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Faranth asks how long will we fight? Carenath asked.

As long as we have firestone to fight with! Sean replied grimly. He had just taken a faceful of char, and his cheeks stung. In the back of his mind he noted that full face masks would be useful.

Manooth says they have no more firestone! Carenath announced suddenly after a nearly mindless length of fighting time. Shall they see if there is more at Fort Hold?

Sean had not realized how far inland their battle had taken them. They were indeed over the imposing ramparts of Fort Hold. He stared in a moment of bewilderment, suddenly very much aware of how he ached from cold and strain. His body felt bruised from the riding straps, his face smarted, and his fingers, toes, and knees were numb.

Tell them to land at Fort! he said. Thread has moved up into the mountains. We can do no more today!

Good! Carenath replied with such enthusiasm that Sean forgot his sore cheeks and grinned. He slapped affectionately at his dragon’s shoulder as the formation executed a right turn, spiraling down to land.

“Emily!” Pierre burst into his wife’s room. “Emily, you’ll never believe it!”

“Believe what?” she said in the tired voice that seemed all she could muster since the accident. She turned her head on the cushioned back of the support chair and smiled wanly at him.

“They’ve come! I heard, but I had to see it to believe it myself. The dragons and their riders have all reached Fort. They reached it in triumph! They’ve actually fought Thread, just as you dreamed they would, as Kit Ping designed them to do!” He caught the hand she lifted, the one part of her that had not been broken in the crash. All seventeen brave fine young people. And they cut a real swath in the Fall, Paul says.” He found himself smiling broadly, tears in his eyes as he saw color flushing across her cheeks, the lift of her chest, and the flash of interest in her eyes. She raised her head, and he rattled on. “Paul watched them flame Thread from the skies. They didn’t stay for the entire Fall, of course, part of it was over the sea anyhow, and the rest will fall in the mountains where it can’t do much harm.

“Paul said it was the most magnificent thing he’s ever seen. Better than the relief at Cygnus. They have a record of it, too, so you can see it later.” Pierre bent to kiss her hand. He had tears in his eyes for Emily, and for the valiant young people who had ridden against so terrible a menace in the skies of their wondrous and frightening new world. “Paul’s gone down to greet them. A triumphant arrival. My word, but it puts heart in all of us. Everyone is yelling and cheering and Pol and Bay were weeping, which is something quite unscientific for that pair. I suppose they feel that the dragonriders are their creations. I suppose they’re right, don’t you agree?”

Emily struggled in the support chair, her fingers clutching at him. “Help me to the window, Pierre? I must see them. I must see them for myself!”

Most of the inhabitants of Fort Hold turned out to greet them, waving impromptu banners of bright cloth and shouting tumultuously as the dragons backwinged to land on the open field, where here and there ground crews had gotten rid of what Thread had escaped the dragons’ fire. The crowd surged forward, mobbing the individual riders, everyone eager to touch a dragon, ignoring at first the riders’ strident appeals for something to ease Thread-pierced wings and scored hide.

Gratefully Sean saw a skimmer hovering, and heard the loud-spoken orders to give the dragons room, and let the medics in.

The hubbub subsided a decibel or two. The crowds parted, allowing the medical teams access, giving the dragonriders space to dismount, and whispering sympathetically when the cheering had died down enough so that the dragons could be heard whimpering in pain. Some of those gathered around Carenath eagerly helped Sean doctor him.

Is everyone here to see us? Carenath asked shyly. The bronze turned his left wing so that Sean could reach a particularly wide score and sighed in audible relief as anesthetic cream was slathered on.

“I don’t know how we got so lucky,” Sean muttered to himself when he was certain that all Carenath’s injuries had been attended to. He looked around him, checking to see that all the other dragons had been treated. Sorka gave him a thumbs-up signal and grinned at him, her face smeared with blood and soot. He returned her sign with both fists. “Sheer fluke we got out of that with just sears and scores. We didn’t even know what we were doing. Blind luck!” His mind roiled with ways to avoid any sort of scoring and ideas for drills to improve how much Thread a single breath could char. Their fight had been, after all, only the first, brief skirmish in a long, long war.

Hey, Sean, you need some, too,” one of the medics said, pulling off his helmet to anoint his cheeks. “Got to get you looking spruce. The admiral’s waiting!”

As if her words were a cue, a murmurous silence fell over the plain. The riders converged together and moved forward to the foot of the ramp where Paul Benden, in the full uniform of a fleet admiral, with Ongola and Ezra Keroon similarly attired flanking him, awaited the seventeen young heroes.

In step, the dragonriders walked forward, past people grinning foolishly in their pride. Sean recognized many faces: Pol and Bay looking about to burst with pride; Telgar, tears streaming down his cheeks, Ozzie and Cobber on either side of him; Cherry Duff upheld by two sons, her black eyes gleaming with joy. He caught sight of the Hanrahans, Mairi holding up his small son to see the pageantry. There was no sign of Governor Emily Boll, and Sean felt his heart contract. What Peter Chernoff had said was true, then. This moment would not be the same without her.

They reached the ramp, and somehow the queen riders had dropped a step behind the others and Sean stood in the center. When they halted, he took a step forward and saluted. It seemed the correct thing to do. Admiral Benden, tears in his eyes, proudly returned the salute.

“Admiral Benden, sir,” said Sean, rider of bronze Carenath,” may I present the Dragonriders of Pern?”

About the Author

Born on April 1, Anne McCaffrey has tried to live up to such an auspicious natal day. Her first novel was created in Latin class and might have brought her instant fame, as well as an A, had she attempted to write in the language. Much chastened, she turned to the stage and became a character actress, appearing in the first successful summer music circus at Lambertville, New Jersey. She studied voice for nine years and, during that time, became intensely interested in the stage direction of opera and operetta, ending this phase of her life with the stage direction of the American premiere of Carl Orff’s Ludus De Nato Infante Mirificus, in which she also played a witch.

By the time the three children of her marriage were comfortably at school most of the day, she had already achieved enough success with short stories to devote full time to writing.

Between her frequent appearances in the United States and England as a lecturer and guest-of-honor at science-fiction conventions, Ms. McCaffrey lives at Dragonhold, in the hills of Wicklow County, Ireland, with two cats, two dogs, and assorted horses. Of herself, Ms. McCaffrey says, “I have green eyes, silver hair, and freckles; the rest changes without notice.”