Reoh had prepared for the test by taking extra survival courses every semester. Now, they were standing on a ridge overlooking a barren, rocky desert of sharp cliffs and flat‑topped plateaus very much like the only place he really did know. “Shunt!” he repeated, shaking his head.

“You say that like it’s bad,” Bobbie Ray pointed out. He was looking very uncomfortable in his rubber suit. “Where’s all the water? Down in the cracks?”

“If this is like Shunt, we’ll have trouble finding enough water to stay alive.”

Bobbie Ray undid the neck buckle of his waterproof suit. “Everyone said there would be water. The last eight times the survival missions took place in a marsh, a bog, two swamps, and four rain jungles.”

Reoh shrugged, just as boggled as Bobbie Ray was over this unusual twist.

Bobbie Ray let out a frustrated growl as he peeled the rubber suit off his fur. He had been so smugly satisfied as the cadet ship had beamed them down to the surface, so certain that he wouldn’t have to suffer four days of wet fur, that his disgruntlement at finding themselves high and dry was ironic, to say the least.

“Where’s Starsa?” Reoh asked, glancing around.

Bobbie Ray tossed the rubber aside. “I didn’t see anything until you came over that ridge.”

“I was put down a few meters inside that ravine,” Reoh said.

Bobbie Ray judged the angles and decided, “I bet she’s over there. If not, we’ll be on higher ground and able to see better.”

“What if we don’t find her?” Reoh asked.

“We’ll find her.” Bobbie Ray started toward the rise about a hundred meters away from them. “You’ve got room for that, don’t you?”

“Uh, sure.” Nev Reoh paused long enough to gather up the rubber suit and stuff it in his bag before hurrying after the Rex.

From their vantage point on top of the slight rise, Reoh could see that, like Shunt, this plateau desert was a step‑by‑step series of fairly flat‑topped units separated from each other by cliffs and broken, steep‑sided slopes. One glance revealed it to be a vast and lonely land, with no signs of life other than a few brown, scraggly plants on the edges of the plateaus or down in the narrow canyons.

Bobbie Ray planted his feet firmly, looking around for Starsa and bellowing her name–“Starsa!!” They could hear his voice echo against the flat‑sided canyons for what seemed like miles. In an aside to Reoh, he added, “This is the ugliest place I’ve ever seen.”

Reoh swallowed. “I sort of like the colors.” The layers of rock exposed by the canyons were brilliantly varied in hues of purple, red‑orange, yellow, gray, and creamy beige. Maybe that explained his innate desire to study geology–rocks, he knew. “It could be a color chart lesson in planet‑building.”

Bobbie Ray gave him a look. “It’s useless land. All chopped up.”

Reoh gave up trying to explain exogeology to the Rex. “Where’s Starsa?”

“How should I know?” Bobbie Ray retorted, looking annoyed.

“What will we do if we can’t find her?”

“We’ll find her.”

“How?” Reoh asked.

“Stop asking me so many questions!” Bobbie Ray kept gazing around, as if hoping Starsa would pop up from one of the canyons.

Nev Reoh obediently kept his mouth shut. The only thing that made him feel better was knowing that his vital signs and location were being closely monitored by the cadet ship. The four dozen cadets participating in the survival test had placed the temporary orbital satellites in the stratosphere of the planet themselves. If anything serious went wrong with a cadet, a transporter would pluck them from the surface before serious injury could occur. There were a number of stories at the Academy, like the one of a cadet losing her grip at the top of a Cipres tree and falling thirty meters before dematerializing in front of the shocked eyes of her survival team. Of course, that cadet had failed the test, but all Reoh cared about was that she had lived to tell about it.

Reoh opened his mouth but remembered in time that Bobbie Ray didn’t like questions. He quietly followed the orange Rex as they tried to triangulate their arrival positions. Ideally, a survival team rejoined shortly after transporting to their test site, and then rejoined with as many other cadet teams as possible while managing to stay alive.

By nightfall, Nev Reoh and Bobbie Ray hadn’t found a single cadet–including Starsa.

Reoh ventured to ask, “We’ll fail if we don’t find her, won’t we?”

“Yes,” Bobbie Ray said shortly, as irritable as if Reoh had personally caused Starsa’s disappearance.

They settled in for the night under an overhang of sandstone, where the shale at the base of the cliff had been cut away by the wind. There was a nice pile of sand that had been deposited by the last rush of water that had run through the canyon–but from the lack of growth, Reoh estimated that had been seasons ago.

“I hope Starsa is all right,” Reoh worried as they smoothed the sand into a place to sleep.

“She’s fine. She’s just down in one of these pits, like us,” Bobbie Ray grumbled. They hadn’t been able to build a fire because of the lack of suitable vegetation. But the absence of any sort of print or trail in the sand had led them to believe it would be safe to sleep on the ground. Actually, they had no choice. It was either here or up on one of the plateaus, exposed to the rising wind. At least in the canyon they had a semblance of shelter.

Bobbie Ray yawned, obviously feeling better now that they weren’t tramping uselessly all over the place. “Besides, as long as we find another team, then we can still get a qualified‑pass.”

“But Starsa’s part of our team,” Reoh protested. “We haveto find her.”

Bobbie Ray shrugged, no longer assuring Reoh that they would find her. Reoh didn’t say anything, but he didn’t like it that Bobbie Ray was giving up on her. He worried about Starsa almost as much as he envied her innocence of sexual tensions and her lack of fear or self‑doubt. She lived completely in the moment, unrestrained, yet unaware of her own freedom. But that made her vulnerable in ways the other cadets couldn’t imagine.

Reoh slept uneasily that night, and at one point he felt Bobbie Ray get up and squirm into his rubber suit for warmth and protection against the wind. Without any cloud cover, the heat was released from the atmosphere and the rock walls lost their warmth almost as soon as the sun went down.

Soon after, Bobbie Ray passed out so solidly that even when Reoh moved in closer, trying to get out of the wind behind the bulk of the Rex’s body, Bobbie Ray didn’t stir. He kept thinking about Starsa, out there all alone.

The next day they spent circling the area where they had beamed down. They stayed on top of the plateaus except when they had to descend into the canyons to cross to another section. In the morning, Bobbie Ray once again seemed confident they would soon find Starsa. But as it turned out, the plateaus were deceptively hilly, hiding variations and crevices in the land until they were nearly upon them.

Nev Reoh felt completely at home in the arid place. Most of the scant vegetation grew in the eroded crevices leading off the plateaus–a few pygmy trees similar to Austrid conifers. The central portions of the high lands were barren hills formed from ancient layers of volcanic ash that had turned to clay. It was likely that plants couldn’t get a hold in the clay because it swelled in the brief wet periods and shrank when dry.

Half the morning was gone when they came upon cadets Puller, Reeves, and Ijen. Nev Reoh’s worst fear was finally confirmed when he saw Puller’s contorted, misery‑filled face. Reoh had suspected something was wrong because of Starsa’s disappearance, but Bobbie Ray hadn’t listened to him.

Now, none of the cadets could ignore Puller’s anguished breathing and sweaty skin. The other team was halfway down a cliff, in an inpromtu camp on a narrow ledge. Nev Reoh couldn’t stop staring at the shreds of Puller’s uniform hanging down one side, echoing the torn flesh underneath. He wheezed from ribs broken in the fall, through his chest was now bound with a support bandage from the medkit.