“Put out sweepriders, to begin with, and let me know where and when Thread falls here. As you said, Thread is mindless. Even in these new Shifts, we may find a predictable pattern.” F’lar frowned up at the hot sun; he was sweating in the wher-hide fighting clothes more suited to upper levels and cold between.

“Fly a sweep with me, F’lar,” T’bor suggested anxiously. “F’nor, are you up to it? If we missed even one burrow here…”

T’bor had Orth call in every rider, even the weyrlings, told them what to look for, what was feared.

The entire complement of Southern spread out, wingtip to wingtip, flying at minimum altitude, and scanned the swampy region right back to Fall Edge. Not one man or beast could report any unusual disturbance of greenery or ground. The land over which Thread had so recently fallen was now undeniably Threadfree.

The clearance made T’bor even more apprehensive, but another tour seemed pointless. The fighting wings went between to the Weyr then, leaving the convalescents to fly straight.

As T’bor and F’lar glided in over the Weyr compound, the roofs of the weyrholds and the bare black soil and rock of the dragonbeds flashed under them like a pattern through the leaves of the giant fellis and spongewood trees. In the main clearing by the Weyrhall, Prideth extended her neck and wings, bugling to her Weyrmates.

“Circle once again, Mnementh,” F’lar said to his bronze. First he’d better get over the urge to beat Kylara, and give T’bor the chance to reprimand her privately. He regretted, once more, that he had ever suggested to Lessa that she pressure that female into being a Weyrwoman. It had seemed a logical solution at the time. And he was sincerely sorry for T’bor although the man did manage to keep her worst depredations under control. But the absence of a queen from a Weyr…Well, how could Kylara have known Thread would fall here ahead of schedule? Yet where was she that she couldn’t hear that alarm? No dragon slept that deeply.

He circled as the rest of the dragons peeled off to their weyrs and realized that none had had to descend by the Infirmary.

“Fighting Thread with no casualties?”

I like that, Mnementh remarked.

Somehow that aspect of the day’s encounter unsettled F’lar the most. Rather than delve into that, F’lar judged it time to land. He didn’t relish the thought of confronting Kylara, but he hadn’t had the chance to tell T’bor what had been happening north.