The principle of starship design is practicality, and everything else must be put after practicality. A starship must first be able to take off safely and complete its design purpose, and then consider optimization issues. So when you encounter a starship, use your eyes to take a good look

If you look at it, even if you only look at its appearance, you can roughly see its design level and functional points.

Colonial ships must be large enough to carry a complete ecosystem; battleships must be simple and direct, highlighting firepower and protection; shuttle (passenger) ships must pay attention to speed and safety, and have the ability to navigate in vacuum and fly in air environments - these

These are general standards for judging the design capabilities of starships. But Alex looked at the super giant continent in front of him and tried hard to imagine it as the Shanhe Sheji starship, but he could not see its design purpose at all.

"Could it be that they are mocking all civilizations in this universe with huge volumes and masses that are beyond the support of physical theory?" Alex scratched his head, and his doubts deepened.

The gravitational wave radar gave him data that made him even more troubled. Because the continent in front of him was too big and too heavy, the gravitational wave radar could no longer work normally. It always reported two warnings in a loop. One was that "the surface of the equipment is covered."

, clean it up immediately", and the other is "You have fallen into the black hole's horizon. Thank you for choosing our products. We are honored that we can accompany you until the last moment."

"No, the gravitational wave radar cannot handle the continent in front of me. I have tried various methods but cannot input this continent into the system as a background constant." Amy gritted her teeth. It seems that she also finds this matter very troublesome. "

After thinking about it carefully, even if a fighter ship comes over, there will be problems with the radar on it. Only by allowing the crew to enter the computing power network and use brain-controlled bodies to manually process all signals can the system be restored to work."

"Then there is no need for gravitational wave radar. It has no other function except to hope that we die painlessly. Even if there is no direction of the giant continent, it cannot detect gravitational wave signals beyond visual range." Alex

After thinking for a while, he said: "Sister, do you think the terrain and mineral scanning system of the mine cannon can be of some use?"

"It's a good idea. It can at least generate the basic terrain information of this continent. But..." Amy was stunned for a moment and said: "The mine cannon is aimed at asteroids or local areas, and its map storage capacity may not be able to adapt to this area.

A super giant continent. It’s bigger than an entire galaxy, and it’s completely filled... It’s really scary. Wait, I suddenly had an idea.”

"Let's hear it. Any new ideas now might help."

"It shouldn't be of much help." Amy smiled and shook her head: "I want to say, does the earth in Earth-Global Alliance Technology refer to the vast earth? If this is their earth, then they do have something to call their own earth.

qualifications."

Calling one's own planet "earth" or "land" is very common in civilizations dominated by terrestrial organisms. If we don't pursue the ultimate details in language translation, about half of the planets in the universe are called "Earth".

Or have similar meanings.

"If you want to expand the storage space, I can help." Ming Ming tilted her head, raised an index finger, and said: "I have cleaned up a lot of useless data recently, and I have a lot of storage space to use. This upgraded version

The Faceless Man has a huge brain-controlled body..."

Before she could finish her words, Amy jumped up from her seat and came to Ming Ming in two steps at a time. She carefully touched the faceless man's body while squinting her eyes to take a closer look.

"What's wrong?" Ming Ming had some questions. Maybe she felt a little uncomfortable being stared at so closely. She used a projection device to generate the appearance and body of a human woman for herself, covering the exposed mechanical parts.

"I didn't notice before you said it. This faceless man has indeed been upgraded. Some of the parts look very familiar. They should have been removed from the heavy combat mecha." Amy poked Mingming's metal head with her finger.

, asked: "But what is the giant brain-controlled body you are talking about?"

"This faceless man has no biological parts in his body, and there is no space left for brain and nerve transplantation. Instead, it is a brain-controlled body that is the same size as a complete brain. Its storage capacity and computing power are amazing, enough to withstand a

The computing power requirements of an A-level compound evolved person. I think this is exactly its design purpose: to allow an A-level compound evolved person to remotely control it."

"Does it have the ability to act autonomously at the artificial intelligence level?" Amy asked.

"No. But its computing power already has the potential to independently generate artificial intelligence."

"What is this going to do in the zero-order world? Producing this kind of faceless man is to test the tolerance of the composite evolutionary human society towards artificial intelligence. In the current situation, especially with the emergence of the natural selector, such testing will only make things worse.

It gets worse!”

"I have a different view." Ming Ming shook his head and said: "The zero-level world has admitted that there are problems with the technological route of brain-controlled bodies. All the work of composite evolved people to advance to the zero-level world must be suspended, waiting for the re-development.

The scientific and technological route has been sorted out. At this stage, the number of composite evolved humans with brain-controlled bodies will definitely decrease, while the computing power required for research and combat is increasing. This new remote-controlled faceless man can at least alleviate the computing power required for combat.

The demand is to make composite evolved humans safer."

"Yes, according to artificial intelligence's point of view, it is a good thing - this is what I am worried about." Amy waved her hand and said: "I don't want to continue discussing with you, lest I want to tear you down. Come on, let's still

Go check out the mining machines.”

"I think so too." Ming Ming said with a smile: "But don't dismantle me. There are anti-matter engines and A-level shield generators inside. Any wrong disassembly may lead to tragedy.

"

"Shut up!" Amy snorted: "When I didn't ask for your opinion, don't talk nonsense like this with hidden threatening meaning."

The two left the bridge, and Alex shrugged at Xiaoxiao and Padme. "Composite evolved humans don't like artificial intelligence, and it's good that they can get along like this now. Okay, although the gravitational wave radar is going crazy.

Alarm, but the environmental scanning system says it is safe down there. Look at the air composition analysis, the oxygen content is 32%, and the nitrogen content is 60% - which are very good. The carbon dioxide is higher than the standard starship environment for composite evolved humans.

Some, but far below the dangerous value, you can breathe directly. I would like to go down and have a look, what about you?"

"I've had this idea for a long time." Xiaoxiao raised her hands excitedly and said, "The airflow below is very stable, and Liuma can fly freely. Let's enter the atmosphere first, and then find a place to land, just like on XM1

What do you think?"

"Approved!" Alex gently pressed the spherical rudder to put the Liuma into a dive landing trajectory.

The giant continent is coming towards you, full of a sense of oppression. Because it is so huge, it is easy for people to have the illusion that it is a piece of land, but it is still inaccessible. It usually takes only ten minutes to land from the surface of the planet, but now it is ten minutes.

A few minutes passed, and the land in front of us continued to expand, so for the first time in our lives, everyone felt that "the earth is broader than the starry sky."

The "mountains" seen from space have now become larger than the planet. An area that looks like a lake from a distance can fit several Earths inside. The scale of all terrains and landforms is extremely huge and cannot be used anymore.

The uncanny workmanship of nature can be described as follows: the closer you get, the more dangerous and weird it feels here. The deep memory of the scale of nature written in the genes of life constantly issues warnings, just like gravitational wave radar, urging you to stay away quickly.

Not only people felt this way, the gravitational wave radar started to alarm again: "Proximity warning, proximity warning, obstacle ahead!"

Obstacle? Alex shook his head and turned off the alarm. He had done this operation no less than fifty times today, feeling vaguely bored. Due to the design of the console, every time the alarm sounded,

It's shocking, it seems like the only way to show how much the system attaches importance to security.

"I got a lot of scares today." Padmé also said: "I have never seen so many alarms, one after another, as if there is no end. Now think about it, if I were the captain,

I definitely can’t cope with such a situation. But then again, who would have thought that there is such a huge land in the universe.”

"Indeed." While answering, Alex lowered his head and glanced at the display screen of the system console. The approach warning had changed to an impact warning. This was different from the previous gravitational wave radar report, "Black holes and quick deaths."

"The series of alarms only repeated themselves and were never upgraded or changed, but the proximity warning was indeed upgraded. He hesitated for a moment, then pulled back the spherical rudder and changed the Liuma to maintain a level flight with the mainland.

There's no rush to land anyway. That's what Alex thought.

Suddenly, the number on the ground altimeter began to plummet, from two light seconds to five thousand kilometers, and then fluctuated in a small range around this number. With Alex's reminder, this phenomenon attracted everyone's attention. Flow

The Horse slowly stopped, and the altimeter's changing speed also slowed down. Until the starship and the ground remained relatively stationary, the altimeter's numbers basically stabilized, jumping within an error range of one or two meters.

"The altimeter uses pan-electromagnetic waves to measure distance. Unless it encounters full-band blocking interference, it can generally work normally." Alex licked his lips and said, "There must be something in the area about 5,000 kilometers below us.

.”

Although Xiaoxiao didn't understand what caused such an anomaly, she had been paying attention to the various detection parameters on the console: "Affected by the giant continent, the gravitational wave radar has no usable information. Except for the altimeter, other

No abnormalities were found in the detection method. Captain, do you want us to continue approaching and let the environmental equipment work?"

"There is an easier way." Alex said: "Padame, put on your space suit and go to the cargo bay, throw something down from there, and let's see what happens. I will use the communicator to tell E.

Mi, she can adjust the environmental barrier to give you a safe environment. Maybe she can also adjust the mine cannon to make it work."

Faced with the unknown situation, Amy agreed with the decision to temporarily stop the descent. About five minutes later, the Liuma opened the cargo bay door, restrained an environmental probe from the mine cannon, and launched it downward at high speed. The environmental probe is part of the starship's environmental circulation system.

The spare part itself can operate with its own reserved power in an emergency. Charge it and launch it, and use the communicator to track and recover the data at a fixed point. This is a common alternative method when there is a lack of environmental detection drones.

The high-speed falling environment probe continuously reported data. At first, it was a complete vacuum, but after falling 4,500 kilometers, it actually began to report the discovery of air.

"I solemnly declare: This continent has completely subverted our understanding and can no longer be viewed with any old eyes." Alex said: "With this gravity level, with this air density and pressure, how could it be so thick?

Atmosphere? Excluding five thousand kilometers and two light seconds, is it all air below?"

Amy's voice came from the communicator: "Don't worry, we will soon reach the area indicated by the altimeter. The hatch has been closed. I suggest you move the Liuma's position."

There are also hidden dangers in staying stationary for a long time in an unknown environment. Anyway, you can be as careful as you want now. The workload is just pushing the spherical rudder gently. At this time, the speed of the environmental detector suddenly began to accelerate, and the speed increased dramatically.

The gravitational acceleration completely overshadowed the effect of air resistance. Everyone watched the probe fall, then break into pieces in mid-air and lay flat on the "sky".

"Sure enough, there is something, and it is very solid. If we had not slowed down and leveled off before, we might have been directly hit and killed." Alex was faintly frightened and strengthened his idea of ​​"be cautious". "Let everyone come to the bridge.

, look at what’s underneath.”

According to the last data sent back by the environmental monitoring head, it "hit the ground". Before the impact, the gravitational acceleration became three times the value detected by the previous gravitational wave radar, but this area was only about a kilometer wide. Triple gravity convection

The horse number is nothing and will not affect its flight, so everyone decided to go take a look and analyze it based on the maximum detection range of the mine cannon.

Gradually lowering the altitude, although only the altimeter still reported an error, everyone could see the clues with the naked eye. A faint shadow of the Liuma appeared in the transparent air, just like there was a glass cover with no frame and no support below.

Amy personally controlled the mine cannon and started working. The detection ray rushed towards the "cover" below, and then penetrated smoothly without returning any data. "What's going on?" Amy's voice sounded a little bit in the communicator.

Helpless. "The fragments of our environmental detector are still 'suspended' there. How come the rays of the mine cannon passed through it?"

"Does the energy beam penetrate all? Try firing a shot. Well, if the blaster has such a long range..."

"You can give it a try. The air here is quite thin, the energy beam will not escape so fast, and the range should be enough." Amy turned off the mine cannon, opened the hatch, and took it out. The apricot-yellow energy beam kept falling,

It briefly illuminated the mid-air cover, and then penetrated through it.

"Most energy methods can pass through, but matter cannot. It can be determined that it is not a deceptive projection, but a means of material isolation." Everyone can only draw this conclusion at the moment. Alex curled his lips and said:

"Tsk, tsk, how are we going to land like this?"

"How did the air get here?" Padame asked, "Air is also matter!"
Chapter completed!