With this full acceleration, Hope's speed climbed straight up to 400 kilometres per second, using up a fifth of its regular fuel reserves. But he had escaped, and Hawke was thankful.
The programs on the Hope began to work, automatically grabbing the Jupiter spirits attached to the Hope's shell. At the same time, a little curiosity grew in Hawke's mind.
"Why are these Jupiter Spirits actively attacking me? Why are these Jupiter Spirits so much more powerful than ordinary Jupiter Spirits?"
Several questions wandered in Hawk's mind.
Suddenly, there was a strange phenomenon that caught Hawke's attention.
Hawke had divided the Jupiter Spirits he had captured during this period into two dozen portions, and each portion had a special highly radiation-resistant box to store them in. The strange phenomenon occurred in the box where the mutated Jupiter spirits were captured behind the confinement.
In this box, apart from the dozen or so mutant Jupiter spirits, there were also about hundreds of ordinary Jupiter spirits caught earlier.
Through the observation instrument, Hawk clearly saw that those Mutant Jupiter Spirits showed unusual aggressiveness, they fiercely tore into the ordinary Jupiter Spirits, swallowing them in one gulp, and at the same time, their own radiation intensity also increased.
"This is, this is ..." Hawke's mind was in awe.
Soon, these dozen mutant Jupiter Spirits devoured hundreds of ordinary Jupiter Spirits, and then, these dozen mutant Jupiter Spirits began to kill and devour each other again.
It took a full hour before they finished conquering each other, and at this time, there was only this one Jupiter Spirit left in this box. Its strength was two hundred and fifty times that of an ordinary Jupiter Spirit.
With a movement in his heart, Hawk commanded the Hope to open a small opening in the box that imprisoned it. Immediately, as if it had received some order, this Jupiter Spirit rushed towards the gap, as fast as lightning. Fortunately, the program moved faster and closed the gap a split second before it could escape out.
"It's got more than instinct, it's got more than rudimentary intelligence!" Hawk was in shock, "No wonder I was attacked! That most powerful Jupiter Spirit must have possessed a similar rudimentary intelligence, that's why it took the initiative to attack me!"
"Devouring, evolving, so that's how it is! But I guess only some special Jupiter Spirits possess such an ability. The group of Jupiter Spirits that I initially captured didn't show intelligence even though they fused with each other to become one." Hawk pondered silently, "That would be a problem. Jupiter is so big, who knows how many Jupiter spirits have evolved intelligence, it won't be so easy to catch them in the future."
"But fortunately, the Hope is escaping this time, let's figure out what to do later." Hawk shook his head and ended his thoughts about that.
More than half a month later, Hope returned to Titan without incident, and then took on the busy task of collecting fusion fuel, transporting supplies between the stars, and repairing damaged moons, and was busy enough to be free until a full six months later.
On Titan, everything is in good order. Under the existing ninety-three bases, Hawke built another Institute for High Energy Physics and began research into physical theory.
There is no doubt about the importance of physical theory. Human society has developed to this point thanks to two major theories established almost a century ago, the theory of relativity and quantum theory. Even all of Hawke's current achievements are based on these two theories. Without new research in theoretical physics, Hawke will soon be at a loss as to where to go from here.
As for the next step in theoretical research, Hawke's main focus is on the direction of "space". With quantum theory describing microscopic particles and relativity describing the macroscopic world and combining matter and energy, the next step in physics, given the current physical foundation, is likely to be 'space'.
But theoretical research is a delicate task, and Hawke has no intention of producing a result in a short time.
In addition to the Institute of High Energy Physics, Hawke had also built another base, this one dedicated to the study of special materials. Although the research on black worm corpses and Jupiter spirits had started early on, but in the early stages, because of the computing power, Hawke had not launched large-scale research. Now, with the construction of the Aurora coming to an end, Hawke finally had enough energy to research this.
The other ninety-three bases had been functioning well, with large quantities of supplies being produced every moment for Hawke's construction. "The construction of the Aurora, a country-class ship, was in its final stages, and Hawke was already trying to construct plans for a larger county-class ship.
However, all of Hawke's titanium and zirconium reserves are now almost depleted, and until the Earth meteor arrives, Hawke will not be able to build a new ship for a while.
After a long wait, the day finally came for the Aurora to take its test flight.
The Aurora was several times larger than the Hope, and accordingly, it was much heavier than the Hope. However, the Aurora is powered by Hawker's newly developed "Fusion II" engine, which provides even more power.
As the order to take off was given, several pale blue flames erupted from the Aurora's tail, sending a huge cloud of smoke across the ground.
The Aurora was not fast, at least not compared to the Hope, and it took more than ten minutes to reach the outer atmosphere of Titan.
Hawk immediately tested all aspects of its performance.
At Hawke's command, the Aurora began to perform a variety of difficult manoeuvres in space. It took a few hours to get all the information he wanted, for example, to stop after a period of rapid flight, or to tell it to spin, or to fire a laser cannon in flight.
"Everything is as expected, not bad. Maximum acceleration to one point five kilometres per second, maximum overload resistance to one hundred and seventy times Earth's gravity, and maximum speed to one thousand five hundred kilometres per second for regular quantities of fuel, very good, very good."
Looking at these experimental data, Hawke nodded in satisfaction.
Although the Aurora's machine power was not as good as the Hope's, its range, as well as its firepower, resistance to attack, and maximum speed of conventional quantity of fuel, all exceeded the Hope by a lot. There was no way around the loss of manoeuvring power, and everyone knew that the bigger something was, the less flexible it was bound to be.
In Hawke's plan, in the event of an interstellar war, a ship like the Aurora would be the flagship of a small squad, responsible for suppressing firepower and covering the attack, while close combat would be left to a "village" class ship like the Hope, or a smaller ship.
Hawk steered the Aurora as it swaggered through the Saturn system, beating up anyone who disagreed with him.
A meteorite about 20 metres in diameter appeared ahead. Hawke's mind went, "Let's test the Aurora's weaponry and the strength of its shell."
Immediately, the internal instruments of the Aurora began to scan the meteorite, and within almost a millionth of a second, the speed, position, orbit, centre of gravity, density and other data of the meteorite were obtained. strategic-grade hydrogen bomb.
The meteorite, carefree and orbiting Saturn at a distance of 30,000 kilometres from the Aurora, could never have imagined that it was about to meet its end because of a single thought by someone.
"Launch!" Hawk gave the order to launch, and immediately, the mechanical arm on the launcher released, and a stream of fire erupted from the tail of the space missile, lunging forward with a roar.
The shape of the missile was not the cylindrical shape commonly used above Earth, but a round ball. For above Earth, the shape of a cylinder with a cone on top minimises air resistance and speeds itself up, but Hawk was different. With Hawke's current level of technology, the main thing to overcome is not air resistance, but the tearing effect of the powerful acceleration on the missile's body. The spherical shape, which maximises this tearing force, spreads it evenly throughout the missile hull to avoid it being torn apart by the powerful acceleration.
This is a valuable lesson that Hawke has learned through thousands and thousands of experiments.
Almost instantly, the speed of the spherical missile, accelerated to almost two thousand kilometres per second by the powerful jet stream in its wake, took only fifteen seconds to reach the meteorite.
The hydrogen bomb was detonated just moments before the impact occurred. Under the effect of the infinite flash of light as well as the high temperature, the meteorite, with a mass of about several thousand tons, was instantly vaporised and disappeared from sight.
A fraction of a second later, the powerful radiation and heat flow reached the Aurora. But the Aurora remained motionless. The powerful radiation and heat did not have any effect on the Aurora's high-strength shell.
"The power is not bad." Hawke's heart was full of joy.
In the following time, Hawke tested the power of the laser cannon and the high velocity machine gun separately. During this day, the meteorites around the Aurora could be considered as having a bad luck. Often a meteorite was carefree, not bothering anyone, orbiting on its own, but the next moment a powerful laser from nowhere vaporised it, or a whole bunch of high speed machine gun bullets came and smashed it to pieces.
"Due to the size limitation of the Aurora, the maximum power of the laser cannon is just that, but when the larger 'County' class ship is built, the power of the laser cannon can be further enhanced. With so many weapons, I won't be afraid even if I encounter any unscrupulous aliens."
Hawk was full of joyful thoughts.