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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?

If you promise not to drool all over me or lick while I’m working, Tai replied with mock severity. In the heat of the day, in an open field, there was no shelter at all from the pests that would smell blood and come for their share. However, she told herself, two pelts would be worth the discomfort.

She debated throwing the bodies over Zaranth’s neck and taking them up to the cooler, swarm-free foothills to skin. Once she was on the ground beside them, she discarded that idea. They were big brutes. She was strong, but these dead weights would be impossible to shift onto her dragon. The first one was smaller, of a different mix, with a mottled hide; the other was a tawny yellow-brown, with striped markings on its legs. Both were females with engorged dugs, and Tai sighed at the thought of yet more of these monsters maturing to savage herds.

She removed her jacket and hung it on a low bush, taking a well-honed knife from her boot.

“Lift the first one up, please!” she said, “and remember, you get the carcass faster if you hold still—and don’t salivate all over me.”

I know, I know, but Zaranth’s mouth was very wet as she lifted the feline by the head so Tai could make the first incision at the base of the thick throat. One zip down, slit the legs. Zaranth did drool as she helped. Tai quickly worked up a sweat. To distract herself, she pondered once again about meeting F’lessan and his interest in astronomy. Was he going to make that his career After? Maybe she’d meet him again. Then she reproved herself. He was a Benden Wingleader, son of Lessa and F’lar, and despite the fact that he had quite earnestly said that green dragons were essential for every wing, their paths were unlikely to cross again. She concentrated on her task. Helpfully, the green idly moved her wings to deflect the swarms of insects drawn to the smell of blood and raw flesh. The most persistent attacked between wingstrokes.

It was dry work, too, in this heat and Tai regretted that she hadn’t grabbed up her water bottle in her haste to answer T’gellan’s summons. She took a deep breath as Zaranth rotated the feline so Tai could strip the pelt from the limp body. A mass of flying insects covered skin and skinners as Zaranth, fanning furiously and growling, lifted the carcass a length away.

Without Zaranth’s wings, clouds of insects attached themselves to the blood on Tai’s arms. She broke a wide leaf off a low-growing shrub and, beating the air about her, walked up the slight incline to see how the rest of the wing was faring before she started the backbreaking task of skinning the second feline.