“Please join us,” Sorka said with quiet dignity. She rose and drew Bay and Pol into the firelight. Two more packing crates were hauled into the circle.
We have tried to figure out what went wrong,” Pol continued after he and Bay had settled down wearily.
“Neither looked where he was going,” Sean said with a heavy sigh. “I was watching. Marco and Duluth took off from the beach and were rising just as the sled driver made an approach turn. He wouldn’t have seen Marco and Duluth coming up under him. Dragons aren’t fitted with proximity warning devices.” Sean raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I have it from very good authority that the sled driver had turned his alarm off because the constant noise in so much traffic was getting on his nerves.’’
Pol leaned toward him. “Then it is more important than ever that you riders teach your dragons discipline.” A ripple of angry denial made him hold up his hands. “That is not meant to sound censorious my dear friends. Truly I mean to be constructive. But obviously now is the moment to take the next step in training the dragons – training them to make proper use of the instinct that ought to have saved both Marco and Duluth today.”
The comment raised murmurs, some angry, some alarmed. Sean held up his hand for silence, his tired face lit by the jumping tongues of flame. Next to him, Sorka was keenly aware of the muscles tightening along his jawline and the stricken look in his eyes.
I believe we’ve been thinking along the same lines, Pol,” he said in a taut voice that told the biologist just how much strain the young dragonrider was under. “I think that Marco and Duluth panicked. If only they’d just come back to the place they’d left, the farking sled was gone!” His anguish was palpable. He took a deep breath and continued in a level, almost emotionless tone. “All of us have fire-lizards. That’s one of the reasons Kit Ping chose us as candidates. We’ve all sent them with messages, telling them where to go, what to do, or who to look for. We should be able to instruct the dragons to do the same thing. We know now, the hard way, that they can teleport, just as the fire-lizards do. We have to guide that instinct. We have to discipline it, as Pol suggested, so panic doesn’t get us the way it got Marco.”
“Why did Marco panic?” Tarrie Chernoff asked plaintively.
“I’d give anything to know,” Sean said, the edge of anguish returning to his voice. “One thing I do know. From now on, no rider takes off without checking what’s in his immediate airspace. We must fly defensively, trying to spot possible dangers. Caution,” he said, stabbing his index finger into his temple, “should be engraved on our eyeballs.” He spoke rapidly, his tone crisp. “We know that the fire-lizards do go wherever it is they go, between one place and another, so let’s stop taking that talent of theirs for granted and watch exactly what they do. Let’s scrutinize their comings and goings. Let’s send them to specific places, places they haven’t been before, to see if they can follow our mental directions. Our dragons hear us telepathically. They understand exactly what we’re saying – not like the fire-lizards – so if we get used to giving precise messages to the fire-lizards, the dragons ought to be able to operate on the same sort of mental directions. When we understand as much of fire-lizard behavior; as we can, then we will attempt to direct our dragons.”
The other riders murmured among themselves, Sean watched them with narrowed darting glances.
“Wouldn’t that risk our dragonets?” Tarrie asked, stroking the little gold that had nestled in the crook of her arm.
“Better the dragonets than the dragons!” Peter Semling said firmly.
Sean gave a derisive snort. “The fire-lizards’re very good at taking care of themselves. Don’t misunderstand me – ” He held up a hand against Tarrie’s immediate protest. “I appreciate them. They’ve been great little fighters. Jays, we’d never have fed the hatchlings without their help, but – ” He paused to look around the circle. “ – they have got a well-developed survival mechanism or they wouldn’t have lasted through the first pass of that Oort cloud. Whenever that was. As Peter said, it’s a lot safer to experiment with the fire-lizards than another dragonpair.”
“You’ve made some very good points there, Sean,” Pol said, beginning to take heart himself, “though I trust you mean to use the, gold and bronze fire-dragonets. They have always seemed more reliable to Bay and myself.”
“I had. Especially since the blues and greens all scampered off after the eruption.
“I’m game to try,” Dave Catarel said, throwing his shoulders back and straightening up, sending a challenging look at the others. “We’ve got to try something. Cautiously!” He shot Sean a quick glance.
A slow smile broke across Sean’s face as he reached across the fire to grasp Dave’s hand.
“I’m willing, too,” Peter Semling said. Nora tentatively agreed.
“It sounds eminently sensible to me,” Otto said, nodding vigorously and looking about him. “It is, after all, what the dragons were bred to do, escape from the danger of Threadfall as the mechanical sleds cannot.”
‘Thanks, Otto,” Sean said. “We all need to think positively.”
“And cautiously,” Otto amended, raising one finger in warning. Stirred from their apathy, the riders began murmuring to one another.
“Do you remember, Sorka,” Bay said, leaning toward her urgently when I sent Mariah to you the day we were called to Calusa?”
“She brought me your message.”
“She did indeed, but all I told her was to find the redhead by the caves.” Bay paused significantly. “Of course, Mariah has known you all her life and there aren’t that many redheads in Landing, or on the planet.” Bay knew she was babbling, which was something she rarely did, but then she rarely broke down in tears, either, and when she had heard the dreadful news, she had cried for nearly an hour, despite Pol’s comforting. As Pol had said, it had been like losing family. Without a terminal to consult for possible solutions, they had spent two frantic hours searching for the crate in which they had packed all their written notes of the dragon program, wanting to have some positive suggestion with which to comfort the young people. “But Mariah did find you with no trouble that day, and you were at our house in minutes. So it can’t have taken her very long to do it.
“No, it didn’t,” Sorka said thoughtfully. She looked around the circle of fire-lit faces. “Think of how many times we told the dragonets to get us fish for the hatchlings.”
“Fish are fish,” Peter Semling remarked, absently prodding the sand with a branch.
“Yes, but the dragonets knew which ones the dragons like best,” Kathy Duff said. “And it takes them no time at all from the moment we issue the command. They just wink out and a couple of breaths later they’re back with a packtail.”
“A couple of breaths,” Sean repeated, looking out to the darkness, his stare fixed. “It took more than a couple of breaths for any of our dragons to realize that . . . Marco and Duluth were not coming back. Can we infer from that that it also only takes a couple of breaths for dragons to teleport?”
“Cautiously . . .” Otto held up his finger again.
“Right,” Sean went on briskly, “this is what we do tomorrow morning at first light.” He reached over and took Peter’s stick, and drew the ragged coastline in the sand. “The governor wants us to ferry stuff out of Landing. Dave, Kathy, Tarrie, you’ve all got gold fire-lizards. You make the first run. When you get to the tower, send your fire-lizards back here to me and Sorka. Bay, do you and Pol have to be anywhere else tomorrow?”