You would think that by the time humanity had colonized sixteen planets and god knows how many moons across four independent solar systems, someone might have invented a decent GPS. I glance up from the endless orange desertscape outside my window as the van pulls to a halt at yet another fork in the road. It is no less than the fifth one we've gotten to argue over in the last two hours. I've started counting.

In the passenger seat, Bersa glances loftily at her phone. "This says we go right."

"There is no right," says Yahvi. "Our options are left and more left. Give me the map."

She makes a dive for the crumpled paper in Bersa's lap, but her scientific second-in-command whips it out of reach. "You have no trust!"

"None at all. AstroMaps still believes I live across from a Taiwanese restaurant. It is, in fact, a park."

Yahvi has a significant height advantage over most people on our teams, and her reach is just as deadly. She snags the map and un-crumples it. Bersa fixes her phone to the mount on the dashboard and sits back with arms crossed combatively. I glance over at Alex at the other end of the back seat. They're the other leader in the vehicle: Yahvi's partner in crime and "definitely not partner," with the sharp features of Quichua ancestry and an even sharper smile. Right now they've got their head against the window and their eyes closed, but the laugh that keeps twitching the corner of their mouth indicates they're no more asleep than I am. They've got a full-sized paper map in their lap, but it's folded. I haven't seen them open it since we left Bauersfeld.

"You're not going to help?" I say.

"Nah. They're having fun."

Two hours in the van with Yahvi and Bersa have given me a distinct sense that both enjoy these arguments more than the actual trip. Alex seems content to let them blow off steam so long as the vehicle keeps moving in more or less the right direction. How reliably it's accomplished that is debatable; if either Yahvi or Bersa had veto power here, we'd have made three wrong turns and lost the road twice already. But they don't, and with the last pavement half an hour behind us, at least we know we're getting close.

Ana is still asleep in her car seat beside me, so I resign myself to watching the rocks outside while the banter in the front continues. Yahvi and Bersa's maps actually agree on this intersection, the problem then being that none of that makes a right turn magically appear. The road this far from the city is little more than a pair of beaten tire tracks, pocked with potholes like Jenu's rock moths wage war on the mining vehicles that occasionally use this route.

"I say more-left," says Yahvi, smacking the steering wheel decisively.

"Less-left," counters Bersa without missing a beat.

Yahvi tips one arm back over her headrest in an entreaty to the back seat. "Ale?"

"More-left," says Alex without opening their eyes. It looks like it's taking all their willpower not to laugh.

Yahvi lets out a "Ha!" of triumph and hits the gas, swinging the van around the turn. Bersa drops back with a huff.

"After that, it should be two rights to the camp," finishes Alex. "But you'll probably see it by then."

The road circumvents a rock outcropping, and Jenu's plains roll out before us under an open sky. They're like most of the planet: pan-flat, dotted with stray rocks, and a resounding rust-orange that takes particular delight in applying its colour to everything it touches. The van windows waste no time regathering the film of dust we shed at the last vehicle charging station. Whoever is getting paid to install automatic window-cleaners out here in the outback must be laughing all the way to the bank.

By the time we reach the second right turn half an hour later, the road is more of an artistic suggestion than a functional piece of infrastructure. There are a few potholes, but the rocks are bad enough that Bersa flicks on her wheelchair suspension and even Alex pulls their head off the window. Ana wakes with a whine. Her hands curl over her face against the dull light of Jenu's dust-shrouded sky.

"Are we there yet?" she mumbles.

"Almost," says Alex with a smile. "Ten more minutes."

"Can I have my apples now?"

"Ask your daddy."

She drops her gaze and kicks her feet hard, trying to reach the van console. Her soft black curls have been flattened on one side from leaning against the car seat. Stray strands cling to her forehead, and the pressed line of a seam runs down her brown cheek like train tracks.

"Daddy, can I have my apples now?" she says without looking at me.

"How do you ask?"

"Please." Another kick.

I pull the container from my bag. Another whine stops my fingers on the lid. Ana flops over and reaches out both hands.

"Use your words," I say.

"I want to open it."

"Okay. How do you ask that properly?"

"Can I open it?"

I wait, container held pointedly out of reach.

"Please," she finishes.

"There we go." I pass her the apples just as Bersa points to something out the van's front window. Some ways ahead, another outcropping makes a wart on the orange horizon. This one's larger than most, a ten-story hump of a thing dropped like a toad among lily pads. At its base is the gleam of the camp.

There's a child's noise of frustration behind me as Ana fails to get the apple container open. Out the corner of my eye, I see her pass it to Alex with a request that I swear includes an unprompted "please." They oblige, popping off the lid and passing it back. Ana says thank you, too. I fix my gaze on the road again, trying to duck the sting of the small exchange. It bites me anyway. I don't resent Alex for their closeness with my daughter. The two of them share enough four-year-old energy to entertain each other, and it's good to see Ana in the company of a friend. It hurts more to remember the last person she opened up to like this.

"Everyone ready to test this girl's off-roading capabilities?" says Yahvi with a grin, patting the van's dashboard. The "road" ahead curves off to the side, leaving a hundred-meter stretch of raw desert between us and the camp. Smaller tire tracks and upturned rocks indicate we're not the first people to bust our asses here.

"Two seconds," says Bersa, checking the straps securing her wheelchair. When those are tight, she drags her seatbelt all the way out to put it on child lock. "Alright, we're good," she says, crossing her arms again when she's strapped back firmly. "Let's see if this van's any better than the Lumiuk spaceport shuttles."

"Should be," says Alex with a disgusted look. Lumiuk is the scientific hub of the United Inhabited Solar Systems—UIS for some godforsaken reason—and home base for most of us. Everyone here is intimately familiar with its spaceport shuttles. "I checked the specs against those specifically."

Yahvi switches to four-wheel drive and steers us off the road. She commands the vehicle with the easy hand of a pro, but those last hundred meters are still the worst of the trip. I grip the shoulders of the seat in front of me and clench my jaw to keep it from clacking as the van pitches and bumps over the rocks. Disregarding this, Alex unbuckles their seatbelt and goes fishing over the back seat, their wiry frame braced against the vehicle. At five feet tall with the build of a bird, I'm surprised they don't get pitched over the seat every time Yahvi can't find a way around a rock.

They don't even bump their head, and I can't pretend I'm not salty about it. The van ceiling clears my scalp by an inch and a half, and I've already got a bruise there from an earlier pothole. Alex drops back triumphant, a duffel bag clattering into their lap. They unzip it and start handing out masks and light air tanks like we're not still trapped inside the tin-can equivalent of a bucking bronco. I swear, by the end of this trip, these two are going to make me carsick by association.

The rest of the team sees us coming. Lingmei, Tiana, and Iraj run to the camp's edge, waving enthusiastically and laughing at us. As we draw nearer, they flag us to the side, where our team's other van is sun-charging on a patch of cleared ground.

Yahvi swings us in and parks without a hitch. "Welcome to base camp, everyone; I hope you enjoyed your flight in spite of the minor turbulence." She's not even sorry, I swear to god. "Get your masks on. Bersa, verdict on the van?"

Bersa snorts, but she's smiling as she unstraps her legs and lifts each one briefly to stop the spasms. "Someone tell the Hub to replace their Lumiuk fleet."

Ana digs a dropped apple out from beside her while the rest of us don masks and check each other's regulators. Bersa breaks out a second bag and hands out pairs of goggles, more for the dust than anything. Alex gives my equipment the all-clear and hands me a child-sized mask and tank for Ana. My daughter gives me a wary side-eye as I unbuckle her. She lets me put her mask on, but balks at the backpack until I turn it around for her royal inspection. It's covered with princess, rock, and butterfly patches. They're new. They are also not my doing. The backpack suddenly and magically becomes acceptable. Ana lifts her arms so I can adjust the straps, then bounces, smiling brightly. Given the sparkle in Alex's eye, I think I know who's behind this.

Yahvi confirms we're all masked, then flips the van's airlock switch. Vents around its roof hiss, and the temperature rises to just shy of t-shirt weather. The doors unlock when the dashboard airlock light pings on. Alex is first to haul theirs open and hop down outside, where a flurry of greetings welcomes us into the camp. Ana wriggles out of her car seat and waves to Alex from the door of the van. They lift her down with a dramatic swoop that sets her giggling. The two of them confer briefly, then leave together in search of a bathroom.

My knees smart as I exit last and shut the door behind me. Iraj is hovering nearby.

"Long ride?" he says, then laughs as an experimental twist makes both my knees and spine crackle.

"I am not that old yet," I grumble at them. I'll take gray hair any day—it makes pedantic academics take me more seriously—but joints imitating parchment paper is a development I could do without.

"If it makes you feel any better, I'm already getting grandpa sunshades," says Iraj, tapping his eyebrows. "I trim them."

I cast a critical eye over said eyebrows, trying not to let my gaze linger. If those are groomed to eliminate unwanted grays, he's good at it.

"Iraj!" hollers Yahvi from the direction of the camp. "You're needed! We have scum!"

Iraj laughs. "Sample boxes for me. I should go."

I wave him off, then watch him leave for longer than I should. It costs me my attention to my immediate surroundings. I don't spot Lingmei lurking behind me until she sneaks up and deals me a hard punch in the arm.

"Ow."

"Ha!" She pumps the offending fist in the air, then thrusts her hand out, palm up. "Pay up."

"You're not supposed to make it an ambush."

"You're not supposed to get a warning so you can brace and hide it. Don't be a sore loser. Gimme the pen."

I dig in my pocket with a groan. "The pen" is the same one she used when she wrote our confirmation of the Neuron Theory of Planetary Consciousness half a year ago, in a claustrophobic moon base on the icy moon Mahaha. It's become something of a sacred item. Or at least one worth betting on. She said she could make me flinch with a punch by the end of this mission, and I don't like the start we're off to.

"Yours until the next try." I drop the pen in her outstretched hand.

She pockets it smugly. "Don't get cocky, old man."

"Sure thing, pipsqueak."

Her smile turns wicked. "Do you really want to revive that one here?"

And with that, she's got me cornered. I'm the tallest in the camp at a meter eighty-eight—beating Yahvi by a dangerously narrow margin—but Lingmei's not short and Alex is. While I'm sure they'd laugh it off, the sense I've gotten in the brief time I've seen them and Yahvi reunited is that only she has the liberty of making short jokes at their expense and escaping more or less unscathed.

I resort to the last weapon in my arsenal. At twenty-three, Lingmei's the youngest on the team by several years, but I'm only thirty-five. "By that logic, you shouldn't be calling me old, either. I'm fifth of eight here."

"Yeah, but you're the oldest man." She's grinning. "Everyone above you is either non-binary or female. You and Iraj are on a team of your own."

She's won this round, and she knows it. I elect to save my dignity and admit defeat. "Well, keep the push-ups coming, because you're not the only one ready to get back to field workouts."

"Deal."

With another punch—I'm prepared for it this time—she bounds away to help pack in the supplies we brought with us. I wait until she's out of sight before rubbing my arm.

Yahvi and Alex did an excellent job of scouting this location when we picked a spot for our home base out here. Jenu's storms move unpredictably, but this outcropping hugs the back of the camp like a shield, blocking any onslaught from two directions. The success of its work is already evident. Our teammates out here got wallopped by a monster of a storm on their very first night—big enough to trigger weather warnings in nearby Shuttle Landing—but the camp's low, spreading roof shield and the blow-up living quarters look no worse for wear. I wonder if our teammates even had to pull in the bubble-tents that sprout from its perimeter like viral tumors.

My eyes linger on the camp, sizing it up now that it's more than a 3D rendering on the website we rented it from. I've camped in smaller accommodations with more people to knock elbows with. But stuffing two rival research teams into this one for a six-week stay feels like an experiment in spontaneous combustion. Maybe if Jenu yields important enough discoveries, it'll keep our two head scientists from mutually assured destruction.

Standing alone in the shelter of the rocks, I lace my fingers behind my head and squint up at Jenu's pale, dusty-orange sky. "So you're the one we get to meet next, huh?" I murmur. "Wonder what you want."

Neither the sky nor the rocks respond. Not that I'd expect them to. Of the two astronomical bodies in the UIS proven to exhibit planetary consciousness, only Mahaha greets—or warns—its invaders.