The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall Read online

  THE CHRONICLES OF PERN

  FIRST FALL

  Anne McCaffrey

  A Del Rey® Book

  BALLANTINE BOOKS • NEW YORK

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Timeline

  Maps

  The Survey: P.E.R.N.c

  The Dolphins’ Bell

  The Ford of Red Hanrahan

  The Second Weyr

  Rescue Run

  About the Author

  Books by Anne McCaffrey

  To learn more about other great ebook titles from Ballantine

  Copyright

  This book is respectfully dedicated to

  Jay A. Katz

  for many good reasons

  Timeline for The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

  Year 1:

  Landing

  Year 6:

  Torene Ostrovsky b.

  Year 8.6:

  First Fall

  Year 10:

  First Hatching

  Michael Connell b.

  Fort Hold established.

  Evacuation of Landing—The Dolphins’ Bell

  Year 16:

  The Fever Year

  Emily Boll dies

  Year 17:

  Pierre de Courcis starts Boll Hold

  Year 19:

  Red Hanrahan’s yarn—The Ford of Red Hanrahan

  Year 22:

  Michael Impresses Brianth at twelve

  Ongola moves his people to found hold

  Year 25:

  Jim Tillek dies

  Torene Ostrovsky Impresses Alaranth

  Year 26:

  Paul Benden dies

  Year 27:

  Queens’ battle—Porth, Evenath, Siglath

  20FF Year 28:

  Sean announces three new Weyrs—The Second Weyr

  20FF = Twenty Years: First Fall

  The Survey: P.E.R.N.c

  “IT’S THE THIRD planet we want in this pernicious system,” Castor said in a totally jaundiced tone, his eyes fixed on the viewscreen. “How’s the hairpin calc going, Shavva?”

  Looking up from her terminal, Shavva screwed up her face for a moment before she spoke. “I’m happy to report that that’ll work out fine. Pity we can’t have a look at the edge of the system,” she added. “I’d love to have a look at those heavy-weight planets and the Oort cloud, but that can’t be done when we’ve got to do an entry normal to the ecliptic. As it is, the slingshot will only give us ten days on the surface.” She cast him an expectant, wry look.

  He groaned. “We’ll have to double up again.” At her half-stern, half-sardonic glare, he added, “Fardles, Shavva, after so long together we all know enough of each other’s specialties to do a fair report.”

  “Fair?” Ben Turnien repeated, his quirky eyebrows raised in amazement. “Fair to whom?”

  “Damn it, Ben, fair enough to know when a planet’s habitable by humanoids. None of us needs a zoologist anymore to tell us which beasties are apt to be predatory. And each of us has certainly seen enough strange life-forms and inimical atmospheres and surface conditions to know when to slap an interdict on a planet.”

  There was a taut silence as the four remaining team members each vividly recalled the all-too-recent deaths: Sevvie Asturias, the paleontologist-medic, and Flora Neveshan, the zoologist-botanist, both lost on the last planet the Exploration and Evaluation team had visited. Castor had inscribed, in bold letters on the top of that report, D.E. Dead end. Terbo, the zoologist-chemist, had been felled in a landslide on the first planet of their present survey tour, but as that world had clearly supported some intelligent life, the initials I.L.F. ended that report. They’d lost Beldona, the second pilot and archeologist, on the third world in the same accident that had injured Castor: a planet initialed G.O.L.D.I.—good only for large diversified interests. And they’d orbited one that probes had given them all the information they needed to label it L.A.—lethal, avoid!

  To a team that had been together for five missions, the casualties were deeply felt. And this mission had yet to be completed. The system they had just reached, five planets orbiting the primary Rukbat, was the fifth of the seven to be investigated on their latest swing through this sector of space.

  “We can handle the geology, the biology, and the chemistry,” Castor went on, frowning at the gelicast on his leg. The compound fractures had not quite healed. “Well, I can do the analysis when you’ve brought appropriate samples back. We might not be able to do the usual in-depth analysis of all the biota, but we can find the requisite five possible landing sites, regular or serious meteoric impacts, any gross geological changes, and if there’s a dominant major life-form.”

  “Hospitable planets are few enough, but Numero Tres does look very interesting,” Mo Tan Liu remarked in his gentle voice. “I get good readings on atmosphere and gravity. I think probes are in order.”

  “Send ’em,” Castor said. “Probes we got to spare.”

  “We’re in a good trajectory to send off a homer, too,” Liu added. “Federated Sentient Planets ought to know about the D.E. condition of Flora Asturias.” Following the bizarre and perhaps macabre practice of the Exploration and Evaluation Corps, they had named the last planet after the team personnel lost during that surface survey. “We are obliged to report those and that L.A. immediately.”

  “All right, all right,” Castor said irritably.

  “Shall I do the report?” Shavva asked.

  “I did it,” Castor replied in a tone that ended discussion. He called up the program, and when the copy was ready, he rolled it up into a tube to be inserted in the homing capsule. It would reach their mother ship some weeks before their projected return. “They will want to know we’ve discovered another Oort cloud, too. Is it five or six?”

  “Six, with this one. I still don’t buy that space-virus theory,” Ben remarked, relieved to switch to a less depressing topic.

  “Number Four System was dead,” Shavva said unequivocally.

  “Can’t prove the Oort cloud affected it in any way. Besides,” Ben went on, “the planet was bombarded by meteors and meteorites, to judge by the craters and the craterites. Shattered the surface and boiled off a good deal of the major oceans. Just like Shaula Three. That system had an Oort cloud, too.”

  “But it had once supported life. We all saw the fossil remains in the cliff faces,” Castor said.

  “Like a road sign: Life was here, it has gone hence.” Shavva had been depressed by the landing. Ten days on a dead world had been nine and a half too many. The atmosphere was barely adequate; to be on the safe side, they’d used support systems. A rough estimate suggested that the damage had been done close to a millennium earlier. “At the beginning of Earth’s Dark Age, this planet had found the final one.”

  “Pity, too. It must have once been a nice world. Great balance of land and water masses,” Castor said.

  “I don’t know what could have stripped it so completely,” Ben said.

  “You never did like the Hoyle Wickramansingh theory, did you?”

  “Has anyone ever found those space-formed viruses? Even a trace in any Oort cloud?” Ben stuck his chin out with a touch of belligerence. “I won’t buy that space-virus theory, not when a planet is covered with city-sized craters. To have both would be overkill, and the universe is conservative. One gets you just as dead as the other.”

  “I searched the library for data on other stripped planets. Asturias matches up on every particular,” Liu said, his eyes on the screen. “What particulars there can be, that is!” He rose, stretched, and yawned broadly. “What we really need is one in the process of being strip
ped.”

  Shavva gave a bark of laughter. “Fat chance of that.”

  Liu shrugged. “Something does it. Anyway, I feel that the virus theory would be the rarest probability, while meteors are common, common, common. Look at what happened in our Earth’s Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. We were just lucky! Probes away, Captain,” he said formally to Castor. “Now, I’m for something to eat, then I’ll pack the shuttle for the shot.”

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Shavva said. “I want to be sure we got what we need this time,” she added in a low, angry voice, bitterly aware that it had been Flora’s own negligence that had cost those two lives. Shavva was now the default leader of this understaffed team, and she was determined not to repeat previous mistakes.

  As a young biologist with latent qualities as a nexialist, she had joined the Exploration and Evaluation Corps for the diversity of duty and the thrill of being the first human to walk on unexplored planets and catalog new life-forms, but she hadn’t counted on losing friends in the process. EEC teams developed very close bonds, having to rely on each other’s strengths and weaknesses in dangerous, stimulating, and testing circumstances no textbook, indeed often no other team reports, could imagine. This was her fourth tour of duty but the first one punctuated by disasters. Now all the fieldwork would have to be accomplished by three people—herself, Liu, and Ben—while Castor, still handicapped by his leg injuries, remained on board as the exploratory vessel did its hairpin turn about the third planet.

  Shavva would have to double as botanist on this trip. Fortunately she had learned enough from Flora to be able to determine a fair amount about the ecology of the plant life—if there were sufficient pollinators, what sort of competition there was for the food crops, as well as the nutritional possibilities of the native forms, and quite likely what disease agents and possible vectors existed within the ecology.

  Ben, as a geologist with some secondary background in chemistry, could cope with the planet’s basic pulse—its air and landmasses, magnetic fields, mass-cons, continental plate structure, tidal patterns, temperatures, the general topography, and, especially, any seismic activity—and evaluate the history of the planetary surface for at least the past million years. If the survey proceeded without glitches, he’d have a go at the longer-term history, attempting to detect signs of magnetic reversals and to determine if—and when—there had been any large extinctions.

  Liu, as nexialist, would investigate whatever remaining aspects of this planet they had time to consider. That is, if the probes brought back reports that would make a visit worthwhile. Numero Tres did look promising, but Shavva had discovered that looks could be very deceiving in this business.

  The probe sent back reports that were skeptically regarded as being too good to be true.

  “Good balance of land and water masses,” Liu said. “Usual ice caps, mountains, good plains areas. Parallels Earth in many respects. Initial P.E. for starters, Castor.”

  “Atmosphere is breathable, slightly above normal in oxygen content: gravity slightly lower at zero-point-nine on the scale,” Ben contributed. “Considerable vulcanism in that chain of islands extending from the southern hemisphere, nothing major at the moment. Rather a nice little planet, actually.”

  “Plenty of green stuff down there,” Shavva said. “What the hell?” she added in puzzlement as the computer began decoding topography. “Have a gawk at these crazy circles!”

  The probe was now on a low-altitude vector, sending back more-detailed sections of the terrain of the southern continent. Clearly visible were groups of circular patches, like ripples overlapping each other but held frozen on the planet’s surface.

  “Ever see anything like this before, Ben?” she asked, fervently regretting the missing Flora Neveshan, with her years of experience as a xenobotanist.

  “Can’t say as I have. Looks like some sort of local fungus on a huge scale. Seems to hit all vegetated areas, not just what appear to be grasslands.”

  “Fairy rings?” Shavva suggested very brightly.

  “Ha! What esoteric stuff you been reading recently?” Ben gave her a jaundiced stare.

  “Whatever it is, be bloody careful, will you?” Castor demanded bitterly. “We’ve got two more systems to work, and I’m running out of initials.”

  “Thin red line of ’eroes?” Ben asked, trying to inject some lightness into Castor’s mood. He knew that Castor would forever fault himself for the deaths of Asturias and Neveshan. He was the most experienced climber of the group and would very likely have prevented the disaster if he’d been downside. The fact that no one blamed Castor did not assuage his feelings of guilt.

  Shavva set the shuttle down on the great plain of the eastern part of the southern hemisphere, several hundred meters from one cluster of the rippling circles they had observed. She, Ben, and Liu went through the routine landing procedures, confirming atmosphere, temperature, and wind velocity before exiting, garbed in their cumbersome protective suits. At least they needn’t resort to face masks and the back-wrenching burden of oxygen canisters. They all drew in deep lungfuls of the fresh air that a stiff breeze flung at them.

  “Good stuff,” Shavva said with a pleased grin. “No L.A., this one.” Suddenly, she felt an obsession for this planet to check out as habitable. From outer space it had had the look of the old Earth pictured in historical tapes. Such reassurance could be bloody, and bloodily, deceptive, she reminded herself, but that didn’t keep her from wishing!

  The grassy plain was springy underfoot, and their heavy boots released sweet, pungent odors from the bruised vegetation. Silently they walked over to the first of the ripples, and Ben and Liu hunkered down to eyeball it. Shavva took out a sampling probe and inserted it deftly into the soil, closing the lid as soon as she had retracted it. Liu poked a plasgloved finger into the hole, fiddled with the dirt that adhered, and dropped the grains carefully back into the hole.

  “Funny. Feels like dirt. Common everyday dirt. Grainy. Rough, uneven.”

  “The empirical test!” Ben chuckled.

  “Let’s get started, guys,” Shavva said. “We’ve only got ten days to do eight people’s work and clear a planet.”

  “A snap!” Ben replied, grinning impudently. “I’ll start by switching on my geologist’s brain.” He moved off to the next arc of the ripple and collected more samples of the discolored ground. “Hey, we’ve got ecological succession here,” he added suddenly, pointing to portions now speckled with new growth.

  Shavva and Liu came to his side to see the promising green tufts.

  “Great wind systems on this planet. They’d be strong enough to carry seed as well as dirt,” Shavva remarked, facing into the stiff breeze. “ ’Nother few decades and this’ll all be grass, or whatever, again. Well, we’ll see what the samples say. Take some right by that new growth, will you, Ben? See what, if anything, is aiding the regeneration.”

  That first day they concentrated on dirt and vegetation samplings from the plain, moving on to other sites throughout the day, working from east to west to utilize as much daylight as possible.

  They took several deep cores in the rich soils of the southern plains and grasslands and, with more effort, drove rock-sampling cores. Inland and south they went, to points that had shown possible ore sites, though the initial metallurgy probe readings did not suggest that the planet had any easily accessible ore or mineral wealth. They made their first nightfall on a vast headland, on the sands of a great cove.

  Marine life seemed to be diverse, with enough interesting variations of exoskeletons and sea vegetation alone to give a marine biologist a lifetime employment. Liu scooped up samples of the red and green algae and found some interesting fungi on the shoreline, some with visible movement. Larger marine forms were occasionally visible in the deeper waters of the cove at dusk, a common feeding time. The explorers spent a pleasant evening taking samples and specimens along the seashore. Liu had found enough dead fronds and branches to build a fire on the sands. Sheddin
g their protective suits, they ate their evening rations around the fire—occasionally managing to capture various types of insectoids drawn to the bright flames.

  “Possibly the pollinators we need,” Liu mused as he peered into the tube of captured insectoids. One had paused in its frantic flight so that its double wings were visible. “Little buggers. I’d feel a lot better, though, if there were bigger things than these to contend with. The probe pictures should have shown us some sort of ruminants or grazers on these grasslands.”

  “What about those large flying things we saw awhile back?” Ben asked, and then snorted. “They looked like airborne barges, squat and fat, and full.”

  “Yeah, but what do they eat? And what eats them?” Liu asked morosely.

  “Maybe we’re between ice ages?” Shavva offered hopefully. She really didn’t want to find fault with the planet, though she knew that was a totally unprofessional attitude to take—and dangerous, as well. But she couldn’t suppress the feeling of “coming home” that was beginning to color all her perceptions of this world.

  Liu snorted, unconvinced. “Ecology is right for ’em. They should be here.”

  “If they are, we’ll find ’em. If we don’t . . .” Shavva shrugged philosophically.

  The next day they ventured as far as the ice cap in the southern hemisphere, taking samples of the frozen crust and as many layers of soil as the deep corer could manage to reach. Then they turned to the winter-held north. By then, Liu had become a bit paranoid about the lack of larger life-forms. So far, all they had seen were some reptiloids, scaled and basking.

  “Quite large enough, thank you,” Shavva had remarked, narrowly escaping the attentions of a ten-centimeter-thick, seven-meter-long example.

  They also saw a great many more of Liu’s flying barges.

  “Wherries, that’s what they were called,” he said suddenly that afternoon. “Vessels that were used to ferry stuff between the English isle and the European continent. Wherries, and call ’em the biggest life-forms seen in the report. Maybe the term’ll stick.” Liu rarely exercised that EEC team prerogative.