Chapter 504: Matter-Antimatter Annihilation! The Perfect Form of the Droplet!
At this moment, even though most people knew their warships were no match for the Droplet, even though the end of the world was approaching, the only thing they could do was stand their ground with unwavering resolve.
Before long, the Droplet had already crossed the lunar orbital region. It maintained its incredible speed, charging straight toward Earth. At this rate, it would reach its destination in barely ten minutes.
Everyone could clearly see the glowing point in the sky growing brighter and brighter, so luminous it was about to outshine the moon, dazzling to the point of being unbearable to look at.
In reality, the human eye could only perceive the Droplet's propulsion halos. In the instant a new halo appeared, the Droplet had already leapt ahead by hundreds of kilometers.
Then, another propulsion halo emerged.
In other words, the Droplet was actually even closer than what human eyes could see.
Faced with this object hurtling toward Earth, Luo Ji on the bridge of the Infinity-class felt his scalp go numb.
Through the warship's portholes, he could see the Droplet like the colossal palm of a titan, pressing down upon them. The suffocating oppression caused countless nerves to snap; some people were literally scared to death.
As the Droplet closed in, Luo Ji couldn't help shouting at the crew beside him: "Fire already! What are you waiting for?!"
As a meticulous scientist, Luo Ji knew perfectly well that the Droplet was closer than what the naked eye showed—this was the optimal firing distance.
Wait any longer, and the Droplet would be right in their faces!
"Don't rush. Wait."
Paul's calm restraint left Luo Ji baffled. What was there to wait for? Space combat was fought at distances measured in tens of thousands of kilometers.
If you could see the enemy with the naked eye, you could already be blasting away!
Right now, the Droplet wasn't hiding its movements at all, nor was it adjusting its trajectory—it was charging straight for the Infinity-class carrier. This was the perfect opportunity to fire.
How could they let it slip?
Paul didn't answer Luo Ji. His eyes stayed locked on the holographic display showing the Droplet, his entire body taut as a drawn bowstring. He was waiting for the perfect moment.
"Droplet is 10,000 kilometers from Infinity-class carrier."
Sweat was already beading on Luo Ji's forehead, the veins bulging on his hand. The approach of the Droplet—and of death itself—brought unprecedented pressure.
"Five thousand kilometers."
On Earth, people—caught between grief and hope—set aside everything and looked up at the sky, awaiting the final judgment on human civilization.
Be it humility or arrogance, in this instant, none of it mattered anymore.
"Two thousand five hundred kilometers!"
The Droplet pierced into Earth's atmosphere, friction with air particles igniting into searing flames. To human eyes, it looked like a burning bullet.
From Alpha Centauri, 4.2 light-years away, it had traveled a two-hundred-year journey to finally reach Earth.
On the ground, some had already closed their eyes. Not everyone had the courage to stare death in the face. The bullet that pierced the brow shattered courage a second before it shattered life.
"One thousand kilometers!"
On board a stellar-class battleship of the Asian Fleet, commander Lin Yun clenched his teeth hard. The destruction of 1,300 allied ships was still vivid in his mind.
Now, the true face of that culprit, the Droplet, was right before his eyes. The suffocating feeling of staring at a demon up close left his breathing heavy and strained.
If he were the supreme commander, Lin Yun would have ordered them to fire long ago. But he wasn't, and so all he could do was wait for the command.
"Target distance: 500 kilometers."
When the AI announced that number, the Droplet was right before the Infinity-class carrier. From inside, they could clearly see its perfectly smooth surface.
At that moment, the AI, following Paul's preset program, automatically opened fire. Simultaneously, the ship's systems calibrated all equipment, concentrating several main cannons on a single point of the Droplet.
At such extreme proximity, the Infinity-class carrier's gravity generators surged into action, unleashing powerful gravitational interference to disrupt the Droplet's trajectory.
The Droplet's target was to ram the Infinity-class carrier. Its course aimed directly at the cannons' mouths; under normal circumstances, it had no need to dodge.
After all, strong-interaction force material could not be destroyed by ordinary matter.
But just a split second before impact, a Sophon warning jolted the Droplet: it had to evade immediately, dodge this attack.
The Droplet reacted swiftly, preparing to veer aside using its vacuum-Versace vortex steering system.
Unfortunately, neither the Droplet nor the Sophon had anticipated the sudden "wall" of gravitational interference blocking its movement.
Even though it tore through the barrier, its maneuver was slowed by a fraction of a second.
At such extreme speeds, even a fraction of a second was enough to shift trajectories by tens of kilometers—let alone when facing incoming cannon fire at point-blank range.
One of the carrier's shells struck the Droplet.
On the bridge, through high-speed replay from the sensors, they clearly saw the shell flatten against the Droplet's smooth surface, like mud splattering, as though it had done no damage at all.
The deformed shell erupted into a violent explosion, fire engulfing both the Droplet and the cannons of the Infinity-class.
The bridge's portholes were instantly covered by thick smoke and fire. To Luo Ji's astonishment, the Infinity-class seemed utterly unharmed—not even the seemingly fragile glass panes shattered under the blast.
What's going on… did the Droplet get away?
Luo Ji's mind went blank. He had seen the Droplet try to dodge before the hit, but one of the shells had still struck it.
Now that the shell had detonated, surely the Droplet would recover and resume its charge toward the Infinity-class.
The massive fireball blazed with such brilliance that those on Earth instinctively shut their eyes, as night turned into day.
Everyone yearned to know the Infinity-class's fate, but no word came.
Inside the bridge, Luo Ji, in that fleeting instant, saw the reel of his life play out.
Yang Dong, the scientific prodigy revered by all, choosing despair and suicide, her body lying cold in a coffin, returning to dust.
His mentor, Ye Wenjie, watching the stars with sorrowful compassion, uttering the cosmic truth of the Dark Forest.
One moment he was the unrestrained university professor, the next, the Wallfacer shouldering the hope of humanity—then hunted mercilessly by Sophons.
He saw Wallbreakers expose one plan after another. He saw the Trisolarans plotting chaos and slaughter, all in the name of survival.
His memories froze on the Droplet closing in on the Infinity-class carrier. A stabbing pain nearly made him faint—but it was only his mind cracking under the pressure.
The flames and blinding glare outside the porthole didn't affect him at all. The Infinity-class carrier had a defense system strong enough to withstand anything—both its materials and its energy shields were unmatched.
The dazzling light that had stung the eyes only moments ago was quickly filtered out by the ship's AI, dimming until it was no longer blinding.
By the time Luo Ji recovered from the shock and confusion, he was astonished to find that he was completely unharmed. Not even the bridge interior had changed.
When the holographic screen once again displayed the scene outside, Luo Ji realized the droplet was gone—vanished without a trace. It was nothing like what he had imagined.
The Infinity-class carrier had neither been destroyed by the droplet's impact nor vaporized by its blazing propulsion corona. Other than the earlier explosion and glare, everything was normal.
"What's going on? Where did the droplet go?"
Luo Ji stared blankly at the holographic screen, trying to locate its position.
"It's over."
Paul walked over and patted him on the shoulder, calmly telling him that the droplet had been destroyed.
But this only deepened Luo Ji's bewilderment. He truly couldn't understand what kind of projectile could possibly shatter the droplet's strong-interaction shell.
Could it be that Universal Megacorp also possessed the technology to produce strong-interaction materials?
And what was with that explosion and glare just now? By all logic, even if two strong-interaction materials collided at near light speed, the result would not be such a violent blast of light and energy.
Something was clearly off.
Seeing Luo Ji's puzzled expression, Paul smiled faintly and said, "It was antimatter. The explosion and glare you saw just now were nothing more than the annihilation effect of matter and antimatter."
"This isn't all that rare in the universe."
Luo Ji froze. The droplet was destroyed by an antimatter missile? He almost blurted out that humanity had no access to antimatter, but then thought again: this was Universal Megacorp. Perhaps that explained it.
The destructive power of antimatter weapons was indeed terrifying. A single pellet the size of an ordinary rifle bullet could obliterate an entire star-class warship.
No matter how strong the droplet's strong-interaction armor was, it was still matter. Ordinary explosions might not harm it, but antimatter annihilation was governed by unshakable physical law.
"Matter–antimatter annihilation…"
Luo Ji muttered under his breath. No wonder Paul had remained so calm the whole time—he really had a trump card in hand.
The energy released by antimatter was even more fearsome than that of conventional nuclear fuels.
Just one gram of antimatter could unleash the energy of 200 kilotons of nuclear explosives.
Three hundred grams would surpass the sixty-megaton blast of the Tsar Bomba.
But if it were only a matter of explosive force, the droplet's defenses could still withstand the three-hundred-fifty-megaton yield of a star-class hydrogen bomb. Theoretically, humanity could never destroy a droplet with mere explosions.
Yet the annihilation effect of matter and antimatter was something the droplet could not resist.
The droplet, for all its power, was still composed of ordinary atoms and molecules. And as long as it was matter, any contact with antimatter meant inevitable annihilation.
That was its fatal weakness.
"No… no, something's not right."
Luo Ji shook his head. "The Mantis's measurements showed the droplet had at least a dozen tons of mass. Where would you even get that much antimatter?"
By all rights, to completely annihilate a dozen-ton droplet, you would need the same mass in antimatter.
And even if Universal Megacorp truly did possess such a colossal stockpile, the annihilation of tens of tons of matter and antimatter would have generated an explosion so enormous it would have engulfed half the Earth. The Infinity-class carrier certainly would not have come through unscathed.
"In fact, it only takes a gram of antimatter," Paul replied.
Luo Ji's eyes widened in shock.
If a single gram was enough, then humanity might actually have a chance.
After all, antimatter wasn't some impossibly advanced miracle. Back in the 20th century, CERN had already created the first antimatter particles—anti-hydrogen atoms.
By now, humanity could produce a few grams of the stuff. The only reason it hadn't been widely weaponized was because, compared to star-class hydrogen bombs, it offered little practical advantage.
But if Universal Megacorp had destroyed a droplet with just one gram, that meant humanity had always had the means to resist the Trisolarans.
Hope had been there all along—they had simply refused to see it.
"I don't get it," Luo Ji pressed. "How can a single gram of antimatter annihilate ten tons of matter? What's really going on here?"
"The answer is right in front of you."
Paul smiled. "The droplet's strong-interaction shell wasn't ten tons thick at all. It was only a single atom thick."
Universal Megacorp knew this because they were already familiar with strong-interaction materials. By constructing a model of the droplet and feeding in the relevant data, the truth became obvious.
Strong-interaction materials were so dense that even atomic nuclei were crushed together, countless times denser than anything found in nature.
If the droplet were really three meters long and entirely composed of such material, its mass would be far greater than ten tons.
The fact that it was not meant the strong-interaction material was only used for the shell, with machinery inside.
According to the ship's AI, for the droplet to maintain its measured mass, the strong-interaction armor could only be one atom thick.
One atom might sound flimsy, but against conventional weapons, that was no different from being a meter thick. Humanity's weapons could never pierce it anyway.
Any thicker, however, and the droplet's mass would increase dramatically, inertia would cripple its agility, and it would lose its maneuverability.
All things considered, a one-atom shell was the optimal choice. What they saw before them was the droplet's perfect form.
Clearly, the Trisolarans had spared no effort in crafting it.
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