Chapter 4: The Ghost of History

Qian Xuesen has been back in China for five years; McCarthy must have been gone for a year or two already.

If I had a choice, I truly wouldn’t want to get tangled in NASA’s vortex right now.

Once I return to 2020, I’ll carefully gather detailed data from 1960, leverage the information gap to maximize my advantage—even if I eventually join NASA to work on something fascinating like manned lunar landing—I must first secure my identity, background, and appearance, ensuring every suspicious detail is perfectly handled before even attempting to join NASA.

But now, I can only take it one step at a time,” Lin Ran thought as he walked.

The “door” has a cooldown period; it cannot open at will.

Until the next opening—meaning returning to Earth in 2020—there are seventy-six hours left, a little over three days.

According to the information the door gave him, the initial cooldown is seventy-two hours, and the more you bring with you, the longer the cooldown becomes. Here, “things” refer only to mass. Even if his own weight increases in the future, the cooldown time will increase accordingly.

Including clothes, shoes, phone, and other items, the extra time added is minimal—only four hours—well within an acceptable range.

But if he tried to bring a 2020 car through the garage door into the 1960s, the cooldown would be at least a year.

If he only needed to survive three days in New York, Lin Ran felt his current abilities posed no problem.

But his current crisis isn’t merely about survival—it’s a far more serious threat of identity exposure.

He was carrying an iPhone XS released by Apple in 2018.

This is the peak of the Cold War between America and Soviet Russia; if the iPhone XS were exposed, this object so obviously out of place—whether suspected to be alien-made or from the future—would plunge him into endless torment in 1960.

Don’t say it’s impossible. The legend of Area 51 has long existed. Right now, America and Soviet Russia are at the height of their imagination, with wild ideas pouring out endlessly; in their desperation to win, they’ve even launched major research programs into superpowers.

If the iPhone were exposed and suspected to be from the future, that would be perfectly normal.

The North Face down jacket he wore stood out absurdly in 1960s Times Square—its fabric, design, and details were utterly alien to the era’s fashion.

Merely following Haines, Lin Ran could see every passerby’s gaze betraying curiosity and scrutiny.

The North Face jacket’s waterproof, windproof fabric was smooth and glossy—a material completely nonexistent in the 1960s. People then wore coats made of wool, cotton, or coarse tweed, heavy and rough in texture. His jacket’s fabric might reflect an odd sheen under sunlight, easily inviting unwanted attention.

Lin Ran sighed inwardly: thank goodness he disliked flashy colors like bright yellow or red, and didn’t pick the blue mountain design—he chose dark blue camouflage, a shade that didn’t look too strange amid the winter crowd’s usual black, gray, and brown coats.

So survival is secondary; the top priority is finding a place to hide for three days without letting his iPhone be exposed.

Fear not the ten thousand possibilities—fear the one in a million.

Controlled, limited contact with Haines carries manageable risk; there’s still plenty of room to recover in the future.

But if the iPhone were ever leaked, no amount of damage control could reverse the dire consequences.

Forget joining NASA—even avoiding being locked away until the end of time would be a miracle.

So a place that fully recognizes the value of his mind is the ideal refuge.

Compared to the abnormality of his intellect, the down jacket is clearly less conspicuous.

His conversation with Haines confirmed Lin Ran’s suspicion: the man’s entire focus was on Newton’s gravitational perturbation correction formula—he hadn’t noticed a single thing about Lin Ran’s attire.

So what if he’s wearing something that looks vaguely like a spacesuit? Big deal.

As a top graduate of aerospace engineering, forced by survival pressure to switch careers, what could be more thrilling than personally joining the 1960s space race?

This is also a perfect entry point—might as well seize the moment.

After all these considerations, Lin Ran chose to complete Newton’s gravitational perturbation correction formula on the glass of a phone booth, delivering a small but potent shock of the future to this era.

In the private dining room Haines had carefully selected, Lin Ran volunteered: “Randolph Lin.”

Lin Ran said nothing else; the situation was still unclear, and he hadn’t yet decided what identity to fabricate for himself.

Sitting across from him, Haines didn’t care about this Chinese man’s origins—he only cared how he had derived Newton’s gravitational perturbation correction formula.

“Randolph, you know what I wrote on the glass just now, right?”

Lin Ran leaned back against the brown leather sofa, expression utterly matter-of-fact: “When a satellite passes over the equator, the Earth’s excess mass generates stronger gravity than at the poles. This extra gravitational pull causes orbital oscillations. If unresolved, the satellite’s lifespan will be severely limited.”

Indeed, the man had instantly recognized the formula as Newton’s gravitational perturbation correction—and even knew its purpose.

That wasn’t something an ordinary person could do.

As for casually completing the fourth and fifth terms of the formula, in his understanding, no one on Earth could possibly do it.

That’s why, upon seeing the formula, he’d reacted as if he’d seen a ghost—after careful thought.

Thinking he’d seen a ghost wasn’t wrong; in a certain sense, Lin Ran truly was a ghost of history.

“Of course, right now, whether it’s you or the Soviets, everyone’s focus is still on achieving function, not fine control.

So while it does affect lifespan, the equatorial bulge—the second term—causes a 3-degree deviation per orbit from the intended path. Even with limited lifespan, the satellite could still remain aloft for ten years or more. That’s not fatal.”

When Haines heard “3 degrees,” it felt like lightning struck his brain; his carotid artery throbbed. The Chinese man had precisely replicated the angular deviation that Houston’s lab had spent 237 hours calculating.

McCarthy’s influence was fading; a tiny number of Chinese engineers had begun returning to NASA positions.

But as far as he knew, not a single Chinese person worked at any astronomical observatory in America.

Moreover, America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, had only launched two years ago; last year, they’d only just precisely calculated the non-spherical perturbations it experienced.

They had derived the J2 term in Newton’s gravitational perturbation correction formula from data—after collecting data, then working backward.

That is, the second term.

This man had casually stated their two years of accumulated results.

“Who are you?” Haines couldn’t hold back any longer.