* * *

“Uncle Zhang, you don’t have to decide now. You’ve asked all the necessary questions, and it’s not a small amount of money, after all,” Shi Xiaoming said to Zhang Yuanchao, his face a picture of serenity.

“It’s not that. Is the plan for real? The TV says—”

“Don’t you mind what the TV says. Two weeks ago the government spokesperson said that freezing accounts was impossible, but now look what’s happened.… Think reasonably. You’re an ordinary man, and you’re thinking about the continuation of your family line. What about the president and the premier? Won’t they be thinking about the continuation of the Chinese people? And the UN about the continuation of the human race? This UN special session is actually an international cooperative plan that will formally launch the Human Escape Plan. This is a pressing matter.”

Lao Zhang slowly nodded. “It does seem that way when you think about it. But I still feel like escape is a long way off. Should I really be worrying about it?”

“Uncle Zhang, you misunderstand. Escape can’t be all that far off. Do you think the escape ships will only take off three or four hundred years from now? If that were true, then the Trisolaran Fleet could catch them easily.”

“Then when will the ships head out?”

“You’re about to have a grandson, right?”

“Yes.”

“Your grandson will see those ships take off.”

“He’ll be aboard one?”

“No, that’s impossible. But his grandson could be.”

“That’s…” Zhang worked it out. “About seventy or eighty years.”

“It’ll be longer than that. The wartime government will tighten population controls and build delays into the birth restrictions, so it’ll be forty years to a generation. The ships will take off in about one hundred twenty years.”

“That’s pretty quick. Can they be built in time?”

“Uncle Zhang, think back to what things were like one hundred twenty years ago. It was still the Qing Dynasty! It took over a month to go from Hangzhou to Beijing, and the emperor had to spend days cooped up in a sedan chair to get to his summer retreat. Now it’s less than three days from Earth to the moon. Technology develops fast, which means that the pace of development is always on the increase. If you add to that the fact that the whole world is pouring all its energy into space technology, then there’s no question at all that spaceships can be created in about one hundred twenty years.”

“Isn’t space travel pretty dangerous?”