Chapter 664 - 646: Code 210

February 14, Yushu No.1 Base.

The Moon is a lonely planet, its color always a monotonous gray-white, never experiencing the changing seasons like Earth, nor does it witness the alternating colors of nature in all their variety.

Its interior has cooled almost completely, so there’s no active magma to drive the movement of the crust.

Gravel from a hundred million years ago will still be here in another hundred million years unless displaced by a meteorite’s collision.

But those occasional visitors from outer space are meaningless apart from adding a few insignificant scars, merely brief interludes in billions of years.

From the day primitive humans first saw the Moon until the numerous manned lunar missions, the Moon actually remained unchanged.

Even though there are tens of thousands of people bustling on Earth, the number of humans active on the Moon at any one time has never exceeded ten, and the total number of visits has not surpassed a hundred times.

Compared to its long history, humans have only briefly and fleetingly touched it a few times before they had to hurriedly depart, because every touch requires an unimaginable amount of resources.

The chosen elites sent there are surrounded by loneliness when they see the desolate gray-white desert; once their limited companions disappear from sight, only the hollow radio maintains a fragile connection.

If you were to ask all the people who had ever set foot on the Moon: if they ever felt a sense of belonging there, you would probably get indifferent shakes of the head or shiver-inducing laughter.

In this world of monotonous bright light and dark space even the moon rocks are thankful to be chosen to go to Earth and receive a level of attention from so many living things that they never had for hundreds of millions of years.

But if today aliens could stand about 3.5 kilometers south of the Kuom Impact Crater and look for a slightly raised hill, they might experience an illusion of being on Earth.

Now it has entered the deep lunar night; the sand and rocks that were heated to nearly two hundred degrees during the lunar day are rapidly cooling to below hundred degrees below zero, no longer emitting the vague glow of the lunar day, but completely merging with the stark blackness of the starry sky.

Without illumination or night vision equipment, the human eye cannot provide any effective guidance in the complete darkness.

But the observer now is different. It can see, in the midst of the boundless black night, a lighthouse emitting a bright cold light, its intense illumination not only brightening its support structure but also covering the ground for hundreds of meters around it.

The bright white light tells the observer that this is a lower lying plain, but what truly gives it meaning as a place of life is the rectangular white building not far away.

It is made up of two equally sized rectangular sections that, when joined together, reach a length of 28 meters, a height of 5 meters, and a width of 7 meters, providing 150 square meters of activity space and six independent cabins.

Between the two habitation cabins, there is a large square area on each side that emits a bright yellow light, its brightness dimming occasionally, as if something is blocking the light source inside.

And if one gets closer, one would discover that they are actually two 1 meter by 1 meter large-area portholes, integrally formed with no seams, with a square table directly opposite inside the portholes, piled with various sundry items that lack the rigor expected of space travel but are filled with the breath of everyday life.

The people moving inside cast shadows in the yellow light from above, projecting onto the desolate world outside the porthole.

If one ignores the incongruous ghastly pale moon soil around it, it looks more like a home in a remote mountainous area, where on moonless nights you can’t see your hand in front of your face, but the bright light from the incandescent lamp in the old house tells travelers:

Upon entering here, the quiet world will be filled with warmth. There will be a warm bed, a kettle hissing on the coal stove, freshly made home-cooked dishes and yellow wine on the table, and the simple walls separate the inside and outside into two different worlds.

Whether one comes from the East or the West, any visitor from Earth upon seeing the light of the beacon below will feel an anticipatory warmth, and this is undoubtedly the most precious anticipation on the Moon.

"The thawing’s done!"

Li Wei seemed to regain the warmth he had when facing his family on vacation on Earth, smilingly taking the opened aluminum foil container out of the microwave and placing it on the imitation wooden square table, his hands protected by insulated gloves.

Liu Ming, already unable to wait, put down the rolling pin, scooped up a sheet of rolled dumpling wrapper, and then shoveled meat filling into it from the disposable heating bowl that Li Wei brought over; his fingers agilely twirled around, and with a pinch, he had made a perfect dumpling placed on the table.

Li Wei, not to be outdone, equally adeptly picked up a dumpling wrapper and in no time placed another dumpling on the table.

On the side of the table near the window, Deng Lei and Fu Xiangjie watched their rapid movements and felt a somewhat helpless embarrassment.

Li and Liu are from the Northeast, where dumplings are a common food; they can both make and eat them.

But Deng and Fu are from the South, and their only dumpling-making experience was a New Year’s event in the military. Although not completely inept, their quality was absolutely lamentable.

As they hesitated to either watch or to "show off their skills," Liu Ming timely said:

"We still need to make at least three other dishes tonight, besides the two we’ve planned, let’s add some cabbage. You guys check what’s left and see what we can make, okay?"

"Aren’t dumplings the main dish?"

Fu Xiangjie still naively asked, but was quickly pulled away by Deng Lei, in good time to be spared from their laughter, then they began to check the remaining fresh supplies.