There's an odd sense of normalcy spreading over the Exodus colony. It's day 8, and they're raising new modules, exploring an alien planet, beginning to do science and investigation of its nature... Just, not on Avalon, the supposedly habitable exoplanet that they were meant for.
The Hydroponics Bay is setting up new racks of crops every day, the shift work steady as a clock. Rice and potatoes and fruit and beans and leafy greens and carrots and smaller numbers of trickier crops like maize or asparagus, for morale and variety. No eggs or chickens or dairy; The debates about bringing livestock for the trip were lengthy, but ultimately came down against, with the weight and efficiency concerns being the main deciding factor. They theoretically could clone new livestock using some of the equipment from the Laboratory Modules, eventually. If it's not smashed on the icy plain.
The 107 children in the colony, each chosen as a unit with their parent or parents in order to help keep up the sense that Exodus was about building a real future and community on another world, are attending school every day. They can clearly tell something is wrong, but children will mostly just grow sullen and quiet, or occasionally act out, when things are harsh. Thankfully, only a very few of them perished in the initial crash- Though it makes the surviving members of those families all the more inconsolable. There are five full-time teachers and plenty of call for guest lecturers and the like. The older ones take 'field trips' to the maintenance areas or the hydroponics module and learn about all the technology that is making surviving here viable, and how they can improve it or invent more in time.
People are spreading out into the second Habitat Module. There were six, each designed to house 250 people in comfortable conditions and 500 in decent conditions. 1106 people in just one was very cramped. Adding a second has taken it down to mostly tolerable levels, with only a few people needing to share rooms. The inner walls are designed to be modular, sliding around and packing away as the colony's needs change. They've all trained on this equipment for months and are used to the layout and facilities. Spreading out feels like going from one of the emergency drills back to normal training time.
The Recycling Module was constructed today in a central location, with all sorts of pipes and vents and even conveyor belts leading into and out of it from other areas, the churning chemistry equipment within processing trash and waste and scrap and carbon dioxide back into useful chemicals and materials. Steam pipes from the reactor power much of its heat-intensive processes, just like they're being extended to the other modules. A ready and free supply of oxygen and water from the outside makes things a LOT easier- They can change it to variant methods of catalysis and processing that use up those precious resources rather than producing them. They're making plastic feedstock.
Nobody seems to know anything about what went wrong. The rumors are wild, and have more room than ever to spread and whirl. People bemoan their submissions being rejected from the official list and come up with plenty of justifications for why they were actually completely serious, going to Shen Takagi to complain about it. (It feels good to complain about something.)
The heavy transports are sent out: One to trawl a particularly dense field of burnt scrap for usable metal and other materials, one to recover the Mining Module that was mapped earlier.
The rovers have been sent out to scout again, on a more reasonable pace after their hard run looking for urgently needed medicine. Today's finds are... One of the Exodus's orbital shuttles, a bank of solar panels, several intact-ish supply lockers, and an entertainment module perched slightly precariously, straddling a crevasse with two landing legs on either side of the gap.
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