Dragons Dawn

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 i

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 co

“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.”