Within two hours, he had the portable refineries up and running, ensuring that it was close to a substantial gold-platinum deposit.

Making the necessary modifications to his set of printers was but the work of a few minutes each. The mining bots took a little longer, ensuring that both printer and bot alike were aligned in such a way that unintentional cold-welding or contact would not occur - such a thing would be disastrous for his already tight time-limit.

Yet still, he couldn't help but take a moment to once again admire his (actual) handiwork, before heading back to his pod. Aman looked at the status update on his HUD. Three days and five minutes before the impact. Less than three days, that's all he had.

With little else to do but wait for the necessary components to be fabricated, Aman decided to fill the time by concocting a Plan B in the event of Plan A's failure. He needed another way to survive that did not involve being stuck on this rock any longer than it had to.

If he somehow managed to survive and make it off the asteroid, he had maybe a week's worth of food. Water was continuously recycled as much as could physically be possible, but that too would eventually run out. It would take ages for The Wanderer to come around and rescue him, and by that time, it may have been too late. Certainly, he wasn't going to risk being left behind if he somehow survived this.

With a muffled, incoherent tirade of swear words, Aman realized the inevitable; he would need to upgrade his space-designed pod for one of the most hellish experiences man or machine could ever undergo - his pod simply wouldn't make it to the Martian surface as-is.

With only fifteen minutes of fuel at full thrust, the maximum theoretical velocity and acceleration would not be sufficient to make a controlled descent through Mars's atmosphere. Landing on its surface would be... difficult at best. That meant he needed a shield, or at least a parachute - something to ensure that he didn't simply burn up in the atmosphere, or die from the impact of hitting the ground at terminal velocity.

Unfortunately, all the mining robots and 3D printers were being sent over to work on the sail. The sail had to be set up on time and it had to work - taking even a single robot off the force would considerably jeopardize both, and Aman was simply not willing to take that risk. It would take twenty four hours at least to make both, and he'd just barely have enough time for that.

After pacing around for an hour while the machines did their work, Aman fell into a deep sleep. Even though he knew what was coming, it had been a very long and tiring day.

Hours later, Aman found himself momentarily disoriented as he was startled awake by the alarm blaring loudly once more.

WARNING-WARNING-WARNING!