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Back The Skies of Pern
Chapters (64)
  1. Other titles by Anne McCaffreyPublished by Ballantine Books:
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. INTRODUCTION
  8. PROLOGUE
  9. At a Gather—6.15.30
  10. Part 1
  11. Turnover at Landing—1.1.31 Present Pass Aivas—Aivas Adjusted Turn 2553
  12. Benden Weyr—1.1.31
  13. Southern Hold—1.1.31
  14. Healer Hall—1.1.31
  15. Back at Landing—1.2.31
  16. Fort Hold—late night—1.1.31
  17. Fort Hold Runner Station—1.2.31
  18. Keroon Printer Hall—1.3.31
  19. Benden Weyr—midday—1.3.31
  20. Monaco Bay Weyr—five days later—1.8.31
  21. Part 2
  22. Ruatha Hold—local time 12:04 in the morning—1.9.31
  23. Telgar Weyr—local time 4:04 in the morning—1.9.31
  24. Benden Weyr—local time 6:04 in the morning—1.9.31
  25. Harper Hall—local time 1:00 in the morning—1.9.31
  26. Landing—local time 10:12 mid-morning—1.9.31
  27. In the Conference Room at Landing—1.9.31
  28. Monaco Weyr—10:22 in the morning—Timing it
  29. In the Conference Room at Landing—local time 1:10–1.9.31
  30. Sunrise Cliff Seahold—timed-back
  31. In the Conference Room—local time 2:12 at Landing—1.9.31
  32. Back at Landing—local time—3:40
  33. Harper Hall—5:00 in the morning, and Southern Hold—2:00 in the morning–1.9.31
  34. Landing—late afternoon—1.9.31
  35. Same time at Keroon Printer Hall—local time 11:15—1.9.31
  36. Later, on an unusually bright evening at Landing, Sunrise Cliff, and Honshu Hold—1.9.31
  37. Part 3
  38. Honshu—1.10.31
  39. Circle Runner Station—1.18.31
  40. Harper Hall
  41. Benden Weyr—
  42. Benini Hold—east Monaco and Honshu—1.20.31
  43. Harper Hall—1.28.31
  44. Honshu Hold—2.1.31
  45. Fort Hold—2.13.31
  46. Printer Hall at Wide Bay—same night
  47. Honshu Hold—2.9.31
  48. Night at Wide Bay—2.9.31
  49. Ruatha Hold—late evening—2.9.31
  50. Core Hold—two days before Council Meeting—2.26.31
  51. Part 4
  52. Honshu Weyrhold—2.26–27.31
  53. Council Meeting at Telgar Hold—3.1.31
  54. Honshu Weyrhold—3.01.31
  55. Interim at Benden and elsewhere
  56. Honshu Weyrhold—time passing slowly
  57. Landing—3.21.31
  58. Honshu Weyrhold—3.21.31
  59. Southern Hold—3.23.31
  60. Honshu Weyrhold—3.27.31
  61. Benden Weyr—3.27.31
  62. Cove Hold—same day, same approximate time
  63. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  64. What’s next onyour reading list?

“Use tablecloths for the food and loose things. Bring the water skins. Stuff each pot with what comes to hand. Dragonriders don’t haul empty space when you can fill it with something useful.”

C’reel’s brown Galuth had two younger women on his back, with two children apiece, and rough packs hung from the neck ridges and trailed down his backbone. St’ven was leaning over Mealth’s side at a dangerous angle to be sure nothing was spilling out of the first of the packed nets the dragon lifted from the sand.

It took much more time to disencumber the dragons on the summit. To his disgust, F’lessan found the knots with which Binness had tied the rocking chair were hard to undo. Awaiting her usual seat, Lady Medda was upright on the trunk of a fallen tree and continued her stream of succinct orders, using a frond to keep the biting insects from her. Beyond her, Mealth carefully maneuvered his net to the ground, and landed beyond it to let his passengers off. The old lady gave a whoop of a cheer for such precise flying. F’lessan struggled with the knot until the youngster who’d seen the dolphins came running over. With a pitying look and a flip of one trailing end, the boy released the knot and the rocking chair was loose.

“You should know how!” he accused F’lessan and ran the chair to his grandmother.

F’lessan rued not his ignorance of sea knots but the time consumed fussing with them. Time! Time! He vaulted—not as effortlessly as usual—astride Golanth. The bronze ran toward the precipice, wings wide, and fell off the edge. When F’lessan heard shocked cries of alarm from behind him at Golanth’s timesaving exit, he grinned.

Binness and the other men had filled two more nets and held up the knots for the browns to grab. F’lessan managed five children, two more women, and a string of sacks down Golanth’s back on the next trip. He could see women and girls filing up the uneven steps zigzagging up the cliffside, everyone laden with so many bundles he wondered how they moved.

On his way back down to the sands, he saw that one of the fishing dories had been manhandled up over the dune high-tide barrier. Four men were racing seaward, obviously to get a second one. “Don’t let them talk you into conveying their boats,” T’gellan had warned him.

“We can’t handle that!” F’lessan cried, leaping off Golanth’s back to confront a belligerent Binness. Beside him was Lias, equally determined.

“No boats, no fish, we starve.”

“We sailed ’em all the way down from Big Bay, dragonrider,” Lias put in, his wizened face fierce. “Days of sailing. We can’t abandon them.”

Gasping for breath, the other four arrived with a second dory.