'SEE YOU MORNING' 101 San Jacinto Sets Sail
It was already dark outside, and snow was falling. Lübeck thought back to when he was an engineer. He and several others had been called out by the project manager. Being young and an intern, he had no better choice.
The group braved the northwest wind, dressed in thin clothes and shoes, stepping through the slushy mud of rain and snow on the ground. They arrived at a semi-open space where male and female classmates gathered in the corridors. The dim yellow courtyard lights illuminated only a small area. Snowflakes fell outside the eaves, sometimes landing on eyelashes, and the whole world became a swirling flicker of dim yellow halos, breaking into brilliant colors of blue, green, orange and yellow, dancing between the pitch-black sky and the black crystal gilded copper ground.
Lübeck disliked the project manager’s boasting and the empty formalism of the others, so he did not walk with the crowd. He chose a more pragmatic colleague and went to the top floor of the building. But for some reason, he climbed onto the boom of the crane on the top floor, and at that moment he was hanging outside the high-rise roof.
Lübeck thought to himself, in such a high cold wind, and dressed so thinly, I’ll freeze stiff in no time. I have to get down quickly. He looked down. Going down directly would be fast, but it would take him straight to the bottom. Although this situation felt like a dream, he couldn’t do that.
So Lübeck wrapped one arm around the cold metal boom truss, and used his other hand, which was almost stiff with cold, to operate the boom to rotate back above the roof. He climbed down the crane to the roof, then went down floor by floor to the ground.
After this experience, Lübeck decided to leave here. He had not walked far through the slush when the road ended. He had to climb over a wall and came to the other side of the brick wall, which seemed to be a seaside embankment under an overpass. Black waves roared towards the shore, and the platform he was standing on was perfect for watching the tide.
Turning his head, he saw an eight or nine-year-old little girl also standing on this concrete platform, holding a water gun in her hand, but she accidentally dropped it into the sea. Lübeck thought, there’s nothing to be done about that now. Looking at the trend of the waves, it seemed a bit dangerous. He was just about to tell the little girl to leave with him when he suddenly realized she was his daughter. Without saying a word, he took her hand and immediately walked inland along the road.
Leaving the seaside area, they were temporarily safe. When Lübeck looked back again, strangely enough, the girl had become three or four years old and said she needed to pee.
Lübeck looked around. There were no restrooms. He asked her if she could hold on a little longer, but she said no. So he had to lead her to the grass by the roadside.
But as soon as she squatted down, her bottom touched the dirt on the ground and got all dirty. Her little body seemed very weak and powerless. Lübeck had to squat down, pick her up, spread her legs and help her pee.
When Lübeck suddenly opened his eyes, the sky was dimly bright. What had just happened was indeed a dream. Looking beside him, it was Brittany who was sleeping, not the little girl, nor his daughter. Lübeck felt very strange, wondering why he had had such a dream.
After several months of adjustment between people, and between people and equipment, the day of departure was approaching. This was not the first time Lübeck had served as captain of an orbital aerospace carrier, but this time it was not Earth orbit. This time he no longer had to take regular leave to go to the ground to visit his Ruth. This time he had a companion who could follow him, although he did not know how far they could go together.
The fiery, weak morning sunlight of Mars illuminated the shipyard. These days, the ship’s authorized personnel were boarding the San Jacinto in batches through the airlock passages. Some relatives and friends were saying their goodbyes one by one at the passage entrances. At the same time, passages connecting to the hull on the lower decks were being used to load supplies. Only the natural light in the lower passages was not very sufficient, giving a somewhat gloomy and decadent feeling.
The ship’s nuclear reactor had been operating at low power since the test run was completed, providing energy for the ship’s facilities and the crew’s daily lives. The departure preparations on the ship were almost complete, waiting only for the final personnel and supplies to arrive. Lübeck had some free time, and after lunch he took Brittany for a walk in the self-sustaining biosphere on the lower deck. Apart from ornamental plants, everything grown and raised here was crops and livestock for the crew. However, limited by space utilization, people could only walk on the transparent suspended walkways, looking down at the fields and crops. But Brittany’s favorite was the landscape bamboo forest at the entrance of the biosphere. For some reason, whenever the bamboo poles swayed and the bamboo leaves rustled in the forest, the way her body twisted as she paced, the rhythm of her waist, hips, shoulders and elbows, and the charm of her shifting eyes, it was as if she had absorbed the spiritual energy of the entire bamboo forest. But Lübeck knew the purpose of these bamboos. In case of necessity, they were excellent supports for damage control. It seemed that Lübeck was more pessimistic, or perhaps it was the pragmatism peculiar to men.
“We’re setting sail tonight, sailing into the depths of the universe for the first time. How do you feel?” Lübeck asked casually as they walked, holding Brittany’s hand.
“With you here, what do I have to fear?” Brittany said, looking at Lübeck, with some uncontrollable excitement in her eyes.
“Haha, I’m not omnipotent. Anything can happen in the universe,” Lübeck said casually. He seemed eager to hear Brittany’s expression of unwavering loyalty to follow him, no matter what difficulties and dangers lay ahead. She was younger than him, like a little sister, not like Ruth had been, the woman who had taken care of him like an older sister. Yet Lübeck still fantasized that he could see some shadow of Ruth in Brittany.
But she did not think too much about it. It seemed that Lübeck should not have had such expectations of this young girl. Brittany had only just begun her own life journey. She had no shared past with Lübeck, nor was she mature enough to imagine a future for him. She was still just a traveler of fate, and she answered casually.
“We can’t be that unlucky, can we?” she said, looking at Lübeck with a smile.
On the contrary, her consistent simplicity and straightforwardness, and the youthful vitality she exuded, infected Lübeck emotionally quite a bit, preventing him from feeling so old and decrepit.
“Yeah,” Lübeck said, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her close to his body.
Looking at Brittany beside him, although she did not have the beautiful clothes that a young woman in her prime should have, the military uniform still showed off her youthful figure very well.
When they returned to the bridge again in the darkness of night, looking out at the brightly lit shipyard, Lübeck gave the order to set sail.
The San Jacinto carried 12 interceptor fighters on each of its port and starboard sides, which could be launched and recovered directly from the sides. However, the San Jacinto still retained a full-length flight deck to maintain some ability to recover aircraft in case of accidents.
As the load on the ship’s anti-gravity engines increased, the air and buildings around the entire shipyard were drawn into the low humming of this energy.
The 12 plasma engines she carried also increased their load, and the blue-to-white flames from their nozzles gradually lengthened, hissing as they struck the shipyard ground and raised a pale pink halo.
In the darkness and the light, the San Jacinto, propelled by its plasma engines, gradually rose, left the shipyard, and began her maiden voyage.