As often as he had seen the Red Star with its boiling cover of reddish-gray clouds, F’nor still experienced a primitive stab of fear. Tonight the fear was like an extra-cold spine from his balls to his throat. The distance-viewer revealed the westward-pointing tail of the gray mass which resembled a featureless, backward Nerat. The jutting edge of the swirling clouds obscured it. Clouds that swirled to form a pattern—no lady braiding her hair tonight. Rather, a massive fist, thumb of darker gray curling slowly, menacingly over the clenched fingers as if the clouds themselves were grabbing the tip of the gray mass. The fist closed and lost its definition, resembling now a single facet of a dragon’s complex eye, half-lidded for sleep.

“What could he have seen?” N’ton demanded urgently, tapping F’nor’s shoulder to get his attention.

“Clouds,” F’nor said, stepping back to let N’ton in. “Like a fist. Which turned into a dragon’s eye. Clouds, that’s all he could have seen, over backward Nerat!”

N’ton looked up from the eyepiece, sighing with relief.

“Cloud formations won’t get us anywhere!”

F’nor held his hand up for Grall. She came down obediently and when she started to hop to his shoulder, he forestalled her, gently stroking her head, smoothing her wings flat. He held her level with his eyes and, without stopping the gentle caresses, began to project the image of that fist, lazily forming over Nerat. He outlined color, grayish-red, and whitish where the top of the imagined fingers might be sun-struck. He visualized the fingers closing above the Neratian peninsula. Then he projected the image of Grall taking the long step between to the Red Star, into that cloud fist.

Terror, horror, a whirling many-faceted impression of heat, violent wind, burning breathlessness, sent him staggering against N’ton as Grall, with a fearful shriek, launched herself from his hand and disappeared.

“What happened to her?” N’ton demanded, steadying the brown rider.

“I asked her,” and F’nor had to take a deep breath because her reaction had been rather shattering, “to go to the Red Star.”

“Well, that takes care of Brekke’s idea!”

“But why did she overreact that way? Canth?”

She was afraid, Canth replied didactically, although he sounded as surprised as F’nor. You gave vivid coordinates.

“I gave vivid coordinates?”

Yes.

“What terrified Grall? You aren’t reacting the way she did and you heard the coordinates.”

She is young and silly. Canth paused, considering something. She remembered something that scared her. The brown dragon sounded puzzled by that memory.

“What does Canth say?” N’ton asked, unable to pick up the quick exchange.

“He doesn’t know what frightened her. Something she remembers, he says.”

“Remembers? She’s only been hatched a few weeks.”