Anne McCaffrey - Dragons Time

By Todd McCaffrey
Published by Ballantine Books

D RAGONGIRL
D RAGONSBLOOD
D RAGONHEART

By Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey

D RAGONS K IN
D RAGONS F IRE
D RAGON H ARPER

Nonfiction Works
D RAGONHOLDER

Dragons Time is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2011 by Anne McCaffrey and Todd McCaffrey

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D EL R EY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
McCaffrey, Todd
Dragons Time/Anne McCaffrey, Todd McCaffrey.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-52641-0
1. DragonsFiction. 2. Pern (Imaginary place)Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A25525D68 2010

813.54dc22 2010014672

www.delreybooks.com

Jacket design: David Stevenson
Jacket illustration: Les Edwards

v3.1

For
Eliza Oriana Johnson
first granddaughter, first niece:
gentle, loving, brave heart

Dear Readers,

When Todd and I were casting about for ideas for our next collaboration, we tossed around working on my novel, After the Fall Is Over, together, but contractual obligations took that out of the runningand, I must confess, I still am a bit possessive when it comes to the futures of Flar and Lessa. Still, I did talk over some of my ideas with Todd, and he sent me a long list of questions in response that proved thought-provoking, inspiring, and challenging.

I had read and enjoyed his Dragonheart and Dragongirl, and the truth is, the excitement was catching. And so I said: You know, Todd, how hard it is for me to share. Maybe you could show me how?

Todd got the message and quickly agreed. And its been a lot of fun. Not only have I enjoyed helping Todd wrap up this very dramatic part of Pernese history, but my own creative juices have been flowing thick and furious: Ive been writing up a storm on my own, too. I think that Dragons Time is one of our best, and were both eager to get started on the next one, Dragonrider. Already we know that Dragonrider will break new ground and old tradition; still, Toddll do most of the writing and Ill do the tweaking and critiquing, just as before.

And after that, who knows? Hes been so good about allowing me to take part in moving his characters around the playing board maybe Ill finally let him play with my characters!

Ciao,
Annie

Thousands of years after man first developed interstellar travel, colonists from Earth, Tau Ceti III, and many other origins settled upon Pern, the third planet of the star Rukbat in the Sagittarius sector.

They found Pern idyllic for their purposes: a pastoral world far off the standard trade routes and perfect for those recovering from the horrors of the Nathi Wars.

Led by war hero Admiral Paul Benden, and Governor Emily Boll of war-torn Tau Ceti, the colonists quickly abandoned their star-traveling technology in favor of a simpler life. For eight yearsTurns as they called them on Pernthe settlers spread and multiplied on Perns lush Southern Continent, unaware that a menace was fast approaching through space.

The Red Star, as the colonists came to call it, was actually a wandering planetoid that had been captured by Rukbat millennia before. It had a highly elliptical, cometary orbit, passing through the fringes of the systems Oort Cloud before hurtling back inward toward the warmth of the sun, a cycle that took two hundred and fifty Turns.

For fifty of those Turns, the Red Star was visible in the night sky of Pern. Visible and deadly, for when the Red Star was close enough, as it was for those fifty long Turns, its indigenous lifeform could cross the void to Pern. Once these alien spores entered the tenuous upper atmosphere, they would thin out into long, narrow, streamer shapes and float down to the ground below, as seemingly harmless Threads.

However, Thread was anything but harmless. Like all living things, Thread needed sustenance, and it ate voraciously of anything organic: wood or flesh, it was all the same to Thread.

The first deadly Fall of Thread caught the colonists completely unawares. And, having abandoned their high-tech weaponry and tools as part of their idealistic move to Pern, they barely survived. In the aftermath, they came up with a desperate plan to design a shield against the recurrent threat: they used their knowledge of genetic engineering to modify fire-lizardssix-limbed, winged Pernese life-forms that had natural resources against Threadinto huge, intelligent, telepathic dragons. Able to instantaneously travel from one place to anotherby going betweenand to breathe fire, the dragons could intercept Thread and burn it out of existence before it could reach the ground. Telepathically linked to their riders from the moment of Hatching and thus able to work as fighting units in perfect tandem, these dragons formed the mainstay of the protection of Pern.

The approach of the Red Star not only brought the mindless Thread but also caused the tectonically active Southern Continent to heave with volcanoes and earthquakes, causing the colonists to seek refuge on the smaller, stabler, though less temperate Northern Continent. In their haste to flee, they lost many important resources and, over time, much knowledge was forgotten.

Huddled in one settlement, which they called Fort Hold, the colonists soon discovered themselves overcrowded, particularly with the growing dragon population. So the dragons moved into their own high mountain space, Fort Weyr. As time progressed and the population spread across Pern, more Holds were formed and more Weyrs were created by the dragonriders.

The combined needs of the holders and the dragonriders resulted in a complex societal structure. Settlements called holds fell under the authoritarian jurisdiction of major Holds, each run by a Lord Holder, who could maintain control over terrified people and limited resources during the years of Threadfall. The Weyrs, under the leadership of a Weyrwomanrider of the senior queen dragonand a Weyrleaderrider of whichever male dragon flew the senior queen in a mating flightwere unable to both provide for themselves and protect the planet. They were forced to rely on tithes from the Holds to keep them provided with food and supplies.

And so the two populations grew separate, distant, and sometimes intolerant of each other.

T he Red Star grew fainter, Thread stopped falling. Then, after a two-hundred-Turn Interval, it returned again to rain death and destruction from the skies for another fifty-Turn Pass. Again, Pern relied on fragile dragon wings and their staunch riders to keep it free of Thread. And, again, the Pass ended, and a second Interval began.

At the beginning of the Third Pass, a new disaster struckdragons started dying of an unknown disease. These deaths, added to the losses from fighting Thread, decimated the Weyrs. Klior, Weyrleader of Fort Weyr, decided upon a desperate course of action and sent his injured dragons and riders ten Turns back in time to abandoned Igen Weyr where they might heal and return in time to fight the next Threadfall. Their desperate jump