“For one thing, there’s all this open air around you. Falling is down onto a hard and injurious surface,” Sean made appropriate gesture 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, Connell?”
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 that 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 are 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 Broglie 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 mothers. 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 dragon-riders’ 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 of 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.