Planetary Expeditions
Institute Two, inside the main control room.
Hundreds of small, thin limbed, huge headed Lucan scientists sat in front of a huge display, all of them watching unblinkingly the new Murakami ship on the screen.
The village ship was currently moored in the star dock, undergoing its final inspection by Hawke.
Dozens of droids climbed on and off the ship and after ten minutes of work, Hawke received a signal that everything was okay.
Hawke pushed back a little of his excitement and gave the order to launch.
After a brief warm-up, the flames increased in intensity and the powerful recoil propelled the ship out in a lightning-fast burst.
"Accelerated for three seconds, hull structure normal, no deformation detected, pressure sensors not detecting excessive gravity."
Hawke received a response and immediately gave a new order, "Continue acceleration."
"Thirty seconds of acceleration, hull structure normal, no deformation detected, pressure sensors have not detected excessive gravity."
"Continue."
Messages continued to be sent back, and Hawke kept sending new commands. Slowly, twenty minutes passed, half an hour passed.
The speed of this village-class ship had reached five thousand four hundred kilometres per second! This speed was almost twice as high as Hawk's previous maximum speed!
"Accelerated for one thousand eight hundred seconds, hull structure normal, no deformation detected, pressure sensors have not detected excessive gravity."
"It can still withstand? Good! Then keep accelerating!" Hawk pressed down his excitement and gave the order to continue accelerating.
Time, forty minutes had passed!
The speed of this village-class ship had already reached seven thousand two hundred kilometres per second!
"Accelerated for two thousand four hundred seconds, hull structure normal, no deformation detected, alarm! Pressure sensors have detected an excess of gravity, if we continue to accelerate, the hull may be destroyed!"
"Whew ..." Hawke exhaled lightly, "Is the limit two thousand four hundred seconds of continuous acceleration? Seven thousand two hundred kilometres per second! That's strong enough."
"Then, stop accelerating and return to the ship." Hawk gave a new order. Immediately, the flames at the rear of the village-class ship began to diminish and eventually slowly died out. The ship then made a posture adjustment and began to slowly reverse its acceleration, heading back towards the Eagle Nebula a base.
By this time, within Institute Two, hundreds of Lucca scientists had fallen into a sea of joy. They were there shouting and hugging, celebrating this great victory.
At this moment, Hawke had this thought: "Perhaps, technology will progress faster if we cooperate with different races. What may be a dead end for one civilisation is easily thought of by another because of differences in living conditions and habits. At least, many of the ideas of the Luka scientists were very inspiring even to me. Well, the idea is worth a try. If we encounter a technological civilization again, we might as well try to capture some of their civilization's scientists and come along to do my bidding."
Hawk made up his mind.
At this moment, the village-class ship had already flown out a few million kilometres away. When it came back, there was less of a hurry. Hawke steered the ship, first slowing it down to zero, and then starting to accelerate towards Eagle Nebula a. It took a full five hours to summon it back.
Immediately after the new ship entered the dock, Hawke manned the droid and performed a full body check on it. The conclusion was that the new material had withstood the massive gravitational pull and had remained largely unchanged during the forty minutes of acceleration. The engine also withstood the long and powerful run without being burned up.
However, the ship had used up all of its portable fuel in one go.
After a three-day mandatory rest period for the Lucca scientists, Hawke announced the next phase of research to be carried out.
The material technology problem had been solved, and the next problem was how to apply the fuel more efficiently.
Before the research could begin, Hawke received a report from a scientist in Lucca.
Through a video link, an unusually old Luka scientist in front of Hawke slowly said, "Dear God's Advocate, under your leadership, we have conquered the material technology problem, but you should know that this material called flowing gold is extremely difficult to make, even if our manufacturing power increases a hundred times or a thousand times, it is still difficult to meet the requirements. In the meantime, we have come up with a new idea."
"That is, to look for naturally occurring quicksilver minerals in the universe. I don't know if you have noticed, but the environment in which we make the quicksilver gold is similar to certain environments in the universe. That is the ... stellar core layer."
"Of course, we can't get into the stellar core layer, but, at the core of giant gas planets, their environment has some similarity with the stellar core layer, so, at the core of gas planets, there may also exist quicksilver minerals. Moreover, after the supernova explosion at the end of stellar evolution, it is also possible that the quicksilver minerals in the cores were released into cosmic space. Therefore, we recommend that you conduct prospecting activities at both of these locations. If we can find quicksilver minerals in these two locations, we can solve the problem of insufficient production."
Hawke's eyes lit up and he couldn't help but think silently, "To put it that way, it is indeed possible that there are quicksilver minerals ... at the core of giant gas planets, and among the cosmic dust, but even at the core of planets, I don't have the ability to reach them. But ... inside the planet, there could be convection currents, meaning that material at the core, could come closer to the surface, through convection currents. eagle Nebula a radius of sixty thousand kilometres, my ship, could probably dive down to five thousand kilometres. This option, it's worth a try."
Hawke made his decision and instructed, "That's a good idea, I'll send a ship to explore the interior of Eagle Nebula a. For now, let's get started on the fuel efficiency issue."
"Gladly at your service." The pale Lucan scientist bent deeply.
Within the next few moments, Hawke once again witnessed the madness of the Lucan scientists. This time, they were even more outrageous, and the entire group of Luca scientists actually did not rest for ninety hours straight. Even Hawke couldn't help but exclaim, "The fervour for religion can actually reach such a level?"
It was only after one of the Lucan scientists could not help but faint that Hawke compulsorily sent them all off to rest. Even then, there were still dozens of Lucan scientists yelling and screaming, refusing to leave their work. This time Hawke had no mercy and gave them a special hypnotic potion for the Luccas and dragged them off to rest.
By this time, Hawke had completed the construction of the Prospector One. The specially modified Prospector I will be able to withstand pressures of up to 100,000 atmospheres and is expected to be able to dive down to 5,000 kilometres below the surface of Eagle Nebula.
Inside the planet, Hawke can be refuelled at any time, so the ship's range is extremely impressive. However, although the fuel problem was solved, there was also the problem of fatigue of the ship's shell, which could not exceed fifty hours per prospecting trip.
Once everything was ready, the Prospector I entered the interior of the Eagle Nebula a.
There is no significant separation between the Eagle Nebula a and the interstellar medium. Hawke used the interior of Eagle Nebula a, where the pressure reached one atmosphere, as the dividing line.
Upon reaching this place, the thick gas has cut off all external light. Here, it is the domain of violent air currents and endless lightning. Right in the middle of the fierce winds and thunderstorms, Hawke manoeuvred the ship and slowly descended.
Luckily, Hawke had used quantum entanglement communication technology, otherwise, any radio wave communication would have been blocked out in such an environment.
The further into the planet's interior, the higher its temperature became. Just 10,000 metres below the dividing line, Hawke observed a miraculous scene.
Inside Eagle Nebula a, it was raining.
Because of the extremely low temperature of Eagle Nebula a's surface, hydrogen, helium and other gases become liquid, and because of their increased density, this liquid material falls through the dense atmosphere and into the interior, creating the miraculous rainfall that Hawke observed.
The dense raindrops struck the ship with a popping sound, and in the next moment these raindrops were turned back into gas by the temperature of the planet's interior and began to drift towards the planet's outer layers again. Thus back and forth, inside the planet, a unique circulation system was formed.
At this moment, Hawke had already descended to a depth of twenty kilometres, or twenty thousand metres. The pressure here reached the point where it was five hundred times the pressure of the planet. This made Hawke's heart worry. The pressure there was probably more than 100,000 times the Earth's atmospheric pressure, five thousand kilometres below the planet's interior.
Hawke did not give up, but continued to dive deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper, and now, Hawke had reached a depth of two hundred kilometres below the dividing line.
The concentration of gas here had reached an extremely terrifying point, where it was denser than water because of the elevated temperature, yet it still remained in gas form. Hawke turned the ship's engines up to thirty percent power to barely keep the ship stable.
It was absolute darkness, and no visible light could penetrate the two hundred kilometres of gas to shine here. In the midst of the darkness, Hawke's ship, like a tiny fish, swam in a sea of gas.
Suddenly, with a boom, a bolt of lightning cut through the sky, illuminating hundreds of kilometres of space.
Under this lightning shine, Hawke saw a magical scene.