Free Moonsteed by Manda Benson Page A

a thought-prompt. She pressed the button to retract the drilling shaft and pulled the bore up from the ice. “Let’s move on to the next one.”
    They took five more readings in this fashion on the route toward the scarp where Verity and John Aaron had chased the spy. As she came into the shadow of the great ice protrusions, Verity looked back to see Vladimir still lagging behind. “Hurry up!” she shouted. “Don’t be such a wimp!”
    After he caught up, he asked, “Is there any reason for this?”
    “I just told you what the reason was!”
    “Not the bores! What I mean is, why use horses? Why not use a vehicle? It’s warm inside and you can’t fall off.”
    Verity frowned. “Because most of the terrain’s no good for vehicles. It’s all right over there and around the base, but most of it’s all ravines and mess.” She pointed up the near-vertical cliff. “Last time I came here, chasing the spy, I went that way.” She paused to relish his daunted expression. “But this time, we’ll go the slow way. Now keep up with me!”
    She kept to a slow canter as they followed the narrow path edged with sharp protrusions of ice and jagged outcrops. It wasn’t really safe to go flat-out with this little margin of error, anyway, and she’d be held accountable if Vladimir managed to skewer himself on the ice or, even worse, if he hurt the horse through his ineptitude.
    Verity could see through the horse’s vision that Vladimir was twisting and shifting in his saddle to get a good view of the surroundings. “This really is quite spectacular! It’s got to be in the same league as the Mariner Valley, or the Grand Canyon!”
    “Ya, whatever.”
    “But look at it! It’s amazing! People would pay good money to come and look at this and have photographs of it.” He added, in a more pensive voice, “I hope it doesn’t melt. Does it have a name?”
    Verity had slowed her horse to a walk. “We just call it the scarp. They run all around the Valhalla crater. This happens to be the closest one to the installation. These towers and pointy bits of lighter ice are unusual, though. They come from when there’s an impact and molten stuff from the mantle gets forced up through the crust and crystallizes fast.”
    “I suppose before the moon was terraformed, they just used to sublime away, into those blunt columns you see on the plain?”
    “Ya, that ice is older.”
    “We ought to think of a name for it.”
    Verity threw a glance over her shoulder. “They can call it Sergeant Verity’s Canyon.”
    “Like they’re going to call it after you...”
    “Well, they’re not going to call it after you !”
    “You never know. I could become a famous geneticist. Like Pilgrennon.”
    Verity’s horse snorted. “What do you know about Pilgrennon? He wasn’t Russian, and he did genetic engineering on humans, not horses.”
    Vladimir stared up at the glittering crags. Verity followed his focus to the sharp cliff edge. “You know what else this reminds me of?” he said. “Torrmede.”
    Verity grimaced. “How can it look like Torrmede? Stop name-dropping Torrmede into everything! Just because you went there doesn’t make you special or anything like that.”
    “You know what I mean! Torrmede’s built on a steep rocky piece of land, and the rhododendrons all grow up it.”
    “I never saw any rhododendrons at Torrmede or anywhere else that looked like ice spikes!” Verity checked the surrounding landmarks. This looked like the right place. On the ground she saw a lighter stripe scratched. Could that mark where a horse had slipped? She dismounted.
    “Perhaps it’s your imagination that’s not up to task. Now where are you going?” Vladimir asked from behind her. There was that smashed stand of ice she’d kicked over to pack the head in. There, the broken points where the horse had gone down. At the memory of the horse’s death, a queasy sensation started in Verity’s stomach and began to spread upward into her