The Dark Forest

Dongfang Yanxu brings Zhang Beihai on board the ship Natural Selection and gives him a tutorial about how the ship works. After showing him the basics, she says that she is considering retiring from the fleet. Zhang Beihai asks if it’s because of the review, and Dongfang Yanxu says that it is. Zhang Beihai doesn’t explicitly tell Dongfang Yanxu not to retire, but he does say that part of a soldier’s job is to bear up under scrutiny, even if that scrutiny is unwanted.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kuhn and General Robinson, who are Dr. Ringier and General Fitzroy’s successors, monitor the closest Trisolaran probe. That probe is scheduled to pass Jupiter in six days. Following Dr. Kuhn and General Robinson’s plans, a sheet of space dust has been arranged in the path of the Trisolaran probe so when the probe passes through it, they’ll be able to track the probe’s speed and direction. Meanwhile, the spacecraft Blue Shadow has orders to track the probe. As Blue Shadow moves toward where the probe is expected to be, the pilot shouts that he sees it. The commander says that can’t be possible, as the probe should be 14,000 kilometers away. But then the commander sees it too. It seems to be decelerating and planning to come to a stop.

On the spacecraft Natural Selection, Captain Dongfang Yanxu transfers the captain’s privileges to Zhang Beihai, who will be the ship’s acting captain as the space fleet tries to verify whether there are any people who advocate for defeatism or escapism in their midst. Zhang Beihai goes into a room where he can access control of the ship after captain’s privileges are transferred to him. He stays in there for longer than seems necessary. Ten minutes later, he comes out. When he does, Dongfang Yanxu sees that Zhang Beihai has programmed the ship to enter into Ahead Four, its highest speed, and is planning to go in the opposite direction of the Trisolaran fleet.  

Dongfang Yanxu and other high-ranking officials nearby ask Zhang Beihai what he is doing. Dongfang Yanxu asks him if he’s has been imprinted with defeatist ideas or whether he is ETO. He says neither is the case. He then tells the people nearby that they must enter into “deep-sea state,” in which they are enveloped in a preserving fluid and put to sleep to ensure their bodies don’t break apart when the ship accelerates. Dongfang Yanxu tells everyone nearby to do as Zhang Beihai says.

The Natural Selection accelerates away at a speed 1/100 of the speed of light. That uses the bulk of the Natural Selection’s remaining fuel, so there will be no way for the ship to return to the fleet. There are 2,000 soldiers on board. When Zhang Beihai thinks they are far enough away, Zhang Beihai gets in touch with the Asian Fleet. He tells them that his actions are not traitorous. Instead, he says, humanity is guaranteed to be defeated in the Doomsday Battle, and he wants to ensure that some members of humanity escape and survive. The person on the other end of the line says that that makes Zhang Beihai a defeatist and escapist.

Zhang Beihai then explains that this had been his plan all along. He had developed the plan after listening to his father, who was a member of an organization called the Future Historians, talk about the future. The Future Historians predicted everything that has happened, including the Great Ravine, and they also predicted that humanity would be destroyed in the Doomsday Battle. Zhang Beihai says that in the last conversation he had with his father, he resolved to find a way to help some members of humanity escape.

Zhang Beihai says that he disguised himself as a triumphalist to achieve his plan and that he killed three people to ensure that humanity would develop the technology necessary for him to have a ship on which to escape. Zhang Beihai says that only Chang Weisi was suspicious of him. The person on the other end says that Chang Weisi warned them about Zhang Beihai in a letter, but those warnings were subtle, and they unwisely ignored them.