Master Robinton winked at Menolly and Sharra and the two girls divested the lecturing Starsmith of his outer garments while he explained, almost oblivious to their assistance, that this was his first visit to the South- ern Continent and yes, he had of course heard of the aberrant behavior of the three stars known as the Dawn Sisters. Until recently he had put the anomaly down to the inexperience of the observers. But, with Master Robinton himself noting their peculiarities, Wansor felt justified in bringing his precious instru- ment to the South to investigate the matter himself. Stars did not remain in fixed positions in the sky. All his equations, not to mention such experienced ob- servers such as N'ton and Lord Larad, had verified this characteristic. Furthermore the Records handed down from the ancients, though they were in a shocking state, mentioned that stars undeniably followed a pattern of movement. Stars obeyed laws. Therefore when three stars had been observed to be in defiance of these nat- ural laws, there had to be some explanation. He was hoping to find it this evening.
Vot without a good deal of discussion, the site for this viewing was placed on the slight elevation of the stony eastern tip of Cove Hold, beyond the spot where the roasting and baking pits had been dug. Master Fandarel drafted Piemur and Jaxom to help him erect a frame on which he placed a swivel to mount the new viewer. Wansor, naturally, supervised this pro- ject until he was so in the Smith's way that the good man sat his Craftmaster on the edge of the promon- tory, near the trees, where he had a full view of all the activities but was no longer in his way. By the time the frame had been completed, Master Wansor was fast asleep, his head cushioned on his hands, snor- ing in a soft rhythm.
Finger against his lips to indicate the little man was not to be disturbed, Fandarel led Jaxom and Piemur back to the main beach. They all took a re- freshing swim before joining the others in the after- noon rest. Rather than miss a single moment of the dusky display of the Sisters, everyone ate on the promontory. Master Idarolan brought out his ship's viewer, and the Smith quickly constructed a second frame from the materials left over from making Wansor's.
Sunset, which had previously come upon them all 347 too quickly, seemed delayed and delayed. Jaxom thought that if Wansor adjusted either the viewer or his bench, or his position on the bench, one more time, he would probably display some aberrant be- havior of his own. Even the dragons who'd been play- ing in the water as if the sport had just been invented, were sprawled quietly on the beach, the fire-lizards sleeping about Ruth or perched on their friends' shoul- ders.
The sun finally went down, spreading its brilliant aftercolors across the western horizon. As the eastern sky darkened, Wansor put his eye to his instrument, let out a startled cry and nearly fell backward off his bench.
"It can't be. There is no possible logical explanation for such an arrangement." He righted himself and looked once again through, the viewer, making delicate adjustments to the focus. "
Master Idarolan- had his eye pressed to his own viewer. "I see only the Dawn Sisters in their usual alignment. Just as they have always been."
"But they can't be. They are close together. Stars do not congregate so closely. They are always far dis- tant."
"Here, let me have a look, man." The Smith was al- most dancing in eagerness to have a glimpse through the instrument. Wansor reluctantly gave way to him, repeating the impossibility of what he had just seen.
"N'ton, your eyes are younger!" The Seaman passed his viewer to the bronze rider, who quickly accepted it.
"I see three round objects!" Fandarel announced in a booming voice. "Round metallic objects. Manmade objects. Those are not stars, Wansor," he said, looking at the distressed Starsmith, "those are things!"
Robinton, almost shoving the Smith's bulk to one side, bent his eye to the viewer, gasping.
"They are round. They do shine. As metal does. Not as stars do."
"One thing sure," Piemur said irreverently in the awed silence, "you have now found traces of our ancestors in the South, Master Robinton."
"Your observation is eminently correct," the Harper said in such a curiously muffled tone Jaxom wasn't cer- tain if the man was suppressing laughter or anger, "but not at all what I had in mind and you know it!"
Everyone was given a chance to peer through Wan- sor's device, since Master Idarolan's was not powerful enough. Everyone concurred with Fandarel's verdict: the so-called Dawn Sisters were not stars. Equally in- disputable was that they were round, metallic objects that apparently hung in a stationary position in the sky. Even the moons had been observed to turn a dif- ferent side to Pern in the course of their regular cycles.
F'lar and Lessa as well as F'nor were asked to come with all urgency before the nightly appearance of the Dawn Sisters was over. Lessa's irritation at such a summons evaporated when she saw the phenomenon. F'lar and F'nor monopolized the instrument for the short space of time that the peculiar objects remained visible in the slowly darkening sky.
When Wansor was seen trying to work equations in the Sand, Jaxom and Piemur hurriedly brought out a table and some drawing tools. The Starsmith wrote furiously for some minutes and then studied the result he'd achieved as if this presented a more inscrutable puzzle. Bewildered, he asked Fandarel and N'ton to check his figures for error.
"If there's no error, what is your conclusion. Master Wansor?" F'lar asked him.
"Those... those things are stationary. They stay in the same position over Pern all the time. As if they were following the planet."
"That would prove, would it not," Robinton said, unperturbed, "that they are manmade."
"My conclusion precisely," but Wansor did not appear to be reassured. "They were made to stay where they are all the time."
"And we can't get from here to there," F'nor said in a regretful murmur.
"Don't you dare, F'nor," Brekke said with such fer- vor that F'lar and the Harper chuckled.
"They were made to stay there," Piemur began,
"but they couldn't have been made here, could they, Master Fandarel?"
"I doubt it. The Records give us hints of many mar- velous things made by men but no mention was ever made of stationary stars."
"But the Records say that men came to Pern..." Piemur looked at the Harper for confirmation. "Per- haps they used those things to travel from some other place, some other world, to get here. To Pern!"
"With all the worlds in the heavens to choose from," Brekke began, breaking the thoughtful silence that fol- lowed Piemur's conclusion, "had they no better place to come to than Pern?"
"If you'd seen as much of it as I have lately," Piemur said, his spirit undaunted for any appreciable length of time, "you'd know that Pern's not all that bad a world... if you ignore the danger of Thread!"
"Some of us never can," F'lar replied in a wry tone.
Menolly gave Piemur a sharp jab in the ribs, but F'lar only laughed when Piemur suddenly realized the tactlessness of his remark.
"This is a most amazing development," Robinton said, his eyes sweeping the night sky as if more mys- teries were to be revealed. "To see the very vehicles that brought our ancestors to this world."
"A good topic for some quiet reflections, eh, Mas- ter Robinton?" Oldive asked, with a sly grin on his face and an emphasis on the quiet.
The Harper made an impatient dismissal of that sug- gestion.
"Well, sir, you could hardly go there," the Healer said.
"I cannot," Master Robinton agreed. Then startling everyone, he suddenly thrust his right arm in the direc- tion of the Three Sisters. "Zair, the round objects in the sky? Can you go there?"
Jaxom held his breath, felt the rigidity of Menolly's body beside him and knew she wasn't breathing either. He heard Brekke's sharp, quickly muffled cry. Every- one watched Zair.
The little bronze stretched his head toward Robin- 350 ton's lips and made a soft quizzical noise in his throat.
"Zair? The Dawn Sisters?" Robinton repeated his words. "Would you go there?"
Now Zair cocked his head at his friend, clearly not unde
rstanding what was asked of him.
"Zair? The Red Star?"
The effect of that question was instantaneous. Zair vanished with a squawk of angry fear, and the fire- lizards nestling by Ruth woke and followed his lead.
"That does seem to answer both questions," F'lar said.
"What does Ruth say?" Menolly whispered in Jaxom's ear.
"About the Dawn Sisters? Or Zair?" "Either."
"He's been asleep," Jaxom replied after consulting his dragon.
"He would be!"
"So? What did Beauty image before she winked out?"
"Nothing!"
Despite an evening of earnest debate and discussion, the humans solved nothing either. Robinton and Wan- sor would probably have kept the conversation up all night if Master Oldive hadn't slipped something into Robinton's wine. No one had actually seen him, but one moment Master Robinton was arguing forcefully with Wansor, the next he had wilted at the table. No sooner was his head down than he began to snore.
"He cannot neglect his health for talking's sake," Master Oldive remarked, signaling to the dragonriders to help him carry the Harper to his bed.
That effectively ended the evening. The dragonrid- ers returned to their Weyrs, Oldive and Fandarel to their respective Halls. Wansor remained. A full wing of dragons could not have dragged him from Cove Hold.
It had been tactfully decided not to broadcast the true nature of the Dawn Sisters, at least until such time as Wansor and other interested starcrafters had had a chance to study the phenomenon and reach some conclusion that would not alarm people. There'd been enough shocks of late, F'lar commented. Some might construe those harmless objects to be a danger, much as the Red Star was.
"Danger?" Fandarel had exclaimed. "Were there any danger from those things, we should have known it many Turns past."
To that, F'lar agreed readily enough but, with every- one conditioned to believe that disaster fell from sky- bome things, it was better to be discreet.
F'lar did agree to send anyone who could be spared from Benden to help search. It was, the Weyrleader felt, more important than ever to discover just what this land contained.
As Jaxom pushed his legs into his sleeping blanket, he tried not to be annoyed with the thought of another invasion in Cove Hold, just when he thought he and
Sharra would be left alone for a while.
Had she been avoiding him? Or was it simply that circumstances had intervened? Such as Piemur's pre- mature arrival in Cove Hold? The worry over Master Kobinton, the need to explore which left them too tired to do more than crawl into their furs, the arrival of half of Pern to complete the Hold for the Harper, then his arrival, and now this! No, Sharra had not been avoiding him. She seemed... there. Her beautiful rich laugh, a tone below Menolly's, her face often hidden by the strands of dark hair which kept escaping thong and clip...
He wished, intensely, that Cove Hold would not be overrun again—a wish that did him little good since he had no control over what was going to happen here. He was Lord of Ruatha, not of the Cove. If the place belonged to anyone, it was Master Robinton's and Menolly's by virtue of their being storm-swept into it.
Jaxom sighed, his conscience nagging at him. Master
Oldive had rated him fully recovered from the effects of fire-head. So he could go between. He and Ruth could return to Ruatha Hold. He ought to return to
Ruatha Hold. But he didn't want to—and not just because of Sharra.
It wasn't as if he were needed in Ruatha. Lytol would manage the Hold as he'd always done. Ruth was not required to fight Thread either at Ruatha or at Fort Weyr. Benden had been lenient but F'lar had made it plain that the white dragon and the young Lord of Ruatha were not to be at risk.
There had been no prohibition, had there, Jaxom suddenly realized, to his exploring. In fact no one had suggested that he ought to return to Ruatha now.
Jaxom took some comfort in that thought, if he took none at all in the knowledge that tomorrow F'lar would be sending in riders—riders whose dragons could fly considerably faster and farther than his Ruth, riders who'd be able to reach the mountain before him. Rid- ers who might just discover those traces which Robin- ton hoped existed somewhere in the interior of the Southern Continent. Riders who might also see in Sharra the beauty and gentle warmth of spirit that at- tracted Jaxom.
He tried, turning on the rushes yet again, to find a comfortable position, to find sleep. Maybe Robinton's plan for himself, Sharra, Menolly and Piemur would not undergo revision. As Piemur constantly reminded them all, dragons were great for flying over, but you still had to traverse the ground on foot to really know it. F'lar and Robinton might well want the dragonriders to spread out, cover as much territory as possible, and let the original explorers continue on to the moun- tain.
Jaxom then admitted to himself that he wanted to be first to the mountain! That serenely symmetrical cone had drawn him, sick and fevered, back to the Cove, had dominated his waking hours and intruded with nightmarish drama into his dreams. He wanted to be first to reach it, irrational as the notion might be.
Somewhere in the middle of these reflections, he did fall asleep. Again those overlapping scenes figured in his dreams: again the mountain erupted, one whole side shattering and spewing pulsmgly red-orange flaming rocks and hot flows of molten lava down its side. Again Jaxom was both frightened refugee and dispassionate observer. Then the red wall began bearing down on him, so close to his heels that he could feel its hot breath on his feet...
He woke! The rising sun was slanting through the trees to caress his right foot which protruded from a rent in the light blanket. Rising sun!
Jaxom felt for Ruth. His dragon was still asleep in the clearing for the old shelter where a sandy wallow had been made to accommodate him.
Jaxom glanced across to Piemur, who slept in a neat ball, both hands resting under his right cheek. Slipping out of his bed, Jaxom noiselessly opened the door and, carrying his sandals, tiptoed out through the kitchen. Ruth stirred briefly, dislodging a fire-lizard or two from his back, as Jaxom passed him. Jaxom paused, struck by some puzzle. He stared at Ruth, then at the fire-lizards. None of those nestled against his friend were banded. He must ask Ruth when he woke if the Southern fire-lizards always slept with him. If they did, those dreams could be fire-lizard dreams—old mem- ories triggered by the presence of men! That mountain! No, from this side a perfect cone appeared to the naked eye, unblemished by eruptive damage!
As soon as he reached the beach, Jaxom glanced up to see if he could sight the Dawn Sisters. But it was, unfortunately, already too late to catch their morning appearance.
The two viewers, Wansor's carefully covered with wherhide against morning dew and Idarolan's in its leather case, were still mounted on their frames. Grinning at the futility of his action, Jaxom nonetheless couldn't resist uncovering Wansor's viewer and peering skyward. He recovered the instrument carefully and stood looking southeast, toward the mountain.
In his dream the cone had blown out. And there were two sides to that mountain. Suddenly decisive, he removed the Seaman's viewer from its case. Though he might get more definition from Wansor's, he wouldn't presume to alter that careful focus. Besides, Idarolan's was strong enough for what he needed. Not that it could show the damage that Jaxom had half-hoped to see. Thoughtfully he lowered the instrument. He could go between now. Further, he was under Master Robin- ton's orders to explore the Southlands. More important, he wanted to be first to that mountain!
He laughed. This venture was scarcely as dangerous as the return of the egg. He and Ruth could go be- tween and return before anyone in Cove Hold was aware of their intention. He took the viewer from its mounting. He'd need this with him. Once he and Ruth were airborne, he'd have to get a good long look at the mountain to find a point to which Ruth could move safely between.
He pivoted on his heel and lurched backward in surprise. Piemur, Sharra and Menolly were standing in a row, watching him.
"Do tell. Lord Jaxom, what yo
u saw in the Seaman's viewer? A mountain, perhaps?" Piemur asked, show- ing all his teeth in that smug grin.
On Menolly's shoulder. Beauty chirped.
"Did he see enough?" Menolly asked Piemur, ignor- ing Jaxom.
"I'd say he had!"
"He wouldn't have planned to go without us, would he?" Sharra asked.
They regarded him with mocking expressions.
"Ruth can't carry four."
None of you are fat. I could manage, Ruth said.
Sharra laughed, covered her mouth to silence the sound and pointed an accusing finger at him.
"I'll bet anything Ruth just said he could!" she told the other two.
"I'll bet you're right." Menolly didn't take her eyes from Jaxom's face. "I think it really is best if you have some help on this venture." She drawled the last two words significantly.
Anne McCaffrey - Pern06 White Dragon Page 37