Dragonsdawn

Chapter 1

“PROBE REPORTS COMING through, sir,” Sallah Telgar announced without taking her eyes from the flickering lights on her terminal.

“On the screen, please, Mister Telgar,” Admiral Paul Benden replied. Beside him, leaning against his command chair, Emily Boll kept her eyes steadily on the sunlit planet, scarcely aware of the activity around her.

The Pern Colonial Expedition had reached the most exciting moment of its fifteen-year voyage: the three colony ships, the Yokohama, the Bahrain, and the Buenos Aires were finally approaching their destination. In offices below the bridge deck, specialists eagerly awaited updates on the reports of the long-dead Exploration and Evaluation team that, 200 years earlier, had recommended Rukbat’s third planet for colonization.

The long journey to the Sagittarian Sector had gone without a hitch, the only excitement being the surprise when the Oort cloud encircling the Rukbat system had been sighted. That phenomenon had continued to engross some of the space and scientific personnel, but Paul Benden had lost interest when Ezra Keroon, captain of the Bahrain and the expedition’s astronomer, had assured him that the nebulous mass of deep-frozen meteorites was no more than an astronomical curiosity. They would keep an eye on it, Ezra had said, but although some comets might form and spin from its depths, he doubted that they would pose a serious threat to either the three colony ships or the planet the ships were fast approaching. After all, the Exploration and Evaluation team had not mentioned any unusual incidence of meteor strikes on the surface of Pern.

“Screening probe reports, sir,” Sallah confirmed, “on two and five.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Admiral Benden smile slightly.

“This is sort of anticlimactic, isn’t it?” Paul murmured to Emily Boll as the latest reports flashed onto the screens.

Arms folded across her chest, she hadn’t moved since the probes had been launched, except for an occasional twiddling of fingers along her upper arms. She lifted her right eyebrow in a cynical twitch and kept her eyes on the screen.

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s one more procedure which gets us nearer to the surface. Of course,” she added dryly, “we’re sort of stuck with whatever’s reported, but I expect we can cope.”

“We’ll have to, won’t we?” Paul Benden replied a trifle grimly.

The trip was one-way—it had to be, considering the cost of getting over six thousand colonists and supplies to such an out-of-the-way sector of the galaxy. Once they reached Pern the fuel left in the great transport ships would be enough only to achieve and maintain a synchronous orbit above their destination while people and cargo were shuttled down to the surface. To be sure, they had homing capsules that would reach the headquarters of the Federated Sentient Planets in a mere five years, but to a retired naval tactician like Paul Benden, a fragile homing capsule did not offer much in the way of an effective backup. The Pern expedition was composed of committed and resourceful people who had chosen to eschew the high-tech societies of the Federated Sentient Planets. They expected to manage on their own. And though their destination in the Rukbat system was rich enough in ores and minerals to support an agriculturally based society, it was poor enough and far enough from the center of the galaxy that it should escape the greed of the technocrats.

“Only a little while longer, Paul,” Emily murmured, her voice reaching his ears alone, “and we’ll both be able to lay down the weary load.”

He grinned up at her, knowing that it had been as difficult for her as it had been for him to escape the blandishments of technocrats who had not wished to lose two such charismatic war heroes: the admiral who had prevailed in the Cygni Space Battle, and the governor-heroine of First Centauri. But no one could deny that the two were the ideal leaders for the Pern expedition.

“Speaking of loads,” she went on more loudly, “I’d better be there to referee my team now the reports are coming in. I suppose specialists have to consider their own disciplines the most important ones, but such contentiousness!” She stifled a groan, then grinned, her blue eyes twinkling in her rather homely face. “Just a few more days of talking, and it’ll be action stations, Admiral.”

She knew him well. He hated the interminable debate over minor points that seemed to obsess those in charge of the landing operation. He preferred to make quick decisions and implement them immediately, instead of talking them to death.

“You’re more patient with your teams than I am,” the admiral said quietly. The last two months, as the three ships had decelerated into the Rukbat system, had been made tedious with meetings and discussions which seemed to Paul to be nitpicking over procedures that had been thoroughly thrashed out seventeen years before in the planning stages of the venture.

Most of the 2900 colonists on the Yokohama had passed the entire journey in deep sleep. Personnel essential to the operation and maintenance of the three great ships had stood five-year watches. Paul Benden had elected to stand the first and last five-year periods. Emily Boll had been revived shortly before the rest of the environmental specialists, who had spent their time railing at the superficiality of the Exploration and Evaluation Corps report. She saw no point in reminding them of their enthusiasm for the same words when they had signed up for the Pern expedition.

Paul continued to absorb the display information, eyes flicking from one screen to another, absently rubbing the thumb of his left hand across three fingers. Though not the sort of man Emily was attracted to, Paul Benden was undeniably handsome, and Emily much preferred him with his hair grown out of the spaceman’s crop that had been his trademark. She thought that the thick blond mass softened the strong features: the blunt nose, the forceful jaw, and the wide thin-lipped mouth, just then pulled slightly to the left in a little smile.

The trip had done him good: he looked fit and well able to face the rigors of their next few months. Emily remembered how terribly thin he had been at the official ceremony commemorating his brilliant victory at Cygnus, where he and the Purple Sector Fleet had turned the tide of war against the Nathis. Legend said that he had remained awake and on duty for the entire seventy hours of the crucial battle. Emily believed it. She had done something of the sort herself during the height of the Nathis attack on her planet. There were many things a person could do if pushed, she knew from experience. She expected that one paid for such physical abuses later on in life, but Benden, well into his sixth decade, looked vigorously healthy. And she certainly felt no diminution of her own energies. Fourteen years of deep sleep seemed to have cured the terrible fatigue that had been the inevitable result of her defense of First Centauri.

And what a world they were now approaching! Emily sighed, still unable to look away from the main screen for more than a second. She knew that all those on duty on the bridge, along with those of the previous watch who had not left, were totally bemused by the magnificent sight of their destination.

Who had named it Pern, she did not recall—quite probably the single letters blazoned across the published report had stood for something else entirely—but it was Pern officially, and it was theirs. They were on an equatorial heading; as she watched, the planet’s lazy rotation hid the northern continent and the spine of mountains up its coast, while the western desert of the southern landmass was revealed. The dominant topographical feature was the wide expanse of ocean, slightly greener than that of old Earth, with a ring of islands splattered across it. The atmosphere was currently decorated with the swirling cloud curl of a low-pressure area moving rapidly northeast. What a beautiful, beautiful world! She sighed again and caught Paul’s quick glance. She smiled back at him without really taking her eyes from the screen.

A beautiful world! And theirs! By all the Holies, this time we won’t botch it! she assured herself fervently. With all that magnificent, productive land, the old imperatives don’t apply. No, she added in private cynicism, people are already discovering new ones. She thought of the friction she had sensed between the charterers, who had raised the staggering credits needed to finance the Pern expedition, and the contractors, the specialists hired to round out the basic skills required for the undertaking. Each could end up with a largeous amount of land or mineral rights on this new world, but the fact that the charterers would get first choice was a bone of contention.

Differences! Why did there always have to be distinctions, arrogantly displayed as superiorities, or derided as inferiorities? Everyone would have the same opportunity, no matter how many stake acres they could claim as charterer or had been granted as contractor. On Pern, it would truly be up to the individual to succeed, to prove his claim and to manage as much land as he and his cared for. That would be the catholic distinction. Once we’ve landed, everyone will be too bloody busy to fret over “differences,” she consoled herself, and watched in fascination as a second low-pressure area began to spin down from the hidden north across the sea. If the two weather systems melded, there would be a tremendous storm over the eastern curve of the oceanic islands.

“Looking good,” Commander Ongola murmured in his deep, sad bass voice. Emily had not seen him smile once in the six months she had been awake. Paul had told her that Ongola’s wife, children, and entire family had been vaporized when the Nathis had attacked their service colony; Paul had specifically requested him to join the expedition. Stationed at the science desk, Ongola was monitoring the meteorology and atmospherics displays. “Atmospheric content as expected. Southern continent temperatures appear to be normal for this late winter season. Northern continent enjoying considerable precipitation due to low-pressure air masses. Analyses and temperatures consistent with EEC report.”

The first probe was doing a high-altitude circumnavigation in a pattern that would allow it to photograph the entire planet. The second, taking a low-level course, could reexamine any portion required. The third probe was programmed for topographical features.

“Probes four and six have landed, sir. Five is on hold,” Sallah went on, as she interpreted the new lights that had begun to flash. “Scuttlebugs deployed.”

“Show them on the screens, Mister Telgar,” the admiral said. She transferred the displays to screens three, four, and six.

Pern’s image continued to dominate the main screen as the planet rotated slowly to the east, from night to day. The southern continent’s coastline was day-lit; the spinal range of mountains and the tracks of several rivers were visible. The thermal scan was showing the effect of daylight on the late winter season of the southern continent.

Probe scuttlebugs had been landed at three not-yet-visible specific points in the southern hemisphere and were relaying updates on current conditions and terrain. The southern continent had always been favored as the landing site: the survey-team report mentioned the more clement weather patterns on the high plateaus; a wider variety of plant life, some of it edible by humans; eminently suitable farmland; and good harbors for the tough siliplex fishing vessels that existed as numbered pieces in the holds of the Buenos Aires and the Bahrain. The seas of Pern teemed with aquatic life, and at least a few of the species could be safely consumed by humans. The marine biologists had high hopes of populating the bays and estuaries with Terran piscine types without harming the present ecological balance. The deep-freeze tanks of the Bahrain contained twenty-five dolphins who had volunteered to come along. Pern’s seas were eminently suitable for the support of the intelligent mammals, who enjoyed sea-shepherding as well as the opportunity to see new worlds.

Soil analyses had indicated that Terran cereals and legumes, which had already adapted well to Centauran soil, should flourish on Pern, a necessity as the native grasses were unsuitable for Terran animals. One of the first tasks facing the agronomists would be to plant fodder crops to sustain the variety of herbivores and ruminants that had been brought as fertilized ova from the Animal Reproduction Banks of Terra.

In order that the colonists could ensure the adaptability of Terran animals to Pern, permission to use certain of the advanced biogenetic techniques of the Eridanis—mainly mentasynth, gene paring, and chromosome enhancements—had been grudgingly granted. Even though Pern was in an isolated area of the galaxy, the Federated Sentient Planets wanted no further disasters like the bio-alts, which had aroused the strong Pure Human Life Group.

Emily Boll repressed a shudder. Those memories belonged to the past. Displayed on the screen in front of her was the future—and she had best get down and help the specialists organize it. “I’ve dallied long enough,” she murmured to Paul Benden, touching his shoulder in farewell.

Paul pulled his gaze from the screen and smiled at her, giving her hand a friendly pat. “Eat first!” He waggled a stern finger at her. “You keep forgetting we’re not rationed on board the Yoko.” She gave him a startled look. “I will. I promise.”

“The next few weeks are going to be rough.”

“Hmm, but so stimulating!” Her blue eyes twinkled. Then her stomach audibly rumbled. “Gotcha, Admiral.” She winked again and left.

He watched her as she walked to the nearest exit off the bridge, a lean, almost bony woman, with gray and naturally wavy hair which she wore shoulder length. What Paul liked most about her was her wiry strength, both moral and physical, which was combined with a ruthlessness that sometimes startled him. She had tremendous personal vitality—just being in her presence gave one’s spirits a lift. Together they would make something of their new world.

He looked back to the main screen and the enthralling vista of Pern.

The large lounge had been set up as an office for the heads of the various teams of exobiology, agronomy, botany, and ecology, along with six representatives of the professional farmers, who were still a bit groggy from their term in deep sleep. The room was ringed by multiple screens displaying a constantly altering range of microbiology reports, statistics, comparisons, and analyses. There was much debate going on. Those hunched over desk monitors, busily collating reports, tried to ignore the tension emanating from the departmental heads who occupied the very center of the room in a tight knot, each one with an eye out for the screens displaying reports on his or her specialty.

Mar Dook, head agronomist, was a small man whose Earth Asiatic ancestry was evident in features, skin tone, and physiology: he was wiry, lean, and slightly bowed in the shoulders, but his black eyes gleamed with eager intelligence and the excitement of the challenge.

“The schedule has long been decided, my dear colleagues. We’re in the first wave down. The probes do not contradict any of the information we already have. The dirt and vegetation samples match. There’s the same sort of red and green algae reported along the shoreline. Marine life has been sighted by the sea probe. One of the low probes has caught a comforting variety of insects, which the EEC also found. The aerial fax that came up with that flyer reported—what did the team call them?—wherries.”

“Why ‘wherries’?” Phas Radamanth asked. He scrolled through the report searching for that particular annotation. “Ah,” he said when he found it. “Because they resemble airborne barges—squat, fat and full.” He allowed himself a little smile for the whimsy of that long-dead term.

“Yeah, but I don’t see mention of any other predators,” Kwan Marceau said, his rather high forehead creased, as usual, with a frown.

“There’s sure to be something that eats them,” Phas replied confidently.

“Or they eat each other,” Mar Dook suggested. He received a stern frown from Kwan. Suddenly Mar Dook pointed excitedly to a new fax coming up on one screen. “Ah, look! The scuttlebug got a reptiloid. Rather a large specimen, ten centimeters thick and seven meters long. There’s your wherry eater, Kwan.”

“Another scuttle has just run through a puddle of excretal matter, semiliquid, which contains intestinal parasites and bacteria,” Pol Nietro said, hurriedly tagging the report for later reference. “There do seem to be plenty of wormlike soil dwellers, too. Rather a significant variety, if you ask me. Worms like nematodes, insectoids, mites that really wouldn’t be out of place in a Terran compost heap. Ted, here’s something for you: plants like our mycorrhizas—tree fungi. Speaking of that, I wonder where the EEC team found that luminous mycelium.”

Ted Tubberman, one of the colony botanists, gave a contemptuous snort. He was a big man, not carrying any extra flesh after nearly fifteen years in deep sleep, who tended to be overbearing. “Luminous organisms are usually found in deep caves, Nietro, as they use their light to attract their victims, generally insects. The mycelium reported by that team was in a cave system on that large island south of the northern continent. This planet seems to have a considerable number of cave systems. Why weren’t any scuttles scheduled for subterranean investigations?” he asked in an aggrieved tone.

“There were only so many available, Ted,” Mar Dook said placatingly.

“Ah, look! Now, this is what I’ve been waiting for,” Kwan said, his usually solemn face lighting up as he bent until his nose almost touched the small screen before him. “There are reef systems. And yes, a balanced if fragile marine ecology along the ring islands. I’m much encouraged. Possibly those polka dots they saw are from a meteorite storm.”

Ted dismissed that instantly. “No. No impact, and the formation of new growth does not parallel that sort of phenomenon. I intend looking into that problem the first moment I can.”

“What we have to do first,” Mar Dook said, his tone gently reproving, “is select the appropriate sites, plow, test, and, where necessary, introduce the symbiotic bacteria and fungi, even beetles, needed for pastureland.”

“But we still don’t know which landing site will be chosen.” Ted’s face was flushed with irritation.

“The three that are now being surveyed are much of a muchness,” Mar Dook replied with a tolerant smile. He found Tubberman’s petulant restlessness tedious. “All three give us ample scope for experimental and control fields. Our basic tasks will be the same no matter where we land. The essential point is not to miss this first vital growing season.”

“The brood animals must be revived as soon as possible,” Pol Nietro said. The head zoologist was as eager as everyone else to plunge into the practical work ahead. “And reliance on the alfalfa trays for fodder is not going to adjust their digestions to a new environment. We must begin as we mean to go on, and let Pern supply our needs.”

There was a murmur of assent to his statement.

“The only new factor in these reports,” Phas Radamanth, the xenobiologist, said encouragingly, without turning his eyes from his screens, “is the density of vegetation. We may have to clear more than we thought in the forty-five south eleven site. See here—” He gestured to the disparate images. “Where the EEC pic showed sparse ground cover, we now have heavy vegetation, some of it of respectable size.”

“There should be at least that, after two-hundred-odd years,” Ted Tubberman said irritably. “I never was happy about the barrenness. Smacked of a depauperate ecology. Hey, most of those circular features are overgrown. Felicia, run up the EEC pics that correspond.” He bent his big frame to peer over her shoulder at the double screen below the probe broadcast. “See, those circles are barely discernible now. The team was right about botanical succession. And that isn’t a grassoid. If that’s mutant vegetation . . .” He trailed off, shaking his head and jutting his chin out. He had loudly and frequently insisted that the success of Pern as a colony would depend on botanical health.

“I, too, am happier to see succession, but according to the EEC reports, it’s—” Mar Dook began.

“Shove the EEC reports. They didn’t tell us the half of what we really need to know,” Ted exclaimed. “Survey, they called it. Quick dip at the trot. No depth to it at all. The most superficial survey I’ve ever read.”

“I quite agree,” said the calm voice of Emily Boll, who had entered while the botanist was ranting. “The initial EEC report does seem to have been less than complete now that we can compare it to our new home. But the most crucial, salient points were covered for us. We know what we needed to know, and the FSP was quite happy to turn the planet over to us because it certainly doesn’t have anything to interest them. And it’s not a planet that the syndicates would fight over. Which is why we were allowed to have it. I think we have to be grateful to that team, not critical.” Her smile swept everyone in the crowded room. “The important elements—atmosphere, water, arable soil, ores, minerals, bacteria, insects, marine life—are all present, and Pern is eminently suitable for human habitation. The gaps, the in-depth investigations that report did not contain, are what we shall spend a lifetime filling in. A challenge for each and every one of us, and our children!” Her low-pitched voice rang in the crowded room. “Let’s not worry at this very late date about what we weren’t told. We’ll find the answers soon enough. Let’s concentrate now on the great work we have to begin in just two days’ time. We’re ready for any surprises Pern might have for us. Now, Mar Dook, have you seen anything in the updates to suggest we must alter the schedule?”

“Nothing,” Mar Dook replied, warily glancing at Ted Tubberman, who was frowning at Emily Boll. “But those soil and vegetation matter samples would occupy us usefully.”

“I’m sure they would.” Emily grinned broadly at him. “We’ll be busy enough—ah, here’s the information you need. And what a bumper crop to digest.”

“We still don’t know where we’re landing,” Ted complained.

“The admiral is discussing that right now, Ted,” Emily replied equably. “We’ll, be among the first to know.”

Agronomists were to be in the first shuttleloads to reach the surface, for it was vital to the colony’s future to break land for crops as soon as possible. Even while the engineers were setting up the landing grids, agronomists would be plowing fields, and Ted Tubberman and his group would be setting up sheds and seeding the precious soil brought from Earth. Pat Hempenstall would set up a control shed using indigenous dirt, to see if Earth or colonial variants would thrive unassisted in an alien soil. Sufficient packaged organisms had also been brought to introduce symbiotic bacteria.

“I will be very glad,” Pol Nietro murmured, “if the reports confirm those insectoids, winged and subterranean, reported by the EEC team. If they should prove sufficient to do the work of dung beetles and flies on our Terran-style detritus, agronomy will be off to a good start. We’ve got to get nutrients back into the soil and introduce the rumen bacteria, protozoans, and yeasts for our cows, sheep, goats, and horses so they’ll thrive.”

“If not, Pol,” Emily replied, “we can ask Kitti to work a bit of her micro-magic and rearrange innards that can deal with what Pern has to offer.” She smiled with great deference at the tiny lady seated in the center of the little cluster.

“Soil samples coming up,” Ju Adjai said into the pause. “And here’s vegetable mash for you, Ted. Get your teeth in that.”

Tubberman launched himself to the position next to Felicia, his big fingers nimble and accurate over the keyboard.

In moments the rattling of keys, punctuated by assorted mutters and other monosyllables of concentration, filled the room. Emily and Kit Ping exchanged glances tinged with amused condescension for the vagaries of their younger colleagues. Kit Ping then turned her eyes back to the main screen and continued her contemplation of the world they were rapidly approaching.

As Emily sat down at her workspace, she wondered how under the suns the expedition had lucked out enough to include the most eminent geneticist in the Federated Sentient Planets—the only human who had ever been trained by the Eridanis. Emily had only seen pics of the altered humans who had made the first abortive mission to Eridani. She suppressed a shudder. Pern wouldn’t ever require that kind of abominable tinkering. Maybe that’s why Kit Ping was willing to come to the edge of the galaxy—to end what had already been a long and incredible life in a quiet backwater where she, too, could practice selective amnesia. There were many on the colony’s roll who had come to forget what they had seen and done.

“The grassoid on that eastern landing site is going to be hell to cut through,” Ted Tubberman said, scowling. “High boron content. It’ll dull cutting edges and foul gear.”

“It’d cushion the landing.” Pat Hempenstall said with a chuckle.

“Our landing craft have landed safely on far more inhospitable terrain than that,” Emily reminded the others.

“Felicia, run a comparison on the botanical succession around those crazy polka dots,” Ted Tubberman went on, staring at his own screens. “There’s something about that configuration that still bothers me. The phenomenon is all over the planet. And I’d be happier if we could get an opinion from that geologist whiz, Tarzan—” He paused.

“Tarvi Andiyar,” Felicia supplied, accustomed to Ted’s memory lapses.

“Well, memo him to meet me when he’s revived. Damn it, Mar, how can we function with only half the specialists awake?”

“We’re doing fine, Ted. Pern is coming up roses for us. Not a joggle off the report data.”

“That’s almost worrying,” Pol Nietro said blandly.

Tubberman snorted, Mar Dook shrugged, and Kitti Ping smiled.

Admiral Benden’s chrono tingled against his wrist, reminding him that it was time for his own meeting.

“Commander Ongola, take the conn.” Reluctantly, his eyes focusing on the main screen until the access panel of the exit closed, Paul left the bridge.

The corridors of the great colony ship were becoming more crowded by the hour, Paul noticed as he made his way to the wardroom. Newly revived people, clutching the handrails, were jerkily exercising stiff limbs and trying to focus body and mind on the suddenly hazardous task of remaining upright. The old Yoko would be packed tighter than reserve rations while colonists awaited their turns to reach the surface. But with the promise of the freedom of a whole new world as the reward of patience, the crowding could be endured.

Having paid close attention to the various probe reports, Paul had already decided which of the three recommended landing sites he would choose. Naturally he would accord his staff and the other two captains the courtesy of a hearing, but the obvious choice was the vast plateau below a group of strato volcanoes. The current weather there was clement, and the nearly level expanse was adequate to accommodate all six shuttles. The updates had only confirmed a tentative preference made seventeen years ago when he had first studied the EEC reports. He had never anticipated much difficulty with landing; it was a smooth and accident-free debarkation that caused him anxiety. There was no rescue backup hovering solicitously in the skies of Pern, nor disaster teams on its surface.

In organizing the debarkation, Paul had chosen as flight officer Fulmar Stone, a man who had served with him throughout the Cygnus campaign. For the past two weeks, Fulmar’s crews had been all over the Yoko’s three shuttle vehicles and the admiral’s gig, ensuring that there would be no malfunction after fifteen years in the cold storage of the flight deck. The Yoko’s twelve pilots, under Kenjo Fusaiyuki, had gone through rigorous simulator drills well spiced with the most bizarre landing emergencies. Most of the pilots had been combat fighters, and were fit and fully experienced at extricating themselves from tricky situations, but none had quite the record of Kenjo Fusaiyuki. Some of the less experienced shuttle pilots had complained about Kenjo’s methods; Paul Benden had courteously listened to the complaints—and ignored them.

Paul had been surprised and flattered when Kenjo had signed up with the expedition. Somehow, he had thought the man would have signed on to an exploratory unit where he could continue to fly as long as his reflexes lasted. Then Paul remembered that Kenjo was a cyborg, with a prosthetic left leg. After the war, the Exploration and Evaluation Corps had had their choice of experienced, whole personnel, and cyborgs had been shunted into administrative positions. Automatically, Paul made his left hand into a fist, his thumb rubbing against the knuckles of the three replacement fingers which had always worked as well as his natural ones. But there was still no feeling in the pseudoflesh. Consciously, he relaxed the hand, certain once again that he could hear a subtle plastic squeak in the joints and the wrist.

He turned his mind to real problems, like the debarkation ahead, knowing that unforeseeable delays or foul-ups could stall the entire operation as cargo and passengers began to flow from the orbiting ships. He had appointed good men as supercargoes: Joel Lilienkamp as surface coordinator, and Desi Arthied on the Yoko. Ezra and Jim, of Bahrain and Buenos Aires, were equally confident in their own debarkation personnel, but one minor hitch could cause endless rescheduling. The trick would be to keep everything moving.

The admiral turned starboard off the main corridor and reached the wardroom. Once again, he hoped that the meeting would not drag on. As he raised his hand to brush the access panel, he could see that he had arrived with two minutes to spare before the other two captains screened in. First there would be the brief formality of Ezra Keroon, as fleet astrogator, confirming the exact ETA at their parking orbit, and then the landing site would be chosen.

“The betting’s eleven to four now, Lili,” Paul heard Drake Bonneau saying to Joel as the access panel to the wardroom whooshed open.

“For or against?” Paul asked, grinning as he entered. Those present, led by Kenjo’s example, shot to their feet, despite Paul’s dismissing gesture. He took in the two blank screens which in precisely ninety-five seconds would reveal the faces of Ezra Keroon and Jim Tillek, and to the center one where Pern swam tranquilly in the black ocean of space.

“There’re some civilians don’t think Desi and me can make the deadline, Paul,” Joel answered with a smug wink at Arthied, who nodded solemnly. Not a tall man, Lilienkamp was chunkily built; he had an engaging monkey face, framed with graying dark hair that curled tightly against his skull. His personality was ebullient, volatile, and could be caustic. His quick wits included an eidetic memory that allowed him to keep track of not only any bet he made, for how much and with whom and what odds, but every parcel, package, crate, and canister in his keeping. Desi Arthied, his second-in-command, often found his superior’s levity a trial, but he respected Lilienkamp’s abilities. It would be Desi’s job to shift the cargo that Joel designated to the loading decks and on board the shuttles.

“Civilians? Who don’t know you very well, do they?” Paul asked dryly, taking his seat and smiling noncommittally at Avril Bitra, who had been in charge of the simulation exercises. Ambition had hardened her. He wished that he had not spent so much of his waking time during the voyage involved with the sultry brunette, but she was stunning. Soon they would all be too busy for personal relationships. More and more attractive young women were appearing in the corridors. He wanted one of them to want to marry Paul Benden, not “the admiral.” Just then, the two screens lit up, the right-hand one displaying Ezra Keroon’s saturnine countenance, with his distinctive fringe of gray hair, and the left showing Jim Tillek, his square face wearing his usual cheerful expression.

“G’day, Paul,” he said, just ahead of Ezra’s more formal salute.

“Admiral,” Ezra said solemnly. “I beg to report that we have maintained our programmed course to the minute. Estimated arrival to parking orbit is now forty-six hours, thirty-three minutes, and twenty seconds. No deviations anticipated at this point in time.”

“Very good, Captain,” Paul said, returning the salute. “Any problems?”

Both captains reported that their revival programs were continuing without incident and that their shuttles were ready for launch once orbit had been achieved.

“Now that we know when, the matter of where is open for discussion,” Paul said, leaning back in his chair to signal that comment was invited.

“So, tell us, Paul,” Joel Lilienkamp said with his usual disregard for protocol, “where’re we landing?” All through the Nathi War, Joel’s impertinence had amused Paul Benden at a time when amusement was scarce, and he had consistently proved himself a near miraculous scavenger. His impudence caused Ezra Keroon to frown, but Jim Tillek chuckled.

“What are the odds, Lili?” he asked, his expression sly.

“Let us discuss the matter without prejudice,” Paul suggested wryly. “The three sites recommended by the EEC team have now all been probed. If you will refer to the chart, the sites are at thirty south by thirteen point thirty, forty-five south by eleven, and forty-seven south by four point seven five.”

“There’s really only one, Admiral, from my point of view,” Drake Bonneau interrupted excitedly, jabbing his finger at Paul’s own choice, the strato site. “Scuttlebug scans say it’s almost as level as if it had been graded for us, and broad enough to accommodate all six shuttles. The site at forty-five south eleven is waterlogged right now, and the western one is too far from the ocean. Temperature readings are near freezing.”

Paul saw Kenjo’s nod of agreement. He glanced at the two screens. Ezra’s growing bald spot was evident as he bent to consult his notes; unconsciously, Paul smoothed back his own thick hair.

“That thirty south is nearer sea for me,” Jim Tillek remarked amiably. “Good harbor about fifty klicks away. River’s navigable, too.” Tillek’s interest in sailing vessels was exceeded only by his love of dolphins. Accessibility to open water would be a high factor in his choice.

“Good heights for observatory and met stations all right,” Ezra replied, “though we’ve no real criterion from those reports about climatology. Don’t fancy settling that close to volcanoes myself.”

“A point, Ezra, but—” Paul paused to screen the relevant data for a quick scan. “No seismic readings were recorded, so I don’t see volcanic activity as an immediate problem. We can have Patrice de Broglie do a survey. Ah, yes, no seismic readings from the EEC, so even the one that has erupted has been dormant for well over two hundred years. And the weather and general conditions on the other two sites do mitigate against them.”

“Hmm, so they do. Doesn’t look from a met point of view as if the conditions at either will improve in two days,” Ezra conceded.

“Hell, we don’t have to stay where we land,” Drake exclaimed.

“Unless there’s some freak weather brewing up,” Jim Tillek said, “which I’m sure the met boys will be able to spot, let’s settle on the thirty-south site. That’s the one the EEC team favored, anyhow. Besides, the scuttlebugs say it’s got a thick ground cover. That should cushion the shock when you bounce, Drake.”

“Bounce?” Drake’s gray eyes widened at the mild jibe. “Captain Tillek, I haven’t bounced a landing since my first solo.”

“Very well, then, gentlemen, have we settled on our landing site?” Paul asked. Ezra and Jim nodded. “Relevant updates and detailed charts will be in your hands by 2200 hours.”

“Well, Joel,” Jim Tillek said, his sly grin broadening, “didja win?”

“Me, Captain?” Joel’s expression was that of injured innocence. “I never bet on a sure thing.”

“Any other problems to raise at this point, Captains?” Paul paused courteously, looking from one screen to the other.

“All ahead go, Paul, now I know I’ll land this bucket in her parking space on time,” Jim said, “and where to send my shuttle.” He waved a casual salute toward Erza and then his screen blacked out.

“Good evening, Admiral,” Ezra said more formally. His image faded.

“Is that all now, Paul?” Joel asked.

“We’ve got the time and the place,” Paul replied, “but that’s a tough timetable you’ve set, Joel. Can you keep it?”

“There’s a lot of money says he will, Admiral,” Drake Bonneau quipped.

“Why do you think it took me so long to load the Yoko, Admiral?” Joel Lilienkamp replied with a wide grin. “I knew I’d have to unload it all fifteen years later. You’ll see.” He winked at Desi, whose expression showed the faintest hint of skepticism.

“Then, gentlemen,” the admiral said, standing up, “I’ll be in my cabin if any problems do arise.”

As he swung out of the wardroom, Paul heard Joel asking for bets on how soon knowledge of the landing site would circulate the Yoko.

Avril’s throaty voice replied. “Those odds, Lili.” Then the door panel whooshed shut.

Morale was high. Paul hoped that Emily’s meeting had been as satisfactory. Seventeen years of planning and organization were about to be put to the test.

On the deep-sleep decks of all three colony ships, the medics were working double shifts to arouse the fifty-five hundred or so colonists. Technicians and specialists were being revived in order of their usefulness to the landing operation, but Admiral Benden and Governor Boll had been insistent that everyone be awake by the time the three ships achieved their temporarily programmed parking position in a stable Lagrangian orbit, sixty degrees ahead of the larger moon, in the L5 spot. Once the three great ships had been cleared of passengers and cargo, there would be no more chance to view Pern from outer space.

Sallah Telgar, coming off duty from her watch on the bridge, decided that she had had quite enough space travel for one lifetime. As the only surviving dependent of serving officers, she had spent her childhood being shunted from one service post to another. When she had lost both parents, she had been eligible to sign on as a charter member of the colony. War compensations had permitted her to acquire a substantial number of stake acres on Pern, which she could claim once the colony had become solidly established. Above all other considerations, Sallah yearned to set herself down in one place and stay there for the rest of her natural life. She was quite content that that place be Pern.

As she exited bridge territory for the main corridors, she was surprised to see so many people about. For nearly five years she had had a cabin to herself. The cabin was not spacious even for single-occupancy, and with three sharing, it offered no privacy at all. Not eager to return, Sallah made for the off-duty lounge, where she could get something to eat and continue planet-gazing, courtesy of the lounge’s large screen.

At the lounge entrance, Sallah hauled up sharp, surprised at how few seats were available. In the brief moments it took her to collect food from the dispensers, her options were narrowed down to one: a wall-counter seat well to the port side of the big room, with a slightly distorted view of Pern.

Sallah shrugged diffidently. Like an addict, she would take any view she could get of Pern. However, as she slipped into the seat, she realized that her nearest neighbors were also the people she least liked on board the Yokohama: Avril Bitra, Bart Lemos, and Nabhi Nabol. They were seated with three men she did not know, whose collar tabs identified them as mason, mechanical engineer, and miner. The six were also about the only people in the room not avidly watching the screen. The three specialists were listening to Avril and Bart, their faces carefully expressionless, though the oldest man, the engineer, occasionally glanced around to check on the attention of those nearby. Avril had her elbows on the table, her handsome face marred by the arrogant, supercilious sneer she affected, her black eyes glinting as she leaned forward toward homely Bart Lemos, who was enthusiastically punching his right fist into his left palm to emphasize his quick low words. Nabhi was wearing his perpetual expression of hauteur, an expression not far removed from Avril’s sneer, as he watched the geologist.

Their attitudes were enough to spoil anyone’s appetite, Sallah thought. She craned her neck to see Pern.

Gossip had it that Avril had spent a good deal of the last five years in Admiral Paul Benden’s bed. Candidly, Sallah could see why a virile man like the admiral would be sexually attracted by the astrogator’s dark and flashing beauty. A mixture of ethnic ancestors had given her the best of all possible features. She was tall, neither willowy nor overripe, with luxuriant black hair that she often wore loose in silky ripples. Her slightly sallow complexion was flawless and her movements gracefully studied, but her eyes, snapping with black fire, indicated a highly intelligent and volatile personality. Avril was not a woman to cross, and Sallah had carefully maintained her distance from Paul Benden, or anyone else seen more than three times in Avril’s company. If the unkind pointed out Paul Benden’s recent marked absence from Avril’s side, the charitable said that he was needed for long conferences with his staff, and the time for dalliance was over. Those who had been victims of Avril’s sharp tongue said that she had lost her bid to be the admiral’s lady.

However, Sallah had other matters on her mind than Avril Bitra’s ploys. She was waiting to hear which site had been chosen for landing. She knew that a decision had been made, and that it was to be kept secret until the admiral’s formal announcement. But she knew, too, that the news was bound to leak. Bets had been surreptitiously made about how soon the rest of the ship would know. The news should percolate through the lounge real soon now, Sallah thought.

“This is where,” a man suddenly exclaimed. He strode to the screen, jabbing his forefinger at a point that had just become visible. He wore the agronomy plow tab on his collar. “Right—” He paused as the screen image moved fractionally. “Here!” He planted his forefinger at the base of a volcano, discernible only as a pinpoint but nevertheless recognizable as a landmark.

“How much did Lili win on that one?” someone demanded.

“Don’t care about him,” the agronomist shouted. “I’ve just won an acre off Hempenstall!”

There was a ripple of applause and good-natured joking, infectious enough to make Sallah grin, until her gaze happened to spot the contemptuous smile of superiority on Avril’s face. Seeing the astrogator’s expression, Sallah knew that Avril had known the secret and withheld the information from her table companions. Bart Lemos and Nabhi Nabol leaned closer to exchange terse sentences.

Avril shrugged. “The landing site is immaterial.” Her sultry voice, though low, carried to Sallah’s ears. “The gig’s equipped to do the job, believe me.” She glanced away and caught Sallah’s eyes. Instantly her body tensed and her eyes narrowed. With a conscious effort she relaxed and leaned indolently back in her chair, maintaining eye contact with an insolence that Sallah found aggravating.

Sallah looked away, feeling slightly soiled. She drank the last gulp of coffee, grimacing at the bitter aftertaste. The ship’s coffee was lousy, but she would miss even that facsimile when the supply was exhausted. Coffee had failed on all the colony planets so far, for reasons no one had yet discerned. The survey team had discovered and recommended a Pernese shrub bark as a coffee substitute, but Sallah did not have much faith in that.

After the identification of the landing site, the noise level in the lounge had risen to an almost intolerable pitch. With a sigh, Sallah ditched her rubbish in the disposer, passed her tray under the cleanser, and stacked it neatly with others. She permitted herself one last long look at Pern. We won’t spoil this planet, she thought. I personally won’t let anyone spoil it.

As she turned to leave, her glance fell on Avril’s dark head. Now there’s an odd one to be a colonist, Sallah thought, not for the first time. Avril was listed as a contractor, with a handsome stake as a professional fee, but she scarcely seemed the sort who would be comfortable in a rural environment. She had all the sophisticated manners of the citified. The Pern expedition had attracted some first-rate talents, but most of those to whom Sallah had talked had been motivated to leave behind the syndicate-ridden technocracy and its ever-spiraling need for resources.

Sallah liked the notion of joining a self-reliant society so far from Earth and her other colonies. From the moment she had read the Pern prospectus she had been eager to be part of the venture. At sixteen, with service compulsory at that point in the bitterly fought Nathi War, she had chosen pilot training, with additional studies in probe and surveillance techniques. She had completed her training just as the war ended and then used her skills to map devastated areas on one planet and two moons. When the Pern expedition was put together, she had not only been eligible to be a charterer, but had the experience and skills that would make her a valuable addition to the professional complement.

She left the off-duty lounge to return to her quarters, but she was not sure she would be able to sleep. In two days, they would reach their long-awaited goal. Then life would get interesting!

Just as Sallah turned into the main corridor, a little girl with burnished deep red hair lurched into her, tried to regain her balance, and fell heavily at Sallah’s feet. Bursting into loud sobs, more from frustration than from hurt, the child clung to Sallah’s leg in a grip astonishingly strong for one so young.

“There now, not to cry. You’ll get your balance back, pet,” Sallah said soothingly, reaching down to stroke the child’s silky hair and then to loosen her frantic grip.

“Sorka! Sorka!” An equally redheaded man holding a little boy by one hand, and a very pretty brunette woman by the other, moved unsteadily toward Sallah. The woman had all the signs of someone only just awake: her eyes didn’t quite focus, and while she was trying to respond to the situation, she was unable to concentrate.

The man’s eyes flicked to Sallah’s collar emblem. “I do apologize, Pilot,” the redheaded man said, grinning apologetically. “We’re really not awake yet.”

He was trying to disencumber one hand to come to Sallah’s assistance, but the woman refused to relinquish her grasp, and plainly he could not let go of the tottering boy.

“You need help,” Sallah said pleasantly, wondering which medic had let the totally unstable quartet out on their own.

“Our quarters are only a few steps along.” He nodded toward the splinter aisle behind Sallah. “Or so I was told. But I never appreciated how far a few steps could be.”

“What’s the number? I’m off duty.”

“B8851.”

Sallah looked at the plates on the corridor corners and nodded. “It is just the next aisle. Here, I’ll help. There now, Sorka—is that your name? Here, I’ll just—”

“Excuse me,” the man interrupted as Sallah moved to lift the child into her arms. “They kept telling us we’d be better off walking. Trying to walk, that is.”

“I can’t walk,” Sorka cried. “I’m lopsided.” She clung more fiercely to Sallah’s legs.

“Sorka! Behave yourself!” The redhead frowned at his daughter.

“Got an idea!” Sallah said in a brisk friendly tone. “You take both my hands—” She peeled Sorka’s fingers from her leg and grasped each little hand firmly in her own. “—and walk in front of me. I’ll keep you on an even keel.”

Even with Sallah’s help, the family made slow progress, impeded by the more agile walkers rushing by on private errands, and by the uncertainty of their own steps.

“I’m Red Hanrahan,” the man said when their progress improved.

“Sallah Telgar.”

“Never thought I’d need help from a pilot before we reached Pern,” he said with a wide grin. “This is my wife, Mairi, my son, Brian, and you’ve got Sorka.”

“Here we are,” Sallah said, reaching their compartment and throwing open the door. She grimaced at the size of the accommodation and then reminded herself that their occupancy would only be for a short time. Even though the bunks were strapped up against the walls in their daytime position, the remaining floor space allowed for little movement.

“Not much larger than the quarters we just vacated,” Red remarked equably.

“How are we supposed to exercise in here?” his wife demanded, a rather shrill note in her voice as she rolled her body around the doorjamb and got a good look at the size of their cabin.

“One by one, I guess,” Red said. “It’s only for a few days, pet, and then we’ll have a whole planet to range. In you go, Brian, Sorka. We’ve kept Pilot Telgar long enough. You really saved us, Telgar. Thanks.”

Sorka, who had propped herself against the inside wall of their cabin as her father encouraged the rest of his family to enter, slid to a sitting position on the floor, her little knees against her chest. Then she cocked her head to peer up at Sallah. “Thanks from me, too,” she said, sounding more self-possessed. “It’s really silly not knowing up from down, and side from side.”

“I agree, but the effect will disappear very quickly. We all had to go through it when we woke up.”

“You did?” Sorka’s incredulous expression turned into the most radiant smile Sallah had ever seen, and she found herself grinning, too.

“We did. Even Admiral Benden,” she said mendaciously. She ruffled the child’s silky, magnificently titian hair. “I’ll see you around. Okay?”

“While you’re in that position, Sorka, do those exercises we were shown. Then it’ll be Brian’s turn,” Red Hanrahan was saying as Sallah closed the door behind her.

She reached her own quarters without further incident, though the corridors were filled with recent sleepers lurching about, their expressions ranging from intense concentration to horrified dismay. The moment Sallah opened her door, she was aware of the occupants asleep inside. She grimaced. Very carefully she slid the panel back and leaned against it, wondering what to do. She was too keyed up to sleep yet; she had to wind down somehow. She decided to go to the pilots’ ready room for some stimulating simulator practice. The moment of truth for her abilities as a shuttle pilot was rapidly approaching.

Her route was impeded by another recently awakened colonist whose coordination suffered from prolonged disuse. He was so rake-thin that Sallah feared he would break a bone as he lurched from side to side.

“Tarvi Andiyar, geologist,” he said, courteously introducing himself as soon as she had supported him to a vertical stance. “Are we really orbiting Pern?” His eyes crossed as he looked at her, and Sallah managed to suppress the grin that his comical expression evoked. She told him their position. “And you have seen with your own bright and pretty eyes this marvelous planet?”

“I have and it’s every bit as lovely as forecast,” Sallah assured him warmly. He smiled broadly in relief, showing her very white and even teeth. Then he gave a shake of his head, which seemed to correct the aberrant focus of his eyes. He had one of the most beautiful faces she had ever seen on a man—not Benden’s rugged, warrior features, but a sophisticated and subtle arrangement, almost sculpted, like some of the ancient Indic and Cambodian princes on ruined stone murals. She flushed as she remembered what those princes had been doing in the murals.

“Would you know if there are any updated probe reports? I am exceedingly eager to get to work.”

Sallah laughed, amusement easing the sensual jolt his face had given her. “You can’t even walk and you want to get to work?”

“Isn’t fifteen years’ holiday long enough for anyone?” His expression was mildly chiding. “Is that not cabin C84l1?”

“It is indeed,” she said, guiding him across the corridor.

“You are as beautiful as you are kind,” he said, one hand on the panel for support as he tried to make a very courtly bow. She had to grab at his shoulders as he overbalanced. “And quick.” With a more judicious inclination of his head, and with considerable dignity under the circumstances, he opened his door.

“Sallah!” Drake Bonneau exclaimed, striding down the corridor toward her. “Anybody told you where we’re landing?” He had the eager expression of someone about to confer a favor on a friend.

“It took no more than nine minutes for the scuttlebutt to circulate,” she said coolly.

“That long?” He pretended disdain and then produced one of the smiles that he assumed would charm anyone. “Let’s drink to it. Not much longer to enjoy our leisure, eh? Just you and me, huh?”

She suppressed her distrust of his flattery. He was probably not even conscious of the triteness of his glib phrases. She had heard him trot out the same smooth lines for any reasonably attractive female, and at the moment, his casual insincerity irritated her. Yet he was not a bad sort, and certainly he had had courage enough to spare during the war. Then she realized that her uncharacteristic annoyance was a reaction to the sudden bustle, noise, and proximity of so many people after the last few years of quiet. Relax, she told herself sternly, it’s only for a few days and then you’ll be too busy flying to worry about crowds and noise.

“Thanks, Drake, but Kenjo has me down for simulator practice in—” She glanced at her wrist. “—five minutes. Getcha another time.”

To avoid the crowded corridors, she took the emergency tube down to the flight deck, then made her way past the variety of cargo secured there to the admiral’s gig, the Mariposa. It was a compact little craft, with its delta wing and its perky, pointed nacelle, but it would be full of quiet and unoccupied space. Sallah punched the hatch release.

Chapter 2

SALLAH SHARED HER next watch, the dogwatch, with Kenjo Fusaiyuki. There was little for either of them to do, bar reacting if a glitch halted the programs. Sallah was hacking around, trying to find something interesting enough to keep her awake, when she noticed that Kenjo had activated one of the smaller screens on his position.

“What have you got there?” she asked before she remembered Kenjo was not generally outgoing and might resent her interruption.

“I was decoding the gen on that eccentric wanderer,” he replied, without looking up from the screen.

“Oh, the one that had the astronomers all excited?” Sallah asked. She grinned, remembering the unusual spectacle of the rather staid, pedantic astronomer, Xi Chi Yuen, flushed with excitement and dancing about the bridge.

“Quite likely,” Kenjo said. “It does seem to have an enormously eccentric orbit, more cometary than planetary, though its mass indicates its planetary size. Look.” He tapped out a sequence that brought up the satellites of Pern’s star system in relation to their primary and to one another. “It computes to come in farther than the usual fourth planet position and actually intrudes on the Oort cloud at aphelion. This is supposed to be an old system, or so the EEC report leads one to believe, and that planet ought to have a more conventional orbit.”

“There was talk that it could be a stray that the Rukbat sun attracted.”

Kenjo shook his head. “That has been ruled out.” He typed out another sequence and the diagram on the screen shifted to another projection. In a few seconds, equations overlaid the system diagram. “Look at the odds against that.” He pointed to the blinking nine-figure probability. “It would have to be a cometary-type orbit, right into the system. But it’s not.” His long, bony fingers reset the screen. “I can’t find a harmonic with the other planets. Ah, Captain Keroon registers the opinion that it might have been captured by Rukbat about ten of its cycles ago.”

“No, I think Xi Chi Yuen ruled that out. He computed it to be just after aphelion right now,” Sallah said. “What did he say? Ah . . .” She tried to remember.

Kenjo was already accessing that file. “His report actually says that the eccentric planetoid had just exited the Oort cloud, pulling some of the cloud matter with it.”

“He also said, and I remember that distinctly, that in about eight years’ time, we’ll have a rather spectacular meteorite show as our new world goes through the wisps of Oort material.”

Kenjo snorted. “I’d rather we didn’t. I don’t have much faith in that EEC report now that it’s being compared with what’s there. Those polka dots may be meteor damage after all.”

“I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

“Nor I.” Kenjo crossed his arms over his chest as the report continued to scroll up the screen. “Yuen apparently believes that with such an eccentric, almost parabolic orbit, this Pluto body may exit the star system again, or fall into the sun.”

“Which wouldn’t much notice, would it?”

Kenjo shook his head, his eyes still scanning the report. “Frozen solid. Much too far from Rukbat to get any warmth during most of its orbit. There’s a possibility of a cometary tail visible when it’s close in.” He exited that program and tapped out a new sequence. “Pern’s two moons are much more interesting.”

“Why? We’re not colonizing them. Anyway, fuel consumption allows for only the one trip to the moons, to set up the relay disks.”

Kenjo shrugged. “You always leave yourself an escape route.”

“To a moon?” Sallah was openly skeptical. “C’mon, Kenjo, we’re not at war with anyone or anything this far from the Hub. Give over.” She spoke kindly, knowing that Kenjo had had several very narrow escapes in the Nathi War.

“Old habits die hard,” he murmured in such a low voice that she almost missed it.

“Yeah, they do. But we’re all going to be able to start fresh.”

Kenjo merely grunted, signaling an end to his talkative mood.

As the colony ships slowed, they were filled with constant activity as sleepers continued to be awakened, and the immense cargo pods were opened and their contents transferred to decks, spilling into access corridors. When the shuttles had been secured for the long voyage, they had already been loaded with the grid components and other necessities to build a safe landing field for the mass of matériel and people to be discharged from the colony ships. The urgency was to have the next shipment—agricultural tools and supplies—ready to be hustled on board as soon as the shuttles returned. The agronomists had promised to break ground before the next shuttle flight could reach the planet.

There were six shuttles between the three ships: three in the Yoko, two in the Buenos Aires and one in the Bahrain, the latter equipped with special fittings for transporting livestock. Once the vessels had achieved their Lagrangian orbit, debarkation would commence.

Twelve hours before that event, all the sleepers had been revived. There was a fair amount of grumbling about the crowding. Many felt that the unessential people, especially young children, should have slept on until planetside accommodations were completed. But despite the inconvenience, Sallah agreed with the governor’s announcement that no one should be denied the chance to witness the end of the long journey and the incredible vision of their new world spinning in black space. Sallah could not keep her eyes off Pern and watched on whatever screen was available, even the tiny one in her quarters. She had also managed to get on the duty roster for the most important watch of the entire trip.

Afterward, Sallah always stoutly averred that she had known the instant the Yokohama reached its orbital position. The great ship had been slowing for days; the slight puff of the retros as they reduced the forward motion to a match with the planet below was infinitesimal. Suddenly they were turning with the planet, in position over a real point on Pern, seeming to come to a halt in relation to the geography below them. Somehow Sallah sensed that moment. She actually looked up from her console just as the helmsman, with suppressed excitement, turned to salute the commander.

“We have arrived, sir,” the helmsman announced.

At the same instant, a similar report came in from the Bahrain and the Buenos Aires, and those on the bridge erupted into cheers and undisciplined expressions of relief and exultation. Commander Ongola immediately informed the admiral of the completion of the maneuver and received formal thanks. Then he ordered all screens to focus on the planet spread out below them, curving away into night on the one side, and into brilliant day on the other.

Sallah joined in the hullabaloo until she noticed a break in the chatter from the probe and checked the monitor. The probe was merely switching its site as programmed. As she looked up, she caught a very sad, oddly pensive expression on Commander Ongola’s face. Aware of her scrutiny, he arched one eyebrow in query.

Sallah smiled back in sympathy. The end of his last voyage, she thought. Who wouldn’t be sad?

Both of Ongola’s heavy eyebrows went up, and with great dignity he turned his head away, giving the order for the shuttle-bay doors to be opened. The crew and the initial landing party were already strapped into their seats aboard the shuttles, awaiting the history-making order. Under her breath, Sallah murmured a good luck to Kenjo, Drake, and Nabol, who were piloting the Yoko’s three shuttles.

Klaxons announced the imminent departure, and immediately the main screen turned its eye to the landing site. The watch officers sat alert at their stations. Smaller screens showed the opened shuttle-bay doors from several angles, so that the bridge personnel could watch the shuttles begin to drift from their mother ship, dropping quickly on puffs of their jets before the main engines were ignited. They would spiral down across the planet, entering Pern’s atmosphere on the western edge of the northern continent, and braking as they continued on down and around the globe until they reached their landing site on the eastern end of the southern continent. Exterior cameras picked up the other three shuttles, which took their positions in the flotilla. Gracefully, all six arrowed down and then out of sight over the curve of the planet.

Sallah’s watch ended before the estimated time of arrival on Pern, but she made herself small against the side wall, along with everyone else from her watch, in order to have the best view possible. She knew that every screen on the ship was broadcasting the same information, and that the visual of the actual landing would flash simultaneously on all three colony vessels—but somehow it seemed more official to see it all from the bridge. So she stayed, reminding herself to breathe from time to time and shifting from one tired swollen leg to another. She would be relieved when the spin went down in order to facilitate the moving of cargo—but soon she would be planetside, with no convenient spin to turn off to reduce the effects of gravity.

“Got rid of your mates?” Stev Kimmer asked, stepping quickly into Avril’s room after a quick glance over his shoulder. He closed the door behind him.

Avril turned to face him, arms extended; she flicked her fingers to indicate unoccupied space, and smiled in smug satisfaction. “Rank has privileges. I used mine. Lock it. Occasionally that oaf Lensdale tries to foist someone off on me, but I added three names below mine, and he may have given up.”

Kimmer, due shortly at the loading bay to take his place in one of the Yoko’s shuttles, got straight to the point. “So where is this incontrovertible proof of yours?”

Still smiling, Avril opened a drawer and took out a dark wood box with no apparent seam. She handed it to him; and he shook his head.

“I told you I’ve no time for puzzles. If this is a ploy to get a man into your bed, Avril, your timing’s way off.”

She grimaced, annoyed by his phrasing as well as the fact that changed circumstances forced her to seek assistance from others. But her first plan had run aground on the reef of Paul Benden’s sudden and totally unexpected indifference to her. Smiling away her distaste, she repositioned the box on her left palm, made a pass at the side facing her, then effortlessly lifted the top. As she had predicted, Stev Kimmer inhaled in surprise, the sparkle in his eyes fleetingly reflecting the rich glow of the ruby that sat nestled in the box. His hands made a movement toward it, and she tilted the box ever so slightly, causing the gem to twinkle wickedly in the light.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Avril’s voice was soft with affectionate possession as she turned her hand, letting him see the brilliance in the heart of the rose-cut gem. Abruptly, she took the jewel from its bed and handed it to him. “Feel it. Look at it through the light. Flawless.”

“How did you get it?” He shot her an accusing glance, his features set with a combination of envy, greed, and admiration. The latter was all for the magnificent jewel as he held it up to the lighting strip and examined its perfection.

“Believe it or not, I inherited it.” At his suspicious expression, she leaned gracefully against the small table, arms folded across her well-formed breasts, and grinned. “My grandmother at seven removes was a member of the EEC team that explored this mudball. Shavva bint Faroud, to give her her maiden name.”

“Fardles!” Stev Kimmer was genuinely astounded.

“Furthermore,” Avril went on, enjoying his reaction, “I have her original notes.”

“How did your family manage to keep this all those years? Why, it’s priceless.”

Avril raised her lovely arched eyebrows. “Great-grandmother was no fool. That bauble was not the only thing she brought back from here, or the other planets she explored.”

“But to bring this with you?” It was all Kimmer could do not to clench his fingers around the beautiful gem.

“I’m the last of my line.”

“You mean, you can claim part of this planet as a direct descendant of the EEC team?” Stev was beginning to warm to such possibilities.

She shook her head angrily at his misconstruction. “The EEC takes bloody good care that doesn’t happen. Shavva knew that. She also knew that sooner or later the planet would be opened for colonization. The ruby and her notes—” Avril paused dramatically. “—were handed down to me. And I—and her notes—are now in orbit around Pern.”

Stev Kimmer regarded her for a long moment. Then she reached over and took the ruby from him, negligently tossing it in one hand while Kimmer nervously watched.

“Now, do you want in on my scheme?” she asked. “Like my beloved and far-seeing predecessor, I have no wish to remain at the end of the galaxy on a seventh-rate world.”

Stev Kimmer narrowed his eyes and shrugged. “Have the others seen the ruby?”

“Not yet.” She smiled slowly with sly malice. “If you’ll help me, they may never need to.”

By the time Stev Kimmer made a hurried departure to the loading dock, Avril was sure of his participation. Now all she needed was a chance to talk to Nabhi Nabol.

Kenjo Fusaiyuko tensed at the first shudder as the shuttle hit atmosphere. The admiral, seated between Kenjo and Jiro Akamoto, the copilot, leaned forward eagerly, straining at his safety harness and smiling in anticipation. Kenjo permitted himself to smile, too. Then he carefully blanked his expression. Things were going far too well. There had been no problems with the countdown checklist. For all its fifteen years of inactivity, the shuttle Eujisan handled perfectly. They had achieved an excellent angle of entry and should make a perfect landing on a site that, according to probe report, was as level as a natural area could be.

Kenjo had always worried about possible contingencies, a habit that had made him one of the best transport pilots in Cygnus Sector Fleet in spite of the fact that the few emergencies he had faced had never been ones that he could have foreseen. He had survived because, in planning for foul-ups, he had been ready for anything.

But the Pern landing was different. No one, apart from the long-dead Exploration and Evaluation team, had set foot on Pern. And, in Kenjo’s estimation, the EEC team had not spent enough time on the planet to have made a proper assessment.

Beside him, Jiro murmured reassuring readings from his instrumentation, and then both pilots felt the resistance as the shuttle dug deeper into the atmospheric layer. Kenjo tightened his fingers around the control yoke, setting his feet and his seat deep for steadiness. He wished the admiral would lean back—it was unnerving to have someone breathing down his neck at a time like this. How had the man managed to find so much slack in his safety harness?

The exterior of the shuttle was heating up, but the internal temperature remained steady. Kenjo shot a glance at the small screen. The passengers were riding well, too, and none of the cargo had shifted under its straps. His eyes flicked from one dial to the next, noting the performance and health of his vehicle. The vibration grew more violent, but that was to be expected. Had he not pierced the protective gases of a hundred worlds in just the same way, slipping like a penknife under the flap of an envelope, like a man into the body of his beloved?

They were on the nightside now, one moon casting a brilliant full light on the dark landmass. They were racing toward day over the immense sea of Pern. He checked the shuttle’s altitude. They were right on target. The first landing on Pern simply could not be perfect. Something would have to go amiss, or his faith in probability would be shattered. Kenjo searched his control panel for any telltale red, or any blinking yellow malfunction light. Yet the shuttle continued its slanting plunge as the sweat of apprehension ran down Kenjo’s spine, and moisture beaded his brow under his helmet.

Beside Kenjo, Jiro looked outwardly calm, but then he bit nervously at the corner of his lower lip. Seeing that, Kenjo turned his head away, careful not to let his expression betray the satisfaction he felt at the revelation that his copilot, too, was experiencing tension. Between them Admiral Benden’s breath was becoming more rapid.

Would the old man expire in joy beside him? Kenjo felt a sudden stab of alarm. Yes, that could be it. The shuttle would land safely, but Admiral Benden would die on the point of arrival at his promised land. Yes, that would be the flaw in the trip. A human error, not a mechanical failure.

As Kenjo’s mind played with the ramifications of that disaster, resistance on the skin of the shuttle decreased as it dropped below the speed of sound. Skin heat was okay, the shuttle was responding smoothly to the helm, and they were at the correct altitude, dropping as programmed.

Remember, Kenjo, use as little fuel in retro as possible. The more fuel saved, the more trips can be made. And then—Kenjo cut off that line of thinking. There would still be the atmosphere planes to drive for many years to come. Power packs lasted for decades if carefully recharged. And if he could scrounge the right parts . . . His spirit would not be grounded for a long time yet.

He took quick altitude readings, checked his compass, trimmed the flaps, did a quick calculation on his speed, and squinted ahead toward the shoreline, which was coming up in plain sight ahead of him. His screens told him that the other shuttles were following at the prescribed safe intervals. The shuttle Eujisan, with Kenjo at the helm and both Admiral Benden and Governor Boll aboard, would be the first to touch down on Pern.

The shuttle was hurtling over the eastern ocean, its shadow preceding it on the water as it overpassed the lumps of islets and larger masses in the archipelago that extended northeastward from their landing site. As he spotted a perfect strato volcano rising above the water, Kenjo nearly lost his concentration: its resemblance to the famed Mount Fuji was incredible. Surely that volcano was a good sign.

Kenjo could see surf boiling at the base of the rocky promontory that signaled their approach to the chosen landing site.

“Retro-rockets, two-second blast,” he said, pleased to hear his voice steady and calm, almost bored. Jiro acknowledged, and the shuttle tugged back slightly but evenly as the retros broke its forward speed. Kenjo lifted the nose, slightly bleeding airspeed. “Landing gear down.”

Jiro nodded. As Kenjo watched, hand hovering over the retros in case the landing gear failed to emerge, the green lights came on unwinkingly, and then he felt the pull of air against the great wheels as they locked into position. The shuttle’s speed was a shade too high for landing. The vast field was coming up under them, a field that undulated like the sea. Kenjo fought down the panic. He checked drag, windspeed, and, wincing at the necessity, fired the retros again briefly and pulled the nose up as he persuaded the shuttle to settle to the surface of Pern.

Once the big wheels touched, the shuttle bounced a bit over the uneven ground. Braking judiciously and making full use of his flaps, Kenjo swung the shuttle in a wide circle so that it faced the way it had just come and rolled to a complete stop.

Kenjo permitted himself a small smile of satisfaction, then returned his attention to the control panel, to begin the landing checklist. Noting the fuel expended, he gave a grunt of pleasure at his economy. Liters under the allowance.

“Fine landing, Kenjo! Jiro! My compliments,” the admiral exclaimed. Kenjo decided that he would forgive him that enthusiastic clout on the shoulder. Then suddenly he and Jiro were startled by unexpected sounds: the snapping of metal clasps, and the sudden noise of air rapidly evacuating.

Alarmed, Kenjo turned just in time to see the admiral and the governor disappearing down the cabin’s escape hatch. Kenjo glanced frantically at his console, certain that the expedition’s leaders must be reacting to an emergency of some sort, but only the red brake light was on. Smells of burning grass and oil and rocket fuel wafted up to the two pilots through the open hatch. Simultaneously they were aware of the shouts from the passenger cabin—shouts of joy, not cries of panic. A glance in the screens proved to Kenjo that their passengers were releasing their safety harnesses. A few had risen and were tentatively stretching legs and arms, talking excitedly in anticipation of stepping out on the surface of their new home. But why had the admiral and the governor left the shuttle so precipitously—and through the escape hatch instead of the main exit?

Jiro eyed him questioningly. All Kenjo could think to do was shrug. Then, as the cheering subsided into a silence punctuated by nervous whispers, Kenjo realized that, as pilot, it fell to him to take charge. He activated the cargo-hold release mechanism, then switched the sensors to exterior, setting the cameras to record the historic moment. Above all, he must pretend that everything was in order, despite the strange behavior of the admiral and the governor.

Kenjo unstrapped himself, motioning for Jiro to do the same. He stooped, briefly, to activate the hatch closure. Then he took the three steps to the panel between the two cabins and palmed it open.

Cheers greeted him and, modestly, he dropped his head and eyes. The cheers subsided expectantly as he reached the rear of the payload cabin and undogged the passenger hatch. With an unnecessary but satisfying force, he pushed open the door. As the aperture widened and the ramp extended, the fresh air of the new world poured in. He was not the only one to take a deep breath of the oxygen-rich, aromatic air. Kenjo was debating with himself the protocol of such an occasion, since the logical candidates had already evacuated the vehicle, but Jiro, beside him, began to point excitedly. Kenjo peered around the slowly opening hatch and blinked in astonishment.

There, visible not only to him but to the other five shuttles which had landed in due order behind him, were two brilliant banners. One was the gold and blue of the Federated Sentient Planets. The other was the brand-new standard for the planet Pern: blue, white, and yellow, with the design of sickle and plow in the upper left-hand corner, signifying the pastoral nature of the colony. Occasionally hidden by the flapping of the banners in the steady breeze over the meadow were the triumphant figures of Admiral Benden and Governor Boll. The pair of them were grinning like idiots, Kenjo saw, as they enthusiastically beckoned the passengers to emerge.

“Let us welcome you, my friends, to the planet Pern,” the admiral cried in a stentorian voice.

“Welcome to Pern!” the governor shouted. “Welcome! Welcome!”

They looked at each other and then began the formal words in an obviously well rehearsed unison.

“By the power vested in us by the Federated Sentient Planets, we hereby claim this planet and name it Pern!”

Chapter 3

THE ENGINEERS, THE power-resource group, the jacks-of-all-trades, and every able-bodied man and woman who knew which end of a hammer to grip were set to work putting down the landing-strip grids. A second work force erected the prefabricated sections of the landing control and meteorology tower, in which Ongola and the other meteorologists would be based.

The tower was three stories high, two square sections supported by a wider and longer rectangular base. Initially the ground level would serve as headquarters for the admiral, the governor, and the informal council. When the proper administrative square had been built later on, the entire installation would be turned over to meteorology and communications.

The third and smallest group—all eight of Mar Dook’s agronomists, plus a dozen able-bodieds, Pol Nietro from zoology, Phas Radamanth and A. C. Sopers of xenobiology and Ted Tubberman and his crew—had the task of choosing the site for the experimental farm. Others were detailed to scout for varieties of vegetation that might be efficiently converted into various plastics which the colony would need for building. On the one minisled brought along, Emily Boll flew between the agronomy survey and the control tower, correlating data. Once the emergency infirmary was set up, medics were kept busy patching bruises and scrapes, and peremptorily ordering rest periods for the older workers who were overextending themselves in enthusiasm.

By midday, those in orbit had a nonstop show of the disciplined but constant activities on the surface.

“It keeps people home,” Sallah remarked to Barr Hamil, her copilot, as they traversed nearly empty corridors on their way back from the main hangar where they had been checking cargo manifests for their first trip down.

“It’s fascinating, Sal. And we’ll be there tomorrow!” Barr’s eyes were shining, and she wore a silly grin. “I really can’t believe we’re here, and will be there!” She pointed downward. “It’s like a dream. I keep being afraid I’ll wake up suddenly.”

They had reached their own quarters and both had eyes only for the vid screen in the corner.

“Good,” Barr said with a relieved sigh. “They’ve got the donks assembled.”

Sallah chuckled. “Our job is to get the shuttle down in one piece, Barr. Unloading is someone else’s problem.” But she, too, was relieved to see the sturdy load handlers lined up at the end of the almost completed landing strip. The donks would greatly facilitate unloading, and speed up the shuttles’ return to their mother ships for the next run. Already there were informal competitions between the various units to bring their projects in faster and more efficiently than programmed time allowed.

Sallah and Barr watched, as everyone did, until the dark tropical moonless night rendered the broadcasts impossible to interpret. Broadcasts from the surface would be primitive until Drake Bonneau and Xi Chi Yuen, in the admiral’s gig, had a chance to install the commsats on the two moons. Nonetheless, the last scene raised a nostalgic lump in Sallah’s throat, reminding her of the hunting trips that she and her parents had enjoyed in the hills around First Centauri.

The screen showed tired men and women seated around an immense campfire, eating an evening meal that had been prepared in a huge kettle from freeze-dried Terran vegetables and meats. In the failing light, the white strips of the runway grids and the wind sock having convulsions in the brisk breeze, were just barely visible. The planetary flag, so proudly displayed that morning, had wrapped itself around the pole above the control tower. Someone began to play softly on a harmonica, an old, old tune so familiar that Sallah couldn’t name it. Someone else joined in with a recorder. Softly and hesitantly at first, then with more confidence, the tired colonists began to sing or hum along. Other voices added harmony, and Sallah remembered that the song was called “Home on the Range.” There certainly had been no “discouraging words” that day. And the evening serenade did make the landing site seem a bit more like a home.

The next morning Sallah and Barr had been up long before the klaxon sounded, assembling their passengers and making last-minute weight calculations. The pilots had been given a very serious briefing from Lieutenant Commander Ongola on the necessity of conserving fuel.

“We have just enough liquid fuel to get every man, woman, and child, beast, parcel, package, and reusable section of the ships down to the surface. Waste not, want not. Fools waste fuel! We have none to waste. Nor,” he added, with his sad wistful smile, “fools among us.”

Watching on the loading-bay screens, Sallah and Barr could follow the six shuttles lifting from the planet’s surface. Then the scene shifted to a panoramic view of the main landing site.

“It’s breathtaking, Sal, breathtaking,” Barr said. “I’ve never seen so much unoccupied, unused land at one time in my life.”

“Get used to it,” Sallah replied with a grin.

With the activities of the landing party to watch, it seemed like no time at all before the shuttles were locking on. The loading detail were trundling the first crates into the hold before Kenjo and Jiro could exit. Sallah was a little annoyed with Kenjo for his brusque dismissal of Barr’s excited questions. Even Jiro looked abashed by his senior’s truculence as Kenjo succinctly briefed Sallah on landing procedures, advice on handling the shuttle’s idiosyncrasies, and the frequency for the tower meteorological control. He wished her a safe drop, saluted, and, turning on his heel, left the bay.

“Well, hail and farewell,” Barr said, recovering from the snub.

“Let’s do the preflight even if Fussy Fusi has made such a big deal of turnover,” Sallah said, sliding into the lock of the Eujisan an inch ahead of the next big crate being loaded. They had finished their check by the time loading was complete. Barr did passenger inspection, making very certain that General Cherry Duff, the oldest charterer and the pro tem colony magistrate, was comfortable, and then they were cleared for the drop.

“We were barely there,” Barr complained as Sallah taxied the Eujisan into takeoff position at the end of the runway eight hours later. “And now we’re away again.”

“Efficiency is our guide. Waste not, want not,” Sallah told her, eyes on the instrumentation as she opened the throttle on the Eujisan for lift-off thrust. She grimaced, eyes flicking between fuel gauge and rev counter, not wanting to use a cc more of fuel than necessary. “Kenjo and the next eager set of colonists will be chewing hunks out of the cargo hatch. We must up, up, and away!”

“Kenjo never made an error in his life?” Barr asked of Sallah sometime later after the famous pilot had made a disparaging remark about the shuttle’s consumption of fuel during the trips made by the two women.

“That’s why he’s alive today,” Sallah replied. But his comment rankled. Though she knew that she had expended no more fuel than was absolutely necessary, she began keeping a private record of consumption on each of her trips. She noticed that Kenjo generally oversaw the Eujisan’s refueling and supervised its fifty-hour checks. She knew that she was a better than average pilot, in space or atmospheric craft, but she did not want to make waves with a hero pilot who had far more experience than she did—not unless she absolutely had to, and not without the ammunition of accurate records.

Patterns were quickly established. Those on the ground began each morning by erecting the housing and work areas for those due to arrive during the day. The agronomy teams handily cleared the designated fields. The infirmary had already dealt with its first clients; fortunately, all the accidents so far had been minor. And despite all the hard work, senses of humor prevailed. Some wit had put up street signs with estimated distances in light-years for Earth, First Centauri, and the homeworlds of the other members of the Federated Sentient Planets.

Like everyone else waiting to drop, Sorka Hanrahan spent a lot of time watching the progress of the settlement, which had been informally dubbed “Landing.” To Sorka, watching was only a way to pass the time. She was not really interested, especially after her mother kept remarking that they were seeing history made. History was something one read about in books. Sorka had always been an active child, so the enforced idleness and the constriction of shipboard life quickly became frustrating. It was small comfort to know how important her father’s profession of veterinary surgeon was going to be on Pern when all the kids she had met in the mess halls and corridors were getting down to Pern faster than she and her brother were.

Brian, however, was in no hurry. He had made friends with the Jepson twins, two aisles away. They had an older brother Sorka’s age, but she did not like him. Her mother kept telling her that there would be girls her age on Pern whom she would meet once she got to school.

“I need a friend now,” Sorka murmured to herself as she wandered through the corridors of the ship. Such freedom was a rare privilege for a girl who had always had to be on guard against strangers. Even home on the farm in Clonmel, she had not been allowed out of sight of an adult, even with old Chip’s protective canine presence. On the Yokohama, not only did she not have to watch out, but the whole ship was open to her, provided she kept out of engineering or bridge territory and didn’t interfere with the crew. But at that moment she did not feel like exploring; she wanted comfort. So she headed for her favorite place, the garden.

On her first long excursion, she had discovered the section of the ship where great broad-leafed plants arched over the ceiling, their branches intertwining to make green caves below. She loved the marvelous aroma of moist earth and green things, and felt no inhibition about taking deep lungfuls of air that left a clean, fresh taste at the back of her mouth. Beneath the giant bushes were all sorts of herbs and smaller plants with tags on them, soon to be transported to the new world. She did not recognize most of the names, but she knew some of the herbs by their common names. Back at home her mother had kept an herb garden. Sorka knew which ones would leave their fragrances on her fingers and she daringly fingered the marjoram, then the tiny thyme leaves. Her eyes drank in the blues and pale yellows and pinks of the flowers that were in bloom, and she gazed curiously at the hundreds of racks of shoots in little tubes of water—nutrient fluids, her dad had told her—sprouted only a few months back, to be ready for planting once they reached Pern.

She had just bent to gently feel the surface of an unfamiliar hairy sort of silver-green leaf—she thought it had a nice smell—when she saw a pair of very blue eyes that no plant had ever sprouted. She swallowed, reminding herself that there were no strangers on the ship; she was safe. The eyes could belong only to another passenger who, like herself, was investigating the peaceful garden.

“Hello,” she said in a tone between surprise and cordiality.

The blue eyes blinked. “Go ’way. You don’t belong here,” a young male voice growled at her.

“Why not? This is open to anyone, so long as you don’t damage the plants. And you really shouldn’t be crouched down in there like that.”

“Go ’way.” A grubby hand emphasized the order.

“I don’t have to. Who’re you?”

Her eyes, adjusted to the shadows, clearly read the boy’s resentful expression. She hunkered down, looking in at him. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“I doan gotta tell nobody my name.” He spoke with a familiar accent.

“Well, excuse me, I’m sure,” she said in an affected tone. Then she realized that she recognized his accent. “Hey, you’re Irish. Like me.”

“I’m not like you.”

“Well, deny you’re Irish.” When he didn’t—because he couldn’t, and they both knew it—she cocked her head at him, smiling agreeably. “I can see why you’d hide in here. It’s quiet and it smells so fresh. Almost like home. I don’t like the ship either; I feel—” Sorka hugged herself. “—sort of cramped and squashed all the time.” She lengthened the words to make them express her feelings. “I come from Clonmel. Ever been there?”

“Sure.” The boy’s tone was scornful, but he brushed a strand of long orange hair from his eyes and shifted his position so that he could keep his eyes on her.

“I’m Sorka Hanrahan.” She looked inquiringly at him.

“Sean Connell,” he admitted truculently after considerable delay.

“My dad’s a vet. The best in Clonmel.”

Sean’s expression cleared with approval. “He works with horses?”

She nodded. “With any sick animal. Did you have horses?”

“While we was still in Ballinasloe.” His expression clouded with resentful grief. “We had good horses,” he added with defensive pride.

“Did you have your own pony?”

The boy’s eyes blinked, and he dropped his head.

“I miss my pony, too,” Sorka said compassionately. “But I’m to get one on Pern, and my dad said that they’d put special ones in the banks for you.” She wasn’t at all sure of that, but it seemed the proper thing to say.

“We’d better. We was promised. We can’t get anywhere ’thout horses ’cause this place isn’t to have hovervans er nothing.”

“And no more gardai.” Sorka grinned mischievously at him. She had just figured out that he must be one of the traveling folk. Her father had mentioned that there were some among the colonists. “And no more farmers chasing you out of their fields, and no more move-on-in-twenty-four-hours, or lousy halts, and no roads but the ones you make yourself, and—oh, just lots of things you really want, and none of the bad things.”

“Can’t be all that good,” Sean remarked cynically.

Suddenly the comm unit in the garden erupted into sound. “The boarding call has been issued for the morning drop. Passengers will assemble immediately in the loading bay on Deck Five.”

Like a turtle, Sean drew back into the shadows.

“Hey, does he mean you?” Sorka tried to make out Sean’s face in the darkness. She thought she saw a faint nod. “Boy, are you lucky, going so soon. Third day! What’s the matter? Don’t you want to go?” She got down on her hands and knees to peer in at him. Then slowly she drew back. She had seen real fear often enough to recognize it in Sean. “Gee, I’d trade places with you. I can’t wait to get down. I mean, it’s not that long a trip. And it’ll be no different from getting to the Yoko from Earth,” she went on, thinking to reassure him. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” She had been so excited, even knowing that she would be put in deep sleep almost as soon as they got on board, that she had been unaware of anything but the first pressure of take-off.

“We was shipped up asleep.” His words were no more than a terrified mutter.

“Gee, you missed the best part. Of course, half the adults,” she added condescendingly, “were weeping about their last view of old Terra. I pretended that I was Spacer Yvonne Yves, and my brother, Brian, he’s much younger than we are, but he made like he was Spacer Tracey Train.”

“Who’re they?”

“C’mon, Sean. I know you all had vidscreens in your caravans. Didn’t you ever see Space Venturers?”

He was openly scornful. “That’s kid stuff.”

“Well, you’re a Space Venturer right now, and if it’s only kid stuff, there’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?”

“Who said I was afraid?”

“Well, aren’t you? Hiding away in the garden.”

“I just needed a decent breath of fresh air.” Suddenly he pushed himself out.

“When you’ve a planet full of fresh air below you, only hours away?” Sorka grinned at him. “Just pretend you’re a space hero.”

The comm unit came alive, and she could hear the edge to the embarkation officer’s voice. Desi Arthied had not had to remind any other load of passengers to assemble. “The shuttles drop in precisely twenty minutes. Passengers scheduled for this drop who default go to the end of the list.”

“He’s angry,” Sorka told Sean. She gave him a little push toward the door. “You’d better git. Your parents’ll skin you alive if you keep them from making their drop.”

“That’s all you know,” he said savagely. He stomped out of the garden room.

“Scaredy-cat,” she said softly, then sighed exaggeratedly. “Well, he can’t help it.”

Then she turned back to examine the fragrant plant.

By the sixth day all essential personnel were on the surface. Seating was removed from all but one of the shuttles and set about the bonfire square until needed again. Mountains of supplies were dropped, distributed, and stored. Delicate instruments packed in shockproof cocoons followed, along with sperm and the precious fertilized ova from Earth and First—Sallah was certain that Barr did not take a deep breath throughout those drops. Immediately fertilized eggs were implanted in those cows, goats, and sheep that had fully recovered from their deep sleep. Small sturdy types had been brought, not themselves the best genotypes available on Earth but suitable as surrogate dams; the embryos were different again, specially adapted for hardiness and resistance. The resultant progeny would, it was hoped, be able to digest Pern-grown fodder, which would have much more boron in it than the usual Terran produce, and a good variety of native weeds. If there were problems, Kitti Ping and her granddaughter, Wind Blossom, would use the Eridani techniques to alter the next generation appropriately. The plan was for at least some of the animals to be tailored to make the required enzymes in their own glands, instead of using symbiotic bacteria as their ancestors had on Earth.

Admiral Benden proudly remarked that by the time the ships were completely evacuated, the first chicken eggs were likely to hatch on Pern. He went on to announce that there was evidence that the planet harbored its own egg-layers, too, for broken shells had been found above the high-tide line on the beach where the harbor and the fish hatchery were being constructed. Zoologists were trying to figure out what sort of creature had laid the chickenlike eggs; they hoped it was the rather beautiful and unusual avians mentioned by the EEC team, but so far, the reptiloid creatures mentioned in the survey report had not been observed. As the analysis of the shell showed a high level of boron, the team put egg and its inhabitant on the dubious list of indigenous inedibles.

The shuttles made only two trips a day for the next four, since the loading and unloading of all that matériel was time-consuming.

“I prefer a few passengers,” Barr remarked as the off-duty pilots were enjoying dinner in the mess hall, “as a leaven to crates and crates, big, little, medium. Or all those absolutely irreplaceable herbs and bushes. There’s still plenty of people to go down.” The mess hall, not nearly so crowded anymore, was still full of diners.

Looking about, Sallah noticed the redheaded family seated at the far left. She waved, smiling brightly because the youngsters looked so glum.

“Gorgeous red hair, isn’t it?” Sallah said wistfully.

“Too unusual,” Avril Bitra said derisively.

“I dunno,” Drake remarked, staring at the party. “Makes a nice change.”

“She’s too young for you, Bonneau,” Avril said.

“I’m a patient man,” Drake countered, grinning because it was not often that he got a rise out of the sultry beauty. “I’ll know where to find her when she grows up.” He appeared to consider the prospect. “Of course, the boy is much too young for you, Avril. A full generation away.”

Avril gave him a long, disgusted look and, grabbing the wine carafe, stalked to the dispensers. Sallah exchanged glances with Barr. Avril was scheduled first the next morning, and the wind factors provided sufficient danger even without alcohol-blurred reactions. They both looked toward Nabol, her copilot, but he shrugged indifferently. Sallah hadn’t hoped for much support from the man. No one had much influence on Avril.

“Hey, Avril, hold off on the sauce,” Drake began, rising to intercept her. “You did promise me a rematch in gravity ball. The court’ll be empty now.” His smile was challenging, and from where she sat, Sallah could see his hand slide caressingly up Avril’s arm. The astrogator’s mouth assumed a less discontented line. “We’d best use it while we may,” he added, his smile deepening. Moving his arm up to her shoulders, he took the carafe from her hand and placed it on the nearest table as he guided her out of the mess hall without a backward look.

“Wow! Charm has its uses,” Barr said.

“Shall we see if it’s ball they’re playing in the gray court?” Nabol suggested, an unsettling glitter in his eyes.

“There’s ball games and ball games,” Sallah said with a diffident shrug. “I’ve seen ’em all. Excuse me.” She stood up and strode over to the Hanrahans’ table. She knew she had left her friend stranded, but Barr could leave, too, if Nabol made her uncomfortable. “Hi, there. When do you drop?” she asked, as she reached the Hanrahans.

“Tomorrow,” Red said with a welcoming grin. He pulled a chair over from the next table. “Join us? I think we’re on your ship.”

“We are.” Sorka beamed at Sallah.

“You’ve had a long wait,” Sallah remarked, sitting down.

“I’m vet, and Mairi’s childcare,” Red replied. “We aren’t exactly essential personnel.”

“Perhaps not now,” Sallah replied with a wide grin that acknowledged the future importance of their specialties.

“Is it really as nice down there as it looks?” Sorka asked.

“I can’t say I’ve had much time to find out,” Sallah said with a rueful expression. “We drop, unload, and lift. But the air is like wine.” She flared her nostrils in deprecation of the recycled atmosphere of the ship. “And a breeze, too.” She laughed. “Sometimes a bit stiff.” She pantomimed fighting with the control yoke of the shuttle. Mairi looked wistful, while her husband looked eager. Sallah turned to the kids. “And school’s great. Outdoors! Teaching you all we know about our new home.” The two children had groaned at her first phrase, but began to brighten as she went on. “Sometimes the teachers are just a skip ahead of the students.”

“They didn’t have bonfires last night,” Brian said, disappointed.

“That’s because they got light pylons up, but watch tonight. You aren’t the only one who missed ’em. I heard they decided to have a bonfire square, and every night someone new gets a chance to light it, if they’ve worked very hard and earned the privilege.”

“Wow!” Brian was elated. “Whaddya have to do to get to light it?”

“You’ll think of something, Brian,” his father assured him.

“See you all bright and early?” Sallah rose, giving Sorka’s hair a ruffle.

“Be there before you,” Red replied with a grin.

To Sallah’s surprise, they were, for Mairi had insisted on reassuring herself that their precious personal baggage was safely stowed in the cargo hold. Mairi had worried and worried about her precious family heirlooms, especially the rose-wood dower chest which had been in her family for generations. It had been carefully unglued and took up most of the weight allowed them, but Mairi had insisted that it accompany them to Pern. Indeed Sorka could not recall her parents’ bedroom without the dower chest under the window. Sorka had been forced to reduce her treasured collection of toy horses to three of the smallest, and her book tapes to ten. Brian’s ship models had been dismantled, and he, too, fretted about finding the proper glue.

That was his urgent question when Sallah and Barr greeted them.

“Glue?” Sallah repeated in surprise. “They’ve dropped everything else; why on earth would they leave glue out?” She winked at Red, who grinned. “Otherwise our local experts are sure to be able to whomp something up. Pern seems to be well supplied. On board with you now, Clan Hanrahan. We’re only a skip ahead of today’s horde.”

As the first arrivals, the Hanrahans got their choice of seats, and Sorka suggested that they take the last row so they would be the first out. It was almost agonizing to have to wait until everyone else was strapped in and the drop begun. Excitement almost strangled Sorka. She was disappointed that the forward screen was malfunctioning, because then she did not know exactly when the shuttle left its bay. And a display would have given her something to distract her from the shuttle’s vibrations. She looked anxiously at her parents, but they had their eyes closed. Brian looked as bug-eyed as she felt, but she would not give him the satisfaction of appearing scared. Then, suddenly, she remembered Sean Connell, hiding in the garden, and forced herself to imagine Spacer Yvonne Yves leading an exciting mission to a mysterious planet.

And then they were there. The retros pushed her back into her padded seat, nearly depriving her of breath, and the shuttle bumped lightly as its landing gear made contact.

“We’ve landed! We made it!” she cried.

“Don’t sound so surprised, lovey!” her father said with a laugh, and reached over to give her knee a pat.

“Can we eat when we get out?” Brian asked petulantly. Someone up front chuckled.

Sorka heard the whoosh as the passenger hatch was cracked. Then the two pilots appeared at the top of the aisle and gave the order to disembark. A blast of sunlight and fresh air streamed into the spacecraft, and Sorka felt her heart give an extra thump of gladness.

Laughing, her father flipped open her safety belt and urged her to move. But a moment of nervousness held her back.

“Go on, you little goose,” Red said, grinning to let her know that he understood her hesitation.

“Hey, Sorka, you can leave now,” Sallah called.

Sorka’s legs were a bit wobbly as she stood. “I’m heavy again,” she exclaimed. Full weight was a new sensation after the half gravity of the Yoko. At the exit, she stopped, awed by her first glimpse of Pern, a vast panorama of the grassy plateau, with its knobs of funny bluish bushes and the green-blue sky.

“Don’t block the exit, dear,” said a woman who was standing outside by the ramp.

Sorka hastily obeyed, though how she got down the ramp with so much looking around to do, she never knew. The ground cover was subtly different from grass on the farm. The bushes were more blue than green, and had funny-shaped leaves, like the put-together geometric shapes of a toy she had played with as a toddler.

“Look, Daddy, clouds! Just like home!” she cried, excitedly pointing to the sky.

Her father laughed and, with an arm about her shoulders, moved her forward with him.

“Maybe they followed us, Sorka,” he said kindly, smiling broadly. Sorka knew that he was just as excited as she was to be landing on Pern at last.

Sorka threw her head back to the fresh breeze which rippled across the plateau. It smelled of marvelous things, new and exciting. She wanted to dance, free once more under a sky, without ceiling or walls to constrict her.

“Are you Hanrahan or Jepson?” the woman asked, a recorder in her hand.

“Hanrahan,” Red replied. “Mairi, Peter, Sorka, and Brian.”

“Welcome to Pern,” she said, smiling graciously before she made a tick on her sheet. “You’re House Fourteen on Asian Square. Here’s your map. All the important facilities are clearly marked. Now, if you’ll just lend a hand to unload and clear the shuttle . . .” She handed him a sheet, gestured toward the float that was backing up to the open cargo hatch, then moved on to the Jepsons, who had just emerged.

“We made it, Mairi love,” Red said, embracing his wife. Sorka was surprised to see tears in her parents’ eyes.

There was more to be unloaded than just the personal luggage of the passengers. Cartons of stores still had to be checked off the supercargo’s lists.

“Tell the dispatcher that more furnishings are required,” Sallah was told once the shuttle’s hold had been emptied. “Or some people won’t have beds tonight.”

“That’s efficiency for you,” Sallah remarked to Barr. She waved to the Hanrahans as she closed the hatch to prepare for the return flight. “Soon there won’t be anyone above and precious little left of the ships but the hulls.”

“I know,” Barr replied. “I half expect to find our bunks already gone.”

The two began their take-off check and Sallah grinned as she made her notations. She had the glide down to perfection, which meant that she was saving nearly twenty liters every journey. The wind was veering to stern, and she warned Barr to speed up her checklist.

“Want to take advantage of that tail wind. Saves fuel.”

“Good God, Sal, you’re as bad as Fussy Fusi.” But Barr completed her list with a flourish. “What I want to know is why are we busting ass saving fuel? We can’t go anyplace useful with what we’d be saving. And once the ships are gutted, there isn’t any use for space shuttles, now is there?”

Sallah gave her a searching stare and then chuckled drolly. “A very good point, my friend. A very good point. I think,” she added after a moment’s thought, “I’ll check the tanks while Fussy’s dropping.”

But when she had done that, she was not that much wiser. If they were saving so much fuel, then the level in the tanks should have been higher. Barr, who was enjoying a flirtation with one of the resource engineers, forgot her idle observation. But Sallah did not. During one of Kenjo’s drops, she did a bit of checking in the mainframe’s banks.

Fuel consumption was at acceptable levels in both of Yoko’s remaining tanks. Sallah computed in her average fuel consumption per trip, plus an estimate of Kenjo’s, and came up with a total that should have left them with an extra two thousand liters of available fuel. She knocked off a percentage, based on consumption during her heavier trips, when drift and wind factors had required a higher expenditure of fuel. Once again she came up with a deficit figure, slightly lower than before but still higher than the amount available.

What good would it do anyone to hoard fuel? Avril? But Avril and Kenjo were not at all friendly. In fact, Avril had made snide remarks about Kenjo on several occasions, unacceptable ethnic-based slander.

“Of course, if you wanted to put someone off the track . . .” Sallah murmured to herself.

Checking the distance to the nearest system, which had been interdicted a century before by the EEC team, and the distance to the nearest habitable system, and computing in the cruising range and speed of the captain’s gig, Sallah came up with the answer that the Mariposa could, even with the most careful management, make it only to the uninhabitable system. But what good would that do anyone? Disgusted by the waste of the afternoon, Sallah went in search of Barr. They had the evening run to make, and that meant that they would get to sleep planetside.

Chapter 4

TO SORKA’S UTTER delight, school on Pern concentrated on adapting the students to their new home. Everyone was given safety instruction about common tools, and those over fourteen were taught how to operate some of the less dangerous equipment. They were shown specimens of the plants to be avoided and lectured on the botany so far catalogued: the varieties of fruit, leafy vegetables, and tubers that were innocuous and could be eaten in moderation. One of the jobs for the young colonists, they were told, would be to gather any edible plants they found to supplement the transported foodstuffs. They were also shown slides of native insectoids and herpetoids. Finally those under twelve gathered in the main classroom, while the older ones assembled outside to be assigned work with adult team leaders.

“During this settling-in period,” Rudi Shwartz, the official headmaster, told the older children, “you will have a chance to work with a variety of specialists, learning what craft or profession you’d like to pursue within the context of the work force on Pern. We’re going to revive an apprentice system here. It worked pretty well on old Earth, has been successful on First Centauri, and is particularly suitable to our pastoral colony. All of us will have to work hard to establish ourselves on Pern, but diligence will be rewarded.”

“What with?” asked a boy at the back of the class. He sounded slightly contemptuous.

“A sense of achievement and,” Mr. Shwartz added, raising his voice and grinning at the skeptic, “grants of land or material when you reach your maturity and want to strike out for yourself. All of us have the same opportunities here on Pern.”

“My dad says the charterers will still end up with all the good land,” a young male voice said from the anonymity of the group.

Surveying the children through slightly narrowed eyes, Rudolph Shwartz waited to answer until his audience began to move restlessly.

“The charter permits them first choice, it is true. This is a large planet with millions of acres of arable land. Even charterers have to prove the land they claim. There will be some left for your father, and for you. Now . . . how many of you already know how to manage the basic sled controls?”

Sorka had been sizing up her fellow students, and reluctantly concluded that there were no girls her age. The clutch of teenaged girls had already formed a group excluding her, and the other girls were all much younger than she was. Resigned, Sorka then looked in vain for Sean Connell. Wasn’t it just like a tinker to skip school as soon as possible?

That initial morning session was concluded with instructions on how to apply to the commissary for their needs, from the carefully rationed candy and treats of Earth, to field boots or fresh clothing. Everyone, their headmaster insisted, had the right to certain luxury items. If an item was available, it would be issued. After a short lecture on moderation, the students were dismissed to enjoy a lunch served from the communal kitchens set up near Bonfire Square and told to report back to the school at 1300 hours for their afternoon duties.

After nearly two weeks of inactivity on the ship, Sorka welcomed the fetch-and-carry tasks. She was almost alone in her preference. The older girls in particular were appalled to be put to rough labor. Farmbred Sorka felt rather superior to those city lilies, and worked so diligently in helping to clear stones from the fields that her agronomist team leader cautioned her to take it easy.

“Not that we don’t appreciate your vigor, Sorka,” the woman said with a wry grin, “but don’t forget you were inactive for fifteen years. Work those muscles in gently.”

“Well, at least I’ve got some,” Sorka replied with a scornful glance at a team of girls who scowled sullenly as they held plastic poles in place for fencing.

“They’ll get used to Pern. They’re here to stay.” The team leader gave a sort of snort. “We all are.”

Sorka sighed with such contentment that the older woman reached out to ruffle her hair. “Ever consider a career as an agronomist?”

“Naw, I’m going to be a vet like my dad,” Sorka replied cheerfully.

The agronomist team leader was the first of many adults who would have liked to have Sorka Hanrahan as an apprentice. She was only a few days on the rock-picking detail before she and five others were sent down to the harbor and the hatchery.

“You’ve proved you can work without supervision, Sorka.” Headmaster Shwartz told her approvingly. “Just the attitude we need to get Pern going.”

After a morning learning to recognize those marine specimens that had already been catalogued, she and the other five youngsters were split into two groups and sent in opposite directions along the immense sweep of the natural harbor to gather any unidentified types of seaweeds and grasses, or anything new that might have been trapped in tidal pools after the previous night’s storm. Delighted, Sorka went off happily with Jacob Chernoff, who, as the oldest, was appointed leader and given a beeper for emergencies.

“This sand ought to be different, not just the same,” the third member of the group complained as they set off.

“Chung, oceans grind stones on Pern the same way they do it on Earth and the result has to be the same: sand,” Jacob said amiably. “Where were you from?”

“Kansas,” Chung replied. “Betcha don’t know where that is.” His mocking glance fell on Sorka.

“Bounded by the old states of Missouri on the east, Oklahoma on the south, Colorado in the west, and Nebraska on the north,” Sorka replied with studied diffidence. “And you don’t have sand out there. You got dirt!”

“Say, you know your geography,” Jacob said to Sorka with a smile of admiration. “Where are you from?”

“Colorado?” Chung demanded sarcastically.

“Ireland.”

“Oh, one of those European islands,” Chung said dismissively.

Sorka pointed to a large purplish branch of weed just ahead of them. “Hey, do they have this one yet?”

“Don’t touch,” Jacob warned as they reached it. With tongs, he lifted the weed for a closer examination. It had thick leaves that branched irregularly from a central stem.

“Looks like it grew from the sea bottom,” Sorka remarked, pointing to a clump of tendrils at the base that looked like roots.

“They didn’t show us anything that big,” Chung said. So they wrapped it in a specimen bag to bring back for study.

That was almost their only find that afternoon, though they sifted through many piles of already identified sea vegetation. Then they rounded an outcropping of the rough gray stone that punctuated the long crescent beach, and came upon a sizable pool in which were trapped a variety of marine life, things that scurried on multiple legs, a couple of purple bladderlike objects that Sorka was certain would be poisonous, and some finger-long transparent creatures that seemed almost like fish.

“How can they be almost fish?” Chung demanded when Sorka voiced her opinion. “They’re in the water, aren’t they? That makes them fish.”

“Not necessarily,” Jacob replied. “And they don’t really look like fish. They look like . . . well, I don’t know what they look like,” he admitted. The life-form seemed to have layers of fins along its side, some of which were in constant motion. “Hairy, they look.”

“All I know is we didn’t see anything like ’em in the tanks at the hatchery,” Chung said. Taking out a specimen bottle, he lowered himself to the edge of the pool to catch one.

Though Jacob was able to get one of the bladders into a jar, and three samples of the many-legged species almost leaped into captivity, the finger fish eluded both boys.

When Sorka’s suggestions for capture were dismissed, she wandered farther down the beach. Around a second pile of boulders, she found a massive outcropping that resembled a man’s heavy-featured head, complete with brow ridges, nose, lips, and chin, though part of the chin was buried in the sand and lashed by the waves. Delighted and awed, Sorka stood in rapt admiration. It was wonderful, and she had found it. One of the girls in her own Asian Square had fallen down a hole that turned out to be one of the many entrances to a series of caves to the south and west of Landing. They had been officially named the Catherine Caves after their inadvertent discoverer.

Sorka’s Head? She murmured the title under her breath. No, people might think it was, her head, and she didn’t look like that at all. As she pondered the question she glanced above the splendidly imposing cliff. It was then that she saw the creature, seemingly suspended in the air. She gasped in wonder, for in that moment the sun caught and dazzled the creature into a golden statue. Abruptly it dove and swooped out of sight, behind the pate of the stone head.

No one had shown her anything that resembled that marvelous creature, and Sorka was filled with excitement. She would have something stupendous to report when she got back to the hatchery. She ran toward the vast head, which was beginning to lose its illusory resemblance. That no longer mattered to Sorka. She had discovered something far more important: a creature of Pern.

She had to scramble up a series of boulders to reach the summit. She paused just before she reached the top and peered over, hoping to catch a closer glimpse of the winged life-form. But she stood up in disappointment. There was nothing visible but naked rock, pitted here and there by faults and holes. She drew back hastily when the surf, beating against the cliff face, became a fountaining plume through one of the holes, showering her with cold seawater.

Disconsolate, she completed her climb onto the pate, keeping well away from the spume holes. The height gave her a splendid view of the crescent harbor. She could see Jacob and Chung sprawled by the tidal pool and even distinguish some activity at the hatchery and the first of the fishing ships riding at anchor. She looked to the west and saw a magnificent vista of small beaches bounded by more outcroppings of the same type of rock she stood on. Ahead of her was nothing but ocean, though she knew that the northern continent was somewhere over the curve of the planet.

She turned about, looking at the thick vegetation growing up to the edge of the cliff. She was thirsty suddenly. Seeing what she thought was a red fruit tree, she decided to pick one. She could cut a few to bring to the boys, too. They were probably ready for a break.

Two things happened at once: she nearly stepped into a large hollow that was occupied by a number of pale, mottled eggs, and something dove at her, its claws just missing her head.

Sorka dropped to the stone surface, peering anxiously about to see what had attacked her. It zoomed in on her again, talons extended, and she waited, as she had done once with an angry bull, to roll away at the last moment. A wave of anger and outrage swept over her, so intense that Sorka inadvertently called out.

Confused by the unexpected emotions but fully aware of her immediate danger, Sorka scrambled to her feet and ran, half-crouched, to the cliff edge. Screams of rage and frustration split the air and lent speed to Sorka’s descent. She heard a whoosh of air and ducked instinctively to evade another attack, then edged under a rocky overhang. Flattening herself against the rock face, she had an all too vivid look at her assailant, something dominated by eyes that rippled with red and orange fire. The creature’s body was gold; its almost translucent wings were a paler shade against the green-blue sky, their dark frames clearly outlined.

The creature screamed in confusion and surprise, and soared up, out of sight. Sorka wondered if it could not see her in the shadow under the ledge. She heard it calling again, the sound muted by, she hoped, distance and the noise of the waves.

Abruptly a wave broke over the rocks about her, soaking her thoroughly. Anxiously she realized that the slight Pernese tide was bringing waves higher on the shoreline, and she would be well advised to move. Soon.

Cautiously she looked about her, listening, but the creature’s cries were still distant. A second wave added a certain urgency, and Sorka began to edge down and toward the bluff. Her feet slipped on the wet rocks, and the last meter was an uncontrollable fall. Arms thrashing for balance, she landed on the beach. Still young enough to cry when she was hurt, Sorka let out an anguished wail, as hands, chin, and knees were scraped in the bruising fall.

From overhead came such a replica of her sounds that she forgot her pain and stared above her to where the flying creature hovered.

“Are you making fun of me?” Sorka suddenly felt as irritated as if one of her peer group had taunted her. “Well, are you?” she demanded of the golden creature. Abruptly it disappeared

“Wow!” Sorka blinked, then scanned the sky for the creature, amazed by the speed with which it had disappeared from sight. “Wow! Faster than light.”

Rising slowly to her feet, Sorka turned a complete circle, certain that the flyer had to be visible somewhere. Then another wave crashed at her feet, and she hastily stepped back, though she was thoroughly soaked already. But her hands and knees were stinging from the salty water, and she had a long walk back to the hatchery ahead of her with really nothing to show for her scrapes. She had subconsciously decided not to mention the flyer to anyone yet.

She jumped in surprise when the bushes on the bluff above her parted and a blond head poked through.

“You fecking gobshite, you iggerant townie. You skeered her away!”

Sean Connell came slithering down the slope, his skin no longer white but red with sunburn, his blue eyes flashing. “I’ve been lying doggo since dawn, hoping she’d walk into my snare, and you, you blow it all on me. Fecking useless you are!”

“You’d snare her? That lovely creature? And keep her from her eggs?” Appalled, Sorka flung herself on Sean, her hands automatically flattening, her fingers tight as she sliced at the boy in hard blows. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare harm her!”

Sean ducked and managed to evade the full force of her blows.

“Not to harm! To tame!” he yelled, dodging with his hands up to deflect her jabs. “We don’t kill nuthing. I want her. For me!”

In an unexpected lunge, Sean tackled Sorka, sending her sprawling onto the sand where he fell on top of her. His longer and slightly heavier frame effectively pinned her. Recovering her breath, she squirmed, trying to angle her legs to kick at him.

“Don’t be so stupid, girl. I wouldn’t harm her. I’ve been watching her for two days. An’ I haven’t told a soul about her.”

Finally understanding what he was saying, Sorka lay quiescent, eyeing him suspiciously. “You mean that?”

“Yup.”

“It’d still be wrong.” Sorka heaved against him experimentally, but he pressed her harder into the sand. Stones were bruising her back. “Taking her from her eggs.”

“I was gonna keep watch on ’em.”

“But you don’t know if her hatchlings need her or not. You can’t take her.”

Sean regarded Sorka with equally angry suspicion. “An’ what were you going to do? There’s a reward for such as her. An’ we need the money a lot more than you do.”

“There isn’t any money on Pern! Who needs it?” Sorka regarded him with surprise and then sympathy for the dismay in his face. “You can get anything you need at Stores. Didn’t they explain that to you when you went to school?” Sean regarded her warily. “Oh, you didn’t even stay in school long enough to learn that, did you?” She gave a disgusted snort. “Let me up. I’ve got stones digging holes in my back. You really are the absolute end.” She got to her feet and swatted at the worst of the sand on her clothes. She faced Sean again. “Did you at least wait to find out what was poisonous?” When he gave her a slow nod, she exhaled in relief. “School isn’t all bad. At least, not here.”

“No money?” Sean seemed unable to grasp that astonishing idea.

“Not unless someone brought some old coins for keepsake. I doubt it: coins’d be heavy. Look,” she said quickly, catching his arm when he started to twist away. “You go to the Stores building at Landing. It’s the biggest one. Tell them what you want, sign your name on a chit, and if they have it, they give it to you. That’s called requisitioning, and every one of us, kids included, are entitled to requisition things from Stores. Well, reasonable things.” She grinned, hoping to lighten his scowl. “What are you doing way out here?” She felt a twinge of annoyance as she realized that if he and his family were in that area, then she had not been the first person to see the headland, and she could not ask to have it named after her.

“Like you told me on the spaceship—” He grinned suddenly, a smile full of charm and mischief. “Once we got here, we could go where we please. Only we can’t go really far yet until we get some horses.”

“Don’t tell me you brought your wagons with you?” Sorka was appalled at the weight those would take up in a cargo hold.

“Wagons were brought for us,” he told her. “Only we’ve nothing to pull ’em with.” He waved toward the thick underbrush. “But we are free again, and camping where we want until we get our animals.”

“That’s going to take a couple of years, you know,” she said earnestly. Once again he nodded solemnly. “But we’ve started. My dad’s a vet and he said they’d woken up some horse and donkey mares, cows, goats, and sheep and made ’em pregnant with our kinds of animals.”

“Woken up?” Sean’s eyes protruded.

“Sure, who could muck livestock out for fifteen years? But it’ll still take eleven months for the horses to be born, if that’s what you’re waiting for.”

“Horses, always. We were promised horses.” Sean sounded wistful as well as emphatic, and she experienced a moment of kindliness toward him.

“You’ll get them, too. My father said so,” she added mendaciously. “He said that the ti—the traveling folk were first on the list.”

“We’d better be.” Sean glowered darkly. “Or there’ll be trouble.”

“You see me before you make any trouble here. My da always got on well with your people in Clonmel. Believe me, you’ll get your horses.” She could see that he was skeptical. “Now, mind, I hear that you’ve harmed our creature and I’ll see you don’t, Sean Connell!” She held up a warning hand, the flat edge in an offensive position. “Not that you could catch her. She’s smart, that one. She understands what you’re thinking.”

Sean eyed her, more scornful than skeptical. “You know so much about her?”

“I’m good with animals.” She paused, then grinned. “Just like you are. See you ’round. And remember about requisitioning!”

She turned and started back down the beach to catch up with Jacob and Chung—just in time to help carry the samples back to the hatchery.

When Sallah Telgar heard the call for volunteers to make up a skeleton crew so that those who had not yet been down to the surface would have a weekend break on Pern, she hesitated until she saw the names of the first three volunteers: Avril, Bart, and Nabhi. That trio did nothing that did not further themselves. Why would they volunteer? Suspicious, she scrawled her name down immediately. Also, she was still curious about what Kenjo had been up to with his fuel economies. The Eujisan had drawn its quota regularly, yet her private calculations indicated a growing balance that had neither been burned up by the Eujisan nor was in the Yoko’s fuel tanks. Very strange. Soon there would be no place on the old Yoko to hide a thimbleful of fuel, much less the volume of the shortfall she had calculated. But Kenjo was not among the volunteers.

All six shuttles went up to relieve the ships’ crews and to bring down more bits and pieces. Sallah flew the Eujisan up with the skeleton crew for the Yoko. Avril had a smile on her face, smug enough to satisfy Sallah that the woman had personal plans for her weekend. Bart Lemos looked apprehensive and fidgeted while Nabhi continued to look supercilious. They were up to something, Sallah was sure. But what it might be she couldn’t imagine.

When Sallah sprang the hatch on the Yoko’s landing deck, she was nearly bowled over by the jubilant men and women waiting to board the Eujisan for their first trip to the surface of their new home. Sallah had never seen a faster loading. Shortly all that would remain of the Yoko would be bare hull and the corridors leading to the bridge, where the mainframe computer banks would remain intact. Most of the computer’s vast memory had been duplicated for use on the surface, but not all—the bulk of the naval and military programs were protected and, in any case, irrelevant. Once passengers and crew left the three spaceships in their orbit, there would be no need to know how to fight space battles.

The volunteers were given their orders by the crew members they were replacing and then the shore-leave party merrily departed.

“Gawd, this place is eerie,” Boris Pahlevi whispered as he and Sallah made their way to the bridge through the echoing corridors, which had been stripped of siding and were down to the central plank of flooring.

“Will the last man off roll the plank up behind him?” Sallah asked facetiously. She shuddered when she noticed that the safety hatches between sections had been removed. Lighting had been reduced to three units per corridor. She watched where she put her feet.

“It’s rape, though,” Boris remarked in a lugubrious tone, as he gazed around, “gutting the old girl this way.”

“Ivan the Terrible,” Sallah said. That was the pilots’ nickname for the ship’s quartermaster in charge of the removal process. “He’s Alaskan, you know, and a real scrounger scrooge.”

“Tut-tut,” Boris said with a mock stern expression. “We’re all Pernese now, Sal. But what’s Alaskan?”

“Fardles, you is the most iggerant bastard, Boris, even for a second-generation Centauran. Alaska was a territory on Earth, not far from its arctic circle, and cold. Alaskans had a reputation for never throwing anything away. My father never did. Must have been a genetic trait because he was reared on First, although my grandparents were Alaskan.” Sallah sighed with nostalgia. “Dad never threw anything away. I had to chuck the whole nine yards before we shipped out. Eighteen years of accumulated—well, it wasn’t junk, because I got good prices on practically everything in the mountain, but it was some chore. Hercules and the Augean stables were clean in comparison.”

“Hercules?”

“Never mind,” Sallah said, wondering if Boris was teasing her by pretending ignorance of old Earth legends and peoples. Some people had wanted to throw everything out, literature, legend, language, all the things that had made people so interestingly different from each other. But wiser, more tolerant heads had prevailed. General Cherry Duff, the colony’s official historian and librarian, had insisted that records of all ethnic written and visual cultures be taken to Pern. Those who had craved a completely fresh start consoled themselves with the fact that anything not valid in the new context would eventually fall into disuse as new traditions were established.

“You never know,” Cherry Duff frequently admonished, “when old information becomes new, viable, and valuable. We keep the whole schmear!” The valiant lady defender of Cygnus III, a healthy woman in her eleventh decade with great-grandchildren making the trip with her on the Buenos Aires, affected idiomatic speech in order to make her points memorable. “Takes up no space at all on the chips we’ve got.”

Sallah and Boris found the bridge territory reassuringly intact. Even the danger doors were still in place. Boris took the command chair and asked Sallah to confirm the stability of their orbit. He was an engineer who dabbled in computer programming, and as weekend duty officer, he would probably spend all his time on the mainframe. He was certainly competent to detect and deal with any untoward deviation from orbit. He had welcomed the respite from outdoor work, as he had forgotten to protect a fair skin against sunburn while he was helping to erect temporary power pylons for the hydroelectric unit. He was annoyed with himself for ignoring a simple precaution just because everyone around him had been shucking shirts to get planet-brown.

“Program’s been left up,” Sallah told him, sliding into the chair at the navigator’s position. “The Yoko’s smack dab on orbit.”

“The duty officer really should have remained here until I officially took over,” Boris muttered. Then he exhaled. “But I suppose she was afraid that they’d leave without her. No harm done, at any rate.”

Boris began calling in the other manned stations, confirming the duty personnel from the roster he had been given. Avril Bitra and Bart Lemos were assigned to Life Support, and Nabhi Nabol was in Supply. While Boris was involved in roll call, Sallah began some discreet checking of her own from the big terminal. She initiated a program to discover who else had been accessing the mainframe. That sort of internal check was a function of the bridge terminal and not available on any of the others, except the one that had once been in the admiral’s suite. By the time Sallah left the Yoko, she would know who had asked for what, if not why.

“D’you know if they’ve got all the library tapes down below yet?” Boris asked, relaxing in the command chair once the calls had been completed and logged in.

“I think General Duff said they are, but why not get your own copies while there’s tape left?”

“Well, I’ll just do a few for private consumption. After all, my hide has been flayed to produce power to run ’em.”

Sallah laughed, but she could not help but feel compassion. Poor Boris’s face was raw with sunburn, and he wore the loosest possible clothing. She regarded him casually until he became absorbed in a perusal of the library; then she turned back to the computer.

Avril was asking for figures on the remaining fuel in the tanks of all three colony ships. Nabol was inquiring about machine parts and replacement units that had already been landed. He was accessing their exact locations in Stores. So he won’t have to ask to get them, Sallah thought. More worrisome were Avril’s programs, for she was the only fully qualified and experienced astrogator. If anyone could make use of available fuel, it was Avril. And where were the liters and liters that Kenjo had scrounged?

Avril requested the coordinates for the nearest planet capable of sustaining humanoids. Two had EEC reports that indicated developing sentient life. They were distant, but within the range of the admiral’s gig. Just. Sallah could not quite see why Avril would be at all interested in those planets, even if they were within reach of the Mariposa. Granted Avril could calculate her way there, but it would be a long, harrowing trip even at the maximum speed the gig could achieve. Then Sallah remembered that the gig had two deep-sleep tanks: a last resort and not one she herself would undertake. If she were in deep sleep, she would prefer to have someone awake and checking the dials. The method was not as foolproof as all that. But there were two tanks. So who was the lucky one to go with Avril? If escape from Pern was what she planned. But why would anyone escape from Pern when she had just got there, Sallah wondered, mystified. A whole new sparkling world, and Avril was not going to wait until she had given it a chance? Or was she?

Sallah continued her surveillance throughout the three-day stint and took hard copy before she erased the file. By the time she boarded the shuttle to return planetside, she understood why the crews had needed shore leave. The poor old nearly gutted Yoko was a depressing place. The two smaller ships, Buenos Aires and Bahrain, would be claustrophobic. But the stripping was nearly complete, and soon the three colony ships would be abandoned to their lonely orbit, visible at dawn and dusk only as three points of light reflecting Rukbat’s rays.

Chapter 5

DESPITE HER PARENTS’ tacit disapproval of Sean Connell as a friend for their daughter, Sorka found many reasons to continue seeing him, once he had relaxed his natural suspicions of her. Curiously enough, Sorka also noticed that his family was no keener on his friendship with her than her own was. That added a certain fillip.

They were bound together by their fascination with their creature and her clutch of eggs. Sorka was watching the nest with Sean, as much to be sure that he did not succeed in his efforts to snare her as to be present when the eggs hatched.

That morning—a rest day—Sorka had come prepared for a long vigil with sandwiches in her pack. She had brought enough to share with Sean. The two children had hidden; bellies down, in the underbrush that bordered the headland rock, in a spot where they- could keep the nest in sight. The little gold animal sunned herself on the seaside; they could see her eyes glittering as she maintained her watch over her eggs.

“Just like a lizard,” Sean murmured, his breath tickling Sorka’s ear.

“Not at all,” Sorka protested, recalling illustrations in a book of fairy tales. “More like a little dragon. A dragonet,” she said almost aggressively. She did not think that “lizard” was at all appropriate for such a gorgeous being.

She carefully waved away another one of the many-legged bugs that was urgently trundling its three-sectioned body through the underbrush. Felicia Grant, the children’s botany teacher, had called them a form of millipede and was happy to see them. She had explained their reproductive cycle to the class: the adult produced young, which remained attached to the parent until it reached the same size, whereupon it was dropped off. Two maturing offspring were often in tow.

Sean was idly building a dam of leaves to turn the bug away from him. “Snakes eat a lot of these, and wherries eat snakes.”

“Wherries also eat wherries,” Sorka said in a disgusted tone of voice, recalling the scavengers at work.

A subtle crooning alerted them as they sprawled, half-drowsing in the midday heat. The little golden dragonet spread her wings.

“Protecting them,” Sorka said.

“Nope. Welcoming them.”

Sean had a habit of taking exactly the opposite line in any discussions they had. Sorka had grown used to it, even expected it.

“It could be both,” she suggested tolerantly.

Sean only snorted. “I’ll bet that trundle-bug was running from snakes.”

Sorka suppressed a shudder. She would not let Sean see how much she detested the slithery things. “You’re right. She’s welcoming them.” Sorka’s eyes widened. “She’s singing!”

Sean smiled at the sound that was growing more lyrical. The little creature tilted her head so that they could see her throat vibrating.

Suddenly the air about the rock was busy with dragonets. Sean grasped Sorka’s arm, as much in surprise as to command her to silence. Openmouthed in astonishment, Sorka could not have uttered a sound; she was too delighted with the assembly to do more than stare. Blue, brown, and bronze dragonets hovered in the air, blending their voices with that of the little gold.

“There must be hundreds of the dragonets, Sean.” The way they were wheeling and darting about, the air seemed overladen with them.

“Only twelve lizards,” Sean replied, impervious. “No, sixteen.”

“Dragonets,” Sorka said firmly.

Sean ignored her interruption. “I wonder why.”

“Look!” She pointed to a new flight of dragonets that appeared suddenly, trailing large branches of dripping seaweeds. More arrived, each with something wiggling in its mouth, the burden deposited on the seaweeds that made an uneven circle about the nest. “Like a dam,” Sorka murmured wonderingly. More avians, or perhaps the same ones on a return trip, brought trundle-bugs and sandworms, which flopped or burrowed in the weeds.

Then, as they saw the first of the eggs crack and a little wet head poke through, Sorka and Sean clung to each other in order to contain their excitement. Pausing in their harvesting, the airborne creatures warbled an intricate pattern of sound.

“See, it is welcome!” Sean knew that he had been right all along.

“No! Protection!” Sorka pointed to the blunt snouts of two huge mottled snakes at the far side of the underbrush.

The intruders were spotted by the flyers, and half a dozen dove at the protruding heads. Four of the dragonets sustained the attack right into the vegetation, and there was considerable agitation of branches until the attackers emerged, chittering loudly. In that brief interval, four more eggs had cracked open. The adult avians were a living chain of supply as the first arrival shed its shell and staggered about, keening woefully. Its dam herded it, with wing motion and encouraging chirps, toward a nearby dragonet that was holding a flopping fishling for the hatching to devour.

A bolder snake, emerging from the sand where it had hidden itself, attempted a rush up the rock face toward another hatchling. It braced its middle limbs as it raised its head, its turtlelike mouth agape, to grab its prey. Instantly the snake was attacked by the airborne dragonets. With a good sense of preservation, the hatchling lurched over the damlike ramparts of seaweed, toward the bush under which Sorka and Sean hid.

“Go away,” Sean muttered between clenched teeth. He waved his hand at the keening juvenile, shooing it away from them. He had no wish to be attacked by its adult kin.

“It’s starving, Sean,” Sorka said, fumbling for the packet of sandwiches. “Can’t you feel the hunger in it?”

“Don’t you dare mother it!” he muttered, though he, too, sensed the little thing’s craving. But he had seen the flyers rend fish with their sharp talons. He would prefer not to be their next victim.

Before he could stop her, Sorka tossed a corner of her sandwich out onto the rock. It landed right in front of the weaving, crying hatchling, who pounced and seemed to inhale the bit. Its cry became urgently demanding, and it hobbled more purposefully toward the source. Two more of the little creatures raised their heads and turned in that direction, despite their dam’s efforts to shoo them to the adults holding out succulent marine life.

Sean groaned. “Now you’ve done it.”

“But it’s hungry.” Sorka broke off more bits and lobbed them at the three hatchlings.

The other two scurried to secure a share of the bounty. To Sean’s dismay, Sorka had crawled out of their hiding place and was offering the foremost hatchling a piece directly from her fingers. Sean made a grab for her but missed, bruising his chin on the rock.

Sorka’s creature took the offered piece and then climbed into her hand, snuffling piteously.

“Oh, Sean, it’s a perfect darling. And it can’t be a lizard. It’s warm and feels soft. Oh, do take a sandwich and feed the others. They’re starving of the hunger.”

Sean spared a glance at the dam and realized with intense relief that she was far more concerned with getting the others fed than with coming after the three renegades. His fascination with the creatures overcame caution. He grabbed a sandwich and, kneeling beside Sorka, coaxed the nearer brown dragonet to him. The second brown, hearing the change in its sibling’s cries, spread its wet wings and, with a screech, joined it in a frantic dive. Sean found that Sorka was right: the critters had pliant skins and were warm to the touch. They did not feel at all lizardlike.

In short order, the sandwiches had been reduced to bulges in lizard bellies, and Sorka and Sean had unwittingly made lifelong friends. They had been so preoccupied with their three that they had failed to note the disappearance of the others. Only the empty shards of discarded eggs in a hollow of the rock bore witness to the recent event.

“We can’t just leave them here. Their mother’s gone,” Sorka said, surprised by the abandonment of dragonet kin.

“I wasn’t going to leave mine any road,” Sean said, slightly derisive of her quandary. “I’m keeping ’em. I’ll keep yours, too, if you don’t want to bring it back to Landing. Your mother won’t let you have a wild thing.”

“This one’s not wild,” Sorka replied, taking offense. With her forefinger, she stroked the back of the tiny bronze lizard curled in the crook of her arm. It stirred and snuggled closer, exhaling on something remarkably like a purr. “My mother’s great with babies. She used to save lambs that even my father thought might die.”

Sean was pacified. He had put the browns in his shirt, one on either side, and tightened the leather belt he had dared requisition. The ease with which he had accomplished that at the Stores building had encouraged him to trust Sorka. It had also proved to his father that the “others” were fairly distributing the wealth of matériel carried to Pern in the spaceships. Two days after getting his belt, Sean began to see proper new pots replacing discarded tins over the campfire, and his mother and three sisters were wearing new shirts and shoes.

The brown dragonets felt warm against his skin and a bit prickly where their tiny spikes pressed, but he was more than pleased with his success. They only had three toes, the front one folded against the back two. Everyone in his father’s camp had been hunting for lizard—well, dragonet—nests and snake holes along the coast. They looked for signs of the legendary lizards for fun, and hunted the snakes for safety. The scavenging reptiles were dangerous to people who camped in rough shelters of woven branches and broad-leaf fronds. Reptiles had eaten their way into the shelters and had bitten sleeping children in their blankets. Nothing was safe from their predatory habits. And they were not good eating.

Sean’s father had caught, skinned, and grilled several snakes. He had sampled a tiny bite of each variety and instantly had to wash his mouth out, as the snake flesh stung and caused his mouth to swell. So the order had gone to everyone in the camp: snare and kill the vermin. Of course, as soon as they had terriers or ferrets to go down the holes, they could make short work of the menace. Porrig Connell had been upset because the other members of the expedition seemed not to understand how urgent it was for his people to have dogs. The animals were not pets—they were necessary adjuncts of his folk’s life-style. It was proving the same on Pern as on Earth: the Connells were the last to get anything useful and the first to be given the back of the hand. But he had had each of his five families put in for a dog.

“Your dad’ll be pleased,” Sorka said, expansive in her own pleasure. “Won’t he, Sean? Bet they’ll be better even than dogs at going after snakes. Look at the way they attacked the mottleds.”

Sean snorted. “Only because the hatchlings were being attacked.”

“I doubt it was just that. I could almost feel the way they hated the snakes.” She wanted to believe that the flying lizards were unusual, just as she had always believed that their marmalade tom, Duke, was the best hunter in the valley, and old Chip the best cattle dog in Tipperary. Doubt suddenly assailed her. “But maybe we should leave them here for their dam.”

Sean frowned. “She was shooing the others off to the sea fast enough.”

Of one mind, they rose and, walking carefully so as not to disturb their sleeping burdens, headed for the summit of the headland.

“Oh, look!” Sorka cried, pointing wildly just as something pulled the tattered body of a hatchling under the water. “Oh, oh, oh.” Sean watched impassively. Sorka turned away, clenching her fists. “She’s not a very good mother after all.”

“Only the best survive,” Sean said. “our three are safe. They were smart enough to come to us!” Then he turned, cocking his head and peering at her through narrowed eyes. “Will yours be safe at Landing? They’ve been after us to bring ’em specimens, you know. ’Cause my dad’s special at trapping and snaring.”

Sorka hugged her sleeping charge closer to her body. “My father wouldn’t let anything happen to this lad. I know he wouldn’t.”

Sean was cynical. “Yeah, but he’s not head of his group, is he? He has to obey orders, doesn’t he?”

“They just want to look at life-forms. They don’t want to cut ’em up or anything.”

Sean was unconvinced, but he followed Sorka as she moved away from the sea and made her way through the undergrowth to the edge of the plateau.

“See ya tomorra?” Sean asked, suddenly loath to give up their meetings now that their mutual vigil had come to an end.

“Well, tomorrow’s a workday, but I’ll see you in the evening?” Sorka didn’t even pause a moment to think about her reply. She was no longer hampered by the stern tenets of Earth restrictions on her comings and goings. She was beginning to accept her safety on Pern as easily as she accepted her responsibility to work for her future there. Sean was also part of that sense of personal safety, despite his innate distrust of all but his own people. Even if Sean was unaware of it, a special link had been forged between Sean and her after their momentous experience on the rock head.

“Are you sure these creatures will hunt the snake?” Porrig Connell asked as he examined one of Sean’s sleeping acquisitions. It remained motionless when he extended one of the limp wings.

“If they’re hungry,” Sean replied, holding his breath lest his father inadvertently hurt his little lizard.

Porrig snorted. “We’ll see. At least it’s a creature of this place. Anything’s better than being eaten alive. One of the blue mottled ones took a huge chunk out of Sinead’s babee last night.”

“Sorka says the snakes can’t get in their house. Plastic keeps ’em out.”

Porrig gave another of his skeptical grunts, then nodded toward the sleeping hatchling. “Watch ’em now. They’re your problem.”

At Residence Fourteen in Asian Square, there was considerably more enthusiasm about Sorka’s creature. Mairi dispatched Brian to bring his father from the veterinary shed. Then she made a little nest in one of the baskets she had been weaving from the tough Pernese reeds, lining it with dried plant fiber. Tenderly she transferred the creature from Sorka’s arm to its new bed, where it immediately curled itself into a ball and, with a tremendous sigh that inflated its torso to the size of its engorged belly, fell deeper into sleep.

“It’s not really a lizard, is it?” she said, softly striking the warm skin. “It feels like good suede. Lizards are dry and hard to the touch. And it’s smiling. See?”

Obediently Sorka peered down and smiled in response. “You should have seen it wolf down the sandwiches.”

“You mean, you’ve had no lunch?” Aghast, Mairi immediately bustled about to remedy that situation.

Though the communal kitchens catered for most of the six thousand regular inhabitants of Landing, more and more of the family units were beginning to cook for themselves for all but the evening meal. The Hanrahan’s home was a typical accommodation for a family: one medium-sized bedroom, two small, a larger room for general purposes, and a sanitary unit; all the furnishings but the treasured rosewood dower chest were salvaged from the colony ships or made by Red in his infrequent spare time. At one end of the largest room was a food preparation unit, compact but adequate. Mairi prided herself on her culinary skills and was enjoying a chance to experiment with new foods.

Sorka was halfway through her third sandwich when Red Hanrahan arrived with zoologist Pol Nietro and microbiologist Bay Harkenon.

“Don’t wake the little thing,” Mairi instantly cautioned them.

Almost reverently the three peered at the sleeping lizard. Red Hanrahan let the specialists monopolize it while he gave his daughter a hug and a kiss, ruffling her hair with affectionate pride. “Who’s the clever girl!” he exclaimed.

He sat down at the table, stretching his long legs underneath, and slid his hands into his pockets as he watched the two tut-tutting over a genuine Pernese native.

“A most amazing specimen,” Pol remarked to Bay as they straightened.

“So like a lizard,” she replied, smiling with wonder at Sorka. “Will you please tell us exactly how you enticed the creature to you?”

Sorka hesitated only briefly, then, at her father’s reassuring nod, she told them all she knew about the lizards, from her first sight of the little gold beast guarding her eggs, to the point where she had coaxed the bronze one to eat from her hand. She did not, however, mention Sean Connell, though she knew from the glances her parents exchanged that they surmised that he had been with her.

“Were you the only lucky one?” her father asked her in a low voice while the two biologists were engrossed in photographing the sleeping creature.

“Sean took two brown ones home. They have an awful time with snakes in their camp.”

“There’re homes waiting for them on Canadian Square,” her father reminded her. “And they’d have the place to themselves.”

All the ethnic nomads in the colony’s complement had been duly allotted living quarters, thoughtfully set to the edge of Landing, where they might not feel so enclosed. But after a few nights, they had all gone, melting into the unexplored lands beyond the settlement. Sorka shrugged.

Then Pol and Bay began a second round of questions, to clarify her account.

“Now, Sorka, we’d like to borrow your new acquisition for a few hours.” Bay emphasized the word “borrow.” “I assure you we won’t harm a—well, a patch of its hide. There’s a lot we can determine about it simply from observation and a judicious bit of hands-on examination.”

Sorka looked anxiously at her parents.

“Why don’t we let it get used to Sorka first?” Red said easily, one hand resting lightly on his daughter’s clenched fists. “Sorka’s very good with animals; they seem to trust her. And I think it’s far more important right now to reassure this bitty fellow than find out what makes it tick.” Sorka remembered to breathe and let her body relax. She knew she could count on her father. “We wouldn’t want to scare it away. It only hatched this morning.”

“Zeal motivates me,” Bay Harkenon said with a rueful smile. “But I know you’re right, Red. We’ll just have to leave it in Sorka’s capable care.” The woman gathered herself to rise when her associate cleared his throat.

“But if Sorka would keep track of how much it eats, how often, what it prefers—” Pol began.

“Besides bread and sandwich spread,” Mairi said with a laugh.

“That would improve our understanding.” Pol had a charming grin that made him appear less gray and frowzy. “And you say that all you had to do was entice it with food?”

Sorka had a sudden mental image of the rather stooped and unathletic Pol Nietro lurking in bushes with a basket of goodies, luring lizards to him.

“I think it had something to do with its being so dreadfully hungry after it hatched,” she replied thoughtfully. “I mean, I’ve had sandwiches in my pockets every morning this week on the beach, and the dam never came near me for food.”

“Hmmm. A good point. The newly hatched are voracious.” Pol continued to mumble to himself, mentally correlating the information.

“And the adults actually held food for the hatchlings?” Bay murmured. “Fish and insects? Hmm. Sort of an imprinting ritual, perhaps? The juveniles could fly as soon as the wings dried? Hmmm. Yes. Fascinating. The sea would be the nearest source of food.” She gathered up her notes and thanked Sorka and her parents. Then the two specialists left the house.

“I’d best go back myself, loves,” Red said. “Good work, Sorka. Just shows what old Irish know-how can achieve.”

“Peter Oliver Plunkett Hanrahan,” his wife immediately chided him. “Start thinking Pernese. Pernese. Pernese.” With each repetition she raised her voice in mock emphasis.

“Pernese, not Irish. We’re Pernese,” Red obediently chanted. Grinning unrepentantly, he did a dance step out of the house to the tempo of “Pernese, Pernese.”

That night, to Sorka’s intense and embarrassed surprise, and to the total disgust of her envious brother, she was called upon to light the evening bonfire. When Pol Nietro announced why, there were cheers and vigorous applause. Sorka was astonished to see that Admiral Benden and Governor Boll, who had made a point of attending that little evening ceremony, were shouting and clapping like everyone else.

“It wasn’t just me,” Sorka said in a loud clear voice as she was formally presented with the torch by the acting mayor of Landing. “Sean Connell got two brown lizards, only he isn’t here tonight. But you should know that he found the nest first, and both of us watched it.”

She knew that Sean Connell would not care if he was given due credit or not, but she did. With that thought, she plunged the burning brand into the heart of the bonfire. She jumped back quickly as the dry material caught and flared brightly.

“Well done, Sorka,” her father said, lightly resting his hands on her shoulders. “Well done.”

Sorka and Sean remained the only proud owners of the pretty lizards for nearly a full week, even though there was an evening rush to the beaches and headlands. But bit by bit, nests were staked and vigilantly guarded. Guided by the routine that Sorka had accurately reported, several more of the little creatures were finally acquired. And her name for the creatures—“dragonets”—was adopted popularly.

The acquisition, as Sorka soon discovered, had two sides. Her little dragonet, whom she nostalgically named Duke after her old marmalade tomcat, was voracious. It ate anything at three-hour intervals, the first night disturbing the entire square with its hungry keening. Between feedings, it slept. When Sorka noticed that its skin was cracking, her father prescribed a salve, prudently concocted of local fish oils, with the help of a pediatrician and a biologist. The pediatrician was so pleased with the result that she had the pharmacist make up more as an ointment for dry skin in general.

“Duke is growing, and his skin is stretching,” was Red’s diagnosis.

The male designation was arbitrary, since no one had been able to examine the creature closely enough to discover its sex, or even if it had any. The golden dragonets had demonstrated a generally more feminine role in egg-laying, though one of the biologists qualified that by reminding people that the males of some species on Earth were the egg-tenders. The dead skin flakes were assiduously collected for analysis. The eager zoologists had not been able to X-ray Duke, for he seemed to know the moment someone had designs on him. On the second day of his advent, the zoologists had attempted to place him under the scope, while Sorka waited nervously in the next room.

“My word!”

“What?”

Sorka heard the startled exclamations from Pol and Bay at the same moment that Duke reappeared above her head, considerably agitated. Dropping to her shoulder with cries of relief and anger, he wrapped his tail firmly about her neck and hooked his talons into her hair, scolding furiously, his many-faceted eyes rippling with angry reds and oranges.

The door behind Sorka opened suddenly, and Pol and Bay burst into the room, their eyes wide with amazement.

“He just appeared,” the girl told the two scientists.

Recovering their composure, the two exchanged glances. Pol’s broad face became wreathed in a smile, and Bay looked remarkably pleased.

“So the Amigs do not have a monopoly on telekinetic abilities,” Bay said with a smug smile. “I always maintained, Pol, that they could not be unique in the galaxy.”

“How did he do that?” Sorka asked, not quite certain as she remembered other instances of perplexingly rapid departures.

“Duke must have been frightened by the scope. He is rather small, and it does look menacing.” Bay said. “So he teleported himself away. Fortunately back to you, whom he considers his protector. The Amigs use teleportation when threatened. A very useful capability.”

“I wonder if we can discover how the little creatures do it?” Pol mused.

“We could try the Eridani equations,” Bay suggested.

Pol looked at Duke. The lizard’s eyes were still red with anger, and he continued to cling tenaciously to Sorka, but he had folded his wings to his back.

“To try them, we need to know more about this chap and his species. Perhaps if you held him, Sorka?” Pol suggested.

Even with Sorka’s gentle reassurance, Duke would not permit himself to be placed under the scope. After a half hour, Pol and Bay reluctantly allowed their unwilling subject to be taken away. Reassuring him every step, Sorka carried her still-outraged lizard to his birthplace. Sean was there, stretched out in the shade cast by the bushes, his two browns curled up against his neck. They heard Sorka coming and peered up at her, their eyes whirling a mild blue-green. Duke chirped a greeting to which they replied in kind.

“I was just getting some sleep,” Sean muttered petulantly, not bothering to open his eyes to see who had arrived. “M’da made me bunk in with the babees to see if these fellers would scare off the snakes.”

“Well, did they?” Sorka asked when he seemed to be falling asleep again.

“Yup.” Sean yawned hugely and swatted idly at an insect. One of the browns immediately snapped it out of the air and swallowed it.

“They do eat anything.” Sorka’s tone was admiring. “Omnivorous, Dr. Marceau called them.” She sat down on the rock beside Sean. “And they can go between places when they’re scared. Dr. Nietro tried to scope Duke and made me leave the room. The next thing I knew Duke was clinging to me like he’d never let go. They said he can teleport. He uses telekinesis.” She was proud that she had gotten the words out without stumbling over them.

Sean opened one eye and cocked his head to stare up at her. “What does that mean?”

“He can project himself out of danger instantly.”

Sean gave a huge yawn. “Yeah? We’ve both seen them do their disappearing act. And they don’t do it always because of danger.” He yawned again. “You were smart to take only one. If one isn’t eating, the other is. What with that and guarding the babees, I’m fair knackered.” He closed his eye again, settled his hands across his chest, and went back to sleep.

“I shall play gold then and guard you, lest a big nasty mottled blunt-nose comes and takes a bite out of you!”

She did not rouse him even when she saw a flight of the lizards in the sky, looping and diving in an aerial display that left her breathless. Duke watched with her, crooning softly to himself, but despite her initial consternation that he might choose to join them, he did not even ease his tailhold about her neck. Before she returned home, Sorka left Sean a jar of the ointment that had been made for Duke’s skin.

Sorka was not the only person on Pern watching aerial acrobatics that day. Half a continent to the south and west, Sallah Telgar’s heart was in her mouth as she watched Drake Bonneau pull the little air sled out of a thermal elevator above the vast inland lake that he was campaigning to call Drake’s Lake. No member of their small mining expedition would deny him that privilege, but Drake had a tendency to beat a subject to death. Similarly, he would not stop showing off; he seemed bent on stunning everyone with his professional skill. His antics were a foolish waste of power, Sallah thought, and certainly not the way to her heart and esteem. He had taken to hanging around her quarters, but so far he had met with no great success.

Ozzie Munson and Cobber Alhinwa emerged from the shelter where they had just stored their gear and paused to see what Sallah was staring at.

“Oh, my word, he’s at it again,” Ozzie said, grinning maliciously at Sallah.

“He’ll crash hisself,” Cobber added, shaking his head, “and that bleeding lake’s so deep we’d never find ’im. Or the sled. And we need that.”

Seeing Svenda Olubushtu coming to join them, Sallah hastily turned and headed for the main shelter of the small prospecting camp. She did not care to listen to Svenda’s snide, jealous remarks. It was not as if Sallah encouraged Drake Bonneau. On the contrary, she had emphatically, publicly, and frequently made her disinterest plain enough.

Maybe I’m going about discouraging him the wrong way, she thought. Maybe if I’d run after him, hang on his every word, and ambush him every chance I get, the way Svenda’s doing, he’d leave me alone, too.

In the main shelter, she found Tarvi Andiyar already marking the day’s findings on the big screen, muttering to himself as he did so, his spidery fingers flicking at the terminal keys so fast that even the word processor had trouble keeping up with him. No one understood him when he talked to himself like that; he was speaking in his first language, an obscure Indic dialect. When asked about his eccentricity, he would respond with one of his heart-melting smiles.

“For other ears to hear this beautiful liquid language, so it will be spoken even here on Pern, so that there will be one person alive who still speaks it fluently, even after all these centuries,” he always told those who asked. “Is it not a lovely language, lilting, melodic, a joy to the ear?”

An intuitive, highly trained mining engineer, Tarvi had a reputation of being able to trace elusive veins through many subterranean shifts and faults. He had joined the Pern expedition because all the glorious hidden “blood and tears of Mother Earth,” as he chose to describe the products of mining, had been pried from her bosom. He had prospected on First, too, but the alien metals had eluded his perceptions and so he had traveled across a galaxy to ply his trade in what he called his “declining years.”

As Tarvi Andiyar had only reached his sixth decade, that remark generally brought the reassurances he required from the kindly, or hoots of derision from those who knew his ploys. Sallah liked him for his wry and subtle wit, which he generally turned on his own shortcomings, and would never think to use to offend anyone else.

Since Sallah had first encountered him after coldsleep, he had not put even so much as an ounce more on his long, almost emaciated frame. “My family has had generations of gurus and mahatmas, all intent on fasting for the purification of their souls and bowels, until it has become a genetic imperative for all Andiyars to be of the thinness of a lathe. But I am strong. I do not need bulk and thews and bulging muscles. I am every bit as strong as the strongest sumo wrestler.” Everyone who had seen him work all day without respite beside Ozzie and Cobber knew that his claim was no idle boast.

Sallah found herself more attracted to the lanky engineer than to any of the other men in the colony. But if she could not impress on Drake Bonneau how little she cared for him, she was equally unable to get closer to Tarvi.

“What’s the tally, Tarvi?” she asked, nodding to Valli Lieb, who was already relaxing with a quikal drink.

One of the first things human settlers seemed to do on any new world was to make an immediate and intensive search for fermentables, and to devise an alcoholic beverage in the quickest possible time. Every lab at Landing, no matter what its basic function, had experimented with distilling or fermenting local fruits into potable beverages. The quikal still had been the first piece of equipment assembled when the mining expedition had set up its base camp, and no one had objected when Cobber and Ozzie had spent the first day producing imbibables from the fermented juices they had brought along. Svenda had berated them fiercely, while Tarvi and Sallah had merely carried on with the surveying. That first evening in the camp the drink had been more than a tradition: it was an achievement.

As Svenda entered the shelter, Sallah poured herself a glass of quikal. Valli moved over on the bench to make room for her. Valli looked freshly washed and in far better shape than when she had emerged from the brush that afternoon, covered with slime but bearing some very interesting samples for assay.

At that moment they heard the sound of the sled landing outside the shelter. Svenda craned her neck to watch Drake’s progress up from the pad; she barely moved as Ozzie and Cobber brushed past her to enter the room.

“What was the assay, Valli?” Sallah asked.

“Promising, promising,” the geologist said, her face glowing with achievement. “Bauxite has so many uses! This strike alone makes this expedition profitable.”

“However, your find—” Cobber bowed formally to Valli. “—will be far easier to work in an open pit.”

“Ha! We have enough to mine both,” Ozzie said. “High-grade ore’s always needed.”

“And,” Tarvi put in, joining them at the table though he refused the drink Svenda always offered him, “there is copper and tin enough within reasonable distance so that a mining town could profitably be established by this beautiful lake, with hydroelectric from the falls to power refineries, and a good waterway to transport the finished products to the coast, and thence to Landing.”

“So,” Svenda asked, “this site is viable?” She looked about her with an air of possession that struck Sallah as slightly premature. Charterers had first choice, before contract specialists.

“I shall certainly recommend it,” Tarvi said, smiling in the avuncular way he had that always annoyed Sallah. He was not old. He was very attractive, but if he kept thinking of himself as everyone’s uncle, how could she get him to really look at her? “I have recommended it,” he went on. “Especially as that slime into which you fell today, Valli, is high-yield mineral oil.” When the cheers had subsided, he shook his head. “Metals, yes. Petroleum, no. You all know that. To establish this as an effective colony, we must learn how to function efficiently at a lower technological level. That’s where the skill comes in, and how skills are remembered.”

“Not everyone agrees with our leaders on that score,” Svenda said, scowling.

“We signed the charter and we all agreed to honor it,” Valli said, quickly glancing at the others to see if anyone else concurred with Svenda.

“Fools,” was the blond girl’s derisive rejoinder. Slopping more quikal into her beaker, Svenda left the shelter.

Tarvi looked after her, his mobile face anxious.

“She’s all wind and piss,” Sallah said softly to him.

He raised his eyebrows, his dark eyes regarding her expressionlessly for a moment. Then his usual smile reappeared, and he patted her shoulder—unfortunately just as one would pat an obedient child. “Ah, and here is Drake with our supplies and news of our comrades.”

“Hey, where is everyone?” Drake demanded the moment he entered, well laden with bundles. “There’s more in the sled, too.”

Sallah dropped her head to hide her expression. “We’re celebrating, Drake,” Valli said, taking him a glass of quikal. “Two new finds, both of them rich and easily worked. We’re in business.”

“So, the Drake’s Lake Mining and Refinery is in business?”

Everyone laughed and, when he raised his glass in a toast, no one refuted the title.

“And I’ve news for you,” he said after he drank. “We’re all to go back to Landing three days from now.”

His announcement was met with great consternation. Grinning with anticipated pleasure, Drake raised his free hand for silence. “For a Thanksgiving.”

“For this? How’d they know?” Valli asked.

“That should be in the fall, after harvest,” Sallah said.

“Why?” was Tarvi’s simple response.

“For this auspicious start to our new life. The last load from the starships has reached Landing. We are officially landed.”

“Why make a fuss over that?” Sallah asked.

“Not everyone is a workaholic like you, my lovely Sallah,” Drake said, pinching her chin affectionately. Seeing that he meant to kiss her, Sallah ducked away, grinning to take away the sting of her rejection. He pouted. “Our gracious leaders have so decided, and it is to be the occasion of many marvelous announcements. All the exploratory teams are being called back, and a grand time will be had by all.”

Sallah was almost resentful. “We only got here last week!”

As an escape from several unpalatable but unprovable conclusions, she had taken on the assignment of flying the geologists and miners to the immense inland lake where the EEC survey had reported ore concentrations. She had hoped that distance might provide some objective answers to the events she had witnessed.

A week before, returning one evening to the Mariposa to look for a tape she had left on board during one of her early stints as Admiral Benden’s pilot, she had seen Kenjo emerging from the small rear service hatch, a brace of sacks in each hand. Curious, she had followed him as he hurried off into the shadows. Then he had seemed to disappear. She hid behind a bush and waited until he had reemerged empty-handed. Then she retraced his steps, and tried to find out where he had put his burden.

After some scrambling about, a couple of bruised shins, and a scraped hand, she had stumbled into a cave—and she was appalled to see the amount of fuel he had purloined. Tons of it, she judged, checking a tag for the quantity, all stashed in easily handled plasacks. The rock fissure was well hidden at the extreme end of the landing grid behind a clump of the tough thorny bushes that the farmers were clearing from the arable acres.

Two nights later, she had overheard a disturbing conversation between Avril and Stev Kimmer, the mining engineer whom Sallah had seen her with the day the landing site had been announced.

“Look, this island is stuffed with gemstones,” Avril was saying, and Sallah, dropping into the shadow of the delta wing of the shuttle, could hear the sound of plasfilm being unrolled. “Here’s the copy of the original survey report, and I don’t need to be a mining specialist to figure out what these cryptic symbols mean.” The plasfilm rippled as Avril jabbed her finger at various points. “A fortune for the taking!” There was a ring of triumph in her wheedling voice. “And I intend to take it.”

“Well, I grant you that copper, gold, and platinum are useful on any civilized world,” Stev began.

“I’m not talking industrial, Kimmer,” Avril said sharply. “And I don’t mean little stones. That ruby was a small sample. Here, read Shavva’s notes.”

Kimmer snorted in dismissal. “Exaggerations to improve her bonus!”

“Well, I have forty-five carats of exaggeration, man, and you saw it. If you’re not in this with me, I’ll find someone who can take a challenge.”

Avril certainly knew how to play her hook, Sallah thought grimly.

“That island’s not on the schedule for years,” Stev pointed out.

Avril gave a low laugh. “I can navigate more than spaceships, Stev. I’m checked out on a sled and I’m as free as everyone else on this mudball to look for the measly amount of stake acres I’m entitled to as a contractor. But you’re charter, and if we pool our allotments, we could own the entire island.”

Sallah heard Kimmer’s intake of breath. “I thought the fishers wanted the island for that harbor.”

“They only want a harbor, not an island. They’re fishermen, dolphineers. The land’s no use to them.”

He muttered, shifting his feet uneasily.

“Who’d know anyhow?” Avril demanded silkily. “We could go in, on the weekends, begin on the most accessible stuff, stash it in a cave. There’re so many that you could search for years and never find the right one. And we wouldn’t have to draw attention to our activities by staking it officially, unless we’re forced to.”

“But you said there was stuff in the Great Western Range.”

“And so there is,” Avril agreed with a little chuckle. “I also know where. A short hop from the island.”

“You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?” Kimmer’s voice had an edge of sarcasm.

“Of course,” Avril agreed easily. “I’m not going to live out the rest of my life in this backwater, not when I’ve discovered the means to live the style of life I very much prefer.” Again there was that rippling laugh and then a long silence, broken by the sound of moist lips parting. “But while I’m here, and you’re here, Kimmer, let’s make the most of it. Here and now, under the stars.”

Sallah had slipped away, both embarrassed and disgusted by Avril’s blatant sexuality. Small wonder Paul Benden had not kept the woman in his bed. He was a sensual man, Sallah thought, but unlikely to appreciate Avril’s crude abandon for long. Ju Adjai, elegant and serene, was far more suitable, even if neither appeared to be rushing a noticeable alliance.

But Avril’s voice had dripped with an insatiable greed. Had Stev Kimmer heard what Sallah had? Or had her enticement clouded his thinking? Sallah had always been aware of Pern’s gemstone wealth. The Shavva Ruby had been as much part of the legend of Pern as the Liu Nugget. Pern’s distance from the Federated Sentient Planets outweighed any major temptation its gem deposits might have held for the greedy. But if a person did manage to return to Earth with a shipload of gems, he or she would undoubtedly be able to retire to a sybaritic lifestyle.

Avril’s plot would hardly deplete Pern’s resources. What worried Sallah was how Avril would contrive the fuel for such a journey. Sallah knew that there was fuel left in the Admiral’s gig, the Mariposa. That was not common knowledge, but as a pilot, Avril would have access to that information. Judging by the computations Avril had made during her time on the Yokohama, Sallah knew that the woman could actually make it to an uninhabited system. But then what?

Sallah had liked surveying with Ozzie, Cobber, and the others, and she had been kept too tired to think of her dilemma. But with return to Landing imminent, her questions came flooding back. While she had no compunction about reporting Avril, she realized that she would also have to mention Kenjo’s activities. She wished she knew why Kenjo had held back fuel. Did he have some crazy notion about exploring the two moons? Or the wayward planet which was expected to cross Pern’s orbit in roughly eight years?

It was impossible to imagine Kenjo being involved with someone like Avril Bitra. Sallah was certain that the obvious animosity between the two was not feigned. She suspected that to Kenjo flying was both a religion and an incurable disease. But he did have all of Pern to fly over, and the packs that powered the colony’s air sleds would, if used circumspectly, allow for several decades of such flight.

What worried Sallah most was the possibility, however remote, of Avril’s discovering Kenjo’s cache. She had thought of confiding in one of the other pilots, but Barr Hamil could not handle such a problem, Drake would not take it seriously, and Jiro, Kenjo’s copilot, would never betray his superior. She did not know the others well enough to judge their reactions to such a disclosure. Go to the top, she told herself. This sort of thing is safest there. She was sure that Ongola would listen to her. And he would know whether or not to burden Paul and Emily with her suspicions.

Damn! Sallah’s fists clenched at her sides. Pern was supposed to be above petty schemes and intrigues. We’re all working to a common goal, she thought. A secure, bountiful future, without prejudice. Why must someone like Avril touch that beautiful vision with her sour egocentricity?

Then Ozzie touched her arm, bringing her out of her depressing thoughts.

“You’ll gimme a dance, Sallah?” he asked in his slightly nasal twang, his eyes twinkling with a challenge.

Sallah grinned and accepted. As soon as she returned to Landing, she would find Ongola and tell him. Then she would be able to trip the light fantastic with an easy conscience.

“And then,” Ozzie went on irrepressibly, “Tarvi can dance with you and give me time to rest my sore toes.”

Tarvi gave her a look of rueful assent, not having much choice, Sallah realized, with so many witnesses and without a chance to prepare an excuse. But she was grateful to sly old Ozzie.

By the time the mining party returned to Landing, the fire was well started in Bonfire Square and the party was gathering momentum. From her high vantage point as she swung the sled to the perimeter and down to the strip, Sallah almost did not recognize the utilitarian settlement. Lights were on in almost every window, and every lamp standard glowed. A dais had been erected across one side of Bonfire Square, and colored spotlights strung on a frame about it. Drake had said that there was a call out for anyone who could play an instrument to take a turn that evening. The white cubes of old plastic packers dotted the dais to serve as stools for the musicians.

Tables and chairs had been brought from residences and set up in a freshly mowed space beyond the square. Firepits had been dug to roast huge wherries; on smaller spits the last of the frozen meats brought from Earth browned along with several other carcasses. The aroma of roasting meat and grilling fish was mouth-watering. The colonists were all dressed in their best clothes. Everyone was bustling around, helping, toting, arranging, and fixing the last of the delicacies brought from the old worlds and saved for one last gorge on the new.

Sallah parked her sled crosswise on the landing grid, thinking that if more were set down at random along the straightaway, the Mariposa parked at the other end of the field would not have sufficient space for takeoff. But how long would there be that many sleds at Landing?

“Hey, hurry up, Sallah,” Ozzie called as he and Cobber jumped out of the sled.

“Gotta check in at the tower,” she said, waving cheerfully at them to go on.

“Oh, leave it the once,” Cobber suggested, but she waved them on again.

Ongola was just leaving the meteorology tower as she reached it. He gave her a resigned nod and opened the door again, noticing as he did so the position of her sled. “Wise to leave it like that, Sallah?”

“Yes. A precautionary measure, Commander,” she said in a, tone intended to warn him that she had come on a serious errand.

He did not seat himself until she was halfway through her suspicions, and then he lowered himself into the chair with such weariness that she hated herself for speaking out.

“Forewarned is forearmed, sir,” she said in conclusion.

“It is, indeed, Mister Telgar.” His deep sigh stressed the return of doubt. He motioned her to be seated. “How much fuel?”

When she reluctantly gave him the precise figures, he was surprised and concerned.

“Could Avril know of Kenjo’s hoard?” Ongola sat up so quickly that she realized he found her suspicions of the astrogator far more worrying than Kenjo’s theft. “No, no,” he corrected himself with a quick wave of his hand. “Their dislike of each other is genuine. I will inform the admiral and the governor.”

“Not tonight, sir,” Sallah said, inadvertently raising her hand to protest. “It’s only because this was the first chance I’ve had to approach you . . .”

“Forewarned is forearmed, Sallah. Have you mentioned these suspicions to anyone else?”

She shook her head vigorously. “No, sir! It’s bad enough suspecting there are maggots in the meat without offering anyone else a bite.”

“True! Eden is once again corrupted by human greed.”

“Only one human,” Sallah felt obliged to remind him.

He held up two fingers significantly. “Two, Kimmer. And who else was she speaking to on board?”

“Kimmer, Bart Lemos, and Nabhi Nabol, and two other men I’ve never met.”

Ongola did not seem surprised. He took a deep breath and sighed before he put both hands on his thighs and rose to his full height. “I am grateful, and I know that the admiral and the governor will also be grateful.”

“Grateful?” Sallah stood, feeling none of the relief she had hoped to gain from telling her superior.

“We had actually anticipated some problems as people began to realize that they are here,” Ongola said, stabbing one long finger downward, “and cannot go anywhere else. The euphoria of the crossing is over; tonight’s celebration is planned to defuse a rebound as that realization sinks in. Well-fed, well-oiled people who have tired themselves with dancing are unlikely to plot sedition.”

Ongola opened the door, gesturing courteously for her to precede him. No one locked doors on Pern, even doors to official administrative offices. Sallah had been proud of that fact, but now she was worried.

“We’re not that stupid, Sallah,” Ongola said, as if he had read her mind. He tapped his forehead. “This is still the best memory bank ever invented.”

She gave a sigh of relief and managed a more cheerful expression.

“We still have a great deal to be thankful for on Pern, you know,” he reminded her.

“Indeed I do!” she replied, thinking of her dance with Tarvi.

By the time she had washed, changed into her own finery, and reached Bonfire Square, the party was in full swing and the impromptu orchestra was playing a polka. Halting in the darkness beyond all that light and sound, Sallah was astonished at the number of unexpected musicians who were stomping time as they waited their turns.

The music changed constantly as new musicians replaced those who had already played. To Sallah’s utter amazement, even Tarvi Andiyar produced pan pipes and played an eerie little melody, quite haunting and a quiet change after the more raucous sets.

The informal group went from dance tunes to solos, calling on the audience to sing old favorites. Emily Boll took a turn on the keyboard, and Ezra Keroon enthusiastically fiddled a medley of hornpipes that had everyone foot-tapping while several couples did hilarious imitations of the traditional seamen’s dance.

Sallah had enjoyed not one dance with Tarvi, but two. In the middle of the second, as they swayed to an ancient tune in three-quarter time, there came a heart-stopping moment when it seemed as if Pern, too, had decided to dance to the new tunes it heard. Every dish on the trestle tables rattled, dancers were thrown off balance, and those seated felt their chairs rock.

The quake lasted less than the time between two heartbeats and was followed by complete and utter silence.

“So Pern wants to dance, does it?” Paul Benden’s amused voice rang out. He jumped to the musicians’ platform, arms outspread as if he considered the quake an oblique sign of welcome. His comment caused whispers and murmurs, but it eased the tension. Even as Paul signaled the musicians to resume their music, he was scanning the audience, looking for certain faces.

Beside Sallah, Tarvi gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head and dropped his arms away from her. “Come, we must go check the rhythm of this dance.”

Sallah tried to hide her intense disappointment at having her dance with Tarvi cut short. The quake had to be given precedence. She had never felt an earth tremor before, but that had not prevented her from instantly understanding what had just occurred. Even as she and Tarvi made their way from the dancing square, she moved warily, as if to forestall the surprise of another shock.

Jim Tillek gathered his mariners to see that the boats were moored well within the newly reinforced breakwater, and hoped that if there were a tsunami, it would dissipate its force against the intervening islands. The dolphineers, with the exception of Gus, who was coerced into remaining behind to play his accordion, went to the harbor to speak to the marine mammals. They could signal the arrival of the tsunami and estimate its destructiveness.

Patrice de Broglie took a group to go set seismic cores, but in his professional opinion the shock had been a very gentle one, originating from a far-distant epicenter.

Sallah got to finish her dance with Tarvi, but only because he was told that the absence of too many specialists might cause alarm.

By morning, the epicenter had been located, east by northeast, far out in the ocean, where volcanism had been mentioned by the EEC team. As there were no further shocks penetrating to the mainland, the geologists were able to dispel the ripple of uncertainty that had marred the Thanksgiving festivities.

When Tarvi wanted to join Patrice to investigate the epicenter, Sallah volunteered to pilot the big sled. She did not even mind that the sled was crowded with curious geologists and packed with equipment. She saw to it that Tarvi occupied the right hand driving seat.

Chapter 6

AFTER THE THANKSGIVING celebration, the colonists settled down to more routine work. The dolphins had a high old time tracking the tsunami wave; it had, as Tarvi had predicted, raced across the Northern Sea, spending the worst of its violence on the eastern extrusion and the western tip of the northern continent and the big island. Jim Tillek’s harbor was safe, although combers brought a ridge of bright red seawrack well up the beaches. The deep-sea plant was unlike anything so far discovered, and samples were rushed to the lab for analysis. An edible seaweed would be valuable.

The dolphins were excited by the earthquake, for they had sensed its imminence from the reactions of the larger marine forms that scurried for safety, and they were pleased to learn of such awareness in the life of their new oceans. As Teresa had told Efram in indignant clicks and hisses, they had rung and rung the seabell installed at the end of the jetty, but no one had come. The marine rangers had had their work cut out to soothe and placate the blues and bottlenoses.

“What was the sense,” Teresa, the biggest blue, had demanded, “of going through all that mentasynth infection if you humans don’t come to hear what we have to tell you?”

Meanwhile, high-quality copper, tin, and vanadium ores were assayed in the north at the foot of a great range, fortuitously near a navigable river by which ore could be carried down to the great estuary. Tarvi, who was now head of mine engineering on Pern, had inspected the site with that mining team’s leader, and they had proposed to the council that a secondary settlement there would be feasible. Ore could be processed in situ and shipped downriver, saving a lot of time, effort, and trouble. The power resources committee agreed that the nearby cataracts would provide ample hydroelectric power. The council proposed to bring the matter up at the next monthly congregation. In the meantime, the geology teams were to continue their explorations of both continents.

Other progress was being made on land and sea. Wheat and barley were thriving; most of the tubers were doing well; and though several species of squash were having trouble, those crops were being sprayed with nutrients. Unfortunately, the roots of cucumbers and all but two of the gourds seemed to be susceptible to a Pernian fungus-worm, and unless the agronomists could combat it with a little cross-parasitism, they might lose the entire family Cucurbitacae. Technology was looking into the problem.

The orchard stock, bar a few samples of each variety, had bloomed and was leafing well. Transplants of two varieties of Pern fruit plants appeared to thrive near Earth types, and technology was hoping for some symbiosis. Two Pernian food plants showed evidence of being attacked by a human-brought virus, but it was too early to tell if it would prove symbiotic or harmful. Land suitable for rice cultivation still had not been found, but the colony cartographer, busy translating probe pictures to survey maps, thought that the southern marshlands might work out.

Joel Lilienkamp, the stores manager, reported no problems and thanked everyone, especially the children, for doing such a grand job of bringing in edible stuffs. The mariners, too, got special thanks for their catches. Some of the indigenous fishlike creatures were very tasty despite their appearance. He once again warned people to be careful of the fins on what they had dubbed “packtails,” for they would infect any cuts or scratches. He would gladly supply gloves now that plastics was able to produce a tough, thin film for handwear.

On the zoological front, Pol Nietro and Chuck Havers delivered a cautious report on the success of gestations. Some of each big species were progressing well, but the initial turkey eggs had not survived. Three bitches were expecting imminently, and there were seventeen kittens from four tabbies, though one mother cat had given birth to only one. Six more bitches and the other two female cats would be in heat soon and would shortly be inseminated or receive embryos. It had regretfully been decided not to use the Eridani techniques, especially mentasynth on the dogs, due to the considerable trouble with such adaptations on Earth. Some of the stock, and indeed many of the human beings, had ancestors who had been so “enhanced,” and their descendants still showed signs of extreme empathy, something that dogs apparently could not adapt to.

Geese, ducks, and chickens had no problems, and were laying regularly. They were kept in outdoor runs, too valuable yet to be allowed to range free, and the runs were much visited by both adults and children. It took nearly six weeks for the omnivorous wherries, as the EEC team had named the awkward fliers, to discover that new source of food and for hunger to overcome their cautious, though some termed it cowardly, nature. But when they finally attacked, they attacked with a vengeance.

Fortunately, by that time there were thirty of the little dragonets in Landing. Although smaller than their adversaries, the dragonets were more agile aerial fighters and seemed able somehow to communicate with one another so that as soon as one wherry had been driven off, one dragonet, usually a big bronze, would keep pace with it to be sure it left the area, while the other dragonets would go to assist their fellows in fending off the next attacker.

Watching from the crowd of onlookers, Sorka noticed something very odd in the dragonets’ staunch defense: her Duke had appeared to attack one very aggressive wherry with what looked suspiciously like a little flame. Certainly there was smoke puffing up above the combatants, and the wherry broke off its attack and fled. It happened so fast that she was not sure what she had seen, so she did not mention the phenomenon to anyone.

There was always a cloud of smell accompanying wherries, like the sulfurous odor of the river estuary and the mud flats. If the fliers were anywhere upwind their presence was obvious. The dragonets smelled cleanly of sea and salt and sometimes, Sorka noticed when Duke lay curled on her pillow, a little like cinnamon and nutmeg, spices that would soon be memories unless there was more success in the greenhouses.

There was no question in the colonists’ minds that the dragonets had preserved the poultry from danger.

“By all that’s holy! What warriors they make,” Admiral Benden declared respectfully. He and Emily Boll had seen the attack from their vantage point in the met tower and hurried to help conduct the defense.

Though startled and unprepared, the settlers had rushed to the poultry run, grabbing up brooms, rakes, sticks—whatever was near to hand. The firemen, who were well drilled and had already had to control small fires, arrived with firehoses, which held off the few wherries that evaded the little defenders. Adults and kids herded the squawking, frightened poultry back into their hutches. One of the funnier sights, Sorka told Sean afterward, was watching the very dignified scientists trying to catch chicks. Although some people bore scratches from the raking talons of the wherries, there would have been more—and probably serious—casualties if the dragonets had not intervened.

“Too bad they’re not bigger,” the admiral remarked, “they’d make good watch animals. Maybe our biogeneticists can create a few flying dogs for us.” He inclined his head respectfully toward Kitti and Wind Blossom Ping. Kitti Ping gave him a frosty nod. “Not only did those dragonets use their own initiative, but, by all that’s holy, I swear they were communicating with each other. Did you see how they set up a perimeter watch? And how they combined their attacks? Superb tactics. Couldn’t have improved on it myself.”

Pol Nietro, himself impressed by the incident, was momentarily between phases of his scheduled projects and not the sort of personality to put leisure time to leisure use. So, when order had been restored and reliable young colonists set as sentinels against a repeat of the incursion, he and Boy paid a visit to Asian Square.

Mairi Hanrahan smiled at his request. “You’re in luck, Pol, for she happens to be home. Duke’s getting an extra-special meal for his defense of the poultry yard.”

“Ah, he was there, then.”

“Sorka would have it that he led the fair of dragonets,” Mairi said in a low voice, her eyes twinkling with maternal pride and tolerance. She ushered him into their living room, which had been transformed from utilitarian to homey, with bright curtains at the windows, and pots of flowering plants, some native and some obviously from Terran seed. Several etchings made the walls seem less bare, and brightly colored pillows improved the comfort of the plastic chairs.

“Fair of dragonets? Like a pride of lions? Or a gaggle of geese? Yes, a very ‘fair’ description,” Pol Nietro said, his eyes twinkling at mother and daughter. “Not that you’re apt to have that kind of cooperation in the ordinary ‘fair.’ ”

“Pol Nietro, if you’re casting aspersions on Donnybrook Fairs . . .” Mairi began with a grin.

“Cast aspersions, Mairi? Not my way at all.” Pol winked at her. “But that fair of dragonets proved very useful. They did, indeed, seem to work well together to a common goal. Paul Benden noticed this particularly and wants Kitti and myself too—”

Mairi caught his arm, her expression altered. “You wouldn’t—”

“Of course not, my dear.” He patted her hand reassuringly. “But I think Sorka can help us, and Duke, if they’re willing. We have already amassed quite a good deal of information about our small friends. Their potential has just taken a quantum leap. And our understanding of them! We brought no creatures with us to ward off such vicious aerial scavengers as the wherries.”

Sorka was feeding a nearly sated Duke, who sat upright, tail extended on the top of the table, the tip twitching with a more decisive movement each time he daintily secured the morsel Sorka offered him. There was about him an odd, not completely pleasant odor which, out of deference to his heroism, she was trying to ignore.

“Ah, the servant is worthy of his hire,” Pol said.

Sorka gave him a long look. “I don’t mean to be cheeky, sir, but I don’t think of Duke as a servant of any kind. And he certainly proved he was a friend to us!” She waved her hand to indicate the entire settlement.

“He and his . . . cohorts,” Pol said tactfully, “most certainly proved their friendship today.” He sat down beside Sorka, watching the little creature pinch the next piece of food in its claws. Duke regarded the morsel from all sides, sniffed, licked, and finally took a small bite. Pol watched admiringly.

Sorka giggled. “He’s stuffed, but he never turns down food.” Then she added, “Actually, he’s not eating as much as he used to. He’s down to one meal a day, so he may be reaching maturity. I’ve kept notes on his growth, and really, sir, he does seem to be as big as the wild ones.”

“Interesting. Do please give me your records, and I shall add them to the file.” Pol shifted his body a bit. “Really, you know, this is a fascinating evolution. Especially if those plankton eaters the dolphins report could represent a common ancestor for the tunnel snakes and dragonets.”

Mairi was surprised. “Tunnel snakes and dragonets?”

“Hmm, yes, for life evolved from the seas here on Pern just as it did on Earth. With variations, of course.” Pol settled happily into his lecturing mode with an attentive if incredulous audience. “Yes, an aquatic eellike ancestor, in fact. With six limbs. The first pair—” He pointed at the dragonet still clutching his morsel in his front pincers. “—originally were nets for catching. See the action of the front claw against the stationary back pair? The dragonets dropped the net in favor of three digits. They opted for wings instead of stabilizing middle fins, while the hind pair are for propulsion. The dry-land adaptation, our tunnel snake, was to make the front pair diggers, the middle set remained balancers, especially when they have food in the front pair, and the rear limbs are for steering or holding on. Yes, I’m sure we’ll find that the plankton eaters are like the common ancestors of our good friends here.” Pol beamed warmly down at Duke, who was deliberating taking a fresh morsel from Sorka. “However . . .” He paused.

Sorka waited politely, knowing that the zoologist had some purpose in his visit.

“Would you happen to know of any undisturbed nests?” he asked finally.

“Yes, sir, but it’s not a big clutch, and the eggs are rather smaller than others I’ve seen.”

“Ah, yes, perhaps the eggs of the smaller green female,” Pol said, placatingly. “Well, since the green is not as protective of her nest as the gold, she will suffer no great pangs if we borrow a few. But I did want to ask you one other, greater favor. I particularly remember your mentioning seeing the body of a hatchling in the water. Is this a frequent hazard?”

Sorka considered that and replied in the same objective tone of voice. “I think so. Some of the hatchlings just don’t make it. Either they can’t feed themselves enough to make up for the hatching trauma,” she began to explain. She didn’t see the slight grin tugging at Pol Nietro’s mouth. “Or they are struck down by wherries. You see, just before hatching, the older dragonets bring seaweed to form a ring about the clutch, and offer fish and crawlies and anything else they can find to the hatchlings.”

“Hmm, definitely imprinting, then,” Pol murmured.

“By the time they’ve filled their stomachs, their wings have dried, and they can fly off with the rest of the fair. The older dragonets do a first-rate job of keeping off snakes and wherries, to give the babies a chance. One day, though, Sean spotted some eellike thing attacking from the sea during a high tide. The hatching didn’t have a chance.”

“Sean is your elusive but oft-mentioned ally?”

“Yes, sir. He and I discovered the first nest together and kept watch on it.”

“Would he assist us in finding nests, and . . . the hatchlings?”

Sorka regarded the zoologist for a long moment. He had always kept his word to her, and he had been very good about Duke that first day. She decided that she could trust him, but she was also aware of his high rank in Landing, and what he might be able to do for Sean.

“If you promise, promise—and I’d vouch for you, too—that his family gets one of the first horses, he’ll do just about anything for you.”

“Sorka!” Mairi was embarrassed by her daughter’s proposal. The girl spent entirely too much time with that boy and was learning some bad habits from him. But to her amazement, Pol smiled cheerfully and patted Sorka’s arm.

“Now, now, Mairi, your daughter has good instincts. Barter is already practiced as an exchange system on Pern, you know.” He regarded Sorka with proper solemnity. “He’s one of the Connells, is he not?” When she nodded solemnly, he went on briskly. “In point of fact, that is the first name on the list to receive equines. Or oxen, if they prefer.”

“Horses. Horses are what they’ve always had,” Sorka eagerly affirmed.

“And when can I have a few words with this young man?”

“Anytime you want, sir. Would this evening do? I know where Sean is likely to be.” Out of lifelong habit, she glanced at her mother for consent. Mairi nodded.

On consultation, Sean agreed that there were only green eggs nearby, but suggested that they would do well to look on the beaches a good distance from Landing’s well-trampled strands. Sorka had found him on the Head, his two dragonets fishing in the shallows for the finger fish often trapped between tides.

“May we request your services in this venture, Sean Connell?” Pol Nietro asked formally.

Casually, Sean cocked his head and gave the zoologist a long and appraising look. “What’s in it for me to go off hunting lizards?”

“Dragonets,” Sorka said firmly.

Sean ignored her. “There aint no money here, and me da needs me in the camp.”

Sorka moved restlessly beside Pol, unsure if the scientist would rise to the occasion. But Pol had not been head of a prestigious zoology department in the huge university on First without learning how to deal with touchy, opinionated fellows. The young rascal who eyed him with ancient, inherited skepticism merely presented a slightly different aspect of a well-known problem. To any other young person, the zoologist might have offered the chance to light the evening bonfire, which had become a much-sought-after privilege, but he knew that Sean would not care about that.

“Did you have your own pony on Earth?” Pol asked, settling himself against a rock and folding his short arms across his chest.

Sean nodded, his attention caught by such an unexpected question.

“Tell me about him.”

“What’s to tell? He’s long gone to meat, and even them what ate him is probably worms, too.”

“Was he special in some way? Apart from being special to you?”

Sean gave him a long sideways look, then glanced briefly at Sorka, who kept her face expressionless. She was not going to get involved further; she was feeling the slightest twinge of guilt for having given Pol a hint about Sean’s deepest desire.

“He was part Welsh mountain, part Connemara. Not many like him left.”

“How big?”

“Fourteen hands high,” Sean said almost sullenly.

“Color?”

“Steel gray.” Sean frowned, growing more suspicious. “Why d’ya wanna know?”

“D’you know what I do on this planet?”

“Cut things up.”

“That, too, of course, but I also combine things, among them, traits, color, gender. That is what I and my colleagues generally do. By a judicious manipulation of gene patterns, we can produce what the client—” Pol waved one hand toward Sean. “—wants.”

Sean stared at him, not quite understanding the terms used and not daring to hope what Pol Nietro seemed to be suggesting.

“You could have Cricket again, here on Pern,” Sorka said softly, her eyes shining. “He can do it, too. Give you a pony just like Cricket.”

Sean caught his breath, darting glances from her to the old zoologist who regarded him with great equanimity. Then he jerked his thumb at Sorka. “Is she right?”

“In that I could produce a gray horse—if I may venture to suggest that you’re too tall now for a pony—with all the physical characteristics of your Cricket, yes, she’s correct. We brought with us sperm as well as fertilized eggs from a wide variety of the Terran equine types. I know we have both Connemara and Welsh genotypes. They’re both hardy, versatile breeds. It’s a simple matter.”

“Just to find lizard eggs?” Sean’s suspicious nature overcame his awe.

“Dragonet eggs.” Sorka doggedly corrected him. He scowled at her.

“We’re trading eggs for eggs, young man. A fair exchange, with a riding horse from your egg in the bargain, altered to your specifications as a gratuity for your time and effort in the search.”

Sean glanced once more at Sorka, who nodded reassurance. Then, spitting into the palm of his right hand, he extended it to Pol Nietro. Without hesitation, the zoologist sealed the bargain.

The speed with which Pol Nietro organized an expedition left many of his colleagues as well as the administration staff gasping for breath. By morning, Jim Tillek had agreed that they could use the Southern Cross if he captained the crew. He was asked to provision it for a coastal trip of up to a week’s length; the Hanrahans and Porrig Connell had given their permission for Sorka and Sean to go; and Pol had persuaded Bay Harkenon to bring along her portable microscope and a quantity of specimen cases, slides, and similar paraphernalia. To Sorka’s surprise and Sean’s amusement, Admiral Benden was at the jetty to wish them good luck with the venture, and helped the crew cast off the stern lines. With that official blessing, the Southern Cross glided out of the bay on a fine brisk breeze.

Landbred Sean was not all that happy about his first sea voyage, but he managed to suppress both fear and nausea, determined to earn his horse and not to show weakness in front of Sorka, who showed every evidence of enjoying the adventure. He spent most of the voyage sitting with his back against the mast, facing forward and stroking his brown dragonets, who liked to sleep stretched out on the sunny deck. Sorka’s Duke remained perched on her shoulder, one pincer holding delicately to her ear to balance himself while his tail was lightly but firmly wrapped about her neck. From time to time, she would nuzzle him reassuringly or he would croon some comment in her ear just as if he was certain of her understanding.

The forty-foot sloop, Southern Cross, could be sailed with a crew of three, slept eight, and had been designed to serve as an exploratory ship as well as a fast courier. Jim Tillek had already sailed as far west as the river they had christened the “Jordan,” and, along with a crew to measure volcanism, as far east as the island volcano whose eruption had interrupted the Thanksgiving feast. He was hoping to get permission to make the longer crossing to the large island off the northern continent, and to explore the delta of the river proposed to carry the ore or finished metals from the projected mining site. He had, he told the enthralled Sorka, sailed all the seas and oceans of Earth during his leaves from captaining a merchantman on the Belt runs, and up as many rivers as were navigable: Nile, Thames, Amazon, Mississippi, St. Lawrence, Columbia, Rhine, Volga, Yangtze, and less well known streams.

“Course, I wasn’t doing that as a professional man, and there wasn’t much call for a sailor on First yet, so this expedition was my chance to ply my hobby as trade, as ’twere,” he confided. “Damned glad I came!” He inhaled deeply. “The air here’s fabulous. What we used to have back on Earth. Used to think it was the ozone! Take a deep breath!”

Sorka inhaled happily. Just then Bay Harkenon emerged from the cabin, looking much better than she had when she had hastily descended to be nauseated in private.

“Ah, the pill worked?” Jim Tillek inquired solicitously.

“I cannot thank you enough,” the microbiologist said with a tremulous but grateful smile. “I’d no idea I was susceptible to motion sickness.”

“Had you ever sailed?”

Bay shook her head, the clusters of gray curls bobbing on her shoulders.

“Then how would you know?” he asked affably. He squinted into the distance, where the peninsula and the mouth of the Jordan River were already visible. Portside, the towering Mount Garben—named after the senator who had done so much to smooth the expedition’s way through the intricacies of the Federated Sentient Planets’ bureaucracy—dominated the landscape, its cone suitably framed against the bright morning sky. There had been some lobbying to name its three small companions after Shavva, Liu, and Turnien, the original EEC landing party, but no decision had yet been made at the monthly naming sessions held around the evening campfire after the more formal official sittings of the council.

Captain Tillek dropped his gaze to the charts and, using his dividers, measured the distance from the jetty to the river mouth, and again to the land beyond.

“Why do the colors stop here?” Sorka asked, noticing that the bulk of the chart was uncolored.

Grinning in approval, he tapped the chart. “Fremlich did this for me from the probe pics, and they’ve been accurate to the last centimeter so far, but as we ourselves walk across the land and sail the coast, I color it in appropriately. A good way of knowing where we’ve been and where we’ve yet to go. I’ve also added notations that a sailor might need, about prevalent winds and current speeds.”

It was only then that Sorka noticed those additional marks. “It’s one thing to see, and another to know, isn’t it?”

He tweaked one of her titian braids. “Indeed, it is being there that matters.”

“And we’ll really be the first people—here?” She laid the tip of her forefinger on the peninsula.

“Indeed we shall,” Tillek said with heartfelt satisfaction.

Jim Tillek had never been so contented and happy before in a life that had already spanned six decades. A misfit in a hightech society because of his love of seas and ships, bored by the monotonous Belt runs to which his lack of tact or incorruptible honesty restricted him, Tillek found Pern perfect, and now he had the added fillip of being one of the first to sail its seas and discover their eccentricities. A strongly built man of medium height, with pale blue, far-seeing eyes, he looked his part, complete with visored cap pulled down about his ears and an old guernsey wool sweater against the slight coolness of the fresh morning breeze. Though the Southern Cross could have been sailed electronically from the cockpit with the touch of buttons, he preferred to steer by the rudder and use his instinct for the wind to trim the sheets. His crew were forward, making all lines fair on the plasiplex decks and going about the routine of the little ship.

“We’ll put in at dusk, probably about here, where the chart tells me there’s a deep harbor in a cove. More color to be added. We might even find what we’re looking for there, too.” He winked at Sorka and Bay Harkenon.

When the Southern Cross was anchored in six fathoms, Jim took the shore party to the beach in the little motorboat. Sean, who had had quite enough company for a while, told Sorka to search for dragonet nests to the east while he went west along the beach. His two browns circled above his head, calling happily as they flew. Galled at the way Sean ordered the girl about, Jim Tillek was about to take the lad to task, but Pol Nietro sent him a warning look and the captain subsided. Sean was already ducking into the thick vegetation bordering the strand.

“We’ll have a hot meal for you when you return,” Pol called after the two youngsters. Sorka paused to wave acknowledgement.

When they returned at dusk for the promised food, both children reported success.

“I think the first three I found are only greens,” Sorka said with quiet authority. “They’re much too close to the water for a gold. Duke thinks so, too. He doesn’t seem to like greens. But the one we found farthest away is well above high-tide marks, and the eggs are bigger. I think they’re hard enough to hatch soon.”

“Two green clutches and two I’m positive are gold,” Sean said briskly, and began to eat, pausing only to offer his two browns their share of his meal. “There’s a lot of ’em about, too. Are you going to take back all you can find?”

“Heavens, no!” Pol exclaimed, throwing both hands up in dismay. His white hair, wiry and thick, stood out about his head like a nimbus, giving him a benign appearance that matched his personality. “We won’t make that mistake on Pern.”

“Oh, no, never,” Bay Harkenon said, leaning toward Sean as if to touch him in reassurance. “Our investigative techniques no longer require endless specimens to confirm conclusions, you know.”

“Specimens?” Sean frowned, and Sorka looked apprehensive.

“Representative would perhaps be the better word.”

“And we’d use the eggs . . . of the green, of course,” Pol added quickly, “since the female greens do not appear to be as maternally inclined as the gold.”

Sean was confused. “You don’t want a gold’s eggs at all?”

“Not all of them,” Bay repeated earnestly. “And only a dead hatching of the other colors if one can be obtained. We’ve had more than enough green casualties.”

“Dead is the only way you’d get one,” Sean muttered.

“You’re likely correct,” Bay said with a little sigh. She was a portly woman in her late fifth decade but fit and agile enough not to hinder the expedition. “I’ve never been able to establish a rapport with animals.” She looked wistfully at Sorka’s bronze lying in the total relaxation of sleep around the girl’s neck, legs dangling down her chest, the limp tail extending almost to her waist.

“A dragonet’s so hungry when it’s born, it’ll take food anywhere it can,” Sean said with marked tactlessness.

“Oh, I don’t think I could deprive someone of—”

“We’re all supposed to be equal here, aren’t we?” Sean demanded. “You got the same rights as anyone else, y’know.”

“Well said, young nipper,” Jim Tillek said. “Well said!”

“If the dragonets were only a little bigger,” Pol murmured, as much to himself as to the others, and then he sighed.

“If dragonets were only a little bigger what?” Tillek asked.

“Then they’d be an equal match for the wherries.”

“They already are!” Sean said loyally, stroking one of his browns. If he had named them, he kept their names to himself. He had trained them to answer his various whistled commands. Sorka felt too shy to ask him how he had done it. Not that Duke ever, disobeyed her—once he figured out what she wanted.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Pol said, giving his head a little shake.

“Tinkering isn’t something lightly undertaken. You know how many efforts abort or distort.” Bay smiled to ease her gentle chiding.

“Tinker?” Sean came alert.

“They didn’t mean you, silly,” Sorka assured him in a low voice.

“Why would you want to . . . ahem . . . manipulate,” Jim Tillek asked, “critters that have been doing quite well in protecting themselves for centuries. And us.”

“Out of the stew of creation so few survive, and often not the obvious, more perfectly designed or environmentally suited species,” Pol said with a long patient sigh. “It is always amazing to me what does win the evolutionary race to become the common ancestors of a great new group. I’d never have expected anything as close to our vertebrates as wherries and dragonets on another planet. The really strange coincidence is that our storytellers so often invested a four-legged, two-winged creature in fantasy, although none ever existed on Earth. Here they are, hundreds of light-years away from the people who only imagined them.” He indicated the sleeping Duke. “Remarkable. And not as badly designed as the ancient Chinese dragons.”

“Badly designed?” the seaman asked, amused.

“Well, look at him. It’s redundant to have both forelimbs and wings. Earth avian species opted for wings instead of forelimbs, though some have vestigial claws of what had once been the forefinger before the limb became a wing. I’ll grant you that a curved rear limb is useful for springing off the ground—and the dragonet’s are powerful, with muscles into the back to provide assistance—but that long back is vulnerable. I wonder how they arrange their mechanics so that they can sit up for so long without moving.” Pol peered at the sleeping Duke and touched the limp tail. “There is one slight improvement: the excretory hole in the fork of the tail instead of under it. And there are dorsal nostrils and lungs, which are a distinct improvement. Humans are very poorly designed, you know,” he went on, happy to be able to exercise his favorite complaint to a rapt audience.

“I mean, surely you can see how ridiculous it is to have an air pipe—” He touched his nose. “—that crosses the food pipe.” He touched his rather prominent Adam’s apple. “People are always choking themselves to death. And a vulnerable cranium: one good crack, and the concussion can cause impairment if not fatality. Those Vegans have their brains well protected in tough internal sacs. You’d never concuss a Vegan.”

“I’d rather have bellyaches in my middle than headaches,” Tillek said in a droll tone. “Though, from what I saw once, some of the other Vegan operating mechanisms are exceedingly unhandy, particularly the sexual and reproductive arrangements.”

Pol snorted. “So you think having the playground between the sewers makes more sense?”

“Didn’t say that, Pol,” Jim Tillek answered hurriedly with a glance at the two children, though neither were paying the adults much heed. “It’s a bit handier for us, though.”

“And more vulnerable. Oh my, oh my, there I go again, falling into the lecture attitude. But there are endless ways in which we humans could be profitably improved . . .”

“We are doing that, though, aren’t we, Pol, dear?” Bay said kindly.

“Oh, yes, cybernetically we do, and in vitro we can correct certain gross genetic mistakes. It’s true that we are allowed to use the Eridani mentasynth, though personally I don’t know whether our response to it is a boon or not. It makes people too empathic with their experimental animals. But we can’t do much yet, of course, with the laws that the Pure Humans forced through to prohibit drastic changes.”

“Who’d want to?” Tillek asked with a frown.

“Not us,” Bay assured him hastily. “We don’t have that kind of need on this world. But I sometimes feel that the Pure Human Life Group was wrong to oppose alterations that would permit humans to use those water worlds in Ceti IV. Lungs exchanged for gills and webbing on hands and feet is not that great or blasphemous an adaptation. The fetus still goes through a similar stage in utero, and there’s good evidence for a more aquatic past for adults. Think how many planets would be open to humans if we weren’t so limited to land areas that met our gravitational and atmospheric requirements! Even if we could provide special enzymes for some of the dangerous gases. Cyanides have kept us out of so many places. Why . . .” She threw up her hands as words failed her.

Sean was peering at the two specialists with some suspicion.

“Campfire talk,” Sorka told him sagely. “They don’t mean it.”

Sean snorted and, carefully positioning his two brown dragonets, rose to his feet. “I plan to be up tomorrow before dawn. Best time to catch the dragonets feeding and know who’s minding the nests.”

“Me, too,” Sorka said, standing.

Tillek had rigged shelters well above the high-tide marks, protection against the sudden squalls that seemed characteristic of the early summer season. Thermal blankets had been stitched into sleeping bags, and Sorka gratefully crawled into one. Duke, without apparently waking, accommodated himself to her new position. She had a little trouble falling asleep because, for a while, the beach seemed to heave beneath her, mimicking the motions of the waves.

A little warning chirp from Duke roused her. Snores drifted over from the adults, but as her eyes grew accustomed to the predawn darkness, she saw Sean rising. She could just see him turn his head toward her and then westward. With an economy of movement he crept to the ashes of the previous night’s fire and rummaged quietly in the supply sacks, taking several items which he stuffed into his shirt.

Sorka waited until he was out of sight and then she rose. Then, after taking a pack of rations and one of the red fruits they had gathered before dinner, she left a note telling the adults that she and Sean had gone to check nests and would be back soon after dawn to report.

As she trotted along the beach, she ate the red fruit, discarding the blemished side where a mold had gotten at it, just as she had once eaten windfall apples and thrown away the brown bits back on Earth. At a little distance from each of the nests, she had piled small cairns of white, ocean-smoothed stones so that she could find each clutch without stepping into it. She found the first two with no problem and hurried toward the third, the one she thought might be a gold’s nest. There was a faint trace of brightness in the eastern sky, and she wanted to be hidden in the bushes before day actually broke.

It was wonderful to be alone, and safe, in a part of a world that had never felt the tread of feet. Sorka had studied the EEC survey reports and maps often enough to know that those intrepid people had not been on that particular beach. She exulted in the special magic of being first and sighed at being so privileged. Her earlier desire to be able to tag a special place with her name had altered to a dream of finding the most beautiful spot on the new world, a really unique place for which she, too, could be remembered. Better still would be for the colonists to wish to name a mountain or a river or a valley after Sorka Hanrahan because of something special that she had done.

She was so lost in that dream that she nearly stumbled over the cairn and into the half-buried clutch. Duke saved her from the error with a warning cheep.

She stroked his little head in gratitude. If she could alter one thing about Duke, it would be to give him speech. She had learned to interpret his various noises accurately and was able to understand what other dragonets said to their owners, but she wished she could communicate with Duke in a common language. But someone had said that forked tongues could not manage speech, and she certainly did not want any drastic changes in Duke—especially not in his size. Any bigger and he would not fit on her shoulder so comfortably.

Maybe she should have a chat with the marine rangers who worked with the dolphins. They communicated with one another about complex matters. It was just as likely that the dragonets did, too, judging by the way they had routed the wherries. Even Admiral Benden had commented on it.

Thinking of the hero of Cygnus, she decided that she, too, must use careful strategy and hide her tracks. The gold dragonets were a lot smarter than the stupid green ones. She found a thickly fronded branch from the underbrush and covered her footprints in the dry sand, retreating into the brush before making her way back to a good vantage point close to but obscured from the beach and the nest.

Dawn coincided with a cheerful morning chorus as a fair of dragonets swooped down to the foreshore. Only the gold approached the nest; the others, brown and bronze and blue, remained a discreet distance from it. Watching their bodies outlined against the white sands, Sorka could appreciate the difference in their sizes. The golden female was the largest, taller in the shoulder by the span of two fingers than the bronzes, who seemed to be the next in size, though one or two of the browns were nearly as big. The blues were definitely smaller, moving with quick nervous steps, examining seaweeds, discarding some and hauling others toward the nest with many smug chirps. The bronzes and browns seemed to be discussing something, murmuring and cheeping to themselves while the blues were clearly interested only in what might be edible. Or were they? The nest was being surrounded by a circle of weeds. When it was completed, the browns and bronzes got busy, depositing the scuttling sea things she had seen at Duke’s hatching.

With an almost peremptory screech, the gold female rose from the nest, swooping down over the heads of the bronzes and browns and dipping wings at the blues as she raced toward the sea. The others followed, not as gracefully, Sorka thought, but swiftly. She saw them climb over the gently lapping surf and then suddenly dive at the waves, chirping triumphantly as they fished. Then, abruptly, they all disappeared. One moment they were there, suspended above the ocean; the next moment the sky was completely clear of flashing dragonet bodies. Sorka blinked in astonishment.

Then she had an idea: If the eggs were that close to hatching, and if she could get one back to Bay Harkenon in time for her to feed it, Bay would finally have a creature of her own. The scientist was a nice, kind lady, not the least bit stuffy like some of the section heads were, and a dragonet would be a companion to her.

Sorka didn’t think about it any further; she acted. Darting out of her hiding place, she streaked to the nest, made a grab for the nearest egg on the top of the pile, and scurried as fast as she could back to the underbrush.

She was only just in time, the branches still swaying from her swift passage, when the dragonets were back again, in what seemed to be greater numbers than before. The little golden one landed right by the eggs while bronzes, browns, and blues were depositing helplessly flapping fish within the seaweed circle. Suddenly the welcoming chorus began, and Sorka was torn between the desire to watch the magical moment of hatching and the need to get her purloined egg to Bay in time. Then she felt the egg, which she had tucked under her pullover for warmth and protection, move against her skin.

“Don’t you dare make a sound, Duke!” she whispered harshly when she heard Duke’s chest begin to rumble. She caught his little jaw between her fingers and glared straight into his faceted eyes, which had begun to whirl with happy colors. “She’ll kill me!”

He clearly understood her warning and hunched closer to her, clinging with sharp nails to her hair and hiding his face against her braid. Then she crawled backward from the beach edge until she was screened sufficiently to risk standing up. Dead fronds and branches tangled her feet as she ran, and she encountered a disheartening variety of thorny bushes and needly plants. But she plunged on.

When she could no longer hear the cries of the dragonets, she turned west and crashed back out to the beach. She pelted down the sands as fast as she could, ignoring the stitch in her side in deference to the antics of the egg beating at her ribs. Duke circled about her head, keening with obediently muted anxiety.

Surely she must be almost back at the camp. Was that the first cairn she had passed, or the second? She stumbled, and Duke cried out in terrible alarm, a shrill strident shriek like the cries of the peacocks that had inhabited her father’s farm, a ghastly sound like someone in extreme agony. He swooped, tugging valiantly at her shoulder, as if he himself could support her.

His shriek had been sufficient to rouse the sleepers. Jim Tillek was the first one to struggle to his feet, which got tangled in the bag for the first few steps. Pol and Bay were more laggard until they recognized Sorka.

Sorka, ignoring both Tillek’s urgent queries and helping hands, staggered to the plump microbiologist, dropping heavily to her knees and fumbling to get the egg into Bay’s hands for she could feel a crack beginning to run along the shell.

“Here! Here, this is yours, Bay!” she gasped, grabbing the astonished woman’s hands and closing them about the egg.

Bay’s reaction was to thrust it back to Sorka, but the girl had thrown herself toward the supply packs, rummaging for something edible, fumbling to open a packet of protein bars and break one into tiny pieces.

“It’s cracking, Sorka. Pol! What do I do with it? It’s cracking all over!” Bay exclaimed uncertainly.

“It’s yours, Bay, an animal that will love only you,” Sorka said in gasps, floundering back with full hands. “It’s hatching. It’ll be yours. Here, feed it these. Pol, Captain, see what you can find under the seaweed for it to eat. You be bronzes. See, watch what Duke’s going after.”

Duke, chirping with exultation, was dragging a huge branch of seaweed up from the high-tide line.

“Just bundle the seaweed up, Pol,” Tillek said moments later as he demonstrated.

“It’s cracked!” Bay cried, half-afraid, half-delighted. “There’s a head! Sorka! What do I do now?”

Twenty minutes later the risen sun shone on a weary but excited quartet as Bay, with the most beatific and incredulous expression on her face, cradled a lovely golden dragonet on her forearm. Its head was an ornament on the back of her hand, its forearms loosely encircled her wrist. Its distended belly had support from Bay’s well-fleshed limb, its hind legs dangled by her elbow, and its tail was lightly twined around her upper arm. A slight noise, similar to a snore, could be discerned. Bay stroked the sleeping creature from time to time, amazed by the texture of its skin, by the strong but delicate claws, the translucent wings, and the strength of the newborn’s tail about her arm. She constantly extolled its perfections.

Jim Tillek regenerated the fire and served a hot drink to counteract the chilly breeze from the sea.

“I think we should go back to the nest, Pol,” Sorka said, “to see if . . . if . . .”

“Some didn’t make it?” Jim finished for her. “You need to eat.”

“But then it’ll be too late.”

“It’s probably too late already, young lady,” Tillek said firmly. “And you’ve acquitted yourself superbly anyhow, delivering the gold. That’s the highest status of the species, isn’t it?”

Pol nodded, peering detachedly at Bay’s sleeping charge. “I don’t think any other biologist actually has one yet. Ironic that.”

“Always the last to know, huh?” Jim asked, screwing his eyebrows sardonically but grinning. “Ah, what have we here?” He pointed his long cooking fork at the figure plodding from the west. “He’s got something. Can you make it out better, Sorka, with your young eyes?”

“Maybe he’s got more eggs and you’ll have one, too, Pol and Jim.”

“I tend to doubt Sean’s altruism, Sorka,” Pol remarked dryly. She flushed. “Now, now, child. I’m not being critical. It’s a difference of temperament and attitude.”

“He’s carrying something, and it’s larger than an egg, and his two dragonets are very excited. No,” Sorka amended. “They’re upset!”

On her shoulder, Duke raised up on to his hind legs, uttering one shrill query. She could feel him sag as he received an answer, and he gave a little moan, almost a sob, she thought. She reached up to stroke him. He nuzzled her hand as if he appreciated her sympathy. She could feel the tension in his small frame, and in the way his feet gripped her pullover. Once again she was glad that her mother had reinforced the fabric to prevent his claws from puncturing through to her skin. She turned her head, rubbing his side with her cheek.

Everyone watched as Sean made his way toward the camp. Soon his bundle could be distinguished as layers of wide leaves, closely wrapped and bound with green climber vine. He was aware of their scrutiny and he looked tired. Sorka thought he also looked unhappy. He came right up to the two scientists and carefully deposited his bundle by Pol.

“There you are. Two of ’em. One barely touched. And some of the green eggs. Had to search both nests to find some that snakes hadn’t sucked dry.”

Pol laid one hand on Sean’s offering. “Thank you, Sean. Thank you very much. Are the two . . . from a gold’s clutch or a green’s?”

“Gold’s, of course,” Sean said with a disgusted snort. “Greens rarely hatch. They’re snake-eaten. I got there just in time.” He looked almost challengingly at Sorka.

She did not know what to say.

“So did Sorka,” Jim Tillek replied proudly, nodding to Bay.

Only then did Sean see the sleeping dragonet. A fleeting look of surprise, admiration, and annoyance crossed his face, and he sat down with a thump.

Sorka did not quite meet his eyes. “I didn’t do as well,” she heard herself saying. “I didn’t get what we were sent after. You did.”

Sean grunted, his face expressionless. Above his head, his browns exchanged news with her bronze in a rapid fire of cheeps, chirps, and murmurs. Then each gave a flip to its wings to close them back and settled in the sun to catch the warming rays.

“Chow’s up,” Jim Tillek said. He began filling plates with fried fish and rings of one of the fruit nuts that was improved by cooking.

Chapter 7

“SO, ONGOLA WHAT have you to report?” Paul Benden asked. Emily Boll poured a measure of Benden’s precious brandy into three glasses and passed them around before taking her own seat. Ongola used the interval to organize his thoughts. The three had gathered, as they often did, in the meteorology tower beside the landing grid now used by the sleds and the one shuttle that had been altered for sparing use as a cargo carrier.

Both admiral and governor, naturally pale of skin, had become almost as brown as the swarthy Ongola. All three had worked hard in the fields, in the mountains, and on the sea, actively participating in every aspect of the colony’s endeavors.

Once the colonists took up their stake acres and Landing’s purpose had been accomplished, the ostensible leaders would turn consultants, with no more authority than other stakeholders. The council would convene regularly to discuss broad topics and redress problems that affected the entire colony. A yearly democratic meeting would vote on any issues that required the consent of all. Magistrate Cherry Duff administered justice at Landing and would have a circuit for grievances and any litigation. By the terms of the Pern Charter, charterers and contractors alike would be autonomous on their stake acres. The plan was idealistic, perhaps, but as Benden repeatedly insisted, there was more than enough land and resources to allow everyone plenty of latitude.

There had been no more than a few grumbles so far about Joel Lilienkamp’s disposition of supplies and matériel from their stores. Everyone knew that once the imported supplies were exhausted, all would have to learn to make do with what they had, to replace with their own industry, or to barter with the appropriate crafters. Many people prided themselves on being able to improvise, and everyone took good care of irreplaceable tools and equipment.

Between the weekly informal gatherings and the monthly mass meeting where most administrative matters were put to a democratic vote, the colony was running smoothly. An arbitration board had been voted on at one of the first mass meetings, comprising three ex-judges, two former governors, and four nonlegal people who would hold their offices for two years. The board would look into grievances and settle such disputes as might occur about staking acres or contractual misunderstandings. The colony had four trained legists and two attorneys, but it was hoped that the need for such representations would be minimal.

“There is no dispute so bitter that it cannot be arbitrated by an impartial board or by a jury of peers,” Emily Boll had stated fervently and persuasively at one of the earliest mass meetings attended by everyone, including sleeping babies in their cradles. “Most of you know war firsthand.” She had paused dramatically. “Wars of attrition over land and water, wars of terrible annihilation in space itself. Pern is now far, far from those former battlefields. You are here because you wished to avoid the contagion of territorial imperatives that has plagued humans since time began. Where there is a whole planet, with diverse and magnificent lands and wealth and prospects, there is no longer a need to covet a neighbor’s possessions. Stake your own acres, build your homes, live in peace with the rest of us, and help us all build a world truly a paradise.”

The power of her ringing voice and the sincerity of her fervent phrases had, on that glorious evening, motivated everyone to fulfill that dream. Also a realist, Emily Boll knew very well that there were dissident factors among those who had listened so politely before giving her a cheering ovation. Avril, Lemos, Nabol, Kimmer, and a handful of others had already been tagged as possible troublemakers. But Emily devoutly hoped that the dissidents would become so involved in their new lives on Pern that they would have little time, energy, or occasion to indulge in intrigue.

The charter and the contracts had incorporated the right to discipline the signatories for “acts against the common good.” Such acts had as yet to be defined.

Emily and Paul had argued about the necessity for any sort of penal code. Paul Benden favored the “punishment fitting the crime” as an object lesson for miscreants and frequent breakers of the “peace and tranquility of the settlement.” He also preferred to mete out community discipline on the spot, shaming offenders in public and requiring them to do some of the more disagreeable tasks necessary to the running of the colony. So far that rough justice had been sufficient.

Meanwhile, the discreet surveillance continued on a number of folk, and Paul and Emily met with Ongola from time to time to discuss the general morale of the community and those problems that were best kept discreet. Paul and Emily also made sure to be constantly accessible to all the colonists, hoping to solve small discontents before they could grow into serious problems. They kept official “office hours” six days of the established seven-day week.

“We may not be religious in the archaic meaning of the word, but it makes good sense to give worker and beast one day’s rest,” Emily stated in the second of the mass meetings. “The old Judean Bible used by some of the old religious sects on Earth contained a great many commonsensible suggestions for an agricultural society, and some moral and ethical traditions which are worthy of retention”—she held up a hand, smiling benignly—“but without any hint of fanatic adherence! We left that back on Earth along with war!”

While the two leaders knew that even that loose form of democratic government might be untenable once the settlers had spread out from Landing to their own acres, they did hope that the habits acquired would suffice. Early American pioneers on that western push had exhibited a keen sense of independence and mutual assistance. The late Australian and New Zealand communities had risen above tyrannical governors and isolation to build people of character, resource, and incredible adaptability. The first international Moonbase had refined the art of independence, cooperation, and resourcefulness. The original settlers on First had been largely the progeny of ingenious Moon and asteroid-belt miner parents, and the Pern colony included many descendants of those original pioneering groups.

Paul and Emily proposed to institute yearly congregations of as many people from the isolated settlements as possible to reaffirm the basic tenets of the colony, acknowledge progress, and apply the minds of many to address any general problems. Such a gathering would also be the occasion for trading and social festivities. Cabot Francis Carter, one of the legists, had proposed setting aside a certain area, midway on the continent, that would be the center for these annual assemblies.

“That would be the best of all possible worlds,” Cabot had said in a mellifluous bass voice that had often stirred Supreme Courts on Earth and First. Emily had once told Paul that Cabot was the most unlikely of their charter members, but it was his legal guild that had produced the actual charter and rammed it through the bureaucracy to be ratified by the FSP council. “We may not achieve it on Pern. But we can damn sure try!”

Alone with Emily and Ongola, Paul recalled that stirring challenge as he ticked off names on his long callused fingers. “Which is why I think we should continue to keep tabs on people like Bitra, Tashkovich, Nabol, Lemos, Olubushtu, Kung, Usuai, and Kimmer. The list is, mercifully, short, considering our numbers. I’m not adding Kenjo, because he’s shown absolutely no connection with any of the others.”

“I still don’t like it. Secret surveillance smacks too much of the subterfuges used by other governments in more parlous times,” Emily said grimly. “It feels demeaning to myself and to my office to use such tactics.”

“There’s nothing demeaning in knowing who’s agin you,” Paul argued. “An intelligence section has always proved invaluable.”

“In revolutions, wars, power struggles, yes, but not here on Pern.”

“Here as well as everywhere else in the galaxy, Em,” Paul replied forcefully. “Mankind, not to mention Nathi, and even the Eridanites to some degree, prove in many ways that greed is universal. I don’t see the bounty of Pern changing that trait.”

“Forgo that futile old argument, my friends,” Ongola said with one of his wise, sad smiles. “The necessary steps have already been taken to defunction the gig. I have, as you recommended—” He inclined his head to Paul. “—stripped the gig of several minor but essential parts in the ignition system, the effect of which would be obvious early on, and substituted two dud chips in the guidance module, something that would not be so obvious.” He gestured out the window. “Sleds are allowed to park any which way, effectively but surreptitiously blocking the gig from taking off. But I don’t really know why she would.”

Paul Benden winced, and the other two looked away from him, knowing that he had allowed himself to be too intimate with Avril for an injudicious length of that outward voyage.

“Well, I’d be more worried if Avril knew about that cache of Kenjo’s,” Paul said. “Telgar’s figures indicate that there’s half a tank’s worth for the Mariposa.” He grimaced. He had found it hard enough to believe that Kenjo Fusaiyuko had scrounged so much fuel. Paul had a grudging admiration for the sheer scope of the theft, even if he could not understand the motive, and especially for the risks that Kenjo had gotten away with during all those fuel-saving shuttle trips.

“Avril favors us so seldom with her company that I don’t worry that she’d discover the hoard,” Emily said with a wry smile. “I’ve also managed to have Lemos, Kimmer, and Nabol assigned to different sections, with few occasions to return here. ‘Divide and conquer,’ the man said.”

“Inappropriate, Emily,” Paul replied, grinning.

“If, and I do stress that improbability, Avril should discover and use Kenjo’s purloined fuel,” Ongola began, holding up a finger for each point, “manage to find the missing pieces, and fly the gig out of here undetected, she would have a half-full tank. She would not then drain the ships’ reserves to a danger point. Frankly, we would be well rid of her and whoever she deigns to take with her. I think we dwell too much on the matter. Those seismic reports from the eastern archipelago are far more worrying. Young Mountain is smoking again and twitching its feet.”

“I agree,” Paul said, quite willing to turn to the more immediate problem.

“Yes, but for what purpose did Kenjo take so much fuel?” Emily asked. “You haven’t answered that question. Why would he risk the safety of passengers and cargo? And he is a genuinely eager colonist! He’s already chosen his stake acreage.”

“A pilot of Kenjo’s ability risked nothing,” Paul replied smoothly. “His shuttle flights were without incident. I do know that flying is his life.”

Ongola regarded the admiral in mild surprise. “Hasn’t he done enough flying for one lifetime?”

Paul smiled with understanding. “Not Kenjo. What I do completely appreciate is that flying a mere power sled is a come-down, a loss of prestige, face, considering the kind of craft he’s flown and where he’s been. You say that he’s chosen his acres, Emily? Where?”

“Down beyond what people are beginning to call the Sea of Azov, as far away from Landing as he can get but on rather a pleasant plateau, to judge by the probe report,” Emily replied. She hoped that the meeting would conclude soon. Pierre had promised her a special meal, and she found that she was enjoying those quiet dinners far more than she had thought she would.

“Howinell is Kenjo going to get those tons of fuel there?” Benden asked.

“I suspect we’ll have to wait and see,” Ongola replied with the trace of a smile on his lips. “He’s got the same right as everyone else to use power sleds to transport his goods, and he’s done some close trading with work units at the commissary. Shall I have a word with Joel about Kenjo’s requisitions?”

Emily glanced quickly at Paul, who was adamant in his defense of Kenjo. “Well, I don’t like unsolved riddles. I’d prefer some sort of explanation, and I think you would, too, Paul.” When Benden nodded reluctantly, Emily said that she would speak to Joel Lilienkamp.

“Which brings us back to that third tremor,” Paul Benden said. “How’s work progressing on buttressing the stores warehouses and the one with all the medical supplies? We can’t afford to lose such irreplaceable items.”

Ongola consulted his notes. He wrote with a bold angular script that looked from Emily’s angle, like ancient manuscript ornamentations. All three of them, as well as most section heads, had made a point of reverting to less sophisticated methods of note-taking than speech processors. The power packs, whose rechargeability was good but not infinite, were to be reserved for essential uses, so everyone was rediscovering the art of calligraphy.

“The work will be completed by next week. The seismic net has been extended as far as the active volcano in the eastern archipelago and to Drake’s Lake.”

Paul grimaced. “Are we going to let him get away with that?”

“Why not?” Emily asked, grinning. “No one’s contesting it. Drake was the first to see it. A community settling there would have ample space to grow, and plenty of industry to support it.”

“Is it scheduled for a vote?” Paul asked after an appreciative sip of his brandy.

“No,” Ongola said with another hint of a grin. “Drake is still campaigning. He doesn’t want any opposition, and whatever there might have been is now worn down.”

Paul snorted, and Emily cast her eyes upward in amused exasperation with the flamboyant pilot. Then Paul pensively regarded the remainder of the brandy in his glass. As Emily went on to the next point on their informal agenda, he took another sip, rolling the liquor around in his mouth, savouring the soon-to-be-exhausted beverage. He could and did drink the quikal but found it harsh to a palate trained to subtleties.

“We are proceeding well in general terms,” Emily was saying briskly. “You heard that one of the dolphins died, but Olga’s death was accepted by her community with considerable equanimity. According to Ann Gabri and Efram, they had expected more fatalities. Olga was, apparently,” she added with a grin, “older than she said she was and hadn’t wished to let her last calf go into the unknown without her.”

All three chuckled and followed Paul’s lead as he raised a toast to maternal love.

“Even our . . . nomads . . . have settled in,” Emily went on, after checking her notepad. “Or, rather, spread out.” She tapped it with her pencil, still unused to handwriting notes but struggling to get accustomed to archaic memory assists. The only voice-activated device still operable was the surface interface with the main computer banks on the Yokohama, but it was rarely used anymore. “The nomads’ve made rather a lot of inroads on clothing fabrics, but when those are depleted, that’s the end of it and they’ll have to make their own or trade, the same as the rest of us. We have located all the campsites. Even on foot, the Tuareg contingent can travel astonishing distances, but they camp for a while, in two separate sections.”

“Well, they’ve a whole planet to lose themselves in,” Paul said expansively. “Have they posed any other problems, Ongola?”

The dark man shook his heavy head, lowering the lids of his deep-set eyes. He was agreeably surprised by the nomads’ smooth transition to life on Pern. Every week each tribe sent a representative to the veterinary sheds. The forty-two mares brought in coldsleep by the colony were all in foal, and the nomads’ leaders had accepted the fact that a mare’s gestation period was eleven months on Pern as it had been on Earth.

“As long as the vets keep their sense of humor. But Red Hanrahan seems to understand their ways and deals with them.”

“Hanrahan? Didn’t his daughter find the dragonets?”

“She and a boy, one of the travelers,” Ongola replied. “They also provided the corpses which the bios have been clucking over.”

“Could be useful creatures,” Benden said.

“They already are,” Emily added stoutly.

Ongola smiled. One day, Ongola thought, he would find a nest at the critical hatching point and he would have one of those charming, friendly, nearly intelligent creatures as a pet. He had once learned Dolphin, but he had never been able to overcome his fear of being constricted underwater to share their world properly. He needed space about him. Once, when Paul was sharing one of the long watches with him on the journey to Pern, the admiral had argued most eloquently that the dangers of outer space were even more inimical to human life than those of inner sea.

“Water is airless,” Paul had said, “although it contains oxygen, but when and if the Pure Lives’ hold on human adaptations is broken, humans will be able to swim without artificial help. Space has no oxygen at all.”

“But you are weightless in space. Water presses down on you. You feel it.”

“You’d better not feel space,” Paul had replied with a laugh, but he had not argued the point further.

“Now, to more pleasant matters,” Paul said. “How many contract marriages are to be registered tomorrow, Emily?”

Emily smiled, riffling pages of her notepad to come to the next seventh-day sheet, since that had become the usual time for such celebrations. In order to widen the gene pool in the next generation, the charter permitted unions of varying lengths, first insuring the support of a gravid woman and the early years of the resultant child. Prospective partners could choose which conditions suited their requirements, but there were severe penalties, up to the loss of all stake acres, for failing to fulfill whatever contract had been agreed and signed before the requisite number of witnesses.

“Three!”

“The numbers are falling off,” Paul remarked.

“I’ve done my bit,” Ongola said, slyly glancing at the two staunchly single leaders.

Ongola had courted Sabra Stein so adroitly that neither of his close friends had realized he had become attached until the couple’s names had appeared on the marital schedule six weeks earlier. In fact, Sabra was already pregnant, which had led Paul to remark that the big gun was not firing blanks. He had let his bawdy humor disguise his relief, for he knew that Ongola still grieved for the wife and family of his youth. Ongola’s hatred of the Nathi and his implacable desire for revenge had sustained the man thoughout the war. For a long while, Paul had worried that his favorite aide and valued commander might be unable to alter that overpowering hatred even in a more peaceful clime.

“Emily, has Pierre consented yet?” Ongola asked, a knowing grin lighting a somber face that even his present felicitous state did not completely brighten.

Emily was astonished. She had thought that she and Pierre had been discreet. But she had recently noticed in herself a tendency to smile more easily and to lose the thread of conversations for no apparent reason.

She and Pierre were an unlikely combination of personalities, but that was half the pleasure of it. Their relationship had begun quite unexpectedly about the fifth week after Landing, when Pierre had asked her opinion of a casserole composed entirely of indigenous ingredients. He administered the mass catering of Landing, and very well, she thought, considering the wide range of tastes and dietary requirements. He had started to serve her special dishes when she ate at the big mess hall. Then, when she would often have to work through the lunch hour, Pierre de Courci would bring over the tray she ordered.

“If I were the possessive type, I would keep his cooking to myself,” she replied. “Kindly remember that I am past childbearing, an advantage you men have over me. How about it, Paul? Will you do your bit?” Emily knew that her tone had a snap to it, born of envy. None of her children, all adults, had wished to accompany her on a one-way journey.

Unperturbed, Paul Benden merely smiled enigmatically and sipped at his brandy.

“Caves!” Sallah cried, nudging Tarvi’s arm and pointing to the rock barrier in front of them. Sunlight outlined openings in its sheer face.

He reacted instantly and enthusiastically, with the kind of almost innocent joy of discovery that Sallah found so appealing in him. The continually unfolding beauties of Pern had not palled on Tarvi Andiyar. Each new wonder was greeted with as much interest as the last one he had extolled for its magnificence, its wealth, or its potential. She had wangled ruthlessly to get herself assigned as his expedition pilot. They were making their third trip together—and their first solo excursion.

Sallah was playing it cautiously, concentrating on making herself so professionally indispensible to Tarvi that an opportunity to project her femininity would not force him to retreat into his usual utterly courteous, utterly impersonal shell. She had seen other women who made a determined play for the handsome, charming geologist rebuffed by his demeanor; they were surprised, puzzled, and sometimes hurt by the way he eluded their ploys. For a while, Sallah wondered if Tarvi liked women at all, but he had shown no preference for the acknowledged male lovers in Landing. He treated everyone, man, woman, and child, with the same charming affability and understanding. And whatever his sexual preference, he was nonetheless expected to add to the next generation. Sallah was already determined to be the medium and would find the moment.

Perhaps she had found it. Tarvi had a special fondness for caves; he had at various times called them orifices of the Mother Earth, entrances to the mysteries of her creation and construction, and windows into her magic and bounty. Even though this was Pern, he worshipped the same mystery that had dominated his life so far.

Their current trip was to make an aerial reconnaissance of the location of several mineral deposits noted by the metallurgy probes. Iron, vanadium, manganese, and even germanium were to be found in the mountainous spine that Sallah was aiming at as they followed the course of a river to its source. She was also operating under the general directive that unusual sites should be recorded and photographed to offer the widest possible choice. Only a third of those with stake acreage had made their selection. There was a subtle pressure to keep everyone in the southern continent—at least in the first few generations—but there was no such directive in the charter. The broad, long river valley that lay to their right as they approached the precipice was, to Sallah’s mind, the most beautiful they had seen so far.

Rene Mallibeau, the colony’s most determined vintner, was still looking for the proper type of slope and soil for his vineyards, though to get his project started he had actually released some of his hoard of special soils from their sealed tanks for his experiments in viniculture. Quikal was not a universally accepted substitute for the traditional spirits. Despite being poured through a variety of filters with or without additives, nothing could completely reduce the raw aftertaste. Rene had been promised the use of ceramic-lined metal fuel tanks which, once thoroughly cleansed, would provide him with wine vats of superior quality. Of course, once the proper oak forests had reached adequate size for use as staves, his descendants could move back to the traditional wooden barrel

“Rather spectacular, that precipice, isn’t it, Tarvi?” Sallah said, grinning rather foolishly, as if the view were a surprise that she herself had prepared for him.

“Indeed it is. ‘In Xanadu did Kublai Khan,’ ” he murmured in his rich deep voice.

“ ‘Caverns measureless to man’?” Sallah capped it, careful not to sound smug that she recognized his source. Tarvi often quoted obscure Sanskrit and Pushtu texts, leaving her groping for a suitable retort.

“Precisely, O moon of my delight.”

Sallah suppressed a grimace. Sometimes Tarvi’s phrases were ambiguous, and she knew that he did not mean what his phrase suggested. He would not be so obvious. Or would he? Had she penetrated that bland exterior after all? She forced herself to contemplate the immense stone bulwark. Its natural fluted columns appeared carved by an inexperienced or inattentive sculptor, yet the imperfection contributed to the overall beauty of the precipice.

“This valley is six or seven klicks long,” she said quietly, awed by the truly impressive natural site.

From the steep, right-angled fall of a spectacular diedre, the palisade led in a somewhat straight line for about three klicks before falling back into a less perfectly defined face that sloped down in the distance to meet the floor of the valley. She angled the sled to starboard, facing upriver, and they were nearly blinded by the brilliant sunlight reflecting from the surface of the lake that had been charted by the probe.

“No, land here,” Tarvi said quickly, actually catching her arm to stress his urgency. He was not much given to personal contact, and Sallah tried not to misinterpret excitement for anything else. “I must see the caves.”

He released the safety harness and swiveled his seat around. Then he walked to the back of the sled, rummaging among the supplies.

“Lights, we’ll need lights, ropes, food, water, recording devices, specimen kit,” he muttered as his deft movements filled two backpacks. “Boots? Have you on proper boots . . . ah, those will do, indeed they will. Sallah, you are always well prepared.” He compounded his inadvertent injury to her feelings by one of his more ingratiating smiles.

Once again, Sallah shook her head over her whimsical fancy, which had managed to settle on one of the most elusive males of her acquaintance. Of course, she consoled herself, anything easily had is rarely worth having. She landed the sled at the base of the towering precipice, as near to the long narrow mouth of the cave as she could.

“Pitons, grappling hook—that first slab looks about five meters above the scree. Here you are, Sallah!”

He handed her pack over, waiting only long enough to see her grab a strap before he released the canopy, jumped down, and was striding toward the towering buttress. With a resigned shrug, Sallah flipped on beacon, comm unit, and recorder for incoming messages, fastened her jacket, settled the rather hefty pack on her back, and followed him, closing the canopy behind her.

He scrambled up the scree and stood with one palm flat against the slab, looking up its imposing and awesome spread, his face rapt with wonder. Gently, as in a caress, he stroked the stone before he began to look right and left, assessing how best to climb to the cave. He flashed her an ingenuous smile, acknowledging her presence and assuming her willingness.

“Straight up. Not much of a climb with pitons.”

The climb proved strenuous. Sallah could have used a breather as she crawled onto the ledge, but there was the cave opening, and nothing was going to deter Tarvi from immediate entrance and a leisurely inspection. Ah, well, it was just 1300 hours. They had time in hand. She rolled to her feet, unlatching the handlight from her belt just a few seconds after he had done the same, and was at his side as he peered into the opening.

“Lords, gods, and minor deities!”

His invocation was a mere whisper, solemn and awed, a susurrous echo. The vast initial cavern was larger than the cargo hold of the Yokohama. Sallah made that instant comparison, remembering how eerie that immense barren space had seemed on her last trip, and in the next second, she wondered what the cavern would look like occupied. It would make a spectacular great hall, in the tradition of medieval times on Earth—only even more magnificent.

Tarvi held his breath, hesitantly extending his still-dark handlight, as if reluctant to illuminate the majesty of the cavern. She heard his intake of breath, in the manner of one steeling himself to commit sacrilege, and then the light came on.

Wings whirred as shadows made silent sinuous departures to the darker recesses. They both ducked as the winged denizens departed in flight lines just clearing their heads, though the cave entrance was at least four meters high. Ignoring the exodus, Tarvi moved reverently into the vast space.

“Amazing” he murmured as he shined the light up and judged that the shell of the outer wall above them was barely two meters thick. “A very thin face.”

“Some bubble,” Sallah said, feeling impious and wanting to regain her equilibrium after her initial awe. “Look, you could carve a staircase in that,” she said, her light picking out a slanting foot of rock that rose to a ledge where a large darkness indicated yet another cave.

She spoke to inattentive ears. for Tarvi was already prowling about, determining the width of the entrance and the dimensions of the cave. She hurried after him.

The first chamber of the cave complex measured an awesome fifty-seven meters deep at its widest, tapering at either end to forty-six meters on the left and forty-two meters on the right. Along the back wall, there were innumerable irregular openings at random levels; some were on the ground level leading into apparent tunnel complexes, most of which were high enough to admit Tarvi’s tall frame with considerable head space; others, like great dead eyes, peered down from higher up the inside wall. Entranced as Tarvi was by their discovery, he was a trained scientific observer. With Sallah’s aid, he began to draft an accurate plan of the main chamber, the openings of secondary ones, and the tunnel complexes leading inward. He penetrated each to a depth of a hundred meters, roped to a nervous Sallah who kept glancing back at the cave’s opening for the reassuring sight of the waning day.

His rough notes were refined by the light of the gas fire on which Sallah cooked their evening meal. Tarvi had elected to camp far enough into the cave to be protected from the stiff breeze that blew down the valley, and far enough to the left so as not to interfere with the habits of the cave’s natural residents. Later, a low flame from the protected gas fire would discourage most of Pern’s wildlife from investigating the intruders.

Somehow, in the cave Sallah did feel like an intruder, though she had not previously been bothered by that notion. The place was truly awe-inspiring.

Tarvi had gone down to the sled to bring up more drafting tools and the folding table over which he had hunched almost immediately. With no comment, he had eaten the stew she had carefully prepared, absently handing back his plate for a second helping.

Sallah was of two minds about Tarvi’s concentration. On the one hand she was a good cook and liked to have her skill acknowledged. On the other hand, she was as glad that Tarvi was distracted. One of the pharmacists had given her a pinch of what she swore was a potent indigenous aphrodisiac; Sallah had used it to season Tarvi’s share. She did not need it herself, not with her mind and body vibrating to his presence and their solitude. But she was beginning to wonder if the aphrodisiac was strong enough to overcome Tarvi’s enchantment with the cave. Just her luck to get him to herself for a night or two and then have him be totally enthralled by Dear Old Mother Earth in Pernese costume. But she had not bided her time to waste a sterling opportunity. She could wait. All night. And tomorrow. She had enough of the joy dust to use the next night, too. Maybe it just took a while to act.

“It is truly magnificent in its proportions, Sallah. Here, look!” He straightened his torso, arching his back against his cramped muscles, and Sallah came up behind him, knelt, and considerately began to knead his taut shoulder muscles as she peered over his shoulder.

The two-dimensional sketch had been deftly drawn with bold lines: he had added back, front, and side elevations, truthfully ending them where his measurements ended. But that only made the cavern more imposing and mysterious.

“What a fort it would have been in the olden days!” He looked toward the black interior, his wide liquid eyes shining, his face alight as imagination altered the chamber before him. “Why, it would have housed whole tribes. Kept them secure for years from invasion. There’s fresh water, you understand, down the third left-hand tunnel. Of course, the valley itself would be defensible and this the protected inner hold, with that daunting slab to defeat climbers. There are no less than eighteen different exits from the main chamber.”

She had worked her hands up the column of his neck, then across the trapezius muscles, and down to the deltoids, massaging firmly but letting her fingers linger in a movement that she found immensely effective on other occasions when she had wished to relax a man.

“Ah, how kind you are, Sallah, to know where the muscles bind.” He twisted slightly, not to evade her seeking, kneading fingers but to guide them to the sorest points. He pushed the low table to one side so that his arms could fall naturally to his lap as he rotated his head. “There’s a point, eleventh vertebrae . . .” he suggested, and she dutifully found the knot of muscle and smoothed it expertly. He sighed like a lithe dark feline being stroked.

She said nothing, but moved ever so slightly forward so that her body touched his. As she walked her fingers back to his neck, she dared to press against him so that her breasts lightly touched his shoulder blades. She could feel her nipples harden at the contact, and her respiration quickened. Her fingers ceased to knead and began to caress, moving down over his chest in long slow motions. He caught her hands then, and she could feel the stillness of him, a stillness of mind and breath, as his body began to tremble slightly.

“Perhaps this is the time,” he mused as if alone. “There will never be a better. And it must be done.”

With the suppleness that was as much a trademark of Tarvi Andiyar as his ineffable charm, he gathered her in his arms, pulling her across his lap. His expression, oddly detached as if examining her for the first time, was not yet quite, the tender, loving expression she had so wished to evoke. His expressive and large brown eyes were almost sad, though his perfectly shaped lips curved in an infinitely gentle smile—as if, the thought intruded on Sallah’s delight in her progress, he did not wish to frighten her.

“So, Sallah,” he said in his rich low and sensual voice, “it is you.”

She knew she should interpret that cryptic remark, but then he began to kiss her, his hands suddenly displaying an exceedingly erotic mind of their own, and she no longer wished to interpret anything.

Chapter 8

FOUR MARES, THREE dolphins, and twelve cows produced their young at precisely the same moment, or so the records for that dawn hour stood. Sean had even agreed to allow Sorka to observe the birth of the foal designated for him by Pol and Bay. He had maintained a pose of skepticism over the color and sex of the creature although, three days previously, he had already witnessed that the first of the draft animals produced for his father’s group was exactly as requested, a sturdy bay mare with white socks and a face blaze who had weighed over seventy kilos at birth and would be the image of the long-dead Shire stallion whose sperm had begot her.

Some wit had quipped that Landing’s records were turning into the biblical begottens of Pern’s chronicle. In two years, the new generation was well begun and increasing daily. Human births were less minutely reported than the successes of animalkind, but at least as well celebrated.

Sheep and the Nubian strain of goats that had somehow adapted where other tough breeds had failed grazed Landing’s meadows and would soon go to farm-stake acres in the temperate belts of the southern continent. The growing herds and flocks were patrolled by such a proliferation of dragonets that the ecologists were becoming concerned that the animals would lose their natural abilities to fend for themselves. The tame dragonets were proving to be extraordinarily faithful to the humans who had impressed them at hatching, even after their voracious appetites abated with maturity and they were well able to forage on their own.

The biology department was learning more about the little creatures every day. Bay Harkenon and Pol Nietro had discovered a particularly surprising phenomenon. When Bay’s little queen mated with a bronze that Pol had impressed, the sensuality of their pets surprised them with its intensity. They found themselves responding to the exciting stimulus in a human fashion. After the initial shock, they came to a mutual conclusion and took a larger residence together. Awed by the empathic potential of the dragonets, Bay and Pol asked for, and got, Kitti Ping’s permission to try mentasynth enhancement on the fourteen eggs that Bay’s Mariah had conceived in her mating flight. They fussed considerably more over the little golden Mariah than was necessary, but neither the dragonet nor her clutch suffered. When Mariah produced her enhanced eggs in a specially constructed facsimile of a beach, Bay and Pol were smugly pleased.

Incorporation of mentasynth, which had originally been developed by the Beltrae, a reclusive Eridani hive culture, sparked latent empathic abilities. Dragonets had already demonstrated such an ability, amounting to an almost telepathic communication with a few people. The dragonets were clearly a remarkable evolutionary attempt which, like dolphins, had produced an animal that understood its environment—and controlled it. So, inspired by the success of the dolphins’ mentasynth enhancement, Bay and Pol hoped that the dragonets would come to an even closer empathy with people.

Initially, humans from Beltrae who had been “touched” were regarded with great suspicion, of course, but as soon as their remarkable empathic powers with animals and other people were realized, the technique became widespread. Many groups eventually had valued healers whose abilities had been amplified that way. Luckily, that all happened well before the Pure Human group became powerful.

From their studies of the tunnel snakes and wherries, Bay and Pol had come to an appreciation of the potential of the charming and useful dragonets. It had taken many experiments with dragonet tissues, and with several generations of the little tunnel snakes, to incorporate the mentasynth system successfully, but longtime’ experience with such species as dolphins—and, of course, man—paid off.

Everyone in Landing had come to have a working knowledge of the habits of the dragonets, biological as well as psychological, for there was good cause to be grateful to the creatures and to tolerate their few natural excesses. Theoretically, Bay had known that some of the owners seemed to feel the “primitive urges” of the creatures: hunger, fear, anger, and an intense mating imperative. She had simply never thought that she would be as vulnerable as her younger colleagues. It had been an exceedingly delightful surprise.

Red and Mairi Hanrahan were thankful that Sorka and Sean had impressed—the word, meaning the act of imprinting a dragonet, had somehow crept into the language—dragonets that would not want to mate with each other. They still did not approve of Sorka’s close attachment to the boy and felt that she was too young to be subject to irresistible sensual urges.

On that morning, nearly twelve months after Landing, the mare Sean had chosen to produce his promised foal was laboring to give birth, there was no doubt that Sorka, who had turned thirteen, and Sean, two years older, were in rapport with their eagerly anticipating dragonets. The two browns and the bronze had perched on the top rail of the stable partition, their eyes whirling with growing excitement as they crooned their birth song. The little chestnut mare dropped to the straw to deliver the forelegs and head of her foal. Above, the rafters of the barn seemed to ripple with its temporary adornment of the dragonet population of Landing, crooning and chirping continual encouragement.

Dragonets were sentimental about births and missed none in Landing, bugling in high-pitched tenor voices at each new arrival. Fortunately, they discreetly remained outside human habitations. The colony’s obstetricians had lately been working nonstop and had drafted the nurses and taken on apprentices. An array of dragonets on a roof became an irrefutable sign of impending birth: the dragonets were never wrong. The obstetricians could gauge the labor’s progress by the growing intensity of the dragonets’ welcoming song. The chorus might deprive neighbors of sleep, but most of the community took it in good humor. Even the most jaundiced had seen the dragonets protecting the flocks and herds, and had to appreciate their value.

The chestnut mare heaved again, extruding the foal farther. Since its legs, head, and forequarters were wet with birth fluids, Sean could not distinguish the animal’s color. Then the rest of the body emerged, followed, with a final push, by the hindquarters. There was no doubt that he was not only darkly dappled but male. With a crow of incredulous joy, Sean dropped to the little fellow’s head to mop it dry, even before the mare could form her bond. Tears streaming down her dusty face, Sorka hugged herself in joy. Dimly she heard the excited comments of the other animal midwives sharing the large barn.

“He’s the only colt,” her father said, returning to Sean and Sorka. “As ordered.” Though the colony actually needed as many female animals as it could breed, Sean’s preference for a colt had been duly considered. And one local stallion would be a safeguard, though there were more than enough varied sperms in reserve. “Grand fellow, though,” Red remarked, nodding his head approvingly. “Make a good sixteen hands, if I’m any judge. A sturdy nine stone, I’d say. Fine good fellow, and she bore him like a trooper.” He stroked the neck of the little mare, who was licking the colt as he suckled her with vigor “Come now, Sorka,” he went on, seeing her tear-streaked face. “I’ll keep my promise that you’ll have a horse, too.” He gave her a reassuring hug.

“I know you will, Da,” she said, burrowing into his chest. “I’m crying because I’m so happy for Sean. He didn’t believe Bay, you know. Not for one moment.”

Red Hanrahan laughed softly, for it wouldn’t do for Sean to hear. Not that the boy was aware of anything but the colt, twisting its stump of a tail as if that would speed its suckling. For once, Sean’s customary wary, often cynical expression had softened with amazed tenderness as he devoured the colt with his eyes.

After Sorka gave her father a hug for his assurances, she stepped away from him, and her bronze glided down to her shoulder, chattering in a happy social tone as he wrapped his tail possessively about her neck. Then Duke leaned down Sorka’s chest, his eyes sparkling blue and green as he, too, examined the new arrival closely. Encouraged, Sean’s brown pair dropped to the lower rail of the foaling box, exchanging cheeps and chirps with Duke.

“You approve?” Sean asked them, grinning despite the challenge in his tone.

Bobbing their heads up and down vigorously, they extended wings, each complaining that the other’s wing was in the way, then they flicked their wings to their backs and assured Sean volubly that they approved. He grinned back at them.

“He’s a real beauty, Sean. Just what you wanted,” Sorka said.

Unaccountably Sean shook his head, looking dubious. “Too young to tell if he’ll match Cricket.”

“Oh, you are the utter limit!” Sorka snapped angrily. She left the box, nearly jamming the door rail as she closed it with considerable vehemence.

“What’d I say?” Sean demanded of Red Hanrahan.

“I think you’ll have to figure that one out yourself, boyo!” Red clapped him on the shoulder, torn between amusement and a certain concern for his daughter. “Give the mare her feed before you leave, will you, Sean?”

As Red Hanrahan walked down the aisle, checking on the other new arrivals, he considered Sorka’s behavior. She was thirteen but a well-developed girl who had been menstruating for nearly a year. That she doted on Sean was patent to everyone but Sean. He tolerated her. As did Sean’s family. Mairi and Red had talked it over, wary of the boy’s background though both Hanrahans acknowledged that it was time to discard old attitudes and opinions.

Sean, too, had made several notable concessions. Whether spurred by competition with Sorka or mere male arrogance, he had improved his reading and writing skills and frequently used a viewer to scan veterinary tests in Red’s office. Red had carefully cultivated the boy’s interest and encouraged him to help with the breeding stock. The boy unquestionably had a way with animals, not just horses, though he ignored sheep altogether.

“Sean says sheep are for stealing, trading, and eating,” Sorka told her father when he had remarked on that exception.

Mairi did worry occasionally that Sorka was inevitably partnered with Sean when they were assigned together to the zoological expeditions. But, as Sorka blithely explained, she got along with Sean, and they were both more used to handling animals and wildlife than urban-bred young people. As long as they did their obligatory share of work for the colony, and enjoyed it, they were ahead of the game. Sean was also making more of a contribution to Landing’s efforts than most of his people. It was just that Sean and Sorka were becoming linked together in the collective Landing mind, Mairi wistfully remarked one evening to Red. To his surprise, Red found himself in the position of devil’s advocate. But then, like Sorka, he had grown accustomed to Sean’s ways and knew what to ignore.

Sorka’s exhibition of female exasperation that morning was the first of its kind, to Red’s knowledge, and he wondered ruefully if her patience with Sean’s obtuseness was exhausted, or if their relationship was merely entering a new phase. Sorka had been given an appropriate theoretical education in sexual relationships but until today had shown only a patient acceptance of Sean’s behavior and eccentricities. He would have to talk with Mairi. When he got the chance.

“Red! Reeeeddd!” another veterinarian called in alarm.

Red ran to consult. It was not until much later that night that he remembered the problem of Sorka and Sean, but Mairi was already long asleep and, as well as being in the second trimester of pregnancy, she was working hard enough in the crèche to deserve her rest.

The westward-jutting finger of the northern continent pointed directly at the big island, which loomed lavender above the gray of the morning sea. Avril had lifted off from the desert camp well before dawn, leaving a message that she was taking a day off. The others would not mind, and she was as tired of Ozzie Munson and Cobber Alhinwa as they were of her.

Yesterday, the two miners had found some really good turquoise and refused to tell her where, tantalizing her with brief glimpses of the very fine sky-blue-banded rock. She had known when they came into camp the previous evening that they were excited about the hunk that they were tossing back and forth. She had merely asked to see it, and had allowed herself to become irritated when the two miners had responded with secrecy. She would have to be very cautious with those two, she thought. They thought themselves so clever. Anyhow, turquoise, though valued for its rarity on Earth, was not really worth the trouble of ingratiating herself to those two jerks.

Then, at supper, when they were still whispering between themselves and glancing at her with sly smiles, she began to wonder if they had heard something in particular to make them react as they had to her polite and diffident query.

She tried to remember if they had ever teamed up with Bart Lemos. But he was at Andiyar’s ore mountain. He must, for once, have kept quiet about the gold nuggets that he had been panning out of a mountain stream above the camp. Obedient to the pact they had made on the Yoko, he had given them to her to hide in her cache at Landing. She had not confided much of her scheme to him, for, given a few mugs of quikal, Bart Lemos would give anyone his life history.

Maybe Stev Kimmer was not as good a choice of ally as she had initially thought, hearing his sly and witty complaints during the last year of that interminable journey to this god- forsaken planet. He was more attractive than the others; in fact, he was extremely attractive and, more importantly, lusty, with a willingness to experiment that the much vaunted Admiral Benden had never displayed. A bit of a bore in bed, our dear admiral. Damn Paul Benden. Why had he turned so cool toward her? After all those protestations of admiration and devotion. She had been so certain that she had felt the marriage contract in her hand. Then, a scant year away from their destination, when Rukbat had grown from a spark to a gleam in the blackness of space, Benden had altered. He suddenly had had no time for her at all. Well, he would find out what Avril Bitra was made of. And then it would be too late.

Colonizing had seemed like a good idea back on Earth when the excitement of the Nathi War had died down. Any alternative, save First Centauri, which everyone knew was controlled by the First Families and founding companies, was better than Earth or moldering at grade on a lumbering merchantman. She had even toyed with the challenge of navigating mining ships within the Belts until the Roosevelt Dome had exploded for no apparent reason, killing all but a handful of the ten thousand inhabitants. The chance to rule a new world had drawn her. Over the years, she had had enough experience with psycho profiles to know how to control her pulse and what answers to give to the asinine questions that were supposed to separate truth from fiction. And so she had been accepted as astrogator for the Pern expedition.

But since she had failed to capture Paul Benden, who would be Pern’s first leader—in her estimation, the less colorful Emily Boll would be overshadowed by the more flamboyant admiral once they landed on Pern—she had decided that living the rest of her life in obscurity at the end of the Milky Way was insupportable. She was, after all, a competent astrogator and, given a ship, charts, and a deep-sleep tank, she could make her way to some other civilized and sophisticated planet that catered to the life-style she wished to enjoy.

She had begun with Stev Kimmer, partly just to ease the pain of losing Paul Benden. When she had noticed that Bart Lemos managed to attach himself to her whenever Stev was on duty, she encouraged him, too. Nabhi Nabol joined the group one evening, along with several others. Bart and Nabhi were pilots, each with a useful secondary skill: Bart in mining, and Nabhi in computers. Stev was a mechanical engineer with an uncanny ability to diagnose computer failures and rearrange chips to do twice the work they had been designed to handle.

For the plan taking shape in her mind, she assembled useful cronies. Most were contractors like herself, or small-stake charterers beginning to feel that they had been shortchanged on their deals. In the back of Avril’s mind was the notion that it would be fun to see if she could foment sufficient discord to overthrow their benevolent-leaders and rule Pern on her own, instead of as Paul Benden’s consort. But that would have to wait for a propitious moment once the colony had been settled in and troubles began.

So far, except for minor hitches, there had been no trouble of the type that she could use for her purposes. Everyone was too busy scurrying around, settling in, raising livestock, and zipping here and there looking at real estate. She despised the colonists for being so enthusiastic about the ghastly empty wasteland of a world, with its noisy wildlife and the thousands of things that crawled, wriggled, or flew. There was not a decent useful animal native to the entire planet, and she was getting very tired of eating fish or wherry, which sometimes tasted more like fish than what came out of the sea. Even tankbeef would have been an acceptable substitute.

More and more her determination to leave this wretched backwater world was reinforced. But she would leave it in style, and the hell with the rest of them.

Stev Kimmer was essential to that escape. He was constructing an emergency beacon for her from parts he had “found” on the Yokohama; without that essential piece of equipment, her scheme would have to be aborted. Kimmer had to be kept on the mark, too, for when she wanted to appropriate the captain’s gig.

More important was his willingness to participate in her plan to stake the right sections of the island to prospect for the gemstones that she knew were there. Grandmama Shavva had left her single remaining descendant a legacy that had to be grasped.

Kimmer was to requisition a sled for seven days in a quite legitimate search for a stake. He was supposed to imply that he was looking about the southern continent. As a veteran of the Nathi War, he had twice Avril’s allotment. That the charterers had more than any contractor, including herself, the astrogator, who had delivered them safely to the wretched place, was a fact that had never set well with her.

Damn Munson and Alhinwa. They could have told her where they had unearthed the turquoise. Pern was a virgin world, with metal and mineral aplenty, untouched as yet by careless prospectors and greedy merchants. There was plenty for everyone. Back on sophisticated worlds, any large, well-colored hunks of that sky-blue stone would be snatched up by ardent collectors—the higher the asking price the more collectible!

And why had she not heard from Nabhi? She suspected that he might be trying to run a program of his own, instead of the one she had set. She would have to watch that one: he was a devious sort. Much as she was. In the long run, she had the upper hand, since she was the astrogator, and Nabhi did not have the skills required to get home by himself. He had to have her, but she did not have to have him—unless it suited her. Nabol was not as good overall for her purposes as Kimmer was, but he would do in a pinch.

She had almost bridged the distance between continent and island and could see waves lashing the granite rock. She veered to port, looking for the mouth of the natural harbor where the long-dead survey team had made camp. She had told Kimmer to meet her there. She felt better about being someplace that had already been occupied. She could not stand listening to the idiot colonists going on and on about being “first” to see that or “first” to step there, or the naming arguments that continually dominated conversation night after night around the bonfire. Shit in Drake’s Lake! Fatuous ass! Lousy gravity-ball player!

She corrected her course as she spotted the two natural spurs of rock that formed a breakwater to the roughly oval natural harbor. Kimmer would have hid the sled anyhow just in case . . . She caught herself and snorted in sour amusement. As if anyone on this goody-good world is checking up on anyone else! “We are all equal here.” Our brave and noble leaders have so ordained it. With equal rights to share in Pern’s wealth. You just bet. Only I’ll get my equal share before anyone else and shake this planet’s dirt off my boots!

Just as she passed over the breakwater, she saw the glint of metal under the lush foliage to starboard on a ledge above the sandy shoreline. Nearby was the smoke of Kimmer’s small fire. She landed her sled neatly beside his.

“You were right about this place, baby,” he greeted her, a closed fist upraised and shaken in victory. “I got here yesterday afternoon, good tail wind all the way, so I did a decco. And see what I found first thing!”

“Let me see,” she said, displaying a bright breathless eagerness, though she did not at all like his presumptive solo explorations.

He smiled broadly as he slowly opened his fingers and let his hand drop so that she could see the large gray rock he held. Her eagerness drained with discouragement until he turned the stone just slightly and she caught the unmistakable glint of green, half buried in one end.

“Fardles!” She snatched the stone from his hand and whirled to the sun, which had risen over the ocean by then. She wet her finger and rubbed at the green glint.

“I also found this,” Kimmer said.

Looking up, she saw him holding a squarish green stone the size of a spoon bowl, rough-edged where it had been prized from a limestone cavity.

She almost threw away the rock with its still-hidden treasure in her eagerness to take the rough emerald from him. She held it to the sun, saw the flaw, but had no complaint about the clear deep green. She weighed it in her hand. Why, it had to be thirty or forty carats. With a clever lapidary to cut beyond the flaw, there would be fifteen carats of gemstone. And if that stone was just a sample . . . The idea of apprenticing as a gemstone cutter and using that magnificent jewel to learn on amused her.

“Where?” she demanded, her breath constricted with urgency.

“Over there.” He half turned, pointing up into the thick vegetation. “There’s a whole cave of them embedded in the rock.”

“You just walked in and it winked at you?” She forced herself to speak lightly, amusedly, smiling up approvingly at his beaming face. He looked so bloody pleased with himself. She continued to smile but ground her teeth.

“I’ve klah for you,” he said, gesturing to the fire where he had rigged a spit and a protecting rock for his kettle.

“That abominable stuff,” she exclaimed. She had a fleet-incurred preference for strong coffee, and the last had been served at that pathetic Thanksgiving shindig—and spilled when the tremor had shaken the urns from their stands. The last coffee from Earth had seeped, undrunk, into the dirt of Pern.

“Oh, if you use enough sweetening, it’s not all that bad.” He poured her a cup even though she had not said that she wanted one. “They say it’s got as much caffeine in it as coffee or tea. The secret’s in drying the bark thoroughly before grinding and steeping it.”

He had lashed sweetener into the cup and handed it to her, expecting her to be grateful for his thoughtfulness. She could not afford to alienate Kimmer even if he sounded revoltingly like a good little colonist, approving of good colonial substitutes.

“Sorry, Stev,” she said, smiling apologetically at him as she took the cup. “Early morning nerves. I really do miss coffee.”

He gave a shrug. “We won’t for long, now, will we?”

She kept her smile in place, wondering if he knew how inane he sounded. Then, she cautioned herself severely, if she had only been more careful with Paul, she might have been first lady on Pern. What had she done wrong? She could have sworn she would be able to maintain his interest in her. All had gone perfectly right up until they entered the Rukbat system. Then it had been as if she no longer existed. And I got them here!

“Avril?”

She came back to the present at the impatience in Stev Kimmer’s voice. “Sorry!” she said.

“I said that I’ve already got food for the day, so as soon as you finish that we can go.”

She tipped her cup, watching the dark liquid momentarily stain the white sand. She jiggled the cup to scatter the last drops, put it upside down by the fire like a good little colonist, and rose to her feet, smiling brightly at Kimmer. “Well, let’s go!”

Chapter 9

PERHAPS IT WAS because people were so accustomed to dragonets after nearly eight years of close association that they no longer paid much attention to the creatures’ behavior. Those who noticed their unusual antics thought that the dragonets were merely playing some sort of a new game, for they were inventively amusing. Later people would remember that the dragonets attempted to herd the flocks and herds back to the barns. Later marine rangers would remember that the bottlenoses Bessie, Lottie, and Maximilian had urgently tried to explain to their human friends why the indigenous marine life was rushing eastward to a food source.

At her home in Europe Square; Sabra Stein-Ongola actually thought that Fancy, the family dragonet, was attacking her three-year-old son at play in the yard. The little gold was grabbing at Shuvin’s shirt, attempting to haul him from his sandpile and his favorite toy truck. As soon as Sabra had rescued the boy, batting at Fancy, the dragonet had hovered over her, cheeping with relief. It was puzzling behavior to be sure, but, though the fabric of the shirt was torn, Sabra could see no marks on Shuvin’s flesh from the dragonet talons. Nor was Shuvin crying. He merely wanted to go back to his truck while Sabra wanted to change his shirt.

To her utter surprise, Fancy tried to duck into the house with them, but Sabra got the door closed in time. As she leaned against it, catching her breath, she noticed through the rear window that other dragonets were acting in the most peculiar fashion. She was somewhat reassured by the fact that there had never been reports of dragonets hurting people, even in the ardor of mating, but that did not seem to be what was agitating them, because greens were wheeling as frantically as the other colors. Greens always got out of the way when a gold was mating. And it was certainly the wrong time for Fancy to be in season.

As Sabra changed Shuvin’s shirt, deftly handling the little boy’s squirms, she realized that the cries that penetrated the thick plastic walls of the house sounded frightened. Sabra knew the usual dragonets sounds as well as anyone in Landing. What could they be frightened of?

The large flying creature—perhaps a very big wherry—that had been occasionally spotted soaring near the Western Barrier Range would be unlikely to range so far east. What other danger could there be on a fine early spring morning? That smudge of gray cloud far off on the horizon suggested rain later on in the day, but that would be good for the crops already sprouting in the grain fields. Maybe she should get the clothes in off the line. Sometimes she missed the push-button conveniences that back on old Earth had eliminated the drudgery of monotonous household tasks. Too bad that the council never considered requiring miscreants to do domestic duties as punishment for disorderly conduct. She pulled Shuvin’s shirt down over his trousers, and he gave her a moist, loving kiss.

“Truck, Mommie, truck? Now?”

His wistful question made her aware, suddenly, of the silence, of the absence of the usual cheerful cacophony of dragonet choruses which was the background to daily life in Landing and in nearly every settlement across the southern continent. Such a complete silence was frightening. Startled, restraining Shuvin who wanted urgently to get back out and play in the sand, Sabra peered out the back window, then through the plasglas behind her. She saw not a dragonet in sight. Not even on Betty Musgrave-Blake’s house where there had been the usual natal congregation. Betty was expecting her second child; and Sabra had seen Basil, the obstetrician, arriving with Greta, his very capable apprentice midwife.

Where were the dragonets? They never missed a birth.

As well established as Landing was, one was still supposed to report anything unusual on Pern. She tried Ongola’s number on the comm unit, but it was engaged. While she was using the handset, Shuvin reached his grubby hand up to the door pull and slid it open, with a mischievous grin over his shoulder at his mother as he performed that new skill. She smiled her acquiescence as she tapped out Bay’s number. The zoologist might know what was amiss with her favorite critters.

Well east and slightly south of Landing, Sean and Sorka were hunting wherry for Restday meals. As the human settlements spread, foragers were having to go farther afield for game.

“They’re not even trying to bunt, Sorka,” Sean said, scowling. “They’ve spent half the morning arguing. Fardling fools.” He lifted one muscular brown arm in an angry gesture to his eight dragonets. “Shape up, you winged wimps. We’re here to hunt!”

He was ignored as his veteran browns seemed to be arguing with the mentasynths, most aggressively with Sean’s queen, Blazer. That was extraordinary behavior: Blazer, who had been genetically improved by Bay Harkenon’s tinkering, was usually accorded the obedience that any of the lesser colors granted the fertile gold females.

“Mine, too,” Sorka said, nodding as her own five joined Sean’s. “Oh, jays, they’re coming for us!” Slackening her reins, she began to tighten her legs around her bay mare but stopped when she saw Sean, wheeling Cricket to face the oncoming dragonets, hold up an imperious hand. She was even more startled to see the dragonets assume an attack formation, their cries clamors of unspeakable fright and danger.

“Danger? Where?” Sean spun Cricket around on his haunches, a trick that Sorka had never been able to teach Doove despite Sean’s assistance and her own endless patience. He searched the skies and stayed Cricket as the dragonets solidly turned their heads to the east.

Blazer landed on his shoulder, swirling her tail about his neck and left bicep, and shrieked to the others. Sean was amazed at the interaction he sensed. A queen taking orders from browns? But he was distracted as her thoughts became vividly apprehensive.

“Landing in danger?” he asked. “Shelter?”

Once Sean had spoken, Sorka understood what her bronzes were trying to convey to her. Sean was always quicker to read the mental images of his enhanced dragonets, especially those of Blazer, who was the most coherent. Sorka had often wished for a golden female, but she loved her bronzes and brown too much to voice a complaint.

“That’s what they all give me, too,” Sorka said, as her five began to tug various parts of her clothing. Though Sean could hunt bare to the Waist, she bobbled too much to ride topless comfortably; her sleeveless leather vest provided support, as well as protection from the claw holds of the dragonets. Bronze Emmett settled on Doove’s poll long enough to secure a grip on one ear and the forelock, trying to pull the mare’s head around.

“Something big, something dangerous, and shelter!” Sean said, shaking his head. “It’s only a thunderstorm, fellas. Look, just a cloud!”

Sorka frowned as she looked eastward. They were high enough on the plateau to have just a glimpse of the sea.

“That’s a funny-looking cloud formation, Sean. I’ve never seen anything like it. More like the snowclouds we’d have now and again in Ireland.”

Sean scowled and tightened his legs. Cricket, picking up on the dragonets’ urgent fears, pranced tensely in place in the piaffe he had been taught, but it was clear that he would break into a mad gallop the minute Sean gave him his head. The stallion’s eyes were rolling white in distress as he snorted. Doove, too, was fretting, spurred by Emmett’s peculiar urgency.

“Doesn’t snow here, Sorka, but you’re right about the color and shape. By jays, whatever it’s raining, it’s damned near visible. Rain here doesn’t fall like that.”

Duke and Sean’s original two browns saw it and shrieked in utter frustration and terror. Blazer trumpeted a fierce command. The next thing Sean and Sorka knew, both horses had been spurred by well-placed dragonet stabs across their rumps into a headlong stampede which the massed fair of dragonets aimed north and west. Rein, leg, seat, or voice had no effect on the two pain-crazed horses, for whenever they tried to obey their riders, they got another slash from the vigilant dragonets.

“Whatinell’s got into them?” Sean cried, hauling on the hackamore that he used in place of a bit in Cricket’s soft mouth. “I’ll break his bloody nose for him, I will.”

“No, Sean,” Sorka cried, leaning into her mare’s forward plunge. “Duke’s terrified of that cloud. All of mine are. They’d never hurt the horses! We’d be fools to ignore them.”

“As if we could!”

The horses were diving headlong down a ravine. Sean needed all his skill to stay on Cricket, but his mind sensed Blazer’s relief that she had succeeded in moving them toward safety.

“Safety from what?” he muttered in a savage growl, hating the feeling of impotence on an animal that had never disobeyed him in its seven years, an animal that he had thought he understood better than any human on the whole planet.

The headlong pace did not falter, even when Sean felt the gray stallion, fit as he was, begin to tire. The dragonets drove both horses onward, straight toward one of the small lakes that dotted that part of the continent.

“Why water, Sean?” Sorka cried, sitting back and hauling on Doove’s mouth. When the mare willingly slowed, Duke and the other two bronzes screamed a protest and once again gouged her bleeding rump.

Neighing and white-eyed with fear, the mare leapt into the water, nearly unseating her rider. The stallion plunged beside her, galled by the spurred talons of Sean’s dragonets.

The lake, a deep basin collecting the runoff from the nearby hills, had little beach and the horses were soon swimming, determinedly herded by the dragonets toward the rocky overhang on the far side. Sean and Sorka had often sunbathed on that ledge; they enjoyed diving from their high perch into the deep water below.

“The ledge? They want us under the ledge? The water’s fardling deep there.”

“Why?” Sorka still asked. “It’s only rain coming.” She was swimming beside Doove, one hand on the pommel of her saddle, the other holding the reins, letting the mare’s efforts drag her forward. “Where’d they all go?”

Sean, swimming alongside Cricket, turned on his side to look back the way they had come. His eyes widened. “That’s not rain. Swim for it, Sorka! Swim for the ledge!”

She cast a glance over her shoulder and saw what had startled the usually imperturbable young man. Terror lent strength to her arm; tugging on the reins, she urged Doove to greater efforts. They were nearly to the ledge, nearly to what little safety that offered from the hissing silver fall that splatted so ominously across the woods they had only just left.

“Where are the dragonets?” Sorka wailed as she crossed into the shadow of the ledge. She tugged at Doove, trying to drag the mare in behind her.

“Safer where they are, no doubt!” Sean sounded bitterly angry as he forced Cricket under the ledge. There was just room enough for the horses’ heads to remain above the level of the water, but there was no purchase for their flailing legs.

Suddenly both horses ceased resisting their riders and began to press Sean and Sorka against the inner wall, whinnying in abject terror.

“Jack your legs up, Sorka! Balance against the inside wall!” Sean shouted, demonstrating.

Then they heard the hiss on the water. Peering around the frightened horses’ heads, they could actually see the long, thin threads plunging into the water. The lake was suddenly roiling and cut every which way with the fins of the minnows that had been seeded in the streams.

“Jays! Look at that!” Sean pointed excitedly to a small jet of flame just above the lake’s surface that charred a large tangle of the stuff before it landed in the water.

“Over there, too!” Sorka said, and then they heard the agitated but exultant chatter of dragonets. Crowded back under the ledge, they caught only fleeting glimpses of dragonets and the unexpected flames.

All at once Sorka remembered that long-ago day when she had first witnessed the dragonets defending the poultry flocks. She had been certain then that Duke had flamed at a wherry. “That happened before, Sean,” Sorka said, her fingers slipping on his wet shoulder as she grabbed at it to get his attention. “Somehow they breathe fire. Maybe that’s what the second stomach is for.”

“Well, I’m glad they weren’t cowards,” Sean muttered, cautiously propelling himself to the opening. “No,” he said in a relieved voice, expelling a big sigh. “They’re by no means cowards. C’mere, Sorka.”

Glancing anxiously at Doove, Sorka joined Sean and cried out with surprised elation. Their fair of dragonets had been augmented by a mass of others. The little warriors seemed to take turns diving at the evil rainfall, their spouts of flame reducing the terror to char, which fell as ashes to the surface of the lake, where quick fish mouths gobbled it up.

“See, Sorka, the dragonets are protecting this ledge.”

Sorka could see the menacing rain falling unimpeded to the lake on either side of the dragonet fire zone.

“Jays, Sean, look what it does to the bushes!” She pointed to the shoreline. The thick clumps of tough bushes they had ridden through only moments before were no longer visible, covered by a writhing mass of “things” that seemed to enlarge as they watched. Sorka felt sick to her stomach, and only intense concentration prevented her from heaving her breakfast up. Sean had gone white about the mouth. His hands, moving rhythmically to keep him in position in the water, clenched into fists.

“No bleeding wonder the dragonets were scared.” He smashed impotent fists into the water, sending ripples out. Sorka’s Duke appeared instantly, hovering just outside and peering in. He waited just long enough to squeak a reassurance, and then literally disappeared. “Well, now,” Sean said. “If I were Pol Nietro, I’d call that instantaneous flit of theirs the best defense mechanism a species could develop.” A long thread slithered from the ledge and hung a moment in front of their horrified eyes before a flame charred it.

Revolted, Sean splashed water on the remains, whisking the floating motes away from Sorka and himself. Behind them the horses’ breathing showed signs of real distress.

“How long?” Sean said, gliding over to Cricket’s head and soothing the horse with his hands. “How long?”

“It is not mating activity,” Bay told Sabra when she called, “and it is a totally irrational pattern of behavior.” Her mind riffling through all she knew and had observed about the dragonets, Bay continued to peer out her window. As she watched, a sled lifted from a parking spot near the met tower, and it headed at full speed toward the storm. “Let me check my behavioral files and have a word with Pol. I’ll call you back. It really is most unusual.”

Pol was working on the vegetable patch behind their homes. He saw her coming and waved cheerfully, tipping back his visored cap and mopping his brow. The garden soil had been carefully enriched and enhanced by a variety of Terran beetles and worms that were as happy to aerate the soil of Pern as of Earth and augmented the local, lazier kinds. Bay saw Pol stop, his hand in midwipe, and stare about him; she guessed he had only then noticed the absence of the dragonets.

“Where’ve they all gone?” He glanced toward other residential squares and Betty’s empty roof. “That was sudden, wasn’t it?”

“Sabra’s just been on to me. She said their Fancy appeared to attack little Shuvin. For no reason, although her claws did not pierce the skin. Fancy then attempted to enter the house with them. Sabra said she sounded frightened.”

Pol raised his eyebrows in surprise and continued to wipe his brow and then the hat band before recovering his head. Leaning on his hoe, he glanced all around. It was then that he saw the gray clouds.

“Don’t like the look of that, m’luv,” he said. “I’ll take a bit of a break until it blows over.” He smiled at her. “While we access your notes on the menta-breed. Fancy’s a menta, not a native.”

Suddenly the air was full of shrieking, screaming, bugling, and very frightened dragonets.

“Where have they been, the little pests?” Pol demanded, snatching off his cap to wave it furiously in front of his face. “Faugh! They stink!”

Bay pinched his nostrils, hurrying toward the refuge of the house. “They do, indeed. Positively sulfurous.”

Six dragonets detached themselves from the swirling hundreds and dove for Bay and Pol, battering at their backs and screeching to hurry them forward.

“I do believe they’re driving us into the house, Pol,” Bay said. When she stopped to study the eccentric behavior, her queen grabbed a lock of her hair, and the two bronzes secured holds on the front of her tunic, pulling her forward. Their cries grew more frantic.

“I believe you’re correct. And they’re doing it to others, too.”

“I’ve never seen so many dragonets. We don’t normally have such a concentration here,” Bay went on, cooperating to the point of a lumbering jog trot. “Most of them are wilds! Look how much smaller some queens are. A preponderance of greens as well. Fascinating.”

“Extremely,” Pol remarked, mildly amused that the dragonets who were their particular friends had entered the house and were cooperating in a joint effort to close the door behind the humans. “Most remarkable.”

Bay was already sitting down at the terminal. “Patently, it’s something harmful to them as well as to us.”

“I’d prefer them to settle,” Pol said. Their dragonets were flitting about the lounge and into the bedroom, the bathroom, and even the addition to the house that had been made into a small but well-equipped home laboratory for the two scientists. “This is a bit much. Bay, tell your queen to settle, and the others will follow suit.”

“Tell her yourself, Pol, while I access the behavioral program. She’ll obey you as well as me.”

Pol attempted to coax Mariah to land on his arm. But the moment she touched down she was off again, and the others after her. A tidbit of her favorite fish was ignored. Pol was no longer amused. He looked out the window to see if others were experiencing the same mass hysteria and noticed that the squares had been cleared of people. He could see clouds of dust over by the veterinary barns, and the dark dashes of dragonets attempting to herd the animals. He could also hear the distant discord of frightened beasts.

“There had better be an explanation for this,” he murmured, pausing behind Bay to read the screen. “My word, look at Betty’s house!” He pointed over the screen and out the window toward a structure fully clothed in dragonets. “My God, should I call them to see if they need help?”

When he put his hand out to reach for the door pull, Mariah, screaming with anger, dove at his hand and pushed it away, scratching him.

“Don’t go, Pol. Don’t go out, Pol! Look!”

Bay had half risen from her chair and remained frozen in the semicrouch, a look of utter horror on her face. As Pol threw a protective arm about her shoulders, they both heard the hiss of the terrible rain that fell on Landing. They could see the individual elongated “raindrops” strike the surface, sometimes meeting only dust, other times writhing about the shrubs and grasses, which disappeared, leaving behind engorged sluglike forms that rapidly attacked anything green in their way. Pol’s nicely sprouting garden became a waste of squirming grayish “things,” bloating larger within seconds on each new feast.

Mariah let out a raucous call and disappeared from the house. The other five dragonets followed instantly.

“I don’t believe what I saw,” Pol said in an amazed whisper. “They’re teleporting in droves, almost formations. So the telekinesis was developed as a survival technique first. Hmm.”

The hideous rain had advanced, spreading its mindless burden behind and inexorably falling across Pol’s neatly patterned stonework patio toward the house.

“They can’t devour stone,” Pol remarked with clinical detachment. “I trust our silicon plastic roof provides a similar deterrent.”

“The dragonets have more than one unexplored skill, Pol, my dear,” Bay said proudly and pointed.

Outside, their dragonets were swooping and soaring, breathing flame to incinerate the attacking life-form before it could reach the house.

“I would be happier if I knew the things could not penetrate plastic,” Pol repeated with a slight tremor in his voice, looking up at the opaque roof. He winced and hunched in self-protection as he heard a slithering impact, then another, then saw the flame spurt briefly in gouts across the dark roof material.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said, straightening his shoulders.

“They did strike the roof, however, until the dragonets, bless their little hearts, set them ablaze.” Bay peered out the window facing Betty Musgrave-Blake’s house. “My word! Look at that!”

The house seemed to be ringed by fiery whirls and gouts as an umbrella of dragonets frantically made certain that not a single piece of the grotesque rain reached the home of a woman in labor.

Pol had the presence of mind to collect his binoculars from the clutter on a shelf. He turned them on the fields and the veterinary sheds. “I wonder if they’ll protect our livestock. There’re too many animals to get all safely under shelter. But dragonets do seem to be massing in that area.”

Keenly interested in the safety of the herds and flocks they had helped to create, Pol and Bay took turns watching. Bay suddenly dropped the glasses, shuddering as she passed them wordlessly to Pol. She had been shocked by the sight of a fullgrown cow reduced in a few moments to a seared corpse covered by masses of writhing strings. Pol altered the focus and then groaned in helpless dismay, dropping the binoculars.

“Deadly, they are. Voracious, insatiable. It would appear they consume anything organic,” he murmured. Taking a deep, resolute breath, he raised the binoculars again. “And, unfortunately, to judge by the marks on the roofs of some of those shelters we put up first, carbon-based plastics, too.”

“Oh, dear. That could be terrible. Could this be a regional phenomenon?” Bay asked, her voice still trembling. “There were those odd circles on the vegetated areas, the ones in the original survey fax . . .” Turning away from the disaster, she sat down at the keyboard and, clearing the screen, began to call up files.

“I hope no one is foolish enough to go out after those last few cows and sheep,” Pol said, an edge to his voice. “I hope they got all the horses in safely. The new equine strain is too promising to lose, even to a ravening disaster.”

Almost as an afterthought the alarm klaxon on the meteorology tower began to bleat.

“Now that’s a bit after the fact, old fellow,” Pol said, turning to focus the binoculars on the tower. He could see Ongola in the tower, holding a rag against his cheek. The sled that had gone out to investigate the storm was parked so close to the tower entrance that Pol guessed that Ongola had probably dived directly from sled to the tower door.

“No, the sound carries and sets off the relays,” Bay said absently as her fingers flew over the keys.

“Ah, yes, I’d forgot that. Quite a few people went out on hunting parties this morning, you know.”

Bay’s quick fingers stilled, and she turned slowly in the swivel chair to stare at Pol, her face ashen.

“There now, old dear, so many people have dragonets now, and at least one of the smarter mentas you developed.” He crossed to her and gave her a reassuring pat on the head. “They’ve done a first-class job of warning and protecting us. Ah! Listen!”

There was no mistaking the exultant warble of the dragonets that always heralded a birth. Despite the bizarre disaster occurring on Pern at that moment, a new life had entered it. The welcome did not, however, interfere with the protective net of flame about the house.

“The poor baby! To be born now!” Bay mourned. Her plump cheeks were drawn, her eyes sunken in her face.

Heedless of the stinging pain on the left side of his face, Ongola kept one finger on the klaxon even as he began calling out to the other stations on the network.

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday at Landing! Take shelter! Get livestock under cover! Extreme danger. Shelter all living things.” He shuddered, recalling the horrific sight of two wayward sheep consumed in an eye-blink by the descending vileness. “Shelter under rock, metal, in water! An unnatural rain heading westward in uneven fall. Deadly! Deadly! Shelter. Mayday from Landing. Mayday from Landing. Mayday from Landing!” Drops of blood from his head and neck dripped in punctuation to his terse phrases. “Cloud unnatural. Rainfall deadly. Mayday from Landing! Take shelter! Mayday. Mayday.”

His own home was barely visible through the sheeting fall, but he did see the gouts of flame above those houses in Landing still occupied. He accepted the amazing reality of the thousand of dragonets massing to assist their human friends, of the living, flaming shield over Betty Musgrave-Blake’s home, of the multitude swirling above the veterinary sheds and the pastures, and he remembered that Fancy had tried to fly into the window where he had been sitting out his watch. When he had suddenly realized that none of the meteorological devices were registering the cloud mass approaching steadily from the east, he had phoned Emily at her home.

“Go have a look, Ongola. Looks like just a good stiff equinoctial squall, but if the water-vapor instruments are not registering, you’d better check the wind speed and see if there’s hail or sleet in the clouds. There’re hunters and fishers out today, as well as farmers.”

Ongola had gotten close enough to the cloud to register its unusual composition—and to see the damage it did. He tried to raise Emily on the sled’s comm unit. When that did not work, he tried to reach Jim Tillek at Harbor Control. But he had taken the nearest sled, a small, fast one that did not have the sophisticated equipment the bigger ones did. He tried every number he could think of and only reached Kitti, who generally stayed in her home, frail in her tenth decade despite prostheses that gave her some mobility.

“Thank you for the warning, Ongola. A prudent person is well advised. I will contact the veterinary sheds for them to get the livestock under cover. A hungry rain?”

Ongola had thrown the little sled to its maximum speed, hoping that there was enough power in the packs to withstand such a drain. The sled responded, but he only just made it back to the tower, the engine dying just as he touched ground.

The stuff pelted down on the sled canopy. He had not managed to outrun the leading edge. He grabbed the flight-plan board, an inadequate shield from the deadly rain but better than nothing. Taking a deep breath, he punched auto-close, then ducked out. He took three long strides, more jump than run, and made it to the tower door just as a tangle descended. The tilted edge of the board deflected the stuff right onto the unprotected left side of his head. Screaming with pain, Ongola batted the stuff from his ear just as a dragonet came flaming up to his assistance. Ongola shouted a “Thanks” for the dragonet’s aid as he threw himself inside and slammed the door. Automatically, he threw the bolt, snorting at useless instinct, and took the steps to the tower in twos and threes.

The stinging pain continued, and he felt something oozing down his neck. Blood! He blotted at the injury with his handkerchief, noticing that the blood was mixed with black fragments, and he became aware of the stench of burned wool. The dragonet’s breath had scorched his sweater.

The warning delivered, he was flipping on the recording when a second stinging pain on his left shoulder made him glance. He saw the front end of a waving strand that did not look at all like wool. The pain seemed to accompany the strand. He had never undressed as fast as he did then. And he was just fast enough: the strand had become thicker and was moving with more rapidity and purpose. Even as he watched in horror at his close escape, the wool was ingested, and the grotesque, quivering segment left in its place filled him with revulsion.

Water! He reached for both the water pitcher and the klah thermos and emptied them over the . . . the thing. Writhing and bubbling, it slowly subsided into a soggy inert mass. He stamped on it with as much satisfaction as he had felt destroying Nathi surface positions.

Then he looked at his shoulder and saw the thin bloodied line scored in his flesh by his close encounter with that deadly piece of thread. A convulsive shudder took hold of his body, and he had to grab a chair to keep from falling to his knees.

The comm unit began to bleat at him. Taking several deep breaths, he got to his feet and back on duty.

“Thanks for the klaxon, Ongola. We had just time enough to batten down the hatches. Knew the critters were telling us something but howinell could we guess that?” Jim Tillek reported from the bridge of the Southern Star. “Thank the powers that be, our ships are all siliplex.”

Monaco Bay harbor office reported overturned small craft and was instigating rescues.

The infirmary reported that human casualties in and about Landing had been minimal: mainly dragonet scratches. They had the dragonets to thank for saving lives.

Red Hanrahan at Vet said that they had lost fifty or sixty assorted livestock of the breeding herds pastured about Landing, thanking the good fortune of having just shipped out three hundred calves, lambs, kids, and piglets to new homes the previous month. There were, however, large numbers at nearby stakes that did not have stabling facilities and were in the path of the abominable rain. Red added that all of the animals left loose to graze could be considered lost.

Two of the larger fishing vessels reported severe burn injuries for those who had not made it under cover in time. One of the Hegelman boys had jumped overboard and drowned when the things landed in a clump on his face. Maximilian, escorting the Perseus, had been unable to save him. The dolphin had added that native marine life was swarming to the surface, fighting over the drowning wrigglers. He himself did not much like the things: no substance.

Messages were rapidly stacking up on Ongola’s board; he rang Emily to send him some assistance.

The captain of Maid of the Sea, fishing to the north, wanted to know what was happening. The skies about him were clear to the southern horizon. Patrice de Brogue, stationed out at Young Mountain with the seismic team, asked if he should send his crew back. There had been only a few rumbles in the past weeks, though there were some interesting changes in the gravity meter graphs. Ongola told him to send back as many as he could, not wanting to think what might have happened to homesteads in the path of that malevolent Threadfall.

Bonneau phoned in from Drake’s Lake, where it was still night and very clear. He offered to send a contingent.

Sallah Telgar-Andiyar got through from Karachi Camp and said that assistance was already on its way. How widespread was the rain? she wanted to know.

Ongola shunted all those calls when the first of the nearby settlements reported.

“If it hadn’t been for those dragonets,” said Aisling Hempenstahl of Bordeaux, “we’d all be—have been eaten alive.” Her swallow was audible. “Not a green thing to be seen, and all the livestock gone. Except the cow the dragonets drove into the river, and she’s a mess.”

“Any casualties?”

“None I can’t take care of myself, but we’ve little fresh food. Oh, and Kwan wants to know do you need him at Landing?”

“I’d say yes, indeed we do,” Ongola replied fervently. Then he tried again to raise the Du Vieux, the Radelins, the Grant van Toorns, the Ciottis, and the Holstroms. “Keep trying these, Jacob.” He passed the list over to Jacob Chernoff, who had brought three young apprentices to help. “Kurt, Heinrich, try the River numbers, Calusa, Cambridge, and Vienna.” Ongola called Lilienkamp at Stores. “Joel, how many checked out for hunting today?”

“Too many, Ongola, too many.” The tough Joel was weeping.

“Including your boys?”

Joel’s response was the barest whisper. “Yes.”

“I am sorry to hear that, Joel. We’ve organized searches. And the boys have dragonets.”

“Sure, but look how many it took to protect Landing!” His voice rose shrilly.

“Sir.” Kurt tugged urgently at Ongola’s bare elbow. “One of the sleds—”

“I’ll get back to you, Joel.” Ongola took the call from the sled. “Yes?”

“Whaddya do to kill this stuff, Ongola?” Ziv Marchane’s anquished cry sent a stab of pure terror and fury to Ongola’s guts.

“Cautery, Ziv. Who is it?”

“What’s left of young Joel Lilienkamp.”

“Bad?”

“Very.”

Ongola paused and closed his eyes tightly for a moment, remembering the two sheep. “Then give him mercy!”

Ziv broke the connection, and Ongola stared at the console, paralyzed. He had given mercy several times, too many times, during the Nathi War when his men had been blown apart after Nathi hits on his destroyer. The practice was standard procedure in surface engagements. One never left one’s wounded to Nathi mercy. Mercy, yes, it was mercy to do so. Ongola had never thought that necessity would ever arise again.

Paul Benden’s vibrant voice broke through his pained trance. “What in hell’s happening, Ongola?”

“Wish the hell I knew, Admiral.” Ongola shook his head and then gave him a precise report and a list of casualties, known or suspected.”

“I’m coming in.” Paul had staked his claim on the heights above the delta on the Boca River. It would soon be dawn there. “I’ll check other stakes on the way in.”

“Pol and Kitti want samples if they can be safely got—of the stuff in the air. It scores holes through thin materials, so be sure to use heavy-gauge metal or siliplex. We’ve got enough of what ate our fields bare. I’ve sent all our big sleds out to track the frigging Fall. Kenjo’s flying in from Honshu in that augmented speeder of his. The stuff just came out of nowhere, Paul, nowhere!”

“Didn’t register on anything? No? Well, we’ll check it all out.”

The absolute confidence in Paul Benden’s voice was a tonic for Ongola. He had heard that same note all through the Cygnus Battle and he took heart.

He needed it. Before Paul Benden arrived late that afternoon, the casualties had mounted to a frightening total. Only three of the twenty who had gone hunting that morning had returned: Sorka Hanrahan, Sean Connell, and David Catarel, who had watched, helpless, from the water as his companion, Lucy Tubberman, dissolved under the rain on the riverbank despite the frantic efforts of their dragonets. He had deep scores on his scalp, left cheek, arms, and shoulders, and he was suffering from shock and grief.

Two babies, obviously thrust at the last moment into a small metal cabinet, were the only survivors of the main Tuareg camp on the plains west of the big bend in the Paradise River. Sean and Sorka had gone to find the Connells, who had last been reported on the eastern spur of Kahrain Province. No one answered from the northern stakes on the Jordan River. It looked bad.

Porrig Connell had, for once, listened to the warnings of the dragonets and had taken shelter in a cave. It had not been large enough to accommodate all his horses, and four of the mares had died. When they screamed outside, the stallion had gone berserk in the confines of the cave, and Porrig had had to cut his throat. There was no fodder for the remaining mares, so Sean and Sorka returned with hay and food rations. Then they went off to search for other survivors.

The Du Vieux and Holstroms at Amsterdam Stake, the Radelins and Duquesnes at Bavaria, and the Ciottis at Milan Stake were dead; no trace remained of them or their livestock. The metals and heavy-gauge, silicon-based plastic roofing, though it was heavily pocked, remained as the only evidence of their once thriving settlement. They had used the newly pressed vegetable-fiber, slabs for their homes. No one on Pern ever would use such building material again.

From the air, the swath of destruction cut by the falling threadlike rain was obvious, the fringes seething with bloated wormlike excrescences which squadrons of dragonets attacked with flaming breath. The path ended seventy-five klicks beyond the narrow Paradise River, where it had annihilated the Tuareg camps.

By evening, the exhausted settlers fed their dragonets first, and left out mounds of cooked grain for the wild ones that would not approach near enough to be hand-fed.

“Nothing was said about this sort of thing in the EEC report,” Mar Dook muttered in a bitter tone.

“Those wretched polka dots no one ever explained,” Aisling Hempenstahl said, her voice just loud enough to be heard.

“We’ve been investigating that possibility,” Pol Nietro said, nodding to a weary Bay, who was resting her head against his shoulder.

“Nevertheless, I think we should arrive at some preliminary conclusions before tomorrow,” Kitti said. “People will need facts to be reassured.”

“Bill and I looked up the reports we did on the polka dots—” Carol Duff-Vassaloe smiled grimly. “—during Landing Year. We didn’t investigate every site, but the ones we examined where tree development could be measured suggests a time lapse of at least a hundred and sixty or seventy years. I think it’s rather obvious that it was this terrible life-form which caused the patterning, turning all organic material it meets into more of itself. Thank heavens most of our building plastics are silicon-based. If they were carbon-based, we’d all have been killed, without a doubt. This infestation—”

“Infestation?” Chuck Havers’s voice broke in incredulous anger.

“What else to call it?” Phas Radamanth remarked in his dogmatic fashion. “What we need to know is how often it occurs? Every hundred and fifty years? That patterning was planet-wide, wasn’t it, Carol?” She nodded. “And how long does it last once it occurs?”

“Last?” Chuck demanded, appalled.

“We’ll get the answers,” Paul Benden said firmly.