When Hao Ren got out of the crack in the elevator shaft, he saw what kind of scene was inside the 100-kilometer-long interstellar ship, and the scene was amazing.
He saw a huge inner space far beyond what he could see, and there was a starship city in this space. Countless buildings spread out on the ground, and the ground gradually bulges and warps in the distance, and finally closes up on the other side of the sky. The whole city is built in a closed, eggshell-like ellipse. Inside the container, all the artificial land and buildings are attached to the inner wall of the eggshell.
He looked in all directions, and a strange sense of vertigo made people dazzled: there is no sky here, and there is no strict difference between up and down, the closed earth forms a spherical shell, and no matter which direction you look in the past, you can see row upon row of buildings And huge, weird mechanisms. Hao Ren glanced back at the elevator shaft he had passed through when he got down, and he realized that it turned out to be a metal tube running through the entire space of the spherical shell. There were more than a dozen of these metal tubes arranged in parallel behind him. A large building in the city inside the ship stretched out, and finally disappeared into another large upside-down building on the opposite side. And in the middle of these parallel metal pipes, you can see many platforms suspended in the center of the space and horizontal pipes, which are obviously the main traffic routes.
And this kind of "parallel metal tube cluster" is not the only one. When looking far away, Hao Ren saw other metal tubes standing in the distance from the faintly shimmering silhouette. They are like monsters. Like the bones of the giant ship, it criss-crossed through this giant ship, maintaining the traffic path between the city inside the ship and the outside world.
Vivienne was the last to come out. She looked curiously at the city in the spherical shell, and muttered to herself: "There is no air, it is silent...but there is light."
The city is not dark, but it is not bright either. Between those silent buildings, it can be seen that the residual lighting system is still in operation. Countless dots of lights flicker in every corner of the closed land, putting the whole city in a twilight, and in this ellipse One end of the spherical shell space. You can also see an extraordinarily huge thing, which is a cylindrical "mountain". It is like a huge machine with a complex structure. The outer edge of the machine is a circle of shimmering orange-red structure, like a heat sink. Bring some light.
But all this light was far from bright—there must be something wrong with the ship's internal systems, whether it was the remaining lighting in the city or the huge machine at the end of the spherical space. Apparently they're not running at full capacity, more like they're in some sort of standby mode.
"There is no life response." Hao Ren glanced at the readings sent by the data terminal. Although the terminal does not have a strong scanning ability as a portable personal data assistant, looking at the cold and dead place in front of him, he didn't think it would be useful. Larger radars can find any survivors from the city. "There is no atmosphere, no moisture, and it is almost as cold as the outer space. And there is excessive radiation... It seems that everyone is dead."
Nangong Wuyue floated over suddenly and poked Hao Ren's arm with the tip of her tail. She pointed in a certain direction: "People are indeed dead."
Hao Ren looked in the direction of Nangong Wuyue's finger. Impressively saw the corpse of a humanoid creature floating in mid-air in the distance.
And when he looked carefully, he found more remains. These remains are floating among the cracks of urban buildings, and some of them have already floated to the high place of this spherical shell space—in this place where there is no distinction between up and down, the "high place" in the strict sense is the center of this closed space. , which is far away from every outer wall. Countless corpses were floating in the air like this, and most of them were incomplete. The ultra-low temperature made them fragile, and a slight collision would shatter the corpses like breaking ice. The remains that survive now should be relatively lucky, and more of them may have been turned into dust in countless collisions over a long period of time.
Hao Ren turned around and floated towards a group of buildings that was relatively close to him, and "landed" on the top of a tall building. When not looking up at those overhanging buildings. The weird illusion of being upside down is also less obvious. He found that there were also several corpses floating near the building, so he came to them to check the situation.
"The facial features are close to standard Type I humans. Light complexion, long ears, slender bones, and tall stature, it cannot be ruled out that they are the result of long-term space survival," Hao Ren inspected the biological characteristics of the body like a professional coroner. , and compared it with the biological genealogy on the data center, "It's well preserved."
"There is no air here, and it is extremely low temperature. The corpse will not rot and dry up. After being turned into an ice sculpture, it can almost keep the appearance of death forever," Nangong Sanba took out a few exquisite knives and metals from the tool bag while talking. Needle, cut and inspected the remains, "Let me see if there is any remaining information."
Hao Ren looked up at the silent city of twilight, and guessed the cause of the tragic death of all the crew members on the ark: "Did the crew die due to an air leak? Or was the life support system shut down for other reasons?"
"The air-tight chamber discovered before is faulty, but the outermost gate of the air-tight chamber remains closed, and the control system can also operate normally," said the data terminal. A detailed scan of the entire hull is needed to determine the cause of the accident. And there are a dozen other ships out there, and this unit thinks they're probably no better off than here."
Hao Ren nodded, and switched on the communicator: "Nolan, release the probe, and conduct an inspection on the hull of the giant ship we are in, to see if there are any air leaks or other fatal injuries."
"Nolan understands."
At this time, Nangong Sanba had already checked the first body, and he seemed to have found something, so he floated to the side of the other bodies to check, Nangong Wuyue asked curiously: "Brother, what did you find?"
"The cause of death of these people is not suffocation and hypothermia," Nangong Sanba put away his tools, "Their death conditions are very peaceful, there are some residual chemical substances in the frozen blood vessels, very similar to..."
Lily asked anxiously, "What does it look like?"
"It's like inhaling a lot of hallucinogens... or something else," Nangong Sanba pointed to the surroundings, "every corpse is like this."
"Lucogen?" Hao Ren looked surprised, "Did these people die from taking drugs?"
"Although this is almost the meaning, I think there is something wrong with your choice of words." Nangong Sanba's mouth trembled twice, "At present, I have only checked a few corpses here, and I am afraid it cannot be used as evidence. place."
Hao Ren hummed, turned his head and floated to the distant street.
Although this ship city is deep inside the spaceship, due to the huge size of the spaceship itself, the scale of the city is naturally unparalleled. There are a large number of buildings lined up here and complete facilities. The streets are wide and the buildings are tall. If you don’t look up and see the closed artificial land, the people in it may even forget the true face of the city.
The crowd went deep into the city, and soon found more remains, and... even more strange things.
They found a building with a beautiful circular glass dome and a wide interior space. Judging by the decoration form, this should be a special venue for holding some kind of party. Because there was a big hole in the outer wall of the building, Hao Ren and the others went straight through the hole and saw a shocking scene:
It seems that a banquet is being held here. In the huge venue, countless neatly arranged dining tables can be seen. There are sumptuous food on the tables. Although everything has been covered by a layer of frost, it can still be seen that this is a banquet. A grand banquet. A large number of corpses are filled in this place, and they still maintain the appearance of the moment of death: sitting at the dining table, the men are wearing neat little dresses, and the women are wearing bright and beautiful new dresses, although they have been frozen into ice corpses, But still dressed up as if attending a banquet. In a corner of the hall, Hao Ren also saw several male corpses in long black dresses lying on the small table over there. They had already frozen into the surrounding things, and they were holding something like a musical instrument in their hands: Seems like a small band.
A sumptuous table, an accompanying band, men and women in gowns, there was a feast—before everyone died.
"I feel hairy." Nangong Wuyue rubbed her hands.
"I feel furry." Lily wagged her tail. (To be continued.)