Chapter Two --Continued--

Author's note: I know that there is already a plot hole here... Yes, Jonathan left his ship at the end of chapter one and then, he left it again at the beginning of chapter two... I know it's there. Ironing out those details comes later. Furthermore, I forgot to mention the fact that there are going to be terrible spelling and gramatical errors in the body text. You'll have to forgive that. In the final version, those will be cleaned up.

Again, Jonathan was struck by the dry cold climate of the dark world. A quick survey of the area showed that he was in a loose forest of tall spindly trees. They were trees, too. They were alien, there was no doubt, but they did carry a certain resemblence to those of Earth. There was a glow coming from deep in the woods, so jonathan set off in that direction.
It did not take long to discover just how stragnely familiar the world was. I felt like earth, the gravity was similiar, and the odd resmblence that the trees held to those of Earth was almost unsetteling. There was one major difference between this world and Earth, however. Jonathan could not shake how quite it was as he moved through the forest. He seemed to be alone. Local flora, but no local fauna in this local forest. There were few plants growing on the ground underneath the tall spindly trees. It was covered in dry twigs and dirt.
Jonathan made good time through the woods and soon ran arcoss what caused the glow through the trees. One of the pods had landed and started a fire. for some reason that he could not explain, jonathan noted that the fire had not spread very far in the extreemly dry environment.
The Pod itself had cooled enough to be approached and opened. The hatch revealed this to be the seventh pod in series, a twenty meter sphere filled with the materials it would require to erect a pre-fabricated extension of the cabin on Starfish, giving Jonathan and home base.
Jonathan logged the distance and direction of the pod from the Starfish on a small personal computer. With the two points of this pod and the location of the Starfish, the computer could map out the location of the other fifteen pods with varying degrees of accuracy based upon weak radar signals and entrance tradjectories.
Jonathan made a decision, and made off towards another Pod. all through the night he searched, mapping out the locations of the pods. He did not find the pod containing the signal booster he needed to comminicate with teh rest of the Starfish, still in orbit, until day break.
As he was cresting a small hill a few kiloeters from what would become his homebase in the woods, he saw the sun crest the horizen. It shed a blue light upon the land, giving everything a very alien hue. this sun was not the colout that jonathan was used to. There was something unsetteling about the light that Jonathan could not put his finger on at the time.
The pod sat in a crater it had created, glinting in the blue light. It reflected the hazy blue, almost white sky of the world. Upon opening the hatch, he let out a cry of excitment, there sat what he needed, a satteltite that could let him communicate with his ship in orbit porperly. It was a clunky but very effecient machine. Jonathan would not be able to move it on his own, but he knew that this pod also carried a vehicle that might take him the better part of the day to assemble. Each pod contained a small survival kit that had enough food to last for days.
Knowing that procrastination woudl gain him nothing, Jonathan crawled into the Pod and began removing materials. Some were hard to wrestle out, but after a few hours of work, he had everythning he needed to assemble his vehicle, if not all of the accessories. The basic chasis of the rover would allow him to transport the communication equipment and find the last few pods quickly.
Setting himself to completing the almost insurmountable task of assembling the rover in a day, Jonathan had to keep focused. He knew that every second, the orbit of Starfish was decaying.
The vehicle was, understandibly, a one man model. It had a cargo pad infront of the cockpit. under te pad was the engine that drove the eight articulated wheels. A small crane for lifting supplies and building materials sat on top of the cockpit. On he back of the vehicle many different peices of machinery could be attached to facilitate various construction purposes.
During training, Jonathan must have built the rover at least fifty times. He knew each of the peice, and where to put them. In what was actually about eight hours, but to Jonathan didn't seem that long, he finished the rover and climbed into the pilot's seat. A flick of a switch and a press of a botton brought the machine to life, the batteries powering lights, engine and crane. Jonathan lifted the sateltie uplink on to the cargo bed and started back for the starfish. This was the first step he needed to complete to make that place home.
It took a while to drive back to the starfish, but when he got there, Jonathan knew that he could not go on any longer without sleep. The planet was darkening again, and Jonathan knew he had limited power in both the ship and the rover without his generator, and that the inclusive solar panels on the rover would not work at night.
"Goodnight strange world." Jonathan mumbled as he walked into Starfish, closing the hatch and pulling a cot essentillay out of the wall to sleep.