Die on Mars

Old Mao dragged Tang Yue in, closed the hatch, removed the Mingguang Armor's life support system, and pulled him out of the space suit.

Old Mao asked Tang Yue to sit down and rest against the wall, then squatted in front of him and pinched Tang Yue's toes hard, "Are your feet cramped?"

"Pinch your uncle, it hurts!"

Tang Yue retracted his feet, opened the old cat's claws with a slap, pinched his calf, and slowly massaged the muscles.

"It's okay." Old Mao spread his hands, "I thought you were a paraplegic and hemiplegic... If you were really paralyzed, I would throw you outside to fend for yourself."

"Can you talk about some humanitarianism?" Tang Yue rolled his eyes.

"It was humanitarian for me to throw you outside. You wouldn't survive three minutes outside Kunlun Station. You would die very quickly and there would be no pain." The old cat said, "Believe me, you would never think of collapsing inside Kunlun Station." The days of slowly dying and decaying, this kind of life is truly worse than death."

Tang Yue kneaded his knee joints. His knees suddenly hurt just now, and he stumbled and fell to the ground.

The old cat walked around him twice, leaned forward and lifted Tang Yue's arm, looking up and down carefully, its eyes turning around and sniffing.

"What are you doing?" Tang Yue felt terrified when he saw it.

"Lower your head." The old cat put a paw on the top of Tang Yue's head, pushed his head down, and then pulled up the collar of his clothes.

"Look up." The old cat dragged Tang Yue's chin, pushed his head up, came over and touched Tang Yue's neck, observing carefully, as if he was looking for a suitable place to put the knife before killing the pig.

"Holy shit, what the hell are you doing..."

Before Tang Yue finished speaking, his face was pinched by the old cat.

"Ah -" Old Mao gestured to Tang Yue to open his mouth, like a doctor checking his body.

Tang Yue said obediently "Ah——".

The old cat pinched one of Tang Yue's front teeth, stared at it for a long time, nodded, let go of Tang Yue, took a step back, sat down on the chair, and crossed his legs.

"There's something wrong with your body."

Tang Yue was confused, "What's the problem?"

"Judging from the current symptoms, your body is not supplementing enough calcium ions and vitamin C. I just checked and found that you have symptoms of subcutaneous bleeding, bruises on your back and arms, and swollen gums. This is a lack of vitamins. Typical manifestations of C, are your joints sore? This may also be caused by a lack of vitamin C." The old cat replied, "Calcium deficiency can lead to fatigue and cramps, and spasms of the limbs."

Old Mao looked serious, and Tang Yue raised his arm. Sure enough, he saw bruises and bleeding spots on the skin on the inside of his arm. He thought they were caused by bumps while wearing the Mingguang Armor.

Tang Yue does not have a background in medicine or physiology. He is not as sensitive to the details of nutritional supplements as old cats. In the current situation of lack of food and clothing, Tang Yue can only ensure that he has food every day and energy supplements to satisfy him. As for iron and zinc It is impossible to take into account such details as copper, selenium, eighteen trace elements and eight essential amino acids.

The former team doctor of the scientific expedition team was Maxwell Thorpe, commonly known as Lao Mai. He was an expert in aerospace medicine and physiology. He had always been responsible for the nutritional intake of the astronauts during the Mars landing mission. The Mars landing mission is a two-year long-term space flight, but the crew of the Orion spacecraft cannot receive regular supplies from the earth like the ISS, and it is difficult to get treatment if they get sick, so the physical health of the scientific expedition team members has always been a problem. .

Lao Mai formulated a very strict physical health plan for the team members, including what to eat every day, how much to eat, how to eat, and physical training methods, in order to prevent the loss of calcium in the body, osteoporosis and muscle atrophy.

"How many vitamin tablets are left?" asked the old cat.

"I gave half of it to Ophiopogon japonicus, and I almost ate the rest." Tang Yue replied.

The lack of vitamins was obviously a food problem. Tang Yue recalled his diet in the past month. In the first two months, his food was relatively rich, but as the large pieces of rehydrated food and canned food gradually ran out, Tang Yue I had to start eating a lot of energy bars and compressed cookies.

The vitamin content in energy bars and compressed biscuits is obviously not as good as that of canned vegetables and fruits.

But he didn't expect the consequences to become apparent so quickly.

"Severe lack of vitamin C can lead to scurvy." Old Cat said seriously, "The radiation dose on Mars is too high. Because there is insufficient atmosphere and magnetic field protection, it is full of high-energy charged particles from space and the sun. and secondary particles produced by the atmosphere and soil, mainly neutrons and gamma rays - which do not exist on Earth."

"In a high-irradiation environment, vitamin C and other antioxidants in the human body will be consumed rapidly, much faster than on Earth." The old cat continued, "If you eat compressed biscuits for three months on Earth, your symptoms will It won’t be as serious as it is now. I think if you continue to develop according to this trend, you will not be far from scurvy.”

Of course Tang Yue knew what scurvy was. Sailors on voyages in the seventeenth century would suffer from scurvy due to lack of supplements of vegetables and fruits. This disease can cause joint pain, subcutaneous bleeding, and even death in severe cases. But in modern society, scurvy caused by lack of vitamin C has disappeared, because this disease can be cured by eating more oranges.

But on Mars, where birds don't poop... it's as hard to find an orange as it is to find an alien spacecraft.

In a sense, the situation of the crew on the Orion spacecraft is the same as that of the voyage crews in the Age of Discovery, except that the sailboat has become a spaceship, and the ocean has become space, but what remains unchanged is the difficulty of material supply. Whether it was the 16th century hundreds of years ago or the mid-21st century with highly developed technology, the shelf life of tomatoes and oranges would not exceed two months.

The scurvy, which had long been forgotten in the piles of historical relics, actually haunted Tang Yue, who was 60 million kilometers away.

There are so many problems with people. Tang Yue thought he would starve to death before.

Now that I think about it, this idea is completely redundant.

Before starving to death, he might die from scurvy, kidney failure, heart rate disorders, or even some inexplicable allergies.

Tang Yue took out a white medicine bottle from the drawer and placed it on the table.

"This is the last bottle of multivitamins."

The old cat unscrewed the bottle cap and took a look.

"How long will you take these pills for?"

"It won't last long, no more than a month at most." Tang Yue replied, "If you eat more canned food and less biscuits in the next period of time, then the time can be longer...but there are not many canned food left. If you eat any more, you’re done.”

The old cat was a little worried.

After a month, Tang Yue has eaten all the vitamin tablets and canned fruits, and his vitamin intake will be greatly reduced, followed by various physical problems.

These minor problems that are completely negligible on Earth will be magnified hundreds or thousands of times in the harsh environment of Mars, turning into insurmountable problems that may even endanger Tang Yue's life.

The old cat was wandering around the hall of Kunlun Station. It had to find a way to replenish the nutrients that Tang Yue lacked in a timely manner.

“What can I eat to supplement vitamin C?”

"tangerine."

The old cat is talking about oranges, but where can it find oranges on Mars? They only had so many supplies, and the old cat couldn't conjure oranges out of thin air.

"What about oranges?"

"tomato."

The old cat sat down and frowned, "Tomato...tomato...where are the tomatoes in this damn place?"

"Mr. Cat? Tang Yue?" Maidong connected to the channel at this time, "What are you talking about? I just heard Tomato?"

"We are looking for tomatoes," the old cat answered.

"Tomato?" The girl held a tomato in her hand, shook it in front of the camera, "There are tomatoes here, look at it."

"We are looking for tomatoes at Kunlun Station." Old Mao said, "Tang Yue now lacks vitamin supplements. He must eat more oranges and tomatoes."

"There are no tomatoes at Kunlun Station, you can plant them." Ophiopogon japonicus suggested.

Both Lao Mao and Tang Yue were startled.

"Grow?" Tang Yue asked, "Where can I grow tomatoes..."

"It doesn't matter if you don't know." The girl geared up and said confidently, "I'll teach you! I'll teach you and I'll know how to do it!"