Chapter 30 (Point of Impact 2): Soft Clay

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April 2030, Yucatán Peninsula

Dr. James, Michael’s assistant, was tall and thin. Though not yet forty, he possessed both solid academic credentials and boundless energy, making him an industrious and practical man.

Only a handful of Asbay Space Technologies’ executives and core technical experts had access to Nikola Tesla’s superluminal wave theory after signing confidentiality agreements—Dr. James was one of them. Michael tasked James with drafting a viable plan for a superluminal wave power station on Mars.

The plan involved building a 90,000-kilometer-high space elevator on Earth’s equatorial Taisland, then doubling its height to construct a carbon-fiber tube pillar soaring 180,000 kilometers—the so-called superluminal wave power station. The engineering challenge was self-evident.

Before the feasibility study for the Taisland power station was even complete, it was vetoed by the head of Project T. Later, the plan for a superluminal wave station on Saturn’s moon Enceladus—using the massive ice of Saturn’s rings as a natural scaffold—was also forced to a halt.

Asbay’s ultimate goal was to build a superluminal wave power station on Mars, to heat its metallic core, restore its liquidity, and thus restart the Martian magnetic field—turning Mars into another habitable world for humanity, a planetary “backup” for Earth.

If constructing such a station on Earth was fraught with difficulties, then building one on Mars seemed downright impossible.

Yet Michael and his team refused to bow to the word “impossible.” When he’d once proposed the reusability of heavy rockets, aerospace experts had pitied the “layman’s” ignorance and hubris, all while chanting: “Absolutely impossible!”

But the difficulties were real. The 180,000-kilometer carbon-fiber tube, though gigantic, could theoretically be delivered to Mars by Asbay’s large, reusable rockets, albeit with many launches.

However, the scaffold needed to stabilize the station’s structure would be hundreds or thousands of times larger and heavier than the carbon-fiber tube itself. Processing it on Earth and transporting it to Mars would require unfathomable lifting capacity and time.

Michael’s external AI, VESSEL, offered the answer: use local resources.

That suggestion awakened Dr. James—he realized the support structures could be refined and manufactured directly from Martian soil. But a new problem arose: while Martian regolith contains iron and other metals, establishing a metal refinery on Mars would be an immense challenge.

And even if iron could be smelted and steel produced, the weight would make stacking a structure 180,000 kilometers high utterly unfeasible. The materials for the scaffold needed to be sufficiently strong, yet not too dense.

Dr. James found the answer: ceramics—producing pottery on Mars to serve as the power station’s structural components.

Pottery requires clay. Dr. James obtained Martian soil samples from the Space Agency of Liangguo, but due to technical limitations, the samples were taken from only ten centimeters below the Martian surface and contained no suitable clay.

Sending a dedicated spacecraft to retrieve deeper samples from Mars would be costly and time-consuming. Dr. James thought of an alternative: find a geological structure on Earth identical or similar to Martian surface soil. If suitable clay could be found deep underground there, the same could be true for Mars.

He narrowed down two regions on Earth with surface soil closely matching that of Mars: one was the sedimentary layers of the East African Rift Valley lakes in northern Kenya, the other, the ancient Maya settlements on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

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After analysis, the sediments of the East African Rift Valley did not match Martian soil, so Dr. James pinned his last hope on the Yucatán Peninsula.

Recently, he made a stunning discovery and hurriedly reported it to Michael. Thus, Michael Max came to the excavation site beside the Maya village in Mexico.

Dr. James, brimming with excitement, said, “Michael, the soil beneath your feet is almost identical in composition to the Martian samples, and just below this layer is a stratum of clay. My only concern now is whether the presence of this topsoil means there’s also clay beneath the Martian surface.”

“Elsewhere, I wouldn’t be so certain,” Michael replied, “but on the Yucatán Peninsula, I’m sure your hypothesis is correct.”

Dr. James looked up in surprise. “Why are you so certain about the Yucatán?”

“Don’t forget, my girlfriend Daphne is an astronomer. She believes that sixty-five million years ago, Mars suffered a cataclysmic explosion, and a massive fragment struck Earth at this very spot.”

“Really? I always thought it was an asteroid. So the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and began the Cenozoic era was actually a fragment from Mars?”

Amazed, James now understood Michael’s certainty—if they were standing atop a Martian fragment, it would be odd if the soil composition didn’t match.

James opened a wooden box and carefully lifted out a piece of pottery Michael had purchased at Mandy’s charity auction. He said with a hint of mystery, “Here’s more good news: we’ve discovered that the ancient Maya made their pottery from a special clay that can be fired at low temperatures. It’s lighter and more resilient than typical ceramics, making it ideal for scaffolding.”

“So this is what’s known as Maya soft pottery. I’ve heard of it,” Michael said. Knowing Irene and Mandy were nearby, he continued, “Let me take you somewhere to see how the Maya make this soft pottery.”

Mandy’s foundation’s first indigenous protection project, “Fossils of Civilization,” was based in a Maya settlement deep within a river valley that extended from a volcanic crater—close to the ruins of an ancient Maya city-state, with palaces, temples, and pyramids of massive stone.

Irene and Mandy greeted Michael’s group warmly. “Michael, I thought you only cared about rockets and electric cars,” Mandy teased, “When did you become so interested in Maya soft pottery?”

Michael merely smiled and, pulling Dr. James along, followed Mandy into the pottery workshop.

James was surprised to see that the villagers didn’t use the usual potter’s wheel. Instead, they rolled the kneaded clay into thin ropes and shaped them by hand. On the workbench lay several mold-like components.

Noticing his confusion, Mandy explained with pride, “The clay here is of exceptional quality—fine, sticky, and highly malleable—so there’s no need for wheel-throwing. The Maya have always shaped pottery by hand or used molds for mass production.”

Michael and Dr. James exchanged a knowing smile. This was yet another stroke of luck. The clay deep beneath Mars’s surface would surely be just as workable. On Mars, using molds for industrial-scale production would be the most efficient way to reduce labor costs.

A sudden thought struck Michael. He turned to Irene and asked, “It makes perfect sense for Mandy to be here for her foundation’s work, but are you here on holiday?”

“Of course not. I’m here for work too. You forget, I’m a molecular biologist focused on life sciences. I came to study an ancient crop.”

“A crop? Aren’t you a top diabetes researcher? And as far as I know, the Maya’s main crop is maize.”

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“Yes, maize. Here in Mexico—specifically, in these plateau valleys—there’s an ancient wild maize that can grow up to ten meters tall. Its cobs are twice the size of regular corn, with plump kernels.”

“My god—ten meters high? Corn like that really exists?”

Life sciences, diabetes, bioenzymes extracted from maize starch—Michael began to guess Irene’s true reason for coming.

On the workbench, a freshly fired pottery jar caught Dr. James’s eye. He pointed it out to Michael. “Look—the pattern on this jar is identical to the one you bought at the auction.”

Michael recalled the designs—indeed, they were the same. He realized that, focused as he’d been on analyzing the pottery’s composition, he’d paid little attention to its decoration.

“So you didn’t know what the design meant? I thought you bid on it because you liked the figure,” Mandy said.

Michael scratched his head in slight embarrassment. He gently turned the jar in his hands, studying the pattern—a humanoid figure with lush corn leaves and tassels sprouting from its head. He asked, puzzled,

“Who is this figure? What does it represent?”

Before Mandy could answer, Irene spoke up, “The Maize God—the deity most revered by the ancient Maya.”

&

A poem of collected lines:

Though small in scale, profound in intent. — Song Dynasty, Chen Yuyi

All my life’s longing, still not spent. — Song Dynasty, Li Mixun

Heaven granted me talent; it must be used. — Yuan Dynasty, Liu E

Neither base as mud nor precious as gold. — Song Dynasty, Shi Weiyi