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  “Who wants to think what might have happened?” Laura of Ista Weyr demanded, laughing with exaggerated relief.

  “For one thing, we wouldn’t have this champagne,” Irene replied. “That’s for damned sure!”

  “How’d you get the sparkly out of Hegmon, Vergerin?” G’don wanted to know, cradling his glass lovingly.

  “We’re old friends, you might say,” Vergerin replied with a droll grin.

  “Did any wing report injuries?” M’shall asked, his expression turning sober.

  “Nothing above char burns in mine,” K’vin said. And that was what the other wingleaders reported one after another.

  “Well, we’re fragging lucky if that’s all. Though I shudder to think how careless the average rider can get,” M’shall said. “We’ll have to keep them on their toes.”

  “And on their dragons,” his weyrmate replied.

  “Look at it this way,” B’nurrin said, grinning from ear to ear, “we’ve only 6,649 more falls to attend, give or take a few, before it’s all over for another two hundred years.”

  There was a moment of dumbfounded silence as that fact was absorbed, and then B’nurrin ducked away before the wrath of his peers could descend on him.

  “But Fall has begun,” K’vin said softly to Zulaya, standing proudly beside him, “and we have met the enemy again.”

  “What a time to be alive . . .”

  “And riding a dragon!”

  And thus began the Second Pass of Thread on Pern!

  Anne McCaffrey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College, majoring in Slavonic Languages and Literatures. Before her success as a writer, she was involved in theater. She directed the American premiere of Carl Orff’s Ludus de Nato Infante Mirificus, in which she also played a witch. Her first novel, Restoree, was written as a protest against the absurd and unrealistic portrayals of women in science fiction novels in the 50s and early 60s. Ms. McCaffrey is best known, however, for her handling of broader themes and the worlds of her imagination, particularly in her tales of the Talents and the fourteen novels about the Dragonriders of Pern.

  McCaffrey lives in a house of her own design, Dragonhold-Underhill, in County Wicklow, Ireland. Visit the author online at www.annemccaffrey.org.

  Books by Anne McCaffrey

  Decision at Doona

  Dinosaur Planet

  Dinosaur Planet Survivors

  Get Off the Unicorn

  The Lady

  Pegasus in Flight

  Restorree

  The Ship Who Sang

  To Ride Pegasus

  Nimisha’s Ship

  Pegasus in Space

  THE CRYSTAL SINGER BOOKS

  Crystal Singer

  Killashandra

  Crystal Line

  THE DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN® BOOKS

  Dragonflight

  Dragonquest

  The White Dragon

  Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

  Nerilka’s Story

  Dragonsdawn

  The Renegades of Pern

  All the Weyrs of Pern

  The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

  The Dolphins of Pern

  Dragonseye

  The Masterharper of Pern

  The Skies of Pern

  By Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough:

  Powers that Be

  Power Lines

  Power Play

  With Jody Lynn Nye:

  The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern

  Edited by Anne McCaffrey:

  Alchemy and Academe

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  A Del Rey® Book

  Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1997 by Anne McCaffrey

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Published in Great Britain under the title Red Star Rising by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd., in 1996.

  http://www.randomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-92492

  eISBN: 0-345-45400-6

  eISBN: 978-0-345-45400-3

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