Chapter 48: Borrowing Knife to Kill
At this moment, the object was orbiting the Loshen Star at an extremely slow speed, on an orbit relatively far from the Loshen Star.
The spaceship, controlled by a Clone, quickly approached it and then retrieved it.
Inside the zero-gravity cabin, Tom, through the eyes of a Clone, carefully examined the wreckage and saw that there seemed to be remnants of some mechanical creations on it.
A chill slowly rose in Tom’s heart.
"This is absolutely not something I made! Nor is it a creation of Human Civilization!"
The appearance of non-self-made technological creations around the Loshen Star clearly indicated that another entity had reached this place.
So... when? Was it before or after he arrived at the Loshen Star? What did they come here for?
More broadly, when did they come to the Solar System? Are they related to the disappearance of humans?
Tom transported this piece of wreckage to the scientific research base on the surface of the Loshen Star at the fastest speed.
There was the most complete laboratory for the current stage, and perhaps he could analyze what kind of equipment this thing fell off of.
After an analysis, looking at the conclusion in front of him, Tom’s heart was heavier than ever before.
He had figured out what kind of wreckage this was.
It still had some mechanical remnants, and its technological level was high, so Tom could not replicate it, but its basic function could still be discerned.
Those were clearly the remnants of some light excitation devices!
And not visible light, but a special wavelength of light belonging to a certain infrared band. Moreover, its total energy was extremely high.
In other words, in that frequency band, the light it emitted was extremely strong.
Further analysis showed that this special wavelength of light corresponded to the spectrum of a certain organic substance. And...
Through years of breeding and researching those Monster Birds, Tom had already determined that the organic food most favored by the Monster Birds, when irradiated by sunlight, emitted light that happened to have this spectrum!
It all matched up, everything matched up.
Those Monster Birds did not just happen to come to the Loshen Star!
Those Monster Birds probably never intended to come to the Loshen Star. But when they were not far from the Loshen Star, a high-energy "infrared bomb" exploded around the Loshen Star, releasing intense light very similar to a certain organic substance.
Because his technological level was limited at that time, and he had no corresponding observation capabilities, he simply did not discover this point.
But the Monster Birds could see it!
So the Monster Birds thought that there was a large amount of organic matter on the Loshen Star that met their needs, so they changed direction and headed straight for the Loshen Star.
They were clearly deliberately lured by some hidden entity!
That unknown entity wanted to use the Monster Birds as a weapon to kill him!
Tom controlled a Clone to suddenly look up at the vast and boundless universe.
The sky was dotted with stars, silent and profound.
"Who is it? Who wants to harm me? Why do they want to harm me?"
Recalling the scene when he fought the Monster Birds, Tom felt a chill run through him.
Although the final result was good, the process was extremely perilous.
A slight misstep, and all of his foundations on the Loshen Star would have been destroyed in an instant.
If he hadn’t already possessed a certain level of industrial capability at that time, capable of rapidly producing cold weapons, and if he hadn’t stockpiled a large number of Clones in advance, delaying time at the cost of the Clones’ lives, ultimately developing hot weapon technology quickly, he might have already been completely devoured by this group of Monster Birds.
At the same time, Tom aimed all of his space exploration devices at the sky.
They were still relatively primitive, just some backward telescopes, radars, and the like, but they were all that Tom possessed.
After a scan, space was still empty, and nothing was found.
Tom’s heart was heavier than ever before.
"We must accelerate the pace of technological development again, and at the same time, we must fully develop military technology and space exploration technology.
Even if we are behind, we must at least have some self-preservation capability!"
Tom looked at the space laboratory that had just begun construction.
This space laboratory was the foundation for all his future development.
Too many technologies needed to be researched in a space environment, and too many experiments needed to be conducted in zero-gravity space.
Without it, his spaceship technology, engine technology, space exploration technology, and weapon and equipment technology suitable for space combat would not be able to develop rapidly.
After weighing it, Tom gritted his teeth.
"Within one year, build the space laboratory!"
For Tom, this was an incredibly ambitious goal.
Because in his plan, this space laboratory would be a massive, kilometer-scale laboratory, with a total mass even reaching 1.3 million tons, far surpassing the Deep Space Spaceship.
—This, of course, did not mean that Tom’s current technological level had surpassed Human Civilization, but rather that the environment of the Loshen Star was relatively special, allowing Tom to achieve round trips between space and the surface with extremely simple technology.
On Earth, human launch activities were constrained by Earth’s greater gravity and thick atmosphere, making the difficulty immeasurably higher.
But even if space launch missions were extremely simple here on the Loshen Star, building a million-ton experimental base was still extremely difficult.
Tom currently had only 200 Kaitian-1 spaceships in total, and a single spaceship’s single transport capacity was only two tons.
Assuming an eight-hour transport time—including fueling, maintenance, loading and unloading, return, etc., this was already the fastest—even if all 200 Kaitian-1 spaceships went all out, it would still take approximately three years.
Adding in the transportation of personnel and the transportation of various supplies, the total time would probably increase to more than ten years.
And this was only for transportation; it did not even include the time required for actual construction.
"I can’t worry about that much! Full speed ahead! It must be completed in one year!"
Under the threat of this unknown entity, all 700,000 Clones in the entire Loshen Star base group, whose consciousness could be directly linked to Tom, began to act.
In the collective dormitory building, the 2 million Clones kept as reserves were also ready to step in at any time.
The entire Loshen Star seemed to be shrouded in an atmosphere of solemnity and grimness.
Tom knew that all his development over the past hundred years had come to a comprehensive test at this moment.
Building this space laboratory itself involved almost every industrial category and every industrial capability he possessed.
"If that’s the case, then let’s do it!"