Brekke could not see. Her eyes were filled with blood from vessels burst by the force of her cry. But she knew there was a speck in the sky, tumbling downward with a speed that increased with every length; a plunge as fatal as the one which Canth had tried to stop over the stony heights of the High Reaches range.

And there was no consciousness in that plummeting speck, no echo, however faint, to her despairing inquiry. The arrow of dragons ascended, great wings pumping. The arrow thickened, once, twice, three times as other dragons arrived, making a broad path in the sky, steadily striving for that falling mote.

It was as if the dragons became a ramp that received the unconscious body of their Weyrmate, received and braked its fatal momentum with their own bodies, until the last segment of overlapping wings eased the broken-winged ball of the bloody brown dragon to the floor of the Weyr.

Half-blinded as she was, Brekke was the first person to reach Canth’s bleeding body, F’nor still strapped to his burned neck. Her hands found F’nor’s throat, her fingers the tendon where his pulse should beat. His flesh was cold and sticky to the touch and ice would be less hard.

“He isn’t breathing,” someone cried. “His lips are blue!”

“He’s alive, he’s alive,” Brekke chanted. There, one faint shallow flutter against her seeking fingers. No, she didn’t imagine it. Another.

“There wasn’t any air on the Red Star. The blueness. He suffocated.”

Some half-forgotten memory prompted Brekke to wrench F’nor’s jaws apart. She covered his mouth with hers and exhaled deeply into his throat. She blew air into his lungs and sucked it out.

“That’s right, Brekke,” someone cried. That may work. Slow and steady! Breathe for yourself or you’ll pass out.”

Someone grabbed her painfully around the waist. She clung to F’nor’s limp body until she realized that they were both being lifted from the dragon’s neck.

She heard someone talking urgently, encouragingly to Canth.

“Canth! Stay!”

The dragon’s pain was like a cruel knot in Brekke’s skull. She breathed in and out. Out and in. For F’nor, for herself, for Canth. She was conscious as never before of the simple mechanics of breathing; conscious of the muscles of her abdomen expanding and contracting around a column of air which she forced up and out, in and out.

“Brekke! Brekke!”

Hard hands pulled at her. She clutched the wher-hide tunic beneath her.

“Brekke! He’s breathing for himself now. Brekke!”

They forced her away from him. She tried to resist but everything was a bloody blur. She staggered, her hand touching dragon hide.

Brekke. The pain-soaked tone was faint, as if from an incalculable distance, but it was Canth. Brekke?

“I am not alone!” And Brekke fainted, mind and body overtaxed by an effort which had saved two lives.

Spun out by ceaseless violence, the spores fell from the turbulent raw atmosphere of the thawing planet toward Pern, pushed and pulled by the gravitic forces of a triple conjunction of the system’s other planets.

The spores dropped through the atmospheric envelope of Pern. Attenuated by the friction of entry, they fell in a rain of hot filaments on the surface of the planet.

Dragons rose, destroying them with flaming breath. What Thread eluded the airborne beasts was efficiently seared into harmless motes by ground crews, or burrowed after by sand-worm and fire lizard.

Except on the eastern slope of a northern mountain plantation of hardwood trees. There men had carefully drawn back from the leading edge of the Fall. They watched, one with intent horror, as the silver rain scorched leaf and fell hissing into the soil. When the leading Edge had passed over the crest of the mountain, the men approached the points of impact cautiously, the nozzles of the flames throwers they carried a half-turn away from spouting flame.

The still smoldering hole of the nearest Thread entry was prodded with a metal rod. A brown fire lizard darted from the shoulder of one man and, chirping to himself, waddled over to the hole. He poked an inquisitive half-inch of nose into the ground. Then he rose in a dizzying movement and resumed his perch on the specially padded shoulder of his handler and began to preen himself fastidiously.

His master grinned at the other men.

“No Thread, F’lar. No Thread, Corman!”

The Benden Weyrleader returned Asgenar’s smile, hooking his thumbs in his broad riding belt.

“And this is the fourth Fall with no burrows and no protection, Lord Asgenar?”

The Lord of Lemos Hold nodded, his eyes sparkling. “No burrows on the entire slope.” He turned in triumph to the one man who seemed dubious and said, “Can you doubt the evidence of your eyes, Lord Groghe?”

The ruddy-faced Lord of Fort Hold shook his head slowly.

“C’mon, man,” said the white-haired man with the prominent, hooked nose. “What more proof do you need? You’ve seen the same thing on lower Keroon, you’ve seen it in Telgar Valley. Even that idiot Vincent of Nerat Hold has capitulated.”

Groghe of Fort Hold shrugged, indicating a low opinion of Vincent, Lord Holder of Nerat.

“I just can’t put any trust in a handful of squirming insects. Relying on dragons makes sense.”

“But you’ve seen grubs devour Thread!” F’lar persisted. His patience with the man was wearing thin.

“It isn’t right for a man,” and Groghe drew himself up, “to be grateful to grubs!”

“I don’t recall your being over-grateful to Dragonkind either,” Asgenar reminded him with pointed malice.

“I don’t trust grubs!” Groghe repeated, jutting his chin out at a belligerent angle. The golden fire lizard on his shoulder crooned softly and rubbed her down-soft head against his cheek. The man’s expression softened slightly. Then he recalled himself and glared at F’lar. “Spent my whole life trusting Dragonkind. I’m too old to change. But you’re running the planet now. Do as you will. You will anyhow!”

He stalked away, toward the waiting brown dragon who was Fort Hold’s resident messenger. Groghe’s fire lizard extended her golden wings, crooning as she balanced herself against his jolting strides.

Lord Corman of Keroon fingered his large nose and blew it out briskly. He had a disconcerting habit of unblocking his ears that way. “Old fool. He’ll use grubs. He’ll use them. Just can’t get used to the idea that it’s no good wanting to go to the Red star and blasting Thread on its home ground. Groghe’s a fighter. Doesn’t sit well with him to barricade his Hold, as it were, and wait out the siege. He likes to charge into things, straighten them out his way.”

“The Weyrs appreciate your help, Lord Corman,” F’lar began.

Corman snorted, blew out his ears again before waving aside F’lar’s gratitude. “Common sense. Protect the ground. Our ancestors were a lot smarter than we are.”

“I don’t know about that,” Asgenar said, grinning.

“I do, young fellow,” Corman retorted decisively. Then added hesitantly, “How’s F’nor? And what’s his name – Canth.”

The days when F’lar evaded a direct answer were now past. He smiled reassuringly. “He’s on his feet. Not much the worse for wear,” although F’nor would never lose the scars on the cheek where particles had been forced into the bone. “Canth’s wings are healing, though new membrane grows slowly. He looked like raw meat when they got back, you know. There wasn’t a hand-span on his body, except where F’nor had lain, that hadn’t been scoured bare. He has the entire Weyr hopping to when he itches and wants to be oiled. That’s a lot of dragon to oil.” F’lar chuckled as much to reassure Corman who looked uncomfortable hearing a list of Canth’s injuries as in recollection of the sight of Canth dominating a Weyr’s personnel.

“Then the beast will fly again.”

“We believe so. And he’ll fight Thread, too. With more reason than any of us.”