More importantly, Lessa and F'lar reported favorably on the reduction of Thread density during the largest Fall over Nerat. There had been three long columns entirely free of the deadly rain. So Lessa and F'lar came to Landing to discuss adding that task to the on-board duties. Aivas had a tape of the incident so that Benden Weyrleaders could view it, which they did several times.
"Incredible to think Thread can be destroyed without dragon assistance," Lessa murmured in a low voice.
"Too bad there aren't a dozen more colony ships up there," Piemur said.
"Then dragons wouldn't have been needed, and that doesn't bear thinking of, " Lessa snapped back at him.
"I spoke as a harper, Weyrwoman," Piemur said courteously, "as I, for one, am very glad dragons do exist."
"I think, F'lar, that we should go to the Yokohama," Lessa remarked. "There's enough oxygen for Ramoth and Mnementh in the cargo bay by now. isn't there, Aivas?"
"There is. It is essential that the larger dragons become accustomed to the conditions of space," Aivas replied. Lessa and F'lar exchanged meaningful glances. "The next stream should intersect with the Yokohama's orbit in three days' time, at precisely 1522 hours ship time."
"That's late morning, isn't it, Benden time?" F'lar asked, turning to Lessa. "We'll go then, direct from Benden."
"Who's going to take me then?" Robinton asked, sitting straight up in his chair and looking aggrieved.
"I will," D'ram said. "Surely there's enough air for three big dragons, isn't there, Aivas?" The old Weyrleader's tone implied that there had better be.
"Certainly," was Aivas's prompt assurance.
"Well, then," Robinton said, brushing his hands together in complete satisfaction, "that takes care of that."
13
LESSA WAS JUST a trifle put out when Ruth, with Jaxom, Sharra, and Oldive astride, joined the three big dragons the morning of their first ascent to the Yokohama.
"Sharra and Oldive volunteered to dissect the Thread egg," Jaxom said without apology, "and I'm to man the telescope and give Aivas fore and aft views of the Thread stream."
What Jaxom did not say was that Ruth might need to give the big dragons a few helpful hints on how to manage themselves in free-fall. So far, none of the green dragons had experienced any difficulty with the unusual sensation of weightlessness. The fire-lizards had been totally fearless and almost casual about coming up to see what the dragons, especially Ruth, were doing on the Yokohama. Mirrim was scheduled for algae-farming on the other two vessels that day, so that would give the party two dragons suitable for bridge-to-bridge transfer.
Going between from the brilliant sunlight and balmy air of Landing to the big, dimly lit cargo bay on the Yokohama brought exclamations from all the initiates.
"Jaxom, I thought you said there were lights," Lessa said.
"There are," he replied, agilely dismounting and expertly pushing himself toward the main switches on the wall by the lift. He was rather pleased that, with such an audience, he arrived effortlessly at the exact spot. Being well aware of the load soon to be taxing the solar panels, he activated only the ring lights, not the power-eating overhead globes.
"Amazing!" Master Robinton exclaimed, staring around the immense, empty facility.
Ramoth made an odd little noise in her throat as she viewed her surroundings, her eyes idly whirling. Mnementh lowered his head, sniffing at the scarred deck plates, peering into the corners, his eyes calm. D'ram's Tiroth stretched his neck until his head reached the ceiling. At that point, his feet lifted slowly from the floor, startling the big bronze into a bellow of protest.
You are in free fall, Tiroth, Ruth said casually. Every action has a reaction. Gently push yourself back to the floor with your snout. See? That was easy.
Then Ramoth swung her head too rapidly about to see what was happening to Tiroth and started to drift.
Don't fight the motion, Ramoth, Ruth said, just relax and let yourself go with the movement. Now, easily swing your head back. See, it's not hard at all. Look at me.
"Ruth!" Jaxom said repressively, "don't you dare show off."
I'm not showing off, I'm showing! Ruth executed a slow backflip, careful to keep his wings tight against his spine where they would not interfere with his progress. We weigh no more than a fire-lizard up here! And then he twirled around on his tail end.
"Ruth!" Jaxom bellowed, his voice echoing off the walls of the bay.
"I think you've made your point, Lord Jaxom," F'lar said, a ripple of suppressed amusement in his voice. "Easy does it, right?" Moving carefully, F'lar swung out of his accustomed perch between Mnementh's neck ridges and found that he had propelled himself deckward. "An incredible feeling! Try it, Lessa. I know you don't weigh much under any circumstances, but I just drifted down! Amazing sensation! No strain for you, Robinton."
There were a few misjudgments as the passengers experimented. Sharra, discreetly assisting Masterhealer Oldive to the deck, made for the lift to start their day's project: a close examination of the egg in the airlock. Aivas has recommended that they take the Thread to the medical station on the top coldsleep deck. Laboratory facilities were still in place there, including a microscope more powerful than anything they had yet managed to build. The section had sufficient air but was not yet too warm, Aivas assured them. For an unemotional piece of machinery, Aivas was exhibiting an odd insistence for what Sharra would have thought a relatively unimportant element of the total project.
When the others had grown somewhat accustomed to the vagaries of free-fall, Jaxom escorted them to the bridge. Certainly he was as eager to show Lessa, F'lar, Robinton, and D'ram his familiarity with the Yokohama's bridge as Ruth was to discreetly supervise the big dragons. Standing in the open lift, Jaxom's novices did not disappoint him: they were as genuinely awestruck by the view of Pern as he could wish. He gave them time to absorb the wondrous sight of the sunlit continent and the brilliantly blue sea, then gently shooed them into the room so that the lift door could close. They clung for a while to the guardrail, coming to terms with their experience.
Propelling himself smoothly to the captain's chair, Jaxom fed the telescope program, checked the ready room, where Sharra was helping Oldive into a space suit, and tuned one of the ceiling screens in to the laboratory.
F'lar dragged his gaze away from the riveting view of Pern to eye the specimen. "It's not as big as I thought it'd be," he said.
"No, it's not. That's why it d be interesting to see how a big, long Thread fits into such a confined envelope," Jaxom replied.
Lessa shot one glance at it before turning back to the more compelling panorama. "Can we go to the window?" she asked.
"Just push yourself off gently-don't worry," he added when she started to float and tried to stop herself. "Just flow. Don't struggle." She went by him, rotating, and he reached up and halted the motion. Then, with a gentle shove, he aimed her at the window.
Robinton, having observed her mistakes, did not repeat them, and shortly he was beside her at the window, his feet dangling a handspan above the floor. D'ram gave a grunt and went handover-hand down to the nearest console, where he strapped himself into the chair.
"How long before the stream starts to intersect the Yokohama's path?" he asked.
Jaxom set D'ram's screen at its highest magnification and called up the appropriate sector. As D'ram's screen refocused, the old bronze rider reared back in his chair, his expression blank with shock as the ragged beginnings of the wave appeared so immediately in front of him.
"It's not that close to us yet, D'ram. I just gave you an enhanced image. Here, I'll give you the actual perspective." Jaxom altered the magnitude so that the incoming stream was merely a sunlit smudge dropping toward them from the fourth quadrant.
"How near is it?" D'ram asked, his voice dry and cracking.
"Proximity monitor suggests we've a good ten minutes before contact," Jaxom said.
F'lar cautiously made his way to D'ram and hung on to the chair back, his le
gs almost horizontal to the floor. Then he levered himself into the other station and strapped in.
Are you all right down there? Jaxom asked Ruth as privately as he could so as not to be overheard by Ramoth.
She's far too busy enjoying free fall, Ruth replied, his tone amused. She's better at it then Mnementh and Tiroth, for all she's bigger. She's not using as much shove. I think they are doing much better without their riders watching. Watch your wings, Ramoth! Not much room in here!
Jaxom grinned, then froze as he caught movement in the lab. Sharra and Oldive were entering the room, Sharra moving as gracefully as the magnetic boots allowed, one gloved hand guiding Oldive's jerkier progress. Jaxom watched, rapt, as they attempted to penetrate the hard shell of Thread. Then Mirrim, on green Path, arrived on the bridge.
"Who'm I taking to the Bahrain?" she asked, grinning at the sight of Lessa and Robinton stretched across the window.
"Whoever will go with you," Jaxom said. "Lessa? F'lar?"
Lessa made an injudiciously sharp movement of her head and flattened herself against the window. "I'll go with you, Mirrim." No, Ramoth, it's perfectly all right. I assure you that you would not fit on the. bridge here, much less on the Bahrain's. You learn to keep your balance down there in the bay where you have some space to maneuver.
Jaxom asked Ruth to oblige F'lar, and the white dragon jumped between to the bridge.
"You know the drill?" Jaxom asked the Benden Weyrleaders.
Lessa gave him a hard stare as she floated across to Path, but F'lar chuckled and replied meekly, "I assure you, we've been practicing hard, Jaxom. My thanks, Ruth, " he added as he glided up to the white dragon's back and settled himself.
"Bit easier to bestride than that great hulk of yours, isn't he?" Jaxom replied, grinning at the mild surprise on the bronze rider's face. "Have a good destructive time! You've got three minutes before contact."
"Where do I sit, Jaxom?" Robinton asked eagerly, pushing himself off from the window.
"Where F'lar was."
Much as Jaxom's fingers itched to insert the command, he found it equally gratifying to watch the expression on the Harper's face as he performed the task. As the smiths had on the previous occasion, Robinton and D'ram both recoiled as the ovoids hurtled toward the window. D'ram grunted as the first puffs signaled the destruction, then sat with arms folded across his chest, eyes narrowed, a look of deep satisfaction on his face.
"You know, D'ram, we really ought to get Lytol to come here one time," Robinton said. "It might ease his heart to destroy Thread. He never had the chance as a rider."
"Might do him some good at that," D'ram remarked thoughtfully.
"Aivas?" Jaxom opened the channel to Landing. "Are the pictures coming in clearly enough?"
"Yes, Jaxom, and the density is up by seven percent or more on the previous Fall."
"Then this predestruction will be welcome."
Jaxom turned his attention to the coldsleep laboratory, where the two healers were having trouble penetrating the shell of the Thread with the instruments they had brought with them.
"We've pounded, we've chipped, we've scraped-and we've not so much as scratched the surface," Sharra told Jaxom in disgust, waving a chisel in frustration.
"So much for those who fear it would leak out and devour us," Oldive said. He sounded more amused than frustrated. "Amazing envelope. Impervious to everything we thought would easily cut through it."
"Diamond cutters?" Jaxom suggested.
"You know, that might be just the thing," Oldive said, pleased. "Well, I certainly won't mind coming up here again. I've never felt so mobile." Although he generally paid no attention to his physical handicaps, his hunched back and crushed pelvis had given him uneven leg lengths and a crabbed gait. In weightlessness those problems were neutralized.
"This is an instance," Aivas said blandly, "when the teleportational abilities of the fire-lizards would come in exceedingly useful."
"Meer and Talla wouldn't know a diamond cutter if it bit them, " Sharra said ruefully. Then Jaxom heard her ruffled breath of a sigh. "I doubt if even that sort of an edge will have any effect on this thing. Its casing is impervious."
"Not to heat," Jaxom reminded her.
"There is no way, Lord Jaxom of Ruatha," Sharra said, settling her hands on her hips in a characteristic posture, "that you will get us to heat that thing up to simulate the friction of an ovoid's passage through atmospheric levels! Not that one could use a flamethrower in such a confined space as this lab."
"You do not have the technology necessary to produce a narrow heat beam such as a laser that would be effective on such a casing," Aivas added. "Another area in which you will have to make great progress over the next Turn."
"Oh? Why?" Jaxom asked, noting the quick interest of both Robinton and D'ram.
"There is no point, at this juncture, to elaborate on device or need," Aivas replied. "It is a matter that has been placed in the Mastersmith's hands but does not have priority over other, more essential, projects."
"Haven't you any helpful suggestions for us?" Sharra asked Aivas caustically.
"The diamond-cutter edge will be effective."
"Then why on earth didn't you suggest that we bring one along on this trip?" she demanded.
"The question was not put to this facility."
"The trouble with you, Aivas," Sharra continued with some asperity, "is that you only tell us what you think we should know: not necessarily all we need to know or what we want to know."
A long silence ensued, during which she and Oldive left the laboratory, sealing the door behind them.
"Sharra's right, you know," D'ram remarked at last.
"Indeed," Robinton said.
"But would we have thought that a diamond cutter would be necessary, considering the selection of edged tools Sharra and Oldive did bring with them?" Jaxom asked, though he agreed completely with his mate and was rather proud of her for speaking so bluntly. It was significant, too, that Aivas had not refuted the accusation.
Robinton shrugged in answer to Jaxom's question. D'ram, however, pulled at his lower lip.
"Diamond cutters are used for gemstones and glass etching. Why would we think to use them to cut open a Thread capsule?" the old Weyrleader asked. He lifted his hands, expressing inadequacy.
"Master Fandarel would have," Robinton remarked. Then he sighed. "We have so much still to understand, to learn, to appreciate. Is there ever an end, Aivas?"
"To what?"
Master Robinton turned a wry smile to Jaxom. "The question was rhetorical, Aivas."
From Aivas, there was silence.
Later, when the group returned to Cove Hold, the consensus was that the sojourn on the Yokohama had been eminently successful. The dragons had become comfortable in free-fall; the humans had had the gratifying experience of cutting ship-shaped tunnels through incoming Thread at no risk to themselves or their dragons. Once their riders had dismounted, the dragons headed for the warm water of the Cove lagoon; and the humans, themselves, were by no means averse to a relaxing swim. Fortunately, Lytol had anticipated these needs and arranged for the meal he had ordered to be delayed until everyone had been refreshed.
Ramoth had become so accustomed to fire-lizards by now that she did not object when wild ones came to assist the riders in scrubbing their dragons. In fact, she insisted that because she was the largest, she needed more to help Lessa scrub her, Lessa being not as big as the other riders. And Ruth has Jaxom and Sharra to bathe him, she added imperiously.
When a laughing Lessa repeated Ramoth's remark, Robinton announced that he was more than willing to scrub a queen. Then D'ram said that there were far too many fire-lizards helping Lessa, whereas Robinton had been flown to the Yokohama by Tiroth and so the Harper ought, out of courtesy, to wash the bronze. In the end, all the apprentices and journeyfolk working at Cove Hold, save Lytol, waded into the waters and helped bathe the five dragons.
After a very pleasant evening meal spent in mo
st congenial company, Jaxom, Sharra, and Oldive reluctantly departed for Ruatha. Jaxom was growing as accustomed to these long days as Sharra. Making use of the extra hours allowed him to acquit his Hold responsibilities while continuing to indulge himself in the Aivas schedule. While Sharra and Oldive dealt with the patients in the Hold infirmary, he located Brand and oversaw the enlargement of the beasthold at Riverside, and checked over the improvements to two more minor hold properties.
Having put in a twenty-hour day, he was not best pleased then to be awakened in the black of the night by an urgent message from F'lessan, relayed to him by Ruth.
Golanth says that the roof of Honshu caved in and something very curious, and quite possibly very important, has been discovered in a secret room, Ruth said, faithfully repeating what he had been told. Golanth has informed Lessa, F'lar, K'van, and T'gellan. Messages have also been sent to Master Fandarel, and for Master Robinton, to relay to Aivas.
Jaxom did not move for a long moment, though his mind actively considered the information. He resented being roused from much-needed rest and yearned to go back to sleep.
Golanth does not ever bother us unnecessarily, Ruth added almost contritely.
I know that! Jaxom replied wearily. Any indication of Aivas's response to this message?
If you are not in Aivas's presence, I can't hear what he says.
Ruth was silent for a long moment while Jaxom argued with himself about leaving the warn bed and his sleeping, wife and making an adequate response to this new summons.
Tiroth is bringing all three from Cove Hold with him, the white dragon went on at last. He says that Lytol believes this could be very important. Aivas was insistent that these sacks be investigated as soon as possible. Ramoth and Mnementh will come. Everyone who was asked is coming.
Stifling a groan, Jaxom eased himself out of bed, careful not to disturb Sharra. She needed the sleep as much as he did. Maybe this wouldn't take long and he could get back before she discovered him gone again. She and Oldive were keen to return to the Yokohama with a diamond cutter. He would hate to disappoint them because he had been called elsewhere.
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