Chapter 5: Capture

Words : 1588 Updated : Sep 12th, 2025

After spending more than half a month as a cosmic scavenger, Xiao Yu came to a realization: comets are nothing but paper tigers. Judging by sheer volume, comets near stars could be considered some of the largest celestial bodies in the universe. Their tails can stretch over 100 million kilometers, resembling massive cosmic brooms majestically sweeping through space. But up close, one can see how fragile they truly are. After navigating through a comet’s tail for over half a month, Xiao Yu managed to collect less than five kilograms of water. This paltry efficiency underscored the extreme scarcity of material in the comet’s tail. The frustration was unbearable. If Xiao Yu still had hair, he would likely have pulled it out in handfuls by now. Currently, Xiao Yu was hovering approximately 30,000 kilometers above or below the ecliptic plane. In the vastness of interstellar space, the concepts of “above” and “below” are arbitrary. The ecliptic plane is an imaginary plane where the majority of planetary orbits in a star system reside. Essentially, it represents the common orbital plane of the planets. Now, Xiao Yu had come quite close to Earth’s original orbit. Using his optical telescope, he could see countless dark, small meteoroids above him, radiating an eerie, unsettling glow. Xiao Yu had already adjusted his trajectory, planning to follow Earth’s debris field as it orbited the Sun for a while. After all, collecting materials was his priority, even if the pace was agonizingly slow. The lens of the optical telescope swept across the sky when an unremarkable figure entered Xiao Yu’s view. It was an irregularly shaped meteoroid, approximately 30 meters long, 7 to 8 meters wide, and 5 to 6 meters high. Reflected light from nearby celestial bodies illuminated its surface, and some of this light was captured by Xiao Yu’s sensors. His heart stirred. Xiao Yu immediately conducted a simple analysis of the meteoroid. The results filled him with excitement. The analysis revealed that this meteoroid was composed of approximately 30% water, 69% iron, and trace amounts of nitrogen, silicon, hydrogen, oxygen, potassium, and other elements. Among these trace elements, hydrogen and oxygen were the most abundant. “Is this... a gift from heaven?” Xiao Yu’s spirits soared instantly. The meteoroid had a volume of over 1,000 cubic meters and a mass exceeding 3,000 tons! Even if hydrogen and oxygen each accounted for only 0.1% of its mass, their combined weight would still amount to over six tons! Such a supply of fuel could accomplish many things. More importantly, it contained over 900 tons of water! This water could be ionized into hydrogen and oxygen using solar energy once he neared the Sun, yielding another massive influx of resources. Additionally, with over 2,000 tons of iron, Xiao Yu could carry out substantial repairs on his spacecraft. “Capture it! I must capture it!” Xiao Yu decided instantly. Just then, a nearby celestial body moved aside, allowing sunlight to strike the meteoroid directly. Under the Sun’s heat, the solid water and frozen hydrogen-oxygen compounds on the meteoroid’s surface began to sublimate rapidly. Its porous surface erupted with jets of gaseous material, shrouding its core in a dense white mist and forming a long tail that trailed behind it. Xiao Yu panicked. “This is all precious material! I can’t let it just evaporate into space like this!” He quickly maneuvered the spacecraft to position itself between the meteoroid and the Sun, using his solar panels to absorb the Sun’s heat. Deprived of sunlight, the meteoroid rapidly cooled in the near-absolute-zero temperatures of interstellar space, and the long white tail dissipated visibly. Relieved, Xiao Yu began calculating how to bring this heavenly gift into his possession. When a delicious cake is placed in front of you, the motivation to prepare knives and forks is boundless. Xiao Yu stopped worrying about energy consumption and began piloting his robot to scavenge the storage compartments for materials. He even dismantled some less critical equipment, intending to repurpose the components. The manufacturing bay was one of the most well-protected areas of Xiao Yu’s spacecraft, second only to the main control room. Here, he had stored the most fundamental and vital machinery to ensure adequate manufacturing capabilities once raw materials were acquired. Fortunately, the manufacturing bay had suffered only minor damage during the previous celestial collision. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the robot, a mechanical claw attached to a 300-meter-long high-strength cable was quickly fabricated. Xiao Yu was now only a few kilometers away from the meteoroid. In astronomical terms, this was an incredibly close distance, but for Xiao Yu’s capture mechanism, it was still a bit far. With no other choice, Xiao Yu carefully maneuvered his spacecraft, reducing the engine power to its lowest setting and inching closer to the meteoroid, meter by meter. This approach was risky. A few kilometers was the minimum safe distance Xiao Yu needed to evade incoming dangers. If another meteoroid were to collide with the target at this range and send it hurtling toward Xiao Yu, there would be no time to dodge, and the spacecraft would be destroyed. “Fortune favors the bold! Damn it, let’s pull this off. After this, I’ll be living the high life!” Xiao Yu cursed under his breath but moved with extreme caution. Gradually, the distance shrank: two kilometers... one kilometer... five hundred meters... Just as victory seemed within reach, an unassuming dark figure suddenly entered Xiao Yu’s line of sight. His heart skipped a beat as he watched it collide with the target meteoroid at a relative speed of several hundred meters per second. The impact caused a burst of sparks, and the meteoroid began tumbling violently. Due to the collision-generated heat, solid water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, oxygen, and other compounds on its surface started sublimating rapidly, releasing thick clouds of vapor. Worse yet, the meteoroid’s trajectory was altered by the collision and began drifting in a different direction, quickly disappearing from view. Frustrated and furious, Xiao Yu cursed the offending meteoroid a thousand times. Then, regaining his composure, he refocused and began scanning the skies with his telescope, searching for his target. Xiao Yu knew that due to the recoil from the vaporization and its original inertia, the meteoroid couldn’t have gone far. Sure enough, after two hours of searching, he found it about 600 kilometers away, toward the ecliptic plane. Not daring to increase his speed too quickly, Xiao Yu carefully maintained a relative velocity of 50 meters per second—roughly 180 kilometers per hour—as he approached the meteoroid. On Earth, 180 kilometers per hour would be a breakneck speed, but in space, it was a crawl. It took Xiao Yu more than three hours to close the gap to within 3,000 meters of the target once again. “Damn it, if another blind idiot tries to ruin this for me, I’ll burn energy to shoot them down with my laser cannon!” Xiao Yu muttered, steeling himself for the final approach. As the distance dwindled, Xiao Yu’s tension rose. Finally, the gap shrank to 280 meters! This was within the capture range of the grappling claw Xiao Yu had constructed. With precision, Xiao Yu aimed the claw at the target meteoroid and decisively issued the launch command. The recoil from launching the grappling claw caused the spacecraft to shake, disrupting the claw’s accuracy. It flew like an arrow but missed the meteoroid, passing within 50 meters of its surface. Undeterred, Xiao Yu retrieved the claw, adjusted the recoil parameters, and fired again. Another failure—the claw missed by 20 meters this time. Refining the recoil parameters further, Xiao Yu launched a third attempt. This time, success! The claw struck the meteoroid dead center, piercing its porous outer layer and locking firmly in place. The grappling mechanism latched onto the meteoroid, securing it to Xiao Yu’s spacecraft with the high-strength cable. The impact caused the meteoroid to recoil in the opposite direction. The taut cable stretched straight as the meteoroid’s momentum dragged Xiao Yu’s spacecraft along with it. Weightlessness in space can produce counterintuitive results. On Earth, if you fired a grappling claw at a rock, the rock wouldn’t move because of gravity. But in space, with no gravitational pull, the meteoroid reacted to the grappling claw’s force by moving in the opposite direction. It was as if Xiao Yu had tied himself to the tail of an arrow and launched it from a bow—he was carried along with the arrow’s flight. Xiao Yu had anticipated this scenario and remained calm. He knew he couldn’t force the meteoroid to stop abruptly, as the resulting stress would exceed the cable’s strength and cause it to snap. Instead, he applied steady force in small increments, gradually reducing the meteoroid’s momentum. After three exhausting hours and covering nearly 1,000 kilometers, Xiao Yu finally brought the meteoroid under control. Dragging the prize behind him, he began steering away from the ecliptic plane. It was like a lion catching a calf in a herd—cautious not to eat its prey surrounded by other potential threats, the lion first moves the calf to a safer location. Similarly, Xiao Yu dared not begin processing the meteoroid in such a perilous region. Over the course of three days, Xiao Yu towed the meteoroid 40,000 kilometers away from the ecliptic plane. At last, his surroundings were clear of other meteoroids. Gazing at the bountiful resource before him, Xiao Yu let out an excited roar: “It’s dinnertime! Let’s feast!”

Chapter 5: Capture

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