“You’ve no business in Fort Weyr,” Meron said, his tone rasping. “Get out of here!”

“Lord Meron,” N’ton said, stepping in front of F’nor. “F’nor of Benden has as much right in Fort Weyr as you.”

“How dare you speak to a Lord Holder in that fashion?”

“Can he have found something?” F’nor asked N’ton in a low voice.

N’ton shrugged and moved toward the Nabolese. The little lizard began to shriek. Grall extended her wings again. Her thoughts were a combination of dislike and annoyance, tinged with fear.

“Lord Nabol, you have had the use of the distance-viewer since full dark.”

“I’ll have the use of the distance-viewer as long as I choose, dragonman. Go away. Leave me!”

Far too accustomed to instant compliance with his orders, Nabol turned back to the viewer. F’nor’s eyes were used to the darkness by now and he could see the Lord Holder bend to place his eye to the viewer. He also saw that the man held tight to his fire lizard though the creature was twisting and writhing to escape. Its agitated screeching rose to a nerve-twitting pitch.

The little one is terrified, Canth told his rider.

“Grall terrified?” F’nor asked the brown dragon, startled. He could see that Grall was upset but he didn’t read terror in her thoughts.

Not Grall. The little brother. He is terrified. The man is cruel.

F’nor had never heard such condemnation from his dragon.

Suddenly Canth let out an incredible bellow. It startled the riders, the other two dragons, and put Grall into flight. Before half the dragons of Fort Weyr roused to bugle a query, Canth’s tactic had achieved the effect he’d wanted. Meron had lost his hold on the fire lizard and it had sprung free and gone between.

With a cry of rage for such interference, Meron sprang toward the Dragonriders, to find his way blocked by the menacing obstacle of Canth’s head.

“Your assigned rider will take you back to your Hold, Lord Meron,” N’ton informed the Lord Holder. “Do not return to Fort Weyr.”

“You’ve no right! You can’t deny me access to that distance-viewer. You’re not the Weyrleader. I’ll call a Conclave. I’ll tell them what you’re doing. You’ll be forced to act. You can’t fool me! You can’t deceive Nabol with your evasions and temporizing. Cowards! You’re cowards, the pack of you! Always knew it. Anyone can get to the Red Star. Anyone! I’ll call your bluff, you neutered perverts!”

The green dragon, her eyes redly malevolent, dipped her shoulder to Meron. Without a break in his ranting denunciation, the Lord of Nabol climbed the riding straps and took his place on her neck. She had not cleared the Star Stones before F’nor was at the distance-viewer, peering at the Red Star.

What could Meron have seen? Or was he merely bellowing baseless accusations to unsettle them?

As often as he had seen the Red Star with its boiling cover of reddish-gray clouds, F’nor still experienced a primitive stab of fear. Tonight the fear was like an extra-cold spine from his balls to his throat. The distance-viewer revealed the westward-pointing tail of the gray mass which resembled a featureless, backward Nerat. The jutting edge of the swirling clouds obscured it. Clouds that swirled to form a pattern – no lady braiding her hair tonight. Rather, a massive fist, thumb of darker gray curling slowly, menacingly over the clenched fingers as if the clouds themselves were grabbing the tip of the gray mass. The fist closed and lost its definition, resembling now a single facet of a dragon’s complete eye, half-lidded for sleep.

“What could he have seen?” N’ton demanded urgently, tapping F’nor’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Clouds,” F’nor said, stepping back to let N’ton in. “Like a fist. Which turned into a dragon’s eye. Clouds, that’s all he could have seen, over backward Nerat!”

N’ton looked up from the eyepiece, sighing with relief.

“Cloud formations won’t get us anywhere!”

F’nor held his hand up for Grall. She came down obediently and when she started to hop to his shoulder, he forestalled her, gently stroking her head, smoothing her wings flat. He held her level with his eyes and, without stopping the gentle caresses, began to project the image of that fist, lazily forming over Nerat. He outlined color, grayish-red, and whitish where the top of the imagined fingers might be sun-struck. He visualized the fingers closing above the Neratian peninsula. Then he projected the image of Grall taking the long step between, to the Red Star, into that cloud fist.

Terror, horror, a whirling many-faceted impression of heat, violent wind, burning breathlessness, sent him staggering against N’ton as Grall, with a fearful shriek, launched herself from his hand and disappeared.

“What happened to her?” N’ton demanded, steadying the brown rider.

“I asked her,” and F’nor had to take a deep breath because her reaction had been rather shattering, “to go to the Red Star.”

“Well, that takes care of Brekke’s idea!”

“But why did she over react that way? Canth?”

She was afraid! Canth replied didactically, although he sounded as surprised as F’nor. You gave vivid coordinates.

“I gave vivid coordinates?”

Yes.

“What terrified Grall? You aren’t reacting the way she did and you heard the coordinates.”

She is young and silly. Canth paused, considering something. She remembered something that scared her. The brown dragon sounded puzzled by that memory.

“What does Canth say?” N’ton asked, unable to pick up the quick exchange.

“He doesn’t know what frightened her. Something she remembers, he says.”

“Remembers? She’s only been hatched a few weeks.”

“A moment, N’ton.” F’nor put his hand on the bronze rider’s shoulder to silence him for a thought had suddenly struck him. “Canth,” he said taking a deep breath, “You said the coordinates I gave her were vivid. Vivid enough – for you to take me to that fist I saw in the clouds?”

Yes, I can see where you want me to go, Canth replied so confidently that F’nor was taken aback. But this wasn’t a time to think things out.

He buckled his tunic tightly and jammed the gloves up under the wristbands.

“You going back now?” N’ton asked.

“Fun’s over here for the night,” F’nor replied with a nonchalance that astonished him. “Want to make sure Grall got back safely to Brekke. Otherwise I’ll have to sneak in to Southern to the cove where she hatched.”

“Have a care then,” N’ton advised. “At least we’ve solved one problem tonight. Meron can’t make that fire lizard of his go to the Red Star ahead of us.”

F’nor had mounted Canth. He tightened the fighting straps until they threatened to cut off circulation. He waved to N’ton and the watchrider, suppressing his rising level of excitement until Canth had taken him high above the Weyr.

Then he stretched flat along Canth’s neck and looped the hand straps double around his wrists. Wouldn’t do to fall off during this jump between.

Canth beat steadily upward, directly toward the baleful Red Star, high in the dark heavens, almost as if the dragon proposed to fly there straight.

Clouds were formed by water vapors, F’nor knew. At least they were on Pern. But it took air to support clouds. Air of some kind. Air could contain various gases. Over the plains of Igen where the noxious vapors rose from the yellow mountains you could suffocate with the odor and the stuff in your lungs. Different gases issued from the young fire mountains that had risen in the shallow western seas to spout flame and boiling rock into the water. The miners told of other gases, trapped in tunnel hollows. But a dragon was fast. A second or two in the most deadly gas the Red Star possessed couldn’t hurt. Canth would jump them between to safety.

They had only to get to that fist, close enough for Canth’s long eyes to see to the surface, under the cloud cover. One look to settle the matter forever. One look that F’nor – not F’lar – would make.