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"Well, it is when there's only one person to call and I'm not loading it up with a lot of other features. If you want easy-to-use are you sure about the 3D printer?"
"Easy-to-use for things there is high value in immediately knowing how to use. Not knowing how to use the printer won't hinder me or you the way not knowing how to use the phone would."
So Cam makes various devices, and the solicited weight of raw steel print material, and the user manuals for things that he can't explain in a paragraph.
And then he jumps off the airship and glides to the surface of the planet.
There are occasional clouds of floating seeds which if tested prove to be full of hydrogen. Palm-size critters with little balloons feed on these when they can catch one. Small birds snatch seeds out of the air, large birds of prey snatch the palm-size critters. That's probably a jellywing, it looks really... Bloated and green.
A different kind of palm-sized critters, these covered in spines in an almost pufferfishy way. A little village, probably too far away for anyone to notice his nonbird shape and coloring. More clouds of seeds. (Seriously, that stuff seems to be everywhere.) A very irregularly shaped island that seems to be just a tangle of plants. Perhaps it broke off from something larger. More jellywings... That's probably a bladesquid. It looks mean.
It does look mean! Cam is not afraid of it, nor is he green. Candid shot of the bladesquid.
The bladesquid seems to be stalking a herd of jellywings. It has a tough-looking shell covering most of the lower part of its main body, and easily two dozen tentacles. It does not choose this moment to strike, dramatic timing though this would be.
Maybe he'll stalk it for a while. Surface of the planet isn't going anywhere.
The bladesquid seems to notice him after a while. Something facelike is pointing at him, at least. It starts ascending, though it doesn't move to go direcly above him, just at a slightly higher altitude.
He doesn't chase it further. Down he goes.
The air's definitely getting thicker. Islands are more common and more commonly inhabited. It's also getting darker.
Cam flies west as he continues to descend. Once he's on the ground he can light his way.
That appears to be a town! There are a lot of what are probably ships and not islands given the propellers and glass coming to and fro, at least.
Hello town! Cam doesn't think towns will be any harder to find on his way up than down, so he ignores it for now. Down down down.
Islands and wildlife are less common, and the exact species have changed dramatically. Though those pesky clouds of seeds are still here, if not in such numbers or size.
The air is starting to get pretty unpleasant. It's thick and warm and seems to not have as much oxygen as it used to. An extremely thick layer of very dark, almost black clouds is visible below by now.
Cam takes some air samples for doing chemistry to, but then sees no reason to tolerate the smell. He can make a little air, just around his face, as he flies.
The dark, thick layer of clouds is trying to burn his skin with both temperature and chemistry. When he passes through, the air below would still be killing a human, just not quite as aggressively. The surface is visible in spots between more dark, thick clouds if he has a sufficiently powerful light source, now.
Cam has a floodlight! And doesn't like burning, so air around all of him when he's in the clouds.
Gravity here is a little heavier than Earth, maybe 1.2 gees. He probably could have noticed this earlier but it's a fairly subtle difference.
Well, he measures that, and samples the rock, and samples the air, and samples the clouds, and drinks some coffee, and energetically chemistries the heck out of everything!
The rock: Is rock. It has a thick layer of buildup that has the same composition as the black clouds, but beneath that it's fairly unremarkable basalt. Over there is some granite.
The fact that the only rocks he can find here are volcanic in nature might indicate that the planet is pretty seismically active, or might indicate that he picked a bad spot.
Not super promising. He makes a little ship and flies to a bunch more locations on the planet, taking samples and confirming that it's all like so.
He encounters more volcanic rock, and ash spouts, and more volcanic rock, and a magma flow, and a moderate earthquake.
He pulls his ship up above the cloud layer and looks for an inhabited island. On the way he calls Nick.