Chapter 602 - Subspace’s Kiss

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The “Courage Voyager” was the name of the spacecraft responsible for the space warp experiment.

As the spacecraft left the port, it soon flew to the designated space warp location, preparing to start the first space warp experiment in human history.

The starting point of this space warp experiment was the orbit of the Moon and the end point was the orbit of Mars. At this time, the distance between the two points was about 80 million kilometers. The acceleration of an average spacecraft, from here to the end point, would take around seven days, which was 168 hours.

However, if one entered the subspace through space warping and used subspace navigation technology, one could compress the distance by ten thousand times. That was to say, in theory, it would only take one second to reach that destination.

Of course, whether a spacecraft was in reality or in subspace, there must be an acceleration process, so the actual time it took would be more than one second.

Currently in the space observatory, Chen Chen was silently watching the data from the radio telescopes. At the same time, a group was busying about in the large hall. Everyone looked solemn, preparing for the first warp.

“Preparing for the navigation experiment, subspace navigation begins in three minutes!”

A cold electronic voice came from the broadcast and everyone was even more fired up, getting busy in their respective posts, constantly testing the accuracy of the data in front of them.

“Activating the nuclear fusion reactor!

“The nuclear fusion reactor has been activated, the temperature is currently rising, and the output power is stable…

“Activating the liquid helium cooling system!

“Activated. The pressure is stable now!

“Activating the strong magnetic ring. The space warp engine is starting to warm up!”

Chen Chen nodded to himself. He raised his head and glanced at the big screen above his head.

He saw dozens of monitoring footage on the big screen. These were all images sent from the spaceship Courage Voyager, but because of the distance, these images were slightly delayed.

Back when humanity first reached Mars, there were already signs of information delay in communications. Due to the distance between the two, the signal delay between Earth and Mars was as much as two to three hundred seconds. If humans got out of the solar system in the future, a mere phone call would take up years.

It seemed that it was time for quantum information transmission technology to be vigorously developed…

Chen Chen thought silently.

The thought flashed through Chen Chen’s mind, but at this moment, the screen above his head displayed the core objective of this experiment — the space warp engine device.

At this time, on the periphery of the engine, three ring-shaped strong magnetic devices spun madly around the black sphere in the center, like three blurry afterimages. As they continued to rotate, the black sphere in the center also rotated unceasingly. After a while, perhaps it was an illusion, but Chen Chen felt that the black sphere in the center seemed to be slightly shifting toward a liquid form…

Of course, Chen Chen was familiar with this sight. The movie had one such scene where a member of the rescue team came to the liquefied space warp engine and slightly extended his hand, reaching into the black liquid.

It was as if the entire space warp engine became a space gate at this moment.

It was just that no one knew what was behind this gate. The rescue team member was finally pulled in. When he came out again, he had become a walking corpse without any consciousness.

As if something across the gate had taken his soul…

This was the danger of subspace. Chen Chen was not ignorant of such dangers. If he had a choice, he would not choose this way of traveling in contact with subspace. However, the universe was far too vast, vast enough to drive any civilization to desperation.

Based on the speed of the current nuclear fusion engine, taking away the time required for acceleration, it would still take more than half a year to travel out of the solar system.

The Milky Way was about 100,000 light-years in diameter, which was billions of times that of the Solar System. This was an extremely devastating number. Even if one factored out the fuel and accelerated a spacecraft to subluminal speed, it would take more than 100,000 years to fly from one side of the galaxy to the other.

Not to mention the Milky Way was just a grain of sand in the observable universe.

Therefore, conventional flying methods would inevitably not be able to support the rise of civilization. If Chen Chen wanted to progress, sooner or later he still needed to develop space warp engine technology. If this was the case, then he could not afford to shrink back…

These thoughts flashed through Chen Chen’s mind and the cold mechanical voice continued.

“The space warp engine has reached critical value. The core of the magnetic field is currently at 50 billion atmospheres and the strong magnetic rings are very stable! Ready to start the warp operation…

“One minute to the activation of the space warp engine…”

The cold electronic voice from the broadcast immediately resounded in every corner of the hall and at the same time, a low warning alarm followed, indicating that the experiment had entered the final stage.

Chen Chen looked somber. It was not only him, even the atmosphere in the entire hall had turned grave. The low and depressive aura weighed heavily on everyone’s heart. Everyone was staring at the data stream in front of them, not daring to let down their guards for a moment.

“30-second countdown to start the space warp engine, be ready…

“Ten-second countdown, ready…

“Ten!

“Nine!

“Eight!”

…

“Three!

“Two!

“One!

“Space warp activating!”

With that order, Chen Chen only saw that the space warp engine on the screen, from the initial black mass, became brighter and brighter, and finally turned into a blinding beam, completely flooding the surveillance lens!

A few seconds later, that was, when the corrected delayed time also reached the time of the warp, all the monitoring screens flickered with static, and the space observatory completely lost contact with the Courage Voyager!

“The link has been lost!”

The voice echoed. “I’m checking the warp location and it has been confirmed that the Courage Voyager hasn’t been found. The spacecraft is determined to have entered the subspace!”

Chen Chen’s eyes suddenly brightened. Since the spacecraft disappeared into thin air, instead of exploding, it naturally meant that the spacecraft had entered the subspace.

However, this did not mean that it was time to celebrate. Only if the Courage Voyager reappeared after a minute or two in the orbit of Mars, would it mean the success of the experiment.

It would take about one minute for the spacecraft to traverse the subspace and it would take about three hundred seconds for the Mars orbit signal to be transmitted to the earth. In other words, if he wanted to know whether the experiment was successful, Chen Chen would have to wait six or seven minutes to see whether the Courage Voyager would send a signal from Mars.

All the researchers were naturally aware of these figures and they began to discuss or chat with each other, waiting for the final data together.

The atmosphere relaxed slightly for a while.

However, as time trickled by, the atmosphere in the hall gradually became more serious. As they got closer to the forecasted warp time, everyone kept looking at the computers in front of them, waiting for the Courage Voyager to send back some news.

One minute, two minutes, three minutes…

Six minutes passed and the Courage Voyager still did not return any news. Many people began to glance at each other.

Eight minutes passed and everyone’s foreheads were dripping with sweat. It seemed that the deep space of the universe had become a ferocious behemoth with a big mouth. It had swallowed the Courage Voyager, but would never vomit it out again.

Ten minutes later, even Chen Chen frowned and looked at the screen above his head. Could it be that this first space warp experiment had failed?

Was the subspace so dangerous?

Just when everyone was starting to feel disappointed, finally, a string of encrypted signals was received by the radio telescope again, and this signal was derived from the Courage Voyager!

“It’s sent back the signal!”

In the hall, many researchers whooped in excitement. They wanted to decipher this signal but in the next second, they were astonished because they discovered that they had lost the authority to decipher the signal.

“What happened?”

“Why did I lose the authority?”

“Is it a system failure?”

Many researchers were in an uproar. After all, they had been involved in this and had looked forward to the end for so long and now they could not even check the results of the experiment. Who could stand this?

However, the cold electronic sound on the broadcast spoke again. “All researchers, please stay where you are. This information is a top secret of Blacklight Biotechnology. Please remain seated and wait for the next order.”

Following the news, Chen Chen had already left the hall and came to another closed room.

The information sent back was naturally intercepted by Little X and the reason was not that it was any great secret. The researchers here were all members of God’s Forbidden Zone so there was no need to hide it from them.

The reason for doing this was only because Chen Chen had learned from the past.

When he was in the dimension of Event Horizon, the local research institutes were instantly destroyed because of the information that was sent back and even the entire earth was eventually destroyed. Of course, Chen Chen did not dare to expose such information just like that.

Therefore, this information must first be inspected by Little X and verified to be free of problems before Chen Chen would truly dare to publish it.

“The encrypted signal has been translated and no memetic characteristics have been found.”

At this time, Little X’s voice came from the headset and as Chen Chen looked up, a video appeared on the screen in front of him.

In the video, Chen Chen only saw that as the Courage Voyager was flying, a huge black hole suddenly appeared in front of it, and then the spacecraft flew into the black hole.

At the moment it passed through the black hole, the scenery outside the spacecraft suddenly changed from a vast stretch of darkness to a world full of dark red.

The world in the subspace was not as empty and pitch-black as the real universe, but a patch of hazy red. It was like flying in a magnificent nebula, surrounded by granular red mist.

These mists churned rhythmically like ocean waves, but strangely, they did not rush in only one direction like ocean waves, but constantly impacted the hull of the spacecraft from all directions…

Even in the mist, one could see colorful spots of light. The spots were not bright, but in the blurry blood-red fog, they appeared to be particularly conspicuous. At first glance, they looked like fireflies in the mist that flared up then died off, surging continuously with the fog.

“What is this?”

Chen Chen narrowed his eyes and looked at the scenery silently.

The video of the spacecraft was very strange. Chen Chen did not know how different it was from the subspace he had been to. When he entered the subspace before, he only opened his eyes once and when he did so, he immediately saw countless twisting shadows around him.

After that, he gouged out his own eyes.

Of course, when watching these images, Chen Chen naturally did not need to gouge his eyes, but with this video alone, he could not figure out whether the scene on the screen was the same subspace he had been to.

Just when Chen Chen was a little doubtful, the spacecraft seemed to have gradually moved away from the bloody fog area. As the bow broke through the last of the fog, the lens suddenly widened and a vast and strange space fully appeared in front of Chen Chen’s eyes!

It was still a dark red world, but in this endless swathe of red, wisps of weird black air currents were constantly blowing past the shell of Courage Voyager. These black air currents continued to condense and transform as if they had a mind of their own. Following that, as they brushed over the hull of the spacecraft, the armor of the Courage Voyager also showed signs of aging and decay…

Chen Chen even saw a black air current swaying in front of the camera. At the moment it passed, Chen Chen’s pupils suddenly shrank and he immediately said, “Pause!”

Following Chen Chen’s order, the video recorded by the spacecraft was suddenly paused.

“Go back a few frames.”

Chen Chen continued to give an order and then the black airflow in front of the camera condensed again, seeming to turn into two dark eerie eyes.

Chen Chen felt a chill in his heart when he saw this.

Then, the video played on for three minutes before it ended. During these three minutes, Chen Chen saw scenes that he had not seen in his entire life — the frantic bloody fog, the strangely colored fireflies, and these endless black air currents…

Chen Chen, for a moment, felt as if he had fallen into a deep and strange dream. There was something incomprehensible and grotesque before him, and he could not detect whether he was dreaming or awake…

“The armor of the Courage Voyager appears to have been slightly corroded.”

Little X’s voice continued and she showed the spacecraft’s data to Chen Chen little by little. “Other than that, everything is normal. Even the passengers played by the five Black Knights are all normal and there’s no change in their physiological characteristics.”

“The armor of the Courage Voyager is corroded?”

Chen Chen was stunned. The Courage Voyager was made of aerospace metal of the highest quality. Even if it had traveled in space for tens of thousands of years, it should not face any problems but now it was corroded slightly after it had only been in subspace for a few minutes?

At this rate, would it not mean that the hull of the spacecraft would be completely corroded after a few days of traveling?

Thinking of this, Chen Chen could not help frowning. It seemed that to sail in the subspace in the future, a new type of material would need to be invented.

“Although it seems that there’s nothing unusual about the Courage Voyager, don’t forget the plot of Event Horizon. We still need to test what should be tested.”

Chen Chen hugged himself and said in deep thought, “The next mission will be much easier. Send some Delta-level experimenters, put them in spacesuits, and teleport them to Mars through the ‘Watchman teleporter’. Then, let them board the Courage Voyager.”

“Understood.”

Little X replied. She also understood Chen Chen’s caution. After all, the Black Knights were not normal people. Maybe some strange reactions in the subspace would not affect the Black Knights, but it did not mean that it would not affect ordinary people.

That was why Chen Chen’s idea was to let this group of people enter the spacecraft to experience it for themselves.

If the Delta-level experimenters were unharmed after a subspace voyage, this experiment would be considered a real success…