Chapter 475 Father-Son Dialogue

He Nianhua's pen stopped on the paper, the tip poking out a small black dot.

"Dad, is the Kunlun... alright?"

He didn't look up when he asked, and his voice was lower than usual. He Yuzhu sat on the edge of the bed, holding a book called "Overall Design of Spacecraft," but he had only turned halfway through the pages and stopped reading.

"The crack isn't serious. It can fly back."

He Nianhua put down his pen and turned his chair around. He Yuzhu noticed that his eyes were a little red, but he didn't shed any tears.

"What happens after it's fixed? Will it still be able to fly?"

"Yes. But it won't fly again. Store it, make a backup."

"Why?" He Nianhua's voice rose a little.

He Yuzhu closed the book in his hand and placed it on the bedside table. "The first one was an experiment. The second one was the real interstellar spaceship. The Kunlun proved that the technology was feasible, but every part of it was first-generation and had defects."

He Nianhua didn't speak. He lowered his head and stared at the table. The physics textbook was spread out on the table, and next to it was a piece of draft paper covered with ellipses and arrows.

He Yuzhu waited.

Several seconds passed before He Nianhua finally looked up.

"Then I'll design an even better one for the second one."

His voice wasn't loud, but he enunciated each word clearly. He Yuzhu looked at his son. The acne scars on his face hadn't faded yet, and the contours of his jaw were already more defined than last year. A dark mark was left on the back of his hand from pencil ash.

"You should get into the aerospace university first."

He Nianhua's eyes didn't waver. "So, if I get accepted, I can do design?"

"We'll talk about it after I pass the exam."

He Nianhua turned back and picked up his pen. The pen tip hovered on the paper, not falling. He Yuzhu noticed that his shoulders were tense and his breathing was faster than usual.

"Do you have anything else to say?" He Yuzhu asked.

He Nianhua put down his pen, took out a piece of paper from the drawer, and handed it over.

"Dad, take a look at this."

He Yuzhu took the paper and held it up to the lamplight. An elliptical cross-section of a coil was drawn on the paper, with the dimensions of its major and minor axes marked beside it. The stress contour plot was colored with pencil, the darker areas at the ends of the major axis and the lighter areas on either side of the minor axis.

"Who taught you that?"

"Nobody taught me. I calculated it myself. I used the finite element method that Uncle Lin taught me, and ran it on the school's computer. The mesh is coarse, but the trend is correct."

He Yuzhu stared at it for a long time. He recalled the elliptical ring scheme that Qian Zhiyuan had demonstrated in the lab last year, along with the stress curve and fatigue life data. It was in the same direction as the one drawn on this sketch.

"Qian Zhiyuan mentioned this idea last year. He has already verified that elliptical rings have twice the fatigue life of circular rings."

He Nianhua opened his mouth slightly, then closed it again. After a few seconds, he finally spoke.

"Then... can we use the second one?"

"able."

He Nianhua took the page back from He Yuzhu's hand, carefully folded it, and put it back in the drawer. Her movements were slow, as if she were afraid of damaging it.

"Dad, can I design part of the coil for the second ship?"

He Yuzhu didn't answer immediately. He noticed the pencil dust and blue marks from a leaked ballpoint pen on his son's hand. A sixteen-year-old's hand shouldn't be holding design drafts so early.

"You should get into an aerospace university first."

He Nianhua didn't press the matter. He turned back, picked up his pen, and wrote a few lines in his textbook. He wrote very slowly, one character at a time.

He Yuzhu stood up, walked behind him, and patted him on the shoulder.

"Finish your homework and go to bed early."

"dad."

He Yuzhu stopped.

"Yanhuang No. 2, can I give it a nickname?"

He Yuzhu turned around and looked at his son's profile. He Nianhua didn't look at him, staring at the textbook on the table.

"What's your name?"

"expedition."

He Yuzhu didn't speak. He Nianhua didn't dare turn around either. The room was quiet. The wind outside the window rustled the jujube tree branches and scraped against the glass.

"We'll talk about it after you get into the aerospace university."

He Yuzhu left He Nianhua's room and closed the door. In the corridor, Qin Huairu stood at the kitchen doorway, holding a bowl of white fungus soup, but didn't bring it in. The bowl was no longer hot, and she gripped the rim, her knuckles turning white.

"Did you hear that?" He Yuzhu asked.

"I heard it." Qin Huairu handed him the bowl. "He said it was called Expedition."

He Yuzhu took the bowl and took a sip. It was lukewarm. He carried the bowl into the kitchen and placed it on the stove. The bottom of the bowl hit the tiles with a crisp sound.

"He's only sixteen. He wants to design a spaceship at sixteen. Isn't that too early?" Qin Huairu followed him in.

He Yuzhu turned on the tap and rinsed the food residue in the bowl.

"What were you doing when you were sixteen?" Qin Huairu asked from behind him.

He Yuzhu turned off the water and placed the bowl upside down on the dish rack. "Chase Pu Zheng."

Qin Huairu didn't ask any more questions. She picked up a rag from the stove and wiped away the splashed water. After wiping, she folded the rag and draped it over the faucet handle.

He Yuzhu walked out of the kitchen. Qin Huairu followed him out.

The living room lights were off. A sliver of light shone through the crack in He Nianhua's bedroom door.

Qin Huairu stood in the middle of the living room, looking at the beam of light. "If he really chooses to go down this path, you can't stop him."

He Yuzhu sat down on the sofa. "I won't stop you."

Qin Huairu walked over and sat down next to him. Neither of them spoke. On the coffee table lay the book, *Overall Design of Spacecraft*, its bookmark clipped to about a third of the way down. Qin Huairu picked up the book, flipped through it, and then put it down again.

"Did you sign it?" she asked.

He Yuzhu leaned back on the sofa. "Not yet."

"When will you sign?"

"tonight."

Qin Huairu stood up, went into the kitchen, and poured the half-pot of white fungus soup from the stove into the sink. A layer of soup stuck to the bottom of the pot, so she scrubbed it a few times with a steel wool pad, rinsed it, drained it, and hung it on a hook. She turned off the light and came out.

He Yuzhu was still sitting on the sofa, and the book was opened again.

"Go to sleep," Qin Huairu said.

He Yuzhu closed the book and stood up. He walked to the kitchen door, opened a drawer, and took out a pen. It was a Hero brand fountain pen that He Nianhua had given him as a birthday present last year, with the word "Dad" engraved on the cap.

He went into the study and closed the door. He retrieved the project approval documents for Yanhuang II from the system space, turned to the last page—the chief designer's signature section was blank.

He unscrewed the pen cap, and the pen tip hovered above the paper.

They paused for a moment.

Then sign your name.

He screwed the pen cap back on and placed the pen back on the desk. He stored the documents in the system space, turned off the study light, and came out.

Qin Huairu stood at the bedroom door, looking at him.

He walked over to her without saying a word and went into the bedroom. Qin Huairu followed him in and closed the door.

The light in He Nianhua's room was still on. He was slumped over his desk, not doing his homework, but drawing another diagram. The oval-shaped coils were labeled with the dimensions of their major and minor axes. In the lower right corner of the drawing, he wrote two words—"Expedition."

The pen tip paused briefly on the last stroke of the character "征" before being lifted and placed on the pen holder.

He closed the notebook and turned off the desk lamp.

In the darkness, he lay down, staring at the ceiling. His mind raced with data on the elliptic ring, the ratio of its major to minor axis, and the stress distribution curve. And there was the moment He Yuzhu signed his name—he hadn't seen it, but he knew it.