Dragon's Time

FOR READERS NEW TO PERN

Thousands of years after man first developed interstellar travel, colonists from Earth, Tau Ceti III, and many other origins settled upon Pern, the third planet of the star Rukbat in the Sagittarius sector.

They found Pern idyllic for their purposes: a pastoral world far off the standard trade routes and perfect for those recovering from the horrors of the Nathi Wars.

Led by war hero Admiral Paul Benden, and Governor Emily Boll of war-torn Tau Ceti, the colonists quickly abandoned their star-traveling technology in favor of a simpler life. For eight years—“Turns” as they called them on Pern—the settlers spread and multiplied on Pern’s lush Southern Continent, unaware that a menace was fast approaching through space.

The Red Star, as the colonists came to call it, was actually a wandering planetoid that had been captured by Rukbat millennia before. It had a highly elliptical, cometary orbit, passing through the fringes of the system’s Oort Cloud before hurtling back inward toward the warmth of the sun, a cycle that took two hundred and fifty Turns.

For fifty of those Turns, the Red Star was visible in the night sky of Pern. Visible and deadly, for when the Red Star was close enough, as it was for those fifty long Turns, its indigenous lifeform could cross the void to Pern. Once these alien spores entered the tenuous upper atmosphere, they would thin out into long, narrow, streamer shapes and float down to the ground below, as seemingly harmless “Threads.”

However, Thread was anything but harmless. Like all living things, Thread needed sustenance, and it ate voraciously of anything organic: wood or flesh, it was all the same to Thread.

The first deadly Fall of Thread caught the colonists completely unawares. And, having abandoned their high-tech weaponry and tools as part of their idealistic move to Pern, they barely survived. In the aftermath, they came up with a desperate plan to design a shield against the recurrent threat: they used their knowledge of genetic engineering to modify fire-lizards—six-limbed, winged Pernese life-forms that had natural resources against Thread—into huge, intelligent, telepathic dragons. Able to instantaneously travel from one place to another—by going between—and to “breathe fire,” the dragons could intercept Thread and burn it out of existence before it could reach the ground. Telepathically linked to their riders from the moment of Hatching and thus able to work as fighting units in perfect tandem, these dragons formed the mainstay of the protection of Pern.

The approach of the Red Star not only brought the mindless Thread but also caused the tectonically active Southern Continent to heave with volcanoes and earthquakes, causing the colonists to seek refuge on the smaller, stabler, though less temperate Northern Continent. In their haste to flee, they lost many important resources and, over time, much knowledge was forgotten.

Huddled in one settlement, which they called Fort Hold, the colonists soon discovered themselves overcrowded, particularly with the growing dragon population. So the dragons moved into their own high mountain space, Fort Weyr. As time progressed and the population spread across Pern, more Holds were formed and more Weyrs were created by the dragonriders.

The combined needs of the holders and the dragonriders resulted in a complex societal structure. Settlements called holds fell under the authoritarian jurisdiction of major Holds, each run by a Lord Holder, who could maintain control over terrified people and limited resources during the years of Threadfall. The Weyrs, under the leadership of a Weyrwoman—rider of the senior queen dragon—and a Weyrleader—rider of whichever male dragon flew the senior queen in a mating flight—were unable to both provide for themselves and protect the planet. They were forced to rely on tithes from the Holds to keep them provided with food and supplies.

And so the two populations grew separate, distant, and sometimes intolerant of each other.

The Red Star grew fainter, Thread stopped falling. Then, after a two-hundred-Turn “Interval,” it returned again to rain death and destruction from the skies for another fifty-Turn “Pass.” Again, Pern relied on fragile dragon wings and their staunch riders to keep it free of Thread. And, again, the Pass ended, and a second Interval began.

At the beginning of the Third Pass, a new disaster struck—dragons started dying of an unknown disease. These deaths, added to the losses from fighting Thread, decimated the Weyrs. K’lior, Weyrleader of Fort Weyr, decided upon a desperate course of action and sent his injured dragons and riders ten Turns back in time to abandoned Igen Weyr where they might heal and return in time to fight the next Threadfall. Their desperate jump between time—led by young Fiona, rider of gold queen Talenth—proved fabulously successful. After spending three Turns living and growing in the past, they returned to Fort Weyr, recovered and trained to fight, a mere three days after they’d left.

Upon her return, Fiona discovered that while not much had changed at Fort Weyr or Pern in the present time, she had changed greatly. She was three Turns older—and wiser. When the dragonriders of Telgar Weyr were all tragically lost between, Fiona volunteered to go to Telgar Weyr to revive its Thread-fighting forces. She was accompanied by bronze rider T’mar and many other dragons and their riders who, during their sojourn in the past, had grown to know her, love her, and respect her.

But at Telgar, tragedy struck again: More dragons, including Fiona’s beloved Talenth, were stricken with the same illness that had already killed so many of the dragons of Pern. It looked as if Fiona would surely lose her dragon … until ex-dragonrider Lorana and Harper Kindan arrived from Benden with a cure—a cure won at the cost of Lorana’s own queen dragon.

An extraordinary and unusual relationship arose among Fiona, Lorana, and Kindan, in which Fiona bonded with both of them—and discovered a strange telepathic connection with Lorana. This three-way bond, as well as her special relationship with bronze rider T’mar, bolstered Fiona as the Weyrs struggled with the knowledge that even though the deadly dragon illness was no more, the surviving numbers were not nearly enough to protect the planet from Thread.

Losses continued to mount. Lorana, who had the rare ability to bespeak all dragons, felt every death, and despite the wonder of her newfound pregnancy, and everything Fiona and Kindan tried to do to protect her, she grew increasingly desperate … until that desperation forced to her to attempt a bold plan.…