The Centaur rumbled over the damp, natural gravel of Planet Nereus, a cold wind whipping across the land. Nic felt the gusts break across his proxybot, winced at the little simulated chill mimicked through the variable-temperature SimGel in a layer of his suit. He had the urge to put on a blanket; it was foreign to him.

Paradigm Preparatory Institute, his Corvette, and even the terraformed planets he’d visited were all carefully climate-controlled environments tailored not just to human survival, but comfort. Nereus was decidedly not. It was a lawless place, still mostly untouched by humanity. It was wild.

And Nic would have a hand in taming it.

“Nice little change of pace, don’t ya think?” Jarek remarked from the front passenger seat. His proxybot faced Nic’s and Nic nodded. “Get to be the first people to set foot on a planet. The very first people... Not gonna lie, that’s kinda givin’ me goosebumps. Ya know? Explorin’ this place that... well, no one has ever even seen before us. Exploration. Feels like what humans were always meant to do. It’s gotta be in our DNA or somethin’!”

“‘Exploration is merely the pursuit of a resource,’” Maqsud waxed philosophical. “‘Food, land, knowledge, and one day, time.’ Nawal Huber-Hayward, Mars, 2400s.”

“[What does that mean?]” Shanti asked. “[Time?]” Nic glanced back at her proxybot in the rear passenger seat next to Max’s. Glad to see she seems to like that gadget I got her, Nic thought. Now she can be part of the conversation... when she chooses, that is.

“Time?” Maqsud echoed. “I don’t follow.”

“[Time,]” Shanti’s thought-to-speech software repeated. “[A resource.]”

“Oh, time as a resource! Now I understand.” Max’s bot gesticulated vibrantly as he talked. “Well, given the rate of the universe’s expansion and decay, there will come a time when we’re long past finding new planets to colonize. Galaxies and star systems will become so distant from each other that even travel with a Devi Drive will become prohibitively difficult and time-consuming. At that point, the greatest crisis we’ll face will be how to delay the inevitable heat death of the universe when the last stars burn out and eventually, even black holes evaporate into nothing... This is, of course, assuming humanity or any other species survives that many trillions of years into the future.”

“I was, um...” Jarek trailed off. “I was kinda tryin’ to put a positive spin on, ya know, this whole outing. Stave off a little existential dread? Take my mind off the fact that we’re hundreds of light years from human civilization on a planet that chewed up the only probe we’ve ever sent it? Catch my drift?”

In the rearview-screen, Nic saw Maqsud’s proxybot shrug. “Shanti was the one who asked the question.”

“[Sorry,]” she interjected immediately.

Jarek chuckled. “It’s okay, Shanti. I’m just glad you can talk with us now. You should do that more often.” Shanti didn’t say anything after that.

“Uh, guys?” Perri said into the team chat. Her airborne Harpy hovered a few hundred meters above them, whirring loudly. “Hate to interrupt, but your ride is about to get a lot more slippery in a couple minutes.”

Nic was solemn when he answered. “Elaborate.”

“You’ll see in about five seconds... Two... One... Yeah.”

The Centaur crested a hill. Nic hit the brakes a bit too hard—he felt the tires skid slightly on the wet, uneven terrain. Focusing, he tapped the brakes lightly as the vehicle went down the slope, and he managed to slow it down... just in time to see the hazard up ahead.

They were approaching a cliff, one with a lip that curled upward at a steep angle. More dangerous than that was what lay beyond: an ocean that stretched well past the horizon in three directions. Holy... Nic thought. There’s something you don’t see every day.

The vast body of water was mostly covered in ice; it made sense, given the planet’s variable temperature hovering right around the ordinary freezing point of water. Huge sheets and shelves of ice floated across the surface, spiderwebbed by gaps that revealed the dark blue water just beneath them. Some shelves were only a few meters high while others looked to be orders of magnitude taller.

“RTIFIS?” Jarek asked nervously.

“Is this safe to drive on?”

“We’re about to find out,” said Nic. “That cliff edge is steep. If I lose momentum, I’m worried I won’t get enough traction to ramp us off and onto the ice at all. We’ll be stuck on land. The first waypoint is a few kilometers dead ahead, across the water. If we want to make it out there, I can’t stop.”

“Can’t we just take the long way around instead?” Jarek bargained. “You know... on land?”

Nic scoffed. “Yeah, let me take us on a little detour. I know the area pretty well.”

“Nicolas,” said Maqsud with a mock-shocked gasp. “That sounds like something I would say. Am I rubbing off on you after all?”

Nic gripped the steering wheel of the Centaur as they continued rolling down the hill. “Any time now, RTIFIS!”

“It’s okay if we die,” Jarek reasoned. “Even if we die, we won’t really die. ‘Cause right now, we’re on the Corvette in the Simnasium. Safe and sound. Even if...” Nic could hear the dread in his voice. “Even if it don’t feel like it.”

“Wait, are you guys really gonna jump that?” Perri asked in disbelief. “That sounds like something I would do.”

“Life-or-death danger or not, I don’t want to have to fish dead proxybots out of the bottom of an unmapped alien ocean,” Nic countered. “The whole point of this mission is recovering Red Terraforming property, not stranding more of it. We’re playing this one for keeps!” “Team Scarlet, hold on tight. We’re jumping it!”

“‘You will never do anything in this world... without courage,’” Maqsud said, his voice shaky with anticipation. “‘It is the greatest q-quality of the mind next to honor.’ Aristotle—”

“Now is not the time, man!”

Their vehicle vaulted off the edge of the stony cliff, the back wheels snagging on the rim of it—they just barely cleared the takeoff.

Nic’s breath caught in his throat. His body was in the Corvette, in the Simnasium, in a helmet and SimSuit safe and sound, but his mind was gripping the Centaur’s steering wheel for dear life. It felt just as real as combat. He braced well in advance of a landing that was a long time coming, adrenaline dilating his perception of time like a Devi Drive opening a wormhole.

The Centaur stuck the landing. Its nose came down with a great cacophonous clunk of metal and a crunch of ice cracking, the back half following a moment later.

“Nice driving, Siegfried!” Perri congratulated him from above. “How are you guys doing? Everyone okay?”

“I think so,” Nic answered, and the other three gave affirmative answers of their own. He stepped on the accelerator again. “Okay. Hardest part’s over.”

Nic saw the holographic path overlaid on his HUD. It zigzagged across the tops of icebergs as far as his robotic eyes could see, the jittery green line constantly shifting to accommodate his exact position and velocity, wiggling like a string blowing in the wind. Okay. Maybe I spoke too soon just now.

***

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Perri asked.

“Now that I don’t feel like pukin’ no more,” Jarek replied, “yeah. It really is kinda nice.”

After negotiating a series of irregular, moving ice sheets near the shoreline, Team Scarlet’s Centaur was now driving comfortably on a massive iceberg that stretched for several kilometers uninterrupted. The terrain was slippery but mostly flat with minor undulations in the ice, gentle slopes and ridges here and there. Nic’s shoulders relaxed for the first time since they’d exited the wormhole earlier that day.

As they drove along the iceberg, with Perri following in her Harpy above, Nic stole glances at the shoreline to their left. A rocky black beach was just barely visible on the horizon with his HUD’s 2x-magnification. The sight of land made him think of Earth; he felt a kinship with ancient human sailors setting out across the ocean to strange, alien worlds of their own. He wondered what they would think of someone like him doing what he was doing now. If they could even comprehend it.

“I wish I had a holophone with me,” Perri sighed dreamily. “I’d video all of this. This is what my dads always wanted to do—travel the galaxy, see new places. Adventure.”

In a rare moment of sincerity, Maqsud commented, “I think they’d be proud, Perri.”

Nic thought of his mother. Wondered what she was doing at this very moment. He reflected on his short career so far with Red Terraforming, Inc, a crushing debut loss on Gwher followed by a redemptive victory on Didumos. He wanted to keep a good image for himself and Team Scarlet with another victory of sorts here on Planet Nereus; that meant recovering Red Terraforming’s lost probe—ideally intact—and securing the company’s territorial claim before any other companies could stake claims of their own.

Let’s make this an in-and-out mission, Team Scarlet, he thought to himself. Grab the probe and haul it back to civilization. Better yet, maybe we can get it operational again and beam the data back today. Light will get there a lot faster than our ship, even through a wormhole.

“Okay, Centaur crew, would you like the good news or the bad news first?” said Perri.

“Draw out our suspense a bit longer with the good news first, won’t you?” Maqsud replied.

“The good news is that our first waypoint isn’t far from here!”

“‘And the bad news?’ the devilishly handsome explorer replied expectantly, on the edge of his seat in the pregnant pause that followed...”

“‘Devilishly handsome?’ the ace pilot said with skepticism—”

“Guys, focus,” Nic interjected.

“The bad news,” Perri went on, “is you have one doozy of a jump to make to reach dry land. I’m seeing a pretty solid gap of seawater at the edge of this iceberg and no little mini-bergs to hop across, either. RTIFIS, what’s your take on this? Can they make it?”

the AI chimed in.

“Accelerate by 64?” Jarek echoed in disbelief. “We’re already cruisin’ at a pretty good clip here, are we not?”

“RTIFIS thinks we can jump it,” Nic sighed, his shoulders tensing up once again. “That’s good enough for me. Team Scarlet, hold on for me one more time!” He gritted his teeth as they neared the edge of the iceberg. RTIFIS laid a path up a steep slope of ice—Nic soon understood the need for extreme acceleration, or else the Centaur never would have made the climb—and seconds later, they were in the air once again. You’re in the ship, Nic calmed his own nerves. You’re not really here. You’re in the ship. You’re in the ship.

The four-wheeled vehicle crossed the gap between the edge of the iceberg and the cliff at the edge of the next landmass.

The front two wheels did, at least.

“Uh-oh,” Nic muttered. The Centaur leaned back, teetering on the edge of the cliff, half on and half dangling over jagged black rocks pummeled by crashing waves. Nic pressed the accelerator but the vehicle wouldn’t budge. “RTIFIS... Might want to do some recalculating here!” Before the AI could respond, the Centaur slipped from its perch and rolled backward off the cliff. “RTIFIS!”

The vehicle lurched suddenly and its three verbal passengers yelled in terror. But it didn’t fall... it lurched forward.

“What in the galaxy is happening right now?” Maqsud wondered aloud.

Then Nic saw the thin cable attached to the front bumper of the Centaur. Looking up, he saw Perri’s Harpy flying by overhead. The copter towed the weighty machine off the precipice and onto solid ground. “Did I hook that on my first try? Awesome! Thanks for the tip, RTIFIS. Okay, Nic, give her some gas.”

“What a charmingly antiquated turn of phrase,” said Max, still hyperventilating.

“Trying,” said Nic. “And... we made it!” Even with the cable slackened, the Centaur was able to drive on its own power and traction. “That was amazing, Perri! Excellent save there!”

Jarek scoffed. “Yeah, that was awesome, but why didn’t you just tow us the whole way instead of makin’ us play iceberg hopscotch? You just like hearin’ us scream or what?”

“It’s this little thing called a battery,” Perri chuckled. “It’s not infinite, you know. I used up a fair bit of juice just doing that. Unless one of you wants me riding in your lap the rest of the way with no warning of what’s ahead of us?”

“Perri makes a good point,” Nic agreed. “We need that bird’s eye view. But RTIFIS, please try to pick safer routes in the future.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes, Nic catching his breath and the others doing the same, until Perri piped up once more. “First waypoint dead ahead, guys! Wait, is that it? I see it! Is that what I think it is?”