The Reviver-class Clone-Human Starship, Ship No. 1 · the bridge.
A-Yun, as the highest officer in charge of the Reviver-class Clone-Human Starship, stepped down from the floating lift at this moment, and was walking quickly along the corridor.
Opposite was a research room.
A-Yun stood before the research room's great door, and a shaft of light swept over her body.
"Identity confirmed: highest officer in charge of the Reviver Program. Access granted."
When the mechanical voice had fallen, the great door opened slowly.
"Elder Shen, what has gone wrong?" A-Yun came in, and saw several researchers in white gowns gathered about an instrument.
A woman researcher with hair gone gray raised her head and looked at A-Yun. "We have found a small trouble."
A-Yun walked to the woman researcher's side, and within her eyes was respect.
For this old woman, Elder Shen, is the Starlight Empire's foremost authority in the sciences of life.
After Zhao Chen came by this class of interstellar warship, the Reviver-class Clone-Human Starship, he did not merely use it; he had a research department prepared expressly besides, to study this class's dark technology.
And beyond this: of every class of interstellar warship whose technology Zhao Chen obtains, saving the first period of secrecy, a research group is afterward set expressly to see through to the core of that technology, and truly master it,
and not merely to hold the standing of a maker and a user.
Therefore A-Yun, highest officer here though she is, is still exceedingly respectful in the face of this old scientist.
At this moment she saw upon a holographic electronic display screen several level lines.
At the first glance no trouble could be told from them.
"This is our detection of the signals of life within the universe, the same thing, in effect, as a radar. These lines are certain characteristic indices of the life signal; in the ordinary way there will be fluctuation, but the fluctuation shows itself in waves, and that is normal. For instance, if at some moment a war upon the great scale breaks out in some region, it will make these life signals rise! And the contrary case brings them down," Elder Shen explained.
A-Yun nodded.
Elder Shen then pointed at several of the characteristic indices, and magnified them without cease; and after some several magnifications.
A-Yun saw a phenomenon: there had appeared a small cliff-like fall.
"Such a sudden cliff-like fall has never occurred before. Yet within these last few days we have detected several of them, and the degree of the cliff-like fall has risen several times over besides! Thereafter we looked over the earlier data. And we made a startling discovery. Within the past three years, the data we recorded do in fact all show this phenomenon of a cliff-like fall, but all of them very slight. Without close observation one would very likely never have marked it at all. And the frequency of its appearing is not high either, perhaps once in a year or half-year. Which led the researchers to take it by mistake for a fault in the instruments, or the effect of a stellar storm, and such," Elder Shen said gravely.
"Then… what does this show?" A-Yun is in this matter only an administrator, and has none but a shallow understanding of such knowledge.
Nor did Elder Shen speak in terms too abstruse; she said outright, "The meaning of it, I will put it by a figure. It is as though I held a cup of water, and poured it out. The speed at which the water flows out may be fast or may be slow, but in the end it will show a tendency. But in a case like this, suddenly a part of the water you pour out has vanished into the empty air!"
"Vanished into the empty air?" A-Yun was left staring.
For the moment she did not take the meaning of it.
Elder Shen said, her gaze deep, "Research upon life has in fact existed since the age of the planets. Why does intelligent life have intelligence, and what is consciousness? How is it produced? And after death, where does it go? Research thereafter found that after an intelligent life dies, a current of energy wells out from the body, and then vanishes away into the outer world. As to where it goes, nobody knows. But by a foundation of science: energy is neither produced out of the empty air nor lost into it; it is only changed from one form into another, or moved from one body to another, and the total quantity of energy is preserved unaltered! And the energy of life is the same; only that we have all along been unable to know where the energy of life goes in the end. Whether, as in the legends, it is reborn upon the wheel; or whether it returns and becomes some minute substance within the universe. But however it be, this case of vanishing into the empty air should not occur! Unless…"
"Unless what?" A-Yun asked at once.
Elder Shen said in earnest, "Unless somebody, as we do, has a use for this energy of life!"
"And speaking of it, in this stretch of time, when we recover the life signals of the Owl Dragon soldiers, there has been a lag. A task that could once be completed within an hour may now want more time than that." Another researcher spoke out a trouble of her own at this point.
A-Yun does not know what in the end lies behind these uncanny cases.
But she knows this: where a thing falls out strangely, there is assuredly a demon in it.
"Elder Shen, do you go on observing this case; and if anything arises, tell me at once. I will report this to the Commander now!" A-Yun said gravely.
…………
At the same time, the offensive of the Owl Dragon Legion, the Angel Race legions and the Machine Race legions went forward exceedingly well.
The Dragon Emperor · the bridge.
"The five industrial bases within the Demon Race's territory have all of them been destroyed or taken by us! One day at the shortest, and at the longest no more than five days. We divided Zhao Waner's Owl Dragon Interstellar Stealth-Bomber Special Fleet into five, and set them upon the five battlefields. Then we had the Owl Dragon Fifteenth Legion use the Lucent-class Interstellar Jump Ships to support them, choosing how many legion fleets to send up as reinforcement by the case upon each field. And in the end we took these five industrial bases without mishap!" Lilith said to Zhao Chen in her excitement.
"And how stand the five industrial bases for soundness?" Zhao Chen inquired.
That star system where the Mechanical Divine Church had been, Zhao Chen had liked those industrial installations well enough at the time; only it was a pity that the Demon Race then came up in support in great force.
Having no help for it, Zhao Chen could only destroy every industrial installation within that star system of the Mechanical Divine Church's.
Holding to the attitude that what he could not have, he would not leave to another either.
And now there are five industrial bases here; and if they can be turned to his own use, that will add greatly to Owl Dragon's depth of industry.
"Of these five industrial bases, two are grievously damaged, and not worth repairing. The remaining three took some damage in the fighting, to a degree of some 70 percent, 50 percent and 37 percent," Lilith said. She has naturally been attending to this too, and reported these figures immediately.
Zhao Chen was well content: to have preserved three is no bad thing, and that two of them are still worth repairing may be counted a fair gain besides.[1]