Dragons Dawn

“Then accept him!” Pol bellowed, gesturing for one of the stewards to come forward with a bowl of food. “Feed him! No, don’t anyone else help you. The bond should be made now!”

Kneeling by his new charge, David offered the little dragon a hunk of meat. It bolted that and urgently cried for more, pushing at David’s leg with an imperious head.

“He says he’s very hungry,” David cried. “He’s talking to me. In my head! It’s incredible. How did she do it?”

“The mentasynth works, then!” Emily murmured to Paul, who nodded with the air of someone not at all surprised.

“Ye gods, but it’s ugly,” Paul said in a very low voice.

“You probably weren’t much to look at at birth either,” Emily surprised herself by saying. She gri

David coaxed his new friend out of the circle of people and toward the edge of the Hatching Ground, calling for more food. “Polenth says he’s starving.”

Bay had ordered plenty of red meat to be available, butchered from animals that had adapted well to the improved Pernese grasses. The young dragonets would require plenty of boron for growth in their first months, and would best absorb it from the flesh of cattle.

Another egg cracked, and a second bronze male made a straight line dash to Peter Semling. A shrill voluntary came from Peter’s fair of dragonets. There was a long wait before any more activity. A worried hum developed among the watchers. Then four more eggs abruptly shattered, two with unexpectedly dainty creatures, one golden and one bronze, who partnered themselves with Tarrie Chernoff and Shih Lao; the other two were stolid-looking browns who took to Otto Hegelman and Paul Logorides.

Do they expect them all to hatch today?” Emily asked Paul.

Let’s go around to Pol and Bay,” Paul said. They inched their way to the right, pausing to admire David Catarel’s bronze, who was bolting down hunks of meat so fast that he seemed to be inhaling them. David looked ecstatic.

“Well, they could,” Pol replied when they reached him. He was masking anxiety well. Wind Blossom was not, and barely acknowledged the quiet greetings of admiral and governor. “They were engineered within a thirty-six-hour period. The six that have hatched were from the first and second groups. We might have to wait. In our observations of wild dragonets, we know that laying the eggs can take several hours. I suspect the greens and golds may be like one of the Earth vipers, which can keep eggs within her body until she finds an appropriate place, or time, to lay them. We know that naturally clutched eggs do hatch more or less simultaneously. This,” he said pointing to the Hatching Ground, “is a concession to Kitti Ping’s reverence for the ancestral species’ habitat. Ah, another one’s cracking.” He consulted the flimsy in his hand. “One of the third group.”

“Six males, but only one perfect female,” Bay said quietly. “To be frank, I’d rather have more females. What do you think, Blossom?”

“One perfect male and one perfect female are all we need,” Wind Blossom said in a tight, controlled voice. She had her hands hidden in her loose sleeves, but there were deep tension lines in her face and her eyes were clouded.

“Peter Semling’s bronze looks sturdy,” Emily said encouragingly. Wind Blossom did not respond, her gaze was fixed on the eggs. “Are they as you anticipated?” she asked, looking at Pol and Bay.

“No,” Bay admitted, “but then it was Kitti who had the requisite image in her mind. If only . . .” She faltered. “Ah, another gold female. I believe that Kitti Ping made the choices gender imperative. For Nyassa Clissma

Emily failed to see charm in the hatchlings, but she was glad to see so many live ones. But what had Kitti Ping had in her mind when she altered the dragonet ova? Those were not dragons of any kind Emily knew. And yet she had an unexpected vision of a sky full of the creatures, soaring and diving, breathing flame. Had Kitti Ping had such a vision?

“The shuttle!” Pol said suddenly. “Did I hear it take off?”

“Yes, he made it,” Paul replied. “Ongola will keep us informed. We don’t have enough fuel for a direct flight. The shuttle’ll have to coast a week before it reaches the trail.”

“Oh, I see.” Then Pol refocused his attention on the eggs.

The crowd shifted as some people had to return to complete unfinished tasks and others moved in to take their places. Food was brought to the biologists and the leaders on their dais, and wooden benches to sit on. Wind Blossom remained standing. Food was also taken to the circle of hopeful dragon riders. The dragonets’ encouragement did not abate. Emily wondered how they could keep it up?

It was dark before there was any further movement, and then all at once a brown and two golds cracked their eggs. Marco Galliani got the brown, and Kathy Duff and Nora Sejby the two golds. There was a good deal of cheering.

The crowd at the opening thi

“Do they always go female to female?” Emily asked Pol. “And male to male?”

“Since the males are expected to be fighters and the females egg carriers, Kitti made it logical.”

“Logical to her,” Emily said, a trifle bemused. “There aren’t any blues or greens among them,” she suddenly realized.

“Kitti programmed the heavier males, but I believe they’re to carry sperm for the entire range. The greens will be the smallest, the fighters; the blues sturdier, with more staying power; the browns sort of anchor fighters with even more endurance. They’ll have to fight four to six hours, remember! The bronzes are leaders and the golds . . .”

Waiting at home to be egg-carriers.”

Pol gave Emily a long look, his tired face reflecting astonishment at her sarcasm.

“In the wild, greens don’t have a good maternal instincts. The golds do,” Bay put in, giving the governor an odd glance. “Kitti ping kept as much natural instinct as possible. Or so her program reads.”

“There!” Nabhi said, leaning back from the console, his swarthy face intense with an i

Bart stared at him, surprised and confused. “Save it for what Nabhi?” He spoke more sharply than he meant to, but he had been wound up with tension that would not ease. It was not that he didn’t trust Nabhi as a pilot – Nabhi was a good driver, or Bart would not have been talked into participating in the insane venture, not for the choicest land on Pern.

“To maneuver,” Nabhi said. His mocking grin did nothing to ease Bart’s disquiet.

“Where? You’re not . . . you wouldn’t be mad enough to try to land on the farking planet?” Bart clawed at the release straps, but Nabhi’s indolent gesture of negation aborted the effort.

“No way. I came to get the pods or whatever.” His smile then broadened, and Bart was amazed at the humor in it. “Our course is basically the same one Avril took.” He turned his head and looked directly at his copilot.

“So?”

“They said the gig blew up.” Nabhi’s smile was pure malice. “Turn on the screens. There might be some interesting flotsam. Diamonds and gold nuggets and whatever else Avril took with her. No one needs to know what else we scooped up out of space. And it sure beats mining the stuff ourselves.”

By midnight Pol and Bay decided to examine the remaining eggs and slowly did the rounds. Wooden platforms had been brought out for the candidates to rest on, since the heat in the sand was enervating. None of the chosen was willing to forgo the chance at impressing a hatchling by leaving the Ground.