Chapter 5

After more than half a month of working as a cosmic cleaner, Xiao Yu realized a truth: comets are all tough on the outside but weak on the inside.

If judged by volume alone, comets near a star can be considered the largest celestial bodies in the universe. Their tails can stretch for over 100 million kilometers, like an enormous broom sweeping majestically through space. However, only by getting close can one truly appreciate how fragile comets are.

After traveling through the comet's tail for more than half a month, Xiao Yu managed to collect less than five kilograms of water. The sparsity of material in the comet's tail is evident. This collection efficiency left Xiao Yu extremely frustrated. If he still had hair, he would have pulled it out in frustration.

Xiao Yu was now about 30,000 kilometers above or below the ecliptic plane. In interstellar space, there is no concept of up or down, so it doesn't matter whether you say above or below.

The ecliptic plane is an imaginary plane that can be simply understood as the plane on which most of the planets in a star system orbit.

This area is already quite close to the original Earth's orbit. Through an optical telescope, Xiao Yu could already see countless small, dark meteoroids above, emitting a chilling glow.

Xiao Yu had already made the necessary orbital adjustments. He planned to follow the Earth meteoroid cluster around the sun for a while. After all, collecting materials was the priority, even though the speed was indeed slow.

The lens of the optical telescope slowly scanned the area, and an inconspicuous figure entered Xiao Yu's field of vision.

It was an irregularly shaped meteoroid, about 30 meters long, 7-8 meters wide, and 5-6 meters high. The diffuse light from nearby celestial bodies illuminated it, and then the light was collected by Xiao Yu.

Xiao Yu's heart stirred, and he immediately conducted a simple analysis of the meteoroid. The results immediately invigorated him.

The analysis showed that the meteoroid was composed of about 30% water, 69% iron, and trace amounts of nitrogen, silicon, hydrogen, oxygen, potassium, and other elements. Among these trace elements, hydrogen and oxygen were the most abundant.

"Is this... a gift from heaven?" Xiao Yu's spirits immediately lifted.

The meteoroid had a volume of about 1,000 cubic meters and a mass of over 3,000 tons! Even if hydrogen and oxygen each made up 0.1% of its mass, that would still be 6 tons in total! That much fuel could be used for many things.

Especially, there were over 900 tons of water! After getting closer to the sun, this water could be ionized into hydrogen and oxygen using the sun's energy, providing another huge resource. Additionally, the 2,000 tons of iron would be enough to repair the spaceship significantly.

"Capture it! I must capture it!" Xiao Yu made up his mind instantly.

At that moment, the celestial body blocking the meteoroid moved away, and sunlight directly illuminated it.

Under the heat of the sun, the solid water and solid hydrogen and oxygen on the surface of the meteoroid began to rapidly vaporize. The fluffy surface started to emit jets, and a large amount of gaseous material was ejected, enveloping the entire core in a thick white mist and dragging a long tail behind it.

Xiao Yu was extremely anxious: "These are all my treasures; they can't just evaporate away like this."

Xiao Yu immediately maneuvered the spaceship to block the meteoroid from the sun, using his solar panels to absorb the heat. Without the sunlight, the temperature in interstellar space, which was only a few Kelvin, quickly cooled it down, and the long white tail dissipated visibly.

Xiao Yu breathed a sigh of relief and began to consider how to truly capture this gift from heaven.

When a delicious cake is placed in front of you, the motivation to make the necessary tools is strong. Xiao Yu no longer cared about energy consumption and controlled the robots to search the material storage room, even dismantling some less important equipment to repurpose them.

The equipment manufacturing room was the most heavily protected place outside the main control room. Here, Xiao Yu had collected all the most basic and important machinery to ensure sufficient manufacturing capacity once he obtained raw materials. Fortunately, the equipment manufacturing room was not severely damaged during the previous cosmic collision.

With the robots working tirelessly, a mechanical claw attached to a 300-meter-long high-strength cable was quickly manufactured.

Xiao Yu was now only a few kilometers away from the meteoroid. In astronomical terms, this distance was considered very close, but compared to his capture capabilities, it was still a bit far. Xiao Yu had no choice but to carefully control the small spaceship, reducing the engine power to the minimum and slowly approaching the meteoroid, a few meters at a time.

This was actually quite risky. A few kilometers was the shortest distance Xiao Yu could maneuver the spaceship to avoid collisions. If another meteoroid collided with the target meteoroid and sent it hurtling towards Xiao Yu, he would have no time to dodge and would be destroyed.

"Great risks bring great rewards. Damn it, if I pull this off, I'll live a life of luxury!" Xiao Yu gritted his teeth, but his actions were even more cautious.

Gradually, the distance shortened to 2 kilometers... 1 kilometer... 500 meters...

Just as victory was in sight, a dark, inconspicuous figure suddenly appeared in Xiao Yu's field of vision. Xiao Yu was startled to see it collide with the target meteoroid at a relative speed of several hundred meters per second, causing a burst of light and sending the meteoroid tumbling. The heat from the collision caused the solid water, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and oxygen to vaporize violently, forming large clouds of gas.

Not only that, but the collision also altered the meteoroid's orbit, sending it flying in another direction and quickly disappearing from sight.

Xiao Yu was both angry and anxious, cursing the offending meteoroid a thousand times. After cursing, he regained his composure, turned the astronomical telescope, and began searching for the target meteoroid.

Xiao Yu knew that due to the recoil from the vaporizing gases and the original inertia, it wouldn't have gone far. Sure enough, after searching for two hours, he found it about 600 kilometers away in the direction of the ecliptic plane.

Xiao Yu didn't dare to increase his speed too quickly, only maintaining a relative speed of 50 meters per second (180 km/h) and slowly approaching it.

180 km/h is considered very fast on Earth, but here, it would be considered slow, like a snail's pace. Xiao Yu took over three hours to get within 3 kilometers of it.

"Damn it, if any more fools dare to ruin my plans, I'll use up energy to blast them with a laser gun," Xiao Yu resolved, and carefully began his approach.

The distance grew shorter, and Xiao Yu's nerves grew tighter. Finally, the distance was reduced to 280 meters!

This distance was within the range of the mechanical claw Xiao Yu had manufactured.

Xiao Yu aimed the gun at the target meteoroid and decisively issued the launch command.

The recoil from launching the mechanical claw caused Xiao Yu's spaceship to shake, affecting the accuracy of the claw. The claw flew out like an arrow but missed the target meteoroid, passing about 50 meters away.

Xiao Yu was not discouraged. He controlled the robot to retract the claw, adjusted the recoil parameters, and launched it again.

Another failure. The claw flew past the meteoroid at a distance of 20 meters.

He continued to adjust the recoil parameters and launched again.

Finally, this time Xiao Yu succeeded! The claw accurately hit the middle of the target meteoroid, piercing through its fluffy outer layer and anchoring itself inside, firmly connecting the meteoroid to Xiao Yu's spaceship.

The meteoroid, struck by the external force, immediately flew in the opposite direction. The high-strength cable was stretched taut, and under the pull of the meteoroid, Xiao Yu's spaceship was dragged along.

In a zero-gravity environment, many counterintuitive things happen. On Earth, if you shoot a claw at a rock, even if the claw catches the rock, the rock won't fly away because of Earth's gravity.

But in space, without Earth's gravity, the meteoroid, when struck, would react by flying away. This is like Xiao Yu tying himself to the tail of an arrow and being launched into the air when the arrow is shot.

Xiao Yu had anticipated this situation and remained calm. He didn't dare to stop abruptly, as the force would exceed the cable's strength and break it. Instead, he gradually applied force to slowly reduce the kinetic energy of the target meteoroid.

It took three hours and almost 1,000 kilometers of travel before Xiao Yu finally subdued the meteoroid. Then, he dragged it slowly away from the ecliptic plane.

Like a lion that quietly catches a calf in a herd but doesn't dare to eat it there, Xiao Yu also didn't dare to start his feast here because it was too dangerous.

After three days, Xiao Yu dragged the target meteoroid to a point 40,000 kilometers away from the ecliptic plane. There were no other meteoroids in sight. Looking at the delicious meal in front of him, Xiao Yu excitedly roared, "Dinner time!"