[The camera lens frosts over slightly. There is no sign of the fractal structures on the horizon, the ones that had been in sight during the Wyvern’s descent. The ground around the HARE is icy and flat, but it looks like it has a strange consistency: not like snow, more like frozen cobwebs. Daley and Taban seem to have trouble walking through it. Their boots sink several centimeters into the ground with each step, in squeaking crunches. Daley curses for a few moments, his breathing labored. Taban remains silent.]

Daley: Look at all this. Think about it. We’re the first and only humans to set foot on this planet. If I hadn’t taken that shortcut around Luxue, we never would have found this place.

Taban: Uh-huh.

Daley: Look at that shit. What is that? Snow? Ice? Who knows? It’s all new. Right?

Taban: Yeah.

Daley: Isn’t this great?

Taban: I mean, sure. But it’s not like we can tell anyone about it, afterwards. Otherwise ISF will be on our asses faster than a rocket of snakes on a jackrabbit.

Daley: What?

Taban: Nothing. Never mind. Also, isn’t Sunfarer going to be pissed that we’re so late with their payload?

Daley: Fuck Sunfarer.

Taban: All right.

Daley: . . .

Taban: . . .

Daley: We could sell the coordinates, you know. On the sly.

Taban: Huh?

Daley: You know. Anonymously. I bet we could make a lot of money that way. It’s like—space tourism. You know? Like a secret club. I bet people would pay a lot of money to have access to a planet no one else knows about.

Taban: I don’t think anything stays anonymous with ISF.

Daley: Trust me, it does. And why do they get first claim on new planets, anyway? Whatever happened to the spirit of entrepreneurship? Anyone who finds something first should get the rights to it, right?

Taban: There must be a reason for them to do it this way.

Daley (snorting): I bet.

Taban: . . .

Daley: . . .

HARE: . . .

Daley: Daleytaban. Hapfin?

Taban: What?

Daley: What we could call it. Some combination of our names. That’s fair, right? I like Hapfin.

Taban: . . .

Daley (breathing heavily): What do you think?

[Taban and Daley are working their way across the sticky half-ice in a circle, keeping the ship at their right shoulders at all times. The HARE focuses its lens on seemingly random patches of frozen ground.]

Taban: You hear that sound, HARE? The sound of Daley wheezing away?

HARE: Affirmative.

Taban: That’s the sound of a lifetime of spongeburgers and milkshake cubes.

HARE (processors whirring): These are the things that nourish USER Daley?

Taban: That’s right.

Daley (breathing heavily): Fuck off—with your—alpha wave diet. That shit’s for Martian hippies.

Taban: What are hippies?

Daley: Group of people—back on Earth. In the old times.

Taban: Oh. Did they also support eco-friendly, waste-free eating habits?

Daley: Something like that.