Anne McCaffrey
Dragonseye
Prologue
Rukbat, in the Sagittarian sector, was a golden o-type star.
It had five planets, two asteroid belts, and a stray planet it had attracted and held in recent millennia. When men first settled on Rukbat’s third planet and called it Pern, they had taken little notice of the stranger planet, swinging around its adopted primary in a wildly erratic orbit - until the desperate path of the wanderer brought it close to its stepsister at perihelion.
When such aspects were harmonious, and not distorted by conjunctions with other planets in the system, the wanderer brought in a life form which sought to bridge the space gap to the more temperate and hospitable planet.
The initial losses the colonists suffered from the voracious mycorrhizoid organism that fell on them were staggering.
They had divorced themselves from their home planet, Earth, and had cannibalized the colony ships, the Yokohama, the Bahrain and the Buenos Aires, so they would have to improvise with what they had.
Their first need was an aerial defense against the Thread, as they named this menace. Using highly sophisticated bio-engineering techniques, they developed a specialized variant of a Pernese life form which had two unusual, and useful, characteristics: the so-called fire-lizards could digest a phosphine bearing rock in one of their two stomachs and, belching forth the resultant gas, create a fiery breath which reduced Thread to harmless char. The second of their unusual qualities were the ability to teleport and an empathy which allowed limited understanding with humans. The bio-engineered “dragons” - so called because they resembled the Earth’s mythical creatures - were paired at hatching with an empathic human, forming a symbiotic relationship of unusual depth and mutual respect.
The colonists moved to the northern continent to seek shelter from the insidious Thread in the cave systems which were called holds.
The dragons and their riders came, too, housing themselves in old volcanic craters or Weyrs.
The First Pass of Thread lasted nearly fifty years and what scientific information the colonists were able to gather indicated that Thread would be a cyclic problem, occurring every two hundred and fifty years as the path of the wanderer once again approached Pern.
During this interval, the dragons multiplied and each successive generation became a little larger than the last, although optimum level would take many, many more generations to reach. And the humans spread out across the northern continent, creating holds to live in, and halls in which to train young people in skills and professions. Sometimes folks even forgot that they lived on a threatened planet.
However, in both Holds and Weyrs, there were masses of reports, journals, maps and charts to remind the Lords and Weyrleaders of the problem: and much advice to assist their descendants when next the rogue planet approached Pern and how to prepare for the incursion.
This is what happened two hundred and fifty-seven years later.
Early Autumn at Fort’s Gather
Dragons in squadrons wove, and interwove sky trails, diving and climbing in wings, each precisely separated by the minimum safety distance so that occasionally the watchers thought they saw an uninterrupted line of dragons as the close order drill continued.
The skies above Fort Hold, the oldest of the human settlements on the northern continent, were brilliantly clear on this early autumn day: that special sort of clarity and depth of color that their ancestors in the New England sector of the North American continent would have instantly identified.
The sun gleamed on healthy dragon hides and intensified the golden queen dragons who flew at the lowest level, sometimes seeming to touch the tops of the nearby mountains as they circled Fort. It was a sight to behold, and always brought a thrill of pride to those who watched the display: with one or two exceptions.
“Well, that’s done for now,” said Chalkin, Lord Holder of Bitra, the first to lower his eyes, though the fly-past was not yet over.
He rotated his neck and smoothed the skin where the decorative embroidered border of his best tunic had scratched the skin. Actually, he had had a few heart-stopping moments during some of the maneuvers, but he would never mention that aloud. The dragon riders were far too full of themselves as it was, without pandering to their egos and an inflated sense of importance: constantly appearing at his Hold and handing him lists of what hadn’t been done and must be done before Threadfall. Chalkin snorted. Just how many people were taken in with all this twaddle? The storms last year had been unusually hard, but then that wasn’t in itself unexpectable, so why were hard storms supposed to be a prelude to a Pass?
Winter meant storms.
And this preoccupation with the volcanoes going off. They did periodically anyway, sort of a natural phenomenon, if he remembered his science orientation correctly. So what if three or four were active right now? That did not necessarily have to do with the proximity of a spatial neighbor! And he was not going to require guards to freeze themselves keeping an easterly watch for the damned planet. Especially as every other Hold was also on the alert. So what if it orbited near Pern? That didn’t necessarily mean it was close enough to be dangerous, no matter how the ancients had gone on about cyclical incursions.
The dragons were just one more of the settlers’ weird experiments, altering an avian species to take the place of the aircraft they had once had. He’d seen the air sled which the Telgar Foundry treasured as an exhibit: a vehicle much more convenient to fly in than aboard a dragon where one had to endure the black-cold of teleportation. He shuddered. He had no liking for that sort of ultimate cold, even if it avoided the fatigue of overland travel. Surely in all those records the College was mustering folks to copy, there were other materials that could be substituted for whatever the ancients had used to power the vehicles? Why hadn’t some bright lad found the answer before the last of the air sleds deteriorated completely? Why didn’t the brainy ones develop a new type of air-worthy vessel? A vessel that didn’t expect to be thanked for doing its duty!
He glanced down at the wide roadway where the gather tables and stalls were set up. His were empty; even his gamesters were watching the sight. He’d have a word with them later. They should have been able to keep some customers at the various games of chance even with the dragon rider display. Surely everyone had seen that by now.
Still, the races had gone well and, with every one of the wager-takers his operators, he’d have made a tidy profit from his percentage of the bets.
As he made his way back to his seat, he saw that wine chillers had been placed at every table. He rubbed his be ringed fingers together in anticipation, the black Istan diamonds flashing as they caught sunlight. The wine was the only reason he had been willing to come to this Gathering; and he’d half suspected Hegmon of some prevarication in the matter. An effervescent wine, like the champagne one heard about from old Earth, was to have its debut. And, of course, the food would be marvelous too, even if the wine should not live up to its advance notice. Paulin, Fort Hold’s Lord, had lured one of the best chefs on the continent to his kitchens and the evening meal was sure to be good: if it didn’t turn sour in his stomach while he sat through the obligatory meeting afterwards. Chalkin had bid for the man’s services, but Chrislee had spurned Bitra’s offer and that refusal had long rankled in Chalkin’s mind.
The Bitran Holder mentally ran through possible excuses for leaving right after dinner: one plausible enough to be accepted by the others. This close to putative Threadfall, he had to be careful of alienating the wrong people. If he left before the dinner… but then he wouldn’t have a chance to sample this champagne-style wine, and he was determined to.