My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 203

ARES 3 solar day 202

"Here. Dig here."

Mark shrugged, raised the weather-beaten sampling shovel in his hand, and dug into the ground under Cherry Berry's hooves about three feet away from a cherry sapling.

All efforts to save the crops had come to an end, so Mark and Berry spent another hour tending to the saplings that had managed to escape except for a few leaves that were swept away when the cave pressure was released. Despite their best efforts, nearly three-quarters of the transplanted crops salvaged from the sinkhole are dying. At the same time, among other alfalfa crops in the same area, some plants that were not affected by the subsidence also showed signs of decline. Even with Berry's wholehearted encouragement, the leaves were still significantly yellowing and showing signs of withering. Even some potatoes began to become diseased, but at least the situation began to improve after being transplanted to a location away from the unknown thick black mud.

There is no immediate solution to these problems caused by harmful bacteria. Starlight Glimmer had stated before that there was no way—no spell at all—that she could tell the difference between good and bad bacteria. She couldn't separate them cleanly from the soil like she had done with perchlorates. Yes, she does theoretically have the ability to kill these bacteria, but at the same time it will also kill all living things in the soil - whether they are good bacteria, bad bacteria, plants, etc., they will all be wiped out.

From a practical point of view, she completely refused to do this, because most of the spells that can achieve this effect belong to the darkest realm of black magic - the cost of casting spells at low cost is to use them more often, attracting users. The temptation to cast again will be stronger. It is very incredible that although Starlight once had a life experience of being obsessed with evil, she was able to strictly avoid all dark curses during her (ahem) "dark history that has long been over", and of course she is even less able to do so now. You may be asking for trouble. So to put it simply, it doesn't work. Using magic to directly solve the problem is out of the question this time.

But other than that, there are not many feasible solutions. According to Mark, the best solution on Earth would be to switch from growing crops to something adapted to anaerobic type (unclear) soil. If there is no such condition, then the only solution is to repeatedly drain the soil and ensure that it is thoroughly breathable - that is, keep turning the soil, the deeper the better. Unfortunately, there is essentially no way to maintain normal agricultural production while doing this soil work. And although Cherry Berry's natural earth pony magic has helped the current situation to a certain extent, her special talent does not lie in crop cultivation after all, so the effect can only be said to be better than nothing.

Apart from the ongoing trouble caused by the thick black mud, other problems facing the cave appear to be stabilizing. The subsidence activity on the ground seems to have finally been silenced. At the same time, the shaft previously dug at the back of the cave to the depth of the large crystals at the bottom of the cave and the permafrost that has not yet completely thawed has recently stopped seeping water.

Of course, another part of the reason for these changes is that the ambient temperature inside the cave continues to drop. Just two days ago, Mark deliberately placed a half-full water cup in the middle of a row of saplings as a test to observe the temperature changes in the cave at night. This morning, it turned out that a thin layer of ice had formed on the water in the cup. . It was also helpless. The heat generated by R-T-G and the huge cave volume were really a drop in the bucket. The eternal extreme cold of the surrounding rocky planet finally prevailed.

In desperation, they asked the horse country for help and took the last resort and began to heat the air delivered by the life support system. In the long term, this approach is actually harmful to crop growth, because simply hot air will cause the plants to lose water too quickly and will also put pressure on them to survive. However, Mark's response to this was that he had to survive the short term before he had the opportunity to consider the long-term pros and cons. In view of this, ESA also decided to contribute its own share.

However, the problem is that all the air intake terminal facilities of the life support system of the Malaysia-Star Joint Space Exploration Project are located in the same building, and the air delivered is directly the ambient temperature. In the past few months, this was actually not a big problem, because it was spring and summer at that time; but now autumn is already halfway through, and the winter solstice and the winter solstice are soon approaching, and the severe cold, frost and snow will soon come. It will spread throughout the Maltimore area as in previous years.

The most the Malaysian side can do is place heaters around the air inlet of the Amicitas life support system and pray for a miracle to happen. Another idea—moving the air inlet of the life support system to a location convenient for heating the air to the required temperature—requires them to build a facility that meets the above requirements and completely shut down the entire life support system. System services can only be restored after the life support system terminal on the Malaysian side is physically moved to a new location. Everyone thinks this method is very inappropriate.

As luck would have it, the seasons on Mars are moving in the exact opposite direction at the moment. It's (theoretically) mid-spring in the plains of Asidaria, and the days are longer than the nights. The light and heat received by the cave are also increasing day by day; soon the Martian summer will come, and the temperature will rise from the minus thirty to minus one hundred degrees range they experienced when they first crashed to the highest temperature for several days occasionally. It will break through zero degrees. But even so, they are still unable to fight back when facing an entire huge frozen planet here.

These silent plants feel the same way.

"Mark," Berry said as she watched Mark digging up the rotten roots she had felt before, "these plants are going to sleep."

Mark stopped digging in his hands. "Asleep?" he asked, "How could that happen?"

Berry stretched out a hoof to caress the sapling, "This tree thinks winter is coming (winter is coming)."

"Great," Mark muttered, "it seems the cherry tree belongs to the Stark family."

Berry often couldn't tell whether Mark's confusing speech was because she couldn't understand it because of her broken English or if he was making another awkward joke. She repeated, with a serious look on her face, "This tree is going to sleep soon. The leaves will turn brown. Run by them and let them fall."

These words made Mark even more confused. "What are you talking about?" He looked confused, "Let the leaves fall? The leaves will fall by themselves in autumn. That's why we say 'a fallen leaf knows the world's autumn' (fall)."

"Not in Ponyland," Berry replied, "We have leaf runs. Earth ponies run through the trees, through the forest, and make all the leaves fall off in the same day. This keeps the trees healthy through the winter."

"Got it." Mark said and continued digging. After throwing out a few shovels of dirt, he continued, "As you know, we need at least one more good alfalfa harvest to survive until Sol 551. But of course, the more, the better."

"Correct."

"You also understand that our next harvest will definitely not look good." He waved another shovelful of soil, "In fact, we may have to make most of the harvest into cuttings for transplanting. The plants we lost no longer have seeds. I can add that it goes without saying how bad it is to start new seeds in this situation.”

"I know all this." At least Berry knew that she could understand what Mark said.

"That means we don't have time to spend the winter with these plants now." Mark dug up the roots of the plants, scraped off a little bit of the black mud that seeped out of the soil to eat away at the saplings, and used the tip of the shovel to cleanly cut off the affected parts of the plant roots. parts. "We had to rebury the heating lines."

"Yes." Berry agreed.

"Let the hot water flow freely again."

"Yes."

"The anaerobic bacteria - those damn black things here - will be so happy." Mark finished.

"I know," CherryBerry said, "but it smells a lot like our new compost. They won't like that, right?"

Mark spreads the slime-contaminated soil on the surface to dry, which kills harmful bacteria. He leaned on his shovel thoughtfully, and finally said: "We are now in a cesspit and the shit is pouring on our heads."

There was no response from Berry. Firstly, she had avoided mentioning it in her speech ever since Starlight had explained to them that it was equivalent to one of the crudest and most primitive pony words; Having to deal with... horse manure in every sense of the word... she still wanted to actively reduce the likelihood of that happening for the rest of her life.

The difficulty is to ensure that the rest of her life is not shortened at the same time.

"So, given our current situation," Mark said, shoveling the surrounding healthy and dry soil back into the hole created by cutting off the roots, "why do we still have to spend time taking care of these things that we won't see the results of at all that day?" Where are the saplings?”

Cherry Berry didn't answer. She was just speechless. Her vision also began to become erratic, and Mark suddenly became blurry in her eyes.

"Oh," Mark said upon seeing this, "Sorry, I forgot." He stepped forward and stretched out a hand to touch her shoulder, "Let's continue working. Where is the next tree that needs help?"

After the shovel went down, Mark got Cherry Berry back on track. She quietly brushed away the tears flashing from the corners of her eyes and walked to the next sapling to continue checking. This one also feels a little sleepy, but the roots haven't suffered much corrosion.

Mark and Cherry Berry never mentioned that emotional moment again.