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seashore, but he’d decided to use skis instead. The practical reason, of course, was that skimmers made too much noise, and thus would have frightened away the polar cows. But the fact of the matter was that Jorge wanted an excuse to spend time alone with Inez, and a cross-country ski trip was the best way to accomplish this.
    It took only a couple of minutes for them to fit the toes of their boots into the ski bindings. Picking up their poles, they shoved off, following the trail they’d broken earlier that morning. Jorge let Inez take the lead this time; although she had only recently learned Nordic skiing, he was impressed by how quickly she’d caught on. Besides, he enjoyed watching her body in motion, her long legs pushing first one ski forward, then the other, as she gracefully glided across the powdery snow.
    Jorge knew that his infatuation was hopeless. Not only was it unseemly for a lieutenant to pursue a relationship with a corporal, but it was becoming increasingly clear to him that she felt nothing for him. Yet from the moment they’d met, when she had been assigned to 4th Company fresh out of cadet training, his emotions had threatened to overrule common sense. As beautiful as she was somber, with a face that reflected equal measures of sadness and joy, Inez had been noticed by every heterosexual male in the Corps. So far as he knew, though, she’d formed no relationships with any of them, nor was she attracted to any of the women. Corporal Torres was a reliable colleague, and that was all there was to it.
    On the other hand, there was quite a bit about her that remained mysterious. Although Inez said that she was born and raised in New Boston, no one in the Corps who hailed from the same town had ever met her. She rarely spoke about her past, nor had Jorge ever heard her mention her family. He’d been told that she kept a printed copy of the Sa’Tong-tas on the bookshelf above her bunk in the barracks—not unusual, considering that more than half of the Corps were Sa’Tong ians—but she almost never said anything about this to anyone, apparently preferring to meditate in private.
    Indeed, Jorge reflected, the only things that he really knew about Inez was that she was grimly determined to succeed in the Corps of Exploration and that he was madly in love with her. Of course, this was probably the very reason why she was keeping him at arm’s length. She probably realized that having an affair with a senior officer—particularly one who carried as much baggage as Jorge did—was a quick way of being expelled from the Corps. Which was why he hadn’t pushed the issue. As much as he desired her, Jorge didn’t want to do anything that would harm her chances of moving up the ranks, eventually to become an officer herself.
    Nonetheless, there was nothing quite as painful as falling in love with someone who didn’t feel the same way.
    Deliberately looking away from her, Jorge concentrated instead upon maintaining the rhythm—right leg and arm forward, pull, coast, left leg and arm forward, pull, coast—that ate up the miles. The mountains lay directly ahead, and he could already make out Algonquin Base, a collection of blue-and-brown-striped dome tents clustered around a central area where the expedition vehicles were parked. The flags of the Coyote Federation and the Corps of Exploration fluttered from a pole set up in the middle of the camp. At midday, the base was nearly deserted: the geologists had gone off to the mountains to collect rock samples—they were searching for evidence to support the theory that the North Sea was an ancient crater formed by an asteroid collision that, in turn, might have been responsible for Coyote’s chaotic terrain—while the cadets underwent arctic survival training with several other officers. Only Jorge and Inez had left the base on their own . . . and Jorge was aware that everyone had noticed the close attention Lieutenant Montero was paying to Corporal