Dragonsdawn

Chapter 10

THE COLONY’S TWO psychologists flew in late that evening when the infirmary was still crowded with the injured and shocked, and set to work immediately to help reduce traumas. Cherry Duff had suffered a stroke at the news, but was recovering splendidly. Joel and his wife were both prostrated by the loss of their sons. Bernard Hegelman had submerged his own grief to comfort his shattered wife and the other families bereft by loss.

Sean and Sorka had tirelessly sledded in the wounded they located. Even those injured were dazed, some weeping uncontrollably until sedated, others pathetically quiet. Porrig Connell had sent his eldest daughter and his wife to help cope with the survivors, while he stayed with his extended family in the cave.

“The first time Porrig Connell ever did anything for anyone else,” his son remarked under his breath to Sorka, who berated him for such cynicism. “He wants to use Cricket to service the rest of his mares when they foal. He expects me to give up my stallion because he hadn’t trained his!”

Sorka wisely said nothing.

With one exception, the distant holdings had contacted Landing, offering either assistance or sympathy. The one exception was the Big Island mining camp, comprised of Avril Bitra, Stev Kimmer, Nabhi Nabol, and a few others. Ongola, running over the log, noticed the absence.

Kenjo, appearing like magic from his distant Honshu plateau, headed the aerial survey. By nightfall, he and his team produced accurate maps and pics of the extent of the terrible “Threadfall,” as it soon came to be called. The original complement of biologists reconvened at Landing to ascertain the nature of the beast. Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom lent their special skills to analyze the life-forms as soon as samples were brought in.

Unfortunately too many, acquired at considerable danger to the volunteers, were found apparently moribund in the metal or heavy plastic containers in which they had been contained. Seemingly, after about twenty minutes, all the frenetic activity, the replications of the original strand several thousand times into big wriggling “sausages,” ceased. The form unraveled, blackened, and turned into an utterly lifeless, sticky, tarry mess, within a tougher shell.

The captain of the Mayflower, which had been trawling at the ragged northern edge of the Fall, inadvertently discovered a segment of Thread in a pail of fish bait, slapped on a tight lid, and reported the find to Landing. He was told to keep it alive, if possible, by judicious feeding until it could be flown to Landing.

By then, the Thread had to be housed in the biggest heavy-gauge plastic barrel on board the Mayflower. Ongola transported the tightly sealed barrel, using a long steel cable attached to the big engineering sled. Only when the crew saw the sled disappearing in the distance would they come on deck. The captain was later astonished to learn that his act was considered one of extreme bravery.

By the time the pulsing life-form reached Landing, it coiled, a gross meter long and perhaps ten centimeters in circumference, resembling a heavy hawser. Double-thick slabs of transparent silicon-based building plastic, tightly banded with metal strips, were rigged into a cage, its base quikplased to the floor. Several thin slits with locking flaps were created. A hole the size of the barrel opening was incised in the top, the barrel lid readied, and with the help of grimly anxious volunteers the terrible creature was transferred from barrel to cage. The top opening was sealed as soon as the life-form was dropped into the plastic cube.

One of the men scrambled for a corner to be sick in. Others averted their faces. Only Tarvi and Mar Dook seemed unmoved by the creature’s writhing as it engulfed the food that had been placed in the cube.

In its urgency to ingest, the thing rippled in waves of gray, greasy colors: sickly greens, dull pink tones, and an occasional streak of yellow flowed across its surface, the image sickeningly distorted by the thick clear plastic. The outer covering of the beast seemed to thicken. The thick shell probably formed at its demise, the observers guessed, for such remains had been found in rocky places where the organism had starved. The interior of the beast evidently deteriorated as rapidly as it had initially expanded. Was it really alive? Or was it some malevolent chemical entity feeding on life? Certainly its appetite was voracious, although the very act of eating seemed to interfere with whatever physical organization the beast had, as if what it consumed hastened its destruction.

“It’s rate of growth is remarkable,” Bay said in a very calm voice, for which Pol later praised her, saying that it had provided an example to the others, all stunned by the sight of that gross menace. “One expects such expansion under the microscope but not in the macrocosm. Where can it have come from? Outer space?”

Blank silence met her astonishing query, and those in the room exchanged glances, partly of surprise, partly of embarrassment at Bay’s suggestion.

“Do we have any data on the periodicity of comets in this system?” Mar Dook asked hopefully. “That eccentric body? Something brought in from our Oort cloud? Then there’s the Hoyle-Wickramansingh theory, which has never been totally discredited, citing the possibility of viruses.”

“That’s one helluva virus, Mar,” Bill Duff said skeptically. “And didn’t someone on Ceti III confound that old theory?”

“Considering it drops from the skies,” Jim Tillek said, “why couldn’t it have a space origin? I’m not the only one who’s noticed that red morning star in the east getting brighter these past weeks. A bit of coincidence, isn’t it, that the planet with the crazy orbit is coming right into the inner planets, right at the same time this stuff hits us? Could that be the source? Is there any data in the library on that planet? On this sort of thing?”

“I’ll ask Cherry. No,” Bill Duff corrected himself before anyone could remind him that the redoubtable magistrate was indisposed. “I’ll access the information myself and bring back hardcopy to study.” He hurried from the room as if glad to have a valid excuse to leave.

“I’ll get a sample from the section pressing against the lower slot,” Kwan Marceau said, gathering up the necessary implements in the rush of someone who dared not consider overlong what he was about to do.

“A record’s being kept of the . . . intake?” Bay asked. She could not quite say “food,” remembering what the creatures had already consumed since they had fallen on Pern.

“Now, to judge the frequency of . . . intake”—Pol seized gratefully on that euphemism—“sufficient to keep the . . . organism alive.”

“And see how it dies,” Kitti added in a voice so bland that it rang with satisfaction.

“And why all its ilk died in this first infestation,” Phas Radamanth added, pulling the EEC pics out of the welter of hardcopy in front of him.

“Did all die?” Kitti asked.

By morning, with no report from scientists who had worked through the night, the muttering began: a still-shocked whisper over morning klah; a rumor that began to seep into every office and the hastily reopened living quarters on the andoned residential squares. A huge blaze had been started the previous evening and continued to burn at Bonfire Square. Torches, pitched and ready to be lit, had been piled at each corner, and more were added to the piles throughout the day.

Many of the lighter sleds that had been on the ground at Landing needed new canopies. Sweeping out the detritus of putrid Thread shells was undertaken with masks and heavy work gloves.

There was a new and respectful title for the winged friends: fire-dragons. Even those who had previously scorned the creatures carried tidbits for them in their pockets. Landing was dotted with fat-bellied dragonets sleeping in the sun.

By lunchtime, a meal was served from the old communal kitchens, and rumor was rife. By midafternoon, Ted Tubberman and a fellow malcontent, their faces streaked and drawn by grief, led bereaved relatives to the door of the containment unit.

Paul and Emily came out with Phas Radamanth and Mar Dook.

“Well? Have you discovered what that thing is?” Ted demanded.

“It is a complex but understandable network of filaments, analogous to a Terran mycorrhiza,” Mar Dook began, resenting Tubberman’s manner but respecting his grief.

“That explains very little, Mar,” Ted replied, belligerently sticking out his chin. “In all my years as a botanist, I never saw a plant symbiont dangerous to humans. What do we get next? A death moss?”

Emily reached out to touch Tubberman’s arm in sympathy, but he jerked away.

“We have little to go on,” Phas said in a sharp tone. He was tired, and working all night near the monstrosity had been a terrible strain. “Nothing like this has ever been recorded on any of the planets humans have explored. The nearest that has been even imagined were some of the fictional inventions during the Age of Religions. We’re still refining our understanding of it.”

“It’s still alive? You’re keeping it alive!” Ted was livid with irrational outrage. Beside him, his companions nodded agreement as fresh tears streamed down their faces. Murmuring angrily among themselves, the delegation crowded closer to the entrance, every one of them seeking an outlet for frustration and impotent grief.

“Of course, we have to study it, man,” Mar Dook said, keeping his voice steady. “And find out exactly what it is. To do that, it must be fed to . . . continue. We’ve got to ascertain if this is only the beginning of its life cycle.”

“Only the beginning!” Tubberman cried. Paul and Phas leapt forward to restrain the grief-mad botanist. Lucy had been his apprentice as well as his daughter, and the two had shared a deep and affectionate bond. “By all that’s holy, I’ll end it now!”

“Ted, be rational. You’re a scientist!”

“I’m a father first, and my daughter was . . . devoured by one of those creatures! So was Joe Milan, and Patsy Swann, Eric Hegelman, Bob Jorgensen, and . . .” Tubberman’s face was livid. His fists clenched at his sides, his whole body strained with rage and frustration. He glared accusingly at Emily and Paul. “We trusted you two. How could you bring us to a place that devours our children and all we’ve achieved the past eight years!” The murmurs of the delegation supported his accusation. “We”—his wide gesture took in the packed numbers behind him—“want that thing dead. You’ve had long enough to study it. C’mon, people. We know what we have to do!” With a final bitter, searing look at the biologists, he turned, roughly pushing aside those in his path. “Fire kills it!”

He stomped off, raging. His followers left with him.

“It won’t matter what they do, Paul,” Mar Dook said, restraining Paul Benden from going after Ted. “The beast is moribund now. Give them the corpse to vent their feelings on. We’ve about finished what examinations we can make anyhow.” He shrugged wearily. “For all the good it does us.”

“And that is?” Paul inquired encouragingly. Mar Dook and Phas gestured to him and Emily to reenter the containment until where Pol, Bay, and the two geneticists were still writing up their notes.

Wearily, Mar Dook scrubbed at his face, his sallow skin nearly gray as he slumped onto a table that was littered with tapes and slide containers. “We now know that it is carbon based, has complex, very large proteins which flick from state to state and produce movement, and others which attack and digest an incredible range of organic substances. It is almost as if the creature was designed specifically to be inimical to our kind of life.”

“I’m glad you kept that to yourself,” Emily said wryly, looking over her shoulder at the door swinging shut on a view of the angry group heading away.

“Mar Dook, you can’t mean what you just said,” Paul began, resting both hands on the shoulders of the weary biologist. “It may be dangerous, yes—but designed to kill us?”

“That is just a thought,” Mar Dook replied, looking a bit sheepish. “Phas here has a more bizarre suggestion.”

Phas cleared his throat nervously. “Well, it’s come out of the blue so unexpectedly, I wondered if it could possibly be a weapon, preparing the ground for an invasion?” Dumbfounded, Paul and Emily stared at him, aware of Bay’s sniff of disagreement and the amused expression on Kitti Ping’s face. “That is not an illogical interpretation, you know. I like it better than Bay’s suggestion, that this might be only the beginning of a life cycle. I dread what could follow.”

Paul and Emily glanced around them, stunned by such a dreadful possibility. But Pol Nietro rose from his chair and cleared his throat, a tolerant expression on his round face.

“That is also a suggestion from the fiction of the Age of Religions, Mar,” Pol said with a wry smile. He glanced apologetically at his wife and then noticed Kitti Ping’s reassuring smile. He felt heartened. “And, in my opinion, highly improbable. If the life cycle produced inimical forms, where are the descendants of subsequent metamorphoses? The EEC team may have erred in considering the polka dots nondangerous, but they also discovered no other incongruous life-forms.

“As for an invasion from outer space, every other planet in this sector of space was found to be inimical to carbon-based life-forms.” Pol began to warm to his own theory and saw Emily recovering from the shock of the other revelations. “And we have determined that that—” He jerked his thumb at the discolored cube. “—is carbon based. So that would seem to more or less limit it to this system. And we will find out how.” Pol’s burst of explanation seemed to have drained the last of his energy, and he leaned wearily against the high laboratory stand. “I believe I’m right, though. Airing the worst possible interpretations of the data we have gleaned has cleared the air, so to speak.” He gave a little, almost apologetic shrug and smiled hopefully at Phas and Bay.

“I still feel we have missed something in our investigations,” Phas said, shaking his head. “Something obvious, and important.”

“No one thinks straight after forty hours on the trot,” Paul said, clasping Phas by the shoulder to give him a reassuring shake. “Let’s look at your notes again when you’ve had some rest and something to eat, away from the stench in here. Jim, Emily, and I will wait and deal with Ted’s delegation. They’re overreacting.” He sighed. “Not that I blame them. Sudden grief is always a shock. However, I personally would rather plan for the worst that can happen. As you’ve suggested several dire options, we won’t be surprised by anything that happens. And we should plan to reduce its effects on the settlements.”

Paul had a quiet word with one of the psychologists, whose opinion was that the thwarted tensions of the bereaved might be eased by what he termed “a ritual incineration.” So they stepped aside when Ted Tubberman and his adherents demanded the cube and destroyed it in a blazing fire. The resultant stench gagged many, which helped to speed the dispersal of the onlookers. Only Ted and a few others remained to watch the embers cool.

The psychologist shook his head slowly. “I think I’ll keep an eye on Ted Tubberman for a while,” he told Paul and Emily. “That was apparently not enough to assuage his grief.”

Telescopes were trained on the eccentric planet early the next morning. Its reddish appearance was due, Ezra Keroon suggested, to the aggregated dust swirls it had brought in from the edge of the system. Despite the lack of any proof, the feeling among the observers was that the planet was somehow responsible for the disaster.

During the day, Kenjo’s group discovered traces of an earlier fall on Ierne Island, which a witness remembered as more of a rainstorm littered with black motes than a fall of Thread. A scout sent to the northern continent reported traces of recent destruction across the eastern peninsula there. That discovery dispersed the vain hope that the Fall was unique or confined to a specific area. A review of the probe pics from the EEC did nothing to alleviate tension, for the fax incontrovertibly showed the Fall two hundred years before to have been widespread. They figured that the event must have happened just prior to the team’s arrival. The demand to know the extent and frequency of the falls increased ominously.

To assuage mounting fears and tension, Betty Musgrave-Blake and Bill Duff undertook to review the survey’s original botanical data. Ted Tubberman was the only trained botanist who had survived, but he spent his days tracking down every Thread shell and his evenings burning the piles. The psychologists continued to monitor his aberrant behavior.

Based on the original data, Betty and Bill deduced a two-hundred-year gap between incursions, allowing a span of ten to fifteen years for the vegetation to regenerate on the damaged circles after taking into account the age of some of the largest trees in and near the previous occurrence. Betty delivered their conclusion as a positive statement, meant to engender optimism, but she could provide no answer to the vital question of how long the deadly rain would continue to fall.

In an attempt to disprove Mar’s theory of purposeful design or Phas’s equally disturbing suggestion of invasion, Ezra Keroon spent that day on the link with the Yokohama’s mainframe. His calculations confirmed beyond question that the eccentric planet had an orbit of 250 years. But it only stayed in the inner system for a little while, the way Halley’s comet periodically visited Sol. It was too much to suppose there was no connection, and, after consulting Paul and Emily, Ezra programmed one of the Yokohama’s few remaining probes to circumnavigate the planet and discover its composition and, especially, the components of its apparently gaseous envelope.

Though all reports were honestly and fully presented to the community as soon they came in, by evening speculation had produced alarming interpretations. Grimly the more responsible members tried to calm those who gave way to panic.

Then a perplexed Kenjo sought Betty out with a disturbing observation. She immediately informed Paul and Emily, and a quiet meeting was arranged with those who were able to discuss the situation with some detachment.

“You all know that I’ve overflown to map the damage,” Kenjo began. “I didn’t know what I’d seen until I’d seen it often enough to realize what was not there.” He paused, as if steeling himself for rebuke or disbelief. “I don’t think all Thread starved to death. And crazy Tubberman hasn’t gotten as far as I have. In most places, there are shells! But in nine circles that I have seen—and I landed to be sure I make no mistake—there were no shells.” He made a cutting gesture with both hands. “None. And these circles were by themselves, not in a group, and the area—demolished—was not as big as usual.” He glanced at each of the serious faces about him. “I see. I observe. I have pics, too.”

“Well,” Pol said, heaving a weary sigh and absently patting the folded hands of his wife beside him at the table. “It is biologically consistent that to perpetuate a species many are sent and few are chosen. Perhaps the journey through space vitiates most of the organisms. I’m almost relieved that a few can survive and flourish. It makes more sense. I prefer your theory to some of the others that have been bruited about.”

“Yes, but what do they become in the next metamorphosis?” Bay wondered, her face reflecting depression. Sometimes being right was another sort of failure.

“We’d better find out,” Paul said, glancing around for support. “Is there one nearby, Kenjo?” When the pilot pointed to its position on the map, Paul nodded. “Good then, Phas, Pol, Bill, Ezra, Bay and Emily, just slip out of Landing in small sleds. Let’s see if we can prevent a new batch of wild notions. Report back here as soon as you can.”

Paul sent Betty back to her home and her new baby, telling her to rest. Boris Pahlevi and Dieter Clissman were summoned and set to work designing a comprehensive computer program to analyze the data as it continued to come in. Then Paul and Ongola settled back to wait tensely for the other specialists to return.

Pol, Bay, and Phas were the first back, and they brought little good news.

“All the insects, slug-forms, and grubs we found on those sites,” Phas reported, “appear harmless enough. Some of them have already been catalogued, but,” he added with a shrug, “we’ve barely begun to identify creatures and their roles in the ecology of this planet. Kenjo was right to alert us. Clearly some of the Thread survives to propagate itself, so Bay’s theory is the most viable to date.” Phas seemed relieved. “But I won’t rest easy until we have discovered the entire cycle.”

Late in the afternoon of the third day after that first Fall, an almost hysterical call came in from Wade Lorenzo of Sadrid in Macedonia Province. Jacob Chernoff, who took the call, immediately contacted Ongola and Paul at the administration building. “He says it’s coming straight across the sea, right at him, sir. His stake is due west on the twenty-degree line. I’m holding him on channel thirty-seven.”

Even as Paul picked up the handset and punched for the channel, he located the coastal stake of Sadrid on the big map of the continent.

“Get everyone in under silicon plastic,” he ordered. “Use fire to ignite the stuff where it hits the surface. Use torches if necessary. D’you have any dragonets?”

The stakeholder’s deep breath was audible as he fought for self-control. “We have some dragonets, sir, and we’ve two flamethrowers—used ’em to cut down bush. We thought it was just a very bad rain squall until we saw the fish eating. Can’t you come?”

“We’ll get there as soon as possible!”

Paul told Jacob to tell no one of the new Fall.

“I don’t want to cause more panic than there already is, sir,” Jacob agreed.

Paul smiled briefly at the boy’s fervor, then dialed Jim Tillek at the Monaco Bay harbormaster’s office. He inquired if there were any trawlers southwest near Sadrid.

“Not today. Any trouble?”

So much for trying to sound casual, Paul thought. “Can you get here to admin without appearing to rush?”

Ongola was looking grimly at the map, his eyes flicking from Macedonia to Delta. “Your Boca River Stake is not that far from Sadrid,” he told the admiral.

“I noticed.” Paul dialed the channel link to his stake and in terse sentences told his wife the grim news and instructed her on what precautions to take. “Ju, it may not reach us but . . .”

“It’s best to be on the safe side with something like this, isn’t it?”

Paul was proud of her calm response. “I’ll give you an update as soon as we’ve got one. With any luck, you’ve got at least an hour’s leeway if it’s just now at Sadrid. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Quite possibly, Boca’s far enough north. This stuff seems to fall in a southwesterly drift.’

“Ask her if her dragonets are acting normally,” Ongola suggested.

“Sunning themselves, as always at this time of day,” Ju replied. “I’ll watch them. They really do anticipate this stuff?”

“Ongola thinks so. I’ll check with you later, Ju.”

“I’ve just got through to the Logorides at Thessaly,” Ongola said. “They might be in the path. Had we better warn Caesar at Roma Stake? He’s got all that livestock.”

“He was also smart enough to put up stone buildings, but call him and then find out if Boris and Dieter have run their new program. I wish the hell we knew when it started, how far it’ll travel,” Paul muttered anxiously. “I’ll organize transport.” He dialed the main engineering shed and asked for Kenjo.

“There’s more Thread? How far away?” Kenjo asked. “Sadrid? On the twentieth? I’ve got something that could make it in just over an hour.” There was a ripple of excitement in Kenjo’s usually even tone. “Fulmar worked out jet-assist units on one of the medium sleds. Fulmar thinks we could get seven hundred kph out of it, at least, even fully loaded. More if we run light.”

“We’re going to have to pack as many of the flamethrowers as possible plus emergency supplies. We’ll use HNO₃ cylinders—they’ll be like using fire and water at once on the Thread. Pol and Bay don’t weigh much, and they’ll be invaluable as observers. We need at least one medic, a couple of joats, Tarvi, Jim, and me. Eight. All right, then, we’ll be with you directly.” Paul turned to Ongola. “Any luck?”

“Since we can’t tell them when it started, they want to know when it ends,” Ongola said. “The more data we can give them, the more accurate they will be . . . next time. Am I among the eight?”

Paul shook his head with regret. “I need you here to deal with any panic. Blast it, but we’ve got to get organized for this.”

Ongola snorted to himself. Paul Benden was already a legend in organizing and operating at high efficiency in emergency situations. Observers, crew, and supplies boarded the augmented sled within twenty minutes of the initial call, and it was airborne and out of sight before Ongola heard the muted roar of its improved drive.

Kenjo drove the sled at its maximum speed, passengers and supplies securely strapped in safety harnesses. They sped across the verdant tip of the untouched peninsula past the Jordan River, and then out to sea where the turbulence of sporadic but heavy squalls added more discomfort to an already rough ride in a vehicle not designed for such velocities.

“No sign of the leading edge of the Fall. Half of that cloud to the south of us is more squalls,” Paul said, looking up from the scope and rubbing his eyes. “Maybe, just maybe,” he added softly, “those squalls also saved Sadrid.”

Despite the excessive speed, the journey, mainly over water, seemed to continue endlessly. Suddenly, Kenjo reduced speed. The sea became less of a blur to starboard, and on the port side, the vast, approaching land was just visible through the mist of squall. Sunlight broke through cloud to shine impartially on tossing vegetation and denuded alleys.

“It’s an ill wind,” Jim Tillek remarked, pointing to the sea, which was disturbed more by underwater activity than by wind. “By the way, before I left Monaco Bay, I sent our finny friends to see what they could find out.”

“Good heavens!” Bay exclaimed, pressing her face against the thick plastic canopy. “They can’t have made it here so fast.”

“Not likely,” Jim replied, chuckling, “but the locals are feeding very well indeed.”

“Stay seated!” Kenjo cried, fighting the yoke of the sled.

“If the dolphins can find out where it started . . . Data, that’s what Dieter and Boris need.” Paul resumed manning the forward scope. “Sadrid wasn’t entirely lucky,” he added, frowning. “Just as if someone had shaved the vegetation off the ground with a hot knife,” he muttered under his breath, and turned away. “Get us down as fast as possible, Kenjo!”

“It was the wind,” Wade Lorenzo told the rescue team. “The wind saved us, and the squall. Came down in sheets, but it was water, not Thread. No, we’re mostly okay,” he assured them, pointing to the dragonets, grooming themselves on the rooftrees. “They saved us, just like I heard they did at Landing.” The younger children were just being shepherded out of one of the larger buildings, wide-eyed with apprehension as they looked about them. “But we don’t know if Jiva and Bahka are all right. They were trawling.” He gestured hopelessly to the west.

“If they went west and north, they’d’ve had a good chance,” Jim told him.

“But we are ruined,” Athpathis added. The agronomist’s face was a picture of defeat as he indicated the ravaged fields and orchards.

“There’re still plenty of seedlings at Landing,” Pol Nietro assured him, patting his back with clumsy sympathy. “And one can grow several crops a year in this climate.”

“We’ll be back to you later,” Paul said, helping to unload flamethrowers. “Jim, will you organize the mop-up here? You know what to do. We’ve got to track the main Fall to its end. There you are, Wade. Go char the bastards!”

“But Admiral—” Athpathis began, the whites of his large fearful eyes accentuated in his sun-darkened face.

“There’s two other stakes in the way of this menace,” Paul said, climbing back into the sled and fastening the hatch.

“Straight to your place, Paul?” Kenjo asked, lifting the sled.

“No, I want you to go north first. See if we can find Jiva and Bahka. And until we find the edge of the Fall.”

As soon as Kenjo had hoisted the sled, he slapped on the jet assist, slamming his passengers back into their seats. But almost immediately he eased back on the power, “Sir, I think it’s missed your place.”

Instantly Paul pressed his eyes to the scope and, with incredible relief, saw the vegetation along the beach tossing in the wake of squall winds. Reassured, he could concentrate on the job at hand without divided priorities.

“Why, it just cuts off,” Bay said, surprised.

“Rain, I think,” Pol remarked as he, too, craned his neck to see out the siliplex canopy. “And look, isn’t that an orange sail?”

Paul looked up from the scope with a weary smile. “Indeed it is, and intact. Mark your position, Mister Fusaiyuki, and let’s get to Caesar’s with all available speed.” He took a more comfortable position in his seat and gripped the arm rests.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The six passengers once again endured the effects of speed and, once again, Kenjo’s abrupt braking. That time he added such a turn to port that the sled seemed to spin on its tail.

“I’ve marked my position, Admiral. Your orders, sir?”

Paul Benden’s spine gave an involuntary shudder, which he hoped was due more to the unexpected maneuver than to Kenjo’s naval address.

“Let’s follow the path and see how wide a corridor it punches. I’ll contact the other stakes to stand down from the alert.”

He permitted himself to contact his wife first and gave her a brief report, as much to lock the details in his own mind as to relieve hers.

“Shall I send a crew to help?” she asked. “Landing’s report says the stuff often has to be burnt to be killed.”

“Send Johnny Greene and Greg Keating in the faster sled. We’ve spare flamethrowers with us.”

Others volunteered to send their sons, and Paul accepted those offers. Caesar Galliani, making the same offer, added that he wanted his sons back in time to milk the big Roma herd.

“I was right, wasn’t I,” the vet said with a chuckle, “to spend so much energy on stone buildings?”

“You were indeed, Caesar.”

“There’s nothing like stone walls to make you feel secure. The boys’ll be on their way as soon as you give me a position. You’ll keep us posted, won’t you, Admiral?”

Paul winced at that second unconscious use of his former rank. After seven happy years as a civilian agronomist, he had no wish to resume the responsibilities of command. Then his eyes were caught by the circles of destruction, so hideously apparent from the air, interspersed with untouched swaths where squally rain had drowned the Thread before it could reach the surface. Rain and dragonets! Fragile allies against such devastation, if he had his way . . . Paul halted that train of thought. He was not in command; he did not wish to be obliged to take command. There were younger men to assume such burdens.

“I make the corridor fifty klicks wide, Admiral,” Kenjo announced. Paul realized that the others had been quietly conferring on details.

“You can watch vegetation disintegrating by the yard,” Bay said anxiously. She caught Paul’s eyes. “Rain isn’t enough.”

“It helped,” Tarvi answered her, but he, too, looked at Paul.

“We’ve got reinforcements coming from Thessaly and Roma. We’ll scorch where we have to on our way back to Sadrid. Set down where you can, Kenjo. Landing will need to know the details we’ve gotten today. Data they want, data they’ll have.”

By the time all the available HNO₃ cylinders were exhausted, so were the crews. Pol and Bay had followed diligently after the flamethrower teams, taking notes on the pattern of the stuff, grateful that squall activity had somewhat limited the destruction. When Paul had thanked the men from Thessaly and Roma, he told Kenjo to make reasonable speed to Sadrid to collect Jim Tillek.

“And so we must arm ourselves with tongues of flame against this menace to our kind and generous planet,” Tarvi said softly to Paul as they finally headed eastward toward a fast-approaching night. “Will Sadrid be safe now?”

“On the premise that lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place?” Paul’s tone was droll. “No promises can be made on that score, Tarvi. I am hoping, however, that Boris and Dieter will soon come up with a few answers.” Then, his expression anxious, he turned to Pol. “This couldn’t fall at random, could it?”

“You prefer the theory that it’s planned? No, Paul, we’ve established that we’re dealing with an unreasoning, voraciously hungry organism. There isn’t a discernible intelligence,” Pol replied, clenching and releasing his fist, surprised at his own vehemence, “much less a trace of sentience. I continue to favor Bay’s theory of a two- or three-stage life cycle. Even so, it is only remotely possible that intelligence develops at a later stage.”

“The wherries?” Tarvi asked facetiously.

“No, no, don’t be ridiculous. We’ve traced them back to a sea eel, a common ancestor for both them and the dragonets.”

“The dragonets were more of a help than I expected,” Tarvi admitted. “Sallah insists they’ve a high level of intelligence.”

“Pol, have you or Bay attempted to measure that intelligence when you used mentasynth enhancement?” Paul Benden asked.

“No, not really,” Pol replied. “There’s been no need to, once we demonstrated that an enhanced empathy made them more biddable. There have been other priorities.”

“The main priority as of now is establishing the parameters of this menace,” Paul muttered. “We’d all better get some rest.”

Once the rescue team had returned to Landing, it was impossible to deny the fact of the new incursion. Despite a comm silence on their trip, rumors were inevitable.

“The only good thing about it,” Paul told Emily as he consumed a hastily prepared meal, “was that it was sufficiently far away from here.”

“We still don’t have enough data to establish either frequency or probable corridors of the stuff,” Dieter Clissmann announced. “The dolphins apparently could not find out where or when it started. Marine life doesn’t keep time. Boris is adding in random factors of temperature variations, high- and low-pressure areas, frequency of rain, and wind velocity to the data.” He gave a long sigh, combing thick hair back from his forehead. “Drowns in the rain, huh? Fire and water kill it! That’s some consolation.”

Few were as easily consoled. There were even some at Landing who were relieved that other sections of the continent had suffered the same disaster. The positive benefit of fear and horror was that emergency measures were no longer resisted. Some had felt that precautions emanating from Landing violated their charter autonomy. The more outspoken revised their objections when pictures of the devastation on the Sadrid corridor—as Pol termed it—were distributed. After that, Ongola and his communications team were kept busy briefing distant stakeholders.

Tarvi drafted a crew to work round the clock, adapting empty cylinders into flamethrowers and filling them with HNO₃. The easily made oxidant had not only proved to be very effective at destroying Thread but could be synthesized cheaply from air and water, using only hydroelectricity, and was not a pollutant. Most importantly, dragonet hide and human skin were usually not severely damaged from spillage. A wet cloth, applied within about twenty seconds, prevented a bad burn. Kenjo led a group in rigging holders for flame-throwers on the heavier sleds. He was adamant that the best defense was not only offense but aerial. He had many willing supporters among those at Landing who had lived through the First Fall.

Fire was the top choice for weapon. As one wit said, since no one had ever figured out how to make rain on demand, fire was the only reliable defense. Even the most ardent supporters of the dragonets did not wish to rely totally on their continued assistance.

There were not hands enough to do all the jobs required. Twice Paul and Emily were called in to arbitrate labor-pirating. The agronomists and veterinarians hastily reinforced livestock shelters. Caves were explored as possible alternate accommodations. Empty warehouses at Landing were made into shelters for any stakeholders who wished to house stock for safety’s sake. Joel Lilienkamp insisted that due to the worker shortage the holders themselves would have to reinforce any buildings they preempted. Many stakeholders felt that that was Landing’s job; some were unwilling to leave their stakes unless, and until, assured of safe quarters. In eight years, the population of the settlers had increased far beyond the point where the original site could house even half the current numbers.

Porrig Connell remained in his cave, having discovered that there were sufficient interlinking chambers to accommodate his entire extended family and their livestock. In addition to stabling for his mares and foals, he had also constructed a stallion box in which Cricket had been made very comfortable. Magnanimously, he allowed the survivors of some other families to remain in his cavesite until they found their own.

Because they had been the colony’s leaders, Paul Benden and Emily Boll—as well as Jim Tillek, Ezra Keroon, and Ongola—found that many decisions were being referred to them, despite the fact that they had stepped down from their previous administrative duties.

“I’d far rather they came to me than to Ted Tubberman,” Paul remarked wearily to Ongola when the former communications officer brought him the latest urgent queries from outlying stakes. He turned to the psychologist Tom Patrick, who had come to report on the latest round of gripes and rumors. “Tom?”

“I don’t think you can stall a showdown much longer,” he said, “or you and Emily will lose all credibility. That would be a big error. You two may not want to take command, but someone will have to. Tubberman’s constantly undermining community effort and spirit. He’s so totally negative that you ought to be thankful that most of the time he’s out trying singlehandedly to clear the continent of rotting Threadshell. Grief has totally distorted his perceptions and judgment.”

“Surely no one believes his ranting?” Emily asked.

“There’re just enough long-buried gripes and resentments, and good honest gut-fear, right now that some people do listen to him. Especially in the absence of authorized versions,” Tom replied. “Tubberman’s complaints have a certain factual basis. Warped, to be sure.” The psychologist shrugged, raising both hands, palms up. “In time he’ll work against himself—I hope. Meanwhile he’s roused a substantial undercurrent of resentment which had better be countered soon. Preferably by you gentlemen and Emily and the other captains. They still trust you, you know, in spite of Tubberman’s accusations.”

“So the Rubicon must be crossed again,” Paul said whimsically, and exhaled. He caught himself rubbing his left thumb against the insensitive skin of his replacement fingers and stopped. Leaning wearily back in his chair, he put both hands behind his head as if supporting an extra weight.

“I can lead a meeting, Paul,” Cabot said when Paul contacted him on a secured comm channel, “but they subconsciously consider you and Emily their leaders. Force of habit.”

“Any decision to reinstate us must be spontaneous,” Paul replied after a long and thoughtful pause. Slowly Emily nodded. The last days had aged both admiral and governor. “The matter must be handled strictly on the charter protocol, though by all that’s holy, I never anticipated having to invoke those contingency clauses.”

“Thank all the powers that be that they’re there,” Cabot said fervently. “It’ll take an hour or two to organize things here. Oh, by the way, we also had a few messages across the river early yesterday- morning. Didn’t notice until about noon today. Hit the southern edge of Bordeaux. We gave Pat and his crew a hand. All’s safe here.” With that, he rang off, leaving Paul dumbfounded.

“After our little brush with the stuff,” Cabot said when he arrived in person, “I’m beginning to appreciate the gravity of the colony’s situation.” A hopeful smile, not echoed by the expression in his keen gray eyes, curved his strong mouth. “Is it as bad as rumor has it?”

“Probably. Depends on the source of the rumor,” Paul answered with an honest grimace.

“Depends on whether you’re an optimist or pessimist,” Jim Tillek added. “I’ve been in worse fixes on the asteroid runs and come out with life and lung. I prefer to have a planet; to maneuver in, on, over. And the seas.”

Cabot’s smile faded as he regarded the five people gathered discreetly in the met tower.

“Most of what we know,” Paul said, “is negative. But—” He began to refute the prevalent rumors by ticking them off on his strong, work-stained fingers. “The Threads are unlikely to be the forerunner of an alien invasion. It was not unique to this area. It did strike the planet in much the same way, to judge by the EEC records, almost exactly two hundred years ago. It may or may not emanate from the eccentric planet, which has a two-hundred-and-fifty-year orbit. And although we do not know what its life cycle is, or even if it does have one—that is the most viable theory—Thread is not the initial stage of tunnel snakes, for example, who have a much more respectable lineage, nor of any of the other kinds of life we’ve had a look at so far.”

“I see.” Cabot slowly nodded his handsome leonine head as he fingered his lips in thought. “No reassuring forecast available?”

“Not yet. As Tom here recommends, we need a forum in which to air grievances and correct misconceptions,” Paul went on. “It didn’t miss Boca Stake because Paul Benden owns it, or drop on Sadrid because they’re the newest, or stop short of Thessaly because Gyorgy was one of the first charterers to claim his stake. We can, and will, survive this hazard, but we cannot have the indiscriminate conscriptions of technicians and able-bodied workers. It is apparent to anyone pausing to think that we also cannot survive if everyone hares off in opposite directions. Or if some of the wilder notions, including Tubberman’s, are not dismissed and morale restored.”

“In short, what you want is a suspension of autonomy?”

“Not what I want,” Paul replied clearly and with emphasis, “but a centralized administration”—Cabot grinned at the admiral’s choice of words—“will be able to efficiently organize available workers, distribute matériel and supplies, and make sure that the majority survive. Joel Lilienkamp locked up Stores today, claiming inventory, to prevent panic requisitions. People must realize that this is a survivial situation.”

“Together we stand, divided we fall?” Cabot used the old saying with respect.

“That’s it.”

“The trick will be in getting all our independent spirits to see the wisdom,” Tom Patrick said, and Cabot nodded agreement.

“I must emphasize,” Paul went on, looking quickly at Emily, who nodded approval, “that it doesn’t matter who administers during the emergency so long as some authority is recognized, and obeyed, that will ensure survival.”

After a pause, Cabot added thoughtfully, “We’re years from help. Did we burn all our bridges?”

Considerable surprise and relief permeated Landing the next morning when Cabot Francis Carter, the colony’s senior legist, broadcast the announcement that a mass meeting was scheduled for the following evening. Representatives of every major stake, charter, or contract, would be expected to attend.

By the night of the meeting, the electricians had managed to restore power to one end of Bonfire Square by means of underground conduits. Where lamps were still dark, torches had been secured to the standards. The lighted area was filled with benches and chairs. The platform, originally constructed for musicians for the nightly bonfires, contained a long table, set with six chairs along one side. There was light enough to see those who took places there.

When neither Paul Benden nor Emily Boll appeared, a murmur of surprise rippled around those assembled. Cabot Francis Carter led Mar Dook, Pol and Bay Harkenon-Nietro, Ezra Keroon, and Jim Tillek onto the stage.

“We have had time to mourn our losses,” Cabot began, his sonorous voice easily reaching to the very last bench. Even the children listened in silence. “And they have been heavy. They could have been worse, and there can’t be one among us who doesn’t give thanks to our small fire-breathing, dragon-like allies.

“I don’t have all bad news for you tonight. I wish I had better. We can give a name to the stuff that killed some of our loved ones and wiped out five stakes: it’s a very primitive mycorrhizoid life-form. Mar Dook here tells me that on other planets, including our own Earth, very simple fungi can be generally found in a symbiotic association with trees, the mycelium of the fungus with the roots of a seed plant. We’ve all seen it attack vegetation—”

“And just about anything else,” Ted Tubberman shouted from the left-hand side of the audience.

“Yes, that is tragically true.” Cabot did not look at the man or attempt to lighten the tone of the meeting, but he intended to control it. He raised his voice slightly. “What we are only just beginning to realize is that the phenomenon is planetwide and the last occurrence was approximately two hundred years ago.” He paused to allow the listeners to absorb that fact, then stolidly held up his hands to silence the murmurs. “Soon we will be able to predict exactly when and where this Threadfall is likely to strike again, because, unfortunately, it will. But this is our planet,” he stated with an expression of fierce determination, “and no damned mindless Thread is going to make us leave.”

“You stupid bastard, we can’t leave!” Ted Tubberman jumped to his feet, wildly waving clenched fists in the air. “You fixed it so we’ll rot here, sucked up by those effing things. We can’t leave! We’ll all die here.”

His outburst started a sullen, murmurous roll in the audience. Sean, sitting with Sorka to the edge of the crowd, was indignant.

“Damnfool loud mouth charterer,” Sean murmured to Sorka. “He knew this was a one-way trip, only now everything’s not running smooth enough for him, it has to be someone’s fault.” Sean snorted his contempt.

Sorka shushed him to hear Cabot’s rebuttal.

“I don’t look at our situation as hopeless, Tubberman,” Cabot began, his trained voice drowning the murmurs in a firm, confident, and determined tone. “Far from it! I prefer to think positively. I see this as a challenge to our ingenuity, to our adaptability. Mankind has survived more dangerous environments than Pern. We’ve got a problem and we must cope with it. We must solve it to survive. And survive we will!” When Cabot saw the big botanist gathering breath, he raised his voice. “When we signed the charter, we all knew there’d be no turning back. Even if we could, I, for one, wouldn’t consider running home.” His voice became rich with contempt for the faint of heart, the coward, and the quitter. “For there’s more on this planet for me than First or Earth ever held! I’m not going to let this phenomenon do me out of the home I’ve built, the stock I plan to raise, the quality of life I enjoy!” With a contemptuous sweep of his hand, he dismissed the menace as a minor inconvenience. “I’ll fight it every time it strikes my stake or my neighbors’, with every ounce of strength and every resource I possess.

“Now,” he went on in a less fervent tone, “this meeting has been called, in the democratic manner outlined by our charter, to make plans on how best to sustain our colony during this emergency. We are, in effect, under siege by this mycorrhizoid. So we must initiate measures and develop the necessary strategy by which to minimize its effect on our lives and property.”

“Are you suggesting martial law, Cabot?” Rudi Shwartz demanded, rising to his feet, his expression carefully guarded.

Cabot gave a wry chuckle. “As there is no army on Pern, Rudi, martial law is impossible. However, circumstances force us to consider suspending our present autonomy in order to reduce the damage which this Thread apparently can—and will—do to both the ecology of the planet and the economy of this colony. I’m suggesting that reversion to the centralized government of our first year on Pern be considered at this point in time.” His next words rose to a near bellow to drown out the protests. “And whatever measures are required to ensure the survival of the colony, unpalatable though they may be to us as individuals who have enjoyed our autonomy.”

“And these measures have already been decided?” someone asked.

“By no means,” Cabot assured the woman. “We don’t even yet know that much about our—adversary—but plans must be made now, for every possible contingency. We know that Thread falls on a worldwide scale, so sooner or later it will affect every stake. We have to minimize that danger. That will mean centralization of existing food supplies and matériel, and a return to hydroponics. It definitely means that some of you technicians will be asked to return to Landing, since your particular skills can be best exercised here. It means we’re all going to have to work together again instead of going our separate ways.”

“What option do we have?” another woman asked in the slight pause that followed. She sounded resigned.

“Some of you have fairly large common stakes,” Cabot answered in the most reasonable of tones. “You could probably do quite well on your own. Any central organization here at Landing would have to consider the needs of its population first, but it wouldn’t be the case of ’Never Darken Our Doorstep Again,’ ” He gave a brief reassuring smile in her general direction. “That’s why we meet here tonight. To discuss all the options as thoroughly as the charter’s conditions and the colony’s prospects were initially discussed.”

“Wait just a minute!” Ted Tubberman cried, jumping to his feet again, spreading out his arms and looking around, his chin jutting forward aggressively. “We’ve got a surefire option, a realistic one. We can send a homing capsule to Earth and ask for assistance. This is a state of emergency. We need help!”

“I told ya,” Sean murmured to Sorka, “squealing like a stuck pig. Earth lands here, girl, and we make for the Barrier Range and stay lost!”

“I wouldn’t bet on Earth sending any,” Joel Lilienkamp said from the front of the audience, his words drowned by the cries of colonists agreeing with Ted.

“We don’t need Earth mucking about Pern,” Sean cried, jumping to his feet and flourishing his arm. “This is our planet!”

Cabot called for order, but very little of the commotion subsided. Ezra Keroon got to his feet, trying to help. Finally, making a megaphone of his hands, he bellowed his message. “Hold it down, now, friends. I have to remind you all—listen to me!—it’d be over ten years before we got a reply. Of any kind.”

“Well, I for one don’t want old Terra,” Jim Tillek said over the loud reaction to that, “or even First, poking their noses in our business. That is, if they’d bother to respond. For sure, if they condescended to help, they’d mortgage all of us to the hilt for aid. And end up owning all the mineral rights and most of the arable land. Or have you all forgotten Ceti III? I also don’t see why a central administration during this emergency is such a big deal. Makes sense to me. Share and share alike!”

A low murmur of agreement could be clearly heard, although many faces wore discouraged or sullen expressions.

“He’s right, Sorka,” Sean said in a voice loud enough for others around him to hear.

“Dad and Mother think so, too,” Sorka added, pointing to her parents, who were sitting several rows ahead.

“We’ve got to send a message,” Ted Tubberman shouted, shaking off the attempts of his immediate neighbors to make him sit down. “We’ve got to tell them we’re in trouble. We’ve a right to help! What’s wrong in sending a message?”

“What’s wrong?” Wade Lorenzo shouted from the back of the audience. “We need help right now, Tubberman, not ten to thirty years from now. Why, by then, we’d probably have the thing licked. A Fall’s not all that bad,” he added with the confidence of experience. He sat down amid hoots and shouts of dissent, mainly from those who had been at Landing during the tragedy.

“And don’t forget that it took half a century before Earth went to Ceti III’s assistance,” Betty Musgrave-Blake said, jumping to her feet.

Other comments were voiced.

“Yeah, Captain Tillek’s right. We’ve got to solve our own problems. We can’t wait for Earth.”

“Forget it, Tubberman.”

“Sit down and shut up, Tubberman.”

“Cabot, call him to order. Let’s get on with this meeting.”

Similar sentiments rose from all sides.

His neighors forced the botanist down and, dismayed by the lack of support, Ted shook off the compelling hands and crossed his arms defiantly on his chest. Tarvi Andiyar and Fulmar Stone moved to stand nearby. Sallah watched apprehensively, although she knew full well the strength belied by Tarvi’s lean frame.

Sean nudged Sorka. “They’ll shut him up, and then we can get to the meat of all this talking,” he said. “I hate meetings like this—people sounding off just to make a noise and act big when they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Raising a hand to be recognized, Rudi Shwartz again got to his feet. “If, as you’ve suggested, Cabot, the larger stakes could remain self-governing, how would a central government be organized? Would the large stakes be at all responsible to it?”

“It’s more a matter of the fair allocation of food, materials, and shelter, Rudi,” Joel Lilienkamp said, rising, “rather than—”

“You mean, we don’t have enough food?” an anxious voice broke in.

“For now, we do, but if this Threadstuff is planetwide . . . we all see what it did to Landing’s fields,” Joel went on, motioning to the dark, ravaged area, “and if it keeps coming back, well—” A woman made a protest of dismay that was clearly audible. “Well,” he went on, hitching up his trousers, “everyone deserves a fair share of what we’ve got. I see nothing wrong with going back to hydroponics for a while. We did just fine for fifteen years on shipboard, didn’t we? I’ll take any odds we can do it again.”

His jovial challenge met with mixed reactions, some cheering, others clearly apprehensive.

“Remember, too, folks, that Thread doesn’t affect the sea,” Jim Tillek said, his cheerfulness unforced. “We can live, and live well, from the sea alone.”

“Most early civilizations lived almost entirely from the sea,” Mairi Hanrahan cried in a ringing, challenging tone. “Joel’s right—we can use alternate methods of growing. And, as long as we can harvest the sea for fresh protein, we’ll be just fine. I think we all ought to buck up, instead of collapsing under the first little snag.” She stared significantly at Ted Tubberman.

“Little snag?” he roared. He would have shoved through the crowd to get to Mairi if he had not been restrained. Tarvi and Fulmar moved in closer to him.

“Hardly a little snag,” Mar Dook said quickly, raising his voice over the ripple of mixed remonstrance and support. “And certainly tragic for many of us. But let’s not fight among ourselves. It’s equally useless for us to bitch that the EEC team did not do a thorough inspection of this planet and grossly misled us. But this world has already proved that it can survive such an incursion and regenerate. Are we humans any less resilient with the resources we have at hand?” He tapped his forehead significantly.

“I don’t want just to survive, hand to mouth,” Ted Tubberman shouted, his chin jerking out belligerently, “cooped up in a building, wondering if those things are going to eat their way through to me!”

“Ted, that’s the bigget bunch of bilgewash I’ve ever heard from a grown man,” Jim Tillek said. “We got a bit of a problem with our new world that I sure as hell am going to help solve. So quit your bitching, and let’s figure out just how to cope. We’re here, man, and we’re going to survive!”

“I want us to send home for help,” someone else said, calm but firm. “I feel that we’re going to need the defenses a sophisticated society can supply, especially as we brought so little technology with us. And most especially if this stuff returns so often.”

“Once we’ve sent for help, we have to take what is sent,” Cabot said quickly.

“Lili, what odds are you taking that Earth would send us help?” Jim Tillek asked.

Ted Tubberman jumped to his feet again. “Don’t bet on it. Vote on it! If this meeting’s really democratic, that is, let’s vote to send a mayday to Federated Sentient Planets.”

“I second the motion,” one of the medics said, along with several others.

“Rudi,” Cabot said, “appoint two other stewards and let’s take a hand vote.”

“Not everyone’s here tonight,” Wade Lorenzo pointed out.

“If they don’t wish to attend a scheduled meeting, they will have to abide by the decision of those who did,” Cabot replied sternly. He was met with shouts of agreement. “Let the vote be taken on the motion before us. Those in favor of sending a homing capsule to the Federated Sentient Planets for assistance, raise their hands.”

Hands were duly raised and counted by the stewards, Rudi Shwartz taking note of the count. When Cabot called for those opposed to sending for help, the majority was marked. As soon as Cabot announced the results, Ted Tubberman was vituperative.

“You’re damned fools. We can’t lick this stuff by ourselves. There’s no place safe from it on this planet. Don’t you remember the EEC reports? The entire planet was eaten up. It took more than two hundred years to recover. What chance have we?”

“That is enough, Tubberman,” Cabot roared at him. “You asked for a vote. It was taken in sight of all, and the majority has decided against sending for help. Even if the decision had been in favor, our situation is serious enough so that certain measures must be initiated immediately.

“One priority is the manufacture of metal sheeting to protect existing buildings, no matter where they are. The second is to manufacture HNO₃ cylinders and flamethrower components. A third is to conserve all materials and supplies. Another problem is keeping a good eastern watch at every stake until a pattern can be established for Threadfall.

“I’m asking that we temporarily reinstate Emily Boll and Paul Benden as leaders. Governor Boll kept her planet fed and free despite a five-year-long Nathi space embargo, and Admiral Benden is by far the best man to organize an effective defense strategy.

“I’m calling for a show of hands now, and we’ll make it a proper referendum when we know exactly how long the state of emergency will last.” A ripple of assent greeted his crisp, decisive statements. “Rudi, prepare for another count.” He waited a moment as the crowd shifted restlessly. “Let’s have a show of hands on implementing those priorities tonight, with Admiral Benden and Governor Boll in charge.”

Many hands were immediately thrust in the air, while others came up more slowly as the undecided took heart from their neighbors’ resolution. Even before Rudi gave him the count, Cabot could see that the vote was heavily in favor of the emergency measures.

“Governor Boll, Admiral Benden, will you accept this mandate?” he asked formally.

“It was rigged!” Ted Tubberman shouted. “I tell you, rigged. They just want to get back into power again.” His accusations broke off suddenly as Tarvi and Fulmar pushed him firmly back down on the bench.

“Governor? Admiral?” Cabot ignored the interruption. “You two still have the best qualifications for the jobs to be done, but if you decline, I will accept nominations from the floor.” He waited expectantly, giving no hint of his personal preference in the matter and paying no attention to the restless audience and the rising murmur of anxious whispers.

Slowly Emily Boll rose to her feet. “I accept.”

“As I do,” Paul Benden said, standing beside the governor. “But only for the duration of this emergency.”

“You believe that?” Tubberman roared, breaking loose from his restrainers.

“That is quite enough, Tubberman,” Cabot shouted, appearing to lose his professional detachment. “The majority supports this temporary measure even if you won’t.” Slowly the audience quieted. Cabot waited until there was complete silence. “Now, I’ve saved the worst news until I was certain we were all resolved to work together. Thanks to Kenjo and his survey teams, Boris and Dieter believe that there is a pattern emerging. If they’re right, we have to expect this Thread to fall again tomorrow afternoon at Malay River and proceed across Cathay Province to Mexico on Maori Lake.”

“On Malay?” Chuck Kimmage jumped to his feet, his wife clutching his arm, both of them horrified. Phas had managed to find and warn all the other stakers at Malay and Mexico, but Chuck and Chaila had arrived just before the meeting, too late to be privately informed.

“And all of us will help preserve your stakes,” Emily Boll said in a loud firm voice.

Paul jumped up on the platform, raising his hands and glancing at Cabot for permission to speak. “I’m asking for volunteers to man sleds and flamethrowers. Kenjo and Fulmar have worked out a way of mounting them. Some are already in place on what sleds they could commandeer. Those of you with medium and large sleds just volunteered them. The best way to get the Thread is while it’s still airborne, before it has a chance to land. We will also need people on the ground, mopping up what does slip through.”

“What about the fire-lizards, or whatever you call ’em? Won’t they help?” someone asked.

“They helped us that day at Landing,” a woman added, a note of fearful apprehension making her voice break.

“They helped at Sadrid Stake two days ago,” Wade said.

“The rain helped a lot, too,” Kenjo added, not at all convinced of assistance from a nonmechanical quarter.

“Any of you with dragonets would be very welcome in ground crews,” Paul went on, willing to entertain any possible reinforcements. But he, too, was skeptical; he had been too busy to attach a dragonet, though his wife and older son had two each. “I particularly need those of you who’ve had any combat or flight experience. Our enemy isn’t the Nathi this time, but it’s our world that is being invaded. Let’s stop it, tomorrow and whenever it’s necessary!”

A spontaneous cheer went up in response to his rousing words and was repeated, growing in volume as people got to their feet, waving clenched fists. Those on the platform watched the demonstration, relieved and reassured. Perhaps only Ongola took note of those who remained seated or silent.

Chapter 11

IF DEITER AND Boris were correct, the oncoming Fall would give the Kahrain peninsula a near miss, beginning at approximately 1630 hours, roughly 120 klicks northwest of the mouth of the Paradise River, 25 degrees south. Dieter and Boris were not sure if the Fall would extend as far southwestward as Mexico on Lake Maori, but precautions were being taken there as well.

Acting Commander Kenjo Fusaiyuki assembled his squadrons at the required point. Though Thread drowned in the sea, his teams would at least have some practice throwing flame at the “real thing.”

“Practice” was not the appropriate term for the chaos that resulted. Kenjo was reduced to snarling preemptory orders over the comm unit as the inept but eager sled pilots plummeted through the skies after Thread, frequently favoring one another with a glancing touch of thrown HNO₃.

Fighting Thread required entirely different techniques from hunting wherry or scoring a hit on a large flying machine driven by a reasonably intelligent enemy. Thread was mindless. It just fell—in a slanting southwesterly direction, occasionally buffeted into tangles by gusting winds. It was the inexorability of that insensate Fall that infuriated, defeated, depressed, and frustrated. No matter how much was seared to ash in the sky, more followed relentlessly. Nervous pilots swooped, veered, and dove. Unskilled gunners fired at anything that moved into range, which more often than not was another sled chasing down a tangle of Thread. Nine domesticated dragonets fell victim to such inexpertise, and there was suddenly a marked decrease in the number of wild ones who had joined the fray.

In the first half hour of the Fall, seven sleds were involved in midair collisions, three badly damaged and two with cracked siliplex canopies which made them unairworthy. Even Kenjo’s sled bore scorch marks. Four broken arms, six broken or sprained hands, three cracked collarbones, and a broken leg put fourteen gunners out of action; many others struggled on with lacerations and bruises. No one had thought about rigging any safety harnesses for the flame-gunners.

A hasty conference between the squadron leaders was called on a secured channel at the beginning of the second hour while the Fall was still over water. The squadron leaders—Kenjo, Sabra Stein-Ongola, Theo Force, and Drake Bonneau—and Paul Benden, as leader of the ground-support crews—decided to assign each squadron their own altitude level at hundred-meter intervals. The squadron would fly in a stacked wedge formation back and forth across the fifty-klick width of the Thread corridor. The important factor was for each wedge of seven sleds to stick to its designated altitude.

Once the sleds began to maintain their distances, midair collisions and scorchings were immediately reduced. Kenjo led the most capable fliers at ground level to catch as much missed Thread as possible and to inform the surface crews where tangles got through. Paul Benden coordinated the movements of the fast ground-skimmers, which carried teams with small portable flamers. Channels were kept open to air, ground, and Landing. Joel Lilienkamp organized replacement of empty HNO₃ cylinders and power packs. A medical team remained on standby.

By mid-Fall, Paul knew that his ground-support teams were too thinly spread to be truly effective, even though there were, fortunately, substantial stretches where Thread landed on stony or poor soil and shriveled and died quickly. Toward the end, when weary pilots were running low on energy and the sled power packs were nearly depleted, more Thread got through. It seemed to be part of the growing bad luck that it fell over thick vegetation and the home farm of the Mexico Stake.

The abrupt end of the Fall, on the verge of Maori Lake and the main buildings of Mexico, came as a distinct shock to those who had been concentrating so hard on destroying Thread. Squadron leaders ordered their fighters to land on the lakeside while they had a chance to confer with the ground-crew marshals. Those at Mexico who had not been in ground defense provided hot soup and klah, fresh bread, and fruit, and had prepared an infirmary in one of the houses. Tarvi and the Karachi team had managed to complete metal roofing just before the Fall reached the area. Then Joel Lilienkamp’s supply barge arrived with fresh power packs and HNO₃ cylinders.

The day was not over yet. Pilots cruised slowly back over the Fall corridor, checking for any “live” Thread. Paul drove himself and his sweat-smeared, soot-covered, weary teams back toward Malay Stake and the coast to try to spot signs of a secondary infestation where no shell or dissolving matter was visible. Only two such points were discovered and, on Paul’s order, the ground was saturated with sustained blasts of HNO₃.

One of the ground crew on that detail told the admiral that he thought that was a waste of fuel. “The dragonets weren’t at all concerned, Admiral. They are when there’s Thread.”

“We take no chances at this stage,” Paul replied, a slight smile removing any hint of rebuke. He did not look upon the fiery bath as an overkill. The dragonets were palpably alerted by Thread, but were obviously unaware of the presence of the second, and possibly more fearful, stage of its life cycle.

However, Paul Benden’s respect for the dragonets was increased by their diligent searching out of newly fallen Thread. Several times during the Fall, he spotted the fair of dragonets fighting alongside Sean Connell and the redheaded Hanrahan girl. The creatures seemed to be obeying orders. Their movements had a discipline, while other groups flitted about in a kind of chaotic frenzy.

On almost too many occasions, Paul saw the little creatures suddenly disappearing just when one seemed certain to be seared by the fiery breath of another. He found himself wishing that sleds had that sort of ability, or even more agility. Sleds were not the most efficient fighter craft. He recalled his admiration of the dragonets during the wherry attack. From accounts of their now legendary “umbrella” defense of Landing from the First Fall, he knew that hundreds of wild ones had assisted their domesticated kin. They could be splendid reinforcements. Paul wondered what the chances were to mobilize all the dragonets to be trained by Connell and Hanrahan.

The present Fall had left denuded patches on the surface, but despite all initial bungling and the inexperience of sled and ground crews, the devastation was not as widespread as in the first horrific Fall.

Most of the exhausted fighters chose to remain the night at Malay Stake. Pierre de Courci took it upon himself to act as chef, and his team had prepared baked fish and tubers in great pits on the beach. Weary men, women, and youngsters sat around the reassuring bonfires, too spent to talk, glad enough just to have survived the rigors of the day.

Sean and Sorka opened an emergency clinic on the Malay beach to tend the wounded fire-dragonets, slathering numb-weed on Threadscored wings and seared hide.

“D’you think that once Sira stops crying, my bronze and brown will come back?” Tarrie Chernoff asked. She was dirty with black grease and vegetation-green stains, her wher-hide jerkin showing numerous char spots, new and old, but like all devoted fire-dragonet owners, she was caring for her creature before seeing to her own relief.

Sean shrugged noncommittally, but Sorka laid a reassuring hand on Tarrie’s arm. “They usually do. They get pretty upset when one of their own fair’s hurt, especially a queen. You get a good night’s sleep and see what the morning brings.”

“Why’d you give her false comfort like that, Sorka?” Sean asked in a low voice when Tarrie had trudged back to the bonfires, her comforted queen cradled in the crook of her arm. “You know bloody well by now that if it’s hurt badly enough, a fire-lizard doesn’t come back.” Sean was grim. He and Sorka had been lucky with their fair so far, but then, he had seen to it that their dragonets had the discipline to survive.

“She needs a good night’s sleep without worrying herself sick. And a lot do come back.”

Sorka gave a weary sigh as she closed the medicine case. She arched her back against tired back muscles. “Give me a rub, would you, Sean? My right shoulder.” She turned her back to him and sighed in relief as his strong fingers kneaded the strain away.

Sean’s hands felt marvelous on her back; he knew just how to ease away the tension. Then his hands moved caressingly up the nape of her neck and lovingly into her hair. Tired as she was, she responded to the silent question. She stepped away from him, smiling as she looked quickly about to see where their fair had taken themselves.

“They’ve all found quiet nests to curl up in.” Sean’s low voice was suggestive.

“Then let’s find us one of our own.” She caught his hand and led him off the beach and into a thick grove of arrow-leaf plants that they had helped save from Threadscore.

Revived by the hot meal and a generous beaker of a very smooth quikal fermented by Chaila Xavior-Kimmage from local fruits, Paul and Emily quietly organized a discreet council, which they held in one of the unscathed Malay outbuildings. Besides the admiral and the governor, Ongola, Drake, Kenjo, Jim Tillek, Ezra Keroon, and Joel Lilienkamp attended.

“We’ll do better next time, Admiral,” Drake Bonneau assured Paul with a cocky salute. Kenjo, entering behind him, regarded the tall war ace with amused condescension. “Today taught us that this Thread requires entirely different flight and strike techniques. We’ll refine that wedge maneuver so nothing gets through. Sled pilots must drill to maintain altitude patterns. Gunners must learn to control their blasts. It’s more than just holding the button down. We had some mighty close encounters. We lost some of the little dragonets, too. We can’t risk so many lives, much less the sleds.”

“We can repair the sleds, Drake,” Joel Lilienkamp remarked dryly before Paul spoke, “but power packs won’t last forever. We can’t afford to expend them uselessly on drills. Despite our resupply system, which I bet I can improve, nine pilots had to glide-land at Maori. That’s clumsy management. That wedge formation, by the way, Drake, is economical on the packs. But it still takes days to recharge exhausted ones. How long will this stuff keep falling, Paul?” Joel looked up from his calculating pad.

“We haven’t established that yet,” Paul said, his left thumb rubbing his knuckles. “Boris and Dieter are collating information from the pilot debriefing.”

“Hellfire, that’s not going to tell us what we need to know, Paul,” Drake said, his weary tone a complaint. “Where does this stuff come from?”

“Probe’s gone off,” Ezra Keroon said. “It’ll be a couple a more days before any reports come back.”

Drake continued almost as if he had not heard. “I want to find out if the stuff mightn’t be more vulnerable in the stratosphere. Even if we only have ten pressurized sleds, would a high-altitude strike be more effective? Does this junk hit the atmosphere in clumps and then disperse? Can we develop a defense less clumsy than flamethrowers? We need to know more about this enemy.”

“It doesn’t fight back,” Ongola remarked, rubbing his temples to ease the pounding sort of headache that battle had always given him.

“True,” Paul replied with a grim smile as he turned to Kenjo. “I wonder if we would gain any useful data from an orbital reconnaissance flight? How much fuel in the Mariposa’s tanks?”

“If I pilot it, enough for three, maybe four flights,” Kenjo replied, deliberately avoiding Drake’s eyes, “depending on how much maneuvering is required and how many orbits.”

“You’re the man for it, Kenjo,” Drake said with a flourish of his hand and a rueful expression. “You can land on a breath of fuel.” Kenjo, smiling slightly, gave a short, quick bow from the waist. “Do we know when, or where, the stuff hits us again?”

“We do,” Paul assured them in a flat tone. “If the data is correct, and it was today, stakeholders are lucky. It strikes in two places: 1930 hours across Araby to the Sea of Azov,”—his expression reflected his continued regret at the loss of Araby’s original stakeowners—“and 0330 from the sea across the tip of Delta. Both those areas are unoccupied.”

“We can’t let that stuff go unchecked anywhere, Paul,” Ezra said in alarm.

“I know, but if we’re going to have to mount crews every three days, we’ll all soon be exhausted.”

“Not everything needs to be protected,” Drake said, unfolding his flight map. “Lots of marsh, scrub land.”

“The Fall will still be attended,” Paul said in an inarguable tone of voice. “Look on it as a chance to refine maneuvers and train teams, Drake. It is undeniably best to get the stuff while it’s airborne. Thread didn’t eat through as much land today, but we can’t afford to lose wide corridors every time it hits us.”

“Draft some more of those dragonets,” Joel suggested facetiously. “They’re as good on the ground as in the air.”

Emily regarded him sadly as the others grinned. “Unfortunately they just aren’t big enough.”

Paul turned around in his chair to give the governor a searching look. “That’s the best idea today, Emily.”

Drake and Kenjo looked at each other, puzzled, but Ongola, Joel, and Ezra Keroon sat up, their expressions expectant. Jim Tillek grinned.

There were five main islands off the southern coast of Big Island and several small prominences, the remains of volcanoes poking above the brilliant green-blue sea. The one Avril and Stev were eagerly approaching was no more than the crater of a sunken volcano. Its sides sloped into the sea, providing a narrow shore, except to the south where the lip of the crater was lowest. Avril was bouncing with impatience as Stev nosed the prow of the little boat up onto the north shore.

“That Nielsen twit couldn’t possibly be right,” she muttered, hopping on to the pebbly beach before he had shut off the power. “How could we have missed a whole beach full of diamonds?”

“We had more promising sites. Remember, Avril?”

Stev watched her scoop up a handful of the black stones and sift them through her fingers. She kept only the largest, which she thrust at him.

“Here! Scan it!” As he inserted the palm-sized stone into the portable scanner, she looked about in angry agitation. “It makes no sense. They can’t all be black diamonds. Can they?”

“This one is!”

She took back the stone and held it up to the sun for a moment. “And this one?” She grabbed up a fist-sized rock and pushed it at him, but he was quick enough to see her slip the first stone into her pouch. “It’s lucky that Nielsen kid’s only our apprentice. All this is—ours—too!”

“We’ll,”—Steve had not missed Avril’s quick alteration— “have to be careful not to glut the market.” He put the big stone into the scanner with eager and not quite steady fingers. “It is indeed black diamond. Around four hundred carats and relatively unflawed. Congratulations, my dear, you’ve struck it rich.”

She grimaced at his mocking tone and snatched the diamond from him, clasping it against her almost protectively. “It can’t all be black diamond,” she muttered. “Can it?”

“Why not? There’s nothing to keep diamonds from being hatched from a volcano, if you have the right ingredients and sufficient pressure at some point in time. I grant you, this might be the only beach composed of black diamond, or any diamond, in the universe, but that’s what”—Stev’s grin was pure malice—“you have here.”

She glanced at him, her eyes wary, and managed an easy smile. “What we have, Stev.” She leaned into him, her skin warm against his. “This is the most exciting moment of my life.” She wound her free hand about his neck and kissed him passionately, her body pressing against him until he felt the diamond gouging his ribs.

“Not even diamonds must come between us, my love,” he murmured, taking it from her resisting fingers and dropping it behind him into the open sled.

Stev was not unduly surprised the next morning when he found that both Avril and the fastest sled were gone from their Big Island mining camp. He made a second check in the rock hollow where he knew Avril secreted the more spectacular gemstones that had been found. It was empty.

Stev grinned maliciously. She might have ignored the mayday from Landing, but he had not. He had followed what was happening on the southern continent, and kept an eye to the east whenever a cloud appeared. He had made contingency plans. He doubted that Avril had. He would have liked to see her expression when she found out that Landing was swarming with industrious people, the takeoff grid crammed with sleds and technicians. So he roared with amusement when one of their apprentices anxiously reported that she could not find Avril anywhere.

Nabhi Nabol was not at all pleased.

Kenjo achieved orbit with a minimum of fuel expenditure. He kept his mind on the task at hand, feeling the upward thrust of the versatile craft, and the glorious elation of release from gravity. He could wish that all his cares would fall away as easily. But he had not lost his touch with spacecraft. He slid appreciative fingers down the edge of the console.

The last three days had been frantic, serving the Mariposa’s dormant systems, checking any possible fatigue or perishing of essential parts. He had even allowed Theo Force to command his squadron when Thread fell over the mountains southeast of Karachi and brushed Longwood, on Ierne Island. It was more important for him to recommission the Mariposa. Ongola had spared some time to tune the comm unit circuits and help with the terminal checks. The little ship had been designed for inactivity in the vacuum of space, and although the more important circuits had been stored in vacuum containers, there was always the fear that some minor but critical connection had not been properly scrutinized. But finally all systems had proved go-green, and a trial blast of her engines had been reassuringly loud and steady—and Kenjo had objected when forced to rest the last twelve hours before takeoff.

“You may be a bloody good jockey, Kenjo, but there are better mechanics on Pern than you,” Paul Benden had told him in no uncertain terms. “You need rest now, to keep you alert in space where we can’t help you.”

A flight plan had been calculated to allow Kenjo to be in the position where Boris and Dieter had predicted the next batch of Thread would enter Pern’s atmosphere. Their program indicated that Thread fell in approximately seventy-two-hour bursts, give or take an hour or two. Kenjo’s mission was to measure the accuracy of their program, to determine the composition of Thread prior to entry, and, if possible, to trace its trajectory backward. Also, last but scarcely least, he was to destroy it before it entered the atmosphere. The next Fall was due to hit Kahrain Province, just above the deserted Oslo Landing, continue on to fall over Paradise River Stake, and end in the Araby Plains.

Kenjo was a hundred miles below the empty spaceships, but that was too far away for them to register on his scope. Nevertheless he strained to see them, magnifying the viewscope to its limit. Then he shrugged. The ships were past history. He was going to make a new contribution, an unparalleled one. Kenjo Fusaiyuko would discover the source of Thread, eradicate it once and for all, and be a planetary hero. Then no one would condemn him for “conserving” so much fuel for his private use. He could relieve his sense of honor and his scouring bouts of conscience.

Building his extra-light aircraft had been most rewarding. He had found the design on tape in the Yokohama’s library, in the history-of-airflight section. It was not the most fuel efficient, even when he had redesigned the engine, but what he had saved from each shuttle drop had made that saucy plane possible. Flying it over his isolated Honshu Stake in the Western Barrier Range had given him satisfaction far beyond his imagining, even if it had given rise to rumors of a large, and hitherto unknown, flying creature. His wife, patient and calm, had ventured no opinion on his avocation, aiding him in its construction. A mechanical engineer, she managed the small hydroelectric plant that served their plateau home and three small stakes in the next valley. She had given him four children, three of them sons, was a good mother, and even managed to help him cultivate the fruit trees that he raised as a credit crop.

She was safe from Thread, for they had cut their home right into the mountain, using wood only on the interior. She had been quite willing to help him carve a hangar for his aircraft with the stone-cutters he had borrowed from Drake Bonneau. But she did not know that he had a second, well-concealed cave in which to store his hoard of liquid fuel. He had not yet managed to transfer all of it to Honshu from the cave at Landing.

Yes, no one would object to what Kenjo had done when he brought them the information they sought. And he would see to it that it took three or four missions to do so. He had missed the tranquility and the challenge of deep space. How pitiful his little atmospheric craft was in comparison to the beautiful, powerful Mariposa. How clumsy the sled he had flown as a squadron leader. He had finally returned to his true medium—space!

The ship’s alarms went off, and moments later the pinging began. He was in the midst of a shower of small ovoids. With a cry once uttered by long-dead Japanese warriors, Kenjo fired his starboard repulsors and grinned when the screen blossomed with tiny stars of destruction.

Avril Bitra was livid. She could not believe the change in Landing, especially as she had counted on it being nearly deserted. When Stev had talked her into taking apprentices so that no one would question exactly what it was they were doing on Big Island, Landing’s population had been down to a mere two hundred.

But the Landing she found was crawling with people. There were lights everywhere, and people bustling about despite the late hour. Worst of all, the landing strip was crowded with sleds, large, small, and medium, and technicians swarmed about—and the Mariposa was not there! What under the suns had happened?

She had settled her sled to one edge of the strip, near where she had last seen the little space gig. She fumed, impotently again over that disappointment. She had a fortune with which to depart this wretched mudball. She had even managed to shake off any companions. She had no qualms about leaving Stev Kimmer. He had been useful, as well as amusing—until just lately, until he had assessed those black diamonds. Yes, she had been right to leave immediately, before he thought to dismantle the sleds or do something drastic so that she would be forced to take him with her. Where in all the hells of seventeen worlds was the Mariposa? Who was using up the fuel she needed to get her to the colony ships? She struggled to control her rage. She had to think!

Belatedly she remembered the mayday. She wished now that she had listened in. Well, it could not have been that serious, not with Landing a hive of industry. Still, that could work in her favor. With so many people around, no one would notice another worker poking about.

She shivered, suddenly aware of the chill in the night air of the plateau. She was accustomed to the tropical climate of Big Island. Cursing inventively under her breath, she rooted through the sled’s storage compartments and found a reasonably clean coverall. She also girded on the mechanic’s belt she found beneath the coverall. It was probably Stev’s—he was always well equipped. She smirked. Not always prepared, however.

Before she left to hunt for the Mariposa, she would have to hide the sled. In the darkness, she tried to locate at least one of the dense shrubs that grew at the edge of the strip, but she could not find any. Instead she stumbled into a small hole that proved large enough to conceal her sacks of treasure. She retrieved them from the sled, dropped them into the hole, piled loose stone and dirt over them, and then shone her hand-beam over the spot to see if they were well hidden. After a few minor adjustments, she was satisfied.

With brazen strides she walked down the grid to the lights and activity.

Glancing out of the ground-floor window of the met tower where Drake Bonneau was conducting a training session, Sallah Telgar-Andiyar thought she had to be mistaken: the woman only looked llike Avril Bitra. She was wearing a tool belt and strode purposefully toward a stripped-down sled. Yet no one else Sallah knew had that same arrogant walk, that provocative swing of the hip. Then the woman stopped and began to work on the sled. Sallah shook her head. Avril was at Big Island; she had not even responded to the mayday, or to the more recent recall to Landing for pilot duty. No one had seen her, or really cared to, but Stev Kiminer’s genius with circuits would have been invaluable. Ongola was trying to get Paul Benden to order the return of Big Island miners.

“Don’t keep your fingers on the release button.” Drake’s voice penetrated her moment of inattention.

Poor fellow, Sallah thought. He was trying to teach all the eager youngsters how to fight Thread. If half of what Tarvi had told her about the deadly menace was true, it was devilish to combat.

“Always sweep from bow to stern. Thread falls in a sou’westerly direction, so if you come in under the leading edge, you char a larger portion.” Drake was running out of space on the operational board, which he had covered with his diagrams and flight patterns. Sallah had yet to fight the stuff, so she had paid attention—until the moment when she had thought she recognized Avril.

The day had had the quality of a reunion for the shuttle pilots. All the old crowd, with the exception of Nabhi Nabol and Kenjo, had answered the summons. Sallah knew where Kenjo was; she was a trifle envious of him, and was glad of Nabol’s absence. He would certainly have sneered to be in the company of all the young ones who had earned their flying tickets since Landing. Why, she had known some of them as adolescents.

Settling in at Karachi had eaten more time than she realized. And it had brought so many changes, such as the dragonets perched on young shoulders or curled up on hide-trousered legs. Her own three—a gold and two bronzes—had, just like her older children, picked up some basic manners. They were perched on the top shelves of the big ready room. Two were mentas, and she wondered if they understood what was going on before their watchful rainbow eyes.

Drake’s imperative warning interrupted her musing. “Don’t deviate from your assigned altitude. We’re trying to rig cruising devices that will warn you hair-trigger pilots when you’re out of line. We’ve got to maintain flight levels to avoid collisions. We’ve got more people to fly than sleds to fly in. You,” he said, jabbing his finger at his audience, “can be replaced. The sled cannot, and we’re going to need every one we can keep in the air.

“Now, a sweep from bow to stern in a one-second blast chars as much Thread for the range of these throwers. Catch the end of the stuff and fire runs back up most of it. Don’t waste the HNO₃.” His rapid-fire use of the chemical designation made it sound more like “agenothree,” Sallah thought, losing concentration once again. Damn, she must pay attention, but she was so used to listening for sounds, not words. And silences. The silence all children made when they were being naughty or trying out forbidden things. And hers were inventive. She felt her lips widen in a proudly maternal smile, then disciplined her expression as Drake’s eyes fastened on her face.

She already missed her three older children dreadfully. Ram Da, Sallah’s sturdy, reliable seven-year-old son, had promised to look out for Dena and Ben. Sallah had brought three-month-old Cara with her—the baby was safely installed with Mairi Hanrahan’s lot—so she was not totally deprived. But Tarvi was back at Karachi, extruding metal sheets on a round-the-clock basis, slaving as hard as the people he drove to their limits.

“ . . . and make each cylinder last as long as possible,” Drake was saying. “Conserve agenothree and power, and you’ll last longer in the flight line. Which is where you’re needed. Now, most of you have had experience with turbulence. Don’t shuck your safety harness until you’re on the ground. The lighter sleds can be flipped on landing if the wind suddenly gusts, because they’re nose-heavy with the flamethrower mounts.”

With Tarvi on such a schedule, it was just as well that she had work of her own to do, Sallah thought. He had little enough time for her, and she would not even have the comfort of sleeping beside him—or be able to rouse him to a dawn lusting when he was too drowsy to resist her caresses.

What was wrong with her? she wondered for the millionth time. She had not trapped Tarvi. The mutual need and passion that day in the cave could not have been faked. When the chance union had resulted in pregnancy, he had immediately offered to make a formal arrangement. She had not insisted, but she had been much relieved that the initiative had been his. He had been considerate, tender, and solicitous throughout the gestation, and sincerely overjoyed when his firstborn was a strong, healthy boy. He adored all his children, rejoicing at their birth and in their development. It was his wife he avoided, dismissed, ignored.

Sallah sighed, and her old friend Barr shot her a quizzical glance. Sallah smiled and gave a shrug, intimating that Drake had caused her reaction. What would her life have been like with Drake Bonneau, happily ensconced on his lake? Svenda looked complacent, boasting about limiting her childbearing to two. Drake might act the confident flyboy in public, but the previous night he had been noticeably dancing attendance on his imperious wife. Sallah had always thought that Drake was more “show” than “do.” Yet for all Tarvi’s eccentricities, Sallah preferred the geologist and treasured those ever more rare occasions when she could rouse him to passion. Perhaps that was the problem: Tarvi should be allowed the initiative. No, she had tried that tack, and had gone through a miserable year before she thought of her “dawn attacks.”

She had learned some Pushtu phrases from Jivan and artlessly she had inquired about feminine names. Whomever Tarvi called for at the height of passion, it was not another woman. Or another man, from all she could discover.

“So,” Drake said, “here is the roster for the next Fall Remember, it’s a double hit, at Jordan and at Dorado. We’re going to send you Dorado squadrons on ahead so you can be well rested by the time you have to fight.” Again Drake’s eagle gaze swept his adoring students. “Now, back to your sleds to lend the technicians what assistance you can. House light’ll go out at midnight. We all need our rest,” he concluded cheerfully as he waved their dismissal.

Svenda quickly moved to his side, her scowl a deterrent to those who approached Drake with private questions.

“When did you get in, Sallah?” Barr asked, turning with her usual friendly grin. “I only arrived in from our stake around noon. No one of the old group knew when you’d make it. I didn’t realize this thing was so serious until I saw what it had done on my way up.”

Sallah laughed. Barr’s bubbling personality had not changed a micro, though her figure had rounded. “How many kids do you have now, Barr?” Sallah asked. “We’ve sort of lost track of each other with you on the other side of the continent.”

“Five!” Barr managed a girlish giggle, glancing slyly at Sallah. “The last was a set of twins, which I’d never have expected. Then Jess told me that he was a twin, and twin births were common in his family. I could have strangled him.”

“You didn’t, though.”

“Naw! He’s a good man, a loving father, and a hard worker.” Barr gave a sharp nod of her head at each virtue, grinning at Sallah again. Then her mobile face changed to one of concern. “Are you all right, Sallah?”

“Me, certainly. I’ve four kids. Brought Cara with me. She’s only three months old.”

“Is she at Mairi’s or Chris MacArdle-Cooney’s?”

“At Mairi’s. We’d better check that roster and see when we’re on duty. Where’s Sorka these days?” Sallah had also lost track of the redheaded Hanrahan girl. “I saw all the others.”

“Oh, she’s living with another vet. Over on Irish Square.”

“How appropriate!” Suddenly Sallah felt a surge of resentment, something to do with the freedom young people had and her frustration with Tarvi’s diffidence, along with the sudden realization that she had relatively few responsibilities at that moment and that her professional skills were once again in demand. “C’mon, let’s go find a drink and catch up on our lives!”

Sorka and Sean arrived at their quarters from different directions, Sean from an unexpected meeting with Admiral Benden, Sorka from the barn. She knew by his jarring stride that Sean was barely containing a fine fit of rage. He held it back until they were inside the house.

“Damn fool, hell’n’damned fool,” he said, slamming the door behind him. “That pompous, pig-headed, butt-stupid git.”

“Admiral Benden?” she inquired, surprised. Sean had never had reason to criticize the admiral, and he had been proud to be called to a special interview.

“That stupid admiral wants a cavalry unit!”

“Cavalry?” Sorka paused as she picked their evening meal out of the freezer compartment.

“To charge about the countryside with flamethrowers, no less!”

“Doesn’t he realize horses hate fire?”

“He does now.” Sean went past her to the small cabinet, hauled out a bottle of quikal, and held it up suggestively.

“Yes, please. If I don’t unwind, too, my food won’t do me any good at all.” She curtailed her anxiety. The need for a drink indicated how tense he was, for Sean was not a drinking man.

“We don’t have to eat up above, do we?” he asked, jerking his head over his shoulder in the direction of the reestablished community kitchen.

“No, I raided Mother’s freezer.” She set the container in the warming unit and dialed the appropriate time.

Sean handed over her glass and raised his in a toast. “To idiot admirals who are very good in space and real dumb washout stupid about animals. As if we had enough horses to waste in such an asinine caper. He also envisions me training squadrons of fire-lizards”—Sean had persisted in using his own name for them—“swooping down on Thread at command. He even feels that he should have one, too. He doesn’t effing know they won’t be hatching till summer! That is, if those flyboys don’t flame ’em all down.”

Sorka had never seen Sean so infuriated. He paced about, his face flushed, throwing his left arm out in extravagant gestures, sipping at his drink between phrases as he vented his anger. He flicked his head to flip the sun-lightened hair out of his eyes. A grimace made him appear inscrutable, almost frightening in his anger. On one level she listened to his words, agreeing with his anxieties and opinions; on the other, she reveled in the fact that beneath the contained, almost coldly detached impression he gave most people, there was such a passionate, intelligent, critical, rational, and dedicated personality.

Sorka did not quite know when she had realized, that she loved him—it seemed that she always had—but she remembered the day she realized that he loved her: the first time he had exploded in her presence over a minor incident. Sean would never have permitted himself that luxury if he had not felt totally secure in her presence, if he had not unconsciously needed her soothing affection and reassurance. Watching him work off his aggravation, Sorka permitted herself a small smile which she tactfully hid behind her glass.

“Now, Sean, the admiral paid you a compliment, too,” she remarked. She caught his surprised glance and smiled. “By consulting you. I noticed, even if you didn’t, that he watched us out there on the Malay corridor, saw how well our fair behaved. And I’m sure that he knows that you’re more likely than anyone else to discover where the queens are hiding their eggs.”

“Humph. Yes, I guess that’s true enough.” Somewhat mollified, Sean continued to pace, but with less agitation.

Sorka loved Sean in every mood, but his infrequent explosions fascinated her. His anger had never been directed at her; he rarely criticized and then only in a crisp impersonal tone. Some of her girlfriends had wondered how she could stand his taciturn, almost sullen moodiness, but Sorka had never found him sullen in her company. Generally he was thoughtful, unwilling to offend even in a complete disagreement, and certainly a man who kept his own counsel—unless horses were at risk. His lithe figure was graceful even as he thudded back and forth, his heels pounding and leaving dents in the thick wool carpet she had woven for their home. She let his tirade continue, amused by the language in which he described the probable antecedents of the admiral, whom he usually respected, and the idiocy of the entire biological team who tampered with creatures whose natures they had not the wit to understand.

“Well, did you offer to find the admiral a dragonet egg when the time’s right?” she asked when he paused for breath after another elaboration of the stupidity of brass asses.

“Ha! I will if I can.” He spun on his heel and sprawled beside her on the couch, his face suddenly still, rage and frustration dissipated, his eyes on the amber liquid in his glass. From his expression, she knew that something else was worrying him deeply. She waited for him to continue. “You know as well as I do that we haven’t caught a glimmer of any of the wild ones around here. They’ve made themselves scarce since the Sadrid Fall. Jays, if there were anywhere safe on this planet, they’d find it!”

“There were a lot helping us at the Malay corridor.”

“Up until some ijjits started flaming them, too!” Sean finished the last of his drink to drown his disgust. “We won’t get the wild ones to help at all if that gets about.” He poured himself another drink. “Say, where’re yours?” he asked suddenly noticing that the usual perches were vacant.

“Same place yours are, out and about,” she answered in a mild tone.

Then Sean began to laugh, as much at himself as at the fact that he had only just realized that his fire-lizards had made themselves scarce the moment he left the admin building.

“Not surprising, is it?” she teased, grinning back at him. He shoved one arm behind her shoulders and pulled her, unresisting, closer to him. “When Emmett told me Blazer was in a tizzy over your righteous wrath, I told mine they’d have to find their own food tonight. They don’t like cheesy things anyway.”

“It’s not often we get a night alone,” Sean said softly, his voice a seductive whisper in her ear. “Finish your drink, redheaded gal.” He ruffled her fringe, then his hand traveled in a caress down her cheek to her chin. “And turn off the cooker,” he added just before he kissed her.

Sorka did as she was told, well pleased. It was awkward having to invent excuses to send the dragonets off on specious errands. But even when they were not in season, the creatures delighted in strong emotions, and with thirteen in a chorus of encouragement, the entire neighborhood would know what was happening in the Hanrahan-Connell quarters.

Later that night, when the sounds of Landing’s industry were muted, Sorka wondered if she had conceived. Sean slept neatly and quietly beside her, his fingers lightly encircling her upper arm. She had never mentioned a formal arrangement to Sean, or even pointed out the common assumption of Landing’s population that they were a tempered team. She and Sean were of one mind in nearly everything they did, utilizing their veterinary apprenticeship to breed strong horses, finding the very best among the genetic stock available from either the banks or the live stallions. They were soon to sit their final exams in veterinary medicine and they had located the perfect spot for a home—a valley halfway down the Eastern Barrier Range. Sean had taken Red to see the proposed Killarney Stake, and her father had approved emphatically of their choice. Sorka took that as a tacit approval of their still informal union.

Although Sorka’s parents had acquiesced, Porrig Connell still treated her formally as a guest he wished to see less often. His wife had never ceased in her efforts to bring her son back to his proper hearth. She had chosen another daughter-in-law for Sean and sometimes embarrassed all concerned by pushing the girl at Sean on every opportunity.

“I won’t breed so close, Mam,” Sean had informed her when she had nagged him once too often. “It’s bad for the blood. Lally Moorhouse’s father was your first cousin. We need to spread the gene pool, not enclose it.”

Sorka had overheard, but she knew Sean well enough by then not to be hurt that he had said no more about choosing. Perhaps he had not known then that he loved fifteen-year-old Sorka Hanrahan, who was already certain where her heart had been given.

She had been seventeen before he had touched her with any kind of passion, and that had been a night to remember. Their roles had become reversed; she, the wanton; he, the hesitant, tender lover. Her ardent response to his gentle overtures had surprised and pleased them both, but they had not moved to separate quarters until she had passed her eighteenth birthday. It had become a custom in their generation to have a trial period prior to a formal declaration before the magistrate.

Sorka wanted Sean’s child badly. Ever since that hideous half hour, treading water under a stone ledge, she had been aware of their mortality. She wanted something of Sean—just in case. Not that he was wild or incautious, but the Lilienkamp boys had not been reckless, and certainly poor Lucy Tubberman had not. So many people had been wiped out in that First Fall.

Sorka did not want to be left with nothing of Sean. She had not tried before to conceive, because pregnancy would have interfered with their plans for Killarney Stake: they needed the work credits for every acre they could purchase. She worried that there was something wrong with her that she had not gotten pregnant before, with all the incautious fooling around that she and Sean had enjoyed. But she was no longer fooling. That night she had meant business.

Wind Blossom opened the door to Paul Benden, Emily Boll, Ongola, and Pol and Bay Harkenon-Nietro. Gracefully inclining her head in welcome, she held the door wide for them to enter.

Kitti Ping was seated on a padded chair that, Paul decided, must be raised off the ground under its cover, giving it the semblance of an archaic throne. She looked imposing, a feat for someone half his height. A beautiful soft woven rug had been tucked about a frail body, and a long-sleeved tunic with elaborate embroideries also increased her general look of substance and authority. She raised one delicate hand, no larger than his oldest daughter’s, and indicated that they were to be seated on the stools set in an irregular circle in front of her.

As Paul doubled his long legs to sit, he realized that she had achieved a subtle advantage over her visitors. Amused by the tactic, he smiled up at her and thought he could detect the merest hint of an acknowledgment.

Only a few strong ethnic traditions had survived the Age of Religions, but the Chinese, Japanese, Maori, and Amazon-Kapayan were four that had retained some of their ancient ways. In Kitti’s Pernese house, which was exquisitely furnished with heirlooms from her family, Paul knew better than to disrupt a hospitality ritual. Wind Blossom served the visitors fragrant tea in delicate porcelain cups. The little plantation of tea bushes, grown to sustain the lovely ceremony, had been a casualty in the First Fall. Paul was poignantly aware that the cup of tea he sipped might be the last he would ever taste.

“Has Mar Dook had a chance to inform you, Kitti Ping, that he had several tea bushes in reserve in the conservatory?” Paul asked when everyone had had time to savor the beverage.

Kitti Ping inclined her head in a deep bow of gratitude and smiled. “It is a great reassurance.”

Such a bland reply gave him no opening wedge. Paul moved restlessly, trying to find a comfortable position on the stool, and he knew that Pol and Bay were bursting to discuss the reason for the interview.

“All of us would be more reassured, Kit Ping Yung”— Abruptly he modulated his voice which sounded so much louder after her delicate response—“If we had . . . some form of reliable assistance in combating this menace.”

“Ah?” Her pencil-thin eyebrows rose, and then her tiny hands made a vague gesture about the armrests.

“Yes.” Paul cleared his throat, annoyed at himself for being so gauche, and more annoyed that he could be so disconcerted by a trivial seating arrangement. She must know why he had arranged the private conference. “The truth is we are very badly positioned to defend ourselves against Thread. Bluntly, we will run out of resources in five years. We do not have the equipment to manufacture either sleds or power packs when what we brought are worn out. Kenjo’s attempt to destroy Thread in space was only partially successful, and there isn’t much fuel left for the Mariposa.

“As you know, none of the colony ships carried any defensive or destructive weaponry. Even if we could construct laser sweep beams, there isn’t fuel enough to move even one ship into an effective position to annihilate the pods. Nevertheless the best way to protect the surface is to destroy this menace in the air.

“Boris and Dieter have confirmed our worst fears: Thread will sweep across Pern in a pattern that will denude the planet unless we can stop it. We cannot entertain much hope that Ezra Keroon’s probe will bring us any useful information.” Paul spread his hands with the hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm him.

Kitti raised her delicate eyebrows in unfeigned surprise. “The morning star is the source?”

Paul sighed heavily. “That is the current theory. We’ll know more when the probe returns its survey.”

Kitti Ping nodded thoughtfully, her willow-slender fingers tightening on the armrests.

“We are, Kit Ping Yung,” Emily said, sitting even more erect on her stool, “in a desperate situation.”

Paul Benden was heartened in an obscure way to see the governor as much like a nervous schoolchild as himself. Pol and Bay nodded encouragement. Kitti Ping and Wind Blossom, who stood slightly behind her grandmother’s left side, waited patiently.

“If the dragonets were only larger, Kitti,” Bay broke in, her manner unusually brusque, “intelligent enough to obey commands, they’d be an immense help to us. I was able to use mentasynth to enhance their own latent empathies, but that’s a relatively simple matter. To breed large enough dragonets— dragons—we need them big—” Bay stretched her arms full length and flicked her fingers to indicate room size. “—intelligent, obedient, strong enough to do the job needed: flame Thread out of the sky.” She ran out of words then, knowing very well how Kitti Ping Yung felt about bioengineering beyond simple adjustments to adapt creatures to new ecological parameters.

Kitti Ping nodded again while her granddaughter regarded her with surprise. “Yes, size, strength, and considerable intelligence would be required,” she said in her softly audible voice. Hiding her hands in the cuffs of her long sleeves and folding them across her stomach, she bent her head and was silent for so long that her audience wondered if she had nodded off in the easy sleep of the aged. Then she spoke again. “And dedication, which is easy to instill in some creatures, impossible in others. The dragonets already possess the traits you wish to enhance and magnify.” She smiled, a gentle, faintly apologetic smile of great sadness and compassion. “I was the merest student, though a very willing and eager one, in the Great Beltrae Halls of Eridani. I was taught what would happen if I did this or that, enlarged or reduced, severed that synapse or modified this gene pattern. Most of the time what I was taught to do worked, but, alas,” she added, raising one hand warningly, “I never knew why sometimes the modification failed and the organism died. Or should have. The Beltrae would teach us the how but never the why.”

Paul sighed deeply, despair threatening to overwhelm him.

“But I can try,” she said. “And I will. For though my years are nearly accomplished, there are others to be considered.” She turned to smile gently upon Wind Blossom, who ducked her head with humility.

Paul shook his head, not quite believing what she had just said.

“You will?” Bay exclaimed, jumping to her feet. She stopped just short of rushing to Kitti’s raised chair.

“Of course I will try!” Kitti raised one tiny hand in warning. “But I must caution you that success cannot be assumed. What we undertake is dangerous to the species, could be dangerous for us, and cannot be guaranteed. It is good fortune of the highest degree that the little dragonets already possess so many of the qualities required in the genetically altered animal that suits the urgent need. Even so, we may not be able to achieve the exact creature, or even be sure of a genetic progression. We have no sophisticated laboratory equipment, or methods of analysis which could lighten our burden. We must let repetition, the work of many hands and eyes, replace precision and delicacy. The task is appropriate, but the means are barbaric.”

“But we have to try!” Paul Benden said, rising to his feet with clenched fists.

Chapter 12

ALL MEDICAL STAFF not on duty in the infirmary or on ground crew duty, the veterinarians, and the apprentices, Sean and Sorka included, worked shifts as Kitti Ping’s project was given top priority. Anyone with training in biology, chemistry, or laboratory procedures of any kind—sometimes even those with nimble fingers who could be put to work preparing slides, or those convalescing from Threadfall injuries who could watch monitors—were drafted into service. Kitti, Wind Blossom, Bay, and Pol extracted a genetic code from the chromosomes of the fire-dragonets. Although the creatures were not of Earth, their biology proved not too dissimilar to work with.

“We succeeded with the chiropteroids on Centauri,” Pol said, “and they had chains of silicons as their genetic material.”

A great deal of schedule-juggling was required in order to muster enough people to fight Fall over populated areas. The detailed sequence of Threadfall, established by the exhausted team of Boris Pahlevi and Dieter Clissmann, gave a structure to which even Kitti’s project had to bow. The resultant four-shift roster attempted to provide everyone with some time for themselves—both to relax and to care for their own stakes— though some of the specialists ignored such considerations and had to be ordered to sleep.

Everyone under the age of twelve was brought in when Thread fell. The hope that Kenjo, in the Mariposa, could deflect Thread pods in the upper reaches of the atmosphere turned out to be ineffective. The predicted double Fall—over Cardiff in mid-Jordan and Bordeaux in Kahrain, and over Seminole and Ierne Island—was patchy, but the gaps perversely did not include occupied sites.

More double Falls could be anticipated: on the thirty-first day after First Fall, Thread would sweep across Karachi camp and the tip of the Kahrain peninsula; three days later a single land corridor would range from Kahrain across Paradise River Stake, while a second Fall would pass harmlessly at sea well above the tip of Cibola Province. After another three days, a dangerous double would hit Boca Stake and the thick forests of lower Kabrain and Araby, stocks of the one real wood vitally needed to shore up mine pits at busy Karachi Camp and Drake’s Lake.

Ezra spent hours in the booth that housed the link with the Yokohama’s mainframe, scanning the naval and military histories to find some means of combating the menace. He also sought, with much less optimism, obscure equations or devices that might be able to alter the orbit of the planet. Then the next Fall could, perhaps, be avoided. Meanwhile, however, the present pass had seeded Pern’s orbit with spirals of the encapsulated Thread, a danger that the colonists would have to face no matter what. He also did comparisons with data from Kitti’s program, delving into science files, using his security ID to access secret or “need to know” information. He was waiting, too, for the probe’s findings to be relayed back to him. And because everyone knew where to find Ezra, he often intercepted complaints and minor problems that would have added unnecessary burdens to the admiral and the governor.

Kenjo was sent on three more missions, each time trying to find a more efficient way of destroying enough Thread in space to justify the expenditure of precious fuel. The gauges on the Mariposa dropped only slightly with each trip, and Kenjo was commended on his economy. Drake was openly envious of the space pilot’s skill.

“Jays, man,” Drake would say. “You’re driving it on the fumes!”

Kenjo would nod modestly and say nothing. He was, however, rather relieved that he had not managed to transfer all the fuel sacks to their hiding place at Honshu. All too soon, he would have to broach that supply to ensure continued trips into space. Only there did he feel totally aware and alive in every sense and nerve of his body.

But each time he brought back useful information. Thread, it turned out, traveled in a pod that burned away when it hit the atmosphere of Pern, leaving an inner capsule. About 15,000 feet above the surface, the inner capsule opened into ribbons, some of which were not thick enough to survive in the upper reaches. But, as everyone at Landing well knew, plenty fell to the surface.

Most of the sleds were unpressurized, so they had an effective ceiling of 10,000 feet. There was still only one way to clear the Thread from the skies: by flamethrowers.

With Thread due to fall on the Big Island Stake on Day 40, Paul Benden ordered Avril Bitra and Stev Kimmer to return to Landing. When Stev asked what Landing needed in the way of the ores mined at Big Island, Joel Lilienkamp was more than happy to supply a list. So when they arrived at Landing with four sleds crammed canopy-high with metal ingots, no one mentioned their long delinquency.

“I don’t see Avril,” Ongola commented as the sleds were being unloaded at the metals supply sheds.

Stev looked at him, slightly surprised. “She flew back weeks ago.” He peered back at the landing grid and saw the sun glint off the Mariposa’s hull. “Hasn’t she reported in?” Ongola shook his head slowly. “Well, now, fancy that!” Stev’s gaze lingered thoughtfully on the Mariposa just long enough for Ongola to notice. “Maybe Thread got her!”

“Maybe her, but not the sled,” Ongola replied, knowing that Avril Bitra was too adept at preserving her skin to be scored. “We’ll keep an eye out for her.”

Threadfall charts were displayed everywhere and constantly updated; previous Falls were deleted and future ones limited to the next three, so that people could plan a week ahead. Avril could not have stopped ten minutes in Landing without learning of the dangers of Thread. Ongola reminded himself that he must remove that guidance chip from the Mariposa as soon as Kenjo landed. He knew exactly how the space pilot had extended the fuel; he did not want anyone else, especially Avril Bitra, to discover how. Admiral Benden had been right about Kenjo. Ongola did not want to be right about Bitra!

“Where do you want me to work now I’m back, Ongola?” Stev asked with a wry grin.

“Find out where Fulmar Stone needs you most, Kimmer. Glad to see you in one piece.”

Avril had stayed around Landing that night just long enough to know that she did not wish to be conscripted into any of the several teams who could use her special skills. The only skill she preferred to employ—space navigation—was thwarted. So, before dawn broke on Landing and before anyone noticed the existence of a spare sled, she lifted it again, loaded with useful supplies, both food and materiel.

She touched down on the rocky height above the ravaged Milan Stake, where she had a clear view of Landing, and, more importantly, a good view of the busy, illuminated grid where the Mariposa would touch down. She spent the early morning hours using the metal sheets she had filched to arrange an umbrella over the sled’s siliplex canopy. She preferred to take every precaution against the deadly airborne stuff. By midmorning she had camouflaged her eyrie and tuned the sled’s scope on her objective. She was rewarded by a provocative view of Kenjo’s return.

By listening carefully to all the channels available on the sled’s comm unit, she managed to discover the facts of his mission and its limited success.

Over the next several days, she began to feel secure in her hideout. Because of the old volcanoes, most air traffic took corridors well to either side of her. During the morning the shadow of the biggest peak lurked over the retreat, like a broad digit pointing directly at her. It was enough to make her flesh creep. She had no real appreciation of views, although the fact that she could look up the Jordan to the bay, or down toward Bordeaux meant that she was unlikely to be surprised. She began to relax and wait. Considering the reward, she had trouble practicing patience.

“Have you any progress to report, Kitti?” Paul Benden asked the tiny geneticist.

He had never found that close surveillance improved performance, but he needed some morsel of encouragement to lighten the depression of his people. The psychologists reported a lowering of morale as the second month of Threadfall ground on. The initial enthusiasm and resolution was being eroded by fierce work schedules and few distractions. Landing’s facilities, once generous, were crowded with technicians drafted into the laboratories and stakeholders’ families returned to the dubious safety of the first settlement.

No one was idle. Mairi Hanrahan had made a game for the five- and six-year-olds with good motor control to assemble control panels by the colors of the chips. Even the most awkward ones could help gather fruits and vegetables from the undamaged lands, or compete with one another in collecting the unusual-colored seaweeds from the beaches after high tides or storms. The seven- and eight-year-olds were permitted to help fish with handlines under the watchful eyes of experienced fishermen. But even the youngest toddlers were beginning to react to mounting tensions.

There was considerable talk about allowing more holders to return to their stakes and fly out from their homes to meet Thread. But that would mean splitting up the supply depots and disarranging the work schedules of the more valuable technicians. Paul and Emily finally had to remain adamant on the centralization.

That night Kitti regarded Paul and Emily with a wise and compassionate smile. As she sat erect on the stool by the massive microbiological unit, its minute laser units pushed back from the manipulation chamber, she did not appear fatigued; only her bloodshot eyes showed the strain of her labors. A program was running with whispering clicks, flashing incomprehensible displays on its several monitors. Kitti paused briefly to regard a graph on one screen and a set of equations on another before she returned her gaze to the anxious people.

“There is no way, Admiral, to accelerate gestation, not if you wish a healthy, viable specimen. Not even the Beltrae managed to hasten that process. As I mentioned in my last reports, we pinpointed the cause of our original failures and made the necessary corrections. Time-consuming, I realize, but well worth the effort. The twenty-two bioengineered prototypes we now have are proceeding well into the first semester. We all”—her delicate hand made a graceful sweeping gesture that included all the technicians working in the huge laboratory block—“are immensely cheered by such a high rate of success.” She turned her head slightly to watch the flicker of a reading. “We constantly monitor the specimens. They show the same responses as the little tunnel snakes whose development we understand well. Let us earnestly hope that all proceeds without incident. We have been infinitely fortunate so far. Patience is required of you now.”

“Patience,” Paul echoed ruefully. “Patience is in very short supply.”

Kitti raised her hands in a gesture of impotence. “Day by day, the embryos grow. Wind Blossom and Bay continue to refine the program. In two days we shall start a second group. We shall continue to refine the manipulations. Always seeking to improve. We do not stand still. We move forward.

“Our task is great and full of responsibility. One does not irresponsibly change the nature and purpose of any creature. As it was said, the person of intellect is careful in the differentiation of things, so that each finds its place. Before completion, deliberation and caution are the prerequisites of success.”

Kitti then smiled a courtly dismissal of the two leaders and turned her complete attention to the rapidly shifting monitors. Paul and Emily executed equally courteous bows to her slender back and left the room.

“Well,” Paul began, shrugging off his frustration, “that’s that.”

“What city wasn’t built in a day, Paul?” Emily asked whimsically.

“Rome.” Paul grinned at Emily’s astonishment at his prompt reply. “Old Earth, first century, I think. Good land fighters and road builders.”

“Militarists.”

“Yes,” Paul said. “Hmm . . . They also had a way of keeping people content. They called it circus. I wonder . . .”

On the forty-second day after First Fall, with Thread crossing uninhabited parts of Araby and Cathay and falling harmlessly in the Northern Sea above Delta, missing Dorado’s western prong, Admiral Benden and Governor Boll decreed a day of rest and leisure for all. Governor Boll asked department heads to schedule work loads to allow everyone to participate in the afternoon feast and evening dancing. Even the most distant stakeholders were invited to come for whatever time they could spare. Admiral Benden asked for two squadrons of volunteers to fly Thread at 0930 over the eastern corridor, and another two to be ready in the early evening to check the western one.

The platform on Bonfire Square was gay with multicolored bunting, and a new planetary flag was hoisted on the pole to flap in the breeze. Tables, benches, and chairs were placed around the square, leaving its center clear for dancers. Vats of quikal were to be broached, and Hegelman would produce ale—no one wished to think that it might be the last made for a long while. Joel Lilienkamp released generous supplies without grudge. “Thank the kids that gathered them! Child labor can be efficient,” he said with a grin. The Monaco Bay fishermen brought in shining loads of fish and the more succulent seaweeds to be baked in the big, long-unused pits; twenty farm stakes donated as many steers to turn on spits; Pierre de Courci had worked all the previous night, baking cakes and making extravagant sweets. “Better to fatten humans than Thread!” He was always happiest when overseeing a large effort.

“It’s good to hear music and singing and laughter,” Paul murmured to Ongola as they wandered from one group to another.

“I think it would be a good custom to establish,” Ongola replied. “Something to look forward to. Reunites old friends, improves bonds, gives everyone a chance to air and compare.” He nodded to the group that included his wife, Sabra, Sallah Telgar-Andiyar, and Barr Hamil-Jessup, chatting and laughing together, each with a sleepy child on her lap. “We need to gather more often.”

Paul nodded, then glanced at his wrist chrono and, swearing softly under his breath, went off to lead the volunteers against the western Fall.

Ongola was not feeling exactly top of the mark the next morning when he arrived for his watch at the met tower. In fact, he had called in first at the infirmary, where the pharmacist had given him a hangover tablet and assured him that he was one of many. But her comment about disturbing casualties during that Threadfall had only made his headache worse.

The report that awaited him at the met tower was a shock and a surprise. One sled had been totaled and its crew of three killed; a second sled had been badly crumpled, the starboard gunner killed, and pilot and port gunner badly injured in the midair head-on collision. Someone had not been obeying the altitude restrictions. Ongola groaned involuntarily as he read the casualty list: Becky Nielson, mining apprentice just back from Big Island—she had been safer after all with Avril; Bart Nilwan, a very promising young mechanic; and Ben Jepson. Ongola rubbed his eyes to clear the blur. Bob Jepson was the other dead pilot. Two in the same family. Those twins! Farting around in break-ass fashion instead of following orders! Stinkin’ air! What could he say to their parents? A minor Fall with a party to come back to, and they died!

Ongola put his hand on the comm unit, about to dial administration. Then he heard someone tapping hesitantly at the door.

“Come!” he called.

Catherine Radelin-Doyle stood there, her eyes round, her face pale.

“Yes, Cathy?”

“Sir, Mr. Ongola . . .”

“Either will do.” He mustered an encouraging smile. Considering the amount of trouble Cathy could get into, from stumbling into caves at an early age, to marrying the most feckless joat on the planet, he wondered at her shy demeanor. She was, poor child, just one of those people to whom events tended to occur with no connivance from themselves at all.

“Sir, I’ve found a cave.”

“Yes?” he encouraged when she hesitated. She was constantly finding caves.

“It wasn’t empty.”

Ongola sat up straight. “It had a lot of fuel sacks in it?” he asked. If Catherine had found it, would Avril? No, Avril did not have the same sort of luck Catherine had.

“However did you know, Mr. Ongola?” She looked faint with relief.

“Possibly because I know they’re there.”

“You do? They are? I mean, they weren’t put there by ‘them’?”

“No, by us.” He wanted to make as little fuss about Kenjo’s hoard as possible. He had been counting the dwindling numbers and wondering why Kenjo seemed so complacent after each trip. Ongola flicked a glance at the corner of the shadowed shelving where the guidance chips were hidden in the dark-foam case.

Catherine suddenly sank to the nearest chair. “Oh, sir, you don’t know what a fright it gave me. Thinking that someone else was here, because everyone knows there’s so little fuel left. And then to see . . .”

“But you saw nothing, Catherine,” Ongola told her crisply. “Nothing whatever. There’s no cave worth noticing down that particular crevasse and you won’t say a thing about it to anyone else. I will personally tell the admiral. But you will tell no one.”

“Oh no, sir.”

“This information cannot—I repeat, cannot—be divulged to any other person.”

“That’s right, Mr. Ongola.” She nodded solemnly several times. Then she smiled winsomely. “Shall I keep on looking?”

“Yes, I think you’d better. And find something!”

“Oh, but I have, Mr. Ongola, and Joel Lilienkamp says they’re going to be excellent storage space.” Her face clouded briefly. “But he didn’t say for what.”

“Go, Cathy, and find something . . . else.”

She left, and Ongola had barely returned to brooding over the first serious losses to their defense when Tarvi came storming up the stairs.

“It’s been staring us in the face, Zi,” he said, swinging his arms in one of his expansive gestures. His face was alight with enthusiasm, although his skin looked a bit gray from the excesses of the night before.

“What?” Ongola was in no mood for puzzles.

“Them! There!” Tarvi gestured extravagantly out the northern windows. “All the time.”

It was probably the headache, Ongola thought, but he had no idea what Tarvi was talking about.

“What do you mean?”

“All this time we have been slavering away at mining ore, refining, molding it, adding weeks to our labors, when all the time we’ve had what we need in front of us.”

“No puzzles, Tarvi.”

Tarvi’s expressive eyes widened in surprise and consternation. “I give you no puzzles, Zi, my friend, but the source of much valuable metals and materials. The shuttles, Zi, the shuttles can be dismantled and their components used for our specific purposes here and now. Theirs is done. Why let them slowly decay on the meadow?” Tarvi emphasized each new sentence with a flick of long fingers out the window and then, exasperated with Ongola’s incomprehension, he hauled the man to his feet and pointed a very long, slightly dirty forefinger directly at the tail fins of the old shuttles. “There. We’ll use them. Hundreds of relays, miles of the proper flex and tubing, six small mountains of recyclable material. Have you any idea of how much is in them?” In an instant, all the exuberance drained from the volatile geologist. He put both hands on Ongola’s shoulders. “We can replace the sled we lost today even if we cannot replace those marvelous young lives or comfort their stricken families. The parts make a new whole.”

Work dulled the edge of the sorrow that hung over Landing at the loss of four young people. The two survivors reluctantly admitted that the Jepson twins, toward the end of that Fall, had indulged in some fatal foolery. Ben’s sled had been scheduled for servicing after the Fall because its previous pilot had reported a sluggish reaction on port side turns. The sled had been considered safe enough for what should have been a monitoring flight.

Rather than prevent other such collisions, the next few Falls saw a rash of them even as Tarvi’s crew began to strip the first shuttle and Fulmar’s teams began to service and replace from the bonanza of salvage.

The longest hours were still put in at Kitti Ping’s laboratory, monitoring the development of the specimens for any signs of aberration from the program.

“Patience,” was Kitti’s response to all queries. “All proceeds vigorously.”

Three days after the midair collision, Wind Blossom discovered her grandmother still at the electronic microscope, apparently peering at yet another slide. But when Wind Blossom touched Kitti’s arm, the movement produced an unexpected result. The dainty fingers slipped from their relaxed position on the keyboard, and the body slumped forward, only kept upright by the brace that held her to the stool for her long sessions at the microscope. Wind Blossom let out a moan and dropped to her knees, holding one tiny cold hand to her forehead.

Bay heard her disconsolate weeping and came to see what had happened. Instantly she called to Pol and Kwan, then phoned for a doctor. Once Wind Blossom had followed the gurney carrying her grandmother’s body out of the room, Bay straightened her plump shoulders and stood at the console. She asked the computer if it had finished its program.

PROGRAM COMPLETED flashed on the screen—almost indignantly, Bay thought in the portion of her mind that was not sorrowing. She tapped out an information query. The screen displayed a dazzling series of computations and ended with REMOVE UNIT! DANGER IF UNIT IS NOT IMMEDIATELY REMOVED!

Astonished, Bay recognized the paraphernalia on the workspace beside the electronic microscope. Kitti Ping had been manipulating gene patterns again, a complicated process that Bay found as daunting as Wind Blossom did, despite Kitti Ping’s encouragements. So Kitti had made those infinitesimal alterations in the chromosomes. Bay felt the chill of a terrible apprehension sweep through her plump body. She pressed her lips together. That moment was not the time to panic. They must not lose what Kitti Ping had been making of the raw material of Pern.

With hands that were not quite steady, she unlocked the microcylinder, removed the tiny gel-encapsulated unit, and placed it in the culture dish that Kitti had readied. An agony as severe as a knife stab almost doubled Bay up, but she fought the grief and the knowledge that Kit Ping Yung had died to produce that altered egg cell. The label was even prepared: Trial 2684/16/M: nucleus #22A, mentasynth Generation B2, boron/silicon system 4, size 2H; 16.204.8.

Walking as fast as her shaky legs would permit and gradually recovering her composure, Bay took the final legacy of the brilliant technician to the gestation chamber and put it carefully beside the forty-one similar units that held the hopes of Pern.

“That was the second probe to malfunction,” Ezra told Paul and Emily, his quiet voice ragged with disappointment. “When the first one blew up, or whatever, I thought it a mischance. Even vacuum isn’t perfect insulation against decay. Probe motors could misfire, their recording device clog somehow or other. So I refined the program for the second one. It got exactly as far as the first one, and then every light went red. Either that atmosphere is so corrosive even our probe enamels melt, or the garage on the Yokohama has somehow been damaged, and the probes, too. I dunno, guys.”

Ezra was not much given to agitated gestures but he paced up and down Paul’s office, strutting and waving his arms about him like a scarecrow in a high wind. The last few days had wearied and aged him. Paul and Emily exchanged concerned glances. Kitti Ping’s death had been such a shock, following so closely on the sled collision disaster. The geneticist had seemed so indestructible, despite the fact that everyone knew of her physical frailty. She had exuded a quality of immortality, however false that had proved.

“Whose theory was it that we were being bombarded from outer space to reduce us to submission?” Ezra asked, stopping suddenly in his tracks and staring at the two leaders.

“Ah, c’mon now, Ezra!” Paul was bluntly derisive. “Think a minute, man. We’re all under a strain, but not one that makes us lose our wits. We all know that there are atmospheres that can and have melted probes. Furthermore—” He halted, not certain what would suffice to reassure Ezra, and himself.

“Furthermore, the organism attacking us,” Emily went on with superb composure, “is hydrocarbon based, and if it comes from that planet, its atmosphere is not corrosive. I favor malfunction.”

“My opinion, too,” Paul said, nodding his head vigorously. “Fardles, Ezra, let’s not talk ourselves into more problems than we’ve got.”

“We’ve got”—Ezra brought both fists down on the desk—“to probe that planet, or we won’t know enough to combat the stuff. Half the settlers want to know the source and destroy it so we can get back to our lives. Rake up the debris and forget all this.”

“What aren’t you telling us, Ezra?” Emily asked, cocking her head slightly and regarding the captain with an unflinching gaze.

Ezra stared back at her for a very long moment, then straightened from his half crouch over the desk and began to smile wryly.

“You’ve been sitting in the interface booth long hours, Ezra, and you weren’t playing tiddlywinks while the programs were running,” Emily went on.

“My calculations are frightening,” he said in a low voice, glancing over each shoulder. “If the program is in any way accurate, and I’ve run it five times now from start to finish, we have to put up with Thread for long after that red planet crosses out of the inner system.”

“How long will that be?” Paul felt his fingers gripping the arm rests and made a conscious effort to relax them while he tried to recall some reassuring facet of planetary orbits.

“I get between forty and fifty years!”

Emily grimaced, her mouth forming an O of surprise be-fore she slowly exhaled. “Forty or fifty years, you say.”

“If,” Ezra added grimly, “the menace originated from that planet.”

Paul caught his eyes and saw the ineffably weary and discouraged look in them. “If? There is another alternative?”

“I have discerned a haze about the planet, irrespective of its atmospheric envelope. A haze that spreads backward in this system and swirls along the eccentric’s path. I cannot refine that telescope enough to tell more. It could be space debris, a nebulosity, the remnants of a cometary tail, a whole bunch of things that are harmless.”

“But if it should be harmful?” Emily asked.

“That tail would take nearly fifty years to diffuse out of Pern’s orbit, some into Rukbat—the rest, who knows?”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Any suggestions?” Paul asked finally.

“Yes,” Ezra said, straightening his shoulders with a wrench. He held up two fingers. “Take a trip to the Yokohama, find out what’s bugging the probes, and send two of ’em down to the planet to gather as much information as we can. Send the other two along the line of that cometary dust and use the Yoko’s more powerful space scope with no planetary interference to see if we can identify its source and components.” Ezra then locked his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, a habit that always made Emily shudder. “Sorry, Em.”

“At least you can recommend some positive action,” Paul went on.

“The big question is, Paul, is there enough fuel to get someone to the Yoko and back? Kenjo’s already made more trips than I thought possible.”

“Good pilot,” Paul said discreetly. “There’s enough for what we need now. Kenjo will pilot, and did you wish to go with him?”

Ezra shook his head slowly. “Avril Bitra has the training for the job.”

“Avril?” Paul gave a harsh bark and then shook his head, grinning sourly. “Avril’s the last person I’d put on the Mariposa for any reason. Even if we knew where she is.”

“Really?” Ezra looked at Emily for an explanation, but she shrugged. “Well, then, Kenjo can double. No,” he corrected himself. “If something’s wrong with the probes, we’d need a good technician. Stev Kimmer. He’s back, isn’t he?”

“Who else?” Paul jotted down names rather than worry Ezra with more suspicions.

“Kenjo is a very capable technician,” Emily insisted.

“There should be two on the mission, for safety’s sake,” Ezra said, furrowing his brow. “This mission has got to give us the results we need.”

“Zi Ongola,” Paul suggested.

“Yes, the very one,” Ezra agreed. “If he runs into any trouble, I can have Stev at the interface for expert advice.”

“Forty years, huh?” Emily said, watching Paul underline the two final choices on the pad. “Rather longer than we’d bargained for, my friend. Let’s start training replacements.”

Inevitably their thoughts went to Wind Blossom, so obviously a frail vessel to continue the work her grandmother had begun.

Avril’s suspicious nature was aroused not by anything she heard, although what she did not hear was as significant, but by what she saw in the weary hours she manned the sled’s scope. It was usually trained on the Mariposa, sitting at the far end of the landing grid. The night before every one of Kenjo’s jaunts he had done exterior and internal checks of the craft. Fussy Fusi! Her use of the nickname was not quite derisive, because she simply could not figure out how he had managed to stretch the small reserve of fuel on the Mariposa as far as he already had. She had seen some activity about it last night but no sign of Kenjo. In fact, with neither moon out, she had just barely seen the shifting of shadow that indicated activity about the craft. She had been quite agitated. The only thing that reassured her was that several figures were involved. But no one entered the gig. That perplexed her.

At first light, so early that no one was yet working the donks at the skeleton of the shuttle that had been the center of considerable activity all week, she was surprised to see Fulmar Stone and Zi Ongola approaching the vessel. Her apprehension, honed by weeks of waiting, spurred her to remove the protective cover from her sled in preparation for a quick departure. At full speed, she could reach the landing grid in less than fifteen minutes. Early morning traffic into Landing would be sufficient to give her cover.

She had a moment’s anxiety thinking that perhaps the Mariposa had developed a problem and they were scavenging replacement parts from the shuttle. Kenjo had flown a mission three days before with his usual economical takeoff and landing. She had to hand it to him—he was gliding in smoothly with no power at all. Only where was he getting the fuel to lift?

The three men, moving with almost stealthy speed, slipped inside the little spaceship and closed the airlock. Well, the access to the engines was through exterior panels, so she began to relax. They remained inside the ship for three hours, long enough for a full interior systems check. But that did not presage a usual flight. Maybe the Mariposa was bollixed. Scorch Kenjo for ineptitude. The Mariposa had to be space-worthy. Avril swore.

Or had something happened to Kenjo so that Ongola was taking the ship up? But how? There could not be much fuel left. So why were they checking internal systems? Why were they making yet another jaunt? Displeased, Avril finished her preparations to fly.

Sallah Telgar-Andiyar was feeding her daughter her breakfast in the shady covered porch of Mairi Hanrahan’s Asian Square house when she caught sight of a familiar figure striding down the path. It was covered by loose overalls, and a peaked cap was pulled well down over the face, but the walk was undeniably Avril’s, especially from the rear. Never mind the greasy hands, the exhaust pipe carried so ostentatiously in one hand, the clipboard in the other. That was Avril, who only sullied her hands for a good cause. No one had seen her since she had left Big Island. Sallah continued to watch until Avril mingled in with the crowd at the main depot, where technicians jostled one another for parts and materiel.

Ever since Sallah had overheard Avril’s conversation with Kimmer, she had known the woman would attempt to leave Pern. Did Avril know of Kenjo’s fuel dump? Irritably Sallah shook her head. Cara blinked her huge brown eyes and stared apprehensively at her mother.

“Sorry, love, your mother’s mind is klicks away.” Sallah gathered more puree on the spoon and deposited it into Cara’s obediently open mouth. No, Sallah told herself fiercely, because she wanted to believe it so badly, Avril could not have discovered that fuel: she had been too busy mining gemstones on Big Island. At least, up until three weeks before. And where has Avril been since then? Sallah asked herself. Watching while Kenjo flew the Mariposa? That would certainly set Avril Bitra to thinking hard.

Well, Sallah was due on her shift soon anyway, and as luck would have it, the sled she was servicing was on the grid. She would have a clear view of the Mariposa and those who approached it. If Avril came anywhere near, Sallah would set up an alarm.

There had been no talk of Kenjo making another attempt to clear Thread in the atmosphere. Then, too, Kenjo’s flights were usually plotted for the dawn window, and Sallah’s shift began well past that time.

It all happened rather quickly. Sallah was walking toward the sled she was servicing as Ongola and Kenjo, suited for space travel, left the tower with Ezra Keroon, Dieter Clissmann, and two other overalled figures whom Sallah was astonished to recognize by their postures as Paul and Emily. Ongola and Kenjo had the appearance of men listening to last-minute instructions. Then they continued on, almost at a stroll, toward the Mariposa, while the others turned back into the met tower. Suddenly another suited figure began to walk across the grid on a path that would intercept Ongola and Kenjo. Even in the baggy space gear the figure walked as only Avril did!

Sallah grabbed the nearest big spanner and started at a jogtrot across the grid. Ongola and Kenjo disappeared behind the pile of discarded sled parts at the edge of the field. Avril had begun to run, and Sallah increased her own pace. She lost sight of Ongola and Kenjo. Then she saw Avril pick up a short strut from the pile and disappear out of sight.

Rounding the pile, Sallah saw both Kenjo and Ongola flat on the ground. Blood covered the back of Kenjo’s head and Ongola’s shoulder and neck. Sallah ran flat out, ducking down to keep scrap heaps between her and the Mariposa. As it was, she just made it as the airlock was closing. She threw herself inside and felt something scrape her left foot; there was an immense hissing, and then she blacked out.

Chapter 13

MAIRI HANRAHAN THOUGHT it odd that Sallah had not rung at lunchtime to tell her she was delayed. With so many small ones to feed, every mother tried to be there at mealtimes. Mairi got one of her older children to feed Cara instead, thinking that something very important must have demanded Sallah’s attention.

None of the people at the met tower or admin building expected any contact from Ongola or Kenjo while the shuttle was moving through the ionized atmosphere. Ezra, seated at the desk of the voice-activated interface, could follow its course via the activated monitor screens on board the Yokohama. The Mariposa was closing fast and soon reached the docking port. “Safely there,” Ezra announced when he rang through to both tower and administration.

Half an hour later, children playing at the edge of the grid came screaming back to their teacher about the dead men. Actually, Ongola was still barely alive. Paul met the medic team at the infirmary.

“He’ll live, but he’s lost more blood than I like,” the doctor told the admiral. “What ’n hell happened to him and Kenjo?”

“How was Kenjo killed?” Paul asked.

“The old blunt instrument. The paras found a bloodied strut nearby. Probably that. Kenjo never knew what hit him.”

Paul was not sure he did either, for his legs suddenly would not support him. The doctor beckoned fiercely for one of the paras to help the admiral to a seat and poured a glass of quikal.

Paul tried to dismiss the eager hands. The implications of the two deaths greatly disturbed him. There was no antidote for Kenjo’s loss, though the wretched quikal eased the intense shock that had rocked him. In the back of his mind, as he knocked back the drink, he wondered where Kenjo had cached the rest of the fuel. Why, Paul seethed at himself, had he not asked the man before? He could have done so any time before or after the last few flights Kenjo had taken in the Mariposa. As admiral, he knew exactly how much fuel had been left in the gig on its last drop. Now it was too late! Unless Ongola knew. He had mentioned to Paul that there was not much left at the original site, but that Kenjo had been supplying the Mariposa. The figures Sallah had initially reported to Ongola indicated a lot more fuel than Paul had seen in that cave the other night. Well, the misappropriation—yes, that was the right term—had had a final appropriate usage. Maybe Kenjo’s wife knew where he had stored the remainder.

Paul consoled himself with that thought. Kenjo’s wife would certainly know if there were more fuel sacks at the Honshu stake. He forced himself to deal with present issues: a man had been murdered and another lay close to death on a planet that had, until that moment, witnessed no capital crime.

“Ongola will survive,” the doctor was saying, pouring Paul a second shot. “He’s got a splendid constitution, and we’ll work any miracle required. We would probably have saved Kenjo if we’d got there earlier. Brain-dead. Drink this—your color’s lousy.”

Paul finished the quikal and put the glass down with a decisive movement. He took a deep breath and rose to his feet. “I’m fine, thanks. Get on with saving Ongola. We’ll need to know what happened when he recovers consciousness. Keep the rumors down, people!” he added, addressing the others in the room.

He strode out of the emergency facility and turned immediately for the building that housed the interface chamber and Ezra. As he walked, he reviewed the puzzle that rattled his orderly mind. He had seen the Mariposa take off. Who had flown her? He stopped off to collect Emily from her office, briefing her on the calamity. Ezra was surprised by the arrival of both admiral and governor; the Mariposa’s current flight was being treated as routine.

“Kenjo’s dead and Ongola seriously injured, Ezra,” Paul said as soon as he had closed and locked the door behind them. “So, who’s flying the Mariposa?”

“Gods in the heavens!” Ezra leapt to his feet and pointed to the monitor, which clearly showed the safely docked Mariposa. “The flight was precalculated to hit the right window, but the docking process was left to the pilot. It was very smoothly done. Not everyone can do that.”

“I’ll run a check on the whereabouts of pilots, Paul,” Emily said, picking up a handset.

Paul glanced at the monitor. “I don’t think we need to do that. Call—” Paul had started to say “Ongola” and rubbed his hand across his face. “Who’s at the met tower?”

“Jake Chernoff and Dieter Clissman,” Emily reported.

“Then ask Jake if there’s any unmodified sleds on the grid. Find out exactly where Stev Kimmer, Nabol Nahbi, and Bart Lemos are. And—” Paul held up a warning hand. “—if anyone’s seen Avril Bitra anywhere.”

“Avril?” Ezra echoed, and then clamped his mouth firmly shut.

Suddenly Paul swore in a torrent of abusive language that made even Ezra regard him with amazement, and slammed out of the room. Emily concentrated on finding the pilots and had completed her check before Paul returned. He leaned back against the closed door, catching his breath.

“Stev, Nabhi, and Lemos are accounted for. Where did you go?” Emily asked.

“To check Ongola’s space suit. Doc says he’ll recover from his injuries. The strut just missed severing the shoulder muscle and leaving him a cripple. But—” Paul held up a crystal packet between forefinger and thumb. “No one is going to get very far in the Mariposa.” He nodded grimly as Ezra realized what the admiral was holding. “One of the more essential parts of the guidance system! Ongola had not yet put it in place.”

“Then how did—Avril?” Emily asked, pausing for confirmation. Paul nodded slowly. “Yes, it has to be Avril, doesn’t it? But why would she want to get to the Yoko?”

“First step to leaving the system, Emily. We’ve been stupidly lax. Yes, I know we have this,” he acknowledged when Emily pointed to the chip panel. “But we shouldn’t have allowed her to get that far in the first place. And we all knew what she was like. Sallah warned us, and the years . . .”

“And recent unusual events,” Ezra put in, mildly hinting that Paul need not excoriate himself.

“We should have guarded the Mariposa as long as she’d an ounce of fuel in her.”

“We also ought to have had the sense to ask Kenjo where he was getting all that fuel,” Ezra added.

“We knew that,” Emily said with a wry grin.

“You did?” Ezra was amazed.

“At least Ongola took no chances,” Paul went on, wincing as he remembered the sight of the man’s battered shoulder and neck. “This—” He put the guidance chip very carefully down on the shelf above his worktop. “—was Ongola’s special precaution, done with Kenjo’s complete concurrence.”

Emily sat down heavily in the nearest chair. “So where does that leave us now?”

“The next move would appear to be Avril’s.” Ezra shook his head sadly. “She’s got more than enough fuel to get back down.”

“That is not her intention,” Paul said.

“Unfortunately,” Emily said, “she has a hostage, whether she knows it or not. Sallah Telgar-Andiyar is also missing.”

Sallah returned to consciousness aware of severe discomfort and a throbbing pain in her left foot. She was bound tightly and efficiently in an uncomfortable position, her hands behind her back and secured to her tied feet. She was floating with her side just brushing the floor of the spacecraft; the lack of gravity told her that she was no longer on Pern. There was a rhythmic but unpleasant background noise, along with the sounds of things clattering and slipping about.

Then she recognized the monotonous and vicious sounds to be the curses of Avril Bitra.

“What in hell did you do to the guidance systems, Telgar?” she asked, kicking at the bound woman’s ribs.

The kick lifted Sallah off the floor, and she found herself floating within inches of the face of an enraged Avril Bitra. Probably the only reason Sallah was still breathing was because the cabin of the Mariposa had its own oxygen supply. Kenjo would have charged the tanks up to full, wouldn’t he? Sallah asked herself in a moment of panic as she continued to float beyond Avril. The other woman was suited; the helmet sat on the rack above the pilot’s seat, ready for use.

Avril reached up and grabbed Sallah’s arm. “What do you know about this? Tell me and be quick about it, or I’ll evacuate you and save the air for me to breathe!”

Sallah had no doubt that the woman was capable of doing just that. “I know nothing about anything, Avril. I saw you stalking Ongola and Kenjo and knew you were up to something. So I followed you and got in the airlock just as you took off.”

“You followed me?” Avril lashed out with a fist. The impact caused both women to bounce apart. Avril steadied herself on a handhold. “How dare you?”

“Well, as I hadn’t seen you in months and longed to know how you were faring, it seemed a good idea at the time.” Hang for the fleece, hang for the sheep, Sallah thought. She could not shrug her shoulders. What had she done to her foot? It was an aching mess.

“Bloody hell. You’ve flown this frigging crate. How do I override the preflight instructions? You must know that.”

“I might if you’d let me see the console.” She saw hope, and then manic doubt, in Avril’s eyes. Sallah was not lying. “How could I possibly tell from over here? I don’t know where we are. I’ve been just another Thread sledder.” Even to a woman slightly paranoid, the truth would be obvious. Sallah warned herself to be very careful. “Just let me look.”

She did not ask to be untied although that was what she desperately wanted—needed. Her right shoulder must have been bruised by her fall into the cabin, and all the muscles were spasming.

“Don’t think I’ll untie you,” Avril warned, and contemptuously she pushed Sallah across the cabin. Grabbing a handhold, she corrected Sallah’s spin to a painful halt against the command console. “Look!”

Sallah did, though hanging slightly upside down was not the best position for the job. She had to think carefully, for Avril had piloted shuttles and knew something of their systems. But the Mariposa, though small, was designed to traverse interplanetary distances, dock with a variety of stations or other craft, and had the sophisticated controls to perform a considerable variety of maneuvers in space and on a planetary surface. Sallah dared to hope that much of its instrumentation would be unfamiliar to Avril.

“To find out what this ship just did,” she instructed, “hit the return button on the bottom tier of the greens. No, the port side.”

Avril jerked at Sallah, tweaking strained arm and back muscles and jamming Sallah’s head against the viewscope. Sallah’s long hair was freed completely from its pins and flowed over her face.

“Don’t get cute!” Avril snapped, her finger hovering on the appropriate button. “This one?”

Sallah nodded, floating away again. Avril punched the button with one hand and hauled her back into position with the other. Then she caught the handhold to keep herself in place. Every action has a reaction, Sallah thought, trying to clear her head of pain and confusion.

The monitor came up with a preflight instruction plan.

“The Mariposa was programmed to dock here on the Yoko.” It was nice to know where she was, Sallah reflected. “Once you hit the power, you couldn’t alter its course.”

“Well,” Avril said, her tone altering considerably. “I wanted to come here first anyhow. I just wanted to come on my own.” Sallah, hair falling over her face, felt a lessening of the tension that emanated from the woman. Some of the beauty returned to a face no longer contorted with frustration. “I don’t need you hanging about, then.” Avril reached up and gave Sallah’s body a calculated shove that sent her to the opposite end of the cabin, to bump harmlessly against the other wall and then hover there. “Well, I’ll just get to work.”

How long Sallah was suspended in that fashion she did not know. She managed to tilt her head and get her hair to float away from her eyes, but she did not dare to move much—action produced reaction, and she did not wish to draw attention to herself. She ached all over, but the pain in her foot was almost unbearable.

A tirade of malevolent and resentful oaths spun from Avril’s lips. “None of the programs run, of all the frigging luck. Nothing runs!”

Sallah had just enough time to duck her head to avoid Avril’s projectile arrival against her. As it was, she went head over heels in a spin that Avril, laughing gleefully, assisted until the rotation made Sallah retch.

“You bitch woman!” Avril stopped Sallah before she could expel more vomit into the air. “Okay! If that’s the way of it, you know what I need to know. And you’re going to tell me, or I’ll kill you by inches.” A spaceman’s knife, with its many handlepacked implements, sliced across the top of Sallah’s nose.

Then she felt the blade none too gently cutting the bindings on her hands and feet. Blood rushed through starved arteries, and her strained muscles reacted painfully. If she had not been in free-fall, she would have collapsed. As it was, the agony of release made her sob and shake.

“Clean up your spew first,” Avril said, shoving a slop jar at her.

Sallah did as she was told, grateful for the lack of gravity, grateful for the release, and wondering what she could do to gain an upper hand. But she had little opportunity to enjoy her freedom, for Avril had other ways of securing her prisoner’s cooperation.

Before Sallah realized what was happening, Avril had secured a tether to the injured foot and tweaked the line. Pain, piercing like a shard of glass, shot through Sallah’s leg and up to her groin. There was too little left in her stomach to throw up. Avril jerked Sallah over to the console, pushed her into the pilot’s chair, and tied her down, twiching her improvised lead line to remind Sallah of her helplessness.

“Now, check the fuel on board, check the quantity in the Yoko’s tanks—I’ve done that, I know the answers, so don’t try anything clever.” A jerk against Sallah’s injured foot reinforced the threat. “Then enter a program that gets me out of this wretched asshole of a midden system.”

Sallah did as she was told, though her head ached and her eyes blurred repeatedly. She could not suppress her surprise at the amount of fuel in the Mariposa’s tanks.

“Yes, someone was holding back on it. You?” There was a jerk on the line.

“Kenjo, I suspect,” Sallah replied coolly, managing to suppress a cry. She was determined not to give Avril any satisfaction.

“Fussy Fusi? Yes, that computes. I thought he’d given up all too tamely! Where did he hide it?” The line tightened. Sallah had to bite hard on her lip against a sob.

“Probably at his stake. It’s back of beyond. No one goes there. He could hide anything there.”

Avril snorted and remained silent. Sallah made herself breathe deeply, forcing more adrenaline into her system to combat pain, fatigue, and fear.

“All right, compute me a course to . . .” Avril consulted a notebook. “Here.”

Only because Sallah already knew the coordinates did she recognize the numbers. Avril wished to go to the system nearest them, a system that, though uninhabited, was closer to the populated sectors of space. The course would stretch the Mariposa to the end of available fuel, even if Avril also drained the Yoko’s tanks. It gave Sallah no consolation to think that the little ship might drift for centuries with Avril safe and composed in deep sleep. Unless, just maybe, Ongola had tampered with the sleep tanks, too. She liked that idea. But she knew Ongola too well to presume that kind of foresight.

Unfortunately, the Avrils of the galaxy could make themselves at home in any time and culture. So if Avril went into deep sleep, eventually someone, or something, would rescue her and the Mariposa. Sallah did not need to see them to know that Avril had several fortunes’ worth of gemstones and precious metals aboard the Mariposa. There had never been any doubt in anyone’s mind why Avril had chosen Big Island as her stake, but no one had cared. But then, no one would have imagined that she would be mad enough to attempt to leave Pern, even with Threadfall threatening the planet.

Wondering why Avril, who was an astrogator, after all, had not been able to complete laying in such a simple course, Sallah did as she was ordered. She had more experience than Avril did with the Mariposa’s drive board. But the program was not accepted.ERROR 259 AT LINE 57465534511 was the message.

Avril jerked hard on the line, and Sallah hissed against the burning, crippling pain in her foot.

“Try again. There’s more than one way of entering a course.”

Sallah obeyed. “I’ll have to go around the existing parameters.”

“Reset the entire effing thing but plot that course,” Avril told her.

As Sallah began the more laborious deviation into the command center of the gig’s course computer, she was aware that Avril had picked up a long narrow cylinder from the rack by her helmet. She fiddled with it, humming tunelessly under her breath, seemingly thoroughly delighted with herself.

When Sallah finally tapped the “return” tab, she became aware of Avril’s intense interest in the flickering console. She chanced a look at what the woman had been fondling. It was a homemade capsule. Not a homer—they were thicker and longer—but something more like the standard beacon. Suddenly she clearly saw Avril’s plan.

Avril would take the Mariposa as far away from the Rukbat system as possible and then direct the distress beacon toward shipping lanes. Every planetary system involved with the Federated Sentient Planets, and some life-forms who were not, traced distress beacons to origin. The devices, automatically released when a ship was destroyed, were often traced by those who wished to turn whatever profit they could on the flotsam.

Avril’s plan was not as insane as it seemed. Sallah felt certain that Stev Kimmer had intended to take the trip with her, to be rescued by the distress beacon he had made for her.

Words flashed on the screen. NO ACCESS WITHOUT STANDARD FCP/120/GM.

“Fuck it! That’s all I could get out of it. Try again, Telgar.” Avril pressed Sallah’s foot against the base of the console module, increasing the pain to the point where Sallah felt herself losing consciousness. Avril viciously pinched her left breast. “You don’t pass out on me, Telgar!”

“Look,” Sallah said, her voice rather more shaken than she liked, “I’ve tried twice, you’ve tried. I’ve tried the fail-safe I was taught. Someone anticipated you, Bitra. Open up this panel and I’ll tell you if we’ve been wasting effort.” She was trembling not only with pain but with the effort not to relieve her bladder. But she did not dare to ask even that favor.

Swearing, her face livid with frustration and rage, Avril deftly removed the panel, kicking the console in her frenzy. Sallah leaned as far away as her bonds permitted, hoping to escape any stray blows.

“How did they do it? What did they take, Telgar, or I’ll start carving you up.” Avril flattened Sallah’s left hand over the exposed chips, and her knife blade cut through the little finger to the bone. Pain and shock lanced through Sallah’s body. “You don’t need this one at all!”

“Blood hangs in the air just like vomit and urine, Bitra. And if you don’t stop, you’ll have both in free-fall.”

They locked eyes in a contest of wills.

“What . . . did . . . they . . . remove?” With each word Avril sawed against the little finger. Sallah screamed. It felt good to scream, and she knew that it would complete the picture of her in Avril’s mind: soft. Sallah had never felt harder in her life.

“Guidance. They removed the guidance chip. You can’t go anywhere.”

The blade left her finger, and Sallah stared in fascination at the drops of blood that formed and floated. The contemplation took her mind off Avril’s ranting until the woman snagged her shoulder.

“Are all the spare parts on the planet? Did they strip everything from the Yoko?”

Sallah forced her attention away from the blood and the pain, clamping down on all but the important consideration: how to thwart Avril without seeming to. “I’d say that there would be guidance chips left in the main board that could be substituted.”

“There’d better be.” Avril slipped the knife through the cord that bound Sallah to the pilot’s seat. “Okay. We suit up and head for the bridge.”

“Not before I go to the head, Avril,” Sallah replied. She nodded at her hand. “And attend to this. You don’t want blood on the chips, do you.” She let herself scream with the pain of the jerk to her foot. She felt she had handled her submission well. Avril would have suspected a more immediate capitulation. “And another boot.”

Finally Sallah could spare a dispassionate look at her foot. Half her heel was missing, and a puddle of blood rocked slowly back and forth, moved by the agitation of Avril’s kicks.

“Wait!” Avril had also noticed the blood. She spun away to the lockers by the hatch and came back with a space suit and a dirty cloth. “There! Strip!”

Sallah tied up her finger with the least soiled strip of cloth and used the rest to bind her foot. It hurt badly, and she could feel that fragments of her work boot had been jammed into the flesh. She was allowed the use of the head, while Avril watched and made snide cracks about maternal changes in a woman’s body. Sallah pretended to be more humiliated than she actually felt. It made Avril feel so superior. The higher the summit, the harder the fall, Sallah thought grimly. She struggled into the space suit.

“She’s left the gig, Admiral,” Ezra said suddenly into the tense silence in the crowded interface chamber. Tarvi had been called in. Silent tears streamed down his face. “She’s passed the sensors at the docking area. No,” he corrected himself, “two bodies have passed the sensors.” Tarvi let out a ragged sob but said nothing.

Bit by bit, the pieces had been put together to solve the puzzle of Sallah’s disappearance and Avril Bitra’s reappearance.

A technician, working on a remount job on the sled nearest Sallah’s, remembered seeing her leave her task and wander toward the scrap pile at the edge of the grid. He had also noticed Kenjo and Ongola walking to the Mariposa. He had not seen anyone else in that vicinity. Shortly afterward he had seen the Mariposa lift off.

Once someone thought to look for it, the sled Avril had used was easily spotted. It carried none of the modifications that all other Pernese sleds bore; it had been left at the edge of the grid, among others that had been called in for servicing. Stev Kimmer was called in to identify it. She had removed every trace of her occupancy, although Stev pointed to scrape marks that were new to him. He also kept his personal comments about his erstwhile partner to himself, though his expression had been sufficiently grim for Paul and Emily to suspect that he had been double-crossed. For one moment he had hesitated. Then, with a shrug, he had answered every question they asked him.

“She won’t get anywhere,” Emily said, firmly striving for optimism.

“No, she won’t.” Paul looked at the guidance cartridge, not daring to glance in Tarvi’s direction.

“Couldn’t she replace it from similar chips on the bridge?” Tarvi asked, his face an odd shade, his lips dry, and his liquid eyes tormented.

“Not the right size,” Ezra said, his expression infinitely sad. “The Mariposa was more modern, used smaller, more sophisticated crystals.”

“Besides,” Paul added heavily, “the chip she really needs is the one Ongola replaced with a blank. Oh, she can probably set a course and it will appear to be accepted. The ship will reverse out of the dock, but the moment she touches the firing pin, it’ll just go straight ahead.”

“But Sallah!” Tarvi demanded in an anguished voice. “What will happen to my wife?”

Sallah waited until Avril had reversed the Mariposa from the dock, let it drift away from the Yokohama’s bulk, and ignited the Mariposa’s tailflame before she operated the comm unit. Avril had done as much damage to the circuitry in the bridge console as she could, but she had forgotten the override at the admiral’s position. As soon as she left the bridge, Sallah accessed it.

“Yokohama to Landing. Come in, Ezra. You must be there!”

“Keroon here, Telgar! What’s your position?”

“Sitting,” Sallah said.

“Goddamn it, Telgar, don’t be facetious at a time like this,” Ezra cried.

“Sorry, sir,” Sallah said. “I don’t have visuals.” That was a lie, but she did not wish anyone to see her condition. “I’m accessing the probe garage. There is no damage report for that area. You’ve three probes left. How shall I program them?”

“Hellfire, girl, don’t talk about probes now! How’re we going to get you down?”

“I don’t think you are, sir,” she said cheerfully. “Tarvi?”

“Sal-lah!” The two syllables were said in a tone that brought her heart to her mouth and tears to her eyes. Why had he never spoken her name that way before? Did it mean the longawaited avowal of his love? The anguish in his voice evoked a spirit tortured and distressed.

“Tarvi, my love.” She kept her voice level though her throat kept closing. “Tarvi, who’s with you there?”

“Paul, Emily, Ezra,” he replied in broken tones. “Sallah! You must return!”

“On the wings of a prayer? No. Go to Cara! Get out of the room. I’ve got some business to do, Pern business. Paul, make him leave. I can’t think if I know he’s listening.”

“Sallah!” Her name echoed and reechoed in her ears.

“Okay, Ezra, tell me where you want them.”

There was a choking, throat-clearing noise. “I want one to go to the body of the cometary, the second to circumnavigate.” Ezra cleared his throat again. “I want the other to follow the spiral curve of that nebulosity. If the big scope is operable, I’d like bridge readings all along that damned thing. We can’t track it with the telescope we have here—not powerful enough for the definition we need. Never thought we’d need the big one, so we didn’t dismantle it.” He was maundering, Sallah thought affectionately, to get himself under control. Did she hear someone crying through that conversation? Surely Governor Boll or the admiral would have been kind enough to get Tarvi out of the room.

Then she needed to concentrate on the information Ezra was giving her to encode the duties and destinations of the individual probes.

“Probes away, sir,” she said, remembering the last time she had given that response. She saw Pern on the big screen; she had never thought that she would again see from space the world she had come to know as her home. “Now I’m sending some data for Dieter to decipher. Avril said she’d killed both Ongola and Kenjo. Has she?”

“Kenjo, yes. Ongola will pull through.”

“Old soldiers don’t die easy. Look, Ezra, what I’m sending for Dieter are some notations I made on available fuel. Ongola will know what I mean. And I’ve set down Avril’s course. She went off in the right direction, but I saw a very odd-looking crystal in that guidance system, one I never saw on the Mariposa when I was driving her. Am I right? She won’t go anywhere?”

“Once Bitra hits the engine button, she goes in a straight line.”

“Very good,” Sallah said with a feeling of immense satisfaction. “The straight and narrow for our dear departed friend. Now, I’m activating the big scope. I’ll program it to report through the interface to you. All right?”

“Give me the readings yourself, Miss Telgar,” Ezra ordered gruffly.

“I don’t think so, Captain,” she said, glad to rely on the impersonal address. She visualized Ezra Keroon’s thin frame hunched over the interface. “I don’t have that much time. Only the oxygen in my tanks. They were full when Avril let me put them on, but she told me she was switching off the bridge’s independent system. I have no reason to doubt her. That’s another reason why I’m switching the scope’s readings to you. Space gloves are good, but they don’t allow for fine tunings. I just about managed some repairs to the mess Avril made on the console. Jury rig at least, so . . . when someone gets a chance to get up here, most everything will work.”

“How much time do you have, Sallah?”

“I don’t know.” She could feel the blood reaching to her calf in the big boot, and her left glove was full. How much blood did a person have? She felt weak, too, and she was aware that it was getting harder to breathe. It was all of a piece. She would miss knowing Cara better.

“Sallah?” Ezra’s voice was very kind. “Sallah, talk to Tarvi. We can’t keep him out of here. He’s like a madman. He just wants to talk to you.”

“Oh, sure, fine. I want to talk to him,” she said, her voice sounding funny even to herself.

“Sallah!” Tarvi had managed to get his voice under control. “Get out of here, all of you! She’s mine now. Sallah, jewel in my night, my golden girl, my emerald-eyed ranee, why did I never tell you before how much you mean to me? I was too proud. I was too vain. But you taught me to love, taught me by your sacrifice when I was too engrossed in my other love—my worklove—to see the inestimable gift of your affection and kindness. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have failed to see that you were more than just a body to receive my seed, more than an ear to hear my ambitions, more than hands to—Sallah? Sallah! Answer me, Sallah!”

“You—loved—me?”

“I do love you, Sallah. I do! Sallah? Sallah! Salllllaaaaah!”

“What do you think, Dieter?” Paul asked the programmer as he consulted the figures Ezra had given them.

“Well, this first lot of figures gives us over two thousand liters of fuel. The second is a guesstimate of how much Kenjo used on the four missions he flew and what was used by the Mariposa today. There’s a substantial quantity unused somewhere down here on the surface. The third set is evidently what was left in the Yoko’s tanks and is now in the Mariposa’s. But, I do point out, as Sallah does, that there’s enough in the Yoko’s sumptank for centuries of minor orbital corrections.”

Paul nodded brusquely. “Go on.”

“Now this section is the course Bitra tried to set. The first course correction should have been initiated about now.” Dieter frowned at the equations on his monitor. “In fact, she should be plunging straight toward our eccentric planet. Maybe we’ll find out sooner than we know what the surface is like.”

“Not that Avril is likely to stand by and give us any useful information as—as Sallah did.” Dieter looked up at the savage tone of the admiral’s voice. “Sorry. C’mon. You’ve the right. And if something goes wrong . . .” Paul left the sentence dangling as he led Dieter down the corridor to the interface room.

Emily had gone with Tarvi to give him what comfort she could, so Ezra was manning the room alone. He looked as old as Paul felt after the wringing emotions of the day.

“Any word?”

“None of it for polite company,” Ezra said with a snort. “She’s just discovered that the first course correction hasn’t occurred.” He turned the dial so that the low snarl of vindictive curses was plainly audible.

Paul grinned maliciously at Dieter. “So you said.” He turned on the speakers.

“Avril, can you hear me?”

“Benden! What the hell did that bitch of yours do? How did she do it? The override is locked. I can’t even maneuver. I knew I should have sawn her foot off.”

Ezra blanched and Dieter looked ill, but Paul’s smile was vindictive. So Avril had underestimated Sallah. He took a deep breath of pride in the valiant woman.

“You’re going to explore the plutonic planet, Avril darling. Why don’t you be a decent thing and give us a running account?”

“Shove it, Benden. You know where! You’ll get nothing out of me. Oh, shit! Oh, shit! it’s not the—oh, shiiiitt.”

The sound of her final expletive was drowned by a sizzling roar that made Ezra grab for the volume dial.

“Shit!” Paul echoed very softly. “It’s not the . . . ’—the what? Damn you, Avril, to eternity! It’s not the what?”

Emily and Pierre, along with Chio-Chio Yoritomo, who had been Kenjo’s wife’s cabinmates on the Buenos Aires and her housemate on Irish Square, took the fast sled to Kenjo’s Honshu Stake. While most of Landing knew about Kenjo’s death and Ongola’s serious illness, there had been no public announcement. Rumor had been busy discussing the “unknown” assailant.

When Emily returned that night, she brought a sealed message to the admiral.

“She told us,” Emily said dryly, “that she would prefer to stay on at Honshu to work the stake herself for her four children. She has few needs and would not trouble us.”

“She is very traditional,” Chio-Chio told the admiral breathlessly. “She would not show grief, for that belittles the dead.” She shrugged, eyes down, her hands clenching and unclenching. Then she looked up, almost defiant in her anger. “She was like that. Kenjo married her because she would not question what he did. He asked me first, but I had more sense, even if he was a war ace. Oh!” She brought her arm up to hide her face. “But to die like that! Struck from behind. An ignominious death for one who had cheated it so often!” Then she turned and fled from the room, her sobbing audible as she ran out into the night.

Emily gestured for Paul to open the small note, which was well sealed by wax and stamped with some kind of marking. He broke it open and unfolded the thick, beautiful, handmade paper. Then, mystified, he handed it to Emily and Pierre.

“There were two caves cut, to judge by the amount of fuel used and rubble spilled. One cave housed the plane. I do not know where the other was,” Emily read. “So he did manage to remove some of the fuel? How much?”

“We’ll see if Ezra can figure it out—or Ongola, when he recovers. Pierre?” Paul asked the chef for a pledge of silence.

“Of course. Discretion was bred in my family for generations, Admiral.”

“Paul,” the admiral corrected him.

“For something like this, old friend, you are the admiral!” Pierre clicked his heels together and inclined his body slightly from the waist, smiling with a brief reassurance. “Emily, you are tired. You should rest now. Paul, tell her!”

Paul laid one hand on Pierre’ de Courci’s shoulder and took Emily’s arm with the other. “There is one more duty for the day, Pierre, and you’d best be with us.”

“The bonfire!” Emily pulled back against Paul’s arm. “I’m not sure I—”

“Who can?” Paul broke in when she faltered. “Tarvi has asked it.”

All three walked with reluctant steps, joining the trickle of others going in the same direction, down to the dark Bonfire Square. Each house had left one light burning. The thinly scattered stars were brilliant, and the first moon, Timor, was barely a crescent on the eastern skyline.

By the pyramid of thicket and fern, Tarvi stood, his head down, a man as gaunt as some of the branches that had been cast into the pile. Suddenly, as if he knew that all were there who would come, he lit the brand. It flared up to light a face haggard with grief, with hair that straggled across tear-wet cheeks.

Tarvi raised the brand high, turning slowly as if to place firmly in his memory the faces of all those in attendance.

“From now on,” he shouted hoarsely, “I am not Tarvi, nor Andiyar. I am Telgar, so that her name is spoken every day, so that her name is remembered by everyone for giving us her life today. Our children will now bear that name, too. Ram Telgar, Ben Telgar, Dena Telgar, and Cara Telgar, who will never know her mother.” He took a deep breath, filling his chest. “What is my name?”

“Telgar!” Paul replied as loud as he could.

“Telgar!” cried Emily beside him, Pierre’s baritone repeating it a breath behind her. “Telgar!”

“Telgar! Telgar! Telgar! Telgar! Telgar!” Nearly three thousand voices took up the shout in a chant, pumping their arms until Telgar thrust the burning torch into the bonfire. As the flame roared up through the dry wood and fern, the name crescendoed. “Telgar! Telgar! Telgar!”

Chapter 14

THE SHOCK OF Sallah Telgar’s death reverberated across the continent. She had been well known, both as shuttle pilot during debarkation and as an able manager of the Karachi camp. Her courage, however, gave an unexpected boost to, morale, almost as if, because Sallah had been willing to devote the last moments of her life to benefit the colony, everyone had to strive harder to vindicate her sacrifice. Or so it seemed for the next eight days until some disturbing rumors began to circulate.

“Look, Paul,” Joel Lilienkamp began even before he had closed the door behind him. “Everyone’s got a right to access Stores. But that Ted Tubberman’s been taking out some unusual stuff for a botanist.”

“Not Tubberman again,” Paul said, leaning back in his chair with a deep sigh of disgust. Tarv—Telgar, Paul corrected himself, had phoned the previous day, asking if Tubberman had been authorized to scrounge in the shuttle they were dismantling.

“Yes,” Joel said. “If you ask me, he’s only accessing half his chips. You’ve got enough on your plate, Paul, but you gotta know what that fool’s doing.’ I’ll bet my last bottle of brandy he’s up to something.”

“At Wind Blossom’s request, Pol has denied him further access to the biology labs,” Paul said wearily. “Seems he was acting as if he was in charge of bioengineering. Bay doesn’t like him much, either.”

“She’s not alone,” Joel replied, lowering himself to a chair and scrubbing at his face. “I want your permission to shut the shop door in his face, too. I caught him in Building G, which houses the technically sensitive stuff. I don’t want anyone in there without my authorization. And there he was, bald-faced and swaggering like he had every right, he and Bart Lemos.”

“Bart Lemos!” Paul sat up again.

“Yeah. He, Bart, and Stev Kimmer’re doing a good-old-buddy bit these days. And I don’t like the rumors my sources tell me they’re spreading.”

“Stev Kimmer’s in on it?” Paul was surprised.

Joel shrugged. “He’s mighty thick with ’em.”

Paul rubbed his knuckles thoughtfully. Bart Lemos was a gullible nonentity, but Stev Kimmer was a highly skilled technician. Paul had put a discreet monitor on the man’s activities after Avril’s departure. Stev had gone on a three-day bender and been found asleep in the dismantled shuttle. Once he had recovered from the effects of quikal, he had gone back to work. Fulmar said that other mechanics did not like pairing with him because he was taciturn, if not downright surly. The thought of Tubberman having access to Kimmer’s expertise made Paul uneasy. “What exactly have you heard, Lili?” he asked.

“A load of crap,” the little storesman said, folding his fingers across his chest. “I don’t think anyone with any sense buys the notion that Avril and Kenjo were in league. Or that Ongola killed Kenjo to keep them from taking the Mariposa to go for help. But I’ll warn you, Paul, if Kitti’s bioengineering program doesn’t show postive results, we could be down the tubes. I’ll lay odds you and Emily are going to be asked to reconsider sending off that homing capsule.”

The previous evening, Paul had discussed that expedient with Emily, Ezra, and Jim. Keroon had been the fiercest opponent of a homing-capsule Mayday, which he termed an exercise in futility. As Paul remarked, such technological help was, at the earliest, ten years away. And the chance that the FSP would move with any speed to assist them was depressingly slim. To send for help seemed not only a rejection of Sallah’s sacrifice but a cowardly admission of failure when they had not exhausted the ingenuity and resourcefulness of their community.

“What sort of material has Ted been requisitioning, Lili?” Paul asked.

Joel extracted a wad of paper from his thigh pocket and made a show of unfolding and reading from it. “Grab bag from hydroponics to insulation materials, steel mesh and posts, and some computer chips that Dieter says he couldn’t possibly need, use, or understand.”

“Did you happen to ask Tubberman what he needed them for?”

“I happened to just do that very thing. A bit arrogant he was, too. Said they were needed for his experiments”—Joel was clearly dubious about their value—“to develop a more effective defense against the Thread until help comes.”

Paul grimaced. He had heard the botanist’s wild claims that he, not the biologists and their jumped-up mutated lizards, would protect Pern. “I don’t like that ’till help comes’ bit,” Paul murmured, gritting his teeth.

“So, tell me to lock him out, Paul. He may be a charterer, but he’s overspent his credit and then some.” He waved the sheet. “I got records to prove that.”

Paul nodded. “Yes, but next time he presents a list, get him to tell you what he wants, then shut the door. I want to know what he’s up to.”

“Restrict him to his stake,” Joel said, rising to his feet, an expression of genuine concern on his round face, “and you’ll save all of us a lot of aggro. He’s a wild card, and you can’t be sure where he’ll bounce up next.”

Paul grinned at the storesman. “I’d be glad to, Lili, but the mandate doesn’t permit that kind of action.”

Joel snorted derisively, hesitated a moment longer, and then, shrugging in his inimitable fashion, left the office.

Paul did not forget the conversation, but the morning brought more pressing concerns. Despite the best efforts of Fulmar and his engineering crews, three more sleds had failed airworthiness tests. That meant using more ground crews, the last line of defense and the most enervating for people already worked to the point of exhaustion. Neither Paul nor Emily recognized the significance of three separate reports: one from the veterinary lab, saying that their supply rooms had been rifled overnight; another from Pol Nietro, reporting that Ted Tubberman had been seen in bioengineering; and the third from Fulmar, saying that someone had made off with one of the exhaust cylinders from the dismantled shuttle.

When Joel Lilienkamp’s angry call came through, Paul had little trouble arriving at a conclusion.

“May his orifices congeal and his extremities fall off,” Joel cried at the top of his voice. “He’s got the homing capsule!”

Shock jolted Paul out of his chair, while Emily and Ezra regarded him in astonishment. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure, Paul. I hid the carton in among stove pipes and heating units. It hasn’t been misplaced, but who the hell could know that carton #45/879 was a homing capsule?”

“Tubberman took it?”

“I’ll bet my last bottle of brandy he did.” Joel spoke so fast that his words slurred. “The fucker! The crap-eater, the slime-producing maggot!”

“When did you discover it gone?”

“Now! I’m calling from Building G. I check it out at least once a day.”

“Could Tubberman have followed you?”

“What sort of a twat do you think I am?” Joel was as apoplectic at such a suggestion as he was about the theft. “I check every building every day and I can tell you exactly what was requisitioned yesterday and the day before, so I fucking well know when something’s missing!”

“I don’t doubt you for a moment, Joel.” Paul rubbed his hand hard over his mouth, thinking rapidly. Then he saw the anxious expressions of Emily and Ezra. “Hold on,” he said into the handset, and reported what Joel had said.

“Well,” Ezra replied, a look of intense relief passing over his gaunt features. “Tubberman couldn’t launch a kite. He can barely maneuver a sled. I wouldn’t worry about him.”

“Not him. But I worry a lot about Stev Kimmer and Bart Lemos being seen in Tubberman’s company lately,” Paul said quietly. Ezra seemed to deflate, burying his head in his hands.

“Ted Tubberman has had it,” Emily said, placing the folder she had been studying onto the table in a precise manner and rising to her feet. “I don’t give a spent chip for his position as a charterer or the privacy of his stake. We’re searching Calusa.” She gave Ezra a poke in the shoulder. “C’mon, you’ll know what components he’d need.”

They all heard the sound of running feet, then the door burst in and Jake Chernoff erupted into the office.

“Sir, sorry, sir,” the young man cried, his face flushed, his chest heaving from exertion. “Your phone—” He pointed excitedly at the receiver in the admiral’s hand. “Too important. Scanners at met—something blasted off from Oslo Landing, three minutes ago—and it wasn’t a sled. Too small.”

As one, Paul, Emily, and Ezra made for the door and ran to the interface chamber. Ezra fumbled at the terminal in his haste to implement the program. An exhaust trail was plainly visible, on a northwestern heading. Cursing under his breath, Ezra switched to the Yoko’s monitor, which was tracking the blip. For a long moment they watched, rigid with fury and frustration. Then Ezra straightened his long frame, his hands hanging limply.

“Well, what’s done’s done.”

“Not completely,” Emily said, her voice harsh as she separated each syllable in a curious lilt. She turned to Paul, her eyes very bright, her lips pursed, and her expression implacable. “Oslo Landing, hmmm? That capsule was just launched. Let’s go get the buggers.”

Leaving Ezra to monitor the capsule’s ascent, Paul and Emily left at a run. The first three big men they encountered on their way to the grid were commandeered to assist. Paul spotted Fulmar and told him to pilot Kenjo’s augmented sled.

“Don’t ask questions, Fulmar,” Paul said, peremptorily seconding two more burly technicians. “Just head us toward Jordan, and everyone keep their eyes open for sled traffic.” He reached for the comm unit as he shrugged into his harness. “Who’s in the tower? Tarrie? I want to know who’s in the air above the river, where they’re going, and where they’ve been.”

Fulmar took off in such a steep climb that for a moment the noise blanketed any answer Tarrie Chernoff gave.

“Only one sled above the Jordan, sir, apart from that—other flight.” She choked on her words and then recovered the impersonal reserve of a comm officer. “The sled does not acknowledge.”

“They will,” Paul assured her grimly. “Continue to monitor all traffic in that area.”

Tubberman was just stupid enough to be obvious, but somehow Paul did not think that such stupidity was a trait of Stev Kimmer or whomever else Ted had talked into such an arrant abrogation of the democratic decision of the colony.

Tubberman was alone in the sled when Fulmar forced him to land in the riverside desolation of the ill-fated Bavaria Stake. He was unrepentant as he faced them, folding his arms across his chest and jutting his chin out defiantly.

“I’ve done what should have been done,” he stated in pompous righteousness. “The first step in saving this colony from annihilation.”

Paul clenched his fists tightly to his sides. Beside him, Emily was vibrating with a fury as intense as his own.

“I want the names of your accomplices, Tubberman,” Paul said through his teeth, “and I want them now!”

Tubberman inhaled, bracing himself. “Do your worst, Admiral. I am man enough to take it.”

The mock heroic attitude was so absurd to his auditors that one of the men behind Paul let out a short bark of incredulous laughter, which he quickly cut off. But the one burst of derision altered Paul’s mood.

“Tubberman, I wouldn’t let anyone touch a hair of your head,” Paul said, grinning in a release of tension. “There are quite suitable ways to deal with you, plainly set out in the charter—nothing quite as crude or barbaric as physical abuse.” Then he turned. “You men take him back to Landing in his sled. Put him in my office and call Joel Lilienkamp. He’ll take charge of the prisoner.” Paul had the satisfaction of seeing the martyred look fade from Tubberman’s eyes, to be replaced by a mixture of anxiety and surprise. Turning on his heel, Paul gestured Emily, Fulmar, and the others back into their sled.

Tarrie reported no other vehicles in the area and apologized that traffic records were no longer kept. “Except for that . . . rocket thing, the pattern was normal, sir. Oh, and Jake’s back. Did you want to speak to him?”

“Yes,” Paul answered, wishing that Ongola were back in charge. “Jake, I want to know where Bart Lemos and Stev Kimmer are. And Nabhi Nabol.” Beside him, Emily nodded approval.

By then, Fulmar had covered the short air distance between Bavaria and Oslo Landing. The remains of the launch platform were still smoking. While Paul went with the others to search the area for sled skids, Fulmar carefully prodded through the overheated circle beneath it, sniffing as he went.

“Shuttle fuel by the smell of it, Paul,” he reported. “A homing capsule wouldn’t take much.”

“It would take know-how,” Paul said grimly. “And expertise, and you and I know just how many people are capable of handling that sort of technology.” He looked Fulmar square in the eye, and the man’s shoulders sagged. “Not your fault, Fulmar. I had your report. I had others. I just didn’t put the pieces together.”

“Who’d have thought Ted’d pull such a crazy stunt? No one believes half of what he says!” Fulmar protested.

Emily and the others came back then from an inconclusive search. “There’re a lot of skid marks, Paul,” she reported. “And rubbish.” She indicated a collapsed fuel sack and a handful of connectors and wires. Fulmar’s look of desolation deepened.

“We’re wasting time here,” Paul said, curbing his irritation.

“Let’s have Cherry and Cabot waiting in my office,” Emily murmured as they climbed into the sled.

“He’s proud of what he did,” Joel stormed when Paul and Emily called him into Emily’s office on their return. “Says it was his duty to save the colony. Says we’ll be surprised at how many people agree with him.”

“He’s the one who’ll be surprised,” Emily replied. Her jaw was set in a resolute line, and her lips curved in a curious smile, which her tired eyes did not echo.

“Yeah, Em, but what can we do to him?” Joel demanded in impotent indignation.

Emily poured herself a fresh cup of klah and took a sip before she answered. “He will be shunned.”

“Who will be shunned?” Cherry Duff demanded in her hoarse voice, entering the room at that instant. Cabot Carter was right behind her, having escorted the magistrate from her office in reply to the summons.

“Shunned?” Carter’s handsome face was enlivened by a smile that grew broader as he looked expectantly from Paul to Emily, then faded slightly as he saw the dour storesman.

Paul grinned back. “Shunned!”

“Shunned?” Joel exclaimed in a disgusted tone.

Emily gestured Cherry into the comfortable chair and motioned for the others to be seated. Then, at a nod from Paul, she gave a terse report that culminated in Tubberman’s illicit use of the homing capsule.

“So we’re to order Tubberman shunned, huh?” Cherry looked around at Carter.

“It’s legal all right, Cherry,” the legist replied, “since it is not a corporal punishment, per se, which is illegal under the terms of the charter.”

“Refresh me on such a process,” Cherry said, her tone doubly droll.

“Shunning was a mechanism,” Emily began, “whereby passive groups could discipline an erring member. Religious communities resorted to it when someone of their sect disobeyed their peculiar tenets. Quite effective really. The rest of the sect pretended the offending member didn’t exist. No one spoke to him, no one acknowledged his presence, no one would assist the shunned in any way or indicate that he—or she—existed. It doesn’t seem cruel, but in fact the deprivation is psychologically destructive.”

“It’ll do,” Cherry said, nodding in satisfaction. “An admirable punishment for someone like Tubberman. Admirable!”

“And completely legal!” Cabot concurred. “Shall I draft the announcement, Emily, or do you prefer to do it, Cherry?”

Cherry flicked her hand at him. “You do it, Cabot. I’m sure you learned all the right phrases. But do explain exactly what shunning entails. Not that most of us aren’t so fed up with the man’s rantings and rumors that they won’t be delighted to have an official excuse to . . . ah . . . shun him! Shun him!” She tipped back her head and gave a hoot of outrageous laughter. “By all that’s holy—and legal—I like that, Emily. I like that a lot!” In an abrupt switch of mood with no leavening of humor, she added, “It’ll cool a lot of hotheads.” She swept Paul and Emily with a shrewd look. “Tubberman didn’t do it by himself. Who helped?”

“We’ve no proof,” Paul began in the same minute that Joel said, “Stev Kimmer, Bart Lemos, and maybe Nabhi Nabol.”

“Let’s shun them, too,” Cherry cried, banging the arm of her chair with her thin old hands. “Damn it, we don’t need dissension. We need support, cooperation, hard work. Or we won’t survive. Oh, flaming hells!” She raised both hands up high. “What’ll we do if that capsule brings those blood-sucking FSP salvagers down on us?”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” Joel answered her, rolling his eyes.

Cherry gave him a hard stare. “I’m relieved to know there is something you won’t make book on, Lilienkamp. All right, so what do we do about Tubberman’s accomplices?”

Cabot leaned over to touch her arm lightly. “First we have to prove that they were, Cherry.” He looked expectantly at Paul and Emily. “The charter says that a person is judged innocent until proved guilty.”

“We watch ’em,” Paul said. “We watch ’em. Carter, compose that notice and see that it’s posted throughout Landing, and that every stakeholder is apprised of the fact. Cherry, will you impose the sentence on Tubberman?” He held out his arm to assist her to her feet.

“With the greatest of satisfaction. What a superb way to get rid of a bore,” she added under her breath as she marched forward. The unholy joy on her face brightened Joel Lilienkamp’s mood as he followed them, rubbing his hands together.

The messenger was quite happy to bring a copy of the official notice to Bay and Wind Blossom, on duty in the large incubator chamber. The room was separated from the main laboratory and insulated against temperature changes and noise. The incubator itself stood on heavy shock absorbers, so that in the precarious early stages the embryos in their sacs could not be jarred by equipment moved around the main laboratory.

Although eggs within a natural womb, or even in a proper shell, could handle a great deal of trauma, the initial ex utero fertilization and alteration had been too delicate to risk the most minute jolt. Development was not yet canalized, nor was the new genetic structure balanced, and any variation in the embryos’ environment would doubtless cause damage. Later, when the eggs were at the stage when naturally they would have been laid in a clutch, they would be transferred to the building where a warmed sand flooring and artificial sun lamps imitated the natural conditions in which dragonet eggs hatched. That point was several weeks ahead.

Special low-light viewing panels had been created, so no light filtered into the womblike darkness while observers had a clear view of the incubator’s precious contents. A portable magnifier had been devised which could be set at any position on the incubator’s four glass sides for very cursory and routine inspections. In the laboratories of First and Earth, each developing embryo would have been remotely monitored and recorded. But, in Pern’s relatively primitive conditions, about which Wind Blossom constantly complained, the necessity for the avoidance of any toxic substances at all meant that no sensors could be allowed close to the embryos in the culture chambers.

Bay was jotting down Wind Blossom’s assessment when the messenger delivered the notice. The lad was quite willing to explain any part of the shunning, but Bay shooed him off on his rounds.

“How extraordinary,” Bay said when she had finished reading it aloud to Blossom. “Really, Ted has been quite a nuisance lately. Did you hear those rumors he was spreading, Blossom? As if that wretched Bitra had anything but her own plans in mind when she stole the Mariposa. Going for help, indeed!” She squinted loyally into the incubator at its forty-two hopes for their future. “But to send off a homing capsule when we most specifically voted against such an action.”

“I am relieved,” Wind Blossom said, sighing gently.

“Yes, he was beginning to upset you,” Bay remarked kindly. She tried to tell herself that the woman was still grieving for her grandmother. There were moments recently, though, when Bay wanted to remind Blossom that it was not just the Yung family who had suffered a grievous loss. She had not, because Blossom had been rather volatile lately and might interpret such a comment as an aspersion on her ability to proceed with her grandmother’s brilliant genetic-engineering program. As her grandmother’s primary assistant, she was technically in charge of the program on file in the biology Mark 42 computer. Bay, too, had scanned it to familiarize herself with the procedure. Kitti Ping had left copious notes on how to proceed, anticipating those possible minor alignments, balancing, or other compensations that might be needed. She had apparently anticipated everything but her own death.

“You misunderstand me,” Blossom replied, inclining her head in a gesture reminiscent of her grandmother correcting an erring apprentice. “I am relieved that the homing capsule has been sent. Now there is no blame to us.”

Bay was certain that she had heard correctly. “What under the suns do you mean, Blossom?”

Blossom gave Bay a long look, smiling faintly. “All our eggs are in one basket,” she said with an inscrutable smile and moved the inspection lens to a new position.

When Pol and Phas Radamanth came to relieve them, Bay lingered. She and Pol did not have much time together anymore, and she did not look forward to another dull supper at the communal kitchen.

“You got a copy, I see,” Pol said, indicating the shunning notice.

“Extraordinary that.”

“More than time,” Phas said, glancing up from Blossom’s notations. “Let’s hope he wasn’t as incompetent a launcher as he was a botanist.”

Bay stared in astonishment at the xenobiologist and Phas had the grace to look embarrassed.

“No one approves of Tubberman’s actions, my dear,” Pol assured her.

“Yes, but if they come . . .” Bay’s gesture took in the incubator and the laboratory, and all that the colonists had managed to do with their new world.

“If it’s any consolation,” Phas said, “Joel Lilienkamp has not opened a book on an ETA.”

“Oh!” Then she asked, “And what’s happened to Ted Tubberman?”

“He was escorted back to his stake and told to remain there.”

Pol could look quite fierce, she thought, when he wanted to. “What about Mary? And his young children?” she asked.

Pol shrugged. “She can stay or come. She’s not shunned. Ned Tubberman was looking pretty upset, but he never was very close to his father, and Fulmar Stone thinks he’s a very promising mechanic.” He shrugged again and then gave his wife an encouraging smile.

Bay had no sooner turned to go than the ground under them shook. She instinctively lunged toward the incubator, and found Phas and Pol beside her. Even without the magnifier they could see that the amniotic fluid in the sacs was not rippling in response to the earthquake. The shock absorbers had proved adequate.

“That’s all we need!” Pol cried, outraged. He stomped to the comm unit and dialed the met tower, slamming down the handset. “Engaged! Bay, reassure them.” He gestured toward the first bunch of technicians heading anxiously to the door of the chamber. He dialed again and got through just as Kwan Marceau pushed his way, into the room. “Are there going to be more shocks, Jake?” Pol asked. “Why weren’t we warned?”

“It was a small one,” Jake Chernoff replied soothingly. “Patrice de Broglie called it in but I am obliged to warn infirmary first in case surgery is in progress, and then your line was busy.” That explanation placated Pol. “Patrice says there’s a bit of tectonic plate action to the east, and there may be more jolts in the next few weeks. The incubator’s on shocks anyway, isn’t it? You don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” Pol demanded. He jammed the handset back onto its stand.

There was a discreet knock on the door to the admiral’s office, and when Paul answered with a noncommital “Come in,” Jim Tillek opened it. Emily smiled with relief. The master of Monaco Bay was always welcome. Paul leaned back in his swivel chair, ready for a break from the depressing inventory of airworthy sleds and serviceable flamethrowers.

“Hi, there,” Jim said. “Just up to get my skimmer serviced.”

“Since when have you needed assistance in that job?” Paul asked.

“Since all my spare parts at Monaco got reabsorbed by Joel Lilienkamp.” Jim’s drawl was cheerful.

“And pigs fly,” Paul retorted.

“Oh, is that the next project?” Jim asked with a comic grin. He dropped into the nearest seat and laced his fingers together. “By the way, Maximilian and Teresa reported on the dolphin search Patrice requested. There are significant lava flows from the Illyrian volcano. It’s only a small one, so don’t be surprised if our easterlies bring in some black dust. It’s not dead Thread. Just honest-to-Vulcan volcanic dust. I wanted you to know before another rumor started.”

“Thanks,” Paul said dryly.

“Logical explanations are always welcome,” Emily added.

“I also dropped in to see our favorite patient.” Jim pushed himself deeper into the chair and met Paul’s eyes squarely. “He’s raring to go and threatens to move into the second story of the met tower and run communications from there. Sabra threatens to divorce him if he does anything before he gets medical clearance. Myself, I told him he doesn’t need to worry, as young Jake Chernoff’s been doing a proper job of it.

The boy won’t even hazard a guess about the weather until he’s run the satellite report twice and looked out the window.”

Paul and Emily both smiled at his jocular account.

“Ongola needs to be back at work,” Emily agreed.

“He’s sure he’ll never use his arm again. He’d do better being so busy he doesn’t think such negative thoughts.” Jim cocked his head at Paul.

“According to the doctors,” Emily said with a grateful smile, “Ongola will use that arm—even if he refuses to believe it—but the amount of mobility is still in question.”

“He’ll get it back,” Jim said blandly. “Hey, is there any truth to the rumor that Stev Kimmer was involved with Tubberman?”

Paul pulled a face, and Emily shot him a glance. “I told you that was doing the rounds,” she said.

Jim leaned forward, his expression eager. “Any truth to the one that he skitted out with one of the big pressurized sleds which has been seen near the Great Western Barrier where Kenjo staked his claim? Kimmer’s a lot more dangerous than Ted Tubberman ever was.”

Paul ran his thumb over his artificial fingers and stopped when he saw that Jim Tillek had noticed the nervous habit. “He is indeed. As the comm unit on that stolen sled was in working order when he lifted it, he will also know that he is wanted back here for questioning.”

Jim nodded in solemn approval. “Has Ezra made any sense out of the reports of those probes Sallah . . .” He blinked, his eyes suspiciously wet.

“No,” Paul said, clearing his throat. “He’s still trying to translate them. The printout is unclear.”

“Well, now,” Jim said, “I’ve got a few hours to spare while my sled’s serviced. I looked at hundreds of EEC survey team reports before I found a planet I liked the look of. Can I help?”

“A fresh eye might be useful,” Paul said. “Ezra’s been at it nonstop.”

“Did I hear correctly,” Jim asked gently, “that the Mariposa plunged directly into the eccentric?”

Paul nodded. “She made no informative comment.” Avril’s cryptic penultimate phrase, “It’s not the . . .” still rang with some message that Paul felt he must unravel. “Look, Jim, do stop in and see if you can help Ezra. We need some good news. Morale is still low after the murders, and having to shun Ted Tubberman and explain how he got his hands on that homing capsule have not improved the administration’s image.”

“Clever trick, though,” Jim said, chuckling as he rose. “Keeps you from having to breach stake autonomy, and keeps that fool where he can’t do more damage. I’ll just amble over to Ezra’s pod.” He left the room with a backhanded wave at Emily and Paul.

Immeasurably cheered by his visit, they went back to the onerous tasks of scheduling crews for the upcoming Threadfalls and mustering teams to collect edible greenery for silage from places as yet untouched by the ravening organism.

Chapter 15

“LOOK, JIM, I just can’t find any other logical explanation for the destruction of the probes and these.” Ezra Keroon waved a handful of probe pics, so blurred that no detail could be seen. “One, maybe two probes could malfunction. But I’ve sent off seven! And Sallah—” Ezra paused a moment, his face expressing the sorrow he still felt at her loss. “Sallah told us that there had been no damage report for the probe garage. Then we have the Mariposa. It did not hit the surface. Something hit it just about the same time one of the probes went bang!”

“So you prefer to believe that something down on the surface prevents inspection?” Jim Tillek asked wryly. He leaned back in his seat, easing shoulder muscles taut from hours of bending and peering through magnifiers. “I can’t credit that explanation, Ez. C’mon, man. How can anything on that planet be functioning? The surface has been frozen. It can’t have thawed appreciably in the time it’s been swinging in to Rukbat.”

“One does not have such regular formations on any unpopulated surface. I don’t say they can’t be natural. They just don’t look natural. And I certainly won’t make any guesses about what sort of creature made them. Then look at the thermal level here, here, and here.” Ezra jabbed a finger at the pics he had been studying. “It’s higher than I’d anticipated on a near-frozen surface. That much we got from the one probe that sent data back.”

“Volcanic action under the crust could account for that.”

“But regular convex, not concave, formations along the equator?”

Jim was incredulous. “You want to believe that plutonic planet could be the source of this attack?”

“I like that better than substantiating the Hoyle-Wickramansingh theory, I really do, Jim.”

“If Avril hadn’t taken the gig, we could find out what that nebulosity is. Then we’d know for sure! Hoyle-Wickramansingh or little frozen blue critters.” Jim’s tone was facetious.

“We’ve the shuttles,” Ezra said tentatively, tapping his pencil.

“No fuel, and there isn’t a pilot among those left that I’d be willing to trust to do such a difficult retrieval. You’d have to match its orbital speed. I saw the dents on the Mariposa’s hull myself where the defense shields failed. Also, we didn’t bring down any heavy worksuits that would protect a man out in a meteor storm. And if your theory’s correct, he’ll get shot down.”

“Only if he gets too close to the planet,” Ezra went on cautiously. “But he wouldn’t have to, to get a sample of the trail. If the trail is nothing but ice, dirt, and rock, the usual cometary junk, we’d know then that the real menace is the planet, not the trail. Right?”

Jim eyed him thoughtfully. “It’d be dangerous either way. And there’s no fuel to do it anyhow!” Jim opened his arms in a gesture of exasperation.

“There is fuel.”

“There is?” Jim sat bolt upright, eyes wide with surprise.

Ezra gave him a wry smile. “Known only to a chosen few.”

“Well!” Jim made his eyebrows twitch, but he grinned to show that he took no offense at having been excluded. “How much?”

“With a thrifty pilot, enough for our purpose. Or maybe, if we can find Kenjo’s main cache, more.”

“More?” Jim gawked. “Kenjo’s cache? He scrounged fuel?”

“Always was a clever driver. Saved it from his drops, Ongola said.”

Jim continued to stare at Ezra, amazed at Kenjo’s sheer impudence. “So that’s why Kimmer’s nosing about the Western Barrier Range. He’s out trying to find Kenjo’s cache. For his own purposes or ours?”

“Not enough to get anyone’s hopes up, mind you,” Ezra continued, holding up a warning hand. “Maybe it’s not too bad a thing that Tubberman sent off the homer. Because if it is the planet, we need help, and I’m not too proud to ask for it.” Ezra grimaced. “Not that Kimmer said anything to anyone when he made off with the big sled and enough concentrated food and power packs to stay lost for years. Joel Lilienkamp was livid that anyone would steal from his Store. We don’t even know how Stev found out about Kenjo’s hoard. Except that he knew how much fuel the Mariposa had in her tanks eight years ago. So he must have figured out someone had saved fuel back when Kenjo made those reconnaissance flights.” Then, as Jim opened his mouth, he added, “Don’t worry about Kimmer taking off even if he finds fuel. Ongola and Kenjo disabled the shuttles some time back. Kimmer doesn’t know where we stash the fuel sacks here. Neither do I.”

“I’m honored—by your confidence and the cares you have so carefully laid on my bowed shoulders.”

“You walked in here three days ago and volunteered your services,” Ezra reminded him.

“Three days? Feels like three years. I wonder if my skimmer’s been serviced.” He rose and stretched again until the bones in his spine and joints readjusted with audible clicks. “So, shall we take this mess—” He gestured to the mass of photos and flimsies neatly arranged on the work surface. “—to the guys who have to figure out what we do with it?”

Paul and Emily listened, saying nothing, until both men had finished expressing their conflicting viewpoints.

“But when the planet is past us in the next eight or nine years, Threadfall will stop,” Paul said, jumping to a conclusion.

“Depends on whose theory you favor,” Jim said, grinning with good-natured malice. “Or how advanced Ezra’s aliens are. Right now, if you buy his theory, they’re keeping us at arm’s length while the Thread softens us up.”

Paul Benden brushed away that notion. “I don’t credit that, Ezra. Thread was ineffective on the previous try. But the Pluto planet could be defending itself. I could live with that much of your theory based on the evidence.”

Emily looked squarely at Jim. “How long will this gunge fall if it’s from your cometary tail?”

“Twenty, thirty years. If I knew the length of that tail, I could give a closer estimate.”

“I wonder if that’s what Avril meant,” Paul said slowly, “by ‘it’s not the . . .’ Did she mean that it wasn’t the planet we had to fear, but the tail it brought from the Oort cloud?”

“If she hadn’t taken the Mariposa, we’d have a chance of knowing.” Emily’s voice had a sharp edge.

“We still do,” Ezra said. “There’s enough fuel to send a shuttle up. Not as economical a vehicle as the Mariposa but adequate.”

“Are you sure?” Paul’s expression was taut as he reached for a calc pad on which he worked several equations. He leaned back, his face pensive, then passed the pad over to Emily and Jim. “It might just be possible.” He caught and held Emily’s gaze. “We have to know. We have to know the worst we can expect before we can plan ahead.”

Ezra raised a warning hand, his expression wary. “Mind you, they can’t get close to the planet! We’ve lost seven probes. Could be mines, could be missiles—but they blow up.”

“Whoever goes will know exactly what and how big the risks are,” Paul said.

“There’s risk enough in just going up,” Ezra said gloomily.

“I hate to sound fatuous, but surely there’s one pilot who’d take the challenge to save this world,” Paul added.

Drake Bonneau was approached first. He thought the scheme was feasible, but he worried about the risk of a shuttle that had certainly deteriorated from eight years’ disuse. He then pointed out that he was married with responsibilities, and that there were other pilots equally as qualified. Paul and Emily did not argue with him.

“Marriage and dependent children will be the excuse of practically everyone,” Paul told their private counselors, Ezra, Jim, and Zi Ongola, who had been permitted four hours of work a day by his reluctant medical advisers. “The only one still unattached is Nabhi Nabol.”

“He’s a clever enough pilot,” Ongola said thoughtfully, “though not exactly the type of man on whom the future of an entire planet should ride. However, exactly the type if the reward could be made attractive enough for him to take the risk.”

“How?” Emily asked skeptically.

Nabhi had already been reprimanded a dozen times and served Cherry Duff’s sentences for social misdemeanors such as being caught “drunk and disorderly,” several work delinquencies, and one “lewd advance.” Lately he had somewhat redeemed himself by being a good squadron leader, and was much admired by the young men he led.

“He’s a contractor,” Ongola said. “If he should be offered, say, a charterer’s stake rights, I think he might well go for it. He’s griped about the disparity in land holdings often enough. That could sweeten him. He also fancies himself as a crack pilot.”

“We’ve got some very good young pilots,” Jim began.

“Who have had no experience in space with a shuttle.” Ongola dismissed that notion. “Though it might be a good idea to choose one to go as copilot and give them the feel. But I’d rather trust Nabhi than a complete space novice.”

“If we suggest that he was also our second choice, rather than our last one . . .” Emily remarked.

“We’d better get on with it, whatever we do,” Ezra said. “I can’t keep stalling questions. We need data and we need a sample of the stuff in that trail. Then we’ll know for certain what our future is.”

Bargaining with Nabhi began that afternoon. He sneered at the flattery and the appeal to his competence and demanded to know just how much the trip was worth in terms of a holding and other rights. When he demanded the entire province of Cibola, Paul and Emily settled down to their task. When Nabhi insisted on being granted charterer status, they agreed with sufficient reluctance to satisfy the man that he was ahead in the bargaining.

Then Emily nonchalantly mentioned that Big Island was now untenanted. She and Paul managed to suppress their relief when he immediately seized on the notion of occupying Avril’s former property.

Nabhi said that he wanted the shuttle he had used during the ferrying operation and he specified the personnel who were, under his supervision, to handle the Moth’s recommissioning. He waved aside the fact that all the people he named were already heavily involved in crucial projects. He would only make the trip if he was satisfied that the long-disused shuttle checked out technically. But the other inducements were his immediately.

He then demanded Bart Lemos as his copilot, with the condition that Bart, too, would be given charterer status. Paul and Emily found that particularly unpalatable, but agreed reluctantly.

Nabol’s attitude toward both admiral and governor immediately altered, becoming so arrogant and pompous that Emily had to struggle to contain her dislike of the man. His smile of triumph was only one degree less than a full sneer as he left their office with the signed charterer’s warrant. Then he commandeered one of the speed shuttles, although it was needed for an imminent Threadfall, and went to inspect his new acquisition.

The admiral and the governor formally announced the venture, its aims, and its personnel. The news managed to outweigh every other topic of interest with one exception: the transfer of the twenty-seven mature eggs to their artificial hatching ground.

The full veterinary contingent assisted the biologists in that maneuver. Sorka Hanrahan and Sean Connell, in their capacities as advanced veterinary apprentices, had also done some of the early analysis and tedious documentation for the project, working under Kitti Ping’s close supervision. It didn’t take long to accomplish the transfer, but Sorka noticed that the amount of dithering was aggravating her lover. But the project meant more to him than his exasperation with worried biologists, and he suppressed his irritation. Finally the eggs were placed to the complete satisfaction of Wind Blossom, Pol, and Bay: in a double circle, seven on the inner ring, twenty on the outer, with the warm sand banked high around them to imitate the natural environment of dragonets.

“The whole thing could have been done in a third of the time,” Sean muttered darkly to Sorka. “So much fuss is bad for the eggs.” He scowled at the precise circles.

“They’re much bigger than I thought they’d be,” Sorka said after a moment’s silence.

“Much bigger than they thought they’d be,” Sean said in a scoffing tone. “I suppose we’re lucky that so many survived to this stage—a credit to Kit Ping, considering all that had to be done to create them.”

Sorka knew that it meant as much to Sean to be a part of the project as it did to her. They had, after all, been the first to discover one of the wild nests. Eager but tired, she was balancing on one of the edging timbers, keeping her feet off the uncomfortably warm sands of the artificial hatching ground.

Although the transfer was complete, the helpers had not yet dispersed. Wind Blossom, Pol, and Bay were deep in discussions with Phas, the admiral, and the governor, who had taken an official part in the removal. Sorka thought that Emily Boll particularly looked drawn and exhausted, but her smile remained warm and genuine. They, too, seemed reluctant to leave.

Most of the Landing population of dragonets had been in and out of the Hatching Ground, darting up to the rafters and vying to find roosting room. They seemed content to watch; none of them had been bold enough to examine the eggs closely. Sorka interpreted their little chirps as reverent, awed.

“Would they know what these are?” she asked Sean softly.

“Do we?” Sean retorted with an amused snort. He had both arms folded across his chest; he unlaced one to point to the nearest egg. “That’s the biggest. I wonder if it’s one of the golds. I’ve lost track of which was put where in that dance we just did. There were more males than females among the ones lost, and Lili’s opened book on which of us get what.”

Sorka gave the egg a long speculative look. She thought about whether or not it was a gold, and then decided, somewhat arbitrarily in her own mind, that no, it was not. It was a bronze. She did not tell Sean her conclusion. Sean tended to debate such issues, and that moment, surveying the first clutch of “dragons,” was not a moment to spoil. She sighed.

Dragonets had become as important to her as horses. She readily admitted that Sean could make his fair behave better than she could hers. He could and did discipline his for effective use during Threadfall. But she knew that she understood any of them—hers, his, or those impressed by anyone else on Pern—better than he did, especially when they were injured fighting Thread. Or maybe her sensitivity, developed over the last couple of months along with her pregnancy, tended toward maternal caring. The doctor had said she was in excellent health and had found nothing in her physical profile to suggest problems. She could continue riding as long as she felt comfortable in the saddle.

“You’ll know when you can’t ride anymore,” he had told her with a grin. “And you’ll have to curtail ground crew at five months. That’s no time for you to be swinging the weight of a flamethrower about for hours on end.”

Sorka had not yet found the proper moment to inform Sean of his impending fatherhood. She fretted about his reaction. They had saved enough work credits to make the Killarney holding a substantial one, but not with Thread falling. Sean had not even mentioned Killarney since the third Fall, but that did not mean he did not think about it. She saw the faraway look in his eyes from time to time.

She had thought he would mention Killarney when his father returned Cricket from his stud duties. But he had not. With everyone working double jobs just to keep essential services going, very few people had time to consider private concerns. Sean and Sorka spent what leisure moments they had keeping their horses fit, riding them out beyond the swath of destruction for an hour’s grazing.

The main door opened to admit one of the security engineers, and there was an instant reaction from the gallery of winged watchers. Sean chuckled softly. “They don’t need a security system in here,” he murmured to Sorka. “C’mon, love, we’ve got surgery in five minutes.”

With backward glances at the, circles of mottled eggs, the two apprentices reluctantly went back to work. As they crossed one of the alleys, they had a clear view of the donks slowly moving the shuttle Moth into takeoff position.

“D’you think they’ll make it?” Sorka asked Sean.

“They’ve been busy enough,” he replied sourly. Neither Nabhi Nabol nor Bart Lemos had made himself popular since the sudden rise to charterer rank. “Still, I wouldn’t be in their shoes for anything!”

She giggled. “Spacer Yvonne. You’ve never told me, Sean, did that help you on the drop?”

He gave her face a long and searching look, a light smile tugging his lips. Then he put his arm about her and hauled her into his side. “All I could think about was proving to you I wasn’t scared. But, by Jays, I was!” Then his expression changed and he halted, turning her roughly to him, both hands feeling across her stomach and pulling the bulky shipsuit taut across her body. He glared accusingly at her. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re pregnant?”

“Well, it’s only just been confirmed,” she said defiantly.

“Does everyone else know but me?” He was furious with her; for the first time in their years together, he was mad at her. His eyes were flashing and his hands rested hard across her thickening waistline.

“No one knows except the doctor, and he doesn’t have to ground me for another three months.” She pulled defensively at one hand to make him release her. “But there’s Killarney and I know you think about it . . .”

“Your mother knows?”

“When do I have a chance to see her? She’s minding half of Landing’s babies, as well as my latest brother. You’re the only other one who knows.”

“Sometimes you baffle me, Sorka,” Sean said, his anger abating. He shook his head. “Why wait to tell me? Killarney’s a long way off in our future now. We’re committed here. I thought you understood that.” He put both hands on her shoulders and gave her a stern shake. “I’ve wanted to be the father of your children. I want you to have only mine. I want it to be now, too, Sorka love, but I didn’t think I had the right to ask you to bring a child into the world the way it is.” His voice fell into the special tender tone he always used when they were making love.

“No, it’s the best time to have a child. Something for both of us to have,” she said. She did not add “in case,” but he knew what she was thinking and tightened his grip on her. His eyes compelled hers to look at him. The fury had been replaced by resolution.

“Immediately after surgery, we’re going before Cherry Duff. This is going to be a two-parent child, or my name’s not Sean Connell!”

Sorka burst out laughing and did not stop until they reached the surgery shed.

Ongola had ended up as arbiter on the reconditioning of the space shuttle Moth. Nabhi Nabol had been driving the refit crew demented, interrupting them at critical moments of repair, demanding to know if that circuit or this segment of hull had been checked. Despite the fact that he had a good working knowledge of the complexities of a shuttle, he delayed more than he assisted. The shuttle Mayfly, lying next to the Moth, had been sectioned off into offices for Ongola, Fulmar, and Nabhi, with a half-dozen comm lines so that Ongola could handle other commitments while on hand at the shuttle. His office was festooned with probe pics and survey maps, as well as with the various launch windows open to Nabhi. Nabhi would often come in and stand broodingly staring at the orbits, picking at his lower lip. Ongola ignored him.

The basic condition of the Moth had been surprisingly good: there had been practically no perishing of interior circuits or lines. But everything had to be double-checked. In that Ongola agreed with. Nabhi. It put quite a burden on Fulmar’s engineering team, but that was not where he disagreed with the autocratic Nabhi.

“I wouldn’t care what he asked me to do,” Fulmar told Ongola, “if he’d only ask politely. You’d think he was doing me a favor. Are you sure he’s as good a driver as he thinks he is?”

“He is good,” Ongola reluctantly admitted.

“I’d’ve preferred the mission in Bonneau’s hands,” Fulmar replied, shaking his head sadly. “But with that big stake, kids and all, I can’t fault his refusal. It’s just that—” He broke off, raising his big, work-stained hands in a helpless gesture.

“The mission has got to succeed, Fulmar,” Ongola said, giving the man an encouraging clout on the shoulder. “And you’re the best man to see that it does.”

In the thirteenth week after Threadfall, the pattern suddenly shifted. As the squadrons reached the projected site, which was mainly over unoccupied lands, only the top of the squadron saw the leading edge. It was well north of their position: the gray shimmering stain on the horizon was all too easily identified.

“Hell and damnation!” Theo Force cried, ramming a call through to Ongola at Landing. “The damned stuff’s shifted north, Zi. We’ll need reinforcements.”

“Give me the coordinates,” Ongola said, issuing crisp orders and gesturing, to Jake to get in touch with Dieter or Boris. “Go for it. We’ll scramble another squadron or two to help. I’ll alert Drake.”

Boris was found, and made some quick calculations. “It’s going to hit Calusa and Bordeaux. It seems to have shifted north by five degrees. That doesn’t make sense. Why on earth would it shift so suddenly?”

There was no answer to his question. Ongola rang off. “Have you the week’s roster there, Jake? Check where Kwan is today. I’ll call Chuck Havers at Calusa.”

Sue Havers answered the phone. After her initial shock at the news, she rallied. “We’ve several hours then, don’t we? And it could just miss us? I hope so. I don’t know where Chuck is working today. Thank you, Zi. And,” she added, her voice less assured, “are you calling Mary Tubberman, or should I warn her?”

“We’ll send Ned along.” Ongola disconnected.

Shunning was very hard on the relatives. Ned was entitled to assist his mother and his younger brothers and sister in fighting Thread. If he chose also to assist his father in the emergency, there would be only family to witness it. Tubberman had been quick to clad his buildings with metal, so his stake was as safe as those precautions could make it. He would get no other help.

Ongola then contacted Drake and ordered him to avoid the Tubbermans’ stake. Drake at first protested that they couldn’t leave any Thread on any ground, shunned or not.

“Ned can protect that much with his mother’s help, Drake, but we cannot assist Ted Tubberman.”

“But it’s Thread, man.”

“That’s an order, man,” Ongola replied in a steely tone.

“Gotcha!”

Ongola then informed Paul Benden and Emily Boll of the pattern’s alteration.

“Ezra will say that proves intelligence directs Fall,” Paul remarked to Emily as they conferred.

“It’s heads we lose, tails we lose, as far as I can see,” Emily replied, heaving a sigh.

“It’s as well we don’t have to wait long to find out.” Paul nodded toward the grid where the Moth was undergoing the final countdown. None of the technicians had been allowed to scramble for additional support squadrons. Their assignments on the shuttle had just become all-important.

Following the courtesy now well established, Drake Bonneau checked in at the Havers’ stakehold on his way back from end of Fall which had just tipped Bordeaux across the Jordan River. He landed within sight of the Tubbermans’ arger home.

“Ned and Mary were out with flamethrowers,” Chuck told the squadron leader, “and then, for some insane reason, Ted drove them back into the house. There couldn’t have been much damage, or we’d have seen results.”

“Well, you’re all right here,” Drake said heartily.

“The ground crew arrived well in advance. But does anyone know why the pattern’s shifted?” Sue asked. Weary with fighting, she needed some spark of reassurance.

“No,” Drake replied cheerfully, “but we’ll probably be old!”

He accepted a cup of the refreshing fruit drink that the oldest Havers girl brought him and his crew, then said goodbye. Drake had obeyed Ongola’s order to bypass the Tubberman stake during Fall, but after what the Havers had said about Ted, he was curious. In his opinion, all Thread had to be destroyed, even if it fell on a shunned homesite. Thread did not care about human conflicts: it ate. Drake did not want to see a little burrow get started because of man-made restrictions.

Therefore, as he took off, he made a leisurely turn right over the Tubberman property. He saw Ned standing on the green patch surrounding the house. Ned waved and gesticulated rather wildly, at which point Drake felt obliged to follow orders and turn northwest towards Landing.

He was having a quick bite to eat in the dining hall when Ned Tubberman found him.

“You saw it, Drake, I know you did. You have to have seen it,” Ned said, excitedly pulling at Drake’s sleeve to pull him to his feet. “C’mon, you have to tell them what you saw.”

Drake pulled his arm free. “Tell who what?” He forked up another mouthful of the hot food. Thread-fighting gave him an incredible appetite.

“Tell Kwan and Paul and Emily what you saw.”

“I didn’t see anything!” Then suddenly Drake had a flash of pure recall: Ned standing on a green square, a green square that was surrounded by scorched earth. “I don’t believe what I saw!” He wiped his mouth, chewing absently as he absorbed that memory. “But Thread had just been across your place, and Chuck and Sue saw your father stop you flaming!”

“Exactly!” Ned grinned hugely and again pulled at Drake. The squadron leader rose and followed Ned out of the room. “I want you to tell them what you saw, to corroborate my statement. I don’t know what Dad’s done.” The grin faded and some of the buoyancy drained from Ned Tubberman. “He says shunning works two ways. Mother told me that he locks himself away in his laboratory and won’t let anyone near it. My brothers and sister go over to Sue’s all the time, but Mother won’t leave Dad, even if he isn’t in the house much. She keeps the place ticking over.”

“Your father’s been experimenting with something?” Drake was confused.

“Well, he’s got botanical training. He did say that until help came, the only defense was the planet itself.” Ned slowed his pace. “And that patch of grass must have defended itself—somehow—against today’s Fall, because it’s still there!”

Drake did tell Kwan, Paul, Emily, and the hastily summoned Pol and Bay. Ned insisted that he had seen Thread fall on the ground-cover plants, had not seen them wither or be ingested, and that by the time Drake had overflown the stake, there was no evidence that Thread had ever fallen on that twelve-by-twelve-meter rectangle.

“I couldn’t hazard a guess as to how he’s done it,” Pol finally said, looking to Bay for agreement. “Maybe he has been able to adapt Kitti Ping’s basic program for use on a less complex life-form. Professionally I have to doubt it.”

“But I saw it,” Ned insisted. “Drake saw it, too.”

There was a long silence, which Emily finally broke. “Ned, we do not doubt you, or Drake’s verification, but as your father said, shunning works both ways.”

“Are you too proud to ask him what he’s done?” Ned demanded, his skin blanched under his tan, and his nostrils flaring with indignation.

“Pride is not involved,” Emily said gently. “Safety is. He was shunned because he defied the will of the colony. If you can honestly say that he has changed his attitude, then we can discuss reinstatement.”

Ned flushed, his eyes dropping away from Emily’s tolerant gaze. He sighed deeply. “He doesn’t want anything to do with Landing or anyone on it.” Then he gripped the edge of the table and leaned across it toward the governor. “But he’s done something incredible. Drake saw it.”

“I did indeed see ground cover where there shouldn’t’ve been any,” Drake conceded.

“Could your mother present evidence on his behalf?” Paul asked, seeking an honorable way out for Ned’s sake.

“She says he only talks to Petey, and Petey says he’s sworn to secrecy, so she hasn’t pushed him.” Ned’s face twisted with anguish for a long moment, then it cleared. “I’ll ask her. I’ll ask Petey, too. I can try!”

“This has not been easy for you either, Ned,” Emily said. “All of us would like to see the matter happily resolved.” She touched his hand where he still gripped the table edge. “We need everyone right now.”

Ned looked her steadily in the eyes and gave a slow nod. “I believe you, Governor.”

“Sometimes the duties to which rank entitles me are more than its worth,” Emily murmured to Paul as the hatch of the shuttle finally closed on Nabhi Nabol and Bart Lemos. She spoke quietly, because every young man in Nabhi’s squadron had come to wish their leader good luck. She turned and smiled at them, leading the way off the grid to the safer sidelines, and waited dutifully with the technicians for the takeoff.

They waited and waited, until both admiral and governor were giving the meteorology tower anxious scrutiny. Just when both had decided that Nabhi was going to renege, as they had half suspected he would, they heard the roar of ignition and saw the yellow-white flame pouring out of the tubes.

“Firing well,” Paul bellowed over the noise. Emily contented herself with a nod as she plugged her ears with her fingers.

She did not know much about the mechanics of shuttles, but the young men were grinning and waving their arms triumphantly. The look of relief on Fulmar’s face was almost comical. Majestically the shuttle began its run up the grid, its speed increasing at a sensational rate. It became airborne, the engines thrusting it in an abrupt but graceful swoop up. The flame became lost in the blue of the sky as the observers shaded their eyes against the rising sun. Then the puffy contrail blossomed, billowing out as a tracer for the shuttle’s path. The technicians who had made it possible cheered, and clapped one another on the back.

“Gawssakes, but it’s good to get a bird up again,” one of the men shouted. “Hey, what’s wrong with them?” he added, pointing to several fairs of dragonets zipping at low level across the grid out of nowhere, crooning oddly.

“Who’s having a baby?” Fulmar demanded.

Emily and Paul exchanged glances. “We are,” she said, sliding quickly into the skimmer. “See? They’re going straight to the Hatching Ground.”

Looking up toward Landing, there was no doubt that fairs of dragonets were streaming in that direction. No one lingered on the grid. The roof of the Hatching Ground was covered with the crooning and chittering creatures. The cacophony was exciting rather than irritating. When the admiral and governor arrived, they had to make their way through the crowd to the open double doors.

“Welcome in nine-hundred-part harmony,” Emily muttered to Paul as they made it to the edge of the warm sands. There they halted, awed by the sense of occasion within.

Kitti Ping had left explicit instructions on who was to attend the birth day. Sixty young people between the ages of eighteen and thirty, who had already shown a sympathy for the dragonets, had the privilege of standing around the circle of eggs. Wind Blossom, Pol, Bay, and Kwan stood to one side on a wooden platform, their faces flushed and expectant.

The dragonets’ song outside remaining softly jubilant while the crooning of those who had found roosting space inside sounded like subdued encouragement, almost reverent.

“They can’t know what we expect for today, can they, Paul?”

“Young Sean Connell”—Paul pointed to where the young man stood beside his wife around the eggs— “Would have you believe that they do. But then, they’ve always been attracted by birthing! After all, they protect their own young, against attack.”

A hush swept around the arena as a distinct crack was heard. One of the eggs rocked slightly, the motion drawing excited whispers.

Emily crossed her fingers, hiding them in the folds of her trousers. She noticed, with a slight grin, that others were doing the same. So much hung on the events of that day, on the first hatching and on what Nabhi Nabol was irrevocably committed to doing.

Another egg cracked and a third wobbled. The chorus became beguilingly insistent, striking an excited chord in every one watching.

Then all of a sudden, one of the eggs cracked open and a creature emerged, damp from birth; it shook stubby wings and stumbled over its shell, squawking in alarm. The dragonets answered soothingly. The young people in the circle stood their ground, and Emily marveled at their courage, for that awkward creature was not the graceful being she had been expecting, a beast remembered from old legends and illustrations held in library treasuries. She caught herself holding her breath, and exhaled quickly.

The creature extended its wings; they were wider and thinner than she had expected. It was so spindly, so ungainly, and its very oddly constructed eyes were flashing with red and yellow. Emily felt a flush of alarms The creature gave a desperate cry, and was answered reassuringly by the multivoiced choir above. It lurched forward, its voice pleading, and then the cry altered to one of joy, held on a high sweet note. It staggered another step and fell at the feet of David Catarel, who bent to help it.

He looked up with eyes wide with wonder. “He wants me!”

“Then accept him!” Pol bellowed, gesturing for one of the stewards to come forward with a bowl of food. “Feed him! No, don’t anyone else help you. The bond should be made now!”

Kneeling by his new charge, David offered the little dragon a hunk of meat. It bolted that and urgently cried for more, pushing at David’s leg with an imperious head.

“He says he’s very hungry,” David cried. “He’s talking to me. In my head! It’s incredible. How did she do it?”

“The mentasynth works, then!” Emily murmured to Paul, who nodded with the air of someone not at all surprised.

“Ye gods, but it’s ugly,” Paul said in a very low voice.

“You probably weren’t much to look at at birth either,” Emily surprised herself by saying. She grinned at his quick glance of astonishment.

David coaxed his new friend out of the circle of people and toward the edge of the Hatching Ground, calling for more food. “Polenth says he’s starving.”

Bay had ordered plenty of red meat to be available, butchered from animals that had adapted well to the improved Pernese grasses. The young dragonets would require plenty of boron for growth in their first months, and would best absorb it from the flesh of cattle,

Another egg cracked, and a second bronze male made a straight-line dash to Peter Semling. A shrill voluntary came from Peter’s fair of dragonets. There was a long wait before any more activity. A worried hum developed among the watchers. Then four more eggs abruptly shattered, two with unexpectedly dainty creatures, one golden and. one bronze, who partnered themselves with Tarrie Chernoff and Shih Lao; the other two were stolid-looking browns who took to Otto Hegelman and Paul Logorides.

“Do they expect them all to hatch today?” Emily asked Paul.

“Let’s go around to Pol and Bay,” Paul said. They inched their way to the right, pausing to admire David Catarel’s bronze, who was bolting down hunks of meat so fast that he seemed to be inhaling them. David looked ecstatic.

“Well, they could,” Pol replied when they reached him. He was masking anxiety well. Wind Blossom was not, and barely acknowledged the quiet greetings of admiral and governor.

“They were engineered within a thirty-six-hour period. The six that have hatched were from the first and second groups. We might have to wait. In our observations of wild dragonets, we know that laying the eggs can take several hours. I suspect the greens and golds may be like one of the Earth vipers, which can keep eggs within her body until she finds an appropriate place, or time, to lay them. We know that naturally clutched eggs do hatch more or less simultaneously. This,” he said, pointing to the Hatching Ground, “is a concession to Kitti Ping’s reverence for the ancestral species’ habitat. Ah, another one’s cracking.” He consulted the flimsy in his hand. “One of the third group!”

“Six males, but only one female,” Bay said quietly. “To be frank, I’d rather have more females. What do you think, Blossom?”

“One perfect male and one perfect female are all we need,” Wind Blossom said in a tight, controlled voice. She had her hands hidden in her loose sleeves, but there were deep tension lines in her face and her eyes were clouded.

“Peter Semling’s bronze looks sturdy,” Emily said encouragingly. Wind Blossom did not respond, her gaze was fixed on the eggs. “Are they as you anticipated?” she asked, looking at Pol and Bay.

“No,” Bay admitted, “but then it was Kitti who had the requisite image in her mind. If only . . .” She faltered. “Ah, another gold female. I believe that Kitti Ping made the choices gender imperative. For Nyassa Clissmann. And such charming creatures!”

Emily failed to see charm in the hatchlings, but she was glad to see so many live ones. But what had Kitti Ping had in her mind when she altered the dragonet ova? Those were not dragons of any kind Emily knew. And yet she had an unexpected vision of a sky full of the creatures, soaring and diving, breathing flame. Had Kitti Ping had such a vision?”

“The shuttle!” Pol said suddenly. “Did I hear it take off?”

“Yes, he made it,” Paul replied. “Ongola will keep us informed. We don’t have enough fuel for a direct flight. The shuttle’ll have to coast a week before it reaches the trail.”

“Oh, I see.” Then Pol refocused his attention on the eggs.

The crowd shifted as some people had to return to complete unfinished tasks and others moved in to take their places. Food was brought to the biologists and the leaders on their dais, and wooden benches to sit on. Wind Blossom remained standing. Food was also taken to the circle of hopeful dragonriders. The dragonets’ encouragement did not abate. Emily wondered how they could keep it up.

It was dark before there was any further movement, and then all at once a brown and two golds cracked their eggs. Marco Galliani got the brown, and Kathy Duff and Nora Sejby the two golds. There was a good deal of cheering.

The crowd at the opening thinned, while the dragonets kept their posts and continued their encouraging song. Emily was becoming weary and she could see fatigue catching up with the others. She was half-asleep when Catherine Radelin-Doyle impressed her gold.

“Do they always go female to female?” Emily asked Pol. “And male to male?”

“Since the males are expected to be fighters and the females egg-carriers, Kitti made it logical.”

“Logical to her,” Emily said, a trifle bemused. “There aren’t any blues or greens among them,” she suddenly realized.

“Kitti programmed the heavier males, but I believe they’re to carry sperm for the entire range. The greens will be the smallest, the fighters; the blues sturdier, with more staying power; the browns sort of anchor fighters with even more endurance. They’ll have to fight four to six hours, remember! The bronzes are leaders and the golds . . .”

“Waiting at home to be egg-carriers.”

Pol gave Emily a long look, his tired face reflecting astonishment at her sarcasm.

“In the wild, greens don’t have good maternal instincts. The golds do,” Bay put in, giving the governor an odd glance.

“Kitti Ping kept as much natural instinct as possible. Or so her program reads.”

“There!” Nabhi said, leaning back from the console, his swarthy face intense with an inner satisfaction. “Kenjo wasn’t the only one who could save fuel.”

Bart stared at him, surprised and confused. “Save it for what, Nabhi?” He spoke more sharply than he meant to, but he had been wound up with tension that would not ease. It was not that he did not trust Nabhi as a pilot—Nabhi was a good driver, or Bart would not have been talked into participating in the insane venture, not for the choicest land on Pern.

“To maneuver,” Nabhi said. His mocking grin did nothing to ease Bart’s disquiet.

“Where? You’re not . . . you wouldn’t be mad enough to try to land on the farking planet?” Bart clawed at the release straps, but Nabhi’s indolent gesture of negation aborted the effort.

“No way. I came to get the pods or whatever.” His smile then broadened, and Bart was amazed at the humor in it. “Our course is basically the same one Avril took.” He turned his head and looked directly at his copilot.

“So?”

“They said the gig blew up.” Nabhi’s smile was pure malice. “Turn on the screens. There might be some interesting flotsam. Diamonds and gold nuggets and whatever else Avril took with her. No one needs to know what else we scooped up out of space. And it sure beats mining the stuff ourselves.”

By midnight Pol and Bay decided to examine the remaining eggs and slowly did the rounds. Wooden platforms had been brought out for the candidates to rest on, since the heat in the sand was enervating. None of the chosen was willing to forgo the chance at impressing a hatchling by leaving the Ground.

When the two biologists returned, Pol was shaking his head and Bay looked drawn. She went immediately to Wind Blossom and touched her arm.

“The rest of the first group show no signs of life. But already the outcome is better than projected. We detected viable signs in the others. We can but wait. They were not all conceived at the same time.”

Wind Blossom remained an unmoving statue.

Sean nudged Sorka in the ribs to wake her up. She had fallen asleep leaning against him, her cheek against his upper arm. She was instantly alert and aware of her surroundings. Sean pointed to the biggest of the eggs, which sat almost directly in front of them. He had taken that position at the outset, and finally, after his long vigil, the egg was rocking slightly.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Nearly dawn. There’s been no other movement. But listen to the dragonets. Listen to Blaze. She’ll have no throat left!”

They had noted their own dragonets early during that long day, and Sorka had taken heart from their constant choral encouragements.

“That egg over there has been moving spasmodically for the last two hours,” he said in a quiet tone. “The one beyond it rocked for a while, but it’s stopped completely.”

Sorka tried to contain a yawn, then gave in to the compulsion and felt better for it. She wanted to stretch, but another candidate was draped over her legs, fast asleep. Beyond, the other candidates began to wake.

At some point while Sorka had been dozing, the admiral and the governor had left. Pol and Bay were leaning into each other, and Kwan’s head was on his chest, arms limp in his lap. Wind Blossom had apparently not moved since she had taken up her watch.

“She’s uncanny,” Sorka said, turning away from the geneticist.

A single great crack startled everyone, and the egg before them parted into two ragged halves. The bronze hatchling walked out imperiously, lifted his head, and made a sound like a stuttering trumpet. Everyone came to attention. Sean was on his feet, and Sorka pushed at his legs to urge him on. She need not have worried. As he locked eyes with the hatchling, Sean gave a low incredulous groan and moved forward to meet the beast halfway. Their fair was bugling with triumph.

“Meat, quickly,” Sorka called, beckoning to a sleepy steward. Hoping that the heat in the building had not soured the meat, she ran to meet the man, grabbed the bowl, and returned to thrust it into Sean’s hands. She had never seen that utterly rapt look in his eyes before.

“He says his name is Carenath, Sorka. He knows his own name!” Sean transferred food from the bowl into Carenath’s mouth as fast as he could shovel it. “More meat. Hurry, I need more meat.”

Everyone in the Hatching Ground was wakened by his vibrant voice. Then the other egg broke open, and a golden female sauntered forth, chittering and looking about urgently. Sorka was too busy passing bowls of meat to Sean to notice until Betsy tugged at her arm.

“She’s looking for you, Sorka. Look at her!”

Sorka turned her head and suddenly she, too, felt the indescribable impact of a mind on hers, a mind that rejoiced in finding its equal, its lifelong partner. Sorka was filled with an exultation that was almost painful.

My name is Faranth, Sorka!

Chapter 16

“WE HAVE ACTUALLY learned a great deal from eggs that didn’t hatch,” Pol told Emily and Paul when he, Wind Blossom, and Bay made their report two evenings later.

“So far, so good?” Paul asked hopefully.

“Oh, very good,” Bay said enthusiastically, grinning and nodding her head vigorously. Wind Blossom managed a prim, set smile. The air of impenetrable gloom that had surrounded her on the Hatching Day had been exchanged for an aloof superiority.

“Then you do believe that the eighteen hatchlings will all become viable adults?’ Paul asked Wind Blossom.

She inclined her head. “We must await their maturity with patience.”

“But they will be able to produce flame from phosphinebearing rocks and go between as the dragonets do?” Paul asked her.

“I am, myself, much encouraged,” Pol said, when Wind Blossom said nothing. “Bay is, too, by the way in which mentasynth has provided a strong empathic bond and telepathic communication.”

“A genuine mind-to-mind contact,” Bay added with a smile of satisfaction. “Especially strong for Sorka and Sean.”

“The dragons were designed,” Wind Blossom added pompously, “to make Impression with other than their own ancestral species. In that much, the program has succeeded.” She held up her hand. “We must contain impatience and strive to achieve the perfect specimen.”

“The stablization of Impression to another species was the most important aspect,” Pol said, his brows creasing slightly.” After all, the dragonets have teleported as naturally as they breathe.”

“The dragonets have,” Wind Blossom said coolly. “We have yet to see if the dragons can.”

“Kitti Ping did not alter those capabilities, you know. They will, of course, have to be refined and controlled,” Pol went on. He did not like Wind Blossom’s attitude, her refusal to concede the triumphs already achieved. “I must say, I am very glad that the young Connells both Impressed. With their veterinary training and their general competence, not to mention their proven ability to discipline their dragonet fairs, we couldn’t ask for better mates.”

Wind Blossom made a slight noise, which the listeners took as disapproval.

“They’re qualified,” Bay said with unexpected heat. “Someone must make the beginning.”

“Their progress must be strictly monitored,” Wind Blossom said, “so that we will know what mistakes must be avoided the next time.”

“Next time?” Emily blinked in surprise and noticed that Bay and Pol were reacting similarly.

“I do not yet know if these creatures will perform on the other design levels, either natural or imposed.” Her sepulchral tone indicated that she had grave doubts.

“How can you not be encouraged—” Pol began with some heat.

A decisive gesture of dismissal cut him off, and he stared at Wind Blossom.

“I will begin anew,” Wind Blossom informed them in a tone that almost implied martyrdom. Pol and Bay regarded her in astonishment. “With what we learned from the post mortem examinations, I cannot be sure that any of the living will be fertile or reproduce. More importantly—reproduce themselves! I must try again, and again, until success is assured. This experiment is only begun.”

“But, Wind Blossom—” Pol began, astounded.

“Come, you shall assist me.” With an imperious gesture, she swept from the room.

Neither the veterinarians nor the xenobiologists had any criteria by which to judge the health of eighteen representatives of a new species. But the dragons’ hearty appetites, the vibrant color of their suedelike hides, and the ease of their physical exertions—which consisted mainly’ of eating and exercising their wings—were taken as measures of well-being. In the first week of life, each had grown at least a handspan taller and had filled out; they looked considerably more substantial. And as the toughness of their transparent wings became more and more evident, those who had worried, about their fragility were relieved.

Fascinated, the official medical support group watched as the two Connells bathed and oiled their ten-day-old dragons. Large shallow bathing pools of siliplas had been erected near the homes of all the dragonmates. Faranth was coyly aware of the admiring glances.

“She’s preening, Dad,” Sorka said, amused, as she poured oil on a scaly patch between the dorsal ridges. “Is that the itchy spot, Farrie?”

My name is Faranth and that is that itchy spot, Faranth said in tones that went from reproof to relief. Another is starting on my hind leg.

“She doesn’t like to be called by a nickname,” Sorka said tolerantly, grinning at her father. “But jays, she takes scrubbing.” A bristle brush had been made for the purpose, firm enough to rub in oil but not harsh enough to mar the tender, smooth hide.

Suddenly everyone was drenched as Carenath, sweeping his glistening wings forward in the low bath, showered them with water.

“Carenath, behave yourself!” Sorka and Sean spoke in the same sharp tone.

I am already clean, you polka-dotted idiot, Faranth said in an excellent mimicry of one of Sorka’s favorite admonitions. I was nearly dry, and now my oiling has to be done again.

Sean and Sorka laughed and then hurriedly explained to the drenched men that they were amused by what Faranth had said, not by Carenath’s playfulness. Sean gestured to the dragonets that perched on the rooftree, obviously watching everything below them. Almost instantly, the soaked observers had towels dropped about them.

“Handy critters, Sean,” Red Hanrahan said, drying his face and hands and mopping his clothing.

“Very useful with young dragons, too, Red,” Sean’ replied. “They fish constantly for these walking appetites.”

Am 1 that much trouble to you? Carenath sounded aggrieved.

“Not at all, pet,” Sean quickly assured him, lovingly caressing the head that was tilted wistfully. “Don’t be silly. You’re young, you have a good appetite, and it’s our job to keep you fed.”

Red was beginning to get accustomed to the sudden non sequiturs from his daughter and son-in-law, but the others were startled. Faranth butted at Sorka for reassurance and when she received it, her eyes settled to the blue of contentment.

“Can’t they be ridden yet? And hunt for themselves?” Phas Radamanth asked.

“You don’t attempt to ride a foal, even a good big one,” Sean replied, brushing oil on the rough patch on Carenath’s broad back. “Kitti Ping’s program suggests waiting a full year before we attempt it.”

“Can we wait long enough for them to mature?” Threadfall and the need to fight it was never far from anyone’s mind.

“I’ve never rushed a horse,” Sean said, “and I’m not about to start with my dragon. However, at the rate they’re growing, and if we can be sure that their skeletal structure—it’s boron-silicate, you know, which is tougher than our calcareous material—is developing properly, I think they’ll be capable of manned flight as scheduled.” Sean grinned. “Jays, what times we’ll have then, old fella, won’t we?”

The tenderness, the concern, and the deep affection in Sean’s voice were almost embarrassing to hear. Red looked at his son-in-law in surprise. So Impression had affected young Connell, as it had changed all the dragonmates. Even Sorka, who had always been caring and capable, seemed somehow strengthened and exuded a radiance that could not all be attributed to her pregnancy.

Young David Catarel had altered in the most spectacular way. Badly scarred mentally as well as physically by that First Fall and Lucy Tubberman’s tragic death, the young man had retreated into a wallow of self-disgust and needless guilt. Not even intensive therapy had broken through the stubborn facade. David fought Thread with a vindictive intensity that was frightening to watch. Only when he had seen how useful dragonets were in ground-crewing had he tolerated their wistful affection.

The renaissance of his personality had begun the moment Polenth nudged his knee. An openly smiling, ecstatic David Catarel had left the hatching sands, solicitously and deftly assisting the staggering little dragon. The changes in the other youths had been felicitous as well, though Catherine Radenlin-Doyle’s tendency to giggle at some unheard comment from her golden mate could be disconcerting. Shih Lao, who had Impressed bronze Firth, also went about with smiles on his once pensive face, Tarrie Chernoff had stopped apologizing for any minor accident or inconsistency, and Otto Hegelman’s stutter had completely disappeared.

“They’re credits to you both,” Caesar Galliani said to Sean and Sorka. “Though Marco’s Duluth, if I say so myself, looks equally as well.”

Sean grinned at the Roma stakeholder. “He does, indeed. As long as they’re eating, sleeping—”

“Being bathed, cosseted, oiled, and scratched, they have nothing to complain of,” Sorka finished, giving Faranth’s nose a final swipe. “There now, love, why don’t you curl up and go to sleep?”

Carenath’s not finished, Faranth complained even as she was moving to the sun-warmed plascrete she preferred as her couch. I like him to lean against. I’m a little hungry.

Sorka put her fingers between her front teeth and gave a piercing whistle. The dragonets instantly disappeared.

All clean, Carenath cried, hopping out of the bath. Warned by Sean, he did not shake himself all over his audience. Carefully he extended his wet glistening wings, holding them aloft in the slight breeze while Sean, with Sorka’s help, mopped his underparts dry.

“D’you need anything, Sean, while we’re here?” Red asked.

“Nope,” Sean grunted as he bent to dry the claw sheaths. The claw design was one of the few physical modifications that Kitti Ping had made from dragonet to dragon. The fingerlike claws would be more useful, she had thought, for grabbing running animals than the dragonets’ pincer-type arrangement. “As soon as they’ve had their snack, we’ll have one, too.”

“Amazing couple,” Phas Radamanth said, smiling up at Red. “Now if that bronze is fertile, and the gold willing, we’ll have our next generation.”

“Let’s not rush too far ahead in our hopes,” Caesar said, looking back over his shoulder at the scene. “Wind Blossom strongly advocates caution about this first batch.”

“Her grandmother bioengineered them.” Phas spoke firmly, stopping in his tracks.

“Well, she also produced imperfect ones that didn’t hatch.”

“Eighteen was a very good result, and we learned a great deal from dissecting the aborts,” Phas said.

They were just turning away when the air filled with dragonets, each carrying a fair-sized packtail in its claws. The dragons lifted their heads, opened their mouths, and took the offering as rightful homage. The men grinned and continued their morning round.

Once Faranth and Carenath had their snack, they were quite willing to curl up together, Carenath with his triangular head neatly placed on his outstretched forelegs. Faranth draped her head and neck over his forequarters, her tail twitching occasionally just in front of his muzzle, her wings sagging slightly from their folded position on her back. Both freshly oiled hides gleamed in the sun.

“I will be glad when they can hunt for themselves,” Sean murmured to Sorka as they wearily settled on the ground in the shade of the east wall of their home.

“Meanwhile,” Sorka said, reaching for a water jar, “we couldn’t manage it without the fair.” She sent strong feelings of gratitude to Duke, Emmett, Blazer, and the others. Their response, muted in deference to the somnolent dragons, was clearly “You’re welcome.”

“The requirements of dragons were never considered by Landing’s architects,” Sean remarked as he took the water jar in turn. Washing dragons was thirsty business. “When they get bigger, something will have to be done. There aren’t enough places to house people in Landing anymore, much less dragons.”

“D’you think they’d be comfortable in some of Catherine’s caves? She mentioned it again yesterday.”

“Yes, so she did. Then she giggled.”

The two Connells exchanged amused and tolerant grins. The human dragonmates had abruptly found themselves a group set apart, by occupation and dedication, as well as by the subtler changes within them. Though they had the unqualified support and help of every member of the medical, veterinary, and biological teams, they found that talking minor problems over among themselves brought better results. One had to be a dragonmate to appreciate the problems—and the joys!

Sorka noted with quiet pride that it was Sean’s opinion that seemed to be sought most frequently by the others. And she agreed. He had always been sensible about animals. But, she realized, she could not really call the dragons “animals.” They were too . . . human. Even their voices: Carenath’s voice sounded just like Sean’s light baritone being spoken through a long tunnel. And Sorka suspected that Faranth’s voice was a version of her own.

From the moment they had brought the two hatchlings to Irish Square, Sorka had realized that she heard both Faranth and Carenath, while Sean heard only Carenath. That Sorka could hear both did not seem to distress either dragon. They were amenable to everything in life as long as they had full bellies and oiled hides. Then, as Sean’s bond with the bronze developed, Sorka heard fewer private exchanges. She, too, had learned, as she suspected each dragonmate had, to communicate telepathically on a private band.

“I’d say they’ll be ready to hunt in another week or two—if we can use a small corral to pen the beasts.” Sean found her hand and squeezed it, then laid his hand over her belly. “All this won’t harm our child, will it?”

Sorka felt guilty. Lately, she had not had time to think about her condition: there was always something to be done for Faranth, or for one of the other young dragons. And she and Sean were still on duty at the dragonet clinic, treating those injured fighting Thread.

“The doctor said I was healthy and could ride . . .” Sorka groaned. “Will we be able to teach them to fly between, Sean?” Her voice was low, and she clutched his hand apprehensively.

“Now, dear heart, we’ll be able for what we have to do.” The unknown clearly did not faze Sean anymore.

“But Sean . . .”

“If we know where we’re going, they will. They’ll see it in our minds. They see everything else. What makes you think directions will be difficult?”

“But we don’t even know how the dragonets do it!”

Sean shrugged, grinning down at her. “No, we don’t. But if the fire-lizards are capable of the teleportation, the dragons will be, too. Kitti Ping did not tamper with that. Let’s not fret ourselves. We won’t fret them.”

She eyed him sourly, then shook her finger at him. “Then you stop worrying about it!”

Laughing, his blue eyes sparkling at her shrewd hit, he took her hand and pulled her into his embrace. She nestled there, taking strength from him and returning it. Although Sorka had never before felt so in charge of herself, so dynamic, there were moments when she was assailed with the fear that she might fail Faranth in some small but essential way. She expressed that to Sean.

“No, you won’t,” he said, smoothing her sweat-damp hair back from her face. “No more will I Carenath. They’re ours, and we belong to them.” He turned her face up to look at him, his eyes so intense with love and assurance that her breath caught. Sean embraced her again tightly. “Ever since we dropped to this planet, Sorka, this has been our destiny. Or why else were we the first to find the fire-lizards? Out of all the people exploring the world, why did the fire-lizards come to us? Why did the last of Kitti Ping’s creation search us out of the crowd? No, believe in yourself, in us and our dragons.” He held her a moment longer and then released her. “I think we have to give Cricket and Doove to your father. Brian gets along with Cricket very well.”

Sorka had known that some decision had to be made about their horses, both of whom had from the start been terrified of the wobbling dragons. Red and Brian had taken the horses up to the main veterinary barn. Sorka thought briefly of all the grand moments she had experienced on the bay mare’s back, most of them shared with Sean and Cricket. But their dragons had become all-important.

“Yes,” she heard herself saying with no further twinge of regret. “I never thought there’d come a day when I wouldn’t have time for horses.” She looked lovingly at the sleeping figure of Faranth and grinned at the bulge in the golden belly, which would all too quickly disappear. “I’ll fix us something to eat.”

Sean kissed her on the forehead. His new willingness to display affection was one of the fringe benefits from Carenath, and Sorka loved him more than ever. She leaned against him, inhaling his manly smell mixed with the herbal dragon oil.

“Make sandwiches, love,” Sean advised. “Here comes Dave Catarel at the trot. If Polenth’s asleep, the others will be along, too.”

“They’ve got it,” Ongola informed Paul when the admiral answered the comm unit in Emily’s quarters, where he was anticipating one of Pierre’s excellent dinners. Emily had taken pity on him as Ju had gone back to check on their Boca holding the previous day. “Nabhi just called in. Bart Lemos got a scoopful. Although . . .”

“Although what?” Paul asked, exchanging glances with Emily.

“Although it took them a long time,” Ongola finished on a troubled sigh. “They should have been well up in the trail before now.” Ongola sounded puzzled. “They have what we need, that’s the important thing: the pods. The fax are being relayed to the interface right now. Ezra and Jim should have an analysis sometime tomorrow.”

“Are you still at the Moth?” Paul asked, frowning. Ongola was not completely recovered from his injuries, and Paul was proprietary in his concern for him. Ongola would be a key man in the coming struggle for autonomy and survival.

“Yes, but Sabra’s brought me dinner.” Ongola was indulging in one of his rare chuckles as he signed off.

“They’ve got what we need,” Paul told Emily as he reseated himself. “Now I can enjoy this dinner.”

The first rumblings occurred the next morning, early enough to rattle many people in their beds. Only the young dragons were unperturbed, sleeping through the commotion made by the excited, frightened humans.

“Will this planet never let up on us?” Ongola demanded as he untangled himself from his bedsack and fumbled for the comm unit set.

“Was that an earthquake?” Sabra asked sleepily. She had left the children with a friend so that she and Ongola could have a few hours together. Sabra felt she needed that comfort almost as much as Ongola must. And she had signed on a charter promising order and tranquility!

“Go back to sleep,” Ongola told her as he dialed. “What does Patrice say, Jake?” he asked his efficient assistant.

“He says the gravity meters have all been registering a disturbance in lava chambers along the island ring. He doesn’t know what’s going to blow, but the display suggests that something has to. He’s trying to guess the most likely escape point.”

Ongola’s next call was to Paul, at home.

“No rest for the weary, huh?” Paul asked in a resigned tone.

“Volcanic disturbance all along the chain.”

“Chain, my foot! That rumble was right under my ear, Ongola, and we do have three volcanoes looming over us.”

Ongola was so accustomed to the great peaks that he had forgotten that they, also, could pose a threat; though the experts had all agreed that the last eruption of Mount Garben had occurred a millennium ago.

By midmorning Patrice relieved the worst fears by his announcement that a new volcano was erupting out of the sea beyond the eastern tip of Jordan Province. Young Mountain, which had been monitored for the past eight years, was throwing up a cloud of smoke, gas, and some ash, but magma pressure did not seem to be building there.

A second underground churning startled people midafternoon. When Patrice arrived, parking his sled in Administration Square and going in to consult with Paul and Emily, an anxious crowd quickly gathered to await the result of that meeting. Finally the colony’s two leaders appeared on the porch with Patrice, who was smiling and waving fax in both hands.

“A new volcano to be named. Like Aphrodite rising from the sea, but I don’t necessarily insist on that name,” he shouted.

“Where?”

“Beyond the easternmost tip of Jordan, safely away from us, my friends.” He held up the largest photo so that the roiling seas and the protruding tip of the smoking peak could be seen by all.

“Yeah, but that’s still the same little tectonic plate we’re on, isn’t it?” one man shouted. He pointed back over his shoulder at the lofty peak of Mount Garben. “That one could go again. Couldn’t it?”

“Of course it could,” Patrice answered easily, shrugging his shouders. “But it is very unlikely in my opinion. It shot its head off thousands of years ago. There has been no evidence of activity here. It’s an old one, that volcano. The young ones have more to say, and are saying it. Do not panic. We are safe at Landing.” He sounded so certain that the anxious murmuring abated and the crowd dispersed.

All through the day there were sporadic growlings, as Telgar called them. Wandering at random through Landing, he had made himself available to anyone who wished to be reassured. It was the first time since Sallah’s death that Telgar had circulated socially. That night, a large proportion of Landing’s population gathered in Bonfire Square, and the blaze was built up to an unusual, almost defiant size.

“Our beautiful Pern has popped a pimple on her face,” Telgar said with a hint of his former joviality, talking to a group of young people. “She’s not so old that her digestion is perfect. And we have been disturbing her with our borings and diggings.”

When he moved off, one of the apprentice geologists followed him. “Look, Tar-Telgar,” the young man began earnestly. “We’re not on basement rock here in Landing.”

“That is very true,” Telgar replied with a slight smile. “Which is why we are rocking a little. But I am not concerned.”

The apprentice flushed. “Well, there’s a wide, long strip of basement rock in the northern continent, along the western mountain range.”

“Ah, how well you have studied your lessons,” Telgar commented. He nodded equably to Cobber Alhinwa and Ozzie Munson, who had just joined them. “An, have a glass with us.”

Embarrassed by having stated the obvious, the young man hastily excused himself.

“So people are talking of basement rock,” Cobber said, and beside him Ozzie smirked.

“I know, you know, and he knows, but we have had enough of insecurity today. The basement rock will not shift. As you know, I have given my opinion to Paul, Emily, and Patrice.” Telgar looked beyond the big miner to a distant view that only his eyes saw. Cobber and Ozzie exchanged meaningful glances. The set, pained look on Telgar’s face meant that he was remembering something about Sallah.

Cobber nudged Ozzie and leaned conspiratorially toward Telgar. “Are we all to go look at some basement rock now, Telgar?”

The next morning a rumble of a different kind finally roused Paul as Ju reached across him for the handset.

“For you,” she mumbled sleepily, dropping it on the bedsack and rolling over again.

Paul fumbled for it and cleared his throat. “Benden.”

“Admiral,” Ongola said urgently, “they’ve begun reentry, and Nabhi’s on a bad course.”

Paul pulled loose the fasteners of the bedsack and sat bolt upright. “How could he be?”

“He says he’s green, Admiral.”

“I’m coming.” Paul had an irrational desire to slam the handset down and go back to sleep beside his wife. Instead he dialed Emily, who said she would join him at the met tower. Then he alerted Ezra Keroon and Jim Tillek.

“Paul?” Ju asked sleepily.

“Sleep on, honey. Nothing to worry you.”

He had tried to keep his voice low and was sorry to have disturbed her. In the second semester of a new pregnancy, Ju needed more sleep. They had stayed up late talking, regretfully aware that they must set the example and close down their stake. The constant drain of Threadfall was having a devastating effect on supplies and resources. Joel particularly fretted over the dwindling efficiency of the power packs. According to Tom Patrick, the psychological profile of Landing’s population was, in the main, encouraging, although therapy and medication were increasingly required to keep distressed people functioning. Somehow Paul could not bring himself to hope that Nabhi Nabol and Bart Lemos had brought back something as vital as encouragement.

Yesterday Ezra and Jim had produced the latest analysis of the eccentric’s orbit. It was as wayward, in Jim Tillek’s phrasing, as a drunken whore on a Saturday night at a space facility in the Asteroid Belt. What had looked to be a reasonable, predictable elliptical orbit through Rukbat’s system proved to be even more bizarre, at an angle to the ecliptic. The planet would wobble into the vicinity of Pern every two hundred and fifty years, though Ezra had made extrapolations that provided some variations of its course, due to the effect of other planets in the system. During some of it orbits, it looked as if the eccentric and its cloud of junk would miss Pern.

“The most singular planet I’ve ever tried to track,” Ezra had said apologetically, scratching his head as he summed up his report.

“Natural orbit?” Jim had asked, with a sly grin at the astronomer.

Ezra had given him a long scornful look. “There’s nothing natural about that planet.”

Although Thread had shifted five degrees to the north in the current—third—round of Falls, the admiral no longer held much hope for Ezra’s theory that the Falls were deliberate, a softening-up procedure by some sentient agency. If that had been the case, he argued, the Falls ought to have accelerated in frequency and density after the wild planet swung to its nearest spatial point to Pern. But Thread had continued to drop in mindless patterns, each consistent with the northern shift. Mathematical calculations, checked and double-checked by Boris Pahlevi and Dieter Clissmann, concurred with Ezra’s depressing conclusion. The eccentric would swing away from Pern and the inner system, only to swing back again in two hundred and fifty years.

The fax Bart had flashed back to Pern had shown the trail of debris to be endless.

“All the way to the edge of the system,” Ezra declared in total capitulation. “The planet pierces the Oort cloud and drags the stuff down with it. Hoyle and Wickramansingh’s theory has been vindicated in the Rukbat system.”

“Aren’t we lucky?” Jim added. “The junk could still be just ice and rock. We won’t know for sure until we see what Bart Lemos scooped up out there.” Jim was not at all happy that his theory was right. He would almost prefer a sentient intelligence somehow surviving on the eccentric planet. You could usually deal with intelligence. His theory made it tough on Pern.

In the cold light of a new morning, Paul dressed quickly, toeing his feet into his boots and closing the front of his ship-suit. He combed his hair neatly back and then stumbled into the predawn light. He used the skimmer—it would be quieter than him puffing and jogging down to the tower. He tried to practice what he preached in matters of conservation, but that morning he did not wish to be heard passing by.

The last few days, with the Moth overdue, had been hard on him. Waiting had never been his forte: decision and implementation were where he shone. Emily had proved once again the staunch, unswerving, resolute governor of herself and her subordinates. She was the best sort of complement to his strengths and flaws.

He saw lights over in Irish Square and, through the lines of dwellings, he caught a glimpse of fluttering wings as the young Connells gave their dragons the early morning meal. In the next square, Dave Catarel was up, too, feeding his young bronze.

At the thought of those young people committed to survival on Pern, Paul felt a sudden surge of confidence that he and Emily would bring everyone through. By all that was holy, they would! Had he not gone through bleaker days before the Battle at Purple Sector? And Emily had been blockaded for five years, emerging with a healthy functioning population despite a shortage of raw materials.

The tower was still dark as Paul parked his skimmer behind it. The windows were shuttered, but the main door was ajar. He went up the stairs as quietly as he could. Lately, with the dormitories so crowded, off-duty communications personnel slept on the ground floor. All of Landing was crowded—with refugees, Paul made himself add. People had even begun to make homes out of some of the Catherine Caves. That may have originated from some atavistic urge, but caves were Thread proof, and some of them were downright spacious. Caves might be a good place to lodge the fast-growing dragons, too.

As he reached the top floor, his eyes went immediately to the big screen, which showed the Moth’s position above Pern, relayed from the moon installation.

“He has not corrected his course once,” Ongola said, swinging his chair toward Paul. He motioned for Jake to vacate the second console chair. The young man’s eyes were black holes of fatigue, but Paul knew better than to suggest that Jake stand down until the shuttle was safely landed. “He ought to have fired ten minutes ago. He says he doesn’t need to.”

Paul dropped to the chair and toggled in the comm unit. “Tower to Moth, do you read me? Benden here. Moth, respond.”

“Good moring, Admiral Benden,” Nabhi replied promptly and insolently. “We are on course and reentering at a good angle.”

“Your instrumentation is giving you false readings. Repeat, you are getting false readings, Nabol. Course correction essential.”

“I disagree, Admiral,” Nabhi replied, his tone jaunty. “No need to waste fuel! Our descent is on the green.”

“Correction, Moth! Your descent is red and orange across our board and on our screen. You have sustained instrument malfunction. I will give you the readings.” Paul read the numbers off from the calculator pad that Ongola handed to him. He was sure he heard a startled gasp in the background.

But Nabhi seemed undisturbed by Paul’s information, and he did indeed report readings consonant with a good reentry.

“I don’t believe this,” Ongola said. “He’s coming in from the wrong quadrant, at too steep an angle, and he’s going to crash smack in the center of the Island Ring Sea. Soon.”

“Repeat, Moth, your angle is wrong. Abort reentry. Nabol, take another orbit. Sort yourself out. Your instruments are malfunctioning.” Fardles, if Nabol could not feel the wrongness of that entry, he was nowhere near the driver he thought himself.

“I’m captain of this ship, Admiral,” Nabol snapped back. “It’s your screen that’s malfunctioning . . . Whadidya say, Bart? I don’t believe it. You’ve got to be wrong. Give it a bang! Kick it!”

“Yank your nose up and fire a three-second blast, Nabol!” Paul cried, his eyes on the screen and the speed of the incoming shuttle.

“I’m trying. Can’t fire. No fuel!” Sudden fear made Nabol’s voice shrill.

Paul heard Bart’s cries in the background. “I told you it felt wrong. I told you! We shouldn’t’ve . . . I’ll jettison. They’ll have that much!” Bart shouted. “If the farking relay’ll work.”

“Use the manual jettison lever, Bart,” Ongola yelled over Paul’s shouder.

“I’m trying, I’m trying . . . She’s heating up too fast, Nabhi. She’s heatin—”

Horrified, Paul, Ongola, and Jake watched the dissolution of the shuttle. One stubby wing sheared off and the shuttle began to spin. The tail section broke off and spun away on a different route, burning up in the atmosphere. The second wing followed suit.

“It’ll hit the sea?” Paul asked in a bare whisper, trying to calculate the impact of that projectile on land. Ongola nodded imperceptibly.

Like an obituary, the relay screen lit up with a glorious sunlit spread of many bits and one, larger object, disappearing into many faint pricks of glitter.

A team of dolphins were sent out to the Ring Sea to find the wreck. Maximilian and Teresa reported back a week later, tired and not too happy to tell humans that they had seen the twisted hulk wedged into a reef in waters too deep for them to examine closely. All the dolphins were still searching the Ring Sea for the jettisoned scoop.

“Tell them not to bother,” Jim Tillek muttered dourly. “There’s unlikely to be anything left to analyze. We know that the junk goes back in a years’ long tail. We’re stuck with it. Hail Hoyle and Wickramansingh!”

“Ezra?” Emily asked the solemn astronomer.

Keroon’s butterscotch-colored skin seemed tinged with gray, and he looked bowed by his responsibilities. He heaved a heavy, weary sigh and scratched at the back of his head. “I have to concede that Jim’s theory is correct. The contents of the pod would have been the final proof, but I, too, doubt the scoop survived. Even if it did, it could take years to find it in such a vast area. Years also apply to that tail, I fear. We won’t be able to judge until the end of that tail comes in sight.”

“And where does that leave us?” Paul asked rhetorically.

“Coping, Admiral, roping!” Jim Tillek replied proudly. With a twitch of his sturdy shoulders, he had thrown off his doomsday expression and instead challenged them all. “And we’ve Thread falling in two hours, so we’d better stop worrying about the future and attend to the present. Right?”

Emily looked at Paul and managed a tentative smile, which she also turned on Zi Ongola, who was watching them impassively.

“Right! We’ll cope.” She spoke in a firm, resolute voice. Surely we can hold out ten years, she thought to herself, if we’re very careful. She wondered why no one mentioned the homing capsule. Perhaps because no one had much faith in Ted Tubberman. “We’ve got to.”

“Until those dragons start earning their keep,” Paul said. “But this settlement must be restructured.” Emily and he had been discussing redispositions for days. They had been waiting for the right moment to broach the subject to the others of the informal Landing council.

“No,” Ongola said, surprising everyone. “We must resettle completely. Landing is no longer viable. It used to be sort of a link with our origins, with the ships that brought us here. We no longer require that sense of continuity.”

“And most especially,” Jim picked up the thoughts, “not with volcanoes popping up and spouting off in this vicinity.” Jim shifted in his chair, settling in to discuss basics. “I’ve been listening to what people are saying. So has Ezra. Telgar’s notion about moving to that cave system on basement rock in the north is gaining strength. The cave complex is big enough to house Landing’s population—plus dragons! We’re not out of raw materials to make plastic and metal for housing. But making it takes time away from the essential task of fighting Thread and keeping us alive. Why not use a natural structure? Use our technology to make the cave system comfortable, tenable, and totally safe from Thread?”

Emily did not even pause to take a breath. “Just what Paul and I have been discussing. There’s enough fuel, I believe, to transport some of the heavier equipment by shuttle. Then we can use the metal in situ. Jim, the Pern Navy is about to be commissioned.”

Paul grinned at Emily. It was much easier when people made up their own minds to do what their leaders had decided was best for them.

Chapter 17

“HOLIEST OF HOLIES,” Telgar murmured respectfully as he held his torch high and still could not illuminate the ceiling. His voice started echoes in the vast chamber, repeating and repeating down side corridors until finally the noise was absorbed by the sheer distance from its source.

“Oh, I say, mate, this is one big bonzo cave,” Ozzie Munson said, keeping his voice to a whisper. His eyes were white and wide in his tanned, wind-seared face.

Cobber Alhinwa, who was rarely impressed with anything, was equally awed. “A bleeding beaut!” His whisper matched Ozzie’s.

“There are hundreds of ready-made chambers in this complex alone,” Telgar said. He was unfolding the plassheet on which he and his beloved Sallah had recorded their investigations of eight years earlier. “There are at least four openings to the cliff top which could be used for air circulation. Channel down to water level and install pumps and pipe—I came across big reservoirs of artesian water. Core down to the thermal layer and, big as it is, the whole complex could be warmed in the winter months.” He turned back to the opening. “Block that up with native stone and this would be an impregnable fort. No safer place on this world during Threadfall. Further along the valley, there are surface-level caves near that pasture land. Of course, it would have to be seeded, but we still have the alfalfa grass propagators that were brought for the first year.

“At the time there was no need to investigate thoroughly, but the facilities exist. As I recall when we overflew the range above us, we discovered a medium-size caldera, well pocked with small cliffs, about a half-hour’s flight from here. We didn’t think to mark whether it was accessible at ground level. It might be ideal for dragon quarters, so accessibility isn’t a problem, provided they do fly as well as dragonets,”

“We seen a couple old craters like that,” Ozzie said, consulting the battered notebook that habitually lived in his top pocket. “One on the east coast, and one in the mountains above the three drop lakes, when we was prospecting for metal ores.”

“So,” Cobber began, having recovered from his awe, “the first thing is cut steps to this here level.” He walked to the edge of the cave and looked down critically at the stone face. “Maybe a ramp, like, to move stuff up here easy like. That incline over there’s nearly a staircase already.” He pointed to the left-hand side. “Steps neat as you please up to the next level.”

Ozzie dismissed those notions. “Naw, those Landingers will want their smart-ass engineers and arki-tects to fancify it for them with the proper mod cons.”

Cobber settled a helmet on his head and switched on its light. “Yeah, else some poor buggers get all closet-phobic.”

“Claustrophic, you iggerant digger,” Ozzie corrected him.

“Whatever. Inside’s safest with that farking stuff dropping on ya alla time. C’mon, Oz, let’s go walkabout. The admiral and the governor are counting on our expertise, y’know.” He gave an involuntary grunt as he settled the heavy cutter on his shoulder and strode purposefully toward the first tunnel.

Ozzie put on his own helmet and picked up a coil of rope, pitons, and a rock hammer. Thermal and ultraviolet recorders, comm unit, and other mining hand-units were attached to hooks on his belts. Lastly, he slung one of the smaller rock cutters over his shoulder. “Let’s go test some claustrophia. We’ll start left, right? I’ll give ya a holler in a bit, Telgar.”

Cobber had already disappeared in the first of the left-hand openings as Ozzie followed him. Alone, Telgar stood for a long moment, eyes closed, head back, arms slightly away from his body, his palms turned outward in supplication. He could hear the slight noises of disturbed creatures and the distorted murmur of low conversations from Ozzie and Cobber as they made their way past the first bend in the tunnel.

There was nothing of Sallah in that cave. Even the place where they had built a tiny campfire had been swept bare to the fire-darkened stone. Yet there she had offered herself to him, and he had not known what a gift he had received that night!

The sudden high-pitched keening of the stone cutter shattered all thought and sent Telgar about the urgent business of making the natural fort into a human habitation.

The hum roused Sorka and she tried to find a more comfortable position for her cumbersome body. Fardles, but she would be grateful when she could finally sleep on her stomach again. The humming persisted, a subliminal sound that made a return to sleep impossible. She resented the noise, because she had not been sleeping at all well during the past few weeks and she needed all the rest she could get. Irritably she stretched out and twitched aside the curtain. It could not be day already. Then, startled, she clutched the edge of the curtain because there was light outside her house—the light of many dragon eyes, sparkling in the predawn gloom.

Her exclamation disturbed Sean, who stirred beside her, one hand reaching for her. She shook his shoulder urgently.

“Wake up, Sean. Look!” Whichever way she turned, she felt a sudden stab of pain in her groin so unexpected that she hissed.

Sean sat bolt upright beside her, his arms around her. “What is it, love? The baby?”

“It can’t be anything else,” she said, laughter bubbling out of her as she pointed out the window. “I’ve been warned!” She could not stop giggling. “Go look, Sean. Tell me if the fire-dragonets are roosting! I wouldn’t want them to miss this, any of them.”

Grinding sleep out of his eyes, Sean struggled to alertness. He half glared at her for her ill-timed levity, but annoyance was replaced by concern when her laughter turned abruptly into another hissing intake of breath as a second painful spasm rippled across her distended belly.

“It’s time?” He ran one hand caressingly across her stomach, his fingers instinctively settling on the band of contracting muscle. “Yes, it is. What’s so funny?” he added. She could not quite see his face in the dim light, but he sounded solemn, almost indignant.

“The welcoming committee, of course! All of them. Faranth, love, are all present and accounted for?”

We are here, Faranth said, where we should be. You are amused.

“I am very amused,” Sorka said, but then another contraction caught her, and she clutched at Sean. “But that was not at all amusing. You’d better call Greta.”

“Jays, we don’t need her. I’m as good a midwife as she is,” he muttered, shoving feet into the shoes under their bed.

“For horses, cows, and nanny goats, yes, Sean, but it is expected for humans to assist humans . . . oooooh, Sean, these are very close together.”

He rose to his feet, pausing to throw the top blanket across his bare shoulders against the early morning’s chill, when there was a discreet knock at the door. He cursed.

“Who is it?” he roared, not at all pleased at the idea that someone might have come to summon him for a veterinary emergency right then.

“Greta!”

Sorka started to laugh again, but that became very difficult to do all of a sudden, and she switched to the breathing she had been taught, clutching at her great belly.

“How under the suns did you know, Greta?” she heard Sean ask, his voice reflecting his astonishment.

“I was called,” Greta said with great dignity, gently pushing him to one side.

“By whom? Sorka only just woke up,” Sean replied, following Greta back to their room. “She’s the one who’s having the baby.”

“Not always the first to know when labor commences,” Greta said in a very calm, almost detached manner. “Not in Landing. And certainly not with a queen dragon listening in on your mind.” She flicked on the lights as she entered the room and deposited her midwifery bag on the dresser. She had been a gangly girl who had turned into a rangy woman with hair and skin the same coffee color and a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes, very brown in her kindly face, missed few details.

“Faranth told you?” Sorka was astonished. A dragon speaking to someone outside of their group was unheard of.

“Not exactly,” Greta replied with a chuckle. “A fair of fire-dragonets flew in my window and made it remarkably plain that I was needed. Once I got outside, it wasn’t hard to figure out whose baby was coming. Now, let me see what’s going on here.”

I told them to get her, Faranth told Sorka in a smugly complacent tone of voice. You like her.

As Sorka lay back for Greta’s examination, she tried to figure that out. She liked her doctor, too, and had no qualms about him attending her delivery. How had Faranth sensed that she really had wanted Greta in attendance? Could Faranth possibly have sensed that she had always been friendly with Greta? Or was it some connection the golden dragon had made because Sorka had assisted Greta in the birth of Mairi Hanrahan’s latest, Sorka’s newest baby brother? But for Faranth to recognize an unconscious preference . . .

Sean slid cautiously onto the other side of the bed and reached for her hand. Sorka gave him a squeeze, laughter still bubbling up in her. She had so hated the last few weeks when her body had not seemed to be her own, when all its controls seemed to have been assumed by the bouncing, kicking, impertinent, restless fetus that gave her no rest at all. Her laughter was sheer elation that all of that was nearly over.

“Now, let me have a look . . . another contraction?”

Sorka concentrated on her breathing, but the spasm was far more painful than she had anticipated. Then it was gone, pain and all. She felt sweat on her forehead. Sean blotted it gently.

You are hurting? Faranth’s voice became shrill.

“No, no, Faranth. I’m fine. Don’t worry!” Sorka cried.

“Faranth’s upset?” Keeping her hand tight in his, Sean crouched to see out the window to the dragons waiting there. “Yes, she is! Her eyes are gaining speed and orange.”

“I was afraid of that!” Mutely Sorka appealed to Sean. Expressions flitted across his face. If she read them correctly, he was annoyed with Faranth, indecisive—for once—about what to do, and anxious for her. Then tender concern dominated his face as he looked down at her, and she felt that she had never loved him more than at that moment.

“A pity we can’t have your dragon heat a kettle of water to keep her out of mischief,” Greta remarked, her strong capable hands finishing the examination. She gave Sorka’s distended belly a gentle pat. “We’ll take care of her fussing you right now. Can you turn on one side? Sean, help her.”

“I feel like an immense flounder,” Sorka complained as she struggled to turn. Then Sean, deftly and with hands gentler than she had ever known, helped her complete the maneuver. She had just reached the new position when another mighty spasm caught her, and she exhaled in astonishment. Outside, Faranth trumpeted a challenge. “Don’t you dare wake everyone up, Faranth. I’m only having a baby!”

You hurt! You are in distress! Faranth was indignant.

Sorka felt a slight push against the base of her spine, the coolness of the air gun, and Then a blessed numbness that spread rapidly over her nether region.

“Oh, blessed Greta, how marvelous!”

You don’t hurt. That is better. Faranth’s alarm subsided back into that curious thrumming of dragons, and Sorka could identify her voice in the hum as clearly as she heard the noise intensify. Oddly enough, the humming was soothing—or was it simply that she no longer had to anticipate that painful clutching of uterine muscles?

“Now, let’s get you to your feet for a little walking, Sorka,” Greta said. “You’re already fairly well dilated. I don’t think you’re going to be any time delivering this baby, even if you are a primipara.”

“I’m numb,” Sorka said by way of apology as Greta got her to her feet. Then Sean was on her other side.

He had gotten dressed, but Sorka, trying to watch where her nerveless feet were going, noticed that he did not have his socks on. She thought that endearing of him. Odd the difference between his hands and Greta’s—both caring, both gentle, but Sean’s loving and worried.

“That’s a girl,” Greta said encouragingly. “You’re doing just fine, three fingers dilated already. No wonder the fairs were alerted. And you’re not the only one exciting them tonight.” Greta chuckled as they began to retrace their steps across the lounge, up the short hall, and into the bedroom. “It’s the walking that’s important . . . ah, another contraction. Very good. Your breathing’s fine.”

“Who else is delivering?” Sorka asked because it helped to concentrate on things other than what her muscles were doing to her.

“Fortunately, Elizabeth Jepson. A new baby will help her get over the loss of the twins.”

Sorka felt a pang of grief. She remembered the two boys as mischievous youngsters on the Yoko, and recalled how she had envied her brother, Brian, for having friends his own age.

“It’s funny that, isn’t it?” Sorka said, speaking quickly. “People having two complete families, almost two separate generations. I mean, this baby will have an uncle only six months older. And be part of an entirely different generation . . . really.”

“One reason why we have to keep very careful birth records,” Greta said.

Sean grunted. “We’re all Pernese, that’s what matters!”

Sorka’s water burst then, and outside the humming went up a few notes and deepened in intensity.

“I think I’d better check you, Sorka,” Greta said.

Sean stared at her. “Do you deliver to dragonsong?”

Greta gave a low chuckle. “They’ve an instinct for birth, Sean, and I know you vets have been aware of it, too. Let’s get her back to the bed.”

Sorka, involved in the second phase of childbirth, found the dragonsong both comforting and soothing; it was like a blanket of sound shimmering about her, enfolding and uplifting and comforting. The sound suddenly increased in tempo, rising to a climax. Sean’s hands grasped hers, giving her his strength and encouragement. Every time she felt the contractions, painless because of the drug, he helped her push down. The spasms were becoming more rapid, almost constant, as if matters had been taken entirely out of her control. She let the instinctive movements take over, relaxing when she could, assisting because she had no other option.

Then she felt her body writhe in a massive effort, and when it had been expended, she felt a tremendous relief of all pressures and pullings. For one moment, there was complete silence outside, then she heard a new sound. Sean’s cry of triumph was lost in the trumpeting of eighteen dragons and who knew how many fire-dragonets! Oh dear, she thought distractedly. They’ll wake up the whole of Landing!

“You have a fine son, my dears,” Greta said, her voice ringing with satisfaction. “With a crop of thick red hair.”

“A son?” Sean asked, sounding immensely surprised.

“Now, don’t tell me, after all my hard work, Sean Connell, that you wanted a daughter?” Sorka demanded.

Sean just hugged her ecstatically.

“Sometimes I feel as if everyone’s forgotten all about us,” Dave Catarel said to Sean as they watched their two bronzes hunting. Sean, his eyes on Carenath, did not reply.

Although all the dragons were well able to fly short distances and had proved capable of hunting down wild wherries, their human partners grew anxious if they flew out of sight. Nor was it always possible to use a sled or a skimmer to accompany them. As a compromise, Sean had talked Red into giving them the culls or injured animals from the main herds. He and the others had rigged a Threadfall shelter for the mixed herd in one of the caves, and each took turns on the succession trays that supplied their fodder.

The young dragons were strong and flew well. But, erring on the side of caution, the veterinary experts had decided that riding should not be attempted until the full year had passed. Sean had railed privately to Sorka about such timidity, but she had talked him out of defiance, reminding him how much they stood to lose in forcing the young dragons. Fortunately the decision had been reached without consultation with Wind Blossom, which made it easier for Sean to accept what he called ‘sheer procrastination.’ He did not like her proprietary attitude toward the dragons. She continued to exercise Kitti Ping’s program, though without the same success. Her first four batches had not produced any viable eggs, but seven new sacs in the incubator looked promising.

The odds in Joel Lilienkamp’s book favored the success of the first Hatching, but only marginally. Sean was privately determined to upset such odds, but he also would not risk official censure or jeopardize the young dragons.

“I really cannot repose the same confidence in Wind Blossom as I did in Kitti Ping,” Paul had told Sean and Sorka in a private conference, “but we would all breathe more easily if we could see some progress. Your dragons eat, grow, even fly to hunt. Will they also chew rock?” Paul began to tick off the points on his left hand. “Carry a rider? And preserve their valuable hides during Threadfall? The power pack situation is getting tight, Sean, very tight indeed.”

“I know, Admiral,” Sean had replied, feeling grim and defensive. “And eighteen fully functional dragons are not going to make fighting Thread all that much easier.”

“But self-reproducing, self-sustaining Thread fighters will make one helluva lot of difference in the long run. And it’s the long run, frankly, Sean, Sorka, that worries me.”

Sean kept his opinion about Wind Blossom to himself. Part of it was loyalty to Carenath, Faranth, and the others of the first Hatching; a good deal stemmed from his lack of confidence in Wind Blossom, where he had had every faith in her grandmother. After all, Kit Ping had been trained at the source, with the Eridani.

As he watched the grace of Carenath, swooping to snatch a fat wether from the stampeding flock, his faith in these amazing creatures was reinforced.

“He really got some altitude there,” David said with ungrudging praise. “Look, Polenth’s dropped his wings now. He’s going for that one!”

“Got it, too,” Sean replied in a return of compliment.

Maybe they were all being too cautious, afraid of pushing down the throttle and seeing the result. Carenath flew strongly and well. The bronze was nearly the same height in the shoulder as Cricket, though the conformation was entirely different, Carenath being much longer in the body, deeper in the barrel, and. stronger in the hindquarters, in fact, the dragons already were much stronger than similar equines, their basic structure much more durable, utilizing carborundums for strength and resilience. Pol and Bay had gone on about the design features of dragons as if they had new sleds, which indeed, Sean thought wryly, was what they were intended to replace. According to the program, dragons would gradually increase in size over many generations until they reached the optimum. But in Sean’s eyes, Carenath was just right.

“At least they eat neatly,” Dave said, averting his eyes from the two dragons who were rending flesh from the carcasses of their kills. “Though I wish they didn’t look like they enjoyed it so much.”

Sean laughed. “City-bred, were you?”

Dave nodded and smiled weakly. “Not that I wouldn’t do anything for Polenth. It’s just that it’s one thing on three-D, another to watch it live and know that your best friend prefers to hunt living animals. What did you say, Polenth?” Dave’s eyes took on that curious unfocused look that people had when being addressed by their dragons. Then he gave a rueful laugh.

“Well?” Sean prompted him.

“He says anything’s better than fish. He’s meant to fly, not swim.”

“Good thing he has two bellies,” Sean remarked, seeing Polenth devouring the sheep, horns, hooves, fleece, and all. “The way he’s squaffing down the wool, he could start a premature blaze when he starts chewing firestone.”

“He will, won’t he, Sean?” Dave’s earnest plea for reassurance worried Sean. The dragonmates could not doubt their beasts for a moment, not on any score.

“Of course, he will,” Sean said, standing up. “That’s enough, Carenath. Two fills your belly. Don’t get greedy. There are more to be fed here today.”

The bronze had been about to launch himself into the air again, aiming toward the rise into the next valley where the terrified flock had stampeded.

I would really like another one. So tasty. So much better than fish. I like to hunt. Carenath sounded a trifle petulant.

“The queens hunt next, Carenath.”

With a peevish swing of his head, Carenath began to amble back down to Sean, spreading his wings to balance himself. Dragons looked odd when they walked, since they had to crouch to their shorter forelegs; some of them fell more easily into a hop-skip gait, dropping to the forequarters every few steps or using their wings to provide frontal lift. Sean disliked seeing the dragons appear so ungainly and unbalanced.

“See you later,” he said to David as he and Carenath turned to walk back to the cave they inhabited.

The dragons had quickly outgrown the backyard shelters and, in many cases, the patience of neighbors, some of whom worked night shifts and slept during daylight hours. Dragons were a vocal lot for a species that could not speak aloud. So dragons and partners had explored the Catherine Caves for less public accommodations. Sorka had at first worried about living underground with their baby son, Michael, but the cavesite Sean had chosen was spacious, with several large chambers—their new home actually had far more space than did the house in Irish Square. Faranth and Carenath were delighted. There was even a shelf of bare earth above the cave entrance where dragons could sunbathe, the leisure activity they enjoyed even above swimming.

“We are all much better suited here,” Sorka had exclaimed in capitulation, and had set about making their living quarters bright with lamps, her handwoven rugs, fabrics, and pictures that she had cadged from Joel.

But the new quarters had proved to be more than just a physical separation, Sean realized as he and Carenath trudged along. Dave Catarel had put his finger on it in his wistful comment about being forgotten.

This walk is long. I would rather fly on ahead, Carenath said, doing his little hop-skip beside Sean. Once again Sean thought that his brave and lovely Carenath looked like a bad cross between a rabbit and kangaroo.

“You were designed to fly. I’ll be happy when we both fly.”

Why do you not fly on me, then? I would be easier to ride than that scared creature. Carenath did not think much of Cricket as a mount for his partner.

Scared creature, Sean thought with a chuckle. Poor Cricket. How easy it would be to swing up to Carenath’s back and just take off! The notion made the breath catch in his throat. To fly on Carenath, instead of shuffling along on the dusty track. The adolescent year for the dragons was nearly over. Sean looked about in deep speculation. Let Carenath drop off the highest point, and he would have enough space to make that first, all-important downsweep of his wings . . .

Sean had spent as much time watching how fire-lizards and dragons handled themselves in the air as he once had patiently observed horses. Yes, a drop off a height would be the trick.

“C’mon, Carenath. I’m glad I. didn’t let you fill your belly. C’mon, right up to the top.”

The top? The ridge? Sean heard comprehension color the dragon’s mind, and Carenath scrambled to the height in a burst of speed that left Sean coughing in the dust. Quickly! The wind is right.

Rubbing dust particles out of his eyes, Sean laughed aloud, feeling elation and the racing pulse of apprehension. This is the sort of thing you do now, at the right time, in the right place, he thought. And the moment was right for him to ride Carenath!

There was no saddle to vault to, no stirrup to assist Sean to the high shoulder. Carenath dipped politely, and Sean, lightly stepping on the proferred forearm, caught the two neck ridges firmly and swung over, fitting his body between them.

“Jays, you were designed for me,” he said with a triumphant laugh, and slapped Carenath’s neck in affection. Then he grabbed at the ridge in front of him.

Carenath was perched on the very edge of the ridge, and Sean had an awesome view of the bottom of the rockstrewn gorge. He swallowed hastily. Flying Carenath was not at all the same thing as riding Cricket. He took a deep breath. It was also not the time for second thoughts. He took a compulsive hold with legs made strong from years of riding and shoved his buttocks as deeply into the natural saddle as he could.

“Let’s fly, Carenath. Let’s do it now!”

We will fly, Carenath said with ineffable calm. He tilted forward off the ridge.

Despite years of staying astride bucking horses, sliding horses, and jumping horses, the sensation that Sean Connell experienced in that seemingly endless moment was totally different and completely new. A brief memory of a girl’s voice urging him to think of Spacer Yves flitted through his mind. He was falling through space again. A very short space. What sort of a nerd-brain was he to have attempted this?

Faranth wants to know what we are doing, Carenath said calmly.

Before Sean’s staggered mind registered the query, Carenath’s wings had finished their downstroke and they were rising. Sean felt the sudden return of gravity, felt Carenath’s neck under him, felt the weight and a return of the confidence that had been totally in abeyance during the endless-seeming initial drop. The power in those wing sweeps drove his seat deeper between the neck ridges as Carenath continued to beat upward. They were level with the next ridge, the floor of the gorge no longer an imminent crash site.

“Tell Faranth that we’re flying, of course,” Sean replied. He would never admit it to Sorka—he could barely admit it to himself—but for one moment he had been totally and utterly terrified.

I will not let you fall, Carenath’s tone chided him.

“I never thought you would.” Sean forced his body to relax, forced his long legs down and around Carenath’s smooth neck, but he took a firmer grip on the neck ridge. “I just didn’t think I’d stay aboard you for a minute there.”

Carenath’s wings swept up and down, just behind Sean’s peripheral vision. He felt their strong and steady beat even if he did not see them. He could feel the air pressure against his face and his chest. There was nothing around him but air, open, empty, and absolutely marvelous.

Yes, once he got the hang of it, flying his dragon was the most marvelous sensation he had ever had.

I like it, too. I like flying you. You fit on me. This goes well. Where shall we go? The sky is ours.

“Look, we better not do much of this right now, Carenath. You just ate, and we’re going to have to think this thing through. It’s not enough to fall off a ridge, Oooooooh—” he cried inadvertently as Carenath banked and he saw the wide-open, dusty, Thread-barren ground far, far beneath him. “Straighten up!”

I wouldn’t let you fall! Carenath sounded nearly indignant, and Sean freed one hand to give him a reassuring slap. But he quickly replaced his hand on the ridge. Jays, a rider can’t fly Thread hanging on for dear life!

“You wouldn’t let me fall, my friend, but I might let me!”

Trying to quell his rising sense of panic, Sean hazarded a glance at the ground. They were nearly to the rank of caves that had become their home. Sean could see Faranth on the height where she must have been sunning herself. She was sitting on her haunches, her wings half-spread. In a few sweeps of Carenath’s powerful wings, they had covered a distance that ordinarily took a half hour of up-hill-down-dale slogging.

Faranth says that Sorka says that we had better come down right away. Right away! Carenath’s tone was defiant, begging Sean to contradict the golden dragon and anything that shortened their new experience. We are flying together. It is the right thing to do for dragons and riders.

“It’s a fantastic thing to do, Carenath, but as we are now home, can you land us, say, by Faranth? Then you can tell her just how we did it!”

Sean did not care if Sorka had hysterics over his spontaneous and totally unplanned flight. He had done it, they had succeeded, and all was well that ended well. The dragons of Pern finally had riders! That would change the odds on Joel’s book!

The other seventeen riders, including Sorka, once Faranth had reassured her about Carenath’s prowess, were delighted at their tremendous advance. Dave wanted to know why Sean had been so precipitous.

“Couldn’t you have waited for me? Polenth and I were just behind you. You scared the living wits out of me for a moment, you know.”

Sean clasped Dave’s arm in tacit apology. “It was what you’d said about being forgotten, Dave. I just had to try, but I didn’t want to endanger anyone else in case I was wrong.” Sean caught Sorka frowning at him and pretended to flinch. “I was all right, love. You know that! But—” He glared warningly at the others seated on the rugs around him. “We’ve got to go about this in a logical and sensible way, folks. Flying a dragon’s not like riding a horse.”

His glance held Nora Sejby’s. She certainly was not the sort of person he would have said would Impress a dragon, but Tenneth had chosen her, and they would have to make the best of it. Nora was accident-prone, and Tenneth had already hauled her partner out of the land and prevented her from falling into the crevices and holes that pitted the hills around the Catherine Caves. On the other hand, Nora had been sailing across Monaco Bay since she was strong enough to manage a tiller and she had checked out on both sleds and skimmers.

“For one thing, there’s all this open air around you. Falling is down onto a hard and injurious surface,” Sean made appropriate gestures, smacking one hand into the palm of the other and startling Nora with the noise.

“So?” Peter Semling said. “We use a saddle.”

“A dragon’s back is full of wing,” Sorka replied dryly.

“You ride forward, sitting your butt in the hollow between the last two ridges,” Sean went on, grabbing for a sheet of opaque film and a marker. He made a quick sketch of a dragon’s neck and shoulders, and the disposition of two straps. “The rider wears a stout belt, wide like a tool belt. You strap yourself in on either side, and the safety harness goes over your thigh for added security. And we’re going to need special flying gear and protective glasses—the wind made my eyes water, and I wasn’t even aloft all that long.”

“What did it really feel like, Sean?” Catherine Radelin asked, her eyes shining in anticipation.

Sean smiled. “The most incredible sensation I’ve ever had. Beats flying a mechanical all hollow, I mean . . .” He raised his fists, tensing his arms into his chest and giving his hands an upward thrusting turn of indescribable experience. “It’s . . . it’s between you and your dragon and . . .” He swung his arms out. “And the whole damned wide world.”

He made a less dramatic presentation at the impromptu meeting where he was asked to account for such risk-taking. He would rather have reported privately, to maybe Admiral Benden or Pol or Red, but he found himself facing the entire council.

“Look, sir, the risk was justified,” he said, looking quickly from the admiral to Red Hanrahan. His father-in-law had been both furious and hurt by what he considered a betrayal. Sean had not anticipated that. “We were almost to the ridge when I suddenly knew I had to prove that dragons could fly us. Sir, all the planning in the world sometimes doesn’t get you to the right point at the right time.”

Admiral Benden nodded wisely, but the startled expression on Jim Tillek’s blunt face and Ongola’s sudden attention told Sean that he had said something wrong.

“I could risk my own neck, sir, but no one else’s,” he went on, “so we’ve got to take our time getting some of the other riders ready to fly. I’ve done a lot of riding and sled-driving, but flying a dragon’s not the same thing, and I’m not about to go out again until Carenath’s got some safety harness on him. And me.”

Joel Lilienkamp leaned forward across the table. “And what will that require, Council?”

Sean grinned, more out of relief than amusement. “Don’t worry, Lili, what I need is what Pern’s got plenty of—hide. I found a use for all that tanned wher skin you’ve got in Stores. It’s plenty tough enough and it’ll be easier on dragons’ necks than the synthetic webbing used in sled harnesses. I’ve made some sketches.” He unfolded the diagrams, much improved on by his discussions with the other dragonmates. “These show the arrangement of straps and the belts we’ll need, the flying suits, and we can use some of those work goggles plastics turns out.”

“Flying suits and plastic goggles,” Joel repeated, reaching for the drawings. He examined them with a gradually less jaundiced attitude.

“As soon as I can rig the flying harness for Carenath, Admiral, Governor, sirs,” Sean said, politely including all assembled and adding a tentative grin at Cherry Duff’s deep scowl, “you can see just how well my dragon flies me.”

“You were informed, weren’t you,” Paul Benden said, and Sean saw him rubbing the knuckles of his left hand, “that there’re new eggs on the Hatching Sands?”

Sean nodded. “Like I told you, Admiral, eighteen are not enough to take up much slack. And it’ll be generations before there’s enough.”

“Generations?” Cherry Duff exclaimed in her raspy voice, swinging in accusation on the veterinary team. “Why weren’t we told it’d take generations?”

“Dragon generations,” Pol answered, smiling slightly at her misinterpretation. “Not human.”

“Well, how long’s a dragon generation?” she demanded, still affronted. She shot a disgusted scowl at Sean.

“The females should produce their first independent clutches at three. Sean has proved that a male dragon can fly at just under a year—”

Cherry brought both hands down on the table, making a sharp, loud noise. “Give me facts, damn it, Pol.”

“Then, four to five years?”

Cherry pursed her lips in annoyance, a habit that made her look even more like a dried prune, Sean thought idly.

“Humph, then I’m not likely to see squadrons of dragons in the sky, am I? Four to five years. And when will they start flaming Thread? That was their design function,, wasn’t it? When will they start being useful?”

Sean was fed up, “Sooner than you think, Cherry Duff. Open a book on it, Joel.” With that he strode from the office. It galled him to the bone to have to take a skimmer back to Sorka and the others who waited to hear what had happened.

Ten days later, when Joel Lilienkamp himself brought them the requisitioned belts, straps, flying kit, and goggles, flight training on the Dragons of Pern began in earnest.

Landing had grown accustomed over the past year and a half to the grumblings and rumblings underfoot. On the morning of the second day of the fourth month of their ninth spring on Pern, early risers sleepily noted the curl of smoke, and the significance did not register.

Sean and Sorka, emerging from their cave with Carenath and Faranth, also noticed it.

Why does the mountain smoke? Faranth wanted to know.

“The mountain what?” Sorka demanded, waking up enough to absorb her dragon’s words. “Jays, Sean, look!”

Sean gave a long hard look. “It’s not Garben. It’s Picchu Peak. Patrice de Brogue was wrong! Or was he?”

“What on earth do you mean, Sean?” Sorka stared at him in amazement.

“I mean, there’s been all this talk of basement rock, and shifting Landing to a more practical base, with a special accommodation for dragons and us . . .” Sean kept his eyes on the plume curling languidly up from the peak, dwarfed beside the mightier Garben but certainly as ominous. He shrugged. “Not even Paul Benden can make a volcano erupt on cue. Come, we can get breakfast at your mother’s. Let’s stuff Mick in his flying suit and go. Maybe your dad will have received some official word.” He scowled. “We’re always the last ones to get news. I’ve got to convince Joel to release at least one comm unit for the caves.”

Sorka got their wriggling son into his fleece-lined carrying sack before she shrugged into her jacket and crammed helmet and goggles onto her head. Sean carried Mick out to Faranth. With an ease grown of practice, Sorka ran the two steps to her dragon’s politely positioned foreleg and vaulted astride. Sean handed her a protesting bundle to sling over her back and then turned to mount the obliging Carenath.

The dragons leapt upward from the ledge before the cave, giving themselves enough airway to take the first full sweep. Over the last few weeks, dragon backs had strengthened and muscled up. They had managed flights of several hours’ duration. Riders, even Nora Sejby—Sean had contrived a special harness that made her feel securely fastened to Tenneth—were improving. Long discussions with Drake Bonneau and some of the other pilots who had both fighter experience in the old Nathi War and plenty fighting Thread had improved the dragonriders’ basic understanding of the skills needed. And practice had encouraged them.

Three weeks before, Wind Blossom’s latest attempt had hatched. The four creatures who had survived had not been Impressed by the candidates awaiting them, although the creatures ate the food presented. Indeed, the poor beasts turned out to be photophobic, but Blossom, much to the disgust of Pol and Bay and against their advice, had insisted on special darkened quarters for the beasts, for the purpose of continued examination of that variant.

Even the fire-lizards were more useful, Sean thought, as the two fairs erupted into the air about them, bugling a morning welcome in their high, sweet voices. Now, if the dragons could only prove capable of that, Sean thought enviously. But how do you teach a dragon to do something you do not yourself understand? The dragons got smarter every day and they were fast learners, but it was impossible to explain telekinesis to them or ask them to teleport the way the fire-lizards did. Kitti Ping had called it an instinctive action. Nowhere in the genetics program that Sean had memorized did he find any words of wisdom on how to instruct a dragon to use his innate instinct.

And it was not the sort of exercise one did on a spontaneous basis. First, they would try to chew firestone and make flame. They knew where the fire-lizards got the phosphinebearing rock; Sean had even watched the browns and Sorka’s Duke selecting the pieces to chew and the careful way they concentrated while they chewed. The fire-lizards had learned to produce flame on demand, so Sean felt easy about teaching the dragons that. But going between one place and another . . . that was scary.

Flame of a different kind obsessed Landing’s counselors three days later.

“What people want to know, Paul, Emily,” Cherry Duff said, turning her penetrating stare from admiral to governor, “is how much warning you bad of Picchu’s activity.”

“None,” Paul said firmly. Emily nodded. “Patrice de Broglie’s reports have not been altered. There’s been a lot of volcanic activity all along the ring, as well as the new volcano. You’ve felt the same shakes I have. Landing and all stakeholders have been apprised of every technical detail. This is as much of an unpleasant surprise to us as it is to you!” Then Paul’s stern expression altered. “By all that’s holy, Cherry, all that black ash gave me as much a fright yesterday as it did everyone else.”

“So?” Cherry demanded, her attitude unsoftened.

“Picchu is officially an active volcano!” Paul spread his hands, looking past Cherry to Cabot Francis Carter and Rudi Shwartz. “And officially, it’s likely to continue to spout smoke and ash. Patrice and his crew are up at the crater now. He’ll give a full public report this evening at Bonfire Square.”

Cherry gave him a long hard stare, her black eyes piercing, her face expressionless. Then she snorted. “I believe him, but that doesn’t mean I like it—or the obvious prognosis. Landing moves, doesn’t it?”

Emily Boll nodded solemnly.

“And your next statement,” Cherry went on in her hard voice, “is that you have prepared a place for us!”

Paul burst into guffaws, though Emily muffled her laughter when she saw how such levity affronted Rudi Shwartz.

“You had no right,” Paul said, controlling his laughter, “to steal that line from Emily, Cherry Duff! Damn it, we were working on the official announcement when you barged in. And you fardling well know we’ve been rushing to complete the northern fort. Landing couldn’t continue much longer as a viable settlement even if Picchu hadn’t started showering us with ash. That doesn’t, of course, mean,” he put in quickly, holding up his hand to forestall Cabot’s explosion, “that stake-holders will be asked to leave their lands. But the administration of this planet will have to be in the most protected situation we can contrive. Plainly Landing has outlived its usefulness. It was never intended as a permanent installation.”

Emily took up the discussion then, passing to each of the delegation copies of the directive she and Paul had been drafting. “The transfer is being organized much as our space journey here. We have the technicians and the equipment to make a northern crossing as easy as possible. We have enough fuel to power two of the shuttles to transport equipment too bulky to fit on any of Jim’s ships. It’ll be a one-way trip for the shuttles: they’ll be dismantled for parts. When there’s time, we can send a crew back to scavenge the other three. Joel Lilienthal has been working on priority shipments for the big sleds, taking as few as possible from the fighting strength.”

“Speaking of fighting strength, has that young upstart taught them any new tricks?” Cherry demanded imperiously, looking down her long nose at Paul. “Speaking of eruptions, as we were, how are those beasts of Kitti Ping’s progressing? I see them flitting around all the time. Mighty pretty they look in formation, but are they any good in battle?”

“So far,” Paul began cautiously, “they’ve matured well beyond the projections. The young Connells have proved splendid leaders.”

“They were the best ground-crew leaders I had,” Cabot Carter said, disgruntled.

“They’ll be superior as aerial fighters,” Paul went on, overriding the legist’s unspoken criticism. “Self-perpetuating, too, unlike sleds and skimmers.”

“D’you know that for sure?” Cherry demanded in her raspy voice. “Blossom’s experiments aren’t all that successful.”

“Her grandmother’s are,” Paul replied with a firm confidence he hoped would reassure Cherry. “According to Pol and Bay, the males are producing their equivalent to sperm. Genetic analysis has started but will take months. We might have direct proof of dragon fertility by then, as the gold females mature later.” Paul tried not to sound defensive, but he wanted to counter the very bad publicity surrounding Wind Blossom’s brutes. Especially when the young dragonriders were trying so very hard to perfect themselves for combat against Thread. Though it was not public knowledge, Sean and his group had already served as messengers and had transported light loads efficiently.

Paul had a report on his desk from Telgar and his group. They had done a survey of the old crater above the fort hold, with its myriad bubble caves and twisting passages, and had pronounced it a suitable accommodation for the dragons and their riders. Telgar had a team working to make the place habitable, while they still had power in the heavy equipment. A stream was being dammed up for a dragon-sized bathing lake, water piped into the largest of the ground-level caverns for kitchen use, and a chimney hole had been bored for a large hearth complex.

Obviously, that would be the pattern for future human habitation on Pern, and for some, accustomed to sprawling living space, it would take some getting used to. But it was the best way to survive!