Anne McCaffrey - Nerilkas Story

Arith executed a little run before he jumped skyward, then his fragile-looking, transparent wings took the first mighty sweep downward. It was the most exhilarating experience I had ever had, and I envied dragonriders anew as Ariths strong wings carried us further aloft.

Mbarak must have known how I was feeling, for he turned his head and gave me a wide pleased grin. Hold on now, Rill, were going between, he yelled.

Then there was blackness, nothingness, and only the knowledge that riders and dragons experienced the same thing daily with no ill effect kept me from screaming in fear.

THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN is a trademark of Anne McCaffrey. Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.

A Del Rey Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright 1986 by Anne McCaffrey
Illustrations Copyright 1986 by Edwin Herder

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.delreybooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 85-26864

eISBN: 978-0-345-45402-7

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Harper and Healer Halls

High Hill Hold

Ruatha Hold

Dragonriders at Various Weyrs

Others

If the reader is unfamiliar with the series The Dragonriders of Pern, certain confusions may occur. Nerilkas Story is an ancillary tale to Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, told from the point of view of one of the minor characters in that novel.

To summarize the background:

Rukbat, in the Sagittarian Sector, was a golden G-type star. It had five planets, two asteroid belts, and a stray planet that it had attracted and held in recent millennia. When men first settled on Rukbats third world and called it Pern, they had taken little notice of the strange planet swinging around its adopted primary in a wildly erratic orbit. For two generations, the colonists gave the bright Red Star little thoughtuntil the 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, parasitic organisms indigenous to the wandering planet sought to bridge the space gap between their home and the more temperate and hospitable planet. At these times, silver Threads dropped through Perns skies, destroying anything they touched. The initial losses the colonists suffered were staggering. As a result, during the subsequent struggle to survive and combat the menace, Perns tenuous contact with the mother planet was broken.

To control the incursions of the dreadful Threadsfor the Pernese had cannibalized their transport ships early on and abandoned such technological sophistication as was irrelevant to the pastoral planetthe more resourceful men embarked on a long-term plan. The first phase involved breeding a highly specialized variety of fire-lizard, a life form indigenous to their new world. Men and women with high empathy ratings and some innate telepathic ability were trained to use and preserve the unusual animals. The dragonsnamed for the mythical Terran beast they resembledhad two valuable characteristics: They could instantaneously travel from one place to another, and after chewing a phosphine-bearing rock, they could emit a flaming gas. Because the dragons could fly, they could intercept and char the Thread in midair before it reached the surface.

It took generations to develop to the fullest the potential of the dragons. The second phase of the proposed defense against the deadly incursions would take even longer. For Thread, a space-traveling mycorrhizoid spore, devoured with mindless voracity all organic matter and, once grounded, burrowed and proliferated with terrifying speed. So a symbiote of the same strain was developed to counter this parasite, and the resulting grub was introduced into the soil of the Southern Continent. It was planned that the dragons would be visible protection, charring Thread while it was still skyborne and protecting the dwellings and the livestock of the colonists. The grub-symbiote would protect vegetation by devouring what Thread managed to evade the dragons fire.