Sixty-five million years ago, the Victoria Wetlands, Earth
Last night, Nikola Tesla and Maria had barely slept. The two of them held each other tightly, with endless things to say.
More than eighty years had passed. After such a long separation, their reunion was all the more precious.
Breakfast with Abbott began very late; by the time they finished, it was nearly noon. The three of them sat around the table, and Abbott said:
“I spent all last night thinking about your plan to transform Earth. I think it makes a great deal of sense. Now tell me about your Mars plan.”
Tesla pondered for a moment, then said, “Erecting a tower 180,000 kilometers tall on Venus’s equator and injecting superluminal-wave energy into it will cause the crust to bulge. We did the same on Earth in order to alter the terrain, but that won’t work on Mars.”
Abbott nodded. “Mm. Mars is the first foothold for Venusian humanity in your plan. The lesson of Venus tells us that if a superluminal-wave power station is erected on the equator of any planet, then at that same time, violent geological activity will occur, greatly affecting human survival.”
Maria said, “Nikola, don’t you have an external brain connected to the Lightning Ball? It can help you think more deeply.”
“The Lightning Ball isn’t omnipotent either. It is built upon experiential big data and logical inference. All it does is increase the speed of my thinking and provide more choices and decision-making plans.”
“The external brain connected to the Lightning Ball is more rational than the human brain. In most cases, the results it guides me toward are the optimal choice, but sometimes it can also make my thoughts get stuck on a paragraph, or even on a single word.”
Abbott asked eagerly, “You mean the optimal construction plan for the Mars power station is stuck on a word?”
“Yes. That word is VESSEL. It can mean a container, but I can’t understand what connection a container has with the construction plan for the Mars power station.”
“VESSEL doesn’t only mean container. I suppose I work in medicine, and in medical terminology, Blood Vessel means blood vessel. Doctors find it troublesome, so VESSEL can also directly refer to a blood vessel, but its more precise meaning is a duct or tube within animals and plants that transports nutrients, also called a vascular vessel.”
VESSEL, a vascular vessel? What connection did that have with a Martian superluminal-wave power station? Nikola Tesla and Abbott fell into deep thought, then shook their heads helplessly.
The weather was clear. The sun, like a bright white disk, hung in the middle of the sky.
Suddenly, the moon’s shadow encroached upon the solar disk. A total annular eclipse, seen only once every few decades, had begun.
“An eclipse? How come neither of you astronomers gave me any warning? Will there be a total solar eclipse in a while?” Maria said to Tesla and Abbott.
The three of them raised their heads to watch. Abbott explained it to Maria in a scholarly manner.
Because of the coincidental relationship among the distances and apparent areas of the moon, Earth, and the sun, when the moon happened to move between Earth and the sun, it just so happened to cover the sun, forming the phenomenon of a solar eclipse.
When a solar eclipse occurred, if the moon was relatively close to Earth, it would completely block the sun; this was called a total solar eclipse. If it was farther away, it would look as though the moon were embedded within a halo of the sun; this was called an annular solar eclipse.
Nikola Tesla had not spoken all along. As if something had inspired him, he suddenly said to Abbott without preamble:
“I understand now. Embedding Mars inside an energy ring—that is the optimal plan for the Martian superluminal-wave power station.”
Tesla offered no further explanation. He hurriedly kissed Maria goodbye, pulled Abbott up, and strode toward the space elevator, saying as they walked:
“Abbott, we’re going to Mars right now.”
In low Mars orbit, the spacecraft carrying Nikola Tesla and Abbott circled Mars at a speed of five kilometers per second.
“The lesson of Venus tells us that we cannot build the power station directly on the surface of a planet’s equator. If that is called a contact-type power station, then the optimal plan should be to build a non-contact-type power station. Use a ring structure in space to wrap Mars inside it without touching it.”
As a top physicist, Abbott understood at once and said, “That’s right. Build a closed ring above Mars’s equator. If the ring’s diameter reaches 180,000 kilometers, it can likewise become a superluminal-wave power station. And the excess heat won’t be injected underground and trigger plate activity.”
Nikola Tesla and Abbott launched excitedly into discussion. Building a closed ring structure in outer space around Mars would be like assembling an extraordinarily long space station; in terms of engineering technology, it was indeed feasible.
But if, like a space station, the building materials were mainly metal, then the amount of metal required for a ring 180,000 kilometers in diameter would be an astronomical figure. Was there a better way?
“Abbott, we can weave hollow tubes out of carbon nanotube fiber, seal them into a connected ring, and fill the tubes with water, just like soft fire hoses,” Tesla said.
This closed circular pipeline, 180,000 kilometers in diameter, would be able to receive the wavelength of superluminal waves in full. Heat energy would be produced inside the structure, driving the water in the tube walls to circulate and flow; the thermal energy and kinetic energy would be converted into electrical energy, making it a superluminal-wave power station.
Nikola Tesla suddenly realized that tubes—tubes that generated and transported energy—wasn’t this precisely the answer provided by the Lightning Ball external brain? VESSEL, vascular vessel.
A vascular superluminal-wave power station!
Abbott thought of another problem and said, “Nikola, even if the vascular power station is completed and can produce massive amounts of electrical energy, how will it be transmitted to the surface of Mars? If it can’t be transmitted to the surface, it will still be useless to the Venusian humans on Mars.”
Nikola Tesla burst into hearty laughter and replied, “Don’t forget, I am the inventor of alternating current, and also the first person to propose and verify that electricity can be transmitted wirelessly.”
Abbott understood instantly. It was indeed feasible. He recalled the tens of thousands of small artificial satellites still densely distributed in low Venus orbit even now. They were a wireless internet system covering all of Venus, provided by a Venusian commercial company and known as the “Star Array Satellites.”
Venusians could connect their phones to the Star Array Satellites and freely access the internet from any corner of Venus. In the future, then, Venusians would be able to receive electricity wirelessly from any corner of Mars to charge their phones.
Abbott thought of another problem. A vascular ring 180,000 kilometers in diameter floating in space would revolve around Mars under the influence of Martian gravity.
But without a stable structural support point, the vascular ring and Mars would undergo relative positional drift, or even collide. It would be very difficult for the ring to remain stable.
Nikola Tesla did not answer this question immediately. Instead, he had Abbott look out through the spacecraft’s porthole. Outside the porthole, a white dot came into view. It was Mars’s only satellite, called “Mars Moon” by the Venusians.
Abbott was thoroughly familiar with the astronomical data of every celestial body in the solar system, and he could not help crying out:
“Nikola, you really are a genius! Mars Moon is ninety thousand kilometers from Mars, its orbital plane coincides with Mars’s equator, and its eccentricity is almost zero. With it as the support point, its orbit is the closed ring of the vessel, and Mars Moon’s orbit is stable. It won’t drift.”
“Once the vascular superluminal-wave power station is built, Mars will have abundant and stable electrical resources. Nikola, you really are a genius!” Abbott exclaimed in admiration.
“Abbott, do you still remember the lunar mass-tumor experiment plan I mentioned?” Tesla asked.
Abbott had long since noticed that Mars’s gravity was weaker than Venus’s. Venusian humans would feel light and floaty on the surface of Mars, and would find it very difficult to adapt.
According to Nikola Tesla’s theory of gravity, a celestial body, as a radiation source, had a relatively fixed and unchanging surface radiation temperature and energy intensity; the radiant flux and peak wavelength it output were accordingly fixed and unchanging as well.
Through mathematical derivation, Tesla had concluded that gravity was proportional to the product of the radiant flux determined by energy intensity and peak frequency.
On the surface of Mars, under the premise that energy intensity remained unchanged, if its peak radiation wavelength were altered, the radiant flux it output would correspondingly change as well. This was precisely the purpose of the lunar “mass tumor” experiment Tesla had designed.
The vascular superluminal-wave power station would emit intense, extremely low-frequency long-wave radiation. After being absorbed by Mars, it would cause Mars’s peak radiation wavelength to undergo a tremendous redshift toward the long-wave direction, and the surface gravity of Mars’s equatorial belt would greatly increase. Its formation principle was the same as that of the lunar “mass tumor.”
Without increasing a planet’s mass, merely changing the planet’s peak radiation wavelength could increase gravity?
Filled with doubt, Abbott suddenly remembered that in recent years, when Venusian spacecraft sent toward Earth had skimmed close above Earth’s equator, abnormal phenomena of sudden increases in gravity had occurred many times. He thought to himself that arguing was useless; better to wait for the result of the lunar “mass tumor” experiment to settle the matter once and for all.
Dean Abbott came back to himself and sorted through Nikola Tesla’s plans for transforming Earth and Mars. He felt that this trip had not been in vain. The question of a foothold for Venusian human migration now had a clear direction.
There was another major problem that left Abbott uneasy. Transporting nearly six billion Venusian humans from Venus to the Martian foothold would require enormous carrying capacity and time. It was almost an impossible task.
Even with military assistance, the Venus Alliance government would face a tremendous challenge. How many people could be transported out in total, and who would go first?
Nikola Tesla seemed to see through Abbott’s thoughts. He patted him on the shoulder and said:
“It’s impossible to transport all six billion Venusians out. When your plan can no longer proceed, you can go find Maria. Perhaps she has a way.”
Abbott raised his head in surprise, looked straight at Tesla, and asked:
“Maria? What way could she possibly have?”
&
Chapter-closing cento poem:
Cloud pavilion, jade terrace, allowing a moment’s leisure, Song, Zhao Sicheng
Crimson pouch, crimson lock, jade linked rings. Song, Huang Tai
A white rainbow flies swiftly, electric light races, Song, Pu Shoucheng
Ten thousand qing of silver waves in half an instant. Song, Yang Wanli