Ball Lightning

Zhufeng

Life grew tense. Apart from daily attention to the war, work also took on a new level of meaning, since the joys and cares that had previously occupied a primary position in my life no longer seemed so important.

One day I received a telephone call from the military instructing me to attend a meeting. A naval ensign would come to pick me up by car.

As the war escalated, I sometimes thought about the ball lightning weapons project. These were unusual times, and if the research base needed me to go back, I would abandon all of my personal feelings and do my utmost to fulfill my duty, but I never heard from them. The war news I read never had anything related to ball lightning weapons. This should have been the best opportunity for them to come out, but it was as if they had never even existed. I tried calling the base, but found that all their numbers were disconnected. Ding Yi was similarly nowhere to be found. All that I had been through was like a dream, and it had left no traces behind.

It was only after I arrived at the military meeting and discovered that most of the people there, none of whom I recognized, were from the navy that I realized that this had nothing to do with ball lightning weapons. Everyone looked grim, and the atmosphere of the meeting was depressive.

“Dr. Chen, first off we’d like to explain to you something that happened in naval combat yesterday,” a senior colonel in the navy said, getting down to business without any opening remarks. “You don’t need to know the specific location and circumstances of the battle, so I’ll only tell you the pertinent information. At around three p.m. yesterday, the Zhufeng carrier battle group was attacked by a large number of cruise missiles—”

My heart jumped when I heard the name.

“—Forty of them. The group immediately switched on defensive systems, but they soon discovered the method of attack was peculiar: under ordinary circumstances, cruise missiles attacking a sea target will fly close to the surface of the ocean to break through anti-missile defenses, but these flew at an altitude of one thousand meters, as if they didn’t care about being shot down. And sure enough, the missiles didn’t directly attack targets in the group. Instead, all of them exploded outside our defensive perimeter at altitudes of five hundred to one thousand meters. The force of each explosion was small, just enough to disperse a large quantity of white powder. Please have a look at the recording.”

Empty sky appeared on the projection screen. There were lots of clouds, and it looked about to rain. Then lots of small white dots appeared and gradually expanded, as if dripping dozens of drops of milk onto the water.

“Those are the cruise missiles’ explosion points,” the senior colonel said, pointing at the expanding dots on the screen. “What’s strange is that we really didn’t know what the enemy was doing. That white material—”

“Were there any other unusual signs at that location?” I interrupted, a foreboding fear rising in my heart.

“What do you mean? There was nothing that seemed relevant.”

“Unrelated, then. Can you take a look?” I asked urgently.

The colonel and several other officers exchanged glances, and a bespectacled lieutenant colonel said, “An enemy early warning aircraft flew through that airspace. That doesn’t seem unusual.”

“Anything else?”

“Hmm… the enemy emitted a high-energy laser at that region of the ocean from a low-orbit satellite, perhaps to coordinate submarine detection with the plane…. Is that related to the missile attack under discussion? Dr. Chen, are you okay?”

I hope to God it’s submarine detection. May the lord make it submarine detection. My heart prayed in a panic as I said, “Not really…. That white powder, do you have a rough idea of what it was?”

“I was about to tell you,” the senior colonel said as he flipped the scene on the screen. Now it was an image formed from a small number of brilliant colors, like a well-used painter’s palette. “This is a false-color infrared image of that region of space. See, the explosion points are rapidly turning into low-temperature zones.” He pointed at a patch of brilliant blue, and said, “So we guess that the white powder might be a highly efficient refrigerant.”

I felt like I had been struck by lightning, and the world had turned upside down. I had to grip the table to bring myself to earth. “Hurry! Get the fleet out of there!” I said to the senior colonel, while pointing at the screen.

“Dr. Chen, this is a recording. The event took place yesterday.”

Dazed by the facts, I was struck dumb for a while before I realized what he meant.

“This was recorded on Zhufeng. Have a look.”