Chapter Four --Continued--

It did not take Jonathan long to travel outside of known territory. With all of his construction duties, he did not have much time to explore beyond going from pod to pod. As he went, Jonathan left the cartographer program running on the onboard computer in the rover.
he made good time across the land, the rover had a high speed. It was unfamilair territory, but the land was not hard to navigate. Once, he came across a frozen river, but that proved to be little obsticle. his real worry was a mountin range or some sort of large gorge. Jonathan had no knowledge of what he was driving towards.
The first morning in the journey, Jonathan had his first encounter with local wildlife. As he stood outside, stretching his legs, he ate an energy bar. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a movement of some sort. It was so odd to see something move that he had not sent into motion that he started as it went out of vision. He dropped the bar and moved after whatever it was. It looked as if it had gone under the rover. Jonathan crouched down and peered under the vehicle. At first, he didn't see anything. Then, it shifted. It moved like a millapeed; it had uncountable legs. It was covered with small horns and it's colour matched the dirt almost perfectly. Jonathan wondered if it wasn't a chameleon of sorts. He waved at it, but the creature did not flinch. It wasn't acting like any animal Jonathan had ever seen before. His lack of knowledge got the better of him, though, and Jonathan moved away from the creature. He left it under the vehicle and his energy bar on the ground and climbed back into the vehicle and started the engine, moving on his way.

For days Jonathan travelled, and every time he stoped he found the same creature somewhere near the vehicle. He could only assume that somehow the animal was travelling with him. He wasn't sure how, but he was still comforted by it in a strange way. It started to give the world a bit of familiarity. Althought it seemed against all semblence of logic to try and domesticate a such a harsh looking creature, and although the food might have killed it, Jonathan fed it part of his energy bar one day. The creature seemed to enjoy it, so Jonathan began to feed it regularily. It did not grow noticably, nor did it die, so Jonathan figured that it couldn't be that harmful.
The creature proved to be remarkably intellegent. Jonathan studied it out of bordom. It fould navigate a rudimentry maze at remarkable speed. In fact, it had crawled over the walls of the original maze. It could solve puzzles. Jonathan gave it an image of three blocks, and let the creature into a box with three blocks. It did not take long for the blocks to be pushed into a pattern closely resembling that of those in the picture. Jonathan could not hekp but feel like he was the one being tested every once in a while, especialy when he wondered how the creature kept up with him day after day.
After a while, Jonathan named the creature Norman. Jonathan did not have the most original imagination when it came to names. Remarkably, Norman recognised his own name. Jonathan never heard him vocalise in any way, but all the senses of the creature seemed to be the same as those of creatures from earth.
And so Jonathan and Norman travelled across a vast amount of land in search of the Starfish. Once they reached the projected landing zone, Jonathan stopped and set up a search grid for the area.
"What do you say, Norman? It's got to be around here somewhere, right?" The creature just walked in a circle, clockwise. Jonathan was beginning to suspect this meant something. Norman had a few patterns he (Jonathan had ascribed the creature a sex for the simplicity of pro-noun use) would walk in when Jonathan asked him these questions. They were always the same. Jonathan made a note to test Norman and try and figure out what he was saying, if anything at all.
"I think we'll leave the search until tomorrow. It'll be dark soon." Jonathan had learned the plant's cycle. Indeed, he lived near the equator, the most temperate region on the planet. It sat at about minus eight degrees centigrade, and the average daily temperature had been dropping. Jonathan assumed the seasons were changing. It seemed preverse that plants flourished at that temperature, but he figured it must be warm for the planet. Day and night both lasted for about eight hours, making the day considerably shorter than Jonathan was used to. He had begun to adust to the strange hours, however.
He slept in the bed in the back of the rover that night, in anticipation of the next day. The search grid could take up to a week to explore, but Jonathan was feeling lucky.
It took him two more days to locate the wreck of the Starfish. To his surprise, a lot of the bulk of the ship remained.
With a certain amount of surprise, he found a few peices that appeared to still be in tact. It took another few local days to salvage what he could, but Jonathan started back for the base camp in hight spirits. He would not be able to go home, but he just might be able to send a message there. That was his best option to date. The light-drive, a surprisingly small machine, appeared to be intact. If he could cobble together a probe of sorts, set it up with the Starfish's transponder signal and send it back to earth, he might just be able to engineer his own resque. Once the ship with the fifteen colonists arrived, there would be a shuttle that could take people back and forth between the systems. The pile of rubble that once had been the scientific marvel of an age might prove to be the only thing that could save Jonathan.
"This is it, Norman" he told his strange companion, who had taken to riding in the cabin with him. "I might just be able to rig this up to take a message back home. I can leave this place. You could even come with me."
Norman moved in a clockwise motion. This was the motion Jonathan had come to recognise as meaning 'yes'.
It was with high spirits that Jonathan made his way back to his base camp. Perhaps it would not be long before he could go home.

Words: 6,365/50,000
Days Left: 28
Sanity: Ebbing at times
Caffinated beverages: still 0