4.5.08 Pern

PERHAPS IT WAS because people were so accustomed to dragonets after nearly eight years of close association that they no longer paid much attention to the creatures’ behavior. Those who noticed their unusual antics thought that the dragonets were merely playing some sort of a new game, for they were inventively amusing. Later people would remember that the dragonets attempted to herd the flocks and herds back to the barns. Later marine rangers would remember that the bottlenoses Bessie, Lottie, and Maximilian had urgently tried to explain to their human friends why the indigenous marine life was rushing eastward to a food source.

At her home in Europe Square; Sabra Stein-Ongola actually thought that Fancy, the family dragonet, was attacking her three-year-old son at play in the yard. The little gold was grabbing at Shuvin’s shirt, attempting to haul him from his sandpile and his favorite toy truck. As soon as Sabra had rescued the boy, batting at Fancy, the dragonet had hovered over her, cheeping with relief. It was puzzling behavior to be sure, but, though the fabric of the shirt was torn, Sabra could see no marks on Shuvin’s flesh from the dragonet talons. Nor was Shuvin crying. He merely wanted to go back to his truck while Sabra wanted to change his shirt.

To her utter surprise, Fancy tried to duck into the house with them, but Sabra got the door closed in time. As she leaned against it, catching her breath, she noticed through the rear window that other dragonets were acting in the most peculiar fashion. She was somewhat reassured by the fact that there had never been reports of dragonets hurting people, even in the ardor of mating, but that did not seem to be what was agitating them, because greens were wheeling as frantically as the other colors. Greens always got out of the way when a gold was mating. And it was certainly the wrong time for Fancy to be in season.

As Sabra changed Shuvin’s shirt, deftly handling the little boy’s squirms, she realized that the cries that penetrated the thick plastic walls of the house sounded frightened. Sabra knew the usual dragonets sounds as well as anyone in Landing. What could they be frightened of?

The large flying creature—perhaps a very big wherry—that had been occasionally spotted soaring near the Western Barrier Range would be unlikely to range so far east. What other danger could there be on a fine early spring morning? That smudge of gray cloud far off on the horizon suggested rain later on in the day, but that would be good for the crops already sprouting in the grain fields. Maybe she should get the clothes in off the line. Sometimes she missed the push-button conveniences that back on old Earth had eliminated the drudgery of monotonous household tasks. Too bad that the council never considered requiring miscreants to do domestic duties as punishment for disorderly conduct. She pulled Shuvin’s shirt down over his trousers, and he gave her a moist, loving kiss.

“Truck, Mommie, truck? Now?”

His wistful question made her aware, suddenly, of the silence, of the absence of the usual cheerful cacophony of dragonet choruses which was the background to daily life in Landing and in nearly every settlement across the southern continent. Such a complete silence was frightening. Startled, restraining Shuvin who wanted urgently to get back out and play in the sand, Sabra peered out the back window, then through the plasglas behind her. She saw not a dragonet in sight. Not even on Betty Musgrave-Blake’s house where there had been the usual natal congregation. Betty was expecting her second child; and Sabra had seen Basil, the obstetrician, arriving with Greta, his very capable apprentice midwife.

Where were the dragonets? They never missed a birth.

As well established as Landing was, one was still supposed to report anything unusual on Pern. She tried Ongola’s number on the comm unit, but it was engaged. While she was using the handset, Shuvin reached his grubby hand up to the door pull and slid it open, with a mischievous grin over his shoulder at his mother as he performed that new skill. She smiled her acquiescence as she tapped out Bay’s number. The zoologist might know what was amiss with her favorite critters.

 

Well east and slightly south of Landing, Sean and Sorka were hunting wherry for Restday meals. As the human settlements spread, foragers were having to go farther afield for game.

“They’re not even trying to bunt, Sorka,” Sean said, scowling. “They’ve spent half the morning arguing. Fardling fools.” He lifted one muscular brown arm in an angry gesture to his eight dragonets. “Shape up, you winged wimps. We’re here to hunt!”

He was ignored as his veteran browns seemed to be arguing with the mentasynths, most aggressively with Sean’s queen, Blazer. That was extraordinary behavior: Blazer, who had been genetically improved by Bay Harkenon’s tinkering, was usually accorded the obedience that any of the lesser colors granted the fertile gold females.

“Mine, too,” Sorka said, nodding as her own five joined Sean’s. “Oh, jays, they’re coming for us!” Slackening her reins, she began to tighten her legs around her bay mare but stopped when she saw Sean, wheeling Cricket to face the oncoming dragonets, hold up an imperious hand. She was even more startled to see the dragonets assume an attack formation, their cries clamors of unspeakable fright and danger.

“Danger? Where?” Sean spun Cricket around on his haunches, a trick that Sorka had never been able to teach Doove despite Sean’s assistance and her own endless patience. He searched the skies and stayed Cricket as the dragonets solidly turned their heads to the east.

Blazer landed on his shoulder, swirling her tail about his neck and left bicep, and shrieked to the others. Sean was amazed at the interaction he sensed. A queen taking orders from browns? But he was distracted as her thoughts became vividly apprehensive.

“Landing in danger?” he asked. “Shelter?”

Once Sean had spoken, Sorka understood what her bronzes were trying to convey to her. Sean was always quicker to read the mental images of his enhanced dragonets, especially those of Blazer, who was the most coherent. Sorka had often wished for a golden female, but she loved her bronzes and brown too much to voice a complaint.

“That’s what they all give me, too,” Sorka said, as her five began to tug various parts of her clothing. Though Sean could hunt bare to the Waist, she bobbled too much to ride topless comfortably; her sleeveless leather vest provided support, as well as protection from the claw holds of the dragonets. Bronze Emmett settled on Doove’s poll long enough to secure a grip on one ear and the forelock, trying to pull the mare’s head around.

“Something big, something dangerous, and shelter!” Sean said, shaking his head. “It’s only a thunderstorm, fellas. Look, just a cloud!”

Sorka frowned as she looked eastward. They were high enough on the plateau to have just a glimpse of the sea.

“That’s a funny-looking cloud formation, Sean. I’ve never seen anything like it. More like the snowclouds we’d have now and again in Ireland.”

Sean scowled and tightened his legs. Cricket, picking up on the dragonets’ urgent fears, pranced tensely in place in the piaffe he had been taught, but it was clear that he would break into a mad gallop the minute Sean gave him his head. The stallion’s eyes were rolling white in distress as he snorted. Doove, too, was fretting, spurred by Emmett’s peculiar urgency.

“Doesn’t snow here, Sorka, but you’re right about the color and shape. By jays, whatever it’s raining, it’s damned near visible. Rain here doesn’t fall like that.”

Duke and Sean’s original two browns saw it and shrieked in utter frustration and terror. Blazer trumpeted a fierce command. The next thing Sean and Sorka knew, both horses had been spurred by well-placed dragonet stabs across their rumps into a headlong stampede which the massed fair of dragonets aimed north and west. Rein, leg, seat, or voice had no effect on the two pain-crazed horses, for whenever they tried to obey their riders, they got another slash from the vigilant dragonets.

“Whatinell’s got into them?” Sean cried, hauling on the hackamore that he used in place of a bit in Cricket’s soft mouth. “I’ll break his bloody nose for him, I will.”

“No, Sean,” Sorka cried, leaning into her mare’s forward plunge. “Duke’s terrified of that cloud. All of mine are. They’d never hurt the horses! We’d be fools to ignore them.”

“As if we could!”

The horses were diving headlong down a ravine. Sean needed all his skill to stay on Cricket, but his mind sensed Blazer’s relief that she had succeeded in moving them toward safety.

“Safety from what?” he muttered in a savage growl, hating the feeling of impotence on an animal that had never disobeyed him in its seven years, an animal that he had thought he understood better than any human on the whole planet.

The headlong pace did not falter, even when Sean felt the gray stallion, fit as he was, begin to tire. The dragonets drove both horses onward, straight toward one of the small lakes that dotted that part of the continent.

“Why water, Sean?” Sorka cried, sitting back and hauling on Doove’s mouth. When the mare willingly slowed, Duke and the other two bronzes screamed a protest and once again gouged her bleeding rump.

Neighing and white-eyed with fear, the mare leapt into the water, nearly unseating her rider. The stallion plunged beside her, galled by the spurred talons of Sean’s dragonets.

The lake, a deep basin collecting the runoff from the nearby hills, had little beach and the horses were soon swimming, determinedly herded by the dragonets toward the rocky overhang on the far side. Sean and Sorka had often sunbathed on that ledge; they enjoyed diving from their high perch into the deep water below.

“The ledge? They want us under the ledge? The water’s fardling deep there.”

“Why?” Sorka still asked. “It’s only rain coming.” She was swimming beside Doove, one hand on the pommel of her saddle, the other holding the reins, letting the mare’s efforts drag her forward. “Where’d they all go?”

Sean, swimming alongside Cricket, turned on his side to look back the way they had come. His eyes widened. “That’s not rain. Swim for it, Sorka! Swim for the ledge!”

She cast a glance over her shoulder and saw what had startled the usually imperturbable young man. Terror lent strength to her arm; tugging on the reins, she urged Doove to greater efforts. They were nearly to the ledge, nearly to what little safety that offered from the hissing silver fall that splatted so ominously across the woods they had only just left.

“Where are the dragonets?” Sorka wailed as she crossed into the shadow of the ledge. She tugged at Doove, trying to drag the mare in behind her.

“Safer where they are, no doubt!” Sean sounded bitterly angry as he forced Cricket under the ledge. There was just room enough for the horses’ heads to remain above the level of the water, but there was no purchase for their flailing legs.

Suddenly both horses ceased resisting their riders and began to press Sean and Sorka against the inner wall, whinnying in abject terror.

“Jack your legs up, Sorka! Balance against the inside wall!” Sean shouted, demonstrating.

Then they heard the hiss on the water. Peering around the frightened horses’ heads, they could actually see the long, thin threads plunging into the water. The lake was suddenly roiling and cut every which way with the fins of the minnows that had been seeded in the streams.

“Jays! Look at that!” Sean pointed excitedly to a small jet of flame just above the lake’s surface that charred a large tangle of the stuff before it landed in the water.

“Over there, too!” Sorka said, and then they heard the agitated but exultant chatter of dragonets. Crowded back under the ledge, they caught only fleeting glimpses of dragonets and the unexpected flames.

All at once Sorka remembered that long-ago day when she had first witnessed the dragonets defending the poultry flocks. She had been certain then that Duke had flamed at a wherry. “That happened before, Sean,” Sorka said, her fingers slipping on his wet shoulder as she grabbed at it to get his attention. “Somehow they breathe fire. Maybe that’s what the second stomach is for.”

“Well, I’m glad they weren’t cowards,” Sean muttered, cautiously propelling himself to the opening. “No,” he said in a relieved voice, expelling a big sigh. “They’re by no means cowards. C’mere, Sorka.”

Glancing anxiously at Doove, Sorka joined Sean and cried out with surprised elation. Their fair of dragonets had been augmented by a mass of others. The little warriors seemed to take turns diving at the evil rainfall, their spouts of flame reducing the terror to char, which fell as ashes to the surface of the lake, where quick fish mouths gobbled it up.

“See, Sorka, the dragonets are protecting this ledge.”

Sorka could see the menacing rain falling unimpeded to the lake on either side of the dragonet fire zone.

“Jays, Sean, look what it does to the bushes!” She pointed to the shoreline. The thick clumps of tough bushes they had ridden through only moments before were no longer visible, covered by a writhing mass of “things” that seemed to enlarge as they watched. Sorka felt sick to her stomach, and only intense concentration prevented her from heaving her breakfast up. Sean had gone white about the mouth. His hands, moving rhythmically to keep him in position in the water, clenched into fists.

“No bleeding wonder the dragonets were scared.” He smashed impotent fists into the water, sending ripples out. Sorka’s Duke appeared instantly, hovering just outside and peering in. He waited just long enough to squeak a reassurance, and then literally disappeared. “Well, now,” Sean said. “If I were Pol Nietro, I’d call that instantaneous flit of theirs the best defense mechanism a species could develop.” A long thread slithered from the ledge and hung a moment in front of their horrified eyes before a flame charred it.

Revolted, Sean splashed water on the remains, whisking the floating motes away from Sorka and himself. Behind them the horses’ breathing showed signs of real distress.

“How long?” Sean said, gliding over to Cricket’s head and soothing the horse with his hands. “How long?”

 

“It is not mating activity,” Bay told Sabra when she called, “and it is a totally irrational pattern of behavior.” Her mind riffling through all she knew and had observed about the dragonets, Bay continued to peer out her window. As she watched, a sled lifted from a parking spot near the met tower, and it headed at full speed toward the storm. “Let me check my behavioral files and have a word with Pol. I’ll call you back. It really is most unusual.”

Pol was working on the vegetable patch behind their homes. He saw her coming and waved cheerfully, tipping back his visored cap and mopping his brow. The garden soil had been carefully enriched and enhanced by a variety of Terran beetles and worms that were as happy to aerate the soil of Pern as of Earth and augmented the local, lazier kinds. Bay saw Pol stop, his hand in midwipe, and stare about him; she guessed he had only then noticed the absence of the dragonets.

“Where’ve they all gone?” He glanced toward other residential squares and Betty’s empty roof. “That was sudden, wasn’t it?”

“Sabra’s just been on to me. She said their Fancy appeared to attack little Shuvin. For no reason, although her claws did not pierce the skin. Fancy then attempted to enter the house with them. Sabra said she sounded frightened.”

Pol raised his eyebrows in surprise and continued to wipe his brow and then the hat band before recovering his head. Leaning on his hoe, he glanced all around. It was then that he saw the gray clouds.

“Don’t like the look of that, m’luv,” he said. “I’ll take a bit of a break until it blows over.” He smiled at her. “While we access your notes on the menta-breed. Fancy’s a menta, not a native.”

Suddenly the air was full of shrieking, screaming, bugling, and very frightened dragonets.

“Where have they been, the little pests?” Pol demanded, snatching off his cap to wave it furiously in front of his face. “Faugh! They stink!”

Bay pinched his nostrils, hurrying toward the refuge of the house. “They do, indeed. Positively sulfurous.”

Six dragonets detached themselves from the swirling hundreds and dove for Bay and Pol, battering at their backs and screeching to hurry them forward.

“I do believe they’re driving us into the house, Pol,” Bay said. When she stopped to study the eccentric behavior, her queen grabbed a lock of her hair, and the two bronzes secured holds on the front of her tunic, pulling her forward. Their cries grew more frantic.

“I believe you’re correct. And they’re doing it to others, too.”

“I’ve never seen so many dragonets. We don’t normally have such a concentration here,” Bay went on, cooperating to the point of a lumbering jog trot. “Most of them are wilds! Look how much smaller some queens are. A preponderance of greens as well. Fascinating.”

“Extremely,” Pol remarked, mildly amused that the dragonets who were their particular friends had entered the house and were cooperating in a joint effort to close the door behind the humans. “Most remarkable.”

Bay was already sitting down at the terminal. “Patently, it’s something harmful to them as well as to us.”

“I’d prefer them to settle,” Pol said. Their dragonets were flitting about the lounge and into the bedroom, the bathroom, and even the addition to the house that had been made into a small but well-equipped home laboratory for the two scientists. “This is a bit much. Bay, tell your queen to settle, and the others will follow suit.”

“Tell her yourself, Pol, while I access the behavioral program. She’ll obey you as well as me.”

Pol attempted to coax Mariah to land on his arm. But the moment she touched down she was off again, and the others after her. A tidbit of her favorite fish was ignored. Pol was no longer amused. He looked out the window to see if others were experiencing the same mass hysteria and noticed that the squares had been cleared of people. He could see clouds of dust over by the veterinary barns, and the dark dashes of dragonets attempting to herd the animals. He could also hear the distant discord of frightened beasts.

“There had better be an explanation for this,” he murmured, pausing behind Bay to read the screen. “My word, look at Betty’s house!” He pointed over the screen and out the window toward a structure fully clothed in dragonets. “My God, should I call them to see if they need help?”

When he put his hand out to reach for the door pull, Mariah, screaming with anger, dove at his hand and pushed it away, scratching him.

“Don’t go, Pol. Don’t go out, Pol! Look!”

Bay had half risen from her chair and remained frozen in the semicrouch, a look of utter horror on her face. As Pol threw a protective arm about her shoulders, they both heard the hiss of the terrible rain that fell on Landing. They could see the individual elongated “raindrops” strike the surface, sometimes meeting only dust, other times writhing about the shrubs and grasses, which disappeared, leaving behind engorged sluglike forms that rapidly attacked anything green in their way. Pol’s nicely sprouting garden became a waste of squirming grayish “things,” bloating larger within seconds on each new feast.

Mariah let out a raucous call and disappeared from the house. The other five dragonets followed instantly.

“I don’t believe what I saw,” Pol said in an amazed whisper. “They’re teleporting in droves, almost formations. So the telekinesis was developed as a survival technique first. Hmm.”

The hideous rain had advanced, spreading its mindless burden behind and inexorably falling across Pol’s neatly patterned stonework patio toward the house.

“They can’t devour stone,” Pol remarked with clinical detachment. “I trust our silicon plastic roof provides a similar deterrent.”

“The dragonets have more than one unexplored skill, Pol, my dear,” Bay said proudly and pointed.

Outside, their dragonets were swooping and soaring, breathing flame to incinerate the attacking life-form before it could reach the house.

“I would be happier if I knew the things could not penetrate plastic,” Pol repeated with a slight tremor in his voice, looking up at the opaque roof. He winced and hunched in self-protection as he heard a slithering impact, then another, then saw the flame spurt briefly in gouts across the dark roof material.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said, straightening his shoulders.

“They did strike the roof, however, until the dragonets, bless their little hearts, set them ablaze.” Bay peered out the window facing Betty Musgrave-Blake’s house. “My word! Look at that!”

The house seemed to be ringed by fiery whirls and gouts as an umbrella of dragonets frantically made certain that not a single piece of the grotesque rain reached the home of a woman in labor.

Pol had the presence of mind to collect his binoculars from the clutter on a shelf. He turned them on the fields and the veterinary sheds. “I wonder if they’ll protect our livestock. There’re too many animals to get all safely under shelter. But dragonets do seem to be massing in that area.”

Keenly interested in the safety of the herds and flocks they had helped to create, Pol and Bay took turns watching. Bay suddenly dropped the glasses, shuddering as she passed them wordlessly to Pol. She had been shocked by the sight of a fullgrown cow reduced in a few moments to a seared corpse covered by masses of writhing strings. Pol altered the focus and then groaned in helpless dismay, dropping the binoculars.

“Deadly, they are. Voracious, insatiable. It would appear they consume anything organic,” he murmured. Taking a deep, resolute breath, he raised the binoculars again. “And, unfortunately, to judge by the marks on the roofs of some of those shelters we put up first, carbon-based plastics, too.”

“Oh, dear. That could be terrible. Could this be a regional phenomenon?” Bay asked, her voice still trembling. “There were those odd circles on the vegetated areas, the ones in the original survey fax . . .” Turning away from the disaster, she sat down at the keyboard and, clearing the screen, began to call up files.

“I hope no one is foolish enough to go out after those last few cows and sheep,” Pol said, an edge to his voice. “I hope they got all the horses in safely. The new equine strain is too promising to lose, even to a ravening disaster.”

Almost as an afterthought the alarm klaxon on the meteorology tower began to bleat.

“Now that’s a bit after the fact, old fellow,” Pol said, turning to focus the binoculars on the tower. He could see Ongola in the tower, holding a rag against his cheek. The sled that had gone out to investigate the storm was parked so close to the tower entrance that Pol guessed that Ongola had probably dived directly from sled to the tower door.

“No, the sound carries and sets off the relays,” Bay said absently as her fingers flew over the keys.

“Ah, yes, I’d forgot that. Quite a few people went out on hunting parties this morning, you know.”

Bay’s quick fingers stilled, and she turned slowly in the swivel chair to stare at Pol, her face ashen.

“There now, old dear, so many people have dragonets now, and at least one of the smarter mentas you developed.” He crossed to her and gave her a reassuring pat on the head. “They’ve done a first-class job of warning and protecting us. Ah! Listen!”

There was no mistaking the exultant warble of the dragonets that always heralded a birth. Despite the bizarre disaster occurring on Pern at that moment, a new life had entered it. The welcome did not, however, interfere with the protective net of flame about the house.

“The poor baby! To be born now!” Bay mourned. Her plump cheeks were drawn, her eyes sunken in her face.

 

Heedless of the stinging pain on the left side of his face, Ongola kept one finger on the klaxon even as he began calling out to the other stations on the network.

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday at Landing! Take shelter! Get livestock under cover! Extreme danger. Shelter all living things.” He shuddered, recalling the horrific sight of two wayward sheep consumed in an eye-blink by the descending vileness. “Shelter under rock, metal, in water! An unnatural rain heading westward in uneven fall. Deadly! Deadly! Shelter. Mayday from Landing. Mayday from Landing. Mayday from Landing!” Drops of blood from his head and neck dripped in punctuation to his terse phrases. “Cloud unnatural. Rainfall deadly. Mayday from Landing! Take shelter! Mayday. Mayday.”

His own home was barely visible through the sheeting fall, but he did see the gouts of flame above those houses in Landing still occupied. He accepted the amazing reality of the thousand of dragonets massing to assist their human friends, of the living, flaming shield over Betty Musgrave-Blake’s home, of the multitude swirling above the veterinary sheds and the pastures, and he remembered that Fancy had tried to fly into the window where he had been sitting out his watch. When he had suddenly realized that none of the meteorological devices were registering the cloud mass approaching steadily from the east, he had phoned Emily at her home.

“Go have a look, Ongola. Looks like just a good stiff equinoctial squall, but if the water-vapor instruments are not registering, you’d better check the wind speed and see if there’s hail or sleet in the clouds. There’re hunters and fishers out today, as well as farmers.”

Ongola had gotten close enough to the cloud to register its unusual composition—and to see the damage it did. He tried to raise Emily on the sled’s comm unit. When that did not work, he tried to reach Jim Tillek at Harbor Control. But he had taken the nearest sled, a small, fast one that did not have the sophisticated equipment the bigger ones did. He tried every number he could think of and only reached Kitti, who generally stayed in her home, frail in her tenth decade despite prostheses that gave her some mobility.

“Thank you for the warning, Ongola. A prudent person is well advised. I will contact the veterinary sheds for them to get the livestock under cover. A hungry rain?”

Ongola had thrown the little sled to its maximum speed, hoping that there was enough power in the packs to withstand such a drain. The sled responded, but he only just made it back to the tower, the engine dying just as he touched ground.

The stuff pelted down on the sled canopy. He had not managed to outrun the leading edge. He grabbed the flight-plan board, an inadequate shield from the deadly rain but better than nothing. Taking a deep breath, he punched auto-close, then ducked out. He took three long strides, more jump than run, and made it to the tower door just as a tangle descended. The tilted edge of the board deflected the stuff right onto the unprotected left side of his head. Screaming with pain, Ongola batted the stuff from his ear just as a dragonet came flaming up to his assistance. Ongola shouted a “Thanks” for the dragonet’s aid as he threw himself inside and slammed the door. Automatically, he threw the bolt, snorting at useless instinct, and took the steps to the tower in twos and threes.

The stinging pain continued, and he felt something oozing down his neck. Blood! He blotted at the injury with his handkerchief, noticing that the blood was mixed with black fragments, and he became aware of the stench of burned wool. The dragonet’s breath had scorched his sweater.

The warning delivered, he was flipping on the recording when a second stinging pain on his left shoulder made him glance. He saw the front end of a waving strand that did not look at all like wool. The pain seemed to accompany the strand. He had never undressed as fast as he did then. And he was just fast enough: the strand had become thicker and was moving with more rapidity and purpose. Even as he watched in horror at his close escape, the wool was ingested, and the grotesque, quivering segment left in its place filled him with revulsion.

Water! He reached for both the water pitcher and the klah thermos and emptied them over the . . . the thing. Writhing and bubbling, it slowly subsided into a soggy inert mass. He stamped on it with as much satisfaction as he had felt destroying Nathi surface positions.

Then he looked at his shoulder and saw the thin bloodied line scored in his flesh by his close encounter with that deadly piece of thread. A convulsive shudder took hold of his body, and he had to grab a chair to keep from falling to his knees.

The comm unit began to bleat at him. Taking several deep breaths, he got to his feet and back on duty.

 

“Thanks for the klaxon, Ongola. We had just time enough to batten down the hatches. Knew the critters were telling us something but howinell could we guess that?” Jim Tillek reported from the bridge of the Southern Star. “Thank the powers that be, our ships are all siliplex.”

Monaco Bay harbor office reported overturned small craft and was instigating rescues.

The infirmary reported that human casualties in and about Landing had been minimal: mainly dragonet scratches. They had the dragonets to thank for saving lives.

Red Hanrahan at Vet said that they had lost fifty or sixty assorted livestock of the breeding herds pastured about Landing, thanking the good fortune of having just shipped out three hundred calves, lambs, kids, and piglets to new homes the previous month. There were, however, large numbers at nearby stakes that did not have stabling facilities and were in the path of the abominable rain. Red added that all of the animals left loose to graze could be considered lost.

Two of the larger fishing vessels reported severe burn injuries for those who had not made it under cover in time. One of the Hegelman boys had jumped overboard and drowned when the things landed in a clump on his face. Maximilian, escorting the Perseus, had been unable to save him. The dolphin had added that native marine life was swarming to the surface, fighting over the drowning wrigglers. He himself did not much like the things: no substance.

Messages were rapidly stacking up on Ongola’s board; he rang Emily to send him some assistance.

The captain of Maid of the Sea, fishing to the north, wanted to know what was happening. The skies about him were clear to the southern horizon. Patrice de Brogue, stationed out at Young Mountain with the seismic team, asked if he should send his crew back. There had been only a few rumbles in the past weeks, though there were some interesting changes in the gravity meter graphs. Ongola told him to send back as many as he could, not wanting to think what might have happened to homesteads in the path of that malevolent Threadfall.

Bonneau phoned in from Drake’s Lake, where it was still night and very clear. He offered to send a contingent.

Sallah Telgar-Andiyar got through from Karachi Camp and said that assistance was already on its way. How widespread was the rain? she wanted to know.

Ongola shunted all those calls when the first of the nearby settlements reported.

“If it hadn’t been for those dragonets,” said Aisling Hempenstahl of Bordeaux, “we’d all be—have been eaten alive.” Her swallow was audible. “Not a green thing to be seen, and all the livestock gone. Except the cow the dragonets drove into the river, and she’s a mess.”

“Any casualties?”

“None I can’t take care of myself, but we’ve little fresh food. Oh, and Kwan wants to know do you need him at Landing?”

“I’d say yes, indeed we do,” Ongola replied fervently. Then he tried again to raise the Du Vieux, the Radelins, the Grant van Toorns, the Ciottis, and the Holstroms. “Keep trying these, Jacob.” He passed the list over to Jacob Chernoff, who had brought three young apprentices to help. “Kurt, Heinrich, try the River numbers, Calusa, Cambridge, and Vienna.” Ongola called Lilienkamp at Stores. “Joel, how many checked out for hunting today?”

“Too many, Ongola, too many.” The tough Joel was weeping.

“Including your boys?”

Joel’s response was the barest whisper. “Yes.”

“I am sorry to hear that, Joel. We’ve organized searches. And the boys have dragonets.”

“Sure, but look how many it took to protect Landing!” His voice rose shrilly.

“Sir.” Kurt tugged urgently at Ongola’s bare elbow. “One of the sleds—”

“I’ll get back to you, Joel.” Ongola took the call from the sled. “Yes?”

“Whaddya do to kill this stuff, Ongola?” Ziv Marchane’s anquished cry sent a stab of pure terror and fury to Ongola’s guts.

“Cautery, Ziv. Who is it?”

“What’s left of young Joel Lilienkamp.”

“Bad?”

“Very.”

Ongola paused and closed his eyes tightly for a moment, remembering the two sheep. “Then give him mercy!”

Ziv broke the connection, and Ongola stared at the console, paralyzed. He had given mercy several times, too many times, during the Nathi War when his men had been blown apart after Nathi hits on his destroyer. The practice was standard procedure in surface engagements. One never left one’s wounded to Nathi mercy. Mercy, yes, it was mercy to do so. Ongola had never thought that necessity would ever arise again.

Paul Benden’s vibrant voice broke through his pained trance. “What in hell’s happening, Ongola?”

“Wish the hell I knew, Admiral.” Ongola shook his head and then gave him a precise report and a list of casualties, known or suspected.”

“I’m coming in.” Paul had staked his claim on the heights above the delta on the Boca River. It would soon be dawn there. “I’ll check other stakes on the way in.”

“Pol and Kitti want samples if they can be safely got—of the stuff in the air. It scores holes through thin materials, so be sure to use heavy-gauge metal or siliplex. We’ve got enough of what ate our fields bare. I’ve sent all our big sleds out to track the frigging Fall. Kenjo’s flying in from Honshu in that augmented speeder of his. The stuff just came out of nowhere, Paul, nowhere!”

“Didn’t register on anything? No? Well, we’ll check it all out.”

The absolute confidence in Paul Benden’s voice was a tonic for Ongola. He had heard that same note all through the Cygnus Battle and he took heart.

He needed it. Before Paul Benden arrived late that afternoon, the casualties had mounted to a frightening total. Only three of the twenty who had gone hunting that morning had returned: Sorka Hanrahan, Sean Connell, and David Catarel, who had watched, helpless, from the water as his companion, Lucy Tubberman, dissolved under the rain on the riverbank despite the frantic efforts of their dragonets. He had deep scores on his scalp, left cheek, arms, and shoulders, and he was suffering from shock and grief.

Two babies, obviously thrust at the last moment into a small metal cabinet, were the only survivors of the main Tuareg camp on the plains west of the big bend in the Paradise River. Sean and Sorka had gone to find the Connells, who had last been reported on the eastern spur of Kahrain Province. No one answered from the northern stakes on the Jordan River. It looked bad.

Porrig Connell had, for once, listened to the warnings of the dragonets and had taken shelter in a cave. It had not been large enough to accommodate all his horses, and four of the mares had died. When they screamed outside, the stallion had gone berserk in the confines of the cave, and Porrig had had to cut his throat. There was no fodder for the remaining mares, so Sean and Sorka returned with hay and food rations. Then they went off to search for other survivors.

The Du Vieux and Holstroms at Amsterdam Stake, the Radelins and Duquesnes at Bavaria, and the Ciottis at Milan Stake were dead; no trace remained of them or their livestock. The metals and heavy-gauge, silicon-based plastic roofing, though it was heavily pocked, remained as the only evidence of their once thriving settlement. They had used the newly pressed vegetable-fiber, slabs for their homes. No one on Pern ever would use such building material again.

From the air, the swath of destruction cut by the falling threadlike rain was obvious, the fringes seething with bloated wormlike excrescences which squadrons of dragonets attacked with flaming breath. The path ended seventy-five klicks beyond the narrow Paradise River, where it had annihilated the Tuareg camps.

By evening, the exhausted settlers fed their dragonets first, and left out mounds of cooked grain for the wild ones that would not approach near enough to be hand-fed.

“Nothing was said about this sort of thing in the EEC report,” Mar Dook muttered in a bitter tone.

“Those wretched polka dots no one ever explained,” Aisling Hempenstahl said, her voice just loud enough to be heard.

“We’ve been investigating that possibility,” Pol Nietro said, nodding to a weary Bay, who was resting her head against his shoulder.

“Nevertheless, I think we should arrive at some preliminary conclusions before tomorrow,” Kitti said. “People will need facts to be reassured.”

“Bill and I looked up the reports we did on the polka dots—” Carol Duff-Vassaloe smiled grimly. “—during Landing Year. We didn’t investigate every site, but the ones we examined where tree development could be measured suggests a time lapse of at least a hundred and sixty or seventy years. I think it’s rather obvious that it was this terrible life-form which caused the patterning, turning all organic material it meets into more of itself. Thank heavens most of our building plastics are silicon-based. If they were carbon-based, we’d all have been killed, without a doubt. This infestation—”

“Infestation?” Chuck Havers’s voice broke in incredulous anger.

“What else to call it?” Phas Radamanth remarked in his dogmatic fashion. “What we need to know is how often it occurs? Every hundred and fifty years? That patterning was planet-wide, wasn’t it, Carol?” She nodded. “And how long does it last once it occurs?”

“Last?” Chuck demanded, appalled.

“We’ll get the answers,” Paul Benden said firmly.