Landing had grown accustomed over the past year and a half to the grumblings and rumblings underfoot. On the morning of the second day of the fourth month of their ninth spring on Pern, early risers sleepily noted the curl of smoke, and the significance did not register.

Sean and Sorka, emerging from their cave with Carenath and Faranth, also noticed it.

Why does the mountain smoke? Faranth wanted to know.

“The mountain what?” Sorka demanded, waking up enough to absorb her dragon’s words. “Jays, Sean, look!”

Sean gave a long hard look. “It’s not Garben. It’s Picchu Peak. Patrice de Broglie was wrong! Or was he?”

“What on earth do you mean, Sean?” Sorka stared at him in amazement.

“I mean, there’s been all this talk of basement rock, and shifting Landing to a more practical base, with a special accommodation for dragons and us …” Sean kept his eyes on the plume curling languidly up from the peak, dwarfed beside the mightier Garben but certainly as ominous. He shrugged. “Not even Paul Benden can make a volcano erupt on cue. Come, we can get breakfast at your mother’s. Let’s stuff Mick in his flying suit and go. Maybe your dad will have received some official word.” He scowled. “We’re always the last ones to get news. I’ve got to convince Joel to release at least one comm unit for the caves.”

Sorka got their wriggling son into his fleece-lined carrying sack before she shrugged into her jacket and crammed helmet and goggles onto her head. Sean carried Mick out to Faranth. With an ease grown of practice, Sorka ran the two steps to her dragon’s politely positioned foreleg and vaulted astride. Sean handed her a protesting bundle to sling over her back and then turned to mount the obliging Carenath.

The dragons leapt upward from the ledge before the cave, giving themselves enough airway to take the first full sweep. Over the last few weeks, dragon backs had strengthened and muscled up. They had managed flights of several hours’ duration. Riders, even Nora Sejby—Sean had contrived a special harness that made her feel securely fastened to Tenneth—were improving. Long discussions with Drake Bonneau and some of the other pilots who had both fighter experience in the old Nathi War and plenty fighting Thread had improved the dragonriders’ basic understanding of the skills needed. And practice had encouraged them.

Three weeks before, Wind Blossom’s latest attempt had hatched. The four creatures who had survived had not been Impressed by the candidates awaiting them, although the creatures ate the food presented. Indeed, the poor beasts turned out to be photophobic, but Blossom, much to the disgust of Pol and Bay and against their advice, had insisted on special darkened quarters for the beasts, for the purpose of continued examination of that variant.