Capture

After more than half a month of being a cosmic scavenger, Hawke has realised one truth: comets are all about outer strength.

In terms of volume alone, comets close to stars can be considered the largest objects in the universe. The tail stretches out to a maximum length of over 100 million kilometres and sweeps across the universe like a huge broom. But it is only when we get close that we realise how weak this comet is.

After travelling through the comet's tail for more than half a month, Hawke was able to collect less than five kilograms of water, and the thinness of the material inside the comet's tail could be imagined. This collection efficiency depressed Hawke to no end. If Hawke had any hair left now, Hawke would be so depressed that he would have grabbed it off by the handful.

Hawke was now 30,000 kilometres above or below the zodiacal plane. It doesn't matter if it's up or down in interstellar space anyway, it's fine to say up or down.

The so-called ecliptic plane is an imaginary plane, which can be simply understood as the plane on which most of the orbits of all the planets in the star system lie.

Here it is already quite close to the proto-Earth orbit. Through the optical telescope, Hawke could already see countless small, dark meteorites emanating a haunting glow above.

Hawke had already made his orbital adjustments, he intended to follow the Earth meteorite swarm around the sun for a while first, after all, collecting material was the business, although this was really slow.

The lens of the optical telescope slowly swept across and an unassuming figure came into Hawke's view.

It was an irregularly shaped meteorite, perhaps thirty metres long, seven or eight metres wide and five or six metres high. Light from the diffuse reflection of a neighbouring star illuminated it, and then the light was collected again by Hawke.

Hawke's mind was moved and he immediately did some simple analysis of the meteorite. The results of the analysis immediately brought Hawke's spirits up.

The analysis showed that this meteorite, was composed of roughly thirty percent water, sixty-nine percent iron, and trace amounts of nitrogen, silicon, hydrogen, oxygen, and potassium. Of these trace elements, hydrogen and oxygen were again predominant.

"Is this ... a gift from the heavens?" Hawk's heart immediately perked up.

This meteorite was about a thousand cubic metres in size and had a mass of upwards of three thousand tonnes! Even if hydrogen and oxygen each accounted for 0.1 percent of its mass, the total would be as much as six tons! That's a lot of fuel to do a lot of things with.

Especially, with over 900 tons of water on top! This water, when close to the sun, can also be ionised into hydrogen and oxygen by the ionising action of the sun, which is another huge income. There were also upwards of two thousand tons of iron, enough for Hawke to probably patch the ship up pretty much.

"Capture it! It must be captured!" Hawke made up his mind instantly.

At that moment, the star blocking the meteor moved out of the way and the sun's rays shone directly on it.

Under the heat of the sun, the solid water, hydrogen and oxygen on the surface of the meteor immediately began to evaporate rapidly, and a geyser began to appear on the fluffy surface, ejecting countless gaseous substances, shrouding the entire core in a blanket of white mist, trailing backwards in a long tail.

The whole core was enveloped in a blanket of white mist, trailing backwards in a long tail. Hawke's heart raced as he watched, "These are my treasures, they can't be evaporated like this."

Hawke immediately manoeuvred his ship between the meteor and the sun, using his solar panels to withstand the sun's heat. Without the sun's light, the temperature of only a few K in interstellar space immediately cooled it down, and the long white tail dissipated at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Hawke breathed a sigh of relief and began to calculate how he could truly take this gift from the heavens into his own pocket.

With a big, sweet cake in front of him, there was plenty of incentive to make knives and forks and other cutlery. No longer concerned about energy consumption, Hawke manoeuvred the robot and raided the material storage room, even dismantling some of the less important equipment, intending to use it for waste.

The equipment manufacturing room was Hawke's most protected place apart from the main control room. Here, Hawke had collected all sorts of the most basic and important machinery to ensure that he had sufficient manufacturing power once he had acquired the raw materials. Fortunately, the equipment manufacturing room had not suffered too much damage during the previous crash of heaven and earth.

As the robots worked tirelessly, a mechanical claw with about three hundred metres of high-strength cable attached to the back was quickly created.

Hawke was now only about a few kilometres away from the meteorite. This distance, on an astronomical scale, was close enough, but still a little longer than Hawke's catching power. Hawke had no choice but to carefully steer the ship, turning the engines down to their lowest power, and slowly approaching the meteorite bit by bit, meter by meter.

It was actually quite risky to do so. A few thousand metres was the shortest distance Hawke could manoeuvre the ship to avoid. Beyond that, if another meteorite hit the block at that moment, causing it to crash towards Hawk, Hawk would have no time to dodge and would only be destroyed by it.

"I'll be rich, I'll be rich, I'll be rich, I'll be rich, I'll be rich, I'll be rich, I'll be rich, I'll be rich!" Hawk was fierce in his heart, but acted even more cautiously.

Gradually, the distance had been reduced to two thousand meters ... one thousand meters ... five hundred meters ...

Just when victory was in sight, suddenly a dark, inconspicuous figure broke into Hawke's line of sight. The target meteorite burst into flames and then tumbled, and because of the heat of the impact, the solid water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and oxygen on it began to evaporate violently, turning into a huge cloud of mist.

Not only that, but the target meteorite was altered by the impact and started to fly away in another direction, disappearing in a flash.

Angry and frustrated, Hawke cursed the errant meteor a thousand times, but when he was done, he started to look for the target meteor by turning his telescope around.

Hawke knew that it would not get far because of the recoil of the volatile gas and its original inertia. Sure enough, after searching for two hours, Hawke finally found it in the direction of the ecliptic, about six hundred kilometres away from him.

Hawke did not dare to increase his speed too fast, but kept his relative speed to the meteor at fifty metres per second, that is, one hundred and eighty miles per second, and slowly approached it.

A speed of 180 mph, which on Earth would be considered lightning fast, would be considered a snail's crawl here. Hawke ran for over three hours before he reapproached within three thousand metres of it.

"Damn it, if any more ungrateful guys dare to spoil my good deed, I'll use my laser gun to finish you off even if I have to use up my energy." Secretly making up his mind, Hawke cautiously began his approach.

As the distance got closer and closer, Hawke's mind tensed closer and closer. Finally, the distance narrowed down to two hundred and eighty metres!

This distance was already within the catching range of the flying claws Hawke had created.

Hawke aimed his gun at the target meteor and gave the decisive order to fire.

The recoil from firing the claw caused a wobble in Hawke's ship, which affected the accuracy of the claw, which flew out like a sharp arrow, but missed the target meteor, instead brushing it about fifty metres away.

Undaunted, Hawke controlled the machine and retracted the claw, reworked the recoil parameters and fired again.

It continued to fail. The flying claw flew past the meteor twenty metres away.

The recoil parameters continued to be modified and the launch continued.

Finally, this time Hawke succeeded! The claw hit the target meteor exactly in the middle, the sharp claw pierced through the target meteor's fluffy outer layer and then jammed openly inside the meteor, connecting it firmly to Hawke's ship.

The meteor was hit by the external force and immediately flew in the opposite direction. The high-strength cable was taut and pulled by the meteor, and Hawke's ship flew off with it.

It's amazing how many things can happen in a weightless environment that defy common sense. If you fired a claw at a rock on Earth, the rock would never escape even if the claw caught it. This is because of the gravitational pull of the Earth.

But this is in space, where there is no earth's gravity. When a meteorite is subjected to force, it is bound to react. It receives the force of the impact of the flying claw, and it escapes in the opposite direction. This situation is like Hawke tying himself to the end of an arrow with a string, then shooting the arrow out with his bow, and then being carried up by the arrow himself.

This situation had already been considered by Hawke, so Hawke did not panic at all. Hawke did not dare to force it to stop, because the force would exceed the capacity of the cable and the cable would break. All Hawke could do was to push harder and harder, bit by bit, slowly reducing the kinetic energy of the target meteor.

It took three hours and almost a thousand kilometres before Hawke finally subdued the meteor. Then, dragging the meteor, Hawke slowly headed away from the zodiacal plane.

Just as a lion, having quietly caught a calf in a herd of cattle, does not dare to devour it surrounded by cattle, but moves it away from the herd before starting to eat it, so too does Hawke not dare to start his feast right here. For it was too dangerous here.

It took three days for Hawke to drag the target meteorite 40,000 kilometres away from the ecliptic plane. Within sight, there was no longer any sign of another meteorite. Looking at the delicious meal in front of him, Hawke hissed with excitement, "Dinner is served!"