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“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?”