Scene Overview
The Hijacking of Natural Selection occurs in the middle-to-latter portion of The Dark Forest (Three-Body II), representing the most dramatic and far-reaching event before the Doomsday Battle. Zhang Beihai, a military officer who had served in the Space Force for nearly two centuries through multiple hibernation cycles, used the trust and authority he had accumulated over decades to hijack the warship Natural Selection during what appeared to be a routine tactical exercise. He ordered the vessel to accelerate at maximum thrust toward deep space beyond the solar system, taking fifteen hundred crew members on a path of interstellar wandering. This event not only rewrote the fates of everyone involved but triggered the darkest chapter in humanity's spacefaring history — the Dark Battle.
Detailed Description
Two Centuries of Disguise
Zhang Beihai's story spans nearly two centuries. In the early days of the Three-Body Crisis, he was a Chinese naval officer later selected for the newly established Space Force. From his very first day, he made a cold and clear-eyed judgment: humanity could not possibly close the technological gap with the Trisolaran civilization, and the Doomsday Battle would inevitably end in catastrophic defeat. Therefore, the only way to perpetuate human civilization was to flee — to escape into deep space with one or several warships and seek a new home.
However, in that era, "Escapism" was the greatest taboo in human society. Anyone advocating flight would be branded a traitor and coward, facing legal punishment and social ostracism. Zhang Beihai understood this fully and thus began his protracted masquerade. He performed as more steadfast than anyone — actively promoting the construction of the Space Force, advocating for the most aggressive nuclear fusion propulsion technology, and even assassinating scientists who attempted to impede the development of radiation sail propulsion to ensure the technology would not be abandoned.
These assassinations used special metallic projectiles extracted from meteorites, making them nearly impossible to trace. His every action appeared aimed at strengthening humanity's combat capability, but in reality each was designed to ensure that sufficiently advanced warships would be available for eventual escape — he needed interstellar propulsion technology, not merely short-range weapons for fighting within the solar system.
His disguise was so perfect that he became one of the most trusted officers in the Space Force. His superiors and comrades all regarded him as a stalwart fighter in humanity's resistance against the Trisolaran civilization. No one suspected that this model soldier was, at heart, an Escapist.
Dongfang Yanxu's Suspicion
Throughout Zhang Beihai's long masquerade, only a very few individuals harbored suspicions. Dongfang Yanxu — a perceptive young female officer — was among them. In her interactions with Zhang Beihai, she sensed an indefinable dissonance. His conviction appeared flawless, but it was precisely this "perfection" that triggered her alertness — a genuine war advocate could not possibly have never shown any wavering or fear.
Yet Dongfang Yanxu's suspicions never found substantive evidence. Zhang Beihai's disguise was too seamless; every word and action was carefully designed to leave no opening. It was only at the moment of hijack that Dongfang Yanxu finally confirmed her intuition.
The Execution of the Hijack
The hijack occurred during what appeared to be an ordinary tactical exercise. Using the exercise as cover, Zhang Beihai issued a series of precise commands to the ship's AI, subtly redirecting the vessel's course from the exercise area toward deep space while ramping the propulsion system to maximum thrust. By the time the crew recognized the anomaly, Natural Selection had entered a high-speed escape trajectory.
Facing the crew's questioning and fury, Zhang Beihai calmly stated his reasoning. He told them the Doomsday Battle could not be won, and staying meant death. At first, virtually no one believed him — after two centuries of technological development, human society was brimming with confidence, and most believed the human fleet was sufficient to counter the Trisolaran advance force.
But when news of the Droplet Attack arrived, everything changed. Nearly two thousand human warships had been destroyed in half an hour by a single small probe. Zhang Beihai's judgment was validated by brutal reality. Natural Selection became one of the very few surviving human warships.
The Dark Battle
Yet escape did not mean safety. After Natural Selection rendezvoused in deep space with several other fleeing warships — Blue Space, Ultimate Law, Enterprise, and Deep Space — a cruel reality confronted everyone: with existing resource reserves, these vessels could not sustain all their crew to the nearest habitable star system.
The absolute finitude of resources transformed these human compatriots into each other's greatest threats. Every crew eliminated from another warship meant more resources for the survivors — fuel, ecological cycling materials, even corpses recoverable as biomass. This was the Dark Forest principle projected in miniature within humanity — chains of suspicion and resource competition made cooperation impossible.
The Dark Battle erupted in an extremely short span of time. Without warning, the ships launched lethal attacks against one another. Natural Selection was destroyed in this battle, and Zhang Beihai perished in the fighting. Ironically, the man who had spent two centuries saving fifteen hundred people ultimately died at the hands of fellow humans.
In the end, only Blue Space and Bronze Age survived. The survivors obtained sufficient resources from the Dark Battle to continue their deep-space voyage, but they had also permanently lost any possibility of returning to human moral order — they had become "dark" beings, regarded by mainstream human civilization as murderers and savages.
Analysis
A Two-Century Game of Chess: Zhang Beihai's plan is perhaps one of the longest-spanning personal stratagems in literary history. Every step was precisely calculated — joining the Space Force, promoting nuclear fusion propulsion, eliminating obstructors, earning trust, obtaining warship command, and the final hijack — each link in the chain was indispensable. This ultra-long-term strategic patience is virtually unmatched in the novel.
The Moral Dilemma of Escapism: Zhang Beihai's actions provoke profound moral debate. Was he a hero or a traitor? Judged by results, his assessment was entirely correct — staying to fight meant death. But judged by process, he assassinated scientists, betrayed the trust of his comrades, and without consent took fifteen hundred people into unknown deep space. The core dilemma of the Escapist is this: to preserve the seed of civilization, how many people's wishes and rights may you sacrifice?
The Clear-Eyed Pessimist: Zhang Beihai was one of the rare characters in the Three-Body series who saw reality clearly from the very beginning. While all of humanity was immersed in blind optimism, he bore the weight of lucid despair alone. He knew humanity was destined for defeat, knew his actions would be deemed treason, knew that even escape into deep space offered no guarantees — yet he carried out his plan without hesitation.
Lessons of the Dark Battle: The Dark Battle is a microcosm of the Dark Forest principle within humanity itself. When resources are finite and survival is threatened, the moral codes of civilization rapidly collapse, and humans regress into "dark hunters" no different from other civilizations in the cosmos. This episode validates the axioms of cosmic sociology that Luo Ji revealed: survival is a civilization's first need, civilizations continuously grow and expand, but the total amount of matter in the universe remains constant.
A Soldier's Fate: At his core, Zhang Beihai was a soldier, and a soldier's duty is to protect the people. But when protection becomes impossible, what should a soldier do? Zhang Beihai chose to lead people in flight to preserve hope, making him an outlier in traditional military ethics but a prophet in the ethics of survival. That he ultimately died in the Dark Battle adds further tragic depth to his character — the savior could not save himself.
Impact and Significance
Birth of a Deep-Space Civilization: The survivors of the Dark Battle — the crews of Blue Space and Bronze Age — became humanity's first true deep-space civilization. They had psychologically and morally severed themselves from solar system humanity, developing a unique survival philosophy and social structure.
Historical Rehabilitation of Escapism: After the Doomsday Battle, Escapism — previously considered treason — underwent a historic reassessment. Zhang Beihai's foresight received belated recognition, though the moral controversy over his methods has never ceased.
Human Verification of the Dark Forest Principle: The Dark Battle verified the universality of the Dark Forest principle within humanity itself — this was not merely a law governing civilizations across the cosmos, but the essence of all survival competition. When resources are finite, trust collapses, cooperation disintegrates, and every individual or group becomes a potential threat to every other.
Foreshadowing the Third Volume: Blue Space, which survived the Dark Battle, played a pivotal role in Death's End (Three-Body III) — it was this very warship that ultimately sent the gravitational wave broadcast, simultaneously exposing the coordinates of both the Trisolaran star system and the solar system to other civilizations in the cosmos. Zhang Beihai's hijacking action two centuries earlier, in a way he could never have foreseen, ultimately altered the fate of two star systems.