On they hiked, in silence. Like a lot of the big craters, Moreux turned out to have several pie-wedge watersheds, converging on a central marsh and lake. In this case the lake was small and kidney-shaped, curving around the rough low knobs of a central peak complex. Zo and Russell came out from under the forest canopy on an indistinct trail that faded into elephant grass, and they would have gotten quickly lost except for the stream, which was oxbowing through the grass toward a meadow and then the marshy lake. Even the meadow was dominated by elephant grass, great circular clumps of it that stood well overhead, so that they often had a view of nothing but giant grasses and sky. The long blades of grass gleamed under the lilac midday zenith. Russell stumbled along well behind Zo, his round sunglasses like mirrors in his face, reflecting the grass bundles as he looked this way and that. He appeared utterly foxed, amazed at the surroundings, and he muttered into an old wristpad that hung on his wrist like a manacle.

A final oxbow into the lake had created a fine sand-and-pebble beach, and after testing with a stick for quicksand at the waterline, and finding the sand firm, Zo stripped off her sweaty singlet and walked out into the water, which got nice and cold a few meters offshore. She dove under, swam around, hit her head on the bottom. There was a beached boulder standing over some deep water, and she climbed it and dove in three or four times, doing a forward flip in the water right after entry; this forward somersault, difficult and graceless in the air, caused a quick little tug of weightless pleasure in the pit of her stomach, a feeling as close to orgasm as any nonorgasm she had ever felt. So she dove several times, until the sensation wore off and she was cooled. Then she walked out of the lake and lay on the sand, feeling its heat and the solar radiation cook both sides of her. A real orgasm would have been perfect, but despite the fact that she was laid out before him like a map of sex, Russell sat cross-legged in the shallows, absorbed apparently by the mud, naked himself except for sunglasses and wristpad. A farmer-tanned little bald wizened primate, like her image of Gandhi or Homo habilis. It was even a bit sexy how different he was, so ancient and small, like the male of some turtle-without-a-shell species. She pulled her knee to the side and shifted up her bottom in an unmistakable present posture, the sunlight hot on her exposed vulva.

“What amazing mud,” he said, staring at the glop in his hand. “I’ve never seen anything like this biome.”

“No.”

“Do you like it?”

“This biome? I suppose so. It’s a bit hot and overgrown, but interesting. It makes a change.”

“So you don’t object. You’re not a Red.”