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.”