“There had better be an explanation for this,” he murmured, pausing behind Bay to read the screen. “My word, look at Betty’s house!” He pointed over the screen and out the window toward a structure fully clothed in dragonets. “My God, should I call them to see if they need help?”

When he put his hand out to reach for the door pull, Mariah, screaming with anger, dove at his hand and pushed it away, scratching him.

“Don’t go, Pol. Don’t go out, Pol! Look!”

Bay had half risen from her chair and remained frozen in the semicrouch, a look of utter horror on her face. As Pol threw a protective arm about her shoulders, they both heard the hiss of the terrible rain that fell on Landing. They could see the individual elongated “raindrops” strike the surface, sometimes meeting only dust, other times writhing about the shrubs and grasses, which disappeared, leaving behind engorged sluglike forms that rapidly attacked anything green in their way. Pol’s nicely sprouting garden became a waste of squirming grayish “things,” bloating larger within seconds on each new feast.

Mariah let out a raucous call and disappeared from the house. The other five dragonets followed instantly.

“I don’t believe what I saw,” Pol said in an amazed whisper. “They’re teleporting in droves, almost formations. So the telekinesis was developed as a survival technique first. Hmm.”

The hideous rain had advanced, spreading its mindless burden behind and inexorably falling across Pol’s neatly patterned stonework patio toward the house.

“They can’t devour stone,” Pol remarked with clinical detachment. “I trust our silicon plastic roof provides a similar deterrent.”

“The dragonets have more than one unexplored skill, Pol, my dear,” Bay said proudly and pointed.

Outside, their dragonets were swooping and soaring, breathing flame to incinerate the attacking life-form before it could reach the house.

“I would be happier if I knew the things could not penetrate plastic,” Pol repeated with a slight tremor in his voice, looking up at the opaque roof. He winced and hunched in self-protection as he heard a slithering impact, then another, then saw the flame spurt briefly in gouts across the dark roof material.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he said, straightening his shoulders.

“They did strike the roof, however, until the dragonets, bless their little hearts, set them ablaze.” Bay peered out the window facing Betty Musgrave-Blake’s house. “My word! Look at that!”

The house seemed to be ringed by fiery whirls and gouts as an umbrella of dragonets frantically made certain that not a single piece of the grotesque rain reached the home of a woman in labor.