F’lar paid no attention to R’gul’s stammered demand for explanation. T’sum, however, grabbed up firestone sacks and raced back to the ledge and his waiting Munth.
“Go on, you old fool,” Lessa told R’gul irascibly. “The Threads are here. You were wrong. Now be a dragonman! Or go between and stay there!”
Ramoth, awakened by the alarms, poked at R’gul with her man-sized head and the ex-Weyrleader came out of his momentary shock. Without a word, he followed T’sum down the passageway.
F’lar had thrown on his heavy wher-hide tunic and shoved on his riding boots.
“Lessa, be sure to send messages to all the Holds. Now, this attack will stop about four hours from now. So the farthest west it can reach will be Ista. But I want every Hold and craft warned.”
She nodded, her eyes intent on his face lest she miss a word.
“Fortunately the Star is just beginning its Pass so we won’t have to worry about another attack for a few days. I’ll figure out the next one when I get back.
“Now, get Manora to organize her women. We’ll need pails of ointment. The dragons are going to be laced and that hurts. Most important, if something goes wrong, you’ll have to wait till a bronze is at least a year old to fly Ramoth…” Suddenly F’lar crushed her against him, his mouth bruising hers as if all her sweetness and strength must come with him. He released her so abruptly she staggered back against Ramoth’s lowered head. She clung for a moment to her dragon, as much for support as for reassurance.
Wheel and turn.
Or bleed and burn.
Fly between,
Blue and green.
Soar, dive down,
Bronze and brown
Dragonmen must fly
When Threads are in the sky.
As F’lar raced down the passageway to the ledge, firesacks bumping against his thighs, he was suddenly grateful for the tedious sweeping patrols over every Hold and hollow of Pern. He could see Nerat clearly in his mind’s eye. He could see the many petaled vineflowers which were the distinguishing feature of the rainforests at this time of year. Their ivory blossoms would be glowing in the first beams of sunlight like dragoneyes among the tall, wide-leaved plants.
Mnementh, his eyes flashing with excitement, hovered skittishly at the ledge. F’lar vaulted to the bronze neck.
The Weyr was seething with wings of all colors, noisy with shouts and countercommands. The atmosphere was electric but F’lar could sense no panic in that ordered confusion. Dragon and human bodies oozed out of openings around the Bowl walls. Women scurried across the floor from one lower cavern to another. The children playing by the lake were sent to gather wood for a fire. The weyrlings, supervised by old C’gan, were forming outside their barracks. F’lar looked up to the Peak and approved the tight formation of the wings assembled there in close flying order. Another wing formed up as he watched. He recognized brown Canth, F’nor on his neck, just as the entire wing vanished.
He ordered Mnementh aloft. The wind was cold and carried a hint of moisture. A late snow? This was the time for it, if ever.
R’gul’s wing and T’bor’s fanned out on his left, T’sum and D’nol on his right. He noted each dragon was well-laden with sacks. Then he gave Mnementh the visualization of the early spring rainforest in Nerat, just before dawn, the vineflowers gleaming, the sea breaking against the rocks of the High Shoal…
He left the searing cold of between. And he felt a stab of doubt. Was he injudicious, sending them all, possibly to their deaths between times, in this effort to out-time the Threads at Nerat?
Then, they were all there, in the crepuscular light that promises day. The lush, fruity smells of the rainforest drifting up to them. Warm, too, and that was frightening. He looked up and slightly to the north. Pulsing with menace, the Red Star shone down.
The men had realized what had happened, their voices raised in astonishment. Mnementh told F’lar that the dragons were mildly surprised at their riders’ fuss.
“Listen to me, dragonriders,” F’lar called, his voice harsh and distorted in an effort to be heard by all. He waited till the men had moved as close as possible. He told Mnementh to pass the information on to each dragon. Then he explained what they had done and why. No one spoke but there were many nervous looks exchanged across bright wings.
Crisply he ordered the wings to fan out in a staggered formation, keeping a distance of five-wings’ spread up or down between them.
The sun came up.
SLANTING ACROSS THE sea, like an ever-thickening mist, Threads were falling; silent, beautiful, treacherous. Silvery gray were those space-traversing spores, spinning from hard frozen ovals into coarse filaments as they penetrated the warm atmospheric envelope of Pern. Less than mindless, they had been ejected from their barren planet towards Pern, a hideous rain that sought organic matter to nourish it into growth. The southern continent of Pern had already been sucked dry. One Thread sinking into fertile soil would burrow deep, propagating thousands in the warm earth, rendering it into a black-dusted wasteland.
A stifled roar from the throats of eighty men and dragons broke the dawn air above Nerat’s green heights—as if the Threads might hear this challenge, F’lar mused.
As one, dragons swiveled their wedge-shaped heads to their riders for firestone. Great jaws macerated the hunks. The fragments were swallowed and more firestone was demanded. Inside the beasts, acids churned and the poisonous phosphenes were readied. When the dragons belched forth the gas, it would ignite in the air, into ravening flame to sear the Threads from the sky. And burn them from the soil.
Dragon instinct took over the moment the Threads began to fall above Nerat’s shores.
As much admiration as F’lar had always held for his bronze companion, it achieved newer heights in the next hours. Beating the air in great strokes, Mnementh soared with flaming breath to meet the down-rushing menace. The fumes, swept back by the wind, choked F’lar until he thought to crouch low on the lee side of the bronze neck. The dragon squealed as Threads flicked the tip of one wing. Instantly F’lar and he ducked into between, cold, calm, black. In the flicker of an eye, they were back to face the reality of Threads.
Around him, F’lar saw dragons winking in and out of between, flaming as they returned, diving, soaring. As the attack continued, and they drifted across Nerat, F’lar began to recognize the pattern in the dragons’ instinctive evasion-attack movements—and in the Threads. For, contrary to what he had gathered from his study of the Records, the Threads fell in patches. Not as rain will, in steady unbroken sheets, but like flurries of snow; here, above, there, whipped to one side suddenly. Never fluidly, despite the continuity their name implied.
You could see a patch above you. Flaming, your dragon would rise. You’d have the intense joy of seeing the clump shrivel from bottom to top. Sometimes, a patch would fall between riders. One dragon would signal he would follow and, spouting flame, would dive and sear.
Gradually the dragonriders worked their way over the rainforests, so densely, so invitingly green. F’lar refused to dwell on what just one live Thread burrow would do to that lush land. He would send back a low-flying patrol to quarter every foot. One Thread! Just one Thread could put out the ivory eyes of every luminous vineflower.
A dragon screamed somewhere to his left. Before he could identify the beast, it had ducked between. F’lar heard other cries of pain, from men as well as dragons. He shut his ears and concentrated, as dragons did, on the here-and-now. Would Mnementh remember those piercing cries later? F’lar wished he could forget them now.