Anne McCaffrey - Dragonseye

Red Star Rising

by Anne McCaffrey

NOTE: this book has two names, in the uk where this book was purchased

its entitled: "red star rising" but in the U.S. its called dragons eye

Synopsis:

When the volcanoes rumble and the powerful storms begin brewing on Pern,

it means one thing: Thread. For 257 years Pern has been free of the

life-destroying Thread, but now the Red Star has reappeared in the sky

and soon the deadly Threadfall will follow. In the holds and weyrs

across the land, the genetically-engineered dragons of Pern and their

human riders begin feverishly training to combat the Thread, for only

dragon fire can destroy the silvery invaders. But, incredibly, one Lord

Holder refuses to believe the Thread will fall again, and he may

endanger the entire planet.

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 defence 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 colour 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 manoeuvres,

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 neighbour! 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