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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?

He heaved himself up and over the broken wall and ran down the hill as fast as he could to the nearest cover of straggly bushes. Crouching behind them, he caught his breath while he listened to the continued sounds of confusion from the minehold. The injured man was still howling: the guards would have to tend to him before they did a head count. They’d probably want to have as close a look at the meteorite as possible. The metal types were valuable. Or so he’d heard, once his deafness had lifted. He didn’t hear everything, but he heard enough. He had never let on that he had recovered from the skull-ripping sound that that abominable Aivas had emitted when Shankolin had led men, picked by his father, Master Norist, to destroy the “abomination” and end its evil influence on the people of Pern.

Having caught his breath, Shankolin rolled down the slight incline until he felt it safe to rise to a crouch and make his way to the sparse forest. He kept turning his head this way and that, listening for any sound of men coming after him. Crouching, he ran as fast as he could down the dangerous inclines. He could hear the pebbles and stones rattling and bouncing ahead of him.

One thought dominated: this time he would make good his escape. This time he had to be free—to halt the progress that the Aivas Abomination was inexorably making, destroying the Pern that had survived so long, as his father had told him in a hushed and fearful voice. Master Norist had been horrified to learn that the Weyrleaders of Pern believed that this disembodied voice could actually instruct them on how to turn the Red Star from its orbit and prevent it from ever swinging close enough to Pern to drop the avaricious and hungry Thread. Thread could eat anything, herdbeasts, humans, vegetation—it could even consume huge trees in the time it took a man to blink. He knew. He’d seen it happen once when he’d been part of the ground crews assembled by the Glasscrafthall. Thread truly was a menace to bodies and growing things, but the Aivas Abomination had been a more insidious menace to the very minds and hearts of men and women, and from its disembodied words a perfidious treachery had been spread. His father had been amazed and disheartened by all the impossible things the Abomination had told the Lord Holders and Craftmasters: of the machines and methods that their ancestors had used; equipment and processes—even ways to improve glass—all of which would make living on Pern much easier.