F’nor had mounted Canth. He tightened the fighting straps until they threatened to cut off circulation. He waved to N’ton and the watchrider suppressing his rising level of excitement until Canth had taken him high above the Weyr. Then he stretched flat along Canth’s neck and looped the hand straps double around his wrists. Wouldn’t do to fall off during this jump between.

Canth beat steadily upward, directly toward the baleful Red Star, high in the dark heavens, almost as if the dragon proposed to fly there straight.

Clouds were formed by water vapors, F’nor knew. At least they were on Pern. But it took air to support clouds. Air of some kind. Air could contain various gases. Over the plains of Igen where the noxious vapors rose from the yellow mountains you could suffocate with the odor and the stuff in your lungs. Different gases issued from the young fire mountains that had risen in the shallow western seas to spout flame and boiling rock into the water. The miners told of other gases, trapped in tunnel hollows. But a dragon was fast. A second or two in the most deadily gas the Red Star possessed couldn’t hurt. Canth would jump them between to safety.

They had only to get to that fist, close enough for Canth’s long eyes to see to the surface, under the cloud cover. One look to settle the matter forever. One look that F’nor—not F’lar—would make.

He began to reconstruct that ethereal fist, its alien fingers closing over the westering tip of grayness on the Red Star’s enigmatic surface. “Tell Ramoth. She’ll broadcast what we see to everyone, dragon, rider, fire-lizard. We’ll have to go slightly between time, too, to the moment on the Red Star when I saw that fist. Tell Brekke.” And he suddenly realized that Brekke already knew, had known when she’d seduced him so unexpectedly. For that was why Lessa had confided in them, in Brekke. He couldn’t be angry with Lessa. She’d had the courage to take just such a risk seven Turns ago, when she’d seen a way back through time to bring up the five missing Weyrs.

Fill your lungs, Canth advised him and F’nor felt the dragon sucking air down his throat.

He didn’t have time to consider Lessa’s tactics because the cold of between enveloped them. He felt nothing, not the soft hide of the dragon against his cheek, nor the straps scoring his flesh. Only the cold. Black between had never existed so long.

Then they burst out of between into a heat that was suffocating. They dropped through the closing tunnel of cloud fingers toward the gray mass which suddenly was as close to them as Nerat’s tip on a high-level Thread pass.