Chapter Four: Life on Norton

If Jonathan were to give up hope at that point, he would never have been selected to take on the mission. He knew there might still be some chance for him. Somehow, the next mission might also be thrown off course, they might locate him. He might even find the part of the lost Starfish and be able to make some sort of probe that would allow him to send a message home. Depending on where he was, if he started broadcasting a message on strong radio waves, me might just be able to get a message across to Earth within a few years. All in all, the situation did not seem entierly hopeless. Jonathan could not but help the feeling of bitter defeat, however, when he could not communicate with the starfish in orbit.
With nothing better to do, Jonathan went back to the mission profile. He started to build a base camp on an unknown world, hoping that someday the colonists might find him and the begginings of their new town. Maybe. There was quite a lot of equipment to set up and the location of the base wasn't entierly the best one. It would take some time to clear the forest around the landing pod of the Starfish, and then most likely days to haul all of the equpiment back. Jonathan worked on his computer for a while, planning his one-man community. His best options would be to keep busy for as long as possible. He could build a landing pad and a road out of the firest with the materials he had. Part of the equipment landed on this advance colonizationmission was a land-base observatory. In theory, it was supposed to be set up among the buildings Jonathan would erect around his grounded spaceship, but it could also be put in a georgaphically convient space as well; on the crest of a near-by hill, for example.
There was literaly months of work ahead for Jonathan. He knew that it might all be futile, but he set to work anyways. The first task was constructing his own home. It was essentially a pre-fabricated addition to the cabin in the spaceship. The hold hatch acted as a doorway between rooms. It was not a large complex, just some more indoor living space for Jonathan. It had been designed to be able to exist in any environment - it had and airlock and was vacuum proof. It was insulated agains cold or heat. All the buildings were. In theory, the entire complex could be constructed into one large building, but it was unsightly and was only meant to be constructed that way when no brethable atmosphere was present.
Other buildings included a rather large laboratory, which Jonathan put in the clearing with his home. An observatory he built a road to and put it on a near-by hill. A meteorological lab was also included, which Jonathan chose to place a quick walk away from the home colony - so that his influence would not effect the data.
A greehouse was a definite necessity in this atmosphere. As it turned out, the oxygen level was slightly lower than that of Earth's. Jonathan soon learned that he was also in the summer months of his planet. In the greenhouse, Jonathan would be able to grow all sorts of food that would sustain him.
A large storehouse full of materials and supplies that were intended for the future colony was also erected behind the main structures. Jonathan did not know the full content of the stores, as they were mostly packed in crates, but he expected he would open them when his construction duties were completed.
There was machinery for extracting moisture form the air. Not expecting that much, jontathan set it up anyway.
A secondary rover used for exploration as opposed to construction was containted in one of the pods. Jonathan spent two days setting up this rover, knowing that he would probably end up using it some time in the future. When completed, he towed it back to the base for future use, using the beginnings of a road he was constructing out of the forest.
In about a month, the pods were all empty and all the machinery was set up, and it not working, then at least ready to. In one final act of salvage, Jonathan dissassembled the pods and towed the metal back to base camp, in hopes that it might somehow be useful.
Eventually, after Jonathan constructed a road out of the forest compeltely and built a landing pad in hope of resque, he as out of work. he could spend his days processing information in the labs, but that would never help him escape this world.
He was already over his projected time of return. Earth had to know that something had gone wrong by now.
He hoped, by some chance, that in seven more months, the follow-up ship with five crew members would find him. A month after that, a fifteen crew member vessel would drop into the colony, creating a permanant population. Slowly, as the years went by, the colony would grow, eventually becoming self-sufficient and in theory, eventually turning a profit in mining or harvest of local materials of some kind.
Jonathan could not find any reason for his flight off course, not could he explain the damage to his ship. He could only hope that the navigational anomoly would repreate itself and the damage to the vessles would not.

Jonathan made up his mind a few weeks later. He woudl record an automated message at the colony, and then leave in the exploration rover. He would find the crashed remains of the Starfish, if there were any, and see if there was anything worth salvage. He had the last orbital trajectory of the ship and from it could deduce the place where it entered the atmosphere, and thus could determine the general area of the wreckage - if there as any.
Before Jonathan set off, he decided that the planet could not go on being nameless. In his recorded message, in case somebody should stumble across the colony in his absense, he refered to the planet as Norton.
With a cab full of supplies, Jonathan drove down the road aay from his home-base, past his observatory, and out into the wilds of Norton.
At this point, Jonathan had become used to the seeming complete lack of animals on the surface of the planet, even if the solid quite caused him some uneasyness.