“Peter, be a good lad, don’t argue. Show the girls where the throwers are kept and let me see the latest fax of Fort Hold. Or better, the Fort harbor I heard they built. Dragons are a lot faster than that fleet Jim Tillek’s shepherding. They haven’t passed the Delta West Head yet.”

Sean gave Peter no time to think or protest. He sent Otto to run off copies of the installation at the mouth of the Fort Hold River. Tarrie chivvied her brother into showing them where the flamethrowers were kept and helping the girls check out the tanks. In a flurry of golden wings, the queens landed at that storehouse and permitted Sean, Dave, and Shih to secure additional tanks to their backs. Sean shouted directions to Jerry and Peter Semling to check the cargo nets of firestone on the browns and bronzes. Peter Chernoff went from one rider to another, pleading with them to stop. What was he to do? How was he to explain all this? When would they bring all this equipment back? They could not leave Seminole defenseless.

Then all the frenzied preparations were completed, and the bronze and brown dragons had chewed as much firestone as they could swallow.

“Check straps!” Sean roared. He was developing quite a powerful bellow. Of course, he did not need to shout, as all the dragons were listening to Carenath, but it served to release adrenaline into his system, and it helped to encourage those who would soon follow him into danger.

“Checked!” was the prompt response.

“Do we know where we’re going?” Setting the example himself, he spread out the fluttering fax for one last long look at the seafront installation with its wharf and the metal unloading crane that looked like an awkward alien species hunched high over the metal beams that had once been part of a space ship.

“We know!”

“Check your airspace?” He turned his head to the left and the right of Carenath, who was vibrating in his eagerness to jump off.

“Checked!”

“Remember to skip! Let’s go!”

Rising up from Carenath’s neck as far as the riding straps would permit, Sean raised his arm high, rotated his hand, and then dropped it: the signal to spring.

Seventeen dragons launched themselves skyward, arrowing upward in the bright tropical sky in two V formations. Then, as a bewildered and incredulous Peter Chernoff watched, the Vs disappeared.

Mouth open, Peter stared for one more long moment. Then he turned on his heels, raced to the office, and launched himself at the comm unit. “Fort, this is Seminole. Fort, do you copy? Only you won’t.”

“Peter, is that you?” his brother Jake asked.

“Tarrie was here, but she left, with a flamethrower.”

“Get a hold of yourself, Pete. You’re not making any sense.”

“They all came. They took our flamethrowers and half the tanks and left. All of them. All at once.”