her to live without him. But no escape existed which could negate responsibility for his death.

    'Coward,' she sobbed, and jammed herself back into the headset. Tears dripped off her chin as she banked the Quest around, this time without equations, calculations; this time with nothing but her wits and the knowledge that if she saved him, others less deserving would die.

    'I hate you,' she said, as she once had to his face, but the words changed nothing.

    The controls shuddered under her fingers, as though protesting betrayal. And the gas-giant swelled in the starboard screens mocking the futility of every month spent in preparation, wasted effort, now, because of Dorren. Wracked by serf4oathing she fought to steady the Quest against the planet's cruel pull, tried not to think, and lost, as she always did, to memory...

'Don't frown so hard,' said a quiet male voice at her elbow. 'Didn't you play Jacks and Aces as a child?'

    Startled, Ataine glanced up from the instrument simulator's console to discover a young man of medium height leaning on the armrest beside her. A grin softened the lines of decisively set features, and the wheeze of the overhead ventilator ruffled perfectly trimmed brown hair. The eyes were direct, and very blue.

    'Were you deprived?' His grin faded into puzzled inquiry. 'I thought every kid played Jacks and Aces. I'm Dorren, assigned to coach you, and if you hated cards, you're going to make a difficult job for me.'

    'I played,' said Ataine. As he crouched beside her seat, she buried a moment of vulnerability by starting stonily at the screen. He's nobody special, she told herself firmly. But the instinctive platitude was useless. Theirs was a rapport so perfectly balanced that nothing she had experienced since was the same.

    Using whimsical analogies drawn from card games, Second Lieutenant Carlton taught her to handle the sensitive instrumentation of Station's ore probes faster than any trainee had done in the past. Long after the others had shut down their systems for lunch, she and Dorren had lingered in the trainer, mixing instruction, anecdotes, and tasteless jokes with unparalleled enthusiasm. Time stopped. Neither of them noticed. Finally, the

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