Taban: We’ve only been out here thirty minutes. Daley’s been out here for, what, hours? Is there any way he’s still alive?

HARE: We’re following the infrared trail of something.

Taban: Goddamn it. (heavy breathing)

HARE: Do you require assistance?

Taban: No, I’m all right. As soon as we find him, I’m dragging him back and locking him up. We can do that thing we talked about. Turn the medical bay into a kind of cell. Just until ISF arrives.

HARE: USER Daley will most likely be uncooperative.

Taban: I’m tired of being cooperative. Seriously. I’ve let him put us in enough danger as it is. It’s over now.

HARE: I have not been in danger.

Taban: He was planning to send you out in all of this. Every night. Trust me, you would have been in danger.

HARE: Thank you.

Taban: You don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve that. We’re just doing our jobs. That’s all it is to us. Just jobs. You explore, I mine. We’re just doing our jobs.

HARE: Yes.

Taban: Him, though . . . (panting) Him, it’s way beyond that. It’s an obsession. Like a madness. It’s bad shit.

HARE: (pausing to analyze the terrain ahead) (beeping)

Taban: What?

HARE: There is a living organism ahead.

Taban: . . . Daley?

HARE: Undetermined. There are anomalies. Interference. I need to be closer to know.

Taban: Fuck.

[Cautiously, the two pick their way forward. It seems impossible to see anything in the murkiness of the night. Taban consistently bumps into the knee-high, dark waves. He curses. After several moments, the HARE speaks.]

HARE: The organism is just ahead.

[Taban stops dead in his tracks.]

Taban: I don’t see anything.

HARE (processors whirring): It is USER Daley.

[Taban stumbles forward, tripping still over the curves in the ground. Suddenly, on the swell of one, Hap Daley’s round, armored body appears. He is cradled face-down in the dip of the wave, with his arms outstretched, as if he had collapsed while crawling.]

Taban: Jesus!

HARE: He is alive.

[Taban approaches clumsily, rolling Daley over onto his back. As soon as he does, Daley reaches out and seizes his helmet, gasping.]

Taban: Fuck, Daley! Let go! It’s me!

Daley: Did you see it? Did you see it?

Taban: See what?

Daley: I saw it—I was sleeping, but I woke up and saw it through the window—

Taban: Saw what?

Daley: Some kind of quadruped. Looked like a fox or a canine of some kind. It was small and white. I followed . . .

Taban: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Daley: You listening? I saw something living out here!

[He struggles to sit up.]

Taban: How’s your oxygen?

Daley: Fin, you listening?

Taban: I heard you. You must have been—dreaming, or something, Daley. Fuck. I don’t know. Let’s go back.

Daley: No. Not until I show you.