Three more days until Rockhunter was finished. Or at least, until the last pieces were printed. Nick wasn't sure he wasn't going to hit a snag on the final assembly; there were still a few details in the blueprints that baffled him.

The seedlings were continuing to grow. Nick took some time to just sit and stare at them every day. The tiniest hint of green—for some reason, he needed to see it. Proof that I am not the only living thing on Planet BigBall.

Another message came in while Nick was swimming. There was a waterproof display that Nick kept by the side of the pool, so he heard the alert when he paused to tread water, and immediately made his way over to the pad. “Petra, is it the same source?”

“Not understood.”

Nick rephrased half a dozen ways before he got his question across. The reply, translated from Petra-speak, amounted to “no reason not to think so.”

“Where is the source?”

“114 degrees.”

“How far away is the source?”

“60,432,817 centimeters.” On the display, the last four digits were all bright green. So, about 600 kilometers, very roughly 300 miles I think? Nick had gotten a lot of practice converting units, but he didn't know how many meters were in a mile and had to ballpark guess at it.

Rockhunter has a cruising speed of about 50 mph, and a top speed about twice that. I could get there in three hours if I push it, once the car is finished. Nick had checked that Rockhunter would give him adequate protection from the Death Star, though it wouldn't be comfortable without changes to the design and Nick wasn't willing to start over at this point.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Nick eyed the clock and frowned. The Death Star had set about ninety minutes earlier. “Petra, time between first transmission and closest sunset?”

“84 minutes, 12 seconds to 87 minutes, 44 seconds.”

“Time now since sunset today?”

“85 minutes, 22 seconds.”

They're transmitting at the same time of BigBall's day. Nick wasn't sure what to do with that information, since Petra was already listening for transmissions all the time, but it seemed important.

“How many BigBall days since the last message?”

“6.9978 BigBall days.”

So not every day. Seven days apart. There might be another transmission seven days from now. Three or four regular days. I wonder if I can get Rockhunter ready in time for that.

Nick would have a lot more options once the vehicle was ready. He could explore a lot more territory quickly, and find mineral deposits of whatever was missing from his lists of ingredients for things he wanted to build. And he could check out the source of that signal.

Is it smart to just go up there and knock? Maybe I should transmit first. Yeah, from somewhere nearby so I don't give away the dungeon's location.

“Petra, can you decrease the power of our transmitter?”

“Yes.”

“Can you decrease the range of our transmitter?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He didn't want to let the whole planet know he was around, yet. He was acutely aware that he didn't have any weapons, and if the aliens were hostile, his only hope would be to get back to Rockhunter and run like hell. He desperately hoped that they were friendly, but he wasn't deluding himself about his chances.

First contact, dude. There should be like a zillion scientists and people figuring out how to do this. All I've got is me, and a rock that can't really speak either of our languages.

Friendly or hostile? That was the big question.

Nick went back to studying the oozlay tool, so he could put the damned pieces together that absolutely should not fit where they were supposed to go...

I don't know, man, I just work here.