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South, they say, Meranath and Charanth echoed.

Suddenly K’vin remembered. Today was the day they would go to see Thread. He said that very, very quietly in the back of his mind where Charanth might not hear it. Both dragons had been asleep when B’nurrin had made his visit.

Which was just as well, or the whole Weyr might have been privy to the notion of a pre-viewing of Thread.

“B’nurrin wants us to join him,” K’vin said, giving Zulaya a cautionary look.

She frowned for a moment, then her face cleared abruptly as she said, “Oh.” With a conspiratorial grin, she was out of the bed, trailing the sheet on her way to her riding gear.

When they passed each other once in the course of dressing, she pulled his head down to her mouth. “I could bring my flame-thrower.”

“Might as well paint your destination on your forehead,” he murmured back. “We’re only going to watch.”

“Yes, watch.” Then she asked more loudly, “Where do we meet B’nurrin, Meranath?”

“We know that, too, remember?” K’vin said, grabbing Zulaya and giving her arm a little shake. Then he mouthed “Landing.”

“Yes, how could I forget?”

If the dragon and rider on watch on the Rim wondered why the two Weyrleaders were slipping away long before dawn, neither asked and the rider gave a cheery swing of his arm as they passed over him.

Ianath says to count to three and then go, Charanth told his rider, still mystified.

Landing is where we’re going, K’vin replied, glancing across the space between his dragon and Meranath. Zulaya showed him a thumb’s-up signal to signify she had had the same message. Visualizing the arid sweep of desolate volcanic ash from Mount Garben down to Monaco Bay, K’vin nodded his head three times.

GO!

Abruptly Charanth rumbled deep in his belly while his mind said in surprised shock OH! K’vin felt him shift. Consequently he was perhaps not as surprised as he might have been to realize that the airspace around them, and Meranath and Zulaya, was well occupied. With that extra sense dragons had, the two had averted a collision. In fact, as K’vin swiveled about to check, the only two Weyrleaders he didn’t see were S’nan and Sarrai, although they might well have been among those who winked out of sight between so as not to be recognized.

K’vin caught flashes of blue, brown and even one or two green hides in the southern sun before they disappeared. Nor was this meeting composed now only of Weyrleaders and dragons; some thirty or so bronzes and browns were present.

The sight was too much for K’vin’s sense of the ridiculous and it was a good thing that he was clipped into his safety harness. He was seized with such a laughing fit that he reeled back and forth against Charanth’s neck ridges.

Had every rider on Pern been possessed of the compulsion to come here this morning? Of course, the particular site of Landing was well known to all riders. But for so many to decide independently to come here… Probably every one certain he or she’d be the only ones daring enough!

Nor was K’vin the only one laughing hard. Right now he was more in danger of wetting his breeches from mirth - not fright at seeing Thread for the first time. Which reminded him why he was here. Again that realization became universal.

Laughter faded as every dragon and rider irresistibly turned north-eastward.

It was there, too, the much-described silvery-grey haze on the upper levels of the blue sky. Not a dragon wing moved, not a rider recoiled as the silver stuff began to drop on to the sea. THREAD! And so aptly called. THREAD!

The word seemed to rumble from dragon to dragon and K’vin had to grab hold of the neck ridge as Charanth started to lurch towards what he had known all his life as his adversary.

I have no firestone! How can I flame it? What is wrong?

Why have you brought me here where there is Thread and I have no fire to char it!

It’s all right, Charanth. We’re here to watch. To see.

But it is Thread! I must chew to flame. Why may I not flame when there is THREAD!

Glancing wildly around him, K’vin realized that he was by no means the only rider having the same difficulty with a frustratedly zealous dragon, rapidly trying to close the gap to Threadfall.

I’ve seen enough, Charanth. Take us back to Telgar.

But THREAD? And the bronze dragon’s tone was piteous, confused and horrified.

We leave. Now!

Leave? But we have not met Thread.

Not here or now or in this place, Charanth.

It took K’vin every bit of will-power and moral strength, and Charanth’s faith in him, to overcome his bronze’s impassioned protest.

Then, all of a sudden, Charanth stopped flying towards Thread.

Oh, all right! The tone was that of a petulant child forced by a senior authority to follow orders totally against the grain.

What?

The queens say we must go to the Red Butte.

Then let us go there. K’vin did not question the order, being far too glad that one was given which the dragon would obey.

The Butte was a training landmark in lower Keroon, a laccolithic dome so difficult to mistake that it figured in all weyrling training programs. And there the would-be observers managed to get their dragons to land. Even the queens eyes were revolving at a stiff red-orange pace, but some of the bronzes were so distraught with anger that their eyes pulsed wickedly, revolving at incredible speed.

K’vin was almost relieved to swing down from Charanth’s neck. But he, and the other Weyrleaders, all kept one hand on their dragons, leg, shoulder or muzzle: some contact was maintained. In a wide outer circle were the brown and bronze riders who had also been rescued”: they remained mounted, soothing their dragons, allowing their leaders the center for discussion.

It was M’shall who spoke first. “Well, that was one good idea gone awry,” he said in a droll tone. “Great minds, all of us!”

“Except for forgetting one simple rule,” Irene added, pulling off her flying cap. Her face was still pale from the fright she must have had.

K’vin glanced at Zulaya who was wiping sweat from her face, so he knew none of the queen riders had had an easy time to get their queens to insist on the disengagement.

“Dragons know what they’re supposed to do when Thread falls,” M’shall said, nodding. And then he started to laugh.

K’vin grinned and, when he heard G’don’s bass chuckle, saw no reason to hold his laughter in any longer. B’nurrin was howling so that he had to clutch at K’vin to keep his balance. Even D’miel looked properly abashed, and Laura’s giggle was infectious enough to increase the volume. Beyond the inner circle, the rest of the riders caught the joke on themselves and joined in the laugh. It was a good release from the fright that they had all just had.

“Did anyone happen to notice a Fort rider disappearing in guilty retreat?” M’shall asked when the laughter died down.

He’d been checking the identity of those on the rim of this informal assembly.

“They’d be the last to admit coming,” said Irene.

“I doubt that, Renee,” G’don said. “S’nan runs a strict Weyr, it’s true, but I’ll wager there’re a few renegades among his wing leaders.”

“I know there are,” Mari agreed, blotting her eyes which were still merry from laughter. “It’s just such a hoot that we all…” and she ringed them with a swirl of her hand, “thought to come and have a peek.”

“It’s not going to inhibit any of the dragons, is it?” Laura asked, turning pale at the sudden thought. “Turning them off like that?”

D’miel wasn’t the only Weyrleader to dismiss that notion derisively. “Hardly! It’s increased rider-credibility a hundredfold. They now know without doubt that what we’ve been telling them since they were Hatched is true!”

“Oh, yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” she said, relieved.