhang Mingyang glanced along both sides of the tunnel, checking whether anyone else was nearby. “Senior Brother, it really isn’t what you think.”

He was getting anxious. He hurriedly clamped a hand over Peng Dongli’s mouth and dragged him toward the far end of the tunnel.

After crossing the tunnel and reaching the vast plaza, Peng Dongli shook free of Zhang Mingyang’s grip and shouted at the top of his lungs, “What are you afraid of? If you managed to win White Muqing over, that’s your ability. Why should you be afraid of other people talking about it?”

“What?”

A deafening voice came from behind them, and the crowd in the plaza turned in astonishment to stare at Zhang Mingyang.

He froze. Looking back at the plaza, he saw more than a thousand people gathered there, all of them staring at him.

“Senior Brother, did we come to the wrong place?”

Seeing the crowd before him, Peng Dongli regretted not noticing how many people were there.

“Junior Brother, you’re on your own. I’m leaving first.”

With that, Peng Dongli took off at full speed and ran back toward his own dormitory.

Watching his senior brother recede into the distance, Zhang Mingyang cursed him ten thousand times over in his heart. How was he supposed to clean this up now?

“Mingyang, you’re back? Why didn’t you say so earlier? I would have come to meet you.”

From within the crowd, Lin Guangming emerged and, under everyone’s watchful eyes, dragged Zhang Mingyang toward the dormitories.

Seeing his teacher help him smooth things over, Zhang Mingyang could hardly have been happier. “Teacher, if you hadn’t come to save me, I really wouldn’t have known what to do.”

Lin Guangming glanced at the crowd behind them. Seeing that no one was following, he let out a breath of relief. “Mingyang, when exactly did you get mixed up with White Muqing?”

Zhang Mingyang looked utterly innocent. “Teacher, I have nothing to do with her.”

Lin Guangming did not believe him. “Then why did that man just say you were together with White Muqing?”

Zhang Mingyang could have strangled Peng Dongli. “Teacher, that man was the Peng Dongli I told you about from the Materials Department. You can’t take his words seriously. When I got back just now, I sent a message to the wrong person, and he thought I was sending it to White Muqing.”

Thinking of the man from earlier, Lin Guangming shook his head. “If I’d known, I never would have let you go with him.”

The two of them finally fled back to the dormitory at a run. When Zhang Mingyang opened the door, a familiar sight and a familiar scent rushed toward him.

“At last, we’re back.”

He set down his backpack and sat on the bed, looking around the familiar room.

“Teacher, why was there such a huge crowd in the plaza?” Only then did Zhang Mingyang remember that, in the middle of the night, when everyone should have been asleep, why had they all run to the plaza?

Lin Guangming took out his communicator and projected an image onto the wall. “Take a look. What is this?”

Staring at the red planet before him, Zhang Mingyang felt an odd sense of familiarity, yet he could not remember where he had seen it before. “Teacher, what is this?”

Lin Guangming replied, “This is Pollux.”

“Pollux?”

This was the first time Zhang Mingyang had seen Pollux up close. It turned out not to be orange, but red.

No.

“Teacher, isn’t Pollux an orange giant? How has it become a red giant?”

“This is exactly why we called you all back.”

The image shifted, and the triangular object above Pollux appeared, only now its color was not white, but red.

“Teacher, isn’t that the mysterious triangular object? Why has its color changed too?”

Lin Guangming walked to the wall and pointed at the triangular object. “This is the latest photo sent back by the Ocean Voyager. Have you noticed that this object has also changed position?”

Zhang Mingyang took out his communicator, opened the earlier photo, and compared the two. Sure enough, the triangular object had shifted by about thirty degrees.

“Teacher, this thing can move?”

Lin Guangming nodded. “Our preliminary analysis suggests that it can move, but we don’t know whether it moves on its own or whether it was displaced by Pollux’s influence.”

With that, Lin Guangming changed the image to another angle. “Mingyang, look. Has Pollux’s brightness decreased?”

Zhang Mingyang had been thinking the same thing. “Teacher, when I was on the lunar base looking at Pollux, I felt its brightness had already gone down. So I wasn’t mistaken.”

Lin Guangming asked, “Then have you considered why Pollux’s brightness has decreased?”

Zhang Mingyang shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

Lin Guangming pointed at the triangular object. “Our preliminary analysis is that it has absorbed Pollux’s energy!”

“Absorbed it, not injected it?”

Lin Guangming said, “I told you the earlier analysis: everyone thought the triangular object was injecting energy into Pollux and then sending signals outward through it. But this photograph shattered all of those assumptions.”

“It isn’t injecting energy; it’s absorbing it. In less than fifty years, Pollux has already evolved from an orange giant into a red giant. Judging from Pollux’s current brightness, in another twenty years it will become a white dwarf, then a black dwarf, and gradually move toward death.”

Listening to his teacher, Zhang Mingyang felt goose bumps rise over his skin. “Teacher, could that triangular object be an alien energy collector?”

Lin Guangming looked at Pollux and remained silent. “We still don’t know. That is why the base has recalled everyone who was out in the field to discuss a countermeasure.”

“Teacher, will the Energy Ship still be built?”

“Of course it will be built!”

Lin Guangming pointed at the triangular object. “Not only must it be built, we must accelerate the pace. We have to reach there before the people from Country M do. We need to find out in advance whether this is an alien device or something else we do not understand.”

“How does it absorb energy?”

“What is the principle behind its energy absorption?”

“How does it store that energy?”

“Is it a natural object, or the product of a civilization?”

Only by seeing it with their own eyes would they know the answers to those questions. If it were a natural object, then they could study it. What they discovered from it would be enough to change the course of all humanity.

As Zhang Mingyang considered his teacher’s words, he found them hard to refute. “But Teacher, what if it really is something made by aliens?”

Lin Guangming knew he would ask that. “Mingyang, this is a gamble. A gamble on the future of all humanity.”

“A gamble?”

Zhang Mingyang had never imagined that the project would become a gamble, and one where the stakes were everything mankind had.

“Teacher, if the Energy Ship discovers that it truly is the product of an alien civilization, what then? Won’t Earth be exposed?”

Lin Guangming replied, “The experts at the base have preliminarily concluded that this object probably is not the product of an alien civilization. If it were, then the Energy Ship would have detected it when it was still five light-years from Pollux. By then, we would also have been able to withdraw in time.”