Trying to quell his rising sense of panic, Sean hazarded a glance at the ground. They were nearly to the rank of caves that had become their home. Sean could see Faranth on the height where she must have been sunning herself. She was sitting on her haunches, her wings half-spread. In a few sweeps of Carenath’s powerful wings, they had covered a distance that ordinarily took a half hour of up-hill-down-dale slogging.

Faranth says that Sorka says that we had better come down right away. Right away! Carenath’s tone was defiant, begging Sean to contradict the golden dragon and anything that shortened their new experience. We are flying together. It is the right thing to do for dragons and riders.

“It’s a fantastic thing to do, Carenath, but as we are now home, can you land us, say, by Faranth? Then you can tell her just how we did it!”

Sean did not care if Sorka had hysterics over his spontaneous and totally unplanned flight. He had done it, they had succeeded, and all was well that ended well. The dragons of Pern finally had riders! That would change the odds on Joel’s book!

The other seventeen riders, including Sorka, once Faranth had reassured her about Carenath’s prowess, were delighted at their tremendous advance. Dave wanted to know why Sean had been so precipitous.

“Couldn’t you have waited for me? Polenth and I were just behind you. You scared the living wits out of me for a moment, you know.”

Sean clasped Dave’s arm in tacit apology. “It was what you’d said about being forgotten, Dave. I just had to try, but I didn’t want to endanger anyone else in case I was wrong.” Sean caught Sorka frowning at him and pretended to flinch. “I was all right, love. You know that! But—” He glared warningly at the others seated on the rugs around him. “We’ve got to go about this in a logical and sensible way, folks. Flying a dragon’s not like riding a horse.”

His glance held Nora Sejby’s. She certainly was not the sort of person he would have said would Impress a dragon, but Tenneth had chosen her, and they would have to make the best of it. Nora was accident-prone, and Tenneth had already hauled her partner out of the land and prevented her from falling into the crevices and holes that pitted the hills around the Catherine Caves. On the other hand, Nora had been sailing across Monaco Bay since she was strong enough to manage a tiller and she had checked out on both sleds and skimmers.

“For one thing, there’s all this open air around you. Falling is down onto a hard and injurious surface,” Sean made appropriate gestures, smacking one hand into the palm of the other and startling Nora with the noise.

“So?” Peter Semling said. “We use a saddle.”