Chapter 4: The Base
Right now, the ten Clones were wearing flimsy, dark-yellow Space Suits wrapped in rings of tape, looking like interstellar refugees.
The primary purpose of the tape was to maintain the shape of the thin-film Space Suits and keep them from bloating into spheres due to the excessive internal pressure.
Still, rings of air bulged out from the gaps between the tape, like rolls of fat.
Inside their Space Suits, the Clones wore heavy clothing, doing everything they could to keep their body heat from escaping.
Battery-heated air blew from a vent across the Space Suits’ visors, preventing them from frosting over while also supplying precious oxygen to the interior.
On their heads, they also had battery-powered lights, similar to miners’ lamps.
It couldn’t be helped; it was too dark on Ceres to go without lights.
Checking the Clones’ physical state, Li Qingsong didn’t notice any discomfort.
They felt a slight chill, but he wasn’t sure if it was psychological or physiological. ’No matter. When it gets too cold to bear, they can just go back to the lander to warm up.’
The ten Clones disembarked, planting their feet on the surface of Ceres and taking a moment to feel its Gravity—only about eight percent of Earth’s.
Here, a 100 kg person would only weigh as much as 8 kg.
Here, any ordinary person was a strongman.
Four Clones boarded a planetary rover and left the landing site to search the area for useful minerals. The remaining six approached one of the landers. They stripped all the detachable equipment from its interior, temporarily placing everything on the ground. Then, working in unison, they used their brute strength to lift the lander, its mass now reduced to five tons.
Of course, while it had a mass of five tons, its weight here was only 400 kg, which was well within the six Clones’ combined lifting capacity.
There was a deep canyon next to the landing site. The six Clones coordinated carefully, carrying the lander down a relatively gentle slope to the canyon floor. They brought it to a cave they had surveyed earlier.
The cave was about 30 meters deep, 20 meters wide, and 5 meters high.
This gave it an interior floor space of roughly 600 square meters, most of which was sheltered by the thick rock of Ceres.
The beams of their headlamps revealed an uneven, dark-red surface, almost identical to the landscape outside.
It was Tolin, a peculiar copolymer molecule that doesn’t exist on Earth. It is found only on distant worlds far from the Sun, formed by interstellar high-energy radiation and a series of other complex mechanisms.
It can appear in various colors, but most of it is brownish-red or dark-red.
This substance is common on distant dwarf planets like Ceres. In fact, it’s what gives Ceres its dark-red hue.
Like the frozen dry ice, methane, ethane, water ice, oxygen, and nitrogen, and even the surface rock of Ceres itself, this Tolin was extremely hard—harder, in fact, than the toughest steel.
This was where Li Qingsong would build his first Ceres base.
He directed the six Clones through another flurry of activity, bringing all the supplies and equipment they had removed from the lander into the cave.
Afterward, an electric heating device was connected to the lander’s small fission reactor and used to scorch the ground at high temperatures.
Vast quantities of gas were instantly generated, sublimating directly into the vacuum. Some of this gas escaped Ceres’s Gravity field entirely, while the rest cooled after a short distance, re-solidified, and fell back down as accumulating snowflakes.
After clearing an area of about 200 square meters, the six Clones once again set to work, using simple tools to level the ground.
This series of tasks took three full days of hard work to complete.
Throughout this process, the extreme cold forced the Clones to return to the lander’s cabin every few hours to rest, warm up, and eat.
Once they were warm, they would head back out and rejoin the work.
The plastic film of the Space Suits tore multiple times during the process. A jet of grayish-white gas could often be seen erupting from one of the Clones’ bodies.
’But it was fine. If a tear appeared, they just slapped some tape on it. It didn’t stop the work.’
Once the ground was finally cleared, the six Clones took out a large pile of the same plastic film used for the Space Suits and carefully spread it out.
It had been prefabricated into the shape of a massive tent.
Of course, with no air inside, it wasn’t inflated but simply lay in a heap on the ground.
Just then, the four Clones who had been searching for minerals returned in the planetary rover.
The rover’s cargo bed was filled to the brim with "ores" of various colors.
Among them, solid oxygen, frozen by the extreme temperatures, was a pale blue; solid nitrogen was transparent; and dry ice was white.
Of course, due to the high impurity content, these colors were not pure.
On Ceres, these gases existed in a mineral-like state and could be mined block by block.
The Clones moved the ores inside the film tent, connected the small nuclear fission power station, sealed the entrance, and then began to carefully heat the material.
A large volume of gas was rapidly generated, causing the limp tent to slowly inflate like a balloon. It eventually swelled into a structure covering about 200 square meters with a height of two meters.
This "house" even had an airlock at its entrance.
It had two doors that created a separate chamber. When the Clones entered or exited the structure, they would first go into the airlock, where air would be pumped in or out as needed to prevent the internal atmosphere from escaping.
Once the tent was fully inflated, the Clones outside worked to secure it with tethers, while those inside connected the power and installed several light fixtures.
With the lights switched on, the entire 200-square-meter empty hall was illuminated.
Because the gas had just been heated, the temperature inside the tent was quite warm, reaching over 20 degrees Celsius.
A Clone cracked open his Space Suit and took a breath. The air that filled his lungs was slightly pungent.
’A bit harsh. Must be the impurities. But it’s not a major issue.’
Looking at the vast, empty hall, Li Qingsong felt a deep sense of satisfaction.
He could almost picture rows of hydroponic racks, lush with green vegetables and golden fields of rice and wheat.
’This is the first base I’ve built on Ceres.
Next, it’s time to try growing vegetables and grains. Once I have a sufficient food supply, I’ll make more Clones.’