Dragonheart
Chapters (1)
This book is lovingly dedicated to Steve and Natalie.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
For Readers New to Pern
Dramatis Personae
Map
Chapter 1 Fort Weyr, AL 507.11.17, Second Interval
Chapter 2 Fort Weyr, The Next Day
Chapter 3 Fort Weyr, AL 507.12.20
Chapter 4 Fort Weyr, AL 507.13.12
Chapter 5 Fort Weyr, Next Morning, AL 507.13.15
Chapter 6 Fort Weyr, Seven Days Later, AL 507.13.22
Chapter 7 Fort Hold, Morning, AL 507.13.23
Chapter 8 Fort Weyr, Afternoon, AL 507.13.25
Chapter 9 Fort Weyr, Morning, AL 507.13.26
Chapter 10 Fort Weyr, Morning, AL 508.1.13
Chapter 11 Fort Hold, Morning, AL 508.1.19
Chapter 12 Igen Weyr, Morning, AL 498.7.2
Chapter 13 Igen Weyr, Early Morning, AL 498.7.3
Chapter 14 Igen Weyr, Morning, AL 498.7.8
Chapter 15 Igen Weyr, Morning, AL 498.8.12
Chapter 16 Igen Weyr, Morning, AL 498.8.14
Chapter 17 Igen Weyr, Late Evening, AL 498.9.8
Chapter 18 Igen Weyr, Early Morning, AL 499.13.11
Chapter 19 Wherhold, Late Evening, AL 500.8.18
Chapter 20 Igen Weyr, Evening, AL 501.3.18
Epilogue: Fort Weyr, AL 508.2.2
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Todd McCaffrey
Copyright
FOR READERS NEW TO PERN
Thousands of years after man first developed interstellar travel, colonists from Earth, Tau Ceti III, and
many other worlds settled upon Pern, the third planet of the star Rukbat in the Sagittarius sector.
They found Pern idyllic for their purposes: a pastoral world far off the standard trade routes and
perfect for those recovering from the horrors of the Nathi Wars.
Led by hero Admiral Paul Benden and Governor Emily Boll of war-torn Tau Ceti, the colonists
quickly abandoned their advanced technology in favor of a simpler life. For eight years—“Turns” as they
called them on Pern—the settlers spread and multiplied on Pern’s lush Southern Continent, unaware that
a menace was fast approaching: the Red Star.
The Red Star was actually a wandering planetoid that had been captured by Rukbat millennia before.
It had a highly elliptical, cometary orbit, passing through the fringes of the system’s Oort Cloud before
hurtling back inward toward the warmth of the sun, a cycle that took two hundred and fifty Turns.
For fifty of those Turns, the Red Star was visible in the night sky of Pern. Visible and deadly, for when
the Red Star was close enough, as it was for those fifty long Turns, a space-traveling spore could cross
the void from it to Pern. Once the spore entered the thin, tenuous upper atmosphere, it would thin out
into a long, thin, streamer shape and float down to the ground below, as seemingly harmless “Threads.”
Like all living things, however, Thread needed sustenance, and it ate anything organic: wood or flesh, it
was all the same to Thread. The first deadly Fall of Thread caught the colonists completely unawares.
They barely survived. In the aftermath they came up with a desperate plan: having abandoned their high
technology, they turned to their knowledge of genetic engineering to modify fire-lizards—six-limbed,
winged life-forms indigenous to Pern—into huge, rideable, fire-breathing dragons. These dragons,
telepathically linked at birth to their riders, formed the mainstay of the protection of Pern. Other solutions
were tried, as well, but none proved to be as effective as dragons.