Dragons Dawn

by Anne McCaffrey

  In that dawn hour, the wind had dropped, saving much of the eastern section of Landing from the worst of the shower of smaller rocks and hot ash. The larger, devastating projectiles that Patrice had feared did not appear. But the lava was sufficiently frightening a menace.

  The Parrakeet, laden with irreplaceable equipment, pierced the western gloom, her engine blasts visible, if not audible, as she drove northwest and out of danger.

  At the sound of the klaxon, the dolphins began to tow heavily laden small boats out of Monaco Bay, a flotilla of vessels not ordinarily suitable for any prolonged sea travel. The dolphins had assured humans that they would get their charges safely to the sheltered harbor beyond the first Kahrain peninsula. Maid and Mayflower, which were not fully loaded, left the harbor to wait outside the estimated fallout zone until they could return for the last of their cargoes. Jim, on board the Southern Cross, shepherded barges and luggers along the coast on their long journey to Seminole, from where they would make the final run north.

  Sleds and skimmers streamed between Landing and Paradise River Hold as the nearest safe assembly point. Traffic there was chaotic, as vital supplies were kept available and loads were shunted to designated areas of the beach. Landing was being cleared of all that could be reused in the new northern hold.

  Thick sulfur-smelling ash began to cover Landing’s buildings. Some of the lighter roofs collapsed under the load, and observers could hear the plastic groaning and shifting. The air was almost unbreathable with traces of chlorine. Everyone used the breathing masks without complaint.

  By midafternoon, a haggard Joel Lilienkamp dropped his battered sled on the lee side of the tower beside Ongola’s. He waited a moment to gather enough strength to thumb open the comm unit.

  “We’ve cleared all we can,” he said in gasps, his voice raspy from the acrid airborne fumes. “The donks are parked in the Catherine Caves until we can strip ‘em down for shipment. You can leave now, too.”

  “We’re coming,” Ongola replied.

  Moments later he appeared, slowly angling a heavy comm package on a grav unit past the door. Jake came next, similarly encumbered and Paul followed, guiding two more components.

  “Need a hand?” Joel asked automatically, though the way he slumped at the console made it hard to believe that he had any more energy to spare.

  “One more trip,” Ongola said when they had positioned the equipment in his sled. “Is your power pack up to a load?” he asked Joel.

  “Yup. My last fresh unit.”

  As Ongola and Jake went back into the tower, Paul went to the flagstaff and, with a bleak expression on his face, solemnly lowered the singed tatters of the colony’s flag. He made a ball of it, which he stuffed underneath the seat he took on the sled. He gave the supply master one long look. “Want me to drive, Joel?”

  “I got you here, I’ll take you out!”

  Paul dared not look back at the ruins of Landing, but as Joel veered east and then north in a wide sweep, the admiral saw that he wasn’t the only one with tears coursing down his cheeks.

  A stiff nor’easterly wind kept the Kahrain cove clear of ash and the acrid taint of Garben’s eruption. The gray pall spread over the eastern horizon as the volcano continued to spew lava and quantities of ash. Patrice and a skeleton team remained to monitor the event after Landing was abandoned.

  “We hunt this morning,” Sean said to the other riders.

  They had found a quiet cove up the beach from the main evacuation camp. None of the dragons sprawled in the warm sun had a very good color, and privately Sean worried that their maturing strengths had been over taxed. He decided stoutly that there was nothing wrong that a good meal would not restore. He looked around for fire-lizards and swore under his breath.” Damn them! We need all we’ve got. Four queens and ten bronzes can’t possibly catch enough packtail to feed eighteen dragons! Surely they’ve seen volcanoes erupt before.

  “Not on top of them,” Alianne Zulueta replied. “I couldn’t reassure mine. They just left!”

  “Red meat would be better than fish – more iron,” David Catarel suggested, his eyes on his pale bronze Polenth. “There’s sheep here.”

  “Hold it,” Marco Galliani said firmly, raising both hands in restraint. “My father’s shipping them on to Roma as soon as sleds are free. Prime breeding stock.”

  “So are dragons.” Sean rose, an odd grin on his face. “Peter, Dave, Jerry, come with me. Sorka, you run interference – if there is any.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, Sean,’’ Marco began, dual loyalties in conflict.

  Sean grinned slyly, laying a finger along his nose. “What the eye doesn’t see, Marco, the heart won’t grieve.”

  “It’s for your dragon, man,” Dave muttered as he passed him.

  An hour later, several dragons disappeared in a westerly direction skimming the tree tops. The other riders were so conspicuous in their efforts to help the crew struggling to organize the chaos on the beach that no one would have noticed that the riders were not all present at any one time. By noon, seventeen brightly hued, sated dragons lolled on the strand. One sat patiently on the headland while fire-dragonets dove into the sea, fishing for packtail.

  Caesar and Stefano Galliani, taking a poll count as their sheep were loaded, discovered that the tally was short by some thirty-six animals, including one of the best rams. Caesar called on the dragonriders to search the area and herd the missing sheep back to the shore.

  “Useless things, always wandering off,” Sean agreed, nodding his head pathetically at the frustrated and puzzled Gallianis. “We’ll give a look.”

  When Sean reported back an hour later, he suggested to Caesar that the sheep must have dropped into some of the many potholes in the area. Reluctantly the Gallianis took off with the depleted flock. The big transport sleds had schedules to keep, and shipment could not be postponed.

  As the last of the sleds departed, Emily came over to Sean. “Are your dragons fit for duty?”

  “Anything you say!” Sean agreed so amiably that Emily shot him a long look. “The fire-lizards worked hard all morning to feed the dragons. He gestured toward the cove where Duluth was accepting a packtail from a bronze.

  “Fire-lizards?” Emily was momentarily baffled by “lizards,” then remembered that Sean tended to use his own name for the little creatures. “Oh, yes, then your fairs have returned?”

  “Not all of them,” Sean said ruefully, and then added quickly, “but enough of the queens and bronzes to be useful.”

  “The eruption scared them all, didn’t it?”

  Sean gave a snort. “The eruption scared all of us!”

  “Not out of our wits, it would seem,” Emily said with a crooked smile. “At least nobody acted as foolish as sheep, did they?” Sean pretended neither innocence nor understanding; he turned her look until she broke eye contact. “If your dragons have lost the taste for fish, hunt wherries. That eruption whittled down our herds quite enough, thank you.” Sean inclined his head, still noncommittal. “There’s so much to be done, and done quickly.” Consulting the thick sheets on her clipboard, she paused to rub her forehead. “If only your dragons were fully functional . . .” Then she shot him a penitent smile. “Sorry, Sean, that’s an egregious comment.”

  “I, too, wish we were, Governor,” Sean replied without prejudice. “But we’re not sure how it’s done. Not even what to tell them to do.” He blotted the sweat from his forehead and neck, a sweat not entirely provoked by the hot sun.

  “A point well made and a matter we must look into, but not here and now. Look, Sean, Joel Lilienkamp’s worried about the supplies still at Landing. We’re shifting loads out of here as fast as we can.” She swept her arm over the mounds of color-coded crates and foam-covered pallets. “The orange stuff has to be protected from Threadfall, so it has to go north as fast as possible to be stored in the Fort Hold. We still have to try to save what’s left at Landing before the ash covers it.”

  “That ash burns, Governo
r. Burns as easily through dragon wings as – ” Sean broke off, staring fixedly toward the western beach, one hand coming up in a futile gesture of warning. Emily twisted around to see what had prompted his concern.

  The dragon’s trumpet of alarm was faint and thin on the hot air. The driver of the sled on collision course with the creature seemed unaware that he was descending onto another flyer. Then, just before the sled would have hit, dragon and rider disappeared.

  “Instinct is marvelous!” Emily exclaimed, her face lit with both relief at the last-minute evasion and joy that a dragon had displayed that innate ability. She looked back to Sean and her expression changed. “What’s the matter, Sean?” She glanced quickly up at the sky, a sky empty of both dragon pair and the sled, which was lost in the many coming and going on the Kahrain cove. “Oh, no!’’ Her hand went to her throat, which seemed to close as she felt the wrenching fear in her guts. “No. Oh no! Shouldn’t they be visible again now? Shouldn’t they, Sean? Isn’t it supposed to be an instantaneous displacement?”

  Distressed, she reached out to clasp his arm, giving him a little shake to attract his attention. He looked down at her, and the anguished expression in his eyes gave her an answer that altered fear to grief. She turned her head slowly from side to side, trying to deny the truth to herself.

  Just as one of the cargo supervisors came striding up to her, a sheaf of plasfilm in his hand and an urgent expression on his face, the most appalling keen rose into the air. The dissonant noise was so piercing that half the people on the beach stopped to cover their ears. In the same moment as the unbearable sound mounted steadily, the air was full of fire-dragonets, each adding its own shrill voice to swell the sound of lament.

  The other dragons rose, riderless, to fly past the point where one of their number and his human partner had lost their lives. In a complex pattern that would have thrilled watchers on any other occasion, fire-dragonets flew around their larger cousins, emitting their weird counterpoint to the deeper, throbbing, mournful cry of the dragons.

  “I’ll find out how that could have happened. The driver of that sled – ” Emily stopped as she saw the terrible expression on Sean’s Face.

  “That won’t bring back Marco Galliani and Duluth, will it?” He whipped his hand sideways in a sharp, dismissive cut. “Tomorrow we will fly wherever you need us for whatever we can save for you.”

  For a long long moment Emily stood looking after him until the image of the sorrowing young man was indelibly imprinted in her mind. In the sky, as if escorting him back to the dragon-riders’ camp, the graceful beasts wheeled, dipped, and glided westward to their beach.

  Whatever pain Emily felt, it could be nothing, she realized, to the sense of loss that would be experienced by the dragon-riders. She scrubbed at her face, at a chin that trembled, determinedly swallowing the lump in her throat, and irritably gestured for the cargo supervisor to approach her.

  “Find out who drove that sled and bring him or her to my tent at noon. Now, what’s on your mind?”

  Marco and Duluth disappeared, just the way the fire-lizards do,” Sean said, his voice oddly gentle.

  “But they didn’t come back,” Nora cried out in protest. She started to weep afresh, burying her face in Peter Semling’s shoulder.

  The shock of the unexpected deaths had been traumatic. The dragons’ lament had subsided over the afternoon. By evening, their partners had coaxed them to curl up in the sand and sleep. The dragons seen to, the young people hunched about a small fire, dispirited and apathetic.

  “We have to find out what went wrong,” Sean was saying, “so that it can never happen again.”

  “Sean, we don’t know even know what Marco and Duluth were doing!” Dave Catarel cried.

  “Duluth was exhibiting an instinctive reaction to danger,” a new voice said. Pol Nietro, Bay beside him, paused in the light thrown by the fire. “An instinct he was bred to exercise. May we offer condolences from all those connected with the dragon program. We – Bay and I – why, all of you are like family to us.” Pol awkwardly dabbed at his eyes and sniffed.

  “Please join us,” Sorka said with quiet dignity. She rose and drew Bay and Pol into the firelight. Two more packing crates were hauled into the circle.

  We have tried to figure out what went wrong,” Pol continued after he and Bay had settled down wearily.

  “Neither looked where he was going,” Sean said with a heavy sigh. “I was watching. Marco and Duluth took off from the beach and were rising just as the sled driver made an approach turn. He wouldn’t have seen Marco and Duluth coming up under him. Dragons aren’t fitted with proximity warning devices.” Sean raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I have it from very good authority that the sled driver had turned his alarm off because the constant noise in so much traffic was getting on his nerves.’’

  Pol leaned toward him. “Then it is more important than ever that you riders teach your dragons discipline.” A ripple of angry denial made him hold up his hands. “That is not meant to sound censorious my dear friends. Truly I mean to be constructive. But obviously now is the moment to take the next step in training the dragons – training them to make proper use of the instinct that ought to have saved both Marco and Duluth today.”

  The comment raised murmurs, some angry, some alarmed. Sean held up his hand for silence, his tired face lit by the jumping tongues of flame. Next to him, Sorka was keenly aware of the muscles tightening along his jawline and the stricken look in his eyes.

  I believe we’ve been thinking along the same lines, Pol,” he said in a taut voice that told the biologist just how much strain the young dragonrider was under. “I think that Marco and Duluth panicked. If only they’d just come back to the place they’d left, the farking sled was gone!” His anguish was palpable. He took a deep breath and continued in a level, almost emotionless tone. “All of us have fire-lizards. That’s one of the reasons Kit Ping chose us as candidates. We’ve all sent them with messages, telling them where to go, what to do, or who to look for. We should be able to instruct the dragons to do the same thing. We know now, the hard way, that they can teleport, just as the fire-lizards do. We have to guide that instinct. We have to discipline it, as Pol suggested, so panic doesn’t get us the way it got Marco.”

  “Why did Marco panic?” Tarrie Chernoff asked plaintively.

  “I’d give anything to know,” Sean said, the edge of anguish returning to his voice. “One thing I do know. From now on, no rider takes off without checking what’s in his immediate airspace. We must fly defensively, trying to spot possible dangers. Caution,” he said, stabbing his index finger into his temple, “should be engraved on our eyeballs.” He spoke rapidly, his tone crisp. “We know that the fire-lizards do go wherever it is they go, between one place and another, so let’s stop taking that talent of theirs for granted and watch exactly what they do. Let’s scrutinize their comings and goings. Let’s send them to specific places, places they haven’t been before, to see if they can follow our mental directions. Our dragons hear us telepathically. They understand exactly what we’re saying – not like the fire-lizards – so if we get used to giving precise messages to the fire-lizards, the dragons ought to be able to operate on the same sort of mental directions. When we understand as much of fire-lizard behavior; as we can, then we will attempt to direct our dragons.”

  The other riders murmured among themselves, Sean watched them with narrowed darting glances.

  “Wouldn’t that risk our dragonets?” Tarrie asked, stroking the little gold that had nestled in the crook of her arm.

  “Better the dragonets than the dragons!” Peter Semling said firmly.

  Sean gave a derisive snort. “The fire-lizards’re very good at taking care of themselves. Don’t misunderstand me – ” He held up a hand against Tarrie’s immediate protest. “I appreciate them. They’ve been great little fighters. Jays, we’d never have fed the hatchlings without their help, but – ” He paused to look around the circle. “ �
� they have got a well-developed survival mechanism or they wouldn’t have lasted through the first pass of that Oort cloud. Whenever that was. As Peter said, it’s a lot safer to experiment with the fire-lizards than another dragonpair.”

  “You’ve made some very good points there, Sean,” Pol said, beginning to take heart himself, “though I trust you mean to use the, gold and bronze fire-dragonets. They have always seemed more reliable to Bay and myself.”

  “I had. Especially since the blues and greens all scampered off after the eruption.

  “I’m game to try,” Dave Catarel said, throwing his shoulders back and straightening up, sending a challenging look at the others. “We’ve got to try something. Cautiously!” He shot Sean a quick glance.

  A slow smile broke across Sean’s face as he reached across the fire to grasp Dave’s hand.

  “I’m willing, too,” Peter Semling said. Nora tentatively agreed.

  “It sounds eminently sensible to me,” Otto said, nodding vigorously and looking about him. “It is, after all, what the dragons were bred to do, escape from the danger of Threadfall as the mechanical sleds cannot.”

  ‘Thanks, Otto,” Sean said. “We all need to think positively.”

  “And cautiously,” Otto amended, raising one finger in warning. Stirred from their apathy, the riders began murmuring to one another.

  “Do you remember, Sorka,” Bay said, leaning toward her urgently when I sent Mariah to you the day we were called to Calusa?”

  “She brought me your message.”

  “She did indeed, but all I told her was to find the redhead by the caves.” Bay paused significantly. “Of course, Mariah has known you all her life and there aren’t that many redheads in Landing, or on the planet.” Bay knew she was babbling, which was something she rarely did, but then she rarely broke down in tears, either, and when she had heard the dreadful news, she had cried for nearly an hour, despite Pol’s comforting. As Pol had said, it had been like losing family. Without a terminal to consult for possible solutions, they had spent two frantic hours searching for the crate in which they had packed all their written notes of the dragon program, wanting to have some positive suggestion with which to comfort the young people. “But Mariah did find you with no trouble that day, and you were at our house in minutes. So it can’t have taken her very long to do it.