More days passed. Petra reported another apple seedling had sprouted, and Nick tried not to get his hopes up. He kept working on Rockhunter, and gave himself a day off to relax when he reached the milestone of 300 pieces assembled. It's almost starting to look like a car. Well, a piece of earth-moving equipment more like, but still.

Nick was amused when Petra extruded an almost exact replica of the back seat of the Ford Explorer as one of the pieces, complete with seat belt. I guess she figures this is what I like in a transport. Makes sense. Instead of screws or welds, of course, it had those weird hexagonal fasteners attaching it to the rest of Rockhunter.

Honestly, I am getting totally spoiled with these tools. There is no way I am going back to Earth without a complete set.

He kept up his language lessons with Petra. He was hoping that whatever language Petra was slowly teaching him was some sort of Galactic Standard and he wouldn't have to learn an entirely different language if and when he picked up a transmission from someone. When he consulted the status displays, it turned out that Petra had 36% command of English, and Nick had 1% command of...alienese. He couldn't pronounce the name of the alien language; it had some weird clicking, huffing and slapping sounds in it. The symbols were pretty straightforward though.

Nick grew tense when the apple seedling hit two weeks old. This is when the other one died. He couldn't bear to look; he avoided looking at the video feed for two whole days before sneaking a peek. It was still alive, and getting a tiny bit taller. Nick drank in the sight of the green shoot and dreamt about having a whole orchard of apple trees. I don't suppose Petra could reverse engineer grass...?

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Petra printed out parts for the piece of Rockhunter that was actually going to do the searching for materials. Nick asked whether he could turn it on separately before installing it, and Petra walked him through the steps. When he activated it, the results were dramatic.

The 3D map of Bare Hill got a lot deeper and a lot more detailed. There was actually a small amount of element 53 almost 70 meters directly below Petra. It wasn't a big deposit, but it was good to know of a reserve in case they ever got short. There was some more mercury in a couple of places, not that Nick wanted any, but Petra used it in small amounts.

There didn't seem to be any delay at all before this appeared. That means I could be driving along and scanning underground for materials basically nonstop. This is huge. Nick grinned. I think shortages are soon to be a thing of the past.

Nick brought the pieces to the “garage”, where Rockhunter was currently under assembly, and installed the scanner properly. That's four more pieces down. Getting there.

Nick checked on the production schedule. Petra was up to fifty warbot “monsters” for defense, and four trapped rooms. The queue had another two traps and thirty warbots in it. Meanwhile the remaining pieces of Rockhunter were going to take another three weeks or so.

As far as personal items went, Petra could now produce all of the food that Nick had preserved from the groceries that were in the car originally. Petra could even make apples directly, that were all absolutely identical to the one he had fed it.

Nick took another look at the seedling. It was still growing, and looked a light but healthy green. Come on, little guy. You can do it.