“I need your counsel, T’bor,” he said and there was that edge of concern in his voice that brought the other to his side instantly.

F’lar scooped up a handful of the brackish water, showing him the filaments of drowned Thread.

“Ever notice this before?”

“Yes, indeed,” T’bor replied in a hearty voice, obviously relieved. “Happens all the time here. Not many fish to eat Thread in these foot-sized pools.”

“Then there’s something in the swamp waters that does for them?”

“What do you mean?”

Wordlessly, F’lar tipped back the scarred foliage nearest him. He warily turned down the broad saw-edged swamp grasses. Catching T’bor’s stunned eyes, he gestured back the way he had come, where ground crews moved without one belch of flame from their throwers.

“You mean, it’s like that? How far back?”

“To Threadfall Edge, an hour’s fast walk,” F’lar replied grimly. “Or rather, that’s where I assume Thread Edge is.”

“I’ve seen bushes and grasses marked like that in these swampy deltas closer to the Weyr,” T’bor admitted slowly, his face blanched under the tan, “but I thought it was char. We mark so few infestations—and there’ve been no burrows.”

T’bor was shaken.

Orth says there have been no infestations, Mnementh reported quietly and Orth briefly turned glowing eyes toward the Benden Weyrleader.

“And Thread was always short-timed?” F’lar wanted to know.

Orth says this is the first, but then the alarm came late.

T’bor turned haunted eyes to F’lar.

“It wasn’t a short Fall, then,” he said, half-hoping to be contradicted.

Just then Canth veered in to land. F’lar suppressed a reprimand when he saw the flame thrower on his half-brother’s back.

“That was the most unusual Fall I’ve ever attended,” F’nor cried as he saluted the two bronze riders. “We can’t have got it all airborne, but there’s not a trace of burrow. And dead Thread in every water pocket. I suppose we should be grateful. But I don’t understand it.”

“I don’t like it, F’lar,” T’bor said, shaking his head. “I don’t like it. Thread wasn’t due here for another few weeks, and then, not in this area.”

“Thread apparently is falling when and where it chooses.”

“How can Thread choose?” T’bor demanded with the anger of a frightened man. “It’s mindless!”

F’lar gazed up at tropical skies so brilliant that the fateful stare of the Red Star, low on the horizon, wasn’t visible.

“If the Red Star deviates for four hundred Turn Intervals, why not a variation in the way it falls?”

“What do we do then?” asked T’bor, a note of desperation in his voice. “Thread that pierces and doesn’t burrow! Thread falling days out of phase and then for only two hours!”