Chapter Eighty-Seven: A Two-Kilometer Tunnel

“There really is a tunnel down here!”

At the sight of the tunnel entrance, Liang Youjun immediately selected several soldiers and ordered them to put on spacesuits and go down first to take a look.

Three soldiers descended cautiously, flashlights in their left hands and tranquilizer guns in their right.

A moment later, Zhang Mingyang and his senior brother jumped in as well.

The floor of the room was five meters above the bottom of the shaft, and Zhang Mingyang gripped the ladder as he climbed down slowly.

When he reached the bottom and looked around, he saw that the entire passage was about two meters wide and two meters high. As for its length, it vanished into pitch-black darkness, with no end in sight.

“Senior Brother, there’s oxygen in here!”

Peng Dongli also glanced at the display screen on his arm. There really was oxygen in the tunnel.

“How was this dug? It’s only five meters deep, and the base’s machines still couldn’t detect it?”

The group kept moving forward. No one knew how long they had walked when a white blast door suddenly appeared before them.

“Everyone, quiet!”

Liang Youjun directed the soldiers beside him to prepare to breach the door.

“Bring the battering ram!”

Two soldiers lifted the massive ram and slammed it with all their strength into the weakest point of the protective door.

Bang!

With a tremendous crash, the door was smashed open by the force of the blow.

“Go!”

The soldiers at the front rushed in at once, guns raised as they searched the area.

“No one here!”

“No one here!”

“Reporting, Commissar: there’s a room beyond the door. No one has been found inside.”

After hearing the report, Liang Youjun pointed toward the room, indicating that they could enter.

Climbing out of the tunnel and into the room, Zhang Mingyang looked around and found it to be a small sealed chamber. Inside, only a single electric lamp and an oxygen generator were operating. There was not the slightest furnishing anywhere else.

Looking at the empty room, Liang Youjun ordered everyone to spread out and search for any other passageways.

“Hm? Are these tire tracks on the ground?”

By the beam of his headlamp, Zhang Mingyang illuminated the two parallel tracks on the floor and called everyone over. “Come look—don’t these seem like tire marks?”

The others hurried over and bent to study the tracks carefully.

Following their trail, Peng Dongli came to the eastern wall of the room. The marks vanished there, which likely meant another passage lay hidden behind it. “Everyone, come check this wall for a switch.”

Zhang Mingyang felt along the wall, above and below, but found nothing at all.

Then, all at once, he remembered the revolving hidden doors often seen in old films.

He went to one corner of the wall and pushed hard outward.

Creak...

To his surprise, the wall actually moved. He pushed harder, and the entire section rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, revealing an exit.

Zhang Mingyang stepped out and stared ahead in astonishment. Before him stretched a barren lunar wasteland.

Peng Dongli continued eastward, following the tire tracks beneath his feet, but after a while those too came to an end.

Liang Youjun took out the positioning system and checked their location. “Mr. Peng, we are now east of the base. From Wan Zhiqiang’s room to here, the distance is two kilometers!”

“Two kilometers!”

Hearing that staggering number, Peng Dongli found himself almost admiring Wan Zhiqiang. The man had actually dug a two-kilometer tunnel on the moon.

“Commissar Liang, the tire tracks disappear less than a hundred meters outside the room. Judging from the direction, he should have gone east. Send men after him at once. We may still catch him.”

“All right.”

Liang Youjun immediately ordered a pursuit.

Zhang Mingyang walked over to his senior brother, patted him on the shoulder, and pointed behind him, signaling him to turn around.

Peng Dongli turned and looked. Only then did he realize that the launch tower was right beside the exit, less than twenty meters away, and that the entire tunnel had passed directly beneath it.

“Senior Brother, it looks like this was planned long ago. A tunnel this long couldn’t possibly have been built in a short time.”

Peng Dongli nodded. What he had feared had indeed come to pass. “I need to contact Director Wang at once.”

His senior brother stepped aside to make the call, while Zhang Mingyang returned to the room to inspect it again.

Several hours later, word came back from the men sent in pursuit: they had gone all the way east to the border and still had not found Wan Zhiqiang.

On hearing the news, Peng Dongli thought of the nearest lunar base. “Could Wan Zhiqiang have fled into the Americans’ Apollo Base?”

“Senior Brother, then can’t we cross over and arrest him?”

Commissar Liang shook his head. “Space law stipulates that no country or individual may enter another nation’s territory without permission, nor do they have the right to cross the border and seize someone on their own. If we started doing that, chaos would break loose on Earth tomorrow.”

“Junior Brother.”

Peng Dongli beckoned him over with a wave of the hand.

“What is it, Senior Brother?”

Peng Dongli switched the voice channel to private mode for the two of them. “We’ve been told to stop handling this. Professionals will come up tomorrow to clean up the mess. Director Wang wants us back at the base immediately—he says there’s something important.”

“Something important? What is it?”

Peng Dongli shrugged. He did not know either.

After explaining matters, Peng Dongli went over to Liang Youjun. “Commissar Liang, please make absolutely certain the scene is protected. Someone from our side will come tomorrow to take over. Once they arrive, you won’t need to trouble yourself with it any longer.”

“Oh, and one more thing—I’ll have to trouble you to arrange a rocket for us tomorrow morning, back to Earth.”

Hearing Peng Dongli speak that way, Liang Youjun thought to himself that his guess had been right after all. Behind these two men there had to be an extremely secretive organization, one capable even of directly directing Wang Bowen, the deputy director of the Space Administration. An organization like that was not one he could afford to provoke. Better simply to do as he was told.

“No problem, Mr. Peng. Rest assured, tomorrow I will hand everything over to your people exactly as it is today. And don’t worry about your return to Earth either. Once I’ve finished arranging things here, I’ll send you a message.”

“Good. Thank you for the trouble, Commissar Liang.”

After shaking hands with Peng Dongli, Liang Youjun instructed all his subordinates that the scene must be strictly secured and that no one was to enter.

Once the handover was settled, Zhang Mingyang and Peng Dongli returned to their quarters to spend their final night on the moon.

Lying in bed, Zhang Mingyang thought of Wan Zhiqiang over the past few days. No matter how hard he tried, he still could not reconcile himself to the fact that the man had actually been a spy.

“Senior Brother, do you think there’s only one spy in the base?”

Peng Dongli, chewing on an apple, replied through a mouthful, “I don’t know either. But the grass has already been stirred. If there are any others, they’ll definitely run tonight.”

Zhang Mingyang got up and went to the window ledge. Looking at the stars from the moon truly was different from looking at them on Earth. As his gaze drifted across the sky, he saw Pollux again.

Suddenly, he felt that Pollux seemed a little dimmer than before, and he called his senior brother over to have a look.

Peng Dongli studied it as well, but noticed no change. “Junior Brother, variations in a star’s luminosity aren’t something you can distinguish with the naked eye.”

“I know, Senior Brother.”

Yet for some reason, Zhang Mingyang simply could not shake the feeling that Pollux had grown fainter.

“All right, all right, stop staring. Let’s eat dinner and come back early to rest. We’ll take the rocket first thing tomorrow morning and be back by evening.”