In the next two weeks, Ravel stayed happily on Mars. He visited the grand canyon and some historical sites in other major cities on Mars. After his trip, he was asked to go to the capital to attend an academic conference at UM (University of Mars).
At the conference, he met Dan again, but not face to face. Dan was on the stage and giving a speech to a large crowd of scientists.
In the middle of the speech, Dan announced the arrival of Ravel and John: “Recently, I received two renowned professors from University of Galaxy, Prof. Ravel, and Prof. Beasley. They’ll help us with our development of archaeology and history.” Dan gestured to Ravel and John to stand up.
Standing up from the audience, Ravel and John bowed in every direction with humble smiles on their faces.
Dan then continued his speech about promoting the development of science.
At a point, Dan turned the content of his speech to the expansion of the territory abruptly: “All those developments of science are for the increase in power of our country, except intellectual endeavor, we also need to put more efforts into the development of weapons.”
All the eyes of scientists were shining with aggression and excitement.
“The era of proton bombs has passed. Let us welcome the new era of blackhole bombs!” Many scientists stood up from their seats and clapped loudly.
“Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Wilkinson, Dr. Jansen…” He recited a long list of names, and ended up with “Prof. Yamashita.”
“I reluctantly accept the name of this bomb, DT-1, which is the abbreviation of my name. I believe its name is unimportant. The blood, sweat, and tears paid by the scientists and engineers who created it are the most important.”
He started to explain how the bomb was built: “The bomb was built using a deserted planet, Earth. First, our engineers used a large sphere to cover the planet. Second, they compressed the planet inside the cover with…”
Suddenly, a tremendous explosion happened on the stage. Dan’s body was blown into pieces, falling down the stage with the sound of metallic collisions. The crowd got into a state of chaos. A voice shouted: “Catch the murderer!”
There was a man with a mask who ran and jumped onto a car, which quickly flew away.
John cried to Ravel: “What the hell is that?”
“Don’t panic, let’s get out of here first.”
They passed through the crowd, there was another corpse near the stage: it was Yamashita.
With pale faces, Ravel and John gave a glance at the corpse and exited the auditorium.
